Hello All! So here's the deal...
I'm not done with Start of a New Life, but my ability to focus on it comes and goes, and life gets in the way. I'm working on Chapter 31, I promise! That story IS going somewhere, I swear. Lots of moving parts mean that I have to be on my game when I post the next chapter, and you know how meticulous I am. I want to be sure I get it right before I put it up.
Regarding Not All Pets are for Hunting...I'm leaving that story hanging too, because I feel like it's incomplete and needs to be wrapped up. At times I do focus my attention there and I've considered just marking it Complete, but...it just doesn't feel that way to me, and I find myself working on another chapter here and there, just haven't decided how to end it yet. So stay tuned!
This new story isn't new for me, it's one of the ones I'd started, gotten a good way into, then abandoned for the better storyline of Chosen. I've had a lot of requests to post the incomplete stories that led to my settling on Chosen, and this is one of them. There might be sections and scenarios that are familiar to my readers, sort of an insight to how I write, sometimes stealing an idea from one story to incorporate it into another. As a matter of fact, there's a major steal used in Pets in this first chapter.
I posted two sections/chapters to start with, to help get you into the story and grounded. This story feels like it should be fast paced to me, with short chapters to keep up the energy level, in a totally different style than Chosen/Start or Pets. As with any story I post, toss out what I've established in my other stories and take this one on its own merit, without the culture/world I've created elsewhere. Read it and let me know what you think!
Disclaimer for this story: Lots of bad language and attempted rape eventually. A ton of misogynistic BS...hell, it's the military! I don't own Predator(s) and I'm not making any money off this fanfic. Give me reviews and that will give me the green light to give you more chapters, that's the deal! :)
I was a good way up the treacherous, rocky trail, very near the summit, when I heard a familiar, rapid ticking that made me freeze, then look up.
A familiar humongous humanoid alien was perched on a large boulder at the side of the trail ahead, crouched down on his haunches, his elbows sticking out on either side of him as he rested his gauntlet-covered forearms on his wide-spread armored thighs. He was hunched, some of his thick banded hairs swinging in the breeze, and as I stared he raised his right hand, clawed pointer finger extended upward, then he shook it back and forth. The universal no-no-no. Mother. Fucker.
"Aw, fuck," I whined.
He trilled then jumped down off the house-sized boulder, his landing deliberately heavy. Believe me, I noticed. If he'd wanted to, he could be silent. He was broadcasting warning to me. To back it up, he lifted his right hand and extended the twin serrated blades housed in his right gauntlet. They flashed in the sunlight, each two feet long and wickedly sharpened to a razor's edge. His mood was definitely not happy to see me...then again, it never was.
His opposite hand, the one not clenched in a fist and backed by blades, extended toward me, palm-up. He wagged his fingers and I sighed, then lifted the pulse rifle and handed it over. Disarmed, I scowled as he tossed his head, motioning with his chin that I should head back down the path.
"Fuckin Lurch," I muttered, but turned and started to retrace my steps, painfully aware of the seven and a half foot tall, heavily muscled and armed alien behind me.
There was a pattern to this. Took awhile but we were starting to catch on. Me and the other soldiers from my squad, I mean. Kidnapped and held captive in a small remote encampment maybe two miles from the cliff face I'd just been intercepted from climbing. We were closely guarded by our captors, except for those times when they just up and disappeared, leaving us the pulse rifles they'd confiscated when they'd first captured us. The first time that had happened we'd formed up and made our way from the camp, creeping through the surrounding jungle. We'd trekked maybe an hour before we were set upon and attacked, again by these aggressive and predatory aliens. That was when we'd discovered that our pulse rifles were set their lowest power, a charge that would stun but not kill. Nothing we did could increase the power back to maximum.
Didn't matter, though. One by one we were disarmed and recaptured, then forced to march back to the encampment we'd come from. The men in the unit were noticeably more beaten up than the females, I'd noticed, though the one who had taken me out with a flying fucking tackle hadn't been all that gentle about it. The worst injury, to a private named Benson, was a concussion and a badly strained knee, and the aliens had shocked us all by actually treating him. There were four of them, all in the seven foot range. Four that had taken out a heavily armed and experienced sixteen-soldier squad in ten minutes.
The process repeated itself, over and over. On any random day they would slip into the jungle, leaving our modified pulse rifles behind. Whether we chose to stay or head out, we'd come to learn that attack was imminent. And time and familiarity with our captors made us finally realize that they weren't the ones who would hunt us after that first trial run; it would always be a band of smaller ones. Noticeably clumsier. Prone to mistakes that meant that sometimes one of us would get lucky and get a shot off.
"It's a game," Reece announced one day as we sat around the fire, nursing the wounds of the most recent attack. "Like paintball, see? And we're always the home team."
"Tell that to my fucking ribs," Carter, lying on his back, had groaned.
But Reece had been right, somewhat. It wasn't a game; we were being used as training aids for predatory extraterrestrials who enjoyed the hunt and chase. Tended by keepers who provided us with meat and watched over us to ensure we didn't wander off when they didn't want us to. Those keepers would disappear once the younger ones were situated and ready for the experience of hunting oomans, as they called us. The keepers presided over the playing field, each of the larger, and apparently older and more experienced predatory aliens responsible for four of us. They kept an eye out, made sure we weren't beaten too badly, and gathered up any strays, herding them back to the camp when the hunt was over.
Like me. Our squad had switched strategies, evolving our approach in an attempt to escape this hellish Groundhog Day existence. Since I was the best runner we had, the others broke off into small groups to engage the enemy of the day, providing cover and distraction for me so I could slip off. The idea was that I could escape and sound the alarm, hopefully bringing the calvary down on these fucking bastard's heads.
I was getting better at it. My goal today had been to make it to the summit of the cliff I'd been climbing, in the hope that I could get a better lay of the land to help me pick a direction to head in the next time. Unfortunately, the dark-skinned bastard assigned to be my keeper was just a little bit better than me. Top it off, I suspected that he was wise to me, too. First foray I had attempted, I'd made it close to four clicks before he found me. Now he was doing it inside two. I had a sneaking suspicion that I was his 'special case' and because of that, he kept a closer eye on me than he did the other three he was responsible for. I hoped I was making his life as much of a living hell as he was making of mine.
I slipped on the loose rock underfoot, sending a cascade of scree down the steep trail ahead of me. Kept my balance, though. I didn't bother to turn around and look for my keeper; he was around somewhere. Watching. They had technology that was beyond my understanding, including the ability to cloak themselves, somehow bending light around their massive forms and pretty much becoming invisible to the human eye. He might be camouflaged, he might not. He might be following right behind me or somewhere off to either side. Fucker was elusive that way. Dead silent, too, when he wanted to be. It was frustrating because it made me feel like I was willingly heading back to camp under the pretense of a threat that didn't exist.
The trail leveled out some and I stepped off it, to the side. Time to make sure that my keeper hadn't already returned to camp, confident that I'd been properly trained like a good little dog and I would be along in short order. Under the pretense of catching my breath I scanned the treetops. This part of the path was just above the canopy, and the breeze was a relief from the suffocating, wet heat beneath it. I raised my face to the sun and slicked my hair back, lifting it off my damp neck.
There was a low growl to my right and I stilled for just a second, then continued to fan my hand-held ponytail. Like the rest of the unit, I'd become familiar with the vocalizations of our keepers, enough to differentiate their sounds from those of the jungle's native inhabitants. They had a language, an aggressive and angry-sounding jumble of clicks and growls and grunts, with occasional clear consonants. There was a pecking order, too. The one growling at me right now ranked either at the top of the heap or in the number two spot.
Hard to tell which was boss, him or Loco Marrón, the brownest one. Loco was the keeper of Ramirez's group of four soldiers, Ramirez being one of the four females in the squad. The girl party had been deliberately broken up, one female in each group. We got preferential treatment, too, much to Ramirez and Guerrero's disgust. Two chicks I was careful not to piss off. Both were harder than any man in the squad, and their respective keepers' diligence in making sure that the younger predatory aliens didn't go too hard on them in particular was a bone of contention. The men were roughed up, and only if it got ugly enough would a keeper give a grunt or a bark that signaled the younger ones to knock it off. A female getting roughed up, however, resulted in direct, physical intervention. Ramirez had had the experience of Loco Marrón backhanding a younger alien-in-training off her when he decided to sit on her to subdue her. The sitter had probably had enough of being bitten even after he'd disarmed her; Ramirez was fucking ferocious in a fight. After sending the sitter flying, the big brown predator had extended a hand to Ramirez, helping her to her feet while he chortled in obvious amusement. She'd taken to calling him Crazy Brown, or in her language, Loco Marrón.
"Pyode amedha," my keeper grumbled from somewhere behind me with a voice like a glacier scraping over granite, and just as slow. "Ki'cte."
The other three could speak english, somewhat. Hell, Loco Marrón sometimes entertained himself with rough spanish just to piss Ramirez off. Mine, however, insisted on speaking his native tongue, if he bothered to even address me at all.
"Growl-click-growl," I snarked. Only I didn't actually say it, I growled, clicked my cheek and tongue, then growled again. "Right back atcha." Stupid, stupid girl.
My short-tempered keeper took a step to my side, then grabbed the front of my fatigues one handed, lifted me off my feet, and spun then slammed me backward into the rocky cliff face. Hard. I clenched my teeth in a pained snarl as stars dotted my vision and my head pounded from the impact. The throbbing growl in my face didn't help, either, as I was held high enough so my keeper could shove his masked face right in front of mine.
"R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Find-out-what-it-means-to-me," Carter's voice sang out.
Ah yes, their other delightful talent. They surreptitiously recorded our conversations, apparently analyzed them for content, then played them back when they wanted to communicate something to us that they wanted to be sure we understood. Seemed to me that fucking Carter was the source of most of the taunts they used. Fucking assclown that he was, he provided them a ton of content.
Satisfied the lesson had been driven home, he dropped me. Just opened his hand and stepped back without warning to give me an unexpected and unwelcome three-foot freefall. Not ready for it, I twisted my ankle under me when I hit and went to my ass with a squeal of pain.
I huffed for a moment to catch my breath, trying to clear the wonkiness out of my head, flexing my foot to find out how badly my ankle was injured. Fucking embarrassing as shit. Three hundred some-odd pounds of meat and muscle, and not a funny bone in him anywhere, unless he was mocking me.
He growled, then rocked his weight to one foot, lifting the other to poke at me with the horrendous claws on his toes. "Break's over, hermana," Ramirez's voice said. She and Guerrero referred to us other two girls as 'sister' in spanish. To hear that word being directed from my keeper to me was infuriating but I held my tongue, got my feet under me, and stood.
Unable to help myself, I muttered, "Sí, novio," then headed back for the path down. He actually trilled in amusement, letting me know that he'd understood my 'yes, sweetheart'.
My ankle twinged each time I put weight on it, and I struggled to keep my balance without trying to look like I was in pain. Fucking monster. I had to bite my lip when the loose footing made me dance a bit to keep my balance, adding insult to injury and further pissing my ankle off.
When we finally hit the jungle I had to sit on the ledge I'd been able to jump up to on my way up the cliff, easing myself down instead of jumping off it like I would have if I'd had two uninjured legs. All that was left was a couple mile hike through dense jungle, challenge enough when I was sound and not lame. I straightened my spine and headed out. No telling where my keeper had gone off to, but I wasn't stupid enough to try his patience and force him to reveal himself again. I simply forged my way through the dense foliage, not bothering to skirt the puddles of rancid water, working through deadfalls and snags with the determination and tenacity that was the trademark of my sheer, bull-headed stubbornness.
It was dusk by the time I limped my way into the encampment, freezing and gaping when I spotted my keeper on the far side of the night's bonfire in the clearing. Seeing him gave me pause and made me wonder to myself if I hadn't made the trek alone, if he hadn't been sitting here for four hours relaxing while I busted my ass to get here, thinking I was being shadowed the whole way.
"What happened to you, hermana?" Ramirez asked, giving me a once-over as she rose from her log by the fire.
"Don't call me that," I snapped. She recoiled as I tromped past her, my fists clenched.
"Somebody's in a mood," Carter mocked.
"Shut. Up." I stood near the fire, glaring over the tall, flickering flames at the dark-skinned predator chatting with Loco Marrón on the far side of it.
"Flic. Don't do that," Patty whispered to me, the fourth female in our squad. I ignored her.
"Get some eats," our sergeant chimed in, his voice harder, bordering on a command.
I huffed and gave in. Discipline was everything, right? If it broke down we'd be in real trouble. The Sarge was a good guy trapped in this nightmare with us and trying to maintain his authority. I scanned and found a hunk of cooked meat set aside from tonight's meal. My portion. No doubt it was cold and greasy by now.
I cursed the black sonuvabitch alien as I limped stoically to the makeshift table and snatched the meat up in my dirty, scuffed hands, then set to devouring it. The rest left me alone for now. They'd seen the limp, they'd noticed the delay, they'd picked up on the animosity. No doubt they'd demand a debrief of the events of my day, the Sarge especially. Wanting to know how far I'd gotten this time, if I'd seen anything.
I turned to face the fire as I stood there chewing. Carter had a gash on his temple and a nice shiner working its way in below his left eye. Benson was flexing his right shoulder slowly, his opposite hand on it like it was hurting him. Sender was lying on his back in front of the log that Ramirez and Guerrero were sitting on. KC was nursing the ribs on his left side. Another day, another pounding. I wondered how much more we could take.
A lot, probably. I could see evidence of alien medicine on Carter's face, a shiny clear coating that went on as a liquid and hardened into a flexible bandage. No doubt the rest had been treated for their various injuries, too. If someone was hurt too badly they were usually held back and left unmolested at the camp during the next hunt. I had a bad feeling we were in this for the long haul.
"Need a spotter," I announced, gimping my way back toward the fire. Patty met my eyes, then nodded and rose from her spot. Everyone used spotters for toileting and bathing, never leaving sight of the others without having at least one member of the team in tow. Besides the damned keepers there was plenty in the jungle to worry about.
Patty followed me the short distance down the worn trail to the river, sitting on the bank while I worked off my heavy boots, then waded in fully dressed. Hell, I had to wash my clothes anyway, and this was as good a way as any to get the process started.
"What's with the limp?" Patty finally asked, after I came back up and slicked my hair back after ducking under, holding my breath for a good minute and feeling the current flowing strongly around and past me. The cool water felt good on my skin, and as I moved closer to her I started undressing to properly rinse my filthy and sweat-stained clothing.
"Fucking keeper. Picked me up and dropped me," I said irritably.
"That was nice of him," she said dryly, and I could see her smile in the bright moonlight. Thank god for the river; it was the only nearby place to escape the confinement of the canopy and ease the claustrophobic feeling the jungle could give you. "What'd you do to piss him off?" she wanted to know.
"Who says I pissed him off?"
"They don't put their hands on you unless you do or say something particularly stupid," Patty knew, referring specifically to our keepers, not the younger ones of their kind who were there to learn how to hunt us. "So which was it? Did you do something, or say something?"
"I might have mocked his clicking and growling," I admitted, shirt finally off. I worked it underwater, refusing to look at her.
"Oh, good one," she teased me.
"Here. Catch." I tossed her my sopped, balled-up shirt then started working my pants down to give them the same treatment. "How'd the hunt go?"
"Not too bad," she said, rising to her feet and shaking my shirt out. "We got four of them this time. Sarge thinks that breaking up into the smaller groups seems to work better. 'Specially when we separate the fours. How far'd you get?"
"Almost to the summit."
'The fours' referred to the breakdown of our squad amongst our keepers: three males and one female to each keeper. Once we figured that out, Sarge started breaking the fours up to keep the overseers busy monitoring their charges, who were sometimes spread out over a couple of miles of jungle. Multiple units that carefully broke up the responsibilities of each keeper, each picking a compass point and running hell-bent-for-leather in that direction to create distraction. Problem was, the younger aliens brought in to hunt us were busy doing just that, ambushing and bogging down different units by attacking them, keeping them from getting too far.
By 'got four', I knew that Patty was saying that four had been shot by our powered-down pulse rifles. Mock kill-shots, specifically. Our keepers were also the referees for the hunt, determining the severity of the injuries on both sides. If we managed to shoot a hunter and incapacitate him, he was taken out of the hunt, reducing the numbers against us.
"I got an idea," I said to Patty, then looked at her. She nodded, then held out her hands, ready to catch my fatigue pants. Other than that she didn't ask and I didn't tell. We'd all learned our lesson talking freely where we could be overheard by the keepers. They were most definitely not on our side in this thing.
I finally left the cool refreshment of the river, wearing nothing but a tank top and boy shorts. The limp was definitely worse outside the ankle support provided by my boots. I hoped the next hunt wasn't for awhile; as long as I was lame I couldn't achieve my primary objective: to scatter from the rest and search for a way out. It required speed and stealth, two things a bum ankle took away from me.
"Whyn'cha keep that foot in there awhile?" Patty suggested, and I decided that was a good idea. I found a nice flat rock near the edge of the water and settled down while she hung my shirt and pants and socks on a nearby branch. They wouldn't dry; nothing ever dried in the jungle. At the very least they'd go from soaking wet to damp, the best I could hope for.
"When'd my bane show up at camp?" I wanted to know. The keepers were the banes of our existence, and I was one of many who referred to mine as my bane. We had plenty of nicknames for them, none complimentary.
"Bout two minutes before you limped your way in."
I grunted and nodded. So he had shadowed me, then. If Patty had told me he'd shown up three hours before I'd gotten there, I'd be pissed. And even more inclined to press my luck during the next hunt.
We stayed another half hour or so, then blindly made our way back down the path toward camp. The thought of slipping away in the dark never crossed our minds, since the keepers had proven themselves to be not only nocturnal, but very good in the dark.
Carter wolf whistled after I hung my stuff and went to stand near the fire again, and Sarge snapped at him to stow it. To be honest, I barely noticed. If there was an opportunity to say or do something offensive, stupid or obvious, Carter would be the first to say it or do it. I was still wearing damp underthings, though they weren't sexy by any stretch of the imagination. Especially not with the permanent sweat stains worked into the cotton. We were all grimy, even fresh from the river. There wasn't any soap around, much less laundry detergent. I wondered what would happen when our clothes finally surrendered to the jungle and just fell apart. Even worse was the lack of dry socks. We were all on alert for any sign of a rash or a fungus, most especially on our feet. Like me right now, most us had taken to walking around camp barefoot in an attempt to toughen up our soles in anticipation of the day when wearing boots was no longer an option.
The keepers were having what seemed to be a rather heated discussion on the far side of the fire and I refocussed my attention to watch. Loco Marrón versus my dark-skinned asshole keeper, what a surprise. This was why we couldn't figure out which one of them was in charge; it seemed like authority slipped back and forth between them.
Loco growled, then looked at me. His mask was more ornate than the others', carved with spirals and flourishes, though marked and pitted like it had seen a lot of years and a lot of use. He looked away and started around the fire and the circle of soldiers sitting around it, stopping in front of me. When I stared defiantly up at him he pointed to my leg. Ah, he'd noticed the limp. How nice.
"Ankle's wonky," I informed him, being deliberately passive-aggressive in my vagueness. Their grasp of the english language, while commendable, was nowhere near fluent. I knew a word like 'wonky' would go right over his head.
"Sit," he said on a growling exhalation. I sighed and gave in, Ramirez and Guerrero making room for me on the log, and Loco followed me, then sank into a crouch in front of me. Being slightly taller than my keeper, his crouch pretty much put him just above my face level from my seat on the thick tree trunk.
And speaking of the asshole, here he was, broadcasting tension as he deliberately closed in while Loco's huge, hot hand wrapped around my calf to lift my leg. I glared up at my keeper as he paused next to Loco and growled, letting the sound end in a low rumble. Still holding my leg, Loco looked at him and said something that started another back and forth. Not funny, and I didn't want to be sitting in the middle of it with my leg in Loco's steadily tightening hand.
He relented, carefully letting my leg back down then rising to his feet. He chuffed and gestured dismissively at me, a fling of his arm, then turned and stalked off. My keeper watched him go, then took his place, assuming a crouch and taking me by the calf. I held myself rigid and stayed quiet a moment, taking in his heat, his size, the faint whiff of coffee rolling off him while he ignored everything but the ankle he'd screwed up for me. From experience I knew that if he reeked like a Starbucks it meant that he was in a foul mood; the barest hint of his coffee smell meant that he wasn't feeling particularly temperamental. For the moment.
"Hola, novio," I said quietly, daring to put a little venom in my tone. Ramirez nudged me with her elbow.
"You named him sweetheart?" Guerrero asked, leaning around Ramirez to look at me, her expression incredulous.
"No, that's not his name," I said, then hissed when he started manipulating my foot. His touch, remarkably, was gentle, his huge clawed hands rough and callused and backed by immense strength.
"Okay, taking bets!" Carter announced. "I say Flic's gonna be the first one to fuck one of these guys." A few others shouted him down and told him to shut up and he leered at me stupidly before subsiding.
"If I was gonna give him a name," I said flatly, "It would be the first thing I always say when I see him."
"Yeah? What's that?" Guerrero asked.
"Aw fuck." The keeper attached to my leg actually looked up and trilled in amusement before going back to torturing me. "See, he knows."
"Knew your name for him would involve the word fuck somehow. Just proves my point," Carter said smugly.
"You know...why don't you spend your time trying to figure out how to get your own dick in your mouth, Carter?" I snapped. "Maybe it'll take your mind off sex for five minutes."
"Knock it off," the Sarge snapped, his tone flat with warning, his dark face shiny with sweat as he delivered the stink-eye to Carter, then me, before glancing at my keeper.
"Damn. If I could do that I wouldn't be in this man's army," Carter muttered. "Never woulda left my bedroom in my mama's house."
"They'd hafta surgically remove your mouth from-"
"Enough, I said!" Sarge barked, raising his voice and cutting Benson off.
There was some fading snickering, then my keeper did something to my ankle that hurt like hell. "Yow, hey!" I yelped, trying to pull away. He held tight to my calf and made that ticking noise, then looked off to the side. Loco Marrón was still standing nearby and my torturer said something to him, then shook his huge head.
Oh god, they're going to put me down like a wounded farm animal, was my first thought. The sudden tension that rippled through my squad-mates told me they were thinking the same thing. It was all the fault of that fucking dark-skinned keeper, I thought, and glared darkly at him as he continued to converse with Loco Marrón.
I could do something, I thought. Last act of defiance. Create a distraction. He vastly outweighed me and his balance was unshakable, but just right now he'd lowered his center of gravity to squat in front of me. If I leapt at him, caught him off-guard and knocked him backwards-
"Stand down, soldier," Sarge said quietly. His words not only distracted me from my thoughts and made me look at him; they attracted the attention of my keeper. Aw Fuck was certainly living up to the name I'd given him, as he looked from the Sarge to me, then trilled, let go of my leg, and chucked me roughly under the chin as he rose powerfully to his full height.
"Hunt in mor-ning. Be-fore light," Loco announced to everyone in general. English words with more than one consonant were broken into separate words by him and his slow, careful speech, forcing us to listen attentively. Lifting his massively muscled arm, he pointed to Benson and said, "You," then Sender, "you," then KC, "you," then me, "you. Stay." Meaning, the four of us were granted a reprieve for the next hunt, given a pass to remain in camp and nurse our wounds. It solidified my suspicion that they were making an effort to keep us alive, intending to use us as training target dummies for a good long while.
Aw Fuck barked something angrier-sounding than usual at Loco, gesturing at me. Loco fired back. The other two keepers, as was their habit, stayed the hell out of the dispute. Aw Fuck stepped away from me, he and Loco Marrón heading back around for the opposite side of the fire, still hissing and clicking in disagreement.
"I think Carter might have a point, hermana," Ramirez said, leaning over to whisper in my ear. "The black one has the hots for you. Watch your back."
I twisted to point my glare at her. "The fuck, Ramirez?" I demanded in a heated whisper. She held up a hand to placate me, her eyes quickly sweeping our squad-mates, then checking the location of the four keepers.
"No offense," she breathed. "I think Loco's got his sights set on me, too. The Green Meanie on Guerrero. Reddy Eddie on chica blanca. I suppose it doesn't only get lonely in the jungle for us, compadre."
"Keep me out of your sick fantasies," I snapped, still keeping my voice low so that only she could hear me. She shrugged, closing her dark eyes and pressing her lips together as she did, telling me my opinion didn't bother her.
"He followed you and chica blanca to the river before," she whispered. White girl was Patty. Didn't come much whiter than Irish. I was accepted into Ramirez and Guerrero's tough-girl clique probably for my café au lait mulatto coloring more than anything else, since Patty was just as capable a soldier as I was. Plus Patty had the bright blue eyes while I had the greenish-brown hazel that bordered on acceptable, as far as the Latino girls were concerned.
"So?" I demanded.
She shrugged again. "He follows you everywhere."
"Maybe I'm more trouble than Nubby, Calm and Tox," I pointed out, the three male responsibilities of my particular keeper. Ramirez snorted and smiled.
"You're not. Trust me," she said flatly.
True, damn her. The minute the words had come out of my mouth I'd regretted them. Nubby was a fucking two hundred fifty pound monster, capable of carrying a mini-gun through the jungle. Calm was our munitions expert, placid on the surface and probably akin to a serial killer beneath. And Tox was our sniper, an out and out madman. I'd probably been lumped in with the three most lethal males in our squad, I suddenly realized. All Aw Fuck's responsibility, instead of spread out amongst all four keepers. I supposed, as I thought about it, that said something for Aw Fuck's capabilities then, didn't it?
"He tried to break my fucking back," I said to Ramirez, angrier now.
"Probably pissed and thinking you were trying to run away."
"Well, duh."
"Look at it from his point of view, hermana."
"You mean your point of view."
"I think it's one and the same. Just sayin'." With that, Ramirez turned away from me on the log and leaned into Guerrero, leaving me pissed off and stewing in my own juices.
Bitch, I thought, unkindly. My eyes lifted over the flames and I saw the whole of Aw Fuck's expressionless mask, meaning he might be looking at me. Argument with Loco Marrón over, apparently. I stewed, wondering what it had been about. Me, obviously, but what about me? I reviewed the sequence of events in my mind, all conjecture and speculation on my part.
What didn't sit well with me was the fact that there were four females in our squad, and four whatever-they-were. Each keeper, all clearly male, was given responsibility for one female. What if Ramirez was right? They were aliens, living on foreign soil, away from females of their own kind. And their concessions regarding the four females in our squad were obvious to everyone. Indisputable. I couldn't help but wonder, if I were male instead of female, if my little twisted ankle would qualify me for a break from the next hunt. Carter with his bashed-in face wasn't given a break. If my face was as busted up as his, would I be sidelined? I had a sneaking suspicion that yes, I would.
"So are you saying," I whispered, leaning into Ramirez, "that if we girls play our cards right, we might find a weakness?"
"I like what you're thinking, hermana. Talk to me," Ramirez hissed back, and Guerrero leaned in closer to hear.
"I was thinking...if we change the line-up of our squads, put all the girls in one group..." I said.
"They would follow us," Guerrero breathed. "Not the guys."
"Who's the fastest besides me?" I asked.
"Tox. Not acceptable," Ramirez said quickly, dismissing him. "Fucking Carter. I don't know if I want to put my life in his hands. At least not until you give him a direction to run in."
"Can't yet. Fucker didn't let me get to the summit." I'd climbed the cliff to try and get a sense of which direction would be best, though it hadn't been a guarantee I'd see anything other than the endless jungle. We'd been dropped in by chopper and the best the Sarge could tell me was to check out the west. Aw Fuck had intervened and stopped me from being able to properly scout the lay of the land from a high vantage point. I'd been counting on making it next time. Now I was sidelined from the next hunt with a bum ankle, thanks to him.
Stand down, soldier, my mind said, echoing Sarge's words. I'd mouthed off at Aw Fuck. Had I known that while he might choose to not converse in english it didn't mean that he didn't understand the language when he heard it...lesson learned, I told myself, and deflated. I'd underestimated my adversary. Time to step up my game.