Trilling, he couldn't make sense of 'dome' as the symbols appeared and before he could access his visual character map the doors were fully open and the scent of old blood bathed his sensors.
Old blood and other… things. Lots of blood, Ooman by the scent along with Ooman bodily fluids and mixed heavily with the stench of hard meats, black Ooman powder from their projectile weapons and something earthy that he couldn't place. Trilling, Gwan'Thwei stepped halfway out of the car and took a deeper breath of air, chuffing.
The original scents he registered weren't a surprise, but this earthy one was. It was dark, aromatic, and bitter with a faint smoky quality that made him think of liquid heat, steam, and energy. Intrigued, the Young Blood took the final step outside the elevator car and stood still to survey as the ride behind him eerily rocked, freed of his weight.
The space appeared large, more like a big room than a hallway but it was completely destroyed, and without light, save for the huge compression glass dome that soared overhead. The floor was cushioned by something slightly soft and it appeared to hold heat as his thermal scan glowed for no particular reason that he could see.
All around him, furniture was overturned. There were desks, chairs, side tables, and broken light fixtures with many thin sheets of Ooman paper scattered about. A couple potted plants had been knocked over too; their rich soil fanned and sprayed out in various directions.
Then there were the bodies. Adult Ooman's lying haphazardly scattered in every direction he panned; some in full display, already in rigor and reeking of death while others only showed a peep of legs behind a desk or a hand behind an open doorway along the wall to either side of him. Death lived on this floor and Gwan'Thwei shuddered, huffing behind his mask as he shook his dreads and kept his blades out.
He couldn't detect any pups on this Level and with the dome overhead, he surmised that this was as high as the structure went. There seemed to be so many papers, so many thin metal cabinets with drawers that it puzzled him. He even managed to spy quite a few inner office communication devices, some beeping with a high pitched noise while others lay silent off their bases, spattered in blood. The scents here were old, as if the conflicts that rendered this Level destroyed had happened some time ago. A first strike?
The hard meats couldn't possibly be that intelligent. Gwan'Thwei wanted to discard that theory based on his training but he couldn't quite seem to let it go entirely. It made no sense. The signal his Elder had eavesdropped on reported a hard meat infestation here due to a rescue and salvage attempt on a crashed ship over one thousand noks away to the north. The trip alone for Ooman's would be dangerous, let alone if they'd found anything to sort through like debris and haul back, such as bodies or worse, hard meat eggs.
Cautiously, Gwan'Thwei stepped through the large space, thankful that the soft floor covering registered no sound of his progress as he veered off to the left. He glanced over his shoulder a time or two, keeping the elevator in sight as its door was still wide open. That was unusual since it seemed to close after a time but it didn't anymore. He'd done more damage to it than he'd thought which could be a problem. Rumbling, he panned around again but could detect no movement or heartbeats. If a hard meat accessed his elevator…
No, that was unlikely. The broken vent panels along the wall suggested that they'd infiltrated that way from the lower floors where they would've been brought in. Which Level would have housed them though? The impregnated bodies and the eggs? It could be any of them yet it still didn't explain why the hard meats had charged up here to the top level first. It made no sense.
The pups were the most likely targets, they were on the lower floors. Such small warm blooded mammals would've been easy pickings for the hard meats and their face huggers so why didn't he see anything like this on the floors he'd previously been on? What were they up to?
A sense of apprehension slowly blanketed Gwan'Thwei as his dreads rose and he growled almost silently behind his mask. Something wasn't right here. Something was wrong. He was too young and too new to the Hunt to figure it out but he knew enough to trigger his instincts and they screamed at him that his team was in trouble.
Once he'd progressed halfway down the left hall, almost out of sight of the large main room with the elevator still clearly at his back he paused and flicked a mandible to open his com link to the Elder.
He wasn't used to waiting this long as a low key mechanical beep kept sounding every few seconds, signaling his call was still trying to go through but as of yet not received. Trilling, Gwan'Thwei knelt down next to the body of an older Ooman female who lay prone on her stomach, her back sporting a large bladed tail hole and much blood as he wondered if his Elder was currently speaking to someone else.
Whatever a team mate had found surely couldn't compare to this. Finding out that pups had over run the facility had been enough of a shock to him and probably to the others but finding a large quantity of dead older adults who had been left for days had to be a clue. It was the older part that bothered Gwan'Thwei the most.
The Ooman woman on her stomach bore so many signs of advanced age, clearly a superior to the pups he'd encountered on the lower level. She was round with fat stores, her face lined with wrinkled folds of skin and even the fur on her head seemed thin and threadbare. An internal scan showed the same wear on her organs. Advanced calcification, swelling in some joints and an inactive chemical signature in her reproductive region testified that she had been an Elder.
She wore a thin fabric covering from her neck to her knees with sleeves that stopped at the elbows. Trilling, Gwan'Thwei reached out to inspect both of the Ooman's hands, finding them empty of any weapons yet slightly gnarled and thickened with disease. A hard meat had definitely ended her, a clean strike through her back directly over her shredded, halved heart. Death would have been instantaneous.
Lifting his head, several more bodies were visible all around. Some were sticking out of various doorways, others were under more furniture or simply laying crumpled in the hall out in the open. They all appeared to be older, like the Ooman female he'd just inspected. Were they the Bearers of the pups? It didn't seem likely, given the age of the bodies but if not Bearers then what?
Rumbling when his Elder still failed to accept his communication, Gwan'Thwei disconnected and rose fluidly to his feet to continue exploring, keeping half an eye on the elevator behind him.
He couldn't find any male Ooman's among the dead, they were all older females. That was strange. Even on Prime, there eventually came a time in a Female's life where she was instructed by males in order to get used to them and learn how to socialize, how to influence and wield power but evidently not here. Why? This complex was strange.
A scuttling noise to the right had Gwan'Thwei holding his breath and standing stock still, his sensors tracking the sound as it tapped, dragged, scraped, and rapidly pattered around a series of desks. There were a variety of work stations, little desks and chairs with computers set up yet they were sectioned off from the ones on either side by some wall like material, creating cubes almost.
He couldn't see anything as of yet, but the sound kept coming closer. A face hugger probably and where there was one, there were others. There had to be life on this Level for them to be around. The dead had been gone for days so they should have avoided coming here.
Duplicate scuttling noises came from the same area, some high, and others low but there were at least five of them roaming around the debris and equipment. Thanking Paya that he'd left his blades extended, Gwan'Thwei was about to turn down the aisle to hunt them down when a snorting like noise from a partially closed door a few feet in front of him sounded. His eyes darted that way even if his head didn't in time to see a shadow pass beyond the thin sliver of window in the door, bright green like an adult hard meat in filter.
Slanting a last glance to the area the face huggers moved in, Gwan'Thwei cloaked before slowly stalking towards the door, pausing as another hard meat noise came to him from down the hall and around a sharp bend to the right. If they were still here along with face huggers, some Ooman's had to be alive and hiding. There'd be no reason for them to patrol here otherwise, so he couldn't blindly attack anything that moved in case it was Ooman.
His Hunt had suddenly become tricky, yet Gwan'Thwei trembled in thirst for the challenge. If Ooman's had lasted this long on this Level or even stumbled up on it like he had, they had to be smart and worthy of honor. It was no small feat to survive hard meats.
Making sure to keep his steps light and stealthy, he slowly closed in on the partially opened door. He couldn't see much else through the sliver of window from the angle but it was open enough to let him skirt through sideways. The small office space was cramped with a large wooden desk to the right along with more metal cabinets with drawers. A bank of three windows broke up the far wall and to the left was a shallow bench with rectangular pictures hanging in a row.
Behind the desk however, an Ooman female was currently cocooned behind a drop down holo board. Thick resin like mucus plastered her up off her feet, halfway up the wall with only the tips of her boots and hands showing as a face hugger readjusted its grip on her head.
The light from the moons outside bathed the scene in an eerie whitish gray. Gwan'Thwei couldn't see that as an Ooman could, but the light did register a paler blue in his thermal scan while the trapped Ooman continued to lose body heat through the top of her hanging head. She couldn't breathe, which meant that the huggers impregnation was successful and it simply waited to die before dropping off.
The scent of blood was thick in this small room. The Ooman must have fought valiantly but it hadn't been enough. From an internal scan he could tell that she was a young adult, perhaps twenty-three or twenty-four Ooman years in age. Such a waste.
The hard meat currently clung to the ceiling directly in front of the female, watching her from upside down as its tail whipped about in a frenzy of excitement. It was probably the one to subdue the female and cocoon her, its job now to await the birth of its sibling. A deeper scan showed Gwan'Thwei the embryo as it had attached to the Ooman's descending aorta, burrowing through with fibrous cord tissue to tap into her blood supply, feeding from it as the tiny heartbeat finally kicked up a fluttery, fast rhythm.
It's very tiny limbs, barely buds on his scan flexed and moved as it wriggled and situated itself while it's embryonic sac slowly formed. At first like a second skin on the tiny alien until fluid started to fill in, expanding, making a pseudo womb just above the Ooman diaphragm. The face hugger convulsed again, pumping in the last of the fluid through a thin, needle like tubule of injection. The last thing it left was a yolk of glowing blue about twice the size of the fetus, a congealed mass of nutrition that would be devoured until the baby alien was strong enough and ready to burst free.
Gwan'Thwei had never before seen the process in this stage and it sickened him to his core. During his Chiva, he'd seen two Ooman's impregnated and they both acted pained afterwards, breathing heavily as if starved and rubbing their chest from the pressure of all that was implanted inside. He couldn't imagine a fate like that for him. It was too late to help this Ooman though. He could do nothing.
The face hugger finally loosened its grip, dropping off onto the ground on its back with its long spindly legs curled inwards and its tail stretched out in the death pose when he finally struck. Flashing forward, he caught the hard meats whipping tail and flung it back against the far wall following fast on its heels with his blades, punching right through its chest and nailing it to the studs.
It shrieked a deafening wail, flailing with its limbs as it slowly died, its heart cleaved and unable to beat. Gwan'Thwei growled in its face defiantly, pinning it as much with his blades as his body as it twitched and gasped before finally falling limp with its head down. Drool pattering onto the soft floor, he stepped back with a grunt and retracted his blades with a metallic snick before flinging the blood from them towards the door as it started to hiss.
Disturbing, disgusting bugs. He'd heard the Ooman's on his Chiva call them that, they'd been soldiers. They hadn't carried any face mask with them and thus were vulnerable unlike him. They hadn't any idea what they faced but they were males. Deeper set into their history of trips to Earth, females went willingly to their death as hosts. It was an honor for them, told by his own ancestors in order to start the Hunt. Gwan'Thwei disagreed.
In his society, Females were revered. Ferocious, extremely intelligent and the greatest asset that they had. Yet Ooman's had sacrificed their own females like cattle to ensure that the aliens they birthed were worthy enough for the Hunt. Smart, shrewd, cunning, and strong willed. Males could be classified as such too. The male he'd impaled and remembered so fondly had been just that. Why not him?
The hard meat body dropped to the floor, its limbs collapsing with falling weight until it thumped and rolled onto its side, dead and still.
Gwan'Thwei turned then to watch the cocooned female on the opposite wall as a somber mood fell over him. He slowly stalked towards her, rounding the desk until his mask was inches from her deathly pale face hanging down. The fur on her head was stringy with slime yet to harden, darkening its color, and thinning it out. Long drips of hard meat saliva strung out from the points of her, stretching and dropping to the soft floor covering with barely a noise at all. The Ooman still breathed but it was shallow, pained as the embryo fed from her blood and somersaulted, stretched and made room.
There wasn't much literature on Ooman hosts to hard meats but in a couple of articles and first account stories it had been hypothesized that the young aliens inherited traits from its host. None of them were physical but more mental or personality based. His own Clans most infamous Queen capture, Xia'lu, several hundred years ago single handedly cemented a break through in Yautja understanding.
To this day that Queen was kept aboard their Clanship in shackles within a laser grid cage, stimulated with electricity to produce eggs to be planted on new plants designated for future Chiva's. Their Queen was special, so different from all others that she was coveted.
Gwan'Thwei's Chiva class had been granted special admission to see her imprisoned and it was a glorious sight indeed. The hard meat Queen was the largest on record for capture and the longest lived while still able to produce eggs. When his class had filed into the containment bay, spreading out in a thin semi-circle outside the laser grid the Queen had barely reacted. She was so docile, curious.
She'd stretched out her massive crowed head towards them, huffing the air to scent them while curling her twin sets of forelegs into her boney chest almost demurely before bowing before them. The others in his group snickered at her weakness, but Gwan'Thwei sensed her sweetness. Her compassion and understanding for organisms other than her own, for their sacrifice and service. He never mocked.
Xia'lu birthed some of the most challenging, fierce some Queens in his Clans history when they were transplanted around the universe and they never failed to deliver a very harrowing Hunt in Chiva. The more Gwan'Thwei stared at the half dead visage of the bound female before him the more he wondered what traits her hard meat would be born with. What was she like in her prime? What kind of personality?
He knew the righteous thing to do would be to put the Ooman out of her misery right now. To strike at her chest to kill her and her hard meat parasite before she could awaken but he found himself hesitating which wasn't Honorable. He wanted to kill the embryo, but he didn't wish to kill the Ooman. Torn, he growled low in his throat as he cupped the Ooman female's chin in his large hand and lifted her face.
She was still unconscious, easily pliable and ripe for the kill yet he couldn't bring himself to do it and he didn't understand why.
"Nadia?" a soft yet deeper timbre voice croaked from the doorway.
Gwan'Thwei rumbled and held still, slightly canting his head.
"Nadia!" the voice came again as an Ooman rushed forward on his right, it's hands hesitating before touching the hard resin covering the female's body. "Ooh god, Nadia, no…"
The Ooman was obviously upset, shaking violently and scrunching up its face, trying not to give in to crushing grief. The hesitancy didn't come across to Gwan'Thwei as a surprise due to incompetance incompetance but more from sheer helplessness. The Ooman was smart enough to realize that there was nothing it could do to help the female.
The Ooman was tall, slender but smelled confusing. How was it possible to smell both like a male and a female? Gwan'Thwei went on alert even more than before, silently studying the Ooman that stood not even three feet from him. Visually the Ooman looked like a male with height, broader shoulders and narrow hips but the scents kept contradicting his analysis. Unless the Ooman male scent was mixing with the female trapped against the wall?
Gwan'Thwei usually considered himself smarter than most of his class but it was times like this, on this Level in the complex and near these Ooman's that he felt the inexperience of his age.
The perplexing Ooman finally shoved the holo screen back up into the ceiling to make more room as he, since Gwan'Thwei had to pick a gender, shuffled to stand directly in front of the female, touching her slick face and lightly slapping at her cheeks while his shoulders shook and his breathing was erratic. He wore a one piece flight suit, zippered from groin to neck that hugged his form and ended tucked into his shiny black boots at mid calf. Matching gloves covered his hands and the fur on his head looked disheveled as if he'd tugged on it a lot or it had been trapped inside a confining helmet.
"Nadia you stupid ass," the Ooman choked out, searching now along the resin to find cracks and weak points to grab hold of and tug in earnest. He even went so far as to plant a boot against the wall for more leverage in order to rip off sections and cast them aside. "I'm gonna get you out of here, I swear."
As another large chunk of resin pulled away from the Ooman female's legs, Gwan'Thwei finally growled low in his throat, knowing that the male would hear him so close by. The male froze, breathing heavily and dropping his head down as the chunk fell to the ground. "Yautja," the male exhaled.
Gwan'Thwei rumbled softly in acknowledgment, puzzled by the males lack of defensive reaction. He had to know how close they stood to each other, how he lacked any real chance of survival if either of them suddenly decided to attack but if anything the Ooman's body seemed to relax, muscles loosening. That was odd.
"De'anj kylp'lre yh'hryup sel'reli?"
Gwan'Thwei jerked slightly at hearing his own language spoken by a foreign mouth, even if it was clear and understandable. The male had asked though not really in a question if Gwan'Thwei had found the female as she currently was, bound and violated. He rumbled assent.
The male sighed loudly and nodded his head, not speaking further as he reached up to cup the female's face in both hands to hang on while his forehead rested against her resin covered stomach. The female was still unconscious yet breathing slightly easier, the color returning to her face but only barely, a faint blush beyond pale.
"I'm her gunner," the male said sadly. "She's my pilot and my sister. We graduated from here together. From Beta Nine before moving on." His thumb moved over his sisters sallow cheekbone, wiping away some loose slime as he fought to compose himself, jaw tensing.