"Remember," growled Jar-hidda, "if I don't bow, just bow, if I bow, you kneel, if I kneel—."
"I prostrate myself on the ground."
Jar-hidda clicked. It was difficult if it was affirmation or just annoyance. He was calm now, fully composed and ready. The last few days he had been a drill instructor, a bundle of nerves ready to snap at any wrong moves.
And wrong moves there were. Jar-hidda had suddenly taken her on a crash course of how she should approach and treat other yautja, something he had hoped would never need to happen; if only she hadn't screwed up. The language barrier didn't help anything, and things would often quickly deteriorate when she misunderstood something he said, did something wrong, and didn't even understand the clarification when she asked for it. It often devolved into a screaming argument between the two in their respective native languages.
Which was something Jar-hidda made sure she understood was something she didn't do to any other yautja. For one, yelling at another yautja would get her head torn from her shoulders, for two, she was to speak in as much of the yautja language as she could, absolutely no English, and lower the tone of her voice if she could. She was to keep her head down and be obedient if she wanted to live.
There were a million of other things that he managed to stuff into her head in the small amount of time. Proper gestures and postures in front of different ranking yautja, how to tell different ranking yautja apart, how to respond to gestures in return, that shaking a fellow's shoulder was different than shoving it, body language, which was something she had already sort-of picked up, and other things that would keep her alive.
One thing he made absolutely clear: as far as his people were concerned, she was still prey and if she made herself seem like a good 'catch,' they'd go for it. She was otherwise the lowest of the low, and no one would care if someone took a pot-shot at her. The more inconspicuous she was, the better. For five days they drilled, and she often went to bed sore as frustration turned into sparring in the middle of the room or kitchen, beginning with her doing something wrong, him smacking her hand shoulder or the back of her head, her punching him in retaliation, and then fighting. Jar-hidda was being harsh, showing to her what others would do to her for the smallest slight.
But Jar-hidda surprised her, just as they were coming up to the ship, an atoll it was called, that was at least one-hundred times the size of Jar-hidda's ship.
He was dressed in his mesh, his most impressive armor, his cactus-spiked mask, armed, decorated with skulls, and a large skull tucked under his arm. It was all for show, to look impressive. Appearance was everything, if you appeared strong, moved well, spoke correctly, you weren't messed with.
Hannah, on the other hand, was just in her two kilts, sandals and the multi-ringed necklace that protected her throat. The ship had landed, and they were waiting, Jar-hidda explained, for some sort of procession to form up ranks to properly greet them. No, not them, him.
But as they stood there waiting, Jar-hidda nudged her shoulder gently, which was more of a surprise than if he had smacked her, which she kind of expected lately. She hastily tried to correct something about her posture, unsure of what he wanted, then saw him extending something to her. In his hand was a grey metal thing that looked like the mouthpiece to a mask like his.
She wasn't sure what to do with it at first, but when he clicked in emphasis she reached over and took it, turning it over in her hands and looking at the complex alien circuitry and two circular filters on either side of the rectangular shape. It was the mouthpiece to a mask.
"Wear it," he said simply and she looked over to where he was standing beside and slightly in front of her. She put the rectangular shape over her mouth, setting the ends of the jaw-shaped sides just under her ears. With the sound of something compressing, the mask seemed to just conform and fit tightly to her face, but not uncomfortably. It stayed put even when she took her hand away from it. She blinked as cool air began to filter in to the space of the mask, and it smelled like oxygen.
Jar-hidda gave a curt nod, "the air in the atoll will be my air, yautja air, it's not good for you to breathe it."
"When did you have the time?" she asked and Jar-hidda looked from the door to her again. He didn't answer and she shifted, taking her place behind him like a good pet. She took a breath and calmed herself, watching the door as it clanked and then slid open. Her breath was then stolen.
Rows upon rows of yautja, spears in hand, standing in perfect formation lined either side of the extending ramp. The area was huge, it would be able to hold fifty of Jar-hidda's ships and a herd of elephants with room to spare, and it was filled with aliens, leaving only a long path from the ship to where a single yautja stood, a cape covering half his body, armored and armed, just like Jar-hidda.
When the ramp touched down, spears lifted and rapped twice against the metal floor, all in unison. Hannah felt an old worry creep up, staring at just how militant it all was. It was apparently what Jar-hidda was waiting for and stepped forward. Hannah followed after, having to take two strides for every one of his, feeling like a Chihuahua. She tried not to wonder if any eyes, all of those possibly hundreds of eyes, were on her as she followed along.
It felt both like forever, and too soon, that they reached the end of the path, where the one yautja stood, Jar-hidda stopped and knelt. Hannah assumed a bowing position like she had seen in Asian cultures, sitting on her heels, both knees on the ground and her forehead touching the floor. It was the one Jar-hidda had approved of when they were practicing.
Hannah wished it was silent, but there were noises, rumblings, murmurings. It was like being the new kid in high-school all over again. But she kept her face planted to the floor, studied the grain of the metal, kept her breath even. She wasn't scared, not really, though she probably should have been with how many known murderers there were in the room, and all the things Jar-hidda told her they would use as an excuse to kill her. She was more nervous about messing up and looking bad and therefore making Jar-hidda look bad as well.
After-all, appearance was everything, and Jar-hidda needed to keep up the tough-guy appearance especially being clanless. Without it, there was no trade.
She became aware of a dull ache rising in her legs. The yautja in the cape was silent for a long while. Jar-hidda hadn't even been given leave to rise beside her, bent to one knee with a fist to his chest, head bowed. It was difficult to tell what he was feeling or thinking with that mask on, and his tusks still. She startled when the apparent leader tapped his staff and her gaze snapped away from Jar-hidda nad back to the floor with a small gasp.
"Welcome, utoim-sumex'l Jar-hidda," began the elder, losing Hannah with the word 'utoim-sumex'l,' and continuing on with some ceremonial spiel that flew mostly over Hannah's head. She caught words like 'gods bless' and 'good hunting,' but most of it was deep-throated babble to her. She'd ask for the translation later. This ceremony seemed to go on forever, and she was startled by another unified spear-thump to the ground, and Jar-hidda finally stood.
Hannah took that as her cue and stood up also. She didn't even really think as she moved to the side and her hand flew up from her hip to the warm metal shaft of the extended spear. Only a few seconds after the attack did she blink and realize what position she was in. The leader had kicked up and jabbed his spear towards her throat, the spear that she was now parallel with, her hand gripping tightly the end. She looked slowly down the shaft to the leader, whose expressionless mask told her nothing, and she slowly released the spear, and went back to kneeling, sure that the attack had been a reprimand for something she had done wrong.
The leader clicked in approval, and looked to Jar-hidda again, who had not moved an inch to defend his pet from the attack.
"Thank you, Chul-yaun, for inviting me, clanless and low-ranking as I am, onto your most esteemed vessel."
The leader gave a curt nod to the much younger yautja then turned his attention once again to the woman on the ground for just a moment. Then he gave a clicked command to Jar-hidda, who tapped Hannah with the shaft of his glaive. She stood and followed after Jar-hidda as he followed after Chul-yaun.
"Your mission was successful then."
"As I said in our discussion on my ship," Jar-hidda acknowledged.
"Then Halkrath-th'syra's honor is restored, and he may hunt eternally and rest in the Nuo'ethy at Cetanu's side."
That was a lot of words that Hannah didn't know.
Jar-hidda only gave a clicking response, one she hadn't heard before and would have to ask about later. She continued following behind, watching as Chul-yaun led them away from the dock and into the ship. Hannah held her breath for just a second, and then was immediately disappointed to find that it was exactly like Jar-hidda's ship, only larger. They were immediately in a hallway, however this one large enough that ten yautja could stand shoulder-to shoulder across, rather than the one and a half-yautja space of Jar-hidda's ship. The leader turned right and continued walking, and talking.
"Your pet moves well," complimented the leader and Hannah tightened her fingers for a moment. It was one thing to know her position, it was another to hear it said so blatantly and casually by a yautja she didn't know.
Don't make ripples, don't cause waves she repeated to herself in her head like a mantra.
"I've been training her," Jar-hidda said with some hesitation, "but she came to me with a great deal of skill already."
"Not to hunt with I hope," growled the leader warningly and Jar-hidda was quick to answer.
"No, not like that. She was a hunter herself on Jh'uda-tjauke, who hated her own kind, and was warrior- friends with a blooded human under your mark."
The leader's step hesitated for a fragment of a second, barely noticeable, but Hannah saw. It was hard not to, keeping her head down this much meant she was looking at the spiked heels of the two yautja in front of her.
"Yes I know the one," he said, "one of the youngbloods who had died honorably on his Chiva, Mahnde was his youth name, as he did not get the chance to choose his name after his blooding, marked it in his last moments. I'm uncertain what he thought gave him the right to do so, but I trusted his judgment and left it alive with a proper weapon. It was a great help in preventing the entire planet from becoming seeded. Killed a queen through its own cleverness. What has this one done?"
Jar-hidda glanced back Hannah, who's eyes flashed up to him for a moment, watching him turn back around, "rescued me from dishonor," the leader gave a harsh click that Hannah didn't understand, "I will explain later."
Hannah imagined the leader was giving Jar-hidda a stern look behind his emotionless mask, which was very smooth, of grey metal instead of red like Jar-hidda's and had a scratch on the brow of it that Hannah recognized from the cheek of Alexa Woods.
Before she could think of what kind of small universe this was, the leader turned to his left and took them through and opening. Hannah blinked wide eyes and stopped dead in her tracks despite herself. She took back what she thought about this ship being anything like Jar-hidda's.
She heard the yautja' laughter coming from the leader who stopped just a step or two after Jar-hidda had and looked back at the small alien's expression.
"Welcome to my ship, human, the jag'd'ja atoll, Resh'skama."