4

Chapter Eleven: Hunting and Gathering

Kel remained awake, staring at the three of them from his makeshift bed of pine branches. Evidently, the coward was no fool and was holding onto his phaser as though it were the only thing between himself and death...as perhaps it was.

They remained that way throughout the night, staring at Kel while Kel stared back. Their mutual mistrust hung heavy in the night air and continued until dawn broke. The ashes of last night's fire still carried embers, and so Jorry busied himself in resurrecting the flames. As the first rays of sunlight fell, K'Eihdan decided that it was time for himself and Kabrech to go hunting for their breakfast.

"We will need to eat, Kel," K'Eihdan announced, "and so let us two hunters go off and bring you some bounty. We can catch prey with our teeth and claws alone...we evolved from purely carnivorous creatures."

"I have no doubt," Kel replied, "Very well, K'Eihdan. You and Kabrech go, but remember that I am still holding the gun and it is pointed at Kettsen's head."

"I want to go too!" Marita exclaimed, hopping off of her bed of branches, "I'd like to see Kabrech and K'Eihdan hunt."

Kabrech eyed Marita, looking as though he was pleased at her interest in his skills.

"No, you will not go, Marita!" Kel objected, "You will stay here because you are the most important hostage—what with your youth and beauty."

"Why, Kel, I didn't know you cared!" Marita retorted sarcastically.

"I don't," Kel told her menacingly, "I care only about getting the job done and getting off this tree-infested ball of rock and water."

Jorry gestured for Marita to be quiet and obey Kel's order, which she did only very reluctantly.

"Why do the Klingons get to have all the fun?" she grumbled as the two hunters stalked off swiftly.

They went as far as they could away from the campsite before pausing to confer with one another.

"I say we should have jumped Kel last night and taken him prisoner!" Kabrech opined, keeping his voice as low as he could to avoid being detected by the keen hearing of the Andorian, "He is weak and we could easily have overpowered him!"

K'Eihdan shook his head.

"I wanted to do the same thing, brother," he replied, "but you need to remember that Kettsen is now our commander. K'Var made us his slaves, and right now Jorry is bidding us to wait. Justice will be ours, but at the right time and place."

Kabrech growled in impatience. In the trees above, a group of scampering, brownish-grey tree rodents chirped at them saucily.

"Let me see if I can outwit those tree-mice up there," Kabrech told him, kicking off his boots to expose his clawed feet, "since we aren't well equipped to take on the catamount yet—maybe after we kill the simpering Kel we can find the big cat."

"Many of these species are protected by laws," K'Eihdan called after his younger sibling as the boy vaulted onto the trunk of a deciduous tree and protracted his claws to help him climb it, "Jorry told me that many of the big cats have gone extinct—much like on Qo'nos."

K'Eihdan did not join his brother in the tree but instead watched, laughing as the "tree mice" waved their bushy tails and sprang easily out of his way and onto the branches of neighboring trees. Kabrech was not nearly so agile, and he almost fell a couple of times.

"Come down here, Kabrech," K'Eihdan ordered him, "Before you kill yourself instead of Kel or the tree-mice. Admit defeat, brother—the little ones have outwitted you."

Kabrech let out a yowl to rival that of last night's catamount.

"We'll set some traps," K'Eihdan told him, bringing a ball of Yark-hair twine out of his jacket pocket, "it's easier."

Kabrech grumbled irritably as he descended the tree. K'Eihdan set his Yark-hair traps, but he had nothing to bait them with. He began to search for a certain type of berry that Jorry had shown him earlier, called a wild blueberry.

"We can't sit around here waiting for these," Kabrech told him, pointing at the makeshift trap, "and Klingons do not search for berries, brother!"

"Why not?" K'Eihdan challenged him, "they taste good, and they're food. And I'm famished. Besides, Jorry told me that the bears like to eat berries. If we look for them, we may find a bear...like Jorry's creature, named Barney."

"Marita will kill us if we bring Barney down," Kabrech told him, "Not that we're terribly well equipped to kill large animals anyways."

The two brothers searched for whatever berries they could find, which turned out to be mostly brambles. Jorry had explained to them which berries were poisonous and which were edible, and K'Eihdan had been an attentive learner. He had learned how to forage for food early on in his life on the home mountain, and he had known not to discount the fruits and vegetation that had grown in his area. Meat had not always been readily available to them, and so the poor peasants on Qo'nos had become omnivores whether they had wanted to or not.

Insects were also an important food item for them, and so K'Eihdan and Kabrech were able to rout out many delicious grubs underneath logs and rocks. Because they knew that Humans were quite adverse to eating insects and their larvae, the pair simply ate the grubs and collected the berries for the benefit of the Humans...and hoped that they would agree with Kel's tastes as well.

After they had collected an acceptable number of berries, using K'Eihdan's jacket as a basket, the older man returned to check on his trap. To his chagrin, he found a dark-haired Human female in an official-looking uniform undoing his handiwork.

"I'm Ranger Katrina Van Zandt," she introduced herself, "Are you the one who set this trap? If so, you need to know that I'm confiscating it. Traps of this kind are no longer legal on Earth. The animals that get trapped in them can take hours and hours to die, which means that they're not humane hunting tools."

"I'm Klingon," K'Eihdan told her, "We don't have those kinds of rules on Qo'nos...however, we apologize for our ignorance of your laws."

"Ignorance of the law is no excuse," Ranger Van Zandt replied, "I could bring you in and require you to take a course in wildlife law, but I doubt if you'll be staying that long on Earth; and so, I'll let you off with a warning this time. Don't let it happen again...and just so you're aware, no hunting in this area, either."

"Yes...thank you," K'Eihdan answered rather awkwardly, attempting to follow the stilted Earth custom of "courtesy", "We have collected only a few berries as our bounty...and, we have eaten some of your insects. Is there a law against hunting insects here?"

"No," Van Zandt replied, surprised, "You can eat as many of our insects as you like...especially the mosquitoes and black flies."

K'Eihdan and Kabrech nodded and hastily resumed their journey back to the campsite.

"They should have a law protecting the insects as well," Kabrech grumbled in an ironic tone, "why do Humans have compassion for mammals but not for the tiny creatures?"

K'Eihdan simply shrugged. He was at a loss when it came to defending Earth policies. At the present time, his goal was to get back to Jorry and his family to make sure that they were unharmed.

By the time they returned to the site, however, it appeared that Kel and their friends were gone.