She held Pruu tightly cradled in her arms, knowing that the yautja was close, but unsure of exactly where. If she bolted and ran right into him, there would be no chance of escape. An airy clicking tumbled through the air again, making the hairs on her arms stand on end. She took slow, deep breaths, trying to convince herself it was going to be ok. All she needed to do was get out of the creek, hide Pruu, and face the alien with weapons drawn.
She didn't even get that far. The yautja jumped down into the shallow water with a splash, and Sammi quickly ran for the bank. She dug in her feet and one hand reached the top edge of the bank to lift herself out, but out of the corner of her eye she saw the maul lift into the air. She jumped out of the way, stumbling, and landed on her back. Sammi lifted her head to watch the black metal hammer crash into the edge of the bank, crumbling it.
A blow like that would have likely broken her back. A yautja would never, under any circumstances, intentionally kill a yautja child. However, during times of war, it would not damage their honour to kill the mother even knowing that the child would die as a result. They would not show restraint simply because she carried a pup in her arms.
The yautja swung the maul at her again, managing to move it fast enough that it make a swoop noise in the air, and the hammer had to weigh more than she did. She scrambled out of the way and got to her feet. But as soon as she did, the maul connected with one of her legs, sweeping her off her feet. Her face hit the rocks under the water and it was all she could do to hold Pruu up, away from the water and rocks. Sammi drew out her sword as she lifted herself up, only for the yautja to smash the hammer into her fist.
When the sword dropped, he forced the hammer down on top of it, mangling her weapon and making it useless to wield. Before she could grab a different weapon, his boot connected with her chest, sending her crashing backwards and Pruu slipped from her arm. She watched her baby roll away from her. The child began to wail, louder than she'd ever heard before as she squirmed on her back in the shallow water.
Once Pruu started to cough, Sammi was terrified that she'd drown. She launched over to her, trying to reach her in time, but the yautja grabbed her by the throat. Sammi kicked and thrashed at him, desperately trying to free herself so that she could get Pruu out of the water. This yautja was stronger than the rest, short and stocky, with bulging muscles. She grabbed the dagger from her hip and plunged it into his chest, yet all he did was growl.
With his fingers closing around her throat, he effortlessly lifted her into the air. She let go of the handle of the dagger to hold onto his arm, preventing her neck from breaking. But that seemed only to make her suffer a longer death. She couldn't breathe, couldn't swallow. The pressure in her chest was beyond painful as her lungs were starved of all oxygen. At first, she was seeing stars but then everything started to dim and fade to black.
She was dropped suddenly, and even though her face was in the water, her first reaction was to inhale. She sucked up water, causing her lungs to burn yet she was too drowsy to stand up and expel the water. She could have just closed her eyes and slept, yet she could still hear her baby coughing. Sammi scrambled upright, but her body forced her to bend at her middle and throw up water from her lungs and her stomach. Then she scrambled over to Pruu, deftly snatching her from the water and bent her over her thigh to make sure she hadn't inhaled any.
She sat sideways in the water with Pruu in her arms, her head spinning. She took in ragged breaths, trying to regain some strength. When she finally shoved her sopping wet hair out of the way and lifted her head, she realized what had distracted the yautja with the hammer. She could hardly believe what she was seeing at first, but Malo charged at the enemy like a raging bull. He pounded his fists into him with the wrath of an angry god.
Then, he lifted the male up into the air and slammed his body down onto his knee. The other yautjas spine let out a sickening crack as it broke. Malo shoved the body away from him carelessly, then turned to look back at the creek. His adrenaline was fading fast. He seemed to look at each Pruu and Sammi to make sure they were safe and then his eyes glazed over and he collapsed into a lifeless heap on the ground.
Sammi struggled from the water, and knelt beside him. His breathing and heart rate was slow, but at least she could tell it was there. It had taken all his strength to to fight like that, but he had come to her rescue. Sammi placed a small kiss on his forehead, her hands shaking, then had to re-stitch every gory wound, align his twisted, broken foot, and bandage him up again. She held back tears; he was going to be ok.
When the sun began to drop and he still hadn't regained consciousness, Sammi constructed a sleigh from branches, and long braided grass for rope. She rolled Malo onto it, and covered him with leaves for some shade. He had told her the location of the base. Walking, it would take them a few excruciating weeks to reach it-and a human could go only three days without water. She drug Malo through the jungle to the very edge of the desert. It was as vast as an ocean, stretching on as far as her eyes could see, with heat waves dancing off the surface.
Sammi fed Pruu, filled all the water containers, and drank from the creek until she was sick. Then when the sun fell below the horizon, she drug the sleigh out onto the cracked desert earth. She didn't get very far before she had company. A pack of four tiger-striped wolves was trailing close behind her. Though they were big, they acted more like scavengers, like hyenas.
Though she was tired, she knew that she couldn't stop. They were steadily getting closer, lured by the smell of blood on her and Malo. They were hungry, and sought to steal her preserved meat or even take a chunk out of Malo while he was vulnerable. In the dark, she fired a plasma bolt at the group to try and scare them off. The explosion caused them to scatter away from the burst of blue light, but they returned.
She heard one of their jaws close on the sleigh Malo was resting on, its sharp teeth scraping across the wood before she swung at it. It was agile as it bounced away, then turned back to try again. They were closing in on her. Sammi covered Malo's body with her own, unwilling to let him go, and with heaving breaths she tased any wolf that dared come near. She stayed awake the whole night keeping the stripped wolves at a distance. When the sky began to lighten, the pack abandoned her to go back to the oasis before the ground began to cook. Sammi twisted the rope around her wrists and began to pull the sleigh farther into the desert.