The Lou-dte Kale
K'Var cocked his head curiously as he watched the small Ooman as she slept pressed against the glass. He didn't understand why the Oomans would imprison one of their own. The child-maker looked far too young to be a Bad Blood and far too small to put up much resistance. Then again, most Ooman females were small, compared to Yautja females who often towered over the males. They had to be big to rear sucklings properly.
Or at least that was the way it once was.
This female looked starved. Her bones were showing through her overly pale skin. It was as if she hadn't seen her planet's sun in many years. Her hair was long for an Ooman, the color of fire, but it was chopped unevenly. Then there were the scars. Her body was layered in them, and that was just the flesh he could see.
A flimsy white covering lay barely secured as a layer of some sort of modesty preventing him from inspecting a large portion of her body, but her legs and arms were bare before him. They were littered with lines of pink puckered flesh, some stacked one on top of another.
Even K'Var, an Honored Warrior, had not earned as many scars in his long life.
These were nothing like his battle scars, however. They were too precise, too measured, and he had a deep feeling that the Ooman scientists were behind them. He also had a feeling that this was what they planned for him and his nephew.
K'Var stood, drawing his gaze away from the child maker to the cell beyond just beyond hers where his Young Blooded nephew, L'ron, paced the small enclosure. The young warrior had been stripped of his weapons and armor and K'Var knew that once they were free his nephew would feel his fury like no other.
L'ron had disobeyed his orders to stay on the hunting grounds that the Oomans had identified. K'Var had barked at his young protégé to stop, ordering him back to the ship numerous times before finally setting out to retrieve the impetuous warrior and teach him a lesson he wouldn't forget. If L'ron was not his brother's son, he would have left the pauk'de to his fate.
Now they were both captives.
A soft sound reached his ears causing him to look down. The female was shivering against the glass, mumbling words to faint for the translator in his skill to pick up. He clicked his mandibles together as he regarded her. It was quite possible that this young child maker had done nothing to deserve this fate. Oomans were not known for their honor, especially regarding their females. He had witnessed many bad blooded males commit vile acts against their females, some of which even spurred him to intervene.
He had lost count of how many Ooman males he had stalked because he had seen them force submission from a child maker. He killed them quickly, not even bothering to take their skulls as trophies. They were tarei'hasan, unworthy prey. Such acts would be impossible to force on a Yautja female, any male who tried would quickly find themselves without their genitals, and quite possibly with their necks broken. Mating with a female Yautja itself was rough and hard, the competition to seed a female while their season lasted once led to deadly battles, but there was no mistake in who led the mating.
Now, with more and more females dying off and many left without the ability to reproduce, Yautja males were forced to procreate with Ooman females. Oomans who were considered prey. Many clans refused to allow their warriors to mate with Oomans and those that did only allowed procreation from females picked from the reserve planet or the slave domicile. Ooman females on Earth were considered feral and unworthy of rearing sucklings. Choosing a mate who was once a slave or was from the reserve planet, allowed for a clean and healthy mate, one that knew their culture and their rules.
K'Var huffed as he sat down, leaning back against the glass just a few feet away from the shivering female so that he could observe her. She was still muttering in her sleep. The words his translator picked up and deciphered gave him cause to frown.
Hold me.
The Ooman female was barely out of her youth. How long had she been held here and how much of her spirit had been broken?
Not all of it for sure.
He recalled the look in her eyes as she took his measure. Despite her pain, she was still aware of her surroundings. K'Var had been enraptured with her eyes. They were a color he had never seen in a human before, mixed hues of purple and red. A color he knew to be called amaranthine. The colors name originated from an Earth species known as Amaranth, a leaf vegetable his people had cultivated and placed on the reserve planet. Its flowers had the same purple and reddish hues as her eyes.
K'Var was pulled from his musing as the Ooman moved, her body dragging itself along the floor until she reached where he sat. She rolled until her stomach was placed firmly against the glass where his back sat before sighing contentedly, the sound slightly muffled by the strange mask she wore about her lower face. He suspected that if there were no glass to separate them, the Ooman would have wrapped herself around his body like a feline.
Just to be sure.
He moved away from her, just a few feet down the wall to her feet. It took only a few minutes of her shivering again before she moved herself to where he now sat. She craved his heat. The revelation surprised him more than it should have. Who knew how long this creature had been kept in isolation.
The large Yautja let her be after that as he closed his eyes. He had to think of a way to get them out of there. Oomans, although technologically inferior, were devious and dishonorable in their methods of dispatching what they considered prey. Even without his armor, he could take down a small group of humans, but he was vulnerable to their weapons and from the size of the facility they had placed him in, he would be outnumbered as well.
K'Var nearly jumped in surprise when a low hissing sound filled the air. His warrior reflexes, unlike his nephews, had kept him still, only his head moving as he searched for the origin of the sound. He had his answer as he watched the female's cell fill with a white hazy gas.
The warrior watched as the female suddenly fell limp against the glass.
Was she dead? Rage filled the elder Yautja. How dare they kill a female so dishonorably without giving her a chance to fight back. K'Var paced his cell, mandibles flaring, he let loose a roar as the injustice of the situation hit him.
"Dishonorable, cowardly, Bad Blood!" He snarled in his language, the rough clicks and grunts filling his cell. "How dare you kill a harmless child maker!" Gas continued to flow through the tiny Ooman's cell, fueling his anger.
"Calm yourself, Uncle," L'ron's voice reached him, trying to remain calm himself. "Her heart still beats; they are only sending her to sleep."
The elder Yautja stopped pacing as he listened for the truth in the Young Blood's words. L'ron was right, her heart was beating, just slowly. K'Var growled as the vents in the roof of the cell flipped on, allowing the gas to be quickly funneled out. The Yautja felt himself relax for a moment, but the ease didn't last long.
Within moments the young females' cell door opened, the whoosh of the negative pressure release was easily heard. A female led the way, followed by two men pushing a metal table. The two Ooman males reached down to pick up the female's limp body off the floor before depositing her on the table. Without ceremony, they stripped the child maker of her flimsy covering, not bothering with modesty. Both Yautja growled at the treatment of the unaware creature, even if it was Ooman.
"Pulse?" The female asked as she flipped open the small notebook she had fished out of her lab coat pocket. One of the males placed two fingers on the female's neck.
"Faint and erratic."
"Respirations?"
"Breathing shallow," The other male replied holding an instrument K'Var didn't recognize to her chest.
"No fluid on the lungs," He informed her. "Her body seems to be fighting off the virus we gave her. Temp is back to normal already, meaning her immune system is still in operation even if her advanced healing isn't."
"Her pupils aren't responding, pinpoint and fixed," The other male was shining a light into her eyes. "Nothing new there." The female continued to write in her notebook, barely giving the child maker a second glance.
One of the males prodded at a row of stitched that her gown had been covering. He didn't seem to care if he made it bleed again and K'Var wondered why they had even bothered to stitch her up in the first place.
"The last incision hasn't healed yet," He moved to inspect her fingers beneath the layers of gauze. "Her fingers have scabbed over from the biting wounds, but they aren't closing."
The female nodded.
"Verdict?"
One of the males snorted. "She isn't going to survive the operation."
"She's surprised us in the past," The other pointed out. "I think she'll pull through."
The female shook her head, "I agree with Dr. Sullivan. The surgery will be extensive and the incision large. I doubt she'll survive this time."
"Doesn't really matter if she survives or not," The unnamed male shrugged carelessly. "The years of research she's given us has been more than profitable and we'll gain even more once she's a corpse."
"Agreed," The female nodded callously. "Let's get her to prep."
K'Var watched as the Oomans wheeled the unconscious female out, taking in their face and committing them to memory.
He was going to kill them all.
A/N: Hope you like it. Let me know in a review!
Translation:
Pauk'de: Fucker
Young Blood: Is a rank. Usually made of adolescent Yautja who has passed basic training and Chiva
Lou-dte Kale: Child Maker (Female), sometimes can be used derogatorily depending on context
