Aut vincere aut mori
The segmented armor panels on her backpiece protecting her spine flexed and creaked as she slammed into the wall, the air in her lungs leaving in an explosive gasp from the impact. She slumped to the floor and rolled fast as the black shape leaped through the air to land where she had fallen, talons flexing but only biting into concrete. Its tail whipped around, but she was ready for it this time and rolled back until she was almost beside the hard meat.
She kicked out, her foot connecting with the backwards-jointed ankle of a kainde amedha's leg and it let out a hiss of pain as the joint gave way. It flinched backwards trying to pull itself out of the way and reposition for another attack as she scrambled back to her feet, her body screaming at her that it hurt, dammit! Her chest felt like someone had slammed into it with a sledgehammer, which wasn't far from the truth – the kainde amedha had flicked its tail into her, only her armor had prevented the serrated plating from scoring deeply into her already abused flesh.
She backed up, trying to keep awareness of the growing pools of dangerous alien blood already spilled. They had already needed to extend the distance between themselves and the kainde amedha twice to try to find a fresh area for the war raging in the basement parking lot, but they were rapidly running out of room. Her cloak had been destroyed by kainde amedha talons, the same talons that had left jagged furrows down her chest plate and would have done the same to her stomach if she hadn't reacted quickly enough – the same talons now trying to paw through the ground where it had expected her to be when it landed.
Three hunters against four kainde amedha. The odds had been worse earlier.
-
"The Elder isn't coming?" The Second laughed, rumbling deep from its chest. It gestured to the Yautja that accompanied it.
"This is one of the blooded Yautja on the ship. It will accompany on this hunt. The Elder is leading another group tonight to also hunt kainde amedha. The queen appears to have decided now is the time to widen her area." She nodded, looking at Marisa to watch her reaction then realizing that she didn't have the translation appearing in a mask, so had no clue what the conversation was about. She was glad, this didn't sound like the sort of news that would make her friend feel safe right now. The Second continued briefing her.
"If the kainde amedha are beginning to spread out, the nest must be reaching a large size. We need to hunt them and cut their numbers down, force them to withdraw while the queen rethinks her strategy to fight us."
"Makes sense." Marisa looked at her, waiting patiently, and she sighed – she knew she'd have to explain part of this or she was quite likely to either get nagged at in front of these Yautja, or worse Marisa would do something stupid - like demand to go on the hunt to see what was going on. She was surprised that Marisa hadn't thought to ask that already, it would be a typical Marisa move.
"The kainde amedha are spreading their wings and we're going to let them know that we don't like the idea." Marisa nodded.
"You never said the candy things could fly." She groaned behind her mask.
"I am so going to have words with you when I get back." Marisa grinned.
"Good, now you have extra motivation to come back. Go babydoll, do what you have to do."
"Thanks. I think." She shook her head, Marisa could be so cutely infuriating at times.
As they made their way across the rooftops, heading back towards the border of the business and industrial visits, the Second had explained more.
"A kainde amedha was found scouting not far from the ship during the day." She gasped, that was bad news on several levels. The second nodded as it saw she understood the seriousness of the discovery. "It was killed, and we traced its trail back to the same general area that you hunt in. We found a building with more recent hosts. It wasn't the nest, but the Elder believes the kainde amedha are changing their practices to take into account the flaws in the first stage life forms."
"And we're going there?" The Second growled a negative.
"A building nearby has an underground portion which seems to be used for egg storage. We are going there to destroy the eggs and any kainde amedha we find there." She'd stopped then and looked at the Second.
"Just the three of us?" She asked in surprise. The Second stepped up to her until they were face to chest – her face, its chest, and growled down at her softly.
"If you're afraid, I can always kill you here." She looked up into its mask, swallowing. She wasn't making a very good impression here. Then she had a thought.
"Any sentient being would be concerned about taking on an unknown number of kainde amedha. Those who are fearless are usually too stupid to recognize the danger." The hunter beside them growled angrily, but the Second started to laugh. It clapped her on the shoulder with a claw so hard her knees almost buckled, then spoke to the other Yautja.
"I warned you, she does not think the same way a young blood would. She might survive this after all." She blinked, but as the other hunter growled she had no time to ask what the Second had meant, as they were off again.
As they reached their objective, she started to get a better idea of where they were – one of those multi-use office block buildings, mostly vacant but with some windows still lit in the early evening gloom. The reference to an underground part of the building became evident, it had an underground parking lot. The bay doors were closed by steel roller shutters, but as the Second made to bend down and lift one, she put her hand out to touch it gently on the elbow. It paused and looked at her, head cocked to one side in question.
"That way will make noise and alert the prey. There will be a way to that area from inside the building we can use." The Second nodded and motioned for her to lead the way. The three cloaked hunters made their way to a side door, and she clenched one fist to extend her wristblades, spiking them through the doorknob and shattering the lock. She retracted the blades as she slowly opened the door, and they were inside. It only took them a few moments to make their way through to the building atrium, and she spotted the sign for the stairs leading down to the parking lot.
She cracked the door at the bottom of the stairs open quietly, her senses and the sensors in her mask straining to detect any sign of trouble. Finding none, she opened the door and walked through, stepping to one side and dropping into a crouch as the two Yautja followed her into the parking lot and crouched similarly, forming a semi circle from the door. She switched vision modes, rapidly cycling through to try and detect any kainde amedha skulking in the area, but the area was clear.
Reaching slowly down to her thigh, she released the spear from its mounting clips on her armor and held it easily as the Second gave a hand gesture that she assumed meant "let's go". The three hunters rose and spread out slightly as the Second led them towards a caged-off maintenance area at the back of the parking area.
As they got closer, she could feel the environmental control of her mesh undergarment start cooling, and she realized that the air here towards the back was warmer, more humid. She could see a large vent in the wall close to the caged area, and assumed the kainde amedha had chosen this place to store the eggs because they could more easily control the environment, an assumption that was borne out as they finally got close enough to the cage to see the large leathery eggs inside.
They paused as a low hiss was heard by all three of them at the same moment. Before any of them had a chance to react, the cover plate to the vent blew outwards, followed by a swarm of chitinous kainde amedha. Without thinking, the three hunters separated further, giving each other enough room to use their weapons freely, and the battle was on.
Her first thought was to take out the eggs, and she was bringing her plasma weapon up to bear on them, planning to blast them into oblivion with one bolt of destruction, when a hard meat charged directly towards her, even though she was cloaked. She realized that it could sense her regardless, and changed her priorities. As it came closer, she waited, and then squeezed the handle of her spear, extending the ends. She brought it up and around, the point on one end slicing a thin line across the head of the hard meat attacking her.
It flinched as the momentum of her swing took her around, and as she came back she spun the spear underhand and thrust it up into the alien's torso. It screeched as she squeezed the handles, retracting the spear and pulling it from the hard meat's body before blood could start to flow. All of her training, the practice she had been made to repeat time and again, came back to her as her mind dropped into the headspace of a hunter. She moved fluidly, her speed and agility dancing her out of reach of the hard meat's grasping talons. Everything felt as if it were moving in slow motion, all of her senses firing signals to her brain, her awareness of her surroundings so clear and sharp.
She could see the Yautja as they used their weapons with devastating effect, kainde amedha blood and entrails splashing and hissing as it landed on the solid concrete, ripped from hard meat bodies by the brutal blades of the hunters.
She could see the hard meat trying in frustration to grab her.
She could feel where the kainde amedha was going to move to before it even knew, and she instinctively removed one of the throwing star weapons from her belt, pressing down on the center to release the five points, fashioned and honed from the talons of kainde amedha themselves. She turned and brought her arm up and across, holding the throwing star in her hand as it slashed across the stomach and chest of the hard meat. A spray of alien blood came sheeting out from the cut, narrowly missing her as she dodged frantically, but she wasn't fast enough to avoid the kainde amedha, as it reached out an arm and the tip of one talon scored a white hot line of pain in her side.
She danced back out of range and without thinking launched the throwing star at the hard meat. It curved an arc briefly through the air, slicing into the shoulder of the alien before soaring off into the distance, and she dropped to one knee, clenching her fists to extend her wristblades. Thinking it had hurt her, the kainde amedha moved in for the kill, but as it bent over to reach for her, she sprang to her feet and leaped up, wristblades carving into the head of the alien as she rose up, then cutting through the front of its head as it staggered forwards and she brought her arm down sharply. With a convulsive shudder it dropped to the ground, just as she noticed a flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye. The throwing star!
She ducked.
The air whistled as the weapon went over her head and she could hear the slap of the weapon against flesh. With trepidation, she turned to see what she had managed to hit, and saw the Second, its spear in one hand boring into the torso of a kainde amedha, a throwing star in its other hand. Her throwing star.
She was distracted by the sight, and missed the kainde amedha that landed on her from behind, talons reaching around and over as she wrenched herself free, rasping against the Yautja metal of her armor. Both of them off balance, she was getting her bearings when she was hit by the tail that lashed into her chest, sending her flying into the wall.
-
She clenched her right fist, flexing it to one side, and her wristblades shot forwards and rotated 180 degrees, angling the blades outwards. She ducked under the grasping claws of the hard meat and pivoted, backhanding it and slicing deeply into its torso where the ribs would be if this were a human. It screeched, the tone piecing through her skull as dark green acid spurted from the twin canyons her blades cut in its flesh, the momentum of her strike carrying her beyond and behind the kainde amedha and away from the spray of blood.
Seeing it raise up in reflex from the pain in its side, she seized the opportunity and brought her other arm up, pointing it at the curve of alien spine arched so well and triggered three rapid shots of barbed arrows, their Y-shaped tips shooting from the vambrace housing of her left wristblade and crashing between the spine-like paired row of organs that ran down the creature's back to cut deeply through the alien exoskeleton and sever the nerves between its simple brain and the rest of its body.
As it collapsed to the floor in a boneless heap, unable to do more than mewl its helplessness and fear of its imminent demise, she stepped forwards quickly and grasped the back of it's elongated head, pushing it up and forwards to expose the kainde amedha's thin neck for the coup de grace of her wristblades. While the head fell clear of the weakly pulsing spout of blood from the stump on its shoulders, she was already switching vision modes to search for her next target, leaving the remains of the alien to sink into a widening pool of acid-dissolved ground.
Absently she flicked her right arm outwards, clearing the acid-resistant coating on her blades of the alien blood remaining on them before it had a chance to work its way past the coating, and noted the position of her companions. The Second was going face to face with one of the hard meat, raw strength against strength as the alien flailed at it with its claws, hitting only air as the Second effortlessly dodged the blows. The other was on its back on the floor, a kainde amedha straddling it as it tried to gore the Yautja with its feet.
She ignored its plight, she knew that if she attempted to help it she would shame and embarrass it, but she saw the last kainde amedha rush towards the pair on the ground and figured she could take out that one before it entered the fight - it was hers!. Without thought, she glanced upwards to the blue icon in her mask's displays, bringing the plasma weapon on her left shoulder online. It pivoted on her shoulder and tracked in on her line of sight as she focused on the rushing kainde amedha, and as the tracking bars met to flash the bright red triangle of target lock superimposed over the spindly shape of the black alien, she let loose a bolt of controlled and focused electromagnetic hell.
She watched without emotion as the blue sphere of energy struck the kainde amedha poised to leap to aid its fellow, coming from the side and blasting through its arm before reducing most of its torso into an ionized cloud of nothingness, the near-absolute zero temperature of the plasma shot in cold mode freeze-cauterizing the edges of the disaster it had caused to the creature's body.
Her control of the energy level had been exact, the force was enough to destroy the chest of the creature but not carry beyond and damage anything else. Her training with the low powered version of the weapon had shown she could instinctively gauge the necessary level of power needed for the purpose she fired and no more, and her talent easily adapted to this fully enabled version of a Yautja's long range firepower.
The momentum of its charge carried the corpse of the kainde amedha a step or two more before colliding with the hard meat trying to claw the hunter on the ground, throwing that one off balance. The hunter didn't hesitate, exploiting this distraction to maximum lethal effect and punched it's wristblades into the kainde amedha's 'face' with a wet sickening crunch. It rolled out from underneath as the limp bodies came down, coming to its feet effortlessly and clear of the bile-tinted alien blood spreading out from its kill.
The Second was locked with its own foe, its claws gripping the kainde amedha's arms at the elbows and pushing them wide apart in a display of sheer strength. As the hard meat opened its mouth, trying to bring its inner jaw into play to punch through the armor, skin, and bone of the Second's head, the hunter head butted the alien, the ribbed surface of its mask shattering the kainde amedha's mouth. The hard meat slobbered watery slime as silvered teeth fell away from its jaws, the inner one shooting forwards but with no effect other than to impact sore alien flesh against the unyielding Yautja armor.
Inexorably, the Second pushed the kainde amedha's arms out until they stood chest to chest, the hard meat stressed as it was crucified by the Second. Something had to give, and in the end it was alien tissue and tendons that parted, the hunter ripping the alien's arms from its shoulders. The kainde amedha staggered backwards at the sudden absence of resistance against its struggles, and the Second tossed the arms aside.
It released its spear from the mounting on the backpiece of its armor and squeezed the handle, extending it to its full deadly length. Calmly, methodically, the Second advanced on the kainde amedha as it tried to back up out of harm's way, but it had nowhere to run to. Crouching for a moment and biding its time, the Second thrust forwards and up, the tip of the spear impaling itself under the chin of the kainde amedha close to its neck and continuing through the skull and brain of the alien until it emerged, cracking an exit through the top of the creature's head.
The death wail of the alien was cut off sharply as its head was removed at the neck, and the Yautja stepped backwards to raise its arms in victory, the head of the kainde amedha spiked on the end of the spear. It let out an eerie roar of victory, and the other hunter stood from removing the head of its own victim to echo the cry, the sounds reverberating and echoing throughout the basement of the parking lot.
She felt it coursing through her, the exultation of victory, and helpless to prevent the emotions from boiling inside her demanding release she threw her arms out, arching her back as she raised up onto the balls of her feet and screamed, the pure unbridled force of her feelings shocking her, yet she reveled in them. After a minute, her scream of victory tailed off but for a moment more she remained tensed, every muscle in her body pulled taut, before she finally allowed herself to relax, collapsing in on herself, gasping for breath.
Now she knew, she really knew. Everything clicked into place, why the Yautja hunted, why the Elder was training her to be a challenge. She could feel it deep inside, the thrill, the feeling of having been tested and winning, beating the odds and tasting the victory.
Now that it was over, she felt curiously empty - it was almost anti-climactic. She felt totally drained after releasing all her emotion, her rage, her pride, her challenge. She looked up slowly to the two Yautja as they came towards her, both of them slinging a kainde amedha head each over their back to mount in their trophy vaults on the ship later. The air around them was filled with the biting acrid mist rising from the melting puddles of ground where kainde amedha blood had fallen, but her mask kept the air she breathed pure.
The hunter placed its claw on her shoulder, then, and shook her gently. "Not bad, for a pyode amedha." It looked around at the site of the war. Already the kainde amedha corpses has sunken below ground level, their blood having eaten the concrete to leave large craters. She looked around and counted nine hard meat bodies, before she had a sudden thought.
"How do we clean this up? We can't let the humans know about the kainde ..." The Second held up a claw to interrupt her as the hunter pulled several objects from its belt, handing three each to the Second and herself, keeping some for itself. She looked down into her hand and saw a simple tube, with a button at one end. She cocked her head to the hunter quizzically.
"Push the end, drop the device in the hole, step back. It is a small plasma charge, it will detonate and destroy anything within a few feet." She nodded slowly.
"Sort of like a hand grenade? Nice weapon." The Second growled, and she looked at it sharply. "What did I say?"
"These are used to remove kainde amedha bodies, the acidic blood makes them unsafe to hang as we would most other prey species. But to use those as weapons would not be a test of a hunter." She nodded again, and looked down, her cheeks flaming red under her mask in embarrassment.
"I meant no offense, Second. I had not encountered these devices before." The Second looked at her for a long moment, then it pulled something from its belt, handing it to her - her throwing star.
"You are still pyode amedha yet, young blood. You will learn."
