'Hi guys GhostNobody here, thought I'd break my silence here just to show some love to you guys and to say a big thanks to all my readers, you guys are absolute stars and myself and the voices are very pleased that you're all enjoying the tale of Tik eleth and Jack. I've read through all of the suggestions in the review section and am loving some of the ideas you guys have come up with for me and I can say that more than one will be getting used even if I will have to rewrite some of the chapters I have on me just because I liked them so much, I won't mention any names but it's safe to say you'll know who you are when you come across it in the future chapters, so with one final big thank you to you all this is GhostNobody signing off and saying on with the show…...'
Chapter 5: First Contact.
It took Jack quite a while to calm down from his encounter with the dino dozer, he'd had to stop and give himself a mental slap to stop himself going into a full on panic more than once. He felt like he was stuck in a full on nightmare after that encounter, slowly the pieces were starting to click together in the logic based part of his brain, the entire rest of it was refusing to believe it and was clinging to the hope that he would wake up in a hospital bed or any bed for that matter, having suffered the effects of some psychedelic compound that was pumped into him when that person in the tree shot him with the dart.
Well that was until he finished climbing to the top of the mini mountain he'd decided gave him the best chance of navigating out of this hell hole. Because as he reached a large plateau he was presented with two sights that took his breath away and broke his mind completely, not only was there no end visible to the jungle in any direction but when he looked up to try and gauge the time he spotted four rather large moons.
Tik eleth tracked the ooman through the forest rather easily, after following his trail for a bit she'd been able to pick out hid thermal signature against the various creatures that seemed to be giving him a very wide berth. She had to admit that little trick the ooman had done was ingenious, who would have ever thought of using the giant lizard's foul smelling blood to not only mask your own scent, but to make all the other creatures fear you, for if there was one thing on this planet that just about everything else feared it was them.
As she watched, the ooman began to climb up one of the many mini mountains of the planet, she guessed that he was either seeking cover or maybe trying to use the height to aid with navigation, she was going to have to be very careful tracking him here as the lack of cover would leave her exposed and he had a head start on her so he already had a height advantage for his sight lines, plus given that his weapon had quite an impressive range and power it was not a situation to be taken lightly by any standards.
Jack stared at the four massive moons in utter disbelief, there was no use pretending anymore and no amount of denial was going to help here, he had either completely lost his mind or somehow he was on a totally different planet.
For what felt like a very long time Jack replayed the events that had led up to this point over and over in his head, it all led to the point where he got knocked out and ended up here, he tried to recall the image of the person that tranquilized him, but try as he might all he got was a shadow, a very big shadow at that.
Suddenly the weight of the entire situation came crashing down on Jack and he felt incredibly tired, he realized that since he'd freed himself from the tree he hadn't stopped, looking around the side of the mountain he quickly and thankfully spotted what he needed, a cave.
Watching from a ledge a hundred meters to his left Tik eleth wondered what was going through the ooman's mind, for quite some time he simply sat there staring at the sky, she wondered if like her he was thinking about how he could make it off this rock on which they found themselves stranded, or maybe he was thinking about the vengeance he would extract on the vermin bad bloods that had stranded him here, a goal that she would gladly aid him in accomplishing.
As she watched the ooman he slowly brought his head down from looking at the sky and began to scan the mountain, settling his vision on a cave located halfway up the face of a fairly steep cliff, slowly he rose to his feet, slinging his weapon over his back, he adjusted the straps to secure it then he begun to climb towards the cave.
Tik eleth guessed that he must be looking for refuge for the fast approaching night and a hard to reach cave was a wise decision. A thought suddenly struck her, given how long she'd been tailing him and how long of daylight they had left there was no way she could reach her own cave before nightfall and if there was one thing after four seasons here that she knew for certain, if you wanted to live you did not go out at night.
This left her with a difficult choice, did she try looking for a cave of her own, or did she take a massive risk and share the ooman's cave, she knew the latter would force a confrontation and she didn't know if she was ready for that yet, he was already a proven warrior in her eyes having taken down that lizard singlehandedly, but she would have preferred to have more time to study the ooman so that she could not only judge his intentions but to gauge his usefulness as an ally, some people were just not good at working with others as well she knew, she herself had often been reluctant to work with other hunters in favour of doing things her way and on her own, but looking around the side of the cliff face it seemed that the ooman had managed to pick the only viable cave on this side of the mountain and with the light quickly fading it would seem she had little choice, so now all she needed was to plan this out carefully.
Before he exposed himself to any potential threat inside the cave Jack just listened, he hung below the mouth of the cave on the rock face and just listened, he was listening for scratching scraping or any sign of movement from within that would announce that he was going to have to fight an occupant for ownership, but much to his relief he heard nothing but silence from within. But ever the cautious type Jack moved slowly and silently as he poked his head slowly above the lip, the cave was shaped like a narrow jagged oval, it would be just high enough for him to stand up without banging his head, he remained motionless as he stared into the blackness of the cave, he was waiting for an explosion of movement to signal that he'd disturbed something within, but it never came.
Emboldened by this Jack heaved himself over the lip of the cave, but rather than immediately get to his feet he reached to his hip and drew his sidearm pointing the large handgun into the darkness, still nothing moved so slowly Jack raised up into a shooters crouch and with his handgun extended in front of him, proceeded slowly into the perfect darkness.
Once his eyes adjusted Jack could see that the cave was a fair bit bigger than he originally thought, it appeared to be ten meters deep by fifteen long, one thing he'd found in his pouches earlier that would be useful here was a small torch, he extracted it now and turned it on keeping it directly under his gun barrel so that anything the beam found he could instantly engage. The walls of the cave were jet black, normarily this would indicate water, but these didn't look wet, he slowly ran his hand over the low ceiling and found it dry as a bone and warm to the touch, the stone reminded him of pictures he'd seen of obsidian.
A quick scan of the cave revealed that he was indeed alone in here, to his far left there was a long piece that kinda looked like a black mortuary slab only a few inches off the floor, it seemed like as good a place as any to rest up, before he did so though he remembered his field craft of sleeping in an unsecure location, so taking the empty shell cases from his earlier engagement with the dino dozer, a good sniper always polices their brass when they can, he set them up at intervals at the entrance, hopefully if anything entered it would knock one over and alert him to its presence, then with this done he returned to the slab and removed both his rifle and his body armor, this was not going to be the most comfortable night's sleep ever, but right now he was far too exhausted to care.
Hanging below the lip of the cave Tik eleth listened intently, the only sound she could hear coming from the cave was the slow rhythmic sound of the ooman's breathing, slowly she peeked her head up above the lip and peered inside her plasma caster tracking every move of her head, to her surprise she could see no sign of the ooman despite being able to hear him quite plainly, immediately she noticed five little shiny things on the floor in varying intervals at the cave mouth, she smiled under her mask, "Clever ooman" she silently murmured as she observed the basic noise maker traps, slowly and silently she climbed over the lip edge and immediately killed her plasma caster worried that the slight noise of it rotating on its mountings may alert the ooman to her presence, silently she withdrew one of her daggers from the base of her spine and crouched so that she could enter the low cave, silently she moved inside carefully of the noise maker traps as she went, moving slowly she turned her head right to left as she entered scanning for his heat signature, immediately she spotted him to her left laid on a long slab of rock, she immediately froze solid and observed him silently even holding her breath, he made no movement at all and he appeared to be fully asleep. Tik remained motionless for a solid minute before she decided to approach him, moving silently she chose her steps carefully as to make sure she neither tripped either one of his noise maker traps or hit debris, slowly and painstakingly she moved till she was leaning right over him.
At this distance Tik eleth saw the ooman's face for the first time, it was pretty distorted by her thermal imager but this was still the first time she'd seen him up-close. To her eyes oomans were quite a strange looking species, no mandibles for expressing themselves, no forehead ridges, in fact they looked rather fragile processing no obvious natural armor, the exposed skin she could see of his face and lower arms looked rather soft, suddenly she caught herself almost reaching out to feel it, then she froze solid, what in the name of pauk was she doing? She gave herself a mental slap and slowly retracted her hand from the inch away from touching the ooman's face, what the hell had possessed her to do that? Had she taken complete leave of her senses? Quickly correcting her course from his face to his side she slowly and silently lifted the large rifle from the ooman's side and took it away from him, placing it on the floor to her right before returning to the sleeping ooman and very slowly and deliberately removing the smaller projectile weapon from by the side of his face, once these were safely removed she turned and picked up the larger one and took them both to the other side of the cave, now all she had to do was wait.
Jack groaned loudly as he woke up, his entire body felt like it was made out of cement, every single muscle ached like he'd run a fucking marathon and sleeping on a very uncomfortable stone slab had not helped at all.
Slowly he sat up and as he did he felt every single vertebra in his spine click in one after the other, it felt like someone ran a fucking zipper up his fucking spine,
"Ugggh fucking Hilton needs to sort these beds out they're as hard as stone" he mumbled to himself with a slight chuckle as he rubbed his stiff neck, then he froze solid, a cold empty feeling to his left told him something was very wrong, glancing down to his left revealed his AS50 was gone, turning his head slightly he noticed his Desert Eagle was missing also, the last place he looked was at his left boot, to his relief he noticed the knife handle still in place.
Jack's fingers flexed slowly as he planned the movement in his head, obviously who'd taken his weapons was to his right as the wall was to his left, he instantly slowed his breathing and opened his mouth slightly to reduce cavity noise, straight away he was able to pick out the breathing of another in the cave with him, it was quiet and sort of had an usual tone to it almost like it was being vented through a respirator but it was there as clear as day, his plan was simple snatch the knife and roll off the bed all in one move, that was until he noticed three red laser dots in the centre of his chest, "Remain still ooman, do not move" a strange voice from his right said quietly, was it his imagination or did the strange voice sound almost feminine? Slowly he held his hands out to his sides away from his body to show no threat, while at the same time he turned his head slowly in the direction of the strange voice, although the dark of the cave made it extremely difficult to see he could make out a figure sat on the floor a few meters away from him, it was rather large in size which surprised him considering only a second ago he'd thought the voice had sounded rather feminine, that's when he noticed the distinct shapes of his weapons on the floor next to the figure, whoever they were they could teach a fucking ninja a few tricks to have been able to get that close to him when he was asleep considering how light a sleeper he was,
"Well you've got my guns and obviously have me at a disadvantage, but since I'm alive and we're having this conversation I assume you have business with me" he said slowly and clearly, the figure didn't respond immediately but he heard a strange clicking noise like fingernails being clicked together, "Relax ooman, mean you no harm, but will defend if needed" the figure with the gruff but oddly feminine sounding voice said slowly, he considered this "So if you mean me no harm then why take my weapons?" Jack asked, "To prevent misunderstanding and unwanted hostility" the figure said, this actually made sense to Jack, it was one way of preventing a Mexican standoff with them both pointing weapons at each other and he had to admit he wasn't really sensing any hostile intentions from this strange figure, "Well then if you want to prevent any unwanted hostility would you mind kindly untraining your weapon from my chest?" he said slowly, the figure seemed to consider this for a few moments before the lasers suddenly disappeared and there was a strange whirring noise from the direction of the figure, he also could have sworn he saw something attached to the figure move,
"Very well ooman but not be stupid" the figure said, Jack took this as a sign that he could relax a bit, so slowly he lowered his hand and rotated his body to face the figure making sure to keep his actions as plain and obvious as possible so that there was no room for misinterpretation, "Thank you" he said,
"Ooman made request respectfully, showing honor" the figure said as if that was meant to mean something to him, suddenly it clicked in his head that this figure had been calling him ooman ever since this very strange conversation had begun, "Jack" he said, the figure didn't reply to this but he saw what he assumed was the figure's head cock to one side and he took this as a sign of either curiosity or not understanding, then it said something that sounded like "Ack?" both a statement and a question,
"Jack, it's my name, I believe it's always customary and polite to introduce oneself" he said pressing one hand to his chest and correcting the figure, he saw the figure's head move in a sort of nodding motion and he heard that strange clicking noise again, "I am Tik eleth proud huntress of the Shadow's Claw clan, it good to converse with you Ack" the figure said pressing one hand to its chest with a sort of metallic clang, then it clicked the figure had said huntress so it was a she after all, "Well then Tik eleth it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, now maybe you can kindly explain to me, just what the flying fuck is going on here?" he said looking at the shadowed figure of the large huntress dead on with the hope that maybe she knew why he was here and what the fuck was happening.