Hobbes had never seen anyone eat as fast as the small apparition now perched at her breakfast bar. The child was shovelling down the last of a bowl of Cookie Dough in the attitude of one who intends to carry on all night.
"Are you guys short on rations or something?" She nudged Lex, who was staring out at the fat, white feathers drifting past the window.
"What? Oh - no." Lex roused from her thoughts "We can always hunt up something," She said vaguely "But ice cream is a new experience, isn't it Spyrro?"
In answer, the girl scraped up the last few traces of Cookie Dough and then looked up sharply.
"Morre eyess creeem."She said, it wasn't a request. Hobbes was reminded again of the child's father, who always spoke as if he expected to be quickly obeyed.
"You've had enough for one night, Spyrro." Her mother ruled "I think maybe you should try to get some more sleep."
"Not tiiirrred!" Small jaws spread in challenge, but Spyrro was not able to stop the defiant gesture turning into a yawn. Their arrival on Earth had interrupted her night's sleep. She yawned again as Lex carried her along the corridor to the hastily made-up bedroom of Angie, one of Hobbes's daughters. "Do not need to sleep," she grumbled in yautja, but she was too drowsy to put up more than token resistance.
Once Lex had closed the door on her slumbering daughter, she went downstairs and returned to the kitchen to find Hobbes with two glasses of Merlot. The former medic pushed one across the counter towards her.
Lex looked at it, "Thank you, but I don't really drink."
"Wrong!" Hobbes waved away the protest "Tonight you drink, because you look like shit."
"Worse than right after giving birth?"
"A lot worse."
Lex sighed and picked up the glass and then clinked it against Hobbes's own "To looking like shit!" She said with a smile.
Hobbes grinned back as Lex took a big mouthful and then coughed "You really don't drink, do you?"
"How are your daughters?" Lex asked, when she had stopped coughing.
"Old enough that they've had enough of their Mom for now. They're both smart cookies buuuut... you always worry, right?"
For a second she could have sworn Lex seemed uncomfortable. The ex-soldier looked at her friend closely for the first time since her arrival. She was a shade of her former self. There were dark blue smudges under her eyes but her lips were as pale as powder.
"Lex, you might as well spill it."
"Spill what?"
"Why you're here," Hobbes swilled her wine around in her glass "I mean it's great to see you - don't get me wrong - but what are you doing back on Earth? Because I know you're wanted by the government and I know you wouldn't risk coming here if it wasn't serious."
Silence.
"Tell me you aren't doing it for the ice-cream?"
Lex smiled "No, but I think one person here at least would think being introduced to sugary ooman desserts worth the risk!" She paused and looked at Hobbes thoughtfully. "Do you have internet out here?"
Hobbes frowned "If you're going to look up suspicious stuff on my home broadband, then I'd prefer you to do it using a VPN. Let's at least try and be a little discreet!"
Lex allowed the medic to lean over her shoulder to show her how to do it. "I never had you pegged for an illegal internet user."
"My nephew hooked me up, it's not bulletproof anonymity but, since almost getting court-martialled, I like to protect my privacy." Hobbes shrugged. "Plus, sometimes I want to look at stuff I don't want my kids or my husband to know about."
One black eyebrow lifted "Like what?"
The former soldier grinned. "Secret Online Gambling? Three-way porn? Hey, watch it!" She exclaimed, as Lex almost snorted wine onto the keyboard.
Lex coughed and wiped Merlot on her leg "Tell me you're joking!"
"OK, OK! I used to spend a lot of time on online forums. Alien encounters - true believer stuff! Most of them are whack jobs but… it was nice to not feel like I was the only one." The medic said, refilling her glass. "Nowadays I mainly spend my time browsing real estate sites. That's my porn!"
"You know how to live dangerously." Lex chuckled and clicked the mouse to bring up a map on the screen "This is what I'm here for: the NASA deep space communication centre at Fort Irwin."
Hobbes frowned at the map "That's on the way to Los Angeles, it's about two day's drive from here."
"Or about an hour on my ship." Lex reminded her.
"God Damn!" Hobbes whistled "So what is it you need at Fort Irwin?"
"They've got technology I want to use."
"But you can't just walk in there," The soldier protested "You're on the FBI's most wanted list, remember?"
Lex shrugged "I've got yautja stealth tech, plus I'm experienced at getting in and out of places." She saw Hobbes's expression "If I'm honest, I'm not much better than a pirate nowadays."
"Sounds like a risky lifestyle choice."
"I'm actually pretty good at it." Lex said, with a trace of pride. "Incompetent pirates don't live long. And it's not getting into that place that's going to be the problem. It's when I'm there things will get tricky. I'm hoping they've got something I can use to amplify the signal from the Dragonfly but…"
"I'm a little lost here," Hobbes said "Who are you signalling?"
Lex looked away, her face partly hidden by her dark hair.
"Is it Mr Tall, Dark and Scary?" Hobbes hazarded.
"You mean Scar?"
"Who else?" The former medic sipped some more wine, watching her friend "Where is he, by the way? Usually, he's not far from wherever you are."
Lex would not meet her eye. That convinced Hobbes that something seriously was off; those black eyes never flinched before.
"What about your boys?" The ex-soldier asked cautiously. "Did something... happen?"
Still the ominous silence.
"Oh God, Lex... what is it?"
"He took them." Lex's face was a death mask.
"Who?"
"Scar." Her friend said dully "He took the boys from me."
Another cold night in another cold forest, seven months ago: Lex awoke on the Dragonfly, shaking off the clutches of a strange, queasy nightmare she only half-remembered. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes but the uneasy feeling clung to her. In the bed next to her was a cold, empty space. Scar must have left some time ago. The twelve years they had been together had not cured him of his roaming tendencies and she often stretched out an arm in the small hours of the night to find him gone. Sometimes, he would return from the hunt, bringing with him the scent of the forest, of sweat and, sometimes, of blood.
Rising from the bed, she wrapped a long, thick animal pelt around her shoulders against the chilly air. The grey fur was soft against her bare skin. Closing it around her, she stepped into the corridor.
She looked in on her children, each one of them sleeping peacefully, "Tired out after a long day of exploring, hunting and brawling." She sighed to herself.
They had set up camp several weeks ago here on Beluah, one of the planetoids that served as their regular hunting ground. It had a breathable atmosphere and plenty of edible game and the forest was dense enough to conceal both shuttles from any local wildlife, although they were camouflaged using yautja stealth tech to avoid more sophisticated surveillance. Neither of them wanted to risk attracting unfriendly eyes. All of these things made this place an attractive base of operations but Lex could sense the children were getting bored here.
She floated through the dim, red light towards the cockpit. She had not been expecting to find Scar but here he was, seated at the console. She could see he hadn't been out hunting, he wasn't wearing his armour. He must have got up out of the bed beside her and come straight to the cockpit without bothering to get dressed. That in itself was strange. She was used to Scar getting up during the night to go out and hunt but Scar getting up during the night to brood over the console? That was new. Nevertheless, she was relieved to see him, wanting to be diverted from her restless state of mind. Drifting over, she leaned on his shoulder.
"Hello handsome." She said, "So this is where you're hiding?"
"Handsome I may be but… hiding I am not," He glanced up briefly "I did not intend to... disturb you."
"I disturbed myself." She grimaced, "Just a bad dream."
He frowned absently "I did not think you needed ... protecting from nightmares."
"I don't need protecting, just distracting... and the bed is much warmer when you're in it." She slid an arm around him, "Why don't you come back there now?"
"Hrrrmm," He purred absently and reached up to grip her arm where it coiled around his neck but didn't turn "At this moment… I cannot. There are things I must ...do."
"What things?"
His frown deepened, spiny brows lowering like a storm front rolling in."Necessary things." He said in yautja.
"More necessary than going to bed with me?"
He didn't answer but touched the controls again, talons clicking on the keys. Looking at the display, she realised that he was plotting a course - programming coordinates into the Dragonfly's console.
"Why the sudden urgency to leave Beluah?" A little spine of alarm caught in her throat "Have we been discovered?"
The system of planetoids they frequented were on the very edge of territory controlled by the Rough Skulls, the clan that she and Scar had deserted when they turned renegade (see end of Deviation). She hoped that after Hirai, they were believed dead or, at least, not worth the trouble of pursuing, particularly when their presence here helped to keep warriors from rival clans away from the margins of Rough Skull space.
She also knew that they could never take the indifference of Nar'Jat - the Rough Skulls' leader - for granted. He was a deadly fighter and willing to sacrifice others to further the clan interest. Fiercely intelligent and totally ruthless: who knew when he might decide they had outlived their usefulness? And, of course, there was always a chance that someone would stumble across their position by sheer accident.
Scar snorted "If we had been discovered, I would… not be sitting here, waiting for the first... blow to fall!"
"Then where do you want us to go?"
"It is called... To'Phet." (Pronounced Toh-FETT)
"Where the hell is that?"
He didn't answer right away, just continued tapping at the controls and she sighed.
"Whatever's on To'Phet, it must be pretty important if you need to get up and plot a course there in the middle of the night." She continued, "So are you going to enlighten me?"
He hesitated for a moment, then he touched the controls, bringing up a schematic of a planet on the viewscreen. Next to the globe of the planet, lines of yautja hieroglyphs scrolled down in a list. It took her a moment to realise this was a biological itinerary, listing all the known life forms on the planet. Her eyes scanned quickly down the lines of jagged text and she hissed: one of the species named on there she recognised.
"The Kainde Amedhe?" (Translation: The hard meat, ie. xenomorphs)
He nodded slowly.
She stared at him, her face gaunt with horror. "You can't be serious! Why would we take the children somewhere we know those things are going to be?"
"I am... deadly serious." He continued tapping in co-ordinates "It is time... for Selim and Isaac to be blooded."
"Selim and Isaac already killed a Queen, what more do you want from them?"
"That was not a hunt." He folded his arms, shifting into yautja again. "They only survived due to luck and because we were there, protecting them. They need to learn to do it on their own. It is time they faced the trial."
"You want to drop the twins into the middle of a hard meat nest? But they aren't ready, you just said so yourself!"
"No-one is ever ready."
"Scar, they will die! They are too young for this!"
"At their age, I had already killed peers who openly challenged me! They need to learn that killer instinct."
"But you were raised that way … and you were older than Selim and Isaac are now when you faced the hard meat: you were twice their size! I was there in the Pyramid, remember?"
"They must be stronger than I. The might of the Rough Skulls stood behind me, what stands behind them?" His hands were clenched into fists, "The punishment for my offences against the clan has come at last and it is this: knowing that my offspring are without allies. That they are alone... " He shook his head, still not looking directly at her, "Enough! I have made my decision. They must face the trial: it is the way of things."
"It doesn't have to be!"
"It does!"
She gripped his wrist "We can spare them all of that!"
"Spare them? Life does not spare the weak. The sooner they learn to fight, the safer they will be."
"Scar, they are our babies!"
"They are infants no longer! It is time they learned: kill or be killed."
"I know you, Scar!" She was still grasping his wrist, trying to drag him around to face her "You won't throw the boys to those things! I know you would lay down your life to protect our children. You love them!"
"''Love'!?" He spat "This is a … a soft meat idea you cling to."
Her jaw tightened, as it always did when he used that yautja phrase she hated "Why do you have to say it like it's something dirty?"
"Will this 'love' help my offspring survive? Will it turn aside the blades of their enemies?"
Suddenly he rose to his feet and turned on her, talons and jaws spread, his face a mask of awful emotion. She stood her ground, knowing she must not back down…