Chapter 2. Hunters Hunted

50 human years later…

Steg'-in waited perfectly still in the highest branches of the dt tree. He looked at a set of bushes about twelve noks away, knowing his prey had to come through them eventually. After several minutes, there was a brief, barely noticeable bit of movement.

Steg'-in threw his smart disk just in front of the bush, and green liquid spilled all over the grass. After a few seconds, a decapitated yautja appeared on the ground. Steg'-in decided to wait a few more moments until grabbing the corpse, in case the sound of the disk cutting through the "pauk-de amedha" had alerted the poor yautjas prey, whatever it was. He finally decided it was safe to get the trophy, when something grabbed on to his back and knocked him off the tree!

He fell for several seconds, wondering how this creature had spotted him with his cloaking device active, before the thing let go of him and he hit the ground hard. He tried to get a good look at it, but it was barely giving off any heat. This made it look like nothing but a faint glow about the same size as Steg'-in. The beast jumped but Steg'-in moved out of its way and stabbed it in the side with his wrist blades. He was startled though when they cut through a bit of fur, and then shattered on a hard surface! This exoskeleton or set of scales must have been shielding its body heat, he thought as he ran.

He pushed a button on his gauntlet as his world went from thermal imaging to ultraviolet. He stopped running and got good look at the beast chasing him. It was about his height, even while on all four of its legs. It had dark fur coming out of the gaps between its scales, and sharp claws on its feet that looked good for tree climbing. It had an odd head, shaped almost like a pyramid, with an eye on left and right sides of its cranium, and four on top! It glared at Steg'-in and opened its beak, letting out a loud

"GEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!"

Steg'-in saw it had three rows of teeth! It jumped again, but this time Steg'-in fired his plasma caster into its open mouth, causing its stomach to burst in a flash of sparks!

Steg'-in cut its head off with a piece of his wrist blade. I hope H'sai-de can build new ones, he thought. He lifted the heads of both his kills and dragged them back to the ship, where he took them to the trophy room. Da'guande walked in as Steg'-in finished removing the skin from the spoils of his victory.

"Impressive. The Pauk-de Amedha and a native beast."

Steg'-in smiled at him and began to clean the skulls.

"As soon as Kv'var gets back, we take off for a strange location on the scanner."

Once again, Steg'-in smiled but was silent. Da'guande knew that he wouldn't speak. Steg'-in was always silent, as if on a constant hunt. As Da'guande had expected, Kv'var had gotten back and was joking with Hiju paya about how on the next hunt they needed to kidnap a female from the Homeworld. Da'guande walked past as they closed the hatch. He sat at command yet again and launched the ship into orbit.

The planet was mostly orange from deserts with four or five large green jungles, including the one they had taken off from. They were in the middle of the planets rings when they saw a bit of motion behind one of the asteroids. A yautja mothership!

The ship came to a halt near them. It was probably scanning them, thought Da'guande. They must have been confused, as their ship was much larger than the one the yautja that had been on the planet would have taken. They must have identified the ship because they soon fired their forward burners!

Da'guande maneuvered out of the path of the blast and moved to the nearest sun at top speed. Da'guande wouldn't run from much, but he knew that they were completely out gunned. The mothership was slightly slower than them, but since Da'guande had to dodge the burners the larger craft would catch up with them shortly.

Da'guandes first idea had been to get the pauk-de amedha stuck in the suns orbit, but as they got nearer to the ball of light he realized that there was no way to do this without getting their ship stuck in the gravitational pull as well, and the mothership was far more likely to escape. He almost risked it when he saw that there was another sun surprisingly close to the first one. This gave him an amazing idea!

Da'guande flew the ship very carefully between the suns and watched as the mothership followed. However, it began to slow to a stop right in the exact middle of the two huge masses! Da'guande had prayed this would happen. The mothership suddenly began to fall apart, and Da'guande knew his plan had worked. The ship was being held in place by the gravity of the two suns! The ship tried to escape again, and again it started to rip in half! Da'guande smiled and took off to the strange world he had found on scanners.

Many hours later, the ship arrived at a small planet with no oxygen. At first, Da'guande thought that it had three moons, but realized one was much smaller than the others! Da'guande examined it on the scanners and saw that it was metal! It almost looked like a large, immobile ship! Judging by the appearance, it was built by oomans, and according to scans it was full of them!

Da'guande looked carefully and saw that it was unfinished in one spot. It was a small hole in the construct, and looked almost like they were attempting to expand the large building in space. A hole, thought Da'guande, almost like an unknown entrance. If they weren't bad blood this would be a great story to tell. But then, only bad blood would actually consider taking such a risk. He smiled and looked at his clansmen.

"The oomans actually built a tiny moon!" said Kv'var. "Next you'll tell me that they have mechanical versions of themselves!"

This got a chuckle out of Cetanu, but the others were silent.

Mesh'in'ga finally said, "This could be an excellent chance to hunt soft meat!"

Steg'-in replied, "We could easily be spotted trying to get in."

While most of them were just shocked to hear his voice, Da'guande reminded the hunter "There are no external defenses. We could get back to the ship with no effort."

Hiju paya then realized, "If we do this, one of us will need to guard the ship."

They all looked at Nan-de than gaun. Cetanu and H'sai-de had built a replacement for his left arm from spare weapons and scarp metal, but it malfunctioned often and didn't always disappear with the cloaking device. For those reasons, Nan-de than gaun rarely went on hunts with the others, and had become more like the ship mechanic.

"I'll do it." He mumbled, depressed. Da'guande was pleased.

"Then we go, we kill all the oomans, and we show those pauk-de amedha what makes the N'dui'se clan the real hunters!"

As he said this, he activated the ships cloaking device and flew up to the ooman construct. There was something written on the side of it in the ooman language. Da'guande couldn't understand it, but it said:

HADES 61793 MILITARY BASE

UNITED STATES COLONIAL MARINES