Chapter 15. Nests
Several hours later…
Da'guande slowly woke up. He thought he had the hard meat when he was using his glaive, before he got stupid and charged the queen. He felt a searing pain in his ribs, which were all probably broken! He suddenly realized the queen had knocked him unconscious! He struggled to move but he couldn't!
He opened his eyes and looked at his legs, only to realize that they were bound in black goo! He looked at his arms, and they were covered in it to! His entire body was covered in it! As he took a closer look at his surroundings, he realized the goo was sticking him to a wall, covered in oomans who were also stuck! He didn't really want to, but he looked at their chests. Each ooman looked like its lungs had exploded!
He knew what this meant for him.
He tried to break out of his containment, but the goo was too strong! He tried to activate his self-destruct device, but his arms were spread much too far apart! He tried to scream in anger, letting both the hard meat and the oomans know that he was ready for them to kill him, but his throat was too dry! So he just waited there, ready for the creature that was put inside him to come out!
He saw somting on the ground several noks away that caught his attention, a yautja corpse! He tried to make out the body more clearly. Everything below the neck had been chewed on, but he still recognized the face! Mesh'in'ga! He suddenly felt a wave of sadness. Mesh'in'ga had been the one most likely to replace Da'guande as elder, and he had fell into the same trap! He looked more closely at the body, and saw several burner wounds! The oomans must have killed him and dumped his body into the nest, as if it were some spare meat for your pet!
That means that two N'dui'se are already dead, he thought, soon to be three! Could I have led my entire clan into a deathtrap? This thought completely infuriated the hunter! He had run out of time to live, but he would make sure his clansmen would make it away!
He struggled as hard as he could to get free, until his right arm finally broke free! This was the arm he wanted free, as it was the one with the wrist blades. Just as he finished using it to claw his way out, a hard meat attacked him! He waited for it to charge, then dove out of the creature's way at the last moment, slicing through its kneecap with his blades as it tried to slow its assault!
He ran past several rows of eggs until he finally reached the door, but it was still locked! He had a sudden flashback of the stadium on the Homeworld, all those seasons ago. Of course! It was the same thing! He waited for one of the many hard meat following him to get closer, and as soon as it close enough, he grabbed it by the arm and threw it up against the door, using his gauntlet plasma bolt to blow it to pieces a split second before it hit!
This created an impressive splatter effect, soaking the door with the beast's blood. Another hard meat came dangerously close to biting off Da'guande's head, but he still managed to cut its head off first! By then the door was almost completely melted, so Da'guande charged through it, smashing the entrance completely!
He was surprised to see though, that instead of the small moving room with the blood, he was somewhere else! This room was about the same size as the moving one, but was much dirtier, and had a much higher ceiling, with a rope hanging from it tied to the floor! He had spent little time in the room though, before it began to fill with hard meat!
Da'guande fired his plasma bolt through the ceiling, and quickly scurried up the rope! He was again surprised when he realized that the floor above him was actually the moving floor from earlier! He thought about it for a moment, and figured out that the moving room must have fallen down the tall one, and then somehow gotten back up!
He decided to think about it later, and slashed through the door with his wrist blades just as a hard meat crawled into the hole in the floor Da'guande had just come through! He ran out past where Steg'-in and the ooman had died, although other oomans had taken the bodies, and all the way to the hole the group had entered through, with hard meat not far behind! But when he got there, he saw large amounts of yautja blood in the hall right near the entrance. He peeked past the corner and looked at the hole, which had seven large burners in front of it!
There was also a little more blood, Hiju paya's smart disk, and Nain-de's shuriken! He pulled his head back in around the corner, and examined the blood. He soon noticed that it was dripping away down another corridor! He followed it as far as he could, but there was a wall at the end of the path!
It said:
Emergency activated airlock
Do not pass!
He was about to blow it up when he noticed a small window on it, which he looked through. He was surprised to see another hole behind it, in a room covered in ashes, but with no doors to prevent things from getting sucked out except for that wall! At least one of them must have gotten out through there, he thought.
He decided to explore a bit before the monster inside him came out. It wasn't very long though, before he turned a corner and found a few other monsters! There were dozens of them! They backed him into a corner, and got ready to disembowel him! He got ready to activate his self-destruct, when he noticed a metal grill covering a hole in the wall behind him!
He ripped the grill off and crawled through the narrow hole as fast as he could! He thought he heard ooman voices, but he kept crawling! Da'guande heard the hard meat following right behind him! The hole suddenly began to shake, and a piece fell right out from underneath him!
Da'guande fell about eleven noks, and landed on his already sore back! He looked around, and saw that he was in a giant room full of oomans! Some of them ran around panicking, while others tried to grab their burners and kill him! This only got worse though, when the hard meat began to fill the room! Da'guande defended himself against both, when he began to feel chest pains!
He opened the cover on his self-destruct device and activated it! He only had about two minutes until the entire construct blew to bits!
Two minutes.