All respective rights to the owners – I am not profiting from this work of fiction or own any of the characters save for the original ones created. – Yours Hopefully

Translating

The medbay was a low-ceilinged chamber near the aft of the ship, outfitted with the latest tech from the homeworld that the clan funds could provide. Regenerative tanks, automated surgical tables – things of that nature. Scar found it suitable.

Lex had been stripped and carefully outfitted in a mesh netting to regulate her temperature on the ship. The ship's regular temperature, like most controlled Yautja environs, was extremely high. In excess of one hundred of her Fah'ren'heit degrees, as he had explained to her.

She sweated instantly under the arid heat in the ship and grimaced at the hotness of the flooring beneath her bare toes before he had swiped her back up in a sure-handed grip. Barking out a terse order to the crew manning that area of the vessel, he had backed them off enough to secure privacy in the medbay where he could array her in peace.

The ki'cti-pa was still clutched in her small hands, but the trembling from the cold had steadied the long, thin fingers clutching the cool steel.

Scar threaded another brace over his ooman's arm. Netting slithered out to connect with the collar of metal clasped around her neck, spanning over the rest of her body 'til she was covered neck to toe in the thermal wear.

The ooman made a noise of relief. Scar could sympathize. He'd rather fuck a live circuit wire than walk around her planet's frozen hell without his gear. It was the reverse for Lex – oomans couldn't take the heat Yautja required to live comfortably in. But changes could be made. He normally kept his chambers on the low end of the hundreds, so with repeated doses of certain chemicals and the thermal wear it was plausible for Lex to acclimate and eventually go without.

A bigger problem was posed with the high nitrogen and carbon dioxide content his race required to breathe. Already her chest was panting in shallow, labored breaths as the ship's vents cycled through the breathable content into the chamber. Scar suppressed a frustrated growl before setting his mask and weapons aside. He kept a burner close for practicality's sake – he didn't trust Pawal to sit still while he and his ooman were alone and unguarded.

It would be hard to keep her lungs full, but a scrape and click to the collar of metal around her throat had a small current of oxygen flowing out of a small niche in the metal.

The tiny, almost microscopic needle popped out to press flush against her throat. Lex's pupils blew up a bit in fear, but like always his ooman mastered and masked the emotion quicker than he could blink. Scar reached for a tiny nanochip stored on the tray he'd put together next to the metal slab of an exam table, forceps gently squeezing on the miniscule thing.

Programming came easy to him. It had been that way since his mother had given him his first terminal – the manipulation of code and information into an electronic format. He'd even managed to snag a signal or two from Lex's planet and hack into their archaic network on his digital terminal a few months before his chiva. All done out of sight of his brothers and any other living body on the ship.

It only took a moment to upload the contents of a so called Eng'lish primer from the archaic network and meld it with the basics of a Yautja's elementary vocabulary. Now the true test run of the device was in order. He opened a small sliver of metal and injected the chip into the collar before fitting it snug around his ooman's throat. The torc of bent steel fit well on her narrow throat. A common piece of fashion most females wore in both of their respective races. Scar figured she wouldn't mind too terribly due to its functionality.

The steel flared for a moment as an underlay of numbers flew across the thin metal. It quieted, and Lex blinked as Scar tried out a word.

"N'jauka," he trilled at the ooman. Satisfaction ran deep when he saw her eyes flare in surprise – she could understand him.

Whatever he had fitted around her throat had worked a miracle. Now indistinguishable clicks and growling syllables turned into language – melded right into the climber's mind to translate.

He welcomed her.

She responded in English, figuring he had understood her so far using it. Yautja seemed to require a wider range of vocal diversity. And Lex was short a set of mandibles to help out in that department.

"Hello," she replied awkwardly to his greeting.

Scar gave her what she translated as a smile. A little quirk of his tusks and a purr.

"The needle…is for your air supply. So you will not be starved for what your body craves," rumbled Scar. Lex suppressed the urge to gape. His voice was now distinguishable – low and sonorous, deep and guttural. Something that pulled at her stomach and made her pulse hike up to a fluttering jitter.

Scar seemed to notice the change, crinkling his brow and flexing the long column of his throat in a frustrated twist.

"Do it," Lex muttered after a moment of tension between the two, baring her throat and clenching her hands down on the edge of the table before the needle slid home with a painless jab into her trachea. Air flowed in after a wet noise sucked the pin into her throat, the collar obviously generating the oxygen despite its micro thin size. Their technology outraced anything she'd ever encountered – even in a fictional sense.

Now she took in a full breath, the dense air filtering through the pin in her throat to simply be synthesized into something close to what she breathed on earth. Focusing, Lex twisted and turned her head and neck to try it out. The pin detached.

Scar covered the tiny pinprick of skin from the entrance wound with a bit of thick, goopy liquid the color of human skin. It melded, filling the hole and sealing it until Lex took her first independent breath with her new implant. Perfect working order. She felt like she could run laps now with this fishnet getup and the miracle needle in her throat.

"It works great," she said with a small smile at Scar. "Thanks."

"You are welcome," he muttered, pacing back and flexing his toes to click his talons on the metal of the floor, eyeing her up and down before throwing the drape back over her body. The thin netting didn't hide much – although it did cover everything from the neck down. It generated what seemed to be a small climate in the suit that blanketed her – cooling and recycling moisture back into her body.

"Try to imitate what I say – even the noises you are not capable of. Vra'jek," Scar said.

Lex repeated, but instead of simply faltering on the trill, the collar emitted a metallic click at the end of the harsh sounding word in lieu of her lack of mandibles. Check off another wonderful thing about alien tech.

"What's it mean?" she asked, then suddenly knew. He pointed emphatically to himself.

"Still look more like a Scar to me – but Vra'jek fits."

Scar gave her another fluttering imitation of a grin, clasping her chin in his talons before turning her face this way and that – more thick liquid added on to any cuts or discolorations found. Once she was properly doctored up, he tended to his own wounds before moving back to the control panels at the airlock. Motioning her forward, he led them out into the vacant hallway. Beneath Lex's feet, the ship was deceptively still. And less obnoxiously hot. Were they moving at all? It was different from anything she'd ever traveled on. Hell, different than anything any human had ever flown in.

A brief memory of her first flight in her father's AW109 with him at the controls came to mind. The sensation of weightlessness as the rotor blades started up. Humming static filling the channel in her ears. Dad looking sidelong at her through his aviators with that grin.

Then she came back to herself from the memory. A lift at the end of the sterile corridor took them up a level into an open, long bay with a viewport situated near the end. The glass – at least it resembled glass – was frighteningly thin and showed nothing but the bleak night and the hunter's moon setting over the ice. Scar led her close as the ship gave an unperceivable tug beneath their feet.

Movement. Now the night was falling, falling. The glass window seemed to be situated at the aft of the ship since the ground was widening into a long stretch of ice instead of facing the open sky. Lex caught sight of the Piper Maru and her lights before it too was a speck in the white. Oceans leaked over the ice, and soon continents appeared in definitive shapes before the great globe of the planet took form in a matter of seconds before Lex's eyes.

"A chance to turn back, if you want it. Lex."

It was Scar's voice in her ear. He had taken up the spot behind her. Warm hands rough from labor and the strange skin of his race clasped to her shoulders. The drape was slipping off in her loose-fingered grip, and he readjusted it to cover her modestly.

"No backing off. No turning back," Lex said in her most affirmative voice, swallowing whatever emotion tightening her throat.

"You may return yet," he added quietly.

Lex gave a shrug. "It wouldn't matter."

In all her life, Lex had never been dependent on anyone but herself. Her father was her only guide after her mother's death. Then the clot had taken him from her as well.

Now after so many years of solitude, of locking herself away in the deepest parts of her personality, she was thawing out to this one being. One that had put his trust in her to toe the line, steel her spine and overcome the odds alongside him. She could put her trust in him.

Scar gave her shoulders a squeeze, turning her to gently guide her away from the viewport as the moon and the earth turned into a tiny pinprick amongst the blackness of space. Receding.

The young hunter had gotten himself into a situation most would view as odd. For one, he had barely achieved maturity and already reaped so many honors in one blow that elites would roar with the absurdity and unfairness of it all.

Now he was a blooded hunter with his own quarters on the clan ship and trophies to mount on his walls and present to his matriarch. But Lex would create conflict upon conflict among the clan until it was proven that she had her right to stand by him. That would require training and time – both of which he could provide. The cruiser would only take a day or so to dock with the clan ship circling the ice world on the edge of this solar system. It would take them six standard months to return to the homeworld from there at the maximum speed – exceeding the rate of light.

Time they had plenty of. Scar was looking forward to it. Already he was getting wretchedly attached to her. Every tilt of her mouth and flare in her expressive eyes set his blood to boil, and endeared her to him. But he knew that was not what she wanted – coddling. She wanted equality like all females on top of her own space to breathe.

He had quarters near the fore of the ship near N'jal's massive apartments. Previously it was shared with one of his brothers while the elder sibling had his own private room near the small kehrite. The ship itself was his uncle's own cruiser during the rare hunts he'd undertake alone, but it was chiefly the clan's own cruiser to use during their chiva.

Round the winding corridors they went. Lex keeping even pace with his long strides and piping up a question or so every few yards – some making little sense to him until she explained them.

"So you've got faster than light travel down, I'm guessing?"

"Yes. Ancient technology for us," he answered in the affirmative.

She made a noise of surprise, coasting a nail over the steel plating girding the halls as they made their way along the dim lit passage. They came to the door, Scar pressing the pad of his thumb into the grid screen on the lock and barking out a brief syllable for the voice command protocol. The steel door slid away to reveal the entrance, and he motioned her in with a lingering scan of the hall. No one tailing them, but he wasn't optimistic. He locked down the magnetic seals and powered down the door after stepping through, bringing up the layout on his wrist terminal to shutter the vents against any subversive intrusions.

Lex seemed to get the idea that they were on lockdown. "Afraid that the macho one is going to rain on our parade?"

Scar didn't understand the euphemism so much, but the meaning was conveyed. He nodded. "Pawal is…competitive. He is impulsive – I do not want harm falling upon you due to his shortsightedness."

"I can handle myself," Lex said in a low voice, rubbing at the bridge of her nose as she situated herself on a low cushion near the carved table in the center of the small common room. A wide, narrow strip of glass showed the emptiness of space outside blocked by the mass of one of the system's few uninhabitable planets. It entranced his small female for a moment. The sight was novel to him now after many life cycles in space, but Scar supposed the view was extraordinary to a terrestrial race that only had just discovered flight a century ago. Let alone space travel half a century ago.

"I used to joke about becoming an astronaut to my father years ago – he flew in a few wars. Made colonel before he retired."

Scar delicately parsed through the information, garnering that her sire was in the military and had achieved the rank of a great warrior. A pilot of sorts as well.

"You have many things open to you now, Lex," he rasped out, gently folding his bulk onto a cushion near the table after setting aside his armor and gear on the ceremonial rack on the wall. It folded in on itself before tucking away in a niche on the wall, a clear pane of glass sliding down as the ultraviolet rays and decontamination fluids filled up to put the items in a suspension.

"I'll drill you with more questions tomorrow, big guy. I think you're a bit worn out as well."

"Yes…but I will keep watch until you have slept properly. Until then, you must rest. I will allow you the second watch, but if anything seems suspicious or the door unlocks, you are to alert me and lock yourself in the sleeping quarters. Pawal and his companions are impulsive, but far from stupid."

"Where do I sleep?" she said boldly, turning to fix him with a look through the lank, stringy strands of hair still wet with melting ice. Scar chuckled, reaching to rub a bit of the silk through his fingers until even Lex cracked a grin.

"Yeah. Maybe a shower before bed."

"I will show you the decontamination and elimination chamber," he said as he rose, leading her towards the spare room off of the common room. The other sleeping chamber had been locked down – less area to contain meant a tightly controlled environment he could keep an eye on. He'd afford his female privacy once the danger had passed.

Lex had to hand it to Scar's race – they had a good sense of decoration. She imagined animal skins – maybe a few human skins – to decorate their quarters in a barbaric motif. Instead it was all chrome and sleek woods with brightly beaded fabrics – a massive amount of potted greenery reaching towards solar lamps recessed into the ceiling.

The bedroom adjacent to the common room was a size larger and identical to the first in color scheme. But another small, sterile room led off of this one and a massive futon took up a corner dais. A wall also seemed plated over with black glass, a massive sectional draped with fabrics taking up the space in front of it. The rear facing wall was a massive pane of glass with a view of space. Mars currently whizzing by. Lex had to pinch herself at the surreal quality of it all.

Scar ducked a head into the decontamination…bathroom, as she had dubbed it. It had the toilet set into a metal bench and a sleek glass box melded into one corner with tiled walls and flooring. Shelves of strange liquids were recessed into the wall of the shower – a grate of beaded metal spouts set into the ceiling above the shower.

"Hit these buttons in sequence – first to shower, then to dry. The cleaning chemicals aren't abrasive to your flesh, but avoid the dark green liquid. It is a very strong base and might cause a rash," he clicked off, the glass of the shower itself lighting up in a sequence of lit characters and pinging with sound as he grazed a claw over them.

Hot water blasted like a small, contained rain shower from the grate of metal above. It sluiced into the drain below, small suds falling after Scar tapped another symbol before he swirled the glass dial. The steam let up to an icy pour. Lex was thrilled, reaching between them to adjust the flow to a scouring hot temperature sans soap suds.

"You catch on quick," he said with a touch of rough pride as she handed over the ceremonial drape and metal braces. The netting slid back into the cuffs and ankle braces as she took them off, the heat tolerable now thanks to a few injections he'd given to thin out her blood. Even the torc came off of her neck with a click. Unabashedly naked in front of her strange alien, she stepped through the sliding panel of glass and hissed as the hot water poured into her eyes and sluiced down her limbs.

Scar rumbled. Amusement or pleasure? Lex really couldn't tell. She flicked him with water before shutting the glass pane, grabbing what looked to be a pumice stone from the tiled shelves to scrub at the soles of her feet. The position left her ass upturned in the steamed air – the glass walls fogging up to merely make her body an outline in the steam to where even his keen vision couldn't make her out.

"Teasing is not a good tactic," Scar groaned out, seeming to wrench his body out of the room with a pained rumble. Even aroused, he wouldn't let his guard down with the macho squad out for her blood. Lex allowed herself a moment of cattish, female satisfaction at her effect on Scar. But turnabout was fair game.

Translations

Chiva – trial

Kehrite – training hall

Ki'cti-pa – spear/combi-stick/lance

N'jauka – welcome