Author's Note: The new alien castes I'm introducing haven't just been made up, they're all part of the expanded universe
The Queen watched Piusnex with something approaching caution, the praetorian had been missing for so long, and would clearly have a long tale to tell. But there simply wasn't time for that now.
"You're to go to your room until I call for you." She ordered her, putting aside the issue for the moment.
"No mother, I can't, I've got to-" The praetorian began only to be cut off by the Queen's angry roar.
"Can't! Can't! I am your Queen and I have given you an order." The Queen hissed furiously, almost shaking with rage.
"Mother. I've survived quite well without your orders for months now. Now shut up and let me tell you what I've learnt." The praetorian snapped back.
The Queen stopped, stunned at the rebellion her eldest (surviving) child was showing, noone, not even her long-dead mate, had dared speak to her like that.
Rearing up on her hind-legs she bellowed at the praetorian, "One more word out of you and I'll-"
"No you won't." The insubordinate child cut in. "We both know I'm far too valuable to the hive for you to have me killed, now shut up, I'll be back in a few hours." And with that she left, the poor Queen too lost to answer.
Yeythwei forced himself through the vent, the passage slightly too small for a yautja physique, his broad shoulders pressed painfully into the sides.
With a grunt of mild agony he forced himself deeper into the ventilation shaft, idly musing that perhaps it wasn't worth the effort to assuage his curiosity.
He'd been passing the ooman's stronghold, as he did every day in the hopes of catching the man out in the open. But it never happened, he doubted the ooman's cameras could see him, but not once had he emerged at a time when the hunter was waiting.
Today was different, one of the grates the ooman used for access had been torn apart entirely with strength far beyond that of a drone or even a warrior. Which was bizarre for he knew both hives were far too busy to waste praetorians on a single soft meat. Nor was it one of his own kind for no yautja would have torn the grate apart when a single burst of plasma would have done a far more efficient job.
There was another oddity too, the grating was torn outwards as if something had been escaping rather than breaking in.
Oddities aside such an easy shot at the ooman was too good to miss.
Finally he emerged from the vent into a tiled room, clothing was scattered on the floor along with weapons and similar. Their crates knocked over or in some cases smashed. Clearly something had happened.
With difficulty and great annoyance at the confined space Yeythwei ducked under a doorway, blades ready. But there was nothing to attack him... and blood in the air. He could smell it, the thick rich metal, his nose may not have been up to Hard Meat standards but he was certainly better than the oomans.
Finally he found the source of the smell, a torn apart body, mostly eaten, in what was apparently the ooman's control room, going by all the electrical devices, barely noticeable in the well heated room.
It was a pity, he'd have liked to have killed it himself, this particular specimen would have made a fine trophy and it would have been a fitting repayment for the bullet wounds he'd received. Not many ooman skulls were worth boasting about, but this one would have been.
With a touch of regret to his thoughts, the yautja left as quietly as he entered.
Piusnex halted outside of the entrance of the human's abode, sniffing deeply. Yautja, she'd missed it by less than an hour. With a feral growl she crept forwards into the vent she'd used to escape, moving slowly due to her wounds and looking furious for those who knew what to look for. The predator had better not have touched her human or there would be hell to pay.
Slowly she moved to her room, stepping over her lunch as she pushed open the door. And there was her human, right where she'd left him. Stuck to the wall by a thick patch of 'resin', the substance used to build a xenomorph hive. Gagged and immobilised, her human glared furiously at her whilst she carefully levered him off of the wall, before spitting another layer of the substance over him. Sitting on his wheeled chair to wait for it to dry.
"I'm sorry my human, but I need to take you to the hive, I can't just keep visiting you here. It's too dangerous right now, there's a hive war. If just one drone got in here, with you stuck like that... well I think you can guess." She hissed softly, stroking his cheek with a claw, though even that drew a thin line of blood.
The praetorian growled in annoyance, the smell of blood would make him almost impossible to sneak into the hive. She'd have to douse him in water first. Still there was a river just ten minutes away so that shouldn't prove a problem.
With the resin set, she picked him up in her arms, screeching briefly at the stabbing pain in her chest whilst cradling him like a mother with a child, electing not to throw the biped over a shoulder for fear of impaling him on one of the spines on her back, or hurting her further.
Then, slowly and carefully, she headed back out through the vent, ignoring the muffled complaints of her human as he squirmed weakly in her grasp.
Alec tensed his arms as hard as he could, straining against the sticky resinous bonds, now long set and so stuck to his clothes and skin, quite painfully in fact. No joy though as the resin held, despite an hour of struggling he hadn't shifted it even slightly.
Despite all logic he was actually quite offended, he'd grown to trust Chrome, and to end his days starving to death on a wall was a rather cruel treatment for helping her recover from her own wounds.
A noise outside caught his attention. For just a moment he was tempted to scream, muffled though it would be, before he remembered that the only things that might here him were xenomorphs. No point handing himself a death sentence, he might still wriggle free.
The noise went away, and, after ten minutes more of writhing against his confinement, Alec collapsed limp to fall asleep.
Awakening later, he didn't know how much, to another noise, the young man was shocked at the level of anger he experienced as Chrome walked into the room.
Author's Note: Sorry it's been so long, thank you to everyone who reads this, the number of reviews I've been getting have been quite gratifying even in the absence of my writing. I owe you all a further apology, I'm going to university next year so once more updates will be intermittent. Though I'm told there are long holidays so with luck I should manage at least four chapters over the next twelve months.