CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
She watched the commotion warily as eager youngbloods, no longer even bothering to concern themselves with her presence aboard the hunt ship, piled into the kehrite ready to exit through the door on the upper level. She knew more young hunters were awaiting their chance to leave the ship through the docking bay door on the lower level, but she returned to R'chnt's chambers until the bulk of everyone had left the ship before she would depart.
A'ryin'di had grown restless, perhaps with the excitement permeating the shell-like walls of the ship.
While K'Shai wanted to remain in the control room to watch the ship enter the planet's atmosphere, she did so instead alone in R'chnt's chambers as the infant nursed herself full.
K'Shai watched the planet grow larger and larger through the windows until finally she could see buildings and cliffs and leaves on trees after the ship soared quickly over the surface of an almost endless looking deep blue ocean. The ship settled down in a red-dirt flatland that looked as though it was at the top of a plateau over a valley.
Other ships had already landed and stood powered down. As the K'ojol was positioned for a quick landing K'Shai could see a few groups of several dozen Yautja going about their business between them.
What she noticed the most though, were the trees not far off from the landing spot of the K'ojol. She had expected, because she had seen the green and blue outlines of the world on the first approach, that Yaut would not look too drastically different than Earth, despite the fact that it had three moons and two suns.
The trees that skirted the flat landing zone still followed some apparent basic laws of the universe. They were still trees. They had trunks and no doubt they had roots that fed on water and nutrients from the soil they were embedded in.
The trunks stretched tall towards the sun and the leaves soaked up atmosphere and light and rain and nourished the tree to make it grow. Beyond that, they had no real comparison to Earth trees at all, at least not any tree she knew of in the present day. Perhaps something prehistoric, she thought vaguely.
The leaves on the trees were big enough to blanket her body entirely twice around. They were green, but the shade was more of a purplish-green accented by yellow lacework that looked like glowing-blooded veins. The leaves had clusters of beautiful white and purple flowers the size of her head protruding off the ends of each branch like clusters of grapes.
They had delicate, flaky leaves and deep red protrusions emerging from the center that looked rather like a sort of Venus fly trap. Even the trunks, though still a brownish-color as one would expect of any tree, looked foreign and many of them were coiled in vines that at first glance appeared to be yellow and black snakes with a girth as big as her thigh.
Beyond the trees, from what K'Shai could see out the window as A'ryni'di suckled her breast dry and unlatched with a little sucking sound, was a sky as clear and pastel blue as her imagination could never even draw up, highlighted with white puffy clouds and the occasional flock of birds which were too far away for her to see in any type of detail, even to gauge size.
"K'Shai, come my mate." R'chnt announced from the doorway of his chambers after the pounding sound of mighty pairs of clawed feet had dimmed to none as the ship was emptied.
With a slight pause, K'Shai turned, adjusted her grip on the infant in her arms and headed towards R'chnt. She stopped again suddenly, realizing she was leaving his chambers without any belongings and suddenly it felt wrong. Was she supposed to take luggage with her? Perhaps supplies for the baby, like her bassinette and cloth wrappings? Maybe she needed to pack up garments or lotions or all the things that people needed to have in their home.
She instinctively changed her trajectory to grab up at least a few things.
"K'Shai, bring nothing. All you need will be there." R'chnt said briskly.
She pressed her lips together feeling a little foolish, but realized she had just come to think of the ship as home, and somehow leaving it and everything on it behind felt like she was abandoning home, again.
In retrospect, she had abandoned home over and over during the last two years, and she had not even realized unit just now, how much she had come to think of the K'ojol as home. She figured of course they would be back to it; the vessel was R'chnt's, not a cruise ship she was only visiting for a brief time.
R'chnt had impressed upon her the idea that Yaut was home, but she did not feel that way about it at all. To her, it was a foreign world with prehistoric looking trees and two suns and the idea of leaving the K'ojol to venture out into it, with a newborn baby wrapped in her grip, was disconcerting at best.
Somehow, being on the atoll, while in orbit of Earth, did not seem so different, she thought in retrospect.
Although when she first stepped aboard the atoll after R'chnt had been injured, the days passed by in a blur and she barely thought about her unusual surroundings. Earth was still visible, so there was familiarity, even though the view was different out the window.
Now though, K'Shai thought quietly as she glanced one last time out the viewing window before the door to R'chnt's chamber slid closed behind her, the view was totally different. The K'ojol was comforting and familiar.
It was home.
A'ryin'di had been born there, and for the last many months, it was simply the only comforting and familiar place she could go.
R'chnt extended an arm around her shoulder, enveloping her into a comforting grip as she walked with him towards the lift at the end of the hall.
The lift slid easily down to the lower level and K'Shai stepped out still wrapped in R'chnt's grip. Even the unusual style of the lift had become familiar to her. Her first time on it, it made her quite nauseous and she had half a mind to simply climb between the two levels using a ladder between the upper and lower engine access rooms.
The lift was a platform that moved inside a tube, but there were no walls to the platform, so unlike an elevator, K'Shai watched the walls move as the floor dropped from under her and it made her nearly lose balance and feel suddenly motion sick.
Now, it was just as familiar to her as every other piece of the K'ojol, and although she said nothing as she walked away from it and headed towards the docking bay with R'chnt, she still felt apprehensive about what awaited her outside the K'ojol.
When she walked into the docking bay, W'rsa and two other hunters were just finishing up directly 'aseigan to clear out trophies and gather equipment. Everyone stopped for a moment and looked up to the Elder Leader and his mate.
K'Shai could not help but notice how their eyes all lingered on her and the offspring she cradled. Some of the 'aseigan simply lost color in their skin the moment they saw her. It was obvious they had not been on the atoll, and had never seen her before. They looked more than just surprised to see her; K'Shai was quite sure they looked genuinely afraid of her.
W'rsa barked to them to return to their tasks and they did so with such an alarmed jump it gave K'Shai pause. The way the Yautja 'aseigan, shorter and scrawnier than the hunters, dropped-headed and submissive, jumped in fearful apprehension when a Blooded hunter ordered them was something she imagined she would never get used to.
As her attention turned away from the 'aseigan and R'chnt stepped away from her for a moment to talk to W'rsa briefly, K'Shai's gaze shifted to her left as something else she was quite sure she would never get used to caught her focus.
The shuttle bay door, long and wide much like an oversized garage door, was open and the fresh air from the planet blew in whispily, carrying with it the scents of the alien world.
The heat of the world blew in on the breeze, along with sweet smells. The world beyond the ship, from what she could see, was lush and green and vibrant like a jungle or rain forest, and although she could feel the sweltering heat, it was not as humid as one might expect a jungle to be.
The hunt ship's engines hummed quietly and whirred down with less disturbance of sound than a hairdryer caused, and she could hear the bustling of Yautja just outside echoing in.
Sounds echoed around the landing zone; clattering of talons and metaling chinking of weapons and armor being handled, moved, packed onto transport vessels. Voices, rumbling and deep, reverberated between the metallic hulls of the vessels.
K'Shai tiptoed quietly over to the top edge of the ramp and looked out, squinting at the almost overpowering bright light, as her eyes were so well adjusted to the dim ambient light in the hunt ship.
She listened to the noises for a moment and slowly tuned them out, focusing instead to the sounds from the planet.
She could hear animals chittering and calling from far in the distance, past the trees that lined the landing zone, and from the sky above.
She tipped her head up as a cackling pair of birds whooshed passed the landing zone. They were as large as herons and K'Shai could see bright yellow tail feathers as they passed overhead. She followed them beyond the curve of the K'ojol until they were out of sight and her eyes settled for a fraction of a second onto one of the suns shining brightly.
She scanned back down towards the trees and surveyed the edge of the forest, once again hearing high-pitched calls from animals that could easily have been frogs of some sort, amidst the echoing calls of what she assumed were birds or maybe even some kind of monkeys.
She tried to envision the types of animals associated with the calls she heard, and the realized it was a fruitless endeavor, for the sounds could very well have been coming from creatures similar to snails.
Only as R'chnt stepped towards her did her attention turn away from total focus on the bright sky, the green jungle, and the noises of the animals.
She had not even noticed that everyone in the landing zone had stopped dead in their tracks to stare at her. She did not notice the silence that fell upon the scene, not until she glanced to R'chnt who nodded his head softly towards her and she turned once again to the ramp and the world beyond.
Her eyes met dozens of eyes locked on her as hunters all stopped to gape and even 'aseigan took a careful moment to stare.
K'Shai glanced over the halted Yautja and smirked her lips together, instinctively pulling her child closer to her breast as if somehow that would shield and protect her better from whatever lay ahead while R'chnt positioned himself in front of both of them, which would definitely protect them from whatever lay ahead. K'Shai followed just behind R'chnt down the ramp, looking about once again.
There were a few familiar faces watching the situation with alert interest. She saw S'aruch-de amongst them who seemed keen to flick his gaze between her and the watching crowd as if he was expecting, anticipating, someone in the crowd to say or do something they shouldn't.
He looked ready to pounce, and purely entertained by the entire situation, watching K'Shai step down the ramp with one tusk cocked into a grin.
R'chnt stepped off the ramp into the red dirt and K'Shai halted at the edge of the ramp, before stepping down onto her first alien world.
R'chnt paused and turned back, watching her patiently, clicking softly. W'rsa and the others behind her all stopped and surveyed K'Shai's back as she scanned the trees and the ships and looked from them to the dirt.
R'chnt imagined she felt very much the same as he once did when he was very young and stepped out onto his first alien world for his blooding hunt. Until that point, his training had been either on Yaut or on his leader's hunt ship.
He had never been on another world and he recalled feeling a rush of excitement and pride as he stepped off the ship onto the windy and rainy world as fire flickered across the sky from comets. That was a ferocious planet, well worthy of a Blooding hunt.
He stepped off eagerly and immediately started out to familiarize himself with the world and the layout of his surroundings, as he had been trained.
He watched K'Shai now, doing exactly as he had been taught, surveying her surroundings and analyzing the land. Her natural senses were clearly sharp enough to take her awareness of the new lands to a new level.
He had not yet begun teaching her such things, but it was obvious she knew them already from natural instincts and previous experience on her world. She paused and surveyed the world and paused some more and took in another look and another and finally R'chnt realized that she was outright reluctant to leave the ship.
"K'Shai," he said flatly. "Join me."
Why she was having trepidation, he could not imagine. This was home.
As he had told her many times over the last few months, Yaut was his home as well as hers now. This was not a foreboding world with vicious prey; all the dangerous animals were generally well away from the clan city, especially with the raucous of the ships landing.
There would be no dangers immediately present, and if there was, she had him to protect her, a job which he took seriously.
K'Shai eyed R'chnt, clearly picking up on the fact that she was delaying entirely too long at departing the ship.
She took a deep breath, pulled back her shoulders, firmed up her grip on A'ryin'di, who was sound asleep in her arms now, completely unconcerned with the change of scenery, and watched her own foot touch down into the red soil of the alien world.
She suddenly felt different somehow. She had done it, with a sort of "here I go" hesitant pride. With one foot in front of the other, she stepped onto the alien planet.
Really, it was the first time a human stepped onto an alien world, she thought. Of course, men had been to the moon, but Yaut was no moon. It wasn't even anywhere near Earth.
If she had her math calculations correct, the flight between Earth and Yaut had taken just over a week of Earth's time.
She had no idea what speed they were travelling at, and R'chnt had scoffed at the idea of warp when she had explained what it was, but still, regardless of how it was figured, Yaut was nowhere close to Earth.
She had gone farther than any human she had ever known to exist, and now, she was looking around at an alien world that she would eventually come to call home. Despite her initial hesitation, once she had touched down onto the soil, she no longer felt reluctant.
Really, what was she worried about? She thought to herself as she moved along with R'chnt and the others out of the landing zone.
The planet was not really that different than Earth. It was round and green and blue, and there was red dirt like she knew existed on Earth. There were green trees with brown trunks, as with Earth. The sky was blue, as was Earth. It was just a little different, that was all, but it was where R'chnt belonged and called home, and where her daughter would be raised.
She smiled to herself as she stepped towards a transport vehicle waiting at the end of the landing zone.
Her definition of home had changed so much over all this time, and Yaut was nothing more than a new location for her to settle into. A'ryin'di had certainly settled; she double checked before approaching the vehicle.
The baby was sound asleep.
The transport vehicle looked like a floating pontoon. It hovered stationary while it waited for its passengers, its propulsion system below the deck barely humming, but glowing so brightly blue it shined even in broad daylight like a low rider car with neons under the chassis.
Other Yautja were lingering near the device, which was large enough to easily hold forty adults, but none of them made a move towards it at all.
'Aseigan and Blooded alike, all eager to return to the clan and their business, no doubt, paused apprehensively and watched K'Shai tail so closely behind R'chnt that their bodies lightly brushed into each other as they moved.
R'chnt paused at the single step up onto the floating platform and K'Shai skirted around him onto the device first. He moved in behind her, brushing his hips against hers as she climbed onto the vehicle, with his arms stretched out to either side of her, channeling her forward and making himself into a living blockade between her and the other Yautja waiting behind him, who all kept an alert distance.
R'chnt had simultaneously both yielded to K'Shai and postured dominance and protectiveness over her and his offspring, and the message was clear.
K'Shai moved to a far corner away from the entrance step and sat on something that probably wasn't a seat, but it served her well enough.
She did notice as the wary Yautja began to move onto the vessel, keeping a wide berth between themselves and R'chnt, who stood guarding over them, that there were actually no seats on the platform at all.
It was a standing room only transport pad, and she received many curious glances as she seated herself upon an angled corner support piece to the guard rail. It was simply in her nature to sit, especially on a moving vehicle.
When the vessel started on its journey, she could feel it swaying, and noticed everyone who was standing braced as the thing kicked into gear. As the vessel moved under its own direction, apparently, she noticed that perhaps the Yautja were not just braced to remain standing on the platform.
There was a definitive tension in the air, and while much of it was reciprocated from the packed crowd, she noticed that it seemed to spur from R'chnt.
He was tall and rigid, clearly tense and on guard, vaguely hiding it all behind a shield of edging savagery as he looked on to the others, surveying them as though any of them might attack in a split second.
He realized she had picked up on his abrasive posture and her own tension seemed to grow in response as well.
K'Shai shuffled the child in her arms and noticeably cast her eyes everywhere but towards the crowd or even to him. R'chnt remained wary.
This was the first moment that his alien mate and half-breed child were arriving to the home world. This was different than being on the clan ship, and while some of the Yautja on the transport had already been familiar with K'Shai aboard the ship, to see her and the infant amongst the males, instead of riding back to the mei'sa on a transport of only females, was simply so unusual that no one really seemed to know how to react.
K'Shai looked about apprehensively, and then shifted her gaze once again to the trees and sights of the planet around her as the floating pad zoomed along smoothly and silently down the trail.
Although she had not yet come to think of the Yautja homeworld as home, she did suddenly realize that she had figured once finally on the planet, there would be something of a reprieve from the nearly constant state of alert posturing that she was so accustomed to from the Yautja.
She assumed the Yautja would be relaxed more and there would be a chance for all of them to ease up, allowing time for K'Shai and R'chnt to discover the new parenthood that they had barely begun to live.
Having dealt with enough unnerving situations aboard the clan ship, she hoped that R'chnt especially would ease up for a moment and be rid of the constant need to be defensive and ready for a fight.
She hoped the Yautja, undoubtedly all just eager and happy to be home again, would just turn their attention to their own businesses and do whatever was in their normal activities to do, while letting her enjoy her new motherhood and R'chnt discovered fatherhood in his own way.
If such things were to happen, it did not seem for the moment that would happen soon. K'Shai could smell the musk of the Yautja around her emanating, almost to the point of making the air unpleasant.
It was a scent of apprehensive anxiety and brimming eagerness, and it combined with the foreign smells of the alien world that hit her nostrils, and drew her attention away from the tension on the floating platform.
She turned her eyes away from the Yautja, from R'chnt, and from her sleeping baby, as she watched the tall, vine covered jungle trees move past her eyes. She tried to absorb everything she could, looking around as if she might never see any of it again.
All the sights and smells and sounds were so unusual to her. She could hear calls of creatures howling up through the trees and smell the scent of the flowers between the trees and the vines as the floating pontoon sailed easily over the red dirt and rock pathway.
The infant in her arms was completely uncaring of her mother's shift from reserved anxiousness to flat out stunned amazement.
She still had her eyes shut, warm, content, and more at ease than any other Yautja on the platform, and had not been in the least bit bothered by the sounds of the jungle, the feel of the motion of the vehicle, or the h'dui'se in the air.
K'Shai tried to take in so much of the sights around her so quickly she found herself unable to focus on any one thing at a time in exchange for trying to see everything at once. All of R'chnt's diligent training on focusing her mind and absorbing her surroundings were overridden in a moment.
The breeze gently whirred up some orange sprinkles of sandy dirt and rustled the deep purplish-green leaves. She was certain she saw something moving high up in one tree, too. Perhaps it was some kind of snake, or maybe the vine itself was moving.
Perhaps it was a Yautja watching from a better view, she could not tell one way or another and the vehicle rounded a curve, so she lost sight of it and focused on something totally different.
"Oh wow!" She exclaimed in a shocked whisper.
R'chnt gazed at her, noting how everyone else turned to look at her. Some may have understood her alien language, or the implication behind the words, but all looked quizzically at her regardless.
He watched her survey the planet, never removing his eyes from her as she ogled the sights of his world in wonder. As she gasped in awed amazement he allowed his body to nudge delicately into hers, an amused grin stretching over his tusks; a look he often donned when K'Shai's attention drifted in wondrous fascination with her surroundings.
It was an unusual thing, he thought; her need to gaze and study and gasp and delight in the simple surroundings of a world or the stars.
He was trained, however viciously as required, and thusly always trained his students in the same manner, to pay attention closely to the situation and surroundings around him only as much as it affected him.
Gawking at what K'Shai referred to as 'the beauty' of the land had no bearing at all on the events of a hunt.
Sitting for endless hours positioned in a chair solely to watch the stars go by, seemed such a curious thing to him. Still, the way she did it, the way she lit up with absolute enjoyment, it was hard for him to not stop and watch her.
It was not that R'chnt could not appreciate the differences in the two planets. Certainly, there were many, it was simply not in his nature to sit and ponder those differences. Yaut was home.
Even all the moons and other planets in the system were almost like home in that he had been to them so many times he knew them equally as well. He had been to many worlds with many different types of landscapes.
He found Earth to be equally as foreign as the rest of the planets beyond the Yautja system, but it was hardly cause for him to stop and stare, absorbing its beauty.
He always evaluated his surroundings closely, especially on new worlds, but also even in familiar territory.
Learning the lay of the land and studying the prey in it was a need no hunter should slack on, but the hunter's need to take in the terrain was done for quite a different reason than K'Shai's.
It was something he had yet to begin to teach K'Shai, but the point seemed almost a little unnecessary, he considered; she would probably spend more time gazing at a new world than actually hunting. There was something beautiful about her absolute wonder, and the others aboard the transport were equally as fascinated by her reaction to the sights of their home world.
No Yautja he knew would gape in wonder at the stars, nor did they focus on the scope of the terrain of their world more than to merely gauge it for travelling.
He watched K'Shai's eyes bounce from dirt to tree to sky and back again and again until she stopped moving entirely and stared in open-mouthed wonder, taking in the view while twenty other hunters stared at her.
Had he caught any of his students stopping to simply admire a planet during a hunt, he would most certainly bash them into the ground for failing to pay attention, for any prey would likely do the same if given an opening. With K'Shai, though, everything was different, and he found absolute delight in watching her, and mild amusement watching the others react to her.
The only view that really mattered to a hunter was that of the prey coming at them, or the one stalking them that may have otherwise gone unnoticed, as he once learned due to not paying enough attention to his surroundings.
Too many hunters that were either far too cocky or inexperienced, or often enough, both of those things, would grow too comfortable in familiar hunting grounds and their wariness and alterness would fade. Such lapses of attention would easily lead to severe injury or death. It served any hunter well to always remember to stay sharp and attuned to his environment, and judging by the way K'Shai gaped at the scenery around her, she would have no trouble at all learning that one simple lesson.
She could not even produce a sound beyond the first shocked whisper as her eyes locked onto the sight before her while the floating platform continued towards its destination down the incline of the mountain.
Being on an alien world was a rush of excitement and she could barely keep her wonder and curiosity contained, but now the planet had won. The beauty before her was overwhelming. The planet looked almost prehistoric; K'Shai had never seen such sights before.
The leaves, the dirt, the colors, the sounds echoing from the wilderness, the oddity of seeing three dozen space ships parked idly amongst a jungle of trees that would have made any human being think they were in the middle of an uncivilized land, the view of the moons and their crystalline rings above her head, and the bright sky lit by dual suns blazing gold, were all just too much, and then, she saw the city.