"Ahhhh! Yes! Good!"
R'chnt was beyond pleased. He was just excited. It was invigorating. He was the eldest out of all of the Yautja on the ship; very possibly he was the eldest of out all of them and K'Shai combined and yet he simply exuded a youthful excitement that was just intoxicating.
"We are ready!" R'chnt announced and the cheer from the other Yautja echoed their agreement.
K'Shai felt the hairs on her arms raise up. She cracked a smile. She was ready. It was really something, she thought. They had spent months flying through the darkness of space. The ship was stocked up for the flight out. It was not, however, stocked for any return trip or multiple stops on the hunting path, which is exactly what R'chnt had planned. Not every hunt would be one for honor and trophies.
R'chnt always maintained through all of his teachings that too many Yautja were just taught only that - to fight to win and gain honor; but they were never actually taught the more important factors of survival. Too many Yautja, he felt, were not taught properly to hunt for food, to hunt for water, to survive in the unknown jungles. The first stop on their hunting trip; was for food.
It was a dense planet they had landed on. The trees were so thick that it almost seemed as if there would not be enough clearance between any of them to actually land. Kor'aun-de, though new to the group, was an experienced pilot, in addition to a fierce fighter in the kehrite. He landed the vessel easily, as if he had done it a hundred times on that same world.
It was strange to K'Shai, she pondered quietly as she watched him easily control the ship, to see a Yautja, young as he was, educated only by his leader in matters of fighting and survival, to display such a natural skill in something like piloting and engineering. Like so many adult Yautja, he could not even read. He could pilot a ship using the picto-gram like controls, and he could rebuild broken armor making it better and more functional than it was before he touched it, and yet none of that was of interest or concern to anyone, not even Kor'aun-de himself.
Only the hunt, the fight, the skill to survive, the strength and wits to outbest your opponent and eat or win a trophy, were of any importance. K'Shai's mind flickered to thoughts of the mei'sa she had left her children at months ago. She thought about exactly what her children were learning while she was gone.
Suddenly she shuddered as she envisioned her return to children to could have cared less who she was. After all, it was not the Yautja way for offspring to care one bit about their parents or heritage; such things only mattered if they actually lived long enough to reap any benefits of having a high-standing parent.
Then again, she hoped she would return to the them all.
Clunk!
She was jostled from her thoughts by the ship settling down onto the rocky ground, which was an invitation to commotion from inside. Thudding Yautja feet immediately followed the setting down of the ship as the hunters prepared to depart for the hunt. By the time K'Shai, at R'chnt's side, entered the kehrite, the hunters were organized, waiting, and clearly eager. The scent of musk was overpowering and K'Shai was grateful that the ramp was down and she would soon be off the ship.
Three months aboard the ship as it was was more than enough. Even though only nine Yautja resided aboard, it was surprising how easily everyone could be in each other's way. The K'ojol seemed plenty big enough when it was just R'chnt and herself, and the children, making a home of it on the beach. It seemed cramped and ridiculously overcrowded when it served as transport to dozens of Yautja on the ride back home from Earth, but that was a short trip.
As she stepped onto the ramp, in her assigned position in the group; a middle point, she suddenly realized she had just thought of Earth, and did not consider it home. Yaut was home; that was where her children were, anyway. Earth was just another world she had been to, and now, she was about to step down onto her third official planet.
Her toes touched off the ramp and into the nearly black alien soil that lightly covered a solid slab they had landed upon. She was focused, erect, attentive, and moved off with the group like a trained hunter. She was Yautja. The task was to survey the world, so she glanced around the planet surrounding them. She glanced casually, only so much as to note her surroundings, check out the HUD display readings flashing across the inside of the biohelmet visor, and continue forth with the group as if she had done this very same thing a hundred times on a hundred different world.
She tried to imagine, as she stepped from the rocky slab through a thicket of trees in the middle of the group, that this was just another world; no different than Earth or Yaut, and that as a proper Yautja, the focus and attention must be on the hunt - on learning the terrain and getting that first hint of the intended prey.
She imagined to herself what R'chnt would say if she started gazing at the surroundings in her "human" way. With that, she focused back on the quickly moving pack of hunters gracefully gliding over the terrain so quietly they might well have been flying. They briskly moved through the trees along a narrow pass between the mighty, vine covered trunks, hopping coolly over the occasional root that raised above the ground.
The world, like Yaut, was thick and hot, but the likeness to home ended there. The trees pulled back quickly and before K'Shai knew it, the group of hunters was standing at the edge of an overlook. The sight made K'Shai gasp.
The sound drew the attention of everyone. The others looked at her with a sort of, is something wrong kind of cock to their heads. She could see their alertness immediately straighten their bodies. Perhaps a threat was near already; perhaps K'Shai sensed danger before even they did. R'chnt however, gave her a kind of pay attention and stop looking at the scenery glance because he knew all too well what her vocalization was regarding.
It was time, he warned with a quiet glare, to hunt.
The group immediately moved off, and while K'Shai most certainly did not stop looking at the sights before her, she kept her gasping reactions to herself. The world was beautiful, unlike anything her wildest imagination could create. There were so many places on Earth she had never been - deserts full of ancient pyramids, snow capped mountains, and green rolling landscapes, even jungle. There were places on Yaut that she had barely even begun to explore that were filled with more beauty than any place she had been to on Earth.
Nothing that she had seen so far came even close to the vision before her. The edge of the plateau was not terribly high, maybe only a hundred feet. It was clear by R'chnt, who showed absolutely no patience to allow her time to gaze over the scenery, and continued right along down the incline, that the group would be heading into the forest just below.
The overlook was enough for her take in a glistening river zig-zagging in a wide pattern through the trees - trees that were blue. The thick forest was blue. Everything was blue.
The leaves were blue with blueish-purple veining, the tree bark was pewter blue, the grass was a deep blue-green. Tiny little bright blue flowers adorned almost everything and a green-blue leafy vine dappled with nearly neon blue buds crawled its way over almost every surface, save for the ground which was blacker than volcanic rock.
K'Shai felt as if she had just barely taken in the sights around her when suddenly, the pack moved onward quickly. Without even thinking, she simply reacted, stepping up her pace to move right along with the group without ever losing her assigned position in the pack. The Yautja were following their leader towards prey.
They were on the hunt. She was on the hunt.
She had hunted plenty on Yaut; alone, with just R'chnt, lightly letting A'ryin'di get a feel for the hunting ropes by hunting creatures the size of rabbits, and even hunting for food with a small group. She had never before, though, hunted in a full pack, on another world. She could feel the pure adrenaline charging through her body as she felt the vibrations of the hefty weight of the Yautja slamming into the ground with every step. Their scent, their low growls which deepened as they neared the prey, was invigorating.
Before she knew it, the pack of hunters, running at speed like a pack of hungry wolves on the scent of a deer, rounded a turn and there the targets were in front of them. The hunters split up in perfect precision, each one targeting a creature for themselves.
K'Shai rounded the turn out of the thicket of trees and immediately darted left, honing in on a half-stunned animal. They had approached swiftly from downwind, with such power and purpose it made the whole thing look and feel easy. The animals were grazing in a field that was heavily scattered with large black-colored boulders, which continued to aide the Yautja pack with cover until they were literally jumping in the air above their targets.
The animals, about the size of an average deer as K'Shai gauged, had long furry hair, long, delicate ears and three-toed hooves. They were beefy creatures that might have well been some kind of llama-pig hybrid. As her spear sliced easily in the startled creature that she targeted that had barely any time to process what was happening before it failed in an attempt to cumbersomely flee, she found herself quickly assessing that each of these animals; eleven of them now down on the ground; would provide ample eating for likely the remainder of the entire journey R'chnt planned to take them on.
The Yautja had come to the blue world for a purpose, and that was completed. The hunt was over nearly as fast as it began. Now, the Yautja simply had the task of preparing their meat for storage and the continued hunt.
The conditions on the planet were ideal; it was temperate and beautiful and the sun was setting just as the hunters, carrying or dragging their prey with them, arrived back at the ship. K'Shai continued to gaze around the world, which seemed to change into a whole new variety of beauty as the sun dropped. R'chnt watched her gazing around the world and couldn't help but to softly raise a mandible in a gentle smile.
"We will set up camp here for the night, prepare our prey, and return to the stars in the morning," he announced to the group. "This was a good hunt. The prey was lush."
K'Shai smiled softly and assisted the group with preparing a campsite. Before too long, a fire was roaring and K'Shai had a filet of her own kill sitting near the fire to slowly cook, which of course drew typically curious stares from the Yautja who were readily gnawing into bloody stump of leg bones to fill their bellies.
"It was a good hunt!" Lot'kdte cheered with a throaty growl and raised his large mug to the echoing approval of the others.
"The next one…" N'tul added in. "Will reap far more rewards."
The other bellowed their readiness and K'Shai shot her eyes widely towards R'chnt. He halfway had the notion that she had some been caught unprepared by the idea of a more challenging hunt. He let the notion pas through his mind quickly as she spoke up.
"Do we hunt here again?" She questioned with an eager and excited hint to her voice.
He had misunderstood, perhaps. She was simply eager to hunt more which pleased him.
R'chnt chuckled softly. "No K'Shai, our next hunt is on another world. The prey will be somewhat less simple."
The anticipation was as ripe as the male Yautja musk that emanated from the hunters the day the K'ojol landed on the hunting world. It was a short flight, just seven days; a far cry from the months they had spent training and prepping before the first hunt, but the Yautja were ready. They spoke of the prey on the world they were headed to and K'Shai listened to their tales for days and nights.
As the ship zoomed into place and the loading door ramp lowered to the ground with ten armored hunters standing at the top of it, she could feel her heart pounding. She was excited, shaking, ready, nervous, but full of anticipation. This was it. This was a hunt. An alien world, the wild jungle, unfamiliar terrain, deadly prey.
The only small comfort she maintained was that she was not hunting alone. The lich-judte were dangerous animals; massive, powerful, and always hungry for fresh meat from what the hunters described. R'chnt was wise to guide the group of hunters as a single unit to kill the beasts if they could, but she definitely had the sense that some of the Yautja, especially the younger ones in the pack, very much wanted to hunt one down by themselves.
E'jul seemed to be the one who talked in circles around it the most; trying to hint as his own exceptional prowess without actually saying he would like to split from the group and R'chnt's command for such a thing would get him killed - by R'chnt, not the prey.
As it was, there was no time to consider these things. The ramp went down and like a pack of wolves suddenly on the scent of a lone deer, the Yautja were off at speed. K'Shai thought about almost nothing as she maintained pace with the group from her mid-formation position. This time, she had little time, or even thought, to gaze at the planet around her. It was night anyway and since it was pouring heavy rain in drops bigger than she had ever seen before, she needed the computer display inside her biohelmet to really see anything.
The display lit the world up in hues of bright white and green and blue, but they were certainly not the natural colors. The thermal vision, once so disorienting to her to the point of causing nausea was now her only real hope at successfully navigating the terrain. She could follow along with the Yautja, but seeing where she was going was something else entirely. She focused so intently on the display in her helmet that she barely looked at anything else around her.
The group traveled on for the entire night until sunrise, stopping or slowing only really because she needed to. It was a new concept for the Yautja, one that R'chnt strictly reinforced to his group and had always in some way during all the training she had received in a group reiterated. The idea of stopping or slowing down on their hunt to make pace with a human with different requirements for food, elimination and physical endurance could have been a real point of contention for them.
However, as they rested for a moment just as the sun came up along the very distant horizon, K'Shai glanced around appreciatively, realizing that this particular group of hunters accepted her for the differences that slowed them down and some had even asked, and fought for the opportunity to hunt along with her under R'chnt's acceptance.
So, they followed his command and direction, every step of the way. Turn left, run, climb, swim, stop, rest, eat; whatever he commanded, the hunters did, and some of those commands were dictated by K'Shai and her needs.
She allowed herself a moment to finally gaze at the natural colors and beauty of the world around her. K'Shai scanned through the visual modes until she arrived at the one that allowed her to see as her own eyes did and she glanced along the ridge that overlooked a valley. The sky was as dark of a gray as she had ever seen; the rain storm finally broken up, but the swirling storm clouds still lingered.
The rising morning sun struggled to shine through them, causing beautiful backlit glowing rims along some of the clouds and random arcs of brilliant yellow color streaking down to the planet's surface. A sparse treeline backed the hunting group in the distance from which they had come, and they rested now on a large flat rock that overlooked moss and rock terrain that seemed to stretch on for miles.
The planet had a beauty and a familiarity to it. It was such a strange thing, she thought idly; how every planet she had experienced thus far seemed to all have shared commonalities. The universe, it seemed, was not as alien and foreign as it was common for humans to once believe.
The rest break was sufficient, but short. A roaring deep trumpet echoed up through the canyon and the group immediately went into full alert. K'Shai had not realized that they were so close to their intended prey. R'chnt led the group along a very narrow pass that scaled downward along the cliffside. The path was barely wide enough for K'Shai to fit her foot upon, and she moved slowly.
The Yautja of course, with their clawed toes and fingers and powerful muscles were far more naturally bred and well practiced at scaling sheer cliff. They moved easily and smoothly while K'Shai crept along just a few lengths behind R'chnt, who kept himself in a strategic position. He maintained the lead, guided the group, and also managed to move along at a pace that allowed K'Shai to keep up.
The roaring bellows filled the canyon as the hunting party moved along the rocky pass. K'Shai could tell just by the sides that there were at least two of the creatures; perhaps three. Maybe the Yautja were on the path towards a family of the animals, or perhaps it was a herd; maybe rivals that were fighting. She tried to imagine the scenario they would be walking into, but when the group slowed to survey the terrain, nothing could prepare her for the sight, no matter how many stories she had been told of the creatures.
The moss and rock terrain curved along the ravine and fed into a wide river that flowed smoothly along a curving path a far as she could see along both directions. The water looked like blue-grey glass, almost as if the river had no current. It might have almost looked artificial if not for the animals that utilized the river all along the banks on both sides.
At one edge stood shoulder to shoulder a group of animals that looked quite a bit like an animal she had seen in the Central Park zoo once; an opaki, she thought it was called. The animals were the size of elk, but with the look of some kind of hybrid zebra.
They drank water, dangling their large heads over sideways splayed legs just so they could reach the river, and three of the animals, one in the back, and one at each side were obviously playing look out for anything that might like to eat them.
With good reason, K'Shai thought quickly as she surveyed the land. There appeared to be plenty of animals that could eat them, all lingering around the river's edge for miles. Some of the creatures were tiny, but even from the distance they were at, K'Shai could see their razor sharp teeth. They looked like miniature tyrannosaurus rex, actually, even though they were barely the size of a rabbit standing on its hind legs.
Every animal she saw along the riverbank appeared to be some kind of dinosaur. She was on a prehistoric world. She was looking at dinosaurs. The animals all looked slightly different that their Terran counterparts from museums and movies, but the general sizes and shapes were spot on. There was a herd of at least two dozen brontosaurus, and three stegosaurus nearby, all grazing on trees and bushes that matched their own size, with leaves as big as their heads.
A large flock of what looked rather like flamingos, only not pink but white, waded through the river, giving the only evidence that the water was either very shallow or the birds were very tall. Another flock of large birds that well could have been pterodactyls flew overhead making lap after lap as if they were circling surveying for a free meal.
Another creature that looked quite a bit like a giant anteater only with scales, was fishing in the river, using its elephant-like snout to simply grab fish right out of the water. The birds flying overhead paid particular attention to that creature. One of them even went as far as to fly down and land on the thing's back for a moment, clearly begging for a free meal.
The sight was magnificent. The sounds of the echoing calls and bellows were surreal. For a moment, she felt almost as if she had walked onto some kind of movie set. As if actually living on an alien world and travelling through space was somehow not science-fictiony enough, seeing real live dinosaurs before her seemed like fantasy has come true.
R'chnt and the pack, though, was on the move. The hunt was on, and there was no time to gawk or admire the scenery. K'Shai struggled to bring her focus of attention back towards the hunt, though she found her eyes veering towards the left to continually survey the animals all along the rivers. The hunters took a different path along a narrow ridge that ran along a low hillside once they had descended from the higher summit.
Over the variety of sounds from the animals all around, K'Shai was finally able to focus in on a standout sound that they were clearly approaching. As the group huddled in tighter and moved in a tight formation, her view became quite limited to the backsides of W'rsa and R'chnt and the right shoulder of N'tul who crept along slightly hunched forward just to her left. They Yaujta were quickly adopted a crouching position while still moving forward.
K'Shai finally took a moment to collect her thoughts and put her focus onto the hunt instead of the river, the animals, the vistas, and the clouds above her. She inhaled deeply and slowly, letting scents register inside her nostrils that she simply hadn't paid attention to before. She realized the Yautja were definitely downwind, and they were definitely focused on something.
She had a suspicion, probably not an unwarranted one, that the group was honing in on whatever was making the massive blaring trumpeting sound that echoed through the valley.
Sure enough, once the view of flapping leather pieces and skull and bone adorned armor finally cleared for a moment, K'Shai got her first full view of the target. R'chnt stopped and without a verbal command, the group mimicked his gestures.
They all stopped, crouched low, and held still. K'Shai realized suddenly that even without camouflage active, the body patterns, sudbued colors of the armor they wore, and absolute stillness, made the Yautja become part of the moss-and-rock spattered hillside.
She assumed, or hoped at the least, that her beautifully tattooed body was at least performing in much the same way. She held her breath just to make sure she kept absolutely still as the Yautja did, unsure if the entire hunt was dependent upon the group staying utterly still. for a moment, it seemed as if even R'chnt didn't breath. Suddenly, the area around her seemed to feel hotter, and it definitely seemed to smell muskier, as the Yautja clearly prepared for attack.
Moving his fingers only slightly, and tipping his sleekly helmeted head from Yautja to a point off to the side of the hill somewhere and again and again, he directed the entire group what to do and where to go, without ever speaking. K'Shai hovered in her assigned position, waiting for the moment R'chnt would call them all to strike, while watching the creatures before her with wary trepidation and a surging rush of excitement.
Without delay, the Yautja pack, like a well tuned herd of ravenous wolves was darting down the cliffside in a superbly formulated attack pattern. The target- something that looked like a cross between a stegosaurus and Godzilla perhaps, but there was no time to focus on just exactly what the giant, quad-mandibled animal looked like compared to something in Earth's history or pop culture.
The Yautja bellowed; the animal turned on them and turned its head a little too far back to echo out a returning challenge cry and whipped its tail angrily. Suddenly, the giant beast turned into the group and charged; spiked head down just like a bull looking to gore its prey. The move was so fast, and so unexpected; at least for K'Shai, that the group jarred to a halt and began to leap to the sides to avoid the attack.
Mora'th-de failed to move promptly enough and found his thigh well torn into quickly. As he fell to the ground in a roaring heap with a loud wail that was somewhere between pain-filled and rage-fueled, K'Shai thought for sure he was going to suffer another blow as the massive beast hunched over him.
Just like that with almost no hesitation, the hunter honored his leader with a prompt display of excellent training. He regrouped and leapt off the ground, immediately stabbing the animal in the side of the head with his kcit'pa blades and using them, and the beast's withdrawal as leverage to pull himself right onto the thing's shoulders. Suddenly, Mora'the-de was riding the animal, preparing for a second attacke when the group moved in.
K'Shai just moved along with the hunters. There was not a lot of time or thought process; simply move. She stepped forward with the charge, weapons ready - a spear in one hand and blades ready just in case over the other wrist. She stepped, she ducked, she lunged, she jumped; each move unthinking, and just happening as she avoided the animal's every attack back at the group now encircling it.
By the time the attack was done, the river bed shore which had been so bustling with activity not that long ago, was abandoned. As the giant beast lay dead and the blood-covered hunters swooned and howled over their kill, K'Shai glanced to the trees around her, and the shores beyond them, and to the hillside from which the hunters had attacked. All the animals were gone. It was as if they knew the Yautja were there, and the Yautja were mighty and should be avoided at all costs.
The one beast that dared to roar and charge and attack the alien invaders now lay in a bloody still heap before them as they raised their spears, batted their chests, and wiped their wounds with pride.
R'chnt walked over to K'Shai, who beamed at him with an exhilarated, prideful gaze. He gently nodded his head and ticked an upper mandible with satisfaction, then reached towards her, tucking his mandibles tightly together as he concentrated on her with concern. His large hand gently brushed against K'Shai's upper arm and she finally glanced towards his touch to see blood seeping from her arm.
She thought she had felt something hurting, but there was hardly any time to think about it. She quickly glanced up and down her arm, which had full function. Nothing was broken, it was just a deep scrape from a hit she took by one of the thing's rear legs. A large flap of skin on her arm was peeled back and suddenly she realized how much it actually did hurt.
"I'll be fine, don't worry. I'll heal it up in a little while." She assured R'chnt.
As the sun set on the group, who spent their time in near silence while diligently and efficiently carving up every last bit of their kill in preparation for return to the ship, she could not stop smiling.
She was filthy, bloody, her sealed injury on her arm had gone from searing pain to an annoying tingle, and she was sweaty and needed a shower, and was pretty sure she somehow had managed to end up with dirt and rocks lodged in between her teeth, but she beamed at R'chnt.
"That was amazing!" She said.
"When do we do it again?"