The next chapter is posted! Enjoy :)
When Kayla next awoke, it was to the sound of someone walking about around her.
Her eyes slowly opened, and she felt a soft breeze hit her skin. She slowly shifted her gaze around the new surroundings. There was a small, strange fire lit up several feet in front of her.
It lit up the area enough to let her see that they were now in the middle of the woods. And it was nighttime.
She then heard more of that strange gravelly language with a few clicks, chirps, and grunts mixed in. Her gaze settled on four large beings walking about the camp.
It looked like they were testing some weapons and sharpening some others. All while taking turns conversing with each other every now and then.
Kayla lied still and tried to keep her breathing even. She didn't want to let these assholes know that she was now awake.
So far, she was doing well at keeping quiet. Until she felt something crawling up her leg. She tensed and slowly looked down to see what appeared to be the biggest insect like creature that she ever saw crawling up her leg to her hip.
And she stood straight up with a startled yelp and quickly batted the gross, strange insect off of her.
It fell off of her leg and used it's several spindly legs to crawl out of the cage and into the nearby bush. She let out a sigh, until she heard what sounded like a bunch of laughter coming from beyond her cage.
Kayla's head whipped around, and she saw the four beings were looking her way and laughing at her. Apparently, they found it highly amusing that she was scared of a harmless insect. And her reactions were downright hilarious.
She gritted her teeth and glared back at the four large males.
"Shut up, you assholes!" She yelled at them, letting her temper get the better of her again.
The outburst certainly caught their attention as they stopped laughing. That's when the red one she recognized from before started to casually walk over to her cage.
He appeared to be the biggest one of all of them, and the way he carried himself made it seem like he was the boss or the one in charge.
The big red one stopped just outside her cage. Unlike the last one she was in; this one was bigger and longer. She could stand up to full height inside of it and the top of the cage came up to the large being's neck.
He placed a hand on the bars and tilted his head down to look at her.
"Com'fy?" He mocked.
Surprise, surprise, the leader of these bastards' spoke English too.
"What do you want? Why did you take me? And where the hell are we?" Kayla demanded.
Sure, she was scared of this nearly eight-foot behemoth. But she was also angry and wanted answers.
"You are our bait. Th'is is why we took you. We're on Plan'et Katy'y'ae. Ver'y far from Ear'th." He said, in a low rumbly voice.
Her eyes widened in shock and horror. This thing just told her they intended to use her as bait and that they were on another world. If it wasn't obvious before, she knew these guys had to be aliens.
And very technologically advanced.
"Why? Why me?" She asked, still in shock.
He just shrugs, "Why not? Yo'ur clear'ly more pl'eas'ing to look at th'an yo'ur plan'ets males." He ended with what sounded like a deep rumbly purr.
Kayla quickly shrunk away from him while giving him a disgusted look. But despite her look of disgust, he can smell fear permeating off of her from his words.
Lar'nix'va leaned in a little closer, until his masked face was mere inches from the bars.
"You won't be mak'ing th'at face wh'en I do de'cide to take you, lit'tle ooman. Who kn'ows, you may act'ually like it. And who kn'ows, if you pl'ease me e'nough, I may de'cide to keep you as pet, in'stead of bait." He rumbled.
He knew his comrades wouldn't object to that. It wouldn't be bad to have a female to use at their disposal whenever they wanted.
Her fear gradually turned to rage as she clenched her fists at her sides.
"I will kill you, if you try it." She gritted out in a low dangerous tone.
The other three hunters who had their translators on and were listening in, were surprised at the small ooman female's boldness. Usually, a remark like that to Lar'nix'va was a big, 'No, No'. And would surely get the other individual killed on the spot.
They observed him closely for a reaction.
Instead of being angry, Lar'nix'va started to chuckle.
"My, my, yo'ur a fier'y one. I like th'at in a fe'male. They are mu'ch more fun to br'eak." He taunted.
"Go to hell and take your dogs over there with you." She spat.
The three others growled in agitation at being referred to as lowly canines. And if their leader wasn't here, they would've taught her a lesson for her smart-ass retorts.
"Al'ready been th'ere, ooman Not hot e'nough for me. Now, sit tig'ht and be a good girl wh'ile we go hunt." Lar'nix'va taunted.
He turned around and walked away, not giving her a chance to snap back.
"Well, what are we waiting for? C'mon dogs, time to hunt." He teased.
They grumbled at his retort. Sometimes, their leader's weird sense of humor can be quite a pain. But regardless, they were still loyal to him. He did after all save them one by one from the Arbitrators' clutches, gave them room and board, and food.
For this Ka'Torag, Mar'cte, and Chulonte will always be grateful and follow him to the end.
The three of them turned to follow him and they all activated their cloaking devices upon entering the dense foliage.
Once they were out of sight, Kayla walked over to the bars closed her eyes, and leaned her forehead against the metal. A couple tears escaped her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.
Meanwhile a few kilometers southeast of the camp another ship had landed about twenty minutes prior to their ship.
One lone individual growled frustratedly as he noted that one of his thrusters took extensive damage. And he was unsure if he will be able to fix it.
The holographic image reflected off of the eye lenses of a dark angular metallic mask.
What he was seeing in the image for the ship's schematics didn't look too good. There appeared to be a small, short circuit in both the navigations system and defense system.
One of the thrusters appeared to take a direct hit from one of the meteors in the meteor storm he went through when his ship's defense shield went down.
He didn't want to go through it. He didn't know by doing a worm hole skip, that it would bring him out into the middle of one. And he barely had time to activate the ship's defense shield.
But an Arbitrator's ship was on his tail. And that's why he had to make the decision to use the skip to get away.
It didn't take long to realize he was hit and there was some smoke pouring out of one of the back thrusters. Once this happened, he had no choice but to land on the nearest planet to him, which happened to be one of the game preserve planets, Planet Kuty'y'ae.
At least it was a planet he knew quite well and been to a handful of times in the past. It was a pretty popular hunting planet for yautja. Which was both good and bad for him.
Good in the sense, he could find another and ask for their assistance. Bad, if they knew who he was and either decided to take matters into their own hands or contact one of the Arbitrators and send them running here.
The male grunted, in a way, he was getting tired of running. It also seemed cowardly to do so. But he just didn't know how else to convince the Elders that he was framed for the crime that was committed on home world within his clan.
Even when he tried to implicate the male that was that actual culprit, they still didn't believe him because it was only, he who was found with the deceased at the time of the crime.
Had he been the one to have done the atrocious deed, he likes to think he had enough dignity to own up to it and face his death upon execution.
Instead, he was compelled to flee and swore an oath to himself to track down the one responsible and bring him to justice and make him admit to his crimes. His ship earlier had locked onto a reading of the bad blood's ship.
But lost track of it when his navigation and homing system short circuited while he was fleeing from one of the Arbitrators.
Now, it seemed like he was possibly stranded on this world. Unless he could pull off some miracle of being able to fix the short-circuited systems and the thruster.
He dreaded going outside to look at the full extent of the damage for himself.
The seasoned Blooded warrior grunted, then got up out of his seat, and left the control deck. He made his way down the hall before stopping by the kehrite to grab weapons off the weapon wall in the back.
Then headed for the exit of the ship.
He put in the code to unlock the door, and a moment later it unlocked and slid open to allow him out. The hunter then walked around the back of the ship.
He followed the small plume of smoke that seemed to still be billowing from the damaged thruster.
The large male came to a stop in front of it and used his mask to scan it. After a minute, he growled in annoyance and swore.
'Pauk! There isn't a way to fix this! It's clear that it needs new pauking parts!' He thought, with irritation.
Just when he thought his life and luck couldn't get any worse, this had to happen. How was he supposed to track down that dishonorable shit now?!
He clenched his fists in anger. But his thoughts were disrupted when he heard the distinct firing of a plasma cannon in the distance. And the hunter's head snapped in the direction it came from.
'Another hunter or hunters must be within this area. That blast sounded very close. Probably a good two or three miles southeast of here.' He gathered.
The hunter contemplated if he should track them down and ask for assistance. Even if they are not from his clan, he's unsure if they'd be willing to help out.
Not to mention some clans will alert other neighboring clans to renegade bad bloods and tell them to be on the lookout if they spotted one.
The crime had happened nearly a month ago now. Surely, that was long enough for his clan to send out his image and info to other neighboring clans and Arbitrators.
It was a hard decision to make. But he cannot stay here. He needed to find a way to somehow fix his ship or inquire for another somehow. Because he sure as hell wasn't going to steal another fellow hunter's ship.
Unless it was a bad blood's.
But who's to say there are any on this vast planet right now?
'Pauk it.' He thought.
The hunter figures he will at least go see who it is and figure out then if they're worth approaching for help or not. After all, not all the clans had strong associations with each other.
His clan maybe only had strong affiliations with two to three other clans and that was it. Perhaps, he'll get lucky, and it won't be a hunter from on those clans.
He snorted. It be straight up irony if they happened to be from his clan.
The small smoke plume coming from the thruster finally died down enough so as not to alert other hunters in the area. Then he activated the ship's cloaking, thankful that that at least still worked.
Then he activated his own cloaking device and took off in the direction where he heard the plasma cannon blast from.
Until Next Time ;)