Hunting Dreams
Part 07
It's widely known throughout the universe that with age comes experience. Many cultures take advantage of this, revering their elders and putting them in positions of authority; mediating disputes and passing judgement.
The yautja use concept to its fullest with their Arbitrators.
As a hunter society, all yautja are constantly finding more and new hunts. The purpose: to gather worthy trophies of said hunts to impress the females. The more trophies they obtain, the more females they will impress, and the more chances they will have to spread their seed. However, the more hunts yautja go on, the higher the chance that eventually one of their prey will get the drop on them and kill them. Even as age gives them more experience and makes such less likely, everyone has a bad day, or the prey had a good day, and it could all go horribly wrong so easily.
As such, each rank has increasingly fewer members, all of whom are directly related to their age. Barely 1% of all yautja males live long enough to become a laudable Elder, leading and guiding their clan as a group; where the most skilled of the Elders becomes Clan Leader.
To become an Arbitrator is even more difficult. The only official requirement was that they were an Elder, but otherwise there is no fight to win. No physical opponent to defeat. Instead, it is a different kind of battle: that of the mind. All Arbitrators had exceptional skills in areas that a young blood male wasn't even aware existed, and a Blooded Hunter barely recognized.
In short, Arbitrators did not obtain their position through combat.
No, Arbitrators were Chosen.
Selected specifically by the High Female Council, which was comprised of each clan matriarch, and no male knew when or if they would be chosen as Arbitrator until after the females had already met and decided.
(Their criteria for choosing the next Arbitrator was never explained. The High Female Council considered it obvious. If you could figure it out on your own, wonderful. If you couldn't, then you were unworthy of the knowledge as you were too inexperienced to understand it. Some on the Council found this funny, but most thought this a perfect test of a yautja's mental maturity level, regardless of gender.)
Huathan had been an Arbitrator for all of seven months, just long enough for the excitement and pride to have worn off, when his personal ship's console lit up. He flicked a talon at the symbol and read through the missive. It was incredibly short. Only a set of coordinates and the universal symbol for an exploding star. His tresses bristled at the oddness.
It was the placement of the symbol that bothered him. If a supernova occurred, the symbol would be placed first, then the coordinates. This was written backwards. One might think it was an honest mistake done by an inexperienced sender, except that this alert had come directly from the Arbitrator network. No young Blooded even knew the network existed, let alone was selected to work the communications array. Thus, the placement was deliberate. But what did it mean? Nothing came to mind.
However, Huathan decided it didn't matter one way or another. It had come through the official Arbitrator channels directly to his ship. He had been requested personally for his very first arbitration! Tamping down the undignified zing! of excitement (an entirely too Young Blood trait for an Arbitrator!), he forwarded to broadcast to the High Female Council with his seal to indicate he had accepted it, then set for the enclosed coordinates.
Far away, a (relatively) young female yautja boredly clicked an alert with an Arbitrator marker. Her eyes flew over the (practically non-existent) message, her eyes found and locked on the symbolization that lay as the signature. It took her mind several long seconds to absorb the implications of its placement.
"PAUK!"
It would take several hours before Huathan would arrive. In the meantime, he thought he would research the planet: which clan claimed it, any blood feuds, long standing disputes, as well as recent history. To his surprise, there wasn't much.
The planet TD-271 had been absorbed into yautja territory a couple generations ago. It had originally been selected as a game planet and terraforming had begun. But a unique mineral had been found that, while useless for most everything, had a devastating long-term effect on all non-native fauna. None lived for more than a few years. Not long enough to establish a colony for breeding. It wasn't worth the effort, not even as practice for the un-Blooded. The project was abandoned shortly thereafter. So, while technically it was in yautja space, it wasn't colonized or utilized.
Huathan had a fleeting thought that perhaps a crash had stranded some young ones, except why would they call for an Arbitrator rather than their clan? It didn't make sense. He decided to catch a quick nap and re-evaluate after he arrived in orbit.
Unfortunately for him, his scans of TD-271 surface did nothing to dispel his confusion. There was no new beacon to indicate clan affiliation or claim. No alert of what type of purpose the formerly useless planet was being put toward. Yet when he scanned for animal life, there was a concentration in one specific biome. A glance through the readout of a more refined scan had his mandibles clicking together.
Six oomans were in a tight group in the abandoned terraforming equipment graveyard. Three yautja near the oomans. That looked like a hunting party. Perhaps a clan had decided to use the planet as a practice area for their younglings after all? But then why did the clan not put out a beacon claiming it?
His claw pushed the holo over to refocus on the last two indicators: one yautja and one…unknown? He tapped the unknown but the only absolute the computer was giving him was that the unknown was female. How odd. And the pair did not appear to be fighting. The yautja was not hunting the unknown. Odder still.
Well, if his scans could not give him information, he would simply have to go to the surface and find out for himself the situation.
His dropship was speeding towards the surface when a second alert began to blink, this one a bright mauve…with the seal of the High Female Council. It was his bad luck to have missed it.
+++++HUNTING+DREAMS+++++
No beta right now, all mistakes are mine.
Let me know what you think but please be kind. I haven't written on this one in 3 years. I know it's not perfect. Constructive comments por favor.