On board the Dragonfly, Spyrro was getting restless. At first she had been elated that her plan had worked. "For once, Mei'Varsi cannot stop me!" She exalted. "I am on the hunt now, like a true yautja! I do not need my Mother watching over me!"

Luckily, Lex's preparations had ensured the ship's stores of food and water had been replenished. Spyrro had already raided the shuttle's supplies and, although she was disappointed that her Mother had not thought to pack any sweet-tasting ooman delicacies, she contented herself with eating large amounts of the food that was there.

Now the novelty of being here on her own was wearing off and she was beginning to get bored and irritable. She had only a very shaky, childish idea of how much time was passing. Peering at the ship's console, she tried to work out how long she had been travelling. She was hoping she might nearly be at her destination by now, but so far it seemed like she had only been here one day {Spyrro measures days by the yautja standard, approximately 26 hours} and there still seemed to be such a lot of distance left to go. Spyrro gave a disgusted sigh. "This journey is taking forever!"

She sat down huffily at the console and tried to be stoical and patient, as a warrior should be.

After some more time had passed the console made a noise, some sort of alert. She pressed the glowing button and two shapes appeared on the screen. Spyrro frowned, she wasn't sure, but it seemed like one of the shapes was meant to be the Dragonfly while the other... she squinted: what was it? She pressed the controls, trying to make the console show her more, the way she'd seen her parents do it, and then started in alarm.

On the screen, she could now see a visual of the ship, not just a schematic of its position. It was not a shuttle like the Dragonfly or the Chameleon but much, much bigger - bigger than any ship she had ever seen. Huge it loomed, huge and menacingly bright against the blackness.

Spyrro watched, eyes like twin black moons as it slowly came closer, expanding to fill the whole of the screen.

Scar stood in the darkened cockpit of the Chameleon, arms folded, with Selim and Isaac either side of him. Around them, the three dimensional display from the console showed craft trajectories as bright tracer lines, winding their way through space, zig-zagging between pinpoints of bright light that showed stars and planets.

"What are you looking for, Mei'Savir?" Selim scanned the glowing star map.

"Trying to get a lock on the Dragonfly's drive signature," Scar tapped another talon on the console.

"But I thought Mom had sent us Spyrro's co-ordinates?" Isaac said "Can't we find her from those?"

"I know the Dragonfly's coordinates upon leaving Earth and its flight trajectory," Scar leaned forward and picked out one small, glowing pathway, "We are close enough now to be able to detect it, so it should be easy to find, but the ship is not where I would expect it to be."

"Maybe Spyrro changed course?" Selim suggested.

Isaac frowned "Could she have interfered with the autopilot, S'Kia?"

"It is… possible... but not likely she would have the ability," The hunter stretched out a talon and pressed a control, altering the display again, "But, if we scan for other shipsss .. look here..." Again he touched another shimmering trace line with the tip of a talon.

Both sons craned to look, "Is it a ship?" Isaac hazarded.

"If so, it is huge!" Selim added.

"Yesssss,"Their Father nodded, "An enormous ship, probably a Rough Skull command vessel by the size of it. You can see it is on a direct intercept course with the Dragonfly and then…." They watched the time lapse as the large glowing shape moved steadily through the air towards the smaller one, until the smaller shape winked out of existence, "The Dragonfly is gone."

"But what does it mean?"

"There are two possibilities; The first is that the Dragonfly was somehow... destroyed."

"No!" Both boys burst out at once in dismay, "It cannot be too late!" Selim choked.

Isaac swallowed, "What's the second possibility?"

"The second possibility is that the Dragonfly encountered the Rough Skull vessel and was captured."

"But then how come the Dragonfly vanished?" Isaac demanded "What happened to the ship?"

"You have no conception of how…. vassst our warships are, " Scar used both hands to zoom in on the larger shape, trying to show the scale of it, "It is big enough to... hold the shuttle inside it. To hold… many shuttles."

"Can't you just ask them to give her back?" Isaac said in a puzzled voice, "I thought these … Rough Skulls were your clan or… your people... or whatever."

Scar shook his head "This ship is one I do not recognise and anyway, I am an outlaw to them… a criminal, as I have explained."

"So, we must go after this command vessel!" Exclaimed Selim. "We have to get Spyrro back!"

Scar was cracking his knuckle joints, "Of, course! We cannot leave her at their mercy, we must recover her." He turned to them, "I have plotted a course for the yautja craft, but we must play this carefully, Mei'Sika. When we reach them, I shall go on board alone and locate Spyrro. You must remain here and not allow yourselves to be seen."

"But she's our sister!" Isaac said in dismay.

Selim jumped to his feet "No Father - we are coming with you!"

Scar made a dismissive gesture "Did you understand nothing of what I said earlier? If you are discovered, they will kill you! You stay here." He stepped away from the console and began to remove his armour, whilst Isaac watched him, mane rising off the back of his neck with temper.

"You can't expect us to just sit around here and wait for you!" He snarled

Scar spread his jaws "If you are... discovered, you would be… executed!"

Isaac's eyes were glowing like hot coals, a reflection of his father's "Like you would care!" Selim reached out and rested his talons lightly on his twin's shoulder.

"Like I would care?!" Scar snarled, for a moment looking like he might be about to answer Isaac's temper with his own. Then he restrained himself, "Of course, I 'care' what happens to my sons." He said, "If you die, who is left to carry my genetic material when I am gone? Besides," He continued, ignoring Isaac's deepening scowl, "Alone, I will have a much better chance of getting on board that ship. I may need to be stealthy or I may need to fight. I cannot do this if I am worried about protecting you."

"So, are we incapable of fighting?" Selim said miserably "Do you think we are of so little use, Father?"

Scar sighed, "Selim, I need you both to guard the Chameleon. If the ship is captured it will be much more difficult for us to escape."

"And if I do not make it back," He said to himself, "Better two of you be left on this ship together than one alone."

Ostrowski stood in the Hobbe's backyard that gave out onto the snowy woods and addressed a group of local law enforcement, "More of our people should be here soon," He thought "But for now these hicks are the best we've got to work with."

"Listen up people," He addressed the group, his breath clouding in the freezing air, "We have a dangerous felon at large in this area. Her name is Alexa Woods; she's on the most-wanted list for serious terrorist offences and she's at large in this area. Print lab confirmed that she was in this house, we think it was as recently as this morning. Judging by the time our first officers arrived, we know she must have left it by ten o'clock at the latest. That gives her a minimum sixty minute head start on us. That means we're working with at least a four mile radius, maybe more. Now we've got snowfall from last night and fresh tracks so we've got a pretty good idea of her direction of travel, but we don't want her to slip through the net, so stay alert! She also may have a small child with her so that could slow her down some."

Hernandez, one of the local cops, raised a hand, "Are we talking about a hostage situation , Sir?"

Ostrowski shook his head "I don't know at this stage Sergeant, I think we have to be aware of that possibility."

Hernandez looked dubious "Sir, it's going to be pretty heavy going for her out there in this cold and forecast looks like it's gonna snow again. How far can she get in these conditions?"

"A lot farther than most people." Ostrowski shook his head "Our felon is a former polar explorer and she's experienced with rough terrain." There were a few mutters and raised eyebrows at this, "She should also be considered armed and extremely dangerous. She's skilled in armed and unarmed combat and the use of both knives and firearms and she will be carrying weapons." There were even more murmurs and some shocked looks. Ostrowski grimaced, feeling the old injury in his leg twinge. It always did in cold weather.

"When you find her, I don't want anyone to be a hero," He said emphatically, "We'll have a chopper that can get to your location quickly so your job is to keep eyes on her and radio for backup. Nobody is to try and tackle her on their own - understood?"

As the group dispersed, the dogs straining at their leads, Ostrowski looked over at Carravino. The two of them had known each other a long time, having worked together as part of the unit: they were a team of special operatives whose purpose was to track and neutralise 'hostiles', a race of aggressive aliens who periodically appeared on Earth. They were the only two surviving members of their original squad. The rest of their team had been wiped out during a single night in Nevada, during an attack carried out by a woman who had formed an unholy alliance with one of these creatures: this was the woman they were hunting now.

Carravino was smoking and looking sceptical. "You really think it's her, after ten years?"

Ostrowski snorted, "Last sighting we had of her was from the Halloween party massacre in San Francisco. We got CCTV from that nightclub and the prints and DNA from the truck they stole. We didn't manage to get there in time then, but I'm going to remedy that very shortly."

"So we had a sighting of one of their ships, what makes you so sure it's her?"

"Listen Carravino, we've got reports of a hostile ship right near a witness who claims to have had previous contact with her and the hostile. We got the local beat cops down here to check it out as soon as we could and this veteran pal of hers was acting awful cagey. Now she's not being too helpful I grant you, but we don't need her, we've got Woods's DNA and prints in the house - it's her!"

"What about her… uh… partner in crime?"

"We found her tracks - plus some smaller ones that could be the kid's - but there's not a trace of him anywhere, nothing to indicate he's been here."

"I hope you're right," Carravino took a long drag on his cigarette, "Because if you're not, we just sent a bunch of keystone cops out into the forest to deal with a big, pissed-off alien. You remember what happened when the Frisco police tried to take them down? That turned into a total clusterfuck!"

"And you remember: it wasn't the hostile who killed Verney, Rheinhardt and Johnson - it was Woods! And she stood there and watched him decapitate Sanchez and Galton. I've watched that CCTV footage a hundred times, she never flinched. Never even blinked! And they both turned Coulter into cold cuts. You really think she's not dangerous on her own?"

"I think you've got a fixation."

"Damn right, I've got a fixation!" Ostrowski spat, "I've been waiting a decade to bring her to justice! Now let's get airborne. I want to be able to get there fast when they radio it in."

So I've had some free time over the last few days and have been trying to spend it writing. Please follow/ favourite/ review if you've been reading the story.

Kassandra: Thanks so much - glad you are enjoying it and yes Scar has totally got it coming to him right now! I think he's probably too much of a non-conformist to lead any kind of yautja dictatorship though, but we'll see what happens.

LovyDovy7: Yeah, Nar'Jat is a bit of a hypocrite, though none of the Rough Skulls have ever really given Lex her due as a warrior (except for Scar) but she is a woman and a human, so they've always seen her as inferior. They may have cause to regret it someday. Also yes, Varrik is the juvenile from the Void Cutter - I was wondering if anyone would notice!

Love n hugs, ScifiTrash xxx