The Tracker

The wound in the Ooman woman’s shoulder was large, threads of muscle and shards of bone, most likely forced apart from her collarbone, were visible from Blade’s place on the ground. He had jumped from the tree, stunned at the ferocity of her battle-rage. She had killed four Kiande Amedha, all but three with melee weapons, a feet that even blooded warriors sometimes couldn’t or wouldn’t perform, preferring to allow their cannons do the work while killing maybe one or two with their Ki’cti-pa, Naginata, or CombiStick.



She touched the bleeding wound carefully, her right arm hanging limp at her side. She looked at the blood-stained fingers.



“SHIT!” she yelled, and kicked the dead Kiande Amedha again with more force than she had a moment before. Could she not feel the pain? He had seen strong Yautja warriors howl in agony in the aftermath of being impaled by the tail of a Xenemorph. He watched her cut her outer layer of cloth, her shirt he thought it was called, and toss it aside. She still wore something to cover her breasts, for which Blade was thankful. He had never seen a naked Ooman female before, and he wasn’t exactly keen to gain the experience.



She looked around her and spotted one of the dead military. With her good arm, she grabbed his ankle and pulled him roughly towards her. Taking one of her smaller blades, she cut through the bag tied to his back, revealing a few foil packages and clean clothing. She pulled the cloth from the destroyed bag, unwrapped one of the foil packages and quickly ate the contents. Blade watched in silent approval. With a wound such as hers, she would need all the energy she could get.



She looked around, spotting Sadrokov and pulled herself to him, moving through his fallen bag as well. From it, she pulled a bottle full of clear liquid, and a lighting utensil.



“Thank the Gods for the Russian.” She inspected the bottle closely, the lettering on it in bold red. S-M-I-R-N-O-F-F. What did that mean?



She placed the bottle between her thighs and unscrewed the top, bringing the mouth of the bottle to her lips and taking a long swig. When she pulled the bottle away, she made a slightly bitter face and took a breath. She carefully spread a bit of the clothing she had cut from the military man’s bag on the ground and lay down. After a few more breaths, she took another long swig, swallowed, pulled the bottle away, looked at the wound, and poured a torrent of it onto it.



Her face contorted and she hissed, her foot kicking the tree at her feet repeatedly with so much force that bits of bark came off on the impact. That was when the bitter smell hit him. Alcohol. Blade should have known. She was disinfecting the wound.



Slowly, she sat herself back up and piled the soiled cloth, along with several other twigs and leaves and poured a little of the alcohol on that. With a click, Blade noticed the lighting utensil flare in her hand and she brought the flame down, the rush of orange fire coming alive. She scooted back a bit and grabbed one of her longer daggers, inspected it, then grabbed a nearby rock and placed it upon it, the bladed end in the fire.



Nix pulled her knees to her chest and waited, bringing the bottle to her lips a few times, though she did not take as much as she had at first. Occasionally she placed more leaves and sticks on the fire.



After several more minutes, she pulled the leather strap that held the Military mans leg coverings up, still slick with his blood, and bent it in half, placing it in her mouth like a bit. Blade cocked his head to the side in curiosity. She scooted closer to the fire, took the blade from the fire, white hot from the blaze, and carefully pressed it into the hole.



A pained, guttural scream issued from her throat, muffled only slightly by the strap. Tears fell from her eyes as she willed her body to be still.



The Yautja took a step forward, alarmed. He had suspected that she would use the heated blade to cauterize the wound. This Ooman was either very tough or very crazy. The blade was shaking. If she was not careful, she would do more harm to herself. Not to mention that the wound, though disinfected, had not been truly cleaned.





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Nix pulled the blade out and dropped it, spitting the makeshift bit from her mouth and grabbing at the wound, her body shaking and her breath gone from her. She tried to breathe, but the pain was too great. She wasn’t sure if she didn’t prefer the numbness she had felt only moments before.



She gasped deeply, trying to fill her lungs, but it was as if something had closed in her throat, forbidding the much needed air from entering her.



Her eyes rolled into the back of her head, and she felt dizzy. NO! she thought, I MUST stay awake. I cannot pass out. The effects of the vodka she had had were starting to go to her head as well. The Powerbar she had eaten was swirling madly in her stomach and she felt nauseated.



She felt a gentle hand over her own. The first thing she noticed was that the skin didn’t feel normal. It was pebbled and rough, but at the same time soft.



Large fingers pulled at her smaller ones, and she opened her eyes as her hand was guided down to her lap. In front of her was one of the Hunters, one of the Predators that had been stalking them. He was kneeling down on one knee, his masked face flat and expressionless. He was gigantic.



Nix gasped in surprise, the sudden and welcome rush of air entering her lungs so quickly that she coughed, crying out at the sharp twinge she received from the hole.



The Predator pulled his hand away an inch or so before tilting his head to the side and rumbling quietly at her. Nix stared at the glassy red eyes of the mask. She set her jaw and tilted her chin up a margin, weakly.



“Don’t touch me.” She said, her voice quiet and hoarse from the combination of alcohol, screaming, and the lack of air.



The Predator growled and pointed at the wound, before moving his finger to point at the knife. Her eyes flickered briefly to the knife before she looked back at him, still trying to act as she normally would. The fog in her head was increasing.



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Blade sighed in frustration. He should have known the Ooman would be obstinate. He should have stayed cloaked and let her pass out before he attempted to help her.



He cycled through all the phrases and words he had recorded on his hunts for the Pyode Amedha. When he found one appropriate, he played it.



“Man, that fucker nailed you good.” A tenor male’s voice played. The woman flinched slightly, her eyes going wide and her eyebrow cocking upwards. Blade found another.



“Oh my God, you’re hurt! Let me help you!” a woman’s voice this time. A look of confusion came across Nix’s face for a moment, before curiosity replaced it.



“Why in the hell would you want to help me? Don’t you hunt my kind for sport?” she asked. Blade felt slight relief that she had finally caught on. He knew she wasn’t stupid, and now he realized that she didn’t grasp the concept that he might actually want to help her.



He pointed at her, and gestured to the area around them; the dead Hard Meat and her companions.



“If we’re surrounded by something, we’re dead.” Her voice played back to her. He pointed to her again and played back a single word, in Sadrokov’s voice.



“Live.” Except that it sounded more like a question as he had been asking whether or not they would be killed for knowing to much if they lived, but Nix understood.



“You’re helping me because out of everyone, including all the Xenemorph, I lived?” she asked skeptically. Blade merely nodded to her and positioned her. She tensed and tried to fight him off, her attempts feeble, but irritating. He played her voice back to her.



“Knock it off!”



She looked taken aback. Blade could say he was having fun now. He could tell it was disconcerting to Nix when she could hear the words of not only herself, but her fallen comrades and those she had never known being twisted around to be used against her.



Blade knew a great deal of the human language, like a good few of the older Yautja. Their kind picked up languages easily and quickly. However, the effort it took to pronounce and get the words in the right order was something that took time, and he had never been very patient before. Sure, he could mimic, but it was so much easier to cycle through all the recordings he had made. Besides, it effectively frightened or quieted his prey. A large, intimidating Yautja trying to speak English and butchering the language could be considered humorous, much like the Oomans who laughed when those from another country were trying to ask for the bathroom and accidentally stated instead that he liked monkey oysters in urine sauce, or something equally strange without realizing it.



He grabbed a shirt from the pile of still-clean clothing and pressed it to the ground, pushing Nix gently onto it. She resisted only slightly before relaxing.



Blade pulled his medkit from its place on his belt and opened it. He had never used the items within on an Ooman before, and he wasn’t sure if any of it would work. He took the shrapnel extractor from its place and studied the wound, picking out what needed to be taken out before it was healed. Carefully, he pressed the cool metal in the take one of the few shards of shattered bone out. She flinched and he heard her grind her teeth. He growled low in his throat, her sudden jolt losing him his place.



He decided to try something different. Straddling her, he knelt down and pressed his arm across her chest to keep her from moving, but also in a way that he could use both hands. He kept his weight from crushing her, glad that he was used to the stress it took to keep his muscles locked above her.



He withdrew the shards one by one, dropping them to the side. He scanned the wound to make sure he had gotten everything and got up. She tried to sit and he turned his head.



“Nix…” he replayed Sadrokovs voice. With a frown, she lay back down. Blade scanned the area. He needed silicone and limestone for the antiseptic gel. He wandered around the clearing, Nix watching him from her place on the ground, the bottle tipping to her lips once again.



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Nix watched him, wondering what he was looking for, if he was looking for anything. She saw him go to a large rock embedded deeply in the ground, staring at it. Then, the cannon on his shoulder came to life and blasted at it, bits of it flying everywhere. He gathered a good few of the smaller pieces and went back to her, taking a device from the kit next to her and pressing its center. With the sound of metal on metal, it morphed into a large bowl with a flame at the center of it. Nix jumped and he growled, though it sounded less like the forceful one he had employed earlier. Nix took it for amusement and relaxed.



The Predator dumped the fragments of rock into the bowl and took the bottle from her hand, ignoring her loud protest as he smashed it into pieces, and added the glass.



He pulled a vial of blue liquid from the kit and poured it in with the rock and glass and sat back as the flame in the bowl flared almost explosively. Nix flinched again, then willed herself to relax. She had made it this far with most of her cool intact.



The flame disappeared at what replaced it was a bowl full of blue goo. Nix looked at it, skepticism in place before she looked at the Predator.



He pointed at the goo and then at the hole in her shoulder. He took a small spatula-looking applicator from the kit and pointed at that as well, before scooping a large amount of the stuff onto it.



Nix frowned.



“Pain.” He said in a simple warning, the first time he had spoken without using the recordings. He grabbed the makeshift bit she had used before and handed it to her. She replaced it in her mouth and watched him with large eyes as he lowered the spatula to her wound.



The next thing she felt was far worse than any pain she had ever experienced. Worse than giving birth to Sam, worse than how she felt after she woke from the accident, worse than getting impaled by the xenemorph tail, and worse than trying to cauterize the damn thing herself.



Swirls of red, black, and white played behind her eyelids as she squeezed them shut. So bad was the pain that she couldn’t even scream, let alone draw a breath to try. She felt her muscles spasm, her back arching painfully towards the sky, her muscles locked so tightly that she felt as if she had turned to stone.



The Predator clicked at her. He lifted her and turned her over, giving her a minute to relax, her body shaking in shock and her breath gasping.



He tapped her back and scooped another amount of the gel up, then smeared that on the matching hole in her back. She hissed and clawed at the ground, her back arching again.



This time, a scream did erupt from her, long and piercing. It echoed through the forest, scattering birds and animals. The two Yautja, now young blooded warriors, looked up from their kills, the mark of their first hunt upon their brows and their trophies in hand. They had killed the last of the Kiande Amedha and fired what was left of the eggs, erasing everything else that indicated alien presence to the Oomans.



At the sound of the scream, they ran forward, afraid that they had missed one of the swift creatures.





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Hoped you like this one too!



Ki’cti-pa—Double-edged wrist blades

Naginata—Spear that is both weapon and ceremonial trophy.