“Dave, come over here,” Detective James Mackey hollers over one shoulder.
He squats at the edge of the river, staring at a large indention in the mud. Deputy Newsome takes his sweet time walking over to his colleague, a cigarette squeezed into one corner of his mouth.
“Okay. What am I looking at?”
“What exactly…Does that look like to you, deputy?”
“Looks like some kind of paw print. Maybe a bear or a big cat. So what?”
“A big cat?” Mackey scoffs. “Are you really that dumb? Come on, Dave. Have you ever…Seen a cougar…With prints that large? I mean…In your whole freaking life? That…Is not a cougar. Or any other large cat I know of. I don’t know what the hell that is.”
“So…I’ll have Felicia come down and make a cast. It’s probably nothing. May not even have a thing to do with what happened to ole Philip. I mean, there’s no blood…No body…No signs of a struggle. Hell, we can’t even find his damn ATV.”
“We may not be looking in the right place. This park is huge, Dave!”
A splash of liquid falls onto Detective Mackey’s cheek and he wipes at it furiously. Studying the dark liquid on his hand, the detective rolls the tips of his fingers across one another.
“Oil? What the hell is oil—?”
Shifting his gaze upward, Detective Mackey’s eyes grow impossibly large. He tilts his head in disbelief, his brain not quite registering what he is seeing.
“What in the devil is going on here?” Mackey gasps.
“What?” Deputy Newsome mutters.
He follows the detective’s gaze with his own eyes. The cigarette tucked into the corner of Deputy Newsome's mouth falls out as his full lips part, a dumbfounded expression overtakes the law man's countenance.
“Oh…Damn!”
Suspended high in the canopy of trees is the missing park ranger’s ATV.
-
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The massive queen explodes from her icy prison and glowers down at Scar and Lex. Lex begins backing away as Scar’s eyes grow wide in his yautja face—mandibles and tusks flaring. The queen roars and stalks toward the two tiny creatures. Her massive hood draws back and her toothy maul drips rivulets of saliva onto the frozen Earth.
Scar uses a weapon attached to his injured right arm to fire dart-like projectiles into the queen’s elongated skull. The serpent queen grows more incensed. She rears up, tossing her head from side to side, splashing acidic blood into the powdery snow for several meters.
Using his uninjured arm, Scar retrieves a throwing disc from his implement belt and launches it at the queen. The dart slices off a portion of the queen’s black crest before returning to Scar’s hand. He follows through with the same move three more times with minimal damage achieved.
On the fifth try, the queen’s barbed tail whips through the air. The tail catches Scar mid-thorax and he is knocked into a metal structure yards away. Lex hollers aloud, watching the yautja warrior fly through the air. However, she has precious little time to think.
The queen immediately charges the downed hunter, whacking him with her massive tail as he attempts to rise. The warrior falls flat onto the twisted metal beneath him. The serpent queen shakes her head in triumph and prepares to stab Scar through his back.
A huntress’ cry goes up as Lex charges at the alien queen. Using the spear and shield Scar fashioned for her, Lex jabs hard at the queen’s injured throat. Her aim is good. The spear pierces the queen’s flesh and goes in deep. The alien queen bellows and grabs at her spewing throat. She falls backward into a burning structure and Lex is tossed away. Sliding into a graveyard of tangled whalebones, Lex grabs at anything which will halt her movement.
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She clambers to her feet, bones aching from the assault on her body. A sizzling noise draws her attention downward. Her jacket and climbing harness are slowly being eaten away by the queen’s acidic blood. Lex removes them both and turns to run. No time to dawdle. The black queen is once again on her feet.
The raging queen charges through the whalebone graveyard, slicing at the air with her meters-long talons—and biting empty space with her enormous teeth. Once or twice, she nearly catches Lex. However, Lex is able to squeeze into a thin space in a forlorn water tower.
After almost completely destroying the tower, the queen leers at Lex from a newly created opening in its roof. Lex’s mouth drops open as she witnesses Scar’s leap into the air, combistick fully extended. The brave warrior slams his combistick into the side of the queen’s head. The force of Scar’s blow is so hard that the combistick goes in one side of the dreaded beast’s head and out the other.
The massive alien screeches and spins away, slapping at the metal object and trying desperately to dislodge it from her skull. Scar lands on the ground with triumph, issuing a loud roar of his own.
Lex spies the chain still attached to the thrashing queen and an idea forms in her mind. The chain. The teetering water tower. If they can attach the chain to the water tower, and force it over the edge of the precipice, the alien queen will be dragged to the depths of the ocean.
Lex moves quickly to secure the chain. Scar realizes what she is planning and comes to her aid. Together, and with some straining, they are able to attach the queen’s chain to the water tower. Lex’s eyes grow bright with relief and hope. She turns to Scar, a single phrase escaping her lips: “Got it!”
Just as suddenly, Lex’s hope fades—and is replaced with terror. The queen’s barbed tail stabs through Scar’s midsection with such force that green blood splatters everywhere. Lex watches in horror as he is lifted into the air and dangled inches from the queen’s maul.
“Noooo!”
-
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Scorvo is seated in a large flight chair facing the vessel’s forward viewport. Lex cautiously enters the confined space and settles down on a smaller chair to his left. She takes a moment to study all of the dials, lights, and buttons surrounding the nearby console. She runs a solitary finger over a symbol very similar to one she witnessed in Antarctica. For all she knows, it could be the same exact symbol. It’s been over a decade since her misadventure down in the pyramid’s depths.
“You didn’t wake me! Again!” Lex teases.
Scorvo does not bother to look up. He doesn’t dare. Having Lex so close, soundly asleep in his arms, has stirred dark lonely feelings in his soul. It was always Scar. Always first in everything. Even in birth, he had bested Scorvo—exiting their mother’s womb with ease. But it was he, Scorvo, who had marked his favored brother. It was Scar who had died on the frozen continent, ending the hope of a glorious battle--and an even more glorious retelling. Scorvo shakes his head, beaded dreads moving with the repetitious motion.
“There was no need.”
“What about my tour?” Lex prods, a coy smile on her lips. “You promised.”
Scorvo’s eyes narrow and his right hand flexes. The tone of the ooman female’s voice is soft and inviting—almost seductive. He swivels in his chair to meet her gaze, his maleness tingling.
“Yes, I did.”
-
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Scorvo leads Lex down a corridor covered with murals of various yautja battlegrounds and fearsome warriors. Lex stops in front of an engraving depicting a warrior holding the elongated black head of a deadly pyramid alien. Scorvo comes to stand beside her.
“The keinde amedha. We have hunted it for many millennia. Our species’ pasts are so intertwined that even the elders do not truly know how we came to war with each other. It is believed…We have always battled with the great serpent.”
Lex nods but allows her gaze to shift elsewhere. She points to a nearby engraving. Similar in design, to the engravings in the Antarctica pyramid, the image is one of fierce battle between two angry yautja warriors.
“What is that? Why are the two yautja fighting each other? Is infighting a common occurrence in your society?”
“That…Is no yautja. The warrior on the left…Is a Kredonyit.”
“A what?” Lex utters in confusion. “But he looks like a yautja.”
“And so it was,” Scorvo says. “But do not let outward appearances fool you. The Kredonyit were a race of skin-shifters. They became too numerous. After a time, we sought to erase them from the galaxy. But the Kredonyit were cunning. Yautja warriors found themselves murdering their own brothers. Mothers gave birth to beings who looked nothing like their fathers. It took many fierce battles to finally rid ourselves of their presence. Now, the Kredonyit home world lies empty. The elders have hidden the exact location. They do not wish any to go there.”
“Creepy!” Lex gasps, moving away from the mural. She reaches back and grips Scorvo’s hand. “What else is there to see?”
“There is one thing…I think you would like.”