The spacecraft circled area above the remains of the human colony. Sobik, made the approach carefully. If any Pyode Amade were left he didn't want them launching any strikes against them. It likely wouldn't do much but maybe scratch the ship and Sobik liked his ship.
He snarled into the wrist communicator, letting the other hunters aboard know that it was time to head to the shuttle that would land on the planet.

Once again he replayed the message that they had intercepted.
"This is Colonel Harding. We are under attack by an alien organism. Send help immediately. We are low on ammo, supplies and personnel. Repeat, send help immed-"
The transmission cut off there. Either the human male was attacked or their worthless equipment ceased to function. He really didn't understand how the Pyode Amade's remained alive so long.

Sobik slowly, almost reverently, suited up in his specially made armor and face mask. His weapons, a Combi stick with a dagger on each end and several large throwing stars that expanded into something the size of spinning buzz saw blades and several long serated knives, were tucked into their proper places. He hadn't become an Elite for nothing. Everything from his armor and face mask and each of his weapons had been custom made for him. It had cost a fortune, but it had been worth it. No other hunter had these and it made him easily recognizable to Elite, Bad Bloods and Young Bloods alike.
Also to females.
But he had a life mate who would tear his malehood off if he even so much as glanced at a female, and would take the head of any female who tried to seduce him. He chuckled. His lifemate was indeed something, and he knew it. Which was why she normally got her way in things he didn't like.

Such as the Pyode Amade that had become part of his clan. So many times he had wanted to leave the pup to the hounds, or use her as Kiande Amade bait, or just snap her neck and be done with it. But his lifemate had insisted she be kept, not even as a pet but as a replacement pup! He had never accepted the pup as his own. To him she was a waste and an embarrassment.
But he had to admit, it was with no little amount of pride that he watched her complete her Chiva. He had been the one to train her, again at his lifemate's insistence, and hadn't been disappointed. Everyone congratulated him on managing to train a useless prey into an above average warrior. He had never taken it easy one her, but now that she was almost equal to a Blooded Warrior he was more amiable towards her now.

He headed towards the loading bay for the shuttle. It was time to hunt.

~~~~~~~~~

In the colony below the hallways, that had once bustled with activity, were now silent. Steam from pipes in disrepair seemed almost like ghosts twisting along the corridors.
A vent popped open and the form of a small girl slid out. She had scrambled into the vent like Ed had told her to when they had been attacked. She had scrambled away like he'd said, not stopping or looking back until the screeches of the monsters were far away.

Lyra's hair was messy and her clothes were torn. Her little stomach rumbled as she wiped the tears from her eyes, leaving clean tracks on her face. She wanted to cry out for Ed, but noise just brought more monsters. They had taken everyone away. Lyra had even seen one of the monsters explode out of someone's chest. The person's screams and the sound of cracking ribs still haunted her nightmares. And all of the blood...
Lyra's stomach rumbled again, the familiar ache of hunger gnawing at her. There wasn't much food left in this part of the colony, which meant soon they would have to go to another part to scavenge. Ed didn't need food, at least not much. He had barely eaten since the monsters had appeared, preferring Lyra to be fed over himself. If it hadn't been for Ed, Lyra knew she would be dead right now with her own chest exploded.

More tears. She wiped them away angrily. She wasn't a baby. She couldn't cry. She hadn't cried much since her mommy and daddy had disappeared. Lyra knew they had been taken by the monsters, or else they would have found her by now. Most of her nightmares were about seeing their chests explode.

A noise made her immediately scramble into a large empty steam pipe. It was very hot and Lyra started to sweat badly. She covered her mouth to stop her cries as two of the monsters moved past in front of her. They were moving quickly but still slow enough that she knew they were searching. Thankfully the monsters didn't like really hot or really cold things so they didn't go near the empty steam pipe. It wasn't the first time Lyra had used hot and cold places to hide. One time she and Ed had hidden in a freezer for two hours, him keeping her warm enough to not get hyperthermia.

The monsters were almost gone when one stopped and looked back, hissing. Lyra never felt so scared. Had it somehow sensed her? Could it smell her? Could it see her? Could it hear her?
Suddenly it looked up and snarled, racing off. Had it heard something? Ed maybe? Was he coming? Lyra climbed out of the pipe and tried to breathe. The heat was incredible and she was feeling weak and thirsty now. But she had to stay alert.
She had to hide.
She had to find Ed.
She had to survive...

Ed motioned down the demolished corridor with an expressionless look on his face. His internal processors clicked and whirled, firing off artificial neurons from a central core unit prompting one command, and one command only: Find Lyra. It superseded everything that was hardwired into him and he didn't know why.

Why did I manually disconnect myself from Seegson's primary network? Why did I refuse to initiate the safety and retrieval protocol of the Working Joes? Am I flawed? Is there a bug in my system? He shook his head at the thought. Ed performed a series of security sweeps and virus scans before and after he made the decision to excommunicate himself from his makers. He even plugged into the colony's mainframe to initiate a diagnostic from an outside source just to be sure. All results came back negative.

Could it be that my time spent on this colony inadvertently causd me to develop independent thought? Such calculations will have to be made at a later date. Right now the focus was on the little girl whom he learned to call friend. At first the title felt meaningless, a required cordiality to help keep her high stress levels stabilized. Yet as more time and distance was spent away from her, the weight behind its meaning started to take form. Her companionship brought purpose, one that he never thought his inner circuitry could make into comprehensible logic.

The sound of clanging metal echoed off into the distance. A series of growls and hisses told him danger was near, but as to whether or not Lyra was among the scuffle couldn't be determined. The girl was not only smart, but tough. In the face of danger she learned to hold her screams and will herself into silence in order to avoid drawing attention onto herself. In any case, he wouldn't leave such probabilities to chance.

He grabbed a loose monitor lying on the ground and tossed it as hard as he could against the metal wall. The loud CRASH! it made was as loud as thunder. "HERE!" Ed shouted, picking up the monitor again, this time slamming it onto the ground. The growls and hisses erupted into a more louder cacophony. The sound of a trampling stampede grew louder and louder in Ed's direction.

Once he saw the shiny domes of their elongated heads, he turned back to where he came from and broke out into a full sprint. He mapped out his direction in the shape of a complicated horseshoe, leading him back to this very spot. At the very least, his diversion would draw the xenomorphs away from where he suspected Lyra would be, baiting as many of these creatures he can into the trap he had ready for them.

Ugly had been in the trophy chamber. She stared at the skull of the Ultimate Prey, the one that she herself had killed. It was a constant reminder that she was supposed to be one of them, that she deserved to be here among the honoured and the blooded. She heard the snarling clicking through her wrist-computer and sent back her reply that she would prepare.

Walking to her room, she looked around to see the [url=http://]Hound[/url] that she had trained was sleeping on her bed. It looked up at her and growled, before she growled back. It got off of her bed and curled up in the corner. She walked towards the armour and bowed before it, before beginning to don it. The ancient helmet that barely fit her. She put it to her head and the technologies within it attached itself to her face. Then, she pulled on the body-harness that held her gear. Attaching the Plasma Caster, a few taps of her wrist computer later and she looked around to find that the caster was now tracking things, locking onto the hound that slept at the foot of her bed. The caster then retreated into its holster. She picked up the Chakram and put it on her hip, before grabbing the extremely long bladed Shuriken. The next weapon was the Whip, which she attached to her belt and finally, the Combi-Stick that she extended, before rescinding it and placing it on her back.

She petted the hound as she left. She would not need it, she suspected that they would be descending via Drop-Pod. She passed several young-bloods on her way down to the pods. It was comforting watching the unblooded as they were the only ones that showed her true respect. Regardless of whether she was Yautja or not, they respected those who could kill an Ultimate Prey in single combat. In fact, the more that she heard tales of the humans, the more she had come to respect their abilities as warriors. The legend of "The King of the Concrete Jungle" who had bested a blooded in single combat, The legendary "Dutch Schaefer" who was the first of the humans to defeat them, had returned (Through some kind of human science) and was now working with a pair of Yautja and a human female against the ultimate prey.

She arrived at the hangar and awaited the huntmaster to arrive so that they may descend and begin the hunt.

The ooman arrived before the others. They had bred in her an eagerness for the hunt that mirrored their own. Sobik set the coordinates for the Drop-Pod and got in. The same coordinated automatically went to the other Pods so that when the others finally decided to get their lazy asses moving they could join them on the planet below in roughly the same area.

The drop was quick. Or maybe it just felt that way because of the anticipation he felt. The ooman colony seemed deserted and ill-repair, which meant this Kiande Amade infestation was highly advanced. Which meant tons and tons of the ultimate prey.

Once Ugly arrived he spoke to her in guttural snarls that her helmet would pick up so he didn't give away their arrival by speaking too loud. "The Kiande Amade is our priority. Any oomans are to be ignored unless they strike first. Infected oomans are killed on sight."
The ooman-born Kiande Amade usually made for interesting and intelligent prey, especially the Queens. And if there was more than one colony here they might have more than one Queen, along with countless Praetorians. This would be an amazing hunt. One that he doubted all in the hunting group would survive.
He glanced at Ugly. She better not screw up because he was NOT about to face his lifemate should the little female warrior die.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lyra entered one of the kitchen areas. The bodies of several people lay sprawled around, covered in blood and with bursted chests, but the child barely noticed them anymore. She stepped over them and headed for the ice box. There were several things of water left, but most were iced over. She one of the jagged pieces of ice from the box and broke it into pieces, sucking on the chunks of ice. It wasn't much but it was something. There were food tins but she couldn't get them open. Ed usually crushed the tops and opened them for her. The motorized can-opener wasn't working and she couldn't find a manual one. Sitting on the floor behind the counter she propped up her elbows on her knees, placing her fists to her cheeks and glaring at the can as though she could will it open with her glare. Her little stomach grumbled and pained her. She hadn't eaten since the evening before when she and ED had become separated.

She had just started to let her mind drift back to other times when she heard a slight noise. Anyone else might have dismissed it but she had learned to fear all sound. Moving like lightning, she darted into an empty cabinet just big enough for her to slide into and shut the door. In the dark, she waited and listened and prayed to a God she wasn't sure existed anymore that the sound had been Ed.

Ugly looked at her father figure as he boarded the drop pod before she got into her own. She stood in the pod as the hatch closed and pressurized. She couldn't help but get the feeling that her father wanted her to die here. Then again, male/female relationships differed between the tribes. In certain tribes, females were small and weak, serving only as the home-keepers and mothers to the children of the tribe. However, their tribe was one in which the females were immense and usually the dominant ones. Her own mother was a clear foot taller than her father and had supposedly torn her prey apart with her bare hands. She knew for a fact that her father had strongly opposed her every step of joining the tribe.

Ugly stared out of the pod and waited for the inevitable drop.

Sobik lead the way to the entrance of the ooman construct. The door controls were laughably easy to override. It was no wonder the oomans here had been overrun.
Inside was a maze of halls. A quick sweep of the area indicated heat in various places throughout the complex, especially below them. But Sobik was not about to enter the hive without first clearing out the rest of the area. Leaving the way open for prey to close in behind you invited death.

The first attack was mere moments after they had entered. The Kiande Amade who attacked were on the small side, not fully mature and likely wandering out from the nest for the first time. The acidic blood hissed as it degraded the walls around them even further. No injuries in the first skirmish, but then if there had been Sobik would have killed the first injured himself for being so weak and stupid as to be injured almost immediately into the hunt.

They were near some kind of ooman living quarters. The smell was almost rancid. Bodies with their chests mangled littered the halls. That was unusual. Normally the Kiande Amade were more organized than this, taking prey back to their nest and attaching them to the wall with resin before implanting the embryo. What made this hive do things differently?
The shrieking sound of a dying creature nearby had them on alert. Holding up his hand for silence, Sobik then motioned them forward. It wasn't fear but caution that made them move slowly. It was stupidity to rush into a situation without surveying it first.
A door slid open and Sobik stopped in shock at what he saw within...

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lyra heard the skittering and held her breath. It was one of them. The monster-spiders that hugged people's faces and made their chests explode. The door of her cupboard started to creak and she heard footsteps along it, then taps, then bangs.
It knew she was there.

Lyra started to cry silently. It wasn't going to go away. Not when it knew she was there. What was she supposed to do?
The cupboard started to open, the long finger-like legs of the spider working it open. Doing the first thing that came to her mind, Lyra shoved the door open and against the other cupboard. The spider squealed as she pressed her whole body against the door, squishing it against the hard surface. The tail and fingers flailed. The tail whipped her body, trying to wrap around her. Scattered around on the floor were broken plates and other kitchen appliances. Lyra spotted a long sharp fork on the floor, like the kind used for serving meat, but it was too far away for her to grab without moving away from the cupboard. If she moved away, the spider would get loose and come after her.
It was really fast. Could she be faster?

Taking a breath Lyra lunged for the fork. The spider dropped to the floor and skittered after her. It launched at her right when she got hold of the fork. She rolled away, causing the spider to miss her. Getting to her feet, she faced the monster spider as it turned to launch itself again. Lyra jumped on it's tail to keep it from moving, then stabbed it repeatedly. Even when it stopped moving she stabbed it. Even when it's green blood hit her arms and chest, burning through her clothes and hurting her she stabbed it. Even when her eyes filled with tears and she couldn't see it anymore she stabbed it.

That was the scene Sobik and the others walked in on : a small ooman girl-child, little more than a suckling, stabbing a face-hugger repeatedly like someone possessed.
The pain from the acid finally became too great and she had to back away from the mangled corpse of the spider. Lyra hugged her knees and cried, her small body shaking. Then she finally sensed someone else in the room. Looking up she froze, her eyes wide in terror.
There were new monsters. Bigger and scarier.
A scream escaped her throat as she darted towards a vent.