This is when the towel flies out of his hands; there's distortion in the air like a heat wave, the distortion is moving with a whoosh of air, and the towel falls in three pieces.
". . . oh," says the giant invisible shimmer hanging from the ceiling.
"You were pulling a blue thing from your face when I was looking through the filter for kainde amedha. Nothing else is supposed to glow blue. What was that?"
Few men are saved from the facehugger towel. And she's following along fine on the words he's using, although it leads to some roundabout versions.
(Although if they weren't in the bar, where she's hoping to get a job as a defender, she would have let it all happen even if it were a facehugger. Preds are inert in the face of others' natural selection like that.)
"You think that slime is worse than being used as a host or food?" She studies his skewed priorities.
"No, but haven't my head peeled open with a bio-saw and my brain eaten with me watching? Not my idea of an evening's entertainment."
"And when that nearly happens right when you're performing the third step in your bureau's diplomatic overture? Makes achieving the mission objective a little... complicated."
There's a rolling of mandibles. "You killed it." She's much impressed. Also, in this case, slime does count as a trophy; it's evidence he fought it and it sounds like he won. (How he displays it in future is his problem.) "Tell me about it?"
Yautja love a good it tried to kill me so I stabbed it a lot! story.
K was born in Texas and has an endless supply of bourbon at hand. Storytelling could take a while.
"Well, now, it all started with a civil war on the planet Yekub IX. The place has about thirty glow-worm factions, and they'd been having at one another for years. My bureau was called in by the neighboring planets to broker a peace before the glow worms could move the war out into the rest of the system."
"But it turns out they weren't too interested in peace. Not when they saw us, anyway."
"About the only thing on their minds about then was lunch."
This long, rolling clicking denotes great interest and understanding. "So we have established predator and prey. Did they show their intent immediately? And what did you do?"
"The glow worms aren't known for their patience. Oh, they put on a show for a while. Signed--well, slimed--a few forms. Made the Galactic Standard handshake for Commencing Diplomatic Relations. The usual."
"But when something gives you a look and then licks both of its twelve-inch incisors, you can usually bet that whatever's coming next, it's not going to be good."
And K isn't even going to start on how disturbing a worm with teeth is in the first place.
. . . alien worldview, yes; but there's nothing to shake up a boring social situation like something dangerous offering you a challenge. Yautja just love being overtly threatened.
"Yes, of course, I Blooded a," this word is the slang term for anything humanish, "and there was a ship--and--finish the story? You got to the part where you realized the hunt was on. . ."
K nods, "You're right. I only just got to the good part."
"Now, as I was saying, the glow worm warlord we were meeting with was starting to look like he wasn't exactly on board with the evening's agenda. My CO had designated me the mission leader so I gave the hand signal to my people to adopt a defensive stance and repositioned myself to be in the warlord's most likely zone of attack."
"Glow worms are tough, but not particularly subtle, so I had every reason to think he would be coming for me first. My people didn't move, but they were ready to. And we'd kept our ship prepped for a fast evac just in case."
"And that's when I brought out the list of grievances from the nearby planetary governments."
"You could say I was just asking for trouble by that point, anyway."
". . . oh," says the giant invisible shimmer hanging from the ceiling.
Reply
Without spilling a drop of bourbon. Naturally.
He looks up at the shimmer and glares.
And in not-quite-flawless, but pretty-good-for-a-human Yautja growls, "Need a refresher about the Rules, Slick?"
Reply
"You were pulling a blue thing from your face when I was looking through the filter for kainde amedha. Nothing else is supposed to glow blue. What was that?"
Reply
He sighs. "Not a kainde amedha. Almost as bad, though. Formal name's unpronounceable by humans, but their slime sticks to us just fine."
At least the Suit still looks good.
Reply
(Although if they weren't in the bar, where she's hoping to get a job as a defender, she would have let it all happen even if it were a facehugger. Preds are inert in the face of others' natural selection like that.)
"You think that slime is worse than being used as a host or food?" She studies his skewed priorities.
Reply
"And when that nearly happens right when you're performing the third step in your bureau's diplomatic overture? Makes achieving the mission objective a little... complicated."
Reply
". . . so why is the slime a threat? Are they slime?"
Ew. That's really hard to use as a good trophy.
Reply
"The 'glow worms' use it for chemical communication. Sorta hoping this one was saying, 'Oh shit!'"
Reply
Yautja love a good it tried to kill me so I stabbed it a lot! story.
Reply
"Well, now, it all started with a civil war on the planet Yekub IX. The place has about thirty glow-worm factions, and they'd been having at one another for years. My bureau was called in by the neighboring planets to broker a peace before the glow worms could move the war out into the rest of the system."
"But it turns out they weren't too interested in peace. Not when they saw us, anyway."
"About the only thing on their minds about then was lunch."
Reply
Reply
"But when something gives you a look and then licks both of its twelve-inch incisors, you can usually bet that whatever's coming next, it's not going to be good."
And K isn't even going to start on how disturbing a worm with teeth is in the first place.
Reply
. . . alien worldview, yes; but there's nothing to shake up a boring social situation like something dangerous offering you a challenge. Yautja just love being overtly threatened.
Reply
"Seen much action lately?"
Reply
Reply
"Now, as I was saying, the glow worm warlord we were meeting with was starting to look like he wasn't exactly on board with the evening's agenda. My CO had designated me the mission leader so I gave the hand signal to my people to adopt a defensive stance and repositioned myself to be in the warlord's most likely zone of attack."
"Glow worms are tough, but not particularly subtle, so I had every reason to think he would be coming for me first. My people didn't move, but they were ready to. And we'd kept our ship prepped for a fast evac just in case."
"And that's when I brought out the list of grievances from the nearby planetary governments."
"You could say I was just asking for trouble by that point, anyway."
Reply
Leave a comment