Predator: The Scavenger

ch 5

"I will give you 250 credits for each jar," the sickly-yellow gangly creature grumbled. Scratching at one of its many brown spots on its jaundiced looking flesh, it stared at her with impatience as he clutched greedily at one of her many glow worm jars.

Cutting her gaze back to him, she gave the buyer a hard look. "300 each or I walk right over to the Syn stand down the way."

The market on space port 8K3 was crowded as usual, Ember had to stand close to the dingy seller's stand to avoid getting hit by the constant coming and goings of the passing crowd.

"Fine," the yellow creature groused as he tapped in her credits onto his tablet. Flipping it over to her for authorization he gave a few oaths under his breath even as he pulled the coveted jars closer.

Twisting her lips in disgust at the stickiness of the tablet screen, Ember signed the contract approving the barter. Done with the transaction she left the disgusting alien to his jars without a word and merged herself into the crowd. The chime from her wrist unit alerted her of a call. Clicking the accept button she answered.

"What, Dart?" She didn't bother hiding the annoyance from her tone.

"What crawled up your ass and died?" Ember could hear female laughter and the familiar clink of glass in the background and knew he was at one of the many bars on the port.

"Nothing I'm fine," she lied. "What bar are you at I will meet you?"

"The Orifice, where the hell else!" he laughed, before yelling to the bartender for another shot. "You sure as fuck don't sound fine, come up here and lean that pretty little head of yours on my nice strong shoulder and tell me all about it."

Hanging up on him, she squeezed through the crowd towards the lifts to the ninth level. He was right, she wasn't fine and she really could use a drink. For a week now, she couldn't find one clue to Red's location nor was the surly red bastard answering any of her messages, calls, or hails. Nothing. Everything was fine one moment and the next it wasn't, Ember couldn't wrap her head around it. At first her imagination assumed the worst, that he was killed from his last bounty. Scouring the feeds and reports from his last bounty's planet, Ember's plans to burn the planet and all their inhabitants was cut short when she read that the prince of the planet was killed by an unknown assailant. Unknown meant they didn't catch him. So, what the hell was up?!

Ember felt as if she was losing her mind. Everything was going so right between them. For once she finally got the big scaly bastard to finally talk to her, an actual back and forth conversation for God's sake. Rereading her messages over and over again she could not find any hint or clue that would suggest he would ghost her like this. Her last message to him about fixing her heating system was labeled "read" by him, meaning he did receive it and saw it. Stomping onto the lift, Ember let her head bang onto the transparent plasma wall as it rose in the air, ignoring the questioning looks from the fellow passengers. She should have never gone to that abandoned planet for a quick break. After finishing fixing the damn heating coils she did a quick survey—a far too quick survey looking back on hindsight—of the land and found an old stepwell in the middle of a ruined city. It was a miracle she somehow dragged herself back to her ship. When she woke up in bed, her systems scans showed her high levels of a sleeping toxin in the air produced by some of the local fauna. It was most likely the reason for the planet's lack of life. Though she had to admit it was some of the best sleep she had in ages—and dreams too. Just remembering the dream, she had about the red yautja hovering over her body made her body pulse with tingling heat. The dream felt so real and tangible she knew she would forever use those images as material for her fantasies about the big red Yautja. Sadly, the mini break cost her big time, she could have been there and waiting for Red when he took off from the ship instead of nearly sleeping to death on that damn planet.