Predator: The Scavenger

ch 6

She tracked the signal of his ship down to a relatively large dwarf planet circling a large barren water planet. Sitting on top of the dwarf planet was a large carrier class ship normally used for transporting vast number of soldiers or hospitals. Her preliminary scans showed the large vessel only had a few signs of organic life, and multiple signs of functioning machinery. Why was Red here—a mission perhaps? But if so, what went wrong enough for his ship to send out a distress signal?

Suiting up, she grabbed her helmet to walk to the hatch. Remembering something, Ember leaned over her chair to type a command into the ship when her gaze swept over the open document of Yautja translations she was working on. Staring at the document she tried to discern what was odd about it. Scanning the text, she stopped on one of the words she could not translate earlier. It should have had a question mark—it didn't.

Her chest felt as if it was on fire as she stared at the word "Love" which was previously untranslated. Love—Asisuru, which translated to weakness. Staring at the screen she felt a multitude of emotions spiral through her, anger, happiness, and betrayal. Red had been on her ship. Red had seen her list of translations. Did that mean the dream she had of him was real? Was that why she couldn't contact him anymore?

Snapping her formed helmet on with a loud click, she stepped out of the hatch. New plan, she was going to find that big hulking alien and she was going to shoot him in the chest, drag him back to her ship, patch up the wound, and then make love—or weakness or whatever the hell he called it—to him until he begged her to stop.

The carrier ship was a lot bigger than she was anticipating. Large docking bays, vast cargo holds, seemingly thousands of small cabins, a large mess hall, and tons more she had no real interest in exploring. With just a cursory glance at the large familiar yautja ship sitting in the large docking bay, Ember knew it was empty. Not once on any of their missions had Red just left the main hatch door wide open for anyone to go in and out of, that and the armed guard standing next to the ship told her he wasn't inside. Ember's stomach knotted in worry.

With her camouflage on she slinked through the halls undetected by the few armed guards she did see. As some of the guards walked past her various hiding spots, Ember wasn't too happy to read that her scans did not pick up the guards' presence. Androids, fucking androids. No one in the universe besides rich corporations liked the things so why haven't they been exterminated yet?

Most of the halls were dimly lit and most of the doors were locked. Looking at her read-outs from her scans she followed a long winding hallway to the organic life signs she could find. There was a large section of the ship that seemed to have a few signs of organic life, but Red's personal signal was still not appearing on her scans. That could only mean his armor was either off or destroyed. Taking a deep breath to calm her rising heartbeat she pressed on further down the hall.

After what felt like an hour of searching, Ember paused around the corner of a large white door. Androids in matching jumpsuits went in and out of the room, giving her only glimpses of the high-tech equipment inside. One tall android in white left the room followed by other male androids who deactivated the lights in the room before leaving. Pressing herself into the wall she listened as their footsteps eventually faded down and around a corner. Quickly, she ran up to the door and pressed the entry button. Inside the immense room she stopped, the whole room was lined with trillions of credits worth of pristine technology. The all white room felt like a clean room of sorts, as if no one should be inside disturbing the immaculate quality of the pure air. Turning she scanned the room until her eyes settled on the large window in the back. Ember nearly screamed.