She was out of options. She needed help, a concept that was once alien to her. But with her pride stripped away and guilt weighing her down, she no other choice. If not for her, then she would do it for the sake of her child. Silent and begrudging t...
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(this picture's text has nothing to do with the chapter, just a mood I was going for)
A/N: I apologize that I did not mention this sooner, but it would be helpful for you to have already read the Predator: Invisible Prince in order to fully enjoy this story.
Justice found it on her second try. A yautja's ship was always placed in a somewhat elevated location near the target area of combat, but with enough clearance for undisturbed takeoff and landing. After a few minutes of highly accelerated running, she put distance between herself and the xenomorphs, but that wouldn't buy her long. They could be hanging back to regroup only to flank her later or holding off in their pursuit to give her a sense of false safety, making her take down a surprise. By every moon in the galaxy, she really hated fucking xenomorphs.
Using the planet's map, Justice went from one small clearing near the northwest part of the map before leaving the area in a cloud of muttered oaths and running to the next location she thought viable. Sandy wind pelted at her shitty mask, and she tightened the carapace around Larsa's body, trying to block out the growing storm winds from touching the baby's soft skin. Within a few minutes, she arrived at the next plausible location she marked on her map and stopped. Sweeping her gaze around the area, she inspected the umber rocks and the coarse, resilient plants that covered the arid terrain. Broken arms of the large phreatophyte plants signaled the presence of her target. Walking forward with one hand outstretched and her rifle up in her other, she took cautious steps toward the seemingly empty clearing in front of her. At first, there was nothing. Just sandblasting wind hitting the palm of her hand. But as her steps took her closer, the nanites in her veins began to hum in recognition. Stopping with her hand only an inch away, Justice stared at the artful nothingness in front of her--the ship was here.
Not risking touching it, she stepped back and toed a rock out of the sandy earth. Flipping it out of the ground with the toe of her boot, she lined up the shot and kicked it. With a clink of stone hitting metal, Justice watched with relieved satisfaction as the stone fell back to the ground undamaged.
Larsa tensed and shifted against her before letting out another demanding cry for appeasement.
"Shh," Justice whispered as she looked down at Larsa's angry face.
With her hands balled into tiny plump fists, Larsa held up her arms in stiff protest as she let out a deafening cry. Reaching in between the makeshift shield, Justice rubbed the back of the infant's head in a soothing gesture while she looked back up at the ship. Going back up to it, she gave it one last testing bump with the side of her rifle and exhaled as no shield met her with resistance. She had minutes if that, Justice surmised, letting her hand trail along the surface of the cloaked ship as she walked around it. Like bloodhounds, the xenomorphs would hear Larsa's fed up cries, and they would track her to this spot soon.
Finding a groove in the ship that was deeper than the rest of the ones that lined the alien ship, Justice traced its edge and nearly grinned at the massive rectangular shape. It had to be a door. But finding a door and opening a door were two separate things, she frowned. It was bio locked, it had to be. The yautja were not the kind to risk having their ships found or stolen. It would take their DNA to access and pilot the ship.
