Chapter Text
A Sangheili would have shot it. A Jiralhanae would have eaten it. She simply watched it.
She hadn’t seen a hatchling of this species before. This one had the same wide, bulging eyes and ugly, pushed-in snout as the rest of its kind. It was rummaging through the debris, turning over bits and pieces of garbage with its stubby little fingers. Suddenly, it stopped, turned abruptly and jammed its arm into a different pile of garbage. Moments later, the hatchling let out a squeal and yanked its arm back out, with a wriggling insect clenched in its grubby fist. It flashed teeth and bit into the insect.
Her inner eyelid closed briefly and she exhaled, watching the hatchling through her rifle’s sight. Then she pulled back on the trigger. There was a flash of pink and a horrible little animal shriek. The hatchling scrambled away on all fours as a Jirlhanae crashed to the ground just a quill’s breadth away, with a needle through his eye socket.
The scream of the hatchling alerted his two packmates. They poked their heads out from the ruined structure they were searching. One bashed open what must have once been a door, and was half-way through it when another one of her needles caught him in the neck. He collapsed, choking on blood. The third bellowed and looked around, then set his sights on the hatchling as it scrambled to hide under the wreckage of a vehicle. He leveled his spiker at the scrap heap.
She whistled, shrill and sharp, and he turned toward her position with a roar. A half second was all the time he had before she put a needle through his open mouth.
After allowing a few moments to let the dust settle—and check that there were no reinforcements—Klik slung her Type-31 over her back and picked her way down from the roof of the building she had chosen as a perch. She half-trotted, half-hopped across the rubble and debris to the corpse of the first target, and pulled out her knife. This was the part she hated the most. So much work. Her employer required proof of the kill, however, and this was easier than lugging back the entire body. After a few minutes of silently cursing to herself, she finished hacking off one of the Jiralhanae’s fingers and slipped it into the watertight pack she kept for just such necessities. She repeated the procedure on the other two, then began the much more rewarding task of searching them for spare gekz, ammunition, and valuables.
Klik heard a creaking noise from her right, and puffed up her feathers. The human hatchling had finally crawled out from under the wreckage. It was even filthier now, covered in soot and grease, and spattered with red-purple Jiralhanae blood. She watched it from the corner of her eye as it slowly crept nearer.
<You shouldn’t be so loud,> she said.
It stopped about a stone’s throw away, and watched her. When she turned her head, it flinched, but didn’t run. It kept its eyes fixed on her, and reached down into the debris, feeling around until it found the bug it had caught earlier. It resumed eating, sitting in a crouch, and watched her with those wild, overly-big eyes.
She didn’t know much about human young. Didn’t know how they grew up, what they ought to look like, or even how old this one might be. But she was fairly certain they weren’t supposed to be so… skinny.
A Sangheili would have shot it. A Jiralhanae would have eaten it. Klik he reached into her pack—slowly—and tossed a fruit to it.
The hatchling froze, glancing between her and the fruit. The gangly little thing’s eyes were probably bigger than its stomach. Finally, its hunger won out over its fear. It pounced on the fruit and gobbled it up in as few bites as possible.
<Where is your nest?> She couldn’t help but feel that a human’s eyes shouldn’t be sunken so far into its already-flat face. <Your parents?>
It wiped a hand across its mouth, then licked the fruit juice off its hand, and said nothing.
Of course. There was little chance it spoke any Kig-Yar dialect. <Do you speak Sangheili?> she tried in that language.
It cringed and moved half a step back.
What was the name of the human tongue she had learned? Ah, right. “Een-liss?” she asked. “Speaking Een-liss, you?”
The hatchling’s eyes widened further, which she hadn’t thought possible. She wasn’t entirely sure of its expression. Humans had such mushy features, it was difficult to discern their emotions some times. It nodded slowly, which was something she did recognize.
“Alone?” she asked.
Another nod.
She honestly hadn’t expected any differently. There was nothing left here but graves and ruin. Most of the planet was glass, and the humans’ most recent attempt to return—a tiny outpost not far from here—had been bombed off the map a few months earlier. The hatchling must have been on its own since then.
Klik felt around in her pack for her last piece of fruit, and set it on the ground. Then she stood, tucked the spoils of her mission into her pockets, and walked back toward her ship.
* * *
Calamity’s sublight engines hummed as Klik slid her claws across the display and eased the throttle forward. The shuttle rose from the glass and popped its wings open like a beetle before climbing into the murky sky. She was glad to be leaving.
Leaving and, her growling stomach reminded her, getting paid. If she was careful with her rations, she would be in good shape until reaching the next supply depot. Otherwise, she’d have to start gnawing on those fingers she had collected. Klik unhooked the sealed pack from her belt and tossed it into the back of the cabin in disgust. She fluffed her feathers and clacked her beak, reassuring herself. Everything would be fine. She knew how to stretch a meal.
If you’re so worried about food, why did you give yours to that human?
She puffed up again and blinked her inner eyelids twice. That really hadn’t been a smart thing to do. She couldn’t just give food away to every sad-looking alien she met. The whole galaxy was falling apart—everyone looked sad right now, even the Unggoy.
Maybe in some strange way, it had reminded her of a newborn Kig-Yar chick. Scrawny and featherless. Helpless.
There was no use dwelling on the matter. She had done what she had done. Now she was going to leave this glass ball and get her money and find her next contract. The hatchling would go on doing… whatever human hatchlings did. Maybe some others humans would find it, soon. Come back to check on their outpost, find the hatchling, and take it back to its nest where it belonged.
No one is coming for that thing, and you know it.
She let off the controls as Calamity slipped through the whorling grey clouds into the stratosphere. It slowed to a stop and drifted in the green-blue haze that hung just below open space. She leaned back in her seat. It would take just minutes to reach her exit point from this system. She needed to leave soon, before more Jiralhanae showed up, before they spotted her ship. Calamity didn’t have cloaking, and it was completely unarmed. Her only defense was speed. Yet here she was sitting still, out in the open, wasting time. Time was one thing she could never afford to waste.
Klik hit the controls again and gunned the throttle, cursing herself every second.
* * *
There was a crunch as her feet hit the glass. She didn’t bother with stealth, now. Calamity’s entrance had been too loud for that.
“Human!” she called out in Een-liss. “Hey!”
There was no response. No sound at all but the distant howl of wind through the glyph canyons. Had the hatchling wandered off already? Or had something else happened to it? She didn’t have time to search. Klik tilted her head and scratched behind her jaw impatiently.
“Hello?” she tried again. Klik wracked her brain for more vocabulary. It was hard to think in an alien language when she was agitated. “You hello? Here?”
Something rustled on the ground behind her, and she wheeled around, pistol up and feathers fluffed to their fullest extent. A pair of big, white-rimmed eyes stared back at her from a grimy face. Klik lowered her crest and sighed out a relieved quuuooorak. It seemed the human could be quiet, after all.
“Good. Being here.”
The hatchling looked up at her, then fixed its eyes on the pouch where she had (until recently) kept her fruit.
“Yes, yes. Food. Wanting food?”
It nodded.
“Then here.” She pointed with her beak toward the door of Calamity. That just got another glassy stare. Maybe humans were like Sangheili, and didn’t understand beak-speak. “Here,” she repeated, and gestured instead with her hand.
This time, the hatchling followed with its eyes, but didn’t budge from its position.
“Food. Here. Fast going!” she insisted. <Rrrak! How can I make you understand?>
A soft, all-too-familiar whir of engines carried over the wind, and she looked back to see the silhouette of a Spirit drawing closer. Time was up.
The hatchling was looking past her, trying to see what had caught her attention. She grabbed it. With one arm around its bony torso, and the other under the back of its gangly stick-legs, she leapt up the ramp and back into her ship. The hatchling shrieked, perhaps in surprise, perhaps in fear, and kicked at her. She didn’t stop, didn’t even let go of it until she was at the console and finally needed a hand free to slap the door controls closed.
It scrambled away, and she grabbed it again and hauled it up into one of the passenger seats. It shrieked again and started babbling something at her as she snapped its seat harness on and locked. If it was speaking Een-liss, the words were too fast and jumbled to make any sense. The hatchling lashed out, grabbed onto her crest and yanked. She hissed, and it instantly let go, though it had managed to pull out three or four feathers, their tips bloody.
Klik warbled to herself and pressed her feathers flat to her body as she trotted back to the controls. “Fast going,” she said, snapping on her own harness. She slapped the throttle to maximum “Now.”