Unforgivable

Creature looked at his brother's tarp-covered body and it set in. I'd been so swept up in making Lockjaw pay that I had barely let it sink in. I'd been numb, operating on autopilot, but now that I'd settled down and was standing here with Creature, it really started to hit me all over again.

This was Critter. He was gone.

I sniffed and tried to control myself so I didn't have to take my mask off again. I couldn't, though. Moisture filled my eyes and I was gasping softly as I fought the sobs. I ended up taking my mask off since it didn't matter at the moment. I wasn't tracking. There was no one here right now.

For now, I had some time to mourn.

"Let us get him on the ship," I muttered, gathering as much of him as I could in my arms.

Creature shooed me off of him and picked Critter up on his own. I opened my mouth to say something but just closed it again. What could I say? I didn't know what words would give him solace. There weren't even any words that would console me, either. I just followed behind him as he carried our fallen friend aboard and I wiped my tears away. They just quickly came back.

I cleared away some of the ransacked boxes and had Creature set Critter down there. The straps used to secure the supplies we no longer had would keep Critter secure, now. Creature seemed reluctant to let him go, but he set his brother down all the same.

"Can you make us fly again?" I asked after a moment of silence.

"Take time," he replied, lying down on the cold floor of the cargo hold, pressed up against Critter's body. "Spare parts lying around."

My heart throbbed watching him seek that small amount of physical comfort. "Do you think there are enough?"

"Maybe." He turned his head away, making it clear he wanted some space.

Nodding, I knelt down and carefully strapped Critter in, trying to work around Creature in the process. I quickly gave that up, however, as I didn't want to ask Creature to move. He deserved to have this time

Closing my eyes, I tried to decide if I wanted to go back through the ship and grab anything else I might need, but I couldn't think of anything pressing. My first aid kit was still practically full and I had all my arsenal. The only thing was maybe more rations and supplies, but everything in the hold seemed to have been ransacked, so who knew what else . . .

My eyes snapped open and I stood up, bolting through the ship. Creature startled and hopped up too, but I left him behind in a flash. Methodically, one by one, I checked all the major rooms on our ship.

The armory was cleaned out, the kitchen was a mess, and—

I stopped at the trophy room. It took a few tries to pry the door open due to the jammed panel, but I managed after using one of my blades as a crowbar. All the while, my head was preparing my heart for what I'd find instead.

To my utter dismay, several of the skulls were in pieces scattered all over the floor. I grabbed both sides of my head and fell to my knees, unable to make even a single sound in lament. There were no sounds, no words, that would have sufficed. Frustrated and angry tears pricked in my eyes and I scratched at my scalp, looking for any outlet for my anger.

Everything was in pieces.

Bits of bone were scattered all over. There was nothing left hanging on the walls. Some were still recognizable, but several were smashed to dust. I didn't have anything of significance yet, but I was outraged on Wolf's behalf.

Teeth grinding together, I picked through the carnage, looking for what pieces were salvageable. This had been senseless destruction wrought by tiny men to make themselves feel big.

We'd see how big they felt when I got through with them.

Suddenly, I realized what the big piece in the center of the room was. I'd been too incensed to realize it before, but it was half of a queen xenomorph's skull. I recognized the ridges of her crest, the gouges in parts of the facial plates . . .

It was our skull. The one Wolf, Brutus, and I had worked together to kill.

I reached out to pick up a piece, but stopped and let it sit there. Before I'd come to live with him, I'd thought the skull was lost. It had been on the crashed ship back in Estes Park, which his rescue party had destroyed. Wolf told me that he'd managed to salvage it before that happened, that he believed it was worth saving.

He was . . . surprisingly sentimental. It was touching.

Now the trophy was ruined.

Quiet fury writhed in my stomach. I didn't even notice that Creature had caught up to me, and it was only when he made a noise to draw my attention that I realized that I was crying. I wiped my face and turned to him.

He looked upon the vandalism and then clacked his claws a few times. "Can fix. Little master not worry."

My voice was hollow when I said, "Focus on the ship first." Still, it did make me feel better.

All was not lost. This, too, could be fixed.

I was getting real fucking tired of cleaning up after these fugitives.

Creature acknowledged that and left me. His parting words were, "Begin repairs soon. Be in cargo. With Critter."

"Thank you, Creature." I stood up and called after him. "If you can, get communications up first. We need to get another working SOS out there. I don't know if the ones we sent before worked."

Taking a few deep breaths, I calmed down a little bit. Trophies could be replaced. Losing them didn't mean that he lost any of his standing. I had to remind myself of that fact. They were just things. The important thing was that I got him back. Then we could work on replenishing the trophy room. Getting better ones.

Having successfully soothed this one outrage, I headed out to check the other parts of the ship when I remembered our room. I hadn't checked that, yet.

My stuff!

I ran straight there. Like the other rooms I had seen, everything was strewn about. I bundled the furs up, shaking them out for any junk swept up in them, but there was nothing. I shoved the furs in a corner and then picked up the heavy mattress-like bed. After some huffing and puffing and heaving, I got it shoved aside and found my bag of Earth stuff.

The bag had been ripped open, but that was fine. That could be fixed. My spare Earth clothes were already in poor repair so that was picture frames were shattered, the pictures intact but crumpled. I sighed in relief. Nothing that couldn't be ignored.

Where was my . . .

Fuck. The bridge. My phone was on the bridge.

I was still out of breath from moving the damn bed so I did a quick cook-down walk to the bridge. I imagined most of the damage was there since that was where all the ship's controls were. Even if we repaired everything else, the ship wouldn't fly without the computer to tell it what to do.

The place was just as smashed up as I thought it was. I had to sift through broken glass, tattered wires, and sparking circuitry to find that my phone was within the rubble, shattered.

My phone. The last bastion of respite in an alien environment. An important connection to my old life. One of the only things that kept me sane on these long journeys through black, endless space when I couldn't spend time with Wolf or Critter.

Gone. Dead.

Even if it could be fixed, who knew if I'd have access to anything that was on it. There was a good chance it would just go back to its factory settings, wiping it clean of any personalization I'd saved.

Time keeping, gone. My silly games, gone. Day tracker, gone. My journals, my pictures, my books and music . . .

In what was not one of my finer moments, I screamed. I screamed and screamed. I kicked debris, threw broken junk, and cried. I was pissed off, I was in despair, and I hated it all. I hated them. I hated me. I hated the situation. I wished they were in front of me again, wished I could make them all suffer the same way I'd made Stranger suffer.

No, make them suffer more.

I wanted to kill them over and over again—string them up, let the birds peck at them. I regretted not taking my time with Lockjaw more.

They stole Wolf, they killed Critter, they scuttled our ship and vandalized our things. How could I have ever felt anything other than hatred for these people? They had nothing but contempt for us. I enjoyed thinking about all the awful things I would do to them.

My rage was not sated until I was too tired to scream anymore, too tired to continue throwing a fit. I was on my hands and knees, panting and dripping tears and sweat to the cold metal floor beneath me. I summoned one last burst of energy and slammed my fist down until it hurt.

"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!" I bellowed.

Unable to look at all that they had done without feeling sick to my goddamn stomach, I stormed out of the bridge and sat in the grass. It took a while for me to cool off. I wasn't okay, but I wasn't throwing a tantrum and plotting inhumane torture, either.

As much as I would have liked to make them suffer, it wasn't a reality. I would have to be satisfied by my fantasies for now. Getting Wolf back was more important than my lust for blood.

I was being unproductive. I needed to channel this raw fury toward my goal.

They wanted a battle?

I was going to bring a war.

First, I had to get my man back. To do that, I had to find a trail.

Though I technically hadn't gotten any fresh air—respirator and all that—being outside had still done me some good. I went back into the cargo and found that Creature was gone, probably to work on repairs. I hoped he had gotten enough time with Critter, but he could come back whenever he wanted.

I kneeled by Critter and took a few moments to use the belts to strap him in. I wanted to say something, but all I could think to do was apologize to him. That wasn't going to help him or me, so I just put my hand on him, wished him well in my heart, and then left to find that trail.

For starters, I looked around the area I'd seen him last. I'd get him back if it was the last thing I did, I vowed silently.

The pheromone tracker was hard to navigate. It basically sapped all the color from my vision and made it hard to distinguish landmarks, but anything pertaining to the genetic markers I sampled popped out as either yellow or orange, depending on how fresh it was. If the trail was too old, it faded into obscurity.

Wolf's was the brightest since it was his blood I sampled and the others were similar in shade to a cold trail. What lingered from the scene around the ship was grayish orange, looping about in wispy tendrils and was incredibly disorienting.

There was one particular path that stood out to me—instead of the normal yellow or orange, it was a pallid and ill green. I hadn't encountered that before, so I had to assume it was Titan's trail. I hadn't thought his signature would show up at all considering he was hish and not yautja, but apparently his genetic makeup was close enough that the pheromone tracker just assigned a different color to it.

In the end, I was able to determine which direction they had gone. Just to be sure, I went back to visible light and checked for any prints in the loamy dirt, but it was all trampled to high heavens.

When I followed the trail, I did find signs that I was correct in my initial analysis: small drops of green blood that I almost completely missed. I was so relieved that I was actually getting the hang of this tracking business that I didn't have time to reflect on the fact that it was most likely Wolf's blood.

It could have been fucking Jackal's, though. Critter had certainly wailed on him long enough to make him bleed, rest his little bug soul.

After committing the path to memory, I returned to the ship to tell Creature that I was going to go. The short cat nap I'd gotten while he was checking the ship would have to be good enough until this whole thing was over. I was going to be pulling the mother of all-nighters this time; it was a good thing Devon and I had trained for this during those long stake-outs in the FBI.

At least now I wouldn't be stuck in a car. Staying active helped to stave off sleep deprivation to an extent. What was the limit? Though, I should have been good since I'd gotten some sleep earlier.

"Creature," I shouted, my voice sounding flat within the tight corridors of the ship. I hadn't ever figured out where they accessed the inner workings of the ship, so I was kind of just wandering around and calling for him until he answered.

He showed up after a bit, holding a sparking piece of technology. I almost asked him what it was but decided I didn't really care.

"I will be going now," I told him. "I do not know when I will return, but if you do not hear from me in a few days, assume I failed and just . . . go live your life, I guess. You will be free, since neither Wolf nor I will be here."

Creature stared at me for a while, then turned without a word and went back to work.

I sighed, but didn't press the matter. It would be like arguing with a brick wall. I would take that as him saying he expected me to return.

"Also," I continued, "do not stay if there is any danger. You are the only one who can fix the ship, so you have to stay alive no matter what."

"Can do."

He busied himself with work and I hesitated a moment longer, but I didn't have anything else to say. I murmured goodbye and left him to it.

When I was outside again, I cast one more glance at the ship. I closed up the bay door to give Creature just one more line of defense against any intruders, then I set off to follow the trail. A nervous energy crackled within me.

With my cloak active, I disappeared into the trees.