Momentarily transformed into a vibrant streak of fire, the scout-ship plunged through the blue planet's atmosphere, a shooting star too eager to wait for night to fall. It tore through the clouds, cast away its fiery cloak only to create a new one as brake-jets flared to life on its nose and underbelly. Its vertical descent cut back rapidly until the ship was all but floating towards the ground, in the direction of a small rock formation and the shade it offered from the desert sun.

With a bit of an ungainly belly flop (the sand would have offered no support for the ship's spidery landing gear) the scout ship came to rest, its thrusters throwing a massive sandcloud into the air. It took several minutes for the cloud to settle, but the instant it had, a single round door slid open in the ship's side, and Rek looked out from it.

Even in the shade, it was incredibly hot, and the dry wind that blew past threatened to leech the moisture out of anything it touched. Mountains rose in the distance, with the tell-tale green tinge of irrigation at its feet, but with the dusty haze of the air that tempting greenness seemed impossibly far. There was a barren wasteland between Rek and that hinted refuge -- mile after mile of a desert deathtrap.

Rek could only hope such a dangerous clime would house equally dangerous fauna.

She stepped down onto the sand, the thick skin of her soles protecting her feet from both the heat and coarse texture of the terrain. The feel of the sun glaring down on her shoulders as she walked away from her ship and stepped out of the shade was practically a physical weight upon her, and the dark tones of her skin soaked the heat up like dry ground would water, but compared to some of the other worlds Rek had visited, this one was a pleasant sauna-steamroom. The planet Klitdyr, for example, was so hot everything lived underground in a vast network of caves, and so dry that-

A shadow passed overhead, its source flying over Rek from behind and throwing her back into shade for a moment. The Tlahsn immediately looked up even as she crouched in preparation for a dash back into her ship -- the suppression tools attached to her belt and crossed baldrics were not meant to subdue beasts of the size it took to cast that kind of shadow.

The harsh sun glinted off of steely scales, making the beast hard to focus on. Powerful wings stroked the air, throwing it higher into the sky before it turned to bank, circling at a distance. It was long, perhaps reptilian, or perhaps a scaled mammal? Whatever it was, it was magnificent! To think that something of that size could thrive in this desert!

The flying creature made no motion of coming any nearer, so Rek slowly stood up straight again, continuing to watch the far-circling creature -- it was blue, she could tell now -- even as it seemed to examine her in turn. It wasn't unlikely. Animals felt curiosity too, and metal birds falling out of the sky were definitely something to be curious about. A pity she never brought any of the big equipment down on her first runs -- it'd be a pleasure to catch a beast like that, whether or not The Boss would have any interest in it.

Without warning, something struck her ship behind her, and the metal echoed with the sound of the impact. Rek immediately whipped around, ears flipping forwards aggressively as her greater hands each pulled a weapon from her baldrics -- a pair of laser guns -- and aimed them forward. There was nothing for her to aim at, however. Nothing met her searching gaze but the copper metal of her ship, though the dull, metal-impact sound soon repeated itself. It seemed to be coming from the other side of the nested ship.

Antennae waving, straining to catch the slightest scent of a threat, Rek slowly paced back to the scout-ship, then down towards its stern. The sand made her movements silent, and between glances back to make sure the flying blue creature was keeping its distance, the mercenary snuck around the ship's stern end and ducked under its rudder-fin. Weapons aimed ahead of her, she peered along its port side -- the side against the rock formation.

What she saw was a creature of segmented body and shiny carapace, and the source of the sound was the result of the creature's mandibles clanking against the ship's metal hull, as if the thing were trying to eat the ship. It was extremely insectoid, so much that Rek was willing to bet her antennae it was an insect, albeit the largest one she'd ever seen. It looked about as tall as her knee, which was no small height given her stature, but the largest insect she'd ever seen before this one had only been the size of her hand. This insect, now... this was a creature worth capture!

A large, horizontal gap in the rock formation, close to the ground, suggested where the super-insect had come from. Likely that was its home entrance, and it viewed her ship as an intruder, hence this amusingly futile attack. Its mandibles were leaving scratches in the metal hull, however, and the hull was made from one of the strongest metals her race knew. Rek made note not to let the thing get within biting distance.

She re-holstered one of her lasers and picked a smaller gun of lesser strength from her belt instead, a stunner instead of a killer. The weapon hummed quietly as she started charging it and began to slowly edge forward, closing some of the distance between herself and the giant insect. It seemed oblivious to her approach at first, but then it jerked, antennae waving frantically, and turned towards her. Unwilling to give the insect time to rush her in defence of its territory, Rek fired her weapon.

The charge of blue-white energy it released shot across and struck the insect square on its broad head and it recoiled, frantically chattering its mandibles. As Rek set the stunner to a higher intensity and began to charge it again, her antennae picked up the faint scent of something pungent, almost out of the scent range she could sense. Pheromones, no question about it.

"Drikhr..." Rek cursed, backing away. It was a hive-insect! And when a hive-insect released pheromones after being attacked, that meant it was either a 'stay away' alarm scent, or a battle summons. Rek most definitely did not want to be facing down a whole swarm of knee-high insects...

Luck wasn't on her side. While the insect she'd shot reeled and snapped at the air, a second one skittered out of the gash in the rocks, to be followed by a third... and then a fourth...

She didn't waste time hanging around to count just how many would surge in response to the injured insect's rally-scent. Letting the second stun-charge off at random, Rek turned and ran with the clacking of mandibles at her tail. She nearly fell as she veered around the scout-ship's tail, her narrow feet sliding in the sand they were not built to traverse, but recovered only to find that not only were the ants swarming behind her, but some had swarmed over the long scout ship as well, inconveniently blocking her way back to the door!

"Drikhr!" she spat again, whipping out her kill-guns again and firing off a pair of shots. The high-intensity blasts screamed as they tore through the air and blasted straight through one of the insect's carapace, but as it fell dead its nearby brethren turned about and rushed forwards over its corpse, mandibles spread aggressively.

"Drikhr drikhr drikhr!" Now Rek ran out of the shade, into the glaring sunlight, holstering her kill-guns and sprinting for all she was worth. If these insects acted like normal ones, they would cease pursuit when she got far enough away to no longer threaten their hive. In theory, anyhow. If theory was wrong... Rek was rather disappointed to think a swarm of insects would be her death. That wasn't half as glorious as dying in one-on-one combat with something large and fierce like, oh, the big, blue, flying--

Drikhr.

Understandably, Rek had forgotten about the big, blue, flying beast. Airborne creatures that didn't bother you were easy to forget about when you had a swarm of angry insects gaining on you despite your ground-eating stride. It ceased being forgotten, however, when it dove out of the sky ahead and skimmed the ground, heading right for her with foreclaws extended.

She had no time to duck or dive out of the way, or to even try and stop. The beast's mighty foreclaws closed on her torso and yanked her into the sky. The closest insects reared, snapping at her heels as Rek was carried away, and circled in a seething mass where she had been. As the blue beast clutched her to its chest, hers against its, she did not even attempt to struggle. Better to die a quick death by being eaten than to fall, where a quick death was not guaranteed.

::Eat you, strange one? I think not.::

Rek stiffened in shock. Was she hearing things, or had she just-

::Heard a voice in your head? Yes, actually, you did.::

The Tlahsn would've turned her head if she'd been able, but the wind and the beast's grasp prevented her from doing so. As a result, Rek's amazed stare had nothing to focus on but the blue chest-plate right in front of her snout.

::You're welcome, strange one. Really, I should've let the Ants have you for being so silly enough to stir up their nest, but you don't look at all like those other strange ones that dropped out of the sky, so I couldn't resist picking you up and seeing what you were about.::

And Rek was so amazed that the blue beast she'd fancied capturing was sentient, telepathic, and had saved her life, that she told him.

"I am Rek T'sohl. I came in search of unusual creatures." Her speech was muffled, both by the passing wind and the fact that she was talking into the creature's chest, but it seemed to hear her well enough.

::You talk funny, Rek T'sohl. Why are you looking for creatures?::

With a detached kind of amusement, Rek noted that the blue beast was a curious one after all. "To take back with me to where I come from."

The beast's chest vibrated, and she heard the echo of a chuckle in her mind.

::To take back with you? Perhaps you should bond a dragon, then.::

"Dhand? Dragn?" Though she 'heard' the words clearly enough in her mind, her own language could not reproduce them. "Explain?"

And with another chuckle, he did.