Yeh'kull: Unblooded Huntress Of Ataegina

Name: Yeh'kull
Species: Yautja
Sex: Female
Role: Ecologist and surveyor, then blooded hunter
Known for: Ataegina survey, Pendaran Queen, branding Ahiliyah and Creen
Setting: Ataegina, after the Rising
First appearance: Another Mother (2022)
Status: Alive, left for the mothership blooded
Weapons: Cloak, plasmacaster, wristblades, disc, scout craft

Yeh'kull was an unblooded female Yautja in Scott Sigler's Another Mother, from Aliens vs. Predators: Ultimate Prey. Clan elders kept her off real hunts because her brothers were dead and she was the last of her line. They sent her to survey the lost colony world Ataegina as an ecologist. She broke those orders, killed three runners, then took a young Queen under the Pendaran mountains with Ahiliyah Cooper and Creen Dinashin. She left for the mothership blooded.

Biography

Last Of Her Line

Yeh'kull's brothers were dead, and the clan elders treated her as a line that had to be protected, not as a hunter who had asked to risk her life the way they had. They called her work important and sent her out as an ecologist, to judge worlds for dangerous game that other Yautja might hunt later. She wanted a blooding and equal standing. The elders refused.

Ataegina was her third ecological survey of that kind. The elders sent her to look for dangerous animals that later hunters could use as game, and they forbade her to take those kills herself. She took the assignments as worlds the clan knew well, with no real danger and no real challenge, chosen so she would live. She finished each survey, and the work left her no closer to a hunt that could kill her.

Survey Of Ataegina

The continent looked primitive next to other human worlds. The people carried steel spears, knives, shields, bows, and crossbows, and they had no firearms, explosives, or beam weapons. Yeh'kull's job was to study the land and feed local speech into a translator. Isolation had changed the dialect, and the program struggled with it. She did not know how long the humans had lived there after the wreck that, in Aliens: Phalanx, left children on that world.

A mothership signal was close. The elders would call her scout craft up within a day or two, and her time on the surface would end. Large animals were scarce, so humans were the biggest game she had seen. She was not supposed to take trophies. She decided a few human souvenirs would not be refused once her survey clock ran out.

Three Runners

She stalked a three-person Ataegina runner crew. One male fought harder than she expected and cut her before she cached his skull and spine. She killed a second scout and took the third alive to work on the dialect. The captive repeated one word, dee-mon, then bled out. Yeh'kull took three trophies from that body and treated the whole take as too easy.

Those dead were Rowan Winden, Aaron, and Miriam. Green blood sat on Rowan's spearhead, with no acid scoring. Ahiliyah and Creen later found Rowan's hidey-suit split and his head and spine gone. Two skulls with the spines attached hung in an alcove on Yeh'kull's scout craft.

The Map

Yeh'kull almost put a plasmacaster bolt into the human she read as the leader, the woman with a nocked bow beside Rowan's body. Sunlight then caught the inner jaw of a Queen hanging from the small male's neck, and three soldier jaws on the woman. She pulled the shot. If the elders had known Xenomorphs were on Ataegina, they would have sent unblooded males to blood themselves, not an ecologist. A Queen in a nest was the prize that would stop the clan from holding her back.

She wrecked Creen's steam cart on the road, took Ahiliyah and Creen into the trees, and made them kneel. Honor would not let her backhand hunters who already wore Queen and soldier trophies. When Ahiliyah started to lift a jaw as a gift, Yeh'kull roared. She wanted the kill herself. Creen read the rolled search map and circled the volcanic Pendaran tunnels as the likely nest. Yeh'kull's forearm plate flipped open while she worked that word, volcanic, into the translator.

She dropped a double-pointed spear in front of Creen, gave Ahiliyah a light metal bow, and brought a cloaked scout craft down in a clearing, then dropped the cloak so they could see a hull the size of a sailing ship. Two skulls waited in an alcove. A ghost-image of the ground ran under the craft as they flew. Yellow rings marked three moving adult Xenomorphs leaving one tunnel mouth in the Pendaran peaks.

Pendaran Hive

Yeh'kull went down the hot tunnels first and dropped glowing tubes for light. She killed more than twenty adult Xenomorphs with the plasmacaster on the way in and spent less time checking side fissures the deeper she ran. Two large protectors came out of a crack behind her. Ahiliyah wrecked one skull with the bow, Creen finished that body through the mouth, and Yeh'kull opened the other with wristblades after a shoulder gore. Green blood ran from the wound. She kept walking.

Honor Melee

The chamber was smaller than the first hive under Black Smoke Mountain, and the Queen was younger, about half the size of the Demon Mother Brandun had killed, with an egg sac and hosts cemented in the walls. Yeh'kull threw light vials, then twisted the plasmacaster off her shoulder and dropped it. She pulled the helmet and took a disc and wristblades for an honor melee. Ahiliyah held a poison arrow in case that fight failed, and she sent Creen to smash eggs.

The disc cut off a Queen finger, then later sank into the neck. The Queen smashed Yeh'kull into the wall and turned toward Creen. Yeh'kull leapt onto the crest, drove the blades through the skull, and dragged them the length of the head. She branded Ahiliyah, Creen, and her own helmet with the severed finger, hung the Queen inner jaw on a wire, and put the helmet back on.

Blooded

Three adult Xenomorphs hit them on the way out, and the plasmacaster wrecked those bodies. Yeh'kull threw a charge into the tunnel mouth that shook the mountain and sent smoke out of the entrance. She limped to the scout craft on a trail of green blood. Ahiliyah and Creen kept the bow and the double spear.

Yeh'kull treated the two living humans as hunters she had blooded, and the three dead runners as trophies. She heard the female leader's name as Lee-ha. Creen had pointed her at volcanic heat, and Ahiliyah's bow had saved her when the protectors hit. The scout craft left atmosphere toward the mothership beacon, Queen jaw on the wire in the style of those human guides. She left as a proven hunter, and the elders could no longer keep her as only a child-maker.

Confirmed Kills

Another Mother never gives Yeh'kull a hive-wide count. Her confirmed line is:

Rowan Winden: skull and spine cached after he cut her.
Aaron: killed on the same runner circuit.
Miriam: taken alive for the translator, then bled out. Three trophies from that body.
Pendaran tunnels: more than twenty adult Xenomorphs with the plasmacaster. Three more on the way out.
Protectors: 1 with wristblades. Ahiliyah and Creen handled the other.
Young Queen: 1, honor melee with disc and wristblades.

Similar Predators

Yeh'kull belonged with huntresses who had to force a blooding the clan tried to withhold. Ca'toll ran the LV-363 hunt after both other captains died and left with three young bloods. Hashori of the Widow Clan survived the Rage War and left Macbeth with human companions. Vagouti hunted on Earth with her mate and died in an Oregon rematch. Blood Venom was another named female in the same Ultimate Prey book, cut free on XK-93 by Lieutenant Kai Kentarus.

Conclusion

Yeh'kull was the last of her line, sent to look at Ataegina rather than hunt it. She took a young Queen under Pendaran, branded Ahiliyah and Creen, and left leaking green blood toward the mothership as a blooded hunter.