Predator - Incursion (22 page)

Mains sent instructions to one of his shoulder drones. It parted from his suit and drifted through the destruction. He switched views and checked out the drone’s feed, arming its weapons at the same time. The infrared view was confused by the heat of plasma blasts, so he switched to normal view, the scene now lit by fires. The drone moved slowly, its small camera panning left and right. The tunnel floor had been ripped up, walls fractured, ceiling dripping molten rock that splashed and hardened in complex patterns.

No sign of the Yautja.

“Stay sharp,” he whispered, knowing he didn’t really need to. He checked his suit scan for movement, and saw only himself and the other Excursionists lit up. But this was a warren, and he couldn’t afford to trust the scan fully. Back to the drone view, and the tunnel beyond the battle site grew darker again. “Looks like the target fled and—”

A shadow shifted, a clawed hand swiped, and the feed from the drone suddenly cut out.

“Son of a bitch,” Mains said. He sent an order for the drone to self-destruct, but the Yautja must already have crushed it, disabling its systems. “Faulkner, Snowdon, wait here. Lieder, with me.” Com-rifle set to plasma, he stormed into the ruined tunnel, Lieder close behind.

Twenty yards in, past the flames and torn-up walls, his suit scan showed no signs of movement. Even when the huge Yautja reared up before him, it showed that nothing was there.

Mains skidded to a halt. “Drop!” Lieder bellowed, and Mains fell to one side. The Yautja swung down two heavy bladed weapons, one in each hand, and he heard them whistling through the air.

Lieder fired. The plasma shot struck one weapon and ricocheted, blasting into the wall and sending the melting metal blade across the alien’s chest. It screeched and swiped at its chest with its other hand, then unleashed a fusillade of shots against Lieder from its shoulder blaster.

Mains rolled onto his back and fired his com-rifle almost point-blank. The shot struck the Yautja beneath the chin, and for a couple of seconds light glared from its mask’s eyepiece as the plasma charge melted into its skull and illuminated from the inside out.

The dead alien released a low, sad sigh, then slumped down beside him.

“Check for any more,” Mains said.

“I’ve been checking, L-T,” Cotronis said. “Nothing on my scans, but their signals earlier were weird, in and out.”

“Yeah, they must be carrying some sort of new stealth tech,” Faulkner said.

“You okay?” Mains asked Faulkner.

“Com-rifle broke in half. And a bruised ego.”

“No need. We did well.” Mains was breathing hard as Lieder helped him to his feet, her hand grasping his for a few more seconds before letting go. They smiled at each other, and Mains felt a sudden twinge.
It’s all just a matter of time
, he thought. They’d crash-landed on a Yautja habitat, their ship had exploded, and in just an hour they’d already fought off four Yautja. How many more would come at them? How long would their ammunition last?

How lucky could they continue to be?

“L-T, you should see this,” Cotronis said. “All of you. Feeding it through now.” Cotronis sent through the view from one of her own shoulder drones, and while they kept one eye on their surroundings, they all gasped at what they saw.

The drone had drifted through the tunnels toward the wider, central portion of the habitat, and it hovered in the shadow of an overhang, showing the habitat’s interior. It was cavernous. The interior space must have been almost a mile across and two long, roughly tubular, so poorly lit that the drone viewed through infrared.

The inner surface was far from smooth, with rocky mounds, dark ravines, and other, stranger shapes lining it all the way around. Artificial gravity was employed here—through centrifugal force, partly, although the Yautja must have been using a more arcane means to produce a result that felt so close to standard. It meant that the entire inner surface was habitable.

Here and there around the tube, settlements were visible. They seemed very small, single buildings sprouting from the uneven surface, with an occasional taller structure. Ships were moored close to some of these places. Each settlement was different, and as was usual with the Yautja, each ship varied in size and design. There were no larger buildings or ships, no places that might contain a gathering or congregation. These hunters were loners, and even though they all coexisted on the same huge habitat, still they lived alone.

“How many do you think?” Lieder asked.

“Not as many as I’d feared,” Cotronis said.

“Yeah, but a lot more than we could wish for,” Faulkner said.

The floor beneath their feet shook, a subtle vibration that Mains wasn’t sure he’d felt until he glanced at the others. They had all sensed it, too.

“Maybe the
Ochse
did more damage than we thought,” Lieder said. “Great. It would be a boring day otherwise.”

“Snowdon, what do you think?” Mains asked.

“I think we’re making history,” she said. “Far as I’m aware, we’re the first humans inside a Yautja habitat. Those four that came at us didn’t launch a concerted, synchronized attack. If they had, they’d have taken us. Each was acting alone, and from what anyone can tell that’s the way these things operate. Occasionally you’ll see them in pairs—or even threes, like we did on Southgate Station—but that’s pretty unusual, and it could be that was a family pack teaching a youngster to hunt. Or it might have been an initiation. This place looks like it’s been around for a
long
time.”

“But now a lot of the ships have left,” Mains said.

“Yeah, and there are more docked outside on those mooring structures,” Cotronis said. “Maybe they move their ships out there and prep them for flight.”

“Right,” Mains said. “So maybe we need to steal one.”

Someone took in a sharp breath, but he wasn’t sure who.

“Lieder?” Cotronis asked.

Their pilot took a while to reply. “I don’t know,” she said.

“You’re the only one who’ll have even a slight chance of flying one of their ships,” Mains said, “and from what I can see, that’s our only hope of getting out of here.”

“I can do my best,” Lieder said. “Snowdon can help me translate controls, perhaps. But Johnny… nothing like this has ever been done before. We’ve captured a bit of their tech, a few bits of bodies, but nothing substantial. And every ship is different, sometimes
vastly
different, built and modified by individual Yautja.”

“I know,” Mains said. “It’s just a long shot, and between now and then, we’ve got to survive.”

The floor bucked again, dust drifting down around them.

“That’s if this damned thing holds together. So, let’s make a plan. Cotronis, call your drone back. We’ve got to assume the rest of those bastards aboard know that we’re here, and probably know that we’ve just offed their four buddies.”

“Which means this silence is nothing of the sort,” Cotronis said.

“Calm before the storm,” Snowdon said. “They’ll be getting ready to hunt.”

Charon Station, Sol System
July 2692
AD

Gerard Marshall was in a safe place. He knew that. General Paul Bassett himself used Charon Station as his main place of residence, and it had been the Colonial Marines’ headquarters for over a century. In that time, no enemy action had ever damaged or killed anyone on Charon Station.

Space was a dangerous place. There had been accidents and one notable disaster, but if Marshall had been asked to choose the safest place in the Human Sphere in which to sit out a potential war, where he was now would have rated very highly.

Which was why news of the attempted sabotage had given him palpitations.

They’d caught one of the station’s support staff making his way down toward a munitions store on one of the outer cells of the station. He’d been carrying a bomb. The cell was held far away from the bulk of the structure, but Marshall had heard from several sources that any detonation of the ordinance stored there would have blown most of the station into shrapnel. Any surviving portions and occupants would have been sent spinning into space, to die a slow, suffocating death.

The man had made it through three levels of automated security before being halted by human guards. They had sensed his nervousness, questioned his presence there, and then shot him when he pulled a gun.

The bomb he was carrying was still being examined, but it appeared to be homemade.

Marshall swilled a glass of single malt and stared at the view from his window. Deep space, peppered with stars. It was said that the ancients had viewed space as a dark blanket with pinprick holes to the outside, and in some ways he supposed they had been right. The real pinpricks were the dropholes, however, and they were man-made. Those stars he was looking at now were likely long-since dead, and the enormity of distance once again crushed him down.

He had been a normal child with simple desires. His mother had been a nurse on an Earth-orbit station, his father a physical educator for the military. Until his fifteenth birthday, Marshall had been a normal boy obsessed with normal boy things. He’d played zero-G soccer, sung in a band, enjoyed schooling, and had been hypnotized every time he saw Jenny Anne Francis in a bikini. Then when he turned fifteen, he was approached by a recruiter for Weyland-Yutani. His imagination was set aflame by the things she told him, and his parents had done little to douse those flames. They saw a good career for him in the Company. It was an opportunity few people were afforded, and Marshall grasped onto it with both hands.

Seven years later he was assistant to one of the Thirteen.

Seven years after that his employer died, and Marshall was tagged as the natural successor. From apprentice to one of the most powerful men in the galaxy in the space of fourteen years, and to what did he ascribe his success?

He didn’t give a fuck about anyone.

Actually, that wasn’t quite true. His success was due to the fact that he could convince anyone that he
did
give a fuck about them.

But he didn’t.

So when General Bassett’s image appeared on his holo frame, requesting contact, Marshall swilled the last of his single malt down and prepared his concerned face.

“Gerard,” the General said. “I trust your mission got away successfully?”

“Halley and her people launched several hours ago, yes.” Marshall frowned. “Honestly, Paul, I’m sorry I had to rip her away from her real duties, but… you know.”

“Not a problem.”

“And for lending her the
Pixie
, you have my eternal gratitude.”

The General waved the comments aside. He looked troubled, and that wasn’t a look that Marshall was used to from the old man. It made him feel troubled too.

“So, this sabotage attempt,” Marshall began, but Bassett waved that aside.

“It’s being looked into. My concern is that it might somehow be connected with what I have to tell you. Some intelligence just in, which I think you should relay to the rest of the Thirteen.”

“Concerning the terrorist actions?”

“Concerning the Yautja.”

Marshall’s blood ran cold. All the talk of war, the preparations, the buzzing undercurrent of activity throughout Charon Station, he’d believed that it was all unnecessary. The Yautja were not a war-like civilization. They were barely a civilization at all. Their high level of technology was an oddity, and he wouldn’t have been surprised if it was discovered that their weapons, ships, and martial technology had somehow been inherited—or stolen, from another alien species.

“The attacks?” Marshall asked.

“We’re used to occasional attacks. These are just more concerted. No, what troubles me the most is Yautja ships making it into the Human Sphere.”

“Only along the Outer Rim, though,” Marshall said.

“They’ve started using dropholes,” Bassett said. “They shouldn’t have the ability, the tech, and codes, but somehow it’s happened. Seven instances so far, and other drophole traces are being checked right now.”

“Where have they dropped to?”

“They’re working their way inward. A couple have been intercepted and destroyed, but others have vanished. It’s an incursion. They’re spreading.”

Marshall leaned back and closed his eyes, wondering how he would communicate this to the rest of the Thirteen. He could see the opportunities here, as would they. The valuable knowledge they could glean from captured Yautja, alive or dead.

“It’s your job to stop them,” he said.

The General bristled, face turning pale. “And I’m doing just that. But I thought it appropriate to inform you, especially as we’re now in a state of war.”

“War can be good for progress,” Marshall said. “Thank you, General. I’ll communicate your concerns.” He cut the link.

He sighed and took a deep breath, pouring himself more whiskey. He would have to initiate a call to the Thirteen soon, tell them the news. They were the Company, though, and each of them had individual resources spanning the entirety of the Human Sphere. If he left it a few more minutes, enjoyed his drink, and considered what the near future might bring, it was likely that they would already know.