Predator - Incursion (28 page)

“Maybe,” Snowdon said, sounding doubtful. “But we’ve seen no evidence that they act in concert. Even in a big fight, they’re on their own. They’re just not like us.”

“That still begs one question,” Mains said. “What enemy were they harrying?”

“Let’s not hang around to find out, eh?” Faulkner said.

As they moved forward in pairs, Mains mused on this. It was their job to find out what was going on here. Trapped for four weeks, reduced from eight to four, still they had a duty to perform. They were Excursionists, trained and willing to spend long years of their lives patrolling the furthest extremes of humanity’s reach into the galaxy, looking out for such dangers as this. Running would be a dereliction of duty. Escape and survival was essential, but only for one reason—to deliver a message about what was happening here.

His crew knew that. Faulkner’s quip had revealed his fear, but Mains knew them all better than his own family. They
were
his family.

He accessed his suit’s holo view. They were four hundred yards from the end of the habitat, and beneath them the narrowing cylinder of the vessel was a solid mass. Above them, past twenty yards of solid structure, the unidentified ship was parked.

“Let’s get to the surface,” Mains said. “All weapons online. Cloaking active. Combat systems hot.”

“I could do with a drink,” Faulkner said.

“I could do with getting this suit off,” Lieder said. “Four weeks without washing, and I smell like a farmyard.”

“You smell like that all the time,” Faulkner replied.

Mains laughed softly and started leading the remnants of his crew up to find an opening out onto the surface.

“L-T!” Lieder said.

“I got it!” His suit’s holo view had suddenly speckled red, indicating some distance ahead of them. He turned left and right, one eye on the screen, to see if it was some sort of interference.

“What have you all got?” he asked his crew.

“Movement,” Faulkner said. “Lots of movement. I count thirty distinct traces.”

Fuck.

“Same here,” Snowdon said. “We’ve gotta fall back, L-T.”

Mains closed his eyes briefly, considering what waited for them back the way they had come. More time hiding, scurrying through shadows, just waiting to be found again by another rogue Yautja. If they retreated now—

“Johnny, those aren’t Yautja,” Snowdon said.

“How do you know?”

“The readings are all wrong. The way they move, and there’s something about them…” She trailed off, and as he waited for her to continue, he saw it himself.

“They’re advancing in waves,” he said. The red specks on his screen were closing in on them, the first line of a dozen less than a hundred yards away. “Too late to run. Dig in.”

They darted left and right, Lieder and Mains close together, Faulkner and Snowdon a few yards to the left. The tunnel here was wide and low, rough, offering many places to hide. It was a good place to defend. They had a clear field of fire. He shoved aside the shattering certainty that they would all be dead within minutes, and rested his com-rifle on the rock before him.

From the shadows far ahead something screeched, a loud, sickening sound like fingernails drawn across a smooth surface.

“Oh my God,” Faulkner said. “Oh, no. Oh…”

“What?” Mains demanded.

“L-T, I’ve heard that sound before,” he said. “Xenomorphs.”

The shadows ahead of them erupted into life, and Johnny Mains and his VoidLarks opened fire.

Love Grove Base, Research Station, LV-1529
September 2692
AD

Over the twelve days since the alien ship landed, and they killed Connors and Sharp, Palant and the other survivors had seen the two Yautja several times, circling the storage hangars, standing motionless in the storms, sometimes passing back and forth as if lost.

They had even given them names.

The big one they called Shamana, after a famous sportsman from the previous century renowned for his size, strength, speed, and the length of his dreadlocks. The other Yautja—the mad one, the screamer, the one that Palant knew for sure would eventually come for them—McIlveen had named Wendigo. His love of myth and legend almost a thousand years old surprised Palant, but then plenty about McIlveen was surprising her.

The Yautja knew they were there. That was for certain, but it was also a mystery, because the predators had done little to trouble them. Palant had given all the survivors, especially the indies, everything she knew about the Yautja species. How they lived, fought, interacted, and died. Their technology and capabilities. The few facts known for sure, and the many more aspects of their existence only guessed at.

She made certain that weapons were within reach, but left untouched. It was a constant trial, preventing the indies from trying to retaliate, but she’d impressed on them that it was the best way to keep safe. Whether the Yautja could see or scan inside the storage buildings she didn’t know for sure, but it was a chance they couldn’t take.

The station staff had arranged a schedule for sleeping and working. Most of the work consisted of collecting and purifying water from the drip points around the hangar, preparing what meager food they had, administering medicine, and trying to keep each other’s spirits up. Several bodies were hidden away in a small room at the hangar’s rear, wrapped in tarpaulin and with the door blocked shut.

No one approached that room.

The indies had also arranged a schedule, built around patrolling and sleeping. They did little else. The storm raged outside as it had for ten days, rain pouring down in sheets. She and McIlveen had immersed themselves in their research once again, and only a part of that was to offer distraction from the pressing dangers surrounding them. Not only from the aliens, but from the dwindling food supplies, and the growing risk of radiation poisoning from the damaged reactor.

A small part of her that she could never reveal to anyone, not even McIlveen, could begin to know how excited she was at what was happening. She had never dreamed that she would one day be this close to a living, breathing Yautja, and she could never have fantasized that she might one day be able to listen to them talking.

“Another one, there,” McIlveen said, pointing. They were hunkered on the ground around an old receiver, its wiry guts spewed over the floor, clever repairs and adaptations made, a small speaker connected. It had taken three days of minute tweaking until they had found the Yautja frequency, and since then one of them had always been by the receiver’s side. Usually both of them.

Palant knew that many of the survivors viewed them with distrust, perhaps even recognizing some of the sick excitement they felt at the precarious circumstance they found themselves in, but right then she didn’t care. The pressure of history hung on every moment, and she could feel its deep resonance.

“Wendigo again,” Palant said. She had rigged a small datapad to the receiver’s speaker, loaded with a program she had been working on for some time. She stopped short of calling it a translation matrix, but after a day spent combining it with some of his own research, McIlveen had given it just that name. So far it seemed to be recognizing about sixty percent of what the Yautja were saying, even though they were speaking very little. When they did, the translation scrolled across a small screen, and was recorded on the ancient datapad device.

“Sounds more pissed off than ever,” McIlveen said. “Think we should tell them?”

Palant glanced across the hangar at where McMahon was sitting with another indie. She’d taken command since Sharp had been slaughtered, and everything about her impressed Palant—but she was still a soldier. Even after everything Palant had told them, McMahon’s natural instinct was to fight.

“Not yet,” Palant said. “Not unless we have to. A couple of them are twitchy as hell. One of them initiates a weapon, the Yautja see, and…”

“Nothing will keep them out.”

She nodded. They’d already talked about this. One blast from a Yautja shoulder weapon and the hangar’s wall would be breached. It was a miracle it hadn’t happened already, but the longer they listened in on the aliens’ sporadic communications, the more Palant was beginning to understand.

These Yautja weren’t on a hunt. They were there because they were the prey.

Hateful demons… fire lizards from… find my own… and blood.

“I wouldn’t like to be inside her head,” McIlveen said, reading the translation.

“I don’t want to be anywhere near her,” Palant said. She hadn’t expected fluffy banter, but this gave her the chills. Wendigo’s ranting seemed to comprise the outline of a nightmare.

“I think she’s insane,” McIlveen offered. In truth, neither of them could accurately discern the Yautja’s sex.

“Whereas Shamana is quiet, controlled,” Isa said, and McIlveen nodded. It had been almost a day since Shamana had responded to a Wendigo scream.
“Be calm… and prepare,”
he had said, yet the calmness applied to only one of them. It was what they were preparing for that concerned Isa the most.

Wendigo spoke again, that strange percussion of clicks, clacks, and guttural croaks that comprised what they knew of the Yautja language. It was a complex tongue, barely understood even by those most interested in the Yautja species. Despite the software they had created, she couldn’t tell whether the translations were at all accurate. Much of what they spoke was discarded by the program and dumped in a “futures” folder.

… clan… know loss… hate hate HATE!

“She’s getting worse,” McIlveen said.

“Maybe,” Palant said. “Or maybe she’s firing herself up.”

“What are the ‘fire lizards,’ do you think? It’s not the first time she’s mentioned them. Shamana doesn’t seem to acknowledge them, though.”

“I think it’s what’s chasing them,” she replied.

“If they’d come here purely to hunt, they’d have forced our hand by now. They know there are soldiers in here, and weapons. And… I think Shamana is confused. He seems aloof and distant, perhaps even in control, but I think it’s just a mask.”

“Maybe,” McIlveen said, sounding dubious. “I can’t imagine anything that could hunt those things. Whatever the case, though, I think it’s time to bring in McMahon. Wendigo might come at us at any moment, and then it’ll be time for the guns.”

“Yeah… time for the guns.” Palant waited a while longer, though, listening to the soft crackle and hiss of atmospheric interference. The Yautja had stopped talking. Their silence was haunting.

“Everything we do here will help the Company,” McIlveen muttered. That surprised her. Though he was a Weyland-Yutani man through and through, she’d started to convince herself that he had come for the love of discovery. For a moment she felt back at square one, as if she didn’t know him at all.

“We’ll be dead before we can tell them,” she said, although she wasn’t sure why. She still held out hope—so maybe she’d said it out of spite. She saw his shock and glanced away, barely holding back a smile.

Hugging her knees to her chest against the cold, Palant remembered her parents and how they had always instilled in her a sense of responsibility. As Weyland-Yutani employees, they’d revealed to her some of the Company’s darker workings. Her mother had borne witness, while her father had taken part in actions he believed were immoral, even criminal. Through it all they had retained their own sense of pride, and the dark deeds had weighed heavy.

They’d told her that their desire for scientific discovery drove them harder and farther than the Corporation for which they worked. If they could keep themselves apart from that—physically if possible, psychologically if not—then they would succeed. As far as Palant was aware, they always had.

She rarely dwelled on the darker episodes in their lives, instead remembering them for the love they had shared, and their passion for learning. She retained that love, that passion. Even now, listening to the words of the Yautja was opening doorways and creating a knowledge base for future generations. Isa couldn’t influence how the Company would use this knowledge… but she
could
determine whether or not they ever received it.

Not… fault, Shamana said. Leave… alone… wait and… for now.

Palant sat up, and McIlveen’s eyes went wide.

“You think he’s talking about us?” McIlveen asked.

Palant looked around, standing and catching McMahon’s attention. Milt was right. It was time to bring her in.

The woman soldier stood, stretching.

“What’s happening?” she asked.

“They’re talking,” Palant replied. “A lot.” A few people turned her way.

“What are they saying?” McMahon asked.

“It’s confusing,” Palant replied. “One of them seems to be urging calm. The other…”

“The other?” another soldier prompted.

“Is mad,” McIlveen said. “Insane, and if she—”

Another series of clicks and grunts issued from the speaker behind Palant, and she crouched to view the screen again.
That sounded bad
, she thought, but she waited for the translation to appear, not yet trusting that task to herself.

… fire lizards took… me alone… need blood! Need blood!