Aliens vs. Predators, page 12
Ptah’Ra was on perimeter guard. When he’d been younger he would have hated it, but on this planet, carved like it had been sliced into by the gods, he looked forward to it. His duty was to make sure everyone was safe.
Ny’ytap told them the oomans had a motto for what he was doing. In their crude language, it was, “Guard my shift from flank to flank and take no shit from any rank.” At midnight, with him in charge, it fit. He was here to protect everyone.
No. One. Else.
Still, some of his fellow unblooded had remained awake for a time, describing the kills they’d seen. They were so immature in the way they approached things. He supposed that was to be expected. After all, they hadn’t been blooded yet. They’d just heard all the stories about it, about the glory. Certainly, they all said they wanted to be blooded, but Ptah’Ra had seen them when the Xenos showed up. He knew the fear the creatures could inspire, if one surrendered to it…
Which they had. He could smell it on them.
Not Ptah’Ra. He was from a strong family where all the males were hunt leaders. He would never let any malformed Xenos haunt his dreams. No, he would kill them.
Even now he wore the shoulder-mounted plasmacaster of his elders, used on many worlds to fight countless different alien life forms. Here, he was only allowed to use it for guard duty, but once he was blooded, his hunt leader would decree that Ptah’Ra could carry it forever.
This one had been carved with the names of the planets and moons where it had been carried in battle. Letters scored into the metal, to remind the wearer of the pride he should show when carrying the familial weapon. Ptah’Ra’s dream was to become blooded while using it to kill, thus proving its magnificence.
He’d seen the plasmacasters carried by Ca’toll and Ny’ytap. Theirs were nothing—flat black and barely used, while his, gifted to him by his family clan, was a true artifact of warrior greatness. He knew—
A sound came from his left.
He spun. Waiting, he heard nothing.
The nighttime cacophony had gone silent. Ptah’Ra activated the visual sensors on his bio-helmet and zoomed in, switching through the various image intensifier settings, to no avail. His optics were auto-gated to shut off as needed, so he wasn’t afraid he might be blinded if there was someone with a powerful light.
Another noise, this time from his right.
Again, his left. Distinct now.
Sticks breaking, brush crackling, from two different directions—
And a third, this time from behind him.
Was he being surrounded?
Standard operating procedure was to wake the hunt leaders. Ptah’Ra hesitated for a moment, wondering if he could take out the approaching enemy on his own, then his training kicked in.
For many reasons the Yautja were the greatest hunters in the universe, and perhaps the first of those reasons was that they knew how to follow procedure. Ptah’Ra hurried to the middle of the camp where the rest were sprawled, sleeping, and nudged Ca’toll awake. When she sat up, he used sign language, and pointed to the three locations.
She nodded but made no sound, then gestured for him to wake the others. Strapping on her plasmacaster, she woke Ny’ytap. After a short and silent exchange, he shrugged on his weapon as well.
Within moments, everyone was awake and ready. All of them faced outward, backs protected as the three plasmacasters pointed equal distances apart. The unblooded were spaced between them, combisticks and wristblades ready. Ptah’Ra felt his chest swell with pride. Yes, they were about to be attacked, but they were ready.
As if to punctuate the moment, one of the LV-363 moons began to rise, its thin illumination breaking through the shadows of the night, filtering through the branches of the trees.
What he’d mistaken for bushes earlier were Xenomorphs, adults and juveniles; there were too many to count. Absent a queen, they had continued to multiply through the process Ca’toll had called “eggmorphing.” The creatures faced them without moving, as though waiting for some kind of signal, proving they just might be more than simply creatures of instinct.
The Yautja were surrounded, but it didn’t concern them. Being in such a tight formation would allow them to concentrate their fire without fear of being attacked from behind.
The species stared at one another, time stretching between them. The Yautja stood tall and proud in armor and bio-helmets, while the Xenos hunched on four legs, tails twitching, heads jerking, mouths extending in what seemed like anticipation. Moonlight glinted off of their midnight carapaces.
Another long moment—
—and they attacked as one.
To call the battle a frenzy would be wrong. It was more like controlled chaos. Although the Yautja could not dictate when and where the Xenos came from, they could regulate their rates of fire and their ability to inflict damage.
The plasmacasters did so repeatedly, but needed time to charge. In the between moments, the hunt leaders were protected by their unblooded, whose combistick spear points quickly were dripping with the acidic blood of their attackers. The battle felt like it took hours, when in reality it was over in a matter of minutes. Once the Xenos attacked, the Yautja defenses rapidly cut them down.
Then an immense form landed directly into the center of the Yautja circle.
It must have been moving through the trees overhead, the noise of its movement camouflaged by the battle. Ptah’Ra spun and found himself face to face with a monster that towered over him. Its black surface glistened in the moonlight, teeth gritted and dripping with drool within an arm’s length of his own face. Ptah’Ra’s heart rate felt like it tripled. Remembering his heritage, he tried to spin his plasmacaster to fire, but it had less than one bar. It needed time to recharge.
Time he did not have.
The others in the circle were hammering the surrounding Xenos with fire, so it was up to him to take care of this one. Before it could snap at him, he dove and somersaulted out of range. When he came up, Ptah’Ra had his wristblades extended. The simplest of weapons that pups learned to use while they were sucklings, they were all that stood between him and death. He whirled—once, twice—the blades flashing beneath the creature’s jutting chin and severing the Xeno’s rippling neck muscles.
It screamed as it died, a hideous, deafening screech, flicking its tail and sending a rope of acid through the air. It hit his body armor but sloughed off. Had he not been wearing it, he’d have ended up with a scar like old Ny’ytap.
Ptah’Ra twirled, ready for another battle, bellowing with battle fervor.
This was what he had been created to do.
27
The Xenomorph attack was over in minutes. Blasted bodies surrounded Ca’toll and the others, acidic blood scorching the dead leaves and branches that littered the ground. Three Yautja bodies lay among them.
Even so, those who remained had fought well, and killed well. A quick glance showed no major injuries, although all of them likely had been peppered with the creatures’ blood. Those wounds would be deemed insignificant and likely not even acknowledged.
All of the young ones were now blooded, and she was particularly proud of Ptah’Ra, who’d faced off with one of the largest Xenos and destroyed it. Leaping into their midst as it had, the creature could have destroyed them, but her ward hadn’t hesitated to step in. He was, indeed, an excellent student and now an apt hunter.
However, they hadn’t killed all the Xenos. Some were injured and retreating, others appeared unhurt but still working their way back into the native fauna, trying to strategically blend back into darkness rather than face overwhelming odds and certain death. One of the things, twice the size of the others and even larger than the one Ptah’Ra had killed, was leaking blood from a couple of small but inconsequential wounds. It leaped high into the trees and crashed away with no attempt at stealth.
This would make the creature easy to track.
Just because some of the Xenomorphs had given up the fight didn’t mean the Yautja would follow suit. The glory of the hunt would continue. Ca’toll and Ny’ytap led the way, with all the newly blooded young ones following. Without being told to do so, each automatically made sure the creatures along the path were dead. If they weren’t quite there yet, they sent them the rest of the way without comment.
The Yautja moved silently, although they needed not have bothered. The largest monster was still hurtling from tree to tree above them, headed away from where they had attacked. The way it was moving, with no attempt to conceal itself, it didn’t seem to be fleeing, but… irate. Was it tracking something? Ca’toll had never witnessed such behavior in the species, but Xenomorph biology was disposed to evolve rapidly, depending on the nature of its host.
Ny’ytap and Ca’toll glanced at each other, then motioned to the others behind them, instructing them to keep going. It didn’t take long to reach the edge of the woods. Thirty meters beyond the trees was the ooman camp, and a rapid left-to-right scan revealed exactly what had pulled the surviving Xenos away from their combat with the Yautja.
Three dead Xenomorphs hung from makeshift structures.
The bodies had been strung up a couple of meters from the tents, the carcasses ravaged and split open. At first, Ca’toll thought the oomans might be trying to learn from the corpses, but no—there was too much damage, most of it clearly uncontrolled, as if the result of a revenge beating. Only oomans would be stupid enough to take their anger out on a dead thing that couldn’t feel it, and thus could offer no satisfaction.
Ca’toll held up a hand, and the others halted behind her.
There had been no opportunity to count the number of Xenomorphs that had attacked back at the forward operating base, so there was no way to know how many that had blended into the trees and brush. Ahead of them, the few Xenos who were out in the open crept forward, like an advance guard for the ones that couldn’t be seen. From previous hunts, Ca’toll knew how capable the Xenos were at stealth, how they could stretch along walls and ceilings and tree limbs and wait for hours for just the right moment to attack their prey.
This time, however, they didn’t bother.
Without a sound, they attacked.
Ooman screams mixed with the Xeno shrieks, while the snap of gunfire sliced through the afternoon. Ca’toll and the others watched for a few seconds, then she turned and motioned for them to follow her back to their own camp.
“This is not our fight.”
28
Shrapnel screamed like he’d never screamed before. The attack came fast and furious. The creatures he’d seen before leaped in waves from the trees surrounding the camp. He opened fire with his pulse rifle and bellowed for the other mercs to grab their weapons. There was no time to aim at anything. He was just spraying and praying.
The tents emptied as men and women lurched out and tried to process what was going on. One guy was taken down before he was able to straighten; another was dragged back into the woods. The creatures had already overrun their location.
Shrapnel had been on this dreary piece of rock many times before, but had never seen creatures like these. The sheer number of them and the ferocity they exhibited was beyond comprehension. They were everywhere—he found himself whirling and firing, again and again, and when his pulse rifle was empty he tossed it aside and grabbed one from the body of a dead merc. Then it was all rinse and repeat, firing again until the rounds digited down to zero. Luckily he laid such a concentrated amount of fire that nothing was able to touch him.
Yet.
At one point Shrapnel thought he might have hit one of his fellow mercs, but she was jerked off her feet and pulled into the trees by a monster before he could be sure.
Responding instinctively, most of the mercs had come out blazing, rifles jerking in their hands as they took aim and let loose. Whether or not they had ever seen this kind of creature, they were experts in the art of killing—and knew how to defend themselves. The noise pounded through the air and the stink of gunfire filled their nostrils as they fired and reloaded, giving it everything they had.
Still, like ants from an enormous underground nest, the enemy kept coming.
Suddenly an immense monster with a bomb-shaped skull dropped from a tree, right into the middle of their crew. Shrapnel and the others retreated, trying to watch their backs and the invader, knowing instinctively that if they fired they’d hit one another. Before any of them could figure out what to do, the beast lunged at one of the mercs and took him down, its jaws snapping out and through the man’s skull. When its teeth retracted barely a second later, the skin and brains around the hole in the guy’s head began to sizzle and turn to liquid.
Fuck no, Shrapnel thought. I didn’t sign up for this.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Murray dash out the back of a main tent and head in the direction of their ship.
Oh, hell no!
He wasn’t about to let that weasel of a boss take off and leave them behind. He snatched a charged weapon up from the ground and fired his way through the melee, hurtling past the trees and after Murray. Anger made him push his legs to their limit, but the smaller man was fast—faster than Shrapnel because he didn’t have a weapon and an equipment belt to weigh him down. Plus Murray was running for his life.
Shrapnel’s breathing turned ragged, but he could still hear the man crashing through the forest, crying out as he bounced off trees. If the situation hadn’t been so fucked up Shrapnel would’ve laughed, because Murray squealed like a pig when some kind of animal crossed his path.
That small bit of humor was gone in an instant as he struggled after the cartel boss. If only he’d listened to the harvesters. For all he knew, the others back at camp were dead by now, and he and Murray were the sole surviving humans on LV-363. What he did know was that when he caught up with that fucker, he was going to make Murray pay for his piss-poor leadership and his cowardice.
He tore through the last of the overgrowth and into the clearing just in time to see Murray dive through the ship’s open door. Before he could cover the distance, the metal hatch slid silently closed. Shrapnel just managed to halt his forward movement before he slammed into it.
Out of breath and sweating in the night air, he slapped his palm against the keypad, but nothing happened. The bastard had locked the controls from the inside. Knowing it was useless, Shrapnel tried again anyway, then yanked his pistol from its holder and hammered on the door with the handle.
“Murray, you son of a bitch, open this fucking door!” he howled. He beat on it again, then heard another sound behind him.
One of the monsters crashed from the tree line and came straight for him.
Shrapnel spun and opened fire with his pulse rifle, barely taking it out before it was on top of him. It was close enough that its blood splattered his legs. The pain made him want to scream, but he bit back the sound, knowing it would only attract more of them. This was what Margo had experienced. The agony was excruciating, and made him stumble along the side of the ship.
Murray was never going to open the door—hell, if their places were reversed, Shrapnel wouldn’t have, either. He stayed there for a moment, chest heaving as he tried to suck in air and breathe around the agony in his legs. Circling the ship, he approached a cargo door in the back, tried tapping in a code.
Nothing.
That fucker.
Despite the tears leaking from his eyes, he kept his pulse rifle aimed at the darkness in the trees, ready to fire at the smallest movement. Then he glanced down at the readout, and realized there were only two rounds left.
Two.
What a fucking joke.
Less than useless.
Disgusted, he threw the weapon aside and took off at the closest thing to a run he could manage. All he had was a knife and his pistol, neither of which was worth a freefall shit against this kind of enemy, if he was attacked. Then he laughed.
If he was attacked?
When he was attacked.
He’d never been much of an optimist or a pessimist. He just believed in reality.
Shrapnel headed at an angle away from the ship, pushing through the foliage. He was making too much noise and knew it, but he was fighting panic. All instinct would let him do was keep pushing forward while he hoped the monsters that had finished at the camp were distracted enough by the ship to buy him some time. He ran with his pistol in hand, knowing it was foolish to put it back in the holster.
He was surprised—actually amazed—when he made it to the rift unscathed. His forward motion almost took him over the rocky edge; for an overlong moment he teetered on the edge, arms pin-wheeling as he threw himself backward and fought to regain his balance. When he finally did, he had an instant of pure terror.
What now?
A fast glance backward showed nothing coming out of the trees after him—yet—but he had nowhere to go that was safe. No place—
Wait.
Shrapnel’s eyes focused on the cable boxes spaced among the boulders at the rift’s opening. He ran to the closest one and peered down. Of course! The descent cables. He holstered his pistol, knowing he couldn’t do what was needed with only one hand. Then he gripped a cable and thumbed the controls.
It wasn’t a fast ride and he alternated between trying to see what waited in the darkness below his feet and what might suddenly come over the edge above him, a line against the star-filled sky that was growing dimmer by the second. Eventually the cable reached its limit and stopped. Since he couldn’t go back up, Shrapnel let go of the controls and went hand over hand down to the very end, hanging there by one hand.
Looking down into the darkness, he tried to remember how far the cables went, and figured he was maybe four or five meters from the floor of the rift. Enough to break a leg, or even his back if he landed the wrong way, but what other choice was there?
He dropped.
And hit the ground with just enough of a twist to cause a lightning flare along his left hip. He straightened his back and clenched his teeth when pain ran down his leg, then forced himself into a crouch so he could turn and evaluate his surroundings. Gradually his eyes adapted to the gloom, enough that he could see vague shapes. There wasn’t much down here but more foliage and… what was that? Almost shaking with fear, he forced his physical pain to the back of his mind and crab-walked toward a darker area about five meters away.
