Aliens Vs. Predator 1 - Prey Read online

  Prey

  Aliens vs Predator - Book 1

  Steve Perry

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  Table Of Contents

  Chapter I

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  Well, not to put too fine a point on it, I still think you're full of crap."

  Scott smiled to take a little of the sting out, but not that much. They'd dropped out of hyperspace a week back, were running on the new and improved gravity drives, and the old argument had been lit and burning almost since the crew left the sleep chambers. The others were working the plant or attending to ship routine and the two pilots were alone in the control module, staring into the blackness of the Big Deep. Still a few weeks out from their next port, but it was starting to look like a few years.

  Tom, whose still-short dark hair had been cropped to his skull before he'd gone into the sleep chamber, was up on his soapbox again, looking kind of like a military-college freshman in free-speak alley.

  Scott stroked his blond beard and waited for the reply he knew was coming. Around them, the stale ship air smelled like a gym locker.

  Tom didn't miss a beat. "Sure, I'm full of crap. Me and everybody else. But I'm telling you, the bill is gonna come due sooner or later. You can't just keep raping virgin planets, stripping them of everything valuable, and leaving the hulks behind."

  "I don't recall that I stuck my dick into the dirt anywhere lately," Scott said.

  "You know what I mean."

  "No, I don't. The Lector, in case you fell asleep during the orientation session, is a tug. We're towing a half-full barge with about fifteen million tons of rendered fish and animal products and the processor that did it to collect more meat on the hoof from the poor suckers on Ryushi, a bunch of shit-kicker cowboys-no, not even cows, they're rhynth boys living on a middle-of-nowhere planet."

  "Scott-"

  "And," he continued, ignoring Tom, "and the barge, this ship, the cowboys, and you and me are all owned body and soul by the Corp. Talk to old man Chigusa with your raping-the-environment complaints."

  "Jesus, you are so damned close-minded-whoa!"

  Scott waved his hands over the controls, trying to get a fix on the blip. Here in the middle of the Big Deep, where there was nothing but their vessel and occasional hydrogen atoms to bounce off it, something had just shot past them so fast it wasn't even a blur. And gaining speed like a bitch, too. Okay, yeah, it was a couple hundred klicks away, but out here, that was almost a sideswipe.

  "Goddamned cheap fucking doppler!" Tom said, trying to get the computer to adjust its scan. "What the hell was that? A ship?"

  "Not hardly. That acceleration would probably turn people into seat pancakes. Nova debris, maybe, old rock spat out by a real big planet-buster blast."

  "Yeah? Maybe it's God on His way to the Final Reckoning. Better scrub your conscience clean, Scotty."

  "I'm just a grunt, pal, don't blame me for the way the universe gets run."

  "Fucking spectrograph missed it altogether." He slammed the heel of his hand against the console. Nobody wasted any money on these ships for such things as decent hardware.

  "Like we were going to chase and catch it even if it was solid platinum, right?" Scott smiled. "It's not our job, buddy. One more rock in the dark, who cares?

  Seated in front of the sensor array on Ne'dtesei, Yeyinde watched the alien ship dwindle in their wake. He was Leader; his very name meant "brave one" but he knew the warriors called him "Dachande" when they thought his ears too dull to hear them. That name meant "different knife," and it referred to his left lower tusk, broken in a bare-handed fight against the Hard Meat, the kainde amedha, they of the black armored exoskeletons and acid blood. He smiled inwardly at the name. It could be considered an insult, but he was proud of it. The Hard Meat, save for the queens, were no smarter than dogs, but they were fierce and deadly game. Good prey upon which to train the young warriors. He could have had the tusk capped and reground, but he had left the broken fang a dull stump to remind himself-and any warriors who felt brave or particularly stupid-that only one yautja of all had ever faced the Hard Meat unarmed and walked away. As befitted a true warrior, Dachande himself never spoke of the battle, but let others tell the tale, holding a serious mandible at the embellishments they added in the singing of it. He was Leader of the Ne'dtesei, son and grandson of ship leaders and warrior trainers, and he bowed to no one in his skill with blade or burner. He had taken hundreds of young males out to learn the Hunt and had lost but a dozen, most of whom would still be among the living had they obeyed his orders.

  But he sighed at the ship now so far behind him as to be invisible to even the sensors' keen eyes. Oomans flew in that vessel. He knew of them, the oomans, though he himself had never Hunted them. They were tool folk, had weapons equal to those of the yautja, and were, if the stories could be believed, the ultimate pyode amedha. Soft Meat. But with deadly stingers, the oomans. A true test of skill. What were they doing out here? Where were they bound? A pity he was locked into this Hunt, responsible for a score of itchy would-be warriors full of themselves and ready to show off their prowess.

  Well. Someday he would Hunt them, the oomans.

  For now, he had a ship to fly, Hunts to prepare.

  He switched to the electronic eyes that watched the Hard Meat queen in the nest they had made for her deep in the belly of the ship.

  The image blossomed on the plate in front of him.

  Tall she was, the queen, twice his own height, massive even in the reduced gen-pull of the ship, probably four times his weight. Black as a nest cleaner's hands, gleaming dully under the lights, the queen looked like a giant zabin bug, with the addition of a long segmented tail and smaller supplemental arms jutting from her torso. Her comb rose high like antlers, flat and flaring, and she had two sets of needle-toothed jaws, one nesting inside the other and able to extrude a span from her mouth to grab like pincers. Freed, she would be a formidable opponent, fast, powerful, intelligent. But she was not free, the queen. She was bound in bands of dlex, wound in restraints that could resist the sharpest blades, the hottest fires, the strongest acids. Bound and made into nothing more than an egg-laying captive, subject to the will of the ship's Leader. A conveyer ran beneath her massive ovipositor, catching the precious eggs and carrying them to the packing compartment. There, they were fed into the robot crawler in the sucker ships connected to the Ne'dtesei like leeches on either side. Inside the suckers the robots-treaded machines designed for one purpose-prepared themselves to transport and place the eggs on fertile ground. Like a mechanical mother, the robots would leave the eggs where they could open and the crab like first stage Hard Meat could find game to infect with the next stage. Those embryos would eventually chew their way free of the hapless host to become drones, the final stage for most of the Hard Meat. Prey, to the warriors he had brought to learn the rules of the Hunt. Stupid but deadly, the Ha
rd Meat would teach the main lesson the young ones needed to know: move well or die. There was no room for error in the Hunt.

  Dachande looked at the fettered queen, the fleshy eggs she laid. His own trophy wall on the homeworld held half a dozen of the Hard Meat skulls, bleached and clean, including the one he had killed with his bare hands, as well as a queen, taken during a hellish hunt in which nine already-Blooded warriors had died. He had killed fifty others, but had kept, as was proper, only those he had thought worthy of his wall. They were fierce, but usually no challenge to one such as himself. If he had occasion to face one on these Hunts, he would limit himself to spear or wrist knife. After all, any yautja could burn the Hard Meat; a Leader had to handicap himself. The females smiled upon a brave male more often than they did others; Dachande had never lacked for female attention before, nor did he intend to begin now. He had sired seventy-three suckers over the years since first he had become a Blooded warrior and he was planning on reaching eighty by the end of the next breeding season. A yautja did what a yautja had to do to bolster his line and when his Final Hunt took place, he intended to leave behind a legion of younglings.

  He grinned. Any Hunt could be the Final Hunt, that was the Path, but he did not think this would be the one. This was routine; he had led a score of missions such as this one, and he could do it blindfolded, with dull blades and a dead burner in his sleep. An easy run, gkei'moun simple.

  He switched off the eyes watching the queen. He should go and release some of the pressure that had built up among the young males. A couple of them in particular were showing signs of preparing to do something stupid, such as challenging a Blooded warrior or even the Leader himself. Young males were not a whole lot brighter than the Hard Meat, Dachande sometimes thought. He could still recall his pre-warrior days when he had known everything, was the bravest yautja ever born and ready to prove it at the slightest provocation. Ah, the days of his invincible youth. Surely there could have been no male who had swaggered more, thought more highly of himself, acted as if he were the linchpin around which the galaxy would someday turn. A creature of destiny, he had thought, different from the other obnoxious would-be heroes who strutted and stood ready to be offended at the hint of disrespect.

  He recalled an instance when a younger male had glanced at him with what he thought an inappropriate demeanor, had allowed his gaze to linger a quarter second longer than the galaxy's would-be linchpin had deemed respectful. How he had puffed up like a poison-toad and stepped forward to issue a claw challenge, and that only because death challenges were forbidden to the un-Blooded. How when crossing the empty space between himself and the insolent pup who had offended him, he had been knocked sprawling by a female going about her business. By the time he had recovered, the disrespectful one had gone and the female, if she had even noticed, had also continued on her way.

  He grinned, tusks going wide. Such a long time ago that had been, before most of the current class of pups had been sap in their fathers' rods. They would learn, just as he had learned. They were not the gods' gift to the universe. He would see to it. Or he would see them dead. Either way was the Path.

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  Chapter 2

  Dachande walked, slowly down the dim corridor toward the kehrite, the room where the training yautja learned blade and simple unarmed combat. Many Leaders focused on the importance of shiftsuit mechanics and burners in the teaching of the Hunt, but not he; from long experience Dachande knew that sometimes there was nothing to rely on outside of one's own prowess. To teach anything else would be to risk the death of future warriors, and a good Leader had many students still Hunting.

  The measure of a teacher was the life span of those he taught. The longer they lived, the better the instructor.

  Dachande inhaled deeply as he neared the kehrite. The musk of aggression was strong in the air, an oily, bitter smell that promised confrontation, but he did not hurry. Being the eldest Blooded on a Hunt had its privileges; no fight would begin without the Leader to witness it.

  The winding passageway narrowed to an arched entry in front of Dachande, the walls lined with Hard Meat armor. Already he could hear the clatter of taloned feet and the mumblings of expectation. He stepped through the arch and waited for acknowledgment. Quickly, he located the few students he had picked to cause trouble early on and marked them; Mahnde, the short one; Ghardeh, with the long tress; and Tichinde, who talked louder than any other. Of the three, Ghardeh would be the least trouble; he was but a follower. But the other two . . .

  Within a short span, all yautja had turned their attention to him. There were fourteen in all who wore the plain dlex headband of student, plus two Blooded warriors who helped supervise; these two, Skemte and Warkha, were also the navigator and flyer. The ship was fully automated, a single trained yautja could handle it-but it did not hurt to take precautions. Both warriors carried Dachande's signature mark upon their foreheads like a third eye, the etch of Hard Meat blood from their first kill, and they watched him carefully for direction; each sought their own Leaderships; both were wise enough to know such achievement would not be through Challenge against him.

  One by one, all heads bowed to him. Dachande nodded curtly, never taking his sharp yellow gaze from the group, Tichinde in particular. What he saw did not surprise him. Tichinde had lowered his head but kept his own gaze on Dachande. When he saw that his Leader watched in return, he flared his lower mandibles and raised his head to face him-a sure sign of aggression. It was insolent, but forgivable, were his Leader a patient one; had Tichinde begun the low growl of confrontation, it would not be so easy to allow him to remain unmolested. As it stood, this was a prime opportunity to let the cooped-up young males practice.

  "Tichinde!" Dachande made his voice angrier than he was. The yautja surrounding the arrogant youth stepped away from him, tusks opened wide.

  "You may show your `skills,' " Dachande continued, his voice threaded with sarcasm, "by a jehdin/jehdin spar with . . . Mahnde. First fall determines the winner."

  There were rumblings of disappointment as the young males moved from the match area to line the scarred kehrite walls; with no weapons to be used, both combatants would probably still be alive after the match. Still, the energy was high. Several yautja had seen the look between Tichinde and the Leader, and all could see the disrespectful face of the student now. What would the Leader do about this? How would he respond? Was he weak enough to allow a Challenge to pass, even one so veiled?

  Dachande paused until all were in place before giving the command.

  "Begin,"

  As one, the yautja began to howl and chant as the two young males circled. Dachande watched carefully as Mahnde lunged forward for the first blow, arms raised.

  Tichinde blocked easily and countered with a jab to the throat.

  Mahnde moved aside, not fast enough to avoid the shot completely. A chorus of guttural hisses filled the room as he stumbled and pulled back. A clumsy response. No one was impressed.

  Tichinde shrieked and ran at Mahnde, talons extended for a stab to the abdomen.

  The defender, already off-balance, blocked too high. Tichinde hit full on and knocked Mahnde to the padded floor. The victorious youth threw back his head and screamed in triumph. The kehrite pounded with the cries of the agitated students. The match was over.

  Too soon. Blood was still too warm; none would be satisfied with such a quick bout.

  Dachande looked for a challenger amidst the yowls and clicks of the clamoring spectators, displeased with Mahnde's performance. Perhaps Chulonte, he showed promise . . .

  A score of new sounds filled the room as the yautja began to scream in surprise and renewed excitement. Dachande's gaze flickered back to the match area, and he watched in amazement as Tichinde kicked his fallen opponent in the head.

  "Ki'cte!" Dachande had to shriek to be heard. "Enough!"

  Tichinde kicked again. Mahnde rolled over, tried to cover his face and grab at Tichinde's foot at the same time. The yautja
were going wild. Blood was molten; spittle flew as they shook their heads in excitement.

  "Tichinde!" Rarely had Dachande seen such disobedience. He stalked onto the match floor and shouted again.

  Tichinde turned to face the Leader. He snarled. The young male extended one hand and shoved at Dachande's left shoulder.

  Dachande avoided the push automatically.

  The clawed hand fell short.

  The watching yautja suddenly fell silent, only a few dying clicks and cries of wonder. Tichinde's movement was unmistakable, and since Dachande had attained Leadership, a move that he had not seen. The sign of direct challenge.

  Dachande sighed to himself silently. What an idiot this one was. How had he survived this long?

  The baked dirt that covered the valley floor appeared nearly lifeless under the searing heat of the dual suns. What vegetation there was appeared stunted, twisted, cooked. The twin stars were hardly an exact match; the secondaries shadows were barely visible, a frail blur next to the deeper charcoal hues cast by the primary. The towering plateaus of dirty tan rock-there had once been water here to cut them so, ran in corridors throughout the basin and offered no comfort unless you crawled among the stones-which no sane human would want to do for all of the venomous forms of hidden life there. Besides the stinging flies and poisonous snakes, there was a particularly lethal form of scorpion that nested amidst the boulders during Ryushi's nineteen hour day. Even after sundown, the heat rarely fell below body temperature, and without the relief of the cool breezes that sometimes came with desert climate after dark. The air was always bone-dry and the feverish winds that occasionally blew were sharp and unpleasant, the crack of a hot whip. Maybe it was somebody's idea of paradise

  But not mine.

  Machiko Noguchi ran a delicate hand through her short black hair and punched the scan button. The portable eye panned across the barren wasteland, showing her more of the same. It was identical to almost everywhere else on Ryushi. Besides the few artificial watering holes and the settlement itself, the whole planet looked like a desert prospector's version of hell-rocks, dirt and heat, and no precious metals hidden there, either.