Predator - Incursion (30 page)

Thinking of Sharp’s death, and McMahon’s drawn-out scream of terror and agony, she had to wonder whether this might ever be possible. Yet she was still convinced that the Yautja were scared, and had been chased here, essentially cornered. If she and McIlveen ever found the time and facilities to analyze their recordings in greater detail, perhaps they would be able to confirm it.

I want to know
, she kept thinking.
We’re so close to something amazing, and I want to know more.
Yet she felt the tightening noose of time, the crushing weight of fate, and the idea that she might die before discovering more made her feel wretched.

“I tried speaking to Shamana,” she said. McIlveen glanced up from the mess of wires and components their translation machine had become. Palant still had the precious datapad, and she was keeping it safe.

“During the attack?”

“When the indies were fighting Wendigo. I used the datapad as a reverse translator, its onboard speaker to broadcast. And I think I got through.”

“How can you know?” he asked, shaking his head. He almost scoffed.

“If I hadn’t, I think he would have joined in the fight.” She nodded at the remaining indies, even now stalking back and forth inside the damaged hangar’s front wall, weapons held high. “He’d have taken them by now.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, ‘I know.’”

McIlveen blinked at her, frowned, and for a moment she saw a look in his eyes that she had seen so many times before, from other people. That confusion, that sense of,
Are you mad?

“He killed McMahon.”

“Revenge for Wendigo, maybe.”

“I don’t think we can assume we know anything about them,” he countered. “I think we’re fools if we do.”

They gathered the rest of their equipment and returned to the other survivors. The fires burned down, and the storm raged outside.

* * *

Three days later, just around dawn, another ship arrived.

“More of them!” someone shouted, and the indies took up firing positions. “There’s more!”

Palant’s heart sank. Someone started crying.

“That’s a Colonial Marine ship!” the indie wearing a combat suit said. “They’ve come for us!”

“The Company sent Marines?” McIlveen asked, but he was smiling at Palant, the sense of relief on his face mirroring everyone else’s.

Palant went to the hangar’s smashed doors and stood with the others, watching distant lights as the ship dropped slowly through the rain. The raging storm had calmed over the past day, allowing them to attempt basic repairs on the hangar. It did little to give them any better shelter, but keeping busy seemed to have lifted the mood a little, and the effort made them feel better.

Now it seemed as if their hopes had not been in vain.

“We should stay here,” the suited indie said. “Wait for them to come to us. No point putting ourselves in danger now.”

“We haven’t heard a thing from him in three days,” Palant said. “He might even have left during the storm.”

“Yeah, we might not have heard his ship,” McIlveen said.

“It’s still there,” the indie said. “My suit’s got a fix on it. Nothing’s changed. That Yautja bastard is still out there, hasn’t touched its ship since landing.”

“Maybe we should warn—” another indie said, and then the shooting began.

Flashes danced across the landscape, strangely silent because of the distance and remnants of the storm. The ship was out of sight beneath a ridge, so the flashes resembled lightning strikes, occasional rumbles rolling in like thunder.

They’re killing him
, Palant thought. She had the datapad in a backpack. She hadn’t put it down in three days. It was still fully charged.
They’ll kill him, and I might never be so close again
.

She ran. McIlveen shouted behind her, and other voices echoed his pleas to return, but she shut them out and ran toward the fight, carrying everything her parents had ever lived for—that passion for discovery and knowledge. At that moment if she’d died she would have died content that she was chasing her dreams. People with guns discovered nothing, they merely destroyed. That was why the Yautja were still a mystery. Perhaps if she substituted datapad for gun, she might learn something amazing.

She passed the remains of one of the indies, little more than a mass of tattered clothing and torn flesh washed pale by days of heavy rain. She didn’t look too closely, and she had no wish to know who it was.

Splashing through standing water, slipping in mud, trying to stick to high ground in case she became bogged down or fell into a deeper pool, she closed quickly on the scene of combat. The sounds grew as she approached, and the weapon discharges were very different from the laser rifles she’d heard over the past few days. As she ran she shrugged the rucksack from her shoulders and opened it, drawing the datapad out. She had to be ready to use it, and several times she slowed, debating what to say and how.

At the top of the final rise, looking down at the newly arrived ship and the fight taking place around it, she tapped in a simple message. Then she went down the slope, sliding in the mud all the way to the bottom.

Two Colonial Marines spotted her and split from the ship, running quickly toward her position. To her right she saw Shamana sprinting across a small slope. His cloaking device had failed, and the bright glare of blood splashed around him. Heavy weapons opened up and bright points of light flicked from his torso, drawing the fire and confusing the Marines’ weapons.

Palant skirted sideways, away from the approaching Marines and toward the fight.

“Hit the dirt!” one of them shouted, weapon raised, but Palant ignored him. Her whole future was ahead of her—not a space of unknown decades filled with stories untold, but this single entity, this one alien creature hunting and being hunted. Everything she had worked toward was concentrated there, in this one moment, this one being.

She watched as he was taken down.

The shot came from behind the ship, a heavy fusillade of bright red points that seemed to slow as they surrounded him, and then they all exploded in a blooming flower of white-hot fire.

Shamana roared and splashed across the sloping ground, his blood speckling the sand, helmet slipping off and smoking in the mud.

Palant ran faster. She was aware of shapes approaching her, but she had the lead and would reach him first. Her future might consist of fewer than ten seconds.

She focused and sprinted, touched the green button on the datapad’s screen, and the sound of an electronic Yautja voice crackled across the landscape.

The writhing alien stilled.

“Don’t kill him!” she screamed, trying to distract and confuse, and then she was standing between Shamana and her rescuers.

His hands were raised and he stared up at her, his glowing yellow eyes revealing nothing. She looked at the control sleeve on his left hand. Its cover was open, access board glimmering. One touch and he could detonate a blast that would take them all out.

She touched the datapad again and the message repeated.

She hoped it said,
Don’t move, don’t die, I know why you came
. The next few seconds would determine just how much of what she knew was right.

Shamana stiffened, then relaxed back into the mud. His wounds were horrific, and his limbs shook with shock. His clawed hands remained raised, in threat or supplication she could not tell.

He spoke. She looked at the datapad.

“Please tell me you’re Isa Palant,” a woman’s voice said behind her, as Palant saw Shaman’s words appear on the screen.

You cannot know.

“I am,” she said, without turning around, “and I need to talk to this Yautja. This isn’t all that it seems.”

“You’re the Yautja Woman, but if it shifts one inch I’ll blow it—and you—to atoms.”

“Who are you?” Palant said, still without looking.

“Major Akoko Halley, thirty-ninth Spaceborne.”

Palant crouched down beside the dying alien and placed the datapad on her thighs. She hoped he could understand her. She hoped the basic translation program would recognize his words, phrases and dialect, through a damaged mouth and a flood of blood from internal injuries. All she could do was hope, and try.

What are the fire dragons?
she typed and played.

Shamana coughed green blood. It might have been laughter.

You fled them.

We… nothing! Only a… retreat… attack again and…

Your companion seemed scared.

… only young.

Have more of your kind retreated?

Many.

Palant blinked softly, trying to see into his eyes. If they were the windows of the soul, then perhaps the Yautja were soulless. She thought of other such Yautja encountering other human settlements, and what the result of that might be.

You didn’t wish to attack us.

I don’t… the weak and feeble.

I want to know you.

A bloody cough again, this time accompanied by a groan of pain. In her peripheral vision Palant was aware of the newly arrived Colonial Marines taking up firing positions all around. She didn’t want to see Shamana die, and for a moment she considered lying close to him—but she could not bring herself to do that. Though the Yautja fascinated her, and this moment might well have been the highlight of her life, she knew that they were as inhuman as a shark, or a slug, or a bird. They were unknowable to her, and this basic interaction was only confirming that more.

Stay with me
, she said.

… surrender.

She frowned at the screen, confused, wondering whether it could be that easy. Then Shamana laughed again, the sound easily identifiable now, and Palant was left with the decision of a lifetime.

Try to prevent him doing what he was about to do… or run.

Self-preservation took over, and as Shamana’s clawed right hand moved toward the control sleeve on his left arm, she backed away and covered her eyes, hugging the datapad to her chest with her other hand, tripping over a rock. She hit the ground hard on her back. The air warmed and then burned around her, and the deafening sound of death smothered all other senses.

Palant squeezed her eyes shut and curled into a ball, and even when hands touched her and offered rough comfort she tried to keep herself away from the world. She wanted to hold onto that last moment of contact. It had been amazing. It was what every moment of her life had been heading toward.

When at last she looked she saw only the tattered, meaty remains of what had once been a living thing. One of Shamana’s tusks had sheared off when his head was blasted apart, and now it protruded from her left calf. She issued a single loud sob that might have been a laugh.

The woman she assumed to be Major Halley knelt beside her. She was wearing the full Colonial Marines combat suit and was heavily armed, as were her soldiers. Behind the skin-tight mask her face looked strangely inhuman. Or maybe it was simply her cold, impersonal manner.

“You could talk to that thing?”

“A little,” Palant said, looking at Shamana’s remains, steaming where the rain struck.

“Good,” the marine said. “That might help. I’ve been sent here to save you, so we need to get moving.”

“Right,” Palant replied, but she was glad when Major Halley stood and moved away again, leaving her with the Yautja’s remains. Then pain kicked in, her leg felt like it was on fire, and as she heard someone shout, “Medic!” the whole world receded into a deep, dark dream.

Yautja ship
Zeere Za,
Outer Rim
August 2692
AD

Even long ago, when she had betrayed the people who had made her and fled the Human Sphere with Wordsworth and the Founders, Liliya hadn’t been the most advanced synthetic in existence. Though a new model, she had been one of many rolling off the Company’s production lines in those vast lab and factory complexes scattered throughout Brownlee Major, a system given the nickname “The People Factory.”

She was indistinguishable from a real person—on the outside, at least. Inside things were different, and although altering her own physiology was forbidden, Liliya had embarked on an enthusiastic series of upgrading, installation of new programming, and downloading of any new update, patch, or improvements for her specific model.

She called it “learning.”

During that time, she had also been presented with one of the most profound choices available to an android synthetic. They were all given the nervous system of a normal human being, the rationale being that a android synthetic needed a way to detect its own damage and degeneration. They were also given the ability to determine whether or not they would feel pain.

As an abstract concept, it was built into them that their systems would transmit pain signals to their central hub—or brain, as most synthetics chose to call it. Once there, there were many ways in which the signals would be translated and addressed. The most basic arrangement was that it would arrive as a stream of information providing an instant analysis of the location, severity, and treatment required at any origin point the signals identified.