Steve Perry - Aliens vs Predator 01 - Prey.pdf - Steve Perry - widez2

Chapter 1

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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."

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"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

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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 Hard 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.

Chapter 2

Dachande walked, slowly down the dim corridor toward the kehrite, the room where the training

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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,"

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Steve Perry - Aliens vs Predator 01 - Prey.pdf

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