S. D. Perry - Aliens vs. Predator 03 - War.pdf - S. D. Perry - widez2

Aliens vs Predator: War

They set down just after dawn, or whatever passed for it on the unnamed planet; the dirty light from two

distant stars lay across the rocky world like smog, an early bath of murky yellow haze that did nothing to

improve Noguchi's mood. It looked like gaseous piss, and even with the steady pump of adrenaline

coursing through her, the intensity that came from knowing she was about to face death, she found herself

wondering if it was worth it anymore.

In the back. Again. After so many training Hunts that I could teach them myself . . .

They waited for the signal in the main loading dock, the planet's ugly surface displayed on a small screen

set into the door. Flashes of glistening black darted across the screen, raising the level of greedy

an-ticipation in the stuffy, overwarm air. Noguchi tried to breathe evenly, wishing that the masks had a

better fil-ter system; it was hot, dark, and she couldn't get away from Hunter musk. Dia-shui, they called

it, along with a clicking that she couldn't pronounce. It was a cloving.

animal smell, and the heat made her feel like she was bathing in it.

Probably not so hot up front. Where I belong.

It wasn't a new thought, but it still stung. Noguchi shook herself mentally, working to slide into the focus

she would need, to concentrate her energy—but it wouldn't come. She felt overheated and irritated,

crowded by the towering young males all around her. The suits had individual thermostats, but even at the

low end they were well over human comfort levels, and since the unnamed planet was cold by Hunter

standards, the others had theirs cranked up. The heat from their suits combined with the thick, oily musk

they secreted, created a humid, feral atmosphere alive with the clicking growls of barely checked

excitement. At one time, the sounds and smells had excited her, too, but today it only made her wonder

again if this was where she wanted to be.

Focus, focus, focus . . .

Right. It didn't matter that she was in the back, or in the middle of the back, the worst position from

which to score a kill. Didn't matter that she bore Broken Tusk's mark and was still Hunting from the least

honor-able position—

— stop it! Focus or die, you can't have both.

Beneath the sweaty face mask, Noguchi gritted her teeth, silently cursing her wounded pride. It wasn't

the time or place to be bemoaning her lot or letting her emotions take over; this was a queen Hunt. It

wouldn't be scored, not burner only, but that didn't mean it was going to be a walk. She kept her gaze

front and center, rinding Topknot's raised claw and fixing on it. She couldn't see the Leader from her

position—most yautja stood two and a half meters, some taller—but the tal-oned fingers were visible to

everyone in the pyramid formation. There were five half-trained novices in a line in front of her, three on

either side; the three lead positions were for the more experienced Hunters—

— where I should be—

—and though the Leader was almost always in front, one of the two males behind Topknot had been

unBlooded on her first Hunt; even then, she'd out-ranked him, and on the last Hunt, she'd killed six

drones, only one behind Topknot himself—but being ooman, as they called it, meant that she'd pulled

rear guard. Again.

At least you 're here; he could have denied you even this. There are twentysomething trainees just hissing

to take your spot. Better to place low than not to place at all—

There was a shuddering rumble all around, the me-tallic floor shaking underfoot and a flash of brilliant

light on the small viewscreen as the ship's weapons laid down cover. Topknot chittered a command and

the other yautja raised their burners, growling excitedly, jostling each other in anticipation. Topknot

signed as he spoke, one of the simple gestures that was specific to Hunting. "Prepare" was the gist of it,

the raised claw twisting back and forth, the talons curled into a fist.

Noguchi held her own burner high, the dark metal of the alien rifle hot and heavy in her hands, feeling her

heart start to beat faster. A glance at the screen showed an increase in lithe movement as another rum-ble

shook the ship, as beams of burning light from the carrier shot into the early-morning haze and black

bod-ies flew.

Topknot let out a battle cry, a guttural shriek of bloodlust that pierced the wet heat and brought the

others to a frenzy point. More screeching cries and vio-lent hisses filled the shadowy dock, the musk

smell growing thicker as the Hunters screamed, shaking back their ropelike locks, holding their weapons

high. The passion, the hunger was impossible to ignore and Nogu-chi let it in, her own howling voice lost

in the furor, joyously reminded of the reasons she'd joined with them in the first place. She wasn't yautja

and maybe they hated her for it, but she shared this one thing with them, this religion of spirit that defined

her deepest self.

The Hunt. The kill.

Still screaming, Topknot opened the door and they plunged out into the hazy morning light, a thousand

dark drones running to meet them and howling their own warrior cries, teeth dripping and arms grasping.

Noguchi picked her first target and fired, feeling noth-ing but alive.

The queen had called all of her minions home, and though the ship was less than a hundred meters from

the hive, they had to fight for every centimeter. Even from her guarded position, Noguchi took out five

within the first minute, and the unBlooded were killing beyond their wildest expectations. Even though it

wasn't to be officially scored, there was some small honor in numbers.

The hive was in a marshy area and the splashes of the spiny, taloned bugs as they came was a pounding

storm, tails whipping up muck, shining exoskeletons mottled with black mud. They didn't come in waves

but in a wave; there was no lull in the onslaught, no time to breathe between kills. It was a tsunami of

nee-dle teeth and razor claws, of grinning, trumpeting death.

Noguchi didn't think. She danced, swirling and feinting, spinning and firing explosive heat through the

wall of bodies. Behind to the left, a shrieking, elongated skull blown into shards. Claws and arms flying in

mul-tiple directions, legs smashed and falling, grinning metal teeth shattering. An alien chest bursting with

a splash of green acid, the blood hitting the murky water, the swamp turning to bubbling steam before the

Hunt-ers had gone a third of the distance.

The fire from the ship continued to clear a path through the worst of it, but there was still no break in the

running bodies. Like ants or bees, the drones sacri-ficed themselves to protect their queen mother, an

in-dividual's life meaningless to the good of the hive. They came from everywhere at her beckoning,

alerted by

some pheromone or telepathy; not even the Hunters knew.

The scents of slime and musk, of fire and some dark and unnatural thing, of alien filled the hot, close

space inside Noguchi's mask. She didn't smell it, didn't feel the steaming heat, didn't see anything but the

next tar-get. And the next. And the next, as the small band of Hunters pushed on to the nest, leaving

broken, bleed-ing creatures in their wake.

As the wall of animals began to thin, Noguchi didn't notice; she was too intent on the blast of blue-white

heat coming from the end of her burner, the crash of imploding light that tore into each hard alien body

and left it dying or dead. Topknot had stopped at the mouth of the huge, high, rounded shell made of

sleek and dusky alien secretion, the queen's egg-laying chamber and home. The drones wouldn't risk

damag-ing the eggs; they were still coming, but the reckless-ness of their attack had dropped. However

they communicated with their queen, they knew to be care-ful the closer they came to the nest.

Another bug, down, another screaming, clutching monster rushing at her—

—and she was roughly shoved aside.

"Hey! Dammit—"

Noguchi stumbled, hard, her concentration blown for the half second it took her to realize what had

hap-pened. She reflexively brought her burner up, pointed it at her assailant, but didn't fire.

Fuckingbastard—

The competition for kills on the Hunt was fierce, but there had been no call for what the yautja had done.

Except for a very few, the drones had broken off their attack; it gave her ample time to hate him as he

took out the drone in her stead. Shorty. Of all the nov-ices, he was the one most often singled out as a

target by the others; he was barely a head taller than she, dis-tinctly undersized, and in the weeks that his

group had

trained under Topknot, he'd gone out of his way to take out his frustrations on her.

"Ell-osde' pauk!"Noguchi snarled at him, the yautja equivalent of "fuck you." She'd heard it often

enough.

Shorty let out a stream of derisive language. She caught only part of it, pyode amedha, "soft meat," a slur

for human, and a negative yautja sound for female. She wasn't particularly insulted until she heard her

own words echoed back at her.

"— lei-k' hey, dammit, ka'tun-de!"

He laughed, then, an imitation of human laughter, a braying mockery. Yautja didn't laugh like that; like

the mimicry, it was meant to offend.

There wasn't time to dwell on it. Topknot had al-ready stepped into the gaping black mouth of the hive

and one of the other Blooded was motioning the train-ees "inside, covering, only a few dozen bugs still

at-tempting to get close to them. Noguchi shoved past the laughing Hunter, forcing her anger aside as the

thick stench of rotting animal flesh washed over her from the darkness. Nests were dangerous, and being

pissed at Shorty would take up too much of her awareness.

Doesn't matter. Let him laugh.He didn't know how much better at the Hunt she was than he, and with

any luck, she'd soon find opportunity to demonstrate—

—and even as she thought it, she saw a glistening string of liquid drip down from above, a long and

sticky drop that spooled past her, almost invisible in the thick shadows. Topknot and most of the others

were several meters in front of her, edging into deeper shadow—

—and as she leapt to one side, raising her burner, the drone dropped from above, landing in a crouch

only a few meters away, but not facing her. It was si-lent and quick, its body blending into the dusky

light, and Shorty didn't see it until it reached for him.

Noguchi allowed herself a second of total satisfac-tion as the drone snatched at Shorty's arm, its claws

landing heavily on his burner, blocking him from de-fense. An experienced Hunter might still have a

chance, there were the wrist blades, but Shorty was ba-sically fucked.

What goes around . . .

She was in position, but she waited a beat longer until she was absolutely sure that he understood how

badly he'd screwed up. She wished she had more time to savor it, but the revenge, however sweet, was

still secondary to survival inside the hive. She took a deep breath, and then she did the worst thing she

could pos-sibly do to Shorty.

The blast from her weapon caught the bug in its ab-domen, its snaking green guts blown off into the

dark. Even with the alien screams from outside, Noguchi could hear the gangly body clatter to the floor,

and the silent appraisal from the Hunters behind her was a palatable thing. No way they'd missed what

had hap-pened.

The mask hid her grin, and there was no point in laughing. If there was any greater dishonor in Clan

eti-quette, she'd never heard of it. Not only had he been denied an honorable death, his peers and betters

had just seen him have his fighting done for him—and by an alien, no less, one even smaller than he.

Shorty stood perfectly still, head tilted down at the drone body. One of the other young males started to

laugh, a clattering, trilling sound that always made her think of a bird with a broken windpipe trying to

sing. He was quickly joined by the others.

Not so much fun being laughed at, is it?

Noguchi shot a look at the assembled Hunters in time to see Topknot signal "enough" and growl a

com-mand to Shorty. She only recognized the sound of his name, but knew what Topknot had asked

even before Shorty walked stiffly toward the Leader; he'd been as-signed to be in the middle of the hive

line, protected front and back.

He wouldn't laugh at her anymore, but it would be wisest not to let her guard down until Shorty was

Blooded and gone. She almost felt bad for him, but re-

minded herself that if he wasn't such an asshole, she would have let him die; he deserved the dishonor,

for being such a goddamn bully.

Topknot signaled for them to proceed, Noguchi tak-ing her position second to last—Shorty's place.

When someone screwed up in battle, the other yautja gener-ally congratulated each other on getting a

better spot, a growling, shoving version of a high five—but no one would look at her, and as they started

down the entry tunnel, the temperature and humidity rising with each uneven step, Noguchi felt as isolated

and ignored as usual.

Doesn't matter, I don't need their approval to Hunt and if I wanted friends, 1 would have left Ryushi with

the colo-nists, gone back to Earth.

Where she'd never had any friends.

Before they'd gone ten meters, all of her defenses were securely back in place. The queen was close,

and the thrill of knowing she'd be facing a queen mother again, even as part of a team, would go a long

way to compensate for the loneliness of the past year. The drones were as stupid and mindless as ants,

but the egg-layer, the queen . . .

An opponent worthy of respect, cunning and re-sourceful—and one she felt more of a connection to

than any of the yautja she'd encountered, with the ex-ception of the one they'd called Dachande, Broken

Tusk. The one who'd died after Blooding her, after the massacre on Ryushi. The one who'd led her to

believe that the yautja were a race capable of appreciating any skilled Hunter, no matter what species—

Behind her, Scar clattered an angry warning for her to move faster and kicked at the back of her leg. It

would have hurt if she hadn't stepped quickly forward at the sound of his voice. As unpopular as Shorty

was, he was yautja—and even after such a monumental fuckup, he was still more popular than she.

So much for appreciation. Noguchi clenched her jaw and reminded herself that the queen was close.

Ellis was strapped in and asleep, and Jess obviously wasn't in the mood to talk; he stared sullenly at the

vidscreen from the copilot seat, at the passing black of space as he'd done for the last four hours. Not a

word, and although Lara wouldn't have minded a little conversation, she didn't want to invade his privacy.

Privacy on the small shuttle meant closing your eyes when someone needed to pee, a difficult enough

activity in zero grav; if Jess wanted to be alone with his thoughts, she could at least give him that.

Not much point in making small talk anyway . . .

Lara closed her tired, grainy eyes for a moment, amazed that the thought of their upcoming deaths hadn't

lost any of its punch. They'd lived with it for al-most three days, and it still made her stomach knot each

time she thought of it, even after the nightmare of 949. She'd been prepared, then, with other lives

de-pending on her actions. Now, though . . . she didn't want to die, and she particularly didn't want to die

from asphyxiation in a cramped, cold shuttle in the depths of space. Even with the patch job on the filters.

they only had another fifteen, twenty hours of breathe time. And though DS 949 hadn't been as DS as

most, the shuttle's bare-bones navigation system was strictly self-contained, no hookups, not even a list

of planets or 'toids in the quadrant; it had been designed as a go-between, ship to shore, not for

deep-space transport— which meant, simply, that if there was anywhere to go, they weren't going to find

S. D. Perry - Aliens vs. Predator 03 - War.pdf

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