But the prisoner had not responded to their feeble attempts to communicate. It told them nothing.
They had tried to weaken the prisoner’s mind by drugging its food, with no result except that it had almost died.
The prisoner had recovered—but still, it was trapped.
No matter. They did not control it. Not in its mind, not in its inner life.
The prisoner felt sure its moment would come.
And it would make them suffer for their presumption. Many soft, pink-skinned heads would be added to its trophies.
* * *
“You up for this, Sarge?”
“Lieutenant Curson said I get a week’s furlough after this,” Nialls said, peering into the helmet, reaching in to adjust the radio mic. “You were there, you heard her. She said it’s straight from Dault.”
“What an officer says to us don’t mean nothing,” Corporal Ramirez said, as he squinted at the seams of Nialls’ armor, going through the standard check. “Army gives and the Army takes away, Sarge. Big Green Machine rolls over you any damn time it wants to.”
“I’ve logged three and a half months straight! More’n three months in a blackout base in the middle of the high desert! I’m due, Corporal. I’d wrestle the devil to get that leave.”
Nialls put the helmet on, and Ramirez made some unnecessary adjustments—the helmet was already perfectly in place, because it sealed itself. It was as if a ghost were doing it.
The heads-up display instantly lit up in response, with luminous green readouts alongside his shield mask. It probably wasn’t as information-comprehensive as the Yautja’s own bio-mask, but the HUD had a lot of sensors, it had sharp zoom function, and, rear view scanning. And it fit well. Nialls had spent a lot of time testing in two other prototype armored suits. The Mark I and Mark II suits didn’t do a third of what this new one did. They’d been bulky, clumsy. But the Mark III…
Nialls pulled on his left-hand gauntlet, thinking, The Mark III fits like a glove.
He figured what he had to do today couldn’t be tougher than that last Mosul action in Iraq. He signed on for the armor-testing assignment so he could help develop new ways to keep his brother Rangers alive. Rangers and every other American in combat. The Mark III had the potential to do the job. Super lightweight composite materials made it easy to move in, and provided good ballistic protection. The nanotech cut down on weight and energy consumption, sped up responses. And the Yautja tech…
First time he’d seen the original tech, from a Predator scout ship shot down in this same desert, he’d felt a long, cold shiver go through him. The marl and gnarl of that gear— definitely not something designed by human beings. They’d retro-engineered a good deal of it; energy flow from the extraterrestrial’s bio-mask, the alternative micro-circuiting of the wrist gauntlet—and especially, the plasma caster. It was a whole new edge, all right, to U.S. military power. But it had to be tested in the field…
And then that crazy son of a bitch General Dault hit the team with his big idea.
Sergeant Nialls couldn’t upbraid a two-star general. So he finished his armor prep, went to full power and walked out, boots softly clanking, to the clean room, for a final inspection. Beyond the clean room were two sets of metal doors—and beyond those, the testing field…
* * *
Lieutenant Olivia Curson was just as fed up with the blackout base as Nialls was.
She’d met Nialls in the rec hall. They’d drunk a beer together, chatted, and she’d noticed how unfailingly respectful Nialls was—respectful but never obsequious. Of course, she outranked him. But that didn’t stop some enlisted guys from leering at her after they had a couple of beers. Nialls never leered, never spoke condescendingly, never tried innuendo. And he met her eyes steadily when they spoke—his own eyes were sky blue.
They talked again when she was brought into armor testing, after she’d read his file—his military history intimidated her. She’d seen barely any combat—and he’d been steeped in it.
Then there was Speevis. Captain Speevis, who’d smuggled a fifth of Wild Turkey into the base. The booze was contraband, even for officers, on a blackout base, because a drunk man, off-duty or not, forgot what high security was all about. And he forgot how to behave around women officers, too, which was why she’d had to knee the captain in the groin when he waylaid her behind the mess hall. She’d cracked his nuts hard enough to make him yelp; he’d staggered away and barfed on a flagpole in front of a major. He claimed, later, she’d come on to him and kneed him when he turned her down.
But Nialls, passing by, had seen the whole thing. He stepped up on his own to testify for her; stood up in military court against a captain and General Dault—Ervin Dault, who just happened to be Speevis’s drinking buddy.
Nialls had a silver cross, a bronze star, and three purple hearts. Every decent man at Area 57 looked up to him. So Speevis lost the case and got himself shipped to a radar base in the arctic.
Now she glanced at Dault: a paunchy, jowly middle-aged man in a perfectly ironed, excessively starched uniform. Dault cracked his knuckles, his tongue tracing the edges of his teeth.
What was Dault’s real motivation, she wondered, in setting up this particular test? They’d already tested the suit a dozen ways, put it through incredible stresses. The enemy they were to test the suit against today, while formidable, was unarmed. The whole thing seemed like a pointless exercise to her—unless the point was retaliation aimed at Nialls for testifying against Speevis.
Across the field, just above the gate that would release the Yautja, two snipers stood on a platform just behind the curved wall. One of them was Cliff Javitz, another sycophant of General Dault’s. Javitz had been caught by an IED, back in Afghanistan; he was missing his right ear and the right-hand section of his lower nose, fully exposing a nostril. Rumor had it his personality had changed after the IED, due to traumatic brain injury. He was as psychopathic a man as Olivia had ever met, though he did nothing he could be convicted for. The other sniper was Earl Smithson, a black man who rarely spoke. Presumably the snipers were there to protect Nialls from the Yautja, should the armor malfunction or the creature get the upper hand.
Below, the doors from the clean room opened, and they watched as Nialls stepped into the dull late afternoon sunlight of the acre-wide testing field. Nialls’ movements in the armor weren’t quite as free as a man in field cammies, but free enough.
Olivia wondered how far up in the chain of command Dault had gone to get approval for this. Maybe he hadn’t gotten any, anywhere. Far as she knew, this Yautja was the only living extraterrestrial in custody. There was a whole exobiology team in this building studying the Yautja through hidden cameras, watching it exercising, eating, pacing, eliminating wastes; using DNA testing and remote body scans they’d worked out what to feed it, how its body worked. She knew the entire exo team was mad as hell about this little gladiatorial setup. Suppose the alien got badly injured, or killed? They had already dissected other dead Yautjas. They wanted this one alive…
But Dault had overruled them. He had always been an arrogant son of a bitch. And he insisted this fight was going to be part of their research on these interplanetary Predators. The Yautja wasn’t likely to get killed, he said.
But from the reports Olivia had read, these things were fast and deadly. Suppose it slipped past Nialls’ defenses and killed him?
Her heart thudded as she watched the gate open, and the Yautja showing itself in the passage opposite Nialls. At first it crouched in the shadows of the passage, its hooded yellow-red eyes and mandibles gleaming…
* * *
Felt different, facing this thing up close and personal, instead of seeing it through an unbreakable window. Its cold inhuman intelligence gave him chills.
Nialls had the plasma caster gripped in his right hand, the weapon hooked to a power source in his armor by a jointed metal tube, and it could be attached to a pivoter on his right shoulder, more or less like the Yautja. But they hadn�
��t worked out the shoulder-based aiming as well as the Yautja had, and Nialls preferred to keep the weapon in his hand.
Then the Predator shuffled slowly out into the circular testing field, turning its head this way and that, the manelike thick dangle of hair about its bald, mottled head waving a little with its motions. It was assessing, calculating, taking in the high, slick, inward slanting walls, the snipers, the gate closing behind Nialls—and then the Yautja stared directly at its adversary. It looked Nialls up and down. Then the Predator hunched down and spread its arms like an old-style wrestler, making low, glutinous clicking sounds deep in its throat.
Nialls did his own assessing. The thing was at least a head taller than he was. It had claws. But otherwise the Yautja was apparently unarmed. It did have some chest armor, and that net-like material over its limbs that would project its camouflage. Its muscles rippled powerfully under skin that looked like something he’d seen on a desert toad. It had some form of gauntlet, but no plasma caster.
How should he handle this? He didn’t have orders to kill it—“just engage the alien,” as Dault put it.
It’s got no reason not to kill me if it can…
Then it opened its mouth—its jaws opening wide, showing the big fangs that pointed almost inwardly, the red-webbed mouth—and he was looking down the Predator’s throat as it lunged roaring at him.
Nialls quickly sidestepped—and then realized the Yautja had only been feinting, pretending to be coming at him to see how quickly he reacted; see if he could be startled into freezing.
“That’s not going to work, crab-face,” he told it. The armor had responded well, enhancing his movements but not overdoing the enhancement.
It responded to his remark—Nialls had heard the creatures sometimes parroted human speech. “Not going to work…” came the mocking voice.
Nialls squared himself, trying to keep his head clear, his pulse down. Focus and maybe get this over with early. Get it to accept defeat…
He pointed the plasma caster, and fired.
Nialls hadn’t aimed directly at the creature—not supposed to kill it. He aimed at the ground just in front of its clawed feet, to give it a warning and knock it back with a shockwave.
But by the time the blast hit the ground the Yautja wasn’t there. It had switched on its active camouflage, was all but invisible—he caught a barely visible cubistic outline of it as, far faster than he’d given it credit for, the Yautja leapt over the plasma caster’s blast trajectory, coming right at him, whipping metal spikes from its left-hand gauntlet at his helmet.
Nialls overreacted in his surprise, stumbled back, fell on his back—and then it was on him, its knees on his chest. It had triggered the long, barbed metal gougers from its left gauntlet. It did have a weapon—he could glimpse light reflecting from it, despite the electronic camouflage.
It slammed the heavy, barbed gougers at his faceplate; the transparent layers protecting his face held, but Nialls felt like his head was inside a ringing church bell. And he could sense the strain in the helmet. It slammed the gougers down again. Was that a crack in the corner of the faceplate?
Struggling to shove the creature off him, Nialls swung hard up at the Yautja’s head with his mailed left fist—but the Yautja, red-yellow eyes glowing with kill-lust, blocked it easily with the gauntlet. The blow somehow switched off its camouflage and he saw it all too well, roaring at him, its eyes bright with hate as it slammed his helmet again with the gougers.
The snipers were up there on the wall. Why didn’t they at least wing the Yautja?
The Yautja raised its tautly muscled left fist, gathering its strength—preparing to smash his faceplate. Nialls was reluctant to disobey orders but he was going to have to shoot this thing off him. He aimed the plasma caster at it almost point blank but it grabbed the caster by the muzzle, used all its strength and its better positioning to turn the weapon— just as the caster fired—right where it wanted the plasma beam to go.
The top of the enclosing wall on the right shattered. A piece of shattered wall struck the alien, and its grip was loosened for a moment. Nialls got his right knee bent, braced his foot under his hip and used the whole force of the leg— his and the armor’s force—to fling the alien away.
The Yautja roared as it was thrown back, and Nialls felt a wrenching in his suit. He lost the grip on his gun. He rolled, got quickly to his feet—and saw that the plasma caster was no longer in his hand.
The Yautja had it—had snapped its connective cable. It was crouching, aiming the caster at the sniper platform…
Neither sniper was in sight now.
It fired—blasting more of the upper wall away, then turned the weapon toward Nialls.
But he knew something the creature didn’t. The human-engineered version of the caster was fed by the cable; it only stored one shot at a time in its load chamber. And the Yautja had used that shot. The gun failed to fire—and the alien tossed it away.
It slashed at Nialls with its gougers; he blocked the blow with his right hand, smashed at the thing with his left, caught it on the side of its head. Its luminous yellow-green blood spurted from a scalp wound. He circled it—and it rushed him, slashing. He jumped aside… but it had simply gotten him out of the way.
It jumped to the break in the wall and pulled itself over.
Nialls bounded after it, jumped—but it could jump higher than he could. He couldn’t catch the lower edge of the break in the wall.
Cursing, he dropped back. Someone up there screamed. A gun fired. Then there was silence, except for the base’s alarms going off…
* * *
Sitting on the table, Nialls held the helmet in his hand, looking it over, as Olivia came in.
“Scratch on the faceplate, but no crack,” he told Ramirez. “It wouldn’t have taken much more.”
“Smithson is dead,” Olivia told him, as Ramirez checked over the armor. “The first blast broke his collarbone, stunned him—then the thing killed him. Javitz is alive—he shot at it, but it was smoky in there, not a good place for a sniper rifle, and he missed. It ducked out a fire door and killed two sentries… just tore into them…”
She took a deep breath. Nialls nodded. “Thanks for letting me know, Lieutenant. I’m sorry about Smithson. He was a good soldier.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” she said. “The alien breached the wall, not you.”
“Lieutenant’s right,” Ramirez said, taking the helmet and looking it over. “No one thought the wall was that vulnerable. But it was old. That wall’s thinner at the top, in that spot, to make room for the platform.”
“Seems to me,” Nialls said, “that weapon was powered up about double what it should’ve been for that situation.” He felt tired, dispirited. Three good men dead so far…
“It was powered up to where the General told me it should be,” Ramirez said. “I kinda wondered about it.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“I thought: more power, better for you, Sarge.”
“Yeah. No one told me it had those gougers.”
Olivia nodded sharply at that. “I was told it had no weapons.”
“I kind of thought the snipers would’ve taken it out, when it was on top of me. That angle, they could have put a couple of fist-sized holes right through its head.”
Olivia looked angrily at the door. “I had the same thought. Javitz says he was told not to fire unless the General gave him the order.”
The door opened—maybe Olivia had been expecting someone.
General Dault. He looked pale, and a little scared. “Sergeant Nialls. That thing’s just killed another sentry. Cooper shot at it, missed, and it gutted him. Took him a while to die.”
Nialls winced inwardly. He should’ve kept that thing bottled up. But no one had told him it had a weapon—and he’d been told not to kill it with the plasma caster. Still—it was his job to knock the thing down and keep it under control.
Dault seemed ready to confirm what Nialls was thinking
. “This is on you, Nialls. Put that helmet back on. Get a jeep and get out there.”
“He hasn’t got the caster!” Ramirez objected. “It’ll take me a whole day to fix it!”
“Tough. He’s got the armor. Everything else in it works. He can take a rifle.”
Olivia shook her head. “Sir—what about an attack helicopter? We’ve got armored vehicles—”
“Negative. That thing is headed to town. It’s dark out. And by the time we track it it’s going to be out there with civilians around. We’re not firing any rockets into any civilian towns, Lieutenant. No. This is on Nialls.”
* * *
Javitz’s head was throbbing, and the bandage was too damned tight, but he was already dressed by the time the General came to the infirmary.
“You good for duty, Javitz?” Dault asked.
Javitz saluted. “I am, sir. Just a crease on the head. Nothing I ain’t had before.”
“Requisition a rifle. We’ve got more to think about than just a runaway monster. What I’m hoping is, Nialls gets the thing’s attention, gets it cornered. Then you put a round through its leg. We recapture it… I’ll send a backup team; you can call them when it’s down, they’ll be right behind you. Then—we shut all this up. No one needs to know how this shitstorm got its start.”
“Shut it up how, sir?”
“I’m counting on you, Javitz. I cannot trust Nialls, see. Or Olivia Curson. You saw what happened—Nialls testified against my man. Over a goddamn attempted rape accusation! That kind of disloyalty…” He shook his head. “Cannot trust him to keep his mouth shut. Anyway…” Dault went to the door, glanced out into the hall, looking both ways. He closed the door and came over to Javitz. Dault lowered his voice. “Nialls is going to get caught in the crossfire. You understand me?”
Javitz thought about it. It’d be good to have the General beholden to him. But this…
“Kind of a risk to me, General, if this comes out.”
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