by Tim Lebbon
Two indies appeared around the front of the loader, glanced at Palant, then chased the Yautja. One of them braced himself with legs parted, and fired a plasma charge. Whatever he thought he was firing at, he missed, the charge exploding against the small locked room where they kept the bodies of the dead.
Metal warped and flew. Fire ate inward. Flesh was burnt, adding a sickening warmth to the metallic tang on the air.
“Isa!” McIlveen called, waving her over. She knew she wouldn’t be any safer there than where she crouched, but she suddenly felt the need for contact, human company, and a sudden affection for the Company man made her eyes water.
She ran, glancing left and right. The fight moved to the far end of the hangar now, close to where the building’s corner had been blasted open and its roof and walls slumped down to the ground. The darkness burst apart again and again, and averting her face from the glare, she looked to her right.
Standing in the open doorway, Shamana was watching her.
Palant paused in the open. A streaking, errant laser blast whipped past her, so close that her sleeve flicked and skin sizzled, pain bleeding up her arm and into her shoulder, but she barely noticed. The Yautja stared. Palant lifted the datapad, suddenly desperate to make contact in any way not involving guns and pain, bloodied blades and death.
Without looking she typed, I know, then whispered, “Translate.” She held up the datapad, turned up the volume, and when it issued a throaty slick and a series of growls, a shiver ran down her spine.
Shamana moved slightly, tilting his head as if listening. Then he stepped aside and melted into the storm, moving away from the chaos of the hangar, not toward it.
Palant slumped to her knees.
I made contact! she thought. I spoke to him. I reached him! But she could not know for sure.
Someone ran toward her. An indie, her clothes burning and hands slapping at the fire that was eating into her face.
McIlveen and several others darted from cover and tripped the woman, rolling her in an attempt to extinguish the flames, but the burning material had melted in deep, and the woman issued only a bubbling groan as she grew still, then curled into a tight ball as her tendons contracted in the heat.
“Isa… here!” McIlveen shouted. She needed no more invitation. She ran to him, and they moved toward the shadows at the rear of the hangar.
As they crouched, Wendigo ran into the open. She was slower than before, trailing a slick of bright green blood that also sprayed from several points on her body. Two indies followed her, pumping laser blasts at her until she fell and squirmed on the ground.
McMahon approached. She was blooded down one side of her face, left arm held across her chest, but she still carried her rifle in her right hand.
“Step back!” she warned, the other two obeying instantly.
Wendigo wore something slick and red around her neck. Palant thought it belonged inside someone, not outside. She was laughing, a deep, throaty sound.
“McMahon!” Palant shouted, thinking of the tales of Yautja suicides. “Her hand! Don’t let her touch—”
McMahon reacted instantly, raising her rifle and blasting the Yautja’s hand away from her arm. It skittered across the floor like a huge spider, flipping onto its back, clawed fingers curling inward and pressing into the palm.
The Yautja grew still and silent. Perhaps dead, perhaps not, but McMahon made sure. There was no sense of victory, and no gloating in the coupe de grace. Remaining at a distance, she fired three short bursts at the alien’s head. The helmet split and skittered across the floor, and Wendigo twitched once as she died.
“Regroup!” McMahon said, motioning. “You at the door, you two over at that corner! The other one could be here at any moment.”
I don’t think so, Isa wanted to say, but she couldn’t be sure, and she would not risk anyone else’s life. At least three indies lay dead. Their shelter was blasted open in several places, exposed to the inimical elements, and one of her research subjects was no more.
She glanced at McIlveen, ashamed at the sadness she felt, but from the way he looked at her, she knew that he felt it too.
“Milt, I don’t think—”
“Here comes the second one!” an indie shouted, and Palant groaned as she backed away, McIlveen by her side. It seemed that in reality she knew nothing at all.
McMahon looked at Palant, exhausted and injured, and Isa began to speak. But then McMahon turned away and staggered toward the door, arm still clasped tight across her chest. Her rifle swung low and she swayed a little as she moved, but she was stocky and strong, her ginger-blonde hair flicking where it had escaped from beneath her helmet.
“Stop!” Palant shouted. “I can talk to him!” But McMahon didn’t seem to hear.
“Isa, we don’t know that,” McIlveen said. “And there’s no way you can risk—”
Gunfire erupted at the building’s ruined corner, flashing through the hangar. Rain drove in almost horizontally, spears of light resembling scattered laser fire.
McMahon stopped, lifting her rifle.
The wall in front of her smashed inward and Shamana burst through, shoving fractured sheet metal aside, sweeping his clawed hand and slashing McMahon from shoulder to hip. The indie dropped her gun and tried to back away, but Shamana clasped her to his chest, spun around and leapt back through the hole.
Several shots streaked across the hangar, chasing after the Yautja.
“You’ll hit McMahon!” Palant screamed. The indies ceased fire, Shamana and McMahon vanished out into the storm, and the building was plunged into a stunned stillness. Wind roared and whistled through the countless holes and gashes in the structure, rain slashed in, but compared to the screams, shouts, and explosions of battle, the silence almost breathed.
The remaining three indies huddled around the door, scanning outside with their infrared goggles.
Palant ran to them. They glared at her as if she were the enemy, eyes wide and shocked, one of them openly shaking.
“I can communicate with it!” she said. “If you go out there after it you’ll be killed.”
“You expect us to let you go?” one of the indies said.
“Do you give a shit?” she spat back. Palant was terrified and excited at the same time, heart thumping, and her fight-or-flight instinct pulled her both ways. Every animal part of her wanted to hide away from the danger, yet the intellectual heart of her—the part that drove every action she’d taken as an adult—craved to venture out into the storm and find the Yautja. Talk to it. Communicate with the alien in a way that had never been attempted before.
“Please,” she said, and then the long, high scream came from out in the storm. It was horrible, an expression of pure pain that could not be feigned.
An indie moved to rush outside. Another one stopped him.
One more scream, long and loud, ending suddenly.
And then Shamana roared in triumph. Somewhere in the storm, another trophy was being taken.
“You want to communicate with that?” the indie said to her. He sounded defeated now, almost resigned to his fate.
Palant had no answer. None that made sense to her, at least.
She had just listened to another good person die.
* * *
The hangar was a ruin. One end had slumped to the ground, its walls were holed from laser fire and explosions, and there were more bodies, with nowhere to keep them.
The remaining three indies were edgy and careless, stalking inside and outside the hangar with weapons at the ready. To Palant, they now seemed dangerous rather than protective. They’d lost their leader, lost their friends, and this relatively safe, comfortable posting had changed into a version of hell. She was certain that they would flee, if there was anywhere left to go.
But there wasn’t. Radiation levels were rising from the damaged reactor, and the storm showed no signs of abating. So the mercenaries prowled the area, waiting to fight, waiting to die.
Palant and McIlv
een gathered the survivors and together they built what shelter they could in the undamaged end of the hangar, away from the ruined corner and the stench of burning bodies. There was very little food left. Drinking water was heavy with radiation, but they had little choice. They all took the maximum doses of radiation drugs, but the longer they were exposed, the more they were merely delaying the inevitable.
While the others gathered and salvaged what they could to survive, the two scientists saved as much of their research material as possible. Palant felt a little shamefaced doing so, yet it felt like the one good thing that could come of this situation. Whatever happened to them, if she could preserve everything she and McIlveen had discovered about the Yautja, independently and together, then perhaps their work might live on. Benefit humanity. Maybe even form the first uncertain foundation on which peace might be built between species.
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.