Foster, Alan Dean – Aliens Vs Predator – War

Shorty flew at her as the last word left her mouth, his face shocked and sick with rage, his blades swinging wildly.

Noguchi was already in motion, leaping away from the pitiful strike, jumping—

—and landing a solid kick to the side of his right knee, where she’d kicked him in their match on the Shell, where he should still be hurting. Shorty howled, falling to the ground, instantly pushing himself off and coming for her—

—and she slashed, the diamond-sharp wrist blades melting through his forearm. Blood spouted up as his right hand folded, hanging from cut bone and sliced flesh by the wet sinewy tendons, the only thing still connecting his claws to his arm.

Shorty screamed again, in agony, grabbing at the pounding flow from his wrist and stumbling at her. Un­able to comprehend that he’d lost.

“You’re not Hunter!” Noguchi shouted as she side­stepped his clumsy attempt, not caring if he under-

stood. “1 am, and I’m better at it than any of you arrogant, bullying children*.”

Shorty crashed into the dirt, still hugging his use­less arm, trilling in pain and denial. Noguchi stood over him, feeling the beat of her human heart, realizing how much time she’d wasted caring about what the Hunters believed—and understanding that she was free from them, that her human spirit had conquered.

With the help of a few carefully chosen words . . .

She’d told Shorty that he loved human women, and that he obviously wanted to father her children. How wonderful, that it was his own conceit and intol­erance that had cost him the battle. How typical.

How very yautja.

Noguchi stared down at the suffering Hunter for a moment longer, then knelt by him, staring into his spiteful, hurting face.

“Human,” he spat, and Noguchi nodded, not at all surprised that he could speak the word clearly.

“That’s right,” she said, and plunged her wrist blades into his throat. She watched his eyes, watched the spark of life leaving him, feeling only triumph.

A moment later, he was dead. Noguchi stood up, flicking the hot blood from her blades and retracting them, looking around at the body-littered clearing. Nirasawa was gone, ruined, but he’d managed to take out four Hunters first. Three had been unBlooded, but the fourth had surely been a challenge, the etched star shape on his brow marking him warrior.

Noguchi reached up and touched her own mark, thinking of Broken Tusk, wondering if he would have approved the things she’d done. She was still proud to wear his symbol, and thought that he would have un­derstood—but it occurred to her that it didn’t particu­larly matter whether or not he would have supported her actions. He wasn’t there—and as trite as it seemed, she knew that it was her opinion and hers only that mattered. It had always been that way, but she’d for­gotten for a while.

Noguchi turned away, looking for her burner. She had a ship to catch.

Lara heard the bugs coming through the jungle and her heart sank. So close, they had to be less than half a kilometer from the Hunter transport, and she simply didn’t know how much longer she could go on. Max was faltering, his steps slowing, and Jess had tripped and fallen twice since their encounter with the Hunt­ers. They’d been through so much, the space station, Briggs, facing death again and again through all of it—

—and Jess is about to collapse, and Ellis could very well die any moment, and I’m so, so tired—

Lara gritted her teeth, forcing the thoughts away. They were close, and she’d faced bugs before. It was still very dark—although it had to be early morning by now—but drones made more than enough noise to target. She was down to her last few rounds, but she was a good shot, she knew she could make them count.

Ellis may not be able to help, but Jess will hang on . . . Whether or not he could aim very well anymore wasn’t something she wanted to consider, but she stepped closer to him, both of them standing close to Max. If he couldn’t do it, she’d take the burner when she ran out of bullets.

They were getting closer, at least ten, fifteen of them, the sounds of their approach violent and wild, trees snapping, their chittering shrieks growing louder.

“Ten o’clock,” Jess said, and Lara nodded—

—and then Ellis spoke, his shaky voice quiet and small.

“Stay back we kill,” he said, and Max’s arms both locked forward, Briggs’s body sliding to the ground in a heap.

Before Lara could consider the implications of “we,” the first drone tore into the open, ten meters

away. And Max took one step forward and became death, the world catching fire at his touch.

Maxellis saw the first break cover and opened up, no longer certain of the best kill method, no longer able to mark an exact distance. They fired everything, deciding in waves of red-and-black awareness that a solid cur­tain of defense would probably work.

Flame erupted from Maxellis’s right hand, a stream of napthal that stretched to meet the XT, its bounding form halting, screaming, turning in circles as its fluids heated and expanded. Its exoskeleton burst, and Max­ellis were already working the next moving forms, finding them, sending HEAP and incendiary grenades into the midst of the tumbling bodies.

—we kill and thirteen more—

Part of Maxellis had been injured by heat, when there had still been a separation. The fusion had been necessary for the good of the whole, although elements of both halves had been lost. There was no pain, but very little clarity, either, the entity’s self-awareness muddled, incomplete.

Maxellis did not think of this as they sent two full cartridges of rounds into the jungle, two hundred armor-piercers that tore through legs and arms, mists of drone blood flying, exo shrapnel from the exploding bodies slamming into other bodies. The napthal contin­ued to stream across the congregation, burning to death those that didn’t fall right away.

In less than two minutes, it was over. The only movement in the burning was the burning itself, smoke and flame rising and twisting up, finding new things to burn.

The Lara and Jess were speaking, but Maxellis’s ca­pacity for speech was extremely limited, their under­standing of language reduced to fundamentals.

We go now assigned parcel—

The body. Maxellis turned and picked it up, doing

as little damage as they could to the fragile flesh. Then they turned and moved ahead, in the direction that they had been going since before the meld.

In a matter of moments, they had reached the des­tination.

29

Noguchi ran through the dark, aware that time was short. She’d heard the explosions only minutes after leaving her battlefield, and knew that the Hunters would head for the sight and sound of action. It was surely that suit, Max, and she hoped that the firefight meant Lara and Jess were still alive, that Ellis was protecting them.

The trees whipped past, Noguchi concentrating on keeping balanced, on skirting obstacles and keeping her speed up. She didn’t want to be left behind; her fight on Bunda was over, and she was more than ready to be away from the Hunt.

And the Hunters, who wouldn’t mind at all if I missed my flight.

Noguchi picked up speed, moving faster.

The Hunter transport was twice as big as the Nemesis shuttle, and looked something like a water pitcher ly­ing on its side, a rounded body tapering at the neck. Jess wouldn’t particularly care if it looked like a giant dog turd; he’d never been so happy to see anything.

The ship had set down in an angled clearing, near the top of a gently sloping hill, the jungle they stepped out of at the bottom. The sky seemed lighter, perhaps because of the open space, or maybe because the end­less night was actually ending; they moved into the pale light away from the trees, Jess grateful to get out of the secretive dark.

At least we’ll see the next deadly thing coming … He considered crossing his fingers but thought it might be his undoing, the final exertion that would knock him out cold. He wouldn’t be good for much longer.

Together, he and Lara struggled to keep up with the Max as it marched easily to the ship, holding Briggs with both arms. Throughout all of it, Briggs still hadn’t come out of his postimplant coma. Jess knew that they’d have to leave the exec behind; he’d thought that they could use him if they ran into any Company peo­ple, but—

“I’ll see about the controls,” Lara gasped, breaking into his wandering thoughts as they neared the vehicle. “You get Ellis out of that thing.”

Jess nodded, suddenly feeling more vulnerable than he had in the wooded jungle. He was afraid of what he would find when he opened the suit. Ellis had referred to himself and the Max as “we” before blow­ing up the band of drones that had come for them, and he’d been an emotional mess already, ever since 949. Jess had been with him for the first interface, and re­membered how he’d gradually declined, losing his speech, becoming erratic—losing himself. . . .

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