Кристофер Голден - The Predator - The Official Movie Novelization

Traeger strode into the room, wrinkling his nose at the heat and the raw, fetid stench of dismembered alien, and marched up to the table. His aide, Sapir, scuttled behind him like an obedient pet rat.

“So this time they’re hunting their own,” Traeger said, and huffed out a sound that translated as: Go figure . He favored Sapir with a glance. “Now tell me again.”

“Eleven feet,” Sapir said.

Traeger whistled. “That’s really fuckin’ tall.” He whipped the white sheet back from the corpse. Sapir recoiled at the sight of the Predator’s head perched on its neck stump at the end of the table, above the body, its piercing, fish-like eyes glazed now in death. Traeger, though, leaned in closer, baring his teeth in a spiteful grin. “Shoulda stuck with us, buddy.” He turned to Sapir again. “You said they had a kid with them?”

The aide nodded. “Yes, sir. Captain McKenna’s son. Wife confirms—he has the operating system to the missing ship. Thinks it’s a video game.”

Traeger rubbed his chin. He paced around the sheeted corpse, looking thoughtful, while Sapir waited patiently.

At last he said, “I’m thinking this guy was a rogue. A runner. The big one was damage control. Sent to take him out.”

“Retrieve the ship?”

“Or destroy it.” Traeger came to a halt. His eyes narrowed. “We need to find that ship. Before he does.”

Sapir licked his lips. Tentatively, he said, “Sir… we’ve been looking for forty-eight hours solid—”

Traeger raised a finger, cutting him off. So pompously that you could almost see the speech marks around his quote, he said, “‘The difficult is done at once. The impossible takes a bit more time.’” He gave Sapir a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “The kid. He has the device.”

Sapir spoke the words eagerly, to show that he was in tune with his boss’s wishes. “Find the kid.”

It was late enough that all good girls and boys should have been asleep. The RV sat, cooling and dark, beneath a bridge at the far edge of a patch of rural farmland so vast it was impossible to tell where it ended and the next property began. Despite technological advances, there were still places in America where a squad of military deserters/mental patients and a startlingly fearless and physically capable scientist could vanish for a few hours.

Despite the late hour, Rory was still awake. He had a stick in his hand and was drawing in the dirt. The stick made an imperfect artistic implement, but he thought he had the basic design and measurements of the alien ship correct. He drew it from memory, recalling the holographic image he’d summoned up from the gizmo that had popped out of the Predator’s wrist gauntlet. The gizmo was gone now, so he wanted to solidify the memory in his head, just in case it was important. At the same time, he kept running through the symbols that had appeared on the readout, trying to understand what it all meant.

Nebraska Williams kept looking over his shoulder. He seemed like a nice man, but Rory grew antsy. He didn’t like being the focus of anyone’s attention.

“I heard you got a hole in your head,” he said.

Nebraska smiled. “People been tellin’ me that since I was five.”

Rory frowned, but stayed on topic. “What happened?”

“Well… you get to be my age, your brain’s like an attic,” Nebraska replied. “All musty and cobwebby. Sometimes you need to air it out.”

The soldier resumed the task of placing grenades gingerly into a box. Rory frowned. He wondered if Nebraska realized he was recommending a middle-school kid solve his problems with a bullet to the head and decided that, no, the man had no idea. Apparently, that was one of the side effects of shooting oneself in the head.

Casey had lost track of time. Ever since childhood that had been her MO. She’d find a thread that intrigued her, some bit of information or a word she didn’t understand or a scientific idea, and she’d follow it down the rabbit hole, learning as much as she could until she fell asleep or her mother forced her to go to bed or come to dinner or go to school. It was warm inside the RV, the air heavy and close now that the engine had been turned off for a while, but she had her microscope—and more importantly, she had the Predator’s gauntlet that had been in Rory’s possession.

When McKenna entered, Casey had the gauntlet on her arm, studying it. She knew it was important to learn as much as possible about the Predator and its tech, but she also relished this time. The rest of the world, and the danger she was in—both from the gigantic Predator 2.0 they’d encountered and from her own government—all fell away while she focused on unraveling the mysteries before her.

McKenna grabbed a beer from the cooler, then paused to glance at her, as if uncertain whether to interrupt her or not. But Casey was ready to talk, ready to demonstrate what she’d found. McKenna wasn’t a scientist, but he was smart, and besides, it was sometimes good to share information, get your findings out into the open, rather than just letting them stew in your head.

Producing the vial of fluid she’d stolen from Project: Stargazer, she said without preamble, “They found this in the Predator’s blood. In layman’s terms, it’s like distilled ‘lizard brain,’ the part that kicks in under extreme survival conditions.”

McKenna took a gulp of beer. “So?” he said, sensing she was eager to tell him more.

“Remember I told you they rip out people’s spines?”

“Trophies, you said.”

“Right. But if a Predator’s first and foremost a survivor, wouldn’t it make sense to collect DNA ‘souvenirs?’”

McKenna raised his eyebrows. “From people’s spines?”

“Brain stem. Close enough.” Casey knew she wasn’t painting a clear picture. It was a bad habit. Her thoughts seemed to coalesce cleanly in her head, but getting the words out in the proper order was another thing entirely. “Look, suppose—just suppose—that these space creatures are… siphoning off our lizard brain juice.”

Now McKenna laughed, although she could tell he was a little insulted. “You don’t have to overdo the layman’s terms.”

She held up a hand in apology. “I think they’re attempting hybridization,” she said. “It would explain the human DNA, now, wouldn’t it?”

McKenna’s brow furrowed. Casey could see his mind working and knew she’d been right in her assessment of his smartness. McKenna might be a rough-tough soldier boy, but there was a brightness about him, an ability to take information on board, adapt, calculate the odds, make quick decisions. If she was being honest with herself, she guessed she should never really have doubted his intelligence. You didn’t get to be an officer in the Army Rangers without being mentally agile.

“Collecting survival traits from high-end specimens,” he said, nodding.

“From the strongest, smartest, most dangerous species on every planet they visit, to make upgrades to their own race. Hybrids.”

McKenna studied her. “Are you just pulling this theory out of your ass?”

“This new Predator, the bigger one,” she said, ignoring the question, “did you see its eyes?”

His nod was almost imperceptible, but it was there. McKenna knew exactly what she was talking about.

“They’re evolving, Captain,” she said. “Changing.”

“Being upgraded,” he murmured.

“And here’s the clincher,” she said. She leaned toward him, as if so eager to impart her information that she wanted to close the gap between the words leaving her mouth and reaching his ears. “Project: Stargazer? The shitshow that recruited me? A stargazer’s a type of flower—an orchid. And not just any orchid…”