“The Hunters are as individual as each and every one of us here,” he had told them. “They have different skills, different abilities, different approaches and procedures. What they do all have in common is that they’re incredibly fast, incredibly strong, and utterly ruthless in combat. They also have a code of honor – they do not kill unarmed innocents. But forget about that, because in your case it will not apply. In terms of equipment, the Hunter will almost certainly have a cloaking device that renders it virtually invisible – though, as we’ve already discussed, there are chinks in the armor that we can exploit if we remain alert. Beyond that, you should expect the unexpected. Virtually every time we’ve come up against one of these bastards, they’ve been touting something we haven’t seen before.”
It did occur to Scott, as the Chinook lowered itself to the ground with all the tentativeness of a child testing the temperature of its bathwater with a big toe, that it would be ironic, given all the buildup to this mission, if this particular Hunter happened to be touting a weapon whose power not even Major “Dutch” Schaefer had previously foreseen; a weapon capable, for instance, of vaporizing an entire Chinook helicopter with one blast, leaving nothing but a greasy black stain on the rock.
As soldiers, of course, they lived with such risks every day, and it was something they had to blank from their minds whilst being, at the same time, acutely aware of it in order to reduce the risk of it happening. As the Chinook bumped gently to the ground and shut off its engines, Scott closed his eyes briefly, and tried to console himself with the thought that at least being blasted to Kingdom Come would be preferable to being skinned and beheaded.
A few minutes later, however, the Chinook was opening its doors and they were stepping out into bright, mid-morning sunshine.
“Jesus, Lau, are you doing egg farts again?” Flynn said loudly, eliciting a ripple of laughter.
Scott had thought the atmosphere inside the Chinook funky enough – after three hours, not even a state-of-the-art aircon could cope with the accumulated odor of three-dozen guys in heavy body armor – but the air here, at least up on the plateau, was positively sulfurous.
“Fire and brimstone,” Marcus said. “Pretty apt if we’re about to meet the closest we’ll ever get to a demon.”
“Is it really a good idea to land on top of a volcano, sir?” asked Flynn.
“Relax, soldier,” said Schaefer. “The last major eruption to take place here was over three thousand years ago.”
With the Major on point, they made their way down toward the crater where the alien shuttle had crash-landed. Although they could see thick woodland below them on all sides, there was little vegetation on and around their current elevated position. The gray rock on which they walked looked as though it was rust-streaked, or splashed with long-dried bloodstains. It had been melted, crushed, shunted around by years of volcanic movement, and now resembled a haphazard selection of vast building blocks, fused together but riven with cracks and fissures, some of them wide enough to fall into.
Although the thirty-plus-strong team had travelled light to give themselves as much mobility as possible, after five minutes they were all sweating. Schaefer led the way down through the step-like slabs of rock, and Scott was impressed by how surefooted and tireless he appeared given his age and size.
“Guy’s like a mountain goat,” Marcus said enviously, keeping his voice low so that only Scott could hear.
“Guess you gotta be super fit to survive against the Hunters all these years,” Scott replied.
Like every other man in the team, Marcus was constantly looking around as he walked, scoping the terrain, gun held across his chest, in readiness to engage the enemy at a moment’s notice. “This place is bleak, but it seems so peaceful. Hard to believe we might see our first ever real live alien before the day’s out.”
After ten minutes of clambering across and down a series of gradually descending stone “steps,” the men found themselves on a ridge of flat ground composed mostly of dirt and brown shale. Scrubby vegetation was starting to encroach on both sides here, but around ten meters directly ahead the ground dropped abruptly away.
Scott expected Dutch to lead them to one side or another, but instead he marched right up to what appeared to be a cliff edge and stepped over it. Instead of disappearing from sight, there was the crunch and patter of dislodged shale and his body lurched downwards a meter or so before coming to a halt. Only his upper half now visible, he twisted toward them and gestured ahead.
“Behold, gentlemen.”
By the time Scott had reached the lip of what he had almost immediately realized must be a crater, the Major was already tramping down its sloping side, some of the men following his example. Chunks of brown dirt and shale skittered down the hill in front of them, but it seemed stable enough. The crater was patched with sinewy vegetation, which forced its way up through the shale here and there, but Scott only half-registered this. His attention was almost entirely taken up by what lay at the bottom of the crater, a sight that drew gasps from many of his own men, despite the fact they’d been prepared for it.
It was a spaceship. A crashed spaceship. Or, more accurately, according to Dutch, a shuttle.
Even in pieces, the craft, constructed of some sort of matte-black metal, looked both sleek and impressive. Like everything else Scott had seen that had been designed by the Hunters – weapons, armor, equipment – there was a brutalism to it, but also an elegance and an economy, a sense that here was something perfectly equipped for its intended purpose.
After pausing for maybe five seconds to take in the sight, Scott started his descent down the side of the crater. Ahead of him he noticed that Dutch Schaefer had halted and taken something from one of the pouches on his combat vest, some sort of electronic device, no bigger than a mobile phone. Scott saw Dutch point the device at the wreckage below, check a green readout screen, and then, apparently satisfied, continue tramping down the side of the crater.
Beside him, Marcus murmured, “No straight lines.”
Thinking that Marcus was somehow referring to the readout the Major had taken, which Scott guessed was maybe a check for radiation, or other harmful emissions caused by the crash, he said, “Huh?”
“The ship,” Marcus said, “it has no straight lines. Everything’s curved. It almost looks more… more grown than made.”
“Organic,” Scott said.
Marcus nodded. “Like a huge insect. A beetle or a… a silverfish.” He didn’t exactly shudder – Marcus was not a man who spooked easily – but his voice changed slightly. “It looks mean, don’t you think? Malevolent.”
“It’s alien,” Scott said. “Therefore it looks wrong to us.”
“That’s it,” said Marcus. “It looks wrong. It sets off a weird little alarm bell in the back of the head. Do you know what I mean?”
Scott did, though he would have likened it more to an itch he was unable to scratch. He felt both drawn to the ship and repelled by it. He looked around to see whether any of the other men from his team were feeling the same, and thought that maybe they were. Their faces were blackened by special camouflage paint that Schaefer had told them would dampen their heat signatures, but he saw tightly pursed lips, eyes that were a little wider and more fixed than usual. Even Flynn, normally the joker in the pack, looked silent and tense.
When he reached the bottom of the crater, and was no more than ten meters from the wreckage, Schaefer raised a hand. Immediately everyone stopped moving, waiting for his cue. The craft had shattered into three main chunks, with smaller pieces of debris lying around. The ground beneath the rear chunk was blackened and charred, and the skin of the craft was blistered, suggesting that this section had burst into flames upon impact with the ground.
“Angus,” Schaefer called, and pointed to the middle section of the shuttle.
Angus, who was close to the bottom of the slope, about halfway between Dutch and Scott, nodded and tramped toward the middle chunk as the Major himself moved t
oward what had clearly been the cockpit.
There was a palpable sense of tension in the air as the two men moved slowly forward to examine what remained of the shuttle. They checked out the ground ahead before placing their feet, wary of booby traps. Scott and his team had shown exactly the same caution on their various missions over the years – you never knew where and when the enemy might leave you a surprise gift – but here there was the extra element of the unknown, and that caused Scott’s heart to beat faster than usual. Marcus caught his eye and raised his eyebrows. Dutch Schaefer paused to take another reading. As he crept close enough to the cockpit to peer into its mangled interior, Scott was reminded of a big cat, utterly focused, instincts on high alert, edging toward its prey. Except that in this instance, the prey was far more physically capable – and dangerous – than the animal that was stalking it.
After a couple of minutes Schaefer straightened up and raised an arm, flipping his hand in a beckoning gesture.
“Captain Devlin, bring your men and come take a look at your first Hunter.”
Scott felt absurdly like a kid on a school trip to the zoo, being instructed by a teacher to check out a rare and elusive animal. He walked up to Schaefer, his team falling into line behind him. Schaefer stepped back so that Scott could take his place. Scott glanced at the Major, then placed his hand on the side of the wrecked ship to steady himself (and how crazy was that, knowing the craft had been designed and built by green-blooded aliens?) and raised himself slightly to peer into the cockpit.
He projected an air of pragmatism, of professional scrutiny and assessment, but inwardly he was freaking out. Some of the less imaginative guys in his team might be able to take a sight like this in their stride, but Scott was acutely aware he was in the presence of something whose existence human beings had spent decades debating over – an intelligent being from another fucking planet!
Photographs didn’t do them justice. With photographs there was a sense of detachment, even of doubt. But actually being up close and personal to an alien – even a dead and badly mangled one that smelled of rotting fish – was both breathtaking and disorienting. Scott wasn’t a religious man, but to him there was something kind of holy about the experience. To think this creature had been up there among the stars, that it had been born and raised on another planet, that it had died millions of miles from home… that was just mind-boggling.
What struck him most forcefully about the Hunter was the size of it. He’d known they were big, but seeing the sheer height and bulk of the thing up close was awe-inspiring. Even smashed up as it was – its head and chest crushed to pulp, green blood everywhere, innards and bits of bone peppering the interior of the cockpit, as if the thing had exploded from the inside – he could see the muscle tone in its one remaining arm and in the almost intact bottom half of its body, and he felt like a puny child in comparison. His only regret was that the thing no longer had a face, only a partial lower jaw that hung down from the mess of its head like a loose hinge. He would have loved to have stared directly into its eyes, even ones that were glazed in death.
Reluctantly he stepped back, allowing Marcus to take his place. Rather than hanging around to see his friend’s reaction, he exchanged a brief nod with Schaefer, then walked away, feeling he needed to be alone for a minute or two. He stood with his back to the wrecked shuttle, staring at the dazzling blue sky above the far side of the crater, taking deep breaths and realizing he had become so acclimated to the sulfur in the air that he could now barely smell it. He wasn’t aware there was anyone behind him until a deep, rumbling voice said, “You okay, sir?”
He turned. The man standing behind him was a human mountain, but he would still have looked small in comparison to the Hunter. He had a pattern of swirls shaved into the side of his head, and was looking at Scott with sympathy.
“I am. Thank you,” Scott said. “Corporal… Brand, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.” Brand glanced back at the shuttle, around which Scott’s men were still crowding, the air filled with their clamor – exclamations peppered with profanities, whoops, cries of shock. “Seeing your first Hunter… it’s quite something, isn’t it?”
“It is, Corporal,” Scott said. “It certainly is.”
Brand nodded, and looked as though he was debating whether or not to share his own first encounter, when Angus called, “Sir? There’s something you need to see.”
Schaefer’s second-in-command was standing by the middle section of the shuttle, and although he had been addressing the Major, Scott gave Brand a nod, as if to say, Nice talking to you, soldier, and walked across to him.
He and Schaefer arrived by Angus’s side at the same time.
“What is it, Angus?” Schaefer asked.
“Something unusual, sir. Come take a look for yourself.”
“Mind if I tag along?” said Scott.
“Captain Devlin,” Schaefer said. “What we know, you should know too. That goes for all the men. Withholding information provides the enemy with ammunition.”
Angus led Scott and Schaefer back across the debris-strewn ground to the middle section of the shuttle. Although this section had not caught fire, it was the most twisted and mangled part of the structure. This was due to the fact that when it had hit the ground, the shuttle’s front end had been ripped off in one direction, while its back end had been ripped off in another. Caught in the middle, the central section had been twisted like tinfoil.
“Watch your step, both of you,” Angus said as they reached what was probably the main entrance to the ship, a buckled hatch that looked to have burst open from the inside and was now half peeled back from its frame like the lid of a sardine can. This left a triangular gap about two meters tall and a meter wide at the bottom. There was nothing to be seen inside but an overlapping mass of shadows shrouding indefinite shapes.
Angus emphasized the words he had spoken by pointing down at the base of the hatch’s frame, which had twisted and split, the stressed and shredded metal now sticking upwards in a series of jagged spikes, like knife blades. He stepped up and over these, and into the shuttle itself, which creaked alarmingly beneath his weight. Despite that, the basic structure seemed sound enough. Once Angus had been swallowed up by the shadows, Dutch followed him, and Scott brought up the rear.
Scott expected the interior of the craft to be cramped and dark, but although the walls had buckled inward, it was still reasonably spacious – no doubt because its oversized occupants had needed the extra room in the first place. Daylight crept in on both sides, where the rear and aft sections of the shuttle had been torn away, which gave their surroundings a grainy, mottled definition.
Like the exterior, the interior of the craft was elegant but functional. There was little concession to luxury here. Various panels and readout screens lined the walls, the majority of them now dark, warped, burned out. Again there was a sense of the organic, the walls curving upwards to meet the ceiling in a series of rib-like ridges, which gave Scott the impression he was standing in the belly of a vast whale. Likewise, various columns and pillars, which were also studded with now-dead readout screens, followed the curve of the walls.
Much as he would have liked to explore, there was little time to linger. Already Angus was forging deeper into the shuttle’s interior, pushing aside cables that had burst from the ruptured ceiling and hung down like jungle vines. Dutch and Scott followed him, sidestepping a tangle of equipment that had torn loose from the wall, and then passing through a circular opening into another section of the craft. There was less equipment here, the left-hand wall instead dominated by a row of pod-like chambers. It was beside these that Angus came to a halt.
Scott leaned forward, peering dubiously into one of the pods. It reminded him of an MRI machine.
“This can’t be where the Hunters slept?” he asked. “It isn’t big enough.”
“The Hunters didn’t, but something did,” Angus said, and pointed at a pair of pods to his right. “Check those two out.”
Scott and Schaefer did so. The pods certainly showed signs of occupancy. They both contained some kind of shredded bedding-like material, and both were littered with bones to which slivers of blackened meat still clung.
And there was another thing. Despite the fact that the craft was open at both ends and fresh air was drifting through, both pods gave off a pungent, animal-like odor.
“Do Hunters keep pets?” Scott asked.
Schaefer looked puzzled. “They’re full of surprises, but I can’t see it. Doesn’t fit with their profile somehow.”
“Could be prisoners,” said Angus. “Of their own kind or some other species. If that’s the case, they might be running around out there too.”
“Might it be livestock?” Scott said. “What do Hunters eat?”
Schaefer was nodding. “That’s a good question, Captain.”
“If it is livestock,” Angus said, “then our boy might be banged up a little, but he won’t go hungry.”
Schaefer straightened up and looked around. “Anything else?”
Angus shook his head. “Lots of stuff to salvage, but I’m not sure how much of it’s going to be useful.”
“Okay,” Schaefer said. “Strip out what you can and incinerate the rest. Twelve men be enough, you think, Angus?”
Angus nodded. “The rest can look for our runaway.”
“It’s a big area,” said Scott. “What are the chances of finding him?”
“We won’t need to find him,” Schaefer said. “He’ll find us. That’s what he’s here for.”
* * *
Forty minutes later Scott and his team were moving through a thickly forested area to the east of the crash site, Scott trying to shake off the feeling that he and his men were effectively walking bait. Okay, so they knew they were bait, and were more than ready to turn the tables on the Hunter if and when the opportunity arose, but it was still an uneasy feeling to think there was a creature in the vicinity to whom you were nothing more than a potential hunting trophy.
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