Predator: The Scavenger

Ch 2

The human female skirted death.

This day's bounty was for all the remaining member of the Corverian resistance. This planet, classified as CI90, a small world in the ninth quadrant of the Secca galaxy and it was home to the Corverian base station Akur was contracted to take out. Minutes ago, he had watched her tiny ship break through the clouds and land a few kilometers to the east, just minutes from his own ship. For the past few months, wherever he would go he could count on the fact that she was trailing not too far behind. That could only mean the human had a way of tracking him—and that should not have been possible.

Though he had never seen her face, Akur was positive it was a human female that persisted in following him to each bounty. He knew she was female by her diminutive statue, rounded features, and the pitch of her voice. He also knew she was human by the shape of her body and her personality. She was annoying. With each encounter he considered the various options in which he would kill her, but each one left him dissatisfied. Akur had to find her a perfect death, one suitable for her unrelenting bothersome personality.

Crouching in the thorny purple trees he watched as her lithe figure slink carefully through the darkness. In her arms, she carried a carbine rifle. Enhancing his screen in his mask, he zoomed in on the long rifle and noted its suppression nozzle, which would make every shot nearly inaudible to standard hearing.

Good. She would need the gun today.

#

Taking cover behind the wall, Ember grimaced at the loud reports of gunfire hitting the rhodium plated steel wall next to her. Goddamn that big red bastard! Though she wasn't sure yet, she had a gut feeling she was trapped in this corridor by a group of hostile and very much alive Corverian assholes due to the big surly yautja setting her up.

She did everything just as she always did when she tailed the big beautiful red hunter; she found his location, waited for him to land, gave him thirty minutes to clean house and then swooped in behind him. That was there system, regardless if he agreed to it or not. It was why she renamed her ship the Plover. A bird of terrestrial planet origins that forms a symbiotic relationship with crocodiles. The crocodile kills and devours its prey and then proceeds to kindly open its mouth and allow the plover bird to clean its teeth, thus feeding the bird. A perfect description of her and Red's relationship!

Reloading her rifle, Ember bent her knees and slid her back lower against the wall until she was a few feet lower from where the Corverian were firing.

"Red you are being one lousy crocodile right now," she mumbled aloud before quickly swinging out of cover and taking five precise shots.

One Corverian down and one wounded in the arm.

Angry roars from the alien beasts echoed off the walls. By her scans there were eight more of the things still alive. On entering the base, she took out one that surprised her and quickly took out three more that came running at the first one's gunfire. A moving red dot on the base's map alerted her to movement to the connecting hallway connected to the one she was hiding in.

"Shit!" grabbing a frag-grenade out of her pack on her back she tossed it down the hall where the mouth of the hallway she was in opened up to the mouth of the other hall just as the red dot hit the corner. Not waiting a second longer, she jumped out of cover and laid down some cover fire to the four Corverian assholes hiding behind the barricade to the control room up ahead. Switching the mode on her gun, she launched an incendiary grenade at the bastards. The ricocheting explosion from the hall, that she just vacated, told her the frag-grenade just went off, hopefully the eight-inch metal spikes that shot out did their job. The red dot wasn't moving, meaning it was still alive but down for now.