The Nature of Predators - The Sacrifice (3/6)

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Memory transcription subject: Kippe, Yulpa Predator Catcher

Date [standardized human time]: March 5, 2137

Hours after the predator vanished, we’d had zero leads on its whereabouts. I assumed it must be hiding in some building in the city, because it couldn’t have gotten far without being sighted…right? However, combing the dilapidated walls of every condemned building didn’t turn up the monstrosity. Grenelka couldn’t afford to have a wild human hiding out in a child’s locker at a school; we checked anywhere that would offer soft targets next, as well as any home whose owners were currently away. It would have to come out when it was time to hunt, but I was hoping to catch it before its appetite drove it into the open.

To my amazement, the first sightings with any veracity were hundreds of miles away—hours of travel down a trucking route. A driver’s dashcam captured the human, hopping out of a semi-truck and making a break for the forest. The beast’s grubby hands were carrying a makeshift satchel, suggesting it’d gotten into the food supply; a separate team of exterminators were sent to throw out the contaminated nourishment. However, knowing that the predator’s plan was to camp out in the wilderness, we sent tens of thousands of personnel to block off every side of the forest. Search-and-rescue aerial vehicles would be scrambled in the afternoon to aid in locating the beast’s heat signature, but I didn’t intend to wait.

The less time it has to prepare for us, the better. I heard it swiped a Yulpa spear, but that’s not going to hold up against twenty predator catchers with dart guns. It’s not as if those pale, freakish humans won’t stand out in the purple leaves of the forest.

I carried my standard firearm as well, considering the possibility of maiming the predator so that it couldn’t flee. If I captured any sapient hunters in the future, I would lop off their hands and feet so they couldn’t go anywhere or touch anything. It was a shame that agony couldn’t be reserved for the spectacle, but it would eliminate the chance of anything going awry. For now, however, we were dealing with a Terran that had full mobility. One of my less-than-intelligent colleagues had tried to bring a large cage, and suggested chasing the human back into confinement—as if these creatures were no more cunning than other flesh-eaters we captured. A beast that could find its way out of a locked cage wouldn’t be herded right back into it.

“Alright, listen up!” I hissed to my team. “This thing is outnumbered, and unlike an animal, it’s completely aware of what we’ll do to it, so it will not surrender. A witness captured a picture of a smoke trail rising above the treetops, and we’re heading toward those coordinates. We track its movements from there…it only has so far to go. It must be exhausted, as a city-dwelling human thrown out here, so it might even be sleeping. Maim or knock it out if at all possible. There’s twenty of us, and one of it.”

Mallin, the idiot who tried to bring a cage, reared back on his hindlegs. “What can it possibly do? It attacks once—and has to get up close and personal to use its one spear—and everyone else fires on it. We should make a ton of noise to startle it, so it’ll take off and show itself.”

“What part of it being sapient do you not understand?! We can’t just clang some pots and flush it from its burrow, Mallin!”

“But the other predators we capture startle at loud noises. Surely it won’t like it, and it’ll want to run if it knows we’re coming.”

“The wild beasts run because they don’t understand our machines or what unnatural sounds mean! Their brains are too small to comprehend it, especially when their thoughts are directed at murder. The human clearly understands what the roar of an engine is or what banging on metal sounds like, since its kind also has built incredibly complex hunting tools. They invented FTL, Mallin, on their own.”

“So?” The Yulpa’s nose wrinkled with utter confusion, stretching the russet fur on his cheeks. “This has nothing to do with FTL. We’re not in space.”

“You’re a fucking idiot. That murder machine has more reasoning power than you. Stick with me, quietly…and try not to instant message the predator our location.”

I half-expected Mallin to take my jibe at face value, and ask how he would attain the human’s contact information (despite the fact its holopad was back on its starship). The small-minded predator catcher seemed to figure it out, falling back at my side. Since he couldn’t piece together how cunning this beast was, with it being capable of taking several Yulpa down alongside it, I’d have to keep him out of the spotlight. The Priestess of Execution had been ready to bestow great honors and riches on me, if I had been able to serve the wretch to the Spirit of Life. Failure to recapture it would sentence me to disgrace.

My plan was seamless…minutes away from working! I won’t start over from scratch, after coming this far. This ends with the Terran back in its cage, where I’ll heap on extra torment for its defiance.

Humans were magnificent at killing living creatures, but without its tools, it wasn’t that dangerous. What was it going to do after the spear was gone: poke us with its fleshy fingers? Press its flat snout right up to our necks to bite us? I kept myself alert regardless, suspecting that it might try to swipe our traditional weapons from our backs. These primates were known to be ambush predators, though I doubted they could be hidden and stealthy without lying in wait. There were no eyes glowing in the bushes, but there were odd impressions on the path ahead of us.

I squinted from afar, suddenly glad I’d left the predator with its pelts. The beast was either too stupid, or its fleshy feet were too sensitive, to walk without the hard, textile shells; lined marks were etched within an hourglass-shape, which lacked any paw pads or toes that could be attributed to a lesser animal. This would be perfect to track the beast! These could be old impressions, considering we weren’t close to the locale of the smoke, or it could tell us where the beast had wandered. It wouldn’t hurt to track the direction of the footsteps, and geotag places we determined it had been on our holopads. I signaled with tail language for the team to follow its tracks.

A seasoned predator catcher named Tunn pranced forward, the perfect candidate for analyzing signs of other beasts; his observant gaze was esteemed for picking up tiny biological traces, whether those were fur, saliva, sediment, or droppings. Tunn stumbled as his forelegs brushed against something, which emitted a lone rustling noise. I could see a string flail to the ground, limp, and simultaneously, a large branch came flying from the side. Movement didn’t happen on its own—had the predator thrown a fallen tree limb? However, despite the lack of mechanical power at the beast’s disposal, it seemed to have rigged the pole for propulsion.

“Yow!” Tunn screeched, at an ear-piercing volume that would alert the human to our exact location. “Help!”

I wondered how hard Tunn had been beaned, as black liquids gushed from his throat; his neck fur was coated in an inky substance in seconds. Another Yulpa rushed forward to lend medical aid to him, and I could see some extension from the vaulted limb had impaled itself in his flesh. Before I could stop my team member, she tugged the pointed object out of his neck. The injured party member had already been fading swiftly, but as inky blood spurted with more intensity, that secured his fate. The light flickered out in his amber eyes, before his body crashed to the ground.

In a shocked daze, I walked up to where Tunn had snapped the string. The device appeared to be crude, and made from unhallowed animal remains, which meant the human had been more than capable of slaying the forest’s wildlife. Of course its stomach won out; the first thing it thought of was a meal! The logical part of my brain implored me to seek out the bones of whatever it’d eaten, perhaps buried beneath a pile of dirt. That might be a better indicator than footprints that seemed to have been left on purpose as bait.

By the Spirit of Life…the predator seems to have turned the very trees against us! How can it have rigged contraptions for killing so quickly? They might be rudimentary, but Priestess knows, they’re effective.

Mallin pawed at the ground, queasiness written on his features. “The predator stole one spear. This isn’t one of ours. Where did it get it?”

“It made it, you fucking dolt. It took what it had lying about, and shaped those resources into a weapon. Who knows what else it has set up?” I spat. “Tunn is dead. We need to keep moving, and watch for any other strings across the path. Anything looks tampered with, we set it off before crossing through.”

“Maybe we should turn back, Kippe. Like you said, who knows what else it has in store for us?” Anla, the dipshit who sped up Tunn’s death, shouted.

“We are not going to show that we’re afraid of a human on our world! As seasoned predator catchers, we might not be used to going after sapients, but we should’ve been more cautious. Imagine how much favor it’ll bring to our world, our loved ones, if we can sacrifice this specimen to the Spirit of Life? It clearly has the utmost killing capacity. This demon had one trick, it was pretty decent, but now, we know what it’s up to. This is over.”

“It’s not over. We haven’t caught it yet,” Mallin protested.

“Shut the fuck up. The human killed an animal for food, and we know humans torch their quarries. Look for any sign of the prey’s remains. That’ll be more reliable than tracks.”

Not risking any detours, I redirected our posse toward the locale of the fire. That was a place we knew for certain the predator had set up a camp, perhaps unable to withstand the nighttime chill—even with its artificial pelts to preserve warmth. The dawnlight poking through the trees illuminated the ground, and I searched for any evidence of the slain animals. Tracing the Terran’s trail of death might be the surest way to find it. A predator couldn’t resist killing any living thing that offered an easy morsel, not without a long-term goal like building a Venlil cattle farm. No matter how intelligent the beast was, it was beholden to its hunger.

Not sparing a moment to mourn our colleague, we pressed forward as a group, on the lookout for spear traps. We disabled another one of them by batting it with a branch; the human must not be used to hunting sapient prey, which would learn from its trickery. With our newfound caution, we navigated near the vicinity of the predator’s campfire without further losses. Now, it was down to locating the cinders, and pursuing the demon from there. There were no visible traces of the blaze, but that wasn’t the end of the story. I perked my ears up with satisfaction, as a repugnant odor hit my nostrils.

While the beast was smart enough to hide the fire, it hadn’t accounted for the unmissable stench of rot. To a sensible creature, the smell was gag-worthy; however, to a scourge like a human, its sickening mind didn’t detect anything awry with blood and decay. A Yulpa named Cavne followed the scent up to its overwhelming source. Hidden under a bush, I could see what looked like ashes and bloodied bits-and-pieces. The moronic predator hadn’t thought to burn the evidence of its carcass with the fire, making its concealment efforts worthless.

Cavne scrunched her features, like she wanted to retch. “I’m going to peek under the bush…see if there’s any footprints or any of its supplies stashed here.”

“Good thinking. Don’t touch the carcass. You don’t want the contaminants making contact with your face,” I barked.

“Of course, Kippe.”

Cavne poked the bush frond out of the way with her snout. It was an innocent enough motion, but as the leaves parted to reveal entrails slopped around with purposeful disregard, the Yulpa predator catcher took flight. She was yanked off the ground by an invisible force, as a low-hanging branch jerked several feet up into the air. I froze as my colleague found herself well above our heads, a cord constricting her neck. Her legs jerked around desperately, while I finally leapt into action to cut her down. I was livid that the human duped us again, but it wouldn’t kill more of my crew.

As I drew my gun to start shooting at the rope, a spear sailed through the air out of nowhere. That wasn’t a pre-ordained trap. It pierced straight through Cavne’s temples, as her eyes bulged from suffocation, and terminated the Yulpa in an instant. That wasn’t a close-range jab; it was a trajectory of impeccable precision, somehow calculating the exact physics needed to hit a flailing target. How could the human have built a spear launcher of that caliber? What kind of accelerator was silent? Either way, the projectile meant that the wretch was nearby. Since it tipped off its presence, I intended to track it down and make it pay.

As I turned in the direction of the spear, another whizzed just past where my head had been; it nailed the Yulpa standing directly behind me. I drew my dart gun, determined to shoot down that predator where it stood. I could see the human behind the bushes, though just barely. The monstrosity had covered every inch of its body in leaves to blend in with the foliage. There was no spear launcher in sight. The shape of its arm had just finished arcing downward, as if it had thrown a large, pointed object into a kill zone without assistance. Its white teeth were visible, snarling with sadism.

That explained what the massive muscles in its arms were for, though it seemed impossible to generate such power and accuracy in a split second. I’d never heard of any capability that came close to Terrans’ projectile precision. For the first time, I felt fear—the emotion predator catchers weren’t supposed to experience around hunters. This human was picking us off with ease, and the wilderness was its territory. It was flourishing in these woodlands, and so far, it had predicted our every move. It had been watching us for some time, while we had no idea it was around.

Maybe Anla’s question wasn’t so dumb. Who knows what else it’s set up in these woods?

Before I could right my dart gun, the predator had scampered off behind the tree line. It vanished as soon as we had eyes on it, though I shot a few darts at the receding shadow. There were no thumps or grunts from it hitting the ground, so we needed to chase after it. Part of me wanted to turn back, but my entire legacy hinged on handling this situation. Instead of being the Yulpa who captured a sapient predator, I’d be the one who made the exterminators burn a whole forest to cover my mistake. It had killed three of my people, but it was still only one beast; we could handle it. We needed to outsmart it, and exhaust its limited supply of tricks.

“Still think we can scare it off by clanging pans, Mallin?” I sneered.

“Look…it was just a suggestion.” Mallin cast a blank stare at the victim of the second spear throw, who had taken a lethal blow to their throat. “We should start shooting it. With guns.”

“You know, that might be the best suggestion I’ve heard from you, ever. It doubled back in that direction, all covered in leaves and dirt. It won’t hide away in the woods on my watch.”

“But it’s picking us off, one by one!” Anla wailed.

“Pull yourself together! We’re supposed to be the bravest Yulpas, hardened to such things. How can the Priestess of Execution have any faith in us if we fail the Spirit now? That human has primitive spears. We have guns and seventeen people all focused on ending its life. Do the math—it can’t win unless we let it. Chase after it, and fill it with bullets!”

The Yulpa predator catchers looked uncertain. With a derisive huff, I took the lead, trotting off in the direction of the predator. My foreleg was ready to raise the sidearm strapped to it in an instant; I could have it to my snout, with my tongue pulled around the trigger, before the predator could wriggle away. It’d proved both deceptive and tough to pin down, but this was our planet. Even if it managed to kill all of us, there was no hope for it to escape. It would spend its days out in the wild like the savage fiend it was, rather than pretending to be civilized.

The traps and the long-range killing it fell into with such ease proved what humans were, at their core. When brought away from their dwellings, these were the instincts my captive fell back on. I hoped its teeth-baring had been enjoyable, because it wasn’t going to bask in killing my people much longer.

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A/N - Part 3! Kippe is able to rally a massive amount of troops to the woods, after Cedric has a day of slapdash preparations, and her team finds themselves in a world of trouble. The loose human set bait that perfectly anticipated their moves, and was lying in wait to score a few extra kills. How many other tricks was Cedric able to construct in a pinch...and will the Yulpa be wiser to his ploys? There's still seventeen predator catchers afoot. What will be his next move, as we return to his POV?

As always, thank you for reading and supporting!