The Nature of Predators - The Sacrifice (2/6)

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Memory transcription subject: Cedric Flynn, Human Civilian

Date [standardized human time]: March 4, 2137

There was nothing but darkness meeting my eyes, as I lay prone underneath the tarp that had covered the fruit shipment. I’d crawled into the back of a parked semi, at a rest stop across the street from the arena; there was no climate control in the container, but it was the fastest way to hitch a ride far away from this place. Scrounging up a plan was my next order of business. Every time the truck stopped, whether at a traffic signal or to turn, I was worried a Yulpa would poke their head back here and root me out. Getting out before the vehicle reached its destination would be ideal, unless I wanted to fight my way through a city.

I clutched my fingers tighter around the seized spear, which I held to my side. It had been a spare item for their ritual left on a desk, presumably in case one of the sticks they meant to crucify me with broke. At least I had a weapon now; I couldn’t allow myself to get recaptured, so this was a grim option should it come to death or agony. A quick end was preferable to a prolonged spectacle, though I’d rather think of a way to survive and find a ship off-world. An opened box of a pink-and-white fruit had supplied me with food, as I gambled that it would be edible; foraging would be a necessity, if I could find my way to the rainforest patches I’d glimpsed in both directions.

I can’t rely on help from the locals, and I imagine a search party is after me now. Dammit. At least out in the wilderness, I know how to survive, and I can wait until they come to me. Kippe snatched the wrong human—one that can handle unfamiliar terrain.

The way that Yulpa bitch had brought about my capture made my skin crawl, going against every principle of mariners watching each other’s backs. Whether someone was sailing through a sea or alien stars, we worked to help a fellow captain in distress—if not out of altruism, because of the hope that someone would go out of their way if we wound up in that position. I’d devoted eight years of my life to the US Coast Guard, transferring after an enlistment as a Navy SEAL. Surviving SEAL training required mental toughness that few people possessed, and while I often regretted burning the prime years of my life in faraway places, that skillset could help me here. It figured that when I finally transitioned to the civilian sector, I got roped into this alien SNAFU that I’d wanted nothing to do with.

I’d enjoyed my time with the search-and-rescue team in the Coast Guard; if it weren’t for first contact, I would’ve re-enlisted as soon as I had the opportunity. Instead, I didn’t sign on the dotted line because of an idea the United Nations floated for after the war: the Space Guard. It would be a supranational military organization, a branch of the Peacekeepers, devoted to patrols and search-and-rescue within the territory of Terra and her colonies. However, personnel wouldn’t be assigned to such missions until Aafa was put down. My time had been spent learning to fly starships on my own dime, before I took on a few contracts ferrying private company goods to Liberty’s Bastion.

“To any starships in the area, I’ve experienced a total power failure. Warp and sublight travel are impossible,” the Yulpa had broadcast, in her carefully-laid trap. In retrospect, she’d seen a human vessel on the sensors and wanted to lure me in. “Life support will fail from backup power in hours. I require immediate assistance, I repeat, the situation is dire.”

Contrary to what Kippe claimed about me wanting to capture her, I’d intended to rescue her from a ship failure. After my time in the Coast Guard, it was second nature to help a spacefarer in distress; I thought it would be the perfect practice run for when I joined the fledgling Space Guard. I knew the voice on the other end of the line was alien, and was aware of how they might react to a “predator” answering the call. That was the reason I extended the docking request without chatter, using the extra time to think of reassurances about my presence. While I imagined I might have difficulties persuading the caller to come with me, I never dreamed I’d have a dart pricking my neck as soon as I opened the airlock. The next thing I knew, I found myself in a cage wearing a collar like I’d read about from Marcel’s torment.

The chants from the crowd, aimed at me, echoed in my ears; I’d been able to hear it from that dehumanizing cage. “Make it scream!”

How close had I been to ending up gutted by thirteen pikes, and spending my final minutes with the pain receptors in my brain at full blast? No amount of toughness could prepare me for a ritual as sadistic as they detailed. It was fortunate that Kippe left me clothed and unattended, and that despite my hammering heartbeat, I’d been able to put the bobby pin I always carried in my pocket to good use. After slipping my wrist through the bars and fiddling with the lock, it clicked open; I’d started to make a break for it, before realizing I needed to ditch the collar. It was awkward, but I managed to get a feel for it and undo it from my neck.

Knowing there was no time to waste, I ducked into an unoccupied storage room, and picked up a spear. It was a guess which way led out of the building, but I thought I could see natural light at the far end of the hallway. Keeping my footsteps as muffled as possible, I crept past an oblivious Yulpa, who was on his holopad instead of watching security cameras. These weren’t any aliens I recognized, with their strange tongues being used to grab objects, and their jarring brown pelts that cut off into zebra stripes on their hindlegs. Observations aside, it had been a matter of silently opening the door, and bolting toward the first semi I saw.

I can dwell on how I got here all day, or I can do something about it. There’s no backup here: it’s me against the world. The next time the truck stops, I need to crack the door open and see if I can make a break for it.

I rolled the tarp up into a makeshift sack, loading pink-and-white fruits inside and slinging it over my shoulder. I crouched at the edge of the truck bed, waiting with my fingers wrapped around the door handle. When I felt the vehicle come to a complete halt, I cracked the door open. My eyes locked with a terrified Yulpa driver in the car behind me, who slammed their snout against a shrill equivalent to a horn: possibly alerting the person driving me. I could see that we were on a winding road through the countryside, with rainforest beckoning to me a few hundred meters away on the right flank. My feet hopped onto the pavement, and I made a break for the obscuring woodland.

The driver who’d spotted me was frozen with fear, and the vehicle didn’t careen after me; I ducked into the tree cover, not daring to stop as leaves crunched beneath my shoes. It was only after I’d pushed deep into the forest that I slowed, and considered my next move. Finding a water source, purifying it, and building a makeshift shelter were my first concerns. Later on, to supplement the snatched food shipment, I would get my hands dirty and hunt. I was certain I should lend thought to self-defense as well. When the witness on the road reported my sighting, Kippe and the rest of her cult would come after me.

Those exterminator freaks could simply start a forest fire to burn me out, given that they didn’t care about the ecosystem, but I believed Kippe wanted me alive. She mentioned how sacrificing me, as her prize, would make her famous, and she seemed delighted by the meticulous torture she planned to put me through. Her pride would compel her to try to bring me back under her control, and that was where my skillset would come in handy. When the Yulpa arrived to capture me, they’d find a few surprises I was going to leave for them. I’d be waiting for them as well, ready to strike when their guard wavered. Frankly, I was pretty damn pissed off about being dragged off as a ritual sacrifice, for trying to offer humanitarian aid to an alien.

“I should’ve never gotten involved with an alien’s problems,” I muttered to myself, as I got to work dragging branches into a clearing. “They’re monsters. They never showed an ounce of compassion for humans; it wasn’t just Sovlin who gets off on our graphic demise. Holy shit.”

I picked up the Yulpa spear from where I’d left it on the ground, and considered how I’d whittle my branches into traps. First off, I thought I could hear running water in the distance, so it was time to get myself a drink—it would need to be toted in makeshift cookware from stone. I’d gather myself a collection of rocks for…other purposes too. I could strike a smooth pebble from the creek into the rough of edge of an appropriate rock, and get myself a good piece of flint. That would lend me another weapon, and one that would be perfect for sharpening more spears from branches and molding parts for traps. Take out a few game animals, use their sinew to make some rope for tripwires…and whatever Yulpa came knocking was going to have a bad day.

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During my visit to the creek, I sated my body’s demands for water enough to keep working. The sun was punishing now, but I knew from the chill back in that arena basement that it would be cold come nightfall. After finishing my toolset, I was able to fashion myself a plant-based pitcher for water, and lit a fire just long enough to boil it and cook some strips of a shrew-like animal. The smoke trail was kept away from my makeshift camp, so as not to lure anyone watching straight to my hideout. I wolfed down the charred meat, which tasted a bit foul—beggars couldn’t be choosers. With my needs taken care of, I set about to create as many contraptions as I could in the vicinity.

The small notches I left on certain trees as direction markers are discernable only to me. I’ll be able to use them to remember where I set all of my traps, and ensure I don’t stumble into them.

I’d shaped myself into a creature of the night, starting off by coating my skin with river mud; slap debris from the forest floor underneath makeshift cordage, and I was left with a natural ghillie suit. I couldn’t help but to laugh to myself, imagining what those Federation herbivores would think, seeing a human with such natural camouflage—and watching me craft the hunting traps of my ancestors from nothing. Today, I was going after The Most Dangerous Game (I would give an arm to see Kippe learn that story): sapients. Those xenos were going to learn what a well-trained human could do if they were motivated to hunt them.

The first machination was a spring spear trap, built to catch game of all sizes. All I needed was two pikes separated across a pathway, where I’d made the point of leaving footprints into the muddy ground so the Yulpa would follow them; one of the poles was notched to fit a perpendicular stone shelf. I tied a string of sinew cordage around a small hook, and looped the other end of the tripwire to the barren pole, before bringing it back around. The finishing touch was resting my spear, which looked like a Grim Reaper scythe, on the shelf. The hook was draped over the weapon to hold it in place, before the noose from the looped rope was tightened around the other end of the hook.

In essence, the tripwire had been cinched around both sides. When a force happened upon it, such as a Yulpa stepping through it, the trigger hook would be yanked loose…and the shifting of the rope would send that spear flying to impale them. There would be several of that type of trap scattered around the woods, but I wasn’t stopping there. This area was going to be a lethal deathzone to anyone corporeal and not named Cedric Flynn, if I had my way. The trees and the darkness were my friends, and their enemies.

“Kippe thinks she’s hunting me, but she’s going to find the tables have turned,” I chuckled. “I can’t wait to find her swinging by her neck.”

I found myself some bendy branches on trees; ones that had some give, but could hold the weight of a full-grown Yulpa. My trap to send my captor to the impromptu gallows entailed crafting classic snares. Again, it was a simple trap, which started off by carving a mouth into the base pike. I shaped a smaller piece to hook into that opening, then connected that catch to a tree branch with a rope. The final bit was tying a very wide noose to the bottom of the hook, and coating it in mud and leaves so it would blend in with foliage. When an unfortunate soul gave the rope a nudge, the trigger mechanism would come free from the ground pike.

Branch snaps back upward, noose tightens around the neck when it catches on something living. Best of all is setting bait for my sapient prey.

Playing on what they thought of predators, I scattered some ashes from my fire and poorly hidden entrails from the animals I’d caught near the noose. The stench would draw them in, if nothing else, especially after it had time to marinate. Kippe and her crew would be expecting to find clues to my whereabouts, or a trail to follow, and instead, they’d wind up dangling from a rope. I intended to have eyes on them from the moment they came to my turf, and to stop them from bailing out any pals if they tried. Those Yulpa cultists wouldn’t even know what hit them; I felt confident about taking out at least a few of them with me.

There was a final surprise with no aboveground triggers for them to spot, even if they were cleverer than anticipated. I toiled with a flat stone to dig a hole in the soil, deep and wide enough to cover the path leading up to my camp. The remainder of the wooden spikes I had, that hadn’t been staked into the ground for trigger traps, were placed with a sharpened edge facing up…in close together rows. I laid several branches across the opening, which wouldn’t support a Yulpa’s weight if they walked across, but could be covered in leaves, twigs, and soil to look like ordinary forest ground. The second they stepped over the pit, they’d find the ground collapsing beneath their feet. Kippe could be the one who ended up staked in thirteen places.

“You did good, Ceddy.” I found myself a hiding spot, clinging to the Yulpa-made spear, and waited for them to come to me. “Now give ‘em hell. Show ‘em what they get, trying to capture human beings as their sacrificial lambs. Semper Paratus.”

Whatever happened next, I suspected these Yulpa had no idea what they were getting into. Their biggest mistake was capturing a trained human killer, instead of whatever cuddly dumbfucks we were sending to the Venlil. My binocular eyes peered into the inky sky of midnight, and I strained my ears for any sign that the search party had arrived. While this was a terrible situation to find myself in, I thought this evening might be quite enjoyable after all.

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A/N - Part 2 of the series! We learn from the human's POV how Kippe captured him, and how he escaped custody...and also discover that he's a former Navy SEAL who is more than capable of handling himself in the woods. Cedric anticipates the Yulpa coming after him, and sets a number of traps for anyone who pursues him. How will Kippe and her crew fare, when they respond to reports of Ceddy being sighted here? What will they think of his unique skillset, should they stumble across his creations?

As always, thank you for reading and supporting!