AVP: Alien vs. Predator

a wet thump, the writhing obscenity dropped to the ground.

The creature, chattering like some terrible giant insect, rose to its full, immense height and shambled toward the cowering hunter. Gnashing jaws parted to extend a long, veined mandible tipped with yet another snapping, drooling orifice.

Weapon forgotten, Funan attempted to flee. In his panic, he stumbled over the entangling vines. Twisting his ankle, Funan struck the ground hard, spear flying from his numbed fist. Then the mightiest hunter of his tribe curled up into a cowering ball and waited for death to claim him. This, he knew, was his punishment for encroaching on the sacred ground around the Temple of the Gods.

Hot spittle splashed his cheek and burned his skin. Chattering jaws snapped at his throat, and a deadly shadow, black as death itself, loomed over him, ready to strike, when an astounding thing happened.

Another abomination emerged from the jungle.

Funan first saw the creature as a blur—for the world seemed to shimmer with its passing. Wherever the apparition stalked, the jungle melted and reformed itself. In a blinding flash of movement, the translucent figure shot across the clearing and struck the black monster at Funan’s throat, penetrating its segmented armored shell with a bone-crushing stab and tossing it away.

The black monster’s exoskeleton clattered as it hit the ground, and Funan saw that the armored plates at the creature’s throat had indeed been pierced and shattered. Fountains of green, acidic blood spurted from the black monster’s wound, spraying leaves and branches and vines. Every place the venomous fluid touched began to smoke and burn. The molten hot drops struck Funan, too, and he rolled on the ground and cried out with raw agony.

The phantom paused to hover over the fallen hunter, and as Funan pulled his hands away from his face and looked up, the ghostly blur formed into a solid thing—a nightmare that appeared part man, part reptile, part demonic beast. The phantom stood on two legs as thick as logs. Its torso was scaled, its wide face covered by a metal mask. Barbarous eyes burned from behind that mask—eyes Funan desperately tried to avoid.

Then the phantom stepped past the human, moving with giant strides toward the black monster still writhing on the ground. Funan watched as the phantom raised its enormous arms. Then, with a sharp and sudden click, a trio of silver blades burst out of the band around the creature’s wrist. Sunlight glinted off razor-sharp tips. The phantom grunted in satisfaction and looked down at Funan once again.

Funan covered his eyes and prayed to all the ancestors of his people. He begged for mercy from a dozen tribal deities, great and small. And to Funan’s eternal surprise, one of those gods answered his pleas.

Shaking its head in pity, as if the fallen human was not worth the time or effort to kill, the Predator turned once again to face its real prey.

The chattering black monster, its ragged neck wound still spewing poisonous green bile, put its back against a tree. Tail whipping, claws extended, the monster prepared for its final battle.

Legs braced, the Predator tossed its head and let loose with a savage howl that shook the jungle. Then it charged.

Funan heard flesh rip and chitinous armor crack. Then came the wet sound of green phosphorescent blood and acidic poisonous venom as both splattered the clearing.

Branches shook and trees quaked in the wake of the terrible life-and-death struggle. While the jungle smoked and burned around him, Funan watched in helpless fascination as two primeval creatures, whose unearthly origins were beyond his comprehension, fought savagely to the death.

CHAPTER 1

Bouvetoya Whaling Station,

Antarctica, 1904

The Emma sailed for the shores of Bouvetoya Island at the start of the 1904 whaling season with a full complement of sailors, harpooners, boats and oil processing equipment—enough to slaughter whales and extract their oil for a full year on the Antarctic ice before returning to Norway the following year.

Emma’s newest skipper and part-owner Sven Nyberg intended to make his first and last voyage as a whaler a profitable one. Sven’s brother, Bjorn, had been the Emma’s captain for nineteen seasons, but Bjorn had died of a fever during last year’s return voyage, which had compelled his brother to assume command on this, the final commercial venture of the Nyberg Brothers Oil Company of Oslo. Upon his return to Norway, Sven fully intended to sell his family’s business to the highest bidder.

The dawn of this new century was bringing an end to traditional whaling. Magnate Christian Christensen had opened a modern processing facility in Grytviken that would eventually edge out smaller Antarctic whaling concerns like the Nyberg brothers—men who’d followed methods practiced by Norwegians since the days of the Vikings. Like seal hunting, an activity that had made many a family fortune back in the 1870s, whaling was becoming an unprofitable enterprise. Declining herds and rising competition from British and Scottish whalers—and recently even the Japanese—along with giant conglomerates like the Christensen corporation were gradually ending the era of the self-sufficient, independent whaler.

Still, Sven Nyberg would try to make the Nyberg Brothers a viable oil company for a little while longer. It was the only way to ensure a profitable sale of his family’s interests. To that end Sven had offered Oslo’s most experienced whale hunter, Karl Johanssen, a position as first mate, with a five-percent share of the expedition’s profits. If successful, the Emma’s journey to the South Pole would make Karl a very wealthy man.

The offer could not have come at a better time for Karl Johanssen. A whaler since he’d been twelve years old, Johanssen had weathered twenty-seven seasons on the ice and survived them with all of his limbs, fingers and toes intact—no mean feat where temperatures could reach 50 degrees below zero. From past voyages with brother Bjorn, Johanssen was also familiar with the Nyberg Brothers’ oil processing facility on Bouvetoya Island, one of the world’s most remote locations.

A few years before, in 1897, Karl Johanssen thought he’d given up the sea for good. Lured to northern California by his brother’s promises of wealth, Karl had squandered his meager savings trying to strike it rich in the Alaska gold rush. Forced to return to whaling out of financial desperation, he’d been ready to sign onto one of Christensen’s ships for a paltry one-half of one percent share when Sven Nyberg had made his offer. A berth as first mate with a full five-percent share was Karl’s lucky second chance at a comfortable retirement.

Of course, Karl would work hard for the money. Sven Nyberg was an indifferent seaman, and he’d never spent even a single season on the Antarctic ice. Fortunately, during their long twelve months of back-breaking labor, Sven had been wise enough to defer to Karl’s judgment in nearly every situation. Under the harpooner’s tutelage, the younger Nyberg brother had learned secrets of the whale hunting trade that it would have taken him years to discover on his own. The result, after a year, was an incredibly successful hunt, with Emma towing over three hundred carcasses into the cove at Bouvetoya Island. There the remains of blues, minkes and sperms would be cut up and the blubber rendered for its oil.

It was during the grimy rendering process, when the men were outside for lengths of time attending the huge iron vat dominating the harbor, that the whalers began to see strange lights in the sky, and not the southern lights they were used to seeing.

Over Lykke Peak and the taller, three-thousand-foot Olav Peak that overshadowed the oil processing facility, bursts like distant cannon fire lit the sky, and explosions on the ice could be heard in the distance. Then a strange reddish glow appeared on the horizon, illuminating the ceaseless twilight with the brilliance of a thousand cook fires. The light danced crimson off the ice and tinged the millions of whalebones that littered the beach a sickly hue. Often—but not always—the eerie lights were accompanied by tremors deep beneath the ground under their feet.

While volcanic activity on the island was not unusual—sometime in 1896 part of the island had even been destroyed by a volcanic eruption—the phenomena unsettled the whalers, who were trapped on Bouvetoya until the spring thaw no matter what happened. So after a few days of these strange events, in an effort to calm the