Predator If It Bleeds 46

Then it opened its mouth-its jaws opening wide, showing the big fangs that pointed almost inwardly, the red-webbed mouth-and he was looking down the Predator's throat as it lunged roaring at him. Nialls quickly sidestepped-and then realized the Yautja had only been feinting, pretending to be coming at him to see how quickly he reacted; see if he could be startled into freezing.

"That's not going to work, crab-face," he told it.

The armor had responded well, enhancing his movements but not overdoing the enhancement.
It responded to his remark-Nialls had heard the creatures sometimes parroted human speech. "Not going towork..." came the mocking voice.

Nialls squared himself, trying to keep his head clear, his pulse down. Focus and maybe get this over with early. Get it to accept defeat...He pointed the plasma caster, and fired. Nialls hadn't aimed directly at the creature-not supposed to kill it. He aimed at the ground just in front of its clawed feet, to give it a warning and knock it back with a shockwave. But by the time the blast hit the ground the Yautja wasn't there. It had switched on its active camouflage, was all but invisible-he caught a barely visible cubistic outline of it as, far faster than he'd given it credit for, the Yautja leapt over the plasma caster's blast trajectory, coming right at him, whipping metal spikes from its left-hand gauntlet at his helmet.

Nialls overreacted in his surprise, stumbled back, fell on his back-and then it was on him, its knees on his chest. It had triggered the long, barbed metal gougers from its left gauntlet. It did have a weapon-he could glimpse light reflecting from it, despite the electronic camouflage. It slammed the heavy, barbed gougers at his faceplate; the transparent layers protecting his face held, but Nialls felt like his head was inside a ringing church bell. And he could sense the strain in the helmet. It slammed the gougers down again. Was that a crack in the corner of the faceplate? Struggling to shove the creature off him, Nialls swung hard up at the Yautja's head with his mailed left fist-but the Yautja, red-yellow eyes glowing with kill-lust, blocked it easily with the gauntlet.

The blow somehow switched off its camouflage and he saw it all too well, roaring at him, its eyes bright with hate as it slammed his helmet again with the gougers. The snipers were up there on the wall. Why didn't they at least wing the Yautja?
The Yautja raised its tautly muscled left fist, gathering its strength-preparing to smash his faceplate.

Nialls was reluctant to disobey orders but he was going to have to shoot this thing off him. He aimed the plasma caster at it almost point blank but it grabbed the caster by the muzzle, used all its strength and its better positioning to turn the weapon-just as the caster fired-right where it wanted the plasma beam to go. The top of the enclosing wall on the right shattered. A piece of shattered wall struck the alien, and its grip was loosened for a moment. Nialls got his right knee bent, braced his foot under his hip and used the whole force of the leg- his and the armor's force-to fling the alien away. The Yautja roared as it was thrown back, and Nialls felt awrenching in his suit.

He lost the grip on his gun. He rolled, got quickly to his feet-and saw that the plasma caster was no longer in his hand. The Yautja had it-had snapped its connective cable. It was crouching, aiming the caster at the sniper platform...Neither sniper was in sight now. It fired-blasting more of the upper wall away, then turned the weapon toward Nialls. But he knew something the creature didn't. The human-engineered version of the caster was fed by the cable; it only stored one shot at a time in its load chamber. And the Yautja had used that shot. The gun failed to fire-and the alien tossed it away.

It slashed at Nialls with its gougers; he blocked the blow with his right hand, smashed at the thing with his left, caught it on the side of its head. Its luminous yellow-green blood spurted from a scalp wound. He circled it-and it rushed him, slashing. He jumped aside... but it had simply gotten him out of the way. It jumped to the break in the wall and pulled itself over.

Nialls bounded after it, jumped-but it could jump higher than he could. He couldn't catch the lower edge of the break in the wall. Cursing, he dropped back. Someone up there screamed. A gun fired. Then there was silence, except for the base's
alarms going off...-pg.263-262-264 chpt.10