Predator - Incursion by Tim Lebbon Read Free Book Online Page A

structures powered by nuclear-fusion reactors, their technology way beyond her understanding. Though a scientist, Palant always maintained that paleontology demanded an artist’s mind. Some people saw the processors as beautiful things, but to her they were clumsy man-made edifices struggling against nature. Every gain they made was hard-won, and they weren’t always successful. Nevertheless, recent analyses predicted that LV-1529 would be a Class 2 planet within fifteen years, and Class 1 in seven decades.
    “Getting back to your monsters this afternoon?” Rogers asked.
    “Yeah, why not. Got some ideas.”
    “What’re you working on now?” He’d seen the samples in her lab, the bio-frozen remnants of Yautja gathered from various contacts made over the last decade. A hand, one finger missing, the tattered stump of its wrist cauterized by the laser-rifle blast that had blown it off. The lower jaw, tusks long and sharp, inner teeth loosened where a new set had started to push through, and the various samples of blood and bodily fluids. Sad things, he sometimes thought. Other times, scary.
    “I’m trying to find out how their blood helps in wound repair and regeneration,” she said. “It’s something we only discovered recently with Eve.”
    “Ah, yeah, the only Yautja kept in captivity. Didn’t it kill itself?”
    “That’s still debated. I believe it did. They found it dead in its cell, and I think it willed its hearts to stop beating.” Palant so wished she’d had a chance to meet Eve—to talk, ask its real name. Attempting their language was another aim of her research, although the strand that had advanced the least. Company scientists had treated it more as a vivisection experiment than what it should have been—contact with an intelligent, highly advanced alien species.
    “Originally I thought it might have been killed with nano-tech, and I spent a long time trying to look into that. Artificial tech first, then when I found no evidence of that I looked into bio-tech.”
    “Huh?”
    “Naturally created nano-bots. W-Y have been researching it for years, without any real success. Essentially it takes tweaking genetics to create nano-bots from biological material already extant in a body, then programming those genes for specific tasks.”
    “Right,” Rogers said. “I wonder what’s for dinner.”
    She smiled, but knew he was joking. Rogers was brighter than he liked to let on, and they’d been friends long enough for him to understand what she talked about more than most. Sometimes she thought of inviting him to become her assistant, but she liked their relationship, and that kind of friendship required distance.
    In her lab, she became far too intense.
    “Thing is, after a long time looking into that, I started to think it was too basic. Old-fashioned thinking. I wasn’t giving their biology the respect it deserved. I was looking more at tech than at an evolved natural ability. So now I’ve gone back to basics, comparing their blood to other creatures that can regenerate. Newts, starfish, flatworms. The axolotl, an amazing creature. Even mammals like deer, which can regrow their antlers, and some bats that can repair damaged wings.”
    “And the Company keep pumping resources at what you do?”
    “Sure they do. BioWeapons and ArmoTech love me.”
    Rogers said nothing. They’d talked about this many times before, and he knew that her intentions were far more pure and honest. She was utterly fascinated with the Yautja, dreamed of making meaningful contact with them, and the best way to do that was to take advantage of the Company’s ongoing desire to benefit from their various warlike technologies.
    “Doesn’t it bug you, playing the system to do what you want to do?” he asked at last. The Company paid his wages, too, and it was unusual to hear him vocalize what she knew he already thought.
    “I don’t see it like that,” she said. “I just have wider horizons. It’s still a great