Aliens vs. Predator: Hunter's Planet: Novel Plot & Lore

Published: December 1994
Author: David Bischoff
Publisher: Bantam Spectra
Format: Paperback
Pages: 260
ISBN: 978-0-553-56556-0
Series: Aliens vs. Predator, Book 2
Setting: Alistair Three / Blior

Aliens vs. Predator: Hunter's Planet is a 1994 novel by David Bischoff, published by Bantam Spectra in December 1994. It was an original sequel to Prey, not a comic novelization, and followed Machiko Noguchi after two years with a Yautja pack. She had turned on that pack at the colony world Gordian and was doing company paperwork on Alistair Three when Livermore Evanston hired her onto his hunt world Blior. Radio-controlled Xenomorphs and a returning clan wrecked the safari business, she killed the hunter she called Shorty, and she held Evanstonville after a hunter took Evanston's skull.

Plot Summary

Machiko was off Ryushi by then, and a separate Hunter party was on the training world Var. Nat'ka'pu was Leader of that party until an armed Hard Meat killed him. His short adjutant Lar'nix'va took the hunt. Machiko still wore the mark Dachande had cut into her forehead. Livermore Evanston had filled one continent of Blior with bought game and, in a locked wing of his factory, radio-controlled Xenomorphs.

Two Years And Gordian

After the ranchers left Ryushi, Vk'leita's pack found Machiko Blooded, with Dachande's mark and a Queen skull over her door. She hunted with them for two years under the name Dahdtoudi, "Little Knife." On one trip Top Knot led a live Queen capture. A hunter she nicknamed Shorty shoved her to the rear, a drone dropped on him, and she burned it off him. Three-Spot died when the Queen slashed his chest. Machiko left her post, grabbed a loose rope, and held the Queen until the pack had her again. Top Knot struck her for leaving her place, then put her on point.

At the ship the Queen broke loose and Shorty slammed a door on Machiko. She got out through a vent and cut off most of the Queen's hand, along with her own ceremonial ringlets. The pack bowed except Shorty. On the human colony Gordian the same pack seeded bugs among settlers. Machiko fought the Hunters to keep those people alive, and the Company hid her afterward.

Alistair Three

The Company parked her on Alistair Three, also called Doc's World after the man who found it. Solitaire City held about ten thousand people and shipped narkon ore for starship engines. Machiko ran spreadsheets for a local boss named Darkins and was bored enough to notice gray in her hair. Her companion was Attila, a mechanical android she had bought and programmed as a trainer, with leftover personality she could not wipe without wiping him.

Livermore Evanston arrived in a private KX yacht and offered to tear up her contract. Bugs had appeared on his world the way they had on Ryushi and Gordian, and guests were dying for reasons he would not name. He would pay her for one or two weeks and leave her enough to start over if she walked. His operations chief Chelsea Zorski had done the work that found her. Machiko signed and took Attila with her.

The Var Hunt

On Var, a world the clan used only off and on, Nat'ka'pu took four students and two adjutants after sensors found a single Hard Meat larger than a drone. He beat the honor-poor student Ki'vik'non in the kehrite first, then went in with a spear to wound the prey for the young ones. The creature had hand-like structures and a firearm. Explosive rounds blew the Leader's head and chest apart. Lar'nix'va and the unnamed second adjutant burned the thing, and Lar'nix'va declared himself Leader with no challenge.

The pack later made him prove that claim with a Hard Meat trial. Bakuub, also called Straight Spear, wanted a team test anyway. Lar'nix'va chose humans and loosed Hard Meat on the same world, a raid on the hunters he blamed for Nat'ka'pu's death. Other packs were hunting nearby and would help only if needed.

Blior

Blior was the fourth of seven worlds around a yellow sun in the Norn system, with five small moons and twenty-nine Australia-sized continents. Evanston had settled one island continent, Livermoreland, and built the planned town Evanstonville between two rivers. He sold safaris of factory-grown game, including six-limbed zangoids and a rebuilt tyrannosaurus, and he traded with the Company while presenting himself as independent. Attila later told Machiko that the independence was a lie and that tearing her contract had been easy because the Company wanted her there.

On the yacht Attila found a hidden case of Hunter gear: a glove, a broken javelin, half a bloody mask, and a knife. Evanston had picked up those oddments when he settled the planet, from a crashed hunt ship his people had stripped. Preserved bug bodies had come out of that wreck, and he had later bought a live specimen taken on Ryushi. Years of genetic work went into the batch he kept in the inner factory. Machiko did not tell him about the Yautja. He already knew more about Ryushi than the Company had put in her file.

The Safari

Before Machiko landed, lawyer Abner Brookings and Petra Piezki went out with guides Hank Nickelson and Hans Beinz after a beacon-marked zangoid. The animal was dying of a Chestburster. A Yautja throwing disc killed the larva, then a net and spears took Blake and Alvarez. A spear killed Hank. The returning disc nearly took Hans's head. Brookings ran when Piezki fell and a Facehugger locked on. He left her and was the only guest who made it back to town.

Willem Cordial toured Machiko through parks where guests shotgunned waterfowl and robots cleared the carcasses. About fifteen hired fighters waited at the barracks, including former Colonial Marine captain Dick Daniels, security veteran Ned Sanchez, Lou MacCraken, and Mishka Marino. They had been told about bugs, not Hunters. Daniels groped Machiko and she threw him. Evanston still kept the inner factory closed.

The T-Rex

Against Evanston's delay, Machiko took a grav copter over the hunt grounds. She saw ten Yautja baiting a factory-grown tyrannosaurus with spears, burners in reserve, and recognized Shorty running the work. A cloaked Hunter came at the copter. Attila, using hidden flight and weapons programs, destroyed that Hunter with the rocket launcher. They did not tell Evanston at once.

Evanston, Brookings, and Zorski then admitted other Hunters were on Blior and were the source of the bugs. They had hired Machiko because they believed she knew those aliens. They still would not open the factory. The next morning her team found the safari site: a burned pile of bug remains mixed with metal, plastic, glass, and circuitry, and Petra Piezki still alive. Piezki tried to strangle Brookings for leaving her. In the infirmary a chestburster came out of her, and Machiko shot the larva.

The Biofactory

Machiko slept with Sanchez and kept him out of the next job so Evanston could not fire him for it. Attila walked the public factory, stole badges, faked retinal and DNA checks, and got them uniforms. The vaulted inner wing held tanks of bug bodies with opposable thumbs, chitin, and cyborg neurotransmitter links. Some of them had eyes, then alarms went and security fire wrecked Attila's body with an explosive shell. Machiko took his still-conscious head, and he started a stolen four-wheeler into the wild.

The Challenge

She would not go back for a memory wipe. She made the ka'rik'na, the summoning call. A Hunter saw Dachande's mark, and the pack decloaked, about ten of them. Lar'nix'va arrived, called her Traitor, and ordered her killed. She challenged him under the honor code. They fought with spears. Attila's head fired a laser through Shorty's temple, and Machiko finished the kill with a spear through chin and neck. The pack accepted the win and did not see the laser hole.

Attila's translator came on. The Hunters told the crashed-ship story and the gun-bug that had killed their Leader. About fifty Yautja could be gathered. Attila then told Machiko he was an X Group plant, built for her record and her Hunter ties, and that the group's real name was not his to give. She wanted the cyborgs stopped first. Bakuub announced that Lar'nix'va was dead and that he was Leader.

The Raid

Bakuub's hunt ships could not strike Evanstonville from the air. Settlement weapons covered those approaches, so the attack had to come on the ground with human allies. Sanchez brought in Daniels, MacCraken, and Marino. MacCraken and Marino would bomb the south force-field as a diversion. Sanchez and Daniels would drop a west fence section near the factory. Machiko would lead about fifty cloaked Hunters through that gap at half past midnight. Daniels wanted the world and the money. Machiko wanted the lab stopped.

The diversion ran late, then the fence came down and they rammed a door. Evanston was already in a basement war-room and released twenty on-line units as a first field test. They were stiff, remote-directed, and some leaned toward Queenhood. Machiko told Bakuub to fight fast and keep moving. The Hunters dropped about five of the cyborgs and lost a couple of their own before Evanston's control panel shorted.

The Factory Blast

With the override dead the units bolted. They tore through security and ignored most Yautja except those in the way. Machiko ordered everyone out. Evanston gave a voice command that blew the factory, and the building exploded with Hunters still inside. Hybrids kept killing in the open. Machiko and Sanchez took main headquarters. Zorski folded, then drew and shot Sanchez, who lived. Attila's head burned a laser through Zorski's forehead.

The Yacht

A technician under Machiko's gun named the escape: a tube from the bunker to a waiting car, then Evanston's spaceyacht, which he could fly himself. Brookings was already in that limo. A cyborg caught them short of the ramp. Evanston wrenched the wheel, broke the creature's legs against the car, jumped out, and left Brookings to the jaws. He sealed the yacht, raised a force field, and went for the takeoff codes, planning to bring Company Marines back and wipe the settlement.

Attila's headless body was already in the pilot's chair and had locked the systems. Evanston shot the torso and it stayed up. Machiko's voice came through the android and told him a party was coming to bring him back. He gave her the kill codes for each cyborg over the radio. A wounded Hunter then came up from the hold, pulled his mask, and showed wrist blades still wet from the factory. Evanston called for Machiko, but the android body had slumped into the chair and no one came for him.

Evanstonville

Machiko had technicians fire those kill codes. On the monitors the metal on the remaining cyborgs sparked and the bodies blew apart. She announced that Evanston's rule was over, that guns should go down, and that the Yautja would not kill the unarmed. Daniels, MacCraken, and Marino checked in alive. She told the town Evanston was being held.

Bakuub's party walked into headquarters, and a warrior held up a net sack with Evanston's fresh skull. Bakuub called it a trophy, then said they would rest and talk the next day about the wild bugs. Attila said X Group could arm a Company-independent Blior, and asked to be put back on a body. Machiko and Sanchez claimed the world together. The factory cyborgs were gone. Adult Xenomorphs had kept spreading while the town fought.

The Yautja

Nat'ka'pu ran a training party of four students, two adjutants, and himself. The students and the Leader carried spears. The adjutants carried burners. After he died, Lar'nix'va took Leadership on the spot, then held it with a Hard Meat trial when the pack pushed back. Bakuub judged him a fool who wanted personal glory, not the People's good, and took command after Machiko killed him.

Lar'nix'va was the hunter Machiko called Shorty during the Queen capture. He started on Var as adjutant, not Leader. He hated a Blooded human from those earlier hunts, slammed a door to feed her to a Queen, and on Blior ordered her killed without a hearing. The pack only listened after she won a death-challenge. Dachande's mark got her a pause, not a place in the line.

Top Knot led the Queen capture during her two years with the pack and was not on Blior. Vk'leita was the Leader who found her on Ryushi. Ki'vik'non was beaten in the kehrite. About fifty Hunters from several packs hit the factory. The hunt ships stayed off the settlement.

The Hard Meat

Ordinary bugs on Blior came from plundered wreck specimens and from whatever the visiting packs had loosed. A zangoid and Petra Piezki both carried chestbursters. Those adult Xenomorphs kept breeding while the town fought the factory. The planet had no living Queen.

The factory creatures were a later batch bred for more intelligence, then fitted with radio-control shunts, armor, and weapons. Evanston called them Buggers. Some had eyes and opposable thumbs. Some leaned toward Queenhood and handled guns badly. The Var escapee used explosive bullets. The twenty combat units carried blasters, spears, and knives. When the war-room panel died they did not power down. They scattered and killed humans in the open until the factory blast and the later kill codes stopped them.

Confirmed Kills

The Var cyborg's gun killed Nat'ka'pu. Lar'nix'va and the second adjutant burned that prey. The Queen on Top Knot's capture hunt killed Three-Spot. Safari Hunters killed Blake, Alvarez, Hank Nickelson, Hans Beinz, and the rest of that guest party except Brookings and Piezki. A chestburster killed Piezki after Brookings left her facehugged. Machiko shot that larva, and a Yautja disc had already killed the zangoid's.

Attila destroyed the cloaked Hunter at the tyrannosaurus with the copter rocket, then killed Zorski with a head-laser. Machiko killed Lar'nix'va after that same laser opened the duel. A factory cyborg killed Brookings. A Hunter took Livermore Evanston on the locked yacht, and Bakuub's party brought the skull to headquarters. Security fire wrecked Attila's body. Sanchez was shot and lived. Daniels, MacCraken, and Marino lived. The twenty combat units died in the lab fight, the factory blast, or the later kill codes. Wild bugs remained.

Key Characters

Machiko Noguchi had hunted two years as Dahdtoudi after Dachande blooded her on Ryushi. She turned on the pack at Gordian, took Evanston's job, killed Shorty, and held Evanstonville with Sanchez while wild bugs kept spreading.
Attila was her mechanical android trainer and an X Group plant. Security wrecked his body, his head ran a laser and a translator, and his remote torso locked Evanston's yacht. He finished as a living head and asked to be put back on a body.
Livermore Evanston owned Blior and the inner factory. He released twenty radio-controlled Xenomorphs, blew the building, gave up the kill codes from the yacht, and died when a Hunter boarded.
Lar'nix'va was the short adjutant Machiko called Shorty. He took Leadership after Nat'ka'pu died, ran the ooman safari and the tyrannosaurus hunt, and died in the spear challenge.
Bakuub, also called Straight Spear, became Leader after Shorty's death, led the factory assault, and brought Evanston's skull to headquarters as a trophy.
Nat'ka'pu was Leader of the Var training party. An armed Hard Meat killed him on the first drop.
Ned Sanchez was a security veteran who had lost a partner in a hive. He recruited the mercs for the raid, was burned when Zorski shot him, and stayed to hold the world with Machiko.
Chelsea Zorski ran operations, found Machiko for Evanston, and died to Attila's laser after she shot Sanchez.
Abner Brookings was Evanston's lawyer. He left Piezki facehugged on the safari and died in a cyborg's jaws after driving the escape limo.
Petra Piezki survived the safari long enough to reach the infirmary, then died when a chestburster came out of her.
Dick Daniels was an ex-Colonial Marine captain among the hired fighters. He lived through the factory blast and wanted a share of the planet.
Top Knot led Machiko's Queen-capture pack during her two years with the hunters. He was not on Blior.

Place In The Books

Hunter's Planet is the second of the seven core Alien vs. Predator novels, after Prey and ahead of War, the 2004 film novelization, Ultimate Prey, Armageddon, and Rift War. It is an original 1994 plot, not a novelization. Prey's epilogue had sent Machiko out with Vk'leita. Here she hunted two years with that pack and broke at Gordian. Perry's War ignores that stretch and keeps her with Topknot for a year until Bunda.

The later comic line stayed with War, then Randy Stradley's Aliens vs. Predator: Three World War in 2010, another sequel beside Hunter's Planet. Top Knot's Queen hunt here already includes Shorty, Three-Spot, and the loose rope. The War comic later used that same hunt as its opening. Hunter's Planet leaves her on Blior. War leaves her flying toward a home she had not reached yet.

Nobody in the book names Chigusa or Weyland-Yutani. The employer is only "the Company." Nobody mentions an Earth hive war. Earth is still a place guests come from, and Daniels is an ordinary former Marine, not a leftover-hive specialist. The two years with the pack plus the later gap on Alistair Three do not line up with War's year on the Shell.

Editions

Bantam Spectra released the first edition as a paperback in December 1994 in the Dark Horse Science Fiction Novels line. The catalog length is 260 pages. John Bolton painted the cover, Machiko in clan mesh holding a Hunter mask with a hunter behind her. Locus dated the book December 1994.

Titan Books put Prey, Hunter's Planet, and War into The Complete Aliens vs. Predator Omnibus on 29 November 2016, an 832-page mass-market paperback. That is the text used for later reprints. The first US printing copyright page dates the Bantam book to December 1994, and the Catalog of Copyright entry lists 4 November 1997.

Behind The Scenes

David Bischoff wrote the novel as a sequel to the Perrys' Prey, not based on a Dark Horse comic. Some catalogs still file it as a novelization of Randy Stradley's comic line. The plot is original. The dedication is for Donald Maass, with thanks to editors Kij Johnson and Janna Silverstein. The omnibus author note places him as a science-fiction novelist since the early 1970s, with more than eighty books, including novelizations of Aliens, Gremlins, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and WarGames.

An old Hunter saying claimed a fight begun would not end until the end. Nat'ka'pu treated it as empty talk, then the Var drop killed him. Bischoff spells that earlier clan Leader Top Knot, two words, and her Hunter name Dahdtoudi. Prey had used Da'dtou-di. War later used Topknot as one word and kept Dahdtoudi without the hyphens. Shorty is Machiko's nickname for Lar'nix'va here, the same undersized rival War kills on Bunda.

Conclusion

Aliens vs. Predator: Hunter's Planet is David Bischoff's 1994 Bantam sequel to Prey. It covers Machiko's two years with the pack, the break at Gordian, Evanston's hunt world, and the fight that killed Shorty. The book ends with Evanston's skull in a Hunter's net, Machiko and Sanchez holding Evanstonville, and wild Xenomorphs still spreading on Blior.