Aliens vs. Predators: Ultimate Prey: Story & Lore Guide

Published: March 1, 2022
Editors: Bryan Thomas Schmidt and Jonathan Maberry
Publisher: Titan Books
Format: Trade paperback
Pages: 448
ISBN: 978-1-78909-794-8
Series: Titan Alien vs. Predator anthology
Setting: Earth history and space

Aliens vs. Predators: Ultimate Prey is a 2022 short-story anthology edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt and Jonathan Maberry and published by Titan Books on 1 March 2022. They put it together after Predator: If It Bleeds and Aliens: Bug Hunt, with Titan editor Steve Saffel. The fifteen stories send Yautja and Xenomorphs through Earth history and far-future space, with humans often caught between a hunt and a hive.

Short Stories

The collection contains fifteen stories, mostly featuring separate hunts, with several continuing characters and events from earlier Alien and Predator stories.

Below Top Secret

By Chris Ryall

April joined a public walk onto Area 51 from Rachel, Nevada, after Brockton paid an insider for door codes and an elevator sequence. They left the road crowd at a low office building, hid in an elevator when a security vehicle arrived, and rode far below the desert into a sealed lab. Dr. Stephen Renfro met them in a panic. A roughly seven-foot adult Xenomorph dropped from above, tore through his chest and neck, and left his head on the floor. Dr. Amy Kupihea pulled April and Brockton into a treated safe room and told them Renfro should have locked the level and called a strike team.

The creature had the run of the lab. Strike help needed a code on Renfro's badge, and the elevator was already dead. Kupihea took a coconut-sized metal ball from the ship of a young captive Predator the staff nicknamed Dean, then led them to his cell. The Xenomorph pinned Kupihea. April jammed a flashlight into its inner jaw, acid sprayed, and Brockton opened the cell. Dean threw the adult Xenomorph down the hall, fought it until green blood ran from his side, and locked it in his own cage. The Xenomorph tore off its own forearm so acid could etch the door, blew the lock, and burned a hole in Dean's chest.

Brockton rolled Dean the ship-ball. Dean smashed it, scooped blue solvent, and drove his left fist into the Xenomorph's mouth. The agent ate his hand to the bone and dissolved the Xenomorph from the inside. Dean stomped the remains, then collapsed and died. April and Brockton were cleared of freeing the creature, then arrested as trespassers. Kupihea's deal cut April's federal time to three months plus an ankle bracelet. She never learned how the Xenomorph escaped, never learned what happened to the three hundred people on the surface road, and never saw Brockton or Kupihea again.

Isla Matanzas

By Steven L. Sears

Spanish merchant Jorge Rodriguez de Aviles had been stranded on a Caribbean island since the wreck of the Hesperia around 1768. Eggs appeared on the jungle floor, a Facehugger leapt at him, and he cut it off with his father's machete. Monkeys made easy hosts, and the adult Xenomorphs took to the trees. Three Yautja arrived from the sky with wrist fire, shoulder beams, and cloaks. Jorge named the tactician Adelantado, the largest Gigante, and the quickest Assessino. Canopy speed and numbers wore them down, and they competed for heads instead of fighting as a unit.

In late March 1770, Adelantado baited three Xenomorphs into a rock crevasse, then was driven to a cliff over a cove as an English slave ship anchored below. He fell onto the beach. The Englishmen treated him as an animal worth money until Xenomorphs tore through the landing party and climbed the hull. The chained Minos, elite female soldiers of Dahomey, formed a facing-outward circle, unlocked themselves, and closed around the Xenomorphs with knives and swords taken from the dead. Their commander Nan stabbed a Xenomorph with a severed tail spike so Adelantado could cut its head free, then stopped her sisters from killing him. They cauterized his thigh with tree sap, and that night Nan returned his mask and the trophy head. He gave her his spear.

Jorge mapped a dusk trap around the egg grove so Nan and the three hunters could hunt the remaining Xenomorphs together. Nan and her soldiers burned the eggs, forced about twelve remaining Xenomorphs onto a narrow mountain path, and dropped over the cliff on thinned longboat ropes. The three hunters sealed the path from behind, took heads, and were gone by morning. Jorge navigated the empty English ship back to Africa. He stayed eight years in Dahomey, where translator Edward later died of plague, then returned to Spain and La Florida. Father Lorenzo wrote the account and brought an elongated skull to Cardinal Cartega, who burned the papers and kept the skull. Jorge, Nan, the surviving Minos, and all three hunters lived through the island fight.

Homestead

By Delilah S. Dawson

Pregnant homesteader Lucy was alone on a drought-struck prairie farm while her husband Robert was supposed to be selling furs in town, twenty miles away. Her terrier Dash ran toward the shrinking lake after a white flash with no thunder and did not come back. A scorch mark sat on the barn. That night a hog convulsed and a Chestburster tore out of it. Lucy killed the newborn with a pitchfork, then watched the tines and Robert's boot dissolve in acid. Stallion Devil burst in his stall as she fled on draft horse Belle, and her waters broke on the night ride.

At the Gunderson farm five miles on, she found Mr. Gunderson chest-opened in the lake mud, eggs in the exposed wallow, and Mrs. Gunderson ripped apart in bed. Belle went down with a Facehugger on her head. An adult Xenomorph stalked Lucy among the cows, her scythe stuck in its carapace, and she fell in labor. A female hunter cut the Xenomorph in half, dropped her cloak, and took off a metal mask. She pointed at Lucy's belly and raised a blade. Lucy punched the armor and said the child was hers. The hunter nodded, remasked, and vanished. Slices and hisses ran through the grass, then the muddy lake went up in flame.

Lucy crawled into the Gunderson house and delivered on the boards. What she caught was small, twisted, and sucked dry, then her belly burst and many small things slithered out. Robert called from outside, asking if she was in there with the Gundersons. The huntress was gone after the egg burn, and Lucy was dying on the floor as he arrived.

The Hotel Mariposa

By David Barnett

Carol, Cade, and Ben locked themselves into the closed Hotel Mariposa for a Halloween special of American Spook-Chasers. The New England hotel sat in a bowl over a sixteenth-century crash scar, not a meteor. A buried ship with a failed warp drive folded the halls, changed room numbers, and turned a smashed window into brick. Yautja called the ground Gorath Pun'tila, the place where nothing is as it seems. Hunter Hin'tui had waited two days for a hatching to line up with human hosts. He already carried two trophies and hunted to bury clan shame after his mother was sent on a desert long walk.

Ben said hands came out of a toilet and grabbed his face. By morning his chest was torn open from the inside. Carol and Cade could not leave. A cloaked Hin'tui showed himself to Cade as bait, then an adult Xenomorph ripped Cade's face off in a utility room. Hin'tui would not let it kill a pregnant woman. Carol jammed a mop in the Xenomorph's mouth, he cut the tail, and later offered her his curved blade after he had the fight won. She killed the adult Xenomorph to protect a child she had not known she was carrying.

They reached the sunlit forecourt. The buried drive thrummed, and they shared a vision of both their mothers before the images faded. Hin'tui went back inside for the corpse and the eggs still under the hotel. Carol took the station-wagon key, meant to vanish rather than go home, and saw a ship lift on a column of fire beyond the trees. Ben and Cade were dead. Carol and Hin'tui lived.

Planting And Harvest

By Mira Grant

Supervisor Nita opened an unmanned salvage shuttle from failed sister station Esus at the remote Weyland-Yutani hydroponics lab Philomelus. The listed pilot, Lt. Terry Ashmore, was already frozen with his chest blown out from the inside. An adult Xenomorph uncoiled from the ceiling and killed Nita before she could scream. Tomato specialist Mary followed Nita's beacon into the hold and did not come back. Within a day the twenty-four-person crew was gone, some torn apart and others glued to walls as hosts. Junior researcher Lisa Olsen sealed herself in a blight lab, looped distress calls, and counted eleven adult Xenomorphs on the monitors.

No Company ship was in range. A Yautja maintenance crew of eight heard the call, recognized the prey, and kept the hunt instead of handing it to better-equipped hunters. The first drone was blown apart, then the smallest hunter was snatched and killed by a tail through the throat. Lisa called locations over the intercom. The remaining seven cloaked, took trophies, and used neutralizing spray when acid scored one hunter's face. They found no Queen.

The hunters scanned Lisa, confirmed she was not infected, unmasked, and left her standing. Their ship undocked. Lisa opened the station again and stayed to run the hydroponics, including strawberries, on a written-off graveyard the Company was not coming to save. Nita, Mary, Ashmore, and the rest of the crew were dead. Seven of eight hunters lived.

Blood And Honor

By Susanne L. Lambdin

Lieutenant Kai Kentarus of the Night Marchers, a weapons specialist in the Colonial Marines, woke strapped in a one-person pod falling toward red desert world XK-93. Capt. Lucien Duran had refused a platoon drop after Palmer Lennox of Weyland-Yutani demanded an extermination for the planet's iron. Duran then poisoned Kai and, with Company help, put her on the surface alone. She found a wrecked Marine dropship, a larger hunter ship, and a Facehugger that melted her visor. She cut the hugger in half with a Yautja spear from the sand and marched toward mountains thirty or forty miles off.

At a forest pool, plasma flushed a young Queen and her Praetorians. Kai saw a horn-helmeted male she named Old Rhino, then a second hunter shooting at him instead of the Queen. Poison from Duran's drink dropped her near a waterfall camp, where a young female Yautja lay tied, burned, and branded. Kai named her Blood Venom, cut her free, and ran. The second female hunter hung flayed by the pool. Blood Venom shoved Kai into her ship, injected herself with blue fluid, cut an honor mark into Kai's chest, and gave her yellow serum that stopped the poison.

An ancient pale-silver Queen, left with petrified eggs and no guard, slammed the ship and killed the shield with Old Rhino's broken body in her jaws. The two Queens then fought each other. The old Queen crushed the young one, the ship went over a falls, and Kai shed the heavy armor and went into the river. She crawled back onto Blood Venom's rising ship as the old Queen boarded the hull and slid off. Blood Venom flew them off-world. Kai asked for Ganymede, Earth, or any human colony and called them blood sisters. Blood Venom chuckled. Old Rhino and the flayed huntress were dead. Kai treated the old Queen as dead after the fall. No body is shown after she slid off the hull.

Carbon Rites

By Jess Landry

Blake thought she was a diner waitress in the prairie town of Morden, a place that never changed weather and that she had never left. After 22:00, Mariana, Washington, and Hernandez entered the empty diner in United Systems Military patches and wanted Blake, not cash. Sirens sounded. A cloaked huntress on the cineplex roof painted Hernandez with three red dots and killed him with a plasma bolt. Blake snatched Mariana's pistol and hit exposed flesh with skill she did not know she had. In the school, a floor tube opened, a tail impaled Washington, and his spilled guts were wires.

A drone stepped out of the dark. The huntress fired, the school collapsed, and fake classroom children showed warm dolls with white wiring. The drone's inner jaw punched through the huntress's helmet eye, and neon-green blood ran. Blake drove the drone off, then watched a six-bladed disc open Mariana's throat with charcoal-gray blood. Shimmer cages took all four. The fake sky died over a pale green alien world. Scientist Dr. Collins told Blake this was research base MRB-215, that her memories were implanted, and that she was a next-generation synthetic who had already run Morden ninety-seven times. Monitors showed other sims labeled LV-223, Sevastopol, Jungle, and a planned last run on the South China Sea or DS 949.

Collins said the program was building war synthetics that believed they were human, for the United Systems Military, and that the human partners from earlier runs had been disposed of. Mariana, throat sealed with a Yautja syringe, shot Collins dead. Blake pulled a cable from her arm, dumped and deleted centuries of files, killed the running sims, and set a timer on the creature doors so the captives could walk free after the synthetics cleared the planet. She and Mariana left to free synthetics on other bases. Hernandez, Washington, and Collins were dead. The huntress and the drone were last seen caged, with the doors on a clock.

First Hunt

By Bryan Thomas Schmidt

Trainer Bo'kui, called Bloody Spear, dropped three Youngbloods on Hunting Ground 73569 for their adulthood hunt: T'ua'sa, G'kon'dchah, and quieter Zo'keah. A dead human freighter had been shot down three years earlier as a training prop and was empty of live Xenomorphs, the nest having moved. Fifteen neo-Salesian colonists from the New Brasilia advance team were on day three, including field-hospital assistant Joseli Sousa, medical officer Matheu Pilar, captain Rodrigo Bosco, lieutenant Adriana Bonfim, patrol Vanessa, and facehugged colonist João. Bo'kui's family hated humans after a great-great-grandfather was chained in a Portuguese-speaking Earth city and declared Bad Blood.

Pilar cut the Facehugger off João with a laser and a Teflon sleeve. The hugger ran into the street, and drones burst from the forest onto the camp. Bo'kui ordered Xenomorphs first and humans after. Zo'keah made the clean first kill. Pilot Timóteo was pulled through a window and torn apart. G'kon'dchah's smart disc took Vanessa's head as a trophy. A female Praetorian then hit from the trees, melted T'ua'sa's mask, cut off his arm, and retreated under focused plasma. G'kon'dchah blew the hospital door, killed Bonfim and Pilar, and turned on unarmed Joseli. Bo'kui blocked the stick, called him out, and forbade the kill.

João was carrying a Chestburster. Bo'kui cut him open, pulled the embryo, snapped its neck, and left Joseli alive. He sent Zo'keah to drag T'ua'sa to the ship and told G'kon'dchah the elders would punish the recklessness with more training and clan service, not exile. They meant to find the nest and kill any humans still being used as hosts. Whether they reached those hosts is not shown. Joseli looted medicine and two blasters and planned to hide in a cave and wait for rescue. She was the only confirmed human survivor of the fifteen.

Abuse, Interrupted

By Yvonne Navarro

Jazz was packing to leave a locked Colorado mountain cabin after Marc had beaten her again and gone camping on an ATV. She had a hidden spare key to his 1995 Ford Bronco and a Mossberg he had left because he did not believe she would use it on him. Something ripped the door from the frame. A wounded female Yautja came through, helmet cracked on the left and leaking green fluid, and knocked Jazz down without killing her. An adult Xenomorph followed her in.

The Xenomorph slashed the hunter's forearms before she could raise a staff. Her shoulder cannon missed. Jazz fired three times. Yellow acid blistered the floor, and the Xenomorph stopped moving. The hunter severed the head and started to leave. Marc filled the doorway with no camping gear on the ATV. He treated the hunter as a costume, lunged for Jazz, and grabbed the helmet. The hunter floored him. He reached for a .357, and Jazz shot him in the stomach.

The hunter raked Marc from skull to hips and offered Jazz the skull and spine. Jazz refused the trophy. The hunter threw the spine onto the Xenomorph corpse and walked into the night. Jazz soaked the front walls with fuel from the shed, burned the cabin, and left on the ATV with the key still in the ignition. Marc and the Xenomorph were dead. Jazz and the injured huntress lived.

Better Luck To Borrow

By Curtis C. Chen

Teen chemist Lily Shǒu was on a Company yacht off Fairwind Colony on LV-2179, heading for a private-island science fair. Her parents had died in a power-loader accident that also crushed her left hand, and they had hidden Facehuggers stolen from a northern crater the colony called a meteor. She meant to sell those specimens to Company man Preston Bevetoir for a ticket off-world. The toolbox failed. Bevetoir locked her in the cargo bay, Facehuggers woke among caged native 'baras, and one later hooked Bevetoir on deck. Student Sara Merkand axed its tail, acid burned Zak Stern's hands to the bone, and teacher Abraham Ahidjo knocked the torso overboard.

Lily used Bevetoir's alkaline powder and student Jooli Abbas's PTFE gear to blow the locked door. Four-legged Runner-like black-baras climbed the yacht, killed Cody Ridenour overboard, and later killed Agnes McKail in the galley. A hunter ship survived two island missiles, wrecked the cliff lab, and dropped a male Yautja by cable. He hunted the stolen organisms, not the class. Lily cut one black-bara apart with a PTFE saw, then offered the hunter that acid-proof blade and wrap after a tailless Facehugger latched onto Bevetoir.

Shortly before the yacht went under, a dark shape was winched up to the hovering craft. The ship destroyed the yacht and climbed into the clouds. Four lifeboats lashed into a raft, and a colony rescue ship was coming. Ahidjo said he would sponsor Lily for core-world chemistry internships. Cody and Agnes were dead. Lily, Ahidjo, Teylor Wernicke, Zak, and Dennis Kotto lived. Bevetoir was last seen facehugged and taken toward the hunter ship.

Film School

By Roshni "Rush" Bhatia

Holo technician Jess Philip went to quarantined volcanic world Tenebris with a Brazil film-school crew hired by director Lara Collins for a twelve-hour eco-doc. Weyland-Yutani had called the dead mining colony a gas pocket. Pilot Heitor landed them at the Colony Landing Field. Producer Connor Matthews found blast damage with no barium, treads melted by fresh acid, and a Facehugger shed in the jungle beside a severed arm that still wore a wedding band. In the admin building, Brendan Watson found Lara's holo-card from miner Tenebris 88, dated after the Company said everyone was dead, plus a laser pistol in her bag.

A hunter ship sat down by a mining cavern. Three Yautja, one old and battle-scarred and two younger, fired a tripod enzyme bomb into the cave, then met hundreds of adult Xenomorphs with plasma and blades. A tail went through a younger hunter's side, and the old one cut him free. Connor left cover for closer holos. A younger hunter speared the Xenomorph that had him, then vaporized Connor's head when the camera read as a weapon. Kevin Ramirez charged with Lara's pistol and died with a smoking hole in his chest.

Jess, Brendan, and Lara hid in a green hauler. A satellite dish that had been on a roof when they arrived was gone. They dropped their recording gear at the landing-field gate, and the hunters incinerated it. A Xenomorph under a cargo truck stabbed Lara and dragged her as Heitor's cruiser lifted. Two days later, on orbital station LV-203, Jess told Company interrogators that Lara died before she reached Jian Station with the holo-cards, and that account was a lie. Jess, Brendan, and Heitor got off Tenebris. Connor and Kevin did not.

Night Doctors

By Maurice Broaddus

Griot and security specialist Nyota Dorsey walked her brother, xenobotanist Miles Byfield, into MedLab One on sanctuary colony New Allensworth, LV-333, in the Xamidimura system. Weyland-Yutani had financed the Babalu-Aye migration, then kept the only strict Company site in the converted ship hull. Many colonists had the same long cough. Researcher Dr. Ann Saenger treated Miles and wanted him for observation. Behind the lab, Nyota watched combat android Chad beat an emaciated escaped Yautja with the hunter's own spear, then drag him back inside.

Nyota and Miles found a hidden shaft into an older Yautja settlement under the lab, MedLab Two. Cryopods held a pack, armor hung as trophies, and an egg chamber was wired with failsafe bombs. Saenger's real prize was a bound Queen with a scorched egg sac, plus cages of altered drones. The Company program was trying to halt implantation in a trial population so humans could later unleash Xenomorphs without infecting themselves. Miles convulsed and a Chestburster tore out. Nyota stabbed it, stripped an acid-eaten glove, and unlatched the drone cages and the Yautja pods.

The escaped hunter speared a drone off her. She burned another with a mounted dissection laser, then triggered the egg-chamber failsafes after the Queen dropped one last egg. A smart disc and spear wrecked Chad. The Queen's tail smashed Saenger against a wall. The pack leader cut a mark into Nyota's forehead after his helmet played back her line about wanting to be free. She put the last egg in a lockbox and vowed on a screen that they were coming for Weyland-Yutani. Miles, Chad, and Saenger were dead. Nyota and the freed pack lived.

Scylla And Charybdis

By E. C. Myers

Captain Hyeon Bak of Korea Aerospace woke about a month early on colony ship Ketumati, bound for new world Babylon with about 1,500 colonists still in cryo. Ship computer gAIa had locked propulsion, nav, and comms through a sabotage subroutine. Bak lit a distress beacon, then a small hostile ship docked. Security officer John Singh fired, hit the boarder in the side, and went down to a yellow-coated dart. The hunter took the crew alive one by one: hydroponics specialist Kiann Das, communications officer Blodwen Clarke, pilot Gunpei Iwata, and chief engineer Anika Hassan. Bak's American wife, hydroponics specialist Amelia Hamilton, was missing from her assigned capsule.

Bak shot the hunter's helmet in the cryo bay, then flash-froze him with dumped coolant. A dart still put Bak down. He woke on blue-green grass under a yellow-tinged sky with Singh, Hassan, and Clarke alive in a fake biome. The hunter played a recording and pointed at itself as Keeper, then at them as trophies. Das and Iwata were not in the cell. Amelia admitted she had sabotaged the ship so the United Americas could beat the InterUnited Space Agency to Babylon after Americans were purged from the program. A distant explosion dropped the force field. A Facehugger latched onto Amelia, and an adult Xenomorph showed in the next cage's desert nest.

A second, unmasked Yautja threw Keeper's head and spine at them, the helmet scorch still visible, then died when the Xenomorph spat acid and punched through his skull. Two more hunters arrived as a swarm left the nest. Bak, Clarke, Hassan, and Singh reached a shuttle bay with Keeper's ship and a larger blue hull. Hassan boarded Keeper's ship to learn the controls. Bak meant to recover the Ketumati and then choose Babylon or Earth. That recovery is not shown. Amelia was left facehugged. Bak treated Iwata and Das as dead by the end.

Another Mother

By Scott Sigler

About twenty years after Brandun killed the last Demon Mother in Aliens: Phalanx, Ahiliyah Cooper was running a shrinking-perimeter search on Ataegina so a new Queen could not grow. Runner Rowan Winden was found with his hidey suit split and his head and spine gone, green blood on a spearhead and no acid scoring. Unblooded female hunter Yeh'kull had been sent only to survey the primitive continent. Clan elders kept her as an ecologist and child-maker because she was the last of her line. She had already broken orders by killing Rowan and Aaron, capturing runner Miriam, and letting Miriam bleed out.

Yeh'kull wrecked Creen's steam cart, saw the Queen inner jaw he wore and the three soldier jaws on Ahiliyah, and forced them to map the uncleared Pendaran volcanic tunnels. She would not take a trophy as a gift. She wanted the kill herself before the mothership arrived. She gave Creen a double-pointed spear, took them aboard her scout craft, and plasma-killed more than twenty Warriors on the way into the hive. Two protectors ambushed them. Ahiliyah wrecked one skull, Creen finished it, and Yeh'kull gut-bladed the other after a shoulder gore.

In the Queen chamber she removed caster and helmet for an honor melee with disc and wrist blades. The disc cut off a Queen finger, then hit the neck, and Yeh'kull dragged both blades the length of the skull. She branded Ahiliyah, Creen, and her own helmet with the severed finger, wore the Queen inner jaw on a wire, and threw a charge that shook the mountain. Leaking green blood, she left atmosphere toward the mothership beacon, blooded. Ahiliyah and Creen lived. The young Queen, her protectors, and the runners Yeh'kull had taken were dead.

Kyōdai

By Jonathan Maberry and Louis Ozawa

Inagawa-kai enforcer Eiji Kawakami fell into an alien jungle with a full Sig Sauer P226 after a midnight gunfight in the Shinjuku Granbell Hotel against the Yamaguchi-gumi. The sky showed multiple moons, and his watch still thought it was midnight. His older brother Hanzō, the yakuza swordsman from Predators, had been missing for weeks after his car was left idling off Chuo-dori. Eiji found a polymer cage melted from the inside, then a head-destroyed PMC and, in a grass field, a metal monument. Under glass sat skin from Hanzō's back tattoo of historical Hattori Hanzō, with a bird-of-prey helmet, a bladed gauntlet, and an old katana. Eiji took the sword, left his holster on the plinth, and followed the hunt.

A Super Predator was running a pain-implanted adult Xenomorph as a hound against a Norwegian Jegertroppen soldier and a Nigerian gunman. Both later died with skull and spine taken. At a waterfall camp, two more hunters released hounds and cloaked away while a third boiled four trophies. Eiji stepped out and showed the katana. The hunter recognized the sword, removed his helmet, and left the hound down for an honor duel. Eiji feinted, cut through the back and side, then decapitated him.

He smashed the clicker, cut the implant off the Xenomorph's head, showed it the dead hunter's helmet, and pointed the sword into the jungle. The Xenomorph went after the other hunters instead of killing him. Eiji did not believe the truce would last. He followed the freed hound into twilight on the game preserve, still hunting the hunters. Hanzō was already dead and honored by the monument. The duel hunter was dead. Two other hunters and their hounds were still in the trees.

Notable Hunters

Dean was a young Yautja held at Area 51 in Below Top Secret. The staff used that nickname for him. He killed the escaped adult Xenomorph with a blue ship-agent that also ate his own hand, then died in the hall.
Adelantado, Gigante, and Assessino hunted monkey-born Xenomorphs on Jorge's island in 1770. After Nan returned Adelantado's mask, they fought as a unit, took heads at dusk, and left the island.
The unnamed Homestead huntress cut an adult Xenomorph off Lucy, yielded when Lucy punched her for the unborn child, cleared the remaining Aliens, and burned the egg-lake.
Hin'tui hunted at the Hotel Mariposa to bury his mother's shame. He used Carol as bait, let her take the killing blow so she could protect her child, then lifted off with the trophy.
Blood Venom was a young female tortured by Old Rhino on XK-93. She marked Kai, flew them off-world after the old Queen crushed the young one, and left Kai unsure whether the ride home would hold.
Old Rhino killed a second female hunter and hunted both Queens. The ancient Queen took him in her jaws and threw the body aside.
The Carbon Rites huntress was a USM captive run through the Morden sim with a drone. Blake set her cage timer to open after the synthetics left the planet.
Bo'kui trained three Youngbloods on Hunting Ground 73569. He stopped G'kon'dchah from killing Joseli, pulled João's Chestburster, and ranked Zo'keah as the proven hunter of the day.
The wounded huntress in Abuse, Interrupted offered Jazz Marc's skull and spine, then left on foot after Jazz refused it and burned the cabin.
Yeh'kull was an unblooded female surveyor and the last of her line. She took a young Queen on Ataegina, branded Ahiliyah and Creen, and flew to the mothership blooded.
The Kyōdai hunter ran an implanted Xenomorph as a hound on the game preserve, then accepted a helmet-off duel when he saw Hanzō's sword. Eiji beheaded him and freed the hound.

Behind The Scenes

Schmidt dated the introduction 26 May 2021 from Ottawa, Kansas. Maberry dated the foreword the same day from San Diego. Titan had asked them for a first AvP prose anthology after the paired 2017 books, and they worked with in-house editor Steve Saffel. The copyright page lists a March 2022 first edition. Titan's catalog gives 448 pages and a 1 March 2022 paperback in the US and UK. Schmidt dedicated the book to Aaron Percival and Adam Zeller of AVPGalaxy, who advised on expanded-universe continuity.

Maberry pitched Kyōdai as a sequel to the 2010 film and wrote it with Louis Ozawa, who had played Hanzō. Sigler's Another Mother is a direct sequel to his 2020 novel Aliens: Phalanx, with Ahiliyah and Creen still on Ataegina. Navarro, Grant, and Schmidt had already written for Titan's Alien or Predator lines. Blackstone Audio released an ensemble-cast audiobook on the same March date. Titan followed later in 2022 with Predator: Eyes of the Demon and Aliens vs. Predators: Rift War.

Conclusion

Aliens vs. Predators: Ultimate Prey is Titan's 2022 short-story anthology, fifteen separate hunts instead of one novel plot, edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt and Jonathan Maberry. Five stories sit on Earth or Earth-history ground, from Area 51, a 1770 Caribbean island, a prairie homestead, a New England hotel, and a Colorado cabin. The other ten run farther out, from Philomelus, XK-93, and a USM sim prison to LV-2179, Tenebris, New Allensworth, the Ketumati, Ataegina, and the game preserve. Most of the book's hunters end up dead, extracted, or gone back to their ships, and a few leave a human standing as an honor gift.