Keeper Predator: Trophy Collector Of Scylla
Keeper was a male Yautja in E. C. Myers's Scylla and Charybdis, from Aliens vs. Predators: Ultimate Prey. He boarded the sabotaged colony ship Ketumati after Captain Hyeon Bak lit a distress beacon, hunted the waking command crew with yellow-coated darts, and took the survivors alive rather than finishing them on the decks. Bak, Singh, Clarke, Hassan, and Bak's wife Amelia woke in a sterile fake biome where he pointed at himself as Keeper and at them as trophies. A second, unmasked hunter later threw Keeper's head and spine at the humans, the laser scorch from Bak's cryo-bay shot still burned into the mask.
Biography
Boarding The Ketumati
The Ketumati drifted with propulsion, nav, and comms locked after a sabotage subroutine in ship computer gAIa, and about 1,500 colonists still slept in cryo. A small hostile ship docked after Bak's distress beacon, and security officer John Singh met a single life sign at the airlock. The boarder stood roughly two heads above the six-foot Fijian, wore a smooth mask with black eyeholes, and carried wrist blades, a spear, and a short scoped rifle. Singh scored one laser hit in its side before a dart and a cloak took him down, and the hunter tossed a piece of him at the camera while mimicking Singh's voice.
Hydroponics specialist Kiann Das, communications officer Blodwen Clarke, pilot Gunpei Iwata, and chief engineer Anika Hassan fell to the same pop-and-dart pattern while Bak tried to hold cryo-storage. The crew later learned the darts were tranquilizers, not kill shots, and that the hunter was collecting them for sport rather than clearing the ship with heavier weapons. Bak found Amelia's assigned capsule empty and heard Hassan die in engineering before the cryo doors finally opened on a cloaked shimmer.
Cryo Bay Trap
Bak used the cold of cryo-storage and Hassan's theory about helmet thermal vision to hide among the sleeping colonists. He scored a head shot that left a scorch mark above the right eye of the mask, then dumped hypersleep coolant over the hunter when the chambers flanking it lit up. Frost locked the warrior in place for a moment, and a yellow-coated dart still took Bak in the chest. Before he blacked out he saw Amelia run from the shadows, and he later understood she had attacked the hunter in that bay.
Up close the hunter showed yellowish-brown skin, dingy gray dreadlocks, plated forearms and shin guards, and a body covered mainly in tight netting under scaly armor. Green blood still stained the side wound Singh had left with his laser pistol at the airlock. Bak judged the archaic dart rifle was a sporting choice, because the same hunter clearly had the tech to destroy an unarmed, disabled colony ship outright if a clean kill had been the goal. That choice matched the later biome, where living trophies mattered more than a cleared hull.
Fake Biome
Bak woke on blue-green grass under a yellow-tinged sky with Singh, Hassan, and Clarke alive beside him. The horizon was a projection, the air smelled nearly sterile, and faint grid seams marked a cage rather than a real world. Gravity felt lighter than Earth or the ship, and the lighting gave no warmth from a true sun. The hunter did not speak English. He played recordings, pointed at himself as Keeper, and pointed at the humans as trophies.
Das and Iwata were not in the cell, and the colonists still seemed to be on the Ketumati. Adjoining cells held other lifeforms, some of them nasty, and an alarm pulled Keeper away before Bak could plan a ship theft. Amelia was already studying the next cage, a barren desert with a gray nest mound behind a force field, and she admitted she had sabotaged the ship so the United Americas could reach Babylon first after Americans were purged from the InterUnited Space Agency program.
Death And Escape
A distant explosion dropped the force fields between the grassy cage and the desert nest next door. A Facehugger latched onto Amelia, and an adult Xenomorph unfurled from the nest mound as smaller shapes scuttled across the sand. A second Yautja, taller and unmasked, with shorter darker dreadlocks, threw Keeper's head and spine into the grass, the cryo-bay scorch still visible on the helmet. Bak guessed Keeper had broken hunter custom by keeping living trophies instead of dead ones.
The new hunter charged a shoulder plasma cannon and closed with the Xenomorph, then died when acid hit his face and an inner jaw punched through his skull. Two more hunters arrived as a swarm left the nest, and Bak led Clarke, Hassan, and Singh out through rock corridors toward a shuttle bay. They found Keeper's ship beside a larger blue hull with an alien glyph, and Hassan boarded Keeper's craft to study the controls. Bak meant to recover the Ketumati and choose Babylon or Earth. That recovery is not shown, and Amelia was left facehugged.
Appearance And Weapons
Keeper stood well above human crew height, with yellowish-brown skin, dingy gray dreadlocks, and a smooth mask broken only by black eyeholes until Bak's laser left a burn above the right eye. He wore scaly armor over tight netting, with plated forearms and shin guards, and he could vanish under a cloak that left only mist and shimmer in cold air. His kit included wrist blades, a spear on his back, and a short scoped rifle that fired barbed darts coated in yellow tranquilizer. Green blood marked Singh's side hit, and the same blood later identified the severed head his rival threw at Bak's group.
He understood enough human speech to replay recorded phrases, including Hassan's line about sleeping colonists never knowing what hit them, and he used those clips to taunt Bak in the cryo bay. His ship was small, built for speed and short distances, with three thrusters and sharp fins that the Ketumati database flagged as extremely hostile. Clarke read the warning as do not engage, run, and if you cannot run, do not resist, which matched how little the dart hunt looked like a boarding slaughter.
Similar Predators
Keeper belongs with hunters who treat humans as collected prizes rather than quick kills. Abductors who stash prey in stasis farms and game preserves hunt the same way on a larger scale, and trophy rooms are the dead end of that habit. Adelantado is another named male from the same Ultimate Prey book, but he hunted Xenomorphs on a 1770 Caribbean island and lived. Bo'kui trained Youngbloods on Hunting Ground 73569 in First Hunt, another Ultimate Prey story that keeps the hunter alive at the end.
Yeh'kull and Blood Venom are named females from the same anthology who leave their worlds after hard bloodings instead of dying in a cage of their own making. Keeper's path ends inside his own collection when another Yautja decides living trophies are wrong and a Xenomorph finishes that second hunter beside the broken force fields. Bak's group escapes during that fight rather than becoming the next set of prizes on the wall.
Behind The Scenes
E. C. Myers wrote Scylla and Charybdis for Bryan Thomas Schmidt and Jonathan Maberry's 2022 Titan Books anthology Aliens vs. Predators: Ultimate Prey. The story gives the hunter no Yautja honor name beyond the English word he plays from a recording. Bak's crew coins Keeper from that clip, and the narration keeps that label through the biome and the shuttle bay. The second hunter who takes Keeper's head is never named.
Conclusion
Keeper boarded the disabled Ketumati, hunted its command crew with tranquilizer darts, and locked the survivors in a fake biome as living trophies. Bak burned his mask in cryo-storage and still woke as part of the collection. Another Yautja ended that zoo with Keeper's head and spine, then died to the Xenomorphs Keeper had caged next door. Hassan took Keeper's ship while Bak planned a return to the colonists still sleeping in space.
Appearances
- Aliens vs. Predators: Ultimate Prey, "Scylla and Charybdis" by E. C. Myers (anthology, Titan Books, 2022)
Tag Categories: Individual Predators | Predators From The Novels | Predator Lore
