Kwei Lar'ja (Sly Dark): The Predator Who Lost His Honor
Kwei Lar'ja, also called Sly Dark, was a male Yautja in Yvonne Navarro's Sly Dark in the Daylight, from Predator: Eyes of the Demon. His secret solo hunt took him to Swift, Colorado, a town of 647 people, in early September of an unspecified year. He killed several townspeople, including Robbie Rosales and the Beck family, then tried to reach a drop pod of illicit trophies. An older Yautja declared him without honor and pushed him at Lourdes Rosales, who shot him in the face. He is not the Kwei from Predator: Badlands.
Biography
The First Kills In Swift
The hunt unfolded in Swift, Colorado, during the early September heat, although the story gives no year. Seventy-year-old Val Wilson was pulling weeds in her backyard when she saw the Rosales boy next door yanked off his feet and hauled into a tree. A line of blood ran down from the branches. Val, a former field nurse in Vietnam, called 911. Sheriff Wayne York walked the yard himself, looked up, and found the body of Robbie Rosales. Deputy Bo Lawley later questioned Val, because York had already been called to a second killing four blocks away.
The second body was Jack Menendez, a man in his late sixties known as Old Lumberjack, left so mangled that Deputy Frescura could barely look at him. A third killing followed in the park. Sandi Lawrence lay there with her German Shepherd King, the dog's lead still twisted in its remains, and her head was gone. Deputy Pacios read the tracks as a walker almost seven feet tall, with four long claws on the feet, grouped in two on each side. Dr. Silvia told York and Pacios that three bodies and a dog were in the basement of her clinic, and she had no room for another.
The Hunting Depot
Ajax Beck and his son Tom were working in the Hunting Depot when the hunter smashed through the heavy glass door. Ajax saw an elongated helmet that came to a point halfway down a face mask, with no opening for the mouth, and black spirals hanging to shoulder length behind a device on one shoulder. Ajax raised a loaded Mossberg twelve-gauge and ordered the intruder to take off the mask. A red laser came from the helmet, the shoulder weapon rose, and a blast of heat wrecked the counter where Ajax had stood.
Tom came up with a .50 Desert Eagle and hit the hunter in the shoulder, knocking him backward. Lana Beck charged out of the office with an AR-15 and ran into him. She fired two point-blank 5.56mm rounds, then fell at his feet, her blood on the wall and on two long serrated wristblades. A second blast from the shoulder gun blew Ajax into scarlet mist. Tom emptied the pistol, saw smoking holes in the chest armor and leaks from the arms and legs, then charged. The hunter snapped out a combistick and drove it through Tom's sternum and out his back.
Deputies At The Hunting Depot
He closed the combistick, treated minor punctures from a medicomp, and turned toward his drop pod with trophies that included Sandi Lawrence's skull. He was Kwei Lar'ja-Sly Dark, on a secret hunt, and this Earth drop had made him think humans weak and unimpressive. Painted vehicles then filled the lot, a dozen humans taking cover, with more still arriving. His mandibles clicking, he flicked out wristblades, pulled the combistick, and raised the plasmacaster. Deputy Ryan Malik rose from cover, and a blue beam cut him down and destroyed his cruiser. The deputies poured gunfire into the brick front, and the hunter dove and vanished under his cloak.
York screamed for a cease fire after the hunter disappeared, and deputies left cover and spread across the lot. One of them jerked upright, his throat opened, and he collapsed as York saw the air shimmer like heat over pavement. York ducked and rolled under a car as something brushed past, metal screeched, and the driver's door was wrenched off and knocked eight feet away. He heard a long stride leaving and later saw deep furrows in the door. Inside the ruined shop he found a scarlet splash on the back wall, a pile of blood-soaked clothing, and Tom on the counter, then went after the killer.
The Failed Escape Across The Park
Kwei Lar'ja knew the humans were tracking him. His cloak worked, but not at full strength in every place, and they had picked up signs of him. He headed for the park, and for the wilderness beyond it, where his drop pod waited with the illicit trophies. After pre-loading that pod onto a scout ship and easing the scout ship out of a mothership slip without being detected, he planned to reconnect and then rendezvous with the mothership. If he were caught, the traditionalist Elders on his homeworld, Yautja Prime, would execute him. He believed he was too advanced for that, and the danger only heightened the thrill.
The attempt to cross the park failed at once. Sixteen-year-old Owen Holland was already there with his father's .38, after learning Robbie was dead, and other townspeople had come armed. Paul McCoy's bloodhound and two redbone coonhounds strained at a shimmer in the playground, and one dog bit into something, then leaped back with a wound across a front leg. Green blood outlined an oversized foot on the jungle gym. Dave Lawrence, Sandi's husband, put a .357 into the netted chest, and the hunter fell as green blood and blue flashes wrecked the cloak. A red light locked onto Dave, and the shoulder gun fired, but Owen tackled him aside.
Declared Without Honor
A giant ship materialized, landed silently a few yards from the fallen hunter, and a ramp lowered. Another Yautja came down, almost a foot taller and seemingly older and more experienced. Kwei Lar'ja stood and tried to raise the plasmacaster. A massive hand wrenched it free, crushed it underfoot, then grabbed him by the back of the neck and hauled him up until his feet dangled. He flicked out wristblades, but the larger hunter snapped that arm, stopped a grab at his belt, and shook him. Val Wilson held Lourdes back at first, then both women planted themselves between the two Yautja and the ramp.
Lourdes raised the twelve-gauge and told them they would not take him, because he had killed her son. The taller hunter snatched off the smaller one's helmet, said M-di yin'tekai, a phrase that meant no honor, then slapped a blade into the uninjured hand and pushed him toward her. The weapon doubled in size, and Kwei Lar'ja leaped at Lourdes. She shot him in the face, leaving little of the head but green blood and shreds of tissue. The Elder grabbed one foot, dragged the body up the closing ramp, and the ship lifted and vanished. Val and Lourdes lived, and Lourdes told her husband Miquel when he came home.
Appearance And Weapons
The story never gives his age or clan, and does not rank him as Youngblood or Elder. Deputy Pacios put him at almost seven feet from his stride, and the Yautja who came for him was almost a foot taller. His helmet was elongated and came to a point halfway down a face mask that covered the eyes and had no opening for a mouth. Black spirals hung to shoulder length and fell behind the shoulder cannon. Exposed skin was gray-white and mottled under leather, metal, and netting. When the helmet came off, Lourdes saw tiny eyes, a deep pink mouth, and finger-length fangs on four sides of the face.
He hunted with a cloak that failed in places, then failed completely once green blood and blue flashes outlined his body. His weapons were a plasmacaster, a combistick that could lengthen with a twist, and two long serrated wristblades. A medicomp treated minor punctures and fragments of glass and wood. The chest armor stopped Tom Beck's Desert Eagle rounds, though the hits left him sore, with leaks in the arms and legs. He had come in a drop pod pre-loaded on a scout ship taken from a mothership slip, and he left as a corpse dragged aboard the Elder's ship.
Similar Predators
Kwei Lar'ja belongs with the novel hunters who make Earth drops in Predator: Eyes of the Demon. Yuahro, from Aftermath in the same book, also hunted in September, in Pisgah National Forest, and a father extracted him alive after Dutch wounded him. This hunt ends the other way. An older Yautja arrived in time to stop the escape, stripped him of his caster and his helmet, and handed him to a human mother instead of taking him home living. The Jungle Hunter's Central American hunt, by contrast, is not described as a secret theft of a scout ship from a mothership slip.
The Elder called him M-di yin'tekai, no honor, a judgment close to the stigma attached to Bad Blood Predators, though the story never uses that term for him. He had already decided that humans were weak, and that the Elders who would have executed him for the unsanctioned drop were traditionalist and narrow-minded. The fight in the park proved the opposite on both points. His punishment shows how seriously the older hunter took the Yautja honor code, even though Kwei Lar'ja had dismissed such traditional judgments before the hunt ended.
Behind The Scenes
Yvonne Navarro wrote Sly Dark in the Daylight for the 2022 Titan Books anthology Predator: Eyes of the Demon, edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt. Titan's catalog lists fifteen original stories and a 9 August 2022 paperback release in the US and UK. Schmidt treated the book as a successor to If It Bleeds, and this story comes late in the collection, just before Scott Sigler's Dead Man's Switch. The hunter's name is given only once, as Kwei Lar'ja-Sly Dark, after the killings at the Hunting Depot, when the point of view shifts briefly to the Yautja.
Most of the story follows the people of Swift, Colorado, from Val Wilson's backyard through the sheriff's department, the Hunting Depot, and the park, rather than the hunter's campaign as a continuous hunt log. Navarro had already written in the franchise, including the 1996 novel Aliens: Music of the Spears and, with Weston Ochse, the 2022 novel Aliens vs. Predators: Rift War. The story does not give the Elder a name, and it does not date the drop beyond early September.
Conclusion
Kwei Lar'ja, also called Sly Dark, made an unsanctioned solo drop on Swift, Colorado, in early September, after easing a scout ship out of a mothership slip. He killed Robbie Rosales, Jack Menendez, Sandi Lawrence, the Beck family, and Deputy Ryan Malik. He still thought humans were weak when he turned for the drop pod. In the park, hounds and a .357 shot stripped his cloak, and an older Yautja landed and declared him without honor. Lourdes Rosales, whose son he had taken, shot him in the face with a twelve-gauge. The Elder dragged the body aboard and left, and Lourdes later told Miquel when he came home.
Appearances
- Predator: Eyes of the Demon, "Sly Dark in the Daylight" by Yvonne Navarro (anthology, Titan Books, 2022)
Tag Categories: Individual Predators | Predators From The Novels | Predator Lore
