La'vindi: Lone Hunter Who Left Clan H'ppattah

Name: La'vindi
Species: Yautja
Sex: Female
Clan: H'ppattah, then none
Role: Failed hunter, then lone hunter
Hunt-mates: Hekkati, Sula'amini
Leader: Zalande
Known for: Killing Zalande and leaving with Cali
Setting: Fourth-Salturna Exodus, Cevresal System, 2422
First appearance: Predator: Eyes of the Demon, "Cannon Fodder" (2022)
Status: Alive; left clan H'ppattah with Cali
Weapons: Cloak, plasmacaster, combistick, wristblades, bio-helmet, scout-ship remote
Kills (Cannon Fodder): 1 named human · 1 Yautja

La'vindi was a female Yautja in Gini Koch's Cannon Fodder, collected in Predator: Eyes of the Demon in 2022. In 2422, Leader Zalande of clan H'ppattah dropped her on Fourth-Salturna Exodus with Hekkati and Sula'amini for a last chance to restore honor after earlier failed hunts. She killed Zalande when he moved to trigger a self-destruct, left the clan, and took Orbital Marine Alana Gonsalves off-world.

Biography

Last Chance On Fourth-Salturna Exodus

Zalande treated the trip as the last chance those three had to restore honor and change the hunt names the clan had given them after earlier failures. None of them had taken a trophy before this world. La'vindi's first hunt had been a disaster on a human planet, and the jungle here felt closer to home than that ground had. Zalande had hunted human worlds before and come back with many trophies. He set the first test at the spaceport and watched from a cloaked scout ship.

Humans who had refused the Expansion Government lived in armed villages on Fourth-Salturna Exodus, in the Cevresal system. The official cover was a terraforming predator. The real program was Operation Sidestep, a bait world meant to pull Yautja off planets the government wanted. Zalande told the three that every adult on the world was armed, that young could be taken only if they attacked, and that pregnant females were off limits. About a quarter of Yautja females were hunters. He treated male and female human kills the same.

Waiting At The Salturna Spaceport

La'vindi waited on the roof of the rectangular spaceport while Hekkati and Sula'amini stayed in the trees. Their armor blended with the jungle, their visors marked heat, and they jumped the explosives around the building. The three were linked by communicators. None of them meant to ask the others for help. Zalande would give no support until each of them had a trophy, and he treated the humans as more worthy than the failed hunters until that happened.

An Orbital Marine ship landed inside the port. H-Squad under Captain Joel Haber came out with local guides. Behind them came L-Squad, Marines sent to the Brig for life under Master Sergeant William Compton, with black-ops officer Marlon Flucher in a chill-suit that hid him from heat sight. La'vindi saw three walking abreast in the front line and only two heat marks. Hekkati and Sula'amini treated that gap as caution with no cause.

First Trophies On The Spaceport Path

Hekkati jumped from the trees onto Haber and the local reception leader while they were in sight of the building, tore off both heads and spines, and ran for the ship. La'vindi had meant to follow the column, then fired from the roof after that attack.

Erin O'Brien, called Tank, stood and hit her with a plasma launcher. The blast cracked around her armor and shorted the cloak long enough for Alana Gonsalves, called Cali, to see a large feminine outline on the roof. La'vindi put several plasmacaster bolts into Tank. Armored humans had taken at least two hits on her first failed hunt, and she used that here. She leaped down, put a foot on Tank, and pulled the head. Sula'amini ran for the ship ahead of her with two trophies of her own. The rest of H-Squad was down on the path.

Zalande met them at the hull with a little pride and then cut the next pass down to wrist gauntlets, combisticks, bows, or hand-to-hand. The first pass had been too easy. La'vindi repaired the armor damage and treated her trophy as the best of that round, because Tank had been the one female among the dead.

Hekkati Dies In The Jungle

L-Squad fled toward the villages, then turned back into the jungle rather than hide behind those walls after leaving the dead on the path. Hekkati took the rear of that line first. A bow shot pinned Tiffany Lee, called Bling-Bling, and Hekkati swung down a vine and lifted the body before the others saw her. She shot again when Jasmine Viviers, called Dash, ran a search circle, then swung after the arrow instead of holding back. Flucher fired Tank's launcher until the cloak failed and stayed down. L-Squad shot the torso. Hekkati reached for the self-destruct, and a second blast from the launcher blew her apart.

La'vindi and Sula'amini did not go back to the ship. Zalande would have blamed them for letting Hekkati die without support. Hekkati had been reckless, and her death name in the clan would not be a proud one. Sula'amini wanted the remaining Marines picked off without that kind of display. La'vindi stayed with that plan and went on looking for the human she could not see.

Sula'amini Dies Near The Scout Ship

When the Marines spread out, Sula'amini swung at the one nearest the ship, Yolanda Lopez, called Yolo, and missed the landing. Yolo's rifle fire shorted the cloak before Sula'amini cut the weapon with wristblades. Yolo slashed her with a blade, and Sula'amini crushed her. Sherry Cantrell, called Scary, and Amelia Burns, called Booksmarts, reached them during that fight and shot Sula'amini down. Scary tore off the helmet, Booksmarts slashed the arms so the self-destruct could not fire, and Booksmarts stabbed her with her own combistick.

Scary put the helmet on and aimed at La'vindi. Zalande arrived then, and Scary turned toward him. La'vindi left them and ran for the Marines who were on their feet.

Flucher Tries To Capture La'vindi

Flucher stabbed Compton in a clearing and treated L-Squad as expendable bait for Operation Sidestep. He then put Tank's launcher on La'vindi until she was on her back and tried to capture her with a collar for study. He knew the weak points in the armor and stopped her from reaching the self-destruct. Cali shot him, pulled the chill-suit off his head and then off his body, and left La'vindi alive. La'vindi stood facing a human who had just saved her and did not fire. Cali ran toward the last fight, and La'vindi followed.

La'vindi Kills Zalande And Leaves The Clan

They found Scary, Yolo, and Booksmarts dead beside Sula'amini, whose arms were gone, and Zalande alive. Zalande treated them as failures and reached for a blast that would have taken all of them. La'vindi threw her combistick and pinned his arm to the ground, then took Cali's rifle and fired until he was dead. She would not go home in disgrace or die by Zalande's hand. From that point she was no longer a member of clan H'ppattah. She was a lone hunter with the scout ship and no clan standing left.

She handed the rifle back, took off her helmet, and found the remote on Zalande. Cali pointed to herself and gave her name. The huntress answered with clicks Cali could not follow, and Cali later called her Click-Click. The cloaked scout ship appeared above them. Cali followed her up the ramp. The hull circled Fourth-Salturna Exodus once and left for open space. They were the only survivors of that hunt party.

Appearance And Weapons

Cali saw La'vindi as larger than Tank, with a feminine outline under the armor, dreadlocks from the helmet, and clawed hands and feet. Hekkati stood about seven feet and looked a little less marked as female, with a different lock pattern. The air on Salturna could be breathed without a helmet. La'vindi used a cloak, a blending mesh, a heat visor, a plasmacaster on the first pass, and a combistick that was bloody when Zalande inspected the trophies. Wristblades and a self-destruct sat on the gauntlets. After Tank's launcher hit, she repaired the plate before the bow-only pass.

Confirmed Kills

Her named kills in Cannon Fodder were few. Other Marines on the spaceport path went down under the first roof fire, and those bodies are not named as hers.

Erin O'Brien (Tank): several plasmacaster hits, then the head taken on the path.
Zalande: combistick through the arm, then Cali's rifle until he was dead.
Named humans besides Tank: 0. Haber and the local reception leader were Hekkati's first trophies. Yolo died under Sula'amini.

Similar Predators

La'vindi belonged with named huntresses who finished a broken hunt and left, not only with trainers of first-hunters. Hashori of the Widow Clan survived the Rage War and left Macbeth with human companions. Ca'toll ran the LV-363 blooding after both other captains died and went home with three young bloods. A'kael took three first-hunters to Earth and came back as clan leader. Donatiki led four unblooded on an Earth survey and left after a live birth at a Hastings reenactment. Ak'kili hunted three bad bloods on a desert world and killed her son Dakdwade. Cali's rescue belonged with other human pairings that started because someone stopped a kill.

Conclusion

La'vindi was the failed hunter Zalande dropped on Fourth-Salturna Exodus with Hekkati and Sula'amini. Those two died on the last-chance hunt. She killed Zalande when he moved to trigger a self-destruct, left clan H'ppattah, and took Cali off-world on the scout ship.