Nakande: Profile Of The Oregon Rematch Predator

Name: Nakande
Species: Yautja
Gender: Male
Mate: Vagouti
Children: Unnamed young with Vagouti
Setting: Oregon forest near Crown Pond, nine years after Alaska
Kills: Harvey, Martin and Beau, shared with Vagouti
First appearance: Predator: If It Bleeds, "Rematch" (2017)
Status: Dead, shot by Sloane and Mary on a forest trail

Nakande was a male Yautja hunter in Steve Perry's story "Rematch," published in the 2017 anthology Predator: If It Bleeds. He came to a remote Oregon forest with his mate Vagouti to hunt Sloane, a former Vietnam sniper who had killed Yautja in Alaska nine years earlier. Nakande thought the white-haired man was too old and slow to be worth the journey. After he and Vagouti killed three armed bikers at a meth-lab RV, he ignored her warnings and walked into an ambush, where Sloane and his wife Mary shot him with two rifles.

Biography

Arrival In Oregon

Nakande and Vagouti travelled to Earth after fragments of recordings from Sloane's fight in Alaska, the hunt told in Predator: Turnabout, reached a Yautja ship. On an overcast summer morning the two hunters watched Sloane walk a deer path near his home, carrying nothing but a small pocket knife. Nakande judged him an old man who moved slowly and thought that even a child could kill him. He believed the victory would be hollow and the trophy worthless after such a long journey between the stars. Vagouti reminded him of what Sloane had done in Alaska, which was the reason the pair hunted together, and they let the unarmed man walk home.

The Meth-Lab RV

Instead of attacking Sloane, Vagouti suggested they stretch their legs on the young, armed humans at a foul-smelling wheeled house deeper in the forest, and Nakande agreed. The house was an RV beside a pond where three bikers, Harvey, Martin and Beau, made methamphetamine. Energy bolts from the hidden hunters blew a hole through Martin's stomach and tore off Beau's arm while the bikers fired a pistol and an Uzi blindly into the trees. Nakande dismissed the fight as target practice and complained that they had not come so far to slaughter such poor prey. A sheriff's deputy named Mac later found all three bikers dead beside the RV.

Pursuit Through The Forest

When the hunters returned to Sloane's house, it was quiet. Nakande believed the humans had to be inside because their pickup truck had been disabled, and Vagouti mocked him for forgetting that people could walk. She insisted on checking the house herself, and he let the argument go. Sloane and his wife had left on foot, and Nakande welcomed the news because armed prey in the woods promised better sport. As the pair tracked the couple, Vagouti urged caution. He answered that he had stalked and killed kiande amedha, the Yautja term for Xenomorphs, in single combat and would not be frightened by a story.

Death On The Trail

Nakande planned to kill the male human with an energy bolt and leave the female to his mate. Sloane waited in a ghillie suit with his single-shot .610 rifle fifty meters from a narrow stretch of trail, while Mary aimed her Winchester .308 at the trunk of a small madrone tree. Nakande was moving under his cloak, but Sloane spotted the ripple in the air in front of the madrone and fired, and Mary fired a moment later. The hunter screamed, and an energy bolt struck the ground three meters behind the couple as they rolled away into the brush.

One bullet passed through Nakande's lungs and the other hit him near the hip. Vagouti found him dying on the trail, and with his last breath he admitted that she had been right and that he had underestimated the human. He coughed up bright green blood and died. Vagouti grieved only briefly, then shut off his self-destruct, because at that range the blast would have killed the humans and she wanted to kill them herself. She continued the hunt alone and died later that day, after Sloane shot her out of a Douglas fir and finished her with his revolver.

Weapons And Equipment

Nakande came to Earth by ship with Vagouti and hunted under a cloaking device, which hid him until Sloane noticed a ripple in the air in front of the madrone tree. He relied on the energy bolts that Yautja used to burn fist-sized holes through their prey, and he meant to kill Sloane with one of them. The bikers at the RV died from blasts of that kind. He also carried a self-destruct device, and because Vagouti switched it off after his death, it did not explode near the humans on the trail.

Personality

Nakande was strong and fast, and Vagouti considered him a good hunter and fighter whose speed and strength had always been enough for him. Patience was not one of his virtues. He was proud of his record against kiande amedha and wanted prey worthy of a long journey, so an old human seemed beneath him. He put up with his mate's sharp tongue because she had other good qualities, and he regarded her as an excellent hunter. In small disputes he usually shrugged and let her have her way, but he refused to accept her warnings about Sloane and expected her to stay quiet once he had decided.

Conclusion

Nakande was the male hunter who travelled to Oregon with his mate Vagouti to settle the old Alaska debt with Sloane. He helped kill three bikers at a meth-lab RV, dismissed Sloane as too old to be dangerous, and died on a forest trail after Sloane and Mary shot him from ambush. Vagouti switched off his self-destruct and hunted alone until Sloane killed her too. Nakande and Vagouti had young together, and she had intended to take Sloane's skull home and tell their children why their father was gone.