Predator: Prey to the Heavens was a Dark Horse Comics series written by John Arcudi and drawn by Javier Saltares, published as four issues of Predator between June 2009 and January 2010 and collected under its subtitle in 2010. It dropped the private soldiers of GDS into an East African civil war, where two Predator clans were fighting their own war. Commander Thorpe and the army observer Major Briggs were caught between the armored killers and a lone hunter who seemed to be on their side.
Plot Summary
A Sniper In The City
In a war-torn city, an American sniper with the call sign Whiskey Stray took aim at General Olango, the rebel leader, from a rooftop. Before he could fire, a plasma bolt struck beside him, and an unseen Yautja watched him in thermal vision. He radioed his forward base to abort, believing that the rebels had a sniper of their own. The cloaked hunter chased him through the streets and blasted through concrete walls to reach him, wounding his shoulder. Unable to raise his base, he made for the rendezvous point and found only a burning truck.
Near the truck, bodies hung from a lamppost, and the sniper blamed the local fighters, whom he called savages. Then another bolt hit, and he saw his real hunter, an unmasked Predator with dreadlocks, grey armor and a shoulder cannon, crouched on a ledge with green blood on its claws. It stood over the wounded man with a long blade in its hand. Before it could finish him, a blast from behind killed the sniper, and the Predator roared at whoever had fired the shot.
The Armored Clan
The shots had come from a band of Predators in black and orange armor, with red eyes glowing behind their masks and mesh across their limbs. They belonged to the clan that later lore called the Killer Predators, and they had not come to hunt in the old way. The grey Predator charged them with a sword, but it was blasted down before it could reach them. When the shooting ended, the lone hunter lay dead in the street beside the sniper, and the armored Killers were left in control of the city, with the war between the two clans of Yautja already under way.
The Convoy Ambush
One morning in East Africa, a convoy of cars carried Western executives to a meeting with Mengistu about a maintenance lease for the country's pipelines. The businessmen chatted about golfing in Dubai while their bodyguards watched the road. A truck bomb tore through the convoy, and rebels attacked the wreckage with rockets and automatic fire. The masked gunmen dragged out the bodyguards and executed them, while their leader denounced the foreigners as Western thieves who had come to steal the country's treasures.
A helicopter called Sky One arrived to rescue the executives, but the rebels blew it out of the sky. The two surviving businessmen expected to die next. Then shapes appeared in the smoke behind the rebels, and the gunmen turned to face armored Predators carrying energy rifles. The rebels who had ambushed the convoy were about to become prey themselves. Whatever the creatures wanted in the city, the civil war had given them a hunting ground full of armed men and very few witnesses.
Briggs And Thorpe
At night, in the compound of the private security company GDS, a tank stood in the yard while its commander, Thorpe, smoked on the hood of a car and skipped the oversight debriefing. Major Briggs had arrived the day before as the army's observer. He told the contractors that they had been there for three weeks and that two other executives had disappeared six weeks earlier. Their replacements from Wecter Corp were due in about a week, and the contractors had been hired to keep them alive.
Thorpe had little patience for Briggs. He had worked with the army in Gabon, Burkina and Yemen, and without it in Malawi and Botswana, and he had taken over security in the city himself. Briggs answered that American citizens were involved, which required an observer from the armed forces. He also reminded Thorpe that Uncle Sam paid him while GDS worked for the highest bidder, and that the company was there to defend American interests, whether its commander liked the arrangement or not.
The Dry Run
Mengistu's people set up a new meeting with the Wecter Corp representatives at the Hilton across town, and Thorpe planned a dry run of the route, with Briggs riding in his car. Olango's rebels had tracked the first meeting too well, and Thorpe suspected that someone had leaked the plan to them. From the ruins along the way, a masked Predator crouched and watched the convoy pass. At the halfway mark, the route led through empty, bombed-out buildings that had once been a chemical plant.
Briggs called Mengistu's security team, codenamed Watchtower, to report a delay, but the team was already dead. Black-armored Predators had slaughtered the guards in their office and answered the call themselves. The convoy found itself in a dead zone with no communications, and the men noted that Olango had bombed the area three nights before the UN declared a no-fly zone. The empty streets were not as empty as they looked, and Thorpe ordered his men to get off the street and stay alert.
The Burning Trucks
An explosion tore through the convoy's trucks, and Briggs called up Blue Team, the squad of Tolin, Rios and Parrish. Through the smoke, the men saw armored figures walking among the flames, and one of them compared the creatures' armor to something out of Star Wars. Thorpe told them to hang back and ordered a full retreat to the base if the fight went bad. He wanted his men out of the fight, not caught in the middle of it.
Thorpe climbed into one of the trucks, pushed aside its dead driver and drove it straight at the attackers. From the cab, he worked the remote turret on its roof and raked the Predators with fire. One of the creatures was hit, which proved that the hunters could be hurt. The rest of his men had not retreated as ordered, and as the truck ground forward through the wreckage, Thorpe was about to learn how quickly the armored hunters could close the distance.
The Wounded Bear
A black-armored Predator leapt onto Thorpe's truck. Before it could reach him, Tolin shot it off, and the out-of-control truck crashed into the creature and pinned it against a wall. Thorpe berated Tolin for ignoring the order to retreat, but Briggs pointed out that Tolin had just saved his life. Looking at the green blood, Thorpe described what they faced as big-game hunting, and he compared their position to that of hunters who had wounded a bear and now had to finish it before it finished them.
The men gathered around the dead creature, its mask gone, and stared at a face with mandibles and tusks that was nothing like a man's. Their satellite phone found no signal, just like the radios, and no one would be coming to help them. Thorpe decided that they should leave the trucks and start heading home on foot. With the city silent around them and the creatures still out there, Thorpe led the survivors of Blue Team away from the wreck and back toward the compound.
Mortars And Plasma
On foot, Thorpe picked up a heat signature and told Briggs that this was not the army, that he commanded the unit and that Briggs could drive back alone if he wanted. He scanned the ruins with active-infrared goggles, and Briggs grew more certain that he was hiding something. Then mortar shells began to fall, and the men ran for cover. Briggs reflected that he could have taken early retirement the year before on a three-quarter pension and been spared all of this.
When the shelling stopped, the men headed east, and one of them was killed by a plasma bolt through the head. Black-armored Predators appeared in the street carrying rifles instead of relying only on their shoulder cannons. The mortars had been meant to herd the men into the open, and now the creatures moved in for the kill, taking their time. Thorpe and the survivors of Blue Team had nowhere left to run and no way to call for help.
Surrounded
The contractors fought back with everything they had. A grenade caught one of the Predators in fire, but a plasma explosion threw the men across the street, and Rios was left with a wounded leg. The black-armored hunters closed in with their rifles, while more Predators with grey masks and spears followed behind them. One of the armored creatures seized Thorpe by the throat and lifted him off the ground, and the commander could do nothing to break its grip.
Through the red haze of thermal vision, another hunter watched the scene from a distance, studying the armored creatures and their prey. It was a different kind of Predator, grey rather than black, carrying a spear instead of an energy rifle, and it was moving toward the fight. For the men pinned down in the street, it looked like the end, with the creatures that had stalked them since the convoy now standing over Blue Team with their weapons raised.
An Unexpected Ally
A plasma bolt from the grey Predator blew off the head of the creature that was strangling Thorpe, and the commander dropped to the ground. More shots tore into the armored hunters, and the survivors scattered, turning a one-sided slaughter into a fight between Predators. The men had no idea why one of the creatures had turned on the others, and they had no time to find out before the survivors fled into the ruins. Briggs tended to Rios, whose leg was badly hurt, while the others counted the dead.
Thorpe lit a cigarette beside the body of the dead hunter. Briggs was glad that they seemed to have a friend out there, but Thorpe was sceptical and would not say why. To the commander, a creature that killed its own kind was not necessarily an ally of men. The survivors gathered their wounded and made their way back through the city to the GDS compound, hoping to find radios, reinforcements and a way out before the black-armored hunters came for them again.
Back At The Compound
At the compound, Pagano manned a mounted gun while Doc, the camp's medic, treated Rios with morphine. The radios, phones and internet were all dead. Thorpe ordered his men to arm up with the heaviest weapons they had, and Leung led them to the armory. There they found that a rocket launcher would not even start, because its processor was jammed. Every sophisticated weapon in the camp had been knocked out, and only simple guns such as a sniper rifle still worked.
Thorpe admitted that he would have pulled out at once if it were not already dusk, since driving through the city in the dark with the creatures waiting seemed even worse. Instead, the camp went on elevated alert, with the wounded resting in the infirmary. Briggs went to check on Rios. None of the contractors knew that the hunters had already slipped inside the wire, or that the next victim had been chosen before the sun went down over the GDS compound.
The Yutani Building
In the infirmary, Briggs found Doc's severed head hanging from the ceiling. The medic's headless body, still in its white coat, had been strung up at the top of the Yutani Building outside the compound, where a Predator with a spear crouched beside it. Thorpe wanted the creature shot, but Pagano did not have the range, and the high-powered weapons that might have reached it were still dead. The men could only watch the gruesome trophy hanging over the city and wonder which of them would be next.
Then, before anyone could act, an explosion tore the body apart above the rooftops. On a ledge nearby crouched an unmasked grey Predator holding a plasma pistol, with a human skull hanging at its belt. The lookout, Grady, had seen the creature blast the others, and the men began to wonder whether the grey hunter was their ally. Thorpe refused to believe it, and the argument over the creature's intentions would soon split the camp and force him to reveal his own past with the hunters.
Thorpe's Story
Doc's head ended up in a cooler marked keep cold, and Briggs started drinking. The men realized that the creatures were using their mortars to corral them like animals, purely for sport. Parrish argued that the friendly one had helped them, and Leung suggested trying to contact it. Thorpe exploded, insisting that there were no friends out there, as he had told them before. The men wanted to know what before meant, and Briggs said that with two dozen lives at stake it was time for him to talk.
Thorpe admitted that he had worked with the army in Gabon and had gone through a hard time there, though it had not been the army's fault. The creatures had hunted him, his commander and an army captain like foxes, and the other two had been killed outright. Thorpe was locked in a wooden cage. He had been held hostage in Peru and jailed in Mogadishu and Aydin, but none of it compared to watching the Predators fight among themselves to decide which of them would get to feed his guts to the goats.
The Compound Burns
That night, the contractors armed their vehicles so they could leave in the morning, and they grumbled that Mengistu's people had abandoned them. Before dawn, a huge explosion destroyed the vehicles and the building beside them. Sixteen men were dead, and there was no longer any quick way out of the city. Briggs, drunk by now, suggested that they had no choice but to play the creatures' game. Thorpe answered that there was only one way left, and that most of their men and weapons were already gone.
The nearest GDS post was about forty-five miles away, and it had air power. Thorpe decided to go alone, on foot, to get out of the jamming range that had killed their radios and to hitch a ride from the locals if he could. He left Briggs and the survivors behind at the compound. It was the kind of plan that only a man who had already survived the Predators once would have attempted, and he set off into the dark streets with little more than a belt of grenades.
Into The City
Thorpe ran through the city at night, unaware that a Predator with a bloody face was watching him. From inside a building, he spotted a group of the creatures on a rooftop, eating raw meat, and one of them bit into the head of a horned animal. He had a belt of grenades, but his radio was still dead, so he could not call in a strike. Then a grey Predator appeared behind him and mimicked his own words back at him.
The creature crouched on a desk over Thorpe, and he spoke to it, guessing that it was on the hunt and had already bagged a few of the others. He asked whether it wanted help, or wanted to be friends. The Predator raised its plasma pistol and fired past him at something behind him, and Thorpe ran. He made it back to the compound gate, where Pagano had taken off his thermal goggles because of a headache, unaware that cloaked hunters were standing right behind him.
A Crappy Idea
Back in the infirmary, Thorpe told Briggs to get Doc's head because they were leaving. He had come back with what he called a crappy idea, and he asked whether they had any mortars left. As the men argued about their contracts, Pagano began firing wildly, shouting that the creatures were everywhere. The survivors loaded the howitzer, and Thorpe fired a shell at the city, hoping that he had guessed the coordinates right. It struck a beeping device inside a tent beside a Predator, and the blast lit up the skyline.
Briggs was in his office, drunk, with his feet on the desk, talking to Doc's head as if the medic were still alive. Pagano was found dead, hanging upside down on the fence, and one of the men admitted that he had been stopped because he was shooting at enemies who were not there. Thorpe replied that the enemies had been real. With the device destroyed, Leung got the radio working and reached Green Leader, whose helicopters were an hour out and fully loaded.
Last Stand At Sickbay
Moments after the good news, plasma fire cut down the men gathered around the tank in the yard. Leung reported that with the scrambler gone, the radios worked again, so the high-powered weapons should be operational, and he armed the launchers in the armory. A black-armored Predator lined up its targeting on them, and Thorpe ordered everyone to sickbay, where Rios still lay in bed. The men argued among themselves over the cooler holding Doc's head while Thorpe radioed Briggs to find out where he was.
A thermal screen showed the creatures gathering on the sickbay roof. Briggs answered from inside the tank, offering to make a stand for them but warning that he would have to blow the sickbay to pieces. The men ran out the back, and the tank's shell blasted the Predators off the roof. Briggs joked that he had not known he was a tank jockey back in the day, and explained that the souped-up tank could not start without a radio signal.
The Tank
The armored hunters leapt at the tank, and Thorpe sent his men away to wait for the helicopters. When the creatures opened fire, he answered with a launcher and blew a group of them off a rooftop. More Predators climbed onto the tank, and Thorpe could not pick them off without hitting it, so he told Briggs to shake them loose while he blasted them one at a time. The tank smashed through the compound fence with hunters clinging to its hull.
One Predator landed on Thorpe, and he shot it in the face at point-blank range with his pistol. He stomped on the dead hunter and taunted it that it still had some friends out there who would be coming for it. On the tank, the creatures swarmed over the hull while Briggs, drunk inside, sang over the radio. Thorpe screamed his name, but the major did not answer, and the fight around the tank reached its end as the helicopters of Green Leader drew closer.
The Aftermath
When Green Leader's helicopters landed, no one answered their calls. The tank lay wrecked and burning on its side, and the soldiers wondered whether Olango had done this. Dead armored Predators lay around the compound. A blond survivor clutching the cooler marked keep cold told them that Thorpe was dead, or so he guessed, and challenged them to look around and say where the creatures were. One soldier told another, Collins, to let it go, because the survivor was in shock.
The soldiers walked among the bodies of the dead hunters and told each other that they would get answers once the survivor had been looked at and was ready to talk. What had become of Thorpe and Briggs was left unclear. As the helicopters waited in the clearing, red eyes watched from the darkness of the jungle, and the war between the two clans of Predators went on, unseen by the men who had flown in to end a battle that was never theirs.
Key Characters
- Thorpe commanded the GDS contractors in the city. He had survived a Predator hunt in Gabon years earlier, refused to trust the grey hunter, shelled the creatures' jamming device and fought the armored clan to the end.
- Major Briggs was the army observer sent to oversee GDS. He clashed with Thorpe, took to drink after Doc's death and drove the compound's tank against the Predators.
- Whiskey Stray was the American sniper who targeted General Olango and was killed when the two clans met in the city.
- Tolin, Rios and Parrish formed Blue Team. Tolin saved Thorpe in the convoy fight, Rios was wounded in the leg, and Parrish argued that the grey Predator was a friend.
- Leung worked in the armory and got the radio working again once the jamming device was destroyed.
- Pagano manned the compound's guns and was found dead on the fence after he began firing at unseen hunters.
- Doc was the compound's medic. The Predators beheaded him and hung his body from the Yutani Building.
- Grady was the lookout who saw the grey Predator blast the others.
- Green Leader led the helicopters that arrived after the battle.
- General Olango led the rebels in the civil war, and Mengistu was the official whose meeting with Wecter Corp the contractors were protecting.
- The Grey Predator was the lone unmasked hunter with a plasma pistol and a skull at its belt. It killed the Predator strangling Thorpe and fired past Thorpe when he tried to talk to it.
- The Killer Predators were the black-armored hunters with red eyes and energy rifles who slaughtered the security team, herded the contractors with mortars and jammed their weapons.
- The dreadlocked Predator in grey armor who stalked Whiskey Stray was killed by the armored clan in the opening battle.
Behind The Scenes
Predator: Prey to the Heavens first appeared as a four-issue series simply titled Predator. Issue #1 went on sale on June 24, 2009, followed by issue #2 on August 26, issue #3 on October 28 and issue #4 on January 27, 2010. Dark Horse listed each issue as a 40-page full-color comic priced at $3.50, with a 22-page chapter of the story inside, and promoted the launch as a celebration of twenty years of its Predator comics. Raymond Swanland painted the covers, and the Grand Comics Database also lists a variant cover for the first issue by Chris Warner.
The trade paperback credits the script to John Arcudi and the pencils to Javier Saltares, who inked the story with Walden Wong and Bucky Gomez. Wes Dzioba colored the series, with Andrew Elder coloring part of the first chapter, and Blambot! lettered it. Chris Warner edited the book, Tony Ong designed it, Lia Ribacchi was art director and Mike Richardson was publisher. The publisher's solicitations named the contractors' company Graham Directive Security, a name the story itself shortened to GDS.
The story of the American sniper first ran as a 10-page Predator tale in the Free Comic Book Day 2009 Aliens/Predator flip-book, released on May 2, 2009 by the same creative team. Dark Horse collected it with the four issues in the 96-page Predator: Prey to the Heavens trade paperback, released on April 28, 2010 for $15.99 with the ISBN 978-1-59582-492-9. The book's indicia called it a first edition from May 2010. The final issue carried a preview of Aliens vs. Predator: Three World War, which continued the war between the clans.
Marvel reprinted the four issues and the Free Comic Book Day story in Predator: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 2, a hardcover released on May 22, 2024 for $125. The series marked the twentieth anniversary of Predator: Concrete Jungle, Dark Horse's first Predator comic, and it introduced the black-armored clan whose feud with other hunters grew into the Predator civil war. Xenopedia credits the lettering to Nate Piekos and lists Samantha Robertson as a second editor, but neither name appears in the credits of the trade paperback.
Conclusion
Predator: Prey to the Heavens brought the Predator back to Dark Horse in 2009 with a war story rather than a single hunt, setting John Arcudi's mercenaries in the middle of an East African civil war and a second, older war between two clans of hunters. Thorpe, a survivor of an earlier hunt, refused to trust the lone grey Predator who fought the black-armored Killer Predators, and his stand at the GDS compound ended in fire, with red eyes still watching from the jungle and the clan war still unresolved.
External Sources
- Predator: Prey to the Heavens TPB at Dark Horse
- Predator #1 at Dark Horse
- Predator: The Original Years Omnibus Vol. 2 at Marvel
- Predator #1 at the Grand Comics Database
- Predator: Prey to the Heavens at Xenopedia
Tag Categories: Predator Comics | Predator Lore
