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The Hunt in Hidden Waters
Author's Note: This is a work of fan fiction set in the Predator universe, created by Jim and John Thomas and owned by 20th Century Studios. This story is written for entertainment purposes only and is not intended for commercial use. All original characters and plot elements are my own creation. The Predator/Yautja mythology and related elements belong to their respective copyright holders. ----Randy T Gipe ,Hope you enjoy
Part One: Discovery and Questions
The leather-bound journals arrived in a wooden trunk that my grandmother left sealed for twenty years after my grandfather’s death. Three distinct handwriting styles. Three impossible accounts of the same three days.
I found them in his study after the funeral, dust thick on the binding. The first entry was dated October 12th, 1751. The last was October 14th. Seventy-two hours that apparently changed the course of three men’s lives so completely that my family spent generations trying to understand it.
How did a pirate captain, a Royal Navy officer, and a captured Spanish engineer become inseparable?
That question shaped our family like weather shapes landscape. My grandmother never said it directly, but I understood: the impossible friendship was the real mystery. Not the battle. The friendship.
I opened the first journal with trembling hands.
Part Two: The Cove
From the Log of Captain James Morrison, Crimson Serpent - October 12th, 1751, 2:47 PM
Three days running. Three days of Blackwood’s guns chasing us like a hound on blood scent. The frigate’s faster than she should be—he’s pushing that crew harder than any captain I’ve faced.
Made the decision at dawn: into the Maw.
It’s always been ours. The limestone cliffs guard it like broken teeth, passages only locals know. But the fishermen won’t come here anymore. They speak of disappearances. Missing crews. They call it cursed.
I thought they were superstitious fools.
I was wrong.
I remember asking Grandfather once why he and Blackwood were so different. I was maybe nine. He looked at me like I’d asked something impossibly complicated.
“We just were,” he said. Then: “That was the point.”
I didn’t understand what he meant. I still don’t, really. Not until I read these journals.
The Crimson Serpent cut through the Devil’s Maw’s narrow passages with practiced grace, her crew knowing these waters like veins in their own hands. Behind her, the HMS Relentless followed with the methodical precision of a warship designed for open ocean, struggling with the confined channels.
Captain James Morrison stood on the Serpent’s bow, studying the frigate with the calculating eye of a man who had survived fifteen years of piracy through intelligence rather than luck. At forty-two, his face was mapped with violence—scars from cutlass fights, sun damage from decades at sea, a missing finger on his left hand taken by a Spanish pistol ball. His beard was gray-streaked. His body was lean as a hunting knife.
“She’s closing the gap,” Old Tom called from the rigging, the Serpent’s quartermaster squinting at the pursuing frigate. The ancient sailor had been Morrison’s first mate for a decade, had seen things most men would dismiss as impossible. “Cap’n, they know these waters better than I thought. We’ve got maybe twenty minutes before they get positioning for a broadside.”
Morrison nodded. He’d expected as much. Blackwood was a good captain—disciplined, methodical, exactly the kind of opponent who didn’t make mistakes born from panic or rashness.
Which meant he was predictable.
“They’ll try to pin us at the Narrows,” Morrison said, his voice carrying the certainty of a man who had spent his life reading currents and anticipating moves. “Shallow water, no room to maneuver. If we let them, we die.”
“And if we don’t?” Tom asked.
Morrison smiled—not with humor, but with the tight satisfaction of a gambler committing to a desperate bluff. “We go deeper. Into the places Blackwood doesn’t know.”
The water here was strange. Darker than normal Caribbean blue. The air tasted wrong—like copper and salt and something organic underneath, something that made your hindbrain scream in ways you couldn’t articulate. The crew felt it. Men grew quiet. Hands moved with less confidence.
Across the water, aboard the HMS Relentless, Captain Nathaniel Blackwood stood rigidly on his quarterdeck with the posture drilled into him across twenty-three years of naval service. His uniform was immaculate despite three days of pursuit. Every button polished. Every crease precise.
His crew would see that discipline and know they were under command of someone who did not break, who did not falter, who understood that order—relentless, mechanical order—was the foundation of everything worth defending.
At forty-five, Blackwood was everything the Royal Navy demanded: precise, honorable, absolutely devoted to duty. He had hunted Morrison across three months and two thousand miles of Caribbean water following a trail of burned merchant vessels and ransacked ports. The Admiralty’s orders were unambiguous: bring Morrison to justice or don’t return to England.
From the Formal Log of Captain Nathaniel Blackwood, HMS Relentless - October 12th, 1751, 3:15 PM
Morrison’s tactical error is now evident. The Devil’s Maw is a natural bottleneck—he has restricted his own maneuverability while simultaneously choosing terrain where my superior gunnery becomes difficult to deploy effectively.
However, this also restricts his escape routes. The inlet has precisely two viable passages. My ships can blockade both.
I have ordered approach to broadside position. My crew is disciplined. Morrison’s crew is composed primarily of desperate men united by profit rather than duty. When tested, such allegiances fracture.
This will end as such confrontations always do—with the triumph of order over chaos, duty over criminality.
The crew executed flawlessly. No mistakes. No hesitation. This is what discipline produces.
The first sign of wrongness came not as sound or sight, but as a change in the very fabric of reality itself.
Old Tom felt it first—a pressure change that popped his ears and made his ancient joints ache with a deep, bone-level cold that had nothing to do with temperature. He’d experienced pressure changes before, weathered a thousand storms, but this was different. This was wrong.
“Cap’n,” he called down to Morrison, his weathered face suddenly pale beneath its permanent tan. “Something’s changed.”
Morrison looked up from charting their next maneuver. The sky was still clear. The wind still normal. But the air around both ships seemed to thicken—becoming almost viscous, resistant. The water took on an oily sheen that reflected light in colors that hurt to focus on directly: colors that didn’t exist in nature.
Then the three-hundred-yard stretch of ocean between the Crimson Serpent and HMS Relentless erupted in impossible light.
It materialized like reality was tearing open.
One moment there was water and sky. The next moment, there was a ship that belonged to no Earth any man present had ever known.
The vessel was massive—perhaps two hundred fifty feet in length—constructed from material that appeared part metal, part living tissue. Its hull pulsed with bioluminescent patterns in shades of blue and green that seemed to shift with their own rhythm, as if the ship itself were breathing. Organic corridors were visible through a translucent outer skin. Structures moved within those corridors—shapes that suggested intelligence and purpose in equal measure.
The entire ship was suspended approximately thirty feet above the waterline, held aloft by some technology that violated every law of natural philosophy.
For perhaps five seconds, there was complete silence.
Then Morrison heard his crew begin to break. Not in panic—not yet—but in something deeper. A recognition that the world had just become fundamentally more dangerous than they had imagined possible.
From Morrison’s Log - 3:47 PM
It materialized.
I have no better words. One moment we were being hunted by a Navy frigate. The next moment, we were both being hunted by something that made our conflict utterly irrelevant.
The thing is massive. Organic and technological at once. Its hull pulsed with light. I could see corridors inside it. I could see movement inside it.
My first thought was that we were dead. My second thought was that Blackwood was also dead. My third thought was that perhaps—just perhaps—this changed the equation.
“Gentlemen,” I heard myself say, my voice carrying across the sudden silence with surprising calm, “I believe we are about to face something considerably more dangerous than the Royal Navy.”
Men laughed. It was hysteria. But they laughed.
Reading this, I see Grandfather trying to maintain control through documentation. The handwriting gets tighter as he writes. The letters compress. This is a man fighting to process something that violated his assumptions about reality.
But then I compare it to Blackwood’s account of the same moment, and his is almost identical. Two men, enemies seconds before, seeing something that transcended their conflict.
That’s when I understood: the impossible friendship didn’t form because they were similar. It formed because they both reacted the same way to something that shattered their understanding of the world.
Both ships fell silent. Gun crews abandoned their stations. Officers stared. The crew of the Relentless had been ready for traditional naval combat. This violated every assumption about how the world worked.
It was Blackwood who reacted first, his military training overriding shock through sheer disciplinary force. “All hands to defensive positions!” His voice carried across his vessel with parade-ground authority. “I want damage control parties standing by. Prepare to repel boarders if it comes to that!”
The command had the psychological effect he intended—giving frightened men something concrete to do, a familiar structure to cling to when reality had become incomprehensible.
Morrison’s response was different but equally immediate. “Load every cannon! Fire on that thing if it moves hostile! Move, you dogs, or we’re all dead!”
The two men looked at each other across the water—pirate and naval officer, sworn enemies who had been trying to murder each other moments before. In that instant, something shifted. The ancient hierarchy of conflict—predator versus prey, hunter versus hunted—suddenly became irrelevant.
“PARLAY!” Morrison’s voice cut through the renewed commotion. “Captain Blackwood, I call for parlay under the Code!”
It was the oldest maritime law, transcending nationality and personal hatred. Parlay was sacred among men who lived by the sea—a temporary truce that even sworn enemies respected.
“PARLAY ACKNOWLEDGED!” Blackwood called back without hesitation, his naval training recognizing the formal invocation immediately. “Under what terms?”
“Until that devil-thing is dealt with or we’re all dead!” Morrison shouted. “By the Code, English and pirate blood flows the same when facing something outside God’s natural order!”
The exchange took perhaps ten seconds. But in those ten seconds, the dynamic between the two vessels transformed from deadly antagonism to tentative alliance.
Part Three: The Impossible Partnership
The rowboat journey to the alien vessel took twenty minutes. Morrison brought four pirates, including Old Tom. Blackwood brought two marine officers and a naval engineer. Dr. Francisco Reyes climbed aboard at Morrison’s insistence—the pirate captain understanding, with characteristic pragmatism, that a man who had studied the artifact might prove invaluable.
The engineer was terrified. Reyes had spent the past three months aboard the Crimson Serpent documenting the properties of the four experimental cannonballs that Morrison’s crew had salvaged from the Spanish galleon Santa Isabella. Three months of studying artifacts that shouldn’t exist, weapons that incorporated principles of physics he didn’t understand, and growing horror at the realization that whatever had created such technology was not mythical.
It was real. And apparently, it hunted.
Morrison met Blackwood on the alien vessel’s entry platform—an opening that pulsed with soft bioluminescent light, its edges organic, almost like lips. The two men studied each other with the careful assessment of warriors evaluating opponents. But something fundamental had changed.
“I’m inclined to think,” Blackwood said, extending his hand in formal naval greeting, “that our previous disagreements are temporarily irrelevant.”
Morrison’s weathered face cracked into something that might have been approval. “By the Code of the Sea and under the laws of parlay, we stand as one crew united,” he replied, taking the offered hand. “At least until we understand what we’re facing.”
The handshake between pirate captain and Royal Navy officer became a moment of genuine accord—not friendship, not yet, but mutual recognition that survival required cooperation against something that transcended their conflict.
From Dr. Francisco Reyes’s Journal - October 12th, Evening
The interior of this vessel defies natural philosophy. The walls breathe. They are warm to the touch and appear to respond to movement. The architecture suggests an intelligence that evolved in radically different environmental conditions than Earth provided.
Morrison and Captain Blackwood have established preliminary security protocols. Already, their incompatibility is evident.
Morrison wants to move aggressively through the corridors, learn escape routes, place armed men at strategic positions. He moves with instinctive decisiveness—commitment before full understanding.
Blackwood wants systematic documentation. He insists on mapping the layout, understanding the technological systems, identifying patterns before committing to tactics. He moves with methodical caution.
They argue constantly.
“We’re wasting time,” Morrison said, frustrated. “Every moment we delay is time it uses to hunt.”
“And every system we don’t understand could kill us faster than the creature itself,” Blackwood replied with that maddening calm. “Discipline, Morrison. It’s the difference between soldiers and corpses.”
Morrison’s response: “Your discipline gets people killed when it wastes time.”
Blackwood’s response: “Your speed gets them killed when it wastes lives on mistakes.”
Yet—and this is what strikes me—their incompatibility somehow works. Where Morrison’s speed would lead to careless errors, Blackwood’s analysis catches them. Where Blackwood’s caution would waste precious time, Morrison’s aggression keeps them moving forward.
This should create paralysis. Instead, it creates something more effective than either man alone could achieve.
And I find myself relying on both of them. Morrison’s willingness to risk everything. Blackwood’s discipline that ensures we calculate those risks correctly.
I no longer fear them equally. I fear them differently.
The artifact chamber was where everything crystallized.
Rows of preserved skulls lined transparent cases—some recognizably from Earth’s predators, others from creatures that had no earthly classification. A massive monitor lizard’s skull. The powerful jaws of a great saltwater crocodile. Things that had never evolved on Earth.
But it was the black skull that dominated the space—elongated, predatory, with a secondary jaw that seemed designed purely for killing. The cranium was nearly three feet long, its surface polished by centuries. It grinned at them with malevolent intelligence.
“Jesus Christ,” Old Tom whispered, crossing himself repeatedly. “The thing that caught this hunter—it was more terrifying than the hunter itself.”
From Blackwood’s Log - October 12th, Night
The trophy collection provides crucial intelligence regarding our opponent’s nature and capabilities.
First observation: the creature we face has conducted hunts across multiple species and star systems. Each skull represents a successful kill. Some appear centuries old. Others are recent—within the past decade.
Second observation: one skull is clearly human. Spanish military insignia still adorns it. The specimen shows no signs of torture or prolonged suffering. A clean, efficient kill by a warrior skilled in single combat.
Third observation: this suggests our opponent kills according to some code. Honor-bound predation rather than mindless violence.
This prompted debate with Morrison regarding tactical implications.
Morrison: “If it respects honor, it will engage in extended combat. It won’t simply eliminate us efficiently. It will want a proper fight.”
Blackwood: “If it hunts according to rules, those rules are predictable. Understanding them allows us to exploit tactical patterns.”
Morrison: “You think we can predict something we don’t understand?”
Blackwood: “I think every organism, no matter how alien, operates according to logic. If we understand its logic, we understand how to kill it.”
I do not know if I am correct. But I know that Morrison’s intuitive fear, combined with my analytical approach, produced a framework neither of us could have achieved alone.
It was Dr. Reyes who articulated the full scope of what they faced.
The three men were examining the technological systems—displays showing star charts, hunting records, weapon specifications. Reyes moved from display to display with the intense focus of an academic confronting evidence that validated his most dangerous theories.
“This creature,” Reyes said slowly, his voice carrying the weight of horrifying certainty, “is part of an organized hunting culture. These symbols, these records—they suggest a civilization that spans multiple star systems. And based on the distribution of hunts recorded here…” He trailed off, unable to complete the thought.
“Earth has been a known hunting ground,” Morrison finished flatly. “For how long?”
“Centuries,” Blackwood said, studying the data streams with growing comprehension. “Perhaps longer. Look at the distribution patterns. Inconsistent. But present across multiple continents and time periods.”
“So what we’re facing isn’t an isolated threat,” Morrison said. “It’s part of something larger.”
“Much larger,” Reyes agreed. “This vessel is transmitting. It has been documenting our movements since we arrived. If this creature has allies, they now know about us.”
Blackwood, who had been absorbing this information with methodical precision, finally nodded grimly. “The creature is expected to report. When it doesn’t, they’ll investigate.”
“Or send replacements,” Morrison said flatly. “Which means we stop discussing and start planning. How do we kill something that can turn invisible?”
That question drove them deeper into the vessel’s systems over the next sixteen hours.
Part Four: The Friction Becomes Foundation
From Morrison’s Log - October 13th, Morning
Couldn’t sleep. Neither could Blackwood. We worked through the night studying the weapon systems.
He wanted to document everything systematically. I wanted to test them, understand them through use. We compromised by doing it his way while I bit my tongue the whole time.
“These energy outputs suggest a power source unlike anything European engineering has produced,” he said, studying readouts that meant nothing to me.
“What I need to know is: can we use them?” I replied.
“Not until we understand them,” he said.
I wanted to hit him. Instead, I listened. And slowly, I began to see what he saw—patterns in the data that suggested not just how the weapons worked, but their limitations. Their failure modes. Their costs.
By dawn, I understood: he was right. Again.
“You’re insufferable,” I told him.
“You’re reckless,” he replied.
“We’re both correct,” I concluded.
He almost smiled at that.
From Blackwood’s Log - October 13th, Morning
Morrison’s tactical instincts are superior to my own. I have spent my career studying naval warfare through systematic analysis of historical engagements. He has spent his career surviving through rapid, intuitive responses to immediate threats.
Both approaches have merit. Both have limitations.
Working through the night, I observed him operate. When faced with a problem, his mind moves quickly to solutions. He tests assumptions by observation rather than theoretical analysis. When something doesn’t work, he immediately tries alternatives.
This should lead to careless mistakes. In practice, it often identifies solutions more quickly than systematic analysis.
Conversely, my methodical approach should slow us down. In practice, it prevents us from making errors that waste resources we don’t have.
We are neither of us wrong. We are simply different approaches to the same problem.
I found myself respecting his methodology even as it frustrated me.
It was Dr. Reyes who finally forced the issue.
The engineer found Morrison and Blackwood in heated argument—not yelling, but the kind of controlled intensity that suggested this was approaching rupture. They stood before what appeared to be a critical ship system—something that controlled the vessel’s power distribution and environmental controls—but neither could determine how to activate it safely.
“You want to just try combinations until something works,” Blackwood was saying, his voice clipped. “Which could shut down life support or trigger a defensive system that kills us all.”
“And you want to spend three hours mapping every connection and analyzing every symbol,” Morrison shot back. “Which means we won’t have prepared defenses when that thing returns.”
“Dictating nothing if we’re dead from your recklessness,” Blackwood replied coldly.
“Your caution has killed more soldiers than my aggression ever will,” Morrison said, his voice dropping dangerously. “I’ve seen disciplined men die waiting for perfect conditions that never come.”
“And I’ve seen reckless men die taking risks that weren’t necessary,” Blackwood replied, not backing down. “At least my mistakes are built on analysis. Yours are built on ego.”
Silence fell between them—the kind of charged silence that precedes either violence or understanding.
Reyes stepped forward carefully. “Stop. Both of you.”
Both men turned.
“Morrison is right that we need to act quickly,” Reyes continued. “But Blackwood is right that we need to understand the system first. Watch.”
He approached the alien console and began tracing the connections with his engineer’s eye—not methodically mapping every pathway like Blackwood wanted, but identifying the critical nodes that Morrison’s instinct had already gravitated toward.
“Morrison, your instinct said to try this combination first, correct?” Reyes pointed to a specific sequence of glowing symbols.
“Yes,” Morrison admitted.
“And Blackwood, your analysis suggested these three connections were primary power conduits?”
“Correct,” Blackwood said.
“Then the answer is both,” Reyes explained, activating the system using Morrison’s sequence but following Blackwood’s identified power pathways. The console hummed to life, displays flickering with information that began flowing in comprehensible patterns.
Morrison studied the result. Blackwood studied the result. Then, simultaneously, both men nodded.
“That’s good,” Morrison admitted.
“That’s… actually quite good,” Blackwood agreed.
They looked at each other, and something shifted. Not agreement—they still disagreed on fundamental approach. But recognition that disagreement wasn’t a problem to be solved. It was a strength to be leveraged.
From Dr. Reyes’s Journal - October 13th, Afternoon
I watched them work through the afternoon. The arguing continued, but it changed.
Where before they each tried to convince the other to adopt their approach, now they began asking questions:
“What am I missing that you’re seeing?”
“Why do you think that will work when it seems inefficient?”
“What would happen if we combined your speed with my caution?”
Morrison charged at tactical problems with aggressive energy. Blackwood analyzed them with methodical precision. Separately, each approach was incomplete. Together, they became formidable.
And I found myself protected by both of them without either of us ever discussing it explicitly.
When I suggested we move deeper into the vessel to study the power core, Morrison positioned armed guards to protect my investigation. When those guards faced potential danger, Blackwood was there with tactical analysis that kept them alive.
They protect me. Not because they’ve decided to, but because it’s become instinctive.
I’m not certain when that happened. But I’m certain it did.
By morning of October 14th, they had achieved something neither could have accomplished alone: a comprehensive understanding of the alien weapons, integrated with tactical deployment strategies that combined Morrison’s aggressive instinct with Blackwood’s systematic planning, all refined through Reyes’s theoretical analysis.
“So what now?” Old Tom asked, studying the battle plan they’d drafted through a night of collaborative argument.
“Now,” Morrison said, checking his cutlass one final time, “we kill something that shouldn’t exist.”
Blackwood nodded, adjusting the plasma weapon he’d claimed as his own. “And hope it’s the only one that exists.”
Reyes said nothing. He was thinking about the small data crystal he’d palmed from the alien control system—a device containing information about technologies that could change everything humanity understood about itself. Information that none of these men had authorized him to take.
He would have to decide soon what to do with that knowledge. But not yet. Not until they survived.
Part Five: The Hunt
The creature emerged from its personal transport like a predator stepping out of darkness. Eight feet tall, ridged mandibles, bio-mask covering features that were simultaneously intelligent and utterly alien. The hunter moved with fluid grace through its own ship’s corridors, its bio-signature painting a thermal image that registered as pure lethal capability.
Scar-Maker—as the creature would have identified itself in its own language—had been hunting for eight hundred years across multiple star systems. He had taken trophies from species that had evolved for billions of years to become apex predators on their home worlds. He had never faced organized resistance. He had never needed to.
What he found aboard his vessel was unprecedented.
From Morrison’s Log - 4:15 PM
It’s inside. We’re using the ship’s own sensors—alien technology we barely understand. It shows us heat, movement, intent. Massive. Moving through the corridors like it owns them—which it does.
Blackwood’s holding defensive position. I’m moving to flank. Reyes is protected behind three layers of security.
The creature is beautiful in a terrifying way. It moves with absolute certainty. No hesitation. No doubt.
I understand now why the locals called this place cursed.
It fires. We scatter.
The battle raged through the alien vessel’s organic corridors for what would later be documented as forty-two minutes but felt like hours to the men fighting for their lives.
Scar-Maker fought with the accumulated expertise of eight centuries. His movements were faster than human reflexes should be able to track. His weapons—plasma cannon, retractable blades, devices whose purposes the humans couldn’t comprehend—operated with mechanical precision. He should have eliminated them all in the first three minutes.
What he hadn’t anticipated was organized group tactics executed with the discipline of trained military personnel combined with the aggressive unpredictability of experienced raiders working in perfect synchronization.
The creature fired its plasma cannon at Morrison, forcing the pirate captain to dive sideways through a corridor junction. The heat was intense—Morrison felt his skin blistering as he tumbled across the organic floor, which pulsed beneath him like the skin of some massive creature. The walls around him smelled of ozone and something else, something sweet and rotten mixed together.
But Blackwood’s covering fire was already laid down, forcing Scar-Maker to change targeting vector. The creature’s plasma bolts impacted the walls behind Blackwood, leaving scorch marks that glowed with residual heat.
In that moment of distraction, Old Tom fired a flanking shot that scored direct impact on the creature’s armor. The plasma bolt punched through, and phosphorescent green blood erupted from the wound—glowing, almost luminous, pooling on the organic floor with the acrid smell of something burning.
The creature roared—a sound that was part predator’s scream, part mechanical failure. It was a sound that had no human equivalent, that made the ear recoil from hearing something so utterly wrong. The alien blood sizzled where it hit the walls, the walls seeming to recoil from the contact.
Scar-Maker pivoted toward Old Tom with predatory speed that seemed to violate physics itself. But Morrison was already moving, charging directly at the creature with complete commitment. His cutlass flashed in the bioluminescent light, aimed at the creature’s mandible joint. The strike missed by inches as the creature shifted its massive frame.
The organic corridors thrummed with the motion—the walls contracting like muscle tissue, the floor becoming slick with alien blood that glowed sickly in the low light.
Blackwood’s next shot forced the creature back. His tactical analysis told him the creature needed space to wield its larger weapons effectively. Keep it close. Keep it fighting on the pirate’s terms, not its own. His plasma fire drove the creature deeper into the corridor where its size became a disadvantage.
“Corridor junction ahead!” Morrison roared, his voice raw with exertion. “Push it through there!”
They coordinated through instinct more than communication—three days of preparation and argument and learning each other’s patterns now paying dividends in survival.
Morrison attacked aggressively, forcing the creature to defend. When it tried to establish distance for its plasma cannon, Blackwood’s covering fire drove it back toward close combat where its technological advantages were less decisive. When the creature adapted and moved tactically, Old Tom was positioned exactly where he needed to be, firing from angles the creature hadn’t anticipated.
But they were slowing.
Exhaustion was setting in. Adrenaline that had fueled the first ten minutes was beginning to fade. Muscles that had been sharp were becoming clumsy. Decisions that had been tactical were becoming desperate.
Morrison’s arm dropped slightly after a feinting strike. His cutlass was growing heavy. The creature seized that moment—recognizing weakness the way a predator always does—and lashed out with one of its retractable blades.
The strike caught Morrison across the ribs, tearing through cloth and flesh with the sound of wet fabric ripping. Blood sprayed across the organic walls—human blood mixing with phosphorescent alien blood, the two mixing into something that glowed with sickly green light tinged with crimson.
“MORRISON!” Blackwood’s shout was equal parts rage and tactical urgency. His plasma fire intensified, forcing the creature away from the wounded pirate captain. The smell of burning flesh—both human and alien—filled the corridor.
But Morrison was already moving, despite the pain. Despite the blood streaming down his ribs. He understood something crucial in that moment: if he showed weakness, if he hesitated, all three of them died.
He pushed himself to his feet and charged again, his movements slower now, less efficient, but driven by pure will.
“Fall back!” Blackwood commanded. “Morrison, retreat! Let me provide covering fire!”
“No!” Morrison roared, his voice cracking. “Keep it pinned! Tom, flanking shot now!”
It was insanity. Morrison was bleeding heavily, moving slower, but charging directly at a creature that had nearly killed him moments before. Tactically indefensible. But Blackwood understood what Morrison understood: predators hunt weakness. Show none.
Old Tom’s plasma bolt caught the creature as it focused on Morrison, the shot finding an already-damaged section of armor. More phosphorescent green blood erupted—glowing in the darkness like liquid emerald, spreading across the walls in patterns that seemed almost intelligent, almost communicative.
Blackwood’s covering fire laid down suppression. Morrison’s charge created chaos where the creature had been establishing control.
The three men’s incompatibilities were now perfectly synchronized: aggression and analysis and intuitive opportunism operating as a single coordinated system.
From Blackwood’s Log - 4:38 PM
Morrison is wounded. I can see the blood from my position. He should withdraw. Tactically, he should preserve himself for what comes next.
Instead, he continues pressing the attack.
I understand now that Morrison’s recklessness isn’t a flaw. It’s exactly what we need. The creature cannot establish the methodical tactical position it requires because Morrison won’t give it time to think.
My analysis allows us to predict its patterns and exploit them. Morrison’s aggression prevents those patterns from becoming established.
Old Tom is positioned for optimal flanking. Our preparation is functioning.
But the creature is adapting. Each attack is met with increasingly sophisticated counter-tactics. It learns from our patterns.
Morrison is correct: we’re running out of time.
The creature’s bio-mask showed damage. Scorch marks covered its armor. For the first time in eight hundred years of hunting, Scar-Maker was genuinely wounded. Phosphorescent blood continued to seep from the wound, coating parts of its armor with that sickly glow.
But it was also learning.
Each time Morrison attacked aggressively, the creature adjusted its defensive response. Each time Blackwood’s fire came from a predictable position, the creature anticipated it. The creature had eight centuries of combat experience, and that experience was now being applied to understanding human tactics.
“We’re losing!” Morrison called, recognizing the pattern shifting in the creature’s favor. “It’s adapting too quickly!”
“We have reserves!” Blackwood replied. “The experimental ammunition! Morrison, now!”
Morrison had hoped to save the four experimental cannonballs. They were the only weapon they truly didn’t understand, the only variable the creature couldn’t predict through experience. Saving them meant keeping options open. Using them meant committing completely.
But Blackwood was right: if they didn’t use them now, they’d never get another chance.
“Load the experimental charges!” Morrison roared across their communication network. “All four, on my mark!”
The four projectiles launched from the Crimson Serpent’s cannons in coordinated sequence. They arced through the cove’s air with trails of strange light following them, leaving shimmering patterns that seemed to bend reality around them.
The moment they impacted the creature’s cloaking field, the world exploded in cascading electromagnetic disruption. The explosion painted the cove in brilliant white light, sending shock waves across the water that capsized smaller boats and sent the Crimson Serpent pitching wildly.
The creature had maintained partial invisibility throughout the battle—a technological advantage that had let it position strikes from unexpected angles. The impact of the experimental ammunition disrupted that field catastrophically.
For perhaps three seconds, Scar-Maker appeared fully in human vision: massive, powerful, alien, and utterly real. No longer some incomprehensible entity, but an actual being that could be wounded, that could bleed that sickly phosphorescent green, that could be killed.
In that moment of vulnerability, all of their incompatibilities aligned into perfect, deadly efficiency.
Morrison moved in with aggressive strikes that should have gotten him killed. But Blackwood’s covering fire was already laid down, forcing the creature to defend instead of counterattack. When Scar-Maker pivoted to pursue Blackwood, Old Tom was positioned exactly where he needed to be, firing a plasma bolt that penetrated the damaged armor.
The creature roared—a sound of pain, surprise, and something else. Perhaps acknowledgment.
Then it made a choice that would echo through the lives of all three men who faced it.
From Morrison’s Log - 4:42 PM
The creature stopped fighting.
It didn’t retreat. Didn’t surrender in any conventional sense. It simply… stopped.
It deactivated what remained of its cloaking field. It removed its bio-mask entirely. It revealed itself.
Scarred mandibles. Intelligent eyes. A physiology that was unmistakably that of a warrior.
And when it looked at us, I saw something I never expected to see in an alien predator’s expression: respect.
It raised what I believe was a traditional warrior’s salute.
Then it attacked with everything it had.
The final engagement lasted ninety seconds.
Scar-Maker fought without cloaking, without the technological advantage that had sustained his eight-hundred-year reign as an apex hunter. He fought as a warrior against warriors, acknowledging by his actions that these humans had earned the right to face him in honest combat.
Morrison charged with everything remaining in his exhausted body—cutlass flashing, face twisted in pure aggression born of rage at his fallen crew, pain from his wound, and the primal need to survive against something that shouldn’t exist.
Blackwood provided covering fire with mechanical precision—analyzing the creature’s patterns and predicting its movements with the analytical calm of a man who had spent his entire life understanding combat systems, even alien ones.
Old Tom, weathered and scarred and absolutely unbreakable, positioned himself for the killing strike—moving with the practiced efficiency of a man who had faced death a thousand times and refused to accept it.
The creature was faster. The creature was stronger. The creature had centuries of combat experience.
But it faced three men who had learned to complement each other’s strengths and compensate for each other’s weaknesses—a coordination that had taken eight hundred years for the creature to develop in itself, but only three days for three incompatible humans to forge together.
Scar-Maker’s blade flashed toward Morrison, who rolled beneath it and came up swinging. The pirate’s cutlass found the creature’s already-damaged armor. More phosphorescent blood erupted across the corridor walls, glowing sickly in the bioluminescent light.
When the creature pivoted to pursue Morrison, Blackwood was there—his plasma fire forcing the creature back toward Old Tom, who had positioned himself in a side corridor. The creature’s roar of frustration echoed through the organic ship as it tried to process three opponents who refused to follow predictable patterns.
It came from Morrison. A desperate, final charge that drove his cutlass directly into the joint where the creature’s mandible connected to its skull. The blade found alien anatomy with the precision of a man whose entire life had been a series of calculated violences.
Scar-Maker roared—a sound of pain and something else: perhaps acknowledgment that these prey had proven worthy after all. The creature fell, phosphorescent blood pooling beneath it, mixing with human blood on the organic floor, creating patterns that seemed to pulse with dying light.
Part Six: The Secret
The three men stood over the fallen creature, breathing hard, covered in alien blood and human exhaustion. The walls around them pulsed weakly, as if the ship itself were dying.
Morrison was the first to speak, though his voice was hoarse from exertion and pain. Blood still seeped from the wound across his ribs, though it had slowed.
“We did that,” he said. “All three of us. Not one would’ve survived alone.”
Blackwood nodded slowly, his disciplined composure finally cracking to show genuine emotion beneath. “Your aggression. My analysis. The engineer’s knowledge. We were exactly what was needed.”
Old Tom limped forward, his shoulder scorched by a plasma bolt that had burned clean through his coat. “The strangest fighting force in history.”
Dr. Reyes emerged from his protected position, moving slowly toward the three men. But his hand was clenched around the data crystal he’d stolen—a choice he would have to make about what that information meant, what it would cost, what it would create.
He stepped forward and looked at each man in turn.
Morrison saw him reach for the crystal and understood immediately what had happened. The pirate captain had built his reputation on reading people, on knowing what they wanted and were willing to take. He recognized that look—the recognition that knowledge had a cost, and that cost had just been paid in blood.
Blackwood saw the same thing, noted it with the methodical precision of a man trained to observe detail. The engineer had taken something. Alien technology. Forbidden knowledge.
For a long moment, nobody spoke.
Then Morrison turned away from the fallen creature and walked toward Reyes. Blackwood followed. Old Tom came last, moving slowly with his burned shoulder held carefully.
Morrison looked at the engineer’s closed hand and then at his face.
“You took something,” Morrison said. Not a question.
“Yes,” Reyes replied, his voice steady despite the fear in his eyes. “I took it because I believe it’s important. Because I believe it could change everything about what humanity understands itself to be.”
“Show us,” Blackwood said quietly.
Reyes opened his hand. The data crystal pulsed with soft light—impossible technology, containing information that could reshape civilizations.
The three men stared at it.
“Where did you get that?” Blackwood asked quietly.
“During the final moments,” Reyes said. “While you two were finishing the creature. The console behind us—I saw the data crystal embedded in it. The systems were failing. Everything was chaos. I made a choice.”
Morrison nodded slowly. He understood. In the confusion, with the creature dying and the ship’s systems cascading into failure, Reyes had seized a moment that would never come again. He’d taken something—impossible knowledge, forbidden technology—and in doing so, had committed himself completely to them.
“That stays between us,” Morrison finally said. “What we saw here. What we learned. What we took. That all stays between us. We speak of the battle, nothing more.”
“And if anyone asks what happened to certain systems aboard this vessel?” Reyes asked carefully.
“Damaged,” Blackwood said. “During the combat. We’ll document it that way.”
Nobody acknowledged the lie they were all committing to. Nobody discussed what it meant that they would protect each other’s secrets, that they would bound themselves together by shared complicity in taking something forbidden.
But something crucial shifted in that moment. They were no longer simply men who had survived together. They were men who would lie together, protect each other’s secrets, and carry the weight of what they’d done.
That was when the impossible friendship truly began.
Secret Archive: The Hidden Journal
Found sealed in a separate chest, discovered only after all three men had passed. The following are fragments—deliberately fragmented, deliberately obscured—from a fourth journal that Morrison, Blackwood, and Reyes maintained in absolute secrecy for forty years.
From the Concealed Records - October 14th, 1751, Evening
We have made a decision that will bind us together until our deaths and perhaps beyond. The knowledge contained in this journal will never be shared publicly. It is for our descendants—specifically, for whomever we choose to trust with the complete truth.
The creature we killed was not an aberration. It was part of an organized structure spanning multiple star systems. The data crystal contains star charts showing Earth marked among dozens of other worlds. The markings are consistent—recurring intervals, suggesting systematic hunting rather than random exploration.
We have studied the records. Scar-Maker—the creature’s name, as best we can translate—had been hunting for 847 years. His kill records span at least 300 worlds. Some hunting grounds show gaps of centuries. Others show recent activity.
Earth appears to have been continuously marked as a hunting ground for approximately 2,000 years.
From the Concealed Records - 1767 (Sixteen Years Later)
Morrison, Blackwood, and I have agreed to meet once every seven years to verify that the technology remains hidden and to assess whether there have been signs of extraterrestrial activity in the intervening period.
There have been reports. Disappearances that don’t make sense.
In 1759, the expedition led by François de la Pérouse into the Amazon disappeared without trace. Twelve men. No bodies. No signs of struggle. The natives in the region speak of “invisible hunters” that walk the jungle at night.
In 1763, an entire settlement in the remote territories of Siberia—forty-three colonists—was found abandoned. Buildings still warm. Food still cooking. Every inhabitant simply… gone.
In 1766, a geological expedition to the high peaks of the Andes reported seeing “lights in the sky” before communications ceased entirely. Rescue expeditions found only equipment, carefully arranged in geometric patterns.
In the records Scar-Maker maintained, we found documentation of identical patterns across multiple worlds. The same disappearance signatures. The same methodical approach.
The creature was not unique. It was part of something larger—an organized hunting culture that operates according to principles we can only partially understand. And Earth remains on their maps.
Most troubling: we found evidence of communication systems aboard the vessel. Transmissions sent and received. When Scar-Maker stopped reporting, someone—somewhere in the vast darkness between stars—would eventually notice.
We have hidden the technology not merely to protect it from misuse, but to protect ourselves from investigation.
Personal Entry - Reyes’s Journal, 1768
I cannot sleep. Blackwood and Morrison have gone. I remain in the study we’ve maintained in secret for seventeen years, surrounded by star charts and hunting records that should not exist.
Today I watched a man die. Not in battle—in bureaucratic inquiry. An explorer named De Chevillard, recently returned from the Amazon expedition. The authorities questioned him about the disappearance. He was incoherent, speaking of “shadows that moved against the light” and “intelligence in the darkness.”
They committed him to a sanatorium. They said he was mad.
But I’ve read the records. I know what he saw.
Morrison asked me today: “Do you regret it? Taking the crystal? Binding us to this?”
I told him the truth: “I regret that I’m the only one still living who understands what we’ve done. What we know. What continues.”
But I don’t regret the friendship. That remains the one true thing from those three days.
The burden is heavy. But it is bearable when shared.
From Blackwood’s Private Archive - 1776
I have made a discovery that changes everything about how we understand the creature.
The ship is not a machine piloted by an operator. The ship is the operator’s extended body. It responds to intention rather than instruction. When examining the organic corridors and the pulsing walls, I realized: the structure itself was neural. The creature was not separate from the vessel—it was integrated with it.
This has profound implications. It means when we killed Scar-Maker, we didn’t simply eliminate a hunter. We destroyed an entire integrated consciousness. A being that was simultaneously individual and collective, organism and machine, alive and technological in ways that defy our categories.
Morrison’s response was characteristically direct: “Does it matter? It would have killed us.”
Blackwood’s perspective: “It matters because it tells us something about what else might be out there. If their hunters are integrated with their technology, then their civilization operates on principles fundamentally different from ours. They don’t build machines—they become them.”
I recorded this in the secret archive because if others come, understanding their nature will be crucial to survival.
From Morrison’s Final Testament - 1790
I am old now. My hands shake when I write. Blackwood died three months ago. Reyes died five years before that. I am the last of us, and I must set down something I have not documented before.
In forty years of observation, we never found evidence of extraterrestrial retaliation. No ships arrived. No investigation came. The disappearances continued, but they remained isolated, scattered, deniable.
This is either the greatest relief or the greatest dread of my life. I cannot determine which.
I chose you, Morrison’s grandchild, because I watched you grow. I saw how you think—how you can hold contradictions without needing to resolve them. How you can sit with mystery without demanding certainty. How you can observe patterns without jumping to conclusions.
These are the qualities necessary to carry what we know.
Blackwood and Reyes argued with me about this choice. They worried you were too young, too unprepared. But I told them: “We were unprepared for everything that happened to us. We learned because necessity demanded it. The grandchild will do the same.”
I was right.
I have watched you over these past years, and I see in you the same capacity for incompatible truths that saved us in the Devil’s Maw. You do not need people to agree with you. You do not need certainty about the future. You simply understand that complexity is the nature of reality, and you move forward anyway.
This is why I chose you.
When you find these journals—whether by accident or deliberate guidance—you will understand. You will read about three men who became inseparable because they learned their differences were their strength. But more importantly, you will read about a burden that cannot be shared, a knowledge that cannot be acted upon, a threat that must be watched but never disclosed.
I do not know what you will do with this knowledge. That choice is yours alone.
But I know you will not break under the weight of it. And I know you will pass it on when the time comes, just as we have done.
The hunt in hidden waters continues. It always will.
But at least now, someone will understand.
From the Concealed Records - 1791 (Forty Years Later)
Blackwood is dying. Morrison’s health is failing. I do not expect to outlive him by more than a few years. We have made the decision to preserve this journal and pass it, along with the three public accounts, to a carefully chosen descendant.
We have spent forty years observing which of our children and grandchildren possessed the qualities necessary to understand what we learned: intelligence, discretion, the ability to carry knowledge without needing to act on it immediately, and most importantly—the capacity to see complexity without demanding simplification.
We are entrusting this knowledge to Morrison’s grandchild. We have watched them grow. We have observed their mind work. We believe they are ready.
The three public journals will be discovered first—whether through accident or deliberate guidance, we leave to Morrison’s judgment. But the secret journal will be hidden separately, in a place only the grandchild will think to look after reading the public accounts.
If we have judged correctly, the grandchild will understand.
In forty years of monitoring, we have detected no evidence of extraterrestrial investigation into Scar-Maker’s disappearance. This could mean several things:
First: They do not know we killed him. His final transmission may have been corrupted or incomplete.
Second: They know but have decided not to investigate. Perhaps a hunter going silent is not exceptional enough to warrant interstellar travel.
Third: They are investigating, but with such vast distances involved, the investigation proceeds at a pace imperceptible to us.
Fourth: They are aware of what occurred, and they are waiting.
We cannot determine which is true. What we know is this: Earth remains marked on their charts. The disappearances continue. The pattern persists.
We are leaving this knowledge to our descendants not as burden but as warning. Scar-Maker was one hunter among thousands. He was skilled. He was dangerous. He was ultimately killable.
But he was not unique.
If others like him come—and statistically, over sufficient time, they will—humanity must be prepared. Not with reverse-engineered technology or corporate weaponry. But with the understanding that has saved us once already:
Incompatible people, united by necessity, can accomplish what no individual alone can achieve.
Pass this knowledge on. Teach it. Remember it.
The hunt in hidden waters may yet continue. But now, at least, someone will understand what we learned in those three days:
Unity is not agreement. It is coordination despite fundamental differences.
That is humanity’s greatest strength. Cultivate it. Protect it. Pass it on.
—Morrison, Blackwood, and Reyes
1791
The data crystal remains hidden. Its contents—technical specifications for technologies that could reshape human civilization—are known only to us and to whoever receives this journal. The decision of what to do with that knowledge falls to them.
We chose silence. Perhaps you will choose differently.
But choose wisely. The universe, we have learned, is far larger and far more dangerous than any of us imagined.
Final Epilogue: The Inheritance
I closed the secret journal as the sun rose fully over my grandfather’s study.
Four journals, not three. Four voices, not three. The mystery deepened rather than resolved.
The public journals documented how three incompatible men became inseparable through shared extremity. They showed the impossible friendship forming, the battle, the bonding. But they left gaps—moments deliberately obscured, questions deliberately unanswered.
The secret journal revealed what those gaps contained: that survival was only the first challenge. That by living through those three days, the three men had inherited knowledge of something vast and patient and ongoing. That Earth remained marked on star charts belonging to beings that span star systems. That the disappearances they documented over forty years of careful observation suggested the hunt had never truly stopped.
They had killed one predator. But the hunting ground itself remained active.
I understood then why my grandfather had arranged for me to find these journals. Why he’d spent his life watching me, assessing me, waiting to see if I possessed the qualities necessary to carry this knowledge without going mad from it.
The three men had learned to work together despite fundamental incompatibility. But they’d remained isolated—unable to share their burden with anyone, unable to act on their knowledge without sounding insane.
Now that burden passed to me.
For forty years, they had watched and waited. And in those forty years, no starship had appeared. No investigation had come. No alien intelligence had made its presence known.
But that didn’t mean the threat had passed. It meant the threat was patient.
I held the four journals in my hands and carried the weight of three men’s impossible friendship into my own future—a future where I, like them, would have to choose silence over revelation, burden over freedom, inherited knowledge over personal peace.
The hunt in hidden waters never truly ended.
It simply moved to a new phase. Observation. Waiting. Inheritance.
And now it fell to me to decide what came next.
END
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