Author Note

In recent reviews, a few people have expressed disappointment in that Clark didn't get to face a Predator. I planned for him to do so in the near future when he was more ready, but then I decided to do it now as it is what the reviewers want. I hope the fight, short as it is, will be enjoyable.

Jump Chain 14 - Smallville

Part 10

The Thunderchild. Smallville Verse.

"There's something wrong about this," I said, "Why is it just hanging around?".

After defeating the Predator who had come to Smallville I'd returned to my Aurora-class battleship to see if I could find the scout ship that had dropped off that hunter. If they were short-range craft unable to make long trips then it could still be somewhere in the system, and if it was floating around awaiting some sort of recall signal then I might be able to get scans or even send some bots over to check it out.

The Scout Ship, which as it turned out was hiding in a power downed state on the dark side of the moon, was a small Yautja Spacecraft which were usually connected to a Mother Ship. According to the design we had in our databanks, that we'd acquired during our time in the Halloween Universe, Scout Ships had three external thrusters and a large blade on the belly of the vessel.

This ship seemed to be of a different make and when I ordered a scan I found that it was unarmed and that the hull of the Scout Ship was not very strong. A single shot from one of my warship's plasma cannons would cripple or even destroy the craft.

It's lack of defences, it didn't even seem to have shields as far as I could tell, might seem odd, but this vessel was meant to deliver Predators to a hunt and then to take them home again. Big game hunters on Earth don't tend to attach large weapons or bits of armour to their jeeps. Well perhaps some of them did, but the Yautja were a race steeped in honour and tradition, and those sorts of things tended to lead to people doing things in foolish or impractical ways.

"Now that is odd" I muttered.

Before my captain's chair, which was really more of a command throne, results of the latest scans were displayed and they showed something unexpected.

"What is it, Master" Cameron enquired.

Since I didn't need the Terminator as a bodyguard these days Cameron had taken to spending time on this ship by herself. She did have her own interests and unless I needed someone to go run an errand for me, or back up on a mission I was happy to let my companions go and their own thing. Cameron just acted more them these days.

"There's a human life sign on that ship," I told her.

This was very strange.

"The Predators aren't known for taking prisoners" Cameron commented, "and they don't tend to work with other races either".

While the Yautja were mostly unknown to us, one of the things I knew for sure about them was that they didn't interact with other races much outside of hunting them. Then again cooperation with a Predator was possible and there were even stories of them taking humans into their clans.

An example of this is a woman called Machiko Noguchi also known as Da'dtou-di "small knife" by the Yautja, she was a Chigusa Corporation employee and the administrator in charge of the Prosperity Wells colony on a world called Ryushi.

Machiko had only recently taken up her position on Ryushi when it was subjected to a devastating assault by a group of Yautja and the Xenomorphs they had unleashed on the planet. The incident led to the destruction of the colony and the death of several of its inhabitants.

As fate would have it Machiko Noguchi survived the incident, in the process earning the respect of a high ranking Yautja known as "Broken Tusk", to the point where she was Blooded by him and went on to join his clan. At least for a time as life in a Yautja clan isn't suited for humans.

However, that was a rare thing to happen. Far more likely was that the person on board that ship was going to be transferred to a hunting preserve run by the Yautja and hunted when there. Given that the Predators took killers I wasn't inclined to go save that person, but this was a chance to take a look at some advanced alien tech, and as long the bots I sent over didn't disturb the ship unduly it should be okay.

"Bring us into the range of the transporters" I ordered.

I then turned to my cyborg.

"Cameron I want you to...".

I'd been about to order her to take a team of bots over to inspect the craft when I felt something through the Force. Precognition, also known as danger sense, was a universal Force power used by Force-sensitives with high experience in the Force.

This ability of foresight was not limited to the Jedi, as many magic users had that power as well, but right it was the Force that was granting me a warning of a future event. This ability in the Force was not restricted to the Jedi, however, as the Sith also were known to perceive direction and insight from the dark side.

"Raise the shields!" I commanded.

An alien vessel jumped out of some form of hyperspace and opened fire on my vessel. If I'd not raised my vessel's defences in time we would have taken considerable damage.

I scanned the alien craft and found that the vessel now heading for Earth was a Predator Mother Ship, which was a massive, mobile base for Yautja hunters. Mother Ships were the home base for a number of Scout Ships that could dock at it. From what I knew these ships rarely entered into conflict with another force and are usually inhabited by a single Clan, led by the Clan Elder, at least in the Halloween Universe.

Like other Yautja craft, these Mother Ships utilized cloaking technology that rendered them invisible, making them virtually impossible to find if you didn't have high advanced sensors like mine. I figured that the pilots of other Yautja vessels must have access to specialists scanners that allow them to locate a nearby Mother Ship.

It was also known that at least some Mother Ship hold a captive Xenomorph Queen, which the Yautja warriors can acquire eggs from so that they can have xenomorphs to hunt. According to the life sign scans, there was a Xenomorph queen on that ship, this was not something I wanted anywhere near my base of operations.

"The alien vessel is heading towards Earth" one of the crew reported.

I had a bad feeling about this. The Predators had lured my ship into an ambush meant to cripple or destroy my vessel so they could reach the Earth, and there was only one thing on that planet that I knew they were interested in.

"Let's go after it" I decided.

On the readouts, I saw that the alien mothership had just fired three pods, and as I tracked them it became clear that they would very soon land in Smallville.

"These Yautja must be clan mates of the one I killed" I reasoned.

The alien mother ship was now coming around, heading towards my ship.

"They might be thinking that Clark killed one of them and that this means he's worthy prey for a trio of hunters" I mused "Or they don't know what happened down there and want to find out".

I simply didn't know and there was little time to think about it.

"Cameron I need you to go help Clark, he won't be prepared for what is coming," I said.

I opened up a portal to the Kent farm and my Terminator went through without delay. Leaving me to deal with the Mother Ship. The alien ship opened fire as my vessel did, it was armed some sort of missiles that would have done quite a bit of damage if I'd not had ZPM powered shields protecting my vessel. Thankfully I'd not needed to lower them to send Cameron to the town as portals weren't like teleporters.

"Return fire" I commanded.

The Thunderchild opened up with its plasma cannons and if the scans hadn't already let me know I'd have discovered at this point that the mothership also had powerful barriers protecting it. Not that this mattered as I had weapons much more powerful than plasma cannons.

Leaning back I closed my eyes and let loose the drones which speed through space. When they met the shields of the Yautja vessel they went right through them and seconds later the alien mothership exploded. The Thunderchild was more than a match for Wraith Hives, Ori Motherships and now it seemed as if Yautja technology was no match for it either.

The fembot crew didn't react to anything that had just happened as they were nothing more than nice to look at bots so there was no distraction for me as I scanned the system and located the scout ship, that was currently trying to make its way out of the system.

"Oh no you don't," I said.

The scout ship was too fast to catch, but it had no shields so I used the transporters to pluck out the human on board and bring him to the bridge, or she as it turned out. Long-range transporting was dangerous, but this person was no friend of mine so I'd been willing to risk it.

"I don't have time to deal with you right now," I told the woman, who was dressed in Predator gear.

Since she had one of those wrist devices and could blow herself up I placed a powerful sleep spell on her. Then I removed the device and had a couple of the bots take her to the brig. I needed to get back to Earth in case Cameron and the others needed my help.

(Line Break)

Kent Farm. Smallville.

The people of this town weren't exactly strangers to things falling from the sky, but even for them having three aliens land at once was a bit much, not that many of them would ever know about it, and those that did were rather worried about the whole thing even before they had much of an idea of what was going on.

In his barn Clark focused his telescope, trying to spot anything odd in the wooded area that the three shooting stars seemed to have landed in.

"That's near to where Farmer Brown was found," the future Man of Steel told his cousin "Maybe we should go take a look".

Kara didn't think that this was a good idea.

"Kal neither of us have night vision to go with our X-ray vision" she reminded him "and we have no idea what might be out there".

Clark gave this some thought.

"Maybe I should signal Jax?" he wondered "He seems to always know what's going on".

Before he could do that someone he didn't know entered the barn. She looked to be a young woman, but neither Clark or Kara had met her before, yet she must have been looking for them.

"Can we help you?" Kara asked.

The young woman looked around as if trying to see something that was hidden.

"My name is Cameron, Jax sent me," she told the two alien teens "You're are in danger, and we don't have much time, the Yautja can move fast".

Kal and Kara exchanged looks.

"What do you mean?" Clark asked "Who are you? Where is Jax?".

The farm was normally very quiet and while neither of the Kryptonians had super-hearing, at least not yet, Clark was unsettled by the sudden lack of noise. It was as the animals on the farm were trying to hide from a predator of some kind.

"They're close," the woman said.

There was a sudden blast and Clark found himself taking cover as shards of wood went flying. By the time the dust settled the young Superman found himself fighting for his life as a massive humanoid figure tried to stab him with a spear of some sort. He rolled out of the way and when he got to his feet he saw the woman called Cameron tackle the figure, which was more than twice her size, and bring it to the ground.

Clark was about to go help the impressively strong woman when he heard his cousin scream. She was clutching her shoulder and she was bleeding. The Kryptonian also noted that Kara had just pulled something out of her arm. An oddly-shaped piece of metal that shouldn't have been able to harm one of his kind.

He raced over to her only to met with another large figure who tried to drive a sword it held into his chest. Moving with his super-speed he batted the blade aside and then shoved the humanoid away, who went flying into the nearby tractor. Had it been human it would have needed medical attention and perhaps even gotten some damage to its spine, but these attackers were much tougher than a normal human.

While Cameron was dealing with one of the attackers, Clark saw that she was beating her opponent, quite literally with her fists, he didn't have any time to do more than register that as he saw more of those oddly-shaped pieces of metal came flying into the barn.

As he was more used to having superpowers than his cousin the future Superman found himself able to bat the projectiles aside, only when he did he cut himself, the wound wasn't deep, but it did hurt and that distracted him long enough for the attacker with the sword, who'd recovered from bashing into the tractor, to swipe at him.

Lucky for alien teen the sword was human-made, an old blade taken from another Earth centuries ago and passed down from an elder to a young hunter, because it was mere steel the blade shattered upon impact, but while it drew no blood the sheer force behind the blow drove Clark to the ground.

The Predator was about to try finishing the job with a dagger it pulled out of a sheath when Kara charged, narrowing missing a combi-stick that was thrown by the third attacker, who as of yet hadn't entered the barn. Kara drove her small yet powerful fist into the attacker standing over her cousin a blow which sent the attacker, which Kara had seen enough of to know it was some sort of alien, through the wall of the barn.

Cameron had finished dealing with one of the Yautja, she'd snapped its neck rather easily after knocking it out, something made possible thanks to one of the upgrades she'd gotten during one of the Jumps, and when she got up she found that the barn was empty of anyone that shouldn't be in it. At least for the moment.

"What are these things?" Kara asked as she helped her cousin get up.

Whatever they were she feared them as they had weapons that could harm her and Kal, and while clearly they were not of this Earth she'd never heard of a race such of these despite having been educated within a culture that had knowledge of life across more than twenty galaxies.

"These are Yautja or Predators as they are sometimes known. They are aliens who hunt dangerous people and animals for sport" Cameron explained as she walked over to the two teens "They've come here to kill you and take your skulls as trophies".

A simplistic view of the situation, but there was no time to discuss more as the sound of a shotgun firing filled the night air.

"Dad!" Clark called out before taking off in a blur.

The Predator who'd been punched through the wall of the barn launched a dart of some kind from its wrist device, which would have hit Kara in the head if Cameron hadn't been able to catch the weapon with her hand. The dart ended up embedded in the organic flesh of the Terminator and when she pulled it free she exposed her no-human nature to Kara.

"You're a robot!" she called out.

Cameron had no time to correct this and explain that she was a cyborg, as the Predator who'd fired the dart was now entering the barn. Despite getting hit hard the alien was not going to turn tail and run, it would fight and perhaps even die as a warrior.

"This one is mine" Kara declared.

These things were a treat to her cousin and it was her destiny to protect him so she blurred forward and kicked the alien in the chest. An act that sent the hunter flying across the farmyard and into the nearest grain silo.

Meanwhile, Clark had moved faster than the eye could see to find his human father, who had grabbed his shotgun upon realising there was trouble, had fired off a warning shot upon seeing one of the hunters. When the alien had fired some sort of blast at Jonathan Kent it had missed only because Clark had rammed into the Predator at full speed, knocking them both down.

Jonathan kept his shotgun aimed at the unknown person while moving to help his son up. As such he didn't see the blur that was another alien getting kicked into the grain silo, although he sure heard it happen.

"Clark do you have any idea what is going on?" he asked.

His adopted son did not and so had nothing to tell his foster father. Not that they had time to discuss this as the alien that Clark knocked over began to stand up. It extended the blades on its wrists and lunged at Clark. Mr Kent fired and the pellets struck metal as Kal-El aimed a punch which knocked the Predator's mask off.

"Not a handsome fella" the future Superman muttered.

At least now he understood what he was facing. This was no human who had been infected with meteor rock, it had to be an alien, but it was certainly not a member of his race.

"Handsome fella," said the alien.

The creature had recovered fast from a blow that would have rendered a human unconscious for hours, and the shotgun blast hadn't even gotten its attention so Clark knew that he had to something more drastic, however, he found himself unwilling to kill.

Not that he needed to as this was when Cameron appeared and began to fight the Predator. Like with Kara her small fists did far more damage than they should have and the Yautja was driven back as the Terminator punched and kicked it.

When the time was right the cyborg moved back and held out her arm. The flesh broke and a small tube of some sort appeared from inside her arm. It was a weapon as it turned out, one more than powerful enough to defeat the Yautja, the alien was vaporised by a focused energy beam of great power.

"The other two are dead I think" reported Kara as she appeared "I can't be sure because the silo collapsed on one of them".

None of the Kent's were glad to hear this, but they were grateful that it was over.

"You need to cover up any sign of an attack," said Cameron "I'll deal with the bodies and anything they left behind. You can handle the repairs".

Seeing no reason to argue the two Kryptonians worked in a blur as they removed all evidence that a small battle had taken place here.

(Line Break)

Kent Farm. Smallville Verse.

In a blur, I appeared on the farm to find Cameron dragging the corpse of a Yautja out of the grain silo, that had collapsed on top of the alien hunter. I used my super strength to pull the body out of the silo and then after quickly looking around I took out my wand so that I could repair the silo without any trouble. Once that was done I tagged the body and it was beamed up to the ship. I could perform an alien autopsy later.

This was when Clark found me.

"Jax, you're here," he said, "Do you know what those things were that attacked us".

I did, and I had to be careful about how I explained all of this.

"They are called the Yautja," I told him "They are a race of aliens who hunt worthy targets, their whole culture is all about the hunt. They found out that there are Kryptonians here on Earth and came to hunt, or at least some of them did. They have a clan structure so the whole race won't be coming after us".

While I was no Predator expert I didn't think that the rulers of the race would waste more resources on this one planet, not if they had the whole multiverse to hunt in, one clan might have come that didn't mean more would, but I'd keep my guard up.

I mostly worried that they might send a powerful hunter like Wolf who was a Xenomorph hunter who arrived on Earth to contain a Xenomorph outbreak in Gunnison, Colorado in 2004. He killed some of the humans who lived in that the town, he also slew many Xenomorphs and fought a Predalien in combat.

Wolf was killed when a tactical nuclear bomb was dropped on Gunnison by Colonel Stevens, along with the Predalien he was battling and any surviving Xenomorphs as well any remaining residents in the town. But I doubted he was only Yautja around who was sent to deal with troublesome situations.

"There are more of them?" Clark asked.

Hopefully, I'd taken out the whole clan.

"I was attacked too that's why I couldn't help you," I told Kal-El "and why I sent Cameron. I knew that you were in danger".

Right now I felt very glad that I'd upgraded my Terminator during past Jumps. If I hadn't she wouldn't have been as effective if I hadn't done the work, and one or even both of the Kryptonians could have died since they weren't willing to use lethal force.

"What is Cameron?" Clark asked, "I saw her fight, she's not human, but she's not just some machine".

He must have scanned her with his X-ray vision and seen the machine parts under the organic shell.

"She's a cyborg I acquired," I told him "she was made to protect me".

Before he could ask more questions I changed the subject.

"There should be one more body left," I said, "I'll get rid of it and help you clean up. No one can know what happened here. If they do you'll have reporters and government agents checking you out".

The pods they'd landed in could be stored in capsules and left there until they could be safely dealt with as I didn't want them self-destructing. The pods weren't interesting anyway I was far more interest the equipment the Yautja had been carrying. I knew that all of it had to be stored away safely in case the Yautja on their homeworld came looking for it. I didn't even want a trace of it left here on the Kent farm.

(Line Break)

Lux. Smallville Verse.

After clearing up on the farm, leaving Cameron behind out of phase to keep an eye on things for a while, I'd come to the workshop here in the basement so that I could take a look at all the Predator tech. It hadn't taken me long to gather everything, bodies included and I would take a look at them later. Having more biological samples would only aid the project I had going to make the ultimate form.

While Cameron had used her inbuilt phaser, a device that she kept hidden inside her body, to totally vaporise one of the Yautja, the bodies and stuff of the other two were intact, and I'd recovered the one from the collapsed cave since there was no point leaving him there for his kin to find. As such, I had plenty of samples to work with.

The pods they'd come down with, there were four in total, had been placed into capsules for later study, as for the captive, she was locked up and could be dealt with later. I didn't know how loyal she was to the Predators and since my bots had taken all of her equipment before throwing in a cell she wouldn't be going anywhere.

For now, I wanted to check out their equipment, it would be important to understand their tools if more of them ever turned up.

I started with their Body Armor which turned out to be a sectional assemblage of armour that was worn by Yautja on different parts of the body while they were on a Hunt. Interestingly none of the Predators we'd encountered had worn full protective suits of armour.

The reason for this was unknown to me, although since the Hunt requires stealth, speed, and a fair bit of athleticism, Yautja may forgo it for this reason as heavy armour often sacrifices mobility. It could also be that the Yautja choose to wear less than a complete set of armour so as to give anyone they enter combat with a chance to strike at a weak spot. They did have a twisted sense of fair play.

A detailed scan of the material that made up the armour led to me having to add several new elements to the periodic table, and mine was much larger than the one you'd see on the wall in chemistry class, and upon testing, I discovered that it was no more durable than stuff I could already make, but a suit of the stuff, the one taken from the Yautja I'd left buried in a cave until now, that would look good displayed in my museum.

Despite the armour providing decent protection, it wasn't a very dense material, and while this lack of mass meant that the armour was easy to move around in it also meant that it hadn't provided any protection to the Yautja that Cameron had vaporised. Unlike the armour that was worn by members of my group these sets of armour hadn't been made to defend from energy weapons, and this made sense they'd been going to a modern Earth to hunt as humans rarely had energy weapons in that setting.

Before long I moved onto the plasma weapon that the Yautja attacking the Kent farm hadn't made much use of aside from firing a warning shot at the barn. Which seemed odd considering that they must have known how durable Kryptonians are.

They were an alien race I found to understand, and that was why they'd been able to ambush me, if not for my force powers they would have crippled my vessel and boarded it after sending down three hunters to kill Clark, I felt certain of that.

Getting back to the study of the plasma weapon, and it was always good to study these things as they could allow us to improve my groups own weapons, I discovered the one plasma weapon the hunters had brought with them was the most commonly seen variant of the Plasmacaster in fiction, which was the shoulder-mounted version.

This weapon was capable of firing multiple long-range bolts of charged plasma, and by test firing it I soon discovered that the power of each individual burst could be adjusted manually, the range went from a minor setting that would leave a nasty burn but not be fatal, to a level that would kill an unarmed human by leaving a hole in their torso, to a blast powerful enough to breach the hulls of interstellar craft. This was very impressive considering the small size of the weapon and how little it weighed.

The Plasmacaster is aimed via a targeting system typically built into the Predator's bio-helmet, causing the weapon to track with the user's head movement, although some have been seen with integral targeting systems. This targeting system involved a three-pointed targeting laser sight arranged in a triangular formation. Plasmacasters also had come computing power, which led to them having some degree of targeting memory, able to track and fire at a target even if the Predator itself turns in another direction.

After taking it apart I discovered that this model could be modified and used as a hand-held Plasma Pistol in the event that the shoulder mount was damaged. I personally wouldn't want a plasma weapon firing near my face, but this tech could be used to improve our hand-held plasma weapons.

As for the Combistick, aside from also being made from unknown metals, it was is telescopic, making it relatively small and easy to store when not in use. It was easily extended to its full length when required in combat. It could be used both as a close-quarters hand-to-hand weapon and thrown like a spear. Not much use to my group as none of us used spears, but it would look good in the armoury addon of the Cosmic Warehouse.

I soon moved onto the wristblades, which were the most basic of Yautja weapons and arguably the species' signature armament aside from the shoulder-mounted plasmacaster. The blades take the form of retractable, serrated blades between six and eighteen inches in length and two to eight inches wide that extends over the back of the hand from a gauntlet worn on the Predator's wrist. The different examples of these weapons let me know that there variations on the basic design beyond the length and width of the blades. But without further information, I could only conclude that the differences were a matter of personal taste.

Despite their relative simplicity, Wristblades are the weapon of choice for most Predators. The deadly blades are sharp enough to cut through bone and are intended for use against unarmored combatants or those who have been disarmed. As a last resort, they can sometimes be fired as a projectile from their gauntlet.

One of the Predators had carried a Smart Disc, a thrown Yautja weapon. It was basically an extremely sharp circular cutting device that is typically thrown like a discus and yet it could return to the user like a boomerang. It also features a hand grip for use as a melee slashing weapon.

Last of all was the Ceremonial Dagger is a Yautja weapon, used by warriors as a last-resort weapon or a weapon to take trophies from fallen enemies. It wasn't made of any material I could recognise so I suspected that it came from some creature rather than be totally manufactured.

"Captain the prisoner is awake," one of the crew told me.

If I could get to her talk she'd be a good source of information, and she didn't cooperate well then I'd just download her memories and get I wanted that way.