He stood there dressed in black, the snow swirling at his feet, a dark and potent tower of potential violence and death surrounded by a blistering white sea of serenity and emptiness.

It was all just patience now, he strained against the silence to try and detect even the slightest tell tale sound that would give away the position of his latest nemesis.  It was out there somewhere, perhaps watching him right now, perhaps moving in on his position unseen.  Perhaps it was waiting for him to make the first move.  That would never happen.

He checked the charge of his weapons again. They were all fine, he knew they were fine.  He thought it was perhaps a sign of nervousness or even fear to continually check the things one knew were perfectly in order… perhaps it was.  He checked them again before holstered the exotic guns and then surveyed his surroundings. 

It had taken him a long time to find such a planet, one with a breathable atmosphere and the right level of gravity, set at just the right distance from its sun and where there was enough water to actually form a large ice field.  The perfect location for a last stand. No, he caught himself…  no not a last stand, not a last stand at all, simply the last meeting place for this one last confrontation with this particular Predator. 

Over the years he had faced dozens of them and walked away from each and every encounter. His abilities had allowed him to survive but they had also marked him out as a worthy prey.  It would never end.  If he succeeded in defeating this foe, it would only be a matter of time before another took its place and the hunt began all over again.

He wondered if there were many others like himself, plucked from their worlds, implanted with a tracking device and then forced to spend the rest of their lives in a constant struggle for survival against an entire race of hunters.  There could be dozens such as himself scattered across the stars for all he knew, but he would never meet them. 

There were very few advanced societies and safe worlds left any more, from the information he'd managed to gather over the years, there had once been a thriving interstellar community in this Galaxy, but it was all gone now.  Even the Predators themselves were on a downward spiral to extinction.  He wondered if they had realized that yet.  He imagined that it might even be the reason for them being the way they were.  Perhaps the certainty of their own demise fuelled them on to seek the greater thrill of the hunt while they still had time as a species to do so.

He'd seen the tell tale signs of their decline first hand when they captured him.  He'd spent quite some time in the cages on one of their so called home worlds.  They were no such thing of course, their real home was long gone and lost in the dimness of time.  It had probably been overrun by one of the many amazingly dangerous life forms that the Predators seemed intent on breeding and distributing throughout the cosmos for their own singular purpose, regardless of the consequences for everyone else.  Either without realizing it or without caring about it the Predators had long ago sown the seeds of Galactic destruction on thousands of worlds just to satisfy their own ridiculous hunger for the hunt.

He looked down at the alien device strapped to his wrist. Its red angular readout had once been a great enigma to him, but over the years he had learnt their language, he'd had to. The technology that they relied on to track and eliminate their prey was ironically now also working for him.  The readout indicated the status of the remote sensors he'd placed around the perimeter of the ice field.  Nothing significant had registered.  That didn't mean he was alone, he knew that.  The one thing the Predators excelled at, was avoiding detection.  Along with the wrist device he was in possession of quite a bit of their equipment and weaponry, stolen and scavenged from the numerous hunters that had come in search of him. 

A  sudden gust of wind lifted the fine dusty snow from the ground and swirled it around him once again. It hissed around him for a second and then settled, leaving a discordant silence in its wake. 

It was here, he could feel it and it was well inside the perimeter. His senses had become so highly attuned to minor variances in ambient sound and even the air pressure that he absolutely knew the killer had bypassed all of the traps. It had somehow totally avoided the sensors he had spent days preparing. 

It was close.  It was obviously a veteran, an experienced killer, not a normal run of the mill hunter.  This Predator had been dispatched to put an end to him, not for sport, but as business.

There had been others of course. Hunters, Killers, Assassins, and he felt sure that the quality of his opponents had been steadily increasing with each passing pursuit.  He hoped soon that they would learn to fear him… he had eliminated dozens of them, would their logic ever triumph over their pride and arrogance?  Would they ever realize that they should just let this one go… He doubted it.

Something shimmered in the distance, an unusual swirl of snow almost like a weak and miniature tornado, it was what he'd been waiting for.  It was the Predator walking stealthily towards him shrouded in an active invisibility cloak, he was without doubt.

Slowly he turned away from it, acting as it he were simply scanning the horizon. Once his back was completely turned, he lowered his hands to the hilts of his weapons and flicked off the safety catches.  Then he began to count. 

5

The killer would try to come in close and take him down with wrist blades. 

4

With his back turned he estimated that his adversary would have accelerated, trading stealth for speed and would now be almost at a flat out run.

3

In a second it would release the icy cold, serrated daggers from their housing in its armor and raise them high, ready to slash down and kill this Predator's prey. 

2

A wry smile touched his lips. 

1

He drew his guns.