The Pilot is a 2017 short story written by Andrew Mayne, published by Titan Books as part of the anthology Predator: If It Bleeds. In it, a United States Air Force pilot, shot down and captured by the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, finds that stranger inmates than he are being held at the remote Siberian outpost where he is incarcerated.
Plot[]
When an infrared flash and strange seismic readings are detected in the vicinity of a small island in the East Siberian Sea, Captain Moore is tasked with performing high-level reconnaissance of the area, overflying the island in his SR-71 Blackbird. However, his supposedly undetectable and invulnerable plane is somehow struck and damaged, forcing Moore to eject. He now finds himself being interrogated by a Soviet officer with limited memory of what caused his plane to go down. To avoid answering their questions about the SR-71's capabilities, he instead tells the officer rambling stories of his youth and civilian life. The officer loses patience and has Moore thrown back into his cell.
Locked inside the dank, windowless room, Moore communicates with a prisoner in a neighboring cell by tapping on a connecting pipe with a spoon. Having heard the man being brought in shortly after he himself was captured — and putting up a substantial fight in the process — Moore concludes he is most likely a Chinese pilot, whose own spy plane was presumably downed by whatever disabled his SR-71. Whatever the cause of their mutual misfortune, the event has seemingly also disabled all electronic equipment at the Soviet base, leading Moore to surmise it was some kind of electromagnetic pulse.
Moore christens his neighbor "Ping". After deducing that Ping does not know Morse code, the two quickly develop a more rudimentary system to communicate by tapping on the pipe, informing each other on the movements of the guards outside. Despite the language barrier and primitive means of communication, Moore soon realizes that Ping is a highly intelligent man. The two exchange details on the base in between interrogation sessions, including the layout, soldiers, and weapons they glimpse whilst being moved to and from the cells. Despite the information they build up, Moore holds out little hope of escaping, stranded as he is on a small, remote Siberian island.
Eventually, Moore's interrogators get sick of his non-compliance and give a large Soviet soldier named Vostov permission to beat him to death, leaving the two alone in Moore's cell. However, by failing to resist during previous assaults, Moore has lured the guards into a false sense of security; he catches Vostov unawares when he stabs him to death with the handle of his spoon. Taking Vostov's keys, Moore lets himself out of his cell, overpowers another guard, and takes his AK-47 and uniform; although he still considers escape futile, he hopes to go down fighting before cracking under interrogation and leaking critical information.
He heads to Ping's cell and opens it, finding him slumped and hooded inside. Removing the hood, he is stunned to realize Ping is not Chinese. In fact, Ping, is not even human. He is a Yautja, badly beaten, apparently experimented on, but still alive. Moore hesitates, but eventually decides to release the creature. It fashions a crude blade from the metal light fixture in its cell before charging into the base's barracks, slaughtering most of the men within before Moore can catch up and assist.
The pair flee the base through an air vent and head into the wilderness outside, discovering more Soviets inspecting and dismantling the Yautja's spaceship where it sits in the middle of a large crater. Moore sneaks in and disables the generators that are powering the site, kicking off a huge firefight, at which point Ping begins butchering the soldiers with his bare hands. After briefly heading into the ship, the Yautja picks up Moore and carries him away from the vessel at a full sprint. They reach the edge of the island and Moore realizes he was hit during the firefight in the crater. Collapsing on the floor, he tells Ping to leave without him. Drifting in and out of consciousness, Moore hears the enormous explosion the Yautja triggered within his ruined ship, followed by other strange noises.
Eventually, he awakes to find his surroundings have changed. Ping is gone. Instead of Siberia, Moore now stands in Alabama. With no clue as to how he got to the other side of the world and realizing he is still wearing a Soviet uniform, he wryly wonders what he is going to tell his superiors about the events he has experienced.
Trivia[]
- The Pilot is notable in that it is a first-person narrative, with the reader assuming the role of the titular pilot Captain Moore for the duration of the story. This manner of storytelling is decidedly rare in the Aliens/Predator/Alien vs. Predator franchise, the only other examples being the Alien short story Deep Black and the novel Aliens: DNA War, which remains the only full-length novel to adopt a first person perspective.
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