So here she was in an alien arkship in a time-skewed enclave, where she’d arrived by travelling down a wormhole for fifty thousand lightyears, ten thousand years after fleeing her home, battling a religious extremist alien with a grudge. Cool.
Around her, the pipe trunks with their sporadic fern leaves and matting of lianas were sagging from the walls and ceiling, splintered and broken. They leaked sludge onto the floor where the vacuum boiled it away, making walking treacherous. The corridor curved away ahead, but she and Odd Quint would see each other from fifty metres away. So it would come down to being the fastest draw, like a pair of old Wild West gunslingers. What she needed was the ultimate in sophisticated hardware that human and Neána technology could produce. She studied the mass of alien biotechnology smothering the rock, a displacement primordial jungle at dusk. Or I could just go full human primitive . . .
There were doubts – so many doubts – seething away in her brain. For the first thirty seconds, crammed upside down into a gap between pipe trunks in the ceiling, she’d felt elated. This was her true self – cunning and ready to unleash violence, heedless of risk. The state she was born to be in. But then flaws in the plan began to manifest, gnawing away at her confidence. Suppose Odd Quint didn’t have any infrared sensors? Because you really shouldn’t short out a maser carbine’s power cell just to produce a thermal signature, as its safeties struggled to contain the feedback. That was never going to end well. Wrapping it in the armoured jacket to contain the heat emission was also dumb. Suppose she needed the jacket for protection?
So many things that could go wrong.
Such a bad idea.
But if it worked . . .
Mary, this is why I needed the gland: clarity.
Her position meant she couldn’t look along the corridor; all she could see was a small section of sticky floor directly underneath. Any sliver of her helmet exposed outside the irregular surface of tattered bark would have given her location away to the most simplistic sensor. So she waited in growing physical discomfort as her thoughts churned and her body grew hotter and hotter. Her environment suit’s thermal regulator was turned off so the heat her body generated couldn’t escape and betray her.
Even though she was expecting something like it, the explosions caught her by surprise. Kandara yipped in shock – a sound that was alarmingly loud inside the helmet. Every muscle turned rigid as the nest of pipe trunks surrounding her rocked. Her whole body juddered downwards a few centimetres as the stems comprising her tangled nest slackened off.
She held her breath, knowing this was the crux. Below her was a quint in a grey spacesuit that looked as if it was made from fish scales, walking cautiously towards the pulverized wall – exactly where she’d wedged the jacket. She fired the nerve block. Her hands let go of the pipe trunks she was holding and she bent forwards, straining to push her head out of the nest. Brittle, smouldering strands snapped around her shoulders, and she wound up with her whole torso hanging down while her legs strained to anchor her. The sight that greeted her was upside down, revealing the quint quaking as it stood over the shredded armour jacket.
She brought both arms up, target graphics splashing into her tarsus lenses. Peripheral kinetics shot the weapon Odd Quint was holding, smashing it apart. Simultaneously, her magpistol fired three times, sending a wyst bullet into three of its legs. They blew apart in gouts of flesh and spacesuit scales, sending Odd Quint toppling to the ground.
Kandara gripped the sturdiest pipe trunk with both hands and eased her legs out, allowing her to drop to the ground in a smooth dismount. In front of her, Odd Quint’s two remaining legs were skittering wildly, but all the motion did was spin it around. Her altme switched on her suit radio, even though she suspected Odd Quint’s suit didn’t even have radio. And to hell with any part of the arkship that could pick up the signal.
‘Bleeding out through your leg stumps, huh? That’s a bad way to go. I know. Let me help.’ She brought up the power machete and swung the blade. Her aim was true, severing one of Odd Quint’s remaining legs.
The crescent of manipulator flesh that was still intact rippled in torment, trying and failing to form appendages. Kandara swung the machete again, taking off its final leg. ‘I’ve spent my life taking down fanatics. Humans, Olyix; we’ve both got sick fucks like you ruining everything for the rest of us. And you all make the same mistake. You think our decency makes us weak, makes us easy targets. Do you still think that?’
She brought the machete around, ready to slice off some of the manipulator flesh. On the wall, the few surviving tatters of leaf fronds fluttered in the wind.
Wind?
A gust of atmosphere blew along the corridor. It was weak, lasting barely a couple of seconds, but it had to come from somewhere – like an emergency pressure door opening and closing.
Oh, sweet Mary.
Jessika’s icon splashed across her tarsus lens. ‘It’s coming, Kandara. The onemind is sending something into the hangar for us. Get out of there. Now!’
Kandara fired her magpistol into Odd Quint, five wyst bullets mashing every internal organ and finally its brain.
Her tarsus lens splashed the helmet sensor image of the corridor behind her as she jogged away from the dead quint. Right where it curved into a vanishing point, jagged shadows were flowing along the bulging walls.
