I noted the dull burst of light that accompanied each shot, and resisted the urge to laugh. Now I knew where each of them was for sure. I didn’t have to try to match the scans and security feed to reality. Reality had already matched it for me.
The next soldier died as he turned toward me. The one after him, fell screaming as I missed a head shot, and caught him in the middle, instead. It wasn’t a problem, I put a hole in his head as I ghosted past to take shelter behind his pillar. I had the attention of his colleagues, now.
But it seemed too easy. I mean, if this was the person liaising with the arach, where were they? They had surely not left their human ally free of their companionship, and guidance? Shadows moved where a pillar joined the ceiling, and I shifted aim.
I hadn’t thought so!
And there was more than one, if Mack’s shout of alarm was anything to go by.
“Hang on, Mack. I’m coming.”
And I was. Just because I’d let him fade from my consciousness, didn’t mean I didn’t know exactly where he was. I was coming, even if the arach were already here. We stood a better chance together than apart.
The world slowed, the ugly buzz of energy smoothing out as I sped up to meet the threat.
Man! How had so many arach made it onto the planet? What the fuck had Odyssey been doing? If I hadn’t known any better, I would have said their heads were….
I regretted throwing the big blade away, now. The blaster was a poor substitute. I slid along the floor between two stabbing forelegs, flipping sideways to avoid the fangs reaching toward me. A second one dropped down alongside the first, but I was already rolling to my feet, having stitched a line of holes in the monster above me as I went.
I used the shorter blade to separate a segment of leg from the one above it, and then I fired at the darkened ‘V’ between the two fangs lashing out towards me. The spider jolted back in a familiar dance, and I took the chance to sweep up the gun from another of my downed foes.
The second spider collapsed, but I had lost sight of Mack. Movement caught the corner of my eye, and I hit the floor, firing upwards at the foreleg that had stabbed through the space I’d been in. That had been far too close. I missed, but at least I had a direction to fire in.
Pivoting, I held both blasters close to my waist, locking them tight against me with my elbows and firing up at an angle. The stars knew these critters were big enough. It wasn’t like I had to actually aim. And that was when I got an idea of the odds. There had been fifteen human soldiers…
There should have been fifteen human soldiers. There hadn’t been. There’d been a half dozen humans in the opponents I’d scanned on the security system; the rest had been arach. Where was Mack?
I lifted the blasters away from my sides and held them out at arm’s length, just like I’d seen Delight do with her Glazers. Granted, those were side-arms, and these suckers were just too big to do that with, but it didn’t matter. Whatever they’d put into the regen tank the last time I’d been in there, was doing wonders for my strength and accuracy. I could keep this up all day.
I found a pillar, and braced myself against it. I figured if I winged enough of them then they’d need to eliminate the threat. Momentarily closing my eyes, I bowed my head. I could hear them moving, separate their scents on the air, smell the wounded from the well, hear…
I could hear Mack in pain, his breath labored, his fingers fumbling as he tried to change energy clips on his Blazer. I could smell the blood of a half dozen humans.
What the fuck had they put in my tank?
It didn’t matter. The arach were coming, homing in on my position in exactly the same way I was mapping theirs. I pushed off the pillar and moved into the open, pivoting and firing as the first of them dropped right where I had been leaning.
“That only works once,” I said, but I didn’t stop.
I took two running steps towards it, and leapt upwards, bouncing off the cephalothorax, and then kicking off the wall to leap out and onto the next one to drop. That one was easy to kill. I fired straight down, and then angled my aim to take out the join between abdomen and chest.
It dropped, and I leapt, again, vaguely aware of silver shadows wavering into being over where I had smelt Mack, more than aware of the monster coming in on my right, and its partner in the pincer, on my left. I raised both guns and fired outwards, not quite Delight in accuracy, but accurate enough for this.
I let them get close, and then raced out from between them, hitting the floor and sliding, not caring what might be soaking into my combat suit, or burning against my skin—not caring about anything except finding the next target, and making it fall. I didn’t even care about the silver shadows. I just cared about the next arach, about taking down each and every one that had drained a human so they could take enough of their form and memories to be able to take their shape and draw from their lives.
Forget the vampires in movies. Forget them all. These things were leeches, sucking more than the life from a person when they fed—and I was going to end them. I
