AllFreeNovel
Share Us
On the final approach to the Ground Bar, fate, or whatever the twisted version thereof exists around this human, intervenes again. There is a rustling to the left, a sort of awkward lumbering sound that usually indicates some kind of animal presence. I expect to see some kind of night predator mistaking us for easy prey.
A beast comes lumbering out of the undergrowth. I say creature, because it is as big as a small primal, but completely unrecognizable as anything belonging to this world. It has a massive, round maw, no discernible eyes, chunky little legs, and a smooth, large body which I can only describe as being made to devour things. I see bits of food around its mouth, hanging from some of the outer teeth which appear to have been partially dislodged. I see scales and pieces of clothing. This thing has been feasting on saurians and is now rippling with their flesh.
“You’re going to want to run,” the human under my arm giggles. “He can sense respiration and body heat. It’s not like your movement-detecting beasts here. This thing knows you’re alive and wants you inside him.”
I am staring at the beast, which is now moving what passes for a head back and forth. It has no neck, so the entire front of it sways with the scanning motion. It catches our scent and rears back, small paws and sharp claws scratching at plain air for a moment before it slams to the ground and starts to charge.
I take Suli’s advice. I run. The bar won’t provide much in the way of shelter, I already know that. I’ve seen the way this thing treated its walls like nothing more than tissue paper. I’m not running for shelter. I’m running because I am the alpha of this land, and I know what happens next.
Somehow, it is gaining on us. That doesn’t seem possible. It is like being chased at high speed by a very rotund caterpillar with a horrific maw where a mouth should be. I can hear Suli laughing with a certain manic edge. She should be screaming, or better, staying silent. The last thing anybody needs right now is more chaos, but I don’t think she is capable of bringing anything else.
“It’s going to get us!” she yells back to me. “It’s getting really close!”
I do not waste energy replying. Instead, I run around the edge of the Ground Bar, hoping that the change of direction will be impossible for the creature to adjust to. It’s a move to buy some time, and it doesn’t work. Somehow that behemoth corners like my bike used to, maybe the short legs and the low center of gravity help that. At any rate, circling the Ground Bar only makes Suli shout all the more.
“What the hell are you doing!? Playing games!? This thing almost has my face off. Argh!”
I hear teeth snapping right behind me as I round the corner of the bar and head up and away.
“Is this creature of your doing?”
“Sort of?”
She manages to sound half-guilty even while nearly being eaten, and I know that somehow it is linked to her, even though it makes absolutely no sense. She claims to have wrecked her ship, but now I have to wonder what else was on that ship when she wrecked it.
There’s no real time to ask questions now, though. I decide to make a break for the city, though by the way this beast is giving chase it feels like outrunning it might not be possible. It is not acting like any creature of this world. It is acting like pure hunger made incarnate. Even primals don’t act with this much sheer determination in the act of consumption.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM
Just as it seems we are going to be overhauled by the alien abomination, light explodes out of the darkness as several large vehicles roll up over the ridge. Photonic energy bolts arc all around us as my soldiers open fire on the beast. White and gold energy snaps into the heavy white-gray flesh of the thing. The first hit lands and the creature stops dead, rearing back. It is followed by another volley of fire that further damages it, and prevents it from following us as I throw my bike into a sliding halt in front of the vehicle Avel is driving.
“It’s good to see you,” I say, speaking a pure dialect of understatement.
“I thought I should bring backup,” Avel says dryly. “Seemed like things could get out of control.”
“Yes. Things did. Especially this thing.”
One of the vehicles has a metal cage on the back, expanded steel mesh allowing air to pass through. It is the sort of cage suitable for an animal.
I lightly toss her into the interior, which has been lined with hay. It’s not exactly the sort of containment one would organize for a sentient creature, but I don’t think Avel explained what they were trying to contain. Or maybe he decided a human is a beast like any other. He might be right on that front.
Suli
This tinny, shitty little cage is not going to keep me contained. I know that already. I don’t know why Thorn hasn’t had the presence of mind to take the suit off me as yet, but perhaps he is distracted. He and all his saurian underlings are standing around the remains of the Chaos Fish. One of them picks up a long stick and pokes at it, proving that no matter the world, or the life form, boys will… well.. probably try to poke something with a stick.
Meanwhile, I am digging out the smallest and most elegant of tiny thermite charges you have ever seen. It’s just a sweet little capsule with two substances in separate compartments. When they’re away from one another, they’re completely inert. But put them together and something very special happens.
Specifically, 4500° F happens. All at once, very hot and very bright, and right in the locking mechanism. It is such a small amount it doesn’t destroy me, but it absolutely decimates the lock and the cage as it drips down, and then it goes through the bed of the vehicle on its way to keep boring a hole into the dirt beneath until the reaction is over. The hay at the base of the door catches fire as the thermite glob moves past, but I stamp that out before it has a chance to really take light.
The door pops off, and I am free. I slip out of the cage, feeling very self satisfied. My plan, of course, is to take the car or whatever they’d call this large vehicle with big wheels and plenty of heavy plating. Whatever they’re using to power these things, it must be in ample supply.
This vehicle is going to be much easier to drive than the bike was, probably. I won’t be fighting the weight of it every time we come off-balance a little bit, and I’ll be protected from most of the monsters that casually roam this world.
While Thorn and his men are still occupied with the unfortunate remains of the Chaos Fish, I climb into the driver’s seat. I’m not going to be able to actually sit down to drive this thing. The distance between the pedals and the steering column is too far. One might think that alien vehicles would be hard, or perhaps even impossible to drive, but much like language has been standardized across sentient planets in a slow meme creep that took thousands of years, so too have certain other technologies become familiarly standard and familiar. There are easy ways to do things, and hard ways to do things, and once someone develops a tech that makes things easier, it spreads. Tonight, this means the alien vehicle control scheme is familiar enough for me to take control.
They left the vehicle running, which also helps. So I put my feet on the pedals and my hands on the wheel and I set off at speed, doing a big spinning circle around the Chaos Fish and the befuddled saurians, each of whose faces is a perfect mask of shock and amazement. Except for Thorn. He’s looking dead straight at me with an expression on his face that sends a chill down my spine. There’s something so terribly exciting about defying someone truly dominant, someone you know will not let the matter rest, but will pursue you to the ends of his world, and perhaps many others as well. There is a determination in his gaze that is not reflected in the eyes of the others, a certain understanding, not only of what he is up against, but who he is up against.
It’s funny. Some people can know you for a hundred years and never know you at all. And other people slash aliens can know you for an hour, hunt you down through a monster-infested jungle, and know you better than anybody else ever has.
