Chapter 6
I dove out of the way of the Karaak as it leaped toward me and rolled across the rocky ground like a beach ball on a windy day. I was back on my feet in a flash and whipped around with my gun pointed at where the Karaak’s head had been. I fired a shot, but the creature had already darted around to the side of me. It’d moved so fast that I could hardly keep up with it, and by the time I had turned to face it, I found myself looking at its dark tongue flying toward me. I only had time to take a stunned step back when the huge, strong muscle smacked into my hand, and the gun flew out of my grasp and clattered onto the rocks.
But I didn’t have the time to reach for the weapon because the Karaak was already advancing on me. I ducked under the tongue as it swung at me, and as I looked up at it, I could see rows of sharp, shark-like teeth grinning at me as I stumbled out of the way of the alien’s mouth.
It retracted its tongue and raised its hand in my direction. I saw a piece of the armor on its arm raise up just above its wrist, and then, the end of it began to glow.
“Shit,” I muttered.
I started to run away from it just as I heard a blast behind me. I heard something whiz through the air just past my ear, and I flinched as it narrowly missed the side of my head. I watched as a yellow shot powered into the rocks just ahead of me. I realized it was the same yellow substance that the Karaak ships secreted, only this one had been compacted into smaller, flying pellets that burst on impact, sort of like a paintball gun, although I was fairly sure that this stuff would hurt a hell of a lot more on impact.
The mucus bored its way into the large rock in front of me, and the stone began to melt under the extreme acidity of the blast. Pieces of molten rock started to drip down onto the ground, but I didn’t stick around to see what kind of pattern they would make.
I bounded toward the edge of the stone circle and took a running jump at one of the rocks. I landed on top of it just as another acidic shot hit the rock just below my feet. I felt the stone start to crumble underfoot, so I hopped from boulder to boulder.
I heard a scrambling sound, and then I saw the Karaak’s head poke up from the clearing. I was pissed that it had managed to disarm me, which put me at one hell of a disadvantage, but I wasn’t out of the fight yet. I’d been up against worse odds and found a way to survive, and this wasn’t any different.
Of course, that’s when I felt its tongue wrap around my ankle, and my burst of anger suddenly turned to fear.
I took quite an impressive tumble and landed in another clearing. What I had assumed would be a hard landing ended up being quite the opposite, though I wasn’t sure which I would have preferred. I bellyflopped into a shallow pool of clay-like, red mud. For some reason, this clearing, which was tightly fenced in by high boulders on all sides, was filled with a shallow pool of wet, clingy mud that stuck to me like a suction cup.
It took almost everything I had, but I heaved myself out of the mud and wiped as much of thick mulch from my visor as I could manage with just my gloved hand. I could still see the smear marks between the crosshairs, but I felt confident that I could still kill my target without a clear screen.
I turned back just in time to see the Karaak jumping down toward me. I waded away from it across the clearing and looked for a way out, but the boulders were packed so tightly that it almost looked artificial. I was literally in the ring, only there wasn’t a bell here that could save me. That part was up to me.
The Karaak landed with a sickening squelch in the mud, though I definitely was wearing more of the marsh than it was. We squared up opposite one another, and my mind began to frantically search for its weaknesses as I tried to determine exactly how I could beat this thing on a foreign terrain with no weapon.
The Karaak thrived in both close-quarters and long-distance combat thanks to its range of weaponry. I wasn’t sure which was better-- or maybe I should have called it less deadly-- the tongue or the acid spewing guns. Then, there was also that screaming noise that Rayne and I had discovered they could make the hard way, though this one hadn’t used that feature yet. Perhaps only some of the Karaak had that ability. Boy, did I hope so. If it could incapacitate me by simply opening its mouth, then this would be curtains before I could even figure out how to kill it.
I realized then that my best bet was probably to try and find my rifle. This thing was strong as hell, and even though I had the nanobots to upgrade my own strength and agility, the addition of a weapon couldn’t go amiss.
I knew I had to stall while I edged back toward the edge of the mud-filled clearing we were in. The gun was in the other one I had just run from, so I needed to get back there. I didn’t have much in the way of distractions available to me, though, but I was nothing if not good at improvising.
“Can you understand me?” I asked.
The Karaak didn’t move. Its burning eyes were locked on mine, and its tongue twitched dangerously like a cat’s tail.
“I think we could come to an agreement,” I said loudly as I started to back off toward one of the rocks.
It stared at me a while longer, though I watched its eyes twitch slightly, as if it was amused by what I had said. I knew there was no way it would parlay with me, but if I could get enough distance between us that I could make it up the rock before its tongue got me, then I had a chance.
“Would you be open to making a deal?” I asked as I continued to back off slowly.
Again, there was no answer.
“You’re not the talkative type, are you,” I said. “That’s fine. I’ll do the talking for us both. I’m Will. I’m from Earth- hey, you’re planning on going there soon, right? I can give you some recommendations of some tourist attractions. I’ve heard that the Grand Canyon is a must-see--”
Suddenly, the monster opened its mouth, and the deafening screeching swallowed my eardrums and cracked into my mind. I clamped my hands over my ears and stumbled back until my back hit the wall behind me.
Eventually, just when I thought my eardrums might burst, the Karaak closed its mouth with a smug expression in its eyes. I realized then that it could have taken me down with its voice if it had wanted to, but instead, it had stopped so that I could fight back. It was toying with me. For fun.
“I’ll take that as a no, then,” I grunted as I righted myself again. “You wanna fight, fuckface? Let’s fight.”
I wasn’t sure if the term ‘fuckface’ could be accurately translated into the Karaak’s language, but by the sudden look of rage in its eyes, I was fairly certain that my message had gotten across to it.
It began to advance toward me, and as it did, its mouth opened again so I could see its tongue starting to unfurl. But this time, I was ready for it. As the tongue struck out at me, I sidestepped it just in time. The muscle punched into the rock behind me instead, and I could feel the force of the blow as the tongue met unmoving rock. The Karaak howled in pain, but before it could nurse its bruised muscle, I wrapped the tongue under my armpit, since that seemed to be the only way to get a good grip on the slimy appendage.
Then, I felt my feet leave the ground as the Karaak lifted me up on the end of the tongue. Jesus, the thing was strong. It swiped me back and forth until eventually, I lost my grip on the moist muscle and went flying across the dirt. I managed to land on my feet, though I sent a wave of mud splattering onto one of the boulders.
I looked up and realized that the boulder had a smaller rock on top of it that looked fairly loose, and that gave me an idea. I turned around to the Karaak as it rounded on me, and a grin painted itself across my lips.
“Come on then, you ugly bastard!” I shouted at it. “I’m right here!”
The Karaak struck out with its tongue again, and again I danced out of the way just in time. Its tongue struck the rock, and the force of the impact shook the stone just enough to knock the boulder on top from its perch. The rock fell forward directly onto the creature’s tongue, and the creature shrieked in pain as it tried to pull its tongue free, but the large rock had pinned it down for the moment.
With my foe trapped in place, it was my turn to strike. I charged through the mud right at the Karaak. It didn’t even have time to raise its gun before I was on it. I knew that the mechanical parts of it acted as a sort of exoskeleton in places, but I also knew that there were parts of this thing that I could definitely hurt.
I heard it take a sharp inhale of breath as it prepared to use its horrendous voice again, so I quickly jabbed a punch into the back of its throat between its teeth. I took a chance that it wouldn’t bite me because that would require the alien to bite its own tongue off, but I also didn’t linger amongst the rows of razor-sharp gnashers. One punch was enough to temporarily silence it, but this thing was hard as nails. One of my punches would have sent the average person flying, but it only made the creature choke. It hardly even stepped back on impact, although part of the reason was that its trapped tongue was holding it in place.
I ripped the gun off its wrist and tried to fire it at the creature, but it turned out that it also had some kind of safety mechanism I couldn’t see, and I couldn’t use it. So, I chucked the gun as far as I could, and it landed in the mud and disappeared below the surface. At least that had evened the score a little.
Then, I heard an almighty thud as the Karaak managed to throw the rock off its tongue. I looked back and saw the bruised muscle start to slither back into its mouth.
“Damn it,” I said.
I looked around and found the shortest rock along the edge of the arena. Fortunately, it was close, so I waded through the mud again and started to climb the rough surface. I was almost at the top when I felt two hands on both of my ankles.
“Crap,” I sighed.
I held on and tried to pull myself up, but there were hardly any holds in the rock available to me, so after one hard tug from the Karaak, I flew back over its head and landed on my back in the muck. I scrambled away from it on my hands and knees, but it dove on top of my legs and started to slither up my body. Mud went everywhere as I struggled to get out from under its surprisingly heavy weight, but eventually, its ugly face appeared above me.
I was able to see every crease, every hole, and every mechanism poking out of its drawn flaps of skin. There were a lot of scars there as well, though I suspected most of those had been caused by the implant surgeries rather than battles.
“Jesus,” I said with a grimace. “You ever heard of moisturizer?”
The Karaak shrieked and the sound was almost unbearable from this distance. The pieces of skin around its mouth opened wide as though they were trying to give me an embrace, though I figured it would be the cold embrace of death that was going to greet me soon. Its teeth spun as its jaw opened to the size of my head, all while the sound continued to flood out of its throat. I could see all the way down its gullet to the grooves and ribs down its esophagus, and I had a front row seat as its throat contracted to force the millions of voices directly into my face.
Since there was nothing but mud around me, I had to make do. I grabbed two handfuls of the stuff and chucked them straight into the creature’s mouth. It coughed and spluttered on the clay-filled mulch, and that gave me the time to reach up to the exposed hydraulic in its jaw. I wrapped my fingers around it as best as I could and pulled with all of my strength. For a moment, I wasn’t sure it would budge, but then the pole came away in my hands, as did a piece of the Karaak soldier’s cracked jawbone.
It screamed in pain. Its jaw hung open, limp and useless, and its teeth, while still sharp, became almost decorative, because it couldn’t open and close its mouth properly.
I managed to bend my knee enough while I was still underneath the predatory alien and planted my foot on its chest. Then, I pushed with everything I had and shoved it off me. While that would have sent the average opponent flying, this scumbag was a little different. I only just managed to get the heavy lug off me, and as soon as I did, I scrambled back on my ass from it until I had space to get up.
I got to my feet, but so did the Karaak. Mud and saliva dripped from its useless bottom jaw, and I happily realized that the Karaak had suffered a lot worse than I had during our battle.
But there was still time for the alien to get its revenge, and I couldn’t allow myself to get cocky until I’d actually dealt with the asshole.
We circled one another for a couple of seconds as we both caught our breath. I wasn’t sure if it breathed in the same way that I did, but after ripping out a piece of its skull, I could understand why it needed a second to regroup. I needed one, too. This thing was a lot more weighty and resilient than I’d expected. It was almost impossible to hurt it, although I was doing a fairly good job so far.
I needed to get back to my gun. That was the only way that I would be able to kill this thing once and for all. My bare hands wouldn’t be enough to rip this thing apart. I needed firepower, and as I had seen when it had taken three Electro-Launch bullets to take down the other one, I needed a lot of it.
So, I turned and tried to get to the edge of the ring again, as I had earlier. However, the thick mud made it feel like I was wading through tar, and I wasn’t able to get far until its tongue wrapped around my waist. I punched and clawed at it as much as I could, but the Karaak pulled me to it until I was just a few feet from its face. Its tongue constricted, and I felt the air start to get squeezed out of my lungs.
It drew me in even closer toward its mouth until its sharp teeth were just below me. I fought against the hold it had on me, but there was no way I could free myself without a weapon or something sharp.
Like a tooth.
I grinned inwardly as I reached toward its face. I grabbed hold of one of its fangs on the broken bottom row of its jaw and pulled as hard as I could. I snapped the tooth out of its mouth, raised it up, and put it into its tongue. It screamed in pain, but I kept going through the deafening shrieks and stabbed it again and again. Then, I looked over at its face, lifted my arm again, and stabbed it in the eye. This time, I left the tooth in. I watched its orange iris explode while the creature wailed in agony. It finally dropped me, and I fell into a crouch in the mud.
It charged at me like a raging bull, and I, the matador, had to fight it. It swung its fists at me while the blood from its tongue flew everywhere, and I dodged as best I could. At such a close distance, it managed to land a few hits to my torso which sent me stumbling one way or the other, but for the most part, I managed to avoid any serious injuries.
I knew it was on its last legs, but it wasn’t finished with me yet. With one final burst of murderous rage, it charged at me again. It wrapped its strong limbs around me so tightly that Karaak blood poured all over my suit, and we fell into the mud together. It held me under the muck and tried to bash my head against the rocky floor beneath the liquid clay.
I fought it off and managed to get on top of it for a moment. I punched it a couple of times in the neck so it couldn’t scream again, but then it flipped us back over, and I was submerged in the mud again.
I kicked it off me, and it fell back into the mud. The bottom half of its jaw swung back and forth as it landed, and more dark blood poured from its mouth and dribbled into the mud.
And then its eyes brightened. It brought its hand up out of the mud, and in its palm was its gun that I had thrown out of its reach earlier. What were the damn chances of the Karaak finding it in this bog? It was a cruel and deadly twist of fate.
“Oh, shit…” I muttered as I started to run out of the line of fire.
“Will!” I suddenly heard from above me.
I looked up just in time to see Rayne throw my bullpup rifle down toward me, and I reached up and caught it.
I spun around and fired just as the Karaak fired its weapon. My laser met its acidic bullet in between the two of us, and it exploded. Pieces of its acid bullet landed in the mud between us, but before it could fire again, I shot the laser at its neck and cut it clean off.
The Karaak’s head fell to one side into the mud with a splash and black blood oozed out to mix with the crimson mud. I switched the gun to Electro-Launch and fired one bullet into the head and then the torso for good measure, though I wasn’t sure how the creature would come back from a decapitation. Still, stranger things had happened.
As soon as I was sure it was dead, I let out a sigh of relief and flopped down onto my ass to rest for a moment. I panted heavily as I tilted my head back to look up at Rayne, who towered above me on the rock she was standing on.
“Look at the state of you,” she said as she folded her arms.
I looked down and saw that it was almost impossible to see any of my suit beneath the mud and alien blood.
“Wanna help me rinse off?” I asked.
Rayne snorted a laugh, rolled her eyes, and then, she bent down and offered me a hand.
Reluctantly, I forced my tired body back onto its feet, and then I reached up for her hand. She helped me up the rock face, and a couple moments later, I was standing on the rock beside her.
“It’s lucky you came when you did,” I said.
“Looks like it,” she replied as she glanced down at the Karaak’s body.
“Thanks for the help,” I said.
“I needed the ride back to the colony, so…” she said with a mischievous grin.
“Ah, of course,” I chuckled. “Are you okay? You took quite a hit back on the ship.”
“I passed out for a little while,” she said. “I’m fine now, though.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. “I’ll get Francine to scan you when we get back to the ship to be certain.”
“I feel fine, so stop worrying,” she said warmly. “I’ve been through worse, and I’m still here.”
“Still, I’m gonna get Francine to check you out,” I replied as we began to walk back in the direction of the ship.
“If you insist,” she chuckled. “It’s nice that you care.”
“Of course I care,” I replied as I looked over at her.
With our masks on, it was hard to read the moment, but the air between our faces seemed to crackle like a bonfire.
“I’m sorry for the argument we had earlier,” I said softly.
“So am I,” she replied.
And that was all that needed to be said.
Bob was waiting by the Karaak ship for us and beeped excitedly when he saw me and Rayne coming toward him. He bounded over to meet us, and I gave him a pat on the back, which left a nice red handprint on his yellow frame.
“Whoops,” I laughed. “I think I’ll need to wash this suit off.”
“You think?” Rayne snorted.
We walked back up the ramp at the back of my ship, and as soon as it closed behind us and the door was sealed, I pulled my suit off. Mud dripped all over the floor of the cargo bay, but I didn’t care too much, because Rayne had pulled her headpiece off to watch me undress.
I only had a pair of boxers on under the suit, and I saw Rayne’s cheeks flush red when she saw my exposed skin.
“Will! Rayne!” General Occana suddenly said as he appeared at the hatch that led to the living compartment. “I am so relieved to see that both of you are safe… Ah, William Ryder. I seem to have caught you undressing. Apologies.”
“No need to apologize, Occana,” I said with a wink to Rayne. “I just didn’t wanna track mud through the ship. Things got a little hairy back there.”
“Did you come face to face with one of them?” he asked. “I was only able to see so much from our position.”
“Two of them survived the crash,” I said as I pulled the suit off my legs and looped it over one arm. “Neither of them are with us anymore.”
“I see,” he said with a nod. “It was a necessary deed.”
“Yeah,” I replied, though taking a life of any kind was never easy on the soul.
Still, Occana was right. To protect the Lilacrons, it was a necessary act of violence on my part. Although, a part of me wished that more species could just put two brain cells together and figure out that barbarism and aggression weren’t always the answer to every problem.
I watched as Rayne climbed up to the living quarters, and then I passed Bob up to her to save him the climb. When I heard Bob moving around on his own, I jumped up through the hole to the floor above.
God, those nanobots were fucking amazing.
I brought the suit over to the shower at the back of the living compartment while Occana and Rayne went into the cockpit, and I quickly showered the mud off the suit. The water ran red as it poured down the drain, and I found myself thanking my lucky stars that it wasn’t my blood that was turning the stream of water crimson.
Once the suit was clean, I hung it up to dry, and then I quickly hopped into the shower and cleaned the grime off my body. It felt refreshing to have the cool water running over my body, and when I stepped out a couple of minutes later, I felt like a new man. My muscles were still twitching slightly from all the activity they’d just had, but I knew they’d relax in a few minutes once my adrenaline levels dropped.
I quickly got dressed in a t-shirt and some jeans that were in the cupboard, put my trucker cap on, and then I rambled into the cockpit.
Rayne and Occana turned around as I entered, and both of them adopted an identical bemused expression when they saw me.
“What?” I asked.
“You look… different,” Rayne said.
“Different how?” I asked.
“You look so…” she said with an amused look on her face.
“Ordinary,” Occana said.
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” I asked as I looked down at my AC/DC t-shirt.
“I’m not entirely sure,” she chuckled. “It’s definitely a different look than what I’m used to.”
“I should think you’d be glad of the change,” I said. “Seeing me in the same outfit every minute of every day must get boring.”
“I happen to quite like your suit,” she replied with a wry smile. “But this is nice, too.”
“Her majesty has spoken,” I said, and Occana laughed. “Alright, everyone, buckle in. It’s time to get out of here.”
I took my spot in the pilot’s seat while Occana and Rayne buckled in. I could see the Karaak ship just ahead of us, and I shuddered again as I thought about what had been done to the snake. I wondered if that was what the Karaak had planned for the rest of the species they came across, but then again, they’d simply wiped out the Lilacrons, so who knew.
“Are we going to bring the Karaak ship with us?” Occana asked as I started up the engines.
“Yeah,” I replied. “I’ll use the tractor beam to drag it along behind us. We might have to fly a little slower than we did on the way here. I don’t want to cause any more damage than we already did.”
“Did you see anything on board that might be able to help us in the fight against them?” Occana asked.
“I think so,” Rayne replied. “There was a room filled with Karaak tech that was totally intact. They didn’t get a chance to destroy it all. And we could probably recover something from the computers that might tell us about their plans. I think there’s a good chance there’ll be something useful there.”
“Let’s hope so,” I said. “We went to enough trouble to get it.”
I lifted off Seloni B easily enough, but then I had to grab the Karaak ship with my tractor beam. With Francine’s help, I eased my ship over the dead snake, and after a couple of tries, I finally managed to wrap the beam around most of the snake. I watched as the Karaak ship slowly lifted off the ground as though it was being abducted like in some cool alien movie from back home.
I took my time as we weaved through the cluster of dwarf planets, though the course Francine plotted kept us clear of large rocks that might disrupt the beam. I could feel tension along my shoulders every time I had to swerve, but we finally reached the edge of the cluster, and I finally pointed us toward the Frumentum colony.
I yawned as I rolled my shoulders. The adrenaline and the excitement had begun to wear off, and a wave of tiredness had hit me like a tsunami. I blinked a few times to try and clear the weariness from my eyes, but eventually, I felt my eyes start to droop.
“Francine, please take over,” I slurred. “I’m just gonna…”
“Will!” Rayne suddenly shouted.
I jumped awake. I felt like I had been asleep for a second, but as I opened my eyes, I found myself staring at a large fleet of Lilacron ships, all pointed in our direction. Beyond them was the colony, but these ships seemed less than happy to see us. These ships were clearly repurposed cargo ships and not built for combat, but there were a bunch of them, and the threat was real.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked as my brain switched back on.
“They’re firing at us!” she said, and just to prove her point, an onslaught of lasers started to fly toward the ship.