Rook Winters - Weight of Ashes

Elle narrowly avoided an incoming swing from a stabbing tentacle. She hit it with her elbow, which hurt her but didn’t seem to bother the alien. Then its other stabbing tentacle and both of its pincer tentacles came looking for her. She scurried underneath its body and drove her shoulder into the leg she’d already hit. The alien bellowed again and used its tentacles to steady itself.

She caught a glimpse of Court stepping away to dodge another swing from Kane. Court would be in trouble once Kane got his footing.

“Bear,” she shouted. “Bear, we need help.”

No response.

The Qyntarak spun itself around so it was facing her. It was unbelievably fast. The alien lunged at her, long stabbing tentacles swinging out so they could stab her from behind while the pincers came at her from the front. It was a classic Qyntarak attack, one that Master Zheng had taught her to counter until the movements were second nature, requiring no conscious effort. She grasped the pincer arm on her left and hoisted herself over it, her body weight throwing off the symmetry of the attack. The most common outcome was that you moved yourself to safety. If you got lucky, a sharp stabbing tentacle would hit the Qyntarak’s own pincer and do a bit of damage.

She got a little lucky, the Qyntarak poking itself but not enough to do any serious harm through the body armor. She dove at its injured back leg and landed a blow with the palm of her hand. A few more good hits and the leg would be unusable, dramatically limiting the alien’s mobility.

Reducing its attack options wasn’t much of a bar for success but one step at a time. She’d taken down a Qyntarak before, once, in a training gym. Never mind that she spent two hours with a surgery bot afterward—she beat it and she intended to beat this one, somehow.

Court grunted and she looked to see Kane’s fists pummeling his torso; Court’s arms were up to protect his face. She was distracted for too long because the Qyntarak had time to spin in place again, and the sides of two tentacles hit her like a pair of swinging tree trunks. The impact sent her to the ground several feet away and knocked the wind out of her.

A stabbing tentacle came at her and she rolled to avoid it. The other stabber followed and caught the edge of her shirt, tearing open the fabric. She didn’t have time to look, but it didn’t feel like it punctured the skin.

She came to a stop on her stomach and saw Petra’s stun gun. Elle pawed at the ground with her hands and feet to build up momentum as she lunged for the weapon.

It looked like a Morris M14. As the name implied, its standard capacity was fourteen stun rounds. At maximum setting, each one could knock out a human. They weren’t designed for Qyntarak physiology and even if they were, they wouldn’t puncture the body armor. But a hit close to the protective covering over the alien’s thermal-optical organ would be like shining a spotlight in a human’s eyes, temporarily blinding and disorienting it.

Elle sucked in a deep breath while her fingers grabbed the gun. She rolled and landed on her back. Giving herself a fraction of a second to center her focus, she pushed the air out of her lungs and pulled the trigger. Then she pulled it again.

And again.

Again.

Again.

The alien veered sideways, staggering and thrashing.

Elle chanced a worried look at Court and was relieved to see Bear with one arm around Kane’s neck and the other hammering on his side. Kane’s hands were scratching at Bear’s head but the big man wasn’t yielding.

Remarkably, Court still had Kane’s gun in his hand, which was visibly shaking even from thirty feet away.

Elle tried to shout at him to help Bear but all that came from her mouth was a scream. Unthinkable pain surged through her body, and she looked to where the alien’s sharp tentacle had sunk deep into her upper leg.

“You are an irritation, human L37.”

“Court,” she shouted. “Court, you need to go. You need to get on the pod. I can’t, not now.”

The alien leaned forward, pressing more of its weight into her leg and she screamed as the stabber slid through to the ground beneath her.

“Please, Court. Go.”

“She’s right,” Bear said. He released Kane’s twitching body and took the gun from Court. “Hurry.”

Elle fired several more stun rounds into the body armor, causing the alien to thrash and wail.

“Go!”

Court stared at her for what felt like much too long and then he ran, moving at an angle away from the Qyntarak. She fired another stun round before the other stabber sunk into her upper chest. She heard something snap.

Collarbone? First rib?

The pain didn’t seem to register. She felt surprisingly clear-headed.

The alien turned, dragging her body along the ground as it did. It was searching for Court. She tried to raise the stun gun but her arm was no longer working.

The alien turned its thermal-optical organ in her direction. The protective covering of its body armor was scuffed where the stun rounds had landed.

“Such irritation. I look forward to eating you, human.”

Kane sucked in air in short gasps as the world came back into focus. Kantarka-Ta had L37 pinned to the ground. The kid was running away. Next to him, his gun hung from the big man’s hand.

Kantarka-Ta said that it looked forward to eating L37.

No. No, it wouldn’t…

He forced his head off the ground and saw Kantarka-Ta removing the body armor from around its feeding slit.

Out in the open like this?

The air on Earth was uncomfortable for Qyntarak, which is why they stayed in the controlled atmosphere of their bunkers and ships. It was why Kane had spent so many hours of his life trapped in a suit to protect him from the air mixture native to their home world. For a Qyntarak to expose its sensitive feeding slit this way was unprecedented in Kane’s experience.

“Give me the gun.”

Kane’s voice was almost nonexistent after his near strangulation and Bear didn’t react. He pushed himself to his knees and pulled the gun from Bear’s hand. That snapped the big man out of his terrified stupor. Kane had the gun pointed at him before he could react.

“Back up.”

Bear raised his hands and took several steps back.

Kantarka-Ta’s mandibles had stretched its feeding slit wide and it swayed over L37, who was clawing pointlessly at the tentacle embedded in her chest.

Kane raised the gun and fired three shots into Kantarka-Ta’s feeding slit, top, middle, and bottom. The alien made a painfully loud screeching sound. Its mandibles snapped shut and it yanked its stabbing tentacles from L37. Kane saw the damaged plating on its back leg and fired at it. The first shot was a couple inches high and bounced off the body armor. His second shot went straight in and Kantarka-Ta’s back end collapsed to the ground.

Bear jumped forward and dragged L37 away. The alien swung a wild tentacle at them but missed.

Kane aimed at the spot where the covering over a tentacle met the plating of the central body armor and fired. The Qyntarak screeched again.

Seven shots fired. Three left.

The Qyntarak only let humans use projectile weapons, saving the powerful and versatile gravity-based weapons for themselves. Modern bullets couldn’t pierce Qyntarak body armor, let alone the exterior of their facilities and ships, and the aliens didn’t care much about how much humans shot each other up, as long as it wasn’t cutting into their profits.

The rules might change after this.

Kane charged at the writhing alien, dodging its tentacles, and threw all of his weight against it, sending the much larger creature tumbling back, unable to brace itself without the use of its damaged leg.