Steph Bennion - Paw-Prints of the Gods

“There’s another one!” shouted Artorius.

A huge spider scuttled along the valley floor beside them, easily matching their diminishing speed. Ravana shuddered, feeling nauseous at the dreadful sight of giant pincers below plate-sized eyes. Without warning, Kedesh stomped on the brake and the spider shot ahead. The woman shoved the speed control lever forward and rammed the transport into the spider’s bulbous abdomen, sending it spinning away into the shadows. Kedesh’s triumphant grin faltered the moment she saw the fresh crack in the windscreen.

“Thraak!” exclaimed Nana. “Thraak thraak!”

“We can’t go on like this,” said Ravana. Nana’s outburst’s were not helping. The translator had filled her head with a bizarre image of giant arachnids standing defiant over a line of chained slaves, both human and grey. “There’s too many! The scanner shows hundreds of the damn things, all coming for us!”

“You’re right,” said Kedesh. She slipped from her seat and let the transport roll on, only now there was no one at the controls. “Take the wheel.”

“What are you doing?” In a panic, Ravana reached across and grabbed the steering wheel just in time to avoid a large boulder. “We’ll crash!”

“Just drive the bloody thing! They’re not bowling me out in this innings.”

Startled, Ravana extracted herself from Artorius’ clutches, dumped the sealant gun into his lap and slipped into the pilot’s seat. Kedesh hurried to the rear of the passenger compartment. When Ravana glanced around a few moments later, she saw her struggling into a survival suit whilst trying to pick up her helmet and open a storage locker all at the same time. There was a thud and another spider fell crushed beneath the wheels, rocking the transport and almost knocking the woman from her feet.

“Keep your eye on the game!” snapped Kedesh.

“Sorry,” muttered Ravana.

Kedesh finished fastening her suit and began strapping to her legs what Ravana was surprised to recognise as cricketing shin pads. The woman gave her a wink, slotted her helmet into place, then reached into the locker and picked up a well-worn cricket bat. Ravana stared in disbelief as Kedesh took a few practice swings with the bat before laying it aside. Returning to the locker, she withdrew a long black cylinder with brutal military overtones. Artorius’ eyes widened when he saw the weapon in the woman’s hands.

“Fwack!” cried Stripy, impressed.

“Is that a plasma cannon?” Artorius asked in awe.

“It’s a portable recoilless electro-thermal accelerator,” said Kedesh. Her voice sounded muffled through the helmet and Ravana switched the suit’s intercom to the console speakers. “So yes, it’s a plasma cannon. Ravana, find a clear spot and stop. Stay at the controls until I get back. If I get back,” she murmured to herself.

“You’re going outside?” exclaimed Ravana, in disbelief.

“No, I’m wearing this suit as a fashion statement,” snapped Kedesh. “Ready?”

Trembling, Ravana nodded and brought the transport to a clanking halt. A cluster of dark long-limbed shapes quickly appeared at the limit of the headlamps and began to advance. Looking pale, Artorius huddled down in his seat and held the sealant canister out towards the windscreen as if it were super-strength bug spray.

“They’re coming!” called Ravana.

“Thraak?” asked Nana. Stripy cowered at Artorius’ feet.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Ravana said crossly. Her heart sank when she saw the empty cabin behind. Kedesh had slipped into the airlock without another word.

There was a sudden bang, followed by a terrible splintering noise as another spider appeared from nowhere and crashed into the cracked port-side window. The spider’s pincers tore a chunk out of the toughened glass, then a head and snapping mandibles broke through into the cockpit. Artorius leapt out of his seat in alarm.

“Thraak!” wailed Nana. “Thraak thraak!”

A foul yet familiar smell reached Ravana’s nose. Nana darted away in a mixture of embarrassment and fear, leaving Artorius sprawled upon the floor and frantically waving his oxygen mask in an ironic attempt to disperse the gust of alien flatulence. Amidst her panic, Ravana saw he had managed to keep hold of the sealant canister as he fell.

“Artorius!” she cried. The spider brought with it a blast of air from outside and the dizziness of carbon-dioxide poisoning hit her hard. “Use the sealant gun! Spray the window!”

The boy twisted onto his back, pointed the canister towards the writhing head of the spider and pulled the trigger. A jet of milky fluid erupted from the nozzle and caught the creature square in the mouth, instantly gumming its jaws together with a ball of sealant. The spider thrashed frantically against the broken window, in a manner that would have looked quite comical in different circumstances, then retreated through the hole in the glass. Artorius, his eyes closed in terror, kept his finger on the trigger and sealant sprayed erratically around the cabin. Ravana grabbed his arm and guided his aim towards the shattered window, waving his hand back and forth in a cross-hatch pattern. To her relief, the sticky threads of sealant latched to the glass and expanded to block the opening. The canister ran dry all too quickly, but the huge flat blob of sealant on the window had done its job.

Ravana felt the transport rock and tensed in anticipation of another impact, then heard the tap of human footsteps and creak of metal as Kedesh clambered onto the transport’s roof. Ravana’s immediate panic faded but did not go away, for still more spiders emerged from the shadows outside. She was not at all comforted by the thought that perhaps the creatures saw the unmoving transport as prey caught in a web, injured or wearied by the chase.

“Well done Artorius,” she said weakly, releasing his arm. Her heart pounded and she was having trouble breathing, for she had not managed to find her mask in time. She heard the comforting rattle of a compressor as the life-support system got to work restoring the air. The boy’s shrieks still echoed in her aching head. “Some excellent quick thinking there.”

“You scared me!” complained Artorius. A sheepish-looking Nana came out of hiding and crept back to join Stripy in the cockpit. “I thought the monster spider had grabbed me!”

Ravana heard Kedesh move again. She barely had time to wonder what the woman had planned when the grandfather of all nightmares stepped into the headlamp beams. Before them, blocking the valley, was an arachnid of truly mammoth proportions, standing high upon eight gnarled legs as thick as ancient tree trunks. The spider’s mandibles flexed like the claws of a salvage-yard crusher, above which a cluster of huge baleful eyes caught their headlights in a hideous kaleidoscope stare.

“Maharaja Ashtapada,” murmured Ravana. “That is what you call a demon king.”

Artorius screamed. “It’s come to eat us alive!”

“Fwack fwack fwack!” shrieked Stripy, seemingly in agreement.

The valley suddenly burned with a blinding white light. A spear of flame erupted from the roof of the transport and caught the monstrous spider in the centre of its snapping jaws. Ravana instinctively shielded their eyes and peered through her fingers in stunned amazement as another rush of fire lanced into the creature, then a third, leaving the monster writhed in flame. A dreadful piercing cry filled the web-strewn canyon, one that made Artorius and the greys to clamp a hand over their ears. Ravana jumped as another fiery burst swept across the ground in front of the transport, instantly reducing an advancing horde of lesser spiders to a series of charred, smoking mounds.

“It’s Kedesh!” Artorius cried jubilantly. “She’s blasting them to bits!”