by Cory Mccoy
The anticipation was killing her. She tried to pass the minutes by double checking all of her weapons. She looked over the mark's anatomy for the twenty seventh time. Tripedal with multiple long tentacle like arms and hudreds of electrified quills covering the torso. It used a form of sonar based on pulses in the electrical current of the air to detect prey. The eyes were crude, blind to anything more than a few meters away. He wasn't really a he. The species was asexual, but rarely reproduced. They were too aggressive, even toward their own kind. Aariel wanted its head on a pike, but there really wasn't enough of a neck to properly decapitate the damn thing.
So lost in though was Aariel that she didn't even realize the first Flea had docked. It was only the airlock alarm that alerted her to the mark's presence.
“Lelantos, ready all combat droids. Position them in the main corridor, out of sight. We'll draw him in and let them kick the shit out of the bastard for a while, then drag him up here.”
“I'm sorry, but that plan conflicts with my instructions from Vel,” Lelantos replied.
“Don't fuck with me. You know something hit his Flea. He may be stranded until we can safely get another shuttle down to him.”
“This plan has a very low rate of success.”
“Then you better try really fucking hard. Do it. Now.”
The main corridor was long and dark. Many anatomy jokes had been made about it. The corridor ran the length of Lelantos, from the stern to crunchdeck to bow. She was made that way to absorb and recoil energy. That's how Lelantos had shattered a massive asteroid, as if it were a cube of ice using a ball pin hammer. It was hardcore.
That ugly sonnuvabitch was making his way to Aariel. The stupid ass kid had fucked up everything. Hadn't she? What else could have made that kind of hole? Only a stray ricochet from a failed jump, Lelantos would have told him. Of fucking course that wasn't it. That was ridiculous. This bastard wasn't smart enough to make a planet based jump. He was monosyllabic for fuck's sake. Without his interpreter, this cocksucker couldn't utter so much as a whimper for help. The interpreter had always been Vel's first target.
No chance. No pity. No room for resistance.
He would die without the ability to even apologize. Not that an apology would help anyone. Vel's closest friend in 10,000 years had died at his hands. The sister of his companion had just tried to kill him. Hadn't she?
Fuck it. There was no time to think about it now. Vel had 3.1 km of corridor to stalk this whore's whelp and he was already a kilometer behind.
Vel slid his finger down the shaft of his new weapon. Slowly, silently it reshaped into a vicious rapier. Not straight at all, but with jagged edges running the length. He felt only a sexual anticipation from his mark. Vel had died in his mind. The mark would ravage this ship soon enough.
Without a word Vel leapt out of the shadows and drove the jagged rapier through his gut. A hundred electrified bristles exploded from the mark's skin, but Vel was gone. The target's organ's were serrated and torn assunder due to the angle of the blade. It was not a wound easily fixed. None of the quills struck home. Vel was gone. Long fucking gone. He had become something more.Giving into his rage. Vel had ascended to something deadlier. He had become something else. Something... Untouchable.
