Galactic Champion 2

by Dante King

  “Skrew got it,” he confirmed as he tested all four of his arms. The one that had been damaged earlier was sluggish, but it did move.

  “So,” Nyna said as she walked toward the panel next to the door, “what do we have here?”

  She studied it through Spirit-Watcher. Then, she got on her hands and knees and peeked at it from underneath. Before standing, she gave my groin a long look. Her face was only inches away. I smiled and let her take it all in for a moment before I nodded at the panel, a hint to get back to work.

  She bit her bottom lip but returned to the panel. “I’m not sure I could get past this thing without breaking it,” she said. “Want me to try anyway?”

  “Do it,” I ordered.

  A few seconds later, she had the panel removed and on fire. “Oops,” she said, wrinkling her nose and grinning.

  “You ready?” I asked Beatrix and Reaver.

  Both women nodded and gripped their weapons tighter. Beatrix’s hammer began to glow brightly. Reaver took a position a few yards from the door where she’d be able to cover our entry if there was anything straight across from us.

  I kicked the door hard, but it barely budged. The whole palace shook with the impact. I kicked again, and this time, the door began to creak and tilt until it crashed to the stone floor beyond. Instead of charging in, though, Beatrix and I stood there and examined the room.

  It filled the entire base of the tower and was illuminated by a single, narrow beam of light from above. In the center stood two people who looked very much like human males. They each had long, brown hair, which was dirty and unkempt, and wore togas so white that the material almost looked like it glowed. Their heads were lowered.

  They appeared to be of average height, maybe a little under six feet. Although they didn’t give any sign they were in pain, their bare legs appeared to be slightly bent at odd angles.I wondered if their legs had broken and healed in the odd positions.

  They were standing directly in the center of a field of white, sparkling sand that extended all the way to a six-foot walkway along the room’s round wall. Behind them, I could make out a polished metal doorway with a small green light beside it on the wall. To the left, I could see the bottom of a winding staircase. To the right was another polished doorway, its door slightly ajar.

  The two men didn’t make any move to attack. Nor did they attempt to retreat. They didn’t speak, and I wasn’t sure if they were breathing.

  “What the fuck?” Reaver whispered. “I’ve got a clean shot on either of them. Want me to take them out?”

  “Not yet,” I said from the corner of my mouth. “Tortengar isn’t going anywhere. I want to see what this is all about. I’m going to try to communicate with them.”

  “I am right behind you,” Beatrix assured me.

  I heard Reaver order the Ish-Nul and Yaltu to guard the doorway to prevent anyone from sneaking up behind us, and then tell Skrew to cover them. She was taking initiative, just like I’d taught her. Then, she stepped into the room, rifle still raised, and took a position to my right, where she’d have a clean line of fire should she need to drop one or both of the men.

  When I stepped into the room, I became aware of a new sound echoing off the walls: breathing. It was rapid, shallow, and though I didn’t see either man’s chest moving, it seemed to come directly from them.

  “Where is Tortengar?” I asked.

  Neither man seemed to hear me, so I asked again. Still no response.

  “Maybe they’re just here to waste our time?” Reaver whispered over the comm. “If so, they’re doing a good job of it.”

  “I don’t think so,” I replied. “There’s something else going on here. Tortengar doesn’t seem like someone who would want to slow us down. He’d want us—or anyone else who invaded his sanctuary—dead. As fast as possible. I smell a trap.”

  Beatrix sniffed the air. “I smell something too,” she confirmed.

  I was tempted to explain that what I had said was only a figure of speech, but she had me curious.

  “What do you smell?” I asked.

  Beatrix’s tentacles unraveled from the tight bun and began to wave around in the air. “Fear,” she said. “Not from us—from them. They have more fear than I have ever sensed. And waste, filth, disease. I smell rotting things, but it is faint. And hunger. I do not know how they are producing so much odor. It does not make sense to me.”

  Beatrix, apparently, had a better sense of smell than the rest of us. Whether it was her tentacles or just better olfactory nerves, I didn’t know, but she’d detected something. There were things nearby that we didn’t see. There was a trap, and whatever Tortengar thought we would do, we had to do the opposite. We had to trigger the trap without falling into it.

  “Reaver,” I whispered, “shoot the sand near their feet. Just a single shot. Let’s see if they respond.” I watched the men and the sand around them closely.

  A hyphen of energy melted a circle of sand, but neither of them budged. Then, I saw it. A small section of sand, no more than a few inches long and wide, shifted. It was too far away to have been caused by either man. There was something else in the room, and it was hiding beneath them.

  I couldn’t tell if the men were being held hostage by the thing beneath the sand, or if they were the ones who tended it. All I knew was that things that concealed themselves could be dangerous.

  “Skrew,” I said over the comm, “please make your way to the doorway. Stay outside, but point that big gun of yours at the two humans in the center of the room. If they so much as take a single step, I want you to turn them into a cloud of pink mist. Understood?”

  Skrew giggled. “Understood much! Pew-pew and make humans dead, yes.”

  Whoever had set the trap expected their prey to approach the humans, work hard to get their attention, and see if they could help. I had no intention of doing what the enemy expected.

  I took a small step to my right as the stomping of the mech’s feet slowed and stopped. I knew the vrak would be behind me, and I wanted him to have a clear shot in case things went sideways.

  “Reaver,” I whispered over the comm, “take out the one on the right. Headshot.”

  Over the next two seconds, several things happened. First, an energy bolt struck the man on the right in the center of his head, just to the left of his ear. Instead of exploding, though, the head split, and green fluid sprayed across the pure white sand.

  Next, Skrew’s minigun began to spin up as he prepared to fire. Third, the man on the left screamed in a voice that was far from human and shot into the sand like he’d been fired from a bow. Skrew’s minigun rounds peppered the sand for a half-second before he realized his target was gone.

  Beatrix gasped. “Where did they--?”

  Her words were cut off when the sand exploded in front of us.

  The human men erupted from the surface and were flailed against the walls of the tower. At first, they looked like they were being held by their feet by segmented, tentacle-like appendages, but I soon realized the truth: they were part of the monster erupting from the ground. They were lures, designed to draw us in, and we’d defeated the trap. More than that, the creature had been hurt, and it was pissed.

  Beatrix, Reaver, and I dove away from the doorway when we heard Skrew’s minigun spin up again. A half-second later, the creature was retreating back into the ground as heavy metal slugs chipped small holes in its armored, iridescent exoskeleton.

  Another segmented appendage, this one ending in a black hook the size of my whole body, erupted from the ground and slashed at Skrew. The wall behind us shook, and little bits of hot rock fell from the gouge it left behind.

  Skrew kept shooting for another two seconds before his gun ground to a halt. “No!” he roared across the comm. “Gun broke! Is fire! Stupid, stinky gun!”

  The creature slashed again with its hooked talon, then stabbed toward and through the doorway at Skrew. The mech’s big hand appeared, wrapped around the tentacle, and pinned it
against the doorway.

  “Ha!” Skrew said through the mech’s external speakers. “Dirty, buggy thing caught! Is stuck! Now what, dirty buggy?”

  Dirty buggy, my mind repeated. There was something about what he was saying that brought back a flood of memories. The iridescent scales were unmistakable. It was a Xeno, but not one I’d ever seen before. How far have they inserted themselves into this world? How far have they spread?

  A single shot from my pistol severed the spidery limb and sent hot green goo splashing to the floor. The stump retreated back into the sand. Reaver was on her feet a moment later, peppering anything that moved with angry bolts of energy. It wasn’t having much effect, but the appendages flinched with every shot, so I knew it hurt.

  Beatrix looked a bit lost. She was standing on the edge of the walkway, peering in at the soil. I could tell she was waiting for an opportunity to smash something with her glowing hammer, but I hoped she wouldn’t be tempted to rush in.

  The sound of Skrew’s stomping feet told me he’d entered the building. His gun was no longer working, but he was carrying the severed Xeno appendage in his hands like a club, the black talon at the far end behind him.

  “Bad bug!” Skrew scolded as he swung the hook over his head at the dirt. It hit with a low, sickening thud.

  Two more appendages shot out of the soil. I shot one, winging it, and it retreated back under the sand. Skrew whacked the second with his makeshift whip and sent it right at Beatrix. My breath caught in my chest for a second as I saw it heading toward her. She didn’t try to get out of the way, though. Instead, she raised her hammer above her head with both hands and sent it crashing into the creature’s claw. There was an explosion of green.

  A second later, I found Beatrix standing in the same spot where I’d seen her before. She was covered in green goo and was surrounded with broken, smoldering bits of Xeno carapace at her feet.

  “I love this hammer,” she said, lovingly cleaning goo off its surfaces before she wiped her face.I caught sight of Reaver on the spiraling stairs heading toward Tortengar’s suite but didn’t have time to ask her what she was doing. Two more appendages erupted from the sand, both headed toward Skrew.

  “Do it again!” I ordered as I shot one.

  But instead of continuing toward Skrew, the creature changed direction and lashed out at me.

  I rolled to my right, narrowly avoiding the sand, and hissed as hot bits of the walkway peppered my back. The Xeno snapped its black hook into the air above me. There was no time to try to bring Ebon up, and I didn’t think cutting through the thing would do any good. There was no time to aim my pistol, and even if it hit it, something would smash down on me. So, I dropped both of my weapons and reached for it.

  The impact sent shooting pains through my wrists and shoulders. The creature was powerful, and it pressed hard against my grip. I held the sharp, black point only inches from my left eye when I felt it start to pull me toward the sand. There was nowhere to plant my feet, no way to stop myself from sliding, so I didn’t. Instead, I turned my head to the side and yanked the limb toward the walkway. Hot sparks landed on my cheek, but I ignored them as I arched my back and squeezed with both arms. I’d pinned the creature by its talon.

  “Skrew!” I shouted. “Come stand next to me!”

  “Want Skrew to smash?” he asked.

  “No, not yet,” I said, “but get your ass over here!”

  The mech was standing a few inches from me a second later, rubbing its big and small hands in anxious anticipation.

  “Stand on the end,” I said. “Keep this thing in place.”

  I moved my hands out of the way as a big, heavy foot planted itself on the Xeno’s talon. Then, I stood up, walked to the edge of the sand, grabbed the thing, and began to pull. It fought hard, but couldn’t stop me from pulling it out of its hidey-hole, one inch at a time. A huge eye appeared in the sand, extended itself like a snail’s eye, and stared at me. It vanished when Reaver burned a hole all the way through it with her rifle. Skrew laughed.

  A smaller tentacle sprang from the soil, but Reaver truncated it with another blast from her rifle. When another appeared, she burned that one off as well.

  “I think I saw its head!” Reaver said across the comm. “Keep pulling!”

  A few seconds later, the main body of the creature appeared. It wasn’t covered in tough scales like the rest of it. The thing looked like a round, pink mouth surrounded by eye-stalks, like a starfish who’d lived its entire life too close to a nuclear powerplant.

  Reaver peppered it with energy bolts until it stopped moving. Then, she shot it a dozen more times.

  “Such fun!” Skrew said.

  “You won’t win,” a voice said from an unseen loudspeaker somewhere above us. “You can’t win. This is my home, my city, my planet.”

  I glanced at the others in the room and at those peeking through the doorway from outside.

  “Ready to go kick Tortengar’s ass?” I asked.

  Everyone cheered their own version of “Hell yeah!”

  Chapter Twelve

  The Ish-Nul leaned into the doorway, two on each side.

  “What was that?” Neb-Ka asked.

  “It was a Xeno,” I explained, “though I’ve never seen one like it. All it has in common with ours is the exoskeleton. But there’s a lot my people still don't know about them. For instance, we didn’t know they’d spread out so far.”

  I almost said “to this part of the galaxy,” but I realized I didn’t know if I was in the same galaxy. I still had no idea where I was.

  “Son of a shiggit,” Timo-Ran breathed, looking the gruesome thing up and down with wide-open eyes.

  Suddenly, a maniacal laugh broke everyone’s concentration.

  “Silly boy,” Tortengar sneered through his hidden speakers, “you think you can win? You have no idea what’s in store for you if you challenge me. You will think my pets were the sweetest, cutest things compared to the horrors I have in store for you. Leave now, and I promise to give you a one-hour head-start before I hunt you down. Who knows what you could accomplish in an hour? Maybe you can make peace with your maker? Oh, just think of the possibilities!”

  “Stupid-head, ugly kakul-licker!” Skrew roared as he shook a little fist at the ceiling.

  “Stop moving!” Nyna scolded as she pounded a fist against the mech’s canopy. “I’m not kidding. I’ll lock you in there and let you breathe your own farts until I say I’m done. Don’t make me do it!”

  Timo-Ran and Tila stifled a snicker.

  “Stay off the sand,” I warned them. “That Xeno was living in it.”

  “You won’t hear any argument from me,” Nyna mumbled past the strange-looking tool she held in her teeth.

  “So, what’s the verdict?” I asked Nyna, nodding at Skrew’s gun.

  “Hard to tell at this point,” she said. “The thing’s got some parts that are beyond repair. In a normal situation, any decent weapons engineer would have them replaced right away, you know? No question. Even for the pilot’s safety. But I’ll try to do what I can with what we have.”

  “That’s all I can ask,” I said, before turning to the others.“Beatrix, Reaver, I need you with me. I don’t know what kind of tricks Tortengar has up there or if he’s just a big talker, but I don’t want to take any chances.

  “I’ll need Timo-Ran, Tila, and Neb-Ka to stay with Skrew and Nyna. Until the mech gets repaired at least enough to hold its own in battle, you three will need to keep them safe. One of you should keep an eye on the sand pit. The other two, the rest of the palace grounds. Don’t stray too far, and if you run into any serious trouble, Skrew can use his communicator to let us know.

  “I want to inspect the contents of the armory, but we’ll have time for that later. Either the guards outside have given up trying to shoot their way through our barricade, or they think Tortengar is already dead. He’s probably got a communicator he’s screaming into, but we just whooped everyone’s ass to get this far. I
doubt the regulars are going to challenge us.” They nodded, and, like soldiers who had been trained under my command for years, got into position.

  “Stairs or elevator?” Reaver asked.

  “Stairs,” I said. “The elevator seems like a thing Tortengar could boobytrap. It’ll take longer, but our enemy isn’t going anywhere. Let’s head out.”

  “Oh, what a lovely plan,” the voice from above sneered. “Split up your team. That is a great plan, isn’t it? I have 200 guards, each in heavy battle armor headed this direction right now. They’re stealthy. They’re sneaky. They’ll get as close as they have to, and then, they'll start cutting throats.

  “Don’t worry, though. Most of you won’t see it coming. There will be a sharp pain, followed by a short wave of dizziness, and then… well, you’ll die. What happens to your bodies afterward won’t be any of your business because you won’t be alive to care. Well, most of you won’t be. I have a special treat planned for your handsome leader, though.”

  “He thinks I’m the leader?” Timo-Ran asked.

  We laughed.

  “I’m glad you retain some lightness until your very last moments. Come and meet your doom, human.”

  I fully intended to meet my doom, beat my doom to a bloody, quivering pulp, and offer it a quick and painless death if he told me what I wanted to know. If he didn’t, he could die slowly.

  I turned to the stairs, my pistol in my left hand, Ebon in the other. It was time to end this.

  “That’s it,” Tortengar whispered from the speakers. “Keep coming, hero. Walk up the stairs toward me. Fall right into my trap. Let me guess; you’re too proud to admit you’ve made a mistake, right? You’re too scared to turn around, wondering if your friends are going to judge you?”

  We started up the stairs, me in the lead, Beatrix in the middle, and Reaver in the rear. Reaver’s job was to pay attention to the ground floor as long as possible. She could be counted on to assist the Ish-Nul and Skrew if anything crawled out of the sand or came in the door. Beatrix and I would handle anything that came down the stairs to challenge us.