Galactic Champion 2

by Dante King

  I shot the first one in the chest and splattered nearby boxes with its blood, which began to sizzle and smoke. Reaver shot the second in the head to the same effect.

  The third decided it wanted to dance, so I drew Ebon, ran out to meet it, and cut off its legs as it passed by. I continued my spin and ran my black blade through its skull.

  Beatrix was toying with hers, blocking its strikes with her mace. The strikes from her mace seemed to multiply the force she put behind her strikes. Even though her swings were subtle, each one ripped limbs from sockets and crushed exoskeleton. When the Xeno had almost run out of legs and charged her with its body, she knocked the thing’s head off. Then she chuckled and gave me a wink before propping her mace like a cane on the ground.

  She picked it up again immediately and hopped away when we heard a dull crack.

  I thought I was seeing things. A crack had formed where she’d touched her weapon to the deck.

  “I didn’t hit it very hard,” Beatrix protested as she stared at the crack, then inspected her mace.

  “I don’t think it was you necessarily,” Reaver said.

  “Yeah, this ship has seen better days,” I added. “Let’s go before reinforcements arrive. Keep your eyes open and look for cracks. Avoid them if possible. I don’t want anyone falling through or opening the ship to vacuum.”

  Now, I wasn’t sure it was a ship which was holding another ship within it. If it was, it was by far the biggest ship I’d ever seen. The Martian Navy had a couple massive specimens; they could carry 60 fighters each, but none had storage compartments as big as this. It would be considered a colossal waste of space, and of energy, when flying.

  We got in line and walked along the edge of the hangar ship. After the close encounter with the little gray Xeno, I was able to estimate the number of the things climbing over the captured alien vessel to be closer to 10,000. Luckily, they seemed to be quite absorbed in their task, and we were too far away to be a threat.

  What was that task, though? Xeno didn’t use tech, at least not what us humans considered tech. They grew everything. Their soldiers, ships, and even their weapons had similar DNA patterns, as Martian scientists had ascertained.

  Xeno didn’t capture ships, at least I’d never heard of them doing it. They destroyed everything they touched. Then again, I hadn’t known they took slaves, either. Yet here I was, trying to liberate the Xeno’s slave-breeding planet.

  We found a passageway, which to me looked a lot like a throat. The walls weren’t flat like they were in the storage room, which made me wonder if the hangar had been assimilated from something much larger.

  The passageway was cylindrical but uneven. The walls were the iridescent colors of the Xeno, and every few feet, a glowing frog-like creature or two floating within goo-filled sections of the walls lit the way. Xeno safety lights, I mused.

  The passageway undulated and twisted as it meandered to its destination, another inefficiency. I was beginning to think we weren’t on a starship after all. More likely it was a space station, or a hive, which was a good place to find a Queen.

  We found another crack, in the wall this time. A strange-looking creature was tending to it, depositing little bits of clear liquid onto it. The creature was no longer than my thumb, and its tiny head was dwarfed by its wide, flat body. Each of its twelve segments was a dull black with bright orange edges, and if it noticed me, it didn’t react.

  “Is good to eat?” Skrew whispered, squinting at the bug.

  “Maybe,” I whispered, “but I think we should leave these things alone. It looks like a kind of Xeno maintenance robot. Judging by the look of this place, it has enough work to keep it busy. If we start killing them, we might find ourselves as frozen corpses in orbit around Druma. They’re probably the only thing holding the hive together.”

  “Yeah,” Reaver said, “I was thinking the same thing. This is looking more and more like a hive.”

  “And where there’s a hive,” I whispered, “there’s a Queen. And where there’s a Queen, there are soldiers. I don’t think we’ve seen the toughest Xenos yet.”

  “Good,” Beatrix said. “I was becoming bored with them.”

  About twenty yards later, we reached a strange junction. We could continue onward, or we could go down. Of course, the idea of “up” and “down” were relative in a space station, and even more so in a Xeno hive. Beatrix squatted at the edge of the hole and squinted down into it while Reaver and I provided cover.

  “I am not certain which way the passage goes,” she whispered.

  Well. No matter which direction we traveled, it would be both the right way and the wrong way. We needed to find a clue as to where the Queen might be. We needed to look for survivors from the Revenge. Neither could be done if we overthought.

  “Let’s go straight,” I said. “If it looks like we’re walking in circles, we’ll either double back or take a different passage. Either way, we need to keep moving.”

  They nodded and followed me on.

  Our next Xeno encounter was even stranger than the first. The bug looked like it had hair, but when we got closer, I could see that it were antennae that were swaying atop its flat, round body. I didn’t see any eyes, and it moved slowly, making scraping motions and sucking noises as it went. The deck behind it was sparkling clean.

  “A cleaning bug?” Reaver asked.

  I shrugged, and Beatrix smashed it with her mace as she walked past. The thing curled in on itself and stopped moving. Its blood was almost clear, with only a slight tinge of yellow.

  Right after that, we came to another intersection. We could either continue straight, or we could take a left. And on the wall in between, there was some kind of organic material growing out of it. It looked like something had run into the wall at high speed. Pulsating organs, an eyeball, and several dangling appendage-like cones of silvery flesh waved as if moved by an unfelt wind.

  The eyeball didn’t stare at anything or anyone in particular, though it turned from time to time. It was larger than a human organ, and the lens was foggy, like it had once been a functional eye, but the years had clouded it.

  “Eww,” Skrew said with a wrinkle in his nose. “Is a splat, yes? Skrew can pokes it?”

  “No,” Nyna said. “This is something else.This is something special. I need to investigate this. Can we afford to lose a couple of minutes?”

  Her tone was urgent and sincere. Whatever was driving her, it was more than mere curiosity.

  I nodded. “Reaver, Beatrix, cover the two side passages. I’ll take this one. Skrew, you stay in the middle and don’t shoot any of us.”

  We provided security as I counted down the seconds in my head. After 200, I was going to insist we continued down the path we’d started on. But I wanted to give Nyna a chance at discovery. Anything we learned about the place would be beneficial, granted we didn’t lose too much time obtaining the information. And, so far, it didn’t look like our presence had caused much alarm.

  Either the Queen didn’t see us as much of a threat, or she was busy with other things. My guess was that her hive was falling apart, and that she was running out of workers.

  “Wow,” Nyna breathed. “I’m in the system. I can see everything.”

  I turned and nearly fell over when I saw what she was doing. She had something that resembled a segmented spider on her head. It was connected to the fleshy mass by a long, corkscrewing umbilical. The black connecting flesh reminded me of a nerve, and I doubted I was far from the truth.

  “I can see you making that face,” she said.

  The eyeball wiggled my direction in time with her finger as she waved it in front of the mass stuck to the wall.

  “Relax,” she said. “This is a computer, sort of. I’ve hacked in. I’m searching the hive now. Oh, and you were right: it’s not a ship. There is a ship here, besides the one we saw being taken apart, but this is a hive.” She grew quiet for a moment and touched the spidery thing touching her head. “It feels like….” Then
, she screamed.

  The same instant, clattering started in the hallway in front of me.

  “Contact!” Reaver said.

  I repeated the announcement. Beatrix just started shooting.

  The hallway was filled with Xeno troops. They skittered along the walls and ceiling as they used their long legs and arms to propel themselves forward against every surface. I dropped two and fired a few extra shots wildly down the hallway.The skittering was deafening. More were coming, many more than we could see.

  “Status!” I ordered.

  “Present!” Screw said.

  “Not helpful, Skrew!” I growled. “What’s wrong with Nyna?”

  “Nyna is to…” he grunted, “for to make…” he sputtered, “got it! The ugly Xeno thing on ugly girl head was bad thing for to have on head. Skrew did break it off.”

  “I’m okay,” Nyna said. “My head hurts, though. There was someone else in the system. A female. That much I know. She… was angry. She tried to kill me. I think it was the Queen.”

  There was no time to consider what that meant. The Queen knew where we were, and it was too late to do anything about it. We would have to deal with the consequences. The only silver lining was that we had three Void-touched warriors armed with energy weapons, and the Xeno didn’t seem intent on shooting back.

  The realization gave me pause as the next Xeno came rushing toward me for me. None of us needed to announce when our own tunnel filled with enemies. We just shot them, and they kept coming.

  This attack is absurd, it’s desperate, I thought.The Queen was throwing away her workers like they didn’t matter at all. Yet each one had a biological cost.

  “They aren’t shooting!” Reaver yelled over the din of battle. “Why aren’t they shooting?”

  “Do not ask, just kill!” Beatrix answered back.

  Then, it dawned on me.

  “They’re not shooting because they don’t want to break the hive! It’s falling apart! Something’s wrong with the Queen!”

  My hallway was almost choked with Xeno corpses. The ones behind had to push the bodies of their kin out of the way to continue the charge. Based on the slowing rate of fire from the others, I guessed their situation was the same.

  “Awww,” Skrew whined. “Is no more? All gone?”

  Reaver laughed. “That wasn’t enough for you?”

  I raised my pistol and obliterated the upper half of a Xeno who’d pushed its way through the tangle of body parts in my passageway. That’s when I noticed all the blood. It was still draining from the bodies and had pooled in spots. When those pools had overflown, it trickled into new spots, each time getting closer.

  What do we do?” Beatrix said, panicked.

  “We can’t dam it,” I said. “And we don’t have anything to try and absorb it. We’re going to have to find another way out. But we can’t just start blasting holes, or we’ll get sucked out into space.”

  “Skrew is scary again,” the vrak whined. “No!”

  “Let go!” Nyna growled.

  I turned toward the commotion. Nyna and Skrew were fighting over the remains of the spidery helmet Nyna had been wearing when the Queen attacked her through the biological

  computer system.

  “No!” Skrew bellowed. “Is too danger! Is hurt for Nyna!”

  “Skrew,” I said, grabbing the vrak’s attention. “Let go. And Nyna, are you sure you want to put that thing back on? The Queen is still alive.”

  “I was close,” Nyna said, her voice sounding a little sad. “I had a way out. I just need another minute, I’ve got this. I can fight her off. I know I can.”

  I turned and glanced at the others as the little rivers of acid snaked toward us.

  “Skrew,” I said, “take my tunnel. Maybe you’ll get a chance to shoot some more Xeno.”

  I took the partly broken spidery interface from him as he hurried to his position.

  Then, I turned to Nyna. “Are you sure about this? The Queen isn’t going to be happy you aren’t dead.”

  “I know. But we need this. I can find out which bulkhead we can destroy. If I get enough time, I can probably find out which ones are occupied, in case she’s set another trap. I have to try. And besides, don’t we want to find the Queen and kill her?”

  I didn’t like being funneled into one decision, but I couldn’t argue with her logic. She was right. Reluctantly, I handed the device back to her.

  “Be careful,” I said. “I’m staying right here. If you look like you’re in distress again, I’ll break the cord and remove it from your head. Don’t fake that everything is okay if it’s not. Okay?”

  She kissed me gently. The patience and softness I felt in her lips reassured me of her confidence.

  She moved back, looked me in the eyes with determination, and placed the device on her head. “Do you know where the ship is?” I asked.

  “I know it’s near the Queen. Very near. I think it’s her ship, one she could use to evacuate. But for some reason, I get the impression that she’s not able to leave. I’m not sure what’s holding her back, but I’ll see if I can find out.”

  “Find us a way out of here first,” I said as I glanced back at the approaching streams of acid.

  Nyna nodded and pressed the spidery headset against her head. She frowned and adjusted it several times before saying, “Ah, there it is. Skrew broke it good, but I’ve still got access. Not as good as before, but, oh, well, that’s easy enough. I found the way out, and the Queen.”

  Just like that, she removed the device and let it drop to the deck.

  That’s my girl, I thought. I was amazed at her courage, even more so because she hadn’t had the privilege of military training and experience like me and Reaver, and even Beatrix to some extent.

  “We need to go through the computer,” she said. “Like, literally through it, you know? It’ll kill it, but we have all the information we need”

  “Something is approaching,” Beatrix piped up.

  I turned to her hallway and raised my pistol but didn’t see any movement beyond the wall of dead Xeno. Small noises filtered through the bleeding corpses, though: slurping, sucking, chewing.

  “It’s those clean-up bugs,” I said.

  “Too bad they’re on the wrong side,” Reaver said. “I need to move out of position. The acid is getting close. Let’s get out of here.”

  Nyna stepped aside, and everyone backed as far away as they could without being burned by the acid. I stood in front of them, took aim, and pulled the trigger. The wet explosion of parts filled the junction with a cloud of foul-smelling gore and vaporized blood. There was no pain, though. The organic computer’s blood wasn’t acidic.

  The adjoining corridor parallelled the wall left and right and was a little wider than the one we’d been in before. Beatrix was at my side in a second. A moment later, we moved in unison, me to the left, and she to the right. The corridor was clear of troops or traps.

  “Which way?” I asked Nyna.

  “Either way,” she said. “They both get us closer. If we go left, we’ll have to go through a couple of rooms, but it’s a shorter path. If we go to the right, it’s longer but it’s just a hallway.”

  I wanted to avoid the rooms. It was too easy for our enemies to set up an ambush among whatever was stored in them or among equipment. Hallways, at least, put us on equal footing, though we’d already proven that a hundred bugs weren’t the equal of three Void-touched warriors, their techie lover, and a crazy vrak.

  I noticed a slight difference between each of the hallways as well. The hallway on the left undulated more than the other. The one on the right, instead of being as opalescent, looked as though it gradually became more yellow as it slowly curved to the left and up.

  I arranged my troops in a column, with myself on point, followed by Nyna, Skrew, Reaver, and Beatrix. I wanted to keep Nyna close to protect her and to allow her quick access to any Xeno-tech we found along the way.

  The hallway also became progressively
cleaner. The walls sparkled like they’d been recently polished, and there weren’t any cracks evident anywhere. We still saw the little red repair bugs once in a while, but they seemed to wander aimlessly as if they’d been assigned to the area but couldn’t find any work to do.

  About six yards ahead, the passageway took a sharp turn to the left. I signaled everyone to slow down: there was danger ahead. The team, under Reaver’s coaching, repeated the signal among themselves to make sure everyone had seen it. They were getting good at it. I smiled. We were becoming a team. A damn good-looking, unbeatable team.

  I signaled for Beatrix to join me. Together, we turned the corner, rifles raised, ready to engage whatever threat we found. What we discovered instead were three odd-looking Xeno. They were roughly the same size as the ones we’d demolished in the three hallways, but these had distinct red stripes on their heads, and they were smaller than the typical harbinger. Their claws were smaller and appeared to be blunt. They were far less threatening overall.

  It looked like they were having an engaging discussion on something of great importance before we ruined it by suddenly appearing. Instead of attacking, as normal Xeno did, they fled, one of them less successfully than the others. It flailed its legs, searching for purchase, and fell to the deck.

  Then it held its three-fingered hands toward me as if it were trying to ward off an evil spirit and froze. The behavior was so odd, I immediately thought it was a trap, but the cowering thing just looked so genuinely scared out of its wits that I couldn’t help believe it and be a little endeared. But a Xeno was a Xeno, whatever its role was in the galactic domination machine.

  “I’ll cover the bugs,” I whispered. “Signal everyone to follow. Column formation. Then, we’ll go see what’s going on here.”

  A few seconds later, the others were standing behind me, leaning over to see what I was looking at. I ignored them and started walking, confident that if they didn’t hold their position, Reaver would put them back in line. Only Skrew had to be scolded, and only once.

  The strange bug cowered as if in fear. It was something I was unfamiliar with when it came to Xeno. I wasn’t aware that they possessed the ability to understand their own mortality. They’d always acted like the ones in the hallway—more than ready to throw themselves at their enemies, completely fearless to the point of reckless.