Galactic Champion 2

by Dante King

  “No time,” Beatrix said, before she tossed the younger woman through the hole.

  Then, she turned back to me.

  “Go!” I ordered.

  The enemy had already begun its charge. Beatrix sent one blast down the hallway she’d been guarding and leapt through the hole, clearing it easily.

  The angle wasn’t right for me to do the same. The oothecae scattered around my feet prevented me from simply taking a few steps sideways and jumping up after her.

  The enemy moved quickly, but I was ready for them. I moved my feet an inch at a time—first one, then the other. I winced as I saw the bug-grenades gently bounce off each other. If one of them wasn’t as sturdy as the others, it would burst. I could be injured in all kinds of ways, I could be blinded. But if it went that way, I’d take a few of them down with me.

  With my pistol in my left hand pointed toward them and Ebon in my right, the battle began. I fired blindly down the hallway—making sure not to aim too low—jabbed my sword through the first bug’s thorax just below its neck, and fired again. My move held the bug on my sword and allowed me to use it as a meat-shield.

  I glanced to my left. The hallway was filled with skittering Xeno warriors, so I fired three more times and hissed as the bug I was using as a shield stepped on an ootheca, popped it, and sprayed acid onto my right leg. Several more had burst, but they popped behind the bug, and its body had blocked their contents.

  The pain was incredible. It felt like someone was playing the nerves in my right leg like a banjo. Lightning bolts of agony shot up my leg, ricocheted off my hip, and landed in my groin. I moved each foot another inch. I was close, but not close enough. I moved my feet again. I was tempted to run faster, but there wasn’t a single spot on the floor that wasn’t covered with the things, so I moved my feet just another inch.

  The Xeno impaled on my sword wasn't dead. It made that fact clear when it grabbed my arm and raked its sharp claws across it. Compared to the pain in my leg, the slices in my arm were a minor inconvenience. I moved again, one tiny bit closer to my escape.

  A bug tried to get past my meat shield. It was armed, and as it lowered its ootheca-launching barrel my direction, I fired two more shots down the opposite hallway and slammed the impaled Xeno against its armed companion, simultaneously yanking my sword back. Both Xeno clattered to the deck, popping a handful more acidic grenades. The pain in my leg increased, as did a thin line where acid had just splashed across my face.

  My eyes slammed shut involuntarily. I winced, but pushed my way through it. I had to keep my eyes open so that I could see what I was doing. My face was on fire, but I was still alive, and as long as I lived, I’d kill bugs and keep moving. I moved again and realized I hadn’t checked the opposite passageway for too long.

  I turned and groaned inwardly as I pulled the trigger. Three bugs came apart. They were too far away to splash me with their acidic blood, but it was close. I moved my feet again, even though the burn of acid on my face and leg screamed at my mind and pleaded with me to run.

  I fired four more times in rapid succession, determined to keep the bugs at bay. I swung and slammed the flat of my sword against two others who tried to get through and watched in horror as one landed on several of the eggs, bursting them. More importantly, one of the sacs had been pinched under a round portion of its carapace, bounced, and sent flying up toward my face.

  There was no time to consider the consequences. I stuffed away my pistol, reached down to one of the corpses—whether it was my old meat-shield or not I couldn’t tell—and slashed its neck with Ebon while ripping its head free with my other hand. I ducked and, as gently as I could, deflected the ootheca away with a little flick. The jiggly oval hit the far wall and popped. I moved my feet and in one smooth movement snapped up my pistol again and fired three more shots down the hallway. I felt the heat of the blast and knew they were close.

  I stabbed one of the Xeno I’d knocked down, heaved it over my head, and tossed it at the rest of the incoming bugs. They fell in a heap.

  I stabbed the second one, lifted it over my head, jumped, and landed on top of the creature with a crunch. I hoped it hurt, because the pain in my leg was a fiery dwarf star. The Xeno’s body provided insulation between myself and the hundred or more oothecae on the floor. I took one big step, planted a foot on the creature’s head, and leapt for the hole in the ceiling.

  I cleared it and landed hard in the hallway. A small grunt of agony escaped my throat as a sensation like white-hot shards of glass ground into my femur. Luckily, there were no enemies in the passage.

  “Oh, shit,” Nyna gasped, “he’s hurt!”

  “Cover the hole!” I ordered.

  “Got it,” Reaver said. “Grenade!”

  “No!” I roared. “You’ll breach the hull!”

  Reaver put the grenade away and pulled out her new weapon from around her neck, the kusari-fundo she’d acquired from Tortengar. She took a couple of practice swings, spun about a foot of the chain around her head, and thrust it toward the hole. It seemed to keep extending forever, surprising both of us.

  Reaver drew it back, spun the foot of chain again, and while holding on to a looped length in her other hand, threw it through the hole again, and again it extended. She laughed, Skrew clapped, and I groaned. Nyna had torn the remains of my pant leg open to see the wound. I knew it was bad, but she acted like it was no big deal—as if she’d seen a hundred wounds that were so much worse. A few moments which felt like a few minutes later, the pain began to subside.

  “I’m healing you,” she said as she ran her fingers through my hair and across my forehead. “Please relax. You heal really fast.”

  Meanwhile, Reaver looked to be having the time of her life. She’d developed a technique in which she would strike once, spin the weighted chain above her head once, then strike again. Between strikes, she took little steps left or right to gain a better position. The look in her beautiful eyes said she was having fun, but the sneer on her lips said she wanted to kill as many as possible.

  Beatrix and Skrew, meanwhile, were standing guard. Skrew was trying too hard to mimic what the tentacle-haired warrior was doing. He tried to stand like her. He tried to scan the perimeter the same as her. And, since he didn’t have tentacles of his own, he wiggled ears.

  “Comes to Skrew, nasty bugs,” the vrak whispered. “Skrew wants to puts the pew in the Xeno butt.”

  The words were funny, but his tone was deadly serious. I knew if he didn’t get the opportunity to do exactly that, I’d never hear the end of it.

  Nyna finished healing my leg and started on my face.

  “This should be quick,” she said. “30 seconds or so, but it looks like you’re gonna have a scar.”

  “I don’t care,” I told her. “Thank you.”

  She leaned in close to me as she waved her healing rod over my wound. “If it’s any consolation, I think scars are sexy.”

  Sure enough, m pain faded until it was completely gone. When I sighed in relief, Nyna leaned in, took my face in both of her soft hands and kissed my new scar. Then, she stood and placed the rod back into her bag and slung it over both shoulders.

  “All out of bugs,” Reaver said.

  “Reaver killed all of Xeno with… that?” the vrak gasped.

  “Sure did,” she said as she looped it around her neck and put the weights down the front of her shirt.

  She did so slowly, just to give me time to appreciate how the weighted ends slipped between her breasts. I would enjoy holding them again soon, squeezing them as I had for the first time before we set off on this endlessly extended expedition.

  “There’s no going back, though,” Reaver said. “The whole room is swimming in acid.”

  “It’s okay,” Nyna answered. “This passage will take us to the Queen, too. And there are no rooms between us and her. We’re there.”

  I placed the team back in formation and led them on. It wasn’t long before we encountered another side passage. I signale
d a warning before I peeked around the corner. After ten yards, the passage to the right opened up into a room that could be nothing other than a hangar. A sleek-looking Xeno ship was the only thing docked, and a hatch was opened toward us.

  It was time to split the team. Once I engaged the Queen and she fully realized she would lose, I didn’t think it would be beyond her to destroy our only chance of escape. It would take a lot of guns to keep the ship, so I needed as many as possible there.

  “Reaver,” I whispered, “take the team. There’s a hangar down this corridor. Inside is a ship. I want you to secure it and hold it.”

  “What will you be doing?” she asked.

  “I’ll be killing the Queen. If you don’t keep the ship, we’ll have no chance of escape. We’ll never make it back, and we’ll die here. No matter what, you must keep the ship.”

  She sighed. “I’ll do it. But don’t think we’re going to leave without you. Not a chance in hell, Paladin.”

  I smiled. I hadn’t heard my nickname in what seemed like ages.

  “She is correct,” Beatrix added.

  Nyna and Skrew confirmed with nods and crossed arms.

  “What if the worst should happen?” Reaver asked, clearly pained. “How would we even know?”

  “Hold it as long as you can,” I said. “If I stay away, and it looks like you’re going to be overrun, take the ship and flee. Please promise me that. And then… avenge me.”

  “I don’t think the Queen has a chance against you,” Nyna said. “So, that’s not even an option.”

  “It is an option,” Reaver corrected. “There’s always chance, rotten luck. Anything can happen, anywhere, anytime.”

  She remembered what I taught her. Boy, would I be broken if I never got to see her again.

  She turned to me. “We’ll hold out as long as we can and not a second less. Kick her ass and get back here.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I crept through the passageway alone while the others secured our escape craft. I tried to take in all the details of my environment. I wouldn’t allow the desperate Queen to catch me off guard.

  Where the others had been wide enough for three Marines to march through them abreast, the passage continuing from the hangar began to narrow almost immediately. It was barely wide enough for me to walk through without twisting my shoulders slightly.

  As I progressed through the twisting, winding passageway, I noticed other differences. The walls were less undulated, and there were more glowfrogs than in the rest of the hive, which made the walls shimmer and shine. This might be a kind of royal treatment. I knew I’d like it if I were their Queen. I chuckled at the thought process I’d just gone through, imagining myself as a huge monster breeding destructive aliens.

  The air in the passageway also changed. It was warmer and far more humid than it had been in the rest of the hive. A foul odor began to fill my nostrils. It reminded me of spoiled milk, fried to a crisp. It was the odor of the Queen. It was the pheromone that kept her alive, well fed, and nurtured.

  The Queen likely had workers with her, just the typical Xeno soldiers I’d already encountered. I’d killed thousands of them before, and they were no match for me. But the Xeno Queen had already proven her cleverness and her complete disregard for efficiency by wasting the lives of countless soldiers in futile attacks. Anything was possible.

  With Ebon drawn and held in front of me, I turned every corner with caution. If there were any bugs waiting in ambush, the first thing they would see would be the razor-sharp blade. The second thing they would see would be their own innards.

  The narrow passageway more or less straightened and began to ascend. The walls and floors were so smooth they were almost mirror-like. The reflection of the glowfrogs created a spectacular starfield effect. Had the air not been filled with the stink of the Queen’s pheromones, I might have had a moment of aesthetic pleasure.

  Sudden movement ahead caused me to crouch into a fighting stance. I relaxed a little when I saw what was approaching. It was one of the gray-skinned bugs I’d seen taking apart the captured spacecraft in the cavernous storage room. It was carrying another Xeno egg. This one looked different, though. Rather than being a leathery, opaque mass, it looked more like a gemstone. It was green, but there was a little pink shape inside. It was fertilized.

  I stepped to one side and kept my sword pointed at the creature in case it was bringing the egg to me as a weapon. But it skittered past, probably on its way to deliver the egg to an incubation chamber. I didn’t need to kill the creature or destroy the egg. Soon, the universe would have one less egg-laying Xeno Queen to deal with. Also, if the ship the rest of the team was securing had any weapons, I’d open enough holes in the hive to ensure there would be no others to take her place.

  There is no hope for survival. No hope for victory. The only hope is surrender. You are full of sorrow and remorse. Surrender now, and you will be forgiven.

  The Queen’s voice sounded familiar and soothing. It was salve on a wound. It was poison in my coffee.

  It probably wasn’t in the Queen’s best interest to give up her secret communication tool. If I made it out of here, and I believed I would, this was another weakness I could share with my forces that we could exploit. But she was clearly desperate, this was yet another sign. I tried to picture my memories of a Xeno Queen panicking, legs flailing and eyes rolling, and grinned.

  About 30 feet ahead, the passageway came to an abrupt end and opened into a strange chamber. I stayed in the doorway. The chamber was only about twenty feet deep, but it was at least three times as wide. Hooks and horns, some reaching three feet in length, pocked the walls and the ceiling, which was at least fifteen feet high.

  Two archways roughly the size of a normal human doorframe were placed on the far wall about six feet apart. Across them was something that looked like a beaded curtain. Xeno didn’t use furniture, as far as I knew, so the curtain was more likely a defense mechanism. It looked like sundew, a tiny carnivorous plant that grew in Earth’s marshy regions. It could also be a Xeno equivalent of a spiderweb, designed to entangle me until something came along to finish me off or inject me with poison.

  If I did die here, it would all be worth it to save Druma, the Ish-Nul, my companions, and those I hadn’t even met—if I managed to take down the Queen with me. Reaver, Beatrix, Nyna, and Skrew would raise an army to fight any remaining Xeno and purge them from the planet. Nyna would take whatever Void-tech she’d discovered so far, incorporate it with anything else she could find, and design defenses to keep the planet safe for the rest of eternity.

  Slavery and torture would be outlawed on the entire planet. Those whose bodies had become hosts to Xeno creatures would be cured. If a cure wasn’t possible, they would have to be killed and their bodies burned on proper funeral pyres.

  First, the Queen had to die. It all hinged on this, on me in this strange, gross-smelling chamber.

  But the Queen was nowhere to be seen. I just knew I was close, though, all signed pointed to this. She had to be in the next room through one of the curtained arches.

  The only other things that appeared to be out of place here were two almond-shaped shields above the archways. They were six feet tall and three feet wide. I thought of them as shields, because, although they fit snugly to the wall, I could tell they weren’t actually part of it, unlike the hooks and horns. They’d been hung there, and I wondered if it was the Xeno version of a heraldic shield.

  The golden shapes were smooth but not polished, and the tiny imperfections I detected on their surface didn’t seem to display any kind of pattern I could recognize. But I remembered there was a Martian theory that Xeno could see a wider spectrum of light than humans could. Perhaps the shields’ decorations were simply invisible to me.Of course, even if they were heraldic shields, they could still be traps.

  I couldn’t suppress a gasp when I suddenly realized why the passage leading up to here was so narrow. Th
e Queen wasn’t allowed to leave. She was in control of her brood, but they also exerted control upon her. She was as much a prisoner as a ruler.

  The other Xeno would bring her food, clean up her waste, and process her eggs. From them, they would grow the workers, soldiers, and parasites that would then be used as slaves for the next generation of bugs. The Queen had nowhere to go, but as long as she lived, she could continue to command her troops and cause Druma to suffer.

  Free or unfree, she was the ruler, and she could choose to kill herself every day. Rather, she chose to continue the cycle of oppression and suffering, every day. This had to end. She had to die.

  A single step into the room set things in motion. The instant I placed my foot on the floor, both shields fell and crashed to the deck. They tipped over and landed round side up, the crash sounding like a pair of perfectly timed gunshots. They remained perfectly still without bouncing even once, as if they were immediately magnetically glued to the floor. Above the doors, they left sockets that appeared to have been specifically designed for them.

  Slowly, they began to lift from the ground as arms and legs unfolded from underneath. I drew my pistol and shot the bug on the right, but the only result was a scorch mark, so I shot it again. Three rapid shots later, all to the same spot, revealed exactly how impenetrable the bugs were to my Void-tech weapon. They’d go down, but I’d have to do it the hard way.

  The Queen screamed again from the next room, and the two heavily armored Xeno turned to me. Their exoskeleton made it look like they were wearing helmets. Two horizontal slits hinted at where their eyes might be located. Their arms and legs were covered in interlocking plates, and as they rose to their full height, I checked for weak spots or seams in their bio-armor, but I found none.

  I could have fled back into the tunnel and forced them to fight me one at a time, but I needed room to maneuver. I also didn’t want to be caught in a tight corridor if they were able to deploy acid.