I threw my helmet at him and raced for the mid-cabin door as he instinctively ducked. I could hear him coming as I mashed the release button and yanked the door open. The Ware’Ulf’s claws scratched down my leg armor as I dove out the door.
I rolled away from the shuttle, using my momentum to come back to my feet. Without thinking about it, I dropped into a defensive stance.
“Nicely done,” the alien said, chuckling appreciatively as he hopped down from the shuttle. “I always thought you Psiclopes were a bunch of sissies, but it looks like you have a little spunk. I doubt you will provide much of a challenge, but this beats being chained to a stake.” He advanced on me as he spoke, obviously not concerned I would put up much of a fight. Psiclopes typically weren’t fighters, after all.
Ivan stalked toward me, and I tried to sweep his legs out from under him. He nimbly jumped into the air and backward, avoiding my kick. Damn, his reflexes were good.
“Interesting,” he said. “Looks like you’ve had some training.”
I decided not to waste my breath talking to him.
I looked around, although running really wasn’t an option. In his changed form, he could run on all fours if he wanted to; he’d be on me within seconds if I tried to flee. No, I’d have to figure out some way of drawing him away from the shuttle where I could get back into it and lock him out.
He approached me again, and I waited for him to make his move, hoping to counter-punch him. He reached forward to grab me. I tried to slap his hand away, but he snatched my wrist—damn he was fast—and pulled me toward him. Grabbing me with both hands, he picked me up and threw me through the air at the only object around. I smashed into the signpost, snapping the wooden pole like a matchstick as I hurtled through where it stood.
I hit the ground and bounced, hard, and my vision went red. Ignoring the pain in my back from the rocks I’d landed on, I jumped to my feet and ran toward the Ware’Ulf. He hadn’t expected this, and his hands were slow coming up to block. I jumped into the air and kicked him in the chin. His head snapped back, and he went down backward as I landed lightly. Seeing my opportunity, I ran toward the shuttle and the open door, and jumped through the doorway.
Or, I would have jumped through the doorway, except a massive claw caught me and altered my trajectory. I slammed into the metal doorframe, face-first, and fell backward, stunned.
Ivan reached down and grabbed me with both claws, his nails finding seams and joints in my armor to pierce my flesh. The pain brought me to my senses again as he lifted me up and held me in the air. Blood ran into my eyes as I struggled, and I tried to kick him, but he blocked my kicks with his forearms and then pitched me aside again.
This time I landed on the signpost, and my left arm broke with a crack! as I came down on top of it. I heard gravel scatter as the Ware’Ulf raced toward me, and I rolled over, grabbing the post with my right hand.
The creature didn’t have time to stop, and the splintered end of the post caught Ivan in the stomach. His momentum ripped the post from my hand, and the end with the sign hit the ground and caught, driving the splintered end completely through Ivan’s stomach. He fell to the ground, gasping.
I hobbled over to the alien—I had wrenched a knee when I hit, too—trying to ignore the pain in my arm that threatened to overwhelm me. I reached Ivan and found him on his side, trying to pull the post from his stomach. He had both hands on it and was slowly working it back out, although the blood was making it slippery. A horrible memory ran through my head—due to their shapeshifting abilities, Ware’Ulfs could regenerate from most wounds. The only thing that killed them was something through the head or heart.
Without my laser pistol, I doubted I could injure its head, as my foot was still throbbing from the fist time I kicked it. I looked around frantically, but all I saw were several large splinters of wood from where the signpost broke. Those would have to do. The alien almost had the post out of his stomach, so I ran over, grabbed the sign, and forced it back through as far as I could without coming in range of his claws. Ivan howled in pain, but as soon as I let go, he began trying to work it back out again.
Having bought myself a few seconds, I limped over to where the sign had stood and grabbed a couple of the foot-long shards laying nearby. I staggered back to the Ware’Ulf to find him still working on the post. Without wasting any time, I went behind him and jabbed the fragments through his back, trying to pierce his heart. The shards had splinters, and I cried out as my hand was pierced in turn as they drove into my hand. They rapidly became slippery as my blood ran out onto them, so I stood and kicked the shards in as far as they would go.
The alien was moving a lot slower now, but almost had the sign out of his stomach. I staggered back around to the front of it again and grabbed the sign, hoping to drive it into the ground to pin the alien into place. Unfortunately, the ground was hard, and with only one hand—and a slippery one at that—I couldn’t get enough purchase to drive the post into the ground. Not enough to hold the flailing Ware’Ulf as it went into its death throes, anyway, and it clawed at me in agony. I tried to stay outside its reach, but its razor sharp claws tore into my skin around my armor, again and again. I knew the disease was only passed through saliva, so getting the disease wasn’t a worry, but the amount of blood I was losing would quickly become an issue if I took many more hits.
The creature’s eye popped open, and he changed his tactics. The Ware’Ulf grabbed hold of the signpost with both hands so he could swing his body around, and he kicked me in the chest. The creature didn’t have much strength left, but I didn’t either, and, caught unprepared, I wasn’t ready for the kick. It knocked my grip off the pole and forced me back. I fell backward, and my life flashed before my eyes as I saw the creature weakly pulling the post from his body. I didn’t know if he’d still be able to regenerate, but I didn’t want to find out. I rolled to my feet, grabbed the end of the post with the sign, and drove it back through the Ware’Ulf, pinning it to the ground with all of my remaining strength. It didn’t penetrate far into the ground, but it was enough to hold the alien in place, and I saw a flash of fear in his eyes as he realized I had him, and he was going to die.
“You…didn’t win…” he coughed out, his blue blood trailing from the corners of his mouth.
“Yes, I did,” I said, starting to feel pretty good with myself, despite my wounds, now that it looked like I had him. “I left a bomb in your camp, and it’s going to wipe out all of your kind.”
A smile came to the creature’s face as the light left his eyes. “I…left a note…to deactivate…it.” The alien breathed his last and his head fell to the side, his smile continuing to mock me.
I looked at my chrono. It was five minutes past when the antimatter was supposed to explode. Well, damn. I fell to the ground, exhausted, and looked up at the moon still hovering above me in the sky. I had no idea what I was going to. It would take time for Arges to bring another trident down from the moon, and by then, the rest of the aliens might have left the encampment. There was no telling what they’d do. Go somewhere else on the planet and start over? Even worse, go to another planet and re-establish their race again?
I couldn’t allow that to happen. For that matter, I couldn’t leave the Ware’Ulf I’d killed lying around; one of the natives might find the body and somehow get infected. I lay back, overwhelmed. How was I going to accomplish all of my goals? There wasn’t time.
My head rolled to the side, and I knew what had to be done.
Before I could change my mind, I got up and began dragging the Ware’Ulf to my shuttle. The creature was heavier than I would have been able to move, most days, but desperation and the need to see the mission to the end gave me an added adrenaline boost, and I was able to drag the body up the ramp, signpost and all. The sign caught on the ramp, so I tore it off and threw it to the side.
I closed the ramp and went to the cockpit, where I programmed the autopilot, but stopped before pressing the “Enable” button. The autop
ilot gave me what I needed to know—eight minutes to destination. I walked back to the engine access panel in the cargo compartment, removed the safety wire holding it closed, and opened it. Inside, I broke the plastic holding the switches in place and flipped the antimatter containment system switches to “Off.”
Walking back to the cockpit, the instrument panel was now lit up like a 200th birthday party display. Apparently the system thought that losing antimatter containment was “bad.” Usually, I would have agreed…but not today. “Ten minutes to loss of containment,” the system dutifully reported.
I grabbed the medikit and put it under my left arm, wincing in pain at moving it, then picked up the transmitter and quickly called Arges. “Could you please bring the other shuttle down to get me?” I asked.
“Why?” Arges asked. “Are the Ware’Ulfs all dead?”
“No, but they will be in nine minutes.”
“Well, I’m not coming until they’re all dead.” Arges was such a pain in the ass.
“Look, I have to go, and I’m about to lose my radio. Come. Get. Me.” Sometimes giving him an order overcame his natural scaredicat-ness. I was out of time though, and didn’t have time to argue with him. The “Loss of Containment” warning read eight minutes, so I pushed the “Enable” button on the autopilot. I dove out the mid-cabin door as the shuttle took off and flew east toward the Ware’Ulf encampment. I watched, wondering what I’d be able to see. After almost eight minutes, a column of bluish light, nearly as bright as the Sun, lit the sky.
Almost immediately, the entire eastern sky turned to flame, and then a wave of heat roared past me, hotter than anything I’ve ever felt before. I wanted to take off my clothes—anything to try to cool off, but then the shockwave hit, and I was thrown through the air. A tree behind me stopped my flight, although both of us were considerably worse for meeting that way. When I woke up, I saw the tree, as big around as my leg, had been snapped in the collision.
It initially felt like most of the bones in my body had been snapped, too, but as I regained my senses, I realized none of them were—aside from the previously broken arm—but I now hurt everywhere. I must not have been out too long; a massive mushroom-shaped cloud could still be seen to the east.
Somehow the medikit had managed to stay with me during my flight, and I pulled out the nanobot spray and doused all of my wounds with it, gritting my teeth as the microscopic machines set to fixing all the damage the Ware’Ulf and I had done to myself.
I had just managed to make it to my feet when Arges arrived with the shuttle, and I hobbled over to meet him.
He met me at the door. “You could have told me you were going to detonate the other shuttle. The blast almost knocked me from the sky.”
“Sorry,” I said. I didn’t sound sorry, not even to my own ears. I wasn’t. “I didn’t have time to explain. Plan “A” failed, and I was worried the Ware’Ulfs would flee.”
“Are they dead?”
“I think it’s safe to say they are,” I replied. “Based on the antimatter remaining at detonation, I expect that was about a 12-megaton blast.”
“It was 11.5,” Arges confirmed.
“Awesome,” I said. “Good enough. Take me home.”
I started to get into the shuttle, then a flash of metal caught my eye. I got back out and picked up the sign from the post I had used to kill the Ware’Ulf.
“What’s that?” Arges asked.
“It’s a memento of the day I almost blew myself up.”
“What’s it say?”
I wiped away some of my blood that had been smeared across it. “Tunguska, 30 kilometers.”
* * * * *
Chris Kennedy Bio
A Webster Award winner and three-time Dragon Award finalist, Chris Kennedy is a Science Fiction/Fantasy/Young Adult author, speaker, and small-press publisher who has written over 25 books and published more than 100 others. Chris’ stories include the “Occupied Seattle” military fiction duology, “The Theogony” and “Codex Regius” science fiction trilogies, stories in the “Four Horsemen,” “Fallen World,” and “In Revolution Born” universes and the “War for Dominance” fantasy trilogy. Get his free book, “Shattered Crucible,” at his website, https://chriskennedypublishing.com.
Called “fantastic” and “a great speaker,” he has coached hundreds of beginning authors and budding novelists on how to self-publish their stories at a variety of conferences, conventions and writing guild presentations. He is the author of the award-winning #1 bestseller, “Self-Publishing for Profit: How to Get Your Book Out of Your Head and Into the Stores,” as well as the leadership training book, “Leadership from the Darkside.”
Chris lives in Virginia Beach, Virginia, with his wife, and is the holder of a doctorate in educational leadership and master’s degrees in both business and public administration. Follow Chris on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ckpublishing/.
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The Theta Decision by Chris Dietzel
A man walks in front of us. He’s wearing a white lab coat and holding a clipboard, but this doesn’t feel like anything I’ve experienced at the doctor’s, or back when I was getting my physical prior to officer training. He looks at each of us as he makes his way down our line.
“Feel okay?”
Each man gives a nod.
“Any questions?”
The responses to this vary. Some of us shrug. Others cringe and suck air in through their teeth.
At this point, what does it matter if we have questions or not? Moments from now, seven out of the ten of us will be dead. The other three will be struggling to survive.
* * *
I guess a good question is, Why am I doing this if it’s more than twice as likely that I’ll die than live?
I don’t dare vocalize this idea, however. The others know the stats just as well as I do, but no one wants to hear them right now. The men next to me would either be outraged at one of their own speaking this thought aloud moments before we learn our fates, or else they would lose their lunches. The scientist in front of me would probably offer a logical answer to the question, one that I already know and I keep reminding myself of.
Basically, as long as there is even a one percent chance of success, everyone should be waiting in line here.
* * *
They aren’t, though.
I am.
Along with the other nine men in line with me.
Just us.
* * *
The scientists told us not to move from where we stand.
This isn’t because they’re our jailers. The three men and two women in lab coats scattered about the room checking the equipment aren’t keeping us here against our wills. We volunteered for this. That’s why we’re all dressed in the same nondescript burlap pants and shirt. That’s why we open our mouths and let the lead scientist shine a light in our throats. It’s why a continuous metal coil wraps around each of our ankles, tying us shoulder to shoulder with each other and with the equipment at either end of the room.
The man to my side is whistling. Not in the loud and obnoxious manner of someone oblivious to those around him, but in a low and calming hum. I don’t acknowledge him. None of us do. Like making fun of someone’s laugh, telling the man to stop whistling would be unnecessarily harsh at this moment. He’s not hurting anyone.
In my final moments, I want to think about why I’m doing this. If he would rather whistle as a way of blocking out such thoughts, he’s entitled to that act of relief before we see if we’re one of the lucky few who will live, or the majority who will die.
* * *
“Why on earth would you do that?”
That’s what my second-grade teacher, Mrs. Ellis, said to me when I took a bite of a glue stick and swallowed it.
Keep in mind, there was a zero percent chance of dying from eating it. I didn’t even get an upset stomach.
I can only imagine what Mrs. Ellis would say if she could see me now and knew my chances.
* * *
I still have no idea why I took a bite of that dumb glue stick.
* * *
On the opposite side of the room, the oldest of the scientists withdraws a calculator from his pocket. He has white, stringy hair that makes half of his scalp visible. His bony fingers tap a couple numbers on the pad, then he frowns at the results and shakes his head in what I interpret to be either fatigue or resignation. Neither are things I want to see right now.
He takes the calculator to a nearby laptop and types something. Again, he shakes his head and frowns. A middle-aged woman walks over to him to see what he’s looking at. She has light brown hair that looks like it might have been blond in her younger years. A pair of reading glasses dangles around her neck. She puts them on and leans toward the screen.
With a sigh, she shrugs and says, “I guess that’s the best we can do.”
Seven out of the ten is only an estimate. If the scientists don’t like what they see, eight or nine of us might die.
For the first time, my stomach turns at the thought of what I’m doing. Somehow, a thirty percent chance of survival doesn’t seem so bad, but a ten percent chance is utterly dreadful.
Maybe all ten of us will die.
Fuck me.
* * *
A humming begins. At first, it sounds like a refrigerator working normally. Over the course of the next thirty seconds, it grows to resemble a vacuum cleaner being used on the far side of the room. I’ve heard that before all is said and done, the humming will grow in intensity until it’s like standing in front of a jet fighter that’s preparing for takeoff.
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