The Warden noticed, and offered an explanation. “Without a more accurate understanding of Siszar anatomy, our rifles would only serve to aggravate them.”
“Blas could have killed them with a rifle,” Tris noted. It was times like this that he missed the big man most of all. “He knew the right places to shoot them.”
“Blas could have killed them with his bare hands,” Kreon said quietly. “I miss him too.”
A roar from further down the ship gave Tris an inkling of what was coming.
He readjusted his grip, bringing the tip of the blade to en garde position.
Still, when it came, nothing could have prepared him for it.
The Siszar boiled down the corridor faster than he could have imagined. They filled it — wall to wall and floor to ceiling. It was an unstoppable tide of leathery alien flesh, and the two marines unloaded their rifles into the midst of it.
The effect was negligible.
Tris couldn’t even tell if any of the aliens fell; if they did, more took their place, and the two marines were swallowed up by the horde and torn apart in seconds.
Tris felt sweat run down his back as he slid his dominant foot forwards. The rush had stopped while the aliens dealt with the marines. Tris didn’t want to think about the possibility of them being eaten. But now the Siszar were on the prowl, advancing more cautiously up the narrow corridor towards the last two human defenders.
They rushed the marines because they were firing, Tris realised. He was suddenly very glad he’d opted for close combat weaponry. Maybe if they attacked slowly, we could force a stand-off?
The Siszar weren’t so obliging.
In an instant, the roiling mass of bodies became a blur. Charging towards them on the walls and roof, the massive aliens moved like lightening.
Tris barely got his staff into position before a heavy tentacle lashed at him. He caught it on the blade, and was rewarded with a spray of foul ichor as the tip of the limb fell to the deck with a thud. Another came on, a broader limb thrusting out, and again he sliced it off. Following up was out of the question; within seconds he was beset on all sides, swinging the glaive back and forth like a farmer scything corn. A heavy body launched itself from the ceiling and he impaled it, but the weight dragged his glaive down leaving him unprotected. He took a blow to the head, his helmet crunching with the impact and his vision flaring white for a second.
Then Kreon was there, the Warden smashing Tristan’s assailant with a double-handed blow from his grav-staff. The alien’s body seemed to crumple with the impact, the staff doing more damage internally than what showed on the surface. A few more swings and Kreon had beaten back the creatures, some of them retreating with severed limbs, leaving corpses scattered along the corridor like discarded toys.
Tris struggled upright, blinking to clear the flashes from his eyes. His ears were still ringing, but his staff came free of the dead Siszar with a sucking sound, and he reset his defensive stance.
“Well done, Tris,” Kreon said.
“What?” Tris panted. “I got battered!”
Kreon took one hand off his staff to wave at the bodies draped along the corridor. “I believe we have seen off the first wave.”
“First wave?”
“There will be more. As I said, Siszar tend to emerge onto enemy vessels individually, but their sheer destructive potential clears out the defenders relatively quickly. Then they gather in ever increasing numbers, which is the phase of battle we are now entering.”
Tris took a few seconds to regain his breath. Having his bell rung so hard had driven the belligerence right out of him. “How the hell… are you so calm?” he gasped.
Kreon’s voice was glacial. “Simple. I have nothing to lose.”
They returned their gaze to the carnage in front of them.
Tris wasn’t sure he could take another attack like that. The aliens moved insanely fast, for creatures that big. And between them, they’d managed to munch their way through over three-hundred heavily-armed marines.
How the hell are we meant to stop them?
The far end of the corridor went dark.
Power cut…?
A deep, guttural rumble announced the arrival of the culprits.
And Tris knew he was about to get a second close encounter.
This time, they came slowly.
Tris couldn’t tell if they were part of the same group, or different ones entirely; most had the pock-marks of laser burns dotted around their limbs, mute testimony to the uselessness of blasters against them.
As they passed the dead marines, the writhing shadows resolved into three large males. None of them was close to the Empress in size, but they still towered a good eight feet from tip to tip. Vicious-looking beaks clacked together as they approached, no doubt anticipating the taste of human meat. Tris remembered Blas saying something about them having a ‘soft spot’ — but all he could see was a leathery pod where the arms joined, bristling with spines and punctuated with penny-sized eye-holes.
They switched position as they moved forward, seething from left to right and vice-versa on a confusion of powerful limbs. Tris guessed one would come straight at each of them; whether the third attacked Kreon or himself first, it could easily tip the balance.
“Come on!” he yelled, as much to psyche himself up as for any effect it would have on the aliens. But the Siszar took note of his defiance; the group split, a pair of them preparing to tag-team him whilst the lone wolf stalked Kreon.
Tris brought his blade up. It was thick with Siszar blood, the thick black liquid dripping off it to pool on the deck. He’d have to be careful; it was slippery as well as disgusting.
He backed off a step, and risked a glance behind him. The blast doors to the bridge were less than a metre from his back, giving him little room to manoeuvre.
At that moment — perhaps noticing the distraction — they attacked. One came in low while the other went high. Tris threw himself against the wall, lopping a limb off his upper assailant before plunging his glaive into the lower. In a desperate move he dived over the twitching Siszar on the deck, rolling over its leathery back even as its limbs flailed either side of him. He came to his feet behind it and stabbed upwards, skewering the alien that had been using the roof. The heavy body crashed down, flattening its comrade beneath it, and Tris took the chance to run them both through with one powerful thrust. He pulled the glaive free, shaking it to remove the worst of the gore, and ran back around the bodies.
To find Kreon laid out on the deck, eyes closed as though he was asleep.
The grav-staff had gone down with him, making a bathtub-sized dent in the deck next to him.
Shit! Tris hadn’t even seen him fall. The dead alien in front of him suggested he’d won his last fight, but the creature had taken its revenge. Tris dropped his glaive and peeled off his glove to feel for a pulse. The helmet came off easily, but he realised that Kreon, of all people, probably didn’t have a normal pulse. He felt the Warden’s forehead. The skin was thin, like paper, but warm; he was still alive, Tris was sure. There was no sign of trauma, no pool of blood beyond the hideous black filth that pumped out of damaged Siszar limbs. Splitting his attention between the corridor and his patient, Tris sighed with relief when he saw Kreon’s eyelids twitch.
Alive! Thank God. But he’s completely unprotected…
He spent a fruitless moment trying to drag the Warden into the shadow of the blast door. No matter what he did, that metal body was too heavy to move. He thought briefly about waving at the door, hoping someone would be watching on a monitor and would open up. But Kreon wouldn’t want that. The Siszar would be watching, too. Endangering the civilians on the other side of that door was out of the question.
Already, his Gift could sense the expectation from the people still in there; Ella was on the way back with the shuttle. Their desperate need to escape warred with fear and grief, in more minds than he could process.
Those people are terrified. And with good
reason.
He couldn’t let them down.
Ella was on her way…
And until then, he was on his own.
Taking a stance in front of Kreon’s body, he braced himself for the next onslaught.
And from the darkness at the end of the corridor, he heard a hissing.
They were coming.
13
Gripping his glaive tightly, Tris faced off against the empty corridor.
Shadows writhed at its far end, where the gloom obscured any details. The Siszar had smashed the lighting down there, presumably for this reason. They’d made themselves a staging post, where they could gather their numbers unobserved.
Not that they needed to.
Tris eyed Kreon’s grav-staff, wondering if he could lift it. The weapon seemed very effective against the aliens, especially in such a confined space. But he didn’t have a tenth of Kreon’s mechanically-assisted strength. He’d probably get himself killed before he landed a blow.
Seconds stretched out, and the ominous noises grew in volume. The delay grated on nerves already frayed; he wished they would attack and get it over with, or at least come into the light so he could stop second-guessing them.
Whereas the Transgressors he’d fought simply threw themselves forward without a shred of self preservation, the Siszar were not mindless automatons. Their tactics seemed similar at first glance — a mad dash forward, using their speed and ferocity to overwhelm their opponents — but it was precisely that. A tactic.
And judging from the hissing in the darkness, it was not their only one.
A crunch came from their position, followed by another. The sounds increased in volume, either getting louder or getting closer. Tris had a hunch he knew which.
Several aliens revealed themselves, moving forward and flattening themselves against the walls.
Preparing to attack? No. Making way for something…
He glanced down at Kreon, nudging him with his boot, but the Warden stayed stubbornly unconscious.
When he looked back up, a dark shape had filled the corridor from side to side, like a hand splayed out at arm’s length.
Then it moved forward into the light, and Tris felt his jaw drop. “What the fuck?”
It wasn’t the biggest Siszar he’d seen so far, but it was by far the most dangerous.
It was wearing armour.
Massive banded plates adorned its body, sliding smoothly across one another as it moved. Talon-like blades dripped red with human blood. Only that terrible beak still protruded, as though denying a warrior such a savage weapon was unthinkable.
Tris stared at the thing, hypnotised.
It made sense. Their ships didn’t shoot lasers at each other — only at humans.
So when the humans they faced wore armour, this was the next logical step.
The monster stomped forward, the whole deck shivering in time to its footfalls. Five thick arms, each encased in vast sheaths of a knobbly material like stone or coral, terminated in claws with wicked folding blades. It was advancing slowly, giving him time to appreciate his predicament, but he had a horrible feeling it wouldn’t be at all slow in combat. Its weight would be enormous, but he could see pistons and cables powering it. No way the Siszar would build something that negated their main advantage.
Tris could already see what would happen; a blow from any one of those limbs would cut him in half. His glaive might still pierce the armour, but its blade was laughable compared to that thing. It was a knife, not a machete; easy to conceal, but not great at cutting through tree trunks. He’d do damage for sure, but… it would be like fighting a troll with a box cutter.
Sweat dripped from his brow. He was out of options.
I can’t fight that thing! Kreon! Wake UP, damn it!
But there was no time.
No help.
Shit… what would Kreon do?
The same thing he always did.
Tris glanced at the floor next to him.
Worth a shot.
Dropping his glaive, he sprang back over Kreon’s prone form. Reaching down for the haft of the grav-staff he wrapped both hands around it like a drowning sailor gripping a rope. If he couldn’t lift it, he’d be dead before he got another chance.
Tensing every muscle in his back, he wrenched the thing off the deck with all his might.
It came easily.
Too easily.
He’d thrown so much effort into the motion that momentum spun him like a top. The staff whipped around, narrowly missing the wall, and flew from his grip. Tris gazed on in horror as it arced through the air—
And struck the armoured behemoth dead centre.
It was like hitting an egg with a sledgehammer. The hulking Siszar simply ceased to exist. A great spray of black mist and rocky shrapnel fountained back along the corridor, liberally splattering the aliens that had been following it. They shrank back as bigger shards of armour pelted them, then retreated in a sudden flailing of limbs.
Tris was stunned. He stepped over Kreon and reclaimed his glaive.
Holy shit! Take that, second wave. Or was it the third?
For an accident, it had panned out quite well.
Sadly, the grav-staff was now lost to him. The Siszar had pulled back to the shadows, but he could still see movement down there. If he left his position to root through the debris in search of it, they would be on him in seconds.
Wishing he could wipe his face, he resumed his position. His blade was encrusted with the thick, oily liquid that ran through Siszar veins. There would be more to come, he was sure of it.
And behind him, Kreon slept on.
The stand-off had to end.
Tris was under no illusions. He knew there was no way he was defeating a ship full of aliens. They’d carved their way through a ship full of marines to reach this point; it didn’t seem likely that they’d stop now and go home. They watched him from the darkness, clacking their beaks and roaring at him.
The ship shook from an impact, causing the deck to tremble beneath his feet. Another tremor struck, then another. With a sinking feeling, Tris realised that the Empress was right. The remaining Siszar outside were abandoning that battle in favour of the one inside. He had no idea how many of the aliens had survived their fight with the marines, but there was about to be a whole lot more of them.
Another impact slammed into the cruiser, hard enough to throw Tris off his feet.
Shit that was close!
He scrambled back upright, but one of the Siszar had seen him fall and decided to take advantage. It surged towards him like a monstrous spider, its huge limbs straddling the corridor from floor to ceiling. Its beak gnashed in anticipation as it closed the distance with shocking speed.
Another came on behind it, and another. Tris just had time to register that the whole corridor was packed with aliens pouring towards him, when the lead one hit. He slashed at it, taking first blood before it got within striking distance, then hacked at its limbs as they came for him. He took a blow to the shoulder, his armour absorbing the worst of it, and sliced away another great tentacle. Remembering a lesson from Blas, he skewered the thing just below its beak and it crumpled, shuddering, to the deck.
Don’t fight the arms! he reminded himself.
But the wall of the corridor in front of him was starting to melt and bubble. He’d been too occupied to notice, and he drove it from his mind as the next Siszar leapt towards him. He danced back, thrusting his glaive at its beak, but one of those powerful arms slammed into his thigh, knocking him sideways. Before he could regain his footing a limb tip speared him in the chest with the force of a wrecking ball, driving the air from his lungs. He staggered back, his feet catching on Kreon’s boots. For a second he thought he was going down, but as the Siszar surged in for the kill he caught it on his glaive, the impossibly-sharp blade passing straight through the creature as its own weight bore it onward. Still clinging to the haft, the leverage kept him on his feet, as the alien died in front of him
— but many, many more swarmed the corridor, rushing towards him.
He gritted his teeth.
This is it.
Then with a pop and a hiss, a section of wall roughly the size of a basketball hoop drooped away, the thick metal hull-plating turned to butter. A dark green tentacle snaked through the hole, and kept coming; the body squeezed through next, expanding like a balloon as the rest of the limbs slid after it.
It happened so fast, Tris had no time to plan. The newcomer was just beyond his reach, but as it drew itself up to its full height he felt his heart skip a beat. It was massive. By far the biggest Siszar he’d ever seen, filling the corridor even with its limbs bent. The scales were thick and bony, and its beak split wide in a yawn that could cut a cow in half.
Tris crouched low over his glaive, bracing himself while the thing studied him. It let out a deafening bellow, which Tris’ helmet was too slow to compensate for, and thrashed its gigantic arms against the walls and ceiling, buckling the metal.
Then it swung around and plunged off down the corridor, towards the approaching Siszar.
They barely had time to move.
Three of them were scooped up by those great arms and crushed together with bone-jarring force. Shrieks and screams came from the mob, and wet sounds like a butcher chopping meat. The newcomer hardly paused, surging on, leaving chunks of the smaller aliens glistening in its wake. It pinned another to the wall, and Tris saw that giant beak lunge in and slice its prey in two. Then the monster was off again, its speed belying its bulk as it threw itself towards another victim.
They fled.
Seconds later, Tris was alone. All around him was carnage. Alien bodies sprawled every which-way, severed limbs twitching amidst pools of ichor. He held his stance for a few more heartbeats, then eased up to let his cramping muscles rest.
What the hell was that?
He hadn’t realised he’d broadcast the thought until he felt the Empress’s triumphant reply.
Warden's Fate Page 16