Kelen dropped her armload of material and reached for her hand
weapon. It was an automatic gesture, made more instinctive than
habit after rigorous training. Realizing she wasn’t wearing it, she
grabbed a section of one of the consoles she’d been carrying and
held it up, ready to swing it at the first Seneecian who approached
her.
Yet,
none of them did. They stood there, their fangs and talons showing,
and growled. But no one appeared to want to take the initiative
until Cooter rushed to the front and raised his rifle. A
split-second before he fired, she whacked the barrel of the gun
upward, and the shot went wide.
“Chambliss!”
“Wait!
Wait! Look!” She
pointed at the creatures facing them. “They’re injured.”
“Good!”
the head of security shouted, and aimed his rifle again, directly at
the immense Seneecian standing in front of the others.
She
started to cut off his shot a second time, when something tried to
skitter across the toe of her boot. As it made contact with her
protective skin, it hissed. Kelen swung her makeshift club at the
thing. It made a squishing sound upon impact, and the creature went
flying across the floor.
Someone
swore. “Shit! There’s more of them!”
For
a moment, she thought someone was saying there were more Seneecians,
when the floor seemed to move. A beam of light swept over the ground
to find it nearly covered with dark, reddish-colored wormlike things
with legs. A single eye stalk rose from the center of their bodies.
As the nearly foot-long creatures spotted them, they rose up to on
their hind legs to reveal a slitted mouth along their underbellies.
“Waste
the fuckers!” Jules hollered, grabbing a piece from Dox’s
collection. He started mowing down the wormy creatures, but more of
them continued to advance toward her and the others, as well as the
Seneecians.
Kelen
pounded them with the console. Others fired their weapons. That
noise, along with the sound of Cooter’s pulse rifle, clashed inside
the temple walls like a thousand bells. The volume became deafening.
Striking
the invading creatures was more difficult than she could imagine.
Every one she hit exploded into blue-black goo that clung to the end
of her club. Goo that adhered to another one of those things, until
the piece of metal was crawling with a dozen stuck wormy bodies all
struggling to fight back. Their combined weight quickly sapped what
little strength she had left, and Kelen knew she’d soon be unable to
lift her weapon, much less continue beating with it.
At
some point, she became aware of a large presence at her back. She
barely had time to glance over her shoulder to see the huge
Seneecian standing there, firing his own weapon at the mob advancing
from behind her. Tightening her grasp on her weapon, she continued
the bat the wormy things.
She
felt a hard tug on the side of her leg. Swinging the club downward,
she missed hitting the worm trying to gnaw through the tough
protective skin. It redoubled its efforts, when something slammed
against the side of the face. Kelen shrieked, dropping her weapon,
and grabbed the creature adhered to her cheek. She heard it hiss,
and an oily substance began to delve into her ear. Crying out again,
she pulled on it, when the thing dug its feet into her face. It
released a thick cloud of noxious fumes, choking her, making her
dizzy. She could feel herself sinking into unconsciousness.
There
was a sudden jerk on her head. Blue-black ichor sprayed across her
face, and she gasped. Another jerk, and she could feel the thing’s
pincers being drawn out of her skin. Kelen rolled her eyes upward,
to find the big Seneecian standing less than a meter away from her.
He tossed away the piece of the creature he’d dragged off her face
as his arms and talons dripped dark colored gore.
Time seemed to hesitate. Her eyes locked with his. Into that nearly
ethereal green gaze. A gaze filled with worry and…
Compassion.
“Thank
you,” she gasped. She tried to lift her club, but her arms had gone
numb.
The
Seneecian’s expression froze. He reached out toward her, and she
flinched as he shoved her to the floor. There was a high-pitched
whine, and a worm exploded inches above her. More ichor splattered
across her face and neck.
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