10. Chapter 10
Chapter ten
-Bryce-
I sensed something coming from behind me and I spun, blaster raised. But I was too slow. Something huge knocked me off my feet, and my body jerked as I was sent flying. But instead of barreling into the ground in a heap, my back slammed against something solid.
With the impact, my vision flashed and blurred. Suddenly I was back on the planet K-Lash-4. Back on that mission where everything went so wrong.
My chest constricted. My throat closed. My thundering pulse drowned out all other sounds. I was trapped, and it was happening again. Was this a nightmare?
But then, through the fog of panic, a face came into view inches from mine; almost human, but not. The skin was the wrong color, a deep, dusky violet. Large glowing yellow eyes, fangs, pointed ears. It was huge, twice my size, towering over me impossibly tall and broad.
My surroundings came back to me. I wasn’t on K-Lash-4, I was here on the Forbidden Planet. And I was being attacked.
I scrambled blindly for my weapon, finding it still somehow in my grip. But I couldn’t get it between myself and whatever this creature was. Its huge body was too close. It pressed against me, pinning me in place and squeezing what little breath I had from my lungs. I resorted to smashing my weapon against it, using it as a one-handed club to rain blows down on its side. But it didn’t seem to affect it.
There was a ringing and buzzing in my ear, and I realized I was shouting. But there was another voice, speaking into my ear from what sounded like a great distance.
“...Can you hear me? What’s happening? Bryce—!”
The creature batted my flailing arm aside, then reached for my face. It fumbled with something on my helmet; I could hear its fingers dragging and probing at the surface of the plasteel. Was it trying to twist my head off? To plant eggs in the stump of my neck? I redoubled my struggle and managed to catch it on the side of the head with the butt of my weapon. The creature ducked its head, hissing, but only for a second.
There was a click at the back of my helmet. The visor retracted. I was suddenly incredibly vulnerable with my unprotected, very stabbable face exposed to the creature. Sweat prickled my forehead, plastering my hair against my head, making me feel suddenly cold. Then it pressed a huge hand over my mouth and pushed down hard. Between my panicked lips, its skin tasted of salt and tree sap, smelled of earth and bruised plants. My shouts turned into muffled noises as it tried to suffocate me.
I kept thrashing, hitting it with my blaster, but it didn’t move. After a few more hits, it gradually dawned on me that it wasn’t doing anything. It had stopped moving. It held still, holding me in place with its weight pressed against me, hand over my mouth. My hits faltered and then stopped. Instead, I gripped the wrist of the hand over my mouth, the blaster held tightly in my other hand, breathing heavily through my nose. Every breath brought in its earthy smell.
For the first time, I actually took in the creature in front of me. Its face was twisted into an expression that, even on its alien face, I recognized as anger: furrowed brow, wide eyes, lips drawn back over sharp teeth and deadly fangs. But as I stared, I realized I was wrong. It wasn’t angry, more like…annoyed. Frustrated. Urgent. Its yellow eyes were agitated, and they weren’t on me. They wheeled around, searching the surrounding jungle as if it was looking for something. It tilted its head, listening.
And, now that it had me trapped, it didn’t seem to be killing me.
I tried to move again, but it pressed down harder, hissing. The air was heavy with suppressed tension. The silence pressed in on us from all sides. It was waiting for something. But what, I had no idea.
The voice in my ear was still talking.
“...are you hurt? Hang on, we’re getting the drones up. If you can hear me, just stay where you are—”
Finally, my mind caught up. Was this one of them ? One of the Aldar that had taken Clay? It sure was intimidating from my position pinned between a tree and its rock-solid body; a ten-foot giant, capable of squashing me under its foot like a bug.
Its eyes returned to me, its nostrils flaring. It leaned in until it was only a few inches away from my face. I held perfectly still.
From this close, I could see that its eyes weren’t really yellow, more like the color of honey; a deep golden, amber hue, warm and thick and luxurious.
It inhaled deeply through its nose again. Was it smelling me? At this point, perhaps the panic had made me loopy.
Maybe this is how they decide whether to plant eggs in you or not , I thought giddily. But its eyes drifted closed and I felt a tremor pass through its body. What the hell was—
A strange feeling ran through me; a prickling, tingling sensation like pins and needles that made every hair stand on end and made my heart trip over itself. I tensed as the feeling ran the length of my body, heading directly for my—
The blaster went off in my hand. The blast echoed between the trees, impossibly loud in the silence. I flinched, my ears ringing, and the creature jerked. For a moment, I thought I’d shot it, but then a purple hand, so big it wrapped easily around the wide barrel, closed on the blaster and ripped it away, snapping the strap that had kept it tethered to me. It landed somewhere in the undergrowth.
If it wasn’t pissed before, it definitely was now. Its eyes went even wider, and it hissed furiously. Then its head snapped to the side and it froze.
It let go of me. Just stepped away and let me fall. I hadn’t realized until that point that my feet were actually a few inches from the ground. With its support gone, I stumbled before I found my feet. I could now see that the creature was mostly naked, apart from a swath of material wrapped around its waist that looked like a long skirt, with full-length slits running up both its muscled thighs. I crouched, ready to defend myself or, more likely, make a run for it. I was unarmed now, and it had the advantage.
But it didn’t attack me again. The—alien? Aldar? big purple person?—backed up a few steps, raised its hands, and started speaking.
It spoke in a language I couldn’t understand, made up of rolling and lilting sounds. Then it gestured in wide, sweeping motions.
“Lye na se rakear, lye mende veeshey sin,” it said.
I blinked. “Er…what?” I said, dumbly.
Excuse my Eurasian, but what in the holy hell fuck was going on?
It gestured again, speaking quickly, frantically, making quick, sharp movements with its hands, its expression growing even more frustrated and agitated.
I hesitated. It was trying to tell me something.
It gestured to me, and then behind me, and then away behind itself. I risked a glance over my shoulder at a thick area of bushes and vines.
When I turned back, the alien—Aldar—was backing away, like it was scared of me , gesturing frantically the whole time.
Through the comm, Clyde was shouting, “Gunner, what the fuck is going on?”
“I…don’t know—”
I felt more than heard a deep rumble. It started beneath my boots and worked its way up my legs until it vibrated over all of me, triggering every prey response on the way up.
I turned.
Emerging from the dense bushes was a monster pulled directly from my nightmares.
“Oh, shit.”