I debated which order to put this and "invisible enemies" in. I also considered intercutting between the two battles, but the separate chapters seemed better to me. I welcome input about what readers think would be best.
Battle royal
0705
The queen turned with a snarl to face Zaratustra. Her brood screamed in unison, revealing their positions in the process. The suinoids formed a protective line in front of her, and the caprinoid and the alpha drone stood at her side. The pongoid swung from the ceiling. From out of an adjacent storage room on the right, the ophoid slithered.
The suinoids struck first, charging in unison. He brought two down with his slug gun and kicked back a third. He heard a hiss from the right, and ducked in time to avoid a mass of caustic bile spewed by the ophoid. The ophoid then retreated, but the pongoid dropped on Zaratustra from above. He managed to keep on his feet. The pongoid held onto his back with its feet, and threw one arm all the way around his chest. Before it could throw its other arm around him to complete the bear hug, he stunned it with a blow over his own shoulder and knocked it to the floor with an elbow jab. When it fell, it tore open a hydraulic line that connected the torso and pelvis of the exoskeleton. The last suinoid charged then. Zaratustra grabbed the pongoid by the ankles and threw it like an oversized discus. The heads of the flying pongoid and charging suinoid connected with literally shattering force.
The alpha drone and caprinoid stood protectively before their queen. She pushed them roughly aside to advance toward the finback. He emptied a clip of slugs at her, with minimal effect. Then, while he was reloading, she lashed out with her ovipositor and knocked him into a repair bay at the rear of the hangar.
The queen stooped to enter the bay, which held a single medium helicopter. Zaratustra had lost his slug gun, but had just found a 23 mm autocannon. He fired two short bursts, all he could manage without risking being knocked over. With a burst of speed and the deceptive agility of her double-jointed legs, the queen dodged his fire and took cover behind the parked helicopter. He fired through the copter, and a screech and a spattering sound announced a hit. The queen countered by pushing over the craft. He leaped aside fast enough to dodge the cockpit and cabin, but was hit and pinned in place by the tail. The queen goose-stepped toward him. He saw that she now possessed only three arms; one of his shots had severed her inner right arm. As she reached out in triumph, she staggered and screeched. A harpoon materialized in her right leg. The Hunter became visible with a roar, and retreated into the main hangar with the queen limping along behind him.
Zaratustra freed himself with a shove and got to his feet. Then he heard a double hiss. The alpha drone and the caprinoid were approaching, the latter on all fours and the former on hind legs. "So, do you wish another test of strength?" he said. The only answer was an attack.
The alpha drone charged him with its head held low and shoulders hunched. The caprinoid leaped at him from the left. He swatted the caprinoid down with a forearm blow, and felled the alpha drone with a kick in the chest. He was lunging for the stunned alpha drone when the caprinoid bit into his calf servo. He kicked back savagely. The caprinoid dodged easily, then turned tail and let fly with both feet into his rump. He was hurled forward, straight into the arms of the alpha drone.
In the moment of collision, it seemed that Zaratustra had the advantage, for the parasitoids were quite lightly built, and as Zaratustra had said, mass was the key consideration in any collision of bodies. But the alpha drone managed to turn him enough to land on top of him rather than vice versa. They skidded along the floor until Zaratustra's helmet hit the wall, at which point the alpha drone added to the damage with a blow of its tail. It took a punch from Zaratustra's right fist, and a resulting puncture of the drone's neck, to knock the alpha drone back.
The alpha drone retreated, and Zaratustra pressed a counter-attack, with a brutality that would have shocked even the most appalled witnesses to his previous actions. He punched/stabbed again and again, mainly at the chest, neck and abdomen. He was not just aggressive, but relentless; not brutally thorough, but excessive, even sadistic. Yet, even now, there was little of true frenzy to his actions. As often and rapidly as his blows fell, they still had the measured arc and meter of a methodical attack. This was not the fury of a berserker, but of a machine in overdrive. As happened far too often, Zaratustra threatened to do as much damage to himself as to his adversary. When the caprinoid circled him, butting, biting and kicking at his flanks, he countered with only half-hearted swats. He gave even less heed to acid gore that gushed and spattered over his armor, pooling in the joints of his armor.
Finally, the alpha drone collapsed. He grabbed it by its regenerated right arm and hauled it up for more punishment, but the arm snapped off. He raised his fist for a killing blow, but his arm froze even as it fell, then began to twitch as if in a convulsion. The acid has burned through a servo housing. Smoke and sparks poured out of his elbow joint. The hideously mutilated creature at his feet raised its head and made an eerie trilling that could not fail to suggest vengeful glee. He took a step back, his right leg dragging a little. That was when the caprinoid came charging from the other end of the bay to tackle him at the knees.
Zaratustra caught hold of the caprinoid's head as he fell, and by pulling on both horns he snapped its skull like a wishbone. But there was nothing he could do when the alpha drone reared up ant struck at his back. Its acid blood did as much damage as its claws and teeth. It bent its head toward the back of its neck. The blood from its ruptured throat rapidly melted the bars of his crown. Before it could deliver the coup de grace, a shot rang out. It rose and turned, only to catch two slugs in the chest. It let out a gargling screech, fell forward and lay still. Zaratustra turned his head to look on his rescuer: It was Dr. Nibeaux, armed with his own slug gun.
Nibeaux proffered the gun to Zaratustra. "Come quickly," he croaked. "We have to take care of the queen."
In the middle of the hangar floor, the Hunter and the monarch fought a savage stalemate. The Hunter wielded a two-meter weapon fitting the description of a weapon called the brandistock. Its triangular head had a central blade and two more that swung out to either side. The harpoon in the queen's leg not only slowed her down, but hindered her when she made right turns. The Hunter used it to his advantage by pressing the attack from the right. The queen was further hampered by the loss of her inner right arm. The Hunter had already inflicted several major wounds, and he seemed almost to be teasing the queen. As the humans watched, he thrust out the brandistock with the blades open and then shut them to clip off a piece of the queen's frill. The queen swung her remaining right arm, but an injury kept her from raising it higher than her shoulder. However, she was able to wheel around to bring her ovipositor to bear. The Hunter shifted and struck again at her vulnerable right side, and so the stalemate continued. Meanwhile, the elevator rose for a helicopter launch.
Nibeaux pointed upward. "We can immobilize the monarch with the overhead crane," he said. Without waiting for a response, he ran for a ladder to the catwalk. Just as he was starting to climb, the ophoid slithered out of a storeroom. "Sophie!" he exclaimed. "ZARATUSTRA!" The finback stood by nonchalantly. He hurried up the ladder, barely escaping a strike by the ophoid. When it did not catch him at the bottom, it reared back in a prelude to a spray. But the only spray that actually came was blood out of the side of its cheek. A second shot struck its head, a third and a fourth, and more whizzed by. Finally, the ophoid fell. The shots had come not from Zaratustra but from the catwalk, where Martinez stood with a silenced pistol.
Martinez circled the cat walk in time to meet Nibeaux as he was climbing into the crane. "What are you doing?" she said.
"I have to save the queen!" he said. She grabbed him by the arm.
"Master! Perfect!" she pleaded. "You warned Frankepanic that the monarch was telepathic, that she might manipulate our minds. Are you willing to risk her doing that to you?"
"Her power proves that the power of mind over mind is real," he said, sounding almost hypnotized. "That is why we must preserve her for further study!" At that, he pushed her away and shut the cab.
With a soprano screech, the Huntress entered the fight. She raised a spear that expanded into a 7 m polearm and sprinted toward the queen's left side. The queen was finally forced to retreat rather than circle. The Hunter lunged in and thrust the closed brandistock into a seam in the egg sac, then spread the outer blades to enlarge the wound. He then jumped back as milky fluid spilled out.
It was at that moment that Nibeaux intervened. The crane peeled down the rail it hung from, swiveled and lowered a four-digit claw. The queen was seized by the neck and lifted like a kitten. She screamed and thrashed, shaking the crane back and forth. The Jag ut jag were no less outraged. The Hunter fired a warning shot with his caster. The Huntress moved under the crane and thrust upward with her polearm. In doing so, she stepped into the path of the queen's lashing ovipositor. The Hunter saw what was going to happen, and in the blink of an eye, he acted. He pushed the Huntress away, and the ovipositor thrust into his abdomen, punching through his belly armor and going out his back. He raised the caster, aimed at the queen's head and fired. Two shots so close together proved too much for the damaged caster. Instead of firing a plasma bolt, the gun exploded. The blast consumed the Hunter's forearm, and did plenty of damage to the queen and the crane. The crane shook, and the queen came free.
The Huntress staggered and dropped her polearm at the blast. The queen got up and made a loping sprint for the elevator shaft, finally leaping out over the open space. In full health, she might have cleared the 5 m gap. As it was, she managed to dig her claws into the floor of the bay outside the nest and clung to the edge.
The Huntress dropped beside the dying Hunter. She was appalled not only by his mortal wounds but by his missing eye and cratered forehead, testimony to his last encounter with Zaratustra. She was also shocked by what he had done. It was the Law of the Hunt that each Hunter was responsible for his own life and health. It was a transgression of the Law to intervene to save another Hunter, especially when it endangered the success of the Hunt. She asked in the tongue of the Jag ut jag: "Why did you break the Law?"
He drew a human symbol with his own blood, the cross that appeared in so many human temples. "On this Hunting Ground, there is another Law," he said, struggling not to choke on his blood. "The strong… fight for the weak… Die if they must, so that the weak may become strong. That… will be our new Law."
"But my father, that is Heresy!"
His eyes seemed to brighten. "My child… a little heresy is not such a bad thing." His eyes shut forever, yet it seemed the light remained.
Huntress raised her head and clashed her mouth parts, sounding a stuttering howl. Then she tore open his armor and drew the saw-edged Funeral knife. With three swift cuts, she opened his chest and lifted up his heart. She held it high as she sang the song of commemoration. Then she raised it to her mandibles and ate the Funeral Feast.
