Through the monochrome haze of unrepentant, boiling Rage, a flicker of colour had brought him to a staggering halt as he'd exited the battered Juggernaut's lowest airlock, his boots momentarily sliding against Syurga's powdery dust amongst twisted, molten metal. What exactly was he trying to achieve?
The stench of unburnt fuel flooded his nostrils the instant thereafter. It scalded his throat and seared at his lungs, even in the relative cool of the air outside. It would be like this for a while yet, he presumed. It had been breathlessly perfect conditions for atmospheric flying, though that small detail had been entirely lost on him as he'd initiated a hasty flyboy's departure in what seemed mere moments earlier; with next to no wind to move the wreckage along, any time spent outside was likely to be exceedingly unpleasant for a while yet.
Amongst the wasteland of broken components and burning debris, somewhat obscured by an outcrop of dark, volcanic rock, was a sight that brought the Rage back to every fibre of his being in roiling, crashing waves. The faint glint of polished metal was unmistakable. The Utukka woman's vessel was a mere few hundred metres away. This carnage was hers; as unlikely as it seemed, until she was neutralised, there existed a chance she'd wreak more.
The inhospitable, tainted atmosphere merely glanced off him as he lurched against the dust. His toes barely brushed the ground as he flew across it in broad, angry paces, as fast as his legs would carry him. He was done, done, with the day's happenings. Once he'd neutralised the creature, he would set about putting the world around him right once more and restore order.
Fuck neutralise, he mused darkly through the haze of the Rage. I'll just kill her. Like I should have done in the first place.
Effortlessly leaping the fractured rocks standing at the entrance of the vessel, his boots had barely landed on the platform before his fingers had set about prying the doors apart. There was no point in trying to override the door controls; it was immediately obvious at first glance that this was not technology he was familiar with. Besides, there was no way he'd have the patience to decode it with the heat of the Rage barely holding the fragile shreds of his sanity in one piece. He was distantly aware that in any other circumstance, brute force would have been his last resort for gaining access – Aldamarak he was not – but the thumping of his own heartbeat in his ears, the racing of air in his throat, all but drowned out cohesive thought. It simply glanced off his psyche and back to whence it came.
Bang, bang.
The locking mechanisms were unambiguously positioned halfway up the undersized twin doors; having refused to yield until this point, what remained of his intellection opted to jar them open with a deft wallop each with the side of his balled fist.
His efforts were rewarded; with a screeching clank, the mechanisms bowed to force.
Wasting not a moment, he jammed the fingers of both hands into the threshold between the doors and, having braced himself against the textured deck below, applied every bit of might his body could exert on the metal.
They did not resist for long, yielding with a deafening screech after a drawn moment of effort.
One last drag of the fuel-soaked Syurga air entered his lungs before he'd scrambled aboard, the edge of his shoulder catching against the doors as they snapped shut behind him. Fighting the urge to stand tall, he kept his head bowed as he surged through the tiny, narrow corridor and staggered to a halt upon encountering the broad, domed central room of the vessel.
This was not what he'd anticipated.
Drawing another long, deep breath as colour once again flooded his vision, it was all he could do to gawp at the nonsensical sight before him.
Awash with muted teals and ochres, the room's dim lighting was at odds with the utter chaos strewn about its furthest reaches. A light source flickered around the central dome amongst torn, sparking conduits hanging from the low-slung ceiling; a thousand-and-one small, rectangular objects lay across the darkened floor, having seemingly exploded from a shelf to the right; shattered glass littered the second, more prominent shelf and floor nearby, and, as several more slow, deliberate breaths would reveal, had left the air heavy with the smell of ethanol and sugar.
What an inordinate waste of space.
As he bowed his head to step into the central room, a faint glimmer caught his eye; hanging from the very centre of the circular ceiling was what appeared to be a ring of crystal beads, but with nothing of note beneath them that would suggest usefulness – just a flat surface that, with the addition of what appeared to be tiny, uncomfortable-looking chairs, seemed to be nothing more than a table. The sorry state of the vessel around him never quite allowed him to forget that this was the work of a primitive race; he could safely assume these glimmering crystals were not a power source like he'd seen in the past, nor any form of functional...anything, really. Scowling, he took another pace and reached up to cautiously touch the nearest thread of beads.
Cool to the touch and perfectly clear, it was immediately apparent that this was glass – plain, uneventful silica glass. There was no purpose this could serve apart from...decoration? Once again reminded that he was neither a diplomat nor a scientist, it seemed obvious to him that decoration ought to suggest culture, even in the most primeval of senses. To decorate, one must be aware of the surroundings they garnish. But weren't these primitive, violent people?
The glass brushing his shoulder had the most pleasantly musical tinkle as it rattled against its neighbours. Even its arbitrary notes tugged at his psyche, daring him to discern a melody from it, begging him to touch it once more – temptation proving irresistible, he reached for the hanging beads once more, idly stroking the lowest in the string with his index finger. Indeed, the cool weight of it, the excess of light it refracted, made it plausible this was perhaps more than mere silica. Its tones were too sweet, too warm. These people had apparently mastered the chemistry behind their art.
That had been a realisation he knew he'd regret. It had already begun weaving knots in the pit of his stomach as he stepped away.
One of the rectangular pieces of debris bumped his foot; as his eyes adapted to the low lighting, he soon noticed that the debris he was staring at was, in fact, a small library's worth of books.
Books? Aboard a spacefaring vessel?
Just what was this place?
Scowl deepening, he crouched to retrieve a large but nondescript example. Its cover was far softer than he'd anticipated, oddly textured – bound in fabric, he quickly realised as he ran his fingertips across the surface. A quick thumb through its contents revealed more natural materials, its hundreds of pale leaves printed in all manner of tiny nonsense he had not a hope of interpreting. In a day of nonsense, it struck him as perfectly appropriate he would stumble upon more.
His line of work had afforded him little opportunity to engage in the culture of other races; he'd briefly met foreign pilots and commanders – fought alongside them, even – and had committed hundreds of weird and wonderful alien craft schematics to memory, but for better or for worse, his interactions had been limited almost exclusively to his own kind. Given his significantly limited knowledge of the convolutions of other races, he was perhaps one of the least qualified people on the station to be drawing conclusions about the nature of interdicted species, and yet...did it not seem just a little strange that an ancient, borderline prehistoric form of archiving would be present on an interstellar vehicle? The excessive use of space, the weight alone, seemed absurd; did they not possess a computer upon which they could store all this?
Perhaps not.
A flash of movement caught his eye as the previously blank panel behind him spluttered to life; the visage of a small Utukka person flooded the panel, from its waist to the top of its head. A long, auburn, furry head ornament shrouded the creature like a cloak. Hair, perhaps? It seemed disproportionate; the creature was of bizarre stature that made little sense. Perhaps a child? It appeared to be cradling a device, prying at its elongated surface with one hand while running a stick-like device back and forth against it with the other. But in the silence of the room around him, it was all but impossible to discern just what the purpose might be–
Music.
The Utukka creature was rocking back and forth in a rhythm as tiny fingers slid back and forth along the long neck of the device. The other hand clearly maintained that same rhythm as it oscillated, and despite that silence, a melody had begun to pluck at his subconscious as he continued to watch. Such a shame it was merely a projection; how curious it would have been to hear what was–
Thunk.
A distant, bassy blow preceded a faint, wet slop. Flinching as the ship's deck vibrated precariously against his soles, ripped from his reverie, he was immediately at one with the foreignness of his surroundings. This was not the time to be fascinating over the trappings of civilian life, let alone that of an interdicted species. How had he managed to lose track of everything? What was wrong with him today? He was here for a reason, wasn't he?
The Utukka woman.
No doubt she was aware of his presence by now, and his dazed exploration had likely given her ample time to react to it. Whatever had made that sound was heavy. It was safe to assume she would be armed. Steeling his stance, his eyes darted about the vicinity for something, anything, he could use as a weapon if the need for it arose. Why hadn't he brought one with him? The unreliability and lack of vision that came with the Sebiti Rage could not be understated, but this was without doubt a new low for him. There had most certainly been something wrong with that confounded stasis unit to leave him so daft.
Slap. Screech.
The vessel shook once more. He'd been wrong about many things today, but he was adamant it would be impossible, barring wizardry, that the little female would be capable of making a sound like that. Something was awry. He was sure, he was sure, that the sound had originated from a pair of doors adjacent to the room he was standing in. Silently talking over the clutter of books and away from the ship's entry, he resolved to rule the source out as a threat before seeing to the pirate woman.
A flash of movement caught his eye.
A gasp escaped him as the cold, ringing tendrils of adrenaline soaked him to the bone. It couldn't be, could it?
The perspiration forming under his suit had begun absorbing the cold from his surroundings, but the entirety of his focus was upon the thrashing movement behind those flimsy metal doors. He should have reached for a weapon before investigating, he knew it, but having never seen these things in the flesh, fear and curiosity had both intertwined to drag him closer without a thought–
An almighty screech permeated the ship's atmosphere as the flimsy doors buckled, yielding to an enormous, sickly-coloured tentacle. As the monstrous limb burst free, spiraling toward him with impossible speed, he barely heard his own scream over the din as he turned on a heel to scramble away.
Too slow, too slow – the doors groaned and cracked against their alcoves as the screeching, baying beast struggled against its confines, just enough to limit its reach beyond. A band of iron-like muscle looped around his left ankle as he ran, snagging it from beneath him. In the next breath the universe flipped on its head and his entire being made contact, full force, with the metal deck below.
More limbs had erupted from the gap between the doors as it dragged him back across the floor; succumbing to pure panic, he thrashed with every inch of his desperate might against the inevitable, scrabbling at the deck with everything he owned whilst kicking for freedom with his unrestrained leg. But it was all for naught. His punches and grabs merely glanced off the alien flesh; his flailing barely registered.
Loops of muscle damn-near yanked his limbs from their sockets as the shrieking monster wrenched him from the ground and pulled him toward the abyss just beyond the parted doors. Somehow, blessedly, in the split-second he was dragged from the floor, he'd managed to straddle the gap in the doors with both feet. Straining with every muscle in his body, he worked that precious leverage in the hope it was just enough to slip free of the seething tentacles and make a bid for freedom.
Another tentacle shot through the gap and immediately wrapped around his neck. Another burst of thrashing became him; he knew what came next. No, no...
Slam!
For a brief moment, there was nothing but stars. Bracing himself against the doors as best he could, squinting away the dazed swirls in his vision, he realised he'd been quite violently smashed into the gap, but neither he nor the enormous Rabizu progenitor could fit through. Its grip around his neck tightened. The stars returned.
A mighty, determined yank managed to free his right wrist from the creature. But it would be all for nothing if he couldn't stop it from strangling him. Clawing at the band of flesh denying him oxygen, he made several frenzied, futile gasps for air before he risked succumbing to unconsciousness. He knew exactly what this thing was. If he didn't get away now, now, the most horrific of deaths awaited him.
At least the Utukka woman would no longer be a problem.
Creaking, popping, the slick limbs around his tightened once more. Perhaps if it snapped his neck, he would be spared the agony of the alternative – but he strained against the tentacles nonetheless.
The sheer power of these creatures was undeniable, even if this one was inexplicably monstrous; the raw sinew looped about his left arm seemingly tightening indefinitely, not giving an inch to his thrashing for freedom. The bones in his arm were not designed to withstand this sort of constriction – he could feel the blood being cut off to his hand, he could feel the bones giving way beneath the–
Crack.
The unbridled agony of the bones in his forearm shattering wrenched the very last of the air from his lungs in a sound that was wholly not his. Whether it was from asphyxiation or from the searing pain in every inch of him, his head was left nauseously spinning. There was so little fight left in him, yet the creature simply raged harder and harder before the doors, more and more eager to have its way with him, to deposit its vile spawn and seal his fate.
What a stupid way to die, Za'il. After everything you've been through.
As his consciousness began to wane, he became vaguely aware of an increase in activity from the creature; its tentacles convulsed angrily as its shrieks raised in pitch and, inexplicably, the iron rope around his fractured left arm snapped limp and fell away. A cacophony of noise followed as another limb fell away in a burst of violence – this one releasing the bonds around his neck.
Cold, sterile air punctuated with the acrid stench of the bedlam opposite flooded his lungs in a series of choked gasps. Oxygen had never seemed so precious, particularly as yet another blurry, wavering limb lunged toward his neck and had begun to encircle him once again – but it failed to fully make contact before the beast quivered again and the tentacle slipped free.
An icy, solid object clipped his nose with enough force to leave the taint of iron in his breath. Squinting through the fog of pain and hypoxia, he pressed his hazy gaze downward to find himself face-to-face with an image he'd truly expected the least; the Utukka woman had made an appearance below him, swinging a flimsy axe at tentacle after tentacle with startling effectiveness. What…
He was not given an opportunity to question her motives. The trilobite appeared hell-bent on becoming one with destiny, and had begun unfurling its ovipositor. No; he would not succumb to this, not at this point, not ever! Thrashing anew, he fought to free his legs from the creature, to get his head as far away from it as possible – if it couldn't find his head, it couldn't finish its job, and he might yet live–
A thin, childlike shriek echoed against the bulkheads as the ovipositor burst free, echoing the cry that escaped his own chest, briefly drowning out the baying of the trilobite.
Before the snake-like organ could embrace its target, the Utukka woman's axe slid straight through the centre of it.
A cascade of foul-smelling acid followed as the ovipositor ruptured, splattering against his biosuit as he twisted away from the source, desperately protecting his face with his good arm. As the creature's shrieks raised in fervour, its grasp on his legs shuddered and waned, eventually relenting entirely and depositing him on the floor with a wet thud; cradling his fractured arm against his chest, he scrambled free of the seething mass of tentacles as fast as he could manage the moment the opportunity presented itself.
The progenitor's fluids had predictably dissolved patches of the floor's coating, just as he'd been told would happen should it come into contact with almost anything. His boots failed to grip the slick surface. One of the trilobite's flailing tentacles snagged his ankle and whipped it from under him in the process. His left elbow struck the ground as he fell, eliciting another howl of agony from his lungs that sounded nothing like his own voice as the onslaught of pain seized his body still. Throughout it all, he surged onward to freedom.
It was not often that a Sebiti soldier found themselves with broken bones. One of the perks of hailing from such a robust species was a seeming imperviousness to serious injury outside of cataclysmic events. He'd attended such injuries before, but he'd never actually experienced a fracture himself – until now. In this moment, as he huddled almost foetal against the opposite wall, cradling the searing, swollen deadweight in his right hand, he finally understood the deafening, agonised screams and sobs of the injured soldiers he'd delivered makeshift, combat first aid to in the past. Granted, they'd all been young. They'd been green, terrified.
Cannon fodder.
Under different circumstances, long ago, he might have made as much noise.
Right now, it was all he could do to keep from retching. He could not get oxygen into his lungs fast enough. The searing pain in his arm twisted at his gut, seizing time still, locking him in this moment that left little room for cognition around the pounding, red-hot razorblades that radiated from his arm, to his chest, to his head. It seemed every nerve in his body reeled in protest.
Every breath left him nauseous. Holding it made it worse.
It occurred to him that there would be an axe between his eyes well before the throbbing would subside enough for him to...to...who knows. It hardly mattered when he could not compel his body to move at all from his crumpled position against the furthest wall he could reach.
It was unlikely the Utukka woman possessed the strength to deal a fatal blow with the blunted mess that remained of her axe, anyway, he distantly reasoned.
You've hardly been right about anything today, Suen. Stop making stupid assumptions.
Being forced to part company with logic was a tall order, even in his brain's presently fried state.
Movement. There was movement across the hallway.
Forcing his eyes open, squinting through the resulting haze, he was met with the dark blue silhouette of the Utukka woman standing before him – there was no weapon in either hand, nothing about her vaguely slumped posture that suggested she intended to use one regardless. Was she sizing him up for a fatal blow while he was incapacitated? Was she enjoying her handiwork?
Her handiwork, he reminded himself, was the heaving, gelatinous mess behind her.
Granted, it also involved the downing of his ship, on top of being part of an invasion party. What part she played in that invasion party was still debatable, but she was there, on his bridge, alongside her fallen compatriots. Or were they captors?
Another wave of nausea gripped at his innards; gritting his teeth and pressing his eyes closed, he figured anything short of her grabbing and wrenching his shattered arm wouldn't profoundly worsen his current state. She could gloat all she wanted.
Though, perhaps, gloating was not on her mind. Through one watery, squinted eye, he could only watch as she turned on a heel and marched – or, it seemed, limped – from the hallway he'd collapsed in and toward more of the Utukka clutter in the main, domed room before fishing about on one of the surfaces. Perhaps she was searching for a weapon? Surely she'd choose one of the many knives that appeared to be scattered about the floor beneath her.
The next wave of nausea forced his eyes shut again. Hell, at this point, he wasn't sure he was particularly enthusiastic about surviving much more of this.
Clatter-clatter.
Snapping his eyes open as the ringing of objects bouncing against the deck right in front of him wrenched him from his self-pity, he found himself staring across at the umpteenth surprise of the day. The tiny alien woman had sunk to her knees before him, her gaze prying at his own. Her strange eyes were as unreadable as they were intense, the white of her sclera amplifying her already haunting stare; they pried at his very soul just as they had aboard his own ship. This creature, this tiny, bedraggled creature, flooded the room in a way she had no right to.
Slowly, deliberately, she raised one hand and pointed it directly at his fractured forearm.
Ah, yes. There's the gloating part. Reflexively, he pulled it an inch further away from her; he was in no mood or state to be toyed with.
Her unsettling gaze remained welded upon his as she raised her other hand, cupping both before her chest and rocking them back and forth as if grasping and flexing an object between them. What in the name of Gugalanna was she up to? Eyes darting between her grubby hands and downright frightening gaze, his fractured, distracted mind slipped helplessly from one partially-formed conclusion to the next.
After a moment of thought, the pirate woman raised and outstretched one arm, probing the centre of it with the index finger of the other. Without breaking creepy eye contact, she then resumed her flexing motion.
Ah.
Clever girl, he mused as another roiling wave of nausea clawed at his gut. This is, in fact, a broken arm. He offered her a singular nod. Just what good that information did her, he could only guess. It certainly did him no good, did it?
Among the clutter she had dragged across the floor with her, evidently, was a large, white sheet; she'd set about slowly, dramatically tugging it toward her as he'd fought the bile rising in his throat, before presenting–
He'd barely spotted the tiny knife before she'd thrust it into the fabric. It was comically small, but it was a weapon nonetheless; his right fist balled reflexively before he'd had time to consider where it might end up, but the Utukka woman seemed to deliberately ignore his sudden movement as she proceeded to slice sections out of the cloth. His fist lingered – the only logical conclusion he could draw from all this is that she intended to do something more than merely gloat.
Why would this alien woman, whose presence had brought him nothing but violence and despair in the last however the fuck, invest any of this time focusing on his injured arm?
Nothing of this day made a dot of sense.
She beckoned with one tiny hand, cloth strips clutched in the other, brown-and-white eyes briefly grazing over the throbbing mess clutched against his chest before staring daggers straight into his head once more.
The thought of a strange alien being in his personal space like that, let alone an Utukka creature, sent a visceral shudder down his spine. Even between military exchanges there had always been strict protocol and medical guidance before any Sebiti personnel could make physical contact with an alien race, and he imagined civilian contact wasn't too dissimilar. Devoid of any such procedure, who knew what grub and disease she was carrying.
It also occurred to him that the only member of the pirate raiding party who had spoken a language he could understand was the Adrammu he'd neutralised first. She hadn't made a dot of noise aboard this vessel apart from a few battle cries as she saw to the trilobite what must have only been moments earlier, despite it feeling like hours. She'd shouted something at him in her own tongue on the bridge of the Juggernaut, but of all the assumptions he'd made to date, perhaps the most logical was that she had no common language. It made sense that she'd resorted straight to pantomime in this moment, but such communication was rife with misunderstanding.
One of these misunderstandings was that she hadn't gotten her point across the first time. She'd begun to coil a strip of cloth around her wrist almost patronisingly before pointing at his fracture again. I got it the first time, he scowled.
Much of his abused mind was still left puzzling over why she appeared to be patiently offering first aid after the happenings of the day. It sat uncomfortably alongside every other observation of hostility thus far, and yet…
Realistically, this wasn't a break he was going to be able to splint himself.
But this as an alternative? An alien woman from an interdicted species, smeared head-to-toe in fuck-knows-what, half his size and with only primitive technology at her disposal?
Got any better ideas, Za'il?
He drew a blank. Right now, he was absolutely useless with his arm as it was. Hell, if she was willing to at least stabilise it so he could figure out what to do next…
Balancing the searing mess in his right palm, he shifted to give her access to the fracture, biting down hard on his bottom lip as she raised a fabric strip toward his hand – she paused half way, scowling as she inspected it more closely before raising both hands to mime something else.
Curious; it seemed she was noting how swollen it had grown. He offered her an understanding nod.
She presented another nonsensical gesture, dragging against the air with curved fingers. Huh?
Apparently reconsidering the vagueness of her instruction, she began tugging at the sleeve of her suit up her forearm instead. Oh. It made sense – the sleeve of his biosuit did, in fact, feel like it was crushing down on the fractured bone within, and his hand felt like it was going to pop. Not that he could simply yank it up, as she'd asked; he would need to cut it free. He pointed at the tiny knife beside her, quietly hoping she'd hand it to him instead of making him clamber around her in this state.
Naturally, he'd anticipated the surprised, accusatory glare she shot him as her gaze darted between him and the knife. He couldn't blame her, really; they were both equally aware of its potential as a weapon. Still, after a moment, she huffed softly and passed it to him, sitting back on her heels and watching with a lip pressed between her teeth as he set about prying this blasted sleeve off his wrecked arm. As sharp as the little knife was, it took a fair bit of effort to rip through the biosuit; his stomach twisted and head spun in protest as he pared it back. No amount of smooth, deliberate movement would be smooth enough to avoid jolting the fracture...
...and no wonder. The assaulted flesh of his forearm bulged through the ripped sleeve, hot and blotched with purple and black; it was fair to assume the monstrosity had inflicted more tissue damage than a mere fracture. No wonder he was in such agony, although it had subsided significantly now that it didn't feel like his arm was being squeezed to oblivion.
The enormous trilobite would have overwhelmed him in seconds had those rickety doors not jammed in place. Hell, they overwhelmed their victims in seconds even at their regular size. And yet, the tiny alien woman kneeling before him had taken to it with nothing but a simple axe, and hadn't stopped until it had relinquished its death-grip on him.
Crack!
A jolt of pain ripped along his fractured arm as he reflexively flinched at the sudden noise. The Utukka woman had smashed the brittle black end of a long, thin piece of metal against the floor. Clever...it was unlikely she'd have a splint even close to his size just lying around, especially in this den of chaos. Her ingenuity didn't match her people's primitive reputation.
It seemed he wasn't the only one in pain; she'd done a poor job of masking a grimace as she slowly, gingerly twisted herself closer to him and raised the metal rod alongside his ruined arm. Her breathing was laboured, he realised, as he pinched the splint by his elbow. Perhaps the dark hair marking her brows dramatised the effect, but her face had maintained a taut, unhappy expression the moment she'd raised her arms, and remained as she began gently winding makeshift bandage over his wrist.
She was tiny, too. As apparent as it had been aboard his bridge that these creatures were not of the same structure as Sebiti, as lightweight and easy to dispatch as they had been – especially in the throes of the Rage – seeing her chest barely peeking over his knee as she worked her way toward the worst of the swelling was nothing short of jarring. Her fingers were the size of a child's, but far more slender and, admittedly, far more dexterous. Even as she delicately pried about one of the more significant injuries he'd experienced in his time, the near-panicked tension gripping every muscle in his body dissolved a little further with each breath he took in this close proximity. Watching her strange eyes dart about as she worked was impossible to glance away from, even as she occasionally paused, pressed them closed, and winced. Yes, his initial assumption that she was injured had been correct. It was possibly the only time today he had been correct.
A firm twinge against the fracture itself elicited a shout that was wholly not his own, yet had emptied every gasp of air from his lungs. With every nerve from head to toe on fire, he instinctively yanked his left arm free while desperately clamping the right over his mouth. The Utukka woman had flinched away in wide-eyed fear, too. For the few times he'd had to hold down a surprise patient performing similar aid, he finally understood why they shrieked and thrashed so violently.
It was all he could do to hold back the bile as he pinched his eyes shut, clamped his good hand over his mouth, and allowed the alien woman to continue her work.
Two small, frail hands carefully handed ownership of the limb back to him as the last of the bandage was tucked around his elbow. She'd done a perfectly adequate job, too, he noted as the splint took his weight in its stride. The angry throbbing had eased enough that the blackening bruises around his throat now demanded more attention. She simply watched in silence as he reluctantly tested just how much of its own weight his arm could bear–
Squelch.
Until now, he'd assumed the pirate woman's dispatching of the trilobite had been complete, but the beast's entire abdomen had briefly spasmed to life. The rest of its hideous limbs – what remained of them – stayed motionless as a faint bulge slipped along its ovipositor, then slopped out of its severed end and across the floor with a wet bletch.
Adrenaline slammed through every inch of him as he found himself immediately on his feet, desperately picking at every detail of the immediate vicinity. Where had she put her axe? Infantile or not, he could not allow Rabizu to rampage through the–
There! He snatched at the handle the moment he spotted the weapon. It was little more than a stick at this point, its metal head completely consumed by the acidic blood it had wrought, but it would do. Wasting not a moment, he darted back toward the thrashing, translucent sac and brought the ruined axe down upon the wraith with all his might.
The splattered remains gazed back up at him. Just how, how, had any of this ended up aboard this vessel? It made no sense; Syurga had just been placed under lockdown to prevent just this. Had the Utukka raiding party somehow brought the infection with them, or had they encountered it gaining access to his ship? Was there more? Had the lack of containment been this drastic? This form of Rabizu wasn't even meant to be used anymore.
His eyes didn't move from the goo as he stepped through the tangle of limbs strewn across the deck. More than anything, he could scarcely believe he'd actually witnessed one of these creatures – and its hideous offspring – and still be alive to observe its corpses. Such stories were few and far between, and for the most part, coming from their shell-shocked survivors, would have sounded like pure fiction if not for their descriptions exactly matching the Military's files on the creatures.
She had survived the Rabizu's onslaught, too. Still crumpled on her knees, the bedraggled Utukka woman's aghast expression must have mirrored his own, but she seemed far more disgusted than she was terrified. Either she hadn't a clue what she'd witnessed, or she knew far more than she let on.
"Where the fuck did this come from? Why is it on your ship?" Pointing demonstratively at the sickly grey mess behind him, he realised the moment he opened his mouth that she wouldn't have the first clue what he'd said. He'd reflexively spoken in his own tongue, of course – not the ancient language her Adrammu had chosen. Not that she'd understood that, either. Her expression faded from the resigned fear his voice had elicited, to eventual befuddlement as her brow creased.
Oh, how his throat hurt. What remained of his biosuit had sluggishly begun doing its damn job repairing the damage, but considering he'd diced with strangulation by brute force, it would be a while before he'd be able to talk without sounding half-dead.
It seemed pantomime was his only hope of clear communication with the tiny alien, but with one arm and an inexplicably enormous carcass strewn across the floor, his options were more limited than he'd like. Waving his good arm more demonstratively across the site of the carnage, he spoke as slowly and clearly as his battered throat would allow. "Where is this from?"
Understanding crept across her bizarre complexion for a brief moment, interrupted by a sudden, violent flinch; her face crumpled as she grunted through gritted teeth, clutching her lower abdomen with one hand. That, he realised, had been where the Utukka mercenary had struck her with the butt of his rifle. If she was that injured from the blow, then there was little he could do to help–
Pinching her features tight in what must have been agony, she reached up and began tugging her suit open. As the pale, pink-brown flesh of her chest and stomach became exposed, he briefly wondered if he should be looking away. Did he need to witness a naked Utukka woman?
With another concerted yank on the closure, she quickly revealed to him the first true answers of the day...in the form of a raw, gaping, bleeding wound exactly where her reproductive organs ought to be. Staples hung uselessly from half of it, with the rest barely held together.
The mercenary had beaten her square in that wound.
She had ripped the trilobite to pieces with that wound in an effort to save his life.
The mere thought of it left him gagging, his own insides convulsing and bending him double as he fought a rising tide of vomit.
Eyes wet, jaw shaking, she pointed a trembling finger at the trilobite carcass as she pulled her suit free of the wound with her other hand.
No. By the grace of Tiamat, no.
The undersized ship's atmosphere rang in his ears as the final, horrifying piece of the puzzle slotted into place. If he was to believe a single thing she'd wordlessly told him, they'd cut the enormous creature out of her within the last few hours and stashed it in the room it had fought to the death to escape. She'd then been dragged aboard his vessel, slugged in the gut, and somehow escaped both her fellow pirates, and Za'il himself, legged it across the landscape beyond the station, and returned to fight the monstrosity herself. It couldn't be possible.
And yet, as she swayed before him on her knees, half-lidded eyes seeming to plead for his attention, little else made sense.
A soft whimper escaped her as she raised her hand again, pointing toward the wrecked doors the trilobite was caught between. With the other, she drew an invisible zig-zag back and forth across the red, yawning gash in her abdomen.
Turning his gaze to the room beyond the carcass, the glint of a veritable plethora of equipment caught his eye. He could see, through the shit-smeared windows and the chaos beyond them, enough objects that would fit in and around a bipedal body, enough bottles and packaging and paraphernalia, to assume this might have been an infirmary. Perhaps they had extracted the trilobite from her, dumped it in here, and ran. Regardless, it seemed she wanted access to this room, and to be stitched back together.
Fair enough. He would too, under similar circumstances.
And given the tidy job she had voluntarily made of his arm, it also seemed fair enough that he might at least assist her with the task before figuring out what the fuck he ought to do next. It was the least he could do, really.
Her finger probed at the creature once more, then the double doors. She drew a shaky breath, gaze clawing at his.
She wanted access badly, but there was just one problem. One minor inconvenience.
Pressing his eyes closed and drawing a deep breath, he supposed he had his first clear task of the day, too – courtesy of the strangest company he'd ever kept.
Nothing, nothing in his training had ever described how to remove an oversized Rabizu progenitor from an undersized doorway.
At least it would make an interesting story to tell once he finally arrived back home.
Hey.
How you doin.
I realise it's been what, two and a half years? I can't even begin to explain the weirdness that's happened between now and then, but suffice it to say, 2020 has beaten the muse back into me and, uh, expunged the distractions that have robbed me of the time.
There may have been several jobs, several house moves, and a company or two getting rekt in that space.
For a time, I'd all but forgotten the myriad of universes residing in my head. The rest of the time, I legitimately feared I'd never have the desire to bring them to you again.
I can't remember what lit the fires again recently. I'd been forced to work full time through lockdown, unlike most, until it all fell over and my salary dried up – how on brand is that? Didn't even get a once-in-a-lifetime stay-at-home-and-dream opportunity out of it all. So it wasn't the same extended self-reflection that many have experienced this year.
But the fires are lit.
It's worth noting that, despite the absence of creativity, I've thought A LOT between the last chapter and now. Za'il's character is a whole lot clearer to me now...not that he wasn't before, but it all makes a whole lot more sense. Elizabeth's, too, has had clarification. The characters and worlds and circumstances that will be introduced in the future have expanded themselves, as well.
I've also got original fiction I desperately want to start. Heck, maybe one day my bread and butter will be from something I truly enjoy.
In the interim, there's probably going to be pretty spotty updates. My job didn't survive the pandemic, and I'm hustling and freelancing to keep the rent paid. It's not always kind on my time. But I don't think the muse is going to leave any time soon.
I'm so sorry it's been literal YEARS. It almost looked like the Engineer tag did its usual, didn't it?
But this is my birthday gift to you. Yep, I decided I'd take this day, of all days, off hustling and choke out the rest of this monstrosity that has been HAUNTING ME for nearly three years. Small wins, eh?