My jaw tightened. I looked at each of them, taking in each of their threat levels, just like Baila had taught me. Captain Johnstone was inching closer to me, and I shuffled back. The soldier that had been holding me at gunpoint the entire time tensed up, pulling his trigger just as I tripped over Vuvu, who had tangled herself between my legs. The fall saved me from taking a heat cannon blast to the chest, but just the heat emanating off the center of the beam was enough to make my skin tighten, singe the edges of my mask, and cause my goggles to fog.
The sound that escaped my body when my back hit the hard-packed street resembled the one I had made when Baila had planted her fist in my stomach. This time, though, the soldiers wouldn’t stop with a fist in the stomach. Instead of waiting to see if they might be more rebels in Terran clothing, I used the small blade hidden in the ring Baila had given me to open my flesh, drawing blood out onto my skin, wrapping it around me, giving me armor that would rival the shells the Terrans wore.
I stood up in time to see another soldier, this one bearing a yellow flower on the front of his shellsuit, firing at me. As the second cannon blast flew at me, I pulled my arms up and did my best to focus the power of the barrier there. I deflected the shot. It sent me stumbling backward again, but I was able to keep on my feet. Just then, something that felt like a comically large wasp’s stinger tore into my side. The pain was blinding. I tried to reshape the barrier to cover the area where I felt the pain, but the feeling remained.
Turning to see what was causing the pain, I could see the Terran captain. He had somehow gotten behind me while I was distracted with the sun guns. His dagger blade was sticking out of my side. The handle of the blade laid at my feet. He stared at me and laughed through the speaker as a long, silver chain dropped from his wrist, the end hitting the ground heavily. He started swinging it above his head. I watched the chain, mesmerized as it spun faster and faster, catching the sunlight and sending it flashing against the walls of the buildings.
As I was watching, I let the barrier wrap around my full body again, just in time to catch a shot from behind me. It sent me sprawling forward onto the hard ground. I coughed up blood, which joined in with my weakening barrier. I was using too much of my energy, too much of my life force. I was beginning to think I would not survive. The chain came down now, much heavier than I had imagined possible, and landed on the side of my head.
The barrier was almost gone. I was defeated, broken, trying to pick myself up off the ground, when I saw the soldier with the flowered shell aiming for Vuvu. I screamed, pooling any last bits of life that I had left in my broken body, and forced myself to my feet. The Terran fired and I jumped, trying to put my body between the beam and the fox. In the same moment, I felt such blind rage at the men, all I wanted to do was to stop them.
The beam smashed into me in midair, and I reached my hands out to the man that had fired it as I was thrown backward. After the beam dissipated, the barrier around me reformed into a long shaft, the point of which pierced through the metal shell the Terran wore, punching through the center of the yellow flower, pushing out the other side and ending at a rigid point.
The scene felt like frozen, none of us breaking the stillness. After a long moment, the shaft of blood retracted and went back into me, partially healing my wounds, save for the dagger that still stuck out of my side. I coughed and felt the pain radiate through my body. I reached for the dagger, and felt the barbed point tug at something beneath my skin.
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The pain was white hot. My knees hit the ground and the fox at my feet growled protectively. The captain’s metal fist landed heavily onto the back of my unprotected head, and a new pain, explosive and overwhelming, sent me the rest of the way to the ground. Vuvu bit at the air in between me and the shell, until the captain kicked her and sent her sailing. I tried to pull the barrier back around me, but my blood just pooled around my head and my midsection. I pulled my knees up to my chest, trying to protect my head and body.
Johnstone grabbed my feet and pulled them straight, then used the chain to tie me up. The cold silver wrapped around my wrists, then my ankles. “You’ll hang for this, blood rat.” The captain kicked me, then grabbed the loop of chain around my ankles and began walking, dragging me behind him. “You’re lucky I don’t let Arlo here give you what you really deserve.” he gestured to the largest of the men, a behemoth with a flower on his armor that matched the other, save for a red blossom in the center of his companion. This was the Terran that had not been able to control his trigger finger earlier. “That was his brother you just murdered.”
My head bounced off the ruts in the street, but I had gone numb, in a state that felt somewhere between alive and dead. Vuvu became a small blur at the furthest edge of my vision. I tried to see where we were going, but couldn’t turn my head. We went up the street past a few buildings, then my feet dropped to the ground and I stopped. Finally able to look around, I craned my neck and saw Captain Johnstone in front of me, save for the hand that had been dragging me.
His screams were loud and robotic through the shell speaker. Blood poured from the hole that had, until just a second earlier, been a gigantic arm inside of an even more gigantic metal case. A second later, a flash of crimson went through the armor at his neck. His head rolled off his towering frame, landing and rolling toward the severed fist that laid near my feet, still holding the chains on my feet. Where it stopped, it looked almost like the fist was resting on his chin, as if he would forever remain in deep thought.
The other two Terrans looked at the scene, then at each other. The taller man, Arlo, broke and ran. The smaller of the two watched his friend retreat, then turned back to the scene. Before he had made a decision, his blood splashed across my body and his top half slid down, separating from his lower half.
The metal legs stayed upright, and the man tried to use them to climb back up. He didn’t have any legs to stand up on once he had righted himself, so he rolled backward. I thought of the little bugs that burrowed into the sand, and how they would roll up into themselves, making little balls from their exoskeletons.
I was still trying to get myself upright to remove the chains when Vuvu ran up to me, yipping and nuzzling my face. “I’m so glad you are okay, little one! I am going to get you so many ants.” I wriggled and writhed until I got to my back, then was able to sit up and work at the chains around my ankles with the tips of my fingers. Slowly, gradually, the chain loosened enough for me to step out of it. I used my feet to push against the chains that bound my wrists.
Finally free, I fell backward and felt all the pain wash over me once more. Vuvu licked my hand, letting out little whimpers. I started to drift off, but she started growling. I heard someone shoo her away, but was too weak to protest, or to look up at them. I groaned and accepted my fate, no longer willing or able to fight my aggressors.
I was lifted up by massive arms, and thought again of Arlo, the gigantic man. Terror washed over me until the man spoke to me. “You sure do like getting the shit kicked out of you, kid.” Stravus barked out a rough chuckle as he carried me away.