By now there were surely two hundred Hegemony shocktroopers in the corridor. Advancing unimpeded, they were now three quarters of the way to overtaking our position.

Hudding in the corner, I saw Kel, still hunched there over Chyrkrady, at the edge of the bulkhead. Pulser fire had incinerated the clothing from his back. The tufts of fur above his eyes and that crowning his head had been largely singed away. I saw the skin on his back beginning to blister as thousands of rounds per second continued to find their mark.

And then he stood, eyes never leaving Chyrkrady. He stood there, gaze traveling to the Human body. He stood there, looking at what had once been Caleb, looking at what had once been Chyrkrady.

There were no longer tears streaming from his eyes. There was nothing on that normally expressive face that I could read. No movement from those tuffs of hair, no bared teeth, nothing.

His eyes lifted, gaze rising slowly to me.

“Stay here.” He said.

I said earlier that the loudest noise I’d ever heard from another living being was earlier, when Kel had been holding Caleb’s body. But that’s not true. It was true then, of course, but not anymore.

The loudest noise I’ve ever heard from any living creature, is the noise that Kel made next, as he turned to face the Lizard horde… and charged.

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Kel covered the distance to The Hegemony’s frontlines in seconds. If the onslaught of superheated plasma did anything to slow his approach, it wasn’t enough to give the Lizard vanguard any more than a half second’s additional time to evaluate their recent life choices.

He slammed into the frontlines, trampling the Lizards, who stood an average of two heads shorter, effortlessly. Crushing bone underfoot as he charged deep into their midst.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

That’s when the shrieking started—concurrent with the tearing sounds—as he ripped limb from socket and head from body.

The shocktroopers piled onto Kel.

Denied their weapons at such intimate range, they clawed and bit. Teeth cut into flesh—but the majority of the flesh being cut into was their own. Those unfortunate enough to be directly in front of Kel’s face—while his hands were busy bludgeoning their fellows with the parts of their other fellows—found great portions of their bodies simply removed. Bitten off by the teeth of a beast adapted—ironically enough—for the consumption of mostly plant matter. But which in a pinch, worked quite well for rending scaly flesh from bone.

Those clinging to his back, attempting an attack from behind, found themselves effortlessly ripped away and battered into walls.

The Lizards, attempting to bite—as an apex predator that finds themselves in a close quarters fight might be expected to—discovered firsthand that their jaws were rather easily removed from their heads.

Otherwise, open mouths presenting such easy targets, they found themselves biting down on the flesh of a massive limb elbow deep—or more often shoulder deep—in their bowels before it burst out of their guts. Otherwise simply leaving from the orifice it entered, spine held fast in hand.

The slightly elongated shape of the shocktrooper’s snouts made for a rather easy one handed grip, while Kel’s free hand caved in the top of their skulls.

When, on occasion, the Human had both hands free, the Lizard’s heads were rather easily restrained from each side while massive thumbs gouged into their eyes, bursting them with a wet pop before cleaving the head in two.

But those suffering such fates were perhaps the lucky ones, since they met their end relatively quickly—albeit painfully.

But the others—those left to crawl limbless along the ground while watching their fellows eviscerated, or blinded and hearing only the shrieks of their comrades, the crunching of their bones, the limbs being loosed from sockets—they had it worse.

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With most of the boarding party dead or maimed, we started our advance to Kel’s position. He had grabbed the barrel of the rapid repeater cannon and was swinging it around. Heads and bodies turning to pulp under the giant club.

Our escorts shot any surviving Hegemony troops along the way—a mercy truly.

A mist of viscera hung in the air and Kel was covered in blood and entrails when we arrived at his side.

He wasn’t speaking, and, deciding now was not the time for conversation, I joined the escorts near the door’s control panel.

The blast door irised open, revealing the last stretch of corridor before the final doors to bay 13… and almost a thousand Hegemony troops waiting in formation.

The escorts flattened themselves to the walls and the Admiral pulled me behind cover immediately.

Kel just stared ahead at all the barrels pointed his way, at the Lizards in between here and there, between where we were and where we needed to be.

And, white teeth glinting in stark contrast to a face covered and dripping with viscera...

he smiled.