Tule heard a screech and was thrown back as an aquamarine spear of energy pumped something toxic into his stomach. Something bad, something deeply wrong. He magnetically isolated the spear with an ultra-thin coating of Nano. He pulled on the newly-formed magnetic sheath and yanked the spear out of his gut.
Blood slopped and he looked around.
The SI was standing still, its hands spread to either side. A tower burst apart and worked its way toward the center. The SI compressed its grip, as the pieces of scrap and circuitry came together in the shape of a cannon.
Tule pushed himself towards the SI on shaky feet. It held up its left palm and a quick-fired flare of concussive orange sent him skidding across the shell.
Tule felt someone touching his gut wound, he tried to swipe at them with his Toothpick. A fist snapped into his head and brought his surroundings into focus.
“Stop trying to cut me, I don’t know how you’re still alive. Coming from me, that’s saying something.”
Oh good, it was Jack. “Sorry, I was a bit mixed up.”
“You talking about your head or your guts?”
Tule would have laughed if his stomach muscles were capable of tightening at that moment, “What’s going on?”
Jack looked up and his eyes widened slightly, he watched for a few seconds then continued applying Medjel throughout the inside.
“Something really messed you up, there’s necrotic tissue everywhere.”
“Just cut it out.”
Jack paused, holding a smaller blade claw, he set it down and picked up Tule’s Toothpick.
Jack paused for a heartbeat then approached Tule’s chest with the blade.
Tule panicked, “No! You can’t use that.”
Jack set it back down and spread his hands out palms down, “Okaaaay.”
“Tell me, what is it doing?”
Jack continued working, “There’s a bunch of the Clan’s people trying to swarm it. It’s firing back with some sort of repeating cannon, like Kala’s. It’s different though, it’s firing these blue bursts.” Jack looked up again, “It just switched to hard ammo, maybe it’s running low on energy.”
“Know,” Tule gasped in pain, “what that was, the crab-father?” The last part came out faint.
Jack subconsciously placed a few gory fingers on his chin, “No, but it’s not hard to believe that there is some fuck-all place filled with crabs. I mean they got on the ship somehow, right? Now stop talking I have to cut through your lung.”
My lung??
He lost his breath again and then a handful of seconds later he could breathe again. He felt Jack withdraw his hands from his body. He pulled himself onto his elbows.
“Whoa, what are you doing? The middle of your torso is 70% Medjel. Your lungs are maybe 20% Medjel.”
“Got. To. Get. Up.” He suspected that he wouldn’t live anyways.
“You’re not going to move anywhere, the Medjel is even having trouble securing you closed. If you stand up a whole chunk of Medjel might just slide right out of you.”
“Doesn’t matter. Got. To. Do it.”
Tule gripped his left hand into a ball and his flesh constricted around the wound, a red-iron glow briefly flashing.
“Well, it’s your life. How about a plan before we go rushing in?”
Jack and Tule watched the SI’s cycling cannon shoot at a Clan Member’s shield, redirect and splatter the soldier’s feet into mush then finish him off and the two behind the first man.
“Yes, ok.”
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They were waiting now, in a chitin foxhole. Waiting for the right moment. Jack had wanted to try a straight approach but he knew Tule would insist on going with him. He wanted to let the Medjel harden completely before Tule ruined all of his work.
After they moved to the crater he was glad they were waiting for an entirely different reason.
GreatShield. GreatShield. GreatShield.
Still nothing. His first idea of running in there would have gone terribly.
“So tell me again why 'I' couldn't use your blade on the shield?”
“The Toothpick can cut through anything.”
Now that Jack was interested in. He didn’t interrupt.
“It depends heavily on proper angle and time, it can’t cut through anything instantly. I’ve been training with it for years and I still wasn’t able to cut through the shield before being thrown off. You will just be thrown off as it vibrates through you.”
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He found this even more interesting, it vibrated? Was that the same as the molecular agitation that Uller went through? Jack pushed those thoughts to the side.
“Can you even run that far?”
Jack felt Tule’s stare through the side of his face, “I’ll be fine, you just survive.”
Jack didn’t like the sound of that, Tule was solid, reliable, and here he was talking about ‘make sure to survive.’ Did he not plan on surviving?
His chain of thought was interrupted as a ‘whump’ clapped across the shelled plateau.
Tule was off, Jack a split second behind. Damn, even injured this guy was fast. They had one shot, Jack poured on the speed as he accelerated to near a blur. In his wake, a sparkling, sparking cloud of Nano drifted and dissipated behind him.
The SI had been hit by some weapon from the Clan, it darkened the area around it, it was electrical in some way. The electricity was behaving oddly. The process was too much for him to take in but he could tell that it had explosively and electrically stripped the temperature of the darkened area suspended in the air. Brutally stripped the temperature, a bit explosively too.
He felt a moment of appreciation that so much stuff was electric.
He caught up to Tule and overtook him. The screams of the SI increased in pitch. Tule blurred above Jack with a trail of crimson iron and planted his blade into the same spot it had been before. Jack saw the blade shake and then Tule shake.
The SI turned towards them an aquamarine spear in its hand, “You!”
Jack jumped in front of Tule and then scrambled as the close-range spear was aimed at him the entire time. BLOCK IT he screamed in his mind as the Gauntlet formed into a convex shield and held back the point of the spear from connecting with him. Jack slid back. He desperately looked around and planted his bladeclaw in a crack of the shell.
The SI waved its cannon to fire on the Clan’s troops as it positioned one hand to reinforce its shield. Its other had the palm outstretched, glowing orange. Tule was blasted back, Jack weathered it by holding himself in place with the bladeclaw. It smiled at Jack and started to gather another spear of aquamarine.
“You’ve ruined everything. I was going to finally be able to leave this ship.”
Jack had so many questions, “Why the crabs?”
“Why crabs?” It laughed, the blue of its eyes sparking and consuming the rest of its face before settling down.
“Crabs are the perfect species. Much better than you... soft meatsacks. They can survive in the vacuum, dismemberment. Do you know that a crab’s anticoagulant characteristics are 800% better than a Human? Their genetic base is… problemat…” It twitched, “perfect! I must protect all crabs.”
“Did the crabs build you?”
“No, no silly meat. They were the canvas of life I was called to protect after being set fre-”
The rest of the talk was interrupted as the Clan Members renewed their assault, lasers and hard rounds managing to punch through the weakened shield on that side. The SI spun around to deal with them, driving its aquamarine javelin through the most serious offender on the Clan's side.
Jack saw the Toothpick slide deeper into the shield. He Bashed his Gauntlet and the spear flew towards the shield and dissipated against it. He sprinted the last remaining feet as the SI felt the feedback of its shield.
It was turning as he reached out for the blade. No time. Its hand was raised, palm filled with orange.
He closed his fist and thought Shield and slammed a Bash into the handle of the Toothpick. He had already fired off a Bash so it was weaker than normal but it still had enough to send the blade spinning through as it split the shield in two and dissipated it in the same moment.
The Toothpick slammed, blade first, into the SI’s shoulder. The orange faded.
It screeched, it tore at Jack’s ears until gushes of blood poured out and down the side of his face. There, in the back of its mouth. It was an AI disk, but instead of green this one glowed blue. Jack could see the SI saying something but its words were now silent to him.
It was doing something. Jack felt electricity now. It wasn’t comforting though, it was every scrap remaining in the dead crab and more, much more. His Electric Affinity warped and twisted in its proximity. Something inside him cut off his Affinity.
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Jonah crested the lip of the shell.
“Oh my.” He saw Tule lying on the ground, motionless. He looked around desperately and saw a hole in the ground, er, chitin and started dragging Tule into it.
He sparked up his fingers and burnt another IQ Allocation to open a new Mental Track. One hand expressed a variety of odd energies as he started carving deeper into the chitin, the other moved over Tule, doing what he could.
He opened up a third Mental Track while he was still boosted and the sensors and shielding of his goggles were quickly overwhelmed and the third track forcefully shut itself down.
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“Off! Off! Move it!” Thank the Clan’s Ancestors that she had managed to convince the Clan Head to stay back. She had seen his hands shaking. He had used entirely too much Nano before, no matter what he said.
She saw a Monitor scramble and plummet off of a 50-plus foot sheer cliff. The ones who could tell what was happening were throwing themselves off in a rush. Never a good sign.
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The energy building up around the SI was pushing Jack back, each step he took just barely managing to make up for the ground he had just lost.
He palmed his AI disk and reached deep inside his cellular battery to gather every joule of electricity together. He tensed his muscles, felt Skills kick in.
Finally, he flipped the switch and shot forward, arm extended. He slapped aside a bolt of weird electricity with his Gauntlet, tanked another one that hit him directly in the chest, and kept pushing forward. He landed rough, No You Move kicking in midrotation as he twisted his hips and punched his hand through the SI’s screaming mouth.
The build-up stopped, energy stopped condensing. Then a blinding flash and a building energy. His hand was stuck.
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“Move it, Sentinel, move it!” the Clan Head wasn’t consciously aware of his whispered supplications.
He should have gone with. He looked at the height of it. It was a poor situation all around. He had burnt too much Nano earlier. He leaned on his cane and watched his Clan rappel off of the sides. They did not stop when they reached the bottom, sprinting away.
Leanne was still on the top of the crab, waving Members off. He knew that she wouldn’t leave until they all had.
His eyes reflected the pillar of brilliant light that grew out of the middle of the crab’s back.
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They had pulled far enough back. Cora didn’t like this, she didn’t like this at all.
She should have been up there. She should be up there. She looked at Telane. Korl had calmed down but now Telane was having to hold Korl back again, stopping him from joining Tule to die on the top of the crab. She wouldn’t let Korl die. She had promised Tule.
She looked at the Cryo-Pod next to them. He had a sister? And it was that woman? She could see a bit of a resemblance. She sighed, she would protect her too.
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The room was thrown into darkness as the flash wiped out all light. It clapped back on then faded as a ball of light expanded from the center and strobed the room, turning it into a slideshow.
Everyone and everything felt the boom of the crab hitting the ground again. Anyone looking at the center noticed the giant crab missing.