Malik Rosen, erstwhile Executive Officer of the Starlight Journey, scanned the approaching flock of flying snakes with mounting horror. Coatls, as he’d come to call them. Their structure consisted of leathery wings and clawed feet attached to a serpentine body. A maw full of jagged teeth set into an eyeless skull the shape of an iguana completed the image. The two-meter-long pests had been waging a guerilla war against Mal and his floating lifepod since the day after he’d splashed down on the planet Ryujin. He’d taken some injuries in skirmishes against the solitary monsters but had inflicted significant casualties on the local coatl population in return. Over the week he’d spent adrift, Mal had come to see the alien creatures as a dangerous, but manageable threat.
All that changed when he saw dozens of flying snakes approaching his lifepod in a loosely organized flock. The air was so thick with coatls that they looked like a murder of crows preparing to descend on an undefended cornfield. He’d wondered, in the quieter moments of the night, if his acts of self-defense could spark some sort of territorial response from the local fauna.
Now he had his answer. Like an army of rage-filled barbarians, the winged serpents had mobilized for war. Gone were the coatl’s probing attacks and their impotent cries of rage while they balefully watched the pod from high above. They had come to do battle with the pale-skinned interloper because there could be no peaceful coexistence. By the end of the day, one of the two sides will be sundered and scattered across the waves.
Malik didn’t intend for his side to be the one that broke.
“I hope you’re hungry, Oscar,” Mal muttered to himself as he backpedaled through the hatch’s open doorway.
As he stepped further into his lifepod, he saw the murderous glare the leviathan was directing toward the approaching flock.
Looks like I don’t have to worry about him bailing on me. Guess its nice to know that the big lug is loyal enough to help defend his provider of snacks. Or maybe he’s just hungry. Either way, I’ll take all the help I can get.
Three quick steps took him across the tiny pod that had been his home since he’d escaped the crippled Starlight Journey. He quickly grabbed his EM rifle from where it leaned against the far wall. A slide of his thumb activated the parallel capacitors that immediately came to life with an audible hum. With the gun in his right hand, his left snapped out like an angry cobra to grab the utility belt that held his extra ammo. He’d barely moved his empty hand before a hot flash of pain ripped through his left arm from the base of his neck to the tips of his fingers. In his haste,, he’d forgotten about the lingering shoulder injury he’d gotten from being tossed around by the monsoon last night.
Sonofabitch, Mal thought amidst a string of even more vivid profanity. Can I still make this work? I don’t have any options. I guess I could close the hatch, but I know that they’ll attack the solar cells if I do. I’m pretty sure the heat they put off is what drew the coatls to the pod in the first place. Even if they were content to trash the place and leave, which I highly doubt, it wouldn’t do me any good if they knocked out my power supply. That would just be a delayed death sentence.
Those thoughts flickered through his mind like the scenes of a holovid playing at 4x speed. By the time he’d turned back toward the open hatch, his decision had been made. For better, or for worse.
In the blink of an eye,, he returned to the hatch and dropped down to one knee. The utility belt made a rattling sound as it fell to the tritanium floor, leaving his left hand free to take hold of the rifle’s handguard. With the practiced motion of a career soldier, Mal planted the stock firmly against his right shoulder and began to aim. The rifle’s muzzle rose into the air like the finger of a vengeful god promising to leave death and destruction in its wake.
Mal took a deep breath as he gauged the range to the nearest coatl. Despite the perilous situation, there was something comforting about being in his element. Ever since he’d splashed down into this strange ocean he’d been forced to adapt to problems that he lacked the skill set to solve. He wasn’t a scientist or an engineer. He was, and always had been, a warrior. To face a challenge that he could overcome with a steady aim and a sharp eye was a validation of the training he had instead of an indictment of what he lacked. A small part of him rebelled at the thought of gleaning so much comfort from unmitigated violence, but a larger part exalted in it. He hadn’t enjoyed this sense of control since the first moment he started drifting across Ryujin’s endless sea.
“Here they come, buddy,” Mal said, his voice calm and his hand as steady as a surgeon’s. “No, I don’t want to have a contest to see who gets the most coatls,” he huffed indignantly without ever taking his eyes off the steadily approaching flock. “Because you’ll cheat! How am I supposed to count yours after you eat them?”
The flying serpents were close now. Near enough that the muzzle of Mal’s rifle began to bob in time with the beat of their leathery wings. His index finger tightened against the trigger like a noose cinching around the neck of a condemned man.
Then, as one, the coatls shrieked a tuneless cry of murder and mayhem that would have humbled a banshee. Out of the corner of his eye, Mal saw the water churn as Oscar thrashed against the sonic onslaught. The Chief yearned to flinch away at the raucous noise shredding his eardrums. Instead,, he clenched his jaw and responded the same way he would have to any attack.
He returned fire.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
When Mal squeezed the trigger, his EM rifle chuffed like a giddy boar as it spat a shard of tritanium at Mach 5.2. The fifteen-gram round cleared the distance between Malik and his target at the speed of thought. The unlucky coatl that Mal had picked out of the crowd vanished in a spray of bloody mist and ragged meat. The force behind the shot easily carried it through its target and the wing of a coatl behind it.
Mal was already lining up his second shot as the one winged coatl plummeted toward the rolling waves with a scream of defiance.
His blue eyes blinked once, then focused with the intensity of a jeweler cutting the impurities from a diamond. Again his rifle sang with a deep bass note when a squeeze of it's trigger sent his next bullet hurtling through the air at hypersonic speeds. As tough as the coatl’s aquamarine scales may be, they offered no more protection than so much tissue paper in the face of the overwhelming force that Malik brought to the battlefield.
A second flying snake vaporized amidst its kin, leaving behind only a single shredded wing that fluttered forlornly toward the water below. A third coatl vanished from the sky, then a fourth as Malik fell into a rhythm that would make the Grim Reaper proud.
The muzzle of Malik’s rifle swayed through the air like a conductor’s wand directing a symphony destruction. He managed to snuff the life from five more flying snakes before the flock took evasive action. The coatls suddenly spread out, expanding across the sky to increase the empty space between them. Not expecting the change in tactic, Mal's shot went wide when the creatures scattered like startled pigeons.
A frown tugged at the corner of his lips as he lined up another shot. They were close now. Close enough that their raucous shrieks were driving a hot spike of discomfort into his skull. It was almost enough to make him forget the white hot spark of pain in his left shoulder when he ejected the magazine from his rifle. He hissed like a crippled tiger as he jerked one of the magazines out of his belt to slam it into the rifle’s mag well.
Though the delay in his anti-aircraft fire was short, the coatls seemed to sense a moment of weakness. As one, the flock surged forward upon frantically beating wings. By the time Malik raised the muzzle of his rifle they were close enough to encircle the floating lifepod. He had time to put a tritanium shell through two more beasts before he heard the unmistakable thump of monsters landing on the roof of the pod.
“Could use a little help here, Oscar,” Mal mumbled under his breath as his EM rifle blasted another coatl from the sky. Looking rapidly for a new target, he almost missed the winged serpent silently swooping toward him from the right. It’s wings were closed in a sharp dive that had its viciously curved talons aimed directly at Malik’s head. The creature’s lizard-like maw was open wide in a malevolent grin filled with jagged shark’s teeth. In moments those wickedly plentiful teeth would be buried in Mal’s neck.
Reflex took over and he threw himself backwards. For one frozen moment the coat's talons continued to angle towards him as he retreated deeper into the pod. Then his fall carried him out of the creature’s reach. His left shoulder hit the floor. Hard. But with adrenaline filling his blood with preternatural resilience, he didn’t feel a thing. His entire being was laser focused on the ‘fight’ portion of fight or flight. Malik’s whole world consisted of the pod’s hatch and the coatl that unfurled its wings with a scream of anger. Unwilling to be denied its prey, the winged snake made to land at the edge of the open hatch.
Malik casually brought his rifle up and shot it in the head.
The beast’s eyeless head exploded in a fountain of gore. Malik, and the inside of the pod, became covered in a coat of hot, sticky, red paint. Malik immediately began spitting blood from his lips and wiping the red mess from his eyes. But even as fast as he took action, it wasn’t fast enough. A second coatl settled on the corpse of the first with a triumphant scream.
It’s scream was cut short as the water outside erupted like an angry volcano. Water surged into the pod, mixing with the red layer that already covered the floor. The source of the sudden watery blast was a prehistoric alligator who’s snout was too large to fit through the open hatch.
But not too large to take hold of the coatl’s splayed wings. The uninvited guest screamed in pain when Oscar’s massive teeth sank through its thin wings. It writhed in the leviathan’s grasp for a fluttering heartbeat before it was jerked from the pod and pulled beneath the churning waves.
Mal would have whooped in celebration if he hadn’t been so preoccupied with saving his utility belt. The slosh of water created by Oscar’s dynamic entrance had washed the belt with all his extra ammunition to the very edge of the hatch. Desperate to save his irreplaceable resources, Mal scrambled his way over the headless coatl corpse and dove for the dyneema belt before it could tip over the edge and plunge into the abyss.
His fingers closed around the belt just in time to see another coatl diving toward the hatch. For the second time Mal retreated deeper into his pod, hastily crawling backwards over the corpse in the floor to create space between himself and this new challenger. It landed with a shriek that rang through the pod like a demonic bell. It’s sharp talons clicked against the tritanium floor as it folded its wings in tight against it’s sinuous body. He barely managed to get his feet underneath him before the monster surged forward in a frenzy of snapping teeth.
What followed with a desperate retreat as Mal conceded territory to the slavering mouth trying to rip his throat out. The monster struck with the speed of a viper, alternating it’s approach from the left to the right as it followed Malik’s weaving stance. Each strike of its jagged teeth drove Malik deeper into the pod where he would become trapped against the far wall. Thankfully, for all its physical tools, the coatl still possessed the intellect of a wild animal. After baiting the creature into falling into a predictable pattern, Malik abruptly stepped into one of its strikes as he brought the butt of his rifle up high over his head. Caught off guard by the suddenly close quarters, the serpent tried to retreat.
Malik ended it’s life by bringing the stock of his rifle down onto its eyeless skull with a sickening crunch.
Breathing hard, Mal looped his belt over his shoulder and brought his rifle back up into the ready position. Measured steps took him around the two coatl corpses with the muzzle of his gun constantly trained on the world beyond the pod’s open hatch. If anything came past the threshold again, he would be ready.
It was almost a disappointment when he reached the edge of the door of the pod and saw the remaining coatls winging it toward the western horizon.
The lifepod was safe. Malik was alive. Oscar was fed.
The War Upon the Waves had been decisively won.