Riverboat Fudo-Maru, Iztacatl River
Krandermore, Survivor’s Refuge
4453.2.20 Interstellar
Captain Tanaka turned to see why Mick and Janus were grabbing weapons from the buggies, and she reached up to tug on a rope. A loud bell started clanging in alarm, red lights flashed at the boat’s four corners, and everyone from the sailors to the mechanic and cook clambered up on deck. “All crew! All crew! Stand by to repel boarders!”
Mick clipped a grenade launcher attachment to his assault rifle.
Janus holstered his chem pistol, and he got his helmet on and locked in place.
“What’s happening?” Ryler asked, climbing up from the cargo hold with Lira behind him.
“River monster,” Mick said with a grin. “Better get that fancy stick of yours, priest.”
The crew members were grabbing a mix of high-caliber rifles and harpoons from the ship’s weapon locker.
Fury was going berserk, rushing around and putting her front paws on the railing to look at the river, her mouth smoking like a chimney.
“You keep that critter from setting fire to my ship!” Captain Tanaka hollered from the pilot
“Come here, girl,” Janus said, and Fury scampered over, putting her body behind his legs and craning her neck, the strange, waving frills behind her extended.
Lira grabbed a shotgun from the backseat of her buggy.
Koni joined them from the pilothouse, carrying a harpoon in both hands.
“Wouldn’t you rather have a gun?” Lira asked.
“Gun’s not going to do anything to a tentacarth.”
Janus frowned. “There aren’t any tentacarths—”
An object like a tanker-truck-sized torpedo came up from their rear, moving so fast it threw a plume of water three meters into the air as it overtook them and continued down the river.
“—on this part of the river,” Janus finished.
Fury lifted her snout and howled, except instead of howling, she blew a meter-long flame into the air, roaring like a jet engine.
The plume of water ahead of the boat died down.
“Did Fury just challenge that thing?” Lira asked.
The bell stopped ringing, and everything was quiet on the boat except for the lapping of water and the calls of the sailors.
Boom!
The entire front of Fudo-Maru lifted a meter in the air and came crashing down into the water.
Captain Tanaka threw the wheel to starboard. “Crew to port! Kill that thing!”
Ryler unfolded his staff, and it emitted a low hum.
Boom!
The boat heaved again, but the angle that Captain Tanaka had taken just made the ship turn faster, and the tentacarth came at them over the port side rail.
A massive webbed and clawed hand appeared over the handrail, followed by a creature with a high forehead and forward-facing eyes of a primate and the muzzle of an alligator. Two sets of eyelids blinked river water from the monster’s eyes as it swung a long muzzle to look at the assembled crew, and for a moment, Janus thought it might decide that fighting that many humans was a bad matchup.
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Then the tentacarth stiffened, hand digging into the wooden side of the ship, and it shrieked, heaving itself onto the deck with a crash that made the prow dip dangerously toward the water.
The crew opened fire. Captain Tanaka turned the boat back in the direction of the current, making Janus stumble, but Mick and Lira let loose a steady rhythm of fire from their rifles, just like in training, but the tentacarth didn’t seem to notice. Its upper body was like a giant gorilla’s in anatomy but armored in layers of mossy green scales. Its lower body was a nightmarish tangle of dozens of tentacles ranging from hair-thin stingers to arm-thick grippers. It slithered and rolled forward, smashing one crew member to the deck when he foolishly tried to stab it with a harpoon.
Koni threw her harpoon from four meters away, and the long barbed spear thunked into the tentacarth’s shoulder, burrowing into the meat. The creature flinched, swiping at the wooden shaft with a clawed hand and snapping it into splinters.
“Get that thing off my ship!” Captain Tanaka shouted.
The creature lunged toward Ryler, and he slammed the gravity staff into its knuckles with a crack. Janus snapped off four quick shots from his chem-pistol, dousing the monster’s torso in a fast-acting corrosive agent. Bullets continued to slam into its scales, and it was now smoking.
Koni had retrieved a second harpoon. The creature should have fled.
Instead, it stiffened again, eyes widening in pain, and it let out a powerful shriek that stunned the crew and seemed to make its scales vibrate. Then it coiled its tentacles, pushed off its arms, and snapped a screaming crew member up in its jaws.
The rest of the crew was stunned.
“Kill it!” Koni shouted, and she pitched her second harpoon at the creature’s neck.
The tentacarth knocked the missile out of the air with its right hand as it bit down on the screaming crew member, and he went quiet, blood frothing at his lips.
Ryler crowded the creature against the railing, his grav staff swinging through a slow but impenetrable pattern of rotations.
Fury bellowed a challenge, her fan-like crests extended, and she charged the massive creature.
“Hold your fire!” Mick shouted. “Damn it, Fury!”
Ryler had to step out of the way.
The jungle dragon darted in, and the tentacarth raised a half-dozen tentacles to snatch her up or squash her.
Fury let out a meter-long burst of fire, bathing the river monster’s skin in crackling orange and purple flames, and darted out of the way.
If the tentacarth had thought she was a nuisance before, it gave her its full attention now. It spat the dead crew member out and tore after the jungle dragon, and Fury let it chase.
The two creatures lunged, ran, slithered, and jumped across the deck, bowling humans out of the way.
“Get me another harpoon!” Koni shouted
One of the sailors tried to do the job herself, bracing their harpoon against the deck as Fury and the tentacarth barreled toward the pilot house, but the river monster swiped her out of the way with a braid of tentacles like an afterthought, and the crewmember fell overboard.
“Woman in the water!” a shipmate yelled.
Janus bobbed and leaned to get a clear shot. Fury jumped onto the hood of the front buggy and unleashed an even longer stream of flame at her pursuer, and the tentacarth bellowed in pain, covering its chest and snout with raised arms. As Janus had seen before, the flames didn’t go out even though the tentacarth was covered in water and slime, and the deck of the Fudo-Maru was starting to smell like a fish fry.
Ryler was spinning the grav staff through a dizzying pattern of spins and twirls, and with each rotation, the hum was getting louder.
“Janus!” Koni said, hefting her third harpoon. “Call her!”
Janus’s eyes went back to where the flame dog was making her stand against the tentacarth on the hood of the lead buggy. He’d never trained the wild animal on recall, but he shouted, “Fury, come!”
The jungle dragon didn’t hesitate. She dove off the hood of the buggy, narrowly avoiding getting wrapped up by bundles of tentacles, and the tentacarth came after her in a flailing tangle of appendages.
The jungle dragon had her eyes locked on Janus, running straight for him the way she had in Hayyam.
The tentacarth, still on fire and mad with pain, was charging after her and closing, and that wall of blubber and flesh was heading toward Janus, and he didn’t have anywhere to run.
At the last moment, just as Fury took cover behind Janus’s legs and the tentacarth bunched its tentacles to leap, Ryler stepped in and swung his grav staff, holding it by the end. The silver staff bounced off the river monster like it was made out of rubber, and the monster stopped in its tracks, the laws of momentum momentarily upended.
Koni threw the harpoon. The spear and the wicked barb went in through the tentacarth’s right eye and punched through its cartilaginous skull. The tentacarth’s head sagged backward, spear shaft pointed into the air, and it made a mewling, stringy sound as it lurched toward the side of the ship.
“How is that things still moving?” Lira asked, lowering her weapon.
“Independent neural loops to control the limbs and a central nerve cluster for autonomous control,” Janus said. “It could probably recover from this if it can get the harpoon out, given time.”
“You’re kidding,” Lira said.
There was a loud ping.
“Yeah, not much chance of that, mate,” Mick said, slinging his weapon. He walked up to the tentacarth, grabbed the harpoon haft, and shoved a live grenade into its maw. “Everybody get down!”
Janus grabbed Lira and hit the deck.
The tentacarth exploded, showering the Fudo-Maru with blubber and offal.