“Shoo. Shoo.” She couldn’t pronounce the human’s name correctly… her short muzzle just didn’t want to make the proper sound. But Xiù had always known when she was being addressed. She didn’t respond now; the alien was staring down at her open hands, hairless but spotted with the greenish blood of the Locayl.
Ayma hadn’t seen the first brute die, but she’d been hypnotized along with everyone else as the second met his end even as he tried to escape. Xiù had crossed the room in an eyeblink and shoved him into the nutrient sphere dispenser, leaping high and following it up with another hit from her leg. The impact had crushed him against the dispenser, crumpling it and spilling a stream of round nutrient spheres across the floor.
Ayma had been terrified and infuriated at the same time. Terrified because this alien, this human who she’d allowed to play with the cubs for ten-days, had crushed two of the cruelest mercenaries available for hire as if they were nothing. Infuriated, because this alien could crush these mercenaries as if they were nothing, and yet she’d cowered along with the rest of them for ten-days as Gaoians were plucked from their cage for experimentation and death. Then Ayma saw Xiù’s face, and recognized the horror there: She’s never killed before! She didn’t know she could do this!
Of course… an uncontacted species! It made Ayma feel better and worse at the same time.
“Shoo,” she said again, carefully taking hold of the alien’s hand, making sure her small claws were retracted before she did. Xiù flinched, jerking out of her grip, and Ayma forced herself to take hold again, not thinking of what those hands could do. “Shoo, we have to go!” Xiù just stared blankly.
Ayma reluctantly let go, turning to the others to help calm the cubs and get those who were still feeling the effects of the pain-sticks to their feet. The door was still open, this was their one opportunity, and they couldn’t waste it. They owed Xiù but they couldn’t make her move nor spend time convincing her… there was always the chance the door could be operated remotely.
With that in mind she hustled everyone out the door to gather themselves safely out of their cell. Ayma had barely made it out herself when the door began to slide down, either commanded by remote or activated by a timer. “Shoo!” She made a mournful sound.
The door was three-quarters closed – just above a Gaoian’s low hips – when clawless digits grabbed hold of it from underneath. Ayma heard the motors inside the walls groan as they struggled against the obstructing force; the door still moved, but barely. The whine climbed in pitch for several heartbeats, until Xiù ducked under and let it go.
The human met Ayma’s gaze. She shivered as if cold, the thick coat she’d been captured with and used as a pillow while she slept left behind, but her eyes were clear.
“Good,” Ayma said. She turned away, sniffing at the air, using her nose to try and choose a direction. She was reasonably certain they were on a planet, and an open window was the best she was hoping for. Picking a direction, she moved forward with a confidence she didn’t really feel. “This way!”
Ayma was the eldest female, so the others looked to her for leadership… but she wished it hadn’t fallen upon her. She had no idea what she was doing, not that she’d admit that to the others. So she lead them and hoped for the best.
They got lucky in that they didn’t meet any resistance within the prison wing. Soon they found themselves in among what was obviously a lab complex; the walls were high and white, coated in polymers that helped them resist damage, bacteria… and blood stains, Ayma thought grimly. Opening the odd door revealed the labs themselves and their Corti occupants, confirming for Ayma the nature of their kidnappers.
One particular lab contained a Corti scientist that Yulna recognized, her remaining eye blazing with fury. She leaped at him with a snarl, and half of the other females followed to help; when they were done the Corti would trouble no one else except the cleaning droids. Ayma glanced over at Xiù, who had watched the massacre with wide eyes.
Shortly afterward they encountered the first squad of guards sent to recapture them. Ayma smelled them before she saw them, but when the first Mjrnhrm rounded the corner, a pain-stick held high in one pincer, it still took them all by surprise. The stick struck Ayma across the face, and she fell with a shriek of pain, her entire body shaking with convulsions. The insectoid raised the stick to hit another, but Xiù leaped in between, taking the blow across her raised upper limb. Fighting the betrayal of her own body, Ayma was still able to see the crippling blow do little to the human; Xiù screeched but didn’t fall, and her foot snapped out and crushed the joint on the Mjrnhrm’s right foreleg. He tipped, emitting a high-pitched cry, and the human spun. Mjrnhrm weren’t as big as Locayl, but they still towered over the little human; it didn’t matter as he collapsed and Xiù’s leg reached as high as her own head in a spinning kick. The Mjrnhrm’s head was torn clean from his shoulders, flying off to bounce against the far wall and putting its blood-resistant coating to the test with a splatter of beige slime.
Ayma watched as Xiù was frozen again by shock at the worst time. The Mjrnhrm wasn’t alone; another came up behind, and seeing his partner killed so easily he dropped his pain-stick and went for the holster around his thorax. Before any of them could react he pulled his pulse pistol. Xiù stared uncomprehendingly as he aimed and shot her in the chest. The human reeled backwards.
Ayma had recovered enough to cry out, but the shocked sound was cut off in her throat as Xiù recovered her balance. She didn’t fall, though by rights her chest should have been a ruin of powdered bone and bruised organs. Not only could she still breath, but she was snarling, her teeth bared ferociously as she flung herself at her assailant.
The thug was as shocked as any of them, but he aimed the pistol to try again. Xiù moved more quickly than she had even in the prison room; she swept within his reach, an open hand parrying the insectoid’s extended limb. She swept it down in a circle and her other hand snapped around against the limb’s joint. There was a crunch of chitin and the limb was torn away, the pistol still held in the now-limp pincer.
Xiù dropped the severed limb, and the Mjrnhrm didn’t even have time to cry out before her open hands slammed into his thorax, sending him flying backwards. He crashed against the wall and slid to the floor, unmoving.
The other three members of the five-sapient team, all Locayl, surged around the corner and halted, aghast, at the sight of their two dead team members. Then Xiù was leaping at them, and they had no time to think.
Xiù was becoming deaf to the crack of bone, blind to the colour of beige or green blood.
The group was advancing steadily forward… they’d progressed beyond the labs and were now in what seemed to be office areas. Some of the rooms contained the aliens who looked like the Roswellian greys, but those aliens had no desire to fight, instead choosing to run or hide. Except for the one alien that the one-eyed raccoon had had a special hate for, the group didn’t bother with them.
A few of the offices had windows, and Xiù now knew they were on a planet. A barren planet that looked a lot like a beige version of Mars. She was on an alien planet. It was amazing and momentous and she desperately wished it was someone else in her place… a soldier, maybe, or a scientist.
They’d met two more groups of soldier-aliens, slightly larger groups each time. Their enemies weren’t interested in capturing them anymore, as they always opened fire with their energy weapons as soon as they caught sight of them, spitting out bolts of white light. Three of their number had been cut down already – two fatally, if she understood the mournful sounds of her partners. It proved her suspicion that the raccoon-like aliens were just as fragile as their captors… or, more accurately, that Xiù was as far more durable. Twice Xiù had thoughtlessly thrown herself in front of Ayma and taken hits that she was sure would have killed her alien friend; the impacts had hurt, like a solid punch, but no worse.
When they met such resistance Ayma and the others would fall back and take shelter, and leave Xiù to her work.
The first encounters had been slaughters. She’d still been frightened and angry, and the insectoid aliens were terrifying… she didn’t like bugs! But she still had to defend the others, and so she’d fought desperately. Her form had been horrible; Sifu would have made her clean the guan top to bottom twice if he’d seen it! She hit too hard and barely maintained her balance while kicking. The adrenaline flooding her system had made her sloppy, and in between fights she would shiver as her heart raced.
Still she won. The insectoids were terrifying, their carapaces shiny and hideous, but they cracked like glass beneath her strikes and spewed horrible beige fluids onto her hands and clothing. She already knew the behemoths couldn’t take a hit, but every time one of the big creatures broke underneath her palms it surprised her. One had grabbed her arm and drew back two of his other fists to hit her… she’d countered without thinking, twisting her wrist, and his grabbing arm had splintered, bending where even she knew it wasn’t supposed to. Her retaliating palm-strike to his chest had produced another popping sound and sent him flying into his squadmates, knocking them down like tenpins. He hadn’t gotten back up.
Her fright had eventually turned to incredulity, and then a grim inner chill.
Xiù knew how stupid it was to wish for a fair fight… they were fighting for their lives and freedom. And yet… she didn’t feel like a freedom fighter. She felt like an executioner. There was no honour to be had, no sense of accomplishment; she stormed through them as easily as she might have kicked and punched her way through a playground at recess. Xiù was forced to revise her earlier revelation: she wasn’t merely the alien… she was the alien monster. It wasn’t as satisfying as she thought it might be.
She allowed herself to ease back, to concentrate on her technique and her breath. She’d been wasting energy and her shoulders and thighs burned from the exertion. She rested as she could between encounters, saving her strength for when battle was joined, when she would move like the wind and draw fire away from the others. She would take a few hits from the energy weapons, but once she’d jumped and sprinted into the center of the group they risked hitting each other with every shot.
A few of her enemies had drawn glowing swords (her brother would have been thrilled, he was such a nerd) and nearly sliced her in half, but she dodged the blows and had torn the weapons – and sometimes the hands that held them – from their grips. Rather than pick the swords up herself she left them for her friends, since for some reason the guns wouldn’t work for them. She still had her hands and feet.
With her newfound calm she tried not to kill. She concentrated on her form, her qigong. Her blocks had been sharp and brutal, once even tearing an arm off one of the behemoths; so instead she tried to use chi sao, guiding their blows around and away. Her strikes could crush an alien chest, so she softened, turning them into powerful shoves. Even the largest of the aliens she could fling across a room, where they’d crash into a wall and fall to the ground… down for the count, but still breathing.
She was less careful with the grasshopper aliens, but they triggered every phobia she had and she found it hard to empathize with them. Still, most of them would survive, even if many were lacking limbs when she was done. They were still the bad guys, she reminded herself.
When she forced herself to relax it actually let her move faster and last longer, and her movements confused and frustrated the enemy. It was less effective than the raw terror she’d inspired before, of course, but was also less of a burden on her own spirit. And it was funny watching the behemoths trying to hit or shoot her when she was in her low stances – they never seemed to think of kicking her. Perhaps being short wasn’t all bad.
Ayma had never thought they’d make it so far. She fought because she had to; lead because no one else would. She was lucky that her guesses so far had been accurate. She’d simply thought of how the males on Gao tended to act: concerned about image and power, seeking opulence for themselves and their friends. So she’d simply aimed their group in the direction of the offices with the most decoration, the finest carpets. So far it seemed to be working. But they’d have been stopped the moment they’d stepped out of the prison wing were it not for the engine of destruction, this human, that they’d allied themselves with.
Xiù came from a heavy-gravity world, Ayma was sure of it. It explained her strength and speed. It explained her durability, and why she ate so much… her skeleton and musculature must be far denser than the average sapient. It explained why the floor quivered when she ran, as those long legs hammered against the floor… vibrations that Ayma hadn’t noticed in their prison because Xiù walked softly, unconsciously hiding her power.
By unspoken agreement they left the bulk of the fighting to the human. Ayma had picked up one of the dropped fusion swords, and she and Hamfa and Garun stood guard over the others and the cubs. Only once had they had to cut down an attacking Locayl… the rest never made it past Xiù, who could dash down a hallway and be within melee before they could react.
Ayma had heard of tornadoes – though no sensible sapient lived on a world that produced them – and Xiù was a living version. It was all the more astonishing because Amya recognized the attacks the alien female used… although disjointed and out of order, she was unquestionably using the same movements she’d demonstrated in her dancing, applied faster than the eye could follow and with all the strength her compact, powerful body could generate. It should have been comical, to see a squad of mercenaries attacked by a little alien half their height and a tenth their bulk, but her hands shattered their limbs, knocking them to the floor. If she was particularly pressed she would jump, lashing out with her feet in sweeping arcs that crushed skulls. As she watched, Ayma could only think of the steady, elegant movements that Xiù would practice alongside little Myun.
She danced and her enemies died. What kind of creatures were these humans, that they made combat – the distribution of injury and death – an elegant, perhaps even beautiful process?
The first two squads that tried to stop them were wiped out to the last sapient, blood and gore coating the walls and Xiù’s clothing. She was a nightmare, a creature from a holovid, and though Ayma knew they needed her it was impossible to feel safe in the presence of something that killed so easily.
After the second group, though, something changed in the way Xiù would fight. Instead of the sharp, deadly movements, the human began concentrating on defence. Once the pulse pistols were torn out of manipulators and tossed away or crushed underfoot, the alien female would slow her pace, going after limbs and legs. At first Ayma thought she was playing with her victims, but it soon was obvious that although she threw mercenaries into walls or each other with force that seemed impossible for such a small body, and the thugs rarely stood up again afterward, they were still breathing.
So the humans knew mercy as well. It made Ayma feel much better. Gaoian females were expected to do whatever was necessary to protect their cubs and each other, and what was necessary could be grim indeed. But they never went that far unless they had to. Were Xiù’s people the same?
The group ended up in front of a pair of large double doors, carved with mechanical precision from the wood of a Cortian schweet tree and varnished by nanobots with durable diamond coating. Ayma knew from her limited readings of interstellar trade that such doors cost enough to supply a colony with a fusion power unit. Without a doubt, these were the doors to the administrator of the facility which had trapped them.
Her claws slid from their sheaths as her paw gripped her fusion sword tightly. Her clan and their cubs stood behind her, ready; she glanced over at Xiù and saw the human watching her, ready to follow her lead.
She actually wondered if Xiù had the strength to kick in the door as she reached for the trigger pad. Corti, Gaoians, and humans were all similar in height, so the pad was at a comfortable height. She was surprised when the door opened without complaint, and she stepped inside cautiously, her eyes and nose active.
She knew someone was inside, but she was still taken by surprise as a six-fingered hand seized the back of her neck and pulled her to the side. The Corti who had hidden beside the door used his other hand to press a pulse pistol to the side of her muzzle. Xiù made an angry noise, lurching forward, but before she could close the distance another hand from the other side of the door grabbed her lower arm and wrenched her away, hurling her aside with a whine of servos. If Ayma needed any confirmation of how heavy Xiù was she got it as the human crashed into a small table in a lounge area to the side of the large office, crushing it beneath her.
From beside the door stomped a bulky, humanoid figure. The newcomer was shaped like a Corti, but far bulkier and slightly taller. The creature’s head was slender and whiplike, looking out of place as it stuck out from between the brawny shoulders. The head had a pair of bulbous eyes and a single horizontal line for a mouth, the corners of which were bent downward in displeasure.
Allebenellin, Ayma’s memory supplied. A wormlike race famous for their prosthetics and avarice. The creature’s entire body was synthetic, mechanical… and it gave him the strength to challenge the human.
Xiù staggered to her feet, breathing heavily, but hesitated as she saw the weapon held to Ayma’s head. At the door the other Gaoian females did the same, growling and spitting in anger.
“That will be quite enough of that kind of language, thank you,” said the Corti, and Ayma’s eyes went wide as she realized he had a translator. “I’m quite impressed that you’ve made it so far, but your little escapade stops here. If you don’t wish to meet your ends so much sooner, I’d advise you to put down your weapons and surrender.”
“You expect us to calmly walk back to our cage and await vivisection?” Ayma snapped, but she let the fusion sword drop to the floor unlit as he ground the emitter of the pistol against her cheek warningly.
“Don’t be ridiculous, we don’t plan to vivisect all of you. Five, maybe six. After that, what more is there to learn? The rest of you will help with viral research, chemical agent testing, and cosmetics. Your contribution to science will be small but important,” the Corti explained calmly. “I’m afraid your friend there, however, won’t be joining you. Captain Mij here is rather put out about her crippling his mercenary company. His contract didn’t include risk provisions… he didn’t think they were needed. You know how annelids are.”
“Trig…” Mij growled warningly.
“Why did you take her? Why did you take any of us?” Ayma demanded.
The Corti, Trig, sighed. “You want me to monologue, do you? Fine. I took you all for science. You and your brethren are simply the means to fulfill my main contract. It’s just work… nothing personal until you decided to make it such. The human was for a side project. I’d heard rumours of the species, and they’re almost certainly going to end up under a quarantine, so I wished to fetch a specimen before that occurred. Their homeworld is only a small diversion from your colony, so I asked the ship to obtain one. I thought a female would be more docile.”
Ayma couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Contracts? Science? Her mouth moved of its own accord. “Docile? You really are a bunch of shut-in nerds, aren’t you?”
The pistol pressed more firmly. “Mistakes were made,” he growled. “Such is science. Captain Mij, feel free to fix the mistake.”
“Right, boss,” the Allebenellin said, stomping forward.
Xiù had watch uncomprehendingly as they spoke, but as Mij approached her she lowered her body, extending her hands in front of her as she often would during her dances. Mij swung a cybernetic punch at her, but she pushed it aside. Hopping back a step, she hooked one of the low-slung chairs with her foot and flung it at her opponent, who smashed it aside.
Trig sighed again. “Preferably without completely destroying my office, Captain!”