Of Men and Spiders

Ben watched for hand signals as Archer led the way through the tunnels. Being in Archer's group was both a blessing and a curse. The man was a legend on the crew, with a kill count in the hundreds. Rumors have it he'd be running the ship, except he prefers slitting throats from the shadows to bossing people around. His commands came in the form of a complicated set of hand signals. There was a bet among the crew as to whether he was silent by choice or if there'd been some sort of horrible accident rendering him mute, but no one was stupid enough to try and find out, so it remained unresolved.

They'd been following a relatively straight line through one empty room after another when Archer signaled for a halt. Ben held his gun in an easy position, ready to take aim at any movement as he watched one hallway while the other guys covered theirs. Meanwhile, Archer started walking around the room, tapping on the walls for some reason.

It went on like that for a minute or two. Ben wanted to stop and ask Archer what he was looking for, maybe offer to help, but there was something about the man that just screamed for silence, so he stayed quiet.

Eventually, Archer found a spot where he slowed and kept tapping around the same area, leaning close in his suit as if listening to something. After a few repetitions, he stopped and stood back, then shouldered his rifle, pointing it at the wall.

Ben didn't know if the odd surfaces of the cave would make the bullets ricochet or not, so he dove low, covering his ears for all the good it would do. After the silence of their search, the loud crack of the weapon firing was borderline deafening, so it took Ben a moment to realize not only were the bullets not ricocheting, but they were punching holes in the wall...large holes as if it was hollow. A moment later, the wall collapsed, and Archer signaled they should move through the new opening.

As Ben carefully walked over the fallen wall, it was clear it was leaking some sort of organic fluids, and some of the debris made it look like legs had been attached to the thing. He steered well clear of the legs, trying not to look too closely. This was probably one of those situations that were better to think about with distance and the benefit of hindsight rather than trying to focus on it now.

As they followed the path, Archer led them into a new room. However, this one wasn't empty like the rest had been. Giant spiders with pincers crawled around what looked like pulsating fleshy growth suspended between the floor and ceiling. At least they had been before they opened fire.

The spiders died quickly enough, falling after several shots from the smaller firearms of the fireteam or a single bullet from Archer's high-powered rifle. It only took a few minutes to clear the room. That just left the creepy fleshy growths in the room. Archer was currently staring at a spot where a stray shot had pierced the flesh. Ben was just about to ask what they should do about it when Archer grabbed a grenade, pulled the pin, and jammed it into the hole left by the stray shot. Seeing this, everyone cleared the room into the hall, after which a loud "whump" sound indicated detonation.

Walking back into the room, it was clear something had changed, and not just the lack of spiders crawling around. The suspended flesh no longer pulsated. It just hung limply from the few strands still holding it up. Whatever it had been, it looked dead now.

Archer examined the thing, a thoughtful expression on his face as he uttered the first sound Ben had ever heard escape from the man. "Hmmm"

-

Charlotte watched helplessly as one of her nodes went dark. Thankfully, at least in the short term, the loss of such a node was not significantly disruptive. Due to the recent combat to rescue Alice, She already had few enough selves that the loss of this node had no significant impact on her ability to connect to her appendages. However, in the long term, the loss of each node was substantial, and not just because of the loss of resources.

Each node represented years of experiences and knowledge, and while it had been common practice since her first predecessor's time to create redundancies for each significant memory, losing any node put many memories one step closer to being lost. While specific memories could be tied into her genetic code for safekeeping, there was limited space there, meaning only the most basic ideas could be stored in such a way without fundamental understanding or context.

It was clear Lacy's warning was accurate. Things were not going to go as smoothly with this group. It was time to take a chance and take the fight to them. Luckily, Charlotte had some of her new appendages in the area, ready to strike.

-

Archer had picked another passage, seemingly at random, that led them to what appeared to be a room that dead-ended the hallway. Once again, he started tapping the walls, looking for another hidden doorway.

Eventually, he found what he was looking for again and stood back, raising his gun to take aim. However, before his rifle was in place, the loud "crack" of his weapon discharging echoed through the room. Ben wondered what had happened, only to see Archer looking down at his chest in surprise as he spoke for the first time in anyone's memory. "What the hell..?"

A moment later, the false wall fell, but this time into the room to reveal a woman...a human woman, crouched behind the door. She was holding a rifle similar to Archer's, except hers was pointed right at the man's chest, where his armor was now cracked and splintered. Ben could even see some blood leaking out.

After half a moment's hesitation, Ben brought up his gun to fire at the woman, but even half a moment had been too long as she was already retreating into the tunnel. The other two guys started moving to give chase, but several more false walls moved aside just then, revealing two giant spiders with what looked like a praying mantis growing out of their torsos. However, rather than having claws like a mantis, they had two arms, one of which seemed almost humanoid and another that looked long and tubular.

He didn't know what it was, but when anyone, especially a weird, creepy-looking alien, points something that might be a gun in your direction, the best thing to do is move and move quickly. Ben dove behind the "doorway" just as the creepy monsters started shooting.

The "bullets" looked large and slow, more like a thrown baseball than a bullet, and seemed like they'd be pretty easy to dodge at any significant distance. That's just what the two guys who'd charged further into the room a moment ago tried to do. The first one was somewhat successful, but the second took a shot right to the chest. At first, nothing seemed to happen. It bounced off him, then landed on the ground, but then a small cloud seemed to emanate from it, more than just the dust it kicked up from the floor could account for. The cloud surged up toward the man, and he started screaming.

Unwilling to wait longer, Ben aimed at the closest monster and fired a handful of rounds. Several hit his target, and he could see fluid oozing out of the wounds, but rather than drop the creature, it seemed to draw its attention as it raised its gun appendage to aim toward Ben.

-

Charlotte was pleased with the results of her experiment. This one combined her fifth predecessor's swarming organism with something loosely based on human firearms. Of course, there was room for refinement. The projectiles were a little too large and slow-moving, and the pheromones on the tip of the projectile applied only to the surface of her opponent, meaning the swarm would only consume a portion of the victim's dermal layer. But with some time, She could reduce the size, increase the projectile speed, and refine the chemical propellant for more speed and accuracy. Additionally, if She could make it so the egg sacks could penetrate the body, they'd eat their enemy from within like a parasitic organism.

Still, for an untested trial organism, these were quite effective. Even as Charlotte finished off the second unarmored person in the room, She took aim at the third hiding behind the door. But that was when the armored human struck, reaching out and grabbing the extended arm of her new appendage, squeezing until it collapsed in on itself, rendering the firing portion of her appendage ineffective. However, it was clear that, unlike the one she'd faced in the open field, this one was severely injured, as it desperately covered the spot where its armored shell had been cracked with its free hand.

Sensing a point of vulnerability, Charlotte lashed out with her appendage's functioning hand, slamming the human's armored hand into the cracked portion of the armor as hard as She could. The human fell back, coughing, as the remaining unarmored human fired off still more rounds into the injured appendage until it ceased functioning.

Charlotte turned her remaining appendage to fire at the cracked portion of the armored human.

-

One of the monsters was dead, but the other was now shooting at Archer, who'd dropped his weapon and was screaming in pain. While the armor still provided some protection, apparently, it wasn't totally effective at keeping those things away from the man any longer. So much for the silent monster Ben had thought him to be. Not that he could blame the man. He was reasonably sure the other voice he heard screaming incoherently was his own, seeing as the other two guys in their fire team were already dead.

Ben didn't care if Archer was still in the room. That thing needed to die. So he ran in and grabbed one of the grenades on Archer's belt, pulled the pin, and tossed it at the thing's feet, diving behind the remains of one of the other guys as he did so. This time, the sound of the explosion was much louder than before.

As the debris cloud cleared, Ben could see Archer on his knees. Injured but still alive, and a moment later, the thing came into view, now a broken and mangled mess. Archer nodded to Ben and spoke again. "Good thinking."

He'd been worried the silent killer would take revenge for endangering him, but thankfully, he seemed to realize that while the grenade might have endangered his life, it had been their best chance at getting out of here alive.

Now, Ben just had to figure out how to backtrack the way they'd come...

-

After the sound of an explosion followed by a silence that meant the fighting was over, Lucy moved forward just in time to see two pirates had apparently survived. Her right arm was already bruised and aching from firing that monster of a gun just once, but thankfully, she'd trained extensively with firing from either hand and took aim with her left.

Two quick shots to the chest of the unarmored pirate were enough to drop him quickly. The armored one started to stand but was clearly unsteady on his feet. Lucy lept forward, kicking the suit right in the damaged portion of the frame for all she was worth, collapsing the man onto the ground. As he lay there groaning, Lucy shoved the gun through his cracked armor.

Through the pain, the man managed to get off one last sentence. "Cooper is going to kill you all!" Then, Lucy fired off several rounds, ensuring the job was done.

Once she was done, Lucy looked around at the carnage of the room, turning her attention to the smaller spider version of Charlotte, who was acting as her guide through these tunnels. "Are you okay? Does losing bodies like this hurt you or anything?"

Charlotte answered promptly as though nothing were wrong. "I do not experience pain as you understand the sensation, but it is not pleasant to lose an appendage. It's like losing a portion of my mind, and the sensation becomes more impactful the fewer appendages I possess. If we all survive this, it will take me quite some time to recover from this day's events..."

Lucy looked back at the bodies of some of the men, grimacing at the way they'd died. "And people called me the scariest bitch to sail the stars!"

Charlotte was quiet for a moment. "How are you comparable to a female dog?"

Lucy opened and closed her mouth a couple of times before realizing something. "You're just messing with me again, aren't you?"

Even though the mouth spider could not properly emote, Lucy got the distinct impression Charlotte was chuckling as she answered. "Yes, I am, as you said, 'messing with you.'"