Stray Cat Strut

Chapter Fifteen - Worm

“Little is truly known about what happens in a hive. Not because of a lack of research, but because the means to destroy a hive leave little left to research. What we do know is that the Antithesis are not a species made up of individuals, or even a proper colony. Hive is a misnomer. We have spent too long thinking of extraterrestrial life in a way that is easy for us to understand.

The Antithesis are not ants, they are not termites, they are not insectile in nature, or mammalian. If anything they share more in common with plants. Ambulatory, devastating, violent plants.”

--Professor Heinlein, excerpt from a lecture on the knowledge gained from early Antithesis studies (thereafter called Alien Anthropology), 2028.

***

I pulled back and hid behind the corner not a moment before I felt all of my blood going cold. That had been, in my not-so-humble opinion, terrifying.

The lack of noise from the aliens was alarming. Alarming-ish. Or maybe not alarming, but it made them scarier, and harder, to deal with. I sort of wished they had the courtesy to announce their presence.

I tightened my grip around my Trench Maker, then flicked my thumb over the safety. The gun made a tiny humming noise and I felt things shifting within it. The reticule floating in my vision flashed orange.

I looked down the other end of the corridor. I could still leave. They hadn’t heard me coming, which meant that maybe they wouldn’t see me going either.

And then, when we crossed over with all the kids, they would be right there waiting for us. I grit my teeth and held back a swear. The last thing I needed was to be disemboweled because I couldn’t keep a lid on my dirty mouth.

I shifted so that I was in more of a crouch, then held my gun close to my side. It wasn’t how the heroes in the movies held their guns, but the heroes usually had an extra arm, and in the older movies they didn’t have a red circle telling them where their bullets would land.

I took one last breath, then moved.

The first Model Three never saw it coming. It was still staring off down the far end of the corridor when the red circle of my reticule lined up with the side of its head.

I yanked the trigger back, winced as that pulled my aim off, then winced harder when the gun barked in my hand. The noise was nearly deafening, and if it wasn’t for the knowledge that there were more beasts I might have flinched hard enough to drop the Trench Maker.

Luck, or some poor half-rate equivalent, was on my side as my first shot punched a hole into the back of the Model Three’s head.

The second spun around and rushed towards me, huge paws thumping on the ground even as its jaw opened wide to take a chunk out of me.

I fired into it once, then for good measure twice more before jumping to the side.

The Model Three flopped by, its body ragdolling over the ground.

You only hit that one twice.

“Not now!” I said. Myalis’ snark was cute, welcome even, but this wasn’t the time.

I brought my gun around to point it right at the huge worm thing and... and it wasn’t really moving towards me.

That wasn’t entirely true. Its sides were undulating and moving about where it wasn’t covered in bands of scale. Tiny little legs, no longer than one of my fingers, poked out from the overlapping scales and scratched at the floor as the worm wiggled away.

I looked out ahead and spotted a few bodies laying on the ground, most in plain clothes, but a few looked like they worked in the nearby shops. And, at the far end of the corridor, a hole was blasted through one of the windows. The slime slick leading from the hole to the worm told me everything I needed to know about where it came from.

Most models numbers between Eight and Ten are considered utilitarian, or specialized. This is a Model Eight. They are harmless.

“Harmless my ass,” I said. The worm was moving over to some poor twenty-something that looked like he’d been mauled. The smell wafting over from him had me recoiling, but I’d been made to clean out the orphanage bathrooms enough times to be able to ignore it for a bit.

The worm, the Model Eight, opened its mouth wide and started to grab onto the boy’s legs.

“Fuck,” I said as I raised my gun.

Three shots later I paused to let the ringing in my ears fade away. The worm was bleeding from three pinprick holes in its side, but didn’t seem to care one whit. Its jaw opened wider and a few little tentacles pulled out of it and grabbed onto the corpse.

I’m afraid that it’s rather useless. Killing that right now is possible, but you don’t have the ammunition on hand to destroy every one of its brains. Nor do you have the time to find a more creative way to kill it.

“Brains? Plural?” I asked.

One for every segment, yes. Albeit a very simple brain, as far as those go.

I counted the sections of the worm’s body, and gave up after twenty or so. “And it won’t attack me?” I asked.

No. Not even if provoked. Model Eights are used to transport biological elements from one part of an Antithesis hive to another. That is all they do. Aggression is beyond them. They are worth few points. Speaking of...

Targets Eliminated!
Reward... 20 Points!

Well done, Catherine! Your current point total is resting at a comfortable twenty-seven.

“I can’t just let that thing eat people!” I said.

I don’t wish to be the bearer of bad news, but if you do not begin to move soon, there will be a lot more people being eaten today.

I tightened my grip on my handgun. “Damn,” I said.

Looking past the model eight, I looked towards the hole in the far wall. It looked as if something big had rammed into the building, tearing apart one of the glass walls and the railings bhind it before falling or flying off. One of the bigger flying aliens, or a hover car maybe. I didn’t matter.

I inched past the worm and towards the far end of the corridor. I assumed that any other nasty aliens would have run over at the sound of gunfire. The lack of them was comforting.

The hole in the glass revealed part of the city I couldn’t see from the other end of the building. Smoke rose up, obscuring large parts of the world, but it left enough visible for me to see that the incursion stretched out all across the lower parts of New Montreal, past the island proper, and into the suburbs beyond.

There had to be millions of people in the middle of it all.

A red flash across the sky was accompanied by three dozen tiny black specks falling back to earth. I could just barely make out the form of someone way off in the distance, hovering over the eviscerated form of one of the giant ship-worms that had come down to Earth.

Hundreds of tiny flying forms darted out towards the floating figure.

It waved an arm their way and a shower of red beams wiped the air clean.

I wondered how many xenos had died right there, how many points had been made.

It seems that other Vanguard are hard at work. No doubt the local armed forces are making a stand as we speak.

“You think they’ll be able to clean this up?” I asked. The city wasn’t in ruins, but I saw one skyscraper entirely on fire some five blocks down, and the air traffic that usually congested the sky was almost all alien.

I don’t doubt it. This is a small-to-medium sized incursion. It will take some weeks to clear it out entirely, but humanity is nothing if not tenacious. Soon this area will be repopulated and growing once more, the dead will be replaced by newly born humans and your species will continue to flourish.

“Hmm,” was all I could say.