Dominant Species Volume One -- Natural Selection (Dominant Species Series) (51 page)

Phil wished that for just ten seconds he could have his .40
caliber Smith with a full magazine, in his hand. He wanted it so bad he could
feel the weapon’s phantom weight. He could drop them all in just that
ten-second time span.

Bailey balled up and continued to whimper. Mary scooted over and
laid her body over Bailey’s as a cover.

“You have caused pain,” the alien croaked.

It was the first time Phil had ever heard one speak English; and,
in spite of the rasping undertone, the syllables were quite clear. The comment
was ludicrous, and Phil laughed out loud at it.

“Good one!” he said. “That’s good. We’ve caused
you
pain.
What a joke!”

Mary joined in, it was difficult to tell whether she was laughing
or crying.

“You’ve tortured thousands of us, killed us! You plan to kill
every last one of us—and we’ve caused
you
pain! What a joke!”

Bailey continued to whimper and squirm.

“You are not important,” the alien said. “The planet has many. You
are one.”

The alien stepped aside and the goons came in. When the shadow of
the big one fell on Bailey, she let out a high pitched whine and drew up
tighter. Mary stared up defiantly and wide eyed at it like a bitch defending
her pup.

“In the shallow seas of my home world lives an organism with no
life of its own,” the alien recounted once again. “It takes from others the
life it needs and returns only pain. We call the organism . . .” the sound of
dry leaves followed” . . . it requires little nourishment and can live on an
organism with your mass for many thousands of your years. We reserve the use of
this parasite for those that offend us, as you have done.”

The sobbing and whining had stopped, leaving only the low moaning
sound of those already damned.

The big goon reached down and pulled Mary up by the arm.

“Let go of me!” she screamed at it and kicked and whacked at it
with her fists. “Let the fuck go! Leave me the fuck alone!”

When Phil moved up to grab the goon, he was greeted with a sharp
sting to his side, just under his ribs that sent him to the floor.
 
His face twisted in a silent scream. He
turned and saw the long extended index finger of the alien, and its pointed tip
through the red light of scalding pain.

The goon lifted the kicking and screaming Mary and carried her in
a bear hug to an unoccupied pedestal. It sat her down on it and the tendrils
sprang to life, cementing her to it as if they’d grown around her.

The smaller goon moved into the chamber, the containers nested in
its huge arms glistened like evil fruit. Through the translucent walls, Mary
could see sloshing fluid and ominous shapes afloat in it.

“Stop,
please, stop!”
Mary wailed
. “Please
stop!”

The sounds from the captive gushed into the mind of the smaller goon
and memories of fists and pain and the taste of blood on loosened teeth sprang
from some forgotten corner of her psyche like weeds. When the larger goon
turned, the smaller one saw the pattern of tattoos on its arms and the word
“Buddy” tried to form in a small lump of brain tissue that was still human.

“Stop.
Please. Stop. Oh, God stop,”
Mary pleaded.

The sound of Bailey’s whimpering rained on the goon’s memories and
fed them, gave them form and life. As the rage built, the goon felt the
strength in its arms and legs as if for the first time.

The witch removed the top from one of the containers and reaching
in, pulled the spherical mass out, its wet tendrils hanging limp. It moved the
parasite toward Mary’s head. Mary leaned back from it as far as physically
possible.

“Ohhhhh
God . . .
 
”

The big goon clamped its hand around the back of Mary’s neck to
hold her still.

The smaller goon felt it as if the captive’s neck was its own.

It dropped the containers and they smashed open with a crash,
sending water and the remaining organisms sliding across the floor. It reached
out and slapped the parasite out of the witch’s hand, sending it flying across
the chamber.

The alpha alien was surprised and puzzled. It turned on the goon
with its finger-sting bared.

The goon snatched the entire bony hand with its own and bent it
backwards like so much straw. The alien screamed in a long mew-like scream.
Phil, getting his strength back, kicked out in a sweep at the witch’s thin
legs, and tumbled it to the floor.

The big goon lashed out with his enormous fist and hit the
smaller’s head, snapping it backwards. The smaller struck with a closed fist
nearly as hammer-like, stunning the larger. The two of them stood there
flailing at each other’s heads with their huge fists, roaring with each blow.

Phil was on the alien in a heart-beat, pinning the ruined hand to
the floor with his knee and sending his own fist into the thing’s midsection
several times. He felt brittle ribs under the loose skin with each punch.

“Kill it, Phil!” Mary said. “Kick it to death!”

Phil started to do just that, sending his booted foot into the
alien’s head and neck in rapid succession.

The big goon grabbed the smaller around the head and wrestled it
to the floor. Holding it down with its superior weight, it punched its
adversary repeatedly in the face with the sound of a sledgehammer against a
side of beef. It soon had the smaller subdued, sitting astride it, bringing its
hands down on its head with massive hammer blows, clearly trying to crush the
smaller’s head.

Phil moved to Mary’s position and started to pull at the
restraining tendrils with both hands. “Bailey! Help me!” he yelled.

Bailey had drawn up into a catatonic knot against one wall, but
seeing Phil fighting to free Mary shocked her out of it. She scrabbled over and
forced her hands under the tendrils, tugging at them with all her strength. The
pencil-thin ropes were tough and would scarcely come loose, let alone break
free.

Phil had a handful almost worked loose when the big goon’s fist
hit his face like a club, sending him over backwards.

Bailey screeched and scooted away from the big bastard before it
could hit her, too.

Phil raised up in a stupor and looked over at the smaller goon. It
was lying flat on its back, motionless. Their brief ally had been beaten
senseless by the larger. Phil tried to get up but felt his legs and arms give
way like putty.

The goon reached down and picked up one of the parasites by the
spherical body and lifted it, tendrils dangling, toward Mary’s head.

“No . .
.”

There was a sound like a loose guitar string being thrummed and
the goon stiffened. When he turned toward the open seam, Phil’s eyes focused
and saw Seseidi’s arrow stuck squarely in the thing’s back. Phil heard the
sound again, and the goon flinched for the second time, then dropped the
parasite with a
splat,
like the sound of a wet mop. When it turned back, its huge hands
were wrapped around the shaft of the arrow stuck in its neck just under its
chin.

The big bastard wobbled and fell like a massive tree, face down on
the witch. The crushing
thump
echoed through the chamber.

Phil looked at Seseidi, who was standing in the seam, smiled his
big white-toothed grin. He yammered something at Phil and waved at them to
get out.

Phil didn’t understand a word, but he agreed about the getting out
part.

The smaller goon rose slowly up and as quick as a fly, Seseidi
readied another arrow and took aim at it, squatting partially on his haunches
at the ready.

“Wait!” Phil said, holding his hand up inches from the arrow’s
tip. Seseidi relaxed the tension on the bowstring but watched the goon with a
wary eye.

The goon crawled slowly over on its hands and knees to the
pedestal holding Mary and started to pull the tendrils off with its powerful
hands. The tough material came away like so much string breaking, popping and
snapping, the ends fluttering and writhing like headless snakes, sending thick
liquid in all directions. When she was able, Mary stood and tugged her leg free
of the last one herself with a deep grunt.

Exhausted now, the goon slumped to the floor and rolled on its
side. When Mary looked closer, she could see dark blood running from its ear
and sinus openings, evidence of deeper, and probably fatal, hemorrhage
inflicted by the brutal hammering.

Mary couldn’t explain it, but she knew it was so as surely as she
knew anything at all:
this is a
female.
And she had saved them all—for
the moment at least.

Mary gently touched the goon’s shoulder. She couldn’t see the
goon’s eyes, but she knew they were there. There was a sound, a single deep
sound that modulated up then down into the approximation of words. Mary
couldn’t make the words out, but she didn’t have to. She rested her hand on the
huge distorted face.

“Thank you, sister,” she said gently.

Seseidi yammered at them. Motioning them to go. He grabbed Bailey
by the arm and helped her to her feet.

“Bailey, move!” Phil barked, putting a fire under her. Bailey
started out of the chamber, darting after the retreating brown form of the Indian.

They ran down the tube, one after the other as fast as they could
go. Seseidi seemed to know exactly where he was going, zipping around corners
just within their sight.

“Where the hell is he taking us!” Phil yelled up.

“I don’t know,” Bailey yelled back. “I’m lost!”

They continued on, running from tube to tube, and Phil was finding
it hard to believe that the Indian could possibly have known where he was.

After minutes had passed, Phil was breathing heavily. “Stop!” he
yelled. “Stop goddamn it!”

Seseidi did, and they ran up on him, nearly stacking up one on the
next. When Phil got to his position, Seseidi was pointing excitedly forward.

Phil looked.

The Indian had led them to the central tube. There was the ship’s
spinal column running the length of it, fused to the floor. Looking down at it,
they could see that it ran the entire length of the ship. It terminated just a
few feet from their position where it ran down into the floor and disappeared.

“How did he know?” Mary asked puzzled.

“Good question,” Phil replied. “Some instinct maybe.”

“I know this spot,” Bailey said and pointed. “Gilbert’s chamber is
right up that tube to the right.”

Mary cast her gaze back down the tube in the opposite direction
where she knew the shuttles, and escape from this dark pit, lay.

Phil walked up to the nerve bundle and rested his hands on it.
There was energy coursing through it—tangible, tactile energy of some kind.

“This must be the point where it goes down to the head,” he said.

“This is the point . . . where we kill it,” Bailey said, and
plucked an arrow out of Seseidi’s quiver. She hauled back to plunge it in.

“Hang on! Stop!” Phil said. “Not so fast.”

Phil did a quick count of the arrows in the Indian’s quiver then looked
at the woven basket still strung around the Indian’s neck. He wondered if there
was enough poison in the arrows to do the job. The frogs in the basket
represented a poison reserve if they needed it. He looked closer at the
enormous cable-like structure and tried to find some weakness, some point of
entry. He felt around with his hands on the rubbery surface of the individual
strands, each about as thick as his wrist. The entire bundle seemed to be made
up of identical strands. All were tightly wound, grown around each other like
vines.

 
He had no clue.

“One arrow into each strand until we’re out of arrows,” he said
soberly. “If that doesn’t do it, we lose.”

Mary and Bailey nodded their heads. So did Seseidi—just to join
in.