Breaking Point

Chapter 9: Severed

Zaid woke up gasping, choking and coughing.  He spat out a mouthful of mucus, watching it drift in a nearly straight line before hitting the wall.  Bitgaram the engineer was shouting at him over the communicator.  He could hear his loud untranslated voice even under the translator.  "Zaid.  Zaid.  Are you all right?  Is everything still good?"

He looked down at his handiwork.  He had successfully split up the joint but some fleshy sinews still held on.  Growling and gritting his teeth he slowly sliced away the remaining sinews until it came clean off.  He lifted himself from the pool of his blood and looked down the hole he had crawled out of.  This had better grow back, he thought.  He grabbed his severed leg and shouted down the hole.  "You want a piece of me?  Huh?  You want a piece of me?  Fine!  Have a piece of me!"  Then he threw the leg down the hole.

"What is going on, Zaid?" asked Bitgaram.  "More trash talk?  You are crazy, you know that?"

He probably doesn't know I just cut off my own leg.  And I'm not going to tell him.  "Yeah, you don't know the half of it."

Bitgaram continued.  "Okay, if you reached the end of the server complex, you are now in the cooling maintenance area.  The system uses liquid helium to cool the resonators and the qubit array.  We cannot replace the helium in the system so you must not damage any of the pipes."

"Got it.  No damaging the pipes."  Zaid got up and pulled himself around the area.  While still not tall enough to fully accommodate his size, he was relieved that there was room to stretch out at least somewhat.  In the microgravity, missing his leg didn't substantially hamper his mobility.  The pain from cutting it off was still there, but after the ripper sting the amputation brought relief in comparison.  The bleeding had already stopped, crusted over by an enormous scab.  At least I don't have much exposed skin to sting anymore.

Much like the medical sector had been, the area looked rather sterile except for the pool of blood where he'd cut his leg off.  They must eat everything, even their own waste, thought Zaid.  As he wound his way around the area, which seemed to make a jagged spiral upward, the silence was deafening.  No sign of any more rippers so far.  No sound at all except for the sounds of Zaid's hands grabbing pipes and handholds to pull himself around, and his own breath.  Strangely enough this was not a relief for Zaid.  Why are they not hanging around here?  Something they don't like?

Finally he reached the end of the cooling spiral, which ended in a service hatch to the next area.

Zaid got his answer.

The area was a huge dome, and seemingly every inch of it was covered in scaly carapace.  At the center where the main antenna should be was a massive bug-structure, covered in black dots that looked just like ripper eyes.  As Zaid took in the scene he could see more of those dots scattered about the area.  More eyes.  Sprouting from the walls and floor were hundreds if not thousands of stalks, some of which were stingers and others were claws, but most of which looked like legs.

What in the name of every god to have ever been worshipped is THAT?

He had heard of insects whose queens were dramatically larger than any others of the species. There were plenty that built hives.  But there were none he knew about whose forms had looked like Dr. Frankenstein had built a hive out of their parts.

There wasn't any time to pontificate.  His gazing in grotesque awe was cut short by a massive claw grabbing him by the waist and lifting him into the air.  The pincers squeezed down on him and he could feel the pressure on his stomach.  If he didn't do anything he'd be crushed like a tin can.  Quickly he transformed his arm to a blade and swiped at the base of the claw, nicking its carapace but unable to get a clean swing.  Back to a hand.  He grabbed at the sides of the pincer and pushed out.  He was strong enough to loosen its grip, but not enough to overpower it outright.  Squeezing himself out of its grip just enough that the titanic claw could close down on his intact leg, he was finally able to get a clean swing at the stalk attached to the claw with his sword-arm.

It wasn't enough.  The claw writhed, whipping Zaid back and forth like a dog with a new chew toy.  His leg slipped through until he was trapped only by his ankle.  The writhing stopped, with Zaid having been slammed against the ground and the tall grass of legs gripping at him, and a few waist-high stingers pecking at his armor like birds picking at bugs.

Zaid had never felt so physically overpowered by another living thing before.  It was humiliating.  It filled him with rage.  Still on the floor he began lashing his sword-arm at some of the stingers, which only upset the abominable creature more.  It whipped him by the ankle again, this time letting go and throwing him to the ceiling where two more smaller pincers grabbed him -- this time one by the arm and the other by the leg.  They began pulling in opposite directions.  He could feel the stretch and he instinctively pulled against them.

He had a moment of clarity.  His right arm was free and the pincers holding him weren't that big of a threat.  So he used the opportunity to start taking pot-shots at anything and everything he could.  All the biggest things he could see, claws, stingers, legs that stretched from ceiling to floor, and finally a few shots at the center mass clump.  The thing let out a disturbing shriek and the pincers released him, letting him fall ever so slowly away from the ceiling.

A bunch of legs around the edge of the dome lifted up, revealing something Zaid hadn't noticed:  Two more towering tails, capable of reaching across the entire dome.  One of the tails slowly pointed itself at Zaid's still free-falling body.  It began spraying.  The force of the spray knocked him against the ceiling and pushed him over to the floor.  The other tail coiled back, ready to strike.  Zaid managed to fire a full ball lightning round at it.  The tail didn't seem to notice at all when it struck.  With that massive size, Zaid was sure it could completely skewer him.

The tail lunched forward. Skewer him it did, its meter-long stinger penetrating completely through his stomach and out through his back.  As it coiled its tail back, it took Zaid with it.

Zaid felt faint.  He could barely breathe at all, let alone enough to properly respond.  Stuck on the tail as it lifted him, he looked down at the top of the central eye-clump.  There was its mouth, a tentacle-covered beak, the tentacles seemingly thrilled at the thought of getting a fresh meal.  The tail slowly lowered him over to it.

"Just remember, Zaid, there's always a way out."

His mind flashed back to the first ripper he killed.  "What, you got a bite of me, I get a bite of you."  Yes, I remember -- I cooked the thing and ate part of it.

He changed his arm to microwave emitter and started cooking the tip of the tail he was attached to.  Why didn't I think of that before?

The entire hive-beast writhed and twitched, lobbing Zaid off the stinger out toward the dome ceiling.  He fired his grapple cable toward the ground, pulling him down toward the center eye-mass.  Gripping masses of legs to pull himself closer to the mass, he felt himself become heavy.  Heavier than normal.  Gradually much heavier than normal, too much for him to stand.

And then it reversed.  He felt himself getting lighter, until he started getting pulled to the ceiling, the little tuft of legs he was holding on to ripping under his upward weight.  He fell to the ceiling, his good leg collapsing and snapping under the force of it.  The gravity started reversing again.  This time Zaid grappled himself up to the floor before the inverted gravity could do it for him.  He was right there at the center.  Holding himself with the grapple through another gravity inversion he changed his right arm to the microwave emitter and held it against the mass of eyes.

The blob shrieked and swelled up as it cooked.  Every one of its limbs flung wildly, slamming into the ceiling and floor, including the two most massive tails.

And then the writhing stopped.

Zaid kept going with the microwave emitter.  He had to make sure it wasn't just playing dead.  He held tight for a minute.  Two minutes.

And then the mass let out a big POP.

"Okay, kids, dinner's ready," said Zaid.

Then he clutched his stomach, the surface of the piercing wound already sealed.  He doubled over, which in the low gravity meant accidentally kicking himself into a flip.  As quickly as he could, he peeled back the helmet and rebreather for what was coming.  Blood vomit.

After a few coughs, Zaid spoke.  "Bitgaram, you and everybody else are not going to believe what I just saw..."