White Space

38

 He had to catch himself, Yemon's instincts told him. His body was already working for him mid-fall, twisting him like a cat. Even though his youthful years were behind him, he was still, beneath everything, a soldier, a warrior. He was much nimbler than any average athletic nobody in their mid-twenties. He couldn't completely cushion his fall with his hands, but at least he landed on an arm and a leg, which was softer than his rigid back compartment. His helmet, however, banged into the hard rock surface hard. There was just nothing he could have done about it.

And now, technology decided to kick him while he was down. As a safety feature, whenever the suits got hit on the head, they'd turn the headlights on so that the person could be found after a fall, even unconscious. This, in fact, contrary to what the soldiers said about it, had saved countless lives since first implemented. This time it wasn't so different either, as the lights revealed a white flash already mid-pounce.

 What was closing the distance with him in the air was not a slow, pathetic looking lump he'd imagined by the blob that had been forcing itself out of the submarine. It was much worse. But it had also changed in the last few minutes. Its skin looked harder, more opaque. And it had legs. And the legs had claws. And those claws were getting much too close for comfort. As Yemon rolled to the side to avoid the flailing appendages, he could glance at the body from a different angle. It looked fat but thin at the same time. This was hard to reconcile at first, but in a fraction of a second, he put it together and realized that it was flat vertically and pointy at its front. He jumped up and back to avoid a segmented limb, not unlike that of a crustacean armed with razor sharp talons. Or just one talon. It was too fast to tell. The creature was also covered in what looked like armor hardening on its surface in large, overlapping plates.

It was big. Bigger than him. There was no sign of a head though, but it was safe to assume that the part making constant attempts on his life was its front. Also, transparent, hairlike strands emerged from its tip, similar to the ones he'd seen before. The hairs, obscenely enough, arranged themselves with a floaty motion in a structure very much resembling antlers on an elk. How his mind jumped to this association was something that Yemon had no time, nor any inclination to explore. But it was a fitting description.

 As he hopped further back, the creature sidestepped and launched itself up with insane swiftness. This sort of speed should have been all but impossible in such low gravity, but the thing was aided by more than the three pairs of legs. Before he could adjust, Yemon found himself tangled in a complicated set of appendages that emerging from the back of the thing. Then, having no way of controlling his landing, he hit the ground hard while the creature landed squarely on top of him. He was stuck on his side below it, with his left arm pinned under his torso. On earth, something this big would have already killed him by its sheer weight, but here the foreign body was just hindering his movement. Given the circumstances, however, even that could prove fatal.

 Yemon found himself struggling to turn towards the belly of the elongated, disgusting conglomeration of tentacles and claws, forced to the ground by the alien muscles, tendons and organs slightly visible under the white shell. The body of the creature was also riddled with blood vessels carrying something dark. He turned face up and with miraculous skill, then he lifted his right knee and wedged it into the underside of the thing. He readied himself, avoiding the strikes of the flailing appendages under the horrible bug, feeling the muscles in his leg tense up, ready to spring. In the low gravity of the moon, he felt he should be able to kick the thing right up into the air.

 As his muscles shifted, carried on aching joints, he could feel the strength surging through his leg. All his tendons and ligaments aligned to an extremely fast and strong release of the stored mechanical force, while his hoot found the perfect place for itself, flat against the belly of the beast. He let the energy explode out through his upper leg down to his foot, preparing to roll aside as soon as the thing was off him. Then the whole underside of the monster opened, like one enormous mouth.