"Ana sweetie? Are you okay?" Rusalka called out. "Fine. It's five against two now though."
"I've been keeping count sweetie. Have you got a line on them?" Rusalka heard the pop-crack of two shots from Ana's rifle. Both missed.
"The stairway twists around. I can't get them from here. Maybe if –"
"Do you have any sticky grenades?" Rusalka interrupted.
"My aim's not great..."
"Not what I asked."
"I have two."
"Great. Set one for 15 seconds, detonate it and hold it out."
"Are you crazy?!"
"Left hand, please."
Rusalka pulled a blue orb from her bag. A chrono shield. Umbra tech. Highly dangerous and unstable. Emergency use only. They slowed time down for the user for a limited time, but overexposure carried a long list of symptoms. The kindest was death.
The chrono sheild hatched into life. Rusalka's eyes stung, adjusting. The battlefield yells stretched and distorted. Dust froze in the air like stars in the night sky. Her feet pounded the ground, almost slipping in her new reality.
She scampered over Olivia and Elizabeth. Olivia's armour was burntcorked. She had borne most of the blast. Shots swam past the shield slowly, the heat from the energy beams warming her fur. She twisted away from them and surged towards Ana. The sticky grenade poked out in her left hand as she tucked her knees up to her chin. "Thank you, sweetie."
Rusalka grabbed the grenade and bounced between the rock and rubble, bounding closer as the grenade counted down. Tick. The shots were nowhere near her now. Gravel floated as time stopped. Tock. She reached the Mundus, crashing down on one of their guns. A long scream. The cheeks rippled in slowmo. Rusalka leaned away from the sprayed spit.
As her feet pushed the shotgun barrel down it went off, blasting away the face of another Mundus crouching nearby. "Well, that was unexpected." She slapped the grenade onto the wall then sprang away again. She deactivated the shield and landed in a heap. Legs too slow. "Just thought you'd want to know, it was an alien who killed you! An Umbra too, and we're supposed to be filthy creatures!"
The grenade exploded with a red cloud of smoke. The room fell quiet. "Whatever will people think of you..."
YOU ARE READING
Black Hole Heartbeat
Science FictionBlack Hole Heartbeat is Star Wars if the stormtroopers didn't miss all the time. Like Cowboy Bebop meets Butch and Sundance, or Guardians of the Galaxy in the style of Pulp Fiction. Self confessed thief of ill repute, Elizabeth Ranger, runs head fi...
