Physics of the Crowbar

Resource Pool

The caverns were dark and rough, stone-hard but dripping with moisture and the brood mother's blood. He snagged the suit on the edges, tripped and fell, rolled down a slope and caught himself in a narrow spot above a dropoff. His heart pounded in his chest as his heels kicked over empty space. The walls crumbled and he slid and fell-

A teleporter flashed yellow around him. His gut lurched and he rolled through it onto a suspended platform, nebula bright overhead, crawling with life. Flyers seared yellow lightning across the platform. Enormous ridged pipes or trees grew from the surface. He fought for comprehension as he watched them surge unevenly up and down through pores in the platform's skin. Not a growing thing, more like a machine.

The raw wail of a gasbag brought him back to immediate reality. Understanding would come after killing. He traced its flight, shot it twice, and sidestepped the energy attack of a pentapod. The pentapod arched its back, arms spread for another bolt. He lunged and caught it through the belly with the crowbar. Its half-formed attack sparked in his face, sending pale green electricity across his suit. He flinched back, almost lost the crowbar as the body tumbled over the edge, and saw the line of plasma from the gasbag come for him.

He had time, his brain told him, plenty of time to get out of the way. He could see all six bolts neatly lined up. Had time to count them, calculate trajectory, and time to realize he was thinking much faster than he was moving.

The first two smoked out on the platform but the next four caught him broadside, thigh, belly, chest and the arm he'd thrown over his face. He shot at it blindly, aiming by sound, in the precious moments before the pain caught up.

Burns hurt. He rolled over, instinct protecting the damaged areas, presenting comparatively solid back plating for the next attack, but the thing was dead. Its deflated body dropped below the platform horizon.

Freeman got up on his knees. The chest and belly plating had held better than leg and arm, but the polymer was melted and charred and he coughed on its acrid fumes. The bolt had hit his leg just above and to the left of the bullet. He put experimental weight on it- more surface trauma than the bullet, but unlike the bullet, all that damage was concentrated on the nerve-heavy skin instead of deep tissue. Less mechanical damage, more distraction.

His mind was telling him to find shelter, find cover, find a med box and a back corner and heal. His mind was telling him about how good the drugged payload would feel. Anticipating reward for pain.

He swore at himself, in red ink. Conditioned response. Like a lab monkey accepting an injection for payment of a grape. He was slow because he was tired, because scar tissue didn't function like muscle tissue and because everything about the environment was new, unfamiliar and probably threatening. He didn't want to be slow because his subconscious associated mistakes with pain, and pain with reward.

The terrain rose somewhat on one side of the platform. A shadowed alcove on the hillside, if it could be called a hill, held promise of shelter. The alcove lead into a tunnel, and the tunnel to a pool of the same clear viscous liquid. Saliva, he reminded himself, even as he lowered himself into it and knelt so it could flood the burn on his leg. Another reason to not get hurt. Less contact with the alien fluids. Who knew if the flesh it regenerated was wholly his?

A pentapod teleported on the pool's edge. He shot it before it fully materialized. Its body tumbled into the pool, yellow rings of oily blood ebbing out from it. The flesh spread, thinned. Dissolved.

He wanted to lurch out of the pool in disgust, but held himself still. It was healing. And it wasn't taking the same toll on his body that the med boxes did, because it supplied its own building blocks. It just... got those resources from the nearest accessible source.