Physics of the Crowbar

Mass Production

He picked his way over wet rotten ground, its spongy surface pitted and slick with moisture. The air was warm and humid and sweat pooled on the HEV collar. He felt it trickle behind his ears, down his forehead.

One more teleporter to the factory. The scrap of lined paper was in his utility belt; a mockery of the technological innovation of two civilizations, that the map to save the world would be written with a ball-point pen on dead-tree paper. He wondered what it had cost her to write it, how far her team had gotten before they'd been forced to turn back.

Or flee.

He dropped a grenade off a bridge to distract a grove of claws.

There was red blood splatter, human blood, in his path. He tracked it until it wore off his boots. The narrow road ended in a box canyon of rubble but he could hear the hum and feel the faint static charge of the teleport. He took two steps and saw movement.

Reflex took over and he threw himself back and down, making himself small. Projectiles hissed over his shoulder, one clipped his collar bone. He shot back, willing the living gun to fire, and watched the bullets hiss around wreckage. Ambush. Two heavy troopers, by the weapons fire, and by the way the ground shook under their weight.

He'd dodged away from the gap he'd come through, away from his retreat path.

These ones didn't hesitate like the others had. They'd been prepared for him. They'd known the living guns were not a quick way to kill him.

One laid down cover fire, a steady stream of golden projectiles hissing around his piece of rubble. They seared into it, leaving black charred marks and stinking like burned hair.

The other trooper rushed him.

He was prepared for the tactic and had the shotgun in his off-hand. He shot as it reached for him, its three-fingered claws closing around his shoulders as both barrels emptied into its gut. It roared in pain and fell, and its weight piled down onto him.

Wet alien innards slid over his chest and legs. He scrambled back and hit the wall, no space to maneuver, too much bulk trapping him in. The suit was slick with its blood and he couldn't get purchase on the ground, on the walls. Couldn't get his feet under him.

The second trooper rounded the debris and fired down into the heap of dead flesh and orange HEV.

Freeman threw both arms up to shield his face and neck. He felt the impacts, the burn and sting of contusions as their force transferred through the armor, mentally ticking them off like seconds on a watch—the living guns weren't unlimited, they needed time to regenerate, time he could use if he was still alive—a huge hand closed around his neck and hauled him upright. He flailed back at it, got the Xen gun up and firing into its eyes, dropped the empty shotgun for the crowbar and stabbed into the meaty forearm.

It roared and threw him and he tumbled like a rag doll over the broken ground. The teleporter flashed neon white beside him and he reached for it, but the trooper had him by one ankle, dragging him back. The trooper was wounded, yellow ichor dripping from a dozen places on its face and belly, and it was enraged.

Freeman liked his enemies dead, not in pain and furiously angry about it.

He grabbed the revolver. It was dragging him towards itself, reeling him in joint by joint, the crushing strength of its grasp bending the HEV plates inward, cutting into flesh. It twisted and something gave way in his knee. His hand didn't want to stay steady, his off-hand, but he was close enough to almost rest the revolver between its eyes when he pulled the trigger.

It crumpled over him, onto the leg it had mangled.

His vision went dark as its weight settled on the twisted joint. Movement hurt. Pulling on it hurt. The silver glow of the teleport was a mockery behind him; he was so close, and held back by fallible biology, by his body's insistence that if he pulled his leg from under the dead alien he'd surely leave the foot behind.