Goddamnit.
Hector jumped into the ship just as the first of the crabs came over the ledge. He rushed to the panel, typing in the ship’s code to close the door while watching as hundreds of monsters run toward him.Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.He aimed his gun and shot down the first one with three bullets. When it got back up, he knew they hadn’t brought big enough guns.
He kept spraying bullets as they entered his ship. The door snapped shut, tearing a dozen skittering, giant legs in half and spraying the corridor with green gore and writhing appendages. He reloaded his gun and counted to five, hearing the crabs swarm the entirety of the ship from the outside. The clicks filled his head, blurring out his feed.
“Zeph?” He reached out for his brethren again, rushing for the bridge, connecting with his ship to initiate take-off. He switched frequencies, trying for the Croc, but everything was static and jumbled. “Fucking hell!” He continued to bellow out expletives as his boots thumped the floor. The doors to the bridge zipped open, and everything was dark.
The windows were completely covered by hundreds of the large crab aliens. The ship’s sirens triggered.
One of the Bin’s came up from behind him. “There’s a breach, Master.”
“What?” Impossible. “Where?” Hector turned on the android before he issued the ship’s forcefield.
“The loading bay door, Master.”
He didn’t have time to clear it, already hearing the hundreds of chitin legs breaking through the interior metal of the ship. He reached down and tore off his spacesuit to shift, counting down the seconds as the ship’s reactor powered up.
“Defend yourselves,” he yelled to the other androids.
Hector shifted and ducked to the side wall just as the forcefield pulsed out. For a brief moment, light flooded the bridge and then it was gone. The first of the crabs appeared.
Warning. Warning. Warning.
It ran right past him, and he slammed his fist into one of its legs, breaking the appendage in half. His chameleon skin changed color to match. Hector pressed his back against the wall and shifted his skin again when more appeared.
They couldn’t see him. Nothing could see him when he let his beast out in full.
The crabs rushed the nearest Bin android, and he shot each down, but more flooded the passageways beyond. Suddenly, the power of the reactor rushed his wires, coursing through him like an ethereal lover, and he connected back to the ship’s controls. Take-off was in-process. More crabs came, and he waited for them, hiding as he moved around the space, tearing them apart. The green goo splattered everywhere, quickly ruining his chameleon state, and the next wave of aliens was running right for him. The ship shot into the sky.
It hovered there, unable to move without a navigator through the asteroid belt.
Zeph’s voice came back. “Release the airlock!”
Hector fought off the closest creatures and stumbled to the corner, seeding into the ship to release the lock. Another wave of sirens filled his ears.
Several of the crabs flew at him, knocking him into the wall. They swarmed him, dislodging his weapon from his hand. He reached for it, shoving the crabs away, but they returned a second later with more. Pain flooded his frame as his skin was torn from his metalloid body; his nanocells couldn’t keep up with the rapid damage. They numbed his body, neutralizing what they could. Hector grunted, fighting and tearing at the beasts above him, feeling the exposed wires of his body snap and sizzle.
Gunshots pricked his ears just as everything went black.
He woke up sometime later to utter quiet.
Hector groaned and looked around, seeing nothing except shadows and carnage. A whistling, vacuum noise sounded in the distance. He tried to push himself up but nothing happened.
He tried again. He didn’t move. He tried to look down at himself but only his neck and eyes twitched. The smell of old fish and sulfur threatened to suffocate him. The clicking in his head was a faded, shaky blur. Hector ran a series of diagnostics and found that the majority of his metalloid frame had been severed, sizzled, and destroyed. Part of him was crushed, and the only intact pieces that remained were those completely shielded by pyrizian. He reached out for Zeph.
“You alive?” he asked.
No response. The feed between them was weak but it was there. He focused on it when he was sure he was safe from imminent attack.
“Asshole, I need some fucking help,” he said aloud when he realized Zeph was in the bridge with him. No answer. “Fuck.”
Over the next hour, he tested his remaining limbs and found only his right arm and part of his head intact. Even that wouldn’t last for much longer with all of his short-circuited and broken pieces.I’m going to die.
It had always been a possibility, especially for what he’d been created for, and the profession he took up afterward. He just never thought it would ever happen to him—a Cyborg. He’d survived insurmountable odds, as well as spy missions into the most dangerous Trentian military bases, and he’d come out unscathed from battles with giant monsters and spaceships. But here he was, a heap of metal and electrical signals, in an asteroid belt in the middle of fucking nowhere space, with a ticking time bomb in the remainder of his conscience.
With what strength he had left, he pushed himself free of the bodies littering the ground, and the pooling green gore all around him. Using one arm, Hector dragged himself in the direction of Zeph’s weak signal.
A crab was on top of his friend, and Hector paused, quieting his movements. It was the only one left alive and it was using one of its claws to dig at Zeph’s head. Hector peered around and found a gun. Shuffling slowly toward the weapon, he grabbed it and blessed the nano-gods that it still had ammo.
