Alex seemed unparalleled in hand-to-hand combat techniques, made even more lethal by his blinding speed and brute strength. He spun, lunged, and threw himself at the Morg over and over again. Morag winced as Alex ducked low and twisted to use the edge of his shield to slice across one of the creature’s trunk-like legs. There was a satisfying squeal of pain, and a gash opened right to the bone that poured dark blood to the ground. But almost immediately, it meshed back together, and the Morg increased the intensity of its attack.
Alex spun away, rolled, but not quick enough. He was grabbed then, and hurled into the bulkhead wall with such force the entire hull rang like a bell.
The Morg’s lumbering foot kicked up something that made Morag’s eyes widen with hope.
“The gun,” she yelled, pointing at the weapon.
Whether Alex heard or not, she didn’t know. But the HAWC RG3 gun that one of the Morg had brought back with them still lay on the ground. She had to get it and tried to work out how to sneak beneath their legs and snatch it up.
She still held the length of bone and thought she might be able to use it to hook the weapon.
The next massive impact drew her eyes back to the fight. She felt like she was watching a battle that might have played out at the dawn of time, when two titanic beasts using tooth, claw, and raw fury, tried to tear each other to pieces. And Alex was just as ferocious as the thing he fought.
He used the shield to deflect one blow, but the Morg swiped at him with the other hand open and long claws extended, and the only thing that stopped the HAWC from being shredded was the armored suit he wore.
Morag saw her chance, and scuttled across the floor to the gun. She snatched it up, and began fiddling with it, trying to determine how it worked.
The Morg lurched closer. She pointed the gun and fired — nothing happened.
“Shit!” She began frantically pressing buttons and spinning dials on the device, but nothing she did could get the gun to work.
Alex was thrown to the ground and he quickly got to one knee as the Morg brought hammer-like blows down on top of him. He managed to keep the shield up over himself, but the thumps on the whirring disc began to make the shield distort and fragment in the air. The blows were so powerful, she even saw Alex start to sink down into the metal flooring of the shuttle.
Morag ripped the weapon back up, and drew in a breath to calm herself and focus — there, a small near-hidden button beside the trigger. She pressed it, and immediately a tiny light went green.
“Bingo.” She held up the gun, fired — and missed. There was no recoil, but a softball sized hole opened in the fuselage over the Mitch-Morg’s head. She tried to re-aim, but the frenzied movements began again, making it impossible to follow the pair, and she knew that if she hit the HAWC leader it’d be all over for them both.
The Morg clasped its hands together into a club and brought them down with lightning speed. Alex used the shield to block the blow, but he was fatiguing, and this time only just managed to get the shield up over his head.
The next blow was so hard that the shield finally dissipated, some sort of warning light lit up on the gauntlet he wore, and then the shield simply vanished.
With a squeal of triumph, the Mitch-creature lunged at Alex, grabbing him by the still-raised arm, and began to swing him around like a rag doll, his body going from floor to ceiling and then wall in seconds. The entire craft rung from the impacts, and Alex’s body became looser with every hit.
Morag knew no human being could sustain the amount of damage that was being inflicted on the man, and he must have multiple broken bones, if he could even survive. Alex Hunter was then lifted and thrown against the wall. The metal of the ship actually dented outwards, and when he fell, this time he stayed down.
With Alex out of the way, now was her chance. She sucked in a huge breath, aimed…
“Hey, motherfucker!”
The thing rounded on her, and she fired. This time, she hit it. The thing’s eye cluster disappeared in a spray of shell, mottled flesh, and black blood.
“Yeah!”
Its mouth sagged open and the Morg staggered around drunkenly for a moment before collapsing.
Morag stared, keeping the RG3 pointed at it for several seconds, before her head snapped around to Alex. He still lay unmoving against the inner wall of the Orlando. She dropped the gun and scrambled toward his broken body, lifting him and cradling his head and shoulders in her arms.
“Alex.” She shook him gently. “Alex, please wake up.” She felt the bones poking out at unnatural angles beneath his suit and knew he was severely hurt. “Oh no.” She knew she’d never be able to carry or drag him back, and guessed she’d be out of air anyway, long before she even got half way.
She pulled his upper body further onto her lap, sitting there, and beginning to rock back and forth. She shifted toward the opening in the craft that was turning black with the thick vapor hanging in dense sheets.
Morag sighed. “Yeah, why don’t we just sit here for a while?”
There was a popping sound, and then from under her hands there was a weird sliding sensation from within Alex’s body. She jerked her hands away. Looking down she saw one of the jutting bones sticking from his shoulder pull back into place with the sound of cracking wood.
“What the hell?”
Alex got hot, real hot. She felt the heat right through his suit, to the point of it becoming unbearable against her.
“I don’t believe it,” she whispered as he groaned. These beings called HAWCs weren’t normal men and women. They were like the Morg, a species apart. They were brutal giants, titans, bred for war and conflict.
He’s different, Sam Reid had said.
Alex breathed in and out deeply, as if sleeping or in a coma.
She began to smile, but it immediately dropped when she heard the gentle liquid sound behind her. She spun in time to see the long sticky tendrils edging out of the asteroid fragment to gently touch on the Mitch-Morg creature again.
“Oh, fuck no.” Her eyes went to the gun, and she cursed herself for dropping it.
The tendrils felt along the body, found the head and then the massive hole in the sunken face. They stopped moving for a moment, before pulling back slightly. With a sound like pulling a foot from a sucking bog, the mass in the asteroid fragment started to lift itself free.
To Morag’s horror, from inside the meteorite fragment a solid gelatinous mass that was all lumps, folds, and branching veins rose. Repulsively, it throbbed, like a heart, or — she grimaced behind her mask — a giant brain.
The long tentacles had given up on the obliterated body of the Morg and began to reach toward her and Alex. She couldn’t see any eyes or sensory organs on the thing, but somehow it knew they were there. And she also knew that it saw them both. Her problem was the feelers were now between her and the gun.
She started to shake the still-groggy Alex. “Come on, wake up. I need you.”
Morag turned back, seeing the pulsating mass that had been a deep purple when it rose, was now glowing red on the side closest to them. The tendrils started to extend like long elastics toward them. She had seen what happened to Anne when they took hold of her, and she was damned sure it wasn’t going to touch her.
She needed more time. Morag grabbed at Alex and started to yank him along the ground, feeling her back pop and complain as she jerked the extremely heavy man through the debris and slime.
“Come…”
— tug —