Planet Leviathan

^{Chapter 3} The Official Leviathan Welcoming Committee

While Stacia’s enhancements allowed her to attack the door with a strength no civilian would have ever been able to muster, the drop pod doors were still intended to survey planetfalls and some levels of enemy attacks. They didn’t want to budge much further than Stacia had already managed. The opening, as it was, was about as big as it was going to get. Unfortunately, Stacie still didn’t think the wide shoulders of her second-hand battle armor would make it through. And during all that time, the trembling sounds came closer.

While she did as much final work as she could widening the opening, Stacia’s neural implants tried to take the data they were being given and run a threat assessment. Those particular implants were designed to compile all sensory data available and create a picture in her mind of what might be coming for her, a valuable ability in the Galactic Marines when half the time they had to face something brand new they’d never seen before. Stacia had an image in her mind of the shockwaves from the things footsteps being traced back to it, then building a skeleton, a muscle structure, and skin type, as well as, thanks to some nerdy joker who had first programmed the implants, a banana next to it for scale.

Compared to the image forming in her mind, the banana was tiny.

Stacia gathered up the pack full of meager supplies and threw it through the opening, then took the knife in her teeth and started squeezing through the hole. She immediately got stuck at the shoulders. As she flexed, trying to get even the smallest amount of give, her implant finished its analysis. The thing approaching from the southwest, behind where she could currently see, was between fifty and sixty-five feet tall, with five boney legs that ended in enormous, toe-less knobs. Four of the legs were positioned like any other quadruped, while the fifth came out from behind. Its body was relatively small compared to its legs, and the simulation was somewhat unclear on what its head looked like, if it had one at all. Whether it had a mouth full of sharp teeth, however, didn’t really matter at the moment. Even if it didn’t look at her as food, it was still walking straight for the pod, and if any of those club-like knobs came down on the pod, she would be squashed.

Stacia registered pain as one of the loose pieces of armor on her arm caught on some of the bent metal, but as she did her best to ignore it, first one shoulder, then the other, popped free through the gap. As that was the widest part of her armor, the rest of her slipped through easily. Stacia hit the ground head first, but the fall was short enough that it didn’t do any real damage. Had this been an actual combat situation, she would have been issued a helmet, but as she was no longer going to be in officially sanctioned combat ever again, the brass hadn’t seen fit to give her anything more than the bare minimum to keep her from immediately dying. She rolled into a defensive position and brandished the knife in the direction of the coming creature with one hand while she secured her pack to her armor with the other.

What am I doing? she thought. A single knife won’t do me any good against that thing. She chastised herself for that thought as soon as she had it. That was not thinking like a Galactic Marine. That was thinking like a civilian. And while she might technically no longer be able to call herself a marine, she’d be damned if she took the title of civvie so easily.

The southwest had more of those weird, organic spires, although they weren’t as dense in that direction. Although they were tall, Stacia could still see the alien beast over their tops. The proportions felt all wrong to her human eyes. Its central body didn’t look that much bigger than the drop pod itself, which made it look ridiculous compared to the many enormous and boney joints all up and down its legs. Her implant took in this new visual data and enhanced it for her, letting her know that yes, it did indeed have a mouth full of mandibles and teeth. And it looked to be moving right for her.

Probably the smartest thing would be for her to run. She wasn’t the kind who would go charging into a fight that she had no chance of winning just because she was addicted to the heat of battle. Her mothers had taught her the value of thinking with her brain rather than with her trigger finger. But she also saw that, no matter how fast her enhanced body could move, she wouldn’t be able to outrun the creature’s titanic stride. She could go for the polyp-covered spires (she’d begun to think of them as trees, even though she had no proof that they were plant-based or even organic), but this thing could just walk over and around them.

So the only logical choice (if it could really be called that) was to face it. Tiny little her. With nothing but a knife.

“I’d say my chances are about fifty-fifty,” she muttered to herself. Then, as she could see its nearest knobby foot clear the trees and slam down not far from her pod, she rushed it.

It occurred to her during her mad dash that maybe the thing wasn’t after her at all, that it had been attracted by the sound of the crash and come to check out the pod, but would ignore her as she ran right under it. Those hopes were dashed when the thing stopped moving, and she saw the creature’s fifth leg raise up and point its knobby end right at her.

Let it make the first move. Assess its attack. Learn its weakness, she thought. This may be the biggest thing I’ve ever faced, but let’s face it, not by much.

An orifice opened up in the bottom of a knob and three fleshy tendrils shot out at her. They were fast, like they’d actually been fired from some sort of organic cannon, living harpoons at the end of pulsing tethers. Her enhanced reflexes allowed her to just manage to dodge all three of them, but while two of the harpoons stuck in the ground, the third twisted in mid-air behind her to whip around her waist. The tendril constricted so tight that it probably would have crushed a normal human. Her replacement armor, thankfully, wasn’t so third rate that it crushed or dented under the force, but she could still register the squeezing pain.

Stacia raised her knife and prepared to make a chopping, sawing motion through the tendril, but she stopped as it retracted and pulled her up into the air. It instantly pulled her up high enough that, if she fell and turned the wrong way with her head down, the drop would kill her. Her enhancements, in that situation, should kick in and right her in the air like a cat. Her internal threat assessments, however, were telling her that the ground was the last place she wanted to be. She couldn’t run from this. She couldn’t hide from it. And the lower parts of its legs were covered in a heavy carapace that she doubted her knife could get through. The carapace looked to thin out the higher it got, though, until the creature’s disproportionately small torso looked completely vulnerable.

That’s where she needed to be. She needed to get on top of the situation, literally.

The two other tendrils yanked themselves out of the ground and retracted all the way back into the knob. The one that had her stayed out as the fifth leg swung through the air, reversing itself so that it was held up over the top of the creature like a scorpion’s tale. The motion swung her through the air and took her breath away, yet not so much that she didn’t see what it intended. The fifth leg was going to position her so she was directly over that garbage-disposal of a mouth and then drop her in. Her armor might have been able to resist the tendril’s attempt to crush her, but she wasn’t so certain that it would do the same for her versus those mandibles and arm-length teeth. Even if her armor was strong enough, her head was still exposed. Going into that mouth was a guaranteed one-way trip.

She wasn’t going to let herself get that far. As the tendril swung her over the creature’s body, Stacia made several hacking and sawing jabs at the flesh around her. She only managed to cut a quarter of the way through the tentacle, but apparently, this thing wasn’t used to its prey fighting back like that. The tendril let go, dropping her directly over the main body. Stacia wasted no time, aiming her fall at the point where the body met one of the legs, and stabbed it as she landed. The creature made a weird, warbling screech as she pulled the knife out then thrust it in again, and again, and again. Pale blue blood sputtered all over her as she must have hit something vital. The creature whipped its fifth leg back down onto the ground to give it more support as the leg she attacked went completely limp. Even though it still had four legs on the ground, the creature’s torso shifted to an unbalanced angle beneath her and threatened to drop her to the ground. Before she could fall, though, she dove at several bulbous black protuberances near its mouth that she assumed were eyes or some other kind of sensory organ. Whatever they were, they looked like its weakest point. She stabbed one, and it exploded all over her with a viscous, white jelly-like substance.

The creature didn’t screech this time. Instead, it simply shuddered, its body dipping like it could no longer support itself and was trying to sit down. She popped two more of the five in all before the entire creature shuddered and gave out.

Then she was falling again. The creature’s body just barely missed being impaled by one of the trees. It slid partway down the side before getting caught on one of the tree’s polyps. Stacia briefly caught hold of one of the legs to break up her fall before she tumbled the rest of the way. The knife hit the ground next to her head, burying itself halfway to the hilt.

She stayed there on the ground for several seconds, assessing the damage to herself. Armor damage was negligible. No notable damage to her head beyond a few small scrapes and bruises. The implants in her head told her that she was strangely close to dehydration, but that was something she figured she could fix easily.

All in all, compared to some campaigns she had fought in, that had been easy. Easy enough that she didn’t trust she was safe yet.

Sure enough, when she sat up and looked around her, she saw nine people standing a respectful distance from the creature’s corpse. All of them were clad in the same shoddy battle armor as her. One of them stood behind the others, some kind of rolled-up leather parchment in his hand and his eyebrow cocked quizzically at the dead creature. The other eight all had heavy weaponry, the sort of high-powered assault rifles and cannons that were not supposed to exist on a prison world, with each gun pointed directly at her head.

The man with the leather finally tore his eyes away from the dead creature, gave Stacia a perfunctory nod, and then opened up the leather to read what was printed on it in a voice that almost sounded bored.

“On behalf of Lord Commander Alena Lexton, greetings and welcome to Leviathan. We hope you enjoy your stay and wish you a long life before someone or something horrible slaughters you. Now come with us to swear fealty or we’ll blow your head off.”