Colony by Benjamin Cross (ready player one ebook .TXT) 📗

“What does it do?” Darya asked.

“I’ve no idea, but look!”

Running along the creature’s back was a criss-cross laceration. The surrounding feathers were clotted with dried blood. The wound looked infected. It looked recent.

Callum swallowed hard. Was it possible? You just better hope those things don’t hold a grudge…

The creature raised its head back up to let out a screech.

Darya’s grip tightened. She could see what he could: the chafe marks around the base of its neck, where the Centaur’s pincer had bitten down.

There was no mistaking it.

“It remembers,” Callum hissed.

4

Peterson flinched as another thud rang out above him. Through the periscope, he could see that two of the creatures were now attacking the sub’s dorsal fin. Already one of them had torn a gouge into the base, while the other had near as dammit gnawed the tip off.

He increased speed again and jerked the craft from side to side as sharply as he could without losing control. Whatever he did, the two creatures clung on tight with all four limbs, their combined body weight wrenching the fin back and forth.

One of the wingmen broke formation suddenly, veered in and kicked out at the windscreen. As the crunch of the collision sounded, Peterson threw his arms over his face. When he looked back up, he could see that the blow had chipped away only a tiny fragment, no bigger than half a centimetre from the six centimetre-thick screen. But his sense of relief was fleeting, as the creature then dug the tip of its hind claw into the chink and began to pick it open.

The second wingman now side-winded towards the screen. Peterson’s mind blanked with fear, and it was only at the last second that he thought to deploy the sub’s pincer. The three prongs had barely emerged from their housing before they speared into the front of the creature’s chest, bringing its charge to an abrupt halt. Peterson forced the arm out further and further as the pincer tips clamped down harder. Blood streamed from the creature’s mouth as it scrabbled to escape. The pincer tips bore though the skin and deep into its flesh, gradually sliding in-between its lower ribs and closing firm around its sternum.

“Still reckon on messing with me, you ugly piece of shit!” Peterson bellowed.

With its talon still embedded in the Centaur’s windscreen, the other creature looked across at its mate. Then it plunged over and joined in the attack. Peterson seized the opportunity to deploy the second arm, and by the time the free creature realised what was happening, it was too late. The pincer had dug into its neck, just below the jaw, and begun to constrict.

He roared with success. “Too damn easy!”

Outside, the creature fought against its restraint, jerking the mechanism from side to side. But as the pincer grip tightened, its movements grew softer and softer. Finally, its eyes bulged and its tongue dribbled out of its mouth, flapping like a blood-red eel in the current.

Remembering the two creatures on the roof, Peterson raised the angle of both arms until the pincers were level with the sub’s dorsal fin. Then he released the dead creatures simultaneously. The slipstream overhead pulled their corpses towards the rear of the vessel, flinging them into their live counterparts and dislodging both from the roof.

The initial despair Peterson had felt was transformed to jubilation. He was half-dead, goddammit, but no matter what tricks these goggle-eyed, fuck-faced little critters tried to pull, he was kicking their reptilian ass!

“Any more takers?” he screamed out, drunk with adrenaline. “Centaur, five! Overgrown iguanas, nothing! How does that feel?”

No sooner had he spoken than the sub lurched to the left. Speed was reducing, and keeping her level was like wrestling a bull. Peterson watched in renewed horror as another of the creatures took a final swipe at the pelvic fin. As the remaining thread snapped, it leapt clear with the fin caught between its teeth.

Peterson tugged the throttle back, attempting to bring the Centaur to a stop. But it was no use. No matter what he did, he just couldn’t hold her steady. The next thing he knew, the world was thrown into a spin. He was tossed around, and the only thing stopping him from braining himself on the Centaur’s interior was his seat restraint.

Then came the inevitable. With a terrifying groan, the roof of the submarine smashed into the seabed, ricocheted off and came crashing back down. The internal lighting shorted out and the emergency warning sirens burst into life. There were more impacts to both sides of the sub, before the tail caught and the nose flipped upwards. Then the whole craft tumbled forward again and again, eventually grinding to a stop along the jagged bedrock.

Peterson opened his eyes. He was delirious. So much so that it took him several minutes to realise that he was hanging upside down. Sparks leapt from the control panel and narrow jets of gas vented into the cabin around him. It was the last sight any submariner wanted to see.

He unfastened his seat restraint and slumped awkwardly down onto the roof. His side was an ecstasy of pain. The rest of his body ached like hell. As he surveyed the wreckage of his cabin, the system supporting the emergency siren faltered and then stalled, the whine giving way to the sound of leaking gas.

The situation was dire. If he wasn’t imminently burnt alive or poisoned by the build-up of stray gases, then before long the cabin’s damaged atmospheric regulator would give out and he would be left drowning in his own CO2.

To Peterson’s surprise, his first response was: So what? There wasn’t a chance in hell that he was making it out of there alive anyway. For one thing he was trapped. The Centaur was upside down, which meant that the hatch was wedged against the seabed. Even if he could get out, with no idea where he was, he’d get lost and the temperature of the