Fragment - Paul G Swanson (best android ereader .TXT) 📗

the door in its place.
The on-ship alarm began to go off warning him that if he didn't cut the power soon there would most likely be irreparable damage to the ship. He ignored it. Any damage that resulted from the sudden strain he would deal with later.
For now, he just wanted to get this lizard off his ship. The ship whipped back and forth in the air as the anchor didn't budge.
As his ship rocked in place, he managed to catch a glimpse of the other ships. Each hatch was sitting open. His overactive imagination told him that each ship called out with ghostly breaths. Another lizard-thing climbed out of one of the other ships, or perhaps he was just imagining it.
The ship he was towing was in fact rocking back and forth in the clamps. The stress was beyond the designed maximum and they had begun to bend, giving way, little by little. If not for a small defect in the alloy of the metal they might have held completely stiff without even so much of a bend.
First it moved only and inch and then two. The misshaped clamps had reached the operational limits and had been retched from place. The bolt heads snapped off and went flying like bullets.
Zeke felt the release and watched on the HUD as the speed gauge shot up. His ship jumped forward and had to bank to the right in order to leave the colony and get back outside.
It had to be safe out there, right? As far as he knew nothing, with the exception of a very small percentage of living things, could survive in space. Of that tiny bit, the only one he had ever seen with his own eyes was the Spatium Cratere, or Space crabs, and that life form looked barely alive as it was.
He did know that if he managed to get back to the Orion safely with the prize he was carrying they would still have to get off the colony all together.
This meant going back inside and gathering up Sarah, Psylix, Somie, Moumoru, Orwen, Tio, and Seth. Of everyone he suspected Somie to be the easiest to find, it would be as simple as calling out the mans name, with ears like that, how could he not hear almost everything.
Since the colony seemed almost deserted probably killed or devoured by those things whatever they are, Somie could most definitely hear him.
Zeke knew the anchor behind him had to be flying around behind him like a water-skier at the end of a rope. Another bang from the roof of the ship. In an effort to remove the large creature, he performed a roll as he swung it into the tunnel leading to the exit.
The beast held on and smacked the roof once again, this time harder that before. It was hungry; it had been a busy day of breeding. Almost a hundred implants. Now this one, this one MAN wearing red, had put up a fight.
With one of its four massive feet, it clawed violently at the panel that his prey had entered. The claws dug shallow recesses in the tough metal. In a fit of anger, it bashed the door with its tail.
If there was another way in it did not know of it. Nor did it have the time to think about it, it was to busy holding on and bashing at the door with its tail.
Knowing the roll did not jettison his unwanted passenger Zeke did the last resort and braced for the hopefully nonfatal impact. The wall of the tunnel came closer, and closer, until the ship bounced and skidded across it.
A wake of sparks shot out behind the tiny ship as it bounced and twisted nearly out of control. The beast had to let go and fall, but luck was with it. As the steel line ran past it, the dragon felt a mighty crash as the pursuing anchor caught the giant lizard. The beast tumbled completely through the hull and crashed into the interior.
Zeke brought his ship back under control and sighed when he finally felt the weightlessness of space. He felt he had won this battle. Now it was time to head back to the ship.
He was going to have to hurry; the monitor next to him was telling him that he was leaking fuel. It indicated that he only had about six minutes left. In an attempt to conserve the energy, he turned the ship in the right direction and let the inertia carry him the rest of the way.
Warm blood ran from the cut on his forehead and slid down his cheek. He must of hit the ceiling during all the chaos. Damn, what a crazy week this has been.

* * *

"What the hell are those things?" Psylix asked the driver.
"Get in," He responded, "We'll explain on the way."
"Where are you going to take us?" Sarah had stepped forward.
"Where those things can't get us." John quickly swept the area again making sure nothing could creep up behind them. "We've managed to gather up about forty maybe fifty additional survivors. These things attacked so quickly."
As if agreeing with them, Psylix hopped into the strange vehicle. At his feet, he saw almost a dozen guns. Best not to ask questions, at least not until he knew what the situation was.
Sarah climbed in and took the seat next to him. Seth grabbed the center seat. Tio climbed in the front passenger seat and picked one of the guns up off the floor. John operated the turret again and Gren slammed the gas back down.
Tio saw that it was a shotgun and put it back down, his own gun was better. It could do more damage both near and far. Hand held nuclear blasts had to be better than a singlewide blast of metal. Especially since, it was capable of rapid fire.
The vehicle rounded a corner and brought the sheer destruction into perspective. Uncountable bodies laid in the roads, and only every now and then did they spot a dead lizard.
"We eventually decided on calling those things Sanbe Tanago, and as you can see, they are a vicious breed of carnivorous reptile." Grendal told them. "We don't know where they came from, just that they suddenly appeared about five weeks ago. John and I have been studying a single specimen thats been in containment."
"Yeah," John yelled down at them, "And we've found out some crazy stuff!"
"Definitely weird stuff." Grendal took back the lead. "First off, the tails. They lay eggs inside the prey. Three of them." Grendal twisted the vehicle left to head down a narrow street. "Everything about these creatures is in threes. Frankly I'm stupefied." The vehicle sped out the other end of the alley; they must have been doing at least seventy.
"Instead of killing and eating the prey they lay the eggs. Usually in the chest." He stopped for a second as if deciding how to explain it. "Within minutes, well.the host dies and the three eggs hatch with such force they explode outward completely killing the host, they never stand a chance... In the bloody mess sits the three infants. They quickly go on to stage two and they actually grow in front of your eyes."
"The damn things are almost unstoppable," John took back the conversation again, "One becomes three tiny ones, which very quickly become three big ones, and so on and so forth. I don't think we even need to explain what this could mean to everyone else that's not already dead yet." Suddenly he pulled the triggers on the gun. Everyone but Gren ducked in surprise. "Got the bastard!"
"Nice one." They saw it fall short of the vehicle but missed its arrival. John had indeed gotten used to laying waste to the Sanbe Tanago.
"Thanks. Anyways, you can blame the people in charge for not acting when we gave them the report. It was rejected as a work of fiction."
"But it was pure truth, based on what we had observed, and from the lab tests on the captive." Gren interjected.
"Back to the creatures, have you noticed the carapace?" He asked and without waiting for an answer he continued, "It was as if it had been designed. The armor was a match to the exoskeleton of a cockroach. And the beak resembled that of a bird."
"When we put all the facts together; exoskeleton, beak, lack of an internal skeleton, rapid growth, parasitic breeding, three of every organ with the exception of the brain it became obvious what we were looking at." Grendal told them.
"This was a experiment that had gone terribly wrong."
"Maybe nothing went wrong, it doesn't really matter."
"No, it does matter, whether this was premeditated or not, determines what happens to the mastermind behind all this."
"And the science behind it just screamed Chimera." John saw another chance to kill something and wasted no time as he unloaded the rounds into the creature. The vehicle bounced and rocked as it tumbled over the beasts' dead body.
"Chimera effect occurs when you merge multiple species DNA into a single form. If you're not familiar with the term, it's also known as gene splicing. Usually unpredictable results even with just a single pair. However, in a case like this, totally unprecedented results can present themselves."
"When we compared the DNA strands to all other known types we were absolutely blown away by what we found. What we found was trace amounts of some Earth most territorial predators including parasites even human DNA had been tossed into the mix." They stopped and left the group in an uncomfortable silence with exception of the engine.
Sarah, Tio, Seth and Psylix all knew that DNA or Deoxyribonucleic acid was what made up the cells that held all living bodies together. They understood that all DNA was unique and if even a tiny part of the gene structure is tampered with, the form of the creature can become either a failed attempt or a successful evolution. The way it normally would have occurred is through normal reproduction when the genes are divided up and spread around at near random while fusing the winners of the gene lottery.
It had occurred to them upon hearing that last bit of information that their government could very well be at fault the creation of these, for lack of a better word, chimeras. They certainly would have the assets and the distorted and possibly even delusional, creative minds. However, what would be the point of releasing these chimeras into the public? What could be the point of destroying the society? The human race was now going