Stray Cat Strut [Will Stub for $1 Trillion Dollars]

Chapter Seventy-Four - Sprint

“Being on coms means providing the information that will keep people alive

[...]

You can generally tell when something has gone wrong when the people at the other end start swearing incoherently.”

--Excerpt from a Guide to Wartime Communications, 2045

***

I think the only reason I didn’t get myself dead was because the monster was expecting me as much as I was expecting it.

The Model Thirteen was hovering close to the ground, a few of its tentacles holding it up while its much smaller tentacles were reaching out ahead of it. At a guess, it felt as if it was searching for something, like looking for something by touch when the lights are off.

Had it noticed me before? Or maybe it was just suspicious.

It didn’t matter. The alien was definitely staring at me with all three of its faces.

I pulled my Claw up and fired, barely even making sure that the reticule was lined up with one of its bodies.

A whip-crack sounded out and I felt as if someone had just punched me right in the chest.

I’d gotten into trouble once. A bunch of middle-class looking assholes had been visiting the ground-level, and they started to annoy Lucy and a couple of the other kids. They probably wouldn’t do anything, just some older teens being assholes.

Of course, I was filled with more nerves than sense back then, and I wanted to impress Lucy, so I started a fight with them.

The sensation of all the air in my lungs being rammed out of them was hard to forget.

I saw a glimmer in the air as my coat’s shield thing stopped a few more tendrils whipping out at me, but it was only a glimpse before I crashed down a few metres back and rolled.

“Guns,” I gasped.

My shoulder-mounted weapons deployed and immediately fired.

A railgun shot tore a hole through one of the Model Thirteen’s bodies, but that barely made it hitch before it drove itself forwards.

“Shit!”

I rolled back.

With my cloaks still on, it would--I hoped--have a better chance dodging the whips, and rolling would get me further back.

Problem was, while rolling I wasn’t firing back. My plasma caster took some potshots, but it kept folding back in not to stop my roll.

The Model Thirteen loomed large above me, the hardened ends of its larger tentacles crashing into the ground.

I gasped as one of them rammed me in the side. It didn’t pierce through my coat, and my undersuit hardened, stopping it from crushing me.

Still hurt like a bitch, and it had effectively pinned me in place.

I placed my Claw against the limb and fired, then I fired again and again. I imagined that having a tentacle filled with a few spinning blenders wasn’t great for the Model Thirteen.

I tugged my coat out from under it with one arm, while aiming up with my Claw.

My railgun fired into one of its bodies, so I aimed at the one next to it and fired my Claw until a warning filled my vision.