The pod rumbled slightly, likely one of the many small tremors that periodically troubled the planet, and the door slumped a little more, allowing her to see that it was the ground itself that had jammed the door closed. Under ideal circumstances, a drop pod would hit the ground with exactly enough force to drive the thorny bottom point into the ground for stability, but not so much that the door sunk into the ground with it. Instead, the loose rock and soil went halfway up what should have been the opening. Through that top half, Stacia could see a spread of about ten to twenty feet around the pod where the soil had spread out in an impact pattern. Beyond that, the ground was covered in waist-high plants that might have been similar to grass if they weren’t three times as thick and seemed to wave themselves against the wind as though slightly sentient. The air was thick and muggy and full of unidentifiable buzzing sounds, undoubtedly Leviathan’s versions of crickets and locusts. Some distance beyond, there were thick, spiraling structures covered in small green polyps that opened and closed at random like mouths trying and failing to eat the air itself. The sky beyond was orange-ish in color, the sort of hue she would have assumed was a sunrise on Earth.
That was all the small opening would allow her to see for now. In terms of alien worlds, it wasn’t the strangest she had ever seen. Her second ever combat drop had been onto a planet that didn’t have a sun at all. The life forms that had lived there were beyond strange, to the point where, from what little she had been able to see of them, her language didn’t even have the words capable of describing them.
I can work with this, Stacia thought to herself. So far, it’s nothing I can’t handle.
There was another tremor, this one slightly stronger than the last. A thought occurred to her, causing her to resume kicking at the door in an effort to make the opening wide enough for her armor-enhanced body to crawl through. Sure enough, she felt the tremor again, still stronger.
That wasn’t the earthquakes. Something was coming her way. Something very, very large.
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.