Spiral of Light

Chapter 20: Getting In Deeper

He was about to key the anti-grav pack and leap down again, when the sensors on his helmet pinged him with a motion alert coming from behind. He instantly ducked and spun, pivoting to the left immediately. He guessed correctly and narrowly avoided being brained by the swing of a long polearm.

A hulking red haired primate hybrid with four horns growing out of the crown of his head, and two curved tusks, slashed with a barbed hook fixed to the end of a pole, where his throat and stomach would have been a moment earlier. Instead it only connected with the armor on his back.

Moloch cried out in pain as the force of the blow shoved him to the ground. The front of his helmet impacted and skidded along the floor with a terrible screech. He rolled over and came up firing wildly. None of his shots connected, either flying to either side of the creature, or impacting on several large thick keratinous scales that it wore over its more vulnerable parts, as a type of primitive armor.

Moloch's emitter pistol clicked up for the chamber to spin off and cool, as it needed to cycle, before it could be fired again. He drew his voidblade and sparked it up, giving it a few swings before the primate. The weapon hummed menacingly as its edge crackled with a hot yellow heat. He swung it through the air, to intimidate the hybrid for in several strokes it would make short work of the creature reducing it to a dismembered heap.

His voidblade was longer than the Legionnaires gladius, and slightly curved, intended for duels, or for fights that took place separated from the ranks of the other soldiers, where he would have room to swing it without harming his fellows.

He held his voidblade, in the ready position, his feet shoulder width apart and his knees slightly bent. Something impacted his hands. It was wet and sticky, but barbered and coarse at the same time. He felt his hands go numb. Tingles and pinpricks blossomed all over his skin. He looked over to see a chameleon hybrid with massive bulbous eyes and wet festering skin, had wedged itself into a corner of the room above him, forming a small nest with its hardened secretions that seemed to glisten all over its body. Its tongue which Moloch realized is what had struck him, wrapped around the hilt of the voidblade and wrenched it from his numb grasp, whipping it up and away to the creature's mouth. Its large eyes grew even wider, when it realized what it had done, and that there would be no way to stop what was coming next. It gave a startled croak as the voidblade impacted into its soft wet body, cutting it in half. Its tongue lolled out, still wrapped around the voidblade, as it hung limply down, from the creature's nest but unfortunately out of Moloch's reach.

He looked back at the primate hybrid and it gave a low gravelly laugh, at Moloch's misfortune. It surged forward swinging the weapon down, in a fearsome overhead arc. Moloch sidestepped the blow, and it came crashing down, with such an impact that the floor shuddered. With a surprising degree of agility, the ape-man pivoted and kicked out with a foot that it formed into a fist. The force of the blow sent Moloch flying through the air to land on the floor several paces away, with the wind completely knocked out of of him.

He tried to sit up and groaned. It felt like several of his ribs were broken. His emitter chamber clicked up, as it had to be spun off to disperse the excess heat. The Ape-man leapt high into the air, raising the polearm to bring it crashing down on Moloch with enough force to smash his body into a bloody pulp, like a sledgehammer smashing a satsuma.

Click! His emittered finally finished spinning off, and the cylinder clicked back into place, seating the firing crystal of the weapon back against the primary fractionator. With a desperate effort, Moloch lurched away, flinging himself to one side, and shooting a tight burst of three shots. Two of the rounds struck the hybrid's shoulder at the site of attachment for the arm holding the polearm. Its flesh, muscle and bone began to melt away into ash, as the beast howled in pain. This caused the polearm's trajectory to be altered slightly, and it was just enough for Moloch to be able to dodge the blow.