“
Get that guy some Tic Tacs,” I complained.
“
You’ll get used to it in a hundred years,” Tyler said.
Somehow, I doubted that. I was about to become the unending meal for this big guy, and it was going to hurt and stink.
I managed to reach into my pocket in spite of my tied hands, felt about for my bottle of metabolism boost pills, and popped the cap. I let them spill out into the bottom of my pocket and then scooped all of them into my hand. It felt like I had about ninety small pills, and I held them tightly in my hand.
“
Greetings, Your Majesty,” Tyler said in Intergalactic Common Tongue.
The Wendigo’s voice was guttural as it replied in Intergalactic Common Tongue. “Slime. Is this tiny creature all you have brought me?” The king gestured to me with his clawed hand.
“
At least this guy knows who he’s dealing with,” I whispered in Tyler’s direction.
“
Yes, Your Majesty. He will make you the most powerful Wendigo ever,” Tyler replied coolly.
The king moved with blinding speed and snatched me off the ground, the stump to which I was tied too, and held me up to his beady black eyes. “It will be tough not eating him all at once.”
I was counting on that. I really wasn’t into being tortured for a hundred years. “Bite me,” I said.
The Wendigo chuckled. “Such willing food.”
He ripped away the ropes that held me. I managed to lift my hand that held the pills just as he bit my arm clean off. The pain was nearly overwhelming, and I gritted my teeth to keep from screaming, but I couldn’t stop a groan from escaping my lips.
Chapter 14. Miranda
The jungle was teeming with small chitinous creatures, most no bigger than a chipmunk. None of them approached us, and most we only barely saw because they scampered away when they heard us coming. John was uneasy all the same and kept his stick ready.
The jury-rigged tracking device kept shutting down unexpectedly, and we had to stop each time while I fixed it. Medical bandages are not the best substitute for electrical tape, and the trouble was always a short. The trick was finding which connection was the culprit.
“
If this thing is working, the ship should be up ahead less than a hundred yards away,” I said after putting the device back together for the umpteenth time.
“
Shh!” John had his finger to his lips and the stick extended in front of him with his other hand.
Then I heard, or rather felt, what John was warning me about. The ground trembled as if giant feet were marching, and as the trembling came closer, I could hear growls and snorts. The smaller critters of the forest went silent and invisible now. The true masters of the jungle were coming, and the lesser creatures knew it.
There was a massive stampede of beasts we could hear but not see somewhere to our left. The noise of snapping branches and trembling ground as they passed was deafening.
John crept forward through the undergrowth, and I followed. When we came to the edge of the thick foliage, we found a rocky hill jutting out. At the peak was the goose-shaped Phoenix 5000 perched on a massive flat rock.
The edges of the hill climbed steeply, and John navigated his way between the sharp boulders slowly. I could have made my way to the top in a few quick jumps, but I thought it best if we stuck together. My training in martial arts notwithstanding, I was unarmed and at least John had a sharp stick. I assumed the ship was guarded by more of Tyler’s robots. I knew we were just lucky John managed to take out the one robot earlier, and so I needed to figure a way to disable not only a single robot but multiple machines, which I assumed to be what we would find waiting for us.
As we climbed, I picked up small rocks. They wouldn’t do any serious damage, but I reasoned that the robots’ defense mechanisms might be distracted by them and a split second advantage might make all the difference. In the academy, there wasn’t a fighting-robots-while-unarmed symposium. Maybe I could go back as a guest lecturer if I managed to figure this out, I thought. I’d call my presentation “Rock, Cannon, Fist,” the premise being that rock beats fist, proton pulse cannon beats rock, and fist always loses.
We stopped near the top of the hill and peered around a large outcropping of rocks. The bay doors were open, and there were no robot guards in sight. I glanced to my right and felt a knot tighten in my gut. A forty-foot tall creature with bone-white skin and bluish tufts of hair was standing at the base of the hill. Below him and tied to a stake was Max. Tyler, accompanied by two of his robots, was talking to the beast.
I started toward them, but John grabbed my arm. “If you want to help your partner, you’re going to need a weapon, and only the proton cannons on that ship will even make one of those creatures wince,” he said.
John was right. I leapt into the ship in a single bound and found four robots waiting for me. I threw a wad of small rocks at one of the robots, but it simply ignored them and shot at me. I honestly thought that trick would have at least made the thing blink.
“
Focus fire,” one of the robots ordered.
I knew that I couldn’t stop moving or I’d be blasted to bits, and so I jumped and dodged, trying to get behind one of the robots to use as a body shield or to rip out its circuitry if I could get close enough. The machines moved so fast that I had to focus on staying alive amidst the barrage of blasts and so could not get near enough to pull the plug. I wanted to huddle down behind a pile of crates or something, but I feared they would pin me down if I stopped moving. Proton cannon blasts ricocheted around the bay as I moved as quickly as I could, hoping something would come to me in the process that would give me the upper hand.
“
Oh!” a robot said.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a robot short circuit as a stick erupted from between its head and neck plates. John had joined the fight. The three remaining robots turned on him and blasted. John used the robot he had deactivated as a body shield, but the machine was quickly getting shredded. This was the opportunity I needed, though. I landed behind one of the robots and, using Aikido, I tossed the machine at its partner.
The target robot’s defense mechanisms were triggered by the huge hunk of metal about to smash into it, and it blasted with impunity. I was forced to jump again as the remaining two robots targeted me. The walls of the bay were badly scorched and the fire retardation systems were spraying foam everywhere, making every surface slippery.
I tumbled and slid between the legs of one of the robots, and as I passed under it, both robots turned to fire on me. John took advantage of the opening and leapt forward with a crowbar, an upgrade from the stick he had been using. I had no idea where he had found it, but he used the hunk of iron to knock the head off the nearest robot with Babe Ruth-like pizzazz.
My skid ended against the wall, and I exhaled hard with the impact. A proton blast plinked off the alloy wall above my head, and I rolled behind some crates to my right. The fire retardant systems had stopped spraying, The foam was still a hazard, but it was already dissipating.
On the floor next to me was an Intergalactic Standard screwdriver. I picked it up, leaped into the air, and threw it end over end. When the robot spun to target me, the screwdriver blade drove into one of his dozen eyes. The machine missed as it fired repeatedly at me while I fell back toward the floor, but I knew it would zero in on me in the next few seconds.
Then John tackled the robot and ripped the wires from its throat.
Chapter 15. Max
The Wendigo swallowed, and for a moment the creature looked triumphant. Then his expression changed to a weird animal combination of hunger and panic. My ploy worked. Even a creature of his size couldn’t consume that many metabolic boost pills without feeling overwhelming hunger. He’d have to eat five times his bodyweight simply not to starve, and my blood would push his metabolic system even harder. The beast was going to either eat me, Tyler, and his own friends, or he was going to starve. I was okay with the first outcome, as long as Tyler was on the menu.
“
Where is my payment?” Tyler demanded.
The king dropped me on the ground and grasped his throat. I landed on jagged rocks with bone smashing force and was too dazed by pain to move.
A smaller Wendigo charged forward toward me, a greedy look in its eyes. The king snatched the creature up and swallowed it whole.
“
You would trick the king of the Wendigo?” he demanded of Tyler.
Tyler now looked scared and confused. “I brought you exactly what I promised.”
The king lunged toward Tyler, who pulled his pistol like a gunfighter in an old western and sprayed the king with antimatter blasts. Giant craters of flesh vanished on contact but healed almost instantly. Tyler’s robots also opened fire with smaller proton blasters, but they were doing no visible harm to the Wendigo. The king opened his mouth to devour Tyler, but four antimatter shots to the back of the throat left a hole clean through to the top of the king’s head and the king collapsed. Tyler hit the ground hard, gained his feet, and started to scramble for the ship while his robot guards covered his retreat. The largest of the Wendigo moved toward the corpse of the king, but the smaller Wendigo in the clearing charged forward with elation. I assumed these beasts must have the same drive to run down escaping prey as predators on Earth. They ignored me lying prone on the ground and followed Tyler.
The robots did more damage to the smaller Wendigo than they had the king, but none of the blasts were lethal. Surging Wendigo crushed the robots as Tyler neared the ship. The ramp lifted just before Tyler reached it, and even from here I could see he was stunned by this turn of events. He spun back to face the mob of Wendigo charging at him and fired antimatter blasts with precision, killing a dozen as they neared him—but more came. When his pistol finally made a hollow clicking sound, he panicked and banged on the bottom of the ramp as the ship slowly began to rise. “Let me in!”
The pilot of the ship either couldn’t hear him or ignored him. A massive hand scooped Tyler up. He struggled against the grip of the larger creature, but the beast simply bit Tyler in two. I looked away. As much as I hated Tyler, I couldn’t watch him get eaten. The ship’s full-size proton cannons unleashed a flurry of blasts that scattered the Wendigo as it flew low at them, then continued to fire as the craft hovered above me. The bay doors opened, and I saw John the sheriff looking down at me.
“
Time to go.” He dragged me aboard without care for my pain. The moment we were clear of the door he shouted, “We’re good! Get out of here!”
Chapter 16. Max
John helped me into a bunk. Even through my pain, I noticed that he had new injuries of his own. His crisp tan uniform had a number of slices, and I could make out gashes in his skin. His shoulder was heavily bandaged with thick gauze.
“
What happened to you?” I asked.
“
We made it to an escape dinghy and it crash landed on Zeta-Terra. We saw the Phoenix entering the atmosphere, and we made straight for it. Unfortunately, we only had a few medical supplies and a tracking device Miranda rigged together from parts on the dinghy.”
Miranda walked in, her T-shirt intact. Other than some dried blood on her arm, I couldn’t see that she had any injuries. Of course, I had given her blood recently and maybe that had helped. “We’re in orbit, but there’s some bad news.” She paused when she saw me, or rather, saw that I was missing a limb, and looked away. “We can talk about it after you’ve rested.”
“
I could use some bad news, but first I need food and lots of water,” I whispered through dry lips.
Miranda disappeared through the door.
I turned back to John. “Thanks for coming back for me.”
John smiled. “Well, we really didn’t have a choice, now did we. You’d be Wendigo poop on a regular basis if we didn’t come back.”
“
Yeah, well, you could have just taken off without me and saved yourself the risk, but you didn’t.”
“
I’m fairly sure your partner wasn’t going to leave without you, as much as I tried reasoning with her.”
Miranda returned holding a handful of Bar-E bars and a water bottle. “Tyler didn’t bring along anything better than this.”