7
BRANDI
Get behind me, Tyrix commanded, and even though the two Karak were nothing more than beams of light I knew which one he was. I hastily obeyed, crouching next to their spacecraft while they faced the woods ahead.
"I thought you said they weren't even on our planet yet!"
Our assumptions were incorrect, Kerix replied.
I wished I had my sidearm. I should have brought it with me, part of my mind insisted, even though that would have raised concerns when I left the base. I was helpless.
And so were the Karak, it appeared. They hovered above the ground before me, pulsing gently in the early morning light. I didn't know what Karak weapons looked like, but it sure as hell looked like they didn't have any.
Motion in the distance.
The Wolvae loped through the trees, moving diagonal to our position rather than head-on. They were indeed identical to wolves: graceful bodies of black and grey fur, sleekly gliding through the forest. I saw two, three, four of them moving closer, in a formation like a diamond.
But the perspective was all wrong. The Wolvae made the trees look cartoonishly small, even from a few hundred yards away. And only as they neared the clearing did I understand why.
"Holy fuck! You didn't say the Wolvae were the size of Volkswagens!"
They reached the edge of the clearing and slowed, then stopped. They stood in a line, enormous tanks of fur and flesh with eyes that glowed like yellow embers.
And then they charged.
They came straight at us, moving so fast that the ground actually trembled, a stampede sensation from only four beasts. Their jaws opened to reveal vicious teeth, fangs that must have been as long as my forearm, glistening with saliva in the morning light.
My every instinct told me to run, to flee from this place of wolves and aliens and get back to the safety of my base, with fences and alarms and guards with rifles. But I knew I couldn't outrun those things, and so I was forced to watch.
Ready... Kerix said.
When the Wolvae were 50 yards away, he fired a beam from the center of his photon body. It was a thick beam of light, almost as solid as a lance, and it struck the left-most Wolvae directly on the snout. Rather than cutting through his body it had a concussive effect, knocking his face down into the ground and causing him to somersault upside-down onto the twig-strewn ground. The beam left a green afterimage on my vision when I blinked. The Wolvae still moved on the ground, and his fur smoldered where the beam had struck, but for now he appeared out of the fight.
The other Wolvae growled in anger.
Kerix fired another beam, and although the Wolvae tried launching out of the way all that accomplished was that the beam struck him in the flank instead of the head. The motion of leaping and being struck in mid-air made him swing around like a helicopter before sliding across the ground, a smoldering mark left on his side where the fur had been burned away.
By then the remaining two Wolvae were on us, leaping through the air with wicked arcs.
The one on the right came straight at Tyrix in front of me. In slow motion I saw its glistening fangs and massive jaws, jaws the Karak told me wanted carnage, and I could think of nothing but them clenching down on my skull as it soared through the air. But as he fell toward Tyrix with claws extended, he smashed against an invisible wall of air, yelping and falling backwards
Kerix had no shield, but he flew sideways away from the Wolvae's leap, and the beast whirled to follow the moment its paws hit the ground. Kerix fired another beam, smaller this time, and it missed by mere inches and split a nearby tree in half, the wood cascading down to the forest in a rain of timber.
Tyrix bulled forward with his shield, which I could see now as a faint shimmer in the air disturbing the scenery beyond. I could feel him letting out a battle cry in my mind as he struck the Wolvae with the shield, sending it tumbling backwards before it could recover.
Come on! I felt Kerix shout in my head, though he was not speaking to me but to his opponent. They circled one another slowly, waiting for the other to make a mistake. As the Wolvae's face came into view I could see discoloration on his exposed fangs: they looked like metal rings circling the teeth, almost crackling with electricity. I wondered what one of those would do to the alien Karak bodies.
And then the Wolvae saw me.
In that moment I could sense all the worst instincts in the world: hate, and bloodlust, and a foreign fury worse than anything I thought a human could feel. It leaped into the air and Kerix slid out of the way, but the Wolvae wasn't jumping at him.
He was leaping toward me.
As he made his terrible arc in the air, I felt my death coming for me.