The Watcher [Alien Nation #1]

Chapter 18

For a moment, the only sound was Erri's own breathing. Then came the footsteps, a dozen feet marching right towards him.

He prayed he was hidden well enough. He'd climbed up into a locker near the ceiling, his muscles starting to tremble where he was keeping himself up by bracing his hands and feet on the walls and holding the door closed with his tail. Hopefully the aliens wouldn't look up and see the door staying closed on its own, or see the glint of his eyes through the grille.

At least he had what they'd come for. Avery had just cracked the code protecting the data core from tampering—or at least that was what he'd assumed had happened, because a section of the floor had opened up like a flower, revealing a small, neon yellow cylinder, just the right size to slip into the pocket on the holster at his waist.

He only wished he'd had time to free her, too. Something was going on in that cybernetic head of hers, he could tell by the frantic twitching behind her eyelids and the occasional spasm of her organic hand. He'd wanted to drag her out of whatever Maia was putting her through, but she'd always been very explicit about never disconnecting her from an AI without letting her eject first, and he wasn't about to take that kind of risk. The best he could do had been to make sure she was well hidden. Luckily, the port she'd chosen to connect to had been in a tiny closet with barely enough room for the server, so it had just been a matter of closing the door after rearranging her limbs a bit.

If the aliens tried to get to her, he'd strike them from above. He didn't know how many there were, if they were armed, or even how big they were, but that part of the plan was clear. If they went for Avery, he would crush their spines and figure it out from there.

He clenched his teeth to stop a surprised gasp when the door to the server room was kicked open. A couple of...creatures dropped down into the chamber, brandishing heavy weapons hoisted on their shoulders. They glanced around the room a couple of times—not thinking to look up at the ceiling, thank all the stars—before stepping aside to allow three more of the invaders to enter.

He couldn't see them properly from this angle, but they had some sort of exoskeleton. Erri's heart sank. He knew how tough his own hide was, and that was just keratin. The aliens—who did not seem to be wearing any clothes, he noted—gleamed with metallic iridescence, and it made his own natural armour look like flimsy cardboard by comparison. His pistol was loaded, but he wondered if they would even feel it.

Talking among themselves in a staccato tongue that was more clicks and whistles than words—almost like how a Mu'ka sounded without Lexcion—the aliens started rooting through the few lockers they could reach, tossing out mouldy spare clothes and the random crap that accumulates in spaceships. At one point a packet of peanuts went flying across the room to smack against the door hiding Avery. Erri flinched, but the aliens didn't notice the door, thank all the stars in the galaxy and then some.

While the grunts were ransacking the server room, the bigger one strolled around with what Erri imagined to be a bored look on its unreadable face. It had a heavy brow, with interlocking plates that shifted whenever it spoke and tapered to a slightly-upturned point above its mouth. For a moment, Erri could swear the alien looked directly at him, and he felt his spinal plates straining against his under-layer as his body tried to expand in an ancient threat. After a second that seemed to stretch on for an hour, the alien looked away.

Only for its gaze to fall on the small gap in the floor where the data core had lain.

It shouted something in that awful, crackling voice, and the others leaped to attention. It started jabbing a clawed finger at the hole in the floor, the others occasionally nodding or murmuring in docile agreement until the tirade stopped abruptly.

The alien turned to look above it. At his hiding spot. Erri and the alien seemed to realise, at the same moment, that the other locker doors hung open and empty. Only one was closed, though it had been dented so badly in the crash that it could never lock again.

Deciding to make use of what remained of the element of surprise, Erri let the door to the locker fall open and launched himself at the door. He landed on all fours and sprang for the corridor, moving faster than a human ever could. He would lead them away from Avery, he decided as he bounded towards the main airlock, alien gunfire behind him, and then he and Jules could deal with them together.

The aliens had placed a sentry at the cave mouth and he slammed into it as he rounded the corner, both of them falling to the sand in a tangle of limbs and curses. Erri bounded up and carried on running, giving the alien's face a cursory slash with his talons as he did.

Once he'd put some distance between himself and the quickly-recovering guard, he freed his pistol from his belt and gave his pocket a quick pat, only continuing when he found the data core still there, safe and sound.

Jules was skidding down a sand dune towards him, her eyes wide and mouth forming his name.

That was when he felt the bullets.