Confused Aliens - Part Three
Our not-so-heroic crew has destroyed the planet they are on a mission to see. They've blamed an insurgent on board for the accident, even though the error was their own. And in searching for the renegade on the ship, they've set off another explosion, this one on board their own craft. More not-so-heroics will be necessary to free the victims of the latest screw-up.
Initially I have full control over the fangs and I make excellent progress through the debris. There comes a point, however, when my bandoleer begins to malfunction, and electricity is delivered directly to my torso. I am somewhat protected by the bandoleer's insulation, but I nonetheless lose control of my muscles. The thermal fangs continue to chomp. I am now chewing my way through the titanium floor. Soon I have eaten a large enough hole for my whole body to slide through. My lips are burning as I fall ten feet to the next level, and my paralyzed body thumps to the ground like a thrown sack of rocks.
The fangs again begin to chomp at the floor, and the whole process is repeated. Then it is repeated again. And again. I hear Private Cascadilla call down to me from what sounds like miles away, and I can only hope that he understands the magnitude of the situation, and knows to keep his distance. I don't need any heroics. There's no telling what I might eat through or electrocute!
These are the times when we must consider our chosen paths in life, but I would like to say that even now, arbitrarily chewing, falling great distances, I am glad to be the supreme commander. I do not remember my childhood, but I imagine that it was chalk full of exploration, and that I scurried across the countryside just after the larval stage with my subordinate companions, leading mock missions and imaginary conquests. In my false memories I once lifted a fallen boulder from a friend's tail. That feeling has followed me everywhere. I am a leader, and sometimes, bad things happen to leaders.
After chewing my way through several more levels of the ship, I note quite dispassionately that the floors are no longer made of titanium, but rather something different, something firmer, and I surmise that I am nearing the ship's sacred black-steel underbelly, where the Overdriver Engine Systems burn their nuclear fuel and push us forward through the open void. The fangs are glowing white hot as my head emerges through a hole in the ceiling of the Engine Room.
"Kakk!" I cry down to Fourth Engineer Zandig, whose toupee I can see directly below me. "Enerneenee! Nut Nown Ne Nonernriner!"
He and several other engineers look up as I slip further down into the hole, to my shoulders. The fangs whip my head around and work at widening the gap, and I continue to scream such warnings as I can muster whenever the shock-pulses pause and I can use the muscles of my face.
"Nut ginown na neecoreeter!"
"Admiral Stairs," says Zandig stupidly. "What are you doing up there?" He turns to one of the others, a shorter man with an eye patch and a set of unusable drosophila wings. "He's up there coming through the ceiling," he says.
The weight of my somewhat bloated body forces the issue; I slide through and fall onto Fourth Engineer Zandig, who watches idiotically until I crush him and shatter his exoskeleton. The thermal fangs sense an organic target and begin slicing up through his soft, gelatinous, unprotected pelvis, neatly snipping, pulling my face along on a personal tour of Zandig's entrails. He screams for a moment, but he quickly ceases as I eat up through his lungs, neck, and brain. If I had the use of my eyelids I would close them. I don't.
I am pulled five feet across the cold steel floor by my mouth, my stomach and legs painting Zandig's intestines in a straight path behind me, before I realize that the fangs have detected the energy of the Overdriver Core, and are aiming to eat it, too. If this happens, we will all explode, or implode, or both; I will be sucked into an alternate dimension, or perhaps reborn. The other engineers are standing around beside me, watching. So passive! What I wouldn't give for another Admiral's presence, someone who would take the initiative and really save the day!
As if as answer from the Gods (I am an atheist), Private Cascadilla's flaccid body drops from the ceiling and pins my legs to the floor. I feel his face, pressed against the back of my bandoleer, directly atop the power cell, shaking and twitching as it absorbs what I estimate to be 1,000,000,000 super-amperes of electricity. (I have just now invented that term.) The fangs go haywire, snapping in all directions, and sparks arc out from me towards the Overdriver Core. I smell smoke and burning flesh; the ship rocks and the lights cut out. With one final convulsion, the bandoleer shorts out and Private Cascadilla's sizzling body stops moving.
