Page 25 of A Mate For Matrix
“Thanks!” Matrix growled.
“What do I do?” Jana asked, eyes wide with worry.
Matrix turned and cupped her cheeks between his large palms. He stared down into her eyes before he bent to brush a tender kiss across her lips. There wasn’t enough time to get her to the transport. He had sent it to hover above the tree line. They would have to kill the Crawler before it got to the house.
“Stay inside,” he said, his voice low but firm. “K-Nine and I are experienced in dealing with situations like this. I need to remain focused, and I need you to stay inside. We’ll keep it from getting to the house.”
Jana swallowed and nodded. She watched as Matrix finished dressing and slipped into the harness with the two long blades. Her gaze narrowed on the cartridges he was loading into a weapon that looked like a cross between an enormous gun and a small cannon.
Several minutes later, they left the house. Jana debated whether to turn on the lights or to keep them off. She finally decided that having them on might make her feel safer, but it could also make it easier for the creature to see Matrix and K-Nine. In the end, she retrieved her cell phone, a small flashlight, and the biggest damn knife she could find in her kitchen.
A soft “meow” echoed from the hallway. Then another.
“Come here, sweethearts. Biscuit, Honeybun, Butter—come to Momma,” Jana coaxed softly.
Jana opened the door to the pantry and poured a small amount of food into their glass food bowl. The sound of the dry pieces was loud as they struck the glass. She slid to the floor and pulled one of her large cloth shopping bags close to her. After the kittens were finished with their early morning snack, she picked them up and placed them in the bag.
“Hush now,” Jana whispered, laying her hand in the bag and letting the kittens play with it. “Please, keep them both safe. I don’t think I could handle losing either of them now. Please, oh please.”
Matrix nodded to K-Nine. Three of the scanners in the southwest were going off. A fourth one suddenly lit up. The Crawler was half a klick away. K-Nine stood near the back of the house while Matrix had taken up a position just inside the tree line. He squatted on a low branch to minimize the chances of being detected.
“It’s coming,” K-Nine muttered through the communicator in Matrix’s ear.
“The fifth sensor just activated. It must still be traveling underground,” Matrix warned.
They didn’t have to guess. Seconds later, the ground roiled, then erupted as the Crawler emerged. Matrix cursed as he counted the legs—an even dozen. His mother had been right as always, this one was a fully mature female—an egg-laying, eating machine. If the other information was correct, and he feared it was, the Crawler could lay over a thousand eggs. Every one of those eggs could lay another thousand when they matured at the end of a solar year. Within two years, the planet would be infested with the Crawlers, and the planet’s inhabitants would become the Crawler’s food source.
K-Nine emitted a loud, high-pitched howl, sending the creature into paroxysms of pain. The high pitch, unheard by most creatures, pinged the sonar built into the Crawler’s frontal lobe. Matrix jumped to the ground and charged while the creature was temporarily debilitated. He was almost upon it when it whipped around and spat out a stream of acid.
Matrix lunged to the side, rolling before he regained his footing. K-Nine darted forward, attacking one of the exposed legs. He clamped down on the third limb on the right side. The force and speed of his attack allowed him to grab the leg and wrench it off.
The Crawler turned with a howl and struck at K-Nine as he jerked the twitching limb away from the creature. The force of the blow threw K-Nine up into the air. He landed almost a dozen feet away, the twitching leg still hanging from his jaws.
“You will not kill me, warriors,” the Crawler hissed in a guttural voice. “Thissss will be my world!”
“Not as long as we are still breathing,” Matrix swore as he circled the creature. “Why don’t you do us all a favor and just hold still so we can kill you?”
“Not likely, warrior,” the Crawler snapped as it turned, intending to dive back into the hole gaping behind it.
“I don’t think so,” Matrix growled, surging forward and tossing a cement charge into the massive hole.
The Crawler’s back legs struck against his chest. The blow tossed him through the air. K-Nine, seeing the blow, raced across the yard just as the charge exploded.
The force of the explosion in the hole threw K-Nine and the Crawler backwards. The hole caved in, filling with the rapidly expanding cement material that quickly hardened into stone. The Crawler struggled for a moment before she curled into a ball, her interconnecting plates creating a protective shield around herself.
Matrix’s expression hardened when he saw what the creature had done. He knew from the vidcom of the creatures on the asteroid that she expected him to use the standard laser charge against her. Her protective shell repelled those types of energy bursts, making them useless against the Crawler and the ricochets dangerous to anyone nearby. He and K-Nine had trained for this.
Pulling out his blades, Matrix circled the Crawler, and then swung, striking at one of the hard, armored plates. Brilliant sparks lit the air, and his arm shuddered with the force of the blow, but the blade didn’t penetrate the plating.
“Matrix, something is wrong, I can feel her moving,” K-Nine said, pressing his nose against the ground.
“I covered the hole,” Matrix snapped, striking the plating again.
“She’s not in there,” K-Nine insisted, taking several steps before he stopped and looked up. “She’s shed her outer casing and is heading for the house.”
A curse erupted from Matrix and his arm froze even as his head turned toward the dark building. Fear gripped his heart, and for a brief second he forgot how to breathe. He glanced at the hollow shell of the creature, then back at the house. There had been nothing in the briefing about the Crawler being able to shed its outer casing. Pulling out an energy charge, he pointed it at the empty shell of the Crawler.
“Run,” he ordered, pulling the trigger.
