QxK-T’q-KCkTrrt
He wore the shape well.
The armor hid his shape. The gait was calibrated. The breath timing was wrong if measured closely, but no one did. No one ever cared for what scraped the bottom.
They looked for eyes, for shoulders, for hands. He gave them all three, layered over a body that had never been meant to compare with theirs.
Four primary appendages carried his weight beneath the armor plating, jointed low and wide, distributing pressure into the pavement.
The two larger arms were folded close, their mass disguised beneath reinforced sleeves, pincers locked and still.
The secondary manipulators rested higher, slimmer, clawed tips sheathed in synthetic gloves.
At a glance, he passed for human; he passed for dangerous.
That was enough, and closer to the truth than it needed to be.
The dome above was fully sealed, metal locking the skyline into a static ceiling of dull light and shadow.
It didn’t stop the beasts, but it bent their paths, forced momentum into channels. It eased containment.
He approved of the decision even if it hadn’t been his. That also meant that all the interlopers would be there: the old hound, and the remnants of the experiment from below.
He was bound to Taboo to know why the contact had gone dark and was captured. He could almost taste the cosmic irony in that.
The street ahead was a ruin of layered failure: collapsed transit pylons, exposed conduits still faintly glowing, the skeletons of buildings that had once housed too many mouths and not enough planning.
He could smell ferrocrete dust through the filters. Burnt organics. Old blood. New blood.
The lab should have been beneath this sector.
That had been the reason he was here originally. Audit. Recovery. Assessment.
Then the pirates took him. The battle above. The sudden vacuum of command when K??tr? died screaming in her ship—or so he was told.
Dexton had chosen him to replace her.
Not because he was loyal. He absolutely wasn’t.
He knew how to be useful. That was the truth.
His squad fanned out behind him, a mix of species unified by armor, fear, and the understanding that desertion meant death now rather than later.
He let them keep their spacing loose. Tight formations invited panic when something broke through. The first impact came without warning.
A shape dropped from above: massive, asymmetrical, all momentum and teeth. The beast hit the street hard enough to crater the pavement, its bulk skidding forward in a spray of debris.
QxK-T’q-KCkTrrt didn’t flinch.
Beasts were simple. Fast. Strong. Predictable.
He raised his right manipulator, palm flat.
-Hold.-
The translator conveyed his clicks and rapid snaps.
The squad obeyed.
The creature surged forward, limbs scrabbling, claws scraping against stone. It was blind in one eye—old damage. That would make it favor its left turn.
He stepped aside at the last moment, letting it pass, and drove one pincer down into the exposed joint behind its skull. The pressure was precise. His bio-engineered muscles easily severed the head.
The beast convulsed, momentum carrying it another few meters before it collapsed, twitching.
Efficient.
He withdrew the pincer, ichor steaming where it touched the air.
No satisfaction. Just confirmation.
Thermal alerts flared across his HUD. Multiple contacts. Too many for a patrol response.
The creatures were pushing.
If only the experiment had yielded results, his people would be the ones pushing—annihilating everything and taking the spoils.
His comm chimed.
"Officer."
Dexton’s voice was low, calm, and slow. "Status."
The Granfi adjusted his stance unconsciously, lowering his center of mass.
QxK-T’q-KCkTrrt did not answer immediately.
He took half a second to finish mapping the thermal bloom ahead, to register the secondary vibrations crawling along the lower transit supports, to adjust his estimate of how many bodies he would lose before this ended. Only then did he respond.
-Contact density is increasing. Containment is working, for now. But we will be overrun in three to four days if this continues.-
-Good.-
The channel closed. No further instruction.
QxK-T’q-KCkTrrt felt the familiar compression settle along his inner shell.
The narrowing of possibilities.
How will my death be good?
Since the moment of their conception, the Granfi were survivors.
They ate what others discarded, and others told them they evolved after a two-species war of extinction.
Did it matter if they were that, or the remnants that survived the massacre? They never got words full of wonder like others, only scraps. They made do.
Bottom feeders, they called his species. Let them.
They climbed upon others’ leftovers; they improved upon them. His people were smart.
The moment they unlocked genetics, they started improving upon themselves, too.
Something large struck the underside of the avenue ahead, breaking his train of thought and buckling ferrocrete upward in a violent swell.
The pavement cracked, split, and then exploded outward as a beast forced its way through from below, hauling its bulk into the open with raw force.
This one was different.
Bigger. Heavier plating. Reinforced joints. Poorly balanced, but powerful. It roared.
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Another variant.
QxK-T’q-KCkTrrt lifted both primary arms.
-Spread. Anchor points. Do not pursue.-
The squad complied with varying degrees of competence. Two were already too slow.
The brute surged forward, sweeping one of its limbs in a wide arc that crushed a Versel against a storefront wall. The impact didn’t kill them immediately. Their thermal signature flared, then stuttered.
QxK-T’q-KCkTrrt ignored it.
He squeezed the trigger of the energy weapon with his lower manipulators.
The purple blast found its mark, but the beast shrugged it off without much damage.
It was worth the try.
QxK-T’q-KCkTrrt climbed a shattered transit pillar, trying to gain vantage.
He wanted to say something, but all he managed was silence.
There was more movement behind the charging behemoth.
They came in waves already—emerging from alleys, ruptured basements, shattered access tunnels. Smaller variants. Faster. Less durable. Pack behavior, even where no pack could be seen. His people had studied them. Overminds. Wanted to copy them.
The project had gone rogue, which was worse than going silent.
The squad was struggling. He adjusted.
-New priority. Form on me.-
They did. Not because they trusted him, but because he was the largest remaining threat on the field, and proximity to that threat increased survival odds.
The pack charged.
He cursed his luck, planted himself in the center of the avenue, and let the beasts come—intercepting charges, breaking momentum, redirecting bodies into each other or into hard cover. His movements were economical, repetitive, optimized.
Kill. Disable. Kill.
It was clear he would die there, after all.
The sound came first. A pressure change so sudden it compressed the air in his chest and made the pavement vibrate.
The beasts hesitated.
That alone marked the moment as abnormal.
The cruiser broke through the cloud layer as a blade pushed through flesh. Dexton’s ship did not descend so much as assert itself, engines burning clean and cold, vectoring into position with obscene precision. Its hull was scarred, angular, asymmetrical in a way that spoke of battles survived rather than design refined.
The Ahuizotl aligned, then it fired. The first volley erased an avenue and all the creatures it constrained.
Human weapons absurdity at its finest.
White-hot lances tore through ferrocrete, buildings, beasts, and buried infrastructure alike, punching straight. The shockwave rolled outward in a perfect ring, flattening them.
QxK-T’q-KCkTrrt dug his primary appendages into the street and locked his armor’s stabilizers just in time. Even so, the force shoved him backward several meters, joints screaming as his mass skidded through cooling ichor and pulverized stone.
The pack never regrouped.
Secondary batteries opened next: rapid, methodical, surgical in their excess. Fire walked the streets in overlapping patterns, cutting off escape routes, collapsing access tunnels, and sealing emergence points with molten slag. Where beasts surfaced, they were met with annihilation precise enough to feel personal.
The sides of the armored cruiser opened, revealing humans in blackened armor, pirate insignia worn openly, weapons already hot.
They advanced without urgency, stepping over still-burning remains, finishing anything that twitched with casual brutality.
QxK-T’q-KCkTrrt forced himself upright.
His estimate of casualties recalculated itself downward. Sharply.
A shadow fell over him, not from above, but from the side.
Dexton arrived on foot.
He did not wear full battle armor. What he wore was lighter, layered, and clearly custom. It carried the marks of use without ever appearing worn.
His presence bent the flow of motion around him; his men unconsciously adjusted their spacing, their posture, the angle of their weapons.
Predators acknowledging a greater one.
Dexton surveyed the street like a ledger being balanced. His artificial eye's red glare passed over beast remains, collapsed structures, burning wreckage, and finally settled on the Granfi.
-You said three to four days, pup- Dexton said calmly.
QxK-T’q-KCkTrrt lowered himself further, center of mass instinctively dropping.
-Escalation rate exceeded modeled parameters. They seem to be rushing us-
Dexton nodded once, as if that explanation had been expected.
Another explosion bloomed several blocks away, followed by cheering over open comms as one of the pirate squads cleared a nest.
Dexton didn’t look.
He stepped closer, boots crunching on vitrified stone. Up close, the human smelled of ozone, oil, and something sharper: confidence.
-Don’t look for excuses. If you say three days, it has to be three days.- Dexton continued. -Bottom line: don’t go biting the dust in three minutes after saying days, mutt.-
QxK-T’q-KCkTrrt inclined his upper body: acknowledgment, not gratitude.
The Ahuizotl adjusted its main turret's position, firing one last sustained beam into a distant district. The dome’s internal lighting flickered as power was rerouted to compensate.
Silence followed.
He turned away before the words could be interpreted as anything else.
-Seek a position you can defend, and stop these things from endangering our profits.-
QxK-T’q-KCkTrrt watched as Dexton and his crew went back to the ship, and the Ahuizotl lifted, engines blazing as it went on .
Here's my original dragons in space attempt, which won't be part of the cover contest. But I hope you can give it a try and enjoy it too.
