Miracle Workers (SCE Books 5-8) - Keith R. A. DeCandido_. [et al.] [91]
Next to me, J’Roh aimed his sonic rifle at the door. Unfortunately, there was nothing to aim at. The shii hadn’t come all the way through, and the parts that had were blocked by Querti and by Anilegna’s remains. Not that it would have mattered to me. As before, I froze.
Oddly, this time, I couldn’t hear the rifles firing, but I could hear Querti’s screams. People closer to me than he was were saying things. I think Dr. Dolahn cried out, and several people ducked under the beds, but I didn’t hear that. The shii ripped through the rest of the doorway, but I didn’t hear that, either. I continued to hear Querti’s screams, though.
Once he had a clear shot, J’Roh fired his rifle. So did one of the other guards at the door. The second guard’s rifle literally exploded in his face. That, I did hear, as well as his screams, intermingled with Querti’s.
A hole seemed to open up in the shii’s torso, but it didn’t slow down. It sliced the head of the first guard clean off, while the second guard continued to scream in pain. Then it got quiet for a moment. I noticed that the shii had cut Querti’s head off as well.
Suddenly, sound exploded in my ears. Dolahn telling everyone to take cover. J’Roh screaming for me to shoot. The second guard still screaming in agony. And I still couldn’t move, couldn’t fire my weapon, couldn’t speak.
I wanted to, Marig, that’s the worst thing. As loudly as J’Roh was screaming at me, I was screaming at myself. I tried to motivate myself to do something. But I could not budge. I told myself that the deaths of Kejahna, Kelrek, D’Ren, Entorr, and all the others had to be avenged. I told myself that others would die at any moment. I told myself that Commander Gomez had said that I was the one she trusted.
But mostly I just thought about how I was going to die. And I was so frightened of that possibility that I could do nothing but think about it. And so fear continued to grip me as the shii decapitated Kani and Rimlek. Both of them had been attacked by the other shii, which Commander Gomez had killed. Though they had survived, they had been left comatose. Now they, too, were dead.
J’Roh leapt down from our guard post at the doorway and shot the creature again. It started to bleed mercury, as the other one had. But its wounds did not seem to stem its horrific tide. With one slash, it cut J’Roh’s body in two. Then Dolahn, the Gallamite doctor, ran up to it. Dolahn is not what I would consider a brave man. In fact, I would mostly consider him a fool. Like all Gallamites, he has a transparent head, so you can see his brain. Someone used to joke that he wore a hat so no one would know how small that brain truly was. The sad truth is, he wore the hat because Kejahna threatened to kill him if he didn’t. In any case, Dolahn ran up to the shii. He was armed only with some kind of edged instrument. He stabbed the creature in an odd place. It was right in the creature’s lower thorax. Probably where its stomach was. After the doctor did that, the shii cut his head off, too.
His head lay on the floor, the hat having fallen off. I could see his brain. It was not small. In fact, it seemed rather large.
Then the shii collected all the heads it had severed. I noticed that all the wounds that had been inflicted on it had healed. Well, almost all. The one Dolahn had inflicted continued to drip mercury, even as it collected heads. When it was done, it tucked the heads under a foreleg. Then it ran out the way it came.
Slowly, people started to come out from under the beds and tables. The floors were awash in blue from all the blood. Some red was mixed in, from the doctor.
A moment later, Commander Gomez ran in. She asked, “What happened?”
Some mad fool burst out laughing at that absurd question. It took me a moment to realize that I was that