Pathways - Jeri Taylor [82]
Just the type to take home to meet Mother, B’Elanna thought as he lunged, and before she could wonder where that thought had come from, he was on her.
His first blow was predictable, a slashing-downward chop from his right arm. B’Elanna grabbed it as it descended toward her head and used his own momentum to take him down, flipping him onto his back and then kicking him solidly in the throat. He clutched at it, gasping for air through the crushed windpipe. He would fight no more.
This time, there was no telltale sound to warn her of the attack. The second assailant was behind her before she could register his approach, and she took a staggering blow to her left shoulder. Pain rippled down through her arm and hand, little shock waves of anguish that made it all but impossible for her to focus on what she had to do.
The blow had driven her to her knees, and she continued the motion, rolling in a tight ball away from the armored attacker, trying to collect her wits. She tried to push upright with her left arm, but found it was, for all intents, useless; it was nothing more than a thousand tiny fire points, and failed to respond to any command she gave it.
She saw the sweeping kick coming at her head and barely threw up her right arm in time, intercepting the kick and finding purchase with her hand on one of the armored plates. It was surprisingly spongy in texture. Using her legs to drive upward, she toppled the monstrous assailant, who fell to the ground like a giant tree, smashing his face against rocky shale.
B’Elanna massaged her left arm, hoping they were done with her, but doubting it could be that easy, and was proven right when two of the aliens—even larger than the first two—crashed from the woods at opposite ends, galloping toward her, bellowing like Tovian bulls.
She made a quick decision and turned toward one of them, running directly at him, head down. Her small size was actually an advantage with a creature so tall, as he had to bend down to get at her, throwing himself slightly off balance.
He was also somewhat perplexed that she was coming at him, and hesitated slightly as she neared. Then he roared again, and bent down to strike at her small, compact form, just as she dived at his knees. He went sailing over her head and landed directly in the path of the other, who stumbled over the crashing form.
These guys are big, she thought, but not too bright, as she rotated into a flying kick.
And felt her leg almost torn from its socket.
She screamed involuntarily and fell heavily to the floor, muscles and ligaments straining against the force being applied to them by yet another assailant. Without even knowing what she was doing, she rotated with the force, turning her body in the same direction in order to take the pressure off her hip socket. Then she was free of his grip and the pain in her leg triggered an overwhelming response: rage. Fury pulsed through her like a wildfire, igniting everything in its path, turning her into a woman possessed, ferocious and inexorable.
Her hand clutched at the ground beneath her, grabbing for the shale, breaking off a shard of it and then swinging it upward, right at the distended head of the creature, right toward the orb that seemed to be its eye, driving the rocky stake deep into the mass of pulp, plunging it the full length of the shale until her fingers touched the eye.
Then she pulled it out and whirled toward the others, who lay in a tangled heap on the ground, and drove the spike into the eye of the first one she reached, listening with satisfaction at the bellows of pain she was causing. Something feral was loose in her now, a heat to the blood that burned away restraint and urged her to slake her blood-thirst.
“Computer, delete program,” said the disembodied voice behind her, and everything disappeared—the woods, the rocky ground, the assailants, and the shale spike that had become her weapon.
Gasping for breath,