Guns of Mars 64
A Martian action-adventure by The Legend Chuck Dixon
CHAPTER 18.3
He was sliding his sword from the scabbard on his back as he saw a shimmering paleness move within the dark. Multiple clawed feet scrabbled over the loose scree. The sword was fully freed and in his fists when an enormous lizard rushed into the failing sunlight. It was white as milk from snout to tail but for enormous black eyes set wide above a gate mouth lined with glistening fangs. It was fully ten times the thark’s weight and it was all Kal could do to throw himself out of its path.
One swipe of his saber opened a gash in the soft flesh along one flank. Only the tip of the long blade had entered the reptile’s side. It was enough to open a gash that spilled an ichorous blue-black gout of blood.
Hissing, the beast whirled with astonishing speed to drive Kal back against the rocks. It reached for him with wickedly curved talons meant to catch and draw the thark to its waiting jaws.
Kal knew that he would only have time for one desperate gambit or this loathsome thing would take him. He shifted his grip on his saber, holding it well back in one hand to launch it, point first at the charging monster. The blade took the lizard in its right eye and sunk deep into the glistening orb with a splash of viscous ebon muck.
Surprise and the shock of pain caused the rushing creature to pause long enough for Kal to unlimber his rifle. Rather than cower further, he rushed forward, the rifle held before him like a lance in two of his fists. This brought him within the arc of the thing’s madly flailing claws. He launched himself directly at the open maw, yawning wide to reveal ranks of razor teeth. With all his weight he drove the end of the rifle deep into the beast’s gullet until he felt the barrel slam hard in the upper palate. He pressed the trigger home and was instantly showered with a torrent of hot blood and gobs of soft tissue.
Kal fell with the reptile as it collapsed lifeless. He scrambled backward from where he had fallen half-in and half-out of its gaping jaws. He retreated over the blood slick rocks to rest his back against the cliff face. The great salamander lay with its limbs mindlessly twitching. Vapor rose from the hole in its spade-shaped skull where the massive charge had blown its miniscule brain out the back of its skull.
Spitting bits of offal from his mouth, Kal pushed off from the rock to retrieve his sword from where it remained lodged in the insensible eye. As he did so a chittering noise reached his ears.
From within the dim recesses of the cavern a dozen or more creatures scrambled forward. These were smaller, juvenile versions of the thing he’d just slain. He backed then, rifle slung and sword held ready for a fresh onslaught. He continued his retreat along the ledge to a stretch whose span would prevent these offspring from attacking en masse.
He relaxed his stance as, when the hatchlings reached the carcass of their parent they began to feed upon it, tearing at the newly dead flesh with fang and claw. They had no interest in him, their instincts for self-preservation overriding any notions of vengeance that might have passed for thought in their limited intelligence.
Kal made his way along the trail away from the open crevasse and soon found that it reached a gentle slope that would take him from the shadows of the peaks and out onto the badlands that lay to the south.
Special Note: GUNS OF MARS is now available in a hardcover edition. It is available at Amazon and at NDM Express.
