He had one shot, and he had to make it count. He squeezed on the trigger, hitting the right balance between speed and haste.
Suddenly there was no noise for him except the loud explosion and roar of the M-4000 as its load of barbed flechettes shot from the barrel. There would only be time for the one shot, and it had to count.
The mutie bear turned by just a fraction of an angle in the millisecond between hearing the M-4000 explode and feeling the load of flechettes with metal barbs hit home. It was luck for the Armorer that this turn was in the right direction, and assisted the intent of his excellent shot. The open maw of the bear suddenly disappeared in a welter of blood, pus and fur as the load hit home, ripping into the soft flesh of the palette and jaw, splintering bone and pulping tissue, some of the hot metal shooting through to the brain, where it met no resistance from gray matter already reduced to mush by the flechettes. The exit wounds from the wild card of metal and bone exploding inside the brainpan were large, ripping apart the skull so that it disintegrated in a slow motion explosion of fur, pus and bone, showering the immediate area.
The final roar of the creature was strangled in its throat, allowed no exit by the sudden disappearance of its mouth and head.
The body of the bear stood erect, already chilled, but without anything to tell it to lie down. It teetered for a moment before crashing to the earth.
There was an eerie silence and stillness that descended over the party. It lasted for a short moment, before Gloria’s husky tones, tinged with anger, cut across the silence. “Who the fuck let that big fucker through? Why wasn’t he spotted? Who should have made the call?”
Her piercing blue eyes ran over the assembled Gate members and Ryan’s people. She was scanning to see which of the outriders, scouting the territory on each side and ahead of the path, was responsible.
“Shit—woman down,” she whispered, noting that Jess was missing.
It was all too easy to find out what had happened to the small, dark Amazon. All Gloria, Ryan and Jak had to do was follow the trail left by the now chilled mutie bear. They traveled as a trio for cover while the rest of the party regrouped and prepared to continue. Ryan and Jak both carried grens, in case the mutie had a mate who would be less than pleased to see them. But it seemed that the mutie bear had been a loner, perhaps the last of its type. Its lair was roughly a half mile from the path they had hacked into the jungle. It took them no time at all to reach the location, as the bear had destroyed enough undergrowth in its rampage to make the trail easy to follow and the path easy to traverse.
It seemed to them that Jess had been scouting when, her instinct for danger somehow deserting her momentarily but at a crucial point, she had stumbled across the small gathering of trees and ferns that the mutie had gathered as a bed. There had been no time for her to take any action as her blade was still sheathed and her blaster lay beside her outstretched hand. A hand that was immaculate and spotless, a contrast to the rest of her chilled corpse. The mutie had obviously taken her completely by surprise, as her rib cage lay exposed in the dim light, ripped by the talons of the creature to expose bone. There was little left of her innards, and the bear had seemingly used her for sustenance to fuel its rampage. She was nearly severed at the torso, her legs mangled and useless at an obscene angle to the rest of her body. Her head was barely recognizable, partly because of the obvious bite mark that obscured one side of her face, showing where the creature had attacked her.
“Fireblast,” Ryan whispered. “Have to be triple red if there are any more fuckers like that around.”
Gloria shook her head sadly. “Waste of a good warrior. But there are always reasons, and we must draw from this, so that she was not chilled for no reason.”