The aliens won’t understand, won’t budge. “They must think I’m pretty stupid. Here goes.”
She stepped toward the door but at the last moment grabbed one of the aliens by the shoulders and tossed her through first. She hit the floor with a hard bump, but did not get sliced to ribbons or explode or turn into a frog.
Carol stepped through and the woman scrambled away from her, staring expressionlessly. The door slammed shut and the room was dark. Carol turned on her suit lights.
“The walls and ceiling of this room are all metal except for a small window. The floor, too. Maybe they think it’ll keep me from disappearing. Or from communicating. Think I’ll wreck their door.”
There was no latch on her side of the door, but the right-hand edge was a long ribbed strip like a piano hinge. She melted the hinge with four laser bursts and then pushed on the door.
As the door fell, the woman behind Carol jumped onto her back. She shrugged and flipped her across the room.
The door hit with a satisfying boom; curls of smoke rose from the hot edge as it melted a line on the floor. Three of the aliens edged back cautiously as she moved through the doorway.
Then the opposite wall opened and the fourth alien stepped through, cradling an armful of the microphone weapons. Carol plucked a grenade off her chest and threw it at the alien’s feet.
The force of the blast staggered the woman, knocking her on her back. The weapons scattered.
The alien got back up. She had a thousand cuts from scalp to foot; the front of her body was a uniform red sheen. Her right foot was hanging on by a thin strip of flesh. When she put her weight on it the useless foot flopped aside and she walked on the shattered end of her exposed shinbone. She smiled at Carol with red pointed teeth and picked up a weapon. As she plugged it into her belt, Carol snapped the thumb switch that turned on her magnetic field.
And Carol sailed backwards into the metal room, slammed up against the wall, and stayed pinned there like an insect.
“Uh . . . the metal of this room is obviously magnetic. Thirteen minutes. Here they come.”
She unclipped the yellow canister and tossed it in front of the aliens. The leader kicked it aside. She dropped the green one at her own feet.
Three of the aliens, including the mangled one, held back. The leader approached and said two syllables- then her eyes closed, her legs buckled and she fell to her hands and knees.
“Evidently the green tranquilizer works . . . No.” The alien shook her head and stood up again. “I’ll hold off on the red for a few minutes.” She smiled a shy, pretty smile: her teeth were white squares.
“I could have sworn all of them had pointed-“ Carol flinched as the alien pointed the weapon at her. A hole opened in the hull a couple of meters away, letting in a beam of white light.
“It’s working.” The alien wiggled the weapon and the hole widened to a long gash. She nodded and walked back to the other three. She tried the weapon on the bloody one and it sliced her in two.
Carol closed her eyes and swallowed rapidly. They aren’t human, she told herself over and over. They aren’t even proper animals, they don’t feel pain.
Deliberately looking away, she saw the alien who had first been in the room with her. It lay face-down on the floor, head against the wall.
“It looks like some of them are more vulnerable than others. One I threw against the wall is unconscious or dead.”
She forced her eyes back to the others. “They’re talking now, or growling. The . . . one they cut in two is also talking, lying on her back.
“That’s strange. She doesn’t look at all like the pictures we saw in training. Of slingshot accidents. It’s . . . the body cavity doesn’t have any identifiable organs. Just a lot of blood and yellow stuff. Here they come.”