Providence - Max Barry Page 0,112

would be the end of her. She could hear it behind her, its hard skin on rock, and she forced her eyes to stay focused on what lay ahead. Only when she reached a turn did she glance back, and it was there, thirty feet behind.

She shrieked and stumbled forward and heard the salamander start after her. It was going to catch her and she scrambled up the ravine wall, which was possibly idiotic, because it could almost certainly scale the rock faster than she could. The salamander galloped toward her and its jaws opened and she pulled herself upward onto the lip of the ravine and rolled away.

This was not a good feed. This was not amusing, relatable vulnerability. This was horrible. It was Feed Talia being torn to pieces by an alien. She found her feet and began to stumble across the rock on her bad ankle. She should have stayed where she was. She shouldn’t be here at all. When she looked back, the salamander was clawing its way out of the fissure, its black wings spreading, beating for lift, and then they folded down and it began to gallop after her. Its jaws cracked open and it issued a sound: “Pak! Pak! Pak!” The sound cut through her. There was a pressure, a feeling like the clouds were coming down on her like a vise. More salamanders began to emerge from the fissure, one by one, as if there were a procession of them down there and she’d encountered the band leader. They echoed its cry, “Pak! Pak!” which, she now knew, meant, Quick, come eat this human! She stopped running and they swept toward her.

I’m sorry. I don’t think I can continue with this roleplay.

I think that’s scene.

The first salamander was twenty feet away when its front half disappeared. She was looking at its insides, at thick twitching meat. Its legs jerked and it fell over. She didn’t know what had happened. She wasn’t sure where the rest of it had gone. There were sharp kicks in the soles of her feet and she didn’t know what they were, either, but the salamanders jerked and split and became dark stains on the rock. In moments, they were dead.

She looked around. From farther away, more salamanders began to emerge from the fissure.

The pressure in her head was unbearable. She felt as if the air had compressed, as if the sky was falling in a solid slab.

There was a noise like the wail of dying angels. Above, the roiling cloud split open. From it, the ship emerged.

Its hull was almost entirely the burnished yellow of new skin. Wind tore at her. The ships’ mass projectors were rotated onto its belly, flashing. They pounded the rock and obliterated salamanders. After a minute, it fell silent. There was only her and the ship. The wail sounded again.

A white disc glowed hotly at the center of the ship’s belly. She’d never seen that particular weapon powered. It was the plasma cannon, the one they called the planet-killer.

Oh, she thought. Of course.

The ship hadn’t come for her. It had come for the salamanders.

She’d known her relationship with the ship was largely invented. She had just forgotten that for a minute. The wail came a third time. It was the warning siren that meant imminent discharge. The white disc was enormous, like the blind eye of a god. Gilly had been right all along: She was insignificant in the scheme of this war, which would be won by forces larger than any of them, and go on even then, in new and unpredictable forms. She was a bystander. She stood on the rock against the buffeting wind and waited for the ship to destroy everything.

A few hundred feet away, rock burst open. A black torrent of salamanders sprayed forth. A second place exploded, then a third, until the air was thick with them. The rock beneath her feet jolted and she stumbled. Everywhere the ground opened up and black salamanders flew out. In the distance, she saw a swarm like a black cloud swinging toward it from a mountain. As she clung to the rock, they came as if there was no end to their numbers, as if the planet