Three-hundred and fifty stories above an acidic moat with a pH of less than 0.3 on a scale of 0-14, Vera clung to the side of the grubbis Queen Xexquartzz’s mud tower. She glided over the hardened clay walls from crack to crack finding purchase with her bare hands and boot-spikes, trying with her heat vision to locate the bipedal frog-like signatures of the military officers within, and most importantly, the larger, horned silhouette of the Queen. Vera clenched the grip of the needler pistol on her right hip and felt her teeth grind together.
Why did she feel this anxiousness? How had she abandoned the Prime Union’s programming? She shook her head, blinking and took a deep breath. No matter. She knew the Queen of the grubbis must die along with most of the grubbis officers. If the Prime Union’s iron grip on the local galaxies were ever to be loosened, the grubbis control of the jump-gate had to be severed and all their high-ranking capital officials who held access to the jump-gate controls would need to die for that to happen.
Three grubbis officers walked inside a corridor near her proximity on the tower wall. Their sag-bellied shapes flickered in her targeting visual. Not close enough to the Queen. So tempting, though. Three would only alarm more too quickly. Soon, drones would shoot up from the perimeters below and pour a rain of plasma bolts on top of her. A sweeping assault would be the only effective maneuver, then her ejection. She climbed a little higher to the next story. There, at least seventeen officers along with a serving robot gathered around in a circle in a chamber and vaulted on a pedestal in the center stood Queen Xexquartzz, her gown of secretion and jellied spittle shimmering with blue electrical arcs. Some kind of organically generated shielding no doubt.
Vera pulled out her needler pistol this time and nudged the arming switch with her chin. Six-centimeter glass covered the oval windows here. Not a problem. She had kicked through thicker glass before, but that would be too loud too soon. Twenty seconds for entry, executions, and exit. She climbed just below the window nearest her and pulled out a plasma pistol from her boot and switched it to torch. She cut a hole just wide enough for her to crawl through, the glass oozed down in glowing orange globs, flames crackling in the high-altitude winds. Spiderweb cracks surrounded the hole as the chilled air quickly cooled the glass. She saw an elevated oxygen reading in her visual display as the tower’s air pressure released onto her face. She holstered the plasma pistol and crawled through the hole.
She dive-rolled onto the floor within and came up onto her feet shooting. She knew the air must be slightly ionized, but something seemed oddly surreal. She felt it in her bloodstream as she pulled the triggers on both pistols pointed opposite at her left and right. The grubbis officers at each of her sides barely had time to shake their gelatinous necks in shock before their heads disappeared in a spray of mustard yellow blood. Glowing needles tore through the air and appeared jutting from the walls in swathes of dangling grubbis bits.
CELLULAR MUTATION IMMINENT… UNKNOWN ENVIRONMENTAL MICROBES…
As the messages flashed across her vision she squeezed the triggers faster, each time splattering more grubbis officers. When this was over she could sort out pesky alert messages. Two guards with rifles charged her from the entrance of the chamber and started firing. She leaped into the air, flipping toward them and came up with the climbing spikes on her boots in the nearest guard’s shin, disintegrating his head with needles from her pistol whilst blasting the second in the gut, cutting him in half. She winced when she got up, as her shoulder ignited with pain. She glanced at it to find three bullet-holes. “You motherfuckers!” she said.
CELLULAR EVOLUTION IN PROGRESS… UPDATE TO PRIME UNION UPLOADING…
“Fuck Prime!” she said, as she made her way towards the Queen, all the time splatting off more officers’ heads around the chamber. She hesitated when a jerky serving robot moved into her line of fire. It seemed frightened or confused and in ill-repair. Rust patches had taken over its faded-lime paint, and the rubber on its hydraulics had cracked and held clumps of dust-caked grease. She would not destroy this innocent old machine. She waited for it to saunter out of the way still carrying a tray mounded with large pink beetles known to be a delicacy on planet Z’brahct. A jolt of electricity stung her hips and she collapsed to the floor shaking. She saw sparkles of blue exiting her eyes, obscuring her vision. Her internal visual display filled with random text anomalies. The Queen had zapped her somehow. Her hesitation. Her affinity for intelligent machines.