36 Chapter 36 Something not human (1/2)
Dustin was frozen.He was torn between his fear of bugs, the immense size of this damn thing, and wanting to save Olivia.He had memories of her from before all this craziness started.Giving himself a shake, he started forward.
It turned and stared at him with its multitude of beady eyes, and he jerked to a stop.Ignoring Olivia, it darted towards him.With a very unmanly squeak, he went to dart away, but stopped himself, when he realized this thing shouldn't be able to hurt him.Turning back, he saw that it was almost on him, and he braced himself.
The giant spider pounced, exposing a long needle stinger, dripping with poison.He waited until it was just above him, almost on top of him, before shooting out his tongues, and slapping the underside of the spider with all of the venom needles on them.
The spider landed heavily, collapsing to the side and started spasming.Leaping away from it, he sprinted over to Olivia, who was hopelessly tangled in the web.Her look was guarded as she watched him tear the webbing away.
”Please, I don't mean to hurt you!If you will climb on my back, so we can get away from this dangerous area, I will explain everything I know.”
She scowled, but climbed onto his back.After getting used to the feel of her, he turned in the direction of the station and took off again.
”You said you would explain everything!” she hissed, ducking down to keep the wind out of her face.
”What do you want to know?” he asked, giving her a chance to ask questions while he tried to arrange his thoughts on what to tell her.
”Did you really kill that woman?”
”No!It never happened!The murder was fabricated and turned into a memory dream.I had a roommate that was actually an alien, who died.I was tried for murder to placate the aliens.”
”I saw the murder scene!How could you say that wasn't real?”
”Look, I don't know what memories they gave you, but I can tell you that the longer you stay here, the more they will break down, and bits and pieces of your real memories will surface.”
”And how long have you been here?” she asked, sarcastically.
'I don't know, a week?”he wasn't sure how long he had been in that cave with her before, and how long he had stayed in that underground room with the prince.
”Oh,” she seemed to deflate.”Where are we going?”
”To the shuttle port station.This planet is a Josagn hunting planet.If we did manage to survive the creatures, they put down here, then we have them with powerful weapons to worry about.I've seen ray guns and sonic guns.There's no telling what other goodies they have in store for us.”
”Oh God!This is a Josagn hunting planet??There's no way we'll get off this planet!”
”We'll just fight our way to one of the shuttles and then once we get to the space port in orbit, we'll fight our way to a space faring ship.Then we're good to go.”
”But their shuttles have fail-safes!If you fly one too high, it will self-destruct.Only a Josagn can fly one safely off planet.”
He was quiet as he thought about that for a moment.He had managed to reverse engineer tons of different alien tech, what was one shuttle?He just had to fly it somewhere where he could work on it.If there was one thing he knew, it was how to work under pressure, thanks to his boss from before.But where could he fly it?
”How high do you have to fly before it self-destructs?”
”I don't remember,” she said hesitantly.