Kingdom of Monsters by John Schneider (latest novels to read .TXT) 📕

Oblivious, Otto's inexorable marching army had begun to pile upon itself as they crowded into the wall of corpses, until they were starting to flood their way over the top like gigantic swarming insects.

The rogue stubbornly held its ground.  It perceived the missile as clearly as Brutus, even registered it as a potential threat like one of the sky beasts, but dismissed it quickly once it passed on, arcing past the edge of the canyons where the invading army's true numbers lay.

The rex also sensed Shanna's fading aura, and perhaps some part of it perceived that this battle was on her behalf.

When the blast came, the rogue was still at the top of the hill, still swinging, still king under the mountain – for a rex, that was enough.

Brutus paused right at the last, watching the dark, storming horizon in the moments after the missile passed out of sight.

Then there was the flash of light – a sense of warmth and wind.

He felt no pain.

Chapter 59

Major Tom saw the nuke from space.

Then the lights in the ISS went out.

It was not a complete power-cut – computer screens still blinked, but the heat was dropping fast.  He had minutes.

He had already gathered several hydrogen tanks and had gone module by module, setting them on slow release, propping the sealing doors open with pieces of machinery.  The last one he planned to set near the orbit-stabilizer engine at the far end of the station, one module over from the nearest lifeboat.

Then start a fire – that should do it.  He had a butane torch ready.

He'd already covered the Japanese and American sections of the station.

The hard part was going to be getting to the rear engine at the far end of the Russian modules.

The two Ottos who'd escaped were skulking somewhere on the other side of that sealed door, somewhere along the tunneled path to both those modules.

He didn't even know how many of them there really were.  They were small enough to hide in the walls or inside pipes, and they had gotten into the electrical, for sure.

Tom had been doing a last minute search of each module on the security monitor when the lights shut off.

His monitor blinked and the screen was suddenly filled with the faces of toothy gremlins – definitely more than two – small, but with big claws.

And now he was going to have to get past them in the dark.

The compartments behind him should be full-up with gas.  Catching a quick breath, he opened the rear of the module, while slipping out and sealing the front hatch behind him.

Tapping the wall console, he programmed a five-minute reset on the air-lock.

Then he turned, shining his light down the dark corridor as he tapped his way cautiously along the walls, the last gas tank held out weightlessly in front of him, like a cameraman underwater.

He passed over the first of the lifeboats on the way to the engine, and was sorely tempted to just drop below and abandon ship.  But if the remaining components simply broke away as the gas lit, the independent modules could quite possibly survive.

As Tom shined his light down the dark corridor, he saw the connecting airlocks between each section were all open.

The little bastards were waiting for him somewhere.

On the walls, all the little blinking lights looked like eyes reflecting in his flashlight.

He pushed through the first module, over the second lifeboat hatch, and into the rear component connected to the engine.

That was when they came at him in the dark.

His light-beam caught the flash of claws as they went for his eyes, slashing at his face.  Tom spun, swatting with the flashlight, and then he turned on the torch.

A burst of flame shot out, illuminating the compartment, and barbecuing one of the little bastards like a crow on a power-line.  He fired a torch-blast after the others, who scattered.  He kept the flame on until they retreated the module.

He waited another moment before moving on.  He couldn't let the torch run empty, and he couldn't use it once he set the gas – unless Otto forced this into a suicide mission, and that hadn't been decided, yet.

Tom turned on the gas, letting the canister spin slowly, as he reset the door behind him.

Now right above the first of the lifeboats, he turned the torch on the walls, lighting the insulation, before spreading it to the counters and equipment – anything that would burn.

They were waiting for him as he started down the hatch to the first lifeboat.

In the dark, it was hard to tell how many – he felt their claws digging his chest and arms as he covered his face.

The tight-quarters, however, gave Tom the advantage, provided he was willing to bleed.  He braced against the walls and started kicking and thrashing, crushing the seagull-sized lizards with sheer physical strength.  Then he fired another blast from the torch, this time down the hatch as the Ottos fled into the escape pod.

Leaving the flame on, Tom wedged the torch in the lifeboat's air-lock as it automatically tried to close, preventing it from sealing, and flooding the compartment in fire.  The trapped Ottos screamed.

Pushing back up into the main module, Tom pulled himself over the second lifeboat.

The door to the Destiny module would be resetting soon, opening and flooding the rest of the station in gas – a touch of flame would be all that was needed.

There were more of the lizards waiting for him in the cargo-block as he made his way to the second lifeboat.  They pushed off the walls, coming at him, claws outstretched.  Tom batted them away with the flashlight, grabbing hold of one that latched onto his leg and simply breaking its neck like a chicken's.

As he slid down the hatch into the second remaining lifeboat, he again felt their claws in the dark.

Taking the cuts, he crushed them against the walls, seeing droplets of his own blood floating in the air like soap