He fumbled his gun out of its holster and his mouth went dry.
Was there a safety? Did it need to be primed before it’d fire? Was there even an energy cell in it? How many times could he shoot before it’d need to be reloaded?
This was absurd. He hadn’t been trained. Sure, he’d ripped a reinforced airlock door from its track, but that didn’t make him a fighter. He didn’t know protocol, how situations like this were meant to be handled.
“Put that away,” Jackin hissed.
Cavalon looked up, eyes wide. “I think it might be a good idea for me to stay at a distance…”
“Laser’s no good against Drudgers.” Jackin glared. “Bloody void, you really aren’t a soldier, are you?”
Cavalon wiped the sweat from the nape of his neck. He really, really wasn’t. But he still should have known better. Thanks to the degree in genetic engineering his grandfather forced upon him, Cavalon had studied both the Drudger and Savant genomes, and the theories behind how they’d been designed.
So he already knew the Viators had passed along their segmented, carapace-like exoskeleton to their Drudger progenies. With the added bonus of an endoskeleton as well, both species proved incredibly tough—if slow—targets.
And in designing them specifically as war fodder, the Viators had gone a step further with the Drudgers, reinforcing the skin-covered carapace with metallic compounds, giving their gray exoskeletons a slight glint, and a whole lot of strength. Though plasma and most ballistics would do the trick, the armor-like plating could completely deflect laser fire.
Now if one were to shoot it in the same spot twenty or thirty times in a row, it might break through. But mostly it would just singe, distract, or annoy them, while not doing much in the way of actually killing them. Which was probably why his grandfather had zeroed in on them when masterminding his utopian clone-army scheme.
The soft connective tissue between the plates was vulnerable, however, if you could find a way into the narrow gaps. Which, Cavalon supposed, was why the basic loadout on his hip included a sharp, pointy knife. Though he’d bet anything the Sentinels were the only division of the Legion to be issued guns essentially useless against the only enemy they were likely to encounter.
Cavalon dropped his gun back in the holster. At least he wouldn’t have to figure out how to use the thing. Yet. He pulled the knife out instead—heavier than he’d expected, and sizable. The blade alone ran longer than his outstretched hand. It felt just as foreign in his grip as the pistol had.
His breath caught as the airlock siren ceased and a guttural grumbling echoed down the airlock corridor from the main hull. He peeked around the corner far enough to catch a sliver, shuddering as a Drudger form came into view in the dimly lit hall beyond the secondary air lock.
It stepped cautiously through the threshold, rifle clutched in its taloned hands. Its wide head swiveled and its dark, thin lips twitched as it surveyed the empty room.
Cavalon had always tried to find a way to see their human side, but they looked so much like Viators, he had difficulty imagining they were anything but. They seemed more like bastard children than a different species, and that lack of distinction made them even more unnerving than they already were.
There were a handful of differences—they weren’t extinct, for one. Their head and body shape had been altered, like they’d had their edges sanded off, or were slightly melted. Their wide-set eyes were the biggest disparity—Viators had four in total, two pairs, each comprised of one large, primary eye flanked by a smaller one which, for some reason unknown to Cavalon, never blinked. Drudgers only sported the larger of the two, and instead of the endless voids of all-black manifest on Viators, Drudger eyes were like overlarge human versions plucked out and stuck into a Viator shell. This served as the only aspect that even remotely likened them to their Savant counterparts.
Cavalon gulped as a second Drudger walked in behind the first—its gray complexion seeming almost pink in the flashing red light. It had deep red swaths of what looked like war paint across its flat cheeks and broad forehead.