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.Wraith had squared off with one of the six foot long ones and was using her short sword to hold it at bay.She quickly saw that the creature had two attacks.The first was to fly up and try to strike with the stinger in its tail.She had blocked this particular attack on several occasions already and had figured out the rhythm of that attack.The other attack was a bite from the snake’s mouth.Wraith didn’t know if its bite was poisonous, but didn’t want to find out.If it bit her, it would also have better leverage to sting her.Drawing a dagger with her other hand, she focused on maintaining qigong, like she had seen Steropes do earlier in his fight with the spearmen.She relaxed, calmed her breathing, and focused on guiding her life energy throughout her body.When the coatl came in for its next strike, she was ready.Seeing that it intended to try to sting her again, she blocked the strike with her dagger.Pushing the tail out of the way, she spun on the balls of her feet, allowing the short sword to extend and pick up the velocity of the spin.She completed the spin, and the snake’s head was where she had envisioned.Her sword struck just behind the head where scale turned to fur, severing it with one stroke.The head and body of the coatl fell to the floor in two pieces.Doug was fighting one of the eight feet long monsters.Although he was able to hold the monster off with his tomahawk and had blocked a couple of attacks with the razor edge on the top of it, he found that he needed something else to follow up with.The coatl would try to sting him, and he would block, but before he could go on the offensive, the coatl would spring back.The scaly part of the tail protected it from most of his damage, and he realized that it was only a matter of time until the coatl got lucky, and one of its attacks hit him.He didn’t have his suit on, so when it hit him he wouldn’t have any protection; he’d be dead.On the coatl’s next attack, he changed his strategy.Instead of simply trying to block the stinger, he reversed the tomahawk and struck at the tail with the heavy pointed end.It was a gamble; if he missed, it would leave him open to the coatl’s attack.His aim was true, though, and he hit the tail about a foot up from the end.The point of his tomahawk sank in all the way to the haft, pinning the coatl to it.He began swinging the axe in a circular motion, spinning the coatl in a loop over his head, before finally slamming it into the ground.Like kids playing ‘crack the whip,’ the coatl’s head hit the ground at the end of the whipping motion, and the creature was momentarily stunned.Doug lowered the axe so that he could step on the coatl’s tail and pull out the tomahawk.Freeing the weapon, he took two quick steps toward the front of the beast and chopped the coatl just behind its head.The razor-edged blade easily went through the coatl with so much force that he dented the tomahawk on the stone floor.The coatl’s head went flying off toward the dais, the beast dead.The other six foot coatl had chosen Bob as its target, and it quickly saw that it was faster than the therapod.Feigning a bite, the creature whipped its tail at the tomahawk and knocked it from Bob’s hand.Seeing that Bob was weaponless, it dove on him, intending to drive its stinger into him.Bob saw the attack coming, and he was able to grab hold of the snake’s tail in both hands and prevent it from hitting him.The coatl used the hold to its advantage, and it quickly wrapped around him a couple of times in a constricting attack.Bob could feel the coatl crushing the life from him and wasn’t built with the upper body strength required to push it off.He did have one arm free of the coatl’s coils and let go of the tail with that hand.Remembering the snakes from the swamps of his Epsilon Eridani home world, he grabbed the coatl’s head and brought it toward his oversize jaws.The coatl saw what he intended and tried to pull away, but was too late.Bob thrust the coatl’s entire head into his mouth and bit down as hard as he could.He took a second bite and severed the head from the rest of its body.Spitting it out, he took another bite from its body.“Mmm,” he said, as he worked his way out of its coils.“Tasty!”Things were not going as well for Sergeant Tagliabue, who was fighting the other eight foot coatl.He was not armed as well as the others, with two thin 13” switchblade stiletto knives and no natural defenses.The knives were too short and too thin to block effectively with, and he had already been hit a couple of times.The suit had stopped the first two strikes that had gotten past his guard, but it didn’t stop the third one that hit him in the neck.The poison quickly entered his system; all he got out was a weak, “Shit,” before falling on the ground unconscious.Before the coatl could reorient on one of the other Terrans and attack, Wraith struck it from behind with her sword, decapitating it.Master Chief knew he was looking death in the face [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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