A bolt of searing plasma jumped from Pike’s sidearm and pierced through the slime with a sizzle of dissolving gloppy matter. The blobby creature let out a dying gurgle and collapsed into a puddle, the gem at its heart turned into a radioactive drift of ash.

Learn Skill - ‘Small Arms’ ?

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Small Arms - Increases precision, aiming speed, and instincts while wielding a one-handed firearm. May evolve.

The message popped as soon as the creature was properly dead, another one of those old-fashioned text readouts that reminded him of ancient videogames.

This time, instead of waving it away, he tried a little experiment.

“Yes.”

It blinked down into a blue sphere, barely the size of a marble, and shot towards his forehead. Before he could even flinch back, it pierced through his skull and he felt a dizzy wave come over him. A warm, electric fuzz spread outwards from the point of impact, gathering at his fingertips.

It felt pretty good.

Experimentally, he spun the pistol on his finger, then suddenly whipped around. With barely a glance he was able to identify three large, drab-grey birds perched on the branches above, lift the sights, and - not fire, because he wasn’t a prick to animals or an idiot who wasted ammo.

The birds frightened anyway, scattering into the skies.

Now, he might have just been woozy from the crash, but that-

That was pretty damn cool.

It felt a little like getting skill-augs implanted. He had a few related to piloting Lucrecia, mostly to help with crunching the readouts and statistics involved. Never needed any boosts for piloting itself - that skill came all natural to him.

From the day he first touched a flight sim, he knew what he was born to do.

It was funny, but, right now his first priority wasn’t food. It wasn’t water. It was barely even surviving in general. It was getting back to Lucrecia. Judging by the lack of a nuclear blast on the horizon, the crippled reactor had failed and collapsed silently once he nixed the power, rather than going critical. It was vaguely possible she’d survived re-entry.

Titans were known to survive a hell of a lot worse.

If he’d had power, he probably could have even pulled off a proper superhero landing. One foot, one knee, one fist to the ground. At the bottom of a ten-mile crater.

Giving the pistol another spin, feeling pretty cocky about his odds against the local wildlife, he jammed it back in the holster and called the nav function on his wrist-mounted computer. A holo-popup blinked into existence, but it was blurred, shaking constantly, and after a second it fizzled out.

His on-suit computers were all blown. The only readouts he was getting were the weird messages.

But still, somewhere out there, he felt Lucrecia calling him. He felt it in his bones.

The forest was old-growth. Aside from the hole he’d torn on the way in, the leaves stretched in an unbroken canopy, sheltering the forest below from the heat of the twin-suns that blazed in the sky. Within the shade, small creatures ran for cover from the maniac who sent fire flying from his fingers.

There was nothing to do now but start hiking.

Two miles on, he was starting to feel the burn. Gravity here was a little stronger than Earth-standard, and he was used to deep space, where the grav-engines ran at half-capacity most of the time. Spacers liked to be able to jump about without worrying too much about coming down.

And a socket-suit wasn’t exactly the comfiest outfit for jogging through tropical heat. Sweat plastered the nanoscale material to his pale skin.

But there was no stopping.

Something was on his trail.

It was moving through the trees beside him, keeping pace easily even as he employed his jump-jets, burning precious power to stay ahead. The few glimpses he caught were of a giant insect, green chitin and skinny limbs.

He only had so many shots left in his pistol. A full charge held precisely thirty, buuuut he wasn’t always the best at remembering to plug in.

So fifteen was a safe bet.

Fifteen. He’d rather not shoot if he didn’t have to.

There was a knife in a sheathe on his left leg, and the socket-suit had built in micro-servos to boost his strength. The bug was big, though, and a big unknown was something you didn’t tangle with if you didn’t have to.

The forest was thinning out as he ran, falling back from something. Could be civilization, could be water, either way it’d be an open space where his pursuer would have to show itself. Then he could make the call. Shoot, stab, or keep running the fuck away.

But-

And he should seen this coming, what with his luck-

It was a cliff.

There was water, a lush cool river he would’ve killed for a dip in, but it fell right off the edge of a giant hole in the island, breaking into sparkling droplets as it tumbled through the sky towards the blue ocean far below. God knows how there was any water in this place, if it was all flowing off the edges.

With a big kick-off, Pike put maximum power into the jets and jumped. He went soaring over the rift, landing with both boots dragging skidtrails in the loamy soft dirt on the other side. Turning back, he saw his enemy emerge from the forest.

It was more or less a giant mantis. Long, narrow body, four bent-up legs, and two scything blade-limbs, the beast’s green chitin turning black at the points of the long serrated spikes on the underside of each claw. It had an arrow-shaped head, with seven eyes, three on each side and one in the middle, all yellow as mustard.

As he watched, it leapt towards the gap, unfolding a set of purple wings that buzzed through the sky with a grating chainsaw noise.

“Well fuck that.”

Whipping his pistol up, he sent a blazing lance of fire through the left wing. It toppled, crashing down through the gap and vanishing into the thin cover of clouds below.

Giant bugs. He whistled. Giant bugs and space marines did not mix, nosiree. That was worth spending a shot on just so it wouldn’t exist anywhere on this damn planet with him.

There was a crunching footstep in the leaves behind him, and Pike spun around.