Limitless Evolution As a Snake

Horass’s second attack arrived where I wanted to escape, which was the first useful reminder that a clever opponent didn’t need to hit the place I was already leaving.

I cut my turn short and dropped behind the loading cradle as the blast tore through the route ahead. Heat washed across the edge of my fins, and the pressure slammed me against a support hard enough to knock the breath from my mouth.

Galaxy Brain had seen the angle, but my body couldn’t move as quickly as the thought explaining it. Being clever enough to understand the problem didn’t make me fast enough to enjoy the explanation.

[System: Stay low, mate, and stop giving him the easiest turn. He’s not throwing a pissed-up swing outside the servo, because that bastard’s planning where you’ll be after you dodge.]

I’m starting to miss the bloke who tried hitting me with a bag of stolen wages.

Horass moved along the dry deck while his clamp machine rolled towards the cradle. He covered the open water route with the launcher, making me choose between reaching the machine and crossing a space he’d already measured.

I stayed with the machinery because it gave me something solid to work around. He knew I’d choose that too, which became clear when the first clamp drove under the support and nearly caught my tail against its base.

Old Mate brought up the mission while I slid through the gap beneath the loading rail.

[System: Shut Down the Seizure Crew, champ, for eight thousand five hundred EXP and forty IP. Disable the gunboat and machine and stop the operation, because you don’t need to kill this bloke to ruin his bloody evening.]

At the moment, ruining his evening feels slightly less urgent than keeping the rest of mine attached.

I caught the clamp’s exposed sensor housing with my tail and smashed it against the rail as the jaw closed. The machine stopped that arm to avoid crushing its own guide, giving me a small opening that cost more effort than I wanted Horass to see.

I tried reaching the water again, using the damaged jaw as cover instead of taking the route he had left obvious. Horass stepped across the deck and fired into the empty support ahead of me, closing that approach with falling metal while keeping the occupied patrol platform outside his line. He was controlling the space, and I was running out of parts of it he had not already considered.

He saw it anyway and took manual control, withdrawing the damaged jaw while the second one came around from the opposite side. The machine wasn’t helpless because I’d broken one useful part, and its operator was learning faster than my injured body could afford.

A hard strike from Horass caught me as I cleared the rail. I didn’t see a grand swing or a dramatic wind-up, just a branch-like arm moving with A-rank force and the deck suddenly much closer to my face.

I hit the floor, skidded across rough plating and left scales behind me. Pain spread through my middle so quickly that my next breath arrived as a thin, ugly sound I hadn’t meant anyone to hear.

[System: You’re hurt, mate, and pretending otherwise won’t make the next move better. Use the post on your left, keep the bad side away from him and let me count the gap.]

Count quickly, because I’m not enjoying the part where the floor gets a turn.

Horass paused just long enough to shift his launcher away from his own machine, then told me I’d made the same mistake as the generals at the Battle of the Unopened Sandwich. I had no idea whether he believed a word of it, but the advice about retreat routes was irritatingly accurate.

”Did every war you studied happen during lunch, or is that just where you do your best work?”

”A surprising number of campaigns were decided by catering,” he replied, then advanced along the route that forced me away from the water.

Old Mate swore privately with enough Australian warmth to strip paint, but he kept the instructions clear. I followed his count, went under the support instead of around it and reached the clamp machine’s rear housing while Horass adjusted his line.

For a moment I thought I’d bought enough space to disable the drive. Then the machine reversed into the loading cradle, narrowing the gap behind me and proving Horass had wanted me in that exact position.

I was already at my normal six-foot-four length. Extending would make the space worse, and I couldn’t shrink below it except by committing my whole body to Multitude, which I held ready while checking where all twelve copies could actually go.

The second clamp caught my lower coils before I found a clean route. It tightened against the cradle rather than cutting, pinning me at the angle Horass needed while the first damaged jaw blocked the water side.

”You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to collect one customer complaint, mate, and I still don’t think the review is improving.”

He checked the clamp pressure instead of answering the joke. Then he asked whether my unnamed friend who disliked the koala comparison had ever seen a young koala cling to a handler’s arm, which made Old Mate recoil so hard I nearly laughed through the pain.

[System: Don’t you dare describe me, champ, because I’ll haunt whatever bloody sausage machine he puts you in.]

He’s describing an animal, not reading my head, so stop making the worst part of this funny.

I checked that my call was still open and gave Mara the position of the clamp without asking her to enter his firing lane. Knowing where I was mattered more than sending another person into the same trap.

Horass moved the gunboat’s loading line onto the cradle and began drawing it towards the cutting frame. He stood where he could cover the nearest emergency lever, having noticed the same bright red handle Sera had shown me earlier.

The metal beneath me started moving, and I watched the service gap beyond the clamp open for a moment with each pull. I had one skill that could fit through it, twelve bodies to keep alive and a man clever enough to start closing routes the moment I disappeared.