The Fight

Sometimes you go to the wrong cave.

Twelve. That was how many times he had hit the damned thing.
Twelve rounds of 10 mill from the assault rifle, now lying discarded, twisted in the churned snow and mud beneath his dangling feet.
An enforcer droid would not have survived that.
"Nothing less than a class four could have. What the --"

The thoughts choked through his mind as the thing hoisted him up by his neck.
The armored spinal enforcement was the only reason his head had not separated from his torso.

The creature paused in its movements to examine its prey.
It turned the dangling human this way and that, and with one hooked claw sliced off the combat webbing.
It fell away and thunked heavily to the ground.
As it hit the floor, the attached communicator burst to crackly life, muffled by the deep mud on the ground.

"Agent!"
"Ayin! Respond!"

Neither combatant responded to the communicator.

The creature pulled the human's face closer to its own saurian snout and slid its tongue out, licking and flicking the air.

Ayin, the human in the creature's grasp began a negotiation, attempting to prolong his life.
"It was a mistake! Alpha was the mission! Not you!"
The words came out in a choked, oxygen starved slurry of words.
For a moment, the creature stopped moving entirely. Even the tongue disappeared back into that cavernous mouth.

Ayin felt a burst of hope, as the grip about his neck relented.
But the creature laughed, a grim sound of metal scraping on stone.
It increased its grip on Ayin's neck.

Ayin's darkening vision accompanied by the creature's anticipatory growl assured him that his demise was still on deck.
"But we trained for this! Where the crap are you, Grant? You sent me here!!"

The creature slammed Ayin's head and body into the boulder behind him.

Both lights and thoughts in Ayin's head went out. Snapped off suddenly just like his neck which the creature then crushed to a pulp in its impossibly powerful grip.

The creature dropped the suddenly limp body and circled it, appraisingly.

It nosed the body, pawing it over onto its back and then, baring knifelike teeth, took a delicate bite out of Ayin's face.

***

All of this Major Lucas Grant watched through the satellite feed, augmented by the insect spy drone clinging to the ceiling of the cave that the duel had taken place in.

"Frag!"

Grant cursed as he let the microphone dangle in deadened fingers.
"I told you the other cave, Ayin!"
"The silver door, not the black door. You never fragging listen!"

Now he, Grant, was going to have to personally go and get Alpha.