Power Loader: Shatters Steel Grating

  While it moves to right itself, Dorian gauges the distance to safety. There’s too much chance that, with its long legs, the loader could catch him at a jog. He finds a cable run grating and rips it open, then worms his way inside.

  “No you don’t!” the loader rasps.

  Its stomping shakes the deck like a bomb going off. Dorian’s ears ring and his head spins, and his hands and knees go numb with the vibration. He can’t quite see it, but he can hear it up above him. There’s a fork in the conduit in a few yards. If he can reach it, maybe he can lose her.

  The loader’s foot comes crashing through the grating, collapsing it within a few feet of his face. Then again, and again, working its way backward toward him. It hasn’t yet made it back to the fork, and Dorian turns the corner before it bashes through his section. He races down the duct toward an exit grate.

***

  Pincers wedge into the cable run behind him, ripping the grating open like a can. He struggles forward, shearing metal and sparking electrical cables in his wake. He just has to get to the end, and—

  The pincers smash down in front of him, skewering the grating and shattering it. They close around the twisted steel and rip it free. A piece of conduit becomes tangled up in the mess, and a sudden wind across his beaten body tells Dorian he’s trapped, fully exposed, and awaiting death. He rolls onto his back in his trench to see the loader straddling the cable run, poised to deliver a crushing blow.

***

Alien: The Cold Forge, Chapter 29