Free The Awakening (The Hyperscape Project Book 1) by Donald Swan

over her.  It bent
forward and grabbed Arya with its robotic arm, picking her up off the floor and
raising her to eye level. Its long, cold, metal fingers wrapped all the way
around to the back of her neck, clutching her tightly in an icy grip.
    Arya was now
face to face with the Mok’tu, staring into its unsympathetic visual receptors.
As she hung there frantically kicking at it, she tried desperately to pry its
huge fingers loose with her hands. It was no use, the metal monster was going
to squeeze the life from her body and there was nothing she could do about it.
    Nick’s finger
was poised on the trigger, ready to shoot, itching to kill the bastard. But he
hesitated as he assessed the situation. Arya was so close to the Mok’tu that
the plasma blast from his pistol might kill her. But if he didn’t act quickly,
the mechanoid soldier could snap her head clean off.
    “Shoot!” Arya
screamed, her muffled voice barely leaving her tightly clamped throat. “Shoot
the freking thing!”
    Nick squeezed
off eight rounds in one rapid burst. As the rounds met their target, smoke
poured from the Mok’tu’s metal skull, but the beast didn’t move. Nick sprinted
toward the towering hulk, emptying another five rounds into its head as he drew
closer. The Tac Soldier seemed unaffected.
    “Why isn’t it
dying?” Nick yelled.
    The soldier just
stood there motionless with Arya flailing around in its grip. Nick pushed his
legs into a flat out run, planning on using the momentum and his own body as a
ramming device. When he was close enough to the Tac Soldier, he lunged feet
first into the beast, kicking it square in the hip in an attempt to knock it
off its feet. The monstrosity didn’t budge. It was like hitting a brick wall.
The impact jarred Nick’s spine and sent him bouncing off. He landed hard on his
left shoulder. The impact pushed the air out of his lungs and caused him to
bite his lip by accident. He barely missed hitting his head on the floor
beneath him.
    “Crap!” he
cursed. The damn thing was solid as a granite mountain. No wonder everyone was
so afraid of them.
    Ignoring the
pain in his body, he rolled nimbly and was back on his feet in seconds. With
precision born of instinct and training, Nick aimed his pistol at the eight
foot tall Mok’tu’s head and fired another burst of rounds. A stream of hot liquefied
brains flowed out of the skull and dripped down the Mok’tu’s body. But the
massive, silver hulk remained standing.
    Arya still hung
helplessly in the hulk’s grip, staring at the metal soldier’s expressionless
face while steamy red liquid oozed down its neck and dripped onto the hangar
bay deck. She struggled uselessly against the Mok’tu’s grasp as the beast’s
metal legs began to buckle. The Mok’tu slowly collapsed to the floor with her
neck still held tightly in its powerful mechanical hand. Pinned under the
heavy, lifeless monster, she lay on the floor, fighting to get free. “Get this
thing off me!” she screamed in a panic.
    “I’m on it!”
Nick pushed at the dead soldier’s torso.  He had to strain every muscle in
his body just to push the thing off of her. It rolled over onto the floor with
a metallic clank. Nick stared down into Arya’s frantic face. She looked up at
him in desperation, still hopelessly trapped by the Mok’tu’s huge metal hand
clasped around her neck. A tear rolled from the corner of her eye. She was
scared.  She was actually scared. Nick was surprised by her sudden show of
vulnerability. Until this moment, she had always been strong and in control.
He’d never seen fear in her before.
    “I guess we’re
not so different, after all,” Nick mused.
    Arya whimpered
as she gazed up at him. 
    “It’s alright.
I’ve got you,” he soothed as he bent forward to help her.
    Nick pried the
lifeless mechanical hand loose from Arya’s throat. As soon as she was free, she
rolled away from the thing and lay gasping on the floor, struggling for air.
 
    The