The Kryssitid Gaze

By Fiona J. R. Titchenell

Once upon a time, on the second planet from Apocrytus, there was a monster whose face men trembled to behold...
Or they would, if they knew who she was. Perhaps she should leave more survivors.
Meligora lives for revenge, but it’s not as dreary as she thought it would be. Her old life ended when the Brotherhood took control of her planet and started rounding up women for mandatory “conversion,” removing their stingers, wings, and most of their eyes, looting their bodies for their valuable reproductive organs, and leaving them docile shells of their former selves. But after her own botched procedure turned her into a lethal weapon instead of a slave, she learned to make the best of things, bending Brotherhood enforcers to her will and slaughtering them in droves each night.
She knows it’s only a matter of time before someone tries to stop her, but when a young Human bounty hunter finally follows her trail of corpses, he offers her a choice: stay a wanted killer of dime-a-dozen thugs, or join him in tracking down the man who mutilated her.
Welcome to Escape Velocity: Feminist Folktales from Beyond the Stars. This reimagining of the legend of Medusa, along with other patriarchy-smashing Escape Velocity novellas, can be enjoyed independently or in any order.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fiona J. R. Titchenell
• Release date: Aug 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005998639

Fiona J. R. Titchenell

Fiona J.R. Titchenell is an author of Young Adult, Sci-Fi, and Horror fiction. She graduated with a B.A in English from California State University, Los Angeles, in 2009 at the age of twenty, is represented by Fran Black of Literary Counsel, and currently lives in San Gabriel, California with her husband and fellow author, Matt Carter, and their pet king snake, Mica.On the rare occasions when she can be pried away from her keyboard, her kindle, and the pages of her latest favorite book, Fi can usually be found over-analyzing the inner workings of various TV Sci-Fi universes or testing out some intriguing new recipe, usually chocolate-related.

Book preview

The Kryssitid Gaze

An Escape Velocity Novella

Fiona J.R. Titchenell

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2020 Fiona J.R. Titchenell

All rights reserved.

Cover art by Kristyn McQuiggan

http://www.dropdeaddesigns.com

Smashwords License Statement:

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of authors.

Other Escape Velocity novellas:

The Acid Test of Naia Mills

Other speculative titles from Fiona J.R. Titchenell:

Pinnacle City: A Superhero Noir

Some Side Effects May Occur

Out of the Pocket

The Prospero Chronicles

Learn more about Fiona J.R. Titchenell at:

http://www.fjrtitchenell.weebly.com

To support Fiona J.R. Titchenell and gain behind-the-scenes access to current and upcoming projects, become a patron at:

http://www.patreon.com/FionaJRTitchenellAndMattCarter

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Sample of The Acid Test of Naia Mills

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Inspired by the Greek legend of Medusa

Once upon a time, on the second planet from Apocrytus, there was a monster whose face men trembled to behold…

Chapter One

I start by blocking the doors with a few branches through the handles.

The building where some havoc is about to go down is a modest and ordinary hotel, built from chemical-treated mud and wood pulp, with quaintly rounded corners and peeling white paint. It’s the kind of place you might find on the outskirts of any major tourist locale in Kryssitid space, catering to travelers who can’t or don’t want to splurge for brand name treetop lodgings in the thick of the action.

Kritchen Territory isn’t a major tourist locale, however. It doesn’t have brand name treetop lodgings or action of the kind most people want to be in the thick of, so this place is one of the nicest accommodations for days around.

That’s probably why these assholes picked it to set up camp in.

There aren’t too many windows. None large enough to worry about. The ceiling is thick, but like any building, it has a weak spot where the communications array pokes through. There haven’t been any incoming or outgoing signals for those glowing dishes to boost and direct for years now, but no one’s getting paid to rip out all the old hardware. I crawl onto the roof and gnaw at the corner where cellulose meets metal, until the seam crumbles. Then I kick in a hole just large enough to drop myself through.

Just before my feet would touch the floor of a guestroom, I catch myself on my sluggish, single pair of wings, and wait.

Lights, says the room’s occupant.

When the network of bulbs in the ceiling respond to his command, illuminating my hourglass shape, my scarred face, the natural sunset color of my exoskeleton, and my six limbs poised to ensnare him, he jolts upright in the room’s recessed sleeping notch, his groggy rasp turning into a high-pitched scream.

He lifts his thick body into the air on quick double wings, his binocular eyes fixing themselves on me while his surrounding compound ones scan the room for the accomplices I don’t need.

Once more, please, I say, hovering between him and the side of the room that holds both the interior door and the vertical exit I’ve just created. Your friend all the way down in room thirty might not have heard you.

The man stares at me, confounded, until I swoop slightly toward him. Then he obliges me with a frantic shout of, Enemy in the walls!

Nice resonance.

I used to have a full set of wings. Full compound eyes, too. There’s one thing I still have, however, that he only has a mechanical imitation of hanging next to his bed.

He reaches for his Prodge rifle, an ungainly large weapon with a barrel the curved shape of a male Kryssitid abdominal section. I’ve been told I have a dirty mind for noticing, but that’s what it looks like. Unnecessary lighted windows show off the yellow crystals of poison inside.

Before his fingers can brush the handle, my stinger extends from the tip of my own abdomen with the reflexive, organic efficiency no tool can fully replicate. I drop myself on top of him, knocking him back into the sleeping notch, and pierce his naked exoskeleton to inject the flesh beneath.

He raises his two right hands to hit me, but they fall just short of making contact when my paralytic venom takes effect, freezing him into the rigid statue of terror he’ll continue to be until something smashes him, or until he decays and flakes away with time.

Ordinarily, he’d starve to death a few days into this new existence, but I doubt this one will have to wait that long.

The room’s thin, wood panel interior door bursts inward, and I press myself against the mud wall beside it. The first thing to cross the threshold is naturally the barrel of another Prodge.

Pedue? its owner calls nervously to the statue in the sleeping notch.

When it doesn’t move, he takes a step closer, without glancing at me.

If there’s one good thing about the Malphigy Brotherhood, it’s that they’re even more hopeless at little things like planning and discipline and formal training as I am.

"Pedue?" the newcomer repeats.

What’s wrong with him? asks another of his Brothers in the hallway behind him, and several more repeat the question in different words, as if the one in the doorway might not have understood the first version.

Hi. I put my hand on the first Brother’s Prodge barrel and push it down in greeting, but address the traffic jam of bodies as a whole. I’m Meligora. I’ll be your comeuppance for this evening. Maybe you’ve heard of me?

I’ve got her! the guy behind the first one shouts, aiming his own Prodge over his friend’s shoulder and pulling the trigger.

A thunderous burst of perhaps a dozen fragmenting crystal cartridges leaves the weapon, their contents peppering the wall behind me. One of the tiny yellow shards grazes my arm, punching a small, stinging hole in one of my exoskeleton plates, while the rest cut Pedue into two stiff halves.

Guess not. Ouch for both of us, I say, yanking the first Brother’s Prodge out of his grip and shooting the second in the face with it.

The second one gets half a scream out from between his broken mandibles, a little strangled by the vital yellow fluids oozing out of his dozen puncture wounds, before he falls limp to the floor.

The faces I can see that are still in one piece stare at me with as much shock as fury. Some of them are clearly still waiting for me to keel over as well, from the shard of synthetic venom substitute dissolving in my arm.

Even a minor hit from a Prodge means death within seconds for an ordinary Kryssitid. For most other life forms too, for that matter.

On me, it has about the same effect as rock salt.

I’m pretty sure Pedue there recognized me. I tell them. "It’s Meligora Gnatter. The dread Meligora Gnatter, actually, and…. Oh, who am I kidding? You guys aren’t going to be talking to any reporters."

The Brother standing next to the fresh dead one fires at me, and I shove the previous owner of my new gun into the path of the blast. He makes a sound like cardboard in a hailstorm before he gets too heavy to hold comfortably in one hand.

I let him fall and wait to see if the others are ready to reassess their priorities.

One of the Brothers reaches for another handful of cartridges, which I take for a no. I sting him in the leg and let him harden into an artistic rendering of a Malphigy Brother in the endless act of reloading a weapon he can’t fire.

Can I just get… I step awkwardly over the two limp corpses and push my way past the new statue, right where you are? I shoot the guy on the statue’s left and shove him to the side so I can stand in front of the emergency exit and look back at the pileup of living Malphigy Brothers, still blinking in the light outside their rooms. Better, thanks.

I open fire down the narrow hallway.

A few of the Brothers fire back wildly through the shower of antennae and exoskeleton shards that used to belong to the Brothers in front of them. I take a few more crystals to the extremities, but most of their ammunition ends up decorating the ceiling and walls, making the hallway look like a cartoonist’s representation of a jewel mine.

It takes about a dozen more corpses before the rest turn to run, seeking cover in the open guestrooms or running for the exit in the bar.

My Prodge runs dry, so I pick up another, just to clear out the rooms.

All except the one on the far right.

I can smell without having to open the door that that’s the room that goes last.

By the time I reach the bar, there are only four Brothers left, battering frantically against the barricaded doors.

The ceiling is higher in here, just high enough for me to part ways with the ground and take a shortcut over the top of the neat little rows of hexagonal pulp tables. I run my fingers along the smoothly lacquered mud slab of the bar itself as I pass it, with its inlayed white and purple lights designed to make the cheap brands lined up against the wall look classy and festive.

When I touch down some paces behind the Brothers, casting a long, thin, purple-rimmed shadow over them, one of them raises his hands off the door and sinks to his knees, tears welling up in every segment of his eyes. Another one beats harder on the door with his skinny little limbs and such determination.

The other two raise their guns, though the one on the left is trying to load his at the same time.

I take a shot at the already-loaded gun and hit it. Unfortunately, I end up shredding most of the hand holding it in the process.

Whoops. Now there are three.

What do you think, boys? I ask them as I approach. Should I start leaving survivors? Is that what my branding needs?

The one with the last gun looks up from it as he catches my meaning, and even the door-batterer pauses for a moment before proceeding with his task.

The crying one nods and looks desperately to his companions.

Survivors would be wise, the one with the gun says for him, haltingly and between glances at the new corpse next to him. We’ll tell everyone we know. Plea—

Gimme. I point at his gun, then at the floor by my feet.

Of course. He slides it across to me. Please, hear me ou—

I’ve actually thought a lot about it, I tell him, kicking the Prodge to the corner. And I think…. Make your friend stop that noise. He’s worse than my sister’s first drum kit.

I take aim at the door-batterer’s back, and the other two grab him by the shoulders and turn him around. He raises all four of his hands and looks up at me, eyes full of uselessly metaphoric venom.

Thank you. Now, on the one hand, leaving survivors might help me build my rep, strike fear into hearts and all that, keep other Malphigy bros looking over their shoulders even when I’m not around. On the other hand, it’d mean more of you guys still being alive, which kinda goes against my mission statement. You can understand how torn I am.

Please—

‘Please’ doesn’t help me decide, Sugarguts, I tell the formerly gun-loading pleader.

He stops himself before he can say it again. What do you want from us? he asks.

More than you’ve got to give, I warn him, then nod at one of the corner tables. But how about we start with the pleasure of your company?

Wary and shaking, the three of them take their first steps toward the table. Sugarguts has to pull the crier upright and support him there.

Oh. And your cargo.

There’s an instant of silence before Sugarguts says, What cargo?

What cargo? I mimic. Like I’d be here if I didn’t know exactly what you trade in. Go get it and bring it here. All of it. Gently.

The former door-batterer shakes his head at Sugarguts.

Sugarguts hesitates a moment, but then nods and starts back toward the guestrooms.

Not you, Pupadoll, I grab the crier by the shoulder and steer him into one of the chairs, next to me. You’re staying right here.

The cellulose pocket in my throat is full from chewing my way through the ceiling, and I spit its contents onto his arm to cement it to the wall behind the table.

Be quick, I add to Sugarguts.

He repeats the same hesitation-nod combo before hurrying down the hall.

The former door-batterer moves to take the seat opposite me, glaring all the way.

Grab me a blood mead, would you, Feistyface? I tap his leg with the tip of my abdomen.

"My name is—"

Uh-uh, I stop him, resting the Prodge on the table with the barrel pointed in Pupadoll’s direction. He trembles so hard that the chair rattles. One name a night is my limit, and Pedue beat you to it.

Feistyface makes a show of taking five or six deep breaths and stalks away behind the bar.

Extra pollen, I call after him. And pour some for yourselves too, why not?

Feistyface does as he’s told, no doubt wishing he had a bit of poison handy. Even if he did, it wouldn’t matter with me, so I don’t have to watch him too closely.

I turn my attention to examining Pupadoll instead.

He’s small, even for a male. If we were standing, his antennae would barely brush my chin. The longer I look at him, the smaller he tries to make himself, curling inward as if the wall might open and swallow him whole if he can convince it that he’s bite-sized.

His pale exoskeleton is streaked with black, and the stripe pattern around his eyes curves downward at the edges in a resting attitude of melancholy.

I tug open the knotted scarf at his neck that marks him as a Malphigy Brother. He’s one of the few who took the time to put it on for my middle-of-the-night visit. Maybe he sleeps in it.

You’re kind of pretty, you know that? I ask him.

He sits as if I’ve already stung him solid, staring at his hands while I finish removing the scarf.

I brush my stinger against his leg under the table. I asked you a question.

No, he squeaks.

No?

No, I don’t know that, he says.

That’s too bad. You are, I say, unfurling the scarf to show off the Malphigy insignia on the back — the once-innocuous gibbous moon and black-and-yellow stripes