“Hey, over here!” Nori shouted.

“What are you doing?” Bulco shouted. “Are you trying to get us killed?”

“It’s our chance! If he can draw that thing over to us, we don’t have to face it out in the open.”

Bulco nodded. “Good thinking. Hey you, over here!” His voice was much louder than Nori’s.

The man’s eyes were drawn toward the people standing in the doorway of the flying saucer and he nearly faltered his step. He recovered quickly and angled toward them, a glint of hope in his eyes. The monster, however, was closing in fast.

“He’s not going to make it,” Lana yelled in fright.

“He’s halfway there, just a few more seconds!” Nori said desperately while she kept her weapon aimed at the charging monster.

“She’s right, he’s not going to make it,” Bulco grunted. He pushed through the opening and ran toward the man.

“What is he doing?” Lana screamed.

Nori didn’t answer but her grip tightened on the weapon.

The Warped almost caught up to the escaping man, but Bulco got there first. Using his momentum, he punched forward hard. The Puncher discharged, adding hundreds of kilos of force to the strike. The Warped caught the metal fist full on his chest. The impact stopped it dead in its tracks, and it took several faltering steps back to regain his balance.

That was all the time the escaping man needed. He reached the shuttle and threw himself in past Nori.

“Bulco, duck!” the Navigator screamed and pressed the trigger.

The beam narrowly missed the man as he threw himself to the side, and it hit the Warped’s shoulder. The beam punched a fist sized hole in its armored body and two tentacles fell off and continued writhing on the ground. The monster looked at the smoking hole on its side, then looked straight at Nori. It lifted his head and let out another skin-crawling roar.

“You just made it angrier!” Lana yelled.

Nori’s eyes hardened. She shot the Disruptor, again and again. Blue rays of destructive force hit the giant, burrowing smoking craters all over his body, but the monster ignored the damage and charged.

Nori shot three more times, hitting the Warped’s thick armored leg, causing it to go limp, but that barely slowed it down. At the last possible second, she hit the door’s control, closing it in the monster’s face. Loud metallic bangs sounded as the Warped pounded on the shuttle’s hull.

“Bulco’s still out there!” Lana yelled. “He’s going to die,”

Nori looked at the weapon in her hand helplessly. “I hit it at least ten times, but it didn’t go down. Maybe if I--”

The shuttle suddenly jerked upward, sending everyone hurtling to their backs. It then dropped and a loud crunching noise ran through the interior.