Snapping Teeth

How long would three yards of open concrete stay clear when four predators were pacing the shadows on either side? Dario Melgarejo pressed his shoulder against the frosted corner of Rack Forty-Four, his gloved fingers clamping the titanium shaft of his de-icing lance until the cold bit through his thermal palms. The central aisle stretched thirty paces toward the secondary refrigeration hub, lit only by the dying yellow stutter of an emergency halogen bulb. He needed to reach the overhead bypass manifold before the beasts closed the pincers. Out in the open, their heavy insulated suits offered no defense against serrated bone.

Behind him, Geraldo sucked in a rattling lungful of filtered air, clutching the fur collar of his parka like a shield.

"Tell me the soldier has enough darts," Geraldo hissed, his voice trembling inside his acrylic respirator mask. "Tell me she does not plan on saving ammunition while we get carved into cold cuts."

"Quiet," Soledad Ravelo said without turning.

She knelt four paces ahead, her right shoulder wedged into the steel upright of the shelving frame. Her boots dug into the crusted brine on the decking. The pneumatic carbine rested level against her knee, its high-pressure argon cylinder humming with a faint, steady vibration that matched the pulse beacon zipped into Dario's chest pocket. She did not blink. The gray sweep of her hair was stiff with frost where sweat had condensed against her temples.

Ten yards down the aisle, a dry clatter sounded from the lower tier of Rack Forty-Six.

It was not the scrape of steel bolts. It was bone striking zinc. A long, hairless snout slid out from between two rows of dormant seed canisters. The creature possessed four milky, lidless eyes stacked in vertical pairs, but its jaw held no standard teeth. Two curved, lateral mandibles of serrated enamel hinged outward from the cheekbones, clicking together with the sharp cadence of shears. A thick, yellowed saliva dribbled from its split palate, freezing into brittle white beads before it touched the floor grating.

A second set of claws clicked behind them in Aisle Seven. Then a third from Aisle Eight.

"They have our drift," Dario whispered, checking the frost patterns along the overhead piping. "The extraction fans are pulling our exhaust south. They smell the warm air from the suit scrubbers."

"Let them step into the line," Soledad murmured.

Her trigger finger tightened. The carbine discharged with a sharp pneumatic crack, spitting a three-inch tungsten dart wrapped in expanding gas. The projectile punched through the lead canid's left eye cluster and drove deep into the granite upright behind its skull. The beast convulsed once, its scissor-mandibles snapping shut on empty air with a dry crack, then slumped across the aisle in a heap of stiffening gristle.

The remaining three beasts did not retreat. The crack of the carbine provoked a chorus of wet, chittering shrieks from the darkness overhead. Shadows scrambled along the catwalks above the storage bins, their multi-jointed knuckles rattling against the galvanized mesh.

"Forward," Soledad ordered, rising in one smooth motion while cycling the charging lever. "Keep your spacing. Five paces."

Geraldo lunged ahead of Dario, his boots slipping on the slick frost. "Move, mechanic! Move your feet!"

"Wait," Dario snapped, grabbing the smuggler's quilted sleeve. "Watch the rack corners!"

From the dark recess between Bins Forty-Eight and Forty-Nine, a mottled gray form dropped from the overhead cable tray. It landed with a dull thud four feet from Geraldo, its twin scissor-jaws spreading wide in an involuntary reflex of predatory hunger. The beast lunged sideways, driving its head forward before Soledad could swing the carbine around the bulky corner stanchion.

Geraldo shrieked, stumbling backward into Dario. The beast's upper mandible sheared clean through the flared hem of his parka, slicing away a six-inch wedge of down insulation. White goose feathers burst into the freezing air like a cloud of synthetic snow.

"My lining!" Geraldo bellowed, scrambling across the grating on his elbows. "Custom Siberian down, you wretched fossil! That was tailored in Turin!"

The canid shook its head, spitting out the mouthful of bitter feathers, and coiled its hind legs to spring directly onto Geraldo's chest.

Dario did not back away. His boots found purchase against the expansion joint in the concrete floor. He stepped past Geraldo and raised the titanium lance with both hands, driving the hardened chisel tip straight into the creature's exposed shoulder joint. The metal point grated against calcified cartilage. The canid thrashed, its four eyes rolling white as its lateral jaws clamped onto the lance shaft, screeching against the titanium alloy.

"Get off him!" Soledad barked.

A second dart hissed past Dario's ear, taking the beast through the base of the throat. The creature collapsed onto its side, legs bicycling against the shelving posts.

A low hiss of air leaked from the conduit overhead. Dario glanced up and saw the telltale blue discoloration on the high-pressure glycol return line. The valve stem was coated in a dense, granular crust of rime, which meant the liquid inside remained superchilled to minus fifty degrees even as the ambient air rose to minus thirty-eight point five. A red manual release wheel hung just above the access junction, chained to an emergency override lever.

To the left, two more canids dropped from the catwalk into the central aisle, blocking the passage to the primary corridor. Their jaws clicked in rapid, synchronized agitation, cutting off the route to the hub.

Dario jammed the chisel tip of his lance through the spokes of the frozen release wheel.

"Ravelo, get behind the pillar!" Dario shouted. "Both of you, down!"

"What are you touching?" Geraldo gasped, struggling to his feet while clutching his leaking parka. "Is that an explosive?"

"It is four hundred bars of liquid cold," Dario said.

He threw his entire body weight against the lance. The frozen brass packing on the valve stem fought him for a second, screeching under the leverage, then sheared free with a violent metallic pop. Dario yanked the wheel a quarter-turn counterclockwise.

The valve ruptured outward.

A blinding white plume of superchilled glycol vapor exploded across the central corridor. The pressurized jet roared like a jet turbine, filling the corridor with a dense, freezing cloud that instantly dropped the local temperature below minus sixty. The two lunging canids met the spray mid-leap.

The vapor hit their wet muzzles with catastrophic force. The moisture in their eyes, throats, and exposed muscle flash-froze in fractions of a second. Their bodies locked into rigid, crystalline postures mid-stride, skidding across the frosted concrete like heavy sacks of gravel before striking the base of Rack Fifty. The sheer thermal shock shattered their brittle leg bones on impact.

A dense wall of icy fog rolled through the aisle, cutting off the scent trail and choking the ventilation intake behind them. The surviving beasts in the upper tiers recoiled, screeching in agony as the sub-zero cloud burned their unshielded nostrils.

Dario dropped from the pipe riser, his gloves smoking with crystalline frost. The pulse beacon on his chest flashed a steady green, confirming the clear perimeter.

"There," Dario pointed with the tip of his lance toward a low, rectangular service hatch nestled beneath the secondary riser. "Conduit Four-B. It connects to the compressor crawlway behind the primary hub."

Soledad stared at the frozen heap of canid carcasses, then looked at Dario. A faint nod of approval crossed her tight jaw.

"Open it," she said, raising the carbine to cover the fog line. "Move, Sotomayor, before you lose more feathers."

Geraldo did not wait. He dropped to his knees and crawled through the narrow square hatch, dragging his torn coat behind him with breathless curses. Dario squeezed in next, dragging his lance and diagnostic bag over the raised lip of the coaming. Soledad backed through last, her weapon trained on the white wall of glycol vapor.

Dario slammed the heavy hatch shut and drove the manual dog-latches home, sealing the steel door against the freezing mist.

The narrow conduit smelled of dry ozone, machine grease, and bitter copper. For three seconds, only the ragged sound of their breathing filled the dark shaft.

Then the ceiling above them groaned.

A sickening screech of tearing sheet metal echoed through the ductwork overhead. The heavy steel plating of the main air shaft five paces above the sealed hatch buckled downward in a deep, sharp V. Through the tear, two massive, three-jointed talons caked in ancient black pitch punched through the tin, followed by a heavy, wet drop that shook the entire concrete foundation beneath their knees.