by Chris Turner
As for the human, Miko—a flutter of mixed emotions rose in her breast. The creature had shown no gratitude for the service she had granted. He would have been killed, or permanently bottled had she not intervened. True, to save her own skin, she had acted.
Likely her human mate would be captured by the fiends before long, and this possibility irked her. The thought of him, like her, also encased in a tube, the life essence continually siphoned out of him… She was robust, able to handle the rigour, but he was weak. How easily they had caught him and trapped him like a fly in a bottle.
Audra came as close to a sigh as she ever would.
Foolish human! Angst pulsed from her consciousness, rippling out through the water, bouncing off the glass. Her tentacles swept out and battered against the glass.
Locust heads turned, then refocused on their work.
The wounds from the wolf-terrors back on Rogos had been almost enough to keep her from fighting, and now these insectoids had scratched her with their crude tools and burned her with their lasers. No matter. The liquid in which she was immersed was helping her heal. She could feel revitalizing pulsations. There would be blood to pay in the end—by all.
She let up on her pounding. One of the more primitive creatures paused before the glass and stared at her with its glassy globular eyes, as if divining what she was thinking. It was smaller, and weaker, even more repulsive-looking than the others, with a pale, sickly aqua-hued carapace and drooping antennae. A bubble rippled from Audra’s polyp of a mouth. She was not in a stupor like the two other slaves on either side of her that floated in their tubes, staring goggle-eyed.
What was this miniature creature’s next move? She narrowed her smudges of eyes craftily. The locust reached a claw-pincer for the wire that dangled down the side of her tank.
Audra watched enthralled, reflective, and waited as she set to work on the possibility of escape.
Her gaze caught the glowing amber plates arrayed at the far end of the room. It was via these devices that she had come into this hateful world. The portal mechanism…interesting, ingenious. Even scientists on her world would flutter their tentacles; they had not such science. Doubtless a stolen technology. She knew all about piracy, being a grushruk. How would the human’s primitive mind term it? A plunderer. She recalled with satisfaction the delight of capturing the NAVO stealth VR ship that Miko piloted, the one which she had commandeered for her own purposes, despite the displeasure of her superiors. So many races, like Miko’s, had developed clever innovations, despite their inferior brains and backward technology.
The insect creatures’ research science, though, was laughingly primitive. Carving off limbs, then slapping living entities in noisome fluids… It smacked of butchers’ work on her home world.
A team worked at the table in the centre of the room, piled high with guts and gore. Creature after creature were borne in on the backs of the mechnobots, writhing and squealing, unstrapped and lifted onto the table, while the locusts worked with efficiency. Never had she witnessed such a variety of organisms. The insects had obviously invaded and inhabited many worlds and had some means of transporting themselves and specimens to and from their respective environments on their habitable worlds. A veritable parasite network. How their hub had once connected to Rogos was beyond her. Apart from the fact that it was still operable after so many ages, and she and the human had passed through it. A pity. Rogos would have been a perfect haven to settle down with the human who could give her endless pleasures.
A hose was unhooked from the top of her tank and the aqua-coloured creature, hunched before her and inserted it into its abdomen and began to feed.
A stir grew in Audra’s belly—premature birthlings rose and fell inside her. She convulsed.
The vestiges of a smile crawled over Audra’s fleshy face. Her tentacles fluttered in response to the birth pangs, like the streamers of a jellyfish. The birthlings would not tolerate the confinement for long. The enclosure was too small. The young would rebel and strive to escape their cage. Or, the insects would have to open the tank to relieve the pressure. Her abdomen swelled and she quivered in anguish as a seal-like thing surged under her skin like a predacious worm.
The locust creature that was feeding, jerked and tore the wire from its belly, clearly in pain. The others working at the table wheeled about.
She grinned. Easy to absorb the seal-like things and ingest them back into her, but these little horrors could perhaps work to her advantage… The locusts had not thought the situation through. Two of the insects clacked over, forceps and calibres clutched in flesh-dripping pincers, and they fiddled with the wire-to-stopper mechanism.
A smirk caused Audra intense pain, but she rejoiced when the stopper unlatched and the water began to roil and foam with an ominous import.
Miko cut his way through a band of fiends that had caught sight of his flickering frame and had taken pursuit. His half-invisibility had hindered and helped at the same time, allowing him to sneak up on their hunching forms at a point before his body blinked back to visibility, but hindering him when the annoying crackle and stench of electrical discharge had given his location away. The scalpel had done its grisly work. He hid the bodies in a garbage chute, kicked away what dark blood he could from the floor, wiping his boots on the corpses before his visibility finally slipped away. He pushed through the opposite wall, using his bodiless will, then descended to a lower level of the compound, or whatever it was. He could not keep up this hide-and-seek game forever. Sooner or later the insects would catch him, either his being one second too slow, or a searing ray ripping into his vitals.
The walls in this section were richly woven with odd symbols: what looked like insectoid skulls surrounded by wavy lines, and stars and crosses. The patterns shimmered in his eyes, and made his head swim. A huge locust head peered down upon all, in full relief—likely some god. This section seemed excessively secured, with electric trip wires and many security posts stationed everywhere. The place reeked of hostility, overt aggression. Every symbol, every cross feature hinted of locust supremacy.
Audra’s rough handling had not killed him thus far, so surely a few alien skulls and parasitic gods would not unnerve him.
Miko had an ominous feeling yet that there was some hideous surprise waiting around the corner.
He found himself in a vast echoing chamber, interminably high, rising into plum-grey shadows. Bzt. He was back in his body again—with no pain from previous wounds.
He looked up into the dim haze as a low hum filled the air. Mournful, sinister vibrations of unknown source. He stalked forward, emboldened by his recent kills. He felt he had reached the centre of the compound, and was walking in the lair of some bio-mechanic god.
Lights showed ahead, tiny twinkles and shadows that teased his imagination as they stretched to infinity. A small movement caught his eye—a fan of pinprick light rising to the ceiling far overhead. On both sides, levels or bays rose with piping and scaffolding: and with stairs equipped to give locusts access to the bewildering structure. He swallowed hard as he saw heads embedded in the weave: animal-like, human-like, of every genus and species imaginable. Each gory member, he saw, could be reached from the access ramps connecting to the scaffolding above. He was on the very bottom.
A chill of pure horror rippled through Miko’s heart.
The flit of locust pincers caught his attention, a glint against the plum-grey gloom. Or perhaps it was the sharp cutting edge of a metallic instrument? Miko quieted his approach, his feet still driven on by a morbid curiosity. He stopped with a jerk and slumped to his knees, his muscles going slack. For before him a gigantic web of heads strung as far as the eye could see. It was an abominable lattice, some shimmering collective body of tortured souls, stitched together with some obscene, glistening plasma. The wall of heads rose like an impossible, quivering lake of molten quicksilver, for the beings with the heads were still alive, their features animated, their heads victim of a ghoulish rhythm.
How many souls had these murdering devils ripped from their lives and stolen from uncountable worlds? On raids to all corners of the universe to create this monstrous tapestry? For what sinister purpose?
Some sick art form? Miko’s being quailed at the possibilities. Certainly not for feeding—there were no signs of containers.
He felt the familiar tug tickle at his chest. Audra was calling. That bond with her had never diminished, even though he had cut himself physically from her gelatinous flesh some weeks ago.
He stared at the abominable lattice and thought of the sheer improbability of its existence, how he had escaped thus far from such hellish fate. This destiny would have been his had he not escaped from the laboratory. It was Audra’s fate too, if he did not miss his guess. That bittersweet feeling clutched at his soul, like a craving for a drug that would never go away. The Zikri had saved him just recently. So long had he been joined to her that he could feel the attachment like parasitic tendrils. Could he just leave her to die, become part of this sinister web? As he crafted this thought, the hostility and resolve flared up in him again.
Not far out of his reach, Miko heard a silent whisper: it was akin to a gibbering plea, one of the human heads that was entwined in the web called to him. It was only the head and shoulders that wallowed in that greasy, plasmic filth. The rest of the body was missing. Where could it be? Perhaps hidden underneath those slimy layers?
But how could the head survive, knitted together with the other appendages—ape heads, crustaceans, animals, insectoid skulls, many other unclassifiable things? Part of the eldritch science of these ghouls?
In rage and desperation, Miko reached up and hacked the member free from its sticky gum. The head fell with a sick thud and seemed to babble some words in an unknown tongue before its life blinked out. The tongue lolled and it died like so many others before it. But the look on its face was one of gratitude.
Miko turned his head. Whatever the words had been, they were not decipherable to his ears.
This creature had been female. He felt a further black despair grip him and send the blood hammering in his temples.
The lights dimmed; a low throbbing thickened the air, and now a disquieting rumble cascaded throughout the bay.
What had he done?
Had he alerted the locust keepers? He scrambled back through the shadows, cursing himself and his defiance, his skin bathed in the eerie, prune-grey glow. While his body flickered in and out, the clacking of insect claws on metal came from above, ever closer. They would hunt him down!
Impossible to get the image of the ghastly lattice out his head. Did it serve a higher function? Like reproduction of the race, producing higher strains, more intelligent breeds of the organism without the reproductive parts? It was almost too fantastic to imagine.
A faint glow from the leftmost wall caught his eye. A glass patch—an oval portal—revealed a view outside that staggered him. He continued on, transfixed. A dusky brown planet glowered dimly below with orange-hues around the centre. He caught sight of the hard, shiny surface of the edge of a ship of fantastic design. Massive hexagonal pods tiered many times on top of the other, forming a vast complex, radiating outwards from a central hub like the reaching arms of tentacles.
He was on a ship.
Miko shook his head. Beacons of light poured from windows farther down the sides. The vessel was huge, like a planet itself.
So, it was not a bunker he was in, or some land base, but a huge ship, an incomprehensible ark that had transported this parasitic race through the galaxy, from world to world. An ark of horrors.
Mikio looked out from somewhere on the edge of this gargantuan spacecraft while the brown planet swung below, a hundred thousand miles away.
From a triangular portal far down its side, alien vessels buzzed back and forth like silent ghosts toward the dim planet and from round cargo ports scalloped on the edges of the ark.
Miko pulled himself away from the glass, forcing speculation from his mind. To his left stood a feeding station, the first he had seen since the lattice. The victim, blinking within the cannister, was not some primitive beast or some horrid hybrid of one—it was human!
Miko stared with fascination, the scalpel falling loose in his hand. Revulsion seized his heart. The man was in his prime, well-built, of medium stature with thick brown hair and blue eyes, dressed in pilot’s garb similar to his own. A military man?
Miko tapped on the glass with his weapon. No reaction.
In a fit of passion, he smashed the glass with the pipe which he kept tucked at his waist. The fluid gushed out from the tank in a steaming putrid stream, taking the occupant with it. The liquid splashed on the floor.
The man fell to his knees, choking out lungfuls of foul liquid. His limbs shook convulsively. Sobs of despair and relief gurgled from his throat.
Miko tried to help him, but the prisoner brushed him away with a quivering hand.
Miko took a step back. “Who are you?”
“I—I’m Fenli,” the man rasped. His voice was hoarse, affected with a singsong trill, difficult to understand. The glands in his throat looked swollen, doubtless from exposure to the air after such a long period immersed in the locust brew.
“I’m Miko,” the pilot murmured quietly. “I am your liberator.”
So strange was it to hear his own voice. It had been months, years it seemed since he had last spoken to another. How long had it been since he had been kidnapped by the Zikri? He shook off the memory. “We must go. The locusts have been alerted.”
“Where—what?” The man blinked at Miko, reaching out to grab his hand, as if he were struggling with some old, buried memory. The man stumbled after Miko, fighting to gain use of his stiffened limbs. Whatever the strange liquid did, it did not affect the occupant adversely, or keep his limbs inoperable. It kept him remarkably intact.
Miko guided Fenli along, one hand clutched on his scalpel. How long would the man’s seemingly good condition last before he keeled over and died from some obscure complication?
Fenli seemed to recognize this part of the ship and grunted. He pointed a shaking finger ahead in the plum dimness. “There lies the depot. I was a cargo-master once. They captured me on a routine run to Belronus. If we make it over there, we may have a chance.”
“Can we escape?” inquired Miko.
“Stand-by ships—they can take us out of here—if we’re lucky. That’s how I got here. Hellfire, man, you look bad. What are those flaps on your neck? They look like gills.”
Miko scratched at the loose flesh on his throat. “I got off on the wrong foot with an alien. For the record, you don’t look too good yourself.”
“After sitting in water for a lifetime, would you?”
“It’s amazing your muscles haven’t atrophied.”
Fenli shrugged. “What’s your story? How did you get here?”
“I was waylaid—by pirates—” Before Miko could elaborate, another portal gaped to their left. Now he could see activity out in space—aggressive activity off to port.
Pods or enemy escape vehicles shaped like aphids, streamed from the perimeters of the ship and others came to intercept from the direction of the planet below.
“The web—”
“It powers the locusts’ light drive,” the man said, “the space jump transporter system.”
The information sent Miko into a tailspin. “The amalgamator—”
“Yes, whatever you want to call it.”
Of course—it made sense. What other sinister fuel could power such freakish technology? And who but the locusts could have engineered the diabolical means to use human and animal life to power a web of hyperjumps?
Miko had no time to ponder the implications. He saw three enormous ships burst in from near space. Monstrous shapes, hulking, black and grey. Their forecastles loomed top-heavy, but they were lean in the stern—battle cruisers of formidable design.
A luminous point of light flared from a weapons-port and slowly t
hey came winking toward the ark.
Miko gazed spellbound as a deafening crash smote his ears and the space station rocked to its core. Metal plating slewed sideways, landing in heaps around them.
A buzzer bleated; a klaxon shrilled. The sound tore at the air. Fenli and Miko were sent sprawling on their faces. Gingerly, Miko rose from a crouch and glanced about wildly, as plates continued to crumble from the wall. The sound of escaping gases hissed like a thousand snakes. Miko felt a hollow tug at his ears, as of a massive depressurization.
“A breach,” croaked Fenli, gasping for air.
The frenzied chattering of locusts rose above the screech of tortured metal.
The cargo man scrambled toward the corridor’s exit, nursing his wounds from the fallout.
“You fool!” rebuked Miko. “Where are you going?”
The stranger scrambled on.
A beam fell from above. A section of the ceiling collapsed, almost crushing the two of them.
The cargo-master shook his head. He clambered doggedly past the twisted wreckage down the corridor.
Miko, on impulse, raced after him. He snatched up a sharp chunk of metal and strapped his long, wicked-looking scalpel with its serrated edge coated with dried blood at his waist. The cargo-operator seemed to have inside knowledge of the ship. They were dead if they didn’t take action fast. How they could stand on two feet in deep space without floating off in zero gravity was a mystery to him. Obviously the insect creatures had installed gravity stabilizers somewhere. He did notice his body felt lighter here than on Rogos.
Miko tagged Fenli’s heels as they ran dodging wreckage, threading their way through broken command stations and overturned feeding tanks. The temperature fell; the whoosh of escaping gases blew like hurricanes. Suddenly they crashed headlong into a team of security guards.
Miko staggered back on his heels, grimacing. He tossed Fenli his pipe. The cargo-master clutched it gratefully and swung deadly strikes at the nearest locust whose dripping mandibles snapped at him. Fenli thrust himself flat to the ground before a burst of gunfire flared past him and left a smoking hole in the wall.
