by Chris Turner
Yul’s earphone crackled. Frue. “You’d better get over here. We have a situation.”
“What now? Jesus!” cried Yul. “Keep an eye on Greer for me. He’s out there alone.”
“No kidding. There’s something you should know—”
“Not now.” Yul cut the channel and left the hatch pad, hastening down the passage to the bridge, clearly annoyed.
He entered the command area to hear Regers squawking and arguing with Hurd. “I told you not to fuck with the plants, and what do you do?”
“They were trying to get out,” complained Hurd. “Figured they needed some water. Scratching on the glass. Now look, they’re all agitated.”
Yul stare as if Hurd had gone mad. He saw that the moth was gone. Had Hurd killed it? Drowned it somehow? No, the plant must have eaten it. Right, a Venus flytrap. Good one, Yul. Maybe if the moth were in survival mode, it could have burrowed into the soil to hide. No insect parts, legs or wings littered the damp soil.
He saw further that eight of the thirty-some odd plants had already adapted, and had perked up considerably.
Adapted to the move and all the banging around. The instability had caused the plants to create other supports: two double-length buttresses like legs for every stalk, angling out at 45 degrees. All glowed a brown, greenish yellow. To support the stalks in an upright position, they had grown fleshier, fibrous tissue which formed ribs along their stalks almost like muscle.
Hurd sputtered out a defence. “It’s beyond me why Cyber Corp wants this plant shit anyway. I’m no botanist, or gardener.”
“That much is clear.” Yul dismissed Hurd with a wave. “Who cares or knows what these CEO’s are up to? As long as Mathias pays us, we’re golden.”
“We’d better—”
The klaxon rang.
“Oh, shit.” Frue paled. “That’s what I was telling you about earlier. A blip on the microchannel— faded away, thought it was a sensor malfunction. But looks like we do have company. A Mark IV on starboard reach.”
Yul swore. Regers wheeled on Frue. “I thought you scrambled our cloaking frequency, you idiot! Not even government cryptos could crack it.”
“They decoded it, what do you think?” Frue retorted. “Must have found a crack. Or some blind spot or loophole. What do I know? The Mentera must have tipped the Zikri off to our presence.”
“Do something, you dumb fuck!” yelled Regers.
Frue gave a snarl back. “What can I do, if we’re reduced to half impulse?”
“Gun them down!”
“Right, a Class B Orb?”
A shockwave ran to port; a bright flare bounced off their shields, nearly compromising the hull.
Yul raced for the weapons console, a task normally allotted to Greer or Hurd. Hurd stood blinking dumbly. The whiffs of the alien air must have affected his brain.
Regers shook his head in disgust. “Move this ship!” He leaped to the console and jerked the control out of Frue’s hand before the pilot could react. Regers jammed the lever to an upright position and the ship lurched out of its smooth glide and stable orbit.
Frue croaked in horror. Greer was ripped from his umbilical cord and went twirling out into space, toward the yellow planet.
“You fucking cold-hearted bastard,” Frue cried. “What are you, some kind psycho? You just killed Greer.”
“Right, I did your dirty work for you, Frue. And your alternative was to get us all killed? Maybe check your logic there, Frue.”
“Screw you, Regers,” said Frue. “How do you know we couldn’t have got Greer in?”
Yul glared in disbelief. “You’re a callous bastard, Regers. No doubt about it. Should have been you out there.” He bounded two strides to lay the man low. “We’ll settle this after this is over. Battle stations!”
Clenching his fists, he let his anger subside, though his blood was boiling and the strong metal in his left fist ached to pound Regers into the ground. They needed the cretin until the mission was complete. One of these days Regers’ heart of darkness would bury him.
Though he hated to admit it, Yul knew Regers had a point. If they didn’t take action they’d be targeted by ship fire. But perhaps Frue could have dodged the Mark IV at sublight speed long enough to get Greer back in the hatch. Then again, maybe not.
Frue muttered obscenities while Regers snorted. “You think I’m going to trust your goody-goody evasions, Frue? Look at what happened to us last time with those locust freaks. You played cat and mouse and we almost got blown out of the sky. Remember?”
“Do something, faster!” growled Hurd, now joggling the weapons console. He loosed bolts of ion-fire at the invading craft. The photon blasts glanced harmlessly off the attack Orb’s shields.
“They’re closing in.” Yul’s sharp eyes scrutinized the oncoming craft on the viewscreen.
The Albatross rocked to enemy fire. Their reserve shields were low. Only a matter of time before they would fizzle out.
“Zikri!—I hate Zikri,” Yul muttered.
“You know Zikri M.O.,” Frue wheezed. “Take your ship for parts, kill you or sell you to the bloody Mentera.”
“Whatever. Let’s just get the fuck away from them,” Regers growled, cocking his blaster. His eyes darted every which way.
Frue stabbed out at the screen. “It’s a mid-size scavenger vessel. Look! Class B, as I said. Likely a skeleton crew, but—”
“They’re deadly, we know.” Yul scanned the viewscreen and racked his brain for a solution. He saw no weakness in the massive Orb pocked with metal spikes that drove in on them like an undersea mine.
The Albatross weaved like a firefly. Zikri uro bombs lit up the space outside the rear fins. The hull caught scatterings of explosions. Red flames burned from starboard to port viewports. Frue threw up his hands in despair.
The Albatross decelerated to a standstill. The Orb loomed ever closer in the viewscreen.
A tractor beam had caught the ship. Yul could not mistake that faintly perceptible jar tugging at his spine and backward drag of deceleration. Silence. A low throb of ominous frequencies. Yul’s gut plummeted like a deap sea mine. Light dimmed, as a shadow fell over the ship. Now the vessel began to move back toward the larger menace.
Frue jammed the thrusters to max. Nothing.
“Do something!” croaked Regers.
“There’s nothing to do.”
Regers slapped his arms down with frustration.
Yul watched the rear viewport screen and caught twisted glimpses of strange metal walls spiked with barbs closing in on him. The Orb’s tractor hatch closed; starless darkness wrapped around them, as black as a mummy’s tomb.
The dull echoing thud of clamps sounded on the outer hull. Yul could hear the scratching of probes, instruments, alien sensors grinding on the surrounding metal. He could count the times this had happened to him before on one hand. Now it was happening again, though he had vowed never to be caught like a fish in a net.
“Christ!” He leaped to his feet, leaving the command post. “They’re going to board us! Lower the outer visors.”
Frue hit a switch. A whir of machinery gave way to titanized plates sliding over the viewport glass around the ship’s hull.
“Follow me,” grunted Yul. “Grab as much gear and weapons as you can. Haul ass back to the bridge.” He raced to the midship’s bay. The others offered no argument. Fast on his heels, they raided the weapon stores like thieves.
“Suit up!” Yul ordered the others. “Take extra adhesive in case your suits get punctured. The Zikri’ll hit us with everything they’ve got, nerve gas first—or a concussion blast.”
“Both, if we’re unlucky,” grunted Regers.
Yul snatched at pieces of body armour. “We’re going to need these too if we’re to stay alive.”
Yul’s mind raced, his commando sense taking over as he rummaged through the lockers for his suit. They’d be expecting panic-stricken crewmembers.
He grimaced. Not if he could help it. He focu
sed on the task at hand. He grabbed whatever concussion bombs remained in the lower weapons shelves.
Frue gaped at him. “Are you crazy? You’ll blow us sky high.”
“Ever hear of surprise? They won’t expect it. We’re already goners, Frue. Give them something to think about. That’s my motto. A gruesome welcome. I’m setting them for half stun. We’ll shield ourselves behind the consoles.”
“But the samples—”
“Screw the fucking samples! We’re goners if we don’t do something.” He shoved the others along the companionway and through the portal to the bridge. Back in familiar surroundings, the plants stood curiously upright under their protective glass, oblivious to any imminent danger.
Hurd opted to take his chances wearing only a mask. “A full suit will only hinder mobility.”
Regers sneered at such logic, muttering under his breath.
Yul ignored the two of them. He planted the hand-sized bomb at the door’s threshold. With quick fingers, he programmed the remote control detonator for a five second delay before he positioned himself behind the master console in the bridge’s centre. Cocking his weapon, he sent a prayer upward.
“Seal the hatch,” came his murmur to Frue.
Frue hit the switch then ran beside Yul, his weapon trained. The shielded metal door dropped down, plunging them all in silence. They waited, Regers to the left of the starboard console, Hurd, Yul and Frue behind the central stand, blasters aimed at the door. Plunks and scratching noises sounded on the hull over their heads, tools doing grisly work.
A dull reverberation echoed throughout the ship. The aliens had breached the hull! As an ominous silence ticked away, a deafening explosion rocked the ship. The central port hatch exploded in a spray of metal, sending jagged shrapnel everywhere like poison darts.
Yul was thrown back. He hit his shoulder and back hard on the side wall. Regers howled as he opened a stream of fire on the yellowish smoke where the door had been, home now to an indistinct blur of grotesque shapes struggling through. These were neither squid, mollusc or mammal, but some gruesome parody of all—alien life at its worst, with stub legs and tail. Zikri surged forth in body armour like phantasms out of a dark nightmare. Tentacles wavered, thick and slimy, and dark bodies pulsed with scintillating menace. Yul could barely see them in the smoke, but he detected a sprawl of tubes and a diamond-shaped headpiece denoting air masks that covered the withered, ropy flesh.
Yul’s fingers clicked the timed release on the detonator. He counted the seconds in his daze.
Kaboom! The scatter bomb went off like a Roman candle, blinding anything in sight. His armour caught the brunt of the concussion as flying debris slapped at him.
The plant aquarium went flying and smashed against the nearest wall. Glass sizzled and melted. Yul could hear the crackling of burning leaves and pods. He could see nothing in the smoke, his faceplate clogged with soot and alien blood. Only a roaring rush in his ears as of a raging sea, then a whistling noise, and the faraway whimpers of living organisms in pain.
Wiping furiously at his faceplate, he squinted through the glass. The plant aquarium had rolled to a stop nearby, overturned on its edge, the melting, liquid glass pooling and sizzling at his feet, a gaping hole in its side.
Things crawled out. To his horror, the surviving alien ferns had sprouted new root-legs and limped, half hopped from their broken crib like crippled frogs. They skittered and curled around the shins of fighting figures.
Yul’s ears still rang, but he caught sight of other bizarre movements. Some of the pods had rolled out, many half burned, others scorched but intact, rippling in multicoloured confusion like certain chameleons camouflaging themselves in self defence.
His groping hands latched onto one while reaching for his blaster. He shook the thickening haze out of his skull. Staggering to his feet, he felt the pain in his right thigh arc in red hot waves.
Faster than snakes, Zikri flanked them and hauled Hurd back in a sea of tentacles, using the smoke as a screen. Hurd’s mouth opened in a high, soundless cry. His back arched like a man whose bones were snapping, then he disappeared in a swarm of rank flesh. Regers, at the edge of the fray, briefly managed to avoid their attacks.
Yul opened fire into the blur of menacing shapes. Tentacles sprayed in ruin and black blood gushed everywhere. Gutters of fetid liquid flesh pooled. Squalling chitters rang out in mad waves as Zikri writhed and twisted in their death throes. By the sound of their agitated chitters and their lack of weapons, it seemed the creatures had not expected any organized resistance. Hurd flopped in a bloody pool, groping and crawling his way along, gasping out what sounded like his last breaths.
Too many of them! Yul sprang sideways. He arched away from the flesh-rending tentacles, trying to evade the gruesome clot.
His ears rang as Hurd’s agonized wail came crackling over the com.
A dozen or more squids came streaming out of the yellow smog, savaging the fallen Hurd in an unyielding sea of glistening tentacles. Hurd was engulfed before Regers, he or Frue could do anything. A group of the first Zikri wave gripped him and hauled him into the hall.
Yul loosed fire. While Hurd’s wretched howls crackled into obscurity, the crawling plants jerked their quivering, brown stalks upright from under the Zikri’s webbed feet. They hissed. They wrapped the longest of their leaves about the advancing horde’s lower motilators and short swishing tails. The Zikri flung them off and they slapped against the wall with wet, sucking sounds.
“Christ, they’re morphing!” Yul yelled at Frue who floundered at his side. “Get away from them!” The man, panic-stricken, squinted with effort and sprayed blaster fire at the tentacled Zikri monsters.
Another crawling plant answered the call of its drooping neighbours. It jumped like an enormous leech, wrapping its rustling leaves around a Zikri’s midsection.
Regers kicked away one of the curling leaves as it tried to climb his leg. He screeched as one of the plants climbed on his back and wrapped around his neck.
For stability? Revenge? Yul stared dumbfounded as he fired into the smoke. Through his squinting daze he could swear the ferns were trying to protect the defenceless pods from the tramping feet of the Zikri.
Regers choked, nearly strangled, as the ring of foliage tightened around his flexible suit. He thrust up with his bowie knife. The tough plant tissue parted and fell with a thud to the ground. But more things sprouted from the viscous goo.
“Get out of here, you fools!” Yul could hear the whimper of the plant-like voices. Things which seemed immune to the nerve gas, or whatever toxic gunk the Zikri pirates had pumped into the air.
Zikri cornered Regers who raged and fired as their tentacles bit into his suit, questing to carry him away. For all his psychotic behaviour, the man’s grit could not be denied. He threw off his molesters, heaving and cursing, then managed to duck under one’s whipping tentacle and twist away like a gymnast, blasting it with his sidearm.
Yul’s body armour caught a sudden Zikri gun blast. The metal deflected the shot which would have punctured his suit and left him prey to the vapours. Yet the sizzle left a scorching mark smoking on his ribs. Had the ray hit his helmet...
Despite the dirty-yellow smoke drifting Yul’s way, a sixth sense warned him of a sudden movement to his left. He lifted his blaster, caught a gliding Zikri square in the face. The alien face, for an instant, went all pudgy, green and angry with air mask and nozzle askew. Then the head exploded in a gelatinous mess.
The Zikri leader that had fired the shot surged through the mass at Yul’s right. Rippling tentacles caught Yul in a grip before he could react. He fell over in a heap, blaster thrown from his hand. Landing on his side, he groaned at the hard abrasive jab of pear-shaped pods under his aching ribs. The Zikri was all over him, suffocating him like an octopus. He could not break free of its clammy tentacles despite his body armour. His ribs began to cave. The creature emitted an electrical discharge that made his nerves tingle with fire.
; He thrust up an arm, his left mechanized one, to rip off the alien’s facemask. To no avail. He couldn’t reach far enough, his upper arms pinned by the monster’s strangling tentacles.
The whimperings of the plants, the frenzied chitter of Zikri—the tumult of madness crowded in on his brain. He thrashed with desperation, looking for any way to free himself, a weapon, any object. His questing fingers hooked onto a long shard of glass. With savage force, he plunged it into the Zikri’s squishy skull. A squashing sound filled his earpiece. The repulsive grip loosened. He pulled free another of the pods under his back that was grinding into his bones and smashed knuckles into the Zikri’s faceplate, ramming the pod into the mouth of the creature that champed toward his own.
The alien gave a slobbery moan and convulsed in a pile of twitching flesh, its face writhing.
The pod had cracked open. Something had slipped down the Zikri’s throat—something with wings. At least they looked like wings. The Zikri twitched and gurgled, loosing a horrible, shrieking chitter. Yul had no time to see what emerged.
Another vengeful Zikri lunged at him. The thing tried to wrap a slippery coil around his neck but with a savage wrench of his mechanized fingers, he pulled the thing forward. Its flesh tore at the shoulder. Blood spurted from the mangled appendage.
More aliens rushed to avenge their fallen leader. Obscene things with rippling tentacles and hose and nozzled faces surged out of the smoke with fury. Electrical shocks flared through Yul’s besieged nerves as their tentacles brushed his armour like jellyfish. He jerked in pain, but he grit his teeth, reined in all his strength and slashed out with his long shard of glass. He tore away from the quivering mass of tentacles, snatched up his blaster, and struggled toward Regers.
“Get away from them,” he cried at Regers who staggered about, and then to Frue who was moaning and crouching monkey-like in the smoke, his blaster held steady, spraying fire every which way.
If not for the gripping strength of his prosthetic arm, Yul would have perished. Likewise, his wild urge to live and his unfailing body armour saved him from being rent, limb from limb.
