by Chris Turner
A flailing tentacle almost pulled him back and he felt a familiar electrical ripple course through his nerve centres. Damn these things! A potential charge stored in their bodies? How many did he have to kill? Skeleton crew, his ass! Frue was wrong. If not for the suit the thing would have electrocuted him. Which meant that Hurd...
He thrust away the thought of Hurd. He ploughed on, managing to break the slippery grip of his determined foe. Hearing Regers’ howls of pain beside him, he surged forward, knowing the consequences of being pulled back into that ghastly clutch again were dire.
He raced helter-skelter for the blown exit hatch, shooting anything that moved.
Sweat poured down his back mingled with the blood from various wounds caking the inside of his suit. The back of his skull rang with pain. Their only hope was to break through this rabble and reach the exit hatch.
He dodged return fire. A Zikri had curled a slimy tentacle around its captain’s luminous weapon and aimed it with deadly intent; the others had no weapons, only blood-splattered nozzles and hoses that passed over their mouths to protect them from the nerve gas.
“Move!” He pushed Frue away from the fray. In a fierce rush, he bolted for the exit, feeling the brush of tentacles snatching at his limbs and stray fire at his heels. Out through the blasted door, down the Albatross’s companionway Yul fled. Regers and Frue gasped close at his heels. Through the smoking hole in the Albatross’s hull they stumbled—and on into the alien ship.
Towering black walls of the massive hold arched around them. Flanks ribbed like a whale’s belly. Yul caught a glimpse of a human form—Hurd struggling feebly in a mass of tentacles, writhing and screaming, pulled into a side hall. Yul struggled to catch up with the three creatures that held Hurd, but the diamond-shaped port closed and he stopped dead, his nose inches from dark metal.
Two V-Zon lightfighters sat chained to the wall. Prime hardware, mostly intact, but fuselages charred from bomb blasts.
Where were all the enemies? Hopefully they had killed them all.
The sounds of heavy chittering echoed behind him. Then a scuttling like crabs—Zikri out for revenge, hot for blood.
What Yul saw was unexpected.
Some of the Zikri had yellow-red leaves banded around their torsos, their tentacles fighting to rid themselves of the invasive presence that had clung to them like leeches and seemed to burrow deeper into their scaly flesh.
The leaves that had survived the blasters had become broader, stronger, and more spiked. They too had adapted to their foreign environment. Adapted also to the enemy creatures that populated it.
Hurd was a dead man. But where were they taking him?
Yul rushed on with Frue at his heels. Regers lagged behind.
All this coursed through Yul’s brain in a matter of seconds as he caught glimpses of low, strangely-wrought benches and shelves along the sides with assorted metal tools of long, chilling design. Welding torches? Drill cutters? Yul’s brain spun with possibilities but was too dizzy to register anything of significance. The place was as much a chop shop as a depot for captured vessels.
Several arch-shaped exits or entries lined the near wall. Yul, Frue and Regers ducked into the nearest one and staggered down a narrow corridor. Walls crowded in on them with panels rich with motifs of writhing tentacles, malformed heads, Zikri faces, strange star patterns and backdrops of universes. All monochrome, a black or charcoal grey wash. Yul guessed these walls, inscribed with shadowy lines and script, were crafted of octagonal plates. But an otherworldly glow lit the interior: bioluminescence? He could only guess. Either way, it was from some source unknown.
Regers gave a gurgling cry. He collapsed, holding his leg. Wheezing, spitting his own blood into his helmet, he groaned. “Damn it! I can hardly move.”
Yul turned, paused.
“Move, Regers, or you’re snake bait.” Frue’s voice was a hoarse whisper.
Regers held up a hand. “You know, old Mathias practically begged me to join this mission. Shuttled me about like some grand vizier to his lordship’s mansion.” He coughed. “I humoured the old fool, levered him to triple my wages.”
Yul gave a sad mutter. “I was approached by some proxy who read my name off a list. Wouldn’t have taken the job had I not so many damn debts to settle.” He looked around, expecting Zikri to pounce on them.
None in sight.
Regers threw up his hands. He coughed out more blood. “All for this? Out in the Dim Zone, grubbing around filthy worlds, in a Zikri hold, lambs to the slaughter?”
“Come on! We’ve got to keep moving.” Yul felt a trace of pity for the rogue merc, who had succumbed to an addiction and a plant parasite, even though that pity seemed ridiculous, given Regers’ part in killing Greer.
“Maybe, maybe not. We could run right into more of those squid things up there. Where do you want to die, Yul, here or there?”
“Neither. How about we get to a safe haven?”
Frue opened his mouth to speak but Regers cut him off.
“Shut it, Frue. Always were a gasbagger, weren’t you, you little fag. Let me die in peace.”
“Let’s go, then.” Frue pulled Yul’s arm.
Yul shook his head.
Chitters echoed up the ship’s hallway ahead. Back the other way, snorts, bangs and the heavy clomp of metal and machinery rang out. Another percussive blast hit the corridor.
Yul was knocked backward as a massive girder fell, nearly severing his leg. He stumbled to his knees, panting. The passage was blocked with a rain of falling debris. Frue and Regers were trapped on the other side.
Yul cursed. He rubbed his aching back. God help the bastards! He pounded on the fallen mass. It would take forever to move that rubble. Fuck it. With an exasperated grunt, he turned away. There was little else to do. Leaving the others to fend for themselves, he ran on.
Chapter 2
Yul moved ahead, blaster in hand. The cuts and bruises he suffered, less severe than on other occasions, did not impede his half-shambling pace or quest to take down as many of these fiends as he could. He wondered if his companions fared as well.
The wide corridor curved, roughly arch-shaped, rising mere inches above his helmet. His breath coursed in rasps, leaving a trail of grey vapour behind him. His eyes flicked over the oxygen meter on his left wrist. He had sixteen hours of air left. The helm and suit sensors showed breathable atmosphere in the Zikri ship.
Odd. Yet he would not discard his protective suit. Who knew what foreign elements were afloat. He clutched his weapon with new resolve, assured of a measure of safety in this unpredictable world of life and death. The stabbing pain in his shoulder, back and ribs was spiking so he touched the pain inhibitor at his wrist. The resultant muscle relaxant released into his air mix took the edge off the worst of it.
Yul marvelled with fresh horror at the twisted and demented designs that peppered the ship’s walls. Glossy, veined ridges ribbed them like bones flayed of flesh. It was as if he walked the innards of a butchered whale. Those features were glazed with a patina of shellac gleaming with a hideous purpose. Zikri decor? Housings for power cables? Yul traced his gloved fingers across the irregular surface only to sense impending doom.
The passage widened and, if anything, became more garish with incomprehensible designs—floating cities crafted of gargantuan blocks of translucent crystal with Zikri riding strange, gnat-shaped vehicles through the air highways. The images were always static, yet in the dimness, everything seemed to move with a life of its own.
The slithering rustle of scuttling feet somewhere ahead had him halting, every muscle tensed. Zikri were on the lookout for intruders.
He darted across the metal-plated corridor, blaster in hand.
He hid behind a large circuit box with three antennae, crouching rodent-like in the shadows. He guessed it to be some artificial grav-generator module. It emitted a barely-perceptible, low-pitched hum.
Dim designs of Zikri heads and their loathsome tentacles loomed over
head. Such made Yul’s flesh crawl, backlit by an unknown source. Yet the eerie shadows could not hide him forever. Hopefully long enough for these fiends to pass. Had they detected him? He did not think so, but he was still unsure of how keen their senses were. From close-quarter skirmishing he knew they sported some sort of crude nostrils and repulsive, obscene mouth, but he did not know how they worked.
The chittering echoed closer. Three Zikri glided out of the murk to pass before the corridor in which he hid. No mistaking those horrid polyps of mouth and their tiny, yellow-green teeth. Nor their glistening grey tentacles that wavered as vocal organs warbled out some semblance of communication.
The trio rippled their stocky bulks and moved side by side, tentacles three to a side running torso to throat. Thick, webbed feet padded like lizards’ feet and stubs of tails provided balance to facilitate the creatures’ reptilian locomotion. It was the first he had observed them up close while not bent in a frenzied free-for-all. The creatures were the most ghastly things he had ever seen. For years, the Zikri had been nothing but bogeymen of myth in his mind, rather things of distant fairy tale nightmare versus the space pirates they actually were. Things that relied on the constricting and electrifying strength of motilators to overcome opponents, rather than modern blasters. The reality was much worse than the myth.
Let them pass, Yul prayed. With teeth clenched, he stared transfixed. It seemed they were returning to the hold.
Gripping his weapon, Yul resisted the urge to cut down the squad. More would swarm here, alerted by the blast—like rats to a feast. God help Regers and Frue, if they were still alive. He may have signed their death warrants by not killing these aliens, if the predators were heading their way. What was done, was done. He had to trust his instincts.
The noises faded and Yul loosed a relieved breath. Stealthily, he crawled from his hiding place. Listening with both ears strained, he heard no spine-crawling chitters. With gentle force, he scratched the butt of his weapon on the glimmering wall protrusions as he crept on, in case he needed to retrace his steps. Cross-corridors ran rife here. A maze of passageways. Why so many built into their ships?
There must be a command centre. If he could—
He paused, spellbound.
Rounding a corner, he discerned a greenish glow spilling across a gloomy corridor ahead. To his left rose an open archway.
Risking a peek, Yul moved to the entrance. He spied a dimly lit chamber spider-webbed with designs, depicting cruel, spiked, torture instruments. More incomprehensible squigglings ran up and down the walls and across the ceiling like branches of a tree. The ceiling ran high into gloom. There was a wrongness to this chamber that raised the hairs on the back of Yul’s neck. An inexplicable aura of subjugation and terror lurked in the shadows.
Perhaps the Zikri had replicated their halls with something similar to their primordial habitat? But then their cities, if that’s what those depictions were that he’d seen scratched earlier on the walls, seemed crafted of geometric forms. Yul shook his head. The disparity between the settings perplexed him.
He advanced with caution. At once, his mind flashed on the skulking Zikri that had passed him, perhaps the ones that had been dragging Hurd to some doom. He stifled a shudder.
Thirty tanks holding various lifeforms filled the hall. Some were human, or semi-human, with budding horns protruding from their temples, others which gave Yul pause.
He blanched with horror. Hurd hovered in a half curled position, floating upright in his tank like an embalmed puppet. He hung suspended in some foul green liquid with arms and legs akimbo, as if typing at a keyboard. His eyes were glazed over, dead for all appearances. The air mask dangled askew around his neck. His head lolled. His crewmate must be dead. But wait! His eyes...had they blinked?...no, impossible..Yet those lips had moved with a soundless cry. A bubble popped out of the parted lips and rose to the surface. Could the man be alive?
Yul grimaced at the utter impossibility of life preserved in these watery aquaria. His weapon sagged. He reared back, almost brushing against a larger tank behind him.
Enclosed within that glass loomed a grotesque leviathan of an earlier age. Great white tusks curled on its snoutless face, neither fish nor mammal, looking like some Zikri but not. Baby tentacles sprouted on its thorax, as if they had just started budding in their process of maturation. The thing held itself suspended by triangular upper and lower fins of blue and white cartilage.
A cursory glance revealed some quarter of these disturbing tanks contained alien mammals or hybrid fish but the rest were human or human-like. Open archways ran back of the chamber. From the greenish glimpses Yul caught, there reposed more tanks of similar quality in those side rooms. Yul suppressed a surge of anger at the hideous implications.
He gave the large, mammalian squid-like thing a wide berth. It had an incredibly hostile look to it. Who had created such a monstrous menagerie?
It must be the Mentera Frue talked about so avidly. Those bloodsucking locust mutants.
A slithering sound echoed out of the shadows, rousing him out of his reverie.
More Zikri. Shit! Gliding on skulking feet, undulating tentacles extended, they padded like phantoms through a rear entrance. Why did they always travel in threes?
Yul ducked low behind Hurd’s tank, scarcely daring to breathe, his blaster held on the ready. His stark outline was hopefully hidden behind Hurd’s opaque shimmer, though he prayed his thin vapour trail had not been seen. He could hear their squashy movement as they glided forth. He hunched lower, grinding his teeth. Like wraiths they slipped across the plated hall and Yul’s flesh crawled. Those tentacles, thick as boas, could strangle a man in seconds, squeeze his liver right through his mouth. That fate not so long ago he had barely escaped.
Yul could hear the squids’ incessant chittering, like the insect chatter in faraway jungles. How many more of these creatures must he kill, creatures that roved the ship down the many corridors meandering in gloom and eerie stillness?
No time to deal with Hurd. Yul lay in wait, weighing his options. If he startled them, they could storm him in a single swoop. Easy to spray them with a burst of fire, but what of the chance others were skulking nearby?
One of the brutes passed close, only to pause.
It lifted its polyped head as if to sniff the air like a stalking predator, its slimy, grey tentacles pausing from their writhing rhythm.
The Zikri’s features were a smear of indistinct sense organs, pig-like eyes, flattened snout, warted, pudgy cheeks. The stuff of nightmares. Its sense orifices and protuberances were nothing more than chilling, grey-black blobs set against a slightly darker hide.
The thing had sniffed him out like some mutant bloodhound.
He opened fire. Dismembered pieces sprayed black blood. Its comrades whirled, tentacles rippling on robust torsos. More of the grotesques slid out of the shadows like serpents.
Yul slipped on the gore. The fiends were upon him in seconds. He flipped over on his back—just in time to blast the first grisly head and the eel-like appendages about to riddle him with electricity. Yul rolled away—no time to get to his feet—as he swatted off the ghastly flesh from his faceplate.
Two surged after him. More were gliding their way back from the hall where he had come.
He gained his feet and scrambled to an exit. He ran full tilt down an unknown corridor, to an unknown doom. He wheeled around to spray ion fire, a defiant cry on his lips in face of the futility of it all. There were too many of the fiends! Everywhere.
Ducking down a cross corridor, he raced on, then ducked down another, panting with horror. To his left loomed a wide doorway. Beyond it, four Zikri wearing crude, spiked, metal headgear worked at the ship’s helm. Holy shit, the control room! Two others to the side had turned to gaze back at the source of the ruckus and lifted grey tentacles at the human form that aimed blaster at them. Their angry chitters confirmed their awareness of a serious security breach.
Yul heard padding sounds of
webbed enemy feet at his back.
He whirled, blasted the first questing feelers that threatened to wrap around his throat. The Zikri sagged on his torso in twisting ropes of death.
The bridge door came a foot from sliding shut just as Yul heaved and jammed the shredded Zikri in it.
More patterings of webbed feet thudded from the corridor.
A stray blast came hurtling out at him from the bridge, followed by excited Zikri chitters. Yul ducked back, grimacing at the reality of being caught in the crossfire between two grotesque and hostile forces.
His back flush to the leftmost wall, he felt the alien squid motifs dig into his back. A live grisly head poked out its mottled face through the doorway and he blasted it from stem to stern. The lumpy body split open. He caught the sagging heap and using it as a shield, pushed the creature back into the control room. An angry knot of confusion raged on the bridge. With a roar, he riddled the knot of Zikri at the controls with ion fire as they leapt from their stations. The last Zikri choked on its own blood and collapsed in a charred heap.
Yul heaved the dead creature out the door. The sliding mechanism was jammed, but there existed an inner safety door, a heavy barrier with thick black iron, equipped with a metal ring of sorts.
Yul clamped the door shut, cranking the smooth iron ring around with his strong fingers, sealing it.
He crept over to examine the bodies. He licked his lips with distaste. Such obscene things. Nudging the first with his toe, he felt it give way with a sludgy, slopping sound. The dark blood pooled at its side with slick and heavy emphasis and stuck to his boot. Under its misshapen back and unnatural neck more pooled. More squids would be coming soon. To avenge their comrades’ deaths. He turned with a jerk, examining the rest of his environment.
Yul suppressed a gasp. He had a slim sliver of opportunity to figure out the bridge controls, at best sabotage them, so they couldn’t hyperdrive to their home base, or alert their own kind. No way to know whether these creatures had been aware of the cockup on the Albatross and had alerted backup yet or not.
