by Chris Turner
His eyes widened at an unwelcome sight. Another glass tank? Yul reeled at the sight. Slowly he walked over to the aquarium, his mouth sagging, like a man in a trance.
* * *
The sudden blast had sent Regers’ air mix out of kilter. Now it was injecting stimulus chemicals into his air space—the equivalent of a shot of heroin and a zap of speed. The suit’s survival pack, with its sensors tuned to track vitals, BP, heart rate, average reflex rate, was designed for such emergencies should an occupant require a jolt to get him functioning again. In Regers’ case, it gave him a new lease on life. Odd that the adrenaline stimulus hadn’t triggered earlier to boost his chances for survival when his leg had given out. He’d earmark this event as a token of grace. His head felt buoyant; the drugged air was having its effect; there was no pain in his battered limbs. With an ear-to-ear grin, Regers stroked his aching neck, feeling his gloved hand press on his flexible suit. His eyes glazed.
Frue, the smarmy weasel, had forsaken him, his juvenile taunts enough to make him want to jump up and break his bones. Regers recalled thrusting his aching body forward to try to take out the wretch in spite of his pain. He saw the ploy now; the little freak had only goaded him, knowing his only chance to save his ass was to have Regers’ gun on his side. Frue had abandoned him and stayed well out of reach, taunting him from a distance. When the heat had finally come, Frue had blundered forward like a madman, emboldened into gunning down the first wave of Zikri that came gliding out of the gloom like phantoms. More out of blind fear and adrenaline rush than skill, Frue had gone kamikaze. That said, the Zikri that had stumbled upon them had bled and died in as much agony as his own blaster could have dished out.
Nonetheless, Frue’s little moment had given him time to limp away down a murky side corridor while the chitters and gasps of horror raged on, of Zikri and human alike. Eight had emerged, and he’d blasted them head-on, a lethal enough squad to have taken out Frue in a flash had he not been there to protect him. Frue’s gasps and heaves were music to his ears. Where Frue was now, alive or dead, he had no idea, nor did he care. What was for sure, the little weasel had left him isolated here to die, at most hoping that he would be bait for Zikri coming from the rear or side.
The walls around him seemed to waver. They shimmered and blurred. Like a man influenced by acid, Regers stumbled on. Despite the gas mixture entering his blood stream and easing his pain, he pined for the Devirol caps in his waist belt pouch. When Choko and Biggs forced him to take the drug, given him his first taste for it, he’d gotten hooked on that daydreamy shit and now it was out of control. Couldn’t think straight. Things were stretched and blurred at the edges. As if this life-and-death situation were no more than a kids’ cartoon dream.
The ship’s low, hypnotic throb penetrated the layers of his waking consciousness...just within audible range and possibly below, almost subliminal. Black, squid-like figures sculpted like bas-reliefs into the metal plates littered the walls. To his drug-hazed mind, they had the semblance of the inner nest of some creepy-crawling creature. All seemed to swell in the glow of a slightly sepia tint. Regers shook his head, struggling to dispel the illusions.
His fingers reached out and touched the squidly engravings and the rib-like and coral-like formations. His lips writhed in a grunt. Hard cold metal. Just a ship. Only a ship, Regers, don’t jizz your pants over it. What could a freaky, hypnotic thrum do—
He blinked, the wooziness taking over again. He shook out the hallucinations. This weird ship was getting to him. It was only a ship, but full of grotesque shapes and images that sent his brain reeling. The plant creature they had brought aboard had inconvenienced the Zikri, no denying, but if he had his choice he’d have shredded the alien things and stolen Mathias’s ship.
Fuck Mathias. He’d have killed the sod, then nuked the others of his team too if they didn’t agree to his ‘mutiny’ to steal command of Albatross. Maybe those mutant ferns had infected his blood with some toxin? Well, it was the least of his concern now. Where was that bastard Yul anyway? He’d been thrown to the other side of the cave-in. He and Frue had fled down the companionway into endless murk. Frue’d turned chickenshit at the last minute. The weasel’d taken out the first wave, true, but then he saw him scrambling back, beetling into a cross corridor with squids on his tail. Hopefully the coward got mauled by them. He’d blasted most of the freaks after that, given both of them an avenue of escape, at serious risk to his own life, but Frue had initially left him there to die. Then again, would he not have done the same?
Regers gave an unpleasant frown. This was a rat’s maze of corridors. No chance of easily gaining an escape route. His earpiece communicator was dead. He rapped his helmet with a gloved hand, muting its crackling noise. Onwards, where else to go?
Regers paused to collect his wits. That last Zikri had almost torn his head off. The thing had followed him like a hungry spider, some straggler from the pack creeping from the hold. But in the end it had received its just desserts, a faceful of fire, courtesy of his blaster. Ha ha. Fucked up thing. What a horrid species, these Zikri. If he were a god, would he have created such cosmic deformities? Hell no! Another reason to be assured there was no god in this universe. Just a random, cruel universe, screwed up in every aspect, with alien things and powers-to-be ready to mess up everybody and everything.
Calm down, Regers. You’re a ranting pessimist. This is not a domestic debate. We are in survival mode here, so get a grip.
He slapped his hand hard again against his helmet, rattling his skull. He could surely blame his cruddy team, or the Devirol, but why waste his breath? Hurd, the stupid fool, got what he deserved, snatched by those squids. Frue, he need say no more. Messed up the light drive field generator through his ignorant escape tactics. Greer, well, Greer was gone, nothing to be done there. He grinned, knowing the engineer had faced a kinder fate than Hurd, given what the Zikri would have done to him. For Yul he had a grudging respect, only because the man took charge and was something of a natural leader. He remembered the muscled merc’s level-headedness in organizing the expedition to Xeses in face of all the arguments against, especially the risk of leaving the ship prey to new assaults by the Mentera. He had chuckled when Frue had become a little bitch and refused to man the controls and sit exposed to possible attack. Yul had lost it and shaken Frue like a rag doll. Even then, the man was too soft-hearted. A lamb. He would have them turning the other cheek and saying nice things to one another, even if they were enemies. Yul’s thinking was too tunnel-vision. Yet his quick plan of delayed detonation, spur-of-the-moment but effective, had set the Zikri back, enabled them to flee.
Regers glanced down at his boots, frowning at the strange throbbing at his right ankle. He noticed one of the plant things had latched on with tenacious force. It had formed a ring around his leg, like a coil of string. The thing would not let go. At first, it was too puny to detect, but now it had grown. His skin itched, also ached under the coiling pressure. Likely cutting off some circulation. Whether epiphyte or symbiotic growth Regers did not know. He tried ripping the thing off with his gloved hands but had no success. When his bowie knife had failed to pierce it, he had given up. It seemed whenever the plant’s host was attacked, it fought back to protect itself and its host anchor. A remarkable tendency to adapt. A defensive versus aggressive lifeform. Christ, he was sounding like Yul. If it wanted to cut off the circulation in his foot, let it. At this point he cared little. His time was running out. These were advantages of being higher than a kite to the death, on Mebzdoniel or Devirol, whatever the fuck.
Now he was lost. He hadn’t a clue where Yul was, or if he had survived the explosion.
Frue? Who needed the little shit? If the idiot had dodged the Mentera faster and not screwed up the projector beam, none of this would have happened.
Good. Anger would keep him alive longer. Keep him from succumbing to the dominance of these squids. So would contempt for general humanity, and aliens. And all wealthy industrialists who con
ned innocent men into risking their lives for some fool’s errand. He never wanted to see another fishy creature, squid or plant again—what with the thing now latched to his ankle like a dance-whore’s bracelet.
It had all gone wrong less than two months ago. He had never wanted any of this. Mathias. The Dim Zone. Exploring dangerous worlds. But life had thrown him a curve, snatched everything from him—that mattered.
Tooth for a tooth. An eye for an eye. Those were the only maxims that made any sense in the jungle.
Olg, the gang leader, and his brutes had played a number on his loved one. He had wanted out of that twisted gang. Finding her body, or what was left of it, it had been...gruesome. Olg, the fucker. The memories spilled back to him in a bitter flood. That spidery script of Olg’s, written in Salma’s own blood on a note pinned to her mangled corpse, the still-warm blood that caked her glossy blond hair decked with flowers.
The note, rhyming on about ‘betrayal’, ‘duty’, and ‘commitments’ to the guild. Olg was always a traditional bastard.
If he had any regret at this point, Regers admitted it was that he might not get to repay Olg for his brutality.
Regers lifted his head, his blaster raised in a clenched fist. A glow peeked to the left down the corridor. Some weird room entered through a U-shaped archway.
As he stumbled in to take a look, pale eyes gleamed back at him from the dark.
What the—?
A weird medley of creatures glared at him from within those tanks. He recognized man-like Jakru with horns curling out from their temples, a few humans, several Daulks with their elephant-like ears, and Hurd! Dear old Hurd. Of course, these were victims of the Zikri hijackings. To be stored here for a later date. For what? The slave markets at Mansrath? The Mentera?
Very interesting...
Regers staggered over to the glass of Hurd’s prison and blinked, tapping on the surface.
Hurd gazed back with sightless apathy, bobbing in his liquid, like some drowned man. His wounds looked grievous, but strangely healed. A bright gash stained his military grade spaceman’s coat where the Zikri had maimed him.
“Hurd, my fine man—enjoying the vista?”
Regers pushed an ear to the tank. “Cat got your tongue?”
He shook his head in benign wonder, chortling. “Well, at least you’ll never be thirsty, my boy, or lack a place to swim in.”
Regers edged back with a frown. Hurd looked alive, but he must be dead. Shouldn’t he? No man could have withstood that extent of Zikri savagery. Still, the man’s eyes were open. Regers could have sworn the tall man blinked earlier. How did he stay alive in that liquid with his lungs full of water? Unless he was the next Aquaman?
Regers laughed. He toyed with the idea of breaking the glass and releasing Hurd just to see what was up. No, it was insane. But if Hurd were alive, he’d need every ally to escape this mess.
He lifted his blaster, risking the noise that it would make if Zikri were lurking about. Then a particularly loathsome specimen caught his eye. The creature lurked two tanks away in the largest vat—a creature neither squid, nor epiphyte, fish nor mammal. It was a heptadoria or heptadoris, if he knew anything about alien species. What the Christ would Zikri want with one of those? Surely no slaver would buy such a disgusting thing? But then again, Mathias, the crazy git, had given them this task, a gilded carrot in front of their noses to inspire them to haul ass half way around the galaxy to gather these freakish plants. Regers still recalled the sinister grip, the leaf furling around his leg back at the bridge. It was one of the same that had spawned the repulsive vine that currently held him.
Regers was contemplating such thoughts, tapping on his helmet to stave off his maddening wooziness when the Zikri came out of nowhere. Slashing with his knife, he hacked off a foot of writhing tentacle, then he blasted the thing’s face off. Croaking with heedless satisfaction, he kicked the thing and stomped on its ooze-gushing guts. He was a fucking superman! But he had not seen the other rooms yet. And so, while he stomped, he missed the slinking shape that slid from behind him, out of the shadowy doorway. Until it was too late.
A fleet-footed thing with a flurry of tentacles pinned Regers’ blaster. His first shot went awry, the bright flare smacking into a nearby tank, releasing its human occupant. Cursing, Regers slipped on the greasy liquid, as did the Zikri, offering him an instant of opportunity to break free and tear away from the loathsome sting of its pulsing electricity. He cut at it with his knife, swatting flapping chunks of bloody tentacles away from his faceplate.
Dark blood splashed everywhere. The Zikri chittered in obscene fury, loosing an awful racket. Regers laughed again. He battered the thing with fists, and knife. But such an injury which would have disembowelled any other assailant did not stay the thing’s advance. It was larger and more resilient than the others. His attacks only served to provoke the monster more. Now it lashed out, pulling Regers in closer with its repulsive tentacles until his ribs began to cave. His helmet cracked, his protective suit rippled to the abominable pressure, and the Zikri air flooded into his suit.
Regers gasped, unable to prevent gulping the foreign air, but it was neither toxic nor corrosive to his lungs, only riddled with a stagnant odour of dust, moulder and old, neglected places.
The tentacles gripped tighter and Regers’ spine began to buckle. His left ulna snapped, then two of his ribs. He howled in anguish. He could barely move in the crushing grip.
The ravaged Zikri dragged Regers’ struggling body to one of the larger tanks. Flicking off the tank’s cap, it heaved Regers up and over with a mighty toss into the ghoulish water.
Regers felt his body sinking like a stone. He stared, blinking with dismay, unable to stop himself, as he choked on the foul, briny, putrid water, paralyzed from toe to throat.
The shark-like creature that moved around in the greenish fluid was at first curious, its wavering fins dragging at the water to push it closer to the strange human who sank and choked. Regers’ lungs filled with water. Slowly he drowned... but he was strangely alive.
The fish-mammal he had called a heptadoria nudged him with its beak, then it curled its flexible body around him and wrestled with his body, until he could feel nothing but arching pain. Yet new life was coming, springing, surging through his limbs and nerves from the alien fluid. He felt the tug of mandibles, teeth tearing at his hand which hung limp as it gnawed at tendons and gristle, relishing its appetizer, not so much out of hunger as boredom.
The Zikri, chittering in new interest, swayed like a serpent outside the tank, but then it jerked to a new stimulus. It ripped at one of the ferns that had curled about its lower tentacle. A small pod had formed there at the frond’s end. The writhing, red-green plant twisted in the Zikri’s slimy grip, trying to escape. To no avail.
Almost in mockery, the Zikri surged toward the glass and pulled off the tank’s cap and tossed the angry pod inside, resealing the top. It sat back again on its rubbery haunches to watch the interplay.
The pod sank in a stream of bubbles. A miraculous thing occurred.
The pod cracked open, given new life in the warm greenish bath and the Zikri shuffled forward in a sudden, new fascination.
Even as the mutant heptadoria snapped and gulped down the plant and pod, its single eye bulged and its mouth opened wide, as if retching. A remarkable life form had birthed in the Mentera witch water. A fantastic, grotesque creature, some iridescent butterfly with fins and tail, glided out of the monster’s mouth and finned about, a new Lord of the domain, something of a cross between a butterfly and a fish.
The butterfly came to pause inches from Regers’ own goggling eyes, its eyeless face somehow peering with wonder, curiosity, and a sense of deep peace into Regers’ own.
The hypnotic stare bore into Regers’ soul. The insect’s wings outspread like a tiny avatar.
A cosmic understanding passed between Regers and butterfly, beings from worlds apart, and Regers drifted in some kind of surreal dream, his mind spinning t
hrough the kaleidoscope of misdeeds committed in his crime-ridden life, and for the first time he entertained the thought that there must exist a higher form of retribution in the universe.
* * *
Yul recoiled, his scalp prickling at the gruesomeness before him. Some insectoid thing was suspended in the greenish water, human size. Perhaps Mathias would pay extra fare for this absurdity, he thought cynically. Somehow he thought he would not be seeing Mathias anytime soon...
Yul gazed in macabre curiosity. If the Mentera were the makers of these ghastly tanks, why trap one of their own kind in the foul water? It made little sense.
The banging on the door, however, was real enough and grew with each second. Yul’s fingers twitched on his weapon.
In sudden rage, he tucked it away in his suit and dragged the dead Zikri over to the insect’s tank. If these fiends were in cahoots and wanted to be bedfellows, then let them get better acquainted. Unstoppering the tank, he hefted the dead hulk of the Zikri into the greenish soup, his mechanical grip strong enough to punch holes into its squishy underbelly. Its vile blood stained the green water a murky umber. The locust thing within flapped about, trying to evade the newcomer’s plunge. It promptly sank to the bottom.
Yul tore his attention away from the two freakish aliens and studied the Zikri controls. Three panels of tentacle-shaped dials rose before him; a viewscreen in the middle showed the blackness of space, the twinkling of obscure stars, and the planet Xeses suspended below, a thin, yellow crescent dropping off at the bottom of the screen.
The banging stopped. Had the Zikri given up? Yul frowned. Why? To fetch explosives to crack open the hatch?
He swallowed and stepped closer to the main console, his eyes and brain refocused. He tried to make sense of the controls, determined it was hopeless and stepped over to the viewscreen.
