Alien Alliance Box Set

by Chris Turner

  “Oh, you like the horned ones, do you?” Regers sneered. “Well, sure, Jenner, whatever. Come here! I dub thee ‘Sir Knight of the Horned One’.” He laughed, made a sweeping bow before Jennings and touched left and right shoulders with his E1, knighting him on the spot.

  Sniggers drifted from a few.

  “Anyone else have skills to bring to the table? Like piloting a ship?”

  The rough-looking Deakes and the fresh-faced Vincent grudgingly offered up their names.

  “Listen, I’ve picked you well. None of you surviving pansies are to free any of the women or our poor little froggy-floaters in their brine. You realize we have to save your own skins here. Right?”

  There came some muted rumblings and Regers smiled.

  “Then suit up, bitches! Don’t fail me. There’s a shitload of ammonia out there, hull’s breached. In case I didn’t mention it.”

  Three of the men grunted. “Here, here!”

  Quick to recover and to size up the situation, the hawk-nosed Jakru stepped forward, dripping and expressing his gratitude. “I am Ramra. Grateful for this second chance at life.” He bowed low before Regers.

  Regers thrust his weapon in the air again, acknowledging the tribute.

  * * *

  After they were all suited and had used Yul’s adhesive to repair any tears, they engaged in a full check of their oxygen levels and ensured that all their feeds were working. Vincent had a defective air line in his back pack and had to sub in from one of the spare suits. Thinking ahead, Regers had dragged an extra one in to be sure.

  Some of the Cybernetics’ team’s corpses were looking pretty hacked up and in advanced rigor by the time they had dragged them out of their suits. Acid burns on their faces and caked blood in gruesome places brought grimaces to the faces of even these hardened men. Regers shook his head, reckoned them as cargo haulers, miners, marines, security men, engineers, pilots, the like.

  All in all, it had taken Regers longer than expected to prep a decent working crew. Even then he wasn’t sure. There was no guarantee that these hacks with their hack-job suit exchanges would work, or that their makeshift patches would bear up in the alien air before they could get to the lightfighter and safety. Well, they either would or they wouldn’t...

  Regers released the door and the men levelled their rifles as a wash of toxic air whooshed in.

  He resealed the door. With stealthy stride they marched through three more tank rooms before they reached the main hall.

  Regers motioned. “Down this way. A straight haul to the hold. Watch the sides and corridors. They’re sneaky bastards, these squids. Don’t look back.”

  Eight men ran two to a shoulder down the dim corridors, with rifles ready.

  Regers took up the rear, watching the steam issue from their helms. Better that a few of the eager pups die first should they encounter enemies in an ambush. A highly likely scenario.

  The low throb of machinery or something more sinister came to Regers’ ears. The interior, like the insides of a rotting whale, appalled him; it reeked of danger, casting in every corner unnerving shadows in a murky sepia hue.

  But he set such distaste aside. He and his crew passed like wraiths, stepping over scattered Zikri corpses, and Regers began to grin. The remains were in various stages of decay, mutilated bodies beyond recognition, the work of Yul or someone like himself. The cold air had decelerated the decomposition. The arriving Zikri forces obviously weren’t capable housemaids. Regers snickered.

  They rounded a bend and it was another 300 feet to the hold. Wait, what was that, a flicker?

  Regers strained his eyes in the dimness. Nothing. Then he saw a slithering movement.

  “Incoming! Stay alert!” he howled.

  The ambushing squids wore masks but no suits. They seemed able to handle the cold internally and on their skin, damn them.

  A tentacle came out to wrap around Regers’ faceplate. The grisly thing joggled his helmet and he could feel toxic air flooding his suit. He screamed, hacking with his E1, spraying useless fire. The thing locked him in an unbreakable grip. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the movement of a familiar shape. A coloured flying thing. Shredder. It swooped.

  Never before had he been happier to see such a monster. The crafty git must have figured a way out of its prison. But how? No way it could have busted its way through those walls of steel. One of the squids must have let the thing loose by accident.

  Regers could feel his shoulders on the verge of crumbling. It curtailed his ability to fight, compromised as he was with the use of only one hand and the effort needed to hold his breath. The squid’s ugly warted face pressed close to his. The thing suddenly went limp. A razor-edged fin of a wing had cut through the corded Zikri sinew, and a spurt of black fluid sprayed across his faceplate.

  Regers reeled back in disgust, letting the terrifying mass slide to the floor.

  He dropped his blaster and knelt, lungs bursting for lack of air, a trembling hand and rigid stub efforting to screw back on his helmet.

  “Forward!” he croaked. Air began to flow once again in his suit. Staggering about like a drunken man, he dodged tentacle-flailing squids. “Get to the hold, you idiots!”

  Deakes bulled his way through, blasting squid flesh and tentacles, making head parts fly. The fiends that slipped through the knot, he slashed with his bowie knife until the gleaming blade was dripping with black-goo. The youth was right on the man’s heels, picking off rippling targets.

  Four of Regers’ men scrambled ahead, spraying fire into the clot of writhing shapes. Regers snatched up his rifle, blazing rounds into the fray.

  Two of his men were down in a quivering mass of flesh and gripping tentacles, not expecting to survive. It seemed this batch of squids was not intending to take prisoners, having learned the hard way from their past mistakes. Bully for them, thought Regers. The fat fuck, as he had predicted, was joining the roll call of the dead, his arm twisted on a backward angle, his mouth arching in what he’d call an agonized cry. Zikri lashed at his defenceless body and punctured his suit.

  More of the enemy would have followed had not the dragonfly kept them busy, slashing out at them, its colourful, knife-edged wings slicing down at their gruesome hides, dive-bombing them with merciless flair and feral skill. Swooping and rolling like some alien bomber, the thing was an iridescent queen, multi-coloured wings whirring like propellers, darting about the cramped corridor with hummingbird swiftness. It lay ruin to anything and everything with tentacles that moved forward to threaten its guardian.

  Regers snorted. Damn it to bloody hell. The Zikri must have posted sensors in this hall. How else had they snuck up on them so easily? Didn’t matter. The corridor opened up into a dim, cavernous space—the hold. No time to lose.

  He bolted toward the Albatross. Panting for breath, Regers motioned what few of his men were left, toward the chained lightfighter whose faded decal read ‘Xaromar’. The ship was a Daulk model. Simple, efficient, no bells or whistles: compact, sleek, smooth lines, capable of serious horsepower, armed with photon disrupters strapped to port and starboard. Chains with keyed locks securely anchored the landing gear struts to the plated Orb’s side.

  Regers counted Deakes, Jennings, Vincent, Creib, the horned Jakru and one other amongst the survivors. “Saw off those chains,” he ordered. “You three. I saw cutting tools back there on that workbench.”

  As soon as Jennings tweaked the circuit to force an entry and open the hatch, he and Deakes both clambered aboard. Regers stood at the foot of the craft, on the lookout for enemies, knowing that Shredder would be a capable back-up. He was pleased to note that the Jakru had discovered plasma cutters, or what passed for them, and all were busy firing them up. The loops of chains on the first of the four landing gear struts, blackened and weakened from blaster fire, were melting under the hasty ministrations of the men.

  Regers gnawed his lip while they worked. The fact that the squids would leave such tools lying about implied they
were not worried about security. The chains here were used more for anchorage. He massaged the raw ache in his neck from the tentacle attack with the back of his blaster hand. His right knuckles barely made an impression on the wound, even while pressing firmly on the liner of the suit. The tentacle would have wrenched his head off, if not for his helmet.

  Of course, a moot point, given the timely appearance of the dragonfly. How many times had Shredder saved him? Hard to discount that it’d be profitable to carry the insect aboard in a sealed container, selling it to the highest bidder—inevitably some eccentric billionaire or rich research company that would pay dearly for it. But the memory of the feral thing jetting about his watery prison, peering on him with almost human feelings, savaging the heptadoria, caused him to shiver and sweep the idiotic thought out of his head. No fucking way was he going to mess with the damn thing. It scared the hell out of him.

  This blowtorching was taking too long. He hitched himself forward, squinting down at the nearest imbecile who had almost burned off his gloved thumb in his nervous haste to get the job done too quickly. Who knew when Zikri would slither out of the murk like serpents...

  “Ramp it up!” he yelled. He drew back in dismay. “Shit, there they are now!” Above the Zikri shapes swooped the dragonfly, whizzing out of the dim corridor like some mutant wasp.

  The sounds of the lightfighter’s whirring engine filled his earpiece. Regers jerked to action, the pilot lights flashing green on the transom. He made for the hatch, catching a dark glimpse of Deakes and Vincent through the thick glass fiddling with the light drive controls on the bridge.

  Creib melted the last of the chains and he, the Jakru and a black-bearded man clambered aboard, securing the hatch tightly behind them.

  Regers stepped over the dried blood staining the floor of the bridge, likely the aftermath of an uncooperative crewmember under Zikri assault. Jennings scanned diagnostics while Vincent and Deakes toiled at the control console. They guided the ship toward the Zikri tractor pad and the jagged hole of shredded metal in the Orb’s side, which Regers saw the squids had still not repaired.

  A murky twilight bathed the bleak landscape in an otherworldly hue. Stars glinted in the alien sky.

  Regers reeled as the dragonfly smashed its iron-hard, bullet head against the glass. “Warp out of here, Deakes. I’m sick of this fucking place.”

  Another jarring blow hit their moving ship broadside, strong enough to take them slightly off their course. Regers shuddered. “Get this shitbox out of here!”

  Creib started forward, his muscles tensed. “We’ll burn up, Regers, initiating light drive so close to a significant gravitational field like this moon. It’s too risky.”

  Jennings concurred. “She can ride rough on impulse power with her rear stabilizer blown, but better not risk sudden warp in high grav.”

  “Quit squawking, you chicken shits,” muttered Regers. “A little risk isn’t going to kill us at this point in time. Besides, Shredder is looking a little pissed right now.”

  Deakes and Vincent grinned and continued flicking dials on the upper consoles, as if to start up the warp sequence.

  Regers muttered, “Better too, than facing a squid ambush in the air.”

  Creib shook his head. “It’s foolish. Warp sequence magnifies gravitational pressure on the hull. Superstructure overload will likely crumple it. It’s common knowledge. All ship manufacturers caution against it.” Shredder smashed its head against the glass again, and the ship shuddered.

  “Well, well, my foolishness then,” said Regers with a mock trembling hand covering his mouth. “I should check with Captain Kirk on this one. What do you say, Vincent? Captain Kirk, okay with it?”

  “Captain Kirk is okay with it.”

  “Then—!”

  A blip came over the digital viewer and a yellow light flashed on the 3D hologram, cutting Regers off in mid-sentence.

  Jennings pointed to the image on the viewport with a creased brow. “Looks like we’re in for some more heat, Regers.”

  Regers mouthed a curse, gaping at the massive, spiked hull hurtling toward them. “Fucking squids. Can’t believe it. Just our bad luck.”

  Vincent growled, “One of them must have radioed ahead before we could cut it down.”

  “More than likely. Man the weapons! Jenner, make yourself useful. We’re in for a dogfight.”

  Ramra gazed at him incredulously “Why not warp out of here, Regers, like you were going to do?”

  “Well, Creib here, thinks it’s a ‘gravitational risk’. ‘Can cause severe stresses to hull superstructure, against regulation code’, all that shit.”

  “Well, it’s true,” defended Creib.

  Ramra threw his hands in the air. “You’re all going to get us killed!”

  Deakes shrugged, as if it were all one to him. “Death is death.”

  “Get those shields up!” Jennings croaked.

  Deakes looked at him as if he were a genius. “Uh, why didn’t I think of that?”

  Regers laughed. “You boys are larks.” His smile faded when Shredder veered in for another assault.

  Ramra reached down to scratch furiously at his right leg, sweat pooling on his throat. His suit lining was frayed where he itched and rubbed. “I say we nuke them all, the bug too.”

  “Yeah, I appreciate your input,” said Regers. “But it’s a dumb plan. As Creib said, the flux generated by a large gravitational body or for that matter, any large weapon, will convolute our warp exit... We can’t fire and enter light drive at the same time.”

  Uro bombs came pounding at the stern against the Xaromar’s shields; more star pricks of orange fire glinted from the Orb’s looming cannon.

  “Guess it won’t matter now,” grumbled Regers. “Fire on those damn squids!”

  Both Jennings and Deakes plied the weapons controls. Flaring photons torpedoed out of the lightfighter’s twin cannon to smash against the prickly hull.

  The Orb easily absorbed the shock with its shields and manoeuvred to launch more bombs.

  “Fuck it!” Regers hit the warp activation switch.

  The hull creaked. The torturous groan of a thousand metal plates racked the air as a suspension bridge would under hurricane forces. All eyes peered up at the panelled ceiling. Infathomable tidal stresses bulged the metal which was threatening to cave in on them. The cabin went dark.

  Regers felt as if time had gone still. Which it effectively had. There was a flash of yellow light. A soundless, hair-splitting moment passed when each man thought he was caught in the floating limbo of hyperspace, from which there was no return. Research papers had been written on the singularity, describing such a bone-chilling dimensional rift. That place of absolute incomprehensibility where one’s spirit roamed bodiless through the ethers of non-existence, human souls in eternal transit.

  Creib closed his eyes. Ramra gasped, white spittle dripping from his mouth.

  Regers saw the man’s face suddenly stretch like a horrible pumpkin, and the others’ bodies reformed and stretched, then morphed and reformed again, pulled like putty men. Then they were tall stick-like caricatures spinning like tops, shaking violently, blurred at the edges. Regers looked down at his own body, saw his own limbs stretched as if viewed through a distorted lens. Then normal. He relaxed as the ship lurched into the light highways and their forms became whole and still again.

  Regers roared, “Woohoo! Hot damn! Boys, we have liftoff!”

  Creib loosed a moan of relief. He swayed against the console, his trembling hands clutching for support.

  Deakes laughed and Ramra slapped Creib on the shoulder. “See that? Creiby here almost shat his pants.”

  Creib retorted, “If you knew what danger—”

  “Can it, Creiby,” croaked Regers. “This is no time for dour reminisces; methinks celebratory acts are in order.”

  The ship slipped along the lightstream on a general course for Perseus. Deakes had programmed an auto vector into the smart nav leaving the Dim Zone o
nly a memory. Nothing less than complete engine failure, or the wrath of God could stop them now.

  The men were significantly lighter of spirit after the successful jump and they flopped on padded seats in the bridge or prowled around the ship.

  Jennings continued to study the navigational charts while Vincent and the others raided the larders, ravenous as wolves. Deakes found shelves full of bagged coffee, packaged meals, protein liquids, and nutrient pastes in twelve assorted flavours.

  They also found booze. Only mild spirits by Regers’ standard, but gallons of it. Those Daulks sure knew how to stock a ship, even if they were donkey-eared anthromorphs from faraway Gfand, laughed Regers.

  The lightfighter purred along smoothly as a kitten through the ethers despite her banged up side. Regers wondered where the squids had captured her. He didn’t recall many Daulks down in the tank rooms. Perhaps the squids had blasted them? Or eaten them? Regers shrugged.

  The rabble of men he’d recruited was not ideal, but exceeded expectations. Deakes was probably the most useful of the lot. The man had a good head on him, especially in times of danger, as proven by the way he had hewed down those squids with his knife and blaster. Best of all, he didn’t flash any priggish looks behind his back like that smug fuck Jennings. Likewise, Vincent had performed well, racking up squids, doing the old feint and blast while watching Deakes’ back. Jennings, he grudgingly admitted, was a close third, though he would have to lose that stodgy, passive-aggressive personality. Ramra, while devoted, was a bit of a whiny bitch who’d get his horn and tongue clipped in the near future if he wasn’t careful. Creib, he could take or leave. A bit of a mamma’s boy in his opinion. Surprised the stocky fuck had made it out of that corridor with tentacles taking men’s heads off. But then again, if Deakes and Vincent hadn’t been paving the way... He shook his head at the memory.

  Jennings approached the drive console, motioning to the com. “We’d better fly this thing to civilized territory, Regers. Some port in the free colonies where we can make a full report. A proper intelligence report of what we know to New Order Alliance base on the outer peripheries, to the Jakru, the Daulk.”