by Chris Turner
Miko spat out a cry. He sidestepped the charge, sliced the weapon out of the clacking pincer-grip with a wild yell. He ducked under the other snapping pincer then caught the second weapon on his scalpel. Fenli managed to twist on his heels and swing the pipe two-handed into Miko’s attacker’s side. The creature’s ribs caved.
“Haul her past the zero-g safety barrier!” Fenli wheezed.
“Let them have her!” Miko growled.
“Do it. Don’t argue.”
“Are you obsessed?”
“She’s too valuable,” croaked Fenli.
Miko grabbed up the dead locust’s weapon in one hand then seized an end to help drag the sloshing tank away from the outer hatch. More of the fiends sprouted in pairs from the amalgamator. Gibbering curses, Miko dropped the cold tank and trained his lumo weapon on the new menace. Several fell in charred and bloody heaps. He took up the tank once again; together they dragged it past the safety barrier into the midship’s bay.
Fenli hit a hexagon-shaped button on the wall. The half-glass, half-metal-plated doors slowly started to slide shut from both ends, struggling to meet in the middle.
Miko thought furiously: the locusts were trying to kill the woman in the tank. She must have significance.
He rasped, “How can anything human surive in water?”
Fenli growled, “The fluid nourishes! Look out!”
Jakru soldiers were bursting through the outer hatch, wielding stun hooks. The special forces, sizing up the situation, engaged the locusts trying to win past the ever closing, protective wall.
Miko ducked a green, pulsing ray that would have fried his skull.
“Keep them back!” yelled Fenli. “Our only chance is to fly this heap out of here!”
Miko slashed wildly with his scalpel while the door was closing slowly. Blood spurted from locust torsos. In his other hand he wielded the lumo javelin, pressing buttons on the glowing handle trying to figure out how to aim and set it properly. A ray careened from the end and smote the smoking ceiling plates. One of the plates came smashing down to crush a locust lunging for Miko. Now a Jakru trooper edged in and shoved Miko backward. He lost his grip on the lumo weapon and had to scramble to retrieve it. More of the Jakru came rushing over to charge the locusts that seemed a never-ending stream from the left amalgamator. The other plate was mercifully damaged. Miko didn’t want to kill these human-like Jakru which, under the circumstances, he might have treated as allies. But he twisted aside, kicked one flying, just as he wrenched the stun weapon out of his grasp. He tossed the weapon to Fenli. More uniformed, helmed infantry came bounding in and he was forced to drop them with the lumo javelin; eight fell shrieking in puddles of their own reeking flesh.
Fenli was knocked back by a swinging pincer. He fell limp across the gap before the sliding door. Miko grimaced. Without Fenli’s support, his chances at survival were nil. He pulled the unconscious man back as he repelled the last of the pincers but a locust half-way through the sliding doors was caught sideways. The sliding glass cut the creature in two leaving its twitching carcass draining noxious fluids.
Miko crouched and caught his breath. He breathed deeply of the rich cabin air. He listened to the thunk of locusts slamming against the impenetrable glass, their lungs slowly burning in the gathering vacuum. Their chitters of fury echoed tinnily through the glass.
He took up the pipe and advanced toward the cockpit where several paces away, the outcast wrestled with the pilot. The rebel locust broke free from the pilot’s grip and let pincers tap over the command keys and pads.
The ship’s engines flared to life and a dull roar shook the hull. The angry pilot surged forward, pincers snapping, tearing at the outcast. It ripped the outcast off the stool and caught the rebel’s tapping pincer.
The outcast gave a wild, painful shriek. The ship careened wildly down the middle of the depot, smashing into cargo containers, crates and tanks, mowing down locusts left and right. Fleeing Jakru, not quick enough to get out of the way, found themselves crushed under the ponderous bulk of the hull. The momentum kept the ship careening headlong in the wrong direction. Straight for the far wall. Miko strove desperately to break the aggressive pilot’s grip on the outcast who was their only chance at getting out of here.
“Let him fly the thing, you wretched fiend!” growled Miko, swinging his pipe hard as he pulled his ally away from the control panel.
The outcast’s left pincer hung limp, clipped in the fight. In a fit of rage, Miko struck the pilot on the skull. He was reluctant to kill it, for it could be their only means of navigating this craft.
The outcast tottered back to the console to use its one good pincer to tap in the correct sequences. The ship swerved, its tail grazing the wall.
Sensors lit up on the consoles and a klaxon began to whine. Miko looked back to the glass zero-g barrier. Smoke oozed from the join in the glass panes, a material made of special tempered glass. But the gap was not properly sealed. The scent of burnt flesh hung heavily in the air, also the reek of plastics and strange metals. It would be amazing if this crippled vessel could fly...
He clambered over the bodies littering the barrier knowing he must clean the seam where the two doors met. If they made it out to space and there was even the tiniest fracture, they would freeze and suffocate in a vacuum.
He clicked the hexagon-shaped button. The doors slid back a crack. He ducked as claws slashed at him, smacked the button to stop the door. Smoke poured in, lumo blasts arched, rainbowing wildly about as raging chitters and subhuman grunts filled the bay. Frantically, Miko began wiping the glass edges of blood and guts with a piece off his tattered uniform wrapped around the end of his scalpel, loath to get more locust blood on his skin. As the locusts surged toward him, Miko smote with his pipe and fired rays into the tangle of claws. Carapaces and beetly eyes smoked. He smashed the button again. The doors sealed shut.
The ship lurched sideways, knocking Miko off balance. Fenli’s limp body slid past him. Miko yelled back at the controls, “Careful, already! This rustbucket is already at its limits. You’ll get us all killed.”
A chitter of excitement rang from the outcast at the console.
Lasers ripped about outside the ship. Cannons mounted near the depot’s cargo port normally trained out to space, but now their bores swivelled to fire on the rogue ship.
Lights flashed on the ship’s console as smoke billowed from the cockpit. Miko was sure they were done for. Yet somehow, the outcast manoeuvred the ship through the violent chaos, evading the worst fire. He steered it straight for the open cargo port.
The rear lumo-photon boosters flared red and the alien craft swept out into space, barely missing oncoming ships and wreckage spinning out of control.
The planet-like locust ark sprawled below, an octopus of rectangular pods. Miko realized that the bay from which they had flown was only one from the main pod, and he shuddered to think of the immensity of the space station—far larger than anything he had ever imagined.
A sudden hiss of vapours—then a bright flash past the glass zero-g barrier. He watched in sick fascination as the unfortunate locust faces and limbs bulged in the vacuum along with several Jakru. Two, armed with explosive waistpacks, abruptly detonated and their guts and brains sprayed every which way, coating the glass with slime. Miko turned his head. Others more fortunate were sucked out into space, ripped past the mangled outer hatch.
A flash appeared on a viewscreen, causing the outcast to chitter. On the viewport, Miko looked out into space. A hulking Jakru battle cruiser blasted its way toward them through a maze of locust attack ships—hundreds of them, aphid-shaped, tiny as flies, falling apart and blowing into ruin under the flare of laser fire.
Closer the warship loomed, an incredible behemoth of steel and circuitry as their own hijacked ship weaved in between bits of intermittent wreckage and flames threatened to reduce it to dust.
The enemy locust pilot was groggily coming to and Miko knew he would have to dispatch the thing s
ooner or later. But no, there was a better solution. The creature might be needed to fly the craft. With grim resolve, he seized it by the antennae and dragged it past the Jakru woman in the tank over to the feeding tanks at the far wall. A cord dangled from stopper to ground. He knew this fed others of their kind. There was some half-dead creature inside, an aquatic lifeform with too many eyes. He emptied the tank of the creature and stuffed the locust, struggling and spitting into the pale liquid.
The thing thrashed and thrust pincers out at the glass. Miko ignored it and looked at it with cold dispassion, then a look of triumph as he secured the plug.
A blast came to starboard. The outcast jerked the ship sharply starboard past enemy outriders. It was manoeuvring well, past gleaming hulls and red blasts and Miko acknowledged its skill with a silent nod.
Other shell-shaped vessels closed in, locust craft, some long and tapered like grasshoppers, others shaped like warrior beetles. They took out pieces of the Jakru battle cruiser, but its shields held, as blue puffs of debris fanned on its exterior. Now another Jakru battleship came ripping out of light speed. A cone of iridescent light flared around its bow, a fire-flux that sent other defence ships wheeling into oblivion.
“Fire, you fool!” Miko screamed as he leaped over to the outcast and stabbed down at the controls. He caught the gist of the weapon’s panel as he gained the pilot’s chair. The outcast was a capable pilot, but not a weapons’ tactician.
An aphid vessel smashed into the battleship’s shields and disintegrated in a puff of light. Almost at the same time, a Jakru light craft shot out of the cruiser, pointing artillery gun and blasting any resistance to kingdom come.
Miko winced. Intelligence must have reached the mother ship that it was their craft that contained the Jakru prisoner. Was the woman that important? It seemed so. Miko pondered the situation in detail. Would they launch a full-scale assault on his tiny craft for one woman—and against the locust race in general?
He stared at the tank containing the woman. The glass was tipped sideways and she moved imperceptibly on her side like a fish, floating precariously, vulnerable, exposed, sensual. A hand reached out to fan the glass. Miko blinked. He debated whether to smash open the glass and loose her. But something in the woman’s alien gaze stayed his hand. One swing of Fenli’s pipe was all it would take. But a cold flicker of judgement flashed across those lovely eyes. He did not know what complications would arise as a result of his liberating her. Better off to leave her in the tank.
Bzt. His body blinked out of existence. He saw her eyes glow with interest.
A blast came searing close to the vessel. Miko’s ethereal body tingled under the force of the energy pulsation. Fenli looked in a bad way. The cargo man lay on his back groaning.
Miko floated in limbo, considering. His astral senses and intellect told him the problem was unfixable.
It was an understatement to say that he did not like the way things were progressing. Odds were they would perish under enemy fire any second. Then, he knew he had been dead the moment the amalgamator had dumped him on this alien vessel.
Bzt. Back in his body again, feeling the aches and pains running up and down his limbs. The outcast had not even noticed his absence, so absorbed was it in staying conscious and keeping the ship out of laser reach.
Miko ripped a patch of canvas from the gear that hung on the wall. He wrapped a tourniquet around his upper arm where a locust had snagged him. He swept back his lank mass of blood-caked hair, shuddering with exhaustion. What to do? The place was a shambles. Dead bodies lay strewn everywhere, broken panels splashed in blood. His allies were out cold, or impaired. The life force of the outcast, it seemed, was dimming.
But why wasn’t it taking them into light drive?
Was the ship that crippled?
The ship lurched again as it strained under maximal impulse power. A shuddering blow caught her port bow.
The ship probably would not last another minute under such fire. Why it had not been blown out of the ethers, was beyond him. The outcast, obviously, had some evasive manoeuvres left in its arsenal.
A slight jar rocked the ship as the locust shifted into light speed. Miko’s eyes lit in half-mad joy. The ship was still space-worthy! The windows showed a whitish-grey, a chalky fluttering like falling snow. Then the stars were gone, replaced by a milky mass.
Miko went to check on Fenli. The cargo operator lay in a sprawled heap, but breathing normally. A gash on his right temple spoke of concussion. Miko heard the man moan and he gently moved him to a more comfortable position.
The ship gave an alarming wobble. At least the enemy ships couldn’t target or batter them when they were in time drive, thought Miko. The figures around him, Fenli, Usk, the Jakru woman, blurred and shimmered like caricatures from a lurid dream. Fuzzy patterns showed around the edges, then they cleared.
Time drive distortion, Miko told himself—the disastrous side effect of this volatile technology. He knew it only too well from his crash landing on Rogos while linked with Audra. Accelerated through time, he had already popped out into some unknown time in the future, when parasitic races ruled the universe and things like man-sized locusts enslaved lifeforms in tanks of water. For all he knew, the NAVO colony set up from old Earth had suffered enslavement at the hands of these creatures...
Sweat trickled down Miko’s blood-grimed face. He saw the outcast swaying backward and he stumbled forward to catch it and propel it toward the feeders. He hooked it up to a feeding station and clamped the cord into the socket at its belly. The outcast blinked gratefully. It sank down in a crouch beside the tank while the pilot confined in the liquid glared fixedly at Miko as it convulsed in short bursts. Its red eyes narrowed at Miko with the utmost venom.
Miko returned the glare.
The thing’s pincer began to tap at the glass, then it clawed at him. Miko banged back with a fist. “How do you like it now, you miserable scorpion?”
The prisoner stared with defiance, but curbed its aggression.
The outcast continued to feed on the prisoner’s essence. Miko saw its eyes were the colour of dead pools looking into a universe of nothingness.
Usk the outcast, thought Miko, a fitting name. Usk—it meant fighter, or rebel, in the legends of the mysterious mountain raiders who haunted the hills of his youth on Sileron.
The outcast began to relax and stop his quivering as its life forces returned, jump-started by the rejuvenating, intravenous feed. A once limp pincer began to move.
Amazing that these creatures could rejuvenate, mused Miko. Particularly by such cyber-eldritch means. He didn’t think they ate. Maybe they did long ago, back in their prehistory, but they had evolved into these grisly lampreys, these life suckers, or soul eaters. That or they had become so dependent on their ghoulish technology that they had lost the ability to ingest food through regular means like most other races.
A flicker of movement. Past the glass it caught Miko’s attention.
A scorpion-like shape, larger than the others, materialized out of the amalgamator and crawled over the husks of dead bodies. Was it a mechnobot sent by the locusts? Clever, ruthless bastards. The bots could work in a vacuum, smiting at the zero-g shield, where flesh and blood creatures couldn’t, or had failed. Miko remembered the torn and bloody bodies of the Jakru and the locusts.
The anomaly looked through the blood-smeared glass with its robotic eyes, assessing the situation, oblivious to the ravages of vacuum. Clacking its claws with efficiency, the bot removed a saw-toothed tool from a kit at its side. It fitted a wicked-looking blade to claw. Was it trying to kill them?
Miko staggered about with horror, looking desperately for something to thwart the bot’s intent.
The tool whirled and the point levelled at the glass.
“Slow to sublight speed!” Miko cried at Usk.
The locust understood something of what Miko had said and unhooked himself from the feeding cord and ran over to the controls. The ship dipped, then swayed bac
k to impulse power. Miko hoped Usk’s navigational twiddling would not put them somewhere in the middle of a planet. The white-grey flood from the windows disappeared. The stars blurred back into regular form. Unknown stars now appeared on the horizon. Usk cast a look over his shell-back to see the mechanized horror drilling at the glass.
Miko ran clutching for the controls. He joggled the accelerator stick back and forth. Usk was knocked out of his seat. The ship pitched and yawed. The mechnobot was knocked backwards and slid to the side. Its ugly face smashed into the cargo door, its eyes sizzling electric sparks.
“There, you bastard!” crowed Miko vindictively.
He jammed the control, and the bot slid toward the outer hatch. Usk jerked up and clawed madly at the console, trying to get the cargo ramp down. A whine of machinery indicated success and the mechnobot slid past the range of the artificial-grav field generator. It lifted its mechanical arms, then suddenly flailed spider-like as it floated weightless in an airless void.
Miko caught his breath, pausing, for he wondered if the mechnobot could stabilize itself, or if others of its kind would come to finish the job.
None came, though Miko watched for breathless seconds, waiting for some new mechanical horror to materialize through the amalgamator plates. The fact that no new scorpio-bot had been sent to menace them, indicated that perhaps they were free from this scourge for a time. At present, the scorpion-bot could do nothing with its sensors knocked out.
Miko watched as Usk took the plunge back to light speed. For a time, he was hopeful.
But the sudden whirring and inner grindings of machinery told him that such hope was premature; the locust craft came spinning out of light drive and stuttered to a jarring halt. Miko’s head struck the command panel. Red lights blinked in synchrony across the command console.
Miko shook the daze out of his skull. The outcast crawled back to the console from where it had been thrown. Usk shook his hard carapace, which, Miko saw, was cracked along the left side. He let his quivering pincers clack over the console. Chattering on in his incomprehensible language, he gave Miko the impression that the light drive was definitively dead.
