by Chris Turner
He struck like a snake at Jingin. Jingin turned to gun him down but cried out in dismay as Miko wrestled the air gun from his fingers. The weapon fell on the gridded grate, and Miko kicked it through the cracks before Jingin could grab it.
Drek’s voice lashed through the headset. “You simian fool! I see I’ll have to do this job myself. Expect me in fifteen minutes. You’re too close to completing this mission to fail now.”
The mutant’s voice screamed through the com. “One last thing. New rules! Sabotage the water supply, gain yourself a hundred thousand credits!” The gangster’s manic order squawked double volume. “Break the air filtration system and earn yourself the wealth of kings!”
Cheers and howls rumbled from the gathering outcasts, who poured down from the catwalk and raged amongst the defenders, destroying everything they could. Murlag was amongst them, rallying his men.
Miko cursed and sought to wrest the controller out of Jingin’s hands. If he should insert the key in the master filtration slot... Miko elbowed Jingin in the teeth, forced the device out of his grip. He scrambled away, avoiding the jailer’s wrath. Hopping over the railing, he fled down a catwalk to the main water pipe and Jingin raced after him, fists balled, spitting curses. “You’ll die for that, you filthy thrall!”
Escape down the back tunnel was impossible, no less the catwalks, Miko saw, controlled by the gathering horde. He yelled to Star to take refuge in the cluster of control consoles under the catwalks. She and Usk ducked blades and clubs while Miko scrambled for balance on top of the massive water-bearing pipe, gripping his blade, daring Jingin to follow. At his feet the churning water swirled through the pipe past the tempered glass. The water sloshed dangerously, incredibly close. The intake fan at the pipe’s farther end churned the water forward like a ship’s screw.
Sket roared a lusty challenge and clambered upon the pipe with Miko, while Fenli joined Star and Usk to take on the aggressors who had cut them off from the rest of their company. A hawkbot came soaring out of the gloom above, hovering over the catwalks. It swooped down to menace the humans below. The outcasts scattered like rats to take cover behind what machinery they could. If not for the diversion, Fenli and others would have been dead.
Jingin gained the pipe, smiling maliciously, coveting the key. His sharp, glittering machete quivered in a fist.
Miko ran along the pipe, but Murlag came scrambling up from the other direction, his teeth flashing in a hideous grin. Sket and Miko edged together, back-to-back.
“Well, let’s make this our best go,” growled Sket. He charged Murlag with a spitting cry while Miko plunged toward Jingin. Their blades connected in shrill clangs as Jingin sought to disembowel him. Miko saw it before it happened. He crashed to the glass, his foot slipping on the smooth surface. Jingin again sprang upon him, smashing his machete down. Miko rolled in time, but the sound attracted some hideously large wading creature paddling in the murk below.
Miko caught a flash of a grotesque shape—something akin to a turtle but having a bearded snout and six under-fins.
Miko gasped in horror. He could hardly imagine that anything so repulsive existed. Doubtless a creature of the prehistoric past, one of the same that had destroyed the protective screen that held back the lake’s spawn, loosing hordes such as these into the stream.
The turtle, sensing easy fodder, smashed its crusty beak up against the glass, spiderwebbing it with myriad cracks. The weight of the rolling, thrashing men cracked the glass finally and they spilled into the rushing water in a shower of broken glass. The tortoise sprang, snapping its flexible neck, toothy skull driving in with menace. Its six jellyfish-like extensible fins propelled it forward like a monstrous squid and an appendage darted in to grasp Miko’s ankle.
Miko reacted instinctively, pulling himself away. But a slimy appendage latched on to his thigh, and dragged him under.
He felt himself flashing out of existence. Something had triggered the mutant power. The fright and stress of it all? But somehow the warm lake water inhibited his complete transformation. He flickered on and off like a lamp, to and from his astral self. The grim tortoise beak with snapping teeth came angling in for his face. His machete caught those teeth before they made a ruin of his skull. But the fins clutched ever tighter and pulled him in. Bubbles came from his lips; soon his lungs would fill with water. The urge to breathe was overwhelming. The filthy, poisonous water would kill him!
Jingin, no less desperately, thrashed for his life, in an attempt to dogpaddle his way away from the roiling horror. But his hands missed the edge of the pipe, and he was swept downward toward the raging turbine. Crying out in fear, Jingin had only enough air space for his bobbing head, gulping lungfuls of it, as he paddled frantically against the current.
Miko saw a flash of another shape: a familiar, black-grey tentacled menace. Impossible! A tingling chill rippled up his spine.
The turtle’s triangular head whipped out to gnaw at one of the newcomer’s invading tentacles. A chitter of howling anguish rang through the water. Miko could hear it, submerged as he was.
How could it be? He was in some lunatic world! The Zikri was back on that locust space station, trapped in a tank! Wasn’t she? He almost sucked in a lungful of water, his heart nearly stopping on the spot.
With a burst of adrenalin, he thrust free. Dragging himself out of the water, he rolled over the edge of the pipe. His dripping body hit the floor like a beached whale. He looked up.
Beyond the glass, Audra plunged in and out fast and low, but was whipped about by the turtle as it thrashed its head with its teeth sunk into one of her tentacles. A quick flick of her severed tentacle released the turtle’s hold. Could she really have penetrated this far into the pipe? How did she get in? It seemed too incredible to fathom.
The turtle finned off after Jingin who was now sandwiched between monster and turbine. He thrashed and cried out. Somewhere in the terrified expression, Miko could see the ruffian debating which end was worse, being cut to ribbons by the powerful fan blades, or mangled by the ghastly monster that was closing on him.
He chose the turtle. The thing’s fin gripped his shoulder and spun him around like a top.
Jingin floundered; there was nowhere to go. He emitted a helpless sob. Gurgling despair, he kicked off, hoping to break free. The turtle snapped at his right leg and tossed him about like a rag doll. Jingin’s leg, mutilated, floated free. Blood swirled about the murky blue-green water. He was caught in the turbine and his body ripped to shreds. The turtle underestimated the powerful suction of the whirling blades...one of its long front fins caught in the flywheel. The hard shell caught next.
The rotor jammed. The turtle’s shell cracked and splintered; its bulky form struck bottom, pinned by the jammed fan blades. Sparks flew from the turbine’s housing. The engine began to whine and crackle. Smoke flew from the outtake exhaust. The rotors came to a grinding halt.
Turtle parts floated lifelessly. The water flow ceased.
* * *
Murlag roared in, charging Sket. But Sket upended Murlag. He picked up the dazed chief, slung him over his shoulders and hurled him into the pipe’s open water with a barbaric roar. Then he leaped down to lend aid to Star and Usk. A tentacle that Miko recognized as Audra’s lashed around the chief’s waist and pulled him under. Writhing, thrashing, his head came up for air. Somehow he managed to claw his way free from the horror that was Audra, who was still being harried by some other sea beast streaming down the pipe. He crawled his way across the littered ground, earning the snorting jeers of several of his men. Murlag jumped to his feet and smashed a man in the teeth so hard he fell headlong on the spot. “Laugh, will you? Kill them, you idiots!” he thundered, pointing to the fray, his quivering frame dripping with slime.
A scraggly man with more lust than sense lunged, hoping to take Star for his own. “Oi, here’s a tasty treat.”
Star hooked him with her javelin.
“Ouch!” he bent back, blood spurting from his hand. “Get
the bitch!” he howled.
Usk beetled in to thrust a pincer through the man’s eye. The outcast clawed at his face, sagging in a yowling heap.
Star screeched, “Die, lowlife pervert!”
A fierce sense of pride washed over Miko as he caught glimpses of such bloodletting. He increased his efforts, slashing and hacking, fuelled by the courage of his peers.
Usk scuttled like a crab and drove a pincer into another man’s thigh. The locust stomped his hard hind legs on the skull of the fallen man who had overreached while lunging in to brain Sket.
The violence raged on and the massive air generators continued to hum their monotonous dirge. But the turbines ceased to pipe the life-giving liquid through the filtration system.
As Miko looked across the grey battleground, he saw another unsettling sight. A long, slender surface car approached, floating just above the ground and pulling a similar vehicle behind it. It was a tunnel service vehicle, a thinner, longer version of the surface car with landing wheels they had arrived in.
The side hatch opened and a familiar figure popped out. Four men dressed in steel-studded armour bustled out at his heels with air guns trained on the fugitives.
“Well, well.” B & D regarded them with a degree of amusement. “What a merry scene! You are all surprised? Let a man do a monster’s job and what do you get?” He boomed out a baritone laugh while Beardly tickled him in the ribs, cackling in her obscene way.
“A shame about Jingin,” he remarked, eyeing the churning water and the fishy horrors that populated the predatorial pipe. “He was somewhat inept, truth be told. I must say though, the Jakru woman has proven a feisty delight, indeed. An original player, as I’ve learned. I’ve returned her to the glass twice after foreplay. These Mentera are ingenious! Caging their women in tanks. What better way to store their pets?” He laughed a cruel, but sated laugh. He looked to Beardly with endearment in his eyes.
“Oh, Drek, you are so droll!” drawled Beardly. “I love it when you take charge! Shall you show them, or shall I?”
Drek, in his gleeful whimsy, drew an object from his leather jerkin, his face carved in an impish grin. He held out a black ball, which he threw into the air, there to hover and expand into a wide blue holo screen.
Beardly’s face twisted into an inhuman leer, her dark eyes glowing with anticipation.
The camera view showed B & D in the foreground with five of his hairy rogues tossing the naked Jakru woman back and forth in a tight circle. Meanwhile Beardly clapped hands and stomped a foot.
“My, my, what pleasant memories,” cooed Drek.
Miko grew red in the face. The obscene play was too grotesque, and made his blood boil.
Fenli said dryly, “Looks as if our favourite hermaphrodite was having a little rough and tumble with the Empress.”
“Shut up,” growled Miko. “We got her into this mess, remember?”
“That’s debatable,” said Fenli. “She got herself into this mess. We did not give her to the Mentera. Or put her in the tank.”
Drek made a sudden movement and held up his palm. The screen collapsed and the black ball rematerialized and floated back to settle in his hand. “Marvellous invention,” he chuckled, tucking the device back into his pocket. “That’s all the entertainment for tonight, folks,” he quipped. “Now—” he scowled in sudden rage and stabbed out a finger at the five rebels. “Kill those slackers!”
Fire flew from blasters and the clash of arms thundered as a rush of sweating bodies heaved against Miko. He was engulfed in an instant tidal wave, bowled over before he could even think. His heart lurched. His nerves tingled with dismay and loathing.
Bzt.
Invisible. Why now, when he hadn’t in the pipe? The sudden threat, the imminence of death? His astral form slipped from under the growing pile of heaving bodies, and he saw Usk and Sket getting battered.
In rage and desperation, he scooped up the nearest blaster with his will.
Star was stabbing and shrieking, bleeding at the thigh, fighting for her life. “Aie!” she cried, jabbing at a man’s guts, the javelin tip pricking past his leather padding.
“Agh! You bitch!” He jerked the blood-dripping javelin out of her grasp. He smacked her across the face with his other hand. Star’s eyes glazed, pinpricks of light mirrored in her eyes.
Miko, wraithlike, floated up behind her rag-bearded attacker with the bloody headband and smashed the butt of his pistol into his skull, braining him. The man sank in a slack heap, eyes tilted upwards in oblivion.
Star wobbled, groping for her weapon, looking about dizzily for her protector. Miko glided by her while she looked about, peering in bewilderment at the men who were being slain by an advancing blaster with invisible wielder.
Sket, beaten to his knees, was surrounded by foes. Miko drifted over, blowing legs off the attackers. Murlag’s men gasped, weapons raised, looking about in confusion at the firearm that hovered in the air so mysteriously. Usk seized the moment and skewered an attacking man in the groin, then plunged a dagger into his ribs.
Fenli staggered off, perhaps realizing the situation was hopeless. He offered little support to his friends.
Miko followed him in annoyance, sparks crackling around his phantom-like form, revealing him momentarily. Wasting no time, he aimed the air gun at the throng racing in to kill Sket. Three outcasts went up in frothy pools; others threw up arms in despair and death. Gurgles rasped from dying throats.
Miko’s gun turned, laying waste to everyone in sight. Drek had ducked back in fury. Miko waved the weapon to and fro, making it difficult for anyone to wrench it out of his astral grip. He weaved through swinging blades, air blaster fire and jostling men, throats thick with grunts and hissing curses.
“What is this?” roared Drek, looking around in angry perplexity. “Someone shoot that bloody thing!”
“’Tis a ghost of the tunnels!” one cried. “Or some invisible weapon-wielder of the Skullroxers.”
“Shoot it, you fools!” cried Drek.
Dragar, having just arrived with a band of his men, hurried to join the fray. Snatching up weapons of the fallen guards, they opened fire with relish. B & D’s rearguard toppled in ruin as did several of Murlag’s men. The laser fire and air blasts went right through Miko, but one rogue ray caught his air gun and sent it spinning to the ground. It melted away in a pool of smoking metal.
Miko hovered nearby, shivering in his astral nothingness. He glided over the mounds of corpses and grabbed another silver weapon: a broken short sword. Floating behind the unaware Murlag, he smashed the blunt end against the leader’s skull. The chief sank to a knee, shaking his head.
Two of B & D’s guards crouched and aimed at the advancing blade. The weapon swung twirling out of Miko’s astral grip. He grimaced. By this time he was within hand’s reach of the surface vehicle. He stopped dead, stunned at the sight of the Jakru woman quivering in the tank, overturned and leaking fluid. Drek must not have trusted his men enough to leave her behind at his camp. A metal post had smashed down over the tank, pinning glass and woman to the floor. She was garbed in scanty, near see-through fabric. Miko’s ethereal body tingled. A savage fury welled up in him. Also vindictive delight that he could do something for her this time. He passed through the vehicle’s wall and battered at the tank with a piece of wreckage he had snatched up, using his bodiless will to free the prisoner.
The pale greenish water drained out of the tank like demon slime. He pulled the woman free, sweeping the broken glass away from her naked feet. Even in her enslaved, pathetic condition with her golden ram horns trailing down her naked back, she glowed with beauty. Vibrant with a life-force that only an Empress could possess. On contact with the water his astral form crackled back to unholy existence.
The Empress shook her head in dazed confusion. “You!” She regurgitated the vile green liquid. She clenched her fists and pushed him away.
Miko cried, “No time for ill will. Come on!”
She thrust herself aw
ay. “Leave me alone!” she gasped. Pain and frustration swam in her expression and every muscle of her body seemed to tense. She hobbled over to the wall, steadying herself with one hand and grabbed an air gun from the wall rack. She kicked at the glass door and staggered out, distancing herself from the surface car, but into the hellish chaos of the chamber. She gazed around, wild-eyed.
An explosion rocked the chamber, coming from the direction of the tunnel leading to Skullrox.
Miko flinched. More unknowns. He brushed at his face, wet and blackened from grime and smoke. His tortured body was still unstable from his transition from the astral to the visible.
“Where’s Miko?” he heard Star’s familiar voice cry.
“Last I saw, he sank under a tangle of bodies,” croaked Sket.
The Skullrox woman collapsed, whimpered out a sob.
Audra had crawled her way out of the pipe, covered with turtle slime and fish entrails. She now stood surveying the scene, her tentacles dripping. A turtle head, dangling from a twitching tentacle, ripped from its stem, slipped out of her grasp and fell to the ground with a dull thud. Her lopsided face seemed to curl into a smile. Her head swivelled from side to side, looking for someone.
Miko stared across the smoke-blackened chamber and his lips parted in amazement. Audra... Having perceived the enemy was the outcast raiders, she seized a man in a roving tentacle and pulled him into her acidic body. The man writhed and gurgled as his body smouldered and was absorbed by freakish chemical essences.
Drek called out, “What have we here? Some grotesquely offensive creature? Beardly, I say—just your type!”
Beardly gazed at the flabby folds of Audra’s hide and her eyes rolled in lascivious interest at the glistening polyps.
The Jakru Empress, catching sight of the degenerate freak who had tormented her, lifted her weapon in a shaky hand, and a gurgle of hate rose in her throat. She loosed a blast of violet flame. But the wild shot only skimmed off Drek’s shoulder, jolting him backwards and smashing into Audra, shearing off a tentacle.
