by Chris Turner
This ship, like Yul’s was ripe for the picking. Fenli’s taking the last enemy on a merry chase had presented opportunities to all of them. He’d snatch the enemy lightfighter.
With grim precision, Miko worked the controls on the air lock and stepped through. He turned his head away toward the wall and tucked in his arms to minimize any camera exposure. With any luck, if there were any pilots aboard they’d think the air lock light was being activated by one of their own surviving soldiers returning. Like Yul he was banking on the fact that anyone aboard hadn’t seen any hostiles creep out of the disabled ship through the dust cloud. A thin hope, but he had nothing else to go on.
He crept down the hall up to the bridge. Simple layout, like the Mentera ship they’d come in on. A straight corridor, with grey shielded plates to either side. A ceiling of soundproofed baffler cubes. No guards. They must have all gone out to get slaughtered by Fenli.
Miko paused, crouched at the bridge’s threshold, a narrow V-shaped arch. Risking a glance, he saw two locusts manning the helm. Their eyes were glued on the smoking ship they’d gunned down, squinting through the diminishing dust cloud, headsets over their olive-colored plated skulls. One abruptly rose, antennae twitching in suspicion.
Luck don’t fail me now. In a kamikaze run, Miko stormed in, opening fire on the suited figures, shredding Mentera suits and flesh.
The two pilots fell in mangled heaps.
Miko took over the controls, flicked dials and tapped buttons, got the engines revving up. The craft rumbled to life, its nose pointed to the cross tunnel from where Fenli’s pursuer had emerged.
Miko plunked himself in the chair vacated by one of the pilots. The green-black alien was bleeding out, gazing up at him with bulging eyes. He ignored the grotesque posture and amped up the volume on his com. He hissed into the receiver. “I’m going after Star.”
A voice answered: “What do you mean, you can’t just—”
Cloye’s voice rasped. “He already has, Yul. Let him go. We’ve got our own fish to fry and a getaway ship. Let’s quit this hellhole.”
Miko heard no answer, only ominous silence, but he saw in his rear sights Yul and Cloye’s commandeered craft lifting in mimicry of his own. Yul had made the right decision. Without a second thought, Miko focused on the task ahead. His mission was clear…a plan of action was already brewing in his fertile brain.
Chapter 13
Miko stared past the weapons console to the glass tank containing the floating Mentera. A shiver tickled up his spine. He knew the crew would use such a live specimen, possibly a condemned criminal, as food during their long space voyages. The details of the Mentera’s vampirish feeding rushed back to him in a flash of grisly recollection: attaching the cable to the circuit box on top of the tank to their own navels then allowing the sustenance that passed down that apparatus to glut their own energetic need. The trapped creature’s life force waned, only to be rejuvenated daily by the pale green witch water.
Beside the tank stood the box still radiating its blue glow. He’d noticed the Mentera soldiers carrying the odd blue package into this vessel when he’d been invisible. Obviously something about it was important. It had that distinctive look, like something he had experienced earlier…yes, he remembered, those mysterious tower components in the underground bunker of the Masters who had impelled Usk, him and Star to blow up the secret command base.
Miko grimaced at the memory and pulled his attention back to the controls. That Fenli had even made it to this forsaken place after crashlanding defied understanding. Now to witness him blasting Mentera lightfighters in a ship of his own? No secret that Fenli was a phenomenon in his own right. A man who just wouldn’t die. But then what of himself?
Miko’s lip curled in a crooked grimace. He steered the mantis-shaped craft through the gloomy tunnels, as best as his memory allowed in the general direction of the tanks where he’d last left Star. With any luck she’d still be there. Then they could make their getaway. These lightfighters were ultra narrow and sleek in design in order to negotiate the rough-hewn tunnels. Yet a sinking feeling gnawed at his gut; it told him she wouldn’t be there. He tried not to think of that. All these tunnels looked the same. If he had to backtrack, so be it.
At last Miko recognized a familiar landmark: a set of boulders piled on top of one another set at a wider junction of the rough tunnel. He dreaded what he might find. He parked the ship and took his blaster with him, slowly emerging from the cargo hold and depressurization chamber.
A silence gripped this strange cavern that even his ill-fitted locust suit with its multiple sensors did not fail to report. No movement, sound or radio transmissions. Just empty space, cold desolation, sterility.
A sprawl of bodies littered the grey stone. Mangled corpses of Zikri and masses and hunks of tentacles sprawled in inglorious death.
He swallowed the lump in his throat. A battle had been fought here. With no mercy given. Blaster fire had won out, wreaking havoc on squid flesh. Star’s handiwork? There was no sign of her.
At the far end of the chamber loomed four squat glass vats huddled in the icy gloom. The only serviceable one stood empty, its pale waters gleaming in luminous mockery. He threaded past the dead bodies, grimacing in distaste. Approaching the tanks, he felt his heart go cold. He gripped his lumo-blaster, not knowing what horror would jump out at him. He reached out a gloved hand and drew it across the lip of the tank. Some of the pale green liquid had splashed out, leaving puddles at the foot of the glass. Where was Usk? Star? Dragged away by fiendish, blood-hunting Zikri?
Miko’s mind whirled. He remembered the last time he had been here and it seemed like an age ago. Everything was the same, minus the fresh gore. Two tanks drained of liquid with only withered husks lying at the bottom; another stained pink and its horned occupants crouched, long dead—creatures of some unknown race. This hall was an old place, long grown in disuse and Miko could not help but suspect that these ancient prisoners had been used to provide fuel for the locust fighters in the Battle Hall not far away. During times of their ancient rituals.
Miko stared in hollow misery. Where could his friends be? This place looked like a war zone. His hopes at finding them plummeted as he brooded. His gut felt heavy as a sack of lead.
Fingers tightened on his blaster. He chided himself for his lack of faith and urged himself on, willing himself not to think about the probability. Where were they? He shuddered to think what lay ahead.
Hurrying along the line of the dead, he stumbled on to the opposite end of the chamber. There he examined a fresh splatter trail. Blood spots continued up the cross corridor on a slight ascent. It looked like a mixture of Mentera and Zikri ichor.
Miko’s mind warred with many possibilities. Enemies? Friends? Could it possibly be Usk’s blood spilt as he struggled, carried off by some horrific enemy? With only dismal clarity Miko recalled how the Mentera’s suit had been manhandled by squids in the gladiatorial chamber. Little chance of survival for Usk if they pulled him out of the water.
He mustn’t give up. The two could possibly still be alive.
He hopped back in the ship, turned the nose up the nearby cross tunnel and followed the trail magnified ten-fold on the Mentera camera-eye viewport.
At maddeningly slow speeds, Miko patrolled the passages. He scanned the eerie crossways that appeared and up farther ahead for Star and Usk. Nothing. Just the same endless tracts of cold, grey passages untouched for ages, marked by the occasional green phosphorescence from patches of rocks on the wall or the unsettling glow of a Mentera tank’s waters.
Miko began to despair. This was a fool’s errand! The squids must have captured her.
Where were Fenli and the others? He hadn’t even bothered to check in on his suit com. Maybe they were keeping radio silence?
Around a bend in the tunnel he passed a narrow cross corridor. He swore he caught a flutter of movement. Miko halted. Should he use the ship’s com to alert the others? Better not try. The bug fleet might z
one in on the frequencies. On a hunch, he set the ship down by the nearest wall. Too narrow to squeeze through there. He scrambled out of the stern bay, his heart pounding. He checked his blaster. Everything good. He sucked in a sharp breath. Yes, his eyes caught a whisk of shadowy movement up the tunnel where it narrowed. What looked like a light-colored suit…Star’s? He checked his pace. Careful there, Miko. Patrols could be lurking here. Any number of grisly horrors in wait, as he only too painfully knew from his encounters back in the ancient battle hall with the squids, tanks and their monstrous contents.
There! Usk and Star stumbling up the rock hewn passage. He could have cried out loud in relief. They looked beat up. Both must be starving for oxygen.
Star came bounding toward him, her lips moving in a glad cry. Usk’s antenna perked at the sight of a familiar friend. Miko broke out in an answering, shambling run.
Star was thirty feet away, her guard down, when all of a sudden a blurred shape struck out of nowhere. It came hurtling from behind a mass of eroded pillars and caught her broadside, sending her rolling over and over toward the far wall.
Miko froze in dismay. “Star!”
He gaped in horror. The thing was starfished with six black-grey motilators and rough, ropy hide, a familiar creature, crouching like a waiting spider. The powerful tentacles rippled like some unholy marauder. It enveloped Star, lifting her off her feet in a jumble of writhing flesh. Star’s face stretched in a rictus of horror, then a silent scream lost in her helm.
Audra.
He might have known! His blaster rose in a shaky hand.
Yet he dared not shoot. Star would die, either tagged by his beams or crushed by Audra’s powerful tentacles. How they raised grisly memories of old dread in him! Slimy things, clutching, groping at his clammy skin during those shameful moments of bodily joining aboard Sitty II.
His legs almost buckled beneath him. He felt his resolve withering to dust.
Usk stood a dozen feet away, frozen in helpless dismay.
Audra glided over and hulked before Miko, her tentacles rippling in vindictive majesty at her prize. In a vise-like grip she hoisted Star high up like a trophy for him to see. Star’s legs dangled, her heels striking against the Zikri’s rubbery body, kicking like a terrified minnow dragged out of water. Two motilators curled in unison, crossed her helmet, settling on her shoulders.
Miko caught a wild, panicked glimpse of Star’s eyes, pale pinpoints, her lips and feverish brow doused in sweat, visible through the faceplate. Her expression was that of a half mad person.
Miko caught his breath, trying to imagine the pure terror she felt, all too aware of his impotence.
He raised his blaster and aimed for Audra’s head, but she thrust Star before her like a brazen shield.
“Star, don’t struggle! It’s me she wants! I’ll give myself up—” Even if Audra could hear his babbling, what use were such words against her strength?
Two more motilators arched around Star’s legs, stopping those futile kicking motions. The ropy folds of the Zikri’s fleshy motilators tightened, squeezing without remorse. The slimed appendages glistening in the eerie light looked more like python coils than squid assists.
An unsaid communication passed between Miko and Audra. As her hypnotic eyes fixed on him in triumph, Miko’s blaster fell from his limp grip. Perhaps only he could understand her hold on him in that moment after being under her power for so long during those unending months on Sitty II. Like a drugged man in a trance, he walked toward her, offering himself up in exchange. Usk stared in incomprehension. The locust’s chitinous mouth worked; he jerked forward, lifting his sole pincer to strike.
But Miko was no more than a few feet away when Audra tossed Star aside like a sack of potatoes. Her front motilators whipped out, to tear a strip in her suit a few inches above the left breast. The air began hissing out of her chest piece and she gave a shriek of anguish.
Miko’s hoarse wail went unheard. For the briefest of seconds, he realized he’d been betrayed.
Slimy tentacles whipped out and caught him sideways in a writhing grip. He could not scramble away. His blaster lay useless several paces distant. She pulled him aloft, clutching him with terrible force, as she had Star.
Miko’s mind raced a million miles back as familiar Zikri strength smothered him. In a lucid moment, hollow anguish washed over his being, his world suddenly gone to hell. Tentacle tips explored the exterior of his suit in an all too familiar groping, gentle at first then more insistent as the terrible moments passed…much as a master would handle a reluctant pet.
Star crumpled on the stone, her suit punctured. Usk had fled to her side, dragging her with one claw up the tunnel closer to Miko’s ship and life-saving oxygen.
Audra drew Miko in, her eyes betraying a savage intensity, mimicking a starving animal hungry for food.
Miko struggled; he writhed, but he knew such was of no use. The breath whooshed out of his lungs, the force crippled him, and his face contorted in horror, his bones at the verge of cracking. She drew his face closer to hers, the glass pressed to her noseless visage. Black beady eyes stared at him with wrath, almost a mad triumph, something that Miko knew had progressed beyond the scope of normality to strike at the demented core that had haunted this creature for all too long.
The almost telepathic communication lasted long instants and somewhere the savage echo in his brain knew this was the last reckoning.
Alas, Miko, you have been very naughty. Remiss in your affections. Your friends cannot help you now, loyal as they are. We’ve a lot to catch up on, you and me…
The wide, all-seeing eyes kindled a darker shade of ebon and turned baleful in her grizzled face. The ultimate scorn of a jilted lover raged in the heat of frenzy, one spurned and neglected. Now Audra was out to exact her lustful revenge on a careless lover for events long unresolved.
The seconds turned into minutes. Part of Miko’s soul crumbled like an old building. Against all odds, she had prevailed, her brute tenacity had triumphed and she had found him on this desolate world. What a loathsome place to face one’s end.
Audra’s motilators were at last unable to control their twitching and the tips broke through the lining of his suit in a flurry of violent anticipation.
Miko gasped in horror as he braced himself for the inevitable…
Not a score of paces away, two heads popped up from behind a shield of crumbled rock.
“Jesus, what the fuck is that?” Yul gazed in disgust.
“Some mutant squid. It’s got our runaway flyboy,” Cloye hissed. “Doesn’t look too promising. Now would be the time to pull that disappearing act, flyboy.”
“Poor bastard.”
Cloye lifted her E1. “Fuck that, I’ll—”
“No, wait!” Yul grabbed her wrist but it was too late.
A burst of red flared from Cloye’s E1’s muzzle. “He’s already dead.”
Down the tunnel the arc flew and peppered Audra’s glistening hide. She let out a horrid chitter of anguish. The curled tips of her upper motilator hung limp then flaps of flesh thudded to the floor.
Miko immediately jerked back and squirmed out of her grasp as she relaxed her grip. He fell in a quavering heap.
The fire had further ripped holes in his suit. He choked, his lungs struggling for precious air that didn’t exist as the last hissed out from his suit.
In a chitter of rage, Audra flung herself at the unexpected intruders.
She smacked her head into Cloye who could not get off a second shot. She had misjudged the creature’s burst of superior speed. Audra slammed her backward as if she were a sack of fluff.
Yul fired but the Zikri was faster, bowling him over in a savage rolling motion. He felt slime-pocked tentacles crawling over his suit, grasping with unforgivable force. He gasped in anguish. Cloye shook the haze out of her head. Reaching to snatch up her blaster, she fired point blank.
Audra sprang back, chittering as red arcs seared her thick hide. Whistling what thin air
was available through her gullet, she recovered fast, rolling out of the way. Seconds from death, Miko jerked to his knees, croaking and wheezing. Just as he sucked his last breath, bzt, he blipped out of existence.
His bodiless form floated out of his suit like a mutant spirit. Still stunned, though his senses sharpening, Miko traveled with it. In a rush of ghost-like vapors, he drifted past the chittering Audra, immune to her dismay. He snatched up his blaster. The weapon floated eerily in midair. With invisible eyes, he watched wraith-like as Usk got the rear doors of the ship closing. Calmly he swept in behind them, blaster clutched in invisible hand, before they sealed the doors tight.
He had no control over these weird forces that granted him invisibility. It engaged when it would, more often than not, in times of dire peril or extreme stress. When he came back to bodily form was a mystery. If only he could master the power, instead of it mastering him…
Audra, appalled at the chaotic events, staggered for shelter behind the ship’s bow. As the hull vibrated to life, she scuttled to safety, crouching behind some scattered boulders just as Cloye sprayed wild fire again her way. Damn that human! The blasts zipped off at all angles, ripping shards from wall and boulder alike. She propelled herself toward the safety of the tunnel, her ropy, rubbery hide smoking with blaster fire. Used to such hurts, she forced herself on. Such damage would kill lesser Zikri, but not her. Her human quarry lay left behind, hunched twitching on the cold, rough floor. She had been so close. Victory had been hers…but snatched away.
“Into the ship,” Yul wheezed at Cloye hoarsely. He grabbed at her and hauled her back. Cloye squirmed out of his grasp while spewing a spate of obscenities. “Die, you fucking bitch octopus!”
