by Chris Turner
Regers gave a grim laugh. “You got a way with words, Yul. Maybe it’s just my imagination, but I’m thinking I deserved as much dignity as chirpy little Frue.”
“Yeah, so did Greer.”
Regers snarled. “Greer was a mistake. I was flying high on Devirol. Offing him…was a mistake.”
“All fine and nice to say after the fact.”
Chests heaving, they hoofed it down an alley, half covered with twisted beams, girders, broken piping, then down a water-slicked patch of torn-up asphalt to what looked like a muddy canal. A stone pedestrian bridge, clumped with bodies, gave access to the far side, cluttered with fallout, where more grim tenements stood huddled together.
“You going to try to lose them down there?” Yul snapped at Regers. “Doesn’t look promising.”
“Not seeing too many other options.”
“How’d you make it out of the tank room?”
Regers showed a mouthful of teeth. “I’m the cockroach that doesn’t die. Don’t have time to swap war stories with you. Let’s move our sorry—”
Yul struck like a sledgehammer. He smashed into Regers’ right side, sending him reeling back. He twisted his torso to latch vengeful hands on his weapon.
Regers’ rifle went off, ricocheting off the sooty wall. The weapon went skidding out of both men’s grasp. Regers squawked as Vincent and Deakes leveled rifles at both men, neither able to get a clean shot.
“No!…leave him,” Regers roared. “This ratbastard’s mine.”
Deakes trained his muzzle on Cloye. Vincent covered Yul. Yul and Regers circled each other like a couple of prowling tigers. Yul leaped in, grabbing Regers by the neck. Regers ducked, twisted out of the hold. They both locked machine arms together, vying for advantage.
Sweat dripped from Yul’s salty skin. Muscles bulged and veins popped on each other’s temples. Regers seemed to give way…A spurt of Yul’s fantastic strength powered by state-of-the-art mechno force, running half way up to shoulder, courtesy of Cyber Corp, had Regers panting.
In a dream-like trance, Yul’s mind flicked back to the ironic significance of this freak encounter between him and Regers, two quasi-mechno men with metal prosthetics.
Yul landed his full weight on Regers and drew back his arm to smash Regers’ face in. But stun blasts came arching over his head, zinging dangerously close to his ear. He rolled off with a curse. He snatched up Regers’ weapon, firing at anything that moved.
Orbs were in the air, coming down closer now. Three were within firing range. They must have gotten word to clean up the mess the locusts had started.
Now it was back to old times, allied against a common enemy. He and Regers, against the squids, like on Albatross.
A blue streak came whizzing down from the sky and took Vincent full in the throat. He toppled back, choking. His life force drained out in seconds.
Regers gave a dismal cry. “Vincent, you sorry bastard! You didn’t have it in you to survive.” He staggered to his feet.
A small horde of tentacle-waving Zikri came gliding in, powered by lower motilators and what might have passed for primitive feet and tail. No weapons. Such was the monsters’ way. Just pure strength and sheer muscle. Yul only knew that strangling force too well. Once those motilators got around one’s torso, better chance getting out of a python’s grip.
Two of the loathsome creatures drew in on either side of him. Yul blasted the first grey, writhing shape, but the other got a piece of his arm. His rifle went spinning out of his hands. Cloye sprang in to grab it. Regers, without weapon, was caught in the slimy grip of a hulking Zikri. His two henchmen opened fire on the advancing squids but were steamrolled in a grey mass of teeming flesh. They were swiftly overwhelmed. Cloye blasted squid meat, sending mangled chunks into the air. A slimy guard lunged for her, but Yul squirmed out of the grip he was in and smashed his metal fist into the ropy face, sending it spinning sideways. It gave Cloye the split second she needed to blast the alien thing to hell.
The move cost him. The suffocating grip of another latched onto his chest, slowly choking the life out of him. His grip relaxed. The squid tightened its sickening, deadly embrace…then started dragging Yul toward the waiting Orb.
Blaster force ripped through the air, decimating squids as new forces joined the fray. Yul, his head swimming and vision blurring, caught a glimpse of a half-familiar figure hobbling out of the haze. Fenli?
Cloye blasted squids left and right. She whirled in a cartwheel over a whipping tentacle to roll up on her knees and blow three squids to shredded pulp. A tentacle lashed out, whipped by her amber hair. The slimy loop knocked her sideways. She blocked martial-arts style with forearm, ducked a follow up coil with a quick arm movement then lashed out with a fierce roundhouse kick. A kamikaze yell vibrated in her throat. Fresh fire from her muzzle clipped the squid constricting Yul. The thing jerked in a marionette’s dance and sagged. Yul staggered forward, unraveling himself from the rank, twitching coils.
Regers fought like a wild man, kicking, clawing, yelling. Too many of them. The squids hustled him and his other companions, the man he called Deakes and the pale ghost of a man Jennings, toward their ship. Regers slapped out with boot heels lifted a foot off the ground.
Yul stumbled forward, scooping up Deakes’s rifle, trying to get a clean shot. No chance. Too many hovering squids by the Orb to save him or his henchmen. The cargo port was sliding open, taking slaves.
Cloye pulled him back. “You owe that creep nothing, Yul. He came back to kill us, reduced us to this…”
Yul hobbled into the shadowy ruins of the street with Cloye, her amber hair slick with sweat and grime. A new ally to their cause trailed behind—Fenli. He was breathing heavily, wrapped in a numb daze. The cargo door to the Orb slid shut, and the squids and their fresh catches banked into the sky, but circled twice, with cannons aimed their way.
* * *
Away from the gangsters’ hideaway Yul, Cloye and Fenli stumbled through the corpse-ridden streets. The aura of death hung heavily at every twist and turn like a thick cloud blanketing the city.
Fenli stared into space with a faraway gaze. Burn marks etched across both cheeks. The man’s grey space garb was shredded and streaked with black cinder marks. His hands shook. The man should be dead, by all rights.
Yul slapped him on the back. “Good work, Fenli. Snap out of it, flyboy. We’ve got a long run ahead of us.”
“Yeah.” The man blinked and shook himself alert. He looked ten years older, but alive. Some inner fire kept him on his feet.
The three scrambled through the debris of a city made unreal by devastation and rapine. Yul and Cloye were all too glad to be free of Smacky and Regers. Yul looked up in the sallow sky as the NOA craft rocketed over the bombed rooftops. Fewer Orbs now. Could it be? Had NOA gained some ground? Too much to hope for in this precarious war. This was a grim, sallow day for humanity...
Yul shuddered to think of Regers’ fate in the slimy grip of the Zikri. Cloye had said it all—he had it coming. The man was a menace. And now he was going to die all over again…
But in no way could Yul revel in such a fate for anyone, no matter his crime. Living a thousand lives, an eternity of dull, monotonous death, entombed in a Mentera tank. Perhaps that’s why he had picked up that gun and tried to kill those squids before they carted the men away, men who were out to torture and kill him.
Chapter 30
Audra piloted the hijacked Mentera vessel into the endless ranks of the Zikri Orbs. A sea of burning ships, streaks of death fire traded from various vessels: aphids, Orbs, friends, foes alike, including NOA. Collisions, killer torpedoes, uro bombs…a chaotic melee…and now some strange rectangular metal hulks, handiwork of the NOA, drones that seemed to both take hits and pummel the strongest of the Orbs, ripping holes through their armored hulls. Audra shook her head in wonder. A strange universe indeed when such compact fiends could take down assault Orbs. A sign of the turbulent times of the future. From what signals she’d intercep
ted and decoded with the universal translator, she learned that Miko and his companions had been taken prisoner aboard the flagship Viscurg, Admiral Nrog’s own flagship. Likely the most guarded and secure vessel in the fleet. An unbreachable hulk. But not impossible to penetrate…especially if her crafty powers were put to use.
From afar, she studied the activity around the flagship. Lucky for her, the vessel kept a central position, serving as the command hub for the rest of the fleet, processing and relaying orders to squadrons in the attack field. Those orders seemed to be doing little to win this war. An oddity in itself. Other Mentera vessels were docking on her broadside ports. So, why not her? After a bit of thinking and discarding some very rash actions, she came up with a plan of action.
She engineered a staticky response using the shipboard computer by splicing Mentera words together from previous recorded transmissions. Zigzagging amidst the Zikri and NOA ships, she piloted closer to the flagship, taking evasive action as much as possible to preserve her shields as they got bombarded by NOA crossfire.
The flagship loomed ahead, a giant among Zikri destroyers. Easily it was a half mile long, oblong versus orb-like compared to the innumerable spiked monstrosities in the field. Riddled with radiating rods, prickly com towers and attack cannons, she was a formidable sight, no less were the complex bays and loading docks on her scalloped sides shaped like underwater honeycomb caves in old cauliflower coral.
The chaos continued all around her while the NOA ships attacked the Zikri vanguard.
Audra played the voice recording back over the open channel, hoping her simple ruse would work. If not, there was always plan B, the unpleasant alternative.
“Structural damage critical. Air pressure dropping. Request dock access for repairs.”
A pause came over the communication console. “Request acknowledged. Dock in Bay 8 Eil …(the rest was untranslatable).”
A triumphant chitter vibrated through Audra’s glottal cavity.
She brought the ship into the open bay, as the metal hatch closed behind her. Landing in a vacant space among the many other attack vessels, she prepared herself for the next phase of her operation. Much Zikri activity ensued. Military protocols had squids bustling up and down the walkways and catwalks, carrying out orders, loading and servicing ships of many designs: orbs and aphid-shaped lightfighters alike.
Hastily, she feigned a sprawled position in the pilot’s chair, her left dangling motilator a convincing image of a recent skirmish, perhaps a victim of internal cabin burns sparked by an onslaught of enemy fire.
The starboard portal opened. Two Zikri glided in to investigate, evidently puzzled by the squat, massive form sprawled before the master console. When they hovered closer, Audra sprang like the killer she was, wrapping motilators around the foremost’s head and snapping its neck. Before the second could chitter into its com, she lashed out with long lethal fore-tentacles. With coal-black eyes, she stared down at her handiwork. The two were loose masses of jellied flesh on the floor. Audra pursed her polyp of a mouth with satisfaction. Snatching up the com fallen from the last quivering squid, she managed to splice in words:
“Pilot dazed. One of us will stay aboard.”
A pause. “Affirmative. Report status as soon as possible.”
Audra chittered a prefabricated response. She stuffed the bodies in the forward compartment, then glided out of the portal, wearing the guard’s communicator headband.
* * *
Miko crouched inches from Usk, both in fighting stances before the advancing squids. In the eerie glow of the nearby tanks, Basilursk and two squids surrounded him and Usk, tentacles outstretched, cutting off any escape. Nrog watched with half a black, prune-pit eye to the side, while chittering furious orders into his com to the bridge.
Basilursk sent out a questing tentacle. Human and Mentera flashed each other resigned glances as they awaited death. The end would come soon and terribly.
Basilursk pounced. He grappled Miko in an undulating strangle of motilators. Miko fought hard, smashing fists against the rubbery flesh lifting him. But it was of little use. His strength did not come even close to his fiercer opponent. Usk dodged a looping tentacle. His eyes darted in desperation to the U-shaped amalgamator. Jring was through, whisked back to his ship, but not as yet his last aide. A sudden burst of speed propelled Usk under the next whipping tentacle toward the pulsating and glowing transporter. He lashed out his good pincer at the locust’s limb that bore a lumo-weapon.
There was an amber flash, a hiss of sparks as the insectoid’s arm separated from its body, while the rest disappeared through the amalgamator, a wormhole jump across physical space. Usk snatched up the fallen weapon. He dropped in a whirling crouch to level fire at Basilursk’s guards.
Squid flesh parted in bloody cords as the first two went down in sizzling heaps. The third bowled Usk over and caught him up in a whirlpool of tentacles.
Utter mayhem struck in a space of a few seconds. Another menace entered the scene. Its grey-black bulk burst through the convex doorway, a blurred shape, a hulk of writhing tentacles, smashing into the Zikri who was carrying off Usk. Usk went spinning out of the creature’s grasp then hastened to crawl painfully away from the creature’s flailing grip.
Miko struggled in Basilursk’s crushing motilators, his feet kicking at the first touch of the Mentera water as the creature thrust, keen on plunging him into the nearest tank. But its husky torso sagged, as strangling coils fastened around its head and ripped it off and sent it rolling past the blue box with its obnoxious luminous proxy, still smiling with an ape-like face tipped on a slanting angle. The Zikri body slumped; Miko sprawled to the floor, his knees hitting hard. He gasped for air and looked up. The nightmarish face of Audra peered down at him. She stared with an infathomable expression. Perhaps one that said, “So here we are, human. Did you think you’d seen the last of me?”
In a fit of frenzied rage, Admiral Nrog launched his bulk at the intruder. Audra turned to meet his overzealous hulk. Tentacles locked with tentacles. Zikri and admiral tumbled end over end in a mass of rippling flesh.
Nrog’s impressive musculature had developed over years of wrestling, but now they bulged under new pressure not yet experienced. His best was not enough, for Audra was of the older breed, trained to kill without prejudice and mercy. The female of her species was more vicious and in this contest, the better fighter.
She twisted out of Nrog’s grip, uncoiling thick wads of strangling, python-like flesh that worked desperately to squeeze the life out of her.
In his half daze, Miko watched. The titanic struggle between two Zikri generations raged on, as he swayed to his feet. Staggering like a drunk, he scooped up Usk’s blaster and with quivering hand, aimed it at Star’s tank. The glass shattered in a burst of rippling spiderwebs. Shards of glass and green brine sprayed over the floor, sweeping Star with it. She rolled on the cold steel, choking, gasping for air.
Miko raced toward her. Circling her ribcage with both hands, he squeezed the water from her lungs.
Audra and Nrog dueled on. A fierce and ugly fight. As flesh ripped and tore, chitters poured from Nrog’s prune-like mouth.
His strength was rapidly ebbing, no match for Audra’s brawn, nor her cunning, as muscle and cartilage and tough rubbery sinew began to shred under her crushing ministrations. Nrog buckled under her weight, feeling his collapsing body succumb to her superior strength. He was at the point of breaking, when all of a sudden blaster fire rang out. A single flare, and the monster Zikri Audra jerked and spasmed.
A Mentera guard had skulked out of the shadows, gripping a lumo blaster. Miko’s head turned in a daze. The locust thing must have come through the amalgamator. He looked around with wild surprise, guessing Jring must have sent the creature after his mutilated guard had come through the other end. More locusts spewed one by one between the horseshoe-shaped parallel plates. Miko tensed and raced toward the gathering enemies, lumo-blaster lifted in hand with a kamikaze cry in his throat.
Blaster fire shredded advancing locust flesh. Pincers and heads flew in pasty clumps as his green fire did its bloody work. He dove aside, ducked as return fire came his way. With a raucous yell, Miko fell flat on his ass, leveled fire into the amalgamators, laying waste to their hated metal, until all were sizzling, blackened hulks. He sank on his haunches, panting, weak from the horror of it all.
A Mentera had killed Audra, or so the Mentera soldier thought. With half a red eye on the carnage behind him, he came skittering forth on hind legs to save the Zikri Admiral, his eerie eyes blazing, unaware that he dealt not with an ordinary Zikri intruder, but a lethal, guerrilla-war-trained soldier.
Nrog looked up in anguish. “Kill me, you idiot!” he rasped in a hoarse chitter. The admiral convulsed, tentacles splayed aside the hulk of Audra. “You—should have let—this thing kill me when it had me in its hold.”
The chirruping guard lifted his weapon but Audra sprang up with murderous intent, snatching him in a strangling grip. With her last squid-like strength, she ripped his fragile chitinous body in two, helmet, suit and all.
Nrog gasped, unable to believe his eyes. He crawled in the blood and slime, pleading with his female adversary to end it. But Audra would do no such thing. She glided one jerky step and another toward him, gazing with burning singlemindedness. No pity or remorse glinted in those eyes. She swayed, her charred hide quivering in response to incomprehensible inner pain, then she tumbled in a rubbery heap.
She left Nrog there, bleeding out, feeling every inch of his agony, as she, too, dragged her own smoking, bleeding hide away, as an animal crawls off to a hole to die. Three of her motilators trailed uselessly behind her.
The ship rocked to another savage blast. More enemy fire thudded against the hull, now one without a commander to lead it.
Miko staggered over to where Star lay, half senseless, but recovering. He waved a hand in front of her face. He saw the briefest flicker of recognition as an eyelid fluttered open. A mouthful of green water spewed from her lips. She spat it out, wiped her mouth, heaving from the effort. She peered around in a semi-vacuous gaze. “Miko, where are you? Hold me.”
