Alien Alliance Box Set
Page 88
He pressed to her side, his hand gently massaging her back.
“Oh, Miko, it was h-horrible. I could see you and I couldn’t, like I was looking through a fish bowl. You were so far away.” She reached out a feeble hand, clutched at his soiled uniform. “I tried to touch the glass but my arms wouldn’t move.”
“It’s okay, Star, I’m here.” Miko held her close, her wet, shivering form responding to his own warmth.
She gave an unwholesome shudder. “Each moment was like an age.” Tears sprang in her eyes. “I couldn’t move, then when that guard-creature plugged into me, I thought…I was fading away to oblivion, like some mist evaporating in sunlight. Then the scariest thing happened—I didn’t care anymore. As if I could sleep in a vacuum forever.”
Miko shuddered. A silent death. No pain, no free will, no nothing. He knew it well enough. Just an endless silence with no end.
He hoped never to experience the death of the tank again…
A whisper of movement fluttered to his left, then a rasping wheeze. He looked with new concern to where Audra crawled away slowly. In the pit of his gut, he felt a host of indescribable emotions. Remorse? Anger? Sadness?
He released Star gently and hobbled toward where Usk lay in a panting crouch. He gathered up his faithful friend and the two approached the quivering but mobile Audra.
Her black and grey hide was badly scorched, charred beyond repair, her tentacles sprawled in a frightening starfish pattern. The tips left traces of residual slime on the hard-plated floor.
Time slowed and then seemed to stand still. Miko gazed in stunned misery. From that grim day out in Gollonus so long ago when he had encountered Audra, waylaid by her scavenging Zikri Orb, he had come to know the Zikri and it felt like lifetimes ago. Too eerie now seeing her in this helpless, battered condition. Gazing at her slack limbs and near lifeless eyes, he knew he would never understand her motives or what went on behind those alien eyes. Her drive to unite with him, coupled with a desire to kill him, as a female black widow spider would, was an incomprehensible mystery. Alien and human genes had been spliced in some horrible misconfiguration, thus binding them in a way he could not fathom. It scared him more than dying here in this alien ship with no purpose or loftier mission to speak of. He could never escape Audra. Nor could she him. In life or death.
And yet, death was not in keeping with Audra’s courage. Even beyond the grave, he knew deep in his inner being that she would haunt his dreams till the end of time. And if he were to sit here and watch her die in this miserable, ghastly place, those dreams would be only the more bitter.
The ship rocked to another savage blast.
Miko swore under his breath. “Here Usk!…Help me drag her to that largest tank.”
Usk hesitated, recoiling at the violent, headstrong Zikri who had, on prior occasions, tried to kill him.
“Do it!” cried Miko. “If it were not for her, we’d be dead.”
Usk chirruped out a protest. Reluctantly he hooked his pincer onto her upper body.
Miko’s face twisted in anguish. His was a twisted logic. He grabbed at a slimy motilator and pulled Audra inch by inch toward the tank, almost cringing with the thrill of the familiar feel of sliminess that had used and abused him in times long past. No longer did he feel guilt for the symbiotic pleasure they had both experienced in their erotic embrace. In the fading gleams of her defiant stare, he caught a glimpse of surprise on a ropy face gone slack and ashen and an understanding passed between them. For the first time, Audra saw concern mirrored in Miko’s expression, withal, a compassion for her, and her face relaxed in a contented sigh.
Miko did not know why he did it; he was not capable of such introspection right now, only that a strong sense of duty called.
In helpless horror, Star stared, as if unable to comprehend the scene unfolding before her. Her glazed-over eyes were clearing. Now she blinked several times as she recovered from her plunge into a liquid nightmare.
Using their combined strength, Usk and Miko painstakingly upended the dying Zikri into the largest intact tank. She sank, a dead weight, straight to the bottom, gulping lungfuls of nourishing water then drowned.
The blue glow of the simulacrum flickered to life. The AI proxy, projected on a sharp angle, lifted a pale hand and spoke once again in a didactic voice.
“What a tragic waste! A vintage specimen! Pity it couldn’t have been saved for our AI scanners and virtual scientists to study.”
“You’re all monsters!” Miko cried.
“On the contrary, I don’t exist, only as a facsimile of what was once a dead race who crafted you. We live on in the nascent consciousness of our children. Like your memories.”
“I could care less,” snorted Miko. “I have nothing to do with you or the likes of your genesis myth, whoever or whatever you are.”
“On the contrary, you have everything to do with us, human. Without us, you would be nonexistent.”
Miko looked away, hardly knowing what to feel. He had nothing to say. Only a wish to pull the plug on that miserable box forever. But he knew no such thing was possible. That the Masters were technically beyond any ‘shutting down’.
The AI looked at Miko with some pity. “I am sensitive to your pain, human. I can commiserate with your hopes and fears. Maybe our aims are not mutually exclusive. I wish I could offer more comforting words at this moment, but I fear, being an engine of truth, any words would only be superfluous and prolong the inevitable, that a cruel fate awaits you.”
A feeling of overwhelming despair flooded Miko. As he slipped to new lows, Bzt, his body blitzed out and disappeared. The surge of violent emotion had blinked him out of existence.
No, no, not now! His inward shriek landed on deaf ears. He was back in that zone, of invisibility.
No! He had to be with his friends, not in some useless realm of limbo! They had to do something, get off this ship! He gave a shudder of frustration. A blast of anger smote his being and had him willing himself back to his bodily form.
Bzt. In an instant he came staggering back to corporeal form, floating on his heels, his senses reeling.
Star trilled a note of horror. “What are you? You’re not human!”
He wiped at his brow, almost laughing uncontrollably. It hit him in a flash how he could control the force of invisibility. He need only bring the intense emotions that triggered it to the forefront. Bleak despair to blink out…confidence and anger to blink in. Should he test the theory? No. Better to get out of here and not press his luck. Not long would it be before the lack of Admiral Nrog’s response would bring squads of squids gliding in to investigate.
He grabbed up Star. “Come on, there’s no time to lose!”
On shaky but determined feet, he helped the half-quivering woman to the doorway, thrusting an extra weapon in her hand, while Usk scooped up a fallen weapon for his own from a charred claw. With a quick backward glance, he left Audra in her healing fluids and Nrog and the dead Mentera in their creepy tomb, as a growing lump hardened in the pit of his stomach.
They clambered ahead down the bioluminescent hall glowing in leafy-green splendor. The locust’s blaster kept steady vigilance as Usk led the way. About a ten minute haul to the space dock, as Miko recalled when they’d been forcefully brought here.
There would be squids along the way.
Chapter 31
Miko shuddered as he navigated the Zikri halls with their icky moss and creepers hanging from the walls. How they had come to love the damp, lush, creepy stuff when they originated on that dustbowl Kraetoria was beyond him. Maybe the simulacrum had lied about the common genesis origin, part of the overall joke of the universe. Had Nrog adopted a new home world on some lush swamp-infested planet?
There was no point in remaining corporeal. Usk would gain more help with him an invisible man than a visible one right now. He was just about to will himself to invisibility, when blasts pounded at the hull. Viscurg lurched to each blow. Star whimpered, still in her semi-daze, grog
gy from her drowning plunge. She clung to Miko’s arm. “I can’t get that ugly, cold, disembodied voice back there out of my mind…it terrified me. It spoke so clinically of us.”
“Forget it, Star. It’s just a machine. It’ll be destroyed before long as will this ship.”
As will we, if we don’t get out of here, he thought…The Masters. Pure fiction. Only survival of the fittest. But he could not be so sure of that. His blood ran cold at the grim revelation dropped by the luminous ghoul-ape of an AI.
Star clutched her blaster in a shaky hand. “Worse though was when I awoke to you and Usk dragging that Audra thing.”
Miko stumbled over a charred Zikri corpse. Booms rocked the hull. Usk’s blaster took out more squids while he and Star leaped over the inert shapes. Star shirked at the carnage, gripping her blaster in two trembling hands as she fired wantonly. Miko’s eyes roved to the ceiling as they sprinkled down rank clumps of moss with every shudder of the hull.
He pinched his eyes shut. He willed himself into that mind space of utter despair and desolation.
Bzt. He blinked out of existence. Only his blaster clung in midair, like a magical, floating thing. Focusing his will, he trained it down the hall at any approaching squids. Usk chittered in grim acknowledgement of having an invisible ally. He shuffled on in a half-hobbling gait.
In fits and starts, the three threaded their way down the grim hall of Viscurg, blasting squids where necessary. Just a few minutes more, Miko thought. He and Usk acted as a tag team. Star fired from the rear, cleaning up the extras. They approached what looked like a power center, a control grid of five blackened tower boxes arcing sparks from top to top. Squid technicians worked behind a protective wire cage in a frenzy to repair what Miko guessed to be a burnt-out transformer. They slipped past the repair crew undetected. The hall opened up into a wide oval gap that showed a murky yellow glow. Frenetic activity loomed beyond, a massive landing dock of sorts. This hall had been one of the many access points to the command dock.
Pandemonium reigned below. Hundreds of Zikri swarmed the loading docks: a mini spaceport of its own, a marvel in alien engineering. A massive eye-like portal loomed above, allowing ships to launch themselves out into the gulfs of space. More of the strange bioluminescent moss dangled from the ceiling. The crews inspected and serviced craft of all designs to impulse out to fight on the war front.
The flagship had been hit hard. A giant holo screen showed a view out into space: countless ships flying in and out on disparate trajectories. Also two strange rectangular metal hulks under fire, weaving in and out like miniature demons and smashing through the Zikri Orbs as if they were putty. Now one of the NOA drones came barreling toward the flagship, unleashing a giant moth before the outer armature disintegrated under shell fire. The insect swept on to ram Viscurg’s hull, threatening to breach it.
Miko’s mind raced. It looked very probable that Jring’s dreams of some ‘Ark of the Future’ were rapidly disintegrating. A fleeting hope that maybe this alien invasion could be thwarted, percolated through his mind. Almost as suddenly, a dark shiver flashed up his spine at the image of the tens of thousands of humans already bound on that giant slave ship for a far world.
Only two mantis craft remained in the space dock. Tucked in beside a row of craft and a monster attack Orb. It was their only hope. Good luck getting to it!
An unspoken communication passed between Usk and Miko’s invisible form holding the blaster.
Miko set out with bobbing blaster to distract the squids gathered there. He kept the anger and nail-edge panic bottled up just under the threshold of breaking. Just enough not to buzz back to human form at some random instant.
The floating blaster spat out green fire as it advanced upon the service crew of the Mentera fighter. Squid parts streamed every way. Usk and Star came quickly after him, padding in the wake of Miko’s trail of destruction. Usk scuttled to the cargo hatch. An insectoid’s feral grin lay etched on his face, as if pleased at the opportunity to pilot another ship.
In the cargo bay Miko’s blaster dropped as he fully engaged his senses. He contacted that place deep within, the calm and the confidence, and felt his atoms resurging. In a flash of sprinkles of light, he buzzed back to his normal self. He swayed on his feet, clutching his head in a woozy daze, but remained otherwise intact. Star laid a hand on his shoulder to steady him.
A quick race to the vacated bridge. Without words and with deft efficiency, Usk got the ship up and running and moving out of the open portal. Ships were coming in from the depressurization bay at swift and regular rates. The great ocular slit opened wider and the mantis fighter rocketed out into the blackness of space.
A vast battleground of ships greeted Miko’s eyes on the hijacked ship’s viewport. A 3D gridlock of thousands of ships in every direction.
“Holy shit,” he gasped.
“Let’s get out of here,” Star wailed. She wrung her wrists.
‘Usk, planetside’s looking good,” said Miko.
“No, not Xares!” Star protested. “NOA will shoot this locust ship down.”
She had a point. If NOA continued to hold their position, they would fire indiscriminately. “Is the light drive intact?” he asked Usk.
Usk chittered out a high note of affirmation.
Miko gave a sigh of relief. “We can’t hyperdrive out so close to Xares. Try to reach Fenli and Yul.”
Usk fiddled with the controls. Hailing frequencies went out to both ships. But no response. Only a hiss of white noise. Miko sighed. He gave Usk a sad look.
“They’re gone.”
“I’m sorry, Miko.” Star looked at him with despair then at the holo view that registered hundreds of firefights going on. “What now?”
Miko grumbled, “We fight our way out.”
Usk gave a defiant chitter. His good claw clacked over the nav panel, preparing the controls for engagement.
But just as the ship was about to set impulse for a wild flight, an unsettling scene greeted their eyes. More of the odd rectangular hulks weaved in and out of the enemy Orbs amidst the countless raging ships. With fabulous dexterity, the drones attacked. Whenever one of the armored drones looked as it was about to be blown to atoms by Zikri torpedoes, a strange insect—some half moth, half butterfly mutant—jettisoned out and came zipping after the offending craft, at astounding speed. Miko watched with undisguised astonishment as one smashed clear through an Orb’s hull, armored plates and all. Squid carcasses floated out of the freshly-bored hole, frozen on contact with the frigid emptiness.
He’d never seen anything like it. The Zikri were getting pummeled by such creatures.
Renewed with fresh hope, Miko gritted his teeth.
What were those moths? An alien species? Some biogenetic weapon of mass destruction unleashed by NOA? The titanium hulks and their alien moths seemed to leave the submarine-shaped NOA ships alone. How such creatures could withstand vacuum or propel themselves through space at such impossible speeds remained a mystery.
Miko’s biggest fear was how to avoid getting slaughtered himself. He hailed NOA and set up a mayday.
“Usk! Code Red! Launch an escape vector between those two Zikri Orbs. Ten minutes on full impulse and we’ll be within range to light drive to Altair. Plot the best course!”
The Mentera ship lurched into the fray. All the time Miko had a shivery feeling Yul and Fenli were still alive. Clenching a fist, he resolved to find them. Or at least discover the grim truth of their fate.
* * *
Back in the bowels of Viscurg, all was in a state of flux.
Audra stared out of her tank, recovering from her grievous wounds, hardly registering the many Zikri scouts that scoured the interrogation room. All chittered aghast at Nrog’s mangled body, the ruptured angles of his stretched and torn ligaments, the many dead, slain Mentera, the smashed and scorched amalgamators and the ruin of the nearby tank. They paid no heed to the lone Zikri floating immersed in the farthest of the four Mentera tanks.
As the flagship Viscurg was further bombarded by NOA shells, a loose fragment of a heavy plate fell from the ceiling, smashing onto Audra’s tank.
The glass shattered in a thousand shards as water poured out and Audra slid, half carried by the resultant deluge. Her fleshy lungs heaved, upchucking putrid brine. She crawled out of the jagged shards and chittered a ghastly groan—one of triumph though, even as sharp glass cut into her six motilators. Her lungs convulsed. The stark transition from dreary limbo to airy life was an intense experience. A dark awareness surged to her head. She was in the admiral’s torture room. Of course…his mutilated body lay not a dozen paces from where she now sprawled and recovered her breath and senses. Other things resided in the tanks before her, horned and winged insects she could not name. The ship shuddered. Something akin to a grin wrinkled the ropy folds of her face. Across the room she glided, then down the mossy hall, with no need of subterfuge now. She was a Zikri, one of their race, but stronger, smarter. Evidence of the recent wholesale slaughter in the dusky, maroon-lit halls with their bio-luminescent moss coverings did little to faze her. Hers were nerves of steel.
The cavernous space dock teemed with squids bustling about, servicing craft and relaying orders. Vessels of many shapes and forms blasted off to fling themselves into the arena of war. On the open holoview the battle raged: red and green beams of destruction crisscrossing the black tracts of space and meeting shields, some penetrating through armor to targets within. Ships of multiple origins, NOA, Mentera, Zikri, weaved in and dodged out, delivering destruction upon one another: the submarine NOA craft, the triangular Xarean, ultra-light defense squads, Zikri Orbs and the Mentera aphids.