by Chris Turner
“The locusts, sir. They’ve escaped!”
“What do you mean, escaped?” Mong’s voice rumbled in a throaty roar. “How the fuck did that happen?”
I heard the man groan then another groan. “There’s more, sir. Balt’s in a tank. Drowned.”
There was a pause until Mong bawled, “Rusco! I’ll kill that fucking bastard. Go, look for them.”
Now the proverbial shit was about to hit the fan.
The sound of running feet echoed up then the sound of panting breath. Another harbinger of doom?
“They’ve killed six men, sir! With pincers and claws. One guard mauled but still alive, told a gruesome tale. They fight like demons. The Mentera. Hooks, claws, squirting venom from pointed teeth. The meslars died badly.”
I opened the door a crack and saw Mong’s eyes widen with fury.
“Find them,” he hissed through gritted teeth. He flung out a hand and the wall sizzled as if acid had been thrown at it.
I scowled and pulled my head back. If those fiends could keep chopping up Mong’s brigade, we might have a slim window of opportunity.
Staring back through the crack, though, I swallowed hard. This was a precarious situation. Multiple enemies. Nowhere safe to run.
Another voice panted and huffed in fear in the hall. It sounded like Verlioze, Mong’s weapons master. “The Mentera have slipped back through the transporter tunnel, sir, the sacred amalgo.”
Mong gave a bleat of rage. “Go in after them then. Get them back!”
His henchman swore. “Can’t. The device’s jammed. It’s inoperable.”
“Those fucking grasshoppers.” Mong clenched a fist. “They must have shut off the amalgamator from the other end. Now we can’t go in after them. Can’t even visit that wondrous world again.”
Another voice, sounding like Hadruk’s, jeered. “Still think they are the greatest thing since sliced bread, Master Mong?”
I heard a slap as Mong backhanded him. Probably Hadruk. Though I couldn’t physically see Hadruk. “Shut up, you ignoramus. Until we know the Mentera did it purposely, we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe the device just jammed and it can be fixed.”
The struck man sneered. “You’re a bloody fool if you believe that, Mong. Hypnotized by this ancient bug cult of yours and this brotherhood of ‘light’. You’re losing it and you can’t see it.”
Mong pulled out his weapon and smacked Hadruk hard across the mouth, drawing blood. Hadruk grinned and jumped him. The security officer got a good grip on Mong’s face, clawing at nose and lips, before Mong, with his bare hands, grabbed Hadruk by the throat. Hadruk sagged, struggling like an ape, but was no match for the Star Lord’s unnatural strength. With the crushing brawn of ten men, Mong’s augmented arm lifted him off his feet. There came a sudden crunch and ripping of flesh. Mong snapped the man’s neck like a rotten branch and tossed the security officer’s corpse aside. I winced. So much for Hadruk.
If those fiendish crickets could get one of those ships running…I balked at the thought.
Mong bellowed, “Don’t stand there like a bunch of stuffed dummies, you fools! I want that amalgo fixed and I want Rusco brought to his knees. Find him and bring him to me. Someone will answer for this and die.”
Verlioze licked his lips.
Mong gave a feral roar. “Now, you fucking idiots!” The Star Lord’s orders rebounded off the stone and wood like the boom of a cannon.
The temple roof rocked to new blasts.
Mong looked up and he shook his head in frustration. “Leave the corpse,” he spat. “Come with me. New plan. Those fools on defense are doing next to nothing to stop this inane attack. Let’s make for the ships. We’ll deal with the rest of this mess later.”
The sound of echoing bootfall faded down the corridor.
We bolted out of the room, sidling in an opposite direction. Hoping for a back exit, we threaded our way like thieves through the wide, dim-lit corridors. Far too many of us though for stealth.
But stealth wasn’t necessary.
Chapter 27
We burst out of the doors in a shambling crouch, our guns on the ready. Out onto the temple grounds we poured, with Wren in the lead, the roar and whine of jet fighters overhead and the scurry of running feet and anxious shouts all about. The light was fading from Othwan’s opalescent sky.
Enemy ships ranged the sky. How they had penetrated warlord Mong’s security net was still beyond me. More tricks? More last minute secret tech?
Volia and Zan were having a hard time. They had no weapons. I stayed back to cover them. Wren instructed Voj and Grild to move ahead and act as front men, clearing the way. It was their chance to prove themselves.
They hopped from boulder to garden bush, keeping their bodies low, rifles aimed. They motioned us ahead; the coast was clear.
The Temple of Light smoked behind us, a thin chute of flames rising from its caved-in roof. Now a gaping hole smoked in its nearest side, the once-proud spires teetering on drunken angles.
The grounds in the vicinity of the hangar writhed to a beehive of activity. Men in khakis firing R6s. Ships roaring overhead. Vendecki skyslips, smaller Melinarian fighters buzzing by. I could see Mong and his men scurrying away in an opposite direction while the Warhawks were on the move ready to pick them up. One landed and as bombs dropped, lighting up the green in crimson fire, they dove for cover. Mong’s plan to board was thwarted.
I still couldn’t believe the Vendecki had slipped through Mong’s defenses leaving them this unaware and exposed. Must have been one hell of a force field.
I draped an arm around Volia’s shoulder, seeing the white, dazed look of confusion in her eyes. Like another dream, Rusco, no different than the one hanging from Mong’s torture rope or floating in his Mentera tank…
We made it to the open green, a few hundred yards just shy of the charred prayer hall. That was as far as we’d get. I could see Mong’s men were converging on us, coming out of the woodwork like termites. Doom stared us in the face. So, it had all been for naught. Wren screamed orders into the com. Maybe she couldn’t hear over the roar of the destruction. Where the fuck was Noss?
The savage sweep of heavy engines blitzed the compound. Cone-like shapes and elliptical hulls of the rebels drew up and away while others landed air strikes.
A grenade clattered six feet away from us in front of a ruined fountain. Wren tackled Zan out of the way; I pulled Volia down behind a statue. Shrapnel webbed the immediate area; splatter hit the marble base behind which we crouched. The blast nearly took out our ear drums.
Vendecki and Melinarian ships roared across the sky, deafening us further. A fierce dance of death played before our eyes with pursuing Warhawks which numbered in the dozens. Selected rebel craft dropped paratroopers to extract Volia from the temple. What a colossal fuck up! Brave souls, those would-be rescuers. I saw they hopped from cover to cover like us and the terrified cicadas and rained fire into the fray. Volia gestured frantically. None of them could see her. I debated trying to do a kamikaze run across that no-man’s land to tell them we had her, but it’d be suicide.
Wren shouted into the com. “Noss, bring Eagle 4 around to temple pickup! Now! The back door!”
“Can you signal the Melinarians?” I rasped at her.
“All their channels are blocked.”
I shook my head in frustration.
Groups of rebels sprang from blackened shrines to trade fire with Mong’s defenders, with the rebels intent on storming the main temple to rescue Volia. Bombs dropped from above. The tops of pagodas disappeared. We crouched, hoping we could last without getting peppered full of holes until Noss could bring the ship around. So much for Mong’s halcyon, idyllic world.
So much for us too, if we didn’t get away from here fast.
Clutches of men fought guerrilla style, launching grenades and spraying fire, ducking, scrambling for new toeholds of cover. It was Resus all over again.
Fareon beams lashed out of the sky. A
sleek ship with gleaming hull roared down from above.
My heart leaped. An Alpha 9 fast runner? Could it be? My old ship, Starrunner, back from the dead?
No, only a copy.
‘The next best thing,” Wren rasped.
I shook my head in bewilderment. No time to ponder. The ship landed a few hundred yards away, trim and grey with ox horn-shaped prow and rough diamond shape at stern.
It might as well have been a thousand yards away though. A squad of ground troops identified me among the company and moved in with guns booming.
A hoarse yell hovered on my lips. I turned kamikaze and leveled R4 mayhem into the figures that came charging us. I waited for oblivion to snatch me, riddled with fire and the force of energy pulses. But it did not. In a last defensive move, I fell flat on my stomach. Fire clipped the earth all around. I plugged round after round into the noise and confusion. Through the smoke, I saw Mong striding amid those running figures, a gigantic, barbaric, black-clad leather brute with furred cap. I knew the jig was up.
Gunfire grazed my side. Not possible to escape hits. I reached down, felt a wet stickiness at my ribs. The pain was minimal compared to the animal agony of Mong’s hangman’s torture. Still, I’d need regen soon. I saw a dream image of Blest hobbling behind me somewhere, catching some shrapnel fallout in the burst of fire power.
He and Wren jogged together, or rather tottered, lurching ahead to dig in defensive positions closer to the descending ship. They dove into low shrubbery. They would get eaten to bits in seconds if they didn’t find better cover. Volia and Zan, weaponless, hunched like whipped puppies behind them, white-faced, resigned to death while Starrunner’s engines blew dust and grass all over the place. Voj was down, riddled with bullets. Blest’s leg had caught a slug. We were not going to make it. Starrunner, resurrected, loomed a hundred feet away by my estimate, near some broken fountains and a sizzling stream. The ship lifted and tilted. Seeing our plight, Noss angled her in to shield us from the savage fire of Mong’s militia. I realized we had missed the narrow window of rescue by mere minutes, despite Noss’s clever maneuvering. Bigger ships loomed on our rear horizon; they came chugging toward us.
The alien bulb lay at my side, slipped from my waist belt. With my head tucked low, I launched it, mumbling a prayer that Mong and all his deranged brood would taste bitter death. The frightening thing left my fingers, lobbed like a grenade at the first group of running figures only a few dozen feet away. They lay into it with fire, thinking it some freak grenade come to shred them to bits.
A big mistake.
The bulb exploded in ruin and fragments of its coconut shell bubbled like lava. They turned away to shield their eyes from what they expected to be hideous shrapnel. But from within came unimaginable horror. A winged, misshapen creature, some demon spawn with six starfish arms equipped with sucker pods of sandy-brown color, emerged from the chaos. It was different from the other birthlings, nothing like the dragonfly killer or eel-lizard that had attacked and munched through the Skugs, or the black cricket horror that had burrowed into Mong’s gunman’s face.
What spawned the endless variation of this creature from its plain Jane bulb, none could ever know. This one was like some cross between a sea urchin and a bat, if such were possible.
Fully grown and buzzing with anger, it now dove like a demon possessed upon the hapless minions of Mong’s troop, slicing holes into them with its barbed-suckered appendages. It tore through a gaping man and came out his back, leaving a fist-size hole where his heart should have been.
“Holy fuck,” I gasped.
Mong shouted orders, barely ducking and dodging a lunge and slice and dice by the creature. “Stand down! Don’t fire at the thing! It’s one of those alien freaks. It’ll only kill us if we attack. Kill Rusco over there—kill all the fugitives.”
Mong lifted his augmented arm. Immediately I felt a sharp tingling surge course through my joints, rattling my nerves. I flopped about like a fish, but such was my hate for Mong and all his sadistic powers that I vaulted up, gun in hand, spraying fire, cursing him for the end of time. I directed every atom of my animosity and feverish hate at the man.
“Eat buzzard shit, you bloody scumbag, fucking tyrant.”
I watched his arm jerk in a spasm and then his figure double over. With a roar of rage, he straightened then I blinked in puzzlement because my rapid fire didn’t come anywhere near the sod, but I was already stumbling to my feet toward the ship on the heels of Wren and the others, heedless of the gunshots whizzing around us.
I cried out in pain as more stray beams grazed me, but they didn’t kill me—at least not yet. Wren was still shrieking into the com. The others were on the move. I staggered toward them, one hand clutching my ribs, the other my R4. We all raced to safety. In that fateful minute, death and life hung on a thread while the creature from another world made hatchet work of Mong’s men. If not for its deadly savagery we would have been rat bait from the get-go.
We made it through the cargo hatch before it closed and Noss was fast in getting us airborne and the hell out of there. A squadron of Warhawks were on our tail. No doubt Mong was ordering his gunners to exercise maximum force.
We lurched inside and crawled deeper into the dimness, choking on the smoke and clutching the straps along the wall while Noss weaved us on a rocky tour with fareon fire slamming the hull.
I stumbled on duck feet toward the bridge, my ribs on fire, while Grild stayed behind to tend to Zan and Volia. Blest? I don’t know about Blest.
Wren hissed in dismay. “You need regen.”
“Screw the regen,” I rasped hoarsely. “We need to save this ship—and our hides.”
We staggered onto the bridge. Noss beamed at me from behind the pilot’s console. “Welcome back, Captain.”
“Get this bird out in deep space, Noss. Good to see you.”
Reunions were short. We had bogies on our tail, deadly ones. Both Noss and Wren were on it. Wren slapped herself down before the weapons console. I assumed nav. Noss weaved us in impossible circles high over Othwan’s forests and lakes as flash bombs spilled around us like confetti at a wedding. Wren blasted blue hell back at the warbirds behind us. I knew Mong had those superior shields installed, making his vessels nearly tank-armored, so our fire-power would do less than nothing. Dodge and dip was all we could do while we ran the dangerous gauntlet on impulse power. Noss was doing a capable job. This new, suped-up starship was ace, but I could see we were not going to make it through this hell unless we did something very damn tricky. I set the course for Veglos. My hand strayed to the Varwol slider. I pulled my fingers back at the last instant. Gripping my side, I was wracked by a sudden spasm and felt the crippling wooziness of shock threatening to tumble me into an abyss. A monumental bad feeling hit my gut hard—one flick of that lever and it could be the end of us. Planetary gravity and warp drive do not mix, cadet Rusco. Any junior flyboy can tell you that. There had to be another way.
The Vendecki line of battleships ranged the inner edge of the planet’s atmosphere. There was a right, mean space fight in progress. A hundred Warhawks stood arrayed against much the same Vendecki numbers. No other choice but the hard one. The reckless one. And that meant—
“Noss bring us into the eye of the storm.”
“What?”
“There! Straight into the war zone.” I stabbed a thumb at the holo nav.
Noss blinked, he hesitated; at the last moment he caught my drift. Steering Starrunner straight into the Vendecki front, he fought the controls, negotiating an obstacle course where hundreds of ships weaved in and out, firing fareons and launching bombs at Mong’s Warhawks.
Volia came staggering onto the bridge. She’d bypassed Grild’s ministrations and stood before us, her breath a hoarse rasp. “Where are we?”
“A million miles from nowhere soon, sister—or we’re space debris.”
She gazed at me, looking somewhat better than before, though her wide eyes teared at the number of her own Vend
ecki and Melinarian allies locked in heated battle with Mong’s forces getting battered by Warhawks. She let out a hoarse cry. “Tell them you have me, Rusco! Innocents are dying in the air, on the ground—for me.”
I grimaced. The rebels hadn’t responded to us on secure channels. I swore and patched her through to the general emergency frequency.
A staticky voice rasped over the com, “General Azun here, Lady Volia, Countess of Melinar. Are you alright?”
“Yes! I am, General. I’m aboard Starrunner right now with a fellow named Rusco. Get your people out of there!”
“Roger. We’ve confirmed visual. All rescue teams are on the abort. Set a far course and tell Rusco to fly Starrunner to safe haven!”
“Affirmative. You too, find safe haven. Please abort this crazy mission.”
“Negative. Operation Tiger is underway. We’ve committed and we’ll never get a better chance to destroy Mong’s hideaway, though many of us may die.”
“You will all die!” she wailed.
“With all due respect, beloved Lady, we are all dead with Mong ruling the free planets. Over and out.”
I grimaced and clutched the nav. Volia wrung her hands in despair.
The two Warhawks on our tail battered us to hell. Our shields dropped to near zero; a few more direct hits and we’d disintegrate. Before us loomed a phalanx of rebel ships holding off the attackers. We passed right through their great wall of defense, through fire and flame and roiling ships and the topsy-turvy madness of full out war. Fareons grazed our shields and had us buffeted around like puppets. Noss and Wren went skidding out of their seats.