by A. S. Deller
Skeer’s bellow of rage subsided, leaving him standing, almost out of breath, in front of the empty table where his Althorian prisoner used to be. As the thrum of the lek alarms continued to pound into his skull, he could think of only one thing: finding, killing, and eating it.
The exasperated Krell skittered past a row of empty cells and tall shelves of storage cases, and stopped before a wall panel labeled with some perpendicular scratches of Valgon writing. He placed a palm of one of his fingered-arms to the panel, and it slid away into the bulkhead, revealing several plasma rifles and wickedly curved krekree swords mounted within. Skeer’s mandibles were nearly frothing as he grabbed up a blade with one hand and a rifle with the other. His claws clicked in anticipation as he turned to scan the chamber with his ebon compound eyes.
“I am coming for you, alien trash!” Skeer called into the waiting darkness.
Just as Skeer began to stalk back toward the hatch, one of the shelves tilted and fell toward him, pushed from behind by Rhodes. The Valgon shuffled back, the metal frame and supply crates clattering around him. Rhodes jumped up onto the collapsed heap, his tesper aimed at Skeer’s face.
“Where is he? Where’s the Althorian!” Rhodes shouted.
Krell Skeer’s mouthparts parted in a loathsome rictus. “I killed it! I ate it!” With a grunt, he kicked up his four powerful cantilevered legs and flipped the metal pile, sending Rhodes to the deck in a tuck and roll. Rhodes looked up just in time to see the Valgon pointing his plasma rifle in his direction.
Rhodes pushed off, tumbling in a clumsy series of somersaults as the gun fired. Skeer’s wild spray of blue-green plasma bolts struck the row of empty cages, leaving holes of hissing, glowing molten metal in their wake. The Commander ended up ducked behind the interrogation table, and a final plasma bolt splashed into the top of it. Skeer growled in frustration as his rifle clicked dry. He didn’t have another plasma cartridge with him, so he tossed the gun aside and brought up the scythe-like krekree blade.
Rhodes saw his opening. He leaned out from behind the table to fire his tesper, but Skeer was already leaping at him. The vicious arciform blade swept down at him, and Rhodes dove at the last millisecond as it sliced through the metal above him. Sliding on his stomach, Rhodes heard the top half of the table clang onto the floor and Skeer screaming Valgon curses at the top of his twelve-lobed lungs.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
The Valgon warrior standing guard at the lek hatch leading into the captive League ship’s air lock normally thought very little, if anything at all. But hearing the alarms screech and seeing other warriors and Malign robots rushing around made him want to join them. Surely there must be something out there to fight and kill. The threat of being disemboweled by a Krell for leaving his post was enough to keep him standing still, though.
At last, he saw his chance. There, in the deep red shadows of the passageway, coming toward him was a fat, overgrown Kenek in one of those exo-suits, dragging a tiny humanoid behind him. The ugly sauroid didn’t even have a gun with him. The Valgon guard was going to have some fun with this one.
So intent on ripping the intruders limb from limb was the Valgon warrior that he hardly heard the hatch behind him slide open.
“Over here, muckbug,” said Bretan Carson, right before he and two other Petty Officers blasted the warrior into blue-gray bloody chunks with their tespers.
Doc Martell and another medic hurried out behind them, all wearing breathing masks. Rax stopped his lumbering jog and dropped to a knee as his fellow Talisman crew members came out to meet him.
Rax, staring down at the ghastly mess that remained of the guard’s chitinous body, said between ragged breaths, “That’s a...fine welcome mat.”
Halfway back to the Talisman’s dock, Nunez startled when Sorakith appeared from around the corner. The three Pernet tailing her jumped back several body lengths. The Althorian held her hands up in peace, and Nunez lowered her tesper and sighed. “Sior, it’s alright. She’s with me,” Alisa said to the elder felinoid.
Preceptor Sior Herci stepped forward cautiously, with Zera and Meor on his heels, hunched and ready to spring away at a moment’s notice. He looked Sorakith up and down, and finally spoke. “Yes, an Althorian. You should not have come here. They take much pleasure in devouring your kind. After vivisecting them. Quite unpleasant.”
The Pernet were strikingly shorter than humans and Althorians, their gracile forms averaging about five feet tall. Sorakith nodded down at Sior, “I am most familiar with our enemy’s modus operandi, Preceptor. It is good to meet you. Thank you for saving the lives of the twin human children.”
Sior’s neon yellow irises widened. “You have them! They are safe?”
“Yes, they’re safe. Now come on, we don’t have time to talk,” Nunez pressed on.
“Commander Rhodes?” Sorakith asked.
“Oh foist it. He went that way, looking for you.”
Sorakith glanced over their shoulders, into the shadows of the merkek. “Get them back to the ship. I’ll try and find him,” Sorakith said, already running.
The krekree blade sliced through the air with tremendous speed. SES’s did a lot for their wearers, but enhancing reflexes was not their most advanced feature. The additional mass of the suits generally made them less effective for quick movements in higher G environments, and a lek essel was calibrated for the superior gravity of the Valgon homeworld.
Skeer’s weapon cleaved Rhodes’ tesper into two pieces before he could fire it at close range. As the towering Valgon tensed for the return swing, Rhodes dove sideways. The krekree missed him, slicing open space instead.
“I am the only Krell you need see, and the only one you will ever meet!” Skeer yelled as his curved sword sung through the air.
Rhodes parried the swinging blade with the exoskeleton over his right arm. It was an indirect hit, and the sharp weapon spat sparks as it glanced off of the SES. In the same swift movement, the Commander brought his SES-powered right elbow down onto the flat of the krekree sword. It cracked in two, and the broken hilt twisted out of the Valgon’s grip.
“Tired of you,” Rhodes half-whispered at his enemy. When is this damn thing going to slow down already?
Skeer launched himself with all of the force he could muster in his formidable tail and leg muscles. Rhodes’ confidence was shattered by the insane grimace of glee he recognized on the Valgon’s face, a contorted mess of sharp, black mouthparts. As the Krell flung himself at the human, an otherworldly shriek issued from the alien’s armored throat.
Rhodes was pummeled backwards and down onto the merkek’s metallic flooring, resulting in a resounding clang and a huge indentation. Guttural noises spilled from Skeer’s hideous mouth, but without Rhodes’ comm implant linked through Gulliver, there was no instant translation of the Valgon language.
“I will crush you, and suck the marrow from your brittle bones!” Skeer howled. The little human was strong in his exoskeletal suit. He was managing to hold Skeer’s claw arms at bay. They clacked loudly but uselessly as his two fingered-arms pawed and groped at the man’s suit and helmet. Skeer could see his own face reflected back at him in his enemy’s faceplate. Yes, that, he thought. He can’t breathe our air with his weak lungs!
The Valgon reached for a dagger sheathed at his side in some kind of leather scabbard. Rhodes noticed the leather’s pattern was familiar, and suddenly it dawned on him that it was the skin of a Kenek. His revulsion of Valgons increased ever more, if that was even possible.
Skeer grasped his eeskel and whipped it free of its holster. The blade was a high carbon tungsten and vanadium alloy, conically shaped but tapering to razor edges and a deadly point. The Valgon sneered wickedly as he angled the foot-long, slate gray weapon toward Rhodes’ helmet.
Rhodes realized it was no ordinary knife. An electric blue glow emanated from between the torpedo-shaped blade and the hilt, followed by a building hum.
“Die!” Skeer screamed as he pressed the inlaid trigger a
t the top of the weapon’s grip.
With superhuman reflexes generated by his SES, Rhodes lashed out with a mighty kick into Skeer’s torso as the dagger fired toward his face. At the same time, he torqued his upper body. The EM-propelled spike shot down, into the deck. Skeer yelped in pain. Rhodes had felt the Valgon’s left claw-arm pop out of joint with his kick.
With renewed rage, Skeer started to move the hilt crosswise over the human’s upper body. It would be quicker to slice the man in two using the monofilament that connected the eeskel blade to its handle.
If Reksek could see me now, Krell Skeer thought, he would be proud of me. Yes, proud of his brother!
As Rhodes struggled with the Valgon’s vigorous claw thrusts, he just barely noticed a small, ever-lengthening scratch appear in the shoulder of his left SES arm. Immediately, the shoulder actuator burst apart in a shower of sparks and Rhodes realized the alien was actually pulling a thread of monomolecular carbon nanotubes down onto him. A wire made of a single superstring molecule, it could slice through virtually anything. Even in his SES, slashing through Rhodes would be like cutting soup with a chainsaw.
The monofilament had made it all the way through the SES arm before he could even react. His suit HUD flashed warnings as he temporarily lost some pressure and atmosphere before the SES self-sealed above the shoulder. Rhodes kicked again, this time even harder, yanking down on the claw arm.
Skeer bellowed in anguish as he was launched up and away from the bastard human. As he rolled away, his eeskel blade retracted from the floor and flew back into its hilt on its monofilament.
His left claw-arm lay on the metal deck. It still twitched and spouted turquoise hemocyanic blood.
Rhodes scrambled starboard on his hands and knees, plucking his tesper from the deck as he went, and rolled behind a bulkhead for cover. His left SES arm exoskeleton hung ineffectually by his side. His suit had sealed above his shoulder using a quick-hardening polymer foam. Luckily, his left arm was his cybernetic one. Otherwise, exposure to the unaltered Valgon air that filled the common compartments of the lek, laced with dashes of arsenic and sulphuric acid, would be quite dangerous. The metal arm came with the added advantage of strength. Even without the SES’s power amplification, it was nearly as strong.
The Valgon hissed as he tumbled back to his four legs, clutching at the empty joint socket of his missing arm with one of his fingered-arms while holding his eeskel dagger out in front of him. His black eyes darted back and forth across the shadows and intermittent pools of scintillating light.
Catching his breath in the cover that the darkness afforded, Rhodes had a spare moment to actually plan. Rarely had humans engaged in hand-to-claw combat with a Valgon, and now that he had experienced it, he could mentally gauge how the big, ugly alien would react. He summoned the knowledge he had gained over his entire career and began to piece together a series of Sik’nath techniques.
Skeer could feel bile coursing through his multiple guts. His hearts pounded. With one fingered-arm he plugged the hole where his left claw-arm used to be, gray-blue blood still bubbling around the edges of thick gauze. “Show yourself, human dung-rat!” He hissed.
What an embarrassment, to be mutilated by such a weak creature! Why, humans barely rank above Yln when it comes to raw physical power!
While the Valgon fumed, Rhodes sidled slowly backward, moving along the bulkhead behind racks of barely recognizable mechanical parts. In mere seconds he would be behind the Valgon.
Skeer snarled in delight as he was at last granted some reprieve. As his sense of vision became more muted, another had grown in strength to aid him: electroreceptors, much like the jelly-filled canal pores known as ampullae of Lorenzini in many cartilaginous fish species on Earth. Once the primary sense of Valgons’ earliest ancestors, their usefulness was reduced over eons by increased reliance on eyesight for hunting on land. Despite the ampullae’s nearly vestigial presence, they still offered a much-welcomed “sixth sense” that was reliable enough in low-light conditions.
Rhodes moved swiftly, but Skeer had felt him coming. The Valgon whipped around, clapping his massive, hard-shelled tail into the human’s chest plate. Rhodes thundered into a wall of heavy equipment and instruments. As he fell to the deck, bulky metal objects crashed onto and around him.
Skeer laughed wickedly, raising his eeskel dagger and plodding toward his victim for the kill.
Rhodes pushed himself onto one side, looking up just as the Valgon rose over him. He looks like Shiva, was all he had time to think.
But before he could die, a familiar shape leapt out of the shadows, one leg half bent, the other held tight together. Sorakith struck Skeer directly between his neck plate and torso, colliding with an arrowhead shaped knee.
Sorakith bounced off of Skeer like a spring, the extra force enough to drive the large Valgon several meters back.
As Rhodes saw Skeer’s pointed eeskel dagger clatter to the floor in front of him, he knew his next play. The XO rolled forward, plucked up the eeskel with his metallic left hand, and hopped back to his feet only an arm’s length away from the Valgon.
Skeer, off-balance and flailing, couldn’t regain his bearings in time. The filthy Althorian had moved so quickly, hitting him with a blow perfectly timed. And now this—- the human scum coming at me with my own eeskel!
As Skeer’s mouthparts separated for a final, hideous screech, Rhodes rammed the dagger into the Valgon’s open maw. His cybernetic arm sunk nearly to the elbow. Skeer’s eyes shot wide open, their black depths consumed by fear and pain. Rhodes triggered the eeskel, and with an electric blue flash the blade fired through the back of Skeer’s head and neck plate. As the dagger point embedded into the bulkhead behind Skeer, Rhodes carried his arm downward, dragging the eeskel’s laser-sharp monofilament lengthwise through the Valgon’s quivering body.
Rhodes let go of the hilt as the monofilament severed his enemy completely, and it contracted to meet the blade in the wall. Skeer’s body remained standing in a grotesque upside down V shape, disemboweled and dripping gore.
The Commander just stood there, heaving, barely comprehending the sight before him. He felt a pair of steady hands latch in to his right arm and move him around. He looked to his side and was met by a familiar face. Sorakith ran a slim bronze hand over his scalp, brushing away a sheet of perspiration and blood.
“I did that,” he hacked out in between heavy breaths.
“You did. But you had to,” she comforted.
“I came to rescue you,” Rhodes said, tacking on a labored laugh.
“Where to now?”
“You were the last stop. Time to bug out of this hellhole,” said Rhodes, finally getting his wind back.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Regardless of Gulliver’s exertions in keeping the alarms localized, word had begun to spread deeper into the lek. Already, the lek’s master Krell had assembled and sent several response teams toward the merkek. Gulliver tracked them using the lek’s own sensors, a total of sixty-eight warrior-caste Valgons and almost as many Malign, in their humanoid guardian and smaller, nimbler assassin forms.
Deeply embedded in the lek’s systems, Gulliver could follow the action in a full three-dimensional view. He watched as Nunez and her small posse of Pernet neared the Talisman’s docking platform, where Petty Officer Bretan Carson waited with several other crew and medics. Gulliver also saw Commander Rhodes and Soraith, now returned to her female anatomical structure, running as fast as they could. They were still several hundred meters from the dock, and Rhodes was limping despite the support of his SES, likely due to a fractured right femur, from the looks of it.
The enemy response teams converged on their position from three sides. Firing range would be reached in twenty seconds.
Gulliver heard Rhodes shout to Sorakith over the thrumming alarms, “You go ahead! I’m slowing you down!”
Sorakith grabbed onto his bare left cybernetic arm with both of her hands and steadied him. “You weren’t going to
leave me, Gray, and I’m not leaving you,” she told him.
They place risk above trust, and affection above risk, Gulliver thought.
The scuttling, clanking sounds of the approaching Valgons and Malign reached their ears. Rhodes turned to see one of the Alliance response teams closing in on them, rushing down a straightaway, guns drawn. Several of the impish assassin Malign clawed their way ahead of the pack, upside down across the ceiling of the passageway like demonic black panthers. He remembered Rax’s near-death fighting those same forms on LM-32f. Rhodes wasn’t going to let them get their hands on Sorakith. He pushed her away, yelling “Run!”.
The XO was going to make sure he crushed a few of those bastards before they got him.
Just as the barrels of the Valgon warriors’ plasma rifles began to glow blue, a hatch in the middle of the corridor slammed shut in front of them, crunching the assassin Malign between it and the deck. Little arms and black sphere-eyes scattered over the floor. Rhodes stood there and blinked, his adrenaline rush going nowhere fast. The hatch shuddered and buckled as plasma bolts struck it from the other side.
“Huh,” Rhodes uttered as Sorakith yanked on the back of his SES and continued pulling him forward.
“It was Gulliver. Had to be,” she said. “Now come on!”
On the Talisman, Lt. Assif looked up from his holo screen and hollered, “Message from Gulliver! He’s activating the wormhole. T-minus sixty-two seconds, with a window of ten seconds.”
Lancer barked orders, “Altzen, get ready to maneuver us into the singularity. Falken, Weller, reduce shields to fifty percent and transfer all remaining power to impulse thrusters on my mark. Ming, as soon as we’re on the other side we’ll need a heading.” She paused to catch her breath, “You are all the best crew I have ever had the pleasure to work with. Whatever happens next, know that you are all heroes. Now, let’s get a little closer to home.”