by Chris Turner
Through the port window he watched side blasts of Zikri fire lapping at the tractor port, nevertheless he dragged Frue out of the air lock and struggled for the controls. He booted up Lander’s engines, reached for the ramp control to lower it again, and let the men in, but Goss, hot on his heels, slapped his hand away and nudged the blaster under his ribs. “Stand down.” Goss turned to his henchman. “Morag, get in there and fly this thing.” He motioned him to work the controls while the other grinning marine disarmed Yul, who stood stunned, his jaw sagging. Morag edged the lander out above the Albatross, leaving the three screaming men behind.
Yul fumed, cursing himself that he had let himself be taken so easily. He had underestimated the synthetic. How he himself would have loved to leave them all behind—Goss, his feral foxes, the same as they would have done to him. Frue’s life hung in the balance; he hadn’t even had time to get his helmet off.
Goss stepped over the prone man and ordered his minion to watch Yul.
Lander hovered like a bug then sped out through the tractor port, her sides scraping past the twisted screen of metal that Yul had blasted earlier. Goss’s man lifted the vessel skyward, with no small expertise. The roaring engines took it high up into the cloudless night sky, while Frue lay gasping at Yul’s feet, shivering on the floor, with greenish ice still stuck to his suit.
A blip sounded on the console.
Yul’s eyes widened, seeing the characteristic blue-grey signature of a Mark IV, emerging on the console. “Shit, Goss. Just what we need. I hope you have a plan.”
The android glared at him, roaring into his headpiece. “Lander to Lesior. Salvest, talk to me! We’ve got a Mark IV bearing down on us.” He turned to his pilot. “Get us the fuck away from here, Morag. Why’re you driving this thing so slow? It’s going to take those idiots on Lesior minutes to get down here with all the heat they have.”
Goss’s pilot, Morag, hit the controls with frustration. “I can’t. Where’s the manual override? It should be here, right here, dammit, but the controls are reconfigured. It’s as if Frue messed with it. I’ve got minimal thrust.”
Yul knew Lander, being a short range craft engineered for planet-to-ship hops, was not designed for excessive speeds, and pushing the ship’s capacity to dangerous levels wasted too much power. The override sequence was buried under layers of interfaces that perhaps only Frue knew about.
Lander had no weapons. Whoever had built that ‘feature’ into the ship’s design ought to be shot and pissed on.
A massive form appeared out of nowhere, a spiked scout Orb shimmering into existence via its advance stealth tech. To the crew’s horror, it reared up behind them like a predatory hawk.
Goss’s pilot dodged Orb fire, but one blast sent it tailspinning, klaxons shrilling and Yul heard the hiss of leaking air. “Bloody hell! Where’s your backup, Goss?”
Goss roared into his headpiece. “What’s going on up there, Salvest? Albatross’s love bug is breached, losing air. Lander is going down!” He pushed up on sliders, trying to max out Lander’s power to her shields. The move bought them precious seconds.
Frue, gasping out some monosyllables, twitched a finger, somewhat cognizant of what was going on. Yul saw through his faceplate that he was trying to say something.
Yul clawed his way forward to reach for Frue’s helmet.
“Back, you!” Goss lifted his weapon in his good hand. “I don’t trust you one bit.”
Yul snarled. “Do you want to die, Goss?” Yul crouched before Frue. Without hesitation, he tore off Frue’s helmet.
Goss motioned his weapon at his man who was ready to knee Yul in the groin. “Let him be.”
The ship rocked to a spray of a scatter bomb. Frue wheezed out some words. “Override sequence...A287....left monitor.”
“Enter it!” roared Goss.
Goss’s pilot punched the code into the monitor as another blast hit the ship.
Yul’s guard hitched forward, muttering, “Minimal shields, Goss. Another hit and we’re done for.”
“Thanks for the observation,” growled Goss. “Get back there and watch those two monkeys.”
The pilot pushed the thrust lever and the ship lurched into the planet’s upper atmosphere.
Yul saw Orb fire go wide through the viewport, but one uro blast caught Lander’s rear and the ship’s thrusters died.
The world spun dizzily around Yul as they whirled out of control. All were buffeted around the bridge.
Goss’s backup flagship, the Lesior, came roaring in on a sharp tangent, its landing bay port opening wide. Shots came from its lateral rear cannon to strike the invading Orb dead centre. Morag desperately struggled with the top-spinning ship. While it rolled and buffeted, clamps from Lesior rocketed out to latch onto the smoking hull.
Lander reeled and the cables wound them in and the hatch closed. Goss screamed into his helm: “Lesior, finish off that shitball Orb!”
The captain of Lesior acknowledged. Zikri shields had saved it from the last blast, but it was flaring red. Lesior, with her superior impulse manoeuvrability, drove toward the Orb, arched up and over it and sent two ion-cloud missiles firing from port.
The projectiles connected dead right, knocking out all transmission towers. A gigantic explosion filled the sky. The Lesior flew through the flames and wreckage; super-charged debris shuddered off its electro-shields.
Yul squinted in the glare of Lander’s viewscreen. Several tiny blips registered on the horizon, as the Lesior lifted past Phebis’s exosphere.
Then his vision clouded. A Zikri armada was out there. A wave of dread seized him: an ungovernable fear that the Zikri would make them lab specimens in their tanks. And yet some consolation that the cursed samples would be lost forever under threat of such a force.
“Engage hyperthrust,” growled Goss. “Salvest, get us the fuck out of here!”
“Aye, Commander.”
Salvest took the ship into a wash of trans-light haze; it disappeared in a flash of blue, just as the vanguard fleet of Orbs came pulsing out of light drive like digital wasps, uro bombs loosed like fireflies, only milliseconds from impact.
Goss banged his fist on the console. “They’ll never catch us.”
“You’d better hope they don’t,” Yul said.
* * *
An hour later Yul stood in the Lesior’s detention room, stripped and sullen. Frue hunched beside him, shivering, his face a ghostly mask, weak as a lamb.
“Search their persons.”
While one of the guards covered them with blasters, the other hastened to comply.
Goss examined the blackened, grime-faced men with distaste.
He levelled a look at Yul that would take down a building. Walking over, he knuckled him across the face with his good fist.
Yul stared defiantly back at him, his lip bleeding, wiping the trail of crimson away.
“Let’s see. Destruction of an SC 34-6. Jeopardizing an important salvage and rescue operation. Failing to protect and the wilful bombing of a state-of-the-art Vegas-U6 explorer, making unwise decisions leading to its ultimate loss. Up to your neck, I’d say.” He nursed his stub of a forearm, hissing breath through his teeth.
Goss’s communicator sounded and he snatched at it impatiently. “Yeah, Goss, here.”
“Any indigenous life forms recovered?”
“Nada,” replied Goss.
“Bring them in,” growled the voice which Yul recognized as Mathias’s. “They have much to answer for.”
“Roger that.” Goss scowled. “We have only this bulb we found cached in Vrean’s suit. Think he was concealing it. Might be one of the pods of the creatures that attacked us on the bridge.
A pregnant silence pervaded the room. “Bring it to me with all possible speed.” The connection went dead.
Yul ground his teeth. God help the world that those damn pods had not stayed on the ship. Why were they on him? One must have inserted itself into his suit pocket when he was rolling about the Albatross f
loor fighting Zikri. He wished they’d all burned. The pods, Goss and his motley crew, and all of Mathias’s cursed expedition could go to hell.
* * *
Subcommander Krin, garbed in air mask and nozzle, watched the lander take off with a mixture of disgust and frustration. His squid-like face rippled with apprehension, emotions too complex for even a Zikri to process. The events played through his mind in a savage blur, as he struggled to pinpoint where he had gone wrong: his arrival just moments too late after his scouts had been scouring the lower levels searching for the intruder, following the incident in the main specimen room. His gliding in to investigate, only to find the place a shambles and the warning buzzer blaring.
A strange thing, all those tanks, and bodies strewn about like kibble from a starving pup’s maw, and that strange butterfly gliding about the air like some commandant. How it killed Rarl, his number one field officer, when he had reached up to apprehend it, was unexpected. The insect had carved razor-sharp wings through Rarl’s probing tentacles like a butcher’s knife, then doubled back to cut his throat, slicing a deep line through glottalus and epithermial... Poor fool’s innards had spilled out like mash before he had a chance to catch them as another pass sliced a thin line along the abdomen. He and his squad had been unable to seal the chamber completely. Let the practiced forensic team take care of it, Krin thought. Explosions had sounded from above and they had been forced to move.
And yet, several mysteries remained.
When the cold air had pushed in from outside, he and his soldiers had grabbed masks. The freezing air had not affected them unduly, Zikri bodies being more resilient than those of humans. The four humans whom the retreating ship had left behind had been a serious error on the part of the invading team. But why had they left them? It seemed stupid.
How they squealed like young Zikri pups upon being caught in his scouts’ tentacles! Two of them stared out from tanks in the torture room like dead fish. The others had died earlier, scrabbling for their weapons too late.
During the interrogations, a name had come up. A certain ‘Mathias’ of ‘Cybernetics Corp’. The primitive translator module he had commandeered from the Orb’s bridge had identified the human-speak as a business mogul on a world called Phallanor. The human was owner of a galactic robotics firm, which partially explained the mission to the Dim Zone, certainly the financing, but not the purpose. What a cybernetics’ mogul would want with plants still mystified Krin. Krake, his superior, had put ships on high alert for this ‘Mathias’ and he had little doubt Zikri intelligence would track the suspects before long.
Krin paused, considering another thread of events: stealth Orbs landing on the moon, laden with welcome reinforcements and murderous intentions. The Orb, deemed ‘unsafe’, to be thoroughly investigated in due time. The hull breached and all breathable air sucked out. Systems might have been damaged with the onrush of cold air and the resultant temperature drop. The ship would remain where it was, not considered space-worthy. But Krake had ordered a contingent of guards assigned to ensure the Orb was not pillaged by scavengers. Without a doubt, the Zikri were masters of the art.
Meanwhile, the Zikri fleet was in the air, ready to execute Krake’s plan. Krake and his superiors were in savage moods. The humans had slipped away—but they would not escape for long. Krake had made it sufficiently clear to Krin that there would be no rest for him until all the humans had been apprehended.
Krin mused upon the fact. The human they referred to as Yul would not escape. He had his honour to uphold. Zikri code demanded an exact reckoning. So would it be, even if it went badly for him.
Krin scratched the blue-grey scar on his neck, a large oval gash, which always throbbed in moments of stress or panic. The wound was the size of a tentacle width. He recalled the mark ever since the coming of age ceremony when he’d had to prove himself against another young pup. The event was coloured with triumph rather than pain, him suffering terribly, of course, but so had the other, bearing grievous wounds.
His impressive musculature rippled as he shifted position, the tissue extending from shoulder to mid tentacles. Another distinguishing mark on his lower scaly leg, denoted an old wound that had never completely healed, grey-scarred now. It ran several inches from what would be considered knee downward. If he had any weakness, it was that, which limited his speed and dexterity. But coupled with his training on the harsh, Zikri-conquered world Vyan-Ry from an early age, it was relatively insignificant.
Krin shook his head and resolved himself to a course of simple vengeance upon this human. To dwell upon the matter was a waste of time. Other pressing concerns lingered and he would punish the desecrators of the Orb, or would die in the attempt.
The alien plant ring that had gripped his minion Dax earlier was still an enigma. Another specimen with similar red and yellow bands had latched onto Rok’s left motilator and the tentacle was raw and rosy with constriction. Nothing could get it off, even after he had rigged winches and applied manacles taken from the bridge to pry it off. Short of amputating the whole tentacle, which Rok was loath to allow, it seemed hopeless. In fact, the thing had struck back with an acidic spray from jets in its fern-like outerbody that blinded any Zikri attempting to excise it, also severely burned their skin. It seemed the ring considered Rok its host and did not want to relinquish its perceived stable habitat. Barbed suckers pried into Rok’s flesh and fed off it in some bio-chemical way. If it were a symbiotic relationship, Rok certainly did not appear to enjoy the experience. Should anyone try to attack the ring or even menace its victim, pulling his tentacle to get the ring off, the thing would fight back with a vengeance, lash out with caustic fluids or inflict further woe upon Rok. It had been most interesting to watch, though grisly. An odd, almost intriguing arrangement, yet death was Rok’s fate unless there was some way he could get that parasite off.
Nothing would end well for any of them, especially if, as the surviving officer in charge of the Mzigji Orb, he did not punish the offending humans.
Krin’s mouth curled. The other human, wandering about, had fought wildly yet stupidly in the Mentera tank room. In the end to join the predatory hedrax en route to the ring station. A vicious creature, this whale-like beast, at best a grisly showpiece, not to be trifled with. Let the Mentera do what they would with such grotesques.
Krin snapped out of his dark reverie at the sound of Krake’s brittle voice. He was back again in the dark conference hall aboard the Wikrik, the spike-runner, Krake’s warrior Orb heading toward the Zikri-Mentera alliance space hub orbiting Kraetoria. A number of Zikri were present, including Krake’s closest aides and his superior, Mrupuk, the old butcherer.
Krake looked down with contempt upon Krin, after claiming Krin’s human prisoners as his own.
“Because you have failed to protect our customs and ships, you should be put to death. But since you have brought me these humans, I have reconsidered the death penalty. I will give you a ship and one last chance to exact revenge. Do not fail me, subcommander.” He chittered the last words with a sneer in front of his senior Mrupuk. “I give you the task of bringing me back a hundred human prisoners or more during your assigned mission.”
Krin bowed, stunned at his good fortune. Even before the Orb had come to pick them up on the moon Urknu, he thought he had been as good as dead.
“You will be under Vngbrug’s supervision, of course. A trusted gurkuk of mine. If there is any difference of opinion, the gurkuk, my eyes and ears, will prevail. Vngbrug kills on the spot anyone exhibiting disobedience.”
Vngbrug quivered, bowing slightly with a twitch of fore-tentacle. Smaller of frame, he sported a white splotch on the left size of his wizened face, similar to the colour of his top left tentacle, completely albino, which Krin presumed was a congenital defect.
Krin bowed.
“At ease, Krin.” Krake made a conciliatory movement. “Continue where you left off. Use Vngbrug’s talents. Round up these skurg who have cost us dearly and remain alive.”
Krin gave a chitter of brisk acknowledgement. At once he sped down the hall with a fresh lease on life, with Vngbrug matching his stride and his newly assigned crew members, Kral, Vryk, Dax, Bral and six others close behind.
Krin was back in his element. His features twisted in a cruel grin.
Chapter 4
Phallanor, a hub amongst the free colonies as far as planetary commercial centres went, came up fast on the Lesior’s sensors. The most influential and powerful galactic companies set up shop there, or at least held a presence. The major city centre shone like an emerald circuitboard over the rolling landscape as the ship streamed down toward her skyline. With her bustling air highways, a population of 23 million, and a network of junctions to outlying communities, traffic was not as diverse as could have been: air taxis, long and short range shuttles, cargo vessels offworld and domestic, from the sleek and daring retro-fit to the rustbuckets of earlier generations that were the mark of the space explorer age. Noticeably, the tall super towers pushed high their steel and chrome pinnacles into the cumulus clouds. Phallanor City was the super metropolis of this sector of the galactic worlds.
Banking low, the Lesior finally docked on top of the Cybernetics Tower #1. No sooner had the engines died than Goss shuttled Yul and Frue out at gunpoint, down the landing pad into the reception bay where a detail of marines took the prisoners into custody. Goss conveyed the precious ‘pod’ to Mathias while the marines forced Yul and Frue to cool their heels in the White Room, as Goss called it—a windowless, padded detention hall.
Yul was in a sour mood as he paced the spartan confines. His body ached and his guts growled with hunger. When was the last time he had eaten? Aboard the Albatross, synthetic mash with the late Regers. Frue’s droning mumbling had begun to wear on him...
* * *
Yul looked up from his stiff crouch a day and a half later to see Goss’s pug-nosed visage emerge through the locked door with three of his marines, all bearing arms. Arguing with the cyborg or cursing him was useless; Yul did not waste his breath. He opted for a surly silence.