by Chris Turner
Hundreds of warships prowled the vicinity like a swarm of bees, the hive being the hub centred around the partly ruined Mentera ring station and the Zikri megaorb Vixlis—the two like an eye of a swirling galaxy, a floating stronghold in space, an ark of terror. It had been centuries since the Zikri had centralized their power, otherwise they had operated as regional marauders ravishing their territory and collecting their spoils like the outlaw barons of old. United under a new leader, the upstart Nrog, a ruthless tyrant, if not an ambitious visionary who saw the Mentera as the springboard to the Zikri manifest destiny, ultimate rulers of the galaxy, they were a force to be reckoned with.
Krin had yet to meet this Nrog. Veteran Zikri had reported Nrog as being ‘intimidating’, ‘indomitable’, and they felt dwarfed, sucked dry in his presence, as if the leader absorbed their very energy through the air. He must be down there somewhere amongst those masses of ships, plotting, rousing Zikri to fight for him, thought Krin who would relish an audience with the warlord.
A forked formation of protector Orbs guarding the inner ‘gate’ parted now to allow Krake’s ship to pass through to the Mentera base station. No chances were being taken after the last ambush.
“Nrog has plans for us,” said Krake. “An invasion that will set the human colonies on their heels forever. We must be ready. Many opportunities are to be had.”
* * *
On the Mentera space station, Krin and Krake walked the long metal walkways through an impossibly high-ceilinged corridor. A detail of Krake’s ranged behind them, drawing their human spoils in tanks on wheeled carts. To the side gaped an empty blue-black space, plunging below into the bowels of the ship. To where those boundless gulfs led, hundreds of feet below, Krin could barely guess, but he had heard of some larger weave of trapped organisms in the vessel’s core, and some sinister power that drove it. A soup bowl of souls. The same that drove the locusts’ life support systems.
Much activity ranged around Krin and his lord. Large, Zikri-sized locusts with wings long fused to their dark chitinous bodies walked on their hind legs or drove aphid-shaped carts filled with goods, supplies or members of their own kind to unknown destinations within the alien ship. Some clacked their way down dim side corridors, with their antennae twitching, or ascended to levels that spanned above. Krin saw other walkways and substructures arched across those vast spaces.
They came upon the rows of tanks spread to the sides and Krin peered curiously. Rows upon rows of transparent glass containers gleaming in the eerie light, resplendent in their greenish liquid and horrid living contents. While Krake’s servants ushered their haul forth on mechanized drays, a dozen more tanks with human occupants, Krin entertained little doubt that these victims of the Cybernetics Corp raid would slake the Mentera’s lust for sustenance. Others possibly to power their insidious amalgamators, a light drive system of its own, which allowed them to pop up anywhere between sets of parallel plates like ghouls. Perhaps such hapless souls powered their entire space station for all he knew.
Consul Jnedz approached with a translator box clutched in a pincered claw. With his insectoid face carved in an expressionless grin, he was a smallish specimen rising only neck high to Krake, slightly lower on Krin, hunched on splayed hind legs like a repentant mantis, his left pincer glinting with impressive jewels. But the red eyes stared unblinking, black antennae twitching, unnerving even the taller Zikri, his plated skull gleaming in the otherworldly light like a sinister beacon.
After a desultory introduction, Krake conversed with Jnedz, and Krin waited patiently off to the side, dutiful in his deference to his betters who discussed matters beyond his authority. He took time to study the tanks and their gape-eyed victims. Strange tubes extended from the stoppered plugs on the glass tops, which the locusts inserted in their navels to refuel. Several did so now, either kneeling or sitting next to a tank, hooked from navel to tank in symbiosis with a human or animal organism trapped within the greenish brine. The humans hunched within like toads, much to Krin’s disgust. Everything pulsed with a sickening green glow. The storage and feeding chamber was enormous, a steel-plated dome that ran hundreds of feet upward into a plum-coloured murk. He would be anxious to quit this living mausoleum, return to his own ship and resume his hunt for the renegade human.
Krake glided over to Krin somewhat pleased. There was a flush to his grey cheeks, a buoyancy to his step.
“Your intuition was well-founded in returning to the base. The prisoners were well-received by Consul Jnedz. Along with the timing of the delivery of the colonists, it has cemented positive relations between our two nations and has given us more clout in our negotiations. The Mentera will go out of their way to support us and to expand our reach by tipping us off to more vessels and colonies, easy prey to Zikri rapine.”
Krake reached out a tentacle to touch Krin’s cheek. “You have done well, Krin. I will make note of this at your indenture hearing coming up before the Tribunal presided over by Admiral Nrog in the next moon.”
Krin raised a tip of his own tentacle, suppressing a sly smirk.
“Nrog will make us strong,” uttered Krake. “The joint invasion will create a new order in the universe, one which will even set the Mentera reeling with trembling hearts!”
Krake’s communicator sounded and he grasped it in a tightly-coiled tentacle, answering it with a chitter. His face turned grim. He hung up, turned a cold, reptilian glance upon Krin. “It seems a certain package was discovered on your ship. In a hidden place. The ship I loaned you. It was a human in a tank.”
A knot of icy fear gripped Krin’s guts. He jerked himself upright.
Krake raised a tentacle upward, a signal for his escort to apprehend the subcommander.
Krin instinctively grabbed Krake’s two upper motilators. He pulled him in close, unleashed his most savage strength. Taken by surprise, Krake lurched back, quivering in agony, fighting the unrelenting grip which threatened to tear him apart. His eyes bulged and Krin heard Krake’s upper cartilage snap as tendons ripped and what might have been bone. A dozen angry memories of being humiliated before his superior flooded his mind as he clutched his tormentor. Krake’s choking gasp was the last thing he heard spraying from his gullet before Krin hurled him into the abyss that dropped to the side. Krin watched the flailing body plunging below into the blue-blackness.
Krake’s Zikri escort paused stunned, then charged with wild chitterings. But Jnedz’s locusts stepped forward and held them back, threatening them with their lumo sticks. Two of the loyal Zikri were brave enough to charge the line, only to fall in sizzling, smoking heaps as the Consul’s guards opened fire.
Jnedz clattered over, breathless, his clicking voice a blemish on the sudden silence. Instantly the locust seemed to grasp the gist of what had happened and his beady red eyes narrowed on Krin. “Where is ambassador Krake?” his voice rang over the translator. “Dear me, Subcommander, it seems as if you have done something rash. I think you are in serious trouble here.”
Krin brainstormed ways of handling this predicament in a diplomatic way. A daring strategy began to form in his head. “So are you, Consul. How ill do you think it will go for you when Admiral Nrog hears about this outrage, how Krake died on your watch, under your protection?” Krin paused, watching the Consul’s reaction which was startled at best. “But it doesn’t have to be like that.”
Jnedz blinked, surprised but not cowed. “What do you propose?”
“Let me take command of Krake’s ship. I will cover this fiasco up, take his starship a hundred light years from here and dispose of his crew. These Zikri of Krake’s, your locusts can take to the tanks.”
Three of Krake’s Zikri lunged and another fell to the lumo-sticks of the locusts. The others backed off, chittering.
The Consul considered the proposal. “It’s not exactly a fair trade. The assassination of your superior is a treasonous offence. What else do you have to offer?”
Krin’s mind spun. With a new ship, he had an unlimited reach
. Let him sweeten the pot, as a safeguard—in case Jnedz backed out of the deal and doublecrossed him. An image formed in his mind, of the humans he could prey upon on the many cybernetic labs of the human Mathias. “I will lead you to a goldmine of human souls. Would that be a fair bargain?”
Chapter 7
The corridor arched through the gloom with service piping running across the ceiling, giving off a faint hum, as if carrying coolant or heating fluid, perhaps oxygen. Yul stared, moving up the hall, Cloye ahead of him. Black power cables ran alongside the pipes, thick enough to carry significant wattage. They were in some off-limits service area. Anything could happen.
Some minutes passed and they came to a large chamber, squarish in shape, dim of light. A dead end? Only a heavy door with red bars blocked access to a chamber at the far side. To reach that they must cross the chamber, but the room, while empty, seemed slightly suspicious to Yul’s eye. He thought to make out a tiny pinprick of red light or a motion detector set on the wall to one side. Cloye moved toward the door, but Yul held her back, pointing to the sensor.
With caution, he stepped across the invisible line that cast a tight beam from left wall to right. He smiled, only to feel a ripple of pain course through his nerves from spine to toe.
Damn that Mathias! He had fired the nanoparticles in his blood with his pain dispenser. Even as he lifted his foot to make the next step, he could not keep his balance or stop himself from triggering the alarm.
A sudden wallop of sound jolted from the leftmost wall, machinery moving with a thumping electric whine. The wall pushed toward them, sweeping them aside into another dim chamber whose right wall had vanished to grant them access.
“Get back!” Yul cried, reaching for his weapon. But it was too late.
Rolling, he raised his blaster to take out two anthropomorphic shapes leaping out at him. Mechnobots. They sported four wavering arms not dissimilar to Zikri invaders. But could it be? “What the shit—?”
He cursed Mathias’s ill timing. The chamber had sealed itself. A row of the monsters with gruesome faces and mechno bodies glided forth to replace the others he had blasted.
Cloye let out a yell that sent echoes reverberating as she loosed waves of blaster fire into the moving murk, severing heads from torsos.
Yul whirled about. From the smoking corpses emerged something hideous. What in the name of—? Stringed masses propelled by mysterious means reached out wavering feelers. One of the glistening ropes whipped out and latched onto his blaster, jerking it out of his grasp. He leaped aside, gaping as another tough cord coiled on to his mechanized wrist. He pulled free, found his weapon coated with a foul-smelling grease. Another jerked toward Cloye, tripping her.
No sooner had it descended upon her than she tore her arm free from the strangling creepers, raking them with the side of her blaster. She clawed for the fire button but it refused to function. Her weapon was now coated with more of the substance to which Yul had fallen prey. That weapon too was wrenched out of her grip as a stringy mass pinioned her wrist.
The room was alive with the writhing shapes. Jellyfish-like streamers flowered from all angles. The last Zikri bots stood like wraiths, staring hollowly. Why didn’t they kill them outright? Feeling he was fighting a hopeless battle, he broke from the oily masses and crashed his whole weight into the creature that was restraining Cloye. Surprisingly, it went limp on contact and became a lifeless heap.
The floor fell through. He and Cloye thudded onto a hard surface. He looked up. The Zikri bots and stringed monsters were gone. Yul stared in confusion. A trick? Some virtual reality mind bend? Glass partitions now came tumbling down from on high, trapping them in a maze. He saw Cloye’s reflection mirrored in the glass—three of her, staring glazed-eyed, her fingers pressed to the clear barrier. Yul snatched at his blaster which had fallen with him.
He raced toward her and smashed head-first into an invisible wall. He fell back, momentarily stunned, then turned left down another narrow passage. Another transparent wall came down, blocking his path. He grunted, aimed his blaster, and fired. The red flare from his gun ricocheted off the peculiar barrier, nearly taking his head off before he could duck.
“Shit! What is this house of horrors?”
The right wall disappeared and the opposite wall pushed him toward where the other wall had been. He blinked in amazement as he staggered out into a huge, fluorescent-lit chamber. The place was a beehive of activity. Fifty or more scientists, a mix of men and women of various ages, worked diligently at tables and workstations, garbed in lab coats. Cloye lay panting behind him. The moving wall which had pushed them out had stopped and merged seamlessly with the spacious chamber’s wall.
A stocky, middle-aged man stood well back, regarding Yul with rising curiosity. There was a trace of admiration on his features, which quickly faded. The man had a dark complexion, curly brown hair and piercing gold eyes. He wore an immaculate, pressed blue lab coat, black shoes and thick glasses, which he pushed high upon his nose as he hitched himself forward with interest. Others, no less than eight who looked like hitmen, lingered at the sidelines of this huge room, hefting E1’s.
“I see you ran afoul of my testing chamber,” the man said. “It’s a combination defence, security and testing entry to my lab. I get a little absorbed while making my observations. Your scores are high, granted.”
Yul wanted to reach out and strangle him. “Test for what?” Blasters came up to his chest as he moved forward to seize the man.
“The Zikri bots test your reflexes. The glass maze tests your loyalty to each other. The stringy horrors test your resistance to fear and willingness to engage repulsiveness. I have yet to test for stamina and creativity, but for now these suffice to assess potential recruits, or shall I say ‘enemies’, for weaknesses and strengths.”
One of the security officers, a blond man with a scruffy beard, beckoned for their weapons.
Yul held on to his, pondered a rash escape, a flurry of fire, but he suspected he and Cloye would be cut down.
“I sense you are irked about the Zikri counterparts,” the man said. He sighed. “Strikes a sensitive spot? I can explain. We captured a few Zikri on nearby worlds and I modelled some of my guardian bots on their unique physiology. They are prototypes only—fitting that we tested our machines on my obstacle course. It seems you have had the privilege of surviving them.”
Yul glowered at the man. Was this Hresh? When would he see the end of these nutcases?
“I forgot to introduce myself.” The man eyed Cloye with amusement, her chest heaving as she struggled to her feet. “I am Sigmund Hresh, chief roboticist and owner of Sybcore Technologies.”
“Who the fuck cares?” muttered Cloye.
Hresh’s brows rose, his forehead crinkling. He blinked through those thick glasses of his. “A hearty welcome to you too, Lady Kasan.” He turned to Yul. “And you, Mr. Vrean. What a pleasure.”
Yul, startled, frowned. The man knew their last names too?
Hresh seemed to take delight in Yul’s confusion. “I knew you were aboard my terraformer when the nano-particle detector sounded. I tracked you.” He pulled up a blinking image of a wire-frame figure on a terminal. “Are you surprised? I designed the implant Mathias touts as his own and that he shoved in your blood stream. I can trace their signatures. A quick hack into his technical database and your name came up. Cloye, I know you are a well-known hired mercenary, a skilled assassin.”
She dipped her head in a mocking bow. “Now that we’ve cleared all that up, how about a little lighter on the artillery, Hresh?” She jerked an elbow at the men with the unsmiling faces and the automatic rifles.
“I think not,” murmured the scientist. He motioned to his security team and they took Yul’s weapon and reached to bind his wrists behind his back. But Hresh shook his head.
“Don’t I get special treatment too?” mocked Cloye.
“For now, no. Weapon, please.” He held out a hand.
Yul studied his surroundi
ngs. On a long, low metal dais rested a large glass case shaped like a submarine. Floating bulbs the size of potatoes bobbed inside the space, a sealed vacuum, Yul guessed. The light, brownish objects seemed to be flying around of their own accord, without stimulus or provocation. The whole apparatus looked like something out of an eerie science centre display, or some fiendish school science fair exhibit.
The visual monitor connected with wires and electrodes attached to the glass’s surface lit up in strange colours. A spike appeared on a 3D graph whenever any of the objects touched or even glanced off the sides.
“You seem interested in my exhibit,” Hresh said amusedly.
“Let me guess, the Biogron?” croaked Yul.
Hresh clapped his hands in delight. “You are informed. And I thought you were just some boorish bully boy. Only a handful of people in the galaxy have heard that name.”
Yul shrugged. “Thank Mathias.”
Hresh croaked out the word, as if it were a hated thing. “Mathias. It seems he and I see different futures for my invention. After all, I built it. Why should I not govern its fate?”
“Mathias trusted you to finish the job while on payroll,” said Yul.
Hresh chortled, a cruel laugh. “Trusted? What does that mean in today’s world? Here today, gone tomorrow. A trusted friend, a talking head that says good morning, hope you are having a nice day, all the expected pleasantries, then sinks the fangs in. If you knew what ruthless deals Mathias masterminded, how he bullied his way to the top, you would be not be as sympathetic to his cause.”
“Trust me, you’re preaching to the choir, Hresh. I’m only a hired gun. On a mission that went awry.”
“So I gather. How much did he pay you? 1000 credits? Cheap bastard. Whatever he paid you, I can double it.”