Alien Alliance Box Set

by Chris Turner

  How Krin dragged himself those hundreds of yards through the human corridors was beyond him. His emergency mask dangled even further from his cheek, only half covering his bruised mouth, as he chittered in anguish in various stages of delirium. Finally he was at the hangar and through the damaged air lock. The erstwhile Krake’s Orb had gone, taken away by the Mentera with their trove of humans from the research facility. His smaller Orb lay on its side with a gaping hole, defunct, shot down by the research team’s counter-defences.

  Where the human machine that had crippled him was, he did not know, nor did he care at this moment. He crawled with grief amongst the wreckage of bodies closer to his ship, his mausoleum. No time to get to the Mentera tanks that could rejuvenate his ravaged and broken body, he was bleeding out too fast.

  The last thing Krin saw was the mechanical juggernaut looming over him, gazing with certain ‘curiosity’. Twitching bodies of Mentera lay crushed under its mechanical feet as it staggered closer. Just as suddenly came a sound of fluttering over his shoulder. The pod-birthed-dragonfly flew through a jagged gap in the avatar’s metallic breast and Krin glimpsed through the smoking hole in his ship’s side, Mathias’s tank, and he understood...

  That three beings from far-off worlds were inextricably linked by fate, all brought to a tragic end.

  * * *

  The dragonfly observed all this as it flew out of its breach in the Biogron’s glass. The atmosphere of this strange world did not seem to affect its peculiar bodily functions. Its physiology was made for adapting to constantly changing situations and conditions of its existence: atmospheric, climatic, physical. That and chemical shock or physical imprisonment were its banes and strength-givers. Such was the nature of the creature’s survival mechanisms. As its mechanical exoshell smoked and sizzled in the blood and flesh of Zikri at its feet, the dragonfly adapted again. An insight dawned in its agile brain. Flying with fervour back into its armadillo shell, it reached out to state-of-the-art circuits made available by the Biogron. The avatar twitched its ears, lowered its horn in response, while the dragonfly continued to send more pulses to heal its mechno-circuits and its outer wounds and urge its battered, plated form forward across the ruin of bodies closer to the Zikri ship that held Mathias.

  The dragonfly realized it could fly free of its glass case at will, or it could fly back into the Biogron casing and use its protective armadillo armour when it needed to—like a virtual mechanical god.

  As the creature of Hresh’s creation lay there smoking in the sallow murk now lightening before the alien dawn, its robot eyes sighted on the multiple forms of Mentera and Zikri corpses, the sizzling clumps of jagged metal and twisted wreckage, and it sensed a perfect utopian stasis: a harvest of corpses in a peaceful graveyard of eternity, its for the taking, and it, the sole lord of its domain.

  Chapter 11

  Life had taken an unfortunate turn for Regers—if such euphemism could be applied. Left to his own resources, he was to die in the most lonely, hellish manner possible, abandoned by his own crew to the tentacles of the Zikri.

  As he lay choking in the cold, oxygen-deprived air pouring in from the desolate moon through the Orb’s breached hull, it was the dead bodies of the marines that saved him. Several of their suits were nearly intact and the adhesive that Yul had ‘kindly’ left behind had served to repair one he had exchanged for his own. Regers had used Hurd’s oxygen mask during that grim melee, knowing the sod wouldn’t mind, suffering while he sucked air and jerked about, freezing in the cold as the room slowly warmed up. By the time he had loped back to the hold, Lander was gone and Mathias’s mop-up crew had left without him. The fuckers.

  Regers had slumped on his knees, praying for death, with the big eerie dragonfly following him everywhere about like a mariner’s albatross. Now the thing was more a dragonfly than a butterfly since it had grown: a thing of horror and majesty with its tapered, chitinous body and lethal, furious wings.

  Regers would never forget the fact that Yul had left him to die there in a swamp pool of scum, of body parts, feral aliens and the cuckoo bird-butterfly. In the end, the creature had been his saviour. It considered him part of its environment, a necessary fixture to protect, and it would protect him at all costs, even against the ruthless Zikri.

  Regers worked the muscles of his disfigured cheeks, arms, his left hand mauled horribly by the heptadoria. His warped soul was cut even deeper. Regers knew he was a survivor. He had not gotten to where he was by luck alone. Where all had died, he had survived. Outlived team members, gang members, friends, foes, family, even Sama... poor Sama, his vibrant young wife who had died much younger than she should have. His body ached beyond words after spilling out of that locust tank, even though the greenish water had supplied a healing power which he could not explain. His body had been repaired—to a degree. In the unlikely case he made it to a medical institute, a prosthetic unit could replace most of his former hand. Maybe he could appeal to his cybernetics freak Mathias, for some new limbs. This was a dark irony, not wasted upon Regers.

  By scrubbing furiously, Regers had only partially succeeded in removing the white chalky substance that caked his skin. It appeared to be some sort of resin or effluvia the heptadoria had jetted out as an excrement, or some foul ejaculation of fluid and flakes to defend itself much as an octopus would, squirting ink in times of trouble.

  Regers would hunt the bastard Yul down until the debt was paid, discharged in full... This one savoury thought had kept him alive during these hellish trials and would continue to while his plan gathered momentum...

  None had come to investigate the Orb until now. He had self-nourished, jumping back in an unoccupied tank to heal in the magic liquid. Everything had healed except his left hand. That was beyond repair, gone forever. No infection, no fever, just a throbbing agony as the cells multiplied and the ragged skin layers knit together. Angry raw scabbed flesh where normally his wrist would have been, formed at an unprecedented rate. It ached like a bitch, but he’d live.

  The dragonfly had protected him, followed him wherever he went as he nosed his way around the ship. Once, twice, before self-nourishing he had managed to secure the door to the tank room before the thing could slip through. Then, he could hear it banging its iron-hard head against the metal, trying to get out, to get to him. It was as if the thing couldn’t stand the possibility of being without him. Regers cringed, shivering at the memory. Birthed with him in the Mentera tank, its place of entry into the world, it had seemingly identified him as a ‘guardian’, a stable force in its habitat, the dumb fuck thing. He guessed he was something of a mother or father to it. In the end he had had to trap it in an adjoining chamber. But soon enough he would have to return to that hellish room containing the bodies to get nourishment.

  The starship Albatross was crippled. One of the captured lightfighters in the Zikri hold might have given him passage off this loathsome world, if the main drive hadn’t been blown out by a uro bomb. The other...well, at best it could operate with some repair and maybe his rudimentary flying skills. But a big if. The Orb—forget it—it was breached and crawling with Zikri once again, guards he guessed to protect it from scavengers. Even if he took off on impulse power, it would be tracked or flagged by other warships and gunned down.

  Regers had explored the seemingly endless adjoining rooms and found hundreds of victims in the gruesome tanks. The resultant spoils of countless raids, they floated and bobbed in their greenish aquaria. The eerie ghastliness never failed to send chills up Regers’ spine. The machine parts of the raids were probably shipped to Zikri bases around the galaxy, which explained the hold’s relative emptiness at this time, whereas the humans had not been passed to the Mentera—yet. For this reason the ship would still be important to the Zikri. They would return with even more squids...and soon enough. With this in mind, Regers worked hard and fast. He had been spared an agonizing demise thus far by perverse fate alone. He did not want to push that luck. Freedom was his...for the moment...and th
ere would be hell to pay when he was mobile...starting with that fucker Yul who had left him there to die in the tank room. Mathias would also be due a reckoning.

  He had managed to seal himself off from the Zikri invaders by working the self-locking control to the door of the main Zikri tank room bordering the hall. The dragonfly had provided the rest of his backup. It had been fascinating to watch, as the insect sprayed toxic stuff more deadly than acid on the tentacled guards sent to protect the valuable cargo from looters. In a daydream reverie, he had recalled it cutting them to shreds with its fabulous wings. Such a wild instrument of death. Beauty in motion!

  Regers named it ‘Shredder’, his pet dragonfly. He could hear it banging now against the sheeted metal, trapped in the adjoining room where he had last lured it.

  In his requisitioned suit, Regers prowled about a new room of tanks, a hundred, maybe two hundred of them, whistling happily, moodily to himself... The time was ripe for action and he was the maverick who would pull it off. Finally, something of a large enough pool for his purpose. He had managed to seal the chamber, all monstrously dark and dripping, and the Orb’s working systems brought breathable air back into the room. This was something he had experimented with earlier. For backup, he had dragged in ten suits by the leg, with painstaking effort given his chewed off hand, suits formerly occupied by Mathias’s dead, ‘mop-up’ mission crew, the sods. Well, five to be exact. The other five he could not separate from their grey garb, they were so badly mangled.

  He picked several fresh tanks with human contents and marked them with some of the white stuff that still coated his skin. He had to be sure, and nothing like good old intuition for picking subjects which he had in spades. There were some women too, choice pieces of ass, but alas, practicality must prevail over pleasure, and they looked too traumatized for the use he had in mind. He used his E1 like a sledgehammer to smash the tanks he had chosen. Glass shattered; green water gushed out, the victims flowing with it.

  While he whipped about smashing tanks, he conducted mock colloquy with himself, calling out the attributes of the men he had chosen, brawny physique, defiant looks, glares of roguish cunning.

  “Regers, dear, Regers, why not just pull the trigger and blast these poor wretches out of their jars, do it the easy way?”

  In answer, he jumped over to the spot of the imaginary figure he talked to. “As a matter of fact, Mister-in-the-Tank, it’s more fun this way.”

  He moved on past one of the tanks previously marked with white chalk, peered with a frown at one who looked too pedantic, easily intimidated, skipped it, moved on to another. Yes, he liked this one. The man had a perpetual leer.

  He took his time, smashed the glass of the second last tank, and sat back to watch. He amused himself, eyeing the goggling antics of figures coming out of their watery hibernation: groaning, retching, jerking pitifully in convulsions like mannequins. Some were recovering too slowly for his tastes. “Get up, you shivering fuckwad,” he called.

  The dazed man in the dripping slime grunted as Regers’ foot met his midriff, viscous fluid spewing from his mouth. “There, probably did you a favour.”

  He shook another with one hand, till his teeth rattled. “Time for you lotus dream catchers to wake up, and your happy nightmare to begin.”

  The other he booted with the back of his heel.

  One refused to respond, and he flipped this wretch over and slapped his face. “Get up, you!” Still nothing. Grabbing a handful of putrid water from a half-shattered tank, he dashed it into the man’s face. That didn’t work. He grabbed another handful and forced it down the man’s throat.

  Gagging, clawing at his throat, the man loosed gibbering protests.

  “There, you’ll be fine. Just a little mouthwash.”

  The man retched and, rubbing his temples, garbled out curses.

  Regers slapped his thighs and laughed, a gleeful hyena sound that had the rousing men turning in confusion. “You’re all fine specimens.”

  “Who the hell are you?” croaked one, a lank-haired marine who looked like an officer. “Where the hell am I?”

  “I’m your Uncle Regers,” said Regers with a happy grin. “You’re in the middle of funland, call it a ‘squid Orb’.”

  The ten men looked at each other, as if assessing the state of Regers’ sanity.

  “Don’t give me that prissy look!” Regers cried, stomping over to thrust his blaster in one man’s mouth hard enough to make his gums bleed.

  The man’s muffled groan echoed weirdly in the creepy gloom.

  “That’s better,” chuckled Regers. His crooked smile returned. “Now listen up, girls! We’re going to take this hold, that’s about 2500 feet down those filthy halls, through black, slimy corridors of hell. Problem is, we’ve several squids just waiting to squeeze all the love out of us and put us in those bitchy tanks. Get it?”

  They stiffened and remained silent as they peered around the high-ceilinged hall clouded in gloom. The disgust and apprehension lighting up their faces was not feigned. The gleaming resin on the walls slicked with a rank shellac was real enough, likewise the off-putting, squid-like forms with gruesome heads and questing tentacles sculpted in low-relief on the walls.

  Regers caught their disturbed glances and chuckled to himself. “I’ve scouted out the hall already, along with my friend, Shredder. In case you didn’t know, Shredder is my dragonfly-pet in the next room. That’s him hammering against the wall. It looks as if there’s one ship, a lightfighter, intact in the hold. That’s our target. Any one of you engineers?”

  One man crowed, “Name’s Jennings. Mechanical engineer.”

  “Guess my lucky picks were right on then. Figured one of you boys would be the mechanical type. Question is, can you fix it?” He lanced Jennings a glare. The man stared back wide-eyed. “It’s got a big bash in its side. I fooled around with the panel box on-board, even pulled up the diagnostics boot sequence. Was showing a ‘multi phase’ yellow disorder on grid RC2, whatever the hell that means?”

  “My guess is it’s one of the rear stabilizer cells. Must be fried.”

  “And? Can you fix it?”

  The engineer shrugged. “I can try. Maybe patch in series one of the working cells with the blown one.”

  “Atta spirit, Jenner.”

  “That’s Jennings.”

  “Whatever the fuck, Jennings, Jenner, Jiminy Cricket, I could care less...” He lifted his E1. “Gather weapons from these stiffs. These dead fucks won’t need them. There’s enough firepower here to raise Lazarus from the grave, by Jesus, praise the Lord!”

  A meaty man with a fleshy jowl stared at him in awe. “You a religious man, Regers?”

  “You betcha, now get your ass moving! We have work to do.”

  The ten men groped about, arming rounds in their rifles, testing weapons.

  Industrious. Just like he liked them, thought Regers. That fat fuck who had asked him about Jesus wouldn’t last long, but the others? A shit-eating grin had begun to curl on Regers’ face again. He had that look a lot, ever since that pansy-ass Yul had abandoned him. Why couldn’t it have been like this aboard the Albatross?

  He snorted. Well, maybe there’ll be a homecoming yet. “Yul, baby, I’m coming to getchya!” he yowled, piked his rifle in the air, saluting the idea. One last flight aboard the good ole Albatross, God rest her soul!

  The men nearby frowned, thinking Regers a complete lunatic and Regers laughed, the men having no inkling of the depth of his lunacy.

  The men fanned out, rifling through the suits Regers had brought, looking over the arsenal of weapons, some fingering knives and explosives, others E1’s. The more sensible ones examined their knives and tested them on the stubborn corpses that stuck in rigor mortis to their suits. He recalled the blood, sweat and tears it had taken to get those fully-suited men into the tank room and the luck that he had Shredder to run interference on any curious squids.

  Regers curled his lip with approval. The dark man with the balding head, D
eakes, his name conveniently labelled on his uniform, scrutinized everything. He tested his mobility in his suit, practicing mock manoeuvres with another marine, Vincent, a wiry youth with straight black hair, who prodded about, studying the surroundings with a careful eye. They would be rising stars, these two. He knew it.

  One man, blinking like a toad, frowned at the dozens of vacant-eyed figures floating upright in the tanks. His pale tongue flicked out to lick his lips. “We have to set them all free, Regers. Every last one of these men and women.”

  “No, we don’t,” argued Regers. “The minute we open those doors, they’ll all die. We don’t have suits for them, unless you think they can breathe ammonia.”

  The man’s mouth worked and a hot flush reddened his ears. “Well, we’ve got to figure out a way, damn it!”

  Regers made a buzzer sound with tongue and teeth. A cold grin surfaced on his face. “The lightfighter will take only a handful of men. And I don’t want to be shitting, eating and breathing recycled air with a bunch of turds like you.”

  “That’s a cold-blooded way to—”

  Regers whirled and with all his strength laid into the man’s skull with his E1, cracking it like an egg. The man fell like a log, blood oozing from the horrific wound. The others peered on in stunned wonder. “Anyone else with a brilliant suggestion?” howled Regers.

  The men exchanged wary glances, their teeth clenched.

  “Then listen up, you fucks. You’re the chosen ones! My knights of the round table, for lack of better words. Risen from the grave! Jenner, I give you the privilege of choosing a replacement for this misguided soul. Pick a man, any man!” He laughed, a ribald chortle. “Not the women though. I see that bulge in your pants, you sneaky bastard. Keep it on a leash.”

  Jennings shook off his displeasure, his look mirroring the question what had he done to deserve Regers? Grimacing, he blasted a nearby tank that contained a glaze-eyed Jakru inside.