by Chris Turner
The ship floated through space—a derelict, struggling on impulse power.
Miko stared dumbly. The dry blood on his cheek itched.
A faint thud sounded on the upper hull.
“What now?” he groaned.
Fenli moaned painfully at his side, pulling himself along the floor through the blood-soaked debris. Miko staggered over to help him. He could feel his skin quiver and his breath coming in shallow gasps.
“Visual!” barked Miko over Fenli’s shoulder.
Usk showed a scattersplay widescreen. Curiously, a U-shaped craft descended like an inverted horseshoe, latching on to the upper davits on the hull. Robot limbs grappled to the exterior plates spider-like and a strange, long stinger of glistening metal proceeded to puncture the hull.
Miko’s guts crawled in horror. It would open the bay like a can-opener. “They’ll breach the hull and kill us!”
“That’s Jakru made.” Fenli croaked feebly. His eyes squinted at the form growing on the screen. “I’m betting these invaders won’t jeopardize our hull, or the Jakru’s life.”
“Why not? They’ve done everything else. Doesn’t this ship have shields?” Miko bellowed in dismay.
The locust chittered as if in answer.
Fenli croaked. “There’s your answer. The ship’s damaged. We’re lucky it’s still navigable.”
Miko clenched his teeth. “Then prepare to fight whatever it is that comes down to get her.”
The ceiling directly above them split in a wide O and pieces fell crashing on the floor. Miko leaped back, raising a lumo javelin. A long proboscis snaked through the gap—a hideous, metallic thing dripping with oil. On its end was perched an ugly eye, a mechanized sensor. It rotated alarmingly and seemed to look in all directions at once.
Miko sucked in a breath. Through the vacuum-sealed opening, the creature of organics and metal slithered, with its tail still anchored somewhere back in the alien vessel. Sussing out the situation, the probe undulated toward the Jakru tank.
Fenli gave a miserable cry. When the robot probe caught sight of the figure in the tank, it jerked upright and a mini member sprouted from the snake-like outerbody.
“Quick, pull her away from the thing!” Fenli yelled.
Miko roared, “Why don’t you let it take her?”
“And have it kill us after it takes her away? Think it through! We’re expendable. Fight!”
Miko blasted the snake-like body with the lumo. The rays careened off its gleaming surface like quicksilver, rebounding off the equipment wall of the ship. But the blast had the flexible thing streaming smoke and it quivered back, eye rotating in a menacing circle. Miko tossed Fenli the pipe. The injured man staggered up to savage it.
The snake whipped up and snapped a coil, sending the cargo man flying.
Another silver member sprouted from the main mass and it lashed out, coiling around Miko’s waist, lifting him high and choking the breath out of him. Miko gasped in anguish, firing at the loop encircling his torso. Rays careened around the hull in dangerous rainbows. He suffered the thing’s constricting embrace.
Usk advanced to clamp pincers on the probe. The thing sprouted another member and caught him by the leg. It dragged him hard across the floor. Usk chittered and extended his claws toward anything for support. Then the bot spun its victim up like a lariat and flung it wide, lifting Usk up at the last minute before the insidious eye. The outcast’s chittering cry rang out, knowing it had only seconds to live. Shrieks, electric snaps, and lasers flew out around the cabin. A thicker member sprouted to curl around the tank with the woman. Hoisting her up through the opening, it employed cutters on the end of the tentacles poised above to enlarge the hole to pull the bulk through.
Miko cried out in fury. He smashed his fists against the metal tube, feeling his vision swim. Now everything was going black. He caught a glimpse of a metallic loop questing for his skull.
Bzt.
He flashed out of existence. Crackles, blurs and sparks. They were his universe now and he was nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Gleaming coils constricted around thin air. The old Miko was somewhere in limbo. The eye swivelled about looking for him and its metallic body momentarily went slack, unable to sense its prey. With sinister purpose, Miko glided forth in his astral body. He willed himself to acquire the lumo stick. The pulsing weapon floated up toward him to his amazement. How is it that he could pick up objects even though he was insubstantial, and blaster fire and bodies and metal went right through him? Certain mystics had talked of chi, a power that enveloped the body, a force capable of producing miraculous feats. Perhaps his will allowed his chi to retrieve it?
Miko moved through the air like a true ghost, weapon hoisted, as if it had a life its own.
Fenli gaped, blinked. “What the—?”
Miko snatched up the pipe and smashed it at the roving eye, which was swivelling in the other direction.
A whistling whine and grey plasma spewed from the rents in its serpent-like body. The tentacles whipped about in frenzied confusion.
The tank smashed to the ground. The woman was knocked senseless upon the impact.
Splashes of pale green liquid leaked around the tank’s edges. The glass sported a hairline crack.
Moments passed and Miko could feel himself coming back. Bzt—walls of pain came crashing against his skull.
He collapsed, lying in a sprawled, ravaged heap. The woman was coming to. He saw the look of incredulity in her eyes as he blinked back into existence. Miko thrust himself away from the mysterious woman, as if she were a curse. He rolled aside as the inert mass of the probe slid down and lay in a smoking heap. Scrambling to his feet, Miko felt vertigo threatening to capsize him again. His breath rasped in his chest; the blood in his temples throbbed.
Fenli crouched, staring at Miko in stunned disbelief. “You’re dead! I saw you vaporized by the probe. How did you get—” he gulped. “How did you come back to life?”
Miko lay tense, his senses deadened. He debated telling Fenli the truth about his accident, but a part of him stayed his tongue. Could he really trust the cargo man not to betray him? The man had proven himself impetuous by pushing to keep the Jakru woman. Better to keep his mutant power a secret. Words came to Miko’s lips. “The probe confined me in some limbo. When the thing’s power shut off, the prison lattice could not hold me, so I believe. I was released.”
Fenli shook his head. “I don’t get it. The lumo stick arched about and killed the probe. It doesn’t add up. Damndest thing I ever saw.”
“You’re delirious.” Miko massaged his aching temples. “That conk on the head must have you seeing things.”
The locust outcast dragged himself out from under a blanket of metal plates and wreckage. He looked about bleakly, his oval eyes blinking.
Limping over to the console, Usk pulled up a planetary index on the viewscreen. The 3D image showed a dull brown planet rotating in a stable orbit.
Fenli shook a fist at the twinkling lights of an isolated city. “I know that place. Skullrox.”
Miko’s ears perked in amazement.
“Of all the possible worlds out there in the galactic soup...” Fenli’s words trailed off.
The Jakru clamp still clung to their battered vessel. It had compromised their light drive, sawing through the hull, but with the probe’s destruction, so went with it the Jakru’s tenuous link to track the vessel from home base.
A consolation at least.
The ship was dying, leaking air. A fatal hiss sounded somewhere around the seams off by the glass port. Skullrox was an hour away, at 0.3 sublight velocity.
“We have to make critical repairs,” Fenli stated.
With no other plan, they set the controls at impulse power for Demen II, the nearest inhabited world. According to the index, it was a trade world with a single city. Fenli was back in action. They were battered but alive, with the inoperative Jakru mechnobot strewn in smoking heaps about them...
IV
&nb
sp; Miko jarred back to wakefulness, his head spinning from a splitting headache. The ship’s warning signals blasted in his ear. By God, he felt terrible! Every breath was a labour. Through bleary eyes he saw Fenli stooped over a toppled tank, his lustful gaze lingering on the recumbent woman as if he were drunk from lack of oxygen. Usk crouched nearby, clicking his pincers.
“Get away from her!” Miko cried. He staggered toward the tank, jostling Fenli aside. He caught a glimpse of her long locks wavering in the vile locust liquid.
“Beautiful, isn’t she?” clucked Fenli.
Miko shouldered him from view. “We’re going to have to open the tank. Otherwise she’ll die.”
“No, we don’t, not yet. Let’s deal with the immediate situation first.”
“Where are we?”
“The Demen system, approaching Skullrox. I told you. We’re nearing the inner zone.”
It was becoming more difficult to breathe and Miko’s voice came in hoarse rasps. Usk’s insect antennae drooped; he hunched like a beetle.
Fenli, seeing Miko’s look of concern, made a mocking sound. “You seem to care an awful lot for that damned bug.” He jerked his head back to the eye-catching Jakru woman. “Her, well—”
Miko loosed a snarl. He reached out to grab his arm. “If it wasn’t for Usk, we’d all be dead.”
Fenli grunted. “It may not matter. We’ll all be dead soon. Decide now! The Jakru will be on us in swift order. The robot vessel will have radioed our position.”
Miko shook his head in frustration. “Any more bad news to report?” Hardly did he feel rested after the brief few hours of sleep, plagued by nightmares of pincer-clacking, vampish locusts.
A dim yellow disk, the rebel-trader planet Demen II, appeared below. Miko could swear its features made it look like a demon’s face. The impulse power of the locust craft had all but blown out; only their freak momentum carried them in an intercept orbit with the planet. Miko saw two pale moons spinning far out in orbit on the viewer.
Usk clacked over to toggle a red switch on the control console. An imperious voice crackled over the com.
“Identify yourself, Doraxu. You’re approaching Skullrox airspace. We have classified you as an enemy craft.”
Fenli staggered drunkenly over to the com. He pushed Usk out of the way. “Negative, control. We’re not a threat. Repeat, not a threat. Attacked by Mentera. Our ship’s drive is gone, our air is compromised.”
“Who am I speaking with?” the voice thundered.
Fenli paused, a wild gleam in his eye. “Fenli, regit 4567453.”
Miko hissed. “They’ll impound this ship and slap us in prison when they see her—” he stabbed a finger at the Jakru woman.
“You agreed to take her aboard as readily as me,” said Fenli. “Relax, we’ll figure a way out of this.” He turned back to the console.
A pause. The voice crackled back. “We report a ‘Fenli Mahore’ from Listus VIII, having gone missing for eight years. No communication during this period. Is this some kind of joke?”
Miko stared. No answer.
“Prepare to be boarded, Doraxu L-U6. We are impounding your vessel.”
Fenli gave a gravelly curse.
Miko shook his head in desperation. “Skullrox. Nice choice, Fenli. Out of the trash compactor into the incinerator.”
Fenli shrugged. Miko pulled a tarp down from the wall that wasn’t completely burned and draped it over the Jakru tank. “Help me, Usk.” Miko beckoned the locust and he obliged, lending his pincers to what seemed a futile task.
The captive woman seemed to flinch as darkness clouded over her world.
Miko grimaced, glaring in frustration. He hated to do it, but the flare of engines’ light booster fire came from planetside and three escort ships spun into view on the viewscreen. Could he hide her? No—
A sudden thwack to the upper side of the hull indicated towlines, thick cables of titanized steel, arching from the escort ships’ bow cannons to lamprey onto the hull.
Miko tensed.
He could see two of the long, tapered Skullrox crafts flanking their vessel while one veered in behind. Hot, flared, primed weapons trained on the hull.
The enemy ships’ impulse engines roared and they ploughed through the planet’s atmosphere, buffeted by air pockets.
Miko caught a glimpse of twin lakes flanking the northern end of Skullrox. A sea of spires and towers veered into view—elsewhere ranged endless miles of desert and scrub.
Amidst tall, spider-like radio towers long tarmac areas spread, surrounding a giant dome whose panels opened like the lids of a great watching eye. The ship and its escorts were swallowed up in the dome.
Miko heard the thud of bracers as the craft made impact with an underground landing pad. The hatch was blown open and four armoured officials marched through the trail of debris to rap weapons on the zero-g glass.
With mixed feelings, Miko hit the release switch. A whoosh of air sounded as the glass slid back and the landing party swept in.
Faces thrust in on them, lethal weapons trained. “Get down!” the leader cried.
Miko knelt with hands behind his neck. Rough, gloved hands seized him. He saw the flash of white uniforms and brown knee boots, laser-proof vests and skull-capped helms.
The first official motioned to him briskly. When he saw the pools of dried blood and the litter of machine and robot parts, his frown only grew. He shook his head angrily. “Well, you’ll have a lot of explaining to do.”
Pushed nose to the ground, Miko and Fenli were rudely disarmed of their lumo sticks and their hands tied behind their backs. They secured Usk’s pincers with elasto-tape. When he struggled, a security officer tasered him. Despite his chitters, the invaders pulled them up and marched them out.
Bright lights hurt Miko’s eyes as they marched through a large covered hangar. The escort vessels powered down their engines—large Venu-craft with sleek grey hulls and tapered fins. Men were unravelling tow lines while others hurried with tools and kits to pile into their ship and strip search it.
A team hauled the Jakru tank out, men goggling and murmuring at its occupant.
Fenli cast a last longing glance at her as she was carted away. Miko could only guess that his dreams of a quick fortune had been dashed.
* * *
Needless to say, conditions did not improve. The security-custom officers escorted Fenli, Miko and Usk none too gently into separate white rooms somewhere in the complex.
Miko sat in sullen silence, his eyes glowering after his second round of interrogation.
“Name?” blurted a sergeant in grey and white uniform.
“Miko Almstran. Serial# 5439453 NAVO forces, first naval commander, as I’ve told you.”
“What’s this, your personal slave?” A glowing image shimmered before the table as he pulled a blue chip from his front pocket, the size of his thumb, and inserted it into a nearby machine. Miko, confined at the table, blinked in shame at the Jakru prisoner, who glared nervously in her upright tank in the centre of an empty white room. It was a holographic storage system, he guessed.
The Sergeant smiled and peered at Miko sharply, then at his companion, a lean, gangly man with a yellow buzz cut and gleaming buck teeth. The man wore a dog-faced, sinister grin. “You’re a little out of date, ‘Miko’. It’s called ‘New Order Alliance’. It’s been relegated to the ice planet, Winterule, for quite a few decades now.”
Miko’s mouth went slack. He writhed in his bonds, wrists looped behind his chair. “What year is this?” he murmured.
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” the Sergeant said. His thin lips twisted, as he puzzled over Miko’s dazed reaction, snorting out a hot breath.
The Sergeant had a badger beard. His short-sleeved military grey uniform was decked with stripes below the shoulder, stun weapon and truncheon strapped at his hip.
“What’s your game, soldier? Are you doped up on Beslamine?”
Miko’s lips pursed.
“Taki
ng a few pals and some aliens out on a joy ride?” The Sergeant laughed. “I know the scenario. It gets out of hand, you get a bit blasted and creative. That woman with the horns though, she sure is a piece of ass. I’d have her confined too. All for my own. But in a bottle, with other freaks not far away? A bit kinky, don’t you think? What’s the game, you do her, then you do the squids and turtles next?”
The Sergeant’s attendant croaked out a lewd laugh. “You never asked the Commander how he gets her to breathe underwater.”
The Sergeant waved off his friend’s quip. He pulled the blue chip out of the panel and the woman and tank disappeared back into the machine.
Miko grew red in the face. The grilling continued relentlessly—the focus ever returning to the tanks.
“So, what are these freaks in the tanks? A little appetizer after you and your friend Fegri, have your way with the girl?”
Miko snarled angrily. “It’s as I say! They use them for food.”
“Right, like this lobster-cricket fellow of yours is your best buddy.”
“It makes no sense,” his assistant griped stupidly as if used to the benevolent inquisitor routine.
Miko pinched his eyes shut. “He was a rogue rebel of some kind, and they, the locusts, had him caged—”
“Right, so you rescue the locust and he’s suddenly your wing commander. What about this Audra creature you mumbled about earlier?”
Miko stayed sullenly quiet.
“This story of yours gets more farfetched every telling,” the Sergeant growled. He turned resolutely to his mate. “What do you think, Buldis? Should we turn him over to the thought extractor? We got ourselves a real live one here.”
Buldis smiled his toothy smile. “The stories we got from his cabin mate are even better. Doozies, if nothing more. He claims you’re taking the woman to sell to a free agent, the highest bidder. Was that your idea?”
“He’s a rotten liar!” Miko spat.
“Now, now,” tsked the duty Sergeant, wagging a finger. “Not very nice to speak of your comrades like that. And it’s Sergeant Salhan to you.”