by Chris Turner
At the height of his youth and having been isolated so long, Jngken could not help but imagine those glistening, ample limbs entwined around his own, squeezing, caressing, all the pleasures of Zikri sin rolled into one. The oily friction, the heightening constriction and the ultimate sultry chittering of the Zikri queen in his ear. Oh, what a thrill! A meeting of minds and bodies, up to and including the release into ecstasy.
Hrang’s sharp chitter snapped him out of his reverie. Ending his sex-sotted delirium.
Such desire would only impair his scientific judgment. It would jeopardize his position. A deadly mistake with one so capably ruthless as overseer Hrang.
* * *
In a sudden surge of motion, Hrang bounded over to Audra. “You, Griekshj! What have you to say of this utter nonsense the bug babbles? Speak! You knew the other one of this locust’s company, this Miko humanoid filth. Did he talk of these Masters to you?”
Audra paused before answering. She was about to utter some nonsense but veered in another direction. Immediately she feigned a cowed gurgle.
The overseer’s bullet head jerked around as he pushed in closer. “What’s that? Speak up!”
Audra increased the intensity of her plaintive gurgling. As the overseer’s head moved in to decipher the gibberish, she struck with incredible force. She tore her upper motilator free from its cincture, shredding flesh and sinew. The electrode flew from its vise. She snapped goblin teeth and sank yellow fangs into Hrang’s rheumy eye. While a blood-sopped tentacle whirled around his head, pulling him in closer to her teeth, her muscles rippled and smashed his skull against the empty socket where the motilator had last been fastened.
The device short-circuited. White sparks flew, singeing the tyrant’s black, rubbery face. He let out a horrid wail. The cinctures loosened for an instant. In a chain reaction, Audra’s lower motilators broke free. She was mobile! The overseer curled in a defensive C. He pushed motilators outward to counteract the monstrous force, but Audra, pitched to a fountain of rage, flung strangling tentacles around Hrang’s body.
The assistant Jngken stood frozen. His mouth gobbled, beady eyes gaped, then he was instinctively on the move to save the overseer.
Too late. Audra constricted with a vengeance and sounds of ripping cartilage soon filled the room. The overseer cried out and lay helplessly gasping on the cold floor. Audra straddled him in her triumph, her motilators still gripping and tearing away flesh from his hide while bits of his tentacles lay twitching in gory heaps at his side.
Jngken surged forward. He held aloft the sedative hypodermic in a trembling grip.
Audra caught the movement. She leaped up from her captor’s gored body to bat away the syringe. But the needle made contact with her whipping tentacle before she could send the attendant sailing across the room. He smashed into the torture rack. The still-sparking circuits smoked and burned, allowed the captive locust a brief chance to free himself. Tearing at the failing ring mechanism, he ripped his left pincer off. The right pincer slipped free. Tugging and thrashing, he worked to snip the restraining wire from his right leg. He ducked, snapping with sharp teeth at the rings holding his left insect leg. Bedlam, smoke, anguish…all ensued with blood splattering everywhere.
Audra felt a wooziness in her head. That underling Jngken must have pumped her with some somno-drug. She advanced, seeing slightly double. She bore down on him as the locust scuttled out of her way, gibbering in pain.
The Mentera grabbed a suit from the wall and despite its half torn claw, struggled to plunge himself into it. The creature obviously had a plan of action. Soon he was scuttling out the back door. The insect’s exit plan was a good one. Audra dimly registered the need to follow such a lead…
In a fit of rage she sprang at the attendant. He was nimbler. Scrambling to the reinforced front door, he heaved it open with a jerk of tentacle, stumbled through, closing it with a clang.
Audra snatched at the iron wheel, still slowed by the injection, but the door was already tightly locked and her tentacles slapped uselessly against the cold metal. She stared at him through the glass window, their eyes shafting daggers at one another. Each was of the same breed but of different eras spanning centuries.
Enough games. Audra turned at the gurgling moan of the overseer, still not quite dead. Her intent, to follow the locust out the back exit, was momentarily forestalled…
* * *
In a painful crouch, Jngken ducked, breathing heavily. He waited several seconds before he frogged his way across the hall; then he halted, having other thoughts. He waddled back to the glass, gaping at the carnage and impossible ruin of the interrogation lab. Three of Hrang’s motilators lay twisted and lifeless on the floor. Hrang himself lay on his back, sucking in wheezing breaths. He was straddled by the rebel, mutant Zikri, his beady eyes bulging from their sockets. The Zikri’s two foremost tentacles wrapped around the pliable, wattled neck of his superior’s, giving the final twist.
Black blood oozed as Hrang let out his last chittering gasp.
Black blood spilled to smoke and sizzle.
Jngken caught a last glimpse of the female Zikri as she gave a chortle of vindication. She turned and withdrew through the back exit where the locust had fled in jerky motions down the dim stone corridor. Perhaps the mutant had reacted to the threat of being injected. The sedative would not last long. Hrang’s orders had been to keep the prisoners alive and mentally alert so they could be interrogated to the maximum.
Whatever the cause of her escape, Jngken could not believe the strength of the Zikri. He shuddered when he thought about how easily those motilators had made a ruin of Hrang’s tentacles and ripped off his head. Hrang was no weakling.
He struggled with the concept of her improbable presence but was firm in his resolve to avoid a similar fate, both awed and appalled at the prospect of being roughhoused by those meaty motilators and surviving. A dangerous spider-and-fly game. Such distracting thoughts Jngken set aside. What he needed right now was a clear head to handle the current affair. What with his superior Hrang mauled beyond repair, splayed on the detention room floor, Jngken, lab technician, was now leader of the operation.
He turned and glided in silence down the laboratory hall. The research and torture area facility was wide and complex with many side corridors and alcoves, containing machines, decoders, hypno-boxes, pain-inducer units and other interesting gadgets. Half distracted, Jngken wandered on a circuitous path via a back way to the control center, hoping to avoid the creature should it still be lurking. He was still dazed by his near miss of death. Even now, his lustful mind wandered over the lurid fantasy of being wrapped in muscular union with that queenly creature, deadly as she was. A rekindled sexual excitement fluttered up the rubbery mass of his primitive spine and along the sensitive nerves radiating outward toward his carapace. He shook off the lustful urge once again. He must alert Emperor Nrog of Mission Control, tell him of the new developments, the murder of Overseer Hrang and the escape of the rebel Zikri. He must—
He stopped, his ears perked. Odd that the door to the research facility was ajar. Hadn’t he closed it when he had last passed this way? Surely the creature hadn’t managed to penetrate the inner chamber? No, impossible... And yet, there was that containment room access on level 6, where a cunning creature might bypass the electro-monitored checkpoint then…perhaps—
A bulky form hit him sideways, sending him to the far wall. He reeled, curled in a ball to cushion his fall. He spun around with tentacles upraised to meet those of his attacker’s.
Audra advanced. Jngken let out a soft scream. He felt the whoosh of air at his side and the breath fizzle out of his lungs. Before he knew it, he was enveloped in a flurry of whipping tentacles, crushed in a violent embrace. Sexual embrace. Shock, fear, lust and terror all coalesced in one continuum of utter, sensory chaos.
Cartilage bent. Muscle tissue ripped. Jngken felt himself being ravaged, in a thrill of ecstasy, albeit painfully as every corpuscle was crushed to oblivion,
every flexible bit of cartilage torn and ruptured from inside out. His male member thrust against her elastic, soft, rubbery-receptive orifice. But Audra denied him that pleasure at the last instant, crushing every bit of fluid and wind out of him.
* * *
Audra paused after her handiwork, letting the mangled heap fall in a lifeless jumble. No one must know how she escaped if she were to capture Miko unhindered. Black blood dripped from her upper left motilator. Her wounds, though not insignificant, would heal soon enough, toughen up with rubbery scar tissue. Hers was a formidable constitution. Now to follow the renegade Mentera. He would lead her straight to Miko, her real quarry. The human who had wronged her. He had a dire reckoning ahead of him.
She reeled back against the cold stone, her motilators skimming the rough surface of the tunnel floor. A minor lapse. The narcotic the Zikri attendant had pricked her with was only a small dose for her enormous bulk. Not enough to hinder her much—already the drug was wearing off. Still, she was aware that she was not in top condition. No matter. She shook off the woozy feeling, the dullness of her mental activity. There was much to do. The future course of events rode on possibilities explored and risks taken.
How she liked these rock-hewn corridors. Perfect for skulking and ambush.
She paused, used her olfactory glands to sniff out the spoor of the fugitive locust. The Mentera was wounded, dripping ichor from a missing left pincer. The locust blood had a metallic odor to it, quite distinctive, like the bog swamps of her distant home planet. A clear path to follow.
Up the tunnels she glided.
A long time later, the sounds of a struggle met her ears, laced with the hint of human activity—short, blaster bursts. At a bend in the tunnel stood an arched entrance granting access to a small cavern hosting several of the Mentera tanks. She crouched at the threshold of the archway, peering within. Several blood-splattered Zikri corpses were scattered about the rough stone floor, obviously taken out by blaster fire.
Further within, the grey-green cloying shadows thickened and she glimpsed one of the Zikri guards carrying a struggling human wearing a spacesuit.
The woman.
Audra’s beady eyes narrowed in interest. The same female that Miko found so enchanting. She was wrapped in the tentacles of a Zikri guard, hauling her toward one of the vacant tanks. That was reassuring. More leverage to use against Miko. The Zikri hunter lifted his struggling charge ready to plunge the pitiful specimen into one of the locust tanks.
The rebel locust hunched in the shadows in much distress at his lack of means and weapons. This same one she had shared the torture rack with had been the woman’s loyal companion, trying desperately to protect her. What horrid bodies both of them had, human and Mentera. How Miko could find the female thing desirable with her ugly scents, frame so weak and fragile and with hair so fair and long, was a mystery to her.
Without preamble, she acted with a hunter’s instinct.
* * *
With a wild yell, Star struck again and again at the loathsome invader’s tentacles wrapped around her body. The Zikri lifted her toward the tank that Usk had once occupied. No! This could not be happening! It was of no use—the thing’s limbs were like iron, constricting her like pythons. The more she struggled, the more air got sucked out of her lungs. Her suit would rupture at any moment. It would be all over. Yes, maybe that was better and quicker. Die before forced into a more gruesome hell. Please, kill me! Don’t let them thrust me in that tank!
Yet survival reflex would not let her die. Like a drowning dog she kicked and thrashed and lashed out at the odious brine as she inched closer to its sulfurous oblivion.
The Zikri’s face was close to hers now, a black and dusky-grey rubbery thing, like some ancient mask of horror.
In all that terror and the sudden flurry of splashing water, as she touched its filmy surface, she was wrenched back by an inconceivable force.
The sudden ripping of cartilage came to her ears. The strangling grip loosened in an instant and she sank. Some larger hulk was looming behind her, of more massive girth than her captor, something darker and more sinister, a titan of wadded flesh. It clasped her captor in a constricting hold and pulled its motilators up behind its back and bullet head and dragged it backward.
Star gasped, breaking the surface of the water, holding onto the rim of the tank for balance, while dogpaddling with the other gloved hand. She had to get out of this tank!
Could it be? Her defender looked like that grotesque creature that had tried to clasp Miko in an intimate embrace back in the ancient battle hall during the horrible hybrid fight. Why was it killing its own kind? Could it actually be helping her? The concept was as alien to her as the creature, one which turned her stomach and her mind topsy-turvy.
The Zikri in the unknown avenger’s grip gave a last agonized chitter before it lay lifeless in a heap on the cold stone. In a blinking daze, Star pulled herself over the rim and dropped down in front of the tank.
Usk, a quivering shape, scuttled up and pulled her away from that perilous place as her mind began its descent into a haze of delirium.
The black-grey skinned creature known as Audra glided in leisurely fashion after them…
Chapter 9
Miko drifted through the creepy tunnels and the tank-rooms that had seen no humans since the beginning of time. His body had disappeared. He was an invisible entity, yet with senses intact.
Blinked out of existence in near airless vacuum with aliens on his tail. How long would this state of suspended animation last?
His senses were on high alert, allowing him to see, hear, even grasp objects, but not smell. He could think and reason—how, he had no idea, outside of the fact that the laws of physics did not apply to him; furthermore, they were not always immutable. Why this was happening or how he was capable of two distinct realities was beyond him. Only that it had happened in a time drive accident with Audra, and a subsequent amalgamator freak misfire, rendering him invisible, or bodiless from time to time. If he were to rematerialize now, he would surely die, choking on the cold, nearly oxygen-less air. He needed to find pressure suits for him and Usk quickly, otherwise…
But where? Just a honeycombed tunnel-maze of miles of cold grey rock with only the odd dim glimmer of phosphorescent light appearing at random around a corner. In this hostile environment, there was nothing to hope for. Only the odd dim glow of perpetual alien twilight shining from an obscure vent.
The last monster encounter shredding his suit lay still thick in memory…a hybrid of tentacles, armored plates and scales. He had ‘blinked out’ in his usual fashion, eluding it at a crucial moment as he floated out of his mangled suit, thus saving his life. But he could not count on such luck again. Surely there would be more of those foul creatures lurking about this rocky labyrinth. Not to mention…Audra. She had been captured by her own kind, dragged away to some unknown doom. He did not know how he felt about that. Relief? Emptiness? Disbelief? She seemed impossible to kill. Perhaps she was no longer around, but a sixth sense told him otherwise, mixed with a vestige of hollowness and sadness permeating his core. Inexplicable. That was the only word for it. They had been joined for months in Sitty II, that experimental craft of the NAVO, the New Avionic Vanguard Order. Those memories coupled in a ship were dark and disgusting, ones he’d rather never revisit. Crash landing on Rogos with its primitive brood of creatures formed another dim nightmare in the back of his brain. Those desperate moments in a sinking ship in a fetid bog, cutting himself free from her muscled wads of flesh while she was under attack by some alien swordfish, were some of the most vivid of his life. But she had survived and was still hunting him down like a bloodhound its prey.
He hated to leave Star with Usk but he had no choice. He had to find a ship or oxygen, or both, or they were all dead. How much time remained? Six hours for the lot of them? Before her pressure suit’s life support system faded out? It seemed an impossible deadline. Impossible odds.
Usk had to heal. He s
huddered to think what would happen if Zikri caught up with Usk or Star. He hoped Star could protect herself against them.
Fat lot of good he was doing them now—bodiless, lost, without means or weapon. At least he held the advantage of stealth with his sheath of invisibility. That could prove lethal to an aggressor unable to detect his presence. For now, he moved unseen in the dark windless tunnels of the Zikri and Mentera, until he blinked back at random or someone threw some liquid on him. Liquid seemed to uncloak the spell and reveal his outer human form.
What was this place? Some antediluvian tunnels, rough-hewn haunts of the Zikri and the Mentera still in nefarious use today? Evidently they were using it now as some base or research site, for activities unknown. Probably something related to the two races’ recent alliance.
A buzz of motion alerted him. Busy echoes reminiscent of the locusts’ excited chatter. He glided on, willing his spirit by mental effort alone to propel him through the tunnels of emptiness. The buzz-like chatter of Mentera voices grew more distinct. Residuals through voice com. Excited and wary. Two locusts in dun-colored space-suits guarded the upcoming control post.
Miko silently glided past them. He debated snatching one of their weapons, a lumo-baton that zapped like a taser as well as fired a stun ray, but that would only alert them to an intruder’s presence and complicate matters. If he were to blink back to bodily form without warning, even with a weapon he would be vulnerable.
Rounding a corner, Miko’s essence drew to a dead halt.
A hundred or more Mentera craft. Mantis stealth ships. What were these locusts up to?
A burst of fire flashed from somewhere half way up the secret hangar. Resistance? Allies? Haters of the Mentera like himself?
Miko’s heart flared in hope. The disturbance had erupted near the first parked ships. With speed, and without second thought, he willed himself up the tunnel toward the praying mantis-shaped-ships and the source of the chaos.