by Chris Turner
At the sight of the incoming ships, Miko’s eyes bulged like a drunken man’s.
“Team-leader Mekrich lightfighter VH3… Proceed to vanguard manta leg 3 post alpha, beta. Follow the guide beacon on your display. Take up your position! Likewise, VH4 and VH7. We are to launch to Quenrix in T- 2.”
Yul joined the tail of a squadron of eight mantises and several aphid-shaped fighters on the wings. Miko and Fenli had no choice but to fall in behind, all now dwarfed by the sheer size of the alien armada.
Miko rasped to the others, “We can’t let them unleash that kind of hellish menace on a single human world! They’ll devastate it. Enslave millions!”
“Not much we can do, Miko,” said Yul.
“Where is NOA?” muttered Hresh.
“They don’t even know this alien alliance exists,” cursed Miko. “We’re a hell of ways out in The Dim Zone. We have to alert them.”
“How?” wailed Hresh. “Our signals will take forever to reach a civilized, colonized planet and pass through the light-drive tunnels. Saturnia’s the nearest planet in my estimation. What, a light week away?”
Yul grunted. “Fenli, you hyperdrive into Winterule, the nearest NOA base.”
“Right, and have them check my credentials? Find out I’m a space wayfarer, dodgier than shit? Two price tags on my head, Yul, a man who should’ve been dead 40 years ago sitting in a Mentera tank. Why don’t you go? Or maybe let Miko and his pals do the dirty work? Wait, I forgot. Miko predates me by a couple hundred years—and he’s traveling with a true green Mentera.”
“Quit your wise-assing,” snapped Yul. “Warp in, send NOA a message, then warp back out. Go wherever the hell you want after that. What does it matter? Sounds as if you don’t owe anybody anything and nobody owes you.”
“Easy as all that?” said Fenli.
“Yeah, a cake walk.”
Hresh cleared his throat. “The moment Fenli warps out, we’re all buggered. The Mentera’ll be on us like flies. Remember, we came in from the tunnels as a trio.”
Yul gave an exasperated sigh. “I’ll send the mayday now and hope there’s some explorer or surveyor ship that hears us.”
“Those’re mighty slim odds.”
“Better than none. We’ll hyperdrive out together, as a group, right after I send the message. Miko, Fenli, pull up your warp grids. Set a course for neutral ground—in Veglos, say Hasfa’s planet or Varga—”
Cloye swore.
“Shit, they locked our warp! We’re all targeted for Quenrix.”
Every bug ship within radius of the Mentera L-16 destroyers was auto-locked for the target planet.
“Even if we wanted to fly the fuck out of here, we’re committed to Quenrix.”
“No shit,” croaked Fenli. “Happy with your decision now, Yul? We should have just blasted our way from the beginning.”
“Maybe, but how could we have known?” said Hresh. “They could have gotten wise to us and torched us all the easier.”
“Shut it, Hresh. We’re sick of your theorizing,” said Cloye.
“Quit arguing!” Yul spoke over the secure-encrypted network, “NOA, this is an urgent call! Repeat, urgent! Large Zikri and Mentera task force plans an assault on Quenrix. They’re an estimated 3-6 hours away from deployment, max. The next target is a neighboring world, I’m guessing. Maybe Aljo or Baltair. Repeat Aljo or Baltair. Put every ship you have into sector 3.115 DZ. Only way to avert a planetwide disaster. Repeat, urgent—”
His ship, along with a thousand others, blazed in a blinding flash of light. All communication went dead.
“Damn!” Yul cried. He banged his fists on the console. He looked hard at Cloye who cringed as the mantis fighter shot down a cone of light toward their destination light years away. He hoped the hell NOA got the message.
* * *
For Audra to outwit the last locust patrol left in the dim tunnels on Kraetoria was an exercise in ease. The mantis lightfighter landed back at the underground base after fruitless hours of searching the tunnels for its mixed bag of fugitives: a rebel Mentera, two humans and one Zikri. The exhausted locust crew awaited further orders. Audra crept round the back of their mantis’s silver hull. She made note of the sleek, special scout-model design, ideal for her purposes. Her piloting skills, even in the arena of alien Mentera craft, were not to be faulted. A single guard was posted at the starboard hatch, as was normal procedure. The insectoid was starting to nod off, its locust head dipping in the space helmet.
Audra struck like a viper. The guard fell in a flurry of tentacles, crushed beyond recognition. Audra dragged the mangled corpse into the rocks scattered about the periphery. Waiting for some moments, she kept her eyes trained. No immediate reactions. The hatch opened; another locust emerged and peered about with suspicion, tapping its grey helmet’s audio link, lumo blaster raised. Audra struck with no less lightning efficiency. She let motilators guide her through the open hatch and on through the decompression chamber where she made her way to the bridge. In seconds, she disposed of the remaining pilot. With three Mentera neutralized, she had herself a starship.
Chapter 15
Regers’ eyes roved in appreciation to the defensive metal sheets hanging across the wall by Xaromar’s weapons racks. “Get them down!” He swept a brisk hand to Vincent and Deakes. “The horned Daulks had it right by keeping this here fireproof shielding for just such occasions. Slide ’em over to the controls, boys. We’ll create ourselves a nice barricade. Ramra—seal that bridge door. Bugs aren’t going to be kind to that door. Jiminy…Creib—you two stay close to those controls. Guard them with your life, in case anything comes back online.”
The sounds of furious drilling and cutting tools scraped somewhere on the upper hull down the hall. Regers glared up with baleful eyes. His metallic fingers gripped his blaster while Deakes and Vincent dragged the sheeting over past the weapons grid. He tucked himself in behind the makeshift firewall, grumbling his dissatisfaction, racking his brain for ways to win this unwinnable war.
Deakes settled in a wobbly crouch beside him, flush-faced, muttering over the grating noise on the exterior hull. “Regers, you sure you want to do it this way? There may be another option.”
“Like what?”
“Blow the oxygen tanks? Fry the fuckers? Get the ship online and moving away and have us gouge the top of that drone against something hard, like the hard rocks down on Remus—”
“You’re not thinking, Deakes. The locusts’ve corkscrewed us. Cut a hole in our hull. Hear that metal-grating and tinkering? That’s them piling Mentera soldiers into our ship right now. We blow that drone off us, nuke the air seal and we’re suddenly flooded in vacuum. Kills our ship. We can’t hyperdrive out with a hull like a honeycomb.”
“Yeah, okay, so maybe I was wrong. Scratch that.”
Regers clenched teeth. “Yeah, scratch that. What do we have that’s working? What resources? Think, you fuckers—Creib? Jiminy?”
Creib pulled at his muff of stringy hair. “Nothing. Just bridge auxiliary power, electrical, oxygen, life support, but that’ll do us no good against the locusts. Wait, artificial grav is still up.”
“What good is that, ass-fuck?” Vincent snorted. “We’re already in grav, being a dove’s dive from Remus.”
Jennings asked, “Does the AG have a sliding scale?”
“Yeah, why? Quit wasting our time.”
Jennings ignored Regers’ insult. “Max the AG out. Coupled with Remus’s grav, it’ll make them heavier than lead.”
“Yeah, and us too.”
“Well, we’ll know it, but they won’t.”
Regers rubbed his jaw. “We could take them by surprise. Okay, here’s what we do. We hole up in the bridge, spike the artificial grav at a key moment. Creib, you stand by and max it when I tell you to. Teach those bugs a lesson. We give them a mouthful of pure hellfire when they come through that door. Vincent, you and Deakes get yourself ready to be 300 pounds heavier. Lay flat on your bellies, fire around each end of
the shield. Make sure you blast the shit out of those crickets before they hone in on us or we’re dead! Ramra, you’ll be backup. Cover ’em like a fly on shit. I’ll make sure they can’t sneak back to piss on Deakes.”
“It might work,” Jennings admitted.
“It had better work, Jiminy. We’ve nothing else. When those bugs come busting through the door, we want to be ready. Creib, you ready? Wait for my signal.”
“What about me?” whined Dez, crouching like a spider. “Am I supposed to be the third stooge and die over here?” Regers looked at him with a rueful expression, bordering on bland indifference. “You’d better make yourself scarce, Dez—like hop like a bunny into the forward utility bulkhead—you’ve no weapon, no armor. Safest place for you is there.”
Dez dipped his head, cowering like a whipped puppy. He crept into the crawl space, closing the door behind him.
Regers scowled, tugged at his lower lip. He recalled how he’d been caught in a similar situation aboard Albatross with his faithless friend, Yul. That had ended in disaster. By no means must he fall into a similar situation. Not like his former crew member, Hurd, dragged off kicking and screaming to his death by squids.
He and his roughboys didn’t have to wait long. After a quickening series of high-pitched whines and staccato thuds against the hull, there came a space of silence. An ominous interlude that had each man contemplating his own grisly death. They gripped their weapons, staring at the whites of each other’s eyes, eyes darting from one grim face to another, sweat beading from gleaming brows. Deakes’s muscles bulged enough that his joints creaked; even the air crackled with an intensity that could be cut with a knife.
Regers glanced over at Creib whose pudgy hand clutched the artificial grav controller. He flashed him a reassuring nod. Good to inspire confidence when doom lay so thick in the air. A massive boom assaulted the bridge. The steel door flew outward, over the lip of their shield to ream Creib.
He cried out in pain, his left leg pinched between twisted door metal and console.
Smoke enveloped the bridge, reducing visibility to near zero. Regers croaked out a curse. Hordes of Mentera skittered through that haze-filled gap, a blur of motion flitting amidst the clouds of grey-black smoke. To Regers’ eye, those movements were like large rats scuttling out in grey suits.
No rats these. Cannibalistic slaver enemy insectoids born on a faraway planet, with plated heads, antenna like locusts, and pincers for arms, but dressed in man-like suits. “Fire their asses!” Regers roared.
Vincent gave a kamikaze yell. He unleashed a burst of fire that reduced the invading locusts to shredded lumps. Mentera return fire bit back at their metal-shielded barricade. More nimble shapes fanned out to flank them.
Vincent and Deakes loosed deadly volleys, keeping the right flank at bay. Regers and Ramra shot at the other stream flanking them. But a dozen more locusts seemed to replace the ones falling to fire. Regers swore and gnashed his teeth. In seconds they’d be overwhelmed. “Now Creib, now!” he boomed over the chaotic free-for-all.
Creib grasped the grav control despite his blood-streaked shin and quavering hand.
For a brief second, the artificial grav kicked in. Bodies felt the tug of crippling forces. Then they cut out as Creib’s fingers slipped and toggled the switch and the man slid to his knees, groaning in pain, clutching his useless leg.
Regers spewed every curse known, firing bolt after bolt into the fray in his frog-hopping crouch while green Mentera fire streamed close to his head. “Peg those fuckers, you dipshits!”
Sounds of blaster fire deafened his ears in the cramped space.
Mentera stun fire at last targeted Creib, sending him sprawling on his side. Three Mentera slavers snatched him up, carting him off through the smoke like a fresh calf to market.
Regers fought like a wild man. Whirling, he lashed out with arms, elbows, fists and boots. A savage lust for survival possessed his resolve, spittle spraying from his mouth, his trigger finger blasting anything that moved through the dim haze, be it bug, chitter or swirling smoke. The bridge had turned into a bloodbath of alien flesh. Two clicking locusts were moving in on him, firing stun rays. He rolled, catching stun fire that numbed his left side. Deakes turned to cover him. Regers rolled away, blasting moving shapes, willing the feeling to return to his left hip. More shapes edged in from the door. How many of these fucking crickets were there? He felt claw hooks dig into his back. He cried out in anguish. He whirled with an agonized shriek as another jumped on his back. “Agh, you motherfuckers!”
He twisted aside, lashed out with the serrated edge of his combat knife, gutting the thing before it could claw up higher on his back. He threw the quivering thing off him into the parade of creatures bounding at him. A sneak-pack of cricket menace. He ducked as more Mentera fire sprayed against the ravaged firewall as Xaromar did a sudden dip and all bodies went sliding toward the weapons rack.
Regers caught movement in the dimming holo screen: an eerie hulk containing the dragonfly heading toward the Mentera mini-destroyer.
The dragonfly had dipped back into its protective armor. It had perceived the Mentera flagship as a threat, not liking the confusion and invasion of its realm.
The armature, closer now, looked like an ugly, slab-sided molar of blue-grey hue with roots dangling from both bottom ends. The crowning turret had horned ridges, much like the ears of a predatory owl. Between those ears the cannon swiveled and aimed at the Mentera mini-destroyer. In return, red beams sprayed out of the destroyer’s forward cannon to lash harmlessly against the avatar’s armor-shielded exterior.
That was a mistake.
The dragonfly’s protective armor absorbed the hits and flashed crimson. Gunfire spat out from its turret’s spray-guns and rained against the Mentera flanks. Some of the blaster energy deflected and smacked into Xaromar’s own hull.
Regers uttered a grim cry. Deakes scrambled to his side. Thankfully the auxiliary shields held.
The dragonfly gave no quarter. It flew out of the hole in its armor to flit behind its avatar, hovering like some otherworldly ghoul. It dive-bombed the Mentera craft, smashing dents like moon craters in the armored hull. The sight was as improbable as it was impossible. Regers gaped. The insect must consider the locust ship an extreme threat to its habitat to launch such an all-out attack. Why else would it bludgeon the mini-destroyer like that?
He scrambled back through the line of bodies to the command console. Grabbing the grav switch, he jammed it to full capacity.
A terrible weight seized everyone’s limbs. Auxiliary power dimmed. The lights flickered, components did a sparking dance. Running figures suddenly toppled like bowling pins. Either they pitched headlong or ground to a quivering halt, thrown to their knees. Regers, forced to a pancake crouch, went ape with his blaster, pegging off sluggish enemies. Somewhere in the smoke, he saw Ramra roll, clutching for his weapon that had been knocked out of his grasp by a blood-hungry locust. Deakes pivoted, raining fire into suited alien bodies.
At last the bridge was still. Only reeking smoke and barbecued cricket coiled up from riddled heaps. The defenders’ breaths clung in their throats. Their lungs heaved.
Regers’ head turned to the holoview. Crimson beams lashed out from the beleaguered Mentera ship toward the dragonfly to destroy it in one fell swoop. But the creature, as if driven by some freakish sixth sense, dodged in between the death rays and smashed the hull with its bullet-like head, denting plates like blacksmith hammers on sheets of corroded tin. A few more strikes and it would breach that hull.
The Mentera vessel lurched at the punishment of such alien force. The creature’s outer carapace, composed of indestructible material, was unlike anything humans had ever seen. Maybe it didn’t even have DNA in its cells? The alien’s makeup could be something different than DNA. How could it inflict those blows on metal and evade the bug’s ship fire at the same time?
The tractor beam faltered, restoring to Xaromar her electro-force. Unpiloted, Xaromar di
pped, plummeting fast toward Remus.
“Get to the nav!” came Regers’ hoarse cry.
In the brightening holo view, he caught a glimpse of gory, serrated teeth in the dragonfly’s mouth, chomping on mangled Mentera, suits and all, as the dragonfly plunged through the enemy hull to dispose of the crew. Like an insect mutant gone amok.
Regers crawled to the console with legs like logs. He released the AG. Others of his crew rose from their half crouches.
The bridge was a shambles of blood and guts.
Jennings clawed to take over the nav. With a strangled cry of his own, he stabilized the ship’s plummet and lifted the nose, saving them from certain death. With inches to spare Xaromar breasted the mangled towers of Hresh’s research installation below and leveled out to an even path, cruising parallel to the desolate landscape across the eerie predawn ruins. Regers was thrust back on his heels by the sudden Gs. He crab-crawled his way to the nav. A hook of a hand gripped the console. Most of the Mentera were dead, or quivering or groaning in anguish in distended heaps.
“Good save, Jennings. What’s our status?”
Jennings said hoarsely, “Impulse is up, but at min capacity.”
“Light drive?”
“Dunno until we try it.”
“I’ll be optimistic and assume it’ll be working.”
“That’s a dangerous assumption.”
“Move!” croaked Regers in a harsh voice. “Configure it for a jump out of here. Vincent, Deakes? You with me? Get to that bug hole in the upper hull and patch it up as best you can. Nuke any aliens you see.” He waved his gun then trailed after them with a limp. Vincent hobbled on, his face still etched in an idiot’s grin. Man must be in some sort of self-survival autopilot mode.
The hall was bathed in half light on emerg power and permeated by an odor like a grass field of fermented piss, locust spit and pheromones. Regers caught a brisk movement of twitching antenna rounding a bend. “There! Blast that skulking thing.”