Or so Miko called her. For no other reason than it was the name of a former old crow of a supervisor who used to browbeat him while she oversaw him on assignments. In an early part of life, Miko worked as a security guard transporting cargo off-world, and he hated every minute of it.
The monster was graced with eight auxiliary tentacles, obscene, hefty things that sprouted from a grey body. They could extend far beyond her body’s normal reach and exhibit a remarkable strength. She was also more coated than the others with cilia wisps, thin and questing leech-feelers, which served as sensory apparatus that could send electric pulses on touch. It was this battleaxe of a guardian who forced Miko to complete her tasks on a whim. If he delayed, ghastly tentacles seized him, and directed him otherwise. As far as language was concerned, the Zikri communicated with him telepathically and he received commands in his head. The details were easy to decipher. The Zikri had made matters clear: they had no time for stubborn foolishness. Miko was to show them how the ship’s controls worked, and when prompted, point to any circuitry or dial that would help them understand the hardware better. In such way, he was forced to kowtow to the analyst’s whims—on peril of death.
Whenever he thought to disobey, a spray of electric current passed from her cilia or tentacles through his nerves, causing him supreme pain. Miko was trapped in a game he could not win. Strapped into the pilot seat, he felt a nausea of helplessness overcome him, when Audra sat smugly in the co-pilot harness next to him.
Did she not fear the results of her experiments?
Miko gulped back his terror. When the power was activated, there was high risk of assimilation with two pilots stationed. Did she not grasp the danger?
But how could she? Miko thought. His mind stumbled over the most absurd, worst-case scenario.
Now Audra demanded a test ride in the vessel. Miko jerked back in horror. Was she daft? What did she know about the co-pilot hookup or about navigating the ship? Her seniors, aware of her impressive record in deconstruction, seemed ready to oblige her.
The Orb’s hatch-port slid open; Sitty II burst out of the bay into near space. Miko swallowed his despair. The craft’s rear thrusters fired blue flame, her sleek hull free once again. The Zikri vessel followed behind at an intimate trailing distance.
Miko felt a constricting sensation in the pit of his gut. He was cramped in a jerry-rigged cockpit with an alien presence—one which had stripped his motor functions to a minimal utility. Trapped him in a new-and-improved VR lock of her design.
The alien vessel continued to watch from a purposeful distance. Reports and transmissions were beamed back to the mother ship, or so he guessed.
Miko struggled for a means to take back his ship, but Audra was always there, more obsessed than ever. She watched him like a hawk and minimized the control he kept over the vessel. The restraints she had imposed on his limbs prevented him from incapacitating the ship or flying away to alert his own military.
Past the half million mile mark from Numa, the co-pilot power was engaged.
Miko felt a flood of unquenchable pain and grief.
How? Why? The VR link with man and machine should never fire with both pilot and co-pilot secured!
Audra jerked back in baffled anguish, her cilia wavering like dead stalks in the wind.
The flood of energy was enormous, almost overwhelming. Miko suddenly knew. The alien’s tinkering had bypassed the safety override.
She gave an abrupt, howling chitter. Both of them were knocked back, inundated with perilous ecstasy. Rapture upon rapture...communing with that sublime part of existence independent of body.
Audra began to pulse with an understanding of Miko’s unsophisticated personality.
Through the window of the empathic fusion enforced by Sitty’s computer, Miko could feel bursts of alien genetics splicing into his cells.
Audra’s genetics.
The flux edged him into an uncontrollable seizure. He choked on his tongue, gasped for air. He was seized again—with spasms—shooting up and down his back, forcing him to surrender in a most degrading way.
The transformation went on in hyper-pulses, then it was almost complete.
And unimaginable.
A green plasmatic slime began to form around Miko’s nose and mouth, not unlike gills or valves concealed on certain octopi that haunt the underwater ocean trenches. Like a parasite, Audra began feeding off his human life force...
Even then, she wanted more.
Miko saw she was not immune to transformation herself. He saw her face, close up, as they were fused at the hip; it was more human-looking, with faint, pinhole, blue eyes and slightly rounder, rosier cheeks. Her constitution was the stronger, the more dominant, and so she suffered less transformation.
The alien seemed to understand this, and her ultimate potential. It was a sensation unlike any other that the Zikri had ever experienced before and it affected her brain in a perverse way—amplifying the classical instinct of subjugation and domination. She could wield more power than any Zikri. With the power of the NAVO technology behind her, and the fusion with this foreign being, what could she not do?
A triumphant chirrup escaped her polyp of mouth. She hungered to explore the limits of her melding, to take over the craft, throw off the yoke of her Zikri overseers, and overshadow Miko’s symbiotic body.
Miko would have nothing of it. He fought with every inch of his life. An electrical surge pulsed through his body: Audra’s punishment. He reeled back, almost blacking out
