Miko laughed, shuddering at his new sense of wild freakishness. He stroked the growing gills on his throat with his webbed digits in somewhat offhand acknowledgement. He considered his adopted manner with a detachment most unlike him. It was out of touch with his former character. Rebelliousness and hate had transformed him into a cold and brooding creature: Audra and her dominance had warped him.
* * *
The rogue ship passed on through the outer gulfs. The twain crossed uncharted territories, catapulting through interstellar dust never before breached. The two achieved a new level of symbiosis, a perversion of nature that was at once fantastic and appalling.
A strong sexuality existed in their close-coupled arrangement. It transcended all forms of contacts and superfluous joinings. Even their own bodies, now caricatures of what they had been before, were of fantastic origin: intertwined weaves of pulses and signals that had made them so mixed of biology and spirit that neither knew really what they were. The pact consisted of a crossing of species, a freakish melding that pushed past the threshold of invasion.
The trinity was what it was—man, machine, and ‘Audra’. United into some unfathomable whole, the two knew separation was unlikely, if not impossible. They had passed a critical point; perhaps an inevitable milestone in this birthing of a bizarre life form. Was it a necessary evolution of technology to produce the obscenity of which he found himself part?
The metamorphosis had left Miko disfigured. He burned with intensity, convinced only that the universe had its grossly unfair way of manifesting new ‘things’ at the expense of the old.
Somewhere, in the aftermath of all this madness, he thought there would be some sane resolution.
He was wrong.
II
An unknown time passed. Six months? A year? It was all a blur in Miko’s mind. He was resigned to his new role as alien renegade. The time for raiding had come again. The two needed replacement crystals for the time drive, and also raw organic ingredients to feed the food processors which would assimilate the materials and pipe a ready-made mash of nourishing paste through the tubes and into the VR chassis.
Audra choose a small Zikri outpost on a moon far out in orbit around the amber disc of the planet Rogos as their next prey. Approaching the station on an unobtrusive vector, they sat nestled confidently in their NAVO craft. Now they intimately shared the same liquid matrix socket. In fake tow came Sitty, led by a small Zikri craft that they had commandeered. A ploy, of Audra’s making. It was a similar, smaller-sized spiked orb as the mother ship, taken some months ago in a faraway sector. The empty craft, cleansed of corpses, they directed remotely from within Sitty.
The two swung closer, a team of ghoulish raiders. They crafted an innocent descent, then forwarded soothing replies to the outpost’s command bridge whose communication babble poured from the VR audio link.
The outpost was like no NAVO station. It was built of low-lying geometric structures on a small desolate moon, barren and without life. The dry, rugged surface had an unwholesome quality to it, this slowly rotating mountain of rock. The station, constructed of those fabulous cubic shapes and polyhedron that Miko had caught glimpses of aboard the Zikri Orb, was steepled with a thousand frightful spikes jagging out from her surface. Why had the Zikri picked this wasteland as an outpost? A fuel servicing station? A supply depot? There was no activity here, or incoming ships, or movement in the immediate vicinity. The low gravity made it a poor choice for mining, thought Miko. Though there was evidence of drilling within a mile’s radius of the station, he saw no vehicles, only a dozen large tanks or drums set upright in curious clusters. Expansion? Accessories to the outbuildings? A mystery of its own...excepting the possibility of other more insidious operations occurring on Rogos. Yet the desolate outpost suited the rebels’ purposes quite well...
The blue-orange gases of the Mangela nebula drifted light years distant, a majestic backdrop to this lonely setting.
The outpost hatch was about to open, then something strange occurred. As in all unexpected events, a flash of terror gripped Miko. Four bright flashes appeared on Sitty’s left flank.
A warning flashed in his brain. Warships, of Zikri origin!
Behind them had materialized four ominous orbs. The ships were fresh out of time drive: huge vessels, armed to the teeth with laser-cannon, tracking antennae and radiation nets.
Audra loosed a sharp chitter. Truly the creature hadn’t expected such a confrontation, but it was obvious that the excess raids at the hands of the rebels had made the enemy drunk with vengeance. A think tank of tacticians had likely devised some trap for them, and they had unwittingly sprung it...
On reflex, Audra jettisoned the decoy craft. Miko jammed Sitty’s thrust to full, just before the first destructive rays of the war orbs slashed crimson paths across their starboard viewport.
The blast knocked Sitty’s central power out of kilter. The craft was sent spinning away like some kite lost in the wind.
Three of the Zikri war orbs rushed to intercept. They surrounded the wounded craft, weapons trained and honing in for the kill.
Audra chittered out a command. Miko shuddered at the thought of the cold-blooded Zikri getting hold of them and torturing them on some bloodstained operating table. He flash-backed to an episode of the past where a young soldier named Kraig had contracted a virulent disease, infected by some alien life form on a routine mission to an unexplored planet. The amputations of arm and leg had not been pleasant...
Audra’s excited chitter rang in the VR socket. Miko was
