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
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
