“Sometimes he gets overzealous,” muttered Fenli.
One of the thugs slapped Fenli hard across the mouth. “If I want you to speak, I’ll ask for your opinion.”
“You did.”
The thug hit him again.
Miko almost laughed, but then it was hardly a laughing matter. The gang members pushed them into a black surface car and whisked away into the misty shadows.
* * *
Audra hovered in her Doraxu craft above Demen II, east of Skullrox. She could feel the humans’ presence down there somewhere, amongst all the smoke and debris, the dissolute sprawl of modern-day humanity, with all its dry terraformed air they called an atmosphere. This human planet suited her less than the others she had visited in brief in her multiple jaunts about the galaxy. But she had a mission—and a score to settle. The wounds on her side were grievous, but they had healed long ago, along with the many wark bites, thanks to the locust elixir. For that, she could be thankful. The locusts she had absorbed on her way to the spaceport had given her ample fuel to conduct the acts she felt were now necessary.
She fluttered her tentacles and gave a satisfied chirrup.
True, she would have to wait her turn and bide her time, but that was to be expected.
Patience. As a Zikri she knew well that patience was a valuable asset. It was all good and fine to forge ahead on a warpath of impulsive haste, but it was too large a swathe of terrain to effect a random search for the ungrateful Miko. Somewhere in that east end in the slum district, she sensed the pilot was lurking.
It had been easy to track the fugitives—the degree of enticement put on part of the radio expert who now hunched dejectedly in its pilot’s seat, was all that was necessary.
She gave an idle glance over her shoulder. Chitters and angry twitters, if not moans drifted feebly from the two glass tanks. Two wretches she had stuffed in their feeding tanks, floated there listlessly, in case she needed them for food at a later time. In any case, they were expendable resources.
The current locust navigator in the cockpit had learned his lesson. This, after he had viciously tried to claw her to death when she plopped him roughly in the pilot’s seat. One pincer now hung limp. The other was missing. Its cricket-like head was sizzled and scored as if corroded from acid from the smothering embrace of her noisome hide. When she glided over to his command post, she watched him cringe in fear.
The pilot would attempt no more escapades, she chuckled, nor would Miko when she had him back under wraps. The electric shocks had humbled this locust, if not nearly killed it. She could not navigate this alien vessel solo with all its incomprehensible symbology and layers of exotic complexity, despite her breadth of scientific knowledge. She disliked being dependent on these creatures, but it was what it was. Nothing to be done.
Audra gave something of a rattling gust through her polyp of a mouth.
Waiting. What a dismal task. Her consolation—only the best of warriors gained the fruit of their spoils through patience...
VI
The surface car buzzed through the streets, plummeting Miko and the others along dim alleys, through public squares, and gathering, waking masses. Miko saw faces gaze through the tinted glass, long sallow looks of beings from many worlds. Varieties of human and humanoid people he knew not despite all his strange time in the future.
The car ground to a halt before a small square bathed in a pale glow of hydrogen lamps. Few folk were about. The near-deserted square had a sterile, lonely look to it. Teebla signalled Ribshot who shoved Fenli out the door, while others guarded Miko and Star. Peering through the glass, Miko saw three men duck out of the shadows to escort Fenli to one of the tall, booth-like machines that delivered cargo. Fenli, prodded along like a steer, sullenly lifted his palm to the black pad on the device, exposing his right index finger. Teebla’s air rifle jammed into his ribs, expediting the procedure.
The machine whirred. A front panel opened and a glass tank was propelled out on a conveyor belt, intact with its contents. The men gripped the glinting glass and Miko caught a glimpse of the Jakru woman’s grief-stricken face as she was dumped in the trunk, tank and all, and the lid slammed tight. The men piled in, dragging Fenli with them, and the gangsters climbed in, crowding them together. The car lurched and jerked up onto an overpass, then swooped back to the blinking lights at street level then underground and up again out of a tunnel and over the heads of scattered, milling people. For a time, the car and its thuggish band seemed to float ten feet off the ground until it shot airborne, engines full out. He saw the desert stretch below them and soon the city retreated from sight. Demen’s setting moon shone a dull bronze in the northeast, a cloudy half crescent.
The car banked. It passed over a long ridge that extended beyond the outskirts, then swung out over the wastes for miles in both directions. The lake, black as obsidian, shimmered in the saffron dawn like some monstrous eye.
The vehicle roared down toward a gaping, wide cavern that appeared in a rocky outcrop. It flew in, swallowed in a haze of darkness.
A henchman of Teebla turned on the car lights. Past Teebla’s shoulder, Miko saw the console panel lit with glowing charts and holographic maps. One thug sat shoulder to shoulder to him, motioning to the yellow-glowing holo map. Star huddled miserably at Ribshot’s side, terror writ in her
