How could it be? He was in some lunatic world! The Zikri was back on that locust space station, trapped in a tank! Wasn’t she? He almost sucked in a lungful of water, his heart nearly stopping on the spot.
With a burst of adrenalin, he thrust free. Dragging himself out of the water, he rolled over the edge of the pipe. His dripping body hit the floor like a beached whale. He looked up.
Beyond the glass, Audra plunged in and out fast and low, but was whipped about by the turtle as it thrashed its head with its teeth sunk into one of her tentacles. A quick flick of her severed tentacle released the turtle’s hold. Could she really have penetrated this far into the pipe? How did she get in? It seemed too incredible to fathom.
The turtle finned off after Jingin who was now sandwiched between monster and turbine. He thrashed and cried out. Somewhere in the terrified expression, Miko could see the ruffian debating which end was worse, being cut to ribbons by the powerful fan blades, or mangled by the ghastly monster that was closing on him.
He chose the turtle. The thing’s fin gripped his shoulder and spun him around like a top.
Jingin floundered; there was nowhere to go. He emitted a helpless sob. Gurgling despair, he kicked off, hoping to break free. The turtle snapped at his right leg and tossed him about like a rag doll. Jingin’s leg, mutilated, floated free. Blood swirled about the murky blue-green water. He was caught in the turbine and his body ripped to shreds. The turtle underestimated the powerful suction of the whirling blades...one of its long front fins caught in the flywheel. The hard shell caught next.
The rotor jammed. The turtle’s shell cracked and splintered; its bulky form struck bottom, pinned by the jammed fan blades. Sparks flew from the turbine’s housing. The engine began to whine and crackle. Smoke flew from the outtake exhaust. The rotors came to a grinding halt.
Turtle parts floated lifelessly. The water flow ceased.
* * *
Murlag roared in, charging Sket. But Sket upended Murlag. He picked up the dazed chief, slung him over his shoulders and hurled him into the pipe’s open water with a barbaric roar. Then he leaped down to lend aid to Star and Usk. A tentacle that Miko recognized as Audra’s lashed around the chief’s waist and pulled him under. Writhing, thrashing, his head came up for air. Somehow he managed to claw his way free from the horror that was Audra, who was still being harried by some other sea beast streaming down the pipe. He crawled his way across the littered ground, earning the snorting jeers of several of his men. Murlag jumped to his feet and smashed a man in the teeth so hard he fell headlong on the spot. “Laugh, will you? Kill them, you idiots!” he thundered, pointing to the fray, his quivering frame dripping with slime.
A scraggly man with more lust than sense lunged, hoping to take Star for his own. “Oi, here’s a tasty treat.”
Star hooked him with her javelin.
“Ouch!” he bent back, blood spurting from his hand. “Get the bitch!” he howled.
Usk beetled in to thrust a pincer through the man’s eye. The outcast clawed at his face, sagging in a yowling heap.
Star screeched, “Die, lowlife pervert!”
A fierce sense of pride washed over Miko as he caught glimpses of such bloodletting. He increased his efforts, slashing and hacking, fuelled by the courage of his peers.
Usk scuttled like a crab and drove a pincer into another man’s thigh. The locust stomped his hard hind legs on the skull of the fallen man who had overreached while lunging in to brain Sket.
The violence raged on and the massive air generators continued to hum their monotonous dirge. But the turbines ceased to pipe the life-giving liquid through the filtration system.
As Miko looked across the grey battleground, he saw another unsettling sight. A long, slender surface car approached, floating just above the ground and pulling a similar vehicle behind it. It was a tunnel service vehicle, a thinner, longer version of the surface car with landing wheels they had arrived in.
The side hatch opened and a familiar figure popped out. Four men dressed in steel-studded armour bustled out at his heels with air guns trained on the fugitives.
“Well, well.” B & D regarded them with a degree of amusement. “What a merry scene! You are all surprised? Let a man do a monster’s job and what do you get?” He boomed out a baritone laugh while Beardly tickled him in the ribs, cackling in her obscene way.
“A shame about Jingin,” he remarked, eyeing the churning water and the fishy horrors that populated the predatorial pipe. “He was somewhat inept, truth be told. I must say though, the Jakru woman has proven a feisty delight, indeed. An original player, as I’ve learned. I’ve returned her to the glass twice after foreplay. These Mentera are ingenious! Caging their women in tanks. What better way to store their pets?” He laughed a cruel, but sated laugh. He looked to Beardly with endearment in his eyes.
“Oh, Drek, you are so droll!” drawled Beardly. “I love it when you take charge! Shall you show them, or shall I?”
Drek, in his gleeful whimsy, drew an object from his leather jerkin, his face carved in an impish grin. He held out a black ball, which he threw into the air, there to hover and expand into a wide blue holo screen.
Beardly’s face twisted into an inhuman leer, her dark eyes glowing with anticipation.
The camera view showed B & D in the foreground with five of his hairy rogues tossing the naked
