An explosion rocked the chamber, coming from the direction of the tunnel leading to Skullrox.
Miko flinched. More unknowns. He brushed at his face, wet and blackened from grime and smoke. His tortured body was still unstable from his transition from the astral to the visible.
“Where’s Miko?” he heard Star’s familiar voice cry.
“Last I saw, he sank under a tangle of bodies,” croaked Sket.
The Skullrox woman collapsed, whimpered out a sob.
Audra had crawled her way out of the pipe, covered with turtle slime and fish entrails. She now stood surveying the scene, her tentacles dripping. A turtle head, dangling from a twitching tentacle, ripped from its stem, slipped out of her grasp and fell to the ground with a dull thud. Her lopsided face seemed to curl into a smile. Her head swivelled from side to side, looking for someone.
Miko stared across the smoke-blackened chamber and his lips parted in amazement. Audra... Having perceived the enemy was the outcast raiders, she seized a man in a roving tentacle and pulled him into her acidic body. The man writhed and gurgled as his body smouldered and was absorbed by freakish chemical essences.
Drek called out, “What have we here? Some grotesquely offensive creature? Beardly, I say—just your type!”
Beardly gazed at the flabby folds of Audra’s hide and her eyes rolled in lascivious interest at the glistening polyps.
The Jakru Empress, catching sight of the degenerate freak who had tormented her, lifted her weapon in a shaky hand, and a gurgle of hate rose in her throat. She loosed a blast of violet flame. But the wild shot only skimmed off Drek’s shoulder, jolting him backwards and smashing into Audra, shearing off a tentacle.
The Zikri gave a wild screech.
“Don’t kill her!” shrieked Miko, hurtling forward. He shook his head with dismay, not quite knowing why he had blurted that out or had been moved to such intense emotion. He pulled the Empress down as air blasts from B & D’s guards whooshed by her head. The rich purple flare ricocheted off control pipes and grids and zapped off catwalks as B & D’s guard readied for another round.
Audra launched herself at B & D, tentacles latching onto Beardly’s neck.
Miko heard a sickening snap. Drek whipped an air gun up, firing wildly, perhaps symbiotically feeling Beardly’s pain. But the bright blast only scored Audra’s dark, polyped flesh. Another deadly, stinging tentacle snaked out, knocking Drek’s weapon free. He savaged the Zikri monster with his free hand, his inhumanly strong fingers and nails ripping into spongy flesh. But that too was restrained as auxiliary tentacles wrapped and slimed around him. Dragar’s men stood speechless, paralyzed with fear.
Audra encompassed the helpless two-headed mutant. Her fibrous, muscle tissue worked over the two torsos, pulsing and pumping, glowing with a hideous greyish and black strength. It rolled over human flesh, kneading it like pie dough.
As the folds enveloped Beardly’s frontal lobe, the skin sagged and sizzled. Her facial features dissolved like a sandcastle washed by beach surf. It was hard to distinguish whose face belonged to whom in that chaotic jumble of moving, writhing flesh. Crunching sounds echoed in the chamber, and for a moment all present in the dimness stood still.
Sket gave a heart-wrenching cry. Miko heard and stood puzzled, then remembered the truth about the man’s family and all Drek’s dark secrets died within that skull and shrivelled husk of a body.
“Ugh, enough,” moaned Star. “Can we not get out of here?”
Sket, bleeding from a dozen wounds, grunted in agreement, as did Fenli.
Men fell shrieking and smoking as Audra finished her dirty work. She tossed aside the remains of B & D’s corpse. The outcasts cut at her tentacles but she slapped them away and pulled man after man into her foul body. The enemy fled in vain, those who had dared harm Miko throwing hands up in defeat while she shrieked through her horrid gullet, a chittering whine that cast terror in men’s souls.
Miko snatched up a blaster from the hand of a dead guard. He cursed, realizing the mechanism had jammed. One of Murlag’s sword-wielding brutes lunged at him, but Miko twisted aside and rapped the blunt end of the pistol against the man’s skull. “Quick!” he yelled at Star, kicking the stunned enemy to the ground.
Star gaped. “I saw you go down, how—?”
“It was somebody else. Quickly!”
More of the enemy, including Dragar’s contingent, rushed in. Screams of the hurt and dying were all around Miko. Sket swore. “Down this way. The unexplored tunnel. They’ll swarm us and we’ll all be killed! Stay, and regret your choice.”
Fenli paused, confused by the mayhem, the rays of death and screams.
“Fenli, move! Do you want your eyes clawed out?” Sket shoved him, even as a metallic shape loomed overhead. The man was in shock.
Now more of B & D’s militia, arriving on the heels of Dragar’s forces, brought a rain of blaster fire upon anything they perceived as a threat. Audra retreated behind fallen boxes of circuitry and pumping equipment.
Usk was nowhere in sight. In a moment of grief, Miko assumed the valiant locust had been cut down.
The dark and cramped tunnel proved a dead end. Rough walls, hewn by old mining equipment, ended in a sheer wall. They were trapped. Sket slammed down his sword. Miko groaned, a grimace of frustration curdling his features. They retraced their steps back into the cavern, hobbling and staggering, resolved to fight the renegades rather than be caught here and slaughtered like helpless sheep.
Another explosion wracked the cavern, this one far louder, coming from the tunnel behind them. Skullroxers? From the direction of the blast came the
