“Visual!” barked Zaul. A spiked mostrosity, streamed with light trailers, appeared on the holo view with convex, knob-studded plates, com towers, hurtling at supralight. It disappeared off the edge of the horizon, and fled into the depths of space.
Zaul’s lips worked in amazement. “Keep monitoring them. I’ll set my tactics team—”
“No, Colonel,” said Lexia. “We’ll set an immediate course to follow. Engage cloaking. Let locusts and Zikri collude with each other. We’ll spy and figure a way to penetrate their defenses and strike them where they are weakest. I’ll cut off all their heads, after the indignity I’ve suffered, not to mention the countless Jakru souls they’ve snatched. We have a score to settle with those foul insects.”
“Cloak level, red,” Zaul ordered the helmsman. “Shields up. What of the traitors and the home situation, Your Highness?”
Lexia waved off the question. “This reconaissance is more important. A hunch. I feel it! I want to know what the insectoids are up to. A minor delay in our itinerary.” She clapped her hands. “Hear now, all. Course correction to far Altair. The traitors and weasels back home can wait.”
Zaul grinned. “That’s why I like you, Empress—craftier than a serpent, and you never turn your back on a challenge.”
“Take the Kestrel and the fleet to these coordinates.” Lexia’s voice rang with authority. “I want to know what they’re planning...”
* * *
Miko’s body shuddered under the jar of light drive. He sat on the med table, muscles clenched, his cuts aching. Despite the Jakru medicine and the aromatic balms, he was in rough shape. Star was hunched at his side, wincing, her left arm weighted with a bulky bandage and temporary splint. The Jakru medical science was no worse than any he had encountered in his days as a NAVO man. All things considered, it had taken the dull edge off his pain. But there were so many wounds—
Sket, Berlast and Fenli were in no better condition, sprawled on beds opposite him. Bright lights shone from opaque ceiling panels. Miko turned away. Usk was not with them. The last he had seen, the locust was being trundled down a dim corridor by Zaul’s troopers, weak from hunger and peppered with wounds. The Colonel had not trusted the insect, despite the fearless part he had played.
Surgical instruments hung from pegs on the back wall, along with a diagnosis station, radiology and MRI equipment somewhat akin to the old NAVO technology. A robot eye, the size of a large pomegranate, flitted and buzzed about, scanning patients, monitoring their progress and movements, sending updates on to medical doctors. It might also be a clever spy, thought Miko. Some ten critical patients stretched out at the back, and the eye seemed able to administer drugs to them via other standing equipment, communicating with remote staff as necessary. As for the orb’s means of locomotion, he was at a loss.
“Someone get rid of that thing, puh-lease,” growled Fenli.
“Ignore it, it’s harmless,” Sket advised, rubbing his jaw, examining the cuts on his ribs and upper thigh. He hunched in a gloomy daze, muttering and cursing.
“Where are we?” croaked Berlast.
“Who knows?” Miko peered about. “We seemed to have jumped to light speed.”
Ever since Zaul had shuttled them to his main battleship, the Kestrel, upon rendezvousing with the main armada, the dark, sinking feeling in Miko’s gut had only grown.
“Whatever, I don’t like being put in irons here,” grumbled Fenli. “Zaul seems at best a grudging host.” His complaints were louder than necessary, in the absence of orderlies.
“You’re lucky to be alive, considering,” said Sket.
“Considering what?”
“The dressing down we got from her Highness.”
“Oh, that ungrateful wench. I should—”
“She’s not as tyrannical as she looks,” said Miko.
“How would you know?” retorted Fenli. “You bed down with the she-goat?”
“Quiet now!” hissed Miko.
“Yeah, how could you?” echoed Star, a sharp hint of jealousy in her voice.
Miko clamped his mouth shut, realizing it was pointless to defend any of the Jakru people.
The hatch slid open and an orderly stepped through the quarantine seal. The long syringe in her hand was promptly emptied into Sket’s right thigh and the injured man sank back with a groan, clutching his leg.
“Hey, nothing for me, sister?” quipped Fenli. He wiggled his tongue back and forth and Star rolled her eyes in disgust.
Miko laughed, almost grateful that they had some crude comic relief at this time.
The eye continued to flit about, peering down on them with persistent officiousness.
Fenli swatted it away when it zoomed in too close and the thing chirped out some robotic tones in offense.
A troop of three Jakru soldiers marched into the bay in gleaming silver helms.
“You!—” one of the guards motioned his stun weapon at Miko and the others “—the Colonel wants you down by the loading bay asap.”
“What for?” whined Fenli. “Can’t he unload his own supplies?”
“No lip, outlander. Let’s go.”
The nurse stepped in importunately. “But these persons need immuno boosts and antiseptics.”
“Colonel’s orders, ma’am.”
Stifling groans and sullen mutters, the quintet was escorted down the corridors to an elevator and down to a lower level.
The containing barrier slid back. Pressurized gasses hissed and a wall of echoing noise greeted them. The guards prodded Miko and the others into a cavernous bay filled with all manner of engines, machine parts and repair stations for crippled ships. The air was cooler, permeated with the smell of fuel oil and grease. The whine of electrical tools and the clanging noise of metal machinery being repaired echoed off the high walls.
The chamber was huge. Miko guessed that no less than a hundred engineers worked in this bay.
The trio marched them along, past racks of repair consoles and gutted ships. Four locust vessels in various degrees of
