“Watch where you’re going, ox!” chided Laren.
Usk chittered his offence at Laren’s abruptness, which Laren patently ignored.
Slowly they left the crippled ship behind, Miko leading the way to avoid bumping into the others. They made some progress despite the gloomy uncertainty.
Glass crunched under Miko’s boots. He came to a halt, briefly shining his light. Strange crystalline wires and crushed circuits, disturbingly reminiscent of the sinister stoppers of the Mentera tanks, lay strewn across the passageway. Desiccated bones jutted up from the rubble. Some struggle had happened here. What had come of the residents of the tanks, if tanks were once here?
At various intervals, recesses appeared off to the side of the tunnel, housing transparent cocoons, inside which nestled single, dried-out organisms, appearing neither human nor animal. Repulsive things—which had more the semblance of humpbacked shrimp creatures, with tiny skulls and too many eyes.
Star wrinkled her nose and shivered. “What is this place?” came her croaking gasp through the com.
Laren muttered, “Early explorers believed the Zikri and locusts populated this planet aeons ago. For whatever reasons, I shudder to guess. As for these things...” His eyes flitted restlessly over the cocooned bodies, then came to rest on the strange, disturbing faces carved in the walls. Miko saw them too, shadowy figures with peaked heads and elongated necks surrounded by locust motifs: antennae, wings, crudely drawn, as if from an emerging race. He traced a finger across the wall, feeling the grooves of crude-cut eyes and locust parts carved in the rock.
“Now I wish I had studied this planet’s history,” hissed Laren. “Damn that Zaul! Always pushing to get things done. If he had briefed us properly on what to expect on the surface...”
“None of us could have known we’d be stranded here,” grunted Miko.
“One thing for sure, we can expect no mercy from the Mentera should they catch up with us.”
“We can—” A burst of lumo fire ricocheted off the walls and sent rocks tumbling. Laren’s foot slipped as the surface spidered with cracks.
Miko staggered sideways, his fingers snatching at the ledge that opened up at his feet, but that too crumbled and he plummeted into a dark space.
He thumped awkwardly on his side.
Miko swore and rolled himself upright, groaning and nursing bruises. Usk was swatting away the dust, Star gasping wildly in the darkness. Miko looked up. They’d fallen about fifteen feet, into an underground pit or tunnel. Luckily the lower gravity had reduced the impact of their fall.
Red lumo fire burst across the gap from where they had fallen, cascading jagged streaks of light. Locusts! The fiends must have spotted them. How the devils snuck up on them so stealthily—
Laren lifted his stunner. Miko slapped it down. “No,” he hissed. “Don’t alert them. Quick! Out of sight.”
Miko shoved them forward, away from the revealing crack, his heart pounding, breath rasping, wincing from his bruises. Teams of the Mentera must be out on foot looking for them!
His eyes gradually discerned the details of crude, bare walls, a pebbly expanse underfoot, like an ancient, dried up stream. Where were they? Clearly in an underground tunnel, running parallel to the one in which they had been in. Shadows and dust-motes wound off into the gloom. Laren, fingers fumbling on his helmet to turn the light to its lowest intensity, pointed a shaky hand ahead, where the dim light revealed a metallic sheen.
They stumbled on for several hundred yards over tumbled rock and ancient debris, only to stop before a sealed metal door with a round ring a foot in diameter. Laren wrenched at it, but could not open it. Miko and Usk lent aid. The silvery metal gave way inwards with a popping of sealed air. They plunged through.
“Seal it!” cried Star. Usk put his shoulder to the door, grabbed the inner ring and tightened it securely. They slumped down, slowing their breathing, waiting for the locusts.
“Douse the lamp,” Miko hissed at Laren.
They crouched in the inky darkness, waiting. Usk’s pincers flexed and twitched. Hearing the blood pound in his ears, Miko squinted about wildly, as did his peers. Silence. Muted bangings came from beyond the door. The odd trilling of a laser. In the oppressive gloom, Miko felt he was in a chamber that had been sealed for aeons.
An echoing clink smote the thick silence, as if a lock had turned in the door. Miko whirled about, weapon drawn, but discerned no cause for the sound.
A dim green glow appeared further within. Straining his eyes, Miko imagined every sort of worst-case scenario, his heart beating like a jackhammer. The glow stabilized. A barely perceptible hum permeated the air. What new horror waited?
He discerned electrical components, tall white cabinets, crystal holo coils hanging from the ceiling, a series of screens, projectors scattered within. A clinical ambience hung about this unsettling place.
Star touched his arm. Miko blinked in curiosity, not having heard her approach. Usk and Laren huddled nearby. At the far end of the chamber another silver door with a similar ring glinted. An exit?
Cautiously, they crept closer to the light. A low panel lay by the side wall—flat, tilted on a shallow angle, flecked with incomprehensible symbols. Behind appeared a long glass window which gave a glimpse into a room with cobwebbed, misty substance, as if frozen in time. Vertical tubes ran up the side wall and across the ceiling. They were like organ pipes, with fine wires, like blue fibre optics, dangling down from them, glistening in
