The pale water rippled in response to Usk’s feeble movements. The liquid itself emitted its own eerie greenish glow. A companion locust drifted at his side with unseeing eyes, seemingly dulled from his long captivity in the brine. The stuff, Miko’d told her, had a faint odor like sulfur and peat and something else mixed in. She did not have to remind herself that it was the same brine in which other Mentera could feed off a captive like vampires.
Miko had left her to guard Usk, that the locust should not fall prey to the squid-like Zikri. Damn Miko! She had never felt so alone in her life! Or vulnerable. These creepy tunnels were too much for her to bear. Around every corner lurked death. She was no warrior. No soldier of fortune or freedom fighter like the tales spoken of in the holo books, those crusaders of justice on the fringes of the known universe. Forced, more like it, into this wild, insane venture. Woe the day she had accosted Miko in a desperate plan to get off her home planet, miserable as it was. Followed him into the ‘Grand Skull’ casino in Skullrox City and practically thrown herself at him. Had she known she was getting herself into this hellhole, she would have gladly kept her old, boring life, rather than face the predacious menace of the Zikri on this dismal world Kraetoria.
She stared in horror as several dim forms glided out from the far end of the chamber—Zikri! with their flashing tails and grotesque tentacles, making squishy sounds as they moved, chittering in their abominable voices. On the most furtive of feet, Star ducked in behind a rock pillar, the full weight of terror catching up with her.
How they could survive in this environment without protective suits defied reason…their physiology must be super resilient, or capable of adapting to the thin atmosphere and extreme temperature by metabolic or convectional phenomenon beyond her grasp.
The creatures came in twos and threes, gliding without effort on six tentacles and what could have passed for a set of two hind, lizard-like feet. She crept back deeper behind the cold stone tucked under an overhang of rock. Her heart pounded. Her blaster lay clutched in a quivering hand. Should she use that weapon, even a single burst, the brutes would be alerted and she would have the full wrath of them upon her. Perhaps that was the most frightening thing. Gang-attacked by a monstrous brood of unknown genus, knowing firepower alone would not annihilate them. And yet, she could not let them just maul Usk and do god-knows what to him. She hesitated.
Perhaps a second too long.
A slithering tentacle shot out, leaving a trail of slime across her faceplate. She blasted the first of them full in the face, sending black and grey squid parts airborne in squishy, bloody heaps. Another scrabbled forward, incensed at the death of its peer. It curled a slime-pocked member around her waist and whirled her around. The shriek died in her throat. Seeing that loathsome thing’s dusk-grey rubbery face feet away from her sent her into a mad panic. She lifted her E1. Fired point blank. The offending appendage hung limp and half severed, but the rubber-jellied torso came waddling after her. More came in ever fiercer numbers. She scrambled back, a strangled cry catching in her throat.
She clutched her weapon, spraying fire, but a part of her knew it was hopeless. The fiends would surely capture her and kill her. Usk was lost. Though a renegade of his own kind, he had been a valiant ally of her and Miko since the beginning. She caught a brief movement out of the corner of her eye: a Zikri probing with sucker-marked tentacles into Usk’s tank, hauling him aloft and glaring at him with a nearly eyeless face. The gobbling gullet of a mouth twitched.
That Usk should fall to these creatures now, after all his courageous efforts, seemed ridiculously unfair. But then, what ever was fair in this nightmarish world ruled by squids and locusts?
Star ran down a tunnel, cutting corners, weaving in and out, trying to evade the creatures fast on her heels. The slightly lower gravity was not helping. It made her overshoot. She banged into walls and pillars of natural rock, wreaking havoc on her scuffed suit, buffeted body and bruised skin.
She recalled the grim prophecy of the Masters, imparted by the proxy left behind to continue the legacy of that cold, clinical diseased race, one that claimed to have created the Zikri and the Mentera. She shuddered.
Where in hell was Miko?
Chapter 2
Regers frowned down at the nav console on Xaromar’s bridge. “Amazing this rustbucket is even fly-worthy,” he grumbled. “Those gauges ain’t looking too good, Creib. Sure, this ship’ll make it to Phallanor?”
Creib patted the console with a proprietary air. “She’ll get us there, Regers, you’ll see.”
Regers grunted. He smoothed out the lank black hair falling over his receding hairline and turned aside. Confidence. That’s what he liked in a crew member. Didn’t much like Creib though—too much of a fat boy and a crybaby. Yet he’d keep him in this loose Robin Hood-gone-bad outfit, so long as the chips were favorable. Deakes and Vincent were fine, working away at the weapons grid, perfect Rambo types for this sort of situation. Deakes the older of the two, balding, thickset, saw eye
