Regers thought fast. “Creib, reduce the thrust. Let them think we’ve capitulated. At the point of surrender, Vincent, train our guns on their recon tower. Deakes, aim a second set on her two rear boosters. The moment they try to breach, we blast them full on.”
“Damn! We’ll never break free,” groaned Deakes.
“Throw it off! Blast them for crap sakes!”
“Shields are too strong!”
They’re not trying to kill us—they would have blown us out of the air by now,” said Jennings.
“Of course, so they can stick us in their tanks and feed off us till the end of time.”
“Or they were waiting here for somebody to show up,” snarled Regers. “Maybe they want information.”
Dez cowered in a ball, all googly-eyed and holding his blood-seeping nose. He clutched his hair, frightened out of his skull.
Deakes growled. “They’re not drawing us into the mother ship, Regers. They’ve put a can opener on us.”
“Can opener?” His mind reeled. How the fuck had this happened? He saw the screwnail-shaped bot loosed from the mothership come speeding their way in the rear holo cam. It clamped onto Xaromar’s port middle, digging into her armored hull. Long, metallic grey spider appendages vibrated with giant magno suckers latched to the hull and its massive titanium stinger rose like an oil-well’s pumpjack. It poised to penetrate the hull, maintaining the ship’s pressure while locust troopers disgorged into the main hall to capture them.
“Ramra, get the defensive armor down off the wall. Everyone, suit up!” He snatched up a Kevlar vest and others donned armor plates on torsos and vitals. Only six suits to go around so Dez got the short stick. Choking and gibbering, the CEO was already beyond realizing his fate.
“We’ve got ourselves a fight,” Regers rasped. He tossed E1s to the others. “Barricade the bridge. They’ll come in and try to blast us. But we’ll take down as many as we can.”
Chapter 7
Audra stirred from her stupor, spread-eagled in the dimly-lit chamber, smelling of must, alien vermin and ancient death. She started to regain her senses. Each of her six powerful motilators was stretched across a torture board in painful precision, taut and wired to a gridded vise of strange design. The unpleasant memories of being tortured drifted into her consciousness. Yes…she was on Kraetoria, legendary home world of her Zikri race. The air and pressure in the room was controlled—a feature on the plus side—easier to breathe than the inhospitable cold air in the tunnels. On the negative side…well, her immobility was only one of the many negatives…
“We want to get to the bottom of this mystery,” an accented voice said in her own chittering language. “We will ferret out this human and his meddling friends, never fear, Griekshj.” The word, a derogative reference to ghost in her native tongue, held a hollow ring—indicating a rebel hovering on the fringes of society. The massive Zikri standing hunched over her splayed body, mouthed the name in a jeering, almost insolent way. Here was some minor captain, eager to make a name for himself, with a manner gloating and carefree. He pulled up some data on a green-pulsing screen, a 3D monitor of some unknown technology. His assistant, a lowly attendant, clearly intimidated by his overseer, shrank back in his ropy pose, cowering under the murky shadow of his superior.
Audra’s eyes adjusted to the dimness. She squinted through their narrowed slits at her tormentors. She could handle far worse pain than this, but it was expedient to give the semblance of weakness at this moment. All her training had taught her to employ tricks, however small but significant. She cowered in as painful a feigned posture as possible, but made careful note of every nook and cranny around her in the hopes of making an escape. This small claustrophobic burrow with walls and ceiling of the same dull grey stone as without, was not to her liking. Several machines sat to either side: monitors and control panels, tower boxes and surgical equipment with crane-like arms, holding hypodermics and incisory tools…adjusted by a technician, a much more wiry and thin Zikri than the leader, with six long, pale tentacles. Two steel doors at either end of the chamber served as exits, with the squidlike logos and motilator motifs characteristic of her race. Black and silver emergency suits, of both squid and locust design, hung on the far wall. Sprinklers and air vents, set in the smooth rock ceiling, oddly complemented a half dozen air tanks sitting under the long, utility counter. Their presence caused more distress than ease. She couldn’t quite peg the purpose of this place, as much an experimental hazlab as a torture chamber in her opinion. Maybe both.
Noticing her return to consciousness, the overlord made a gesture of tentacle. “No doubt you are wondering why you are here? You are of the older breed,” he said conversationally. “Fascinating, as impossible as that can be.”
Audra stiffened. The overlord twitched his polyp of a mouth and prompted his attendant to flick a switch.
Electro-stimulus coursed through her tentacles. She bore the pain, though it sent ripples of agony through her elastic, muscular upper body. Her own polyp of a mouth tightened in a small quivering O.
“Answer the question, Griekshj, or you will dance in pain. We’ve much time to explore your dark little secrets and you will tell us all you know. Why were you there with the human, Miko, attacking Mentera and Zikri soldiers?”
Audra gave a chitter of disgust. This peacock interrogating her was insufferable! No less, torturing her. He and all his kind had already lost the ability to transmit electro-charged energy through their motilators. A critical natural defense and survival mechanism lost in the mists of time. Had all this happened while she and Miko had been cavorting about in spacetime? Evidently they had been
