Star gasped, breaking the surface of the water, holding onto the rim of the tank for balance, while dogpaddling with the other gloved hand. She had to get out of this tank!
Could it be? Her defender looked like that grotesque creature that had tried to clasp Miko in an intimate embrace back in the ancient battle hall during the horrible hybrid fight. Why was it killing its own kind? Could it actually be helping her? The concept was as alien to her as the creature, one which turned her stomach and her mind topsy-turvy.
The Zikri in the unknown avenger’s grip gave a last agonized chitter before it lay lifeless in a heap on the cold stone. In a blinking daze, Star pulled herself over the rim and dropped down in front of the tank.
Usk, a quivering shape, scuttled up and pulled her away from that perilous place as her mind began its descent into a haze of delirium.
The black-grey skinned creature known as Audra glided in leisurely fashion after them…
Chapter 9
Miko drifted through the creepy tunnels and the tank-rooms that had seen no humans since the beginning of time. His body had disappeared. He was an invisible entity, yet with senses intact.
Blinked out of existence in near airless vacuum with aliens on his tail. How long would this state of suspended animation last?
His senses were on high alert, allowing him to see, hear, even grasp objects, but not smell. He could think and reason—how, he had no idea, outside of the fact that the laws of physics did not apply to him; furthermore, they were not always immutable. Why this was happening or how he was capable of two distinct realities was beyond him. Only that it had happened in a time drive accident with Audra, and a subsequent amalgamator freak misfire, rendering him invisible, or bodiless from time to time. If he were to rematerialize now, he would surely die, choking on the cold, nearly oxygen-less air. He needed to find pressure suits for him and Usk quickly, otherwise…
But where? Just a honeycombed tunnel-maze of miles of cold grey rock with only the odd dim glimmer of phosphorescent light appearing at random around a corner. In this hostile environment, there was nothing to hope for. Only the odd dim glow of perpetual alien twilight shining from an obscure vent.
The last monster encounter shredding his suit lay still thick in memory…a hybrid of tentacles, armored plates and scales. He had ‘blinked out’ in his usual fashion, eluding it at a crucial moment as he floated out of his mangled suit, thus saving his life. But he could not count on such luck again. Surely there would be more of those foul creatures lurking about this rocky labyrinth. Not to mention…Audra. She had been captured by her own kind, dragged away to some unknown doom. He did not know how he felt about that. Relief? Emptiness? Disbelief? She seemed impossible to kill. Perhaps she was no longer around, but a sixth sense told him otherwise, mixed with a vestige of hollowness and sadness permeating his core. Inexplicable. That was the only word for it. They had been joined for months in Sitty II, that experimental craft of the NAVO, the New Avionic Vanguard Order. Those memories coupled in a ship were dark and disgusting, ones he’d rather never revisit. Crash landing on Rogos with its primitive brood of creatures formed another dim nightmare in the back of his brain. Those desperate moments in a sinking ship in a fetid bog, cutting himself free from her muscled wads of flesh while she was under attack by some alien swordfish, were some of the most vivid of his life. But she had survived and was still hunting him down like a bloodhound its prey.
He hated to leave Star with Usk but he had no choice. He had to find a ship or oxygen, or both, or they were all dead. How much time remained? Six hours for the lot of them? Before her pressure suit’s life support system faded out? It seemed an impossible deadline. Impossible odds.
Usk had to heal. He shuddered to think what would happen if Zikri caught up with Usk or Star. He hoped Star could protect herself against them.
Fat lot of good he was doing them now—bodiless, lost, without means or weapon. At least he held the advantage of stealth with his sheath of invisibility. That could prove lethal to an aggressor unable to detect his presence. For now, he moved unseen in the dark windless tunnels of the Zikri and Mentera, until he blinked back at random or someone threw some liquid on him. Liquid seemed to uncloak the spell and reveal his outer human form.
What was this place? Some antediluvian tunnels, rough-hewn haunts of the Zikri and the Mentera still in nefarious use today? Evidently they were using it now as some base or research site, for activities unknown. Probably something related to the two races’ recent alliance.
A buzz of motion alerted him. Busy echoes reminiscent of the locusts’ excited chatter. He glided on, willing his spirit by mental effort alone to propel him through the tunnels of emptiness. The buzz-like chatter of Mentera voices grew more distinct. Residuals through voice com. Excited and wary. Two locusts in dun-colored space-suits guarded the upcoming control post.
Miko silently glided past them. He debated snatching one of their weapons, a lumo-baton that zapped like a taser as well as fired a stun ray, but that would only alert them to an intruder’s presence and complicate matters. If he were to blink back to bodily form without warning, even with a weapon he would be vulnerable.
Rounding a corner, Miko’s essence drew to a dead halt.
A hundred or
