Yul stepped past the ruin of locust bodies and shredded suits, sidling over to the open port on the first vessel. The grotesque mantis-headed prow rose over him like an eerie living thing. The others trailed back behind him. Only a pilot light of greenish hue glowed from the bridge. Fortune prevailed: the dust kicked up from Fenli’s bullets had concealed their movements from anyone aboard.
Yul trooped over to the air lock and worked the buttons. “Get to the bridge,” he ordered. “We take over this vessel. Kill any hostiles on sight. Face the wall and hide your hands, in case they have cameras here.” Seeing Miko hesitate, he rasped into his com. “We make our move now, spaceman. Let’s go!”
Hresh and Cloye stepped inside before Yul hit the button to get the door sliding closed. Each prepared himself grimly to commandeer the ship, but Miko held his ground, eyes beetling over the other ship not fifty yards away.
The tug of other duties seemed to be eating at his heart. Reluctantly, he stepped into the air lock. The air pressurized. While the others rushed forward to sweep the ship’s interior, he turned abruptly back toward the hatch door.
In a moment’s decision he hit the airlock release and ducked under the door. All this before Yul could raise an alarm. He broke out in a dead run through the settling dust cloud toward the other Mentera vessel before his window of opportunity expired. He ignored the chatter of expletives crackling through his com while deliberately dimming the volume.
This ship, like Yul’s was ripe for the picking. Fenli’s taking the last enemy on a merry chase had presented opportunities to all of them. He’d snatch the enemy lightfighter.
With grim precision, Miko worked the controls on the air lock and stepped through. He turned his head away toward the wall and tucked in his arms to minimize any camera exposure. With any luck, if there were any pilots aboard they’d think the air lock light was being activated by one of their own surviving soldiers returning. Like Yul he was banking on the fact that anyone aboard hadn’t seen any hostiles creep out of the disabled ship through the dust cloud. A thin hope, but he had nothing else to go on.
He crept down the hall up to the bridge. Simple layout, like the Mentera ship they’d come in on. A straight corridor, with grey shielded plates to either side. A ceiling of soundproofed baffler cubes. No guards. They must have all gone out to get slaughtered by Fenli.
Miko paused, crouched at the bridge’s threshold, a narrow V-shaped arch. Risking a glance, he saw two locusts manning the helm. Their eyes were glued on the smoking ship they’d gunned down, squinting through the diminishing dust cloud, headsets over their olive-colored plated skulls. One abruptly rose, antennae twitching in suspicion.
Luck don’t fail me now. In a kamikaze run, Miko stormed in, opening fire on the suited figures, shredding Mentera suits and flesh.
The two pilots fell in mangled heaps.
Miko took over the controls, flicked dials and tapped buttons, got the engines revving up. The craft rumbled to life, its nose pointed to the cross tunnel from where Fenli’s pursuer had emerged.
Miko plunked himself in the chair vacated by one of the pilots. The green-black alien was bleeding out, gazing up at him with bulging eyes. He ignored the grotesque posture and amped up the volume on his com. He hissed into the receiver. “I’m going after Star.”
A voice answered: “What do you mean, you can’t just—”
Cloye’s voice rasped. “He already has, Yul. Let him go. We’ve got our own fish to fry and a getaway ship. Let’s quit this hellhole.”
Miko heard no answer, only ominous silence, but he saw in his rear sights Yul and Cloye’s commandeered craft lifting in mimicry of his own. Yul had made the right decision. Without a second thought, Miko focused on the task ahead. His mission was clear…a plan of action was already brewing in his fertile brain.
Chapter 13
Miko stared past the weapons console to the glass tank containing the floating Mentera. A shiver tickled up his spine. He knew the crew would use such a live specimen, possibly a condemned criminal, as food during their long space voyages. The details of the Mentera’s vampirish feeding rushed back to him in a flash of grisly recollection: attaching the cable to the circuit box on top of the tank to their own navels then allowing the sustenance that passed down that apparatus to glut their own energetic need. The trapped creature’s life force waned, only to be rejuvenated daily by the pale green witch water.
Beside the tank stood the box still radiating its blue glow. He’d noticed the Mentera soldiers carrying the odd blue package into this vessel when he’d been invisible. Obviously something about it was important. It had that distinctive look, like something he had experienced earlier…yes, he remembered, those mysterious tower components in the underground bunker of the Masters who had impelled Usk, him and Star to blow up the secret command base.
Miko grimaced at the memory and pulled his attention back to the controls. That Fenli had even made it to this forsaken place after crashlanding defied understanding. Now to witness him blasting Mentera lightfighters in a ship of his own? No secret that Fenli was a phenomenon in his own right. A man who just wouldn’t die. But then what of himself?
Miko’s lip curled in a crooked
