At last Miko recognized a familiar landmark: a set of boulders piled on top of one another set at a wider junction of the rough tunnel. He dreaded what he might find. He parked the ship and took his blaster with him, slowly emerging from the cargo hold and depressurization chamber.
A silence gripped this strange cavern that even his ill-fitted locust suit with its multiple sensors did not fail to report. No movement, sound or radio transmissions. Just empty space, cold desolation, sterility.
A sprawl of bodies littered the grey stone. Mangled corpses of Zikri and masses and hunks of tentacles sprawled in inglorious death.
He swallowed the lump in his throat. A battle had been fought here. With no mercy given. Blaster fire had won out, wreaking havoc on squid flesh. Star’s handiwork? There was no sign of her.
At the far end of the chamber loomed four squat glass vats huddled in the icy gloom. The only serviceable one stood empty, its pale waters gleaming in luminous mockery. He threaded past the dead bodies, grimacing in distaste. Approaching the tanks, he felt his heart go cold. He gripped his lumo-blaster, not knowing what horror would jump out at him. He reached out a gloved hand and drew it across the lip of the tank. Some of the pale green liquid had splashed out, leaving puddles at the foot of the glass. Where was Usk? Star? Dragged away by fiendish, blood-hunting Zikri?
Miko’s mind whirled. He remembered the last time he had been here and it seemed like an age ago. Everything was the same, minus the fresh gore. Two tanks drained of liquid with only withered husks lying at the bottom; another stained pink and its horned occupants crouched, long dead—creatures of some unknown race. This hall was an old place, long grown in disuse and Miko could not help but suspect that these ancient prisoners had been used to provide fuel for the locust fighters in the Battle Hall not far away. During times of their ancient rituals.
Miko stared in hollow misery. Where could his friends be? This place looked like a war zone. His hopes at finding them plummeted as he brooded. His gut felt heavy as a sack of lead.
Fingers tightened on his blaster. He chided himself for his lack of faith and urged himself on, willing himself not to think about the probability. Where were they? He shuddered to think what lay ahead.
Hurrying along the line of the dead, he stumbled on to the opposite end of the chamber. There he examined a fresh splatter trail. Blood spots continued up the cross corridor on a slight ascent. It looked like a mixture of Mentera and Zikri ichor.
Miko’s mind warred with many possibilities. Enemies? Friends? Could it possibly be Usk’s blood spilt as he struggled, carried off by some horrific enemy? With only dismal clarity Miko recalled how the Mentera’s suit had been manhandled by squids in the gladiatorial chamber. Little chance of survival for Usk if they pulled him out of the water.
He mustn’t give up. The two could possibly still be alive.
He hopped back in the ship, turned the nose up the nearby cross tunnel and followed the trail magnified ten-fold on the Mentera camera-eye viewport.
At maddeningly slow speeds, Miko patrolled the passages. He scanned the eerie crossways that appeared and up farther ahead for Star and Usk. Nothing. Just the same endless tracts of cold, grey passages untouched for ages, marked by the occasional green phosphorescence from patches of rocks on the wall or the unsettling glow of a Mentera tank’s waters.
Miko began to despair. This was a fool’s errand! The squids must have captured her.
Where were Fenli and the others? He hadn’t even bothered to check in on his suit com. Maybe they were keeping radio silence?
Around a bend in the tunnel he passed a narrow cross corridor. He swore he caught a flutter of movement. Miko halted. Should he use the ship’s com to alert the others? Better not try. The bug fleet might zone in on the frequencies. On a hunch, he set the ship down by the nearest wall. Too narrow to squeeze through there. He scrambled out of the stern bay, his heart pounding. He checked his blaster. Everything good. He sucked in a sharp breath. Yes, his eyes caught a whisk of shadowy movement up the tunnel where it narrowed. What looked like a light-colored suit…Star’s? He checked his pace. Careful there, Miko. Patrols could be lurking here. Any number of grisly horrors in wait, as he only too painfully knew from his encounters back in the ancient battle hall with the squids, tanks and their monstrous contents.
There! Usk and Star stumbling up the rock hewn passage. He could have cried out loud in relief. They looked beat up. Both must be starving for oxygen.
Star came bounding toward him, her lips moving in a glad cry. Usk’s antenna perked at the sight of a familiar friend. Miko broke out in an answering, shambling run.
Star was thirty feet away, her guard down, when all of a sudden a blurred shape struck out of nowhere. It came hurtling from behind a mass of eroded pillars and caught her broadside, sending her rolling over and over toward the far wall.
Miko froze in dismay. “Star!”
He gaped in horror. The thing was
