Audra.
He might have known! His blaster rose in a shaky hand.
Yet he dared not shoot. Star would die, either tagged by his beams or crushed by Audra’s powerful tentacles. How they raised grisly memories of old dread in him! Slimy things, clutching, groping at his clammy skin during those shameful moments of bodily joining aboard Sitty II.
His legs almost buckled beneath him. He felt his resolve withering to dust.
Usk stood a dozen feet away, frozen in helpless dismay.
Audra glided over and hulked before Miko, her tentacles rippling in vindictive majesty at her prize. In a vise-like grip she hoisted Star high up like a trophy for him to see. Star’s legs dangled, her heels striking against the Zikri’s rubbery body, kicking like a terrified minnow dragged out of water. Two motilators curled in unison, crossed her helmet, settling on her shoulders.
Miko caught a wild, panicked glimpse of Star’s eyes, pale pinpoints, her lips and feverish brow doused in sweat, visible through the faceplate. Her expression was that of a half mad person.
Miko caught his breath, trying to imagine the pure terror she felt, all too aware of his impotence.
He raised his blaster and aimed for Audra’s head, but she thrust Star before her like a brazen shield.
“Star, don’t struggle! It’s me she wants! I’ll give myself up—” Even if Audra could hear his babbling, what use were such words against her strength?
Two more motilators arched around Star’s legs, stopping those futile kicking motions. The ropy folds of the Zikri’s fleshy motilators tightened, squeezing without remorse. The slimed appendages glistening in the eerie light looked more like python coils than squid assists.
An unsaid communication passed between Miko and Audra. As her hypnotic eyes fixed on him in triumph, Miko’s blaster fell from his limp grip. Perhaps only he could understand her hold on him in that moment after being under her power for so long during those unending months on Sitty II. Like a drugged man in a trance, he walked toward her, offering himself up in exchange. Usk stared in incomprehension. The locust’s chitinous mouth worked; he jerked forward, lifting his sole pincer to strike.
But Miko was no more than a few feet away when Audra tossed Star aside like a sack of potatoes. Her front motilators whipped out, to tear a strip in her suit a few inches above the left breast. The air began hissing out of her chest piece and she gave a shriek of anguish.
Miko’s hoarse wail went unheard. For the briefest of seconds, he realized he’d been betrayed.
Slimy tentacles whipped out and caught him sideways in a writhing grip. He could not scramble away. His blaster lay useless several paces distant. She pulled him aloft, clutching him with terrible force, as she had Star.
Miko’s mind raced a million miles back as familiar Zikri strength smothered him. In a lucid moment, hollow anguish washed over his being, his world suddenly gone to hell. Tentacle tips explored the exterior of his suit in an all too familiar groping, gentle at first then more insistent as the terrible moments passed…much as a master would handle a reluctant pet.
Star crumpled on the stone, her suit punctured. Usk had fled to her side, dragging her with one claw up the tunnel closer to Miko’s ship and life-saving oxygen.
Audra drew Miko in, her eyes betraying a savage intensity, mimicking a starving animal hungry for food.
Miko struggled; he writhed, but he knew such was of no use. The breath whooshed out of his lungs, the force crippled him, and his face contorted in horror, his bones at the verge of cracking. She drew his face closer to hers, the glass pressed to her noseless visage. Black beady eyes stared at him with wrath, almost a mad triumph, something that Miko knew had progressed beyond the scope of normality to strike at the demented core that had haunted this creature for all too long.
The almost telepathic communication lasted long instants and somewhere the savage echo in his brain knew this was the last reckoning.
Alas, Miko, you have been very naughty. Remiss in your affections. Your friends cannot help you now, loyal as they are. We’ve a lot to catch up on, you and me…
The wide, all-seeing eyes kindled a darker shade of ebon and turned baleful in her grizzled face. The ultimate scorn of a jilted lover raged in the heat of frenzy, one spurned and neglected. Now Audra was out to exact her lustful revenge on a careless lover for events long unresolved.
The seconds turned into minutes. Part of Miko’s soul crumbled like an old building. Against all odds, she had prevailed, her brute tenacity had triumphed and she had found him on this desolate world. What a loathsome place to face one’s end.
Audra’s motilators were at last unable to control their twitching and the tips broke through the lining of his suit in a flurry of violent anticipation.
Miko gasped in horror as he braced himself for the inevitable…
Not a score of paces away, two heads popped up from behind a shield of crumbled rock.
“Jesus, what the fuck is that?” Yul gazed in disgust.
“Some mutant squid. It’s got our runaway flyboy,” Cloye hissed. “Doesn’t look too promising. Now would be the time to pull that disappearing act, flyboy.”
“Poor bastard.”
Cloye lifted her E1. “Fuck that, I’ll—”
“No, wait!” Yul grabbed her wrist but it was too late.
A burst of red flared from Cloye’s E1’s muzzle. “He’s already dead.”
Down the tunnel the arc flew and peppered Audra’s glistening
