The air around Miko sparked and hissed as he buzzed back to visibility. He reeled, clutching at his temple. “Ow! Don’t do that, Usk! It’s hellish enough coming back into this wretched body.” His head felt like a throbbing lead weight. Cold sweats and chills fled up his limbs.
Usk snarled out in bug-speak. Neither Miko nor Star understood a word. The locust dipped another vesselful into the open top and brought it over to the flashing console with him, intending to immerse his stump such that he could regenerate the pincer. That might take some time. Shaking the webs out of his head, Miko stumbled over to Star, who was recovering from her shock with painful slowness. The woman looked totally defeated. “You okay, Star?”
She stared glaze-eyed past him to the locust-feeding tank. Her eyes registered dim comprehension. She shivered. She still wore her chest-shredded suit. While Usk struggled one-pincered at the controls, as he guided the craft along the narrow tunnels away from the battle grounds, Star stirred, registering Miko for the first time. Her hair, flaxen and damp with sweat, was plastered to her brow. Beads of it funneled down her face. Signs of trauma lurked in those clouded eyes. She looked ten years older, her cheeks hollow, the color of funereal ash. To say the woman was in shock was an understatement. Miko scowled, ashamed that he had put her through this hell. He came over to crouch beside her quivering frame and as gently as possible put his arms around her shoulders, hoping to restore her to some semblance of her former self.
She looked at him, trembling. “Miko…I can hardly believe it’s you. Maybe we’re all dead here and this is some kind of sick joke.”
“No joke, Star. I’m afraid we’re all alive here.”
She rose to a feeble crouch, groaning. “That squid thing…the one that wanted you,” she quavered, “it attacked us in cold blood…it could have…would have killed me.”
Miko looked away, his lips pursed. He jerked up and over to the ship’s nav, where Usk was busy piloting the ship down a tunnel. Miko flipped on the universal translator, a black-red button above the anti-grav generator. He knew where it was from experience. The unit glowed an operating yellow.
He stared at the Mentera, as if seeing him for the first time. “Good to see you, Usk. That claw looks bad. Hope the witch water works. What happened after I left you at the tanks?”
Usk turned to peer up at him with his sad, timeless expression, insectoid and alien. His mouth opened to disgorge guttural syllables. “The Zikri took me from the tank. Tortured me in some chamber. They chased Star, prepared to torture her too. Your hunter female squid was there. We fought our Zikri jailers. She broke free, killed the overseer. I escaped.”
Miko shuddered. “That doesn’t surprise me. Nothing can stop Audra.”
Star came over to gape at Miko. “Audra? Is that what you call that abomination? What does the squid have on you? How is it you are always blinking in and out like some strobe? Are you a mutant?”
Miko dipped his head in wincing shame. “You could call it that.” He swung his gaze away. After tapping some dials, he donned a headset and adjusted the receiver. The incoming signal on the com was flashing. Usk, for obvious reasons, had muted it.
The light had been flashing for some minutes now, likely queries from locust mission control. Nothing good.
Miko set the frequency to the same on his suit’s com, a three-way channel, not trusting the open ship frequencies and hoped they were not out of range. “Fenli? You there?”
After a time, a hoarse voice came over the com. “Good to hear your voice, friend. I’m about eight tunnels over. Sorry I couldn’t help you out. Had my hands busy.”
“Cut the chatter,” a familiar voice intruded. Miko recognized the gruff, no-nonsense tone of Yul. “We have to think of some strategy out of here. Nice work, Miko, disappearing back there. That Zikri freak would have killed you in my estimation. I won’t even ask how you made it into that ship.”
“Plenty more chances to die, Yul.”
Yul grunted. “Where the hell are you, Fenli? Our holo tracker isn’t reading you. Only Miko’s lightfighter.”
“This onboard cloaker is a wonder. Saved my ass a few times. Guess your ships don’t have one. This must be an experimental model, some special task force ship.”
“Lucky you,” said Yul. “Your status? Clean?”
“Some smoke and trailing metal, but I’ll survive. No bogies that I can see. Ready to bird-dog out of here.”
“That’s our biggest problem: getting out of here.”
“Why’s that? Ever hear of impulse power?”
“Impulse isn’t getting us far. We can’t warp out while we’re within Kraetoria’s grav field. The bugs’ve got a fleet up there. Thousands of ships I’ll wager that’ll figure us out in a fly the moment we show our noses. Unless we can convince them we’re not an enemy…”
“We can’t stay down here and get pegged off,” objected Cloye. “We’re lucky to have survived this long. We’ve got to get the hell out of here!”
Hresh grunted his endorsement.
“All nice on paper, but many things