“It might work,” Jennings admitted.
“It had better work, Jiminy. We’ve nothing else. When those bugs come busting through the door, we want to be ready. Creib, you ready? Wait for my signal.”
“What about me?” whined Dez, crouching like a spider. “Am I supposed to be the third stooge and die over here?” Regers looked at him with a rueful expression, bordering on bland indifference. “You’d better make yourself scarce, Dez—like hop like a bunny into the forward utility bulkhead—you’ve no weapon, no armor. Safest place for you is there.”
Dez dipped his head, cowering like a whipped puppy. He crept into the crawl space, closing the door behind him.
Regers scowled, tugged at his lower lip. He recalled how he’d been caught in a similar situation aboard Albatross with his faithless friend, Yul. That had ended in disaster. By no means must he fall into a similar situation. Not like his former crew member, Hurd, dragged off kicking and screaming to his death by squids.
He and his roughboys didn’t have to wait long. After a quickening series of high-pitched whines and staccato thuds against the hull, there came a space of silence. An ominous interlude that had each man contemplating his own grisly death. They gripped their weapons, staring at the whites of each other’s eyes, eyes darting from one grim face to another, sweat beading from gleaming brows. Deakes’s muscles bulged enough that his joints creaked; even the air crackled with an intensity that could be cut with a knife.
Regers glanced over at Creib whose pudgy hand clutched the artificial grav controller. He flashed him a reassuring nod. Good to inspire confidence when doom lay so thick in the air. A massive boom assaulted the bridge. The steel door flew outward, over the lip of their shield to ream Creib.
He cried out in pain, his left leg pinched between twisted door metal and console.
Smoke enveloped the bridge, reducing visibility to near zero. Regers croaked out a curse. Hordes of Mentera skittered through that haze-filled gap, a blur of motion flitting amidst the clouds of grey-black smoke. To Regers’ eye, those movements were like large rats scuttling out in grey suits.
No rats these. Cannibalistic slaver enemy insectoids born on a faraway planet, with plated heads, antenna like locusts, and pincers for arms, but dressed in man-like suits. “Fire their asses!” Regers roared.
Vincent gave a kamikaze yell. He unleashed a burst of fire that reduced the invading locusts to shredded lumps. Mentera return fire bit back at their metal-shielded barricade. More nimble shapes fanned out to flank them.
Vincent and Deakes loosed deadly volleys, keeping the right flank at bay. Regers and Ramra shot at the other stream flanking them. But a dozen more locusts seemed to replace the ones falling to fire. Regers swore and gnashed his teeth. In seconds they’d be overwhelmed. “Now Creib, now!” he boomed over the chaotic free-for-all.
Creib grasped the grav control despite his blood-streaked shin and quavering hand.
For a brief second, the artificial grav kicked in. Bodies felt the tug of crippling forces. Then they cut out as Creib’s fingers slipped and toggled the switch and the man slid to his knees, groaning in pain, clutching his useless leg.
Regers spewed every curse known, firing bolt after bolt into the fray in his frog-hopping crouch while green Mentera fire streamed close to his head. “Peg those fuckers, you dipshits!”
Sounds of blaster fire deafened his ears in the cramped space.
Mentera stun fire at last targeted Creib, sending him sprawling on his side. Three Mentera slavers snatched him up, carting him off through the smoke like a fresh calf to market.
Regers fought like a wild man. Whirling, he lashed out with arms, elbows, fists and boots. A savage lust for survival possessed his resolve, spittle spraying from his mouth, his trigger finger blasting anything that moved through the dim haze, be it bug, chitter or swirling smoke. The bridge had turned into a bloodbath of alien flesh. Two clicking locusts were moving in on him, firing stun rays. He rolled, catching stun fire that numbed his left side. Deakes turned to cover him. Regers rolled away, blasting moving shapes, willing the feeling to return to his left hip. More shapes edged in from the door. How many of these fucking crickets were there? He felt claw hooks dig into his back. He cried out in anguish. He whirled with an agonized shriek as another jumped on his back. “Agh, you motherfuckers!”
He twisted aside, lashed out with the serrated edge of his combat knife, gutting the thing before it could claw up higher on his back. He threw the quivering thing off him into the parade of creatures bounding at him. A sneak-pack of cricket menace. He ducked as more Mentera fire sprayed against the ravaged firewall as Xaromar did a sudden dip and all bodies went sliding toward the weapons rack.
Regers caught movement in the dimming holo screen: an eerie hulk containing the dragonfly heading toward the Mentera mini-destroyer.
The dragonfly had dipped back into its protective armor. It had perceived the Mentera flagship as a threat, not liking the confusion and invasion of its realm.
The armature, closer now, looked like an ugly, slab-sided molar of blue-grey hue with roots dangling from both bottom ends. The crowning turret had horned ridges, much like the ears of a predatory owl. Between those ears the cannon swiveled and aimed at the Mentera mini-destroyer. In return, red beams sprayed out of the destroyer’s forward cannon to lash harmlessly against the avatar’s armor-shielded exterior.
That was a mistake.
The dragonfly’s protective armor absorbed the hits and flashed crimson. Gunfire spat out from its turret’s spray-guns and rained against the Mentera flanks. Some of the blaster energy deflected and smacked into Xaromar’s own hull.
Regers uttered a grim cry. Deakes scrambled to his side. Thankfully the
