The dragonfly gave no quarter. It flew out of the hole in its armor to flit behind its avatar, hovering like some otherworldly ghoul. It dive-bombed the Mentera craft, smashing dents like moon craters in the armored hull. The sight was as improbable as it was impossible. Regers gaped. The insect must consider the locust ship an extreme threat to its habitat to launch such an all-out attack. Why else would it bludgeon the mini-destroyer like that?
He scrambled back through the line of bodies to the command console. Grabbing the grav switch, he jammed it to full capacity.
A terrible weight seized everyone’s limbs. Auxiliary power dimmed. The lights flickered, components did a sparking dance. Running figures suddenly toppled like bowling pins. Either they pitched headlong or ground to a quivering halt, thrown to their knees. Regers, forced to a pancake crouch, went ape with his blaster, pegging off sluggish enemies. Somewhere in the smoke, he saw Ramra roll, clutching for his weapon that had been knocked out of his grasp by a blood-hungry locust. Deakes pivoted, raining fire into suited alien bodies.
At last the bridge was still. Only reeking smoke and barbecued cricket coiled up from riddled heaps. The defenders’ breaths clung in their throats. Their lungs heaved.
Regers’ head turned to the holoview. Crimson beams lashed out from the beleaguered Mentera ship toward the dragonfly to destroy it in one fell swoop. But the creature, as if driven by some freakish sixth sense, dodged in between the death rays and smashed the hull with its bullet-like head, denting plates like blacksmith hammers on sheets of corroded tin. A few more strikes and it would breach that hull.
The Mentera vessel lurched at the punishment of such alien force. The creature’s outer carapace, composed of indestructible material, was unlike anything humans had ever seen. Maybe it didn’t even have DNA in its cells? The alien’s makeup could be something different than DNA. How could it inflict those blows on metal and evade the bug’s ship fire at the same time?
The tractor beam faltered, restoring to Xaromar her electro-force. Unpiloted, Xaromar dipped, plummeting fast toward Remus.
“Get to the nav!” came Regers’ hoarse cry.
In the brightening holo view, he caught a glimpse of gory, serrated teeth in the dragonfly’s mouth, chomping on mangled Mentera, suits and all, as the dragonfly plunged through the enemy hull to dispose of the crew. Like an insect mutant gone amok.
Regers crawled to the console with legs like logs. He released the AG. Others of his crew rose from their half crouches.
The bridge was a shambles of blood and guts.
Jennings clawed to take over the nav. With a strangled cry of his own, he stabilized the ship’s plummet and lifted the nose, saving them from certain death. With inches to spare Xaromar breasted the mangled towers of Hresh’s research installation below and leveled out to an even path, cruising parallel to the desolate landscape across the eerie predawn ruins. Regers was thrust back on his heels by the sudden Gs. He crab-crawled his way to the nav. A hook of a hand gripped the console. Most of the Mentera were dead, or quivering or groaning in anguish in distended heaps.
“Good save, Jennings. What’s our status?”
Jennings said hoarsely, “Impulse is up, but at min capacity.”
“Light drive?”
“Dunno until we try it.”
“I’ll be optimistic and assume it’ll be working.”
“That’s a dangerous assumption.”
“Move!” croaked Regers in a harsh voice. “Configure it for a jump out of here. Vincent, Deakes? You with me? Get to that bug hole in the upper hull and patch it up as best you can. Nuke any aliens you see.” He waved his gun then trailed after them with a limp. Vincent hobbled on, his face still etched in an idiot’s grin. Man must be in some sort of self-survival autopilot mode.
The hall was bathed in half light on emerg power and permeated by an odor like a grass field of fermented piss, locust spit and pheromones. Regers caught a brisk movement of twitching antenna rounding a bend. “There! Blast that skulking thing.”
Vincent fired repeated rounds. Deakes and Ramra scrambled after it. The four of them rounded the bend. They saw, just as the insect was booting it up a ladder, a circular portal cut in the ceiling through which it was escaping.
Ramra opened fire. The insectoid shape fell from the ladder, some weave of spidery ropes. Its pincer claws snapped at empty air. It fell back on its shell and breathed its last breath. Deakes stomped on its neck, crunching it flat. Vincent clambered up the ropy strands while Deakes covered him, his E1 trained. Vincent lifted blaster to point inside the dark opening where the drone assault craft sat above the hull. Firing blindly, he stirred a peal of agonized chirrups just as the portal started to shutter closed like some great eyelid. Ramra blasted the outer mechanism, the circuit box that sparked and sizzled.
Regers grinned a feral grin. “That’ll do, Vincent. Good job, Ramra. Doubt if those bastards’ll be able to open that hatch too soon. Back to the bridge.”
“What about Creib?”
Regers shook his head. “Creib’ll have to fend for himself. That portal’s buggered.”
They staggered back to the bridge where Jennings worked the controls, sweat beading from his brow. Regers hurried behind him, another plan in mind. But a figure came edging out of the ruin of bodies behind him—
A portly man with a half-crazed look scuttling like a crab to snatch up Creib’s fallen rifle. Dez—the fuck. He pointed it with a shaky hand at Regers.
“Turn this ship around, Regers,” he croaked.
Regers faced him, cheeks crinkled in amusement. “You’d better put that firecracker down, Dez, if you know what’s good for you.”
“Shut the hell up. What do you think I am, some kind of moron?”
“Smarter than a moron maybe, but stupider
