Hresh dead. Fenli down. Miko likely in the same place with all his crew. Only himself and Cloye left to fight this bitter war. Stranded on a doomed planet with only their blasters and wits. Not enough to win against these fucking bugs and squids.
But soldier on they must. They were not quitters. Of all people, he was glad to have Cloye at his side.
As they passed a ruined tenant building, a balcony gave way. A crumbling concrete slab slid down and almost brained them. They ran crouching for shelter down a deserted alley. Vacant for some reason…danger? A trap? The Mentera had cleaned everything and everybody out here.
Yul licked his lips. He moved on through the garbage and rotten filth and rubble; Cloye padded ever-alert at his heels. They came out into a dirty square with scattered groups of ragged survivors staggering about, labored of breath. Hostile fire flashed out from up a radiating alley. A brown, rag-garbed man fell at their feet.
Cloye recoiled. She dropped in a crouch, her rifle gripped. “Let’s get out of here.” Defiance lay pasted on her dusty lips. Yul nodded. They pushed on past straggling groups and fallen bodies. The dead were of no use to the Mentera. Easiest to leave the bodies rotting in the streets.
Deeper down into the narrow, winding alley they plunged, with aim to get as far from the lurking slavers as possible.
Yul’s face wrinkled at the sight of three more bodies, torn, charred and twisted in the rubble. These were the sketchy remains of two men and a woman, one singed by blaster fire, the others hit by burning fallout. Passers-by, garbed in ragged wool and cotton, surged past, heedless of those crushed by falling debris.
Life reduced to ignoble mockery. What did it all mean?
“If we get out of this in one piece, Yul,” said Cloye, “you and I are going to have us a lie down and make love till we can’t move.”
Yul turned, his mouth worked, her words hardly bearing meaning to him in this grim moment.
“Call it a celebration over death,” she added.
Yul licked his lips, admiring the suggestive curves of Cloye’s slim figure. Soot-grimed and battle-torn, she was all woman, sexy as hell, foul-mouthed and ornery, but surely, a looker.
He hooked a hand on her shoulder, the touch sending heated visions into his skull. He shook them off. No time for distraction. “Got to get past that open space, Cloye. Looks like a main drainage conduit, or some kind of vehicular culvert. May be a safe way out of here.”
They skulked out of their dim alley as the daytime light of Xares streamed down, harsh to their eyes and surreal in the grim, besieged streets of the city.
Now halfway across the square, with burning vehicles and flutters of movements, stun fire lashed out from the grimy shadows. The surrounding blackened tenements and shabby shops with iron-barred glass, could not help them.
A grim huddle of survivors lay pinned down behind a fallen air bus, twisted and crumpled on its side. Must have been chased into the slum quarters and shot down. Six or eight figures crouched behind the smoking metal from what Yul could see. A squad of a dozen locusts scuttled ever closer, long lumo-blasters clutched in sharp pincered claws.
He and Cloye ran around a mound of rubble and bodies, crouching low. They dug themselves in behind a pile of broken bricks, offering covering fire to the doomed before the slavers could flank them.
Blue fire fanned from their gunmetal muzzles. Bug heads separated from chitinous bodies in smoking yellow-blooded heaps. Only one hostile was left, staggering about, bewildered. The creature fanned its lumo-blaster left and right while one of the besieged, squat, brawny skinheads burst out and brained it with a meat cleaver. He pulled out the weapon from the skull and chopped the thing square in the back.
The locust fell, in a quivering heap. The offender stomped on its neck, cracking it, whooping with glee.
Yul grimaced “Come on. Let’s go. There’re more coming in at three o’clock. God help the survivors. Run!”
Shot gun blasts came from behind him where the others were pinned down. While making their escape, green fire lanced from behind, catching Cloye on her left side, grazing her. She slumped to a knee.
Yul ran over to her. “You, okay? Where’d you get hit?”
“My whole left side feels numb. Fuck, fuck.” She slipped another notch lower to her other knee.
“Damn it. Just what we need.” Yul grabbed her up. “Come on, Cloye, we have to get out of here. More bugs are coming. Quick! Grab on to my shoulders. Cling to my neck.”
She wrapped her good right arm around Yul’s neck, and they half loped across the rubble square, weaving amidst the rubble and flashes of green fire. Yul lifted his rifle in the other hand and peppered back answering fire while hobbling with Cloye toward the culvert. “Down!” he hissed.
They crashed headlong to the bomb-streaked asphalt as more locusts came running. On his belly, Yul lay fire into their masses. Dust and metal kicked up around them.
“Jesus, they’re creeping around us from everywhere! How’d they sneak up on us so fast?”
“I don’t know.” Slowly she flexed her hand. “Feeling’s starting to come back in my left arm.”
Four hostiles beetled forth, black-green, shoulder-high menaces, scuttling on hind legs, determined to take them as prisoners. Yul laid down fire before they could get too close.
He dragged Cloye with one hand behind an overturned air car, then leap-frogged away, drawing them away from her. “Over here, you fuckers!” He waved his hands, roaring.
They wore no suits, these locusts, for better speed. As a horde they ran, like a swarm of wild
