“No!…leave him,” Regers roared. “This ratbastard’s mine.”
Deakes trained his muzzle on Cloye. Vincent covered Yul. Yul and Regers circled each other like a couple of prowling tigers. Yul leaped in, grabbing Regers by the neck. Regers ducked, twisted out of the hold. They both locked machine arms together, vying for advantage.
Sweat dripped from Yul’s salty skin. Muscles bulged and veins popped on each other’s temples. Regers seemed to give way…A spurt of Yul’s fantastic strength powered by state-of-the-art mechno force, running half way up to shoulder, courtesy of Cyber Corp, had Regers panting.
In a dream-like trance, Yul’s mind flicked back to the ironic significance of this freak encounter between him and Regers, two quasi-mechno men with metal prosthetics.
Yul landed his full weight on Regers and drew back his arm to smash Regers’ face in. But stun blasts came arching over his head, zinging dangerously close to his ear. He rolled off with a curse. He snatched up Regers’ weapon, firing at anything that moved.
Orbs were in the air, coming down closer now. Three were within firing range. They must have gotten word to clean up the mess the locusts had started.
Now it was back to old times, allied against a common enemy. He and Regers, against the squids, like on Albatross.
A blue streak came whizzing down from the sky and took Vincent full in the throat. He toppled back, choking. His life force drained out in seconds.
Regers gave a dismal cry. “Vincent, you sorry bastard! You didn’t have it in you to survive.” He staggered to his feet.
A small horde of tentacle-waving Zikri came gliding in, powered by lower motilators and what might have passed for primitive feet and tail. No weapons. Such was the monsters’ way. Just pure strength and sheer muscle. Yul only knew that strangling force too well. Once those motilators got around one’s torso, better chance getting out of a python’s grip.
Two of the loathsome creatures drew in on either side of him. Yul blasted the first grey, writhing shape, but the other got a piece of his arm. His rifle went spinning out of his hands. Cloye sprang in to grab it. Regers, without weapon, was caught in the slimy grip of a hulking Zikri. His two henchmen opened fire on the advancing squids but were steamrolled in a grey mass of teeming flesh. They were swiftly overwhelmed. Cloye blasted squid meat, sending mangled chunks into the air. A slimy guard lunged for her, but Yul squirmed out of the grip he was in and smashed his metal fist into the ropy face, sending it spinning sideways. It gave Cloye the split second she needed to blast the alien thing to hell.
The move cost him. The suffocating grip of another latched onto his chest, slowly choking the life out of him. His grip relaxed. The squid tightened its sickening, deadly embrace…then started dragging Yul toward the waiting Orb.
Blaster force ripped through the air, decimating squids as new forces joined the fray. Yul, his head swimming and vision blurring, caught a glimpse of a half-familiar figure hobbling out of the haze. Fenli?
Cloye blasted squids left and right. She whirled in a cartwheel over a whipping tentacle to roll up on her knees and blow three squids to shredded pulp. A tentacle lashed out, whipped by her amber hair. The slimy loop knocked her sideways. She blocked martial-arts style with forearm, ducked a follow up coil with a quick arm movement then lashed out with a fierce roundhouse kick. A kamikaze yell vibrated in her throat. Fresh fire from her muzzle clipped the squid constricting Yul. The thing jerked in a marionette’s dance and sagged. Yul staggered forward, unraveling himself from the rank, twitching coils.
Regers fought like a wild man, kicking, clawing, yelling. Too many of them. The squids hustled him and his other companions, the man he called Deakes and the pale ghost of a man Jennings, toward their ship. Regers slapped out with boot heels lifted a foot off the ground.
Yul stumbled forward, scooping up Deakes’s rifle, trying to get a clean shot. No chance. Too many hovering squids by the Orb to save him or his henchmen. The cargo port was sliding open, taking slaves.
Cloye pulled him back. “You owe that creep nothing, Yul. He came back to kill us, reduced us to this…”
Yul hobbled into the shadowy ruins of the street with Cloye, her amber hair slick with sweat and grime. A new ally to their cause trailed behind—Fenli. He was breathing heavily, wrapped in a numb daze. The cargo door to the Orb slid shut, and the squids and their fresh catches banked into the sky, but circled twice, with cannons aimed their way.
* * *
Away from the gangsters’ hideaway Yul, Cloye and Fenli stumbled through the corpse-ridden streets. The aura of death hung heavily at every twist and turn like a thick cloud blanketing the city.
Fenli stared into space with a faraway gaze. Burn marks etched across both cheeks. The man’s grey space garb was shredded and streaked with black cinder marks. His hands shook. The man should be dead, by all rights.
Yul slapped him on the back. “Good work, Fenli. Snap out of it, flyboy. We’ve got a long run ahead of us.”
“Yeah.” The man blinked and shook himself alert. He looked ten years older, but alive. Some inner fire kept him on his feet.
The three scrambled through the debris of a city made unreal by devastation and rapine. Yul and Cloye were all too glad to be free of Smacky and Regers. Yul looked up in the sallow sky as the NOA craft rocketed over the bombed rooftops. Fewer Orbs now. Could
