Squid flesh parted in bloody cords as the first two went down in sizzling heaps. The third bowled Usk over and caught him up in a whirlpool of tentacles.
Utter mayhem struck in a space of a few seconds. Another menace entered the scene. Its grey-black bulk burst through the convex doorway, a blurred shape, a hulk of writhing tentacles, smashing into the Zikri who was carrying off Usk. Usk went spinning out of the creature’s grasp then hastened to crawl painfully away from the creature’s flailing grip.
Miko struggled in Basilursk’s crushing motilators, his feet kicking at the first touch of the Mentera water as the creature thrust, keen on plunging him into the nearest tank. But its husky torso sagged, as strangling coils fastened around its head and ripped it off and sent it rolling past the blue box with its obnoxious luminous proxy, still smiling with an ape-like face tipped on a slanting angle. The Zikri body slumped; Miko sprawled to the floor, his knees hitting hard. He gasped for air and looked up. The nightmarish face of Audra peered down at him. She stared with an infathomable expression. Perhaps one that said, “So here we are, human. Did you think you’d seen the last of me?”
In a fit of frenzied rage, Admiral Nrog launched his bulk at the intruder. Audra turned to meet his overzealous hulk. Tentacles locked with tentacles. Zikri and admiral tumbled end over end in a mass of rippling flesh.
Nrog’s impressive musculature had developed over years of wrestling, but now they bulged under new pressure not yet experienced. His best was not enough, for Audra was of the older breed, trained to kill without prejudice and mercy. The female of her species was more vicious and in this contest, the better fighter.
She twisted out of Nrog’s grip, uncoiling thick wads of strangling, python-like flesh that worked desperately to squeeze the life out of her.
In his half daze, Miko watched. The titanic struggle between two Zikri generations raged on, as he swayed to his feet. Staggering like a drunk, he scooped up Usk’s blaster and with quivering hand, aimed it at Star’s tank. The glass shattered in a burst of rippling spiderwebs. Shards of glass and green brine sprayed over the floor, sweeping Star with it. She rolled on the cold steel, choking, gasping for air.
Miko raced toward her. Circling her ribcage with both hands, he squeezed the water from her lungs.
Audra and Nrog dueled on. A fierce and ugly fight. As flesh ripped and tore, chitters poured from Nrog’s prune-like mouth.
His strength was rapidly ebbing, no match for Audra’s brawn, nor her cunning, as muscle and cartilage and tough rubbery sinew began to shred under her crushing ministrations. Nrog buckled under her weight, feeling his collapsing body succumb to her superior strength. He was at the point of breaking, when all of a sudden blaster fire rang out. A single flare, and the monster Zikri Audra jerked and spasmed.
A Mentera guard had skulked out of the shadows, gripping a lumo blaster. Miko’s head turned in a daze. The locust thing must have come through the amalgamator. He looked around with wild surprise, guessing Jring must have sent the creature after his mutilated guard had come through the other end. More locusts spewed one by one between the horseshoe-shaped parallel plates. Miko tensed and raced toward the gathering enemies, lumo-blaster lifted in hand with a kamikaze cry in his throat. Blaster fire shredded advancing locust flesh. Pincers and heads flew in pasty clumps as his green fire did its bloody work. He dove aside, ducked as return fire came his way. With a raucous yell, Miko fell flat on his ass, leveled fire into the amalgamators, laying waste to their hated metal, until all were sizzling, blackened hulks. He sank on his haunches, panting, weak from the horror of it all.
A Mentera had killed Audra, or so the Mentera soldier thought. With half a red eye on the carnage behind him, he came skittering forth on hind legs to save the Zikri Admiral, his eerie eyes blazing, unaware that he dealt not with an ordinary Zikri intruder, but a lethal, guerrilla-war-trained soldier.
Nrog looked up in anguish. “Kill me, you idiot!” he rasped in a hoarse chitter. The admiral convulsed, tentacles splayed aside the hulk of Audra. “You—should have let—this thing kill me when it had me in its hold.”
The chirruping guard lifted his weapon but Audra sprang up with murderous intent, snatching him in a strangling grip. With her last squid-like strength, she ripped his fragile chitinous body in two, helmet, suit and all.
Nrog gasped, unable to believe his eyes. He crawled in the blood and slime, pleading with his female adversary to end it. But Audra would do no such thing. She glided one jerky step and another toward him, gazing with burning singlemindedness. No pity or remorse glinted in those eyes. She swayed, her charred hide quivering in response to incomprehensible inner pain, then she tumbled in a rubbery heap.
She left Nrog there, bleeding out, feeling every inch of his agony, as she, too, dragged her own smoking, bleeding hide away, as an animal crawls off to a hole to die. Three of her motilators trailed uselessly behind her.
The ship rocked to another savage blast. More enemy fire thudded against the hull, now one without a commander to lead it.
Miko staggered over to where Star lay, half senseless, but recovering. He waved a hand in front of her face. He saw the briefest flicker of recognition as an eyelid fluttered open. A mouthful of green water spewed from her lips. She spat it out, wiped her mouth, heaving from
