He pressed to her side, his hand gently massaging her back.
“Oh, Miko, it was h-horrible. I could see you and I couldn’t, like I was looking through a fish bowl. You were so far away.” She reached out a feeble hand, clutched at his soiled uniform. “I tried to touch the glass but my arms wouldn’t move.”
“It’s okay, Star, I’m here.” Miko held her close, her wet, shivering form responding to his own warmth.
She gave an unwholesome shudder. “Each moment was like an age.” Tears sprang in her eyes. “I couldn’t move, then when that guard-creature plugged into me, I thought…I was fading away to oblivion, like some mist evaporating in sunlight. Then the scariest thing happened—I didn’t care anymore. As if I could sleep in a vacuum forever.”
Miko shuddered. A silent death. No pain, no free will, no nothing. He knew it well enough. Just an endless silence with no end.
He hoped never to experience the death of the tank again…
A whisper of movement fluttered to his left, then a rasping wheeze. He looked with new concern to where Audra crawled away slowly. In the pit of his gut, he felt a host of indescribable emotions. Remorse? Anger? Sadness?
He released Star gently and hobbled toward where Usk lay in a panting crouch. He gathered up his faithful friend and the two approached the quivering but mobile Audra.
Her black and grey hide was badly scorched, charred beyond repair, her tentacles sprawled in a frightening starfish pattern. The tips left traces of residual slime on the hard-plated floor.
Time slowed and then seemed to stand still. Miko gazed in stunned misery. From that grim day out in Gollonus so long ago when he had encountered Audra, waylaid by her scavenging Zikri Orb, he had come to know the Zikri and it felt like lifetimes ago. Too eerie now seeing her in this helpless, battered condition. Gazing at her slack limbs and near lifeless eyes, he knew he would never understand her motives or what went on behind those alien eyes. Her drive to unite with him, coupled with a desire to kill him, as a female black widow spider would, was an incomprehensible mystery. Alien and human genes had been spliced in some horrible misconfiguration, thus binding them in a way he could not fathom. It scared him more than dying here in this alien ship with no purpose or loftier mission to speak of. He could never escape Audra. Nor could she him. In life or death.
And yet, death was not in keeping with Audra’s courage. Even beyond the grave, he knew deep in his inner being that she would haunt his dreams till the end of time. And if he were to sit here and watch her die in this miserable, ghastly place, those dreams would be only the more bitter.
The ship rocked to another savage blast.
Miko swore under his breath. “Here Usk!…Help me drag her to that largest tank.”
Usk hesitated, recoiling at the violent, headstrong Zikri who had, on prior occasions, tried to kill him.
“Do it!” cried Miko. “If it were not for her, we’d be dead.”
Usk chirruped out a protest. Reluctantly he hooked his pincer onto her upper body.
Miko’s face twisted in anguish. His was a twisted logic. He grabbed at a slimy motilator and pulled Audra inch by inch toward the tank, almost cringing with the thrill of the familiar feel of sliminess that had used and abused him in times long past. No longer did he feel guilt for the symbiotic pleasure they had both experienced in their erotic embrace. In the fading gleams of her defiant stare, he caught a glimpse of surprise on a ropy face gone slack and ashen and an understanding passed between them. For the first time, Audra saw concern mirrored in Miko’s expression, withal, a compassion for her, and her face relaxed in a contented sigh.
Miko did not know why he did it; he was not capable of such introspection right now, only that a strong sense of duty called.
In helpless horror, Star stared, as if unable to comprehend the scene unfolding before her. Her glazed-over eyes were clearing. Now she blinked several times as she recovered from her plunge into a liquid nightmare.
Using their combined strength, Usk and Miko painstakingly upended the dying Zikri into the largest intact tank. She sank, a dead weight, straight to the bottom, gulping lungfuls of nourishing water then drowned.
The blue glow of the simulacrum flickered to life. The AI proxy, projected on a sharp angle, lifted a pale hand and spoke once again in a didactic voice.
“What a tragic waste! A vintage specimen! Pity it couldn’t have been saved for our AI scanners and virtual scientists to study.”
“You’re all monsters!” Miko cried.
“On the contrary, I don’t exist, only as a facsimile of what was once a dead race who crafted you. We live on in the nascent consciousness of our children. Like your memories.”
“I could care less,” snorted Miko. “I have nothing to do with you or the likes of your genesis myth, whoever or whatever you are.”
“On the contrary, you have everything to do with us, human. Without us, you would be nonexistent.”
Miko looked away, hardly knowing what to feel. He had nothing to say. Only a wish to pull the plug on that miserable box forever. But he knew no such thing was possible. That the Masters were technically beyond any ‘shutting down’.
The AI looked at Miko with some pity. “I am sensitive to your pain, human. I can commiserate with your hopes and fears. Maybe our aims are not mutually exclusive. I wish I could offer more comforting words at this moment, but I fear, being an engine of truth, any words would only be superfluous and prolong
