A feeling of overwhelming despair flooded Miko. As he slipped to new lows, Bzt, his body blitzed out and disappeared. The surge of violent emotion had blinked him out of existence.
No, no, not now! His inward shriek landed on deaf ears. He was back in that zone, of invisibility.
No! He had to be with his friends, not in some useless realm of limbo! They had to do something, get off this ship! He gave a shudder of frustration. A blast of anger smote his being and had him willing himself back to his bodily form.
Bzt. In an instant he came staggering back to corporeal form, floating on his heels, his senses reeling.
Star trilled a note of horror. “What are you? You’re not human!”
He wiped at his brow, almost laughing uncontrollably. It hit him in a flash how he could control the force of invisibility. He need only bring the intense emotions that triggered it to the forefront. Bleak despair to blink out…confidence and anger to blink in. Should he test the theory? No. Better to get out of here and not press his luck. Not long would it be before the lack of Admiral Nrog’s response would bring squads of squids gliding in to investigate.
He grabbed up Star. “Come on, there’s no time to lose!”
On shaky but determined feet, he helped the half-quivering woman to the doorway, thrusting an extra weapon in her hand, while Usk scooped up a fallen weapon for his own from a charred claw. With a quick backward glance, he left Audra in her healing fluids and Nrog and the dead Mentera in their creepy tomb, as a growing lump hardened in the pit of his stomach.
They clambered ahead down the bioluminescent hall glowing in leafy-green splendor. The locust’s blaster kept steady vigilance as Usk led the way. About a ten minute haul to the space dock, as Miko recalled when they’d been forcefully brought here.
There would be squids along the way.
Chapter 31
Miko shuddered as he navigated the Zikri halls with their icky moss and creepers hanging from the walls. How they had come to love the damp, lush, creepy stuff when they originated on that dustbowl Kraetoria was beyond him. Maybe the simulacrum had lied about the common genesis origin, part of the overall joke of the universe. Had Nrog adopted a new home world on some lush swamp-infested planet?
There was no point in remaining corporeal. Usk would gain more help with him an invisible man than a visible one right now. He was just about to will himself to invisibility, when blasts pounded at the hull. Viscurg lurched to each blow. Star whimpered, still in her semi-daze, groggy from her drowning plunge. She clung to Miko’s arm. “I can’t get that ugly, cold, disembodied voice back there out of my mind…it terrified me. It spoke so clinically of us.”
“Forget it, Star. It’s just a machine. It’ll be destroyed before long as will this ship.”
As will we, if we don’t get out of here, he thought…The Masters. Pure fiction. Only survival of the fittest. But he could not be so sure of that. His blood ran cold at the grim revelation dropped by the luminous ghoul-ape of an AI.
Star clutched her blaster in a shaky hand. “Worse though was when I awoke to you and Usk dragging that Audra thing.”
Miko stumbled over a charred Zikri corpse. Booms rocked the hull. Usk’s blaster took out more squids while he and Star leaped over the inert shapes. Star shirked at the carnage, gripping her blaster in two trembling hands as she fired wantonly. Miko’s eyes roved to the ceiling as they sprinkled down rank clumps of moss with every shudder of the hull.
He pinched his eyes shut. He willed himself into that mind space of utter despair and desolation.
Bzt. He blinked out of existence. Only his blaster clung in midair, like a magical, floating thing. Focusing his will, he trained it down the hall at any approaching squids. Usk chittered in grim acknowledgement of having an invisible ally. He shuffled on in a half-hobbling gait.
In fits and starts, the three threaded their way down the grim hall of Viscurg, blasting squids where necessary. Just a few minutes more, Miko thought. He and Usk acted as a tag team. Star fired from the rear, cleaning up the extras. They approached what looked like a power center, a control grid of five blackened tower boxes arcing sparks from top to top. Squid technicians worked behind a protective wire cage in a frenzy to repair what Miko guessed to be a burnt-out transformer. They slipped past the repair crew undetected. The hall opened up into a wide oval gap that showed a murky yellow glow. Frenetic activity loomed beyond, a massive landing dock of sorts. This hall had been one of the many access points to the command dock.
Pandemonium reigned below. Hundreds of Zikri swarmed the loading docks: a mini spaceport of its own, a marvel in alien engineering. A massive eye-like portal loomed above, allowing ships to launch themselves out into the gulfs of space. More of the strange bioluminescent moss dangled from the ceiling. The crews inspected and serviced craft of all designs to impulse out to fight on the war front.
The flagship had been hit hard. A giant holo screen showed a view out into space: countless ships flying in and out on disparate trajectories. Also two strange rectangular metal hulks under fire, weaving in and out like miniature demons and smashing through the Zikri Orbs as if they were putty. Now one of the NOA drones came barreling toward the flagship, unleashing a giant moth before the outer armature disintegrated under shell fire. The insect swept on to ram Viscurg’s hull, threatening to breach it.
Miko’s mind raced. It looked very probable that
