Only two mantis craft remained in the space dock. Tucked in beside a row of craft and a monster attack Orb. It was their only hope. Good luck getting to it!
An unspoken communication passed between Usk and Miko’s invisible form holding the blaster.
Miko set out with bobbing blaster to distract the squids gathered there. He kept the anger and nail-edge panic bottled up just under the threshold of breaking. Just enough not to buzz back to human form at some random instant.
The floating blaster spat out green fire as it advanced upon the service crew of the Mentera fighter. Squid parts streamed every way. Usk and Star came quickly after him, padding in the wake of Miko’s trail of destruction. Usk scuttled to the cargo hatch. An insectoid’s feral grin lay etched on his face, as if pleased at the opportunity to pilot another ship.
In the cargo bay Miko’s blaster dropped as he fully engaged his senses. He contacted that place deep within, the calm and the confidence, and felt his atoms resurging. In a flash of sprinkles of light, he buzzed back to his normal self. He swayed on his feet, clutching his head in a woozy daze, but remained otherwise intact. Star laid a hand on his shoulder to steady him.
A quick race to the vacated bridge. Without words and with deft efficiency, Usk got the ship up and running and moving out of the open portal. Ships were coming in from the depressurization bay at swift and regular rates. The great ocular slit opened wider and the mantis fighter rocketed out into the blackness of space.
A vast battleground of ships greeted Miko’s eyes on the hijacked ship’s viewport. A 3D gridlock of thousands of ships in every direction.
“Holy shit,” he gasped.
“Let’s get out of here,” Star wailed. She wrung her wrists.
‘Usk, planetside’s looking good,” said Miko.
“No, not Xares!” Star protested. “NOA will shoot this locust ship down.”
She had a point. If NOA continued to hold their position, they would fire indiscriminately. “Is the light drive intact?” he asked Usk.
Usk chittered out a high note of affirmation.
Miko gave a sigh of relief. “We can’t hyperdrive out so close to Xares. Try to reach Fenli and Yul.”
Usk fiddled with the controls. Hailing frequencies went out to both ships. But no response. Only a hiss of white noise. Miko sighed. He gave Usk a sad look.
“They’re gone.”
“I’m sorry, Miko.” Star looked at him with despair then at the holo view that registered hundreds of firefights going on. “What now?”
Miko grumbled, “We fight our way out.”
Usk gave a defiant chitter. His good claw clacked over the nav panel, preparing the controls for engagement.
But just as the ship was about to set impulse for a wild flight, an unsettling scene greeted their eyes. More of the odd rectangular hulks weaved in and out of the enemy Orbs amidst the countless raging ships. With fabulous dexterity, the drones attacked. Whenever one of the armored drones looked as it was about to be blown to atoms by Zikri torpedoes, a strange insect—some half moth, half butterfly mutant—jettisoned out and came zipping after the offending craft, at astounding speed. Miko watched with undisguised astonishment as one smashed clear through an Orb’s hull, armored plates and all. Squid carcasses floated out of the freshly-bored hole, frozen on contact with the frigid emptiness.
He’d never seen anything like it. The Zikri were getting pummeled by such creatures.
Renewed with fresh hope, Miko gritted his teeth.
What were those moths? An alien species? Some biogenetic weapon of mass destruction unleashed by NOA? The titanium hulks and their alien moths seemed to leave the submarine-shaped NOA ships alone. How such creatures could withstand vacuum or propel themselves through space at such impossible speeds remained a mystery.
Miko’s biggest fear was how to avoid getting slaughtered himself. He hailed NOA and set up a mayday.
“Usk! Code Red! Launch an escape vector between those two Zikri Orbs. Ten minutes on full impulse and we’ll be within range to light drive to Altair. Plot the best course!”
The Mentera ship lurched into the fray. All the time Miko had a shivery feeling Yul and Fenli were still alive. Clenching a fist, he resolved to find them. Or at least discover the grim truth of their fate.
* * *
Back in the bowels of Viscurg, all was in a state of flux.
Audra stared out of her tank, recovering from her grievous wounds, hardly registering the many Zikri scouts that scoured the interrogation room. All chittered aghast at Nrog’s mangled body, the ruptured angles of his stretched and torn ligaments, the many dead, slain Mentera, the smashed and scorched amalgamators and the ruin of the nearby tank. They paid no heed to the lone Zikri floating immersed in the farthest of the four Mentera tanks.
Many high-ranking guards crouched to listen to Nrog’s last wheezes. But the admiral’s rasps made little intelligible sense. Chittering vengeful threats, the Zikri whisked by the charred and mangled black-grey shape in the green-glowing tank and glided on their way down the mossy hall, tentacles bristling, keen to find Nrog’s slayers. The ship’s crew had been put on high alert. But by that time all but one of the fugitives had escaped.
As the flagship Viscurg was further bombarded by NOA shells, a loose fragment of a heavy plate fell from the ceiling, smashing onto Audra’s tank.
The glass shattered in a thousand shards as water poured out and Audra slid, half carried by the resultant deluge. Her fleshy lungs
