“But the samples—”
“Screw the fucking samples! We’re goners if we don’t do something.” He shoved the others along the companionway and through the portal to the bridge. Back in familiar surroundings, the plants stood curiously upright under their protective glass, oblivious to any imminent danger.
Hurd opted to take his chances wearing only a mask. “A full suit will only hinder mobility.”
Regers sneered at such logic, muttering under his breath.
Yul ignored the two of them. He planted the hand-sized bomb at the door’s threshold. With quick fingers, he programmed the remote control detonator for a five second delay before he positioned himself behind the master console in the bridge’s centre. Cocking his weapon, he sent a prayer upward.
“Seal the hatch,” came his murmur to Frue.
Frue hit the switch then ran beside Yul, his weapon trained. The shielded metal door dropped down, plunging them all in silence. They waited, Regers to the left of the starboard console, Hurd, Yul and Frue behind the central stand, blasters aimed at the door. Plunks and scratching noises sounded on the hull over their heads, tools doing grisly work.
A dull reverberation echoed throughout the ship. The aliens had breached the hull! As an ominous silence ticked away, a deafening explosion rocked the ship. The central port hatch exploded in a spray of metal, sending jagged shrapnel everywhere like poison darts.
Yul was thrown back. He hit his shoulder and back hard on the side wall. Regers howled as he opened a stream of fire on the yellowish smoke where the door had been, home now to an indistinct blur of grotesque shapes struggling through. These were neither squid, mollusc or mammal, but some gruesome parody of all—alien life at its worst, with stub legs and tail. Zikri surged forth in body armour like phantasms out of a dark nightmare. Tentacles wavered, thick and slimy, and dark bodies pulsed with scintillating menace. Yul could barely see them in the smoke, but he detected a sprawl of tubes and a diamond-shaped headpiece denoting air masks that covered the withered, ropy flesh.
Yul’s fingers clicked the timed release on the detonator. He counted the seconds in his daze.
Kaboom! The scatter bomb went off like a Roman candle, blinding anything in sight. His armour caught the brunt of the concussion as flying debris slapped at him.
The plant aquarium went flying and smashed against the nearest wall. Glass sizzled and melted. Yul could hear the crackling of burning leaves and pods. He could see nothing in the smoke, his faceplate clogged with soot and alien blood. Only a roaring rush in his ears as of a raging sea, then a whistling noise, and the faraway whimpers of living organisms in pain.
Wiping furiously at his faceplate, he squinted through the glass. The plant aquarium had rolled to a stop nearby, overturned on its edge, the melting, liquid glass pooling and sizzling at his feet, a gaping hole in its side.
Things crawled out. To his horror, the surviving alien ferns had sprouted new root-legs and limped, half hopped from their broken crib like crippled frogs. They skittered and curled around the shins of fighting figures.
Yul’s ears still rang, but he caught sight of other bizarre movements. Some of the pods had rolled out, many half burned, others scorched but intact, rippling in multicoloured confusion like certain chameleons camouflaging themselves in self defence.
His groping hands latched onto one while reaching for his blaster. He shook the thickening haze out of his skull. Staggering to his feet, he felt the pain in his right thigh arc in red hot waves.
Faster than snakes, Zikri flanked them and hauled Hurd back in a sea of tentacles, using the smoke as a screen. Hurd’s mouth opened in a high, soundless cry. His back arched like a man whose bones were snapping, then he disappeared in a swarm of rank flesh. Regers, at the edge of the fray, briefly managed to avoid their attacks.
Yul opened fire into the blur of menacing shapes. Tentacles sprayed in ruin and black blood gushed everywhere. Gutters of fetid liquid flesh pooled. Squalling chitters rang out in mad waves as Zikri writhed and twisted in their death throes. By the sound of their agitated chitters and their lack of weapons, it seemed the creatures had not expected any organized resistance. Hurd flopped in a bloody pool, groping and crawling his way along, gasping out what sounded like his last breaths.
Too many of them! Yul sprang sideways. He arched away from the flesh-rending tentacles, trying to evade the gruesome clot.
His ears rang as Hurd’s agonized wail came crackling over the com.
A dozen or more squids came streaming out of the yellow smog, savaging the fallen Hurd in an unyielding sea of glistening tentacles. Hurd was engulfed before Regers, he or Frue could do anything. A group of the first Zikri wave gripped him and hauled him into the hall.
Yul loosed fire. While Hurd’s wretched howls crackled into obscurity, the crawling plants jerked their quivering, brown stalks upright from under the Zikri’s webbed feet. They hissed. They wrapped the longest of their leaves about the advancing horde’s lower motilators and short swishing tails. The Zikri flung them off and they slapped against the wall with wet, sucking sounds.
“Christ, they’re morphing!” Yul yelled at Frue who floundered at his side. “Get away from them!” The man, panic-stricken, squinted with effort and sprayed blaster fire at the tentacled Zikri monsters.
Another crawling plant answered the call of its drooping neighbours. It jumped like an enormous leech, wrapping its rustling leaves around a Zikri’s midsection.
Regers kicked away one of the curling leaves as it tried to climb his leg. He screeched as one of the plants climbed on his back and wrapped around his neck.
For stability?
