Regers choked, nearly strangled, as the ring of foliage tightened around his flexible suit. He thrust up with his bowie knife. The tough plant tissue parted and fell with a thud to the ground. But more things sprouted from the viscous goo.
“Get out of here, you fools!” Yul could hear the whimper of the plant-like voices. Things which seemed immune to the nerve gas, or whatever toxic gunk the Zikri pirates had pumped into the air.
Zikri cornered Regers who raged and fired as their tentacles bit into his suit, questing to carry him away. For all his psychotic behaviour, the man’s grit could not be denied. He threw off his molesters, heaving and cursing, then managed to duck under one’s whipping tentacle and twist away like a gymnast, blasting it with his sidearm.
Yul’s body armour caught a sudden Zikri gun blast. The metal deflected the shot which would have punctured his suit and left him prey to the vapours. Yet the sizzle left a scorching mark smoking on his ribs. Had the ray hit his helmet...
Despite the dirty-yellow smoke drifting Yul’s way, a sixth sense warned him of a sudden movement to his left. He lifted his blaster, caught a gliding Zikri square in the face. The alien face, for an instant, went all pudgy, green and angry with air mask and nozzle askew. Then the head exploded in a gelatinous mess.
The Zikri leader that had fired the shot surged through the mass at Yul’s right. Rippling tentacles caught Yul in a grip before he could react. He fell over in a heap, blaster thrown from his hand. Landing on his side, he groaned at the hard abrasive jab of pear-shaped pods under his aching ribs. The Zikri was all over him, suffocating him like an octopus. He could not break free of its clammy tentacles despite his body armour. His ribs began to cave. The creature emitted an electrical discharge that made his nerves tingle with fire.
He thrust up an arm, his left mechanized one, to rip off the alien’s facemask. To no avail. He couldn’t reach far enough, his upper arms pinned by the monster’s strangling tentacles.
The whimperings of the plants, the frenzied chitter of Zikri—the tumult of madness crowded in on his brain. He thrashed with desperation, looking for any way to free himself, a weapon, any object. His questing fingers hooked onto a long shard of glass. With savage force, he plunged it into the Zikri’s squishy skull. A squashing sound filled his earpiece. The repulsive grip loosened. He pulled free another of the pods under his back that was grinding into his bones and smashed knuckles into the Zikri’s faceplate, ramming the pod into the mouth of the creature that champed toward his own.
The alien gave a slobbery moan and convulsed in a pile of twitching flesh, its face writhing.
The pod had cracked open. Something had slipped down the Zikri’s throat—something with wings. At least they looked like wings. The Zikri twitched and gurgled, loosing a horrible, shrieking chitter. Yul had no time to see what emerged.
Another vengeful Zikri lunged at him. The thing tried to wrap a slippery coil around his neck but with a savage wrench of his mechanized fingers, he pulled the thing forward. Its flesh tore at the shoulder. Blood spurted from the mangled appendage.
More aliens rushed to avenge their fallen leader. Obscene things with rippling tentacles and hose and nozzled faces surged out of the smoke with fury. Electrical shocks flared through Yul’s besieged nerves as their tentacles brushed his armour like jellyfish. He jerked in pain, but he grit his teeth, reined in all his strength and slashed out with his long shard of glass. He tore away from the quivering mass of tentacles, snatched up his blaster, and struggled toward Regers.
“Get away from them,” he cried at Regers who staggered about, and then to Frue who was moaning and crouching monkey-like in the smoke, his blaster held steady, spraying fire every which way.
If not for the gripping strength of his prosthetic arm, Yul would have perished. Likewise, his wild urge to live and his unfailing body armour saved him from being rent, limb from limb.
A flailing tentacle almost pulled him back and he felt a familiar electrical ripple course through his nerve centres. Damn these things! A potential charge stored in their bodies? How many did he have to kill? Skeleton crew, his ass! Frue was wrong. If not for the suit the thing would have electrocuted him. Which meant that Hurd...
He thrust away the thought of Hurd. He ploughed on, managing to break the slippery grip of his determined foe. Hearing Regers’ howls of pain beside him, he surged forward, knowing the consequences of being pulled back into that ghastly clutch again were dire.
He raced helter-skelter for the blown exit hatch, shooting anything that moved.
Sweat poured down his back mingled with the blood from various wounds caking the inside of his suit. The back of his skull rang with pain. Their only hope was to break through this rabble and reach the exit hatch.
He dodged return fire. A Zikri had curled a slimy tentacle around its captain’s luminous weapon and aimed it with deadly intent; the others had no weapons, only blood-splattered nozzles and hoses that passed over their mouths to protect them from the nerve gas.
“Move!” He pushed Frue away from the fray. In a fierce rush, he bolted for the exit, feeling the brush of tentacles snatching at his limbs and stray fire at his heels. Out through the blasted door, down the Albatross’s companionway Yul fled. Regers and Frue gasped close at his heels. Through the smoking hole in the Albatross’s
