The passage widened and, if anything, became more garish with incomprehensible designs—floating cities crafted of gargantuan blocks of translucent crystal with Zikri riding strange, gnat-shaped vehicles through the air highways. The images were always static, yet in the dimness, everything seemed to move with a life of its own.
The slithering rustle of scuttling feet somewhere ahead had him halting, every muscle tensed. Zikri were on the lookout for intruders.
He darted across the metal-plated corridor, blaster in hand.
He hid behind a large circuit box with three antennae, crouching rodent-like in the shadows. He guessed it to be some artificial grav-generator module. It emitted a barely-perceptible, low-pitched hum.
Dim designs of Zikri heads and their loathsome tentacles loomed overhead. Such made Yul’s flesh crawl, backlit by an unknown source. Yet the eerie shadows could not hide him forever. Hopefully long enough for these fiends to pass. Had they detected him? He did not think so, but he was still unsure of how keen their senses were. From close-quarter skirmishing he knew they sported some sort of crude nostrils and repulsive, obscene mouth, but he did not know how they worked.
The chittering echoed closer. Three Zikri glided out of the murk to pass before the corridor in which he hid. No mistaking those horrid polyps of mouth and their tiny, yellow-green teeth. Nor their glistening grey tentacles that wavered as vocal organs warbled out some semblance of communication.
The trio rippled their stocky bulks and moved side by side, tentacles three to a side running torso to throat. Thick, webbed feet padded like lizards’ feet and stubs of tails provided balance to facilitate the creatures’ reptilian locomotion. It was the first he had observed them up close while not bent in a frenzied free-for-all. The creatures were the most ghastly things he had ever seen. For years, the Zikri had been nothing but bogeymen of myth in his mind, rather things of distant fairy tale nightmare versus the space pirates they actually were. Things that relied on the constricting and electrifying strength of motilators to overcome opponents, rather than modern blasters. The reality was much worse than the myth.
Let them pass, Yul prayed. With teeth clenched, he stared transfixed. It seemed they were returning to the hold.
Gripping his weapon, Yul resisted the urge to cut down the squad. More would swarm here, alerted by the blast—like rats to a feast. God help Regers and Frue, if they were still alive. He may have signed their death warrants by not killing these aliens, if the predators were heading their way. What was done, was done. He had to trust his instincts.
The noises faded and Yul loosed a relieved breath. Stealthily, he crawled from his hiding place. Listening with both ears strained, he heard no spine-crawling chitters. With gentle force, he scratched the butt of his weapon on the glimmering wall protrusions as he crept on, in case he needed to retrace his steps. Cross-corridors ran rife here. A maze of passageways. Why so many built into their ships?
There must be a command centre. If he could—
He paused, spellbound.
Rounding a corner, he discerned a greenish glow spilling across a gloomy corridor ahead. To his left rose an open archway.
Risking a peek, Yul moved to the entrance. He spied a dimly lit chamber spider-webbed with designs, depicting cruel, spiked, torture instruments. More incomprehensible squigglings ran up and down the walls and across the ceiling like branches of a tree. The ceiling ran high into gloom. There was a wrongness to this chamber that raised the hairs on the back of Yul’s neck. An inexplicable aura of subjugation and terror lurked in the shadows.
Perhaps the Zikri had replicated their halls with something similar to their primordial habitat? But then their cities, if that’s what those depictions were that he’d seen scratched earlier on the walls, seemed crafted of geometric forms. Yul shook his head. The disparity between the settings perplexed him.
He advanced with caution. At once, his mind flashed on the skulking Zikri that had passed him, perhaps the ones that had been dragging Hurd to some doom. He stifled a shudder.
Thirty tanks holding various lifeforms filled the hall. Some were human, or semi-human, with budding horns protruding from their temples, others which gave Yul pause.
He blanched with horror. Hurd hovered in a half curled position, floating upright in his tank like an embalmed puppet. He hung suspended in some foul green liquid with arms and legs akimbo, as if typing at a keyboard. His eyes were glazed over, dead for all appearances. The air mask dangled askew around his neck. His head lolled. His crewmate must be dead. But wait! His eyes...had they blinked?...no, impossible..Yet those lips had moved with a soundless cry. A bubble popped out of the parted lips and rose to the surface. Could the man be alive?
Yul grimaced at the utter impossibility of life preserved in these watery aquaria. His weapon sagged. He reared back, almost brushing against a larger tank behind him.
Enclosed within that glass loomed a grotesque leviathan of an earlier age. Great white tusks curled on its snoutless face, neither fish nor mammal, looking like some Zikri but not. Baby tentacles sprouted on its thorax, as if they had just started budding in their process of maturation. The thing held itself suspended by triangular upper and lower fins of blue and white cartilage.
A cursory glance revealed some quarter of these disturbing tanks contained alien mammals or hybrid fish but the rest were human or human-like. Open archways ran back of the chamber. From the greenish glimpses Yul caught, there reposed more tanks of similar quality in those side rooms. Yul suppressed a surge of anger at the hideous implications.
He gave the large, mammalian squid-like thing a wide berth. It had an incredibly hostile look to it. Who had created such a monstrous menagerie?
