The banging on the door, however, was real enough and grew with each second. Yul’s fingers twitched on his weapon.
In sudden rage, he tucked it away in his suit and dragged the dead Zikri over to the insect’s tank. If these fiends were in cahoots and wanted to be bedfellows, then let them get better acquainted. Unstoppering the tank, he hefted the dead hulk of the Zikri into the greenish soup, his mechanical grip strong enough to punch holes into its squishy underbelly. Its vile blood stained the green water a murky umber. The locust thing within flapped about, trying to evade the newcomer’s plunge. It promptly sank to the bottom.
Yul tore his attention away from the two freakish aliens and studied the Zikri controls. Three panels of tentacle-shaped dials rose before him; a viewscreen in the middle showed the blackness of space, the twinkling of obscure stars, and the planet Xeses suspended below, a thin, yellow crescent dropping off at the bottom of the screen.
The banging stopped. Had the Zikri given up? Yul frowned. Why? To fetch explosives to crack open the hatch?
He swallowed and stepped closer to the main console, his eyes and brain refocused. He tried to make sense of the controls, determined it was hopeless and stepped over to the viewscreen.
His sharp eyes took in the situation in a glance. His heart only sank. How to navigate this alien vessel? The controls and script were gobbledegook. He knew far less about piloting than combat and weaponry. Where was Frue when he needed him?
The tall panels rose over him in mockery.
Yul’s reconnaissance of the enemy craft’s bridge left him sullen and frustrated. Why bring Mentera technology to the bridge?
The Zikri’s eyes, what he thought were eyes, glinted with sinister life in the alien fluid and Yul’s flesh crawled. It seemed animated. A flicker of tentacle caught his eye; no, it was merely settling to a stationary position in the water. Some stimulus reflex after death? The locust creature hovered a few inches above the bottom of the tank, a foot from the tentacled monster. Its unblinking eyes stared on in calm detachment, as if those crimson orbs were in never-ending observation of the bridge’s affairs.
Two antennae sprouted from its plated crown. Pincers hung motionless out in front, zombie-like, with its heavy hind legs bent like a grasshopper’s. A wire hose, attached from the crystalline cap on the tank’s top, trailed down with a circular clamp on its end, the size of his fist. It appeared to have circuitry. Obviously not of Zikri make; the symbology inscribed on the outer edges and base of the tank were different than that written on the bridge’s consoles. The Zikri must have added Mentera technology to their ship... The Zikri—whose infamous piracy was notorious around the galaxy, terrorizing it for generations.
Yul was about to start touching dials randomly when his headset crackled.
“Yul, you alive?”
Yul paused, stunned. “Frue, I thought you were a dead man! Am I dreaming?”
“Open this cock-eyed door.”
Yul blinked. Frue apparently had managed to make his way to the bridge.
“I’m outside the door. There’s a heap of bodies lying about. I’m sure it’s your handiwork.”
Yul grinned. “Thought I’d never hear your whiny voice again.”
“My com blew out. I just managed to get it up and running now. Hurry! These squids’re lurking everywhere. I killed some but—”
“Nevermind. Knock three times. I want to be sure it’s you.”
“What the—? Are you serious?”
Yul heard a series of clinking thuds against the metal, probably Frue’s blaster banging the plates.
Yul pulled the circular ring inward. The Zikri, he guessed, could wrap their squidlike appendages around such a ring and pull it open with ease. Small wonder it took his full force to open the thing. Combined only with his arm’s mechanical strength.
Frue tumbled in, panting. Yul quickly resealed the door.
The pilot looked a mess, his suit blooded and grimed, sweat pouring down his cheeks. His eyes darted everywhere. But he appeared otherwise unwounded, his blaster quivering in a bloody hand.
“Where’s Regers?” Yul queried.
“I tried to motivate him out of his lethargy but the stupid sod came at me with his blaster, as if he was going to pistol whip me.”
“Sounds like him. What then?”
“Zikri all came in a blur. Squids everywhere. I blasted them, he blasted them. Regers managed to kill a horde and get away down some corridor. We got separated. Can’t remember much else.”
“Forget it. In Regers’ state, he’s probably lost. We’ve got to get this ship somewhere safe. I’ve a bad feeling that the Zikri have some nasty surprise planned for us.”
“No kidding. But—”
“There’s at least three of them out there, I saw. Gliding down the hall.”
Frue winced, shaking his head. “You should have killed them when you had the chance.”
“Hindsight, Frue. I found Hurd. He was immersed in a tank of water in some chamber a few halls down.”
Frue blinked, his teeth bared. “And you didn’t free him? What kind of a friend are you—?
“Quiet, relax—He’s dead or drowned. Though he seems kind of alive. Like this freak with the antennae here.”
Frue turned and grimaced at the hateful, glaring eyes of the Zikri and its tentacles. “You threw it in there?”
“It was starting to stink.”
Frue’s cheek quivered. “I’ve heard the Mentera feed off whatever’s in these tanks. Never seen technology like this before. See those hoses at the top? They stick them in their bellies and suck the life out of the victim in the tanks. So I’ve heard.”
Yul felt a chill as he thought back to corpse-like Hurd. “That’s disturbing. Later, Frue. We’ve got to get this Orb out of here, or scramble its frequency so they can’t
