Frue gaped at the daunting panels and the rows of dials on them. “I’m good at this, Yul, but not a magician.”
“Start trying. There’s always a first time.”
Frue uttered a curse. Cold steam fogged behind his helmet as the air outtake valve wheezed. Lightly he touched some dials on the console and the panel zapped to life. His eyes blazed with triumph and he fluttered his fingers over the knobs with a scientist’s curiosity. “It’s meant for their cursed squidly tentacles.”
“No doubt. Work with it.”
Frue worked the dials while Yul stalked more confidently about, examining everything in sight. He swept his eyes over the crypt-like surroundings, avoided the eerie tank, remembering the other vessels in the last chilling room. Much he saw he didn’t understand—like the heavy chains on the wall, or the seats behind the command controls that contained what looked like manacles on the armrests, multiple rings for tentacles. He had no idea the depth of Zikri sadism that ran deep in their psyche, but he assumed it was profound. Things of suggestive savagery, torture and bondage may have easily been but simple entertainment to them.
A strange node, some black globe rested on a sleek stalk at waist height in the centre of the room that disturbed him as much as the grisly tanks. The globe was like some freakish signpost, radiating invisible waves of weird energy.
Yul suspected it emitted a harmful vibration, but of what he could not guess. He pressed an ear closer to it but could detect no hum or warble; the unit appeared to be ‘off’. Good. A cryptic panel of buttons, like everything on this bridge, stood at its base. He did not want to touch the thing.
“What the hell is it?” Yul whispered aloud.
Frue cast it a frowning glance and cringed back. “Looks like a mind disrupter of some kind.”
“On the bridge?”
“To torture victims? Maybe to keep their own in check. Who knows what these freaks do?”
“Nice species, these Zikri. Christ, Frue, concentrate! How long’s it going to take you—?”
“Relax. I’ve almost figured it out. The navigation system they’ve outsourced to Rangenkro. I know Rangenkro hardware fortunately. I can recognize other aliens’ technology in their systems. Makes sense, the scavengers the squids are. See the motifs?” He pointed to the glyphs that came up on the console when he pressed squid-like controls. “The weapons systems and tracking beacon, forget it. They’re in-house, protected. Under some crypto cipher. Likely fingerprint activated, or in the case of these squids, tentacle-driven.”
Yul shrugged. “How long?”
“Where do you want to go?”
“Anywhere but here.”
“How about Vraigon then? There’s a NOA base somewhere in the outer peripheries, so I’ve heard. Winterule, I think it’s called.”
Hope surged in Yul’s chest. Could there be a happy ending to this? He heaved a sigh. New Order Alliance. It was a sound for sore ears.”
Frue set a course for the sector and looked about at the weapons systems as Yul leaned in. “What now?”
“Can you get a secure channel to Mathias?”
“Are you serious? He’d rip off our heads.”
Yul resignedly drew back. With the Albatross toast, that was not a stretch.
Frue perked his ears. “Where are you going?”
“I feel guilty about Hurd. There are no Zikri tapping at the door. I think I’m going to venture out. Maybe free him, or put him out of his misery, one or the other, something I didn’t do earlier.”
Frue swallowed, his eyes kindling. “Are you sure? Wait.” He motioned to a small screen showing several red dots on a grid map of the Orb’s layout. “See those moving blips? My guess is they’re marks. Five Zikri left in that sector.”
“You be my eyes and ears then. Warn me of anything untoward.”
“It’s your life.” Frue shrugged. “We have a shipful of captured vessels. I think we should take this Orb to the end of the galaxy and sell it for parts and the ships too and walk away from Mathias forever.”
“It may come to that, Frue.” Yul considered. Two V-Zon cruisers in good condition. Tempting. He shook his head. Deep down he knew he could never do it. He’d made a promise to deliver the goods, as few of them as there were, and by God, he’d keep it. A matter of personal pride. His own prosthetic limb, ironically, had been manufactured by none other than Cybernetics Corp.
“If we take this Orb anywhere near the free worlds, they’ll blow us to bits.”
Yul chewed his lip.
“How about Phebis then?” offered Frue.
“Where the hell’s that?”
“A small moon in the Delta sector, an impulse hop from Winterule.”
“What’s down there?”
“Nothing, as far as I know. Some abandoned ore projects.”
“Do it then.”
“You still going out there?”
Yul hitched himself forward with a grunt, blaster in hand. “I can’t just sit here.”
Frue stabbed out at the console. “Think twice. There are hostiles in the room, if that’s where I’m guessing Hurd is. Unless you want to tango with them?”
Yul hissed out a curse. “Then we wait.” He crouched, elbows on his thighs, in sullen silence. He glared about, while the crimson-eyed locust watched him with imperturbable patience through the glass of its watery prison. He’d conserve his energy for now.
* * *
Some time passed and as they came out of light drive, a small featureless moon, cold, grey-gold, moved in its eccentric orbit. The planet Iom and its sun Mra shone dimly on the left of the viewscreen.
The indicator blips had moved off to a lower level of the ship and Yul was about to open the hatch and go out, when a spiked shape sheared across the starboard viewport.
Yul looked to the glass and groaned at the ominous
