Yul committed the map to memory. “If they get anywhere near where I’m headed, scream bloody murder. I’ll come back and get you and free Hurd, if I can. In the meantime, keep those vultures cruising out in space, not wandering these decks, or we’re all dead.”
“There’ll be more Zikri lurking down there than you think.”
“The hell with the Zikri! Dodge that war Orb with whatever impulse power we have, otherwise it won’t matter.”
Frue nodded vigorously.
Yul wrenched opened the door, his blaster aimed in quick sweeps left and right. No squids were in sight. “I’m closing the door now. Tighten the ring as much as you can.”
Yul exhaled, felt his rattled nerves prickling. Frue was losing it, bowing to the pressure. He needed him to be on track.
Gritting his teeth, he pushed failure out of his mind. Out in the hall, his senses tingled at a sense of eerie danger. Death and terror lurked in those shadows. He kicked at the coagulated body of the dead Zikri and pulled the door tight, hearing Frue struggling to tighten the door. Damn him, not tight enough.
Nothing to do. He couldn’t mess with it at this time. He’d have to stay focused if he were to accomplish his mission. He coughed out a raspy breath, clenched his fists. Every muscle in his body was knotted. God help Frue. If only the man could pull it off.
Chapter 3
Yul’s new route took him well away from the tanks and Regers’ desperate predicament. A shaky voice in his helm informed him that Frue had no new enemy to report. Frue couldn’t track where he was without a homer but could detect Zikri enemies on the line of his path. Not ideal, but better than no early warning at all. He only hoped Frue could keep the enemy ship at bay.
Yul snuck back along his circuitous route with increased caution. One corridor left, three right, two straight ahead. He took care to notch a mark in the wall at each junction with the butt of his blaster. A risk, should wandering Zikri stumble upon such marks, but better to have an escape route marked than not.
He passed under a spider-veined, diamond-shaped archway and into a spacious area. The Zikri hold. The dull cavernous thud of his booted feet echoed back in his ears, causing his heart to quicken. The Albatross’s blue pilot light came to his view, a familiar beacon, still functional after all the damage to her. He passed through the gaping hole in her side and crept up the companionway breasting the bridge, with the ship’s faint blue glow permeating the dim murk. The unknown lurked here. So far, he had yet to encounter a Zikri.
Slinking to the bridge, he saw the interior was in bad shape. Whole walls were blackened from blaster fire and multiple explosions. A faint smell of decomposition prevailed, like humus in a forest. His suit’s compressor attempted to draw oxygen out of the surrounding air to preserve the stored resources, thus Yul picked up the faint odour, or was it fresh? His blood chilled at the prospect of new developments. The weird, pear-like pods had popped open, dozens of them, showing brown, skeletal, rib-like formations. What had hatched? A scuttling motion came from overhead.
Yul ducked, heart hammering, but he saw nothing. He was about to dip back into the hall when the muted roar of the ship’s engines jarred him, followed by the sudden thud of metal bracing against rock.
The Orb had landed. Good, Frue had come through; they were on Phebis.
Yul worked with speed. He had heard no clunk of tractor pad door retracting so he assumed the task was beyond Frue. He hastened to the Albatross’s armoury to rummage for explosives.
Frue’s panicked voice hissed over the com. “Get back here! The squids, they’ve blown the—”
“What the hell?” Just when he thought nothing else could go wrong! He groped deeper into the pile of hardware. Frue would have to cope with the Zikri himself. No way he could get back in time to protect him. Snatching up two decent sized explosives with detonators, he turned to look up, eyes bulging at what he saw.
A colourful shape, a blurred winged thing, crashed into his forearm. He whipped it off him with a swipe. It chirped like a bug and flew off as fast as it had come.
Frue’s voice was drowned in a peal of blaster fire and chittering shrieks, gasps of terror. At the same time, a shadowy movement brushed by the doorway, then a familiar slithering. Damn, Frue was in trouble, but why hadn’t the sod warned him earlier?
The pilot’s wails of panic rose to a crescendo. Yul heard the slap of tentacles and Frue’s last agonized howl before the com went dead. Yul shuddered.
No time for remorse. He turned and a Zikri hit him like an avalanche. He rolled on the ground, clawing at rubbery, strangling flesh. His blaster fire rained askew. His mechanized fingers tore at slimy tentacles, creepers that wrapped tighter about his waist, arms. A hideous, mottled face jerked closer to his faceplate and he caught a strange, crablike movement hovering over his head.
A dragonfly thing, some winged crustacean, flung itself down from the ceiling and latched onto the Zikri’s neck. It pricked pale barbs onto the lower part of its head and lifted and jammed a white, pulsing, bulb-like proboscis into the thing’s brain.
The Zikri howled, slumped, its short head stalk dangling, while the butterfly pulsed, as if extracting fluids from the Zikri’s brain.
Yul gasped for breath, struggling wildly to extricate himself from the dying Zikri’s embrace. He staggered off, sickened by the sudden assault and the horror of it, wiping off the sticky goo from his suit.
Mercifully no butterfly-dragonfly flew shrieking and seeking his flesh. Only
