A last look back confirmed his suspicion; he must be victim of some mad hallucination. The Zikri’s head oozed vile fluids while the dragonfly, some magnificent absurdity, sucked up the issuing ichor, its wings trembling. A hissing, gurgling chitter burbled impossibly from the Zikri’s exposed throat. Yul winced. A metamorphosis. A butterfly thing, a quarter of the size of the original attacker, morphed out of the Zikri’s shattered skull.
Yul staggered back in shock and disbelief. He tried to erase the image from his brain, but it was impossible.
He scrambled back through the Albatross’s companionway, empty and eerie as was the darkened hold of the Zikri ship.
Tottering on drunken legs through the hold, he reached a dark wall of metal, the gate pad through which the Zikri dragged their victim ships. The spiked barrier rose impossibly high, an impenetrable rampart. As he guessed, there were no controls on the gate to draw it up or down or unlock it.
He armed his detonating device, set the time sequence, and clamped the magnetic casing at eye level then stepped back. His mind could not help but postulate theories as he stumbled away... He had seen that flying insect in all its vivid, grotesque detail.
It had formed crab-like legs as a springboard... why? To jump like a spider? Perhaps a speedy adaptation to a dire situation? In the heavier gravity, wings could not support its mass, so it seemed legs had been a necessity.
The explosion rent the Orb’s hold with tongues of red flame and a terrible concussion batted Yul forward with jarring force.
He shook his head, crumpled in a dazed heap by the far wall, in a tangle of overturned benches. The blast fortunately had not damaged or punctured his suit. Why the devil had he set it for only seven seconds? Stupid. He was not thinking. Shock? Fatigue? Shrieks raged in his ear as the thin Zikri air was sucked through the hold into the outside atmosphere which was even thinner there. It meant the Zikri on board, caught exposed, would die. Perfect! He ground his teeth in a satisfied grimace.
But his body shook and his ears rang.
Over he staggered to the brink of the shredded tractor pad, feeling the tug of air, nudging at him and his suit. The ship depressurized. He looked upon a desolate landscape. Frue had landed them on a slight angle in the dusty soil that looked like snow. Boulders flanked the pliant Orb’s side, and small dusty ridges rose distantly behind it. To his right, ran an endless plain of frosted soil disappearing into a dark horizon. The time of day, if day it were, was late, perhaps approaching dusk. Mra, the distant sun, was setting, and long shadows spread across the lunar soil. The enemy Orb stalking them was nowhere in sight. A fortunate circumstance. Perhaps the erstwhile Frue had taken care of it.
Somehow he thought not.
He looked at the digital readout on his helm’s suit: -25 degrees Celsius, humidity 3%, Gravity 0.84. Air: 60% carbon dioxide, 9% oxygen, traces of 1% sulphur and 0.7% Argon, the rest indeterminable. A weird mix, unsuitable for human life. Lucky that his suit had not been compromised. His only chance would be to board and arm Lander now.
He turned back to the Zikri hold, but his eyes caught a brisk movement on the moon’s horizon.
A ship? Yul gaped, squinted, saw a familiar, cylindrical Wren X, a Mark V design skim the landscape. It emerged to face the Orb. Twin photon torpedoes were mounted on its sleek underbelly and ion-blasters to the sides. It was a state-of-the art light-drive propulsion X3 model. Heavy artillery its trademark, a fast and deadly machine. Mathias did not scrimp. Yul imagined the Wren X contained only the most modern cloaking devices.
So Mathias had come—sooner than he expected. Those plant samples must have meant more to the industrialist than all the gold in the universe. Sad news that the plant pods were either hatched or burned. Mathias would definitely not be pleased. The ferns? Who knew where the hell they were?
* * *
Crouching on his haunches, Yul let the daze wash out of his head. Nervous exhaustion crept into his limbs. He cast a furtive glance back, expecting one of the iridescent dragonfly horrors to come vaulting out at his head. He doubted there was only one. But if any one of them had wanted to hatch something inside him, it would have done so earlier. It hadn’t, which meant something significant. For whatever reason, Yul did not feel the fear he should in his heart. That was a good thing.
He sucked in a grateful gust of oxygen and struggled to his feet. A hailing frequency came over his headset with a staticky rasp.
“Yul Vrean? This is commander Goss of the Mercedes Arknot, Cybernetics Corp. Do you read?”
“Clear,” croaked Yul.
“Any hostile report?”
“I’m clear.”
“How many hostiles are left?”
“I’m not sure.”
“We see you’ve cracked open the tractor pod. Good. We’re coming in.”
“Over.” Nice timing, you morons, he thought. Just when his whole team had been wiped out.
The Wren hovered and landed in a safe area on the plain before the downed Orb. Twenty figures emerged in grey-camo spacesuits. Their ship flew to some safe corridor in the hills and the figures moved ant-like toward the
