He remembered that offensive-defensive technique with vivid clarity, alternating with blaster, kicks and shoulder butts as he took out Gorge, the hall monitor, before that wretched door had clamped shut, assisted by the extraordinary strength of his left arm.
The other survivor, the weak, suited, freckle-faced one, had yielded without struggle.
The rebel would make a good slave. The tanks would be too good for the wretch. He would personally see to the human’s torture and breaking. The manacles and brain disruptor would come in handy in this regard.
Krin gave a snuffling grunt. The rebel could be sneaking around anywhere aboard his ship. He must stalk every corridor and flush him out. Krin’s commanding officer, Druluk and other Zikri had died in agony in the battle on the human bridge. Through no fault of his own. Druluk had been stupid to underestimate the resourcefulness of the humans. Now he was a blood-caked carcass, host to those plants or whatever fiendish brood they were. Already his superior, Krake, had warned Krin of the death penalty for botch ups on these hijacking missions. Two black marks were tagged to his name already. One on the primitive monkey world of Ygramex, the other during the gory Pzyon affair. His very life hung in the balance.
First priority was to flush the human out with their limited crew, now that so many Zikri had been killed. A foolish and unnecessary waste. If only he had have taken more Zikri warriors, more firepower, when they stormed the bridge, this mess could have been averted...
Hindsight. How could he have known the human demon would have fought with such ferocity? Never before had explosions been used against them on a boarding mission, especially coming moments after being tractored aboard. It was unheard of. Still, he had to admire the human’s quick thinking.
The other survivor, the weak, suited, freckle-faced one, had yielded without struggle. He looked out from his tank with goggle-eyed surprise. Why hadn’t his superior been on the bridge? He had left the weak one there to die? It made little sense. Krin gazed back upon the specimens in the tanks, staring out of their glassy prisons like helpless minnows.
Could the human thing be playing him?
No, the human was not that smart. He had made mistakes before: wandering the ship alone, leaving the human unguarded on the bridge. He was lucky to have pulled through.
With his two, blood-slimed comrades, Krin stalked the halls, looking for his quarry, his tentacles curling in a menacing expectation. He would find his quarry and when he did, the rebel would pay dearly.
* * *
Tottering on through the Zikri’s spidery corridors, Yul desperately retraced his path back to the tank room. He avoided the dead-end corridor where fallen debris had blocked it off. Shouts and blaster fire raged behind, echoing like hail on metal. He crashed through the hallways, following the places where he had notched the creepy veins and motifs with his blaster.
Much of the corridor had lost its scary menace from before in contrast to all the horrors he had experienced: mutant crazed moths, bloodthirsty Zikri, explosions, Greer’s loss in space...
Panting, despite the slightly lower gravity, he reached the familiar U-shaped archway that gained entry to the house of horrors he remembered so well. Are you crazy, Yul? Why go to this length? Is Mathias going to let you off the hook after this bungled job? Why not put a blaster to your head and be done with it?
Some crazy intuition drove his legs onward, but now he staggered to a halt.
The room was slightly different than he had remembered it. The floor was soaked with water and smashed glass glinted at the far end. Regers, lolling doll-like, hovered inside the largest tank, coated in some chalky white substance, the like of which he could not decipher. A grotesque monstrosity gaped behind the glass, coral-eyed, comatose, sprawled in a corner with some strange, moth-like fish with fins and wings grown huge, flitting about the water, like some lord of the manor.
Yul reeled back in horror and disgust, his blaster sagging in his hand. “What the shit?”
Even Goss, storming through the arched gap, did a double take, seeing the room with all its ungodly lifeforms.
He caught up with Yul and bawled. “What in the blue flames of hell is this? He swung his arm in a wide arc.
Yul had seen enough. Opening fire on the barriers of glass, he blew up Hurd’s tank first. Then Frue’s.
Glass shattered everywhere, water slewed, releasing a torrent and their occupants.
Hurd tumbled out of his prison, sprawling in a ragdoll heap. He did not move. Frue struggled to his knees, gagging, coughing foul liquid out of his lungs. Miracle of miracles, the man was alive.
Goss caught at Yul’s arm, venting a curse. A stray blast from Yul’s gun went wild, hitting the alien heptadoria’s tank.
Water gushed out and Regers with it, cracked helmet and all, falling forward on his knees in a pitiful, slimy rush. His pale lips, white as parchment, arched in a soundless cry. The man’s right-hand fingers trembled, yet his left hand was only a stump where it had been gnawed by the heptadoria.
The butterfly, moth, or whatever it was, flapped about the ground like a beached mackerel, confused at its new environment. Then in a burst of soggy adaptation, its iridescent wings took it high and wide about the room, soaring inches over the newcomers’ heads, dive-bombing them like an angry eagle.
The men crouched and aimed. Some lifted blasters, others cursed and backpedalled for the exit.
Yul ducked, lest one of those razor sharp wings cut at his throat in a low pass.
A marine’s throat was laid open ear to ear as a wingtip sliced flesh like a machete, and he fell back choking on his own blood.
Goss slapped
