“But, sir? Brenes back there, his neck—”
“What about Brenes?... Use your gear, man! Why’d you bring it all this way?” He snatched away the marine’s E1, his fist shaking.
The man cringed. While his team-mates trained weapons, others extracted nets, and guns that ejected clamp-ons. Two rummaged through their personal kits to shoot darts and stunners on the flying thing. They did this, but with unexpected results.
A gunman who had knelt in the pooling liquid and fired clamp-ons, yelled triumph. A metal restraint hooked on the thing’s wing and the butterfly teetered and dropped in midflight. Men moved in, scrambling forth to net it. But it flicked out its wing and sent the shiny clamp spinning away with surprising strength. It dove at the gunman, squirting an acrid, glistening liquid from its proboscis.
The man’s faceplate melted in a wash of glass as acid sizzled on the flesh beyond. He slapped at his face, yowling like a whipshot hound, clawing at his burning face.
“Damn...” Yul edged back from the tanks, shaking his head.
More marines rifled through their kits. Others crabbed back, spooked, shaken by the grisly deaths of their comrades. Goss cursed them all and kneed them on. “Contain it, you asswipes. What are you waiting for?”
The butterfly’s knife-edged wings tore through the net like paper and it swooped upon the offenders without mercy. Its wings drove it with pulsing purpose, shimmering with bright colour as the thing’s thorax bulged with new strength.
How fast could the thing adapt? Yul gasped. The eyeless head zoomed in on its perceived enemies via some extraordinary sense of radar.
Oddly the pooling water did not freeze. Only a fine blue mist rose from the viscid puddles, which Yul assumed meant the liquid retained its normal temperature. How, he knew not. The components of this alien were unknown.
Yul took in the evolving scene in a glance, sucking in a sharp breath. The butterfly had grown in size, shy of three feet long, and was adapting by the minute. Perceiving the men as a real threat, it began to spurt acid indiscriminately and rake barbed legs and razor wings across men’s suits, slicing them. The captives who had been released from their tanks, choked out vile fluid and gasped and moaned, weaving about like drunken sots.
Yul glared around at the insanity of it all. Let him out of this loony bin. How could those men and women be alive, their lungs full of water?
He considered blasting the rest of the tanks, liberating the remaining nine human figures. But he envisaged them flopping out in dizzy confusion without suits and dying in the alien atmosphere. Better to live as prisoners to the Zikri or Mentera, or die here put out of their misery? A tough choice. One he would not decide for them.
Goss loosed a cry of fury. He flung himself on Yul with renewed zeal. The commander, it seemed, hated being defied... but also knew Mathias would flay him alive if he terminated Yul prematurely.
Yul scoffed at the man’s anger and his feral grimaces. He thrust him away, disliking that ugly face mere inches from his own faceplate. But he recognized the strength in those bulging limbs. That strength was characteristic of a Class A synthetic. This one was a full cyborg, as had been Xix, whereas Yul was only a partial.
The commander’s eyes flared in determined purpose and with some surprise at the ferocious strength of Yul’s fingers which dug rivulets into his shoulder and ribs. Fingers not completely human, suddenly hurled Goss over his shoulder to land in a clumsy heap in a slimy green pool.
The synthetic was up in a flash, as if Yul’s move were but child’s play. “You’ll pay for that, Vrean.”
The commander lifted his E1. An explosion suddenly smote the hull, its thud echoing from above. The Zikri hull shook with resounding force. Goss’s eyes narrowed with surprise and dismay.
Goss’s communicator chimed. “Two war Orbs, sir. They’ve landed on Phebis. More are coming.”
“Engage them!” cried Goss. “Keep those fucking squids away from this craft.”
The commander motioned his weapon at his remaining men and staggered aside. “Back to the ship! if you want to live. You too, Vrean.”
The commandos scrambled to the exit like drowning rats. The dead they left behind.
Yul gingerly scrambled across the trail of bodies. Goss, perceiving insubordination, jerked his weapon to peg him off with stun fire, but the dragonfly, hovering like a predatorial shadow, perceived the act as a signal of aggression and swooped. A splatter of sickly orange fluid splashed across Goss’s rifle arm. His weapon melted and Goss’s suit and arm beneath with it. Goss gaped, eyes widening in horror as electrical sizzles and sparks flew from the prosthetic. He flapped the ruined stub uselessly. Cursing, he struggled with his good hand to seal up the crack. Failing, he stumbled back in the direction of his fleeing men.
Yul saw Goss’s features frosting up as cold penetrated his suit and bit into the artificial skin. His straggling team members blinked in wonder at their commander who with the visibly sparking synthetic limb revealed he had never been human.
“What’s the matter? Never seen a prosthetic limb before? Move!” he bawled.
Yul checked Hurd’s pulse. Nothing. The man wore only his air mask and was not breathing. Frue was shaking like a leaf, sprawled beside his tankmate, gagging and gibbering like a lunatic. He pulled the pilot to a sitting position, readjusted his helmet, which had jarred loose. The offensive water had drained from his suit but the air was freezing and Frue had gone into shock.
Quickly he knelt to tear strips of repair adhesive from his pouch and apply it to the punctures at both knee and waist. The resilient polyethylene instantly bonded and would
