His journey took him close to Regers. Yul paused, heart beating. He considered dragging the half-crawling man behind with his free, mechanized arm, but seeing the sorry state of Regers, mauled by the mutant fish in the tank, reconsidered. There passed an intense lucid moment between the two that would haunt Yul forever. Regers’ bloodless lips forming words ‘Fucking bastard’ and ‘Leave me here to die?’ and his voiceless croak with it. Yul shivering, lurched back, empathetic to Regers’ deplorable condition and embittered state, as he bowed under Frue’s weight, but not willing to do more about it. An image of Greer fled past his mind, wrenched from the Albatross, dying in space, and his scowl deepened. Regers would have to fend for himself.
Yul reached in his pouch and tossed one of the extra rolls of adhesive at Regers’ side, sensing the man’s suit was beyond repair. Regers was a dead man crawling.
Yul stepped back, nearly upending himself on one of the marine’s remains. He hauled out of that lunatic asylum, happy to take his leave of butterfly and fishy horrors lording over their pile of corpses.
Yul struggled to catch up with Goss, carrying Frue as best he could. The man’s suit had been breached. Shit, the man had drowned! It was unfathomable that Frue was still alive or Regers. But he could feel him twitching and the occasional racking cough jerking his light frame. He would die of exposure unless he could get him to Goss’s Wren asap.
His mind thought of the oddest things during that mad dash. A journey that lasted forever. Staggering through the Zikri hold nearing the tractor port, he saw Goss’s small clot of men frog-hopping their way in the lower gravity for their ship that hovered at the ready over the lunar plain, lit in a ghostly grey-white of fresh fallen snow before the low, slate-grey hills.
Yul turned his head, saw Frue’s lips shivering. He was hyperventilating, the man’s skin turning blue. The suit was not heating up his body fast enough.
“Almighty hell!” Yul swore. Frue would never make it out there to the plain on time. What to do? Leave Frue behind and race after the others? He made an instant decision. He turned back to the Albatross, only to catch out of the corner of his eye, a starburst of fire blossom on the armoured turret of Goss’s ship. Kaboom! An iron-spiked Orb, like some ball and chain, shimmered out of nothingness, an instrument of deadly menace, dominating the darkening sky.
Yul stopped dead. New stealth tech? How had the Wren been caught so blind-sided? A stab of hopelessness pierced his heart. The Zikri were not taking any prisoners.
The smoking, rocking Wren loosed counterfire on the Orb and the Orb trembled to its double torpedo assaults. The spiked invader loosed its last devastating bombs on the Wren, a ship now doomed, and both crippled, smouldering vessels crashed to the surface, igniting like matchsticks on the desolate plain.
Survivors of the blasts, a few of Goss’s team, raced back to the downed Orb, clawing desperately up the sides.
Without hesitation, Yul hobbled back to the hold and hauled Frue aboard the Albatross and into the landing bay. Lander stood there intact, her octagonal grey fuselage gleaming dully under the halogen bay lamps. He triggered the loading ramp, shuttled Frue aboard.
Six of the survivors of Goss’s team were soon clawing at Lander’s hatch, Goss himself with his shorn forearm. Before Yul could seal it, the ramp descended and Goss came storming aboard, spitting curses and waving his E1. Two of his men forced their way up the ramp and crowded themselves into the depressurization chamber. There was only room for five. Goss jammed the hatch closed as the three other men in his team gaped, the door slamming in their faces. Yul grunted in dislike at the synthetic’s cold-heartedness.
Through the port window he watched side blasts of Zikri fire lapping at the tractor port, nevertheless he dragged Frue out of the air lock and struggled for the controls. He booted up Lander’s engines, reached for the ramp control to lower it again, and let the men in, but Goss, hot on his heels, slapped his hand away and nudged the blaster under his ribs. “Stand down.” Goss turned to his henchman. “Morag, get in there and fly this thing.” He motioned him to work the controls while the other grinning marine disarmed Yul, who stood stunned, his jaw sagging. Morag edged the lander out above the Albatross, leaving the three screaming men behind.
Yul fumed, cursing himself that he had let himself be taken so easily. He had underestimated the synthetic. How he himself would have loved to leave them all behind—Goss, his feral foxes, the same as they would have done to him. Frue’s life hung in the balance; he hadn’t even had time to get his helmet off.
Goss stepped over the prone man and ordered his minion to watch Yul.
Lander hovered like a bug then sped out through the tractor port, her sides scraping past the twisted screen of metal that Yul had blasted earlier. Goss’s man lifted the vessel skyward, with no small expertise. The roaring engines took it high up into the cloudless night sky, while Frue lay gasping at Yul’s feet, shivering on the floor, with greenish ice still stuck to his suit.
A blip sounded on the console.
Yul’s eyes widened, seeing the characteristic blue-grey signature of a Mark IV, emerging on the console. “Shit, Goss. Just what we need. I hope you have a plan.”
The android glared at him, roaring into his headpiece. “Lander to Lesior. Salvest,
