sheer force driving the creature back.

“No!” uttered Hresh, despaired.

“Happy now?” cried Yul.

Hresh crawled like a worm beside Yul. “Quick—duck into the obstacle course!”

Yul and Cloye wasted no time. They followed Hresh who dipped behind the hulking A13’s legs through the twisted gap into the dripping chamber. Others followed. Several of the scientists halted, doubting the strategy, and locust rays soon immobilized them. The rest ran shrieking for cover, only to be gunned downed by more locusts that quickly surrounded them. They hoisted the limp forms on their chitinous backs and shuttled them back through the exit. Hresh’s commandos, signalled by Nonas, did not hesitate, although half of them were already down by Mentera fire.

Only six of the scientists managed to get into the chamber before being stunned. Two of Nonas’s men yet lived.

Yul turned and blasted the locusts clacking after them. They needed to distract the enemy! Whatever Hresh was planning, it had better work.

Hresh led them past the ruined fishbots toward the end of the chamber, touching several buttons on a wall console. A door slid open. Yul caught ghosts of movement behind them, the smell of scorched metal.

The armadillo curled into a ball upon the enemy fire, shielding its horned head and stumps of limbs, its most vulnerable spots.

What the invaders did not realize was their barrage of fire was destroying the creature’s environment, the worst possible affront against the alien plant-turned-dragonfly. Its first call of duty was to protect its habitat. In a fit of rage, it sprang forward.

The armadillo crouched before its adversaries, arched its back and five foot spikes sprouted along its glistening hide, glinting like swords under the lab lights. Its eyes glittered like black pearls, sighting on its enemies. Strange insectoid whines echoed from beneath its tusked snout, as if the Biogron’s neural link were reaching out to the dragonfly’s speech centres.

Tucked into a ball, the thing rolled, a raging fiend, steamrolling Zikri and locusts that came to meet it. It stormed the lab, mowing down anything that moved, reaping a ghastly harvest of alien flesh. In that few seconds he could see that even encaged in its ghastly armature, the thing was adapting at an alarming rate, given almost unlimited power by Hresh’s mechno-wizardry.

Hresh beckoned them all down a hall through another door and into an adjoining chamber. Much like the previous room, it led the chittering Zikri and Mentera into a trap.

No sooner had he sealed the door shut when jets of water pounded on the trapped aliens. Yul peeked through the glass; he saw squids and locusts floundering in waist-high water, firing useless rounds off the fire-proof walls. The fishy mechnobots began dropping down on them with vicious intent. Behind thick steel walls, the screams and cries of the Zikri and Mentera went unheard.

Hresh pressed another button and entered a code into a wall console. They surged through an opening door. An alarm rang in the adjoining hall—the scuffle of feet, the burst of enemy fire, the booms and explosions of Zikri assaults echoing with it down the hall.

“What about that thing back there?” cried Cloye.

A crazed smirk passed over Hresh’s face. With haggard circles under his black eyes and his matted hair lying flat, he looked like a bedraggled racoon. They will not be able to withstand it. I would love to watch, but pressing business awaits...Hurry! To my ship.

Yul laughed. “They’ll blast your protégé to pieces.”

Hresh shook his head. “It has the adaptive intelligence of ten geniuses. The aliens may at best subdue it but with huge costs to themselves. Nonas, take the lead! Get us out of this rat-trap!”

“Where’s your ship?” growled Yul.

“The hangar, where else?”

Yul quivered in disbelief. “Didn’t you hear?” he grunted. “Your depot is toasted, compromised.”

That panicked the scientists, the four men and two women. One woman whimpered. Another man began to tremble, his eyes darting around the blood-strewn halls. “I don’t want to die,” he cried, “stuffed in a tank. Did you see those insectoids carrying them away?”

Hresh roared, “The only way out of here is by ship. They’re all out there for the taking, including the terraformers. Do you have any other ideas?”

Nonas stared, defying Yul or any other to contradict his employer. Yul kept his mouth shut. Creating more hysteria with these civilian-scientists was unwise. But surely rash stupidity was even worse. As of yet, he couldn’t think of any other plan, except engaging the attackers full on or hiding out in one of the labs like rats in a cellar.

They crept down the halls, Nonas leading with his two security men, weapons raised. Hresh followed with the other petrified scientists. Yul and Cloye took the rear, crouching, training blasters, scanning any cross corridors for unexpected activity.

One of the scientists cried out, “Even if you get us to a ship, Hresh, what’s to stop us from getting blown out of the sky by Zikri, if what Gustav said is true?”

Nonas flapped his hand for the woman to be silent.

The diversion was costly.

The rush came so quickly that none had time to react.

One minute an empty corridor, the next a door flying off its hinges, melted, and a wall of pincered flesh and slimy tentacled monsters surging against them. Nonas’s two security agents were taken down and dragged off in a writhing mass. The six cowering scientists were bowled over and engulfed in similar walls of flesh.

Yul batted aside tentacles, lifting his blaster. Reeking flesh swarmed before his face. Digits, claws, tentacles were everywhere in his line of sight, kicking, clawing, and coiling all about. He fought savagely to keep himself and Cloye from being overwhelmed by slimy tentacles and sharp claws. He jammed an elbow into a locust face, heard it crack, pivoting to spray rounds of blaster fire into an advancing wall of Zikri flesh. Then he ducked a

Вы читаете Alien Alliance Box Set
Добавить отзыв
ВСЕ ОТЗЫВЫ О КНИГЕ В ИЗБРАННОЕ

0

Вы можете отметить интересные вам фрагменты текста, которые будут доступны по уникальной ссылке в адресной строке браузера.

Отметить Добавить цитату