“Makes perfect sense,” Yul repeated, deadpan.
“Let’s shut the small talk, you dull fucks,” growled Cloye. “We need to find a way out of this mess.”
Yul smiled facetiously and bowed. “After you, Princess Cloye. Spoken like a true lady.”
Nonas smirked. “Wish you two had have been here. Couple of roughnecks like you would have made short work of those squids.”
“Yeah, what’s your story?” muttered Yul, looking on the man’s wounds and blackened, blood-streaked face.
“The Zikri started throwing pressure caps at us. One of them, I managed to chuck back. The other, I was a little late.” He grinned, a wide gap showing where two of his front teeth were missing.
“Tough break. Some people just don’t have any luck.”
“Yeah, I thought so too.”
“How is that all the halls aren’t flooded with toxic air?” snapped Cloye.
Hresh waved a hand. “There’s an automated airlock in section E that seals the lab areas in case of accidental breach.”
“But the squids don’t seem to have blown those yet,” added Nonas.
The recorded voice droned on, “Danger. Hangar 1 is flooded with high sulphur dioxide levels. Repeat, danger! All personnel in the vicinity report to evacuation chambers. This is not a drill. Repeat. Not a drill.”
“Shut up, you stupid—” groaned Cloye.
The robotized female voice continued to drone and Yul grinned.
“Great, now what are we going to do?” Cloye hefted her E6.
Yul pushed Nonas aside and looked through the glass. Locust ships amassed in the air, slipping through the cracked dome. Wrecked ships and mechnobots, dead bodies, human and various types of alien, lay strewn across the tarmac. A massive Orb had landed in the middle of the hangar and several Mentera craft ranged beside it. A smaller one with beams lit up the air, and a medium-sized Orb lay ruined beside it, with a gaping hole in its side. Hresh’s terraformers and three other lighter ships lay to the side, seeming as of yet undamaged. Locusts milled about in black pressure suits, pincers outstretched while the Zikri roamed, garbed in light air masks, leaving the rest of their ropy masses of skin exposed.
“Well, the ships are good news,” said Yul, eyeing the intact vessels.
Hresh hitched himself forward with excitement, lifting a finger. “That’s my V6 lightcraft over there. If we can make it—”
“We’ve got to suit up first.” Yul pushed him aside. “Make for that ship, or those ships.”
“It’s a battleground out there,” murmured Nonas. “Are you up for it?”
“Any better ideas? It’ll be a battleground here too pretty soon.”
They grabbed suits from the emergency dispenser to the side of the airlock. Yul checked Cloye’s oxygen level after she had suited up. It was at 90%. They tuned their radio frequencies to each other, as it would be a challenge to get there.
Hresh entered the security code override in the wall monitor and Yul pulled the air lock open and fingered his blaster. A flood of poisonous air whooshed into the chamber, nearly knocking Cloye and the others off their feet.
Yul wasted no time. He herded the others toward Hresh’s light craft and ran ahead with Nonas to engage the enemy.
Mentera scouts stirred at the first glint of movement and lifted their lumo sticks. Green flares arched their way. Yul ducked low, blasting Zikri stragglers that glided by as he ran. The aliens exploded in splatters of blood and guts, air masks disintegrating. He plunged on, scrambling past the landed Orb, ducking stray locust fire.
Tentacled figures clutched captured humans, the remnants of Hresh’s research team, heading to the open cargo bay of the landed Orb. Locusts with lumo sticks oversaw the operation. The gruesome scene brought chills to Yul’s spine. The victims were herded in with slimy appendages. Lost. No way to rescue them. To storm that stronghold was suicide, one or two against hundreds, with armed ships about. As much as he would have loved to blast those aliens to atoms, he had others to think about.
It would take them two minutes to reach Hresh’s V6, he calculated. Should it be a seamless entry, they could be airborne in as little as a minute. Hope flared in Yul’s chest.
A whirring sound whined overhead.
He craned his neck. What the hell was that? Hresh’s invention? No, It couldn’t be! The A13. How did it get in the air?
Like the butterfly in the lab on Phallanor, the A13’s outerbody had formed wings, which now flapped with fury to propel it airborne. Much like the hybrids Yul remembered back on the Orb on Phebis, this one was equally disturbing.
Yul gazed on it with awe, Hresh, no less. He halted to grunt at his brainchild with pride.
The landed Orb, distracted by the mechnobot’s sudden appearance in the air, trained its guns on the A13.
Yul cursed and ran across the debris-littered tarmac. “Hurry, you idiot,” he called after Hresh through the com, “more Orbs and aphid fighters will be coming any second.”
Hresh’s sudden euphoria vaporized as he gazed on with tear-filled eyes at the ruin of his enterprise. “What a stupid waste!”
“Quit your bellyaching,” muttered Cloye, clipping him on the back of his helmet and shuttling him along. “You’ve got the entry codes to the ship, or I’d leave your miserable hide behind.”
Two of the Mentera ships, the ones shaped like bloated mantises, took to the air, treating the A13 as a visible threat. The landed Orb rocked upward, and was powering up its ion cannons. The aphid ships loosed photon fire, but the flying A13 deflected the blasts off its titanium exterior.
How it survived that battery of assaults, Yul couldn’t fathom. A massive torpedo launched from
