Almost as quickly, his dreams faded to dust as his precious escape ship erupted in a ball of flames before his very eyes. The concussion knocked him backward.
Crawling on his hands and knees, he sobbed. “No, no! It wasn’t meant to be like this!” He pounded his fists on the ground.
Looking over to the other ruin, Yul frowned. If the dragonfly creature hadn’t been confined in Hresh’s Biogron, it would have survived the onslaught. “Up, you!” he cried at Hresh, turning back to gather up the distraught man. “This is not over. We may need you to fly one of the alien craft. You’re a scientist, you should know something of technology.”
Hresh’s eyes rounded like saucers, mirroring resentment at the sardonic remark. “Why not fly one of the terraformers?”
“Too slow, too obvious,” grunted Yul. “One of those gets in the air and the Orb will gun it down in a second.”
“This ship here then,” Nonas cried, motioning to the last aphid lightfighter parked a stone’s throw away.
He sped up the locust ramp and smashed the butt end of his E1 on the access control panel. The door jerked open. Yul and Cloye scrambled aboard, dragging Hresh. Obviously the locusts kept no security here, expecting no resistance to their clear occupation of the hangar.
The foursome crouched low, crawling ahead in the dimness, breaths held.
Nonas motioned them to the sidelines with his weapon silently. The whites of his eyes betrayed no sign of hostile movement. His lips moved as if to utter a reassuring word, then suddenly his head and helmet exploded in a ball of crimson. Yul and Cloye ducked, staggered back, faceplates coated with Nonas’s brains.
Yul cursed. “Shit!” So a guard had been posted.
He ran full tilt through the murk, a blood-crazed yell on his lips. Bending low, he slammed hard into a weapon-bearing locust with its lumo disruptor clutched in its pincer. He knocked the weapon aside and sent the insect flying. He crashed on top of its crusty carapace, his full weight straddling it like a gorilla, then he smashed his gloved fist into its chitinous face. It lay there, stunned. Yul’s mechanical fist arched back for a killing strike, but he stayed his hand. It took all his willpower to temper that iron hammer of a fist from smashing through its gullet and into the back of its skull.
No, another time. They would need this verminous creature to fly this piece of trash out of here.
The thing was still conscious as Yul saw. He dragged the insect into the pilot’s chair.
The locust played dumb, its head lolling. Yul twisted its claw with painful effect. The locust chattered out gutturals through its bleeding mouth. Yul grinned with satisfaction.
The locust set pincers to tapping the key console. It got the message, Yul saw. The engines roared to life.
The creature twisted and turned more sticks and toggles that looked like insect antennae. Cloye and Hresh stared at the ship’s surroundings in horror, ruminating on the dire situation. Cloye prowled around like a caged lioness, wincing at the murky tanks off to the side, replete with their gape-eyed human occupants. She dragged Nonas’s headless corpse off to the side, gagging at the carnage.
Hresh stood mute, like an unmoving statue, eyes glazed over.
“We’re all dead,” he mumbled.
“Make yourself useful,” growled Yul. “See if you can figure out these controls. We could use some weapons right now.”
“Forget about their weapon systems,” muttered Hresh. “This panel’s covered with alien script. How do you expect me to decipher it?”
“The same way you rig up a mechanical monster out of a butterfly. Figure out their crapbox weaponry. This grasshopper here—” he motioned to the dazed locust “—doesn’t look as if it’s going to be much use with weapons, even if it’s capable. I’m thinking at best, it’s a pilot.”
Hresh grunted without enthusiasm. He clomped over to sit before the adjacent console.
With Yul’s and Hresh’s assistance, the ship lifted into the air, passing easily through the crack in the dome.
Alien chatter came over the com in garbled bursts.
Yul lifted a finger, cut it across the insect’s neck. “Don’t answer that, freak. Show me the map, the star map.” His quiet command hissed in the insect’s ear.
Though the thing could understand no human tongue, Yul’s suggestive coercion was of such ominous simplicity that the creature brought up a clear map of immediate space.
“Zoom out... Alpha sector! There.” Yul cried, stabbing a finger at a luminous area 18 parsecs away. He pushed his blaster to the thing’s head. “Now. Set it!”
Cloye sucked in a breath. “That’s far, Yul. Does this ship have the capacity for it?”
“It better, or we’re dead. The farther we’re away from this alien nightmare, the better.”
The locust tapped in the coordinates with celerity, fearing the intruder’s threatened punishment. Bright fear danced in its crimson eyes.
“Do you think it understands?” asked Cloye.
“It understands well enough. If it tries to double cross us—” Yul slowly sliced a hand across his neck. “That head comes off.”
Cloye shrugged, wrapping her arms around her midsection. “I’m itchy and cold, Yul. I’m taking this suit off. The suit sensors show the cabin air’s breathable.”
“No! Keep it on. We don’t know what tricks this bug may be up to. It could poison us for all we know with a flick of a switch.”
Photon blasts rocked the ship at her stern. Aphid lightfighters ravaged the shields. They had clued into the hijacking, but it was too late. Yul felt the tug of the light drive hit his gut as the ship entered the
