Regers would never forget the fact that Yul had left him to die there in a swamp pool of scum, of body parts, feral aliens and the cuckoo bird-butterfly. In the end, the creature had been his saviour. It considered him part of its environment, a necessary fixture to protect, and it would protect him at all costs, even against the ruthless Zikri.
Regers worked the muscles of his disfigured cheeks, arms, his left hand mauled horribly by the heptadoria. His warped soul was cut even deeper. Regers knew he was a survivor. He had not gotten to where he was by luck alone. Where all had died, he had survived. Outlived team members, gang members, friends, foes, family, even Sama... poor Sama, his vibrant young wife who had died much younger than she should have. His body ached beyond words after spilling out of that locust tank, even though the greenish water had supplied a healing power which he could not explain. His body had been repaired—to a degree. In the unlikely case he made it to a medical institute, a prosthetic unit could replace most of his former hand. Maybe he could appeal to his cybernetics freak Mathias, for some new limbs. This was a dark irony, not wasted upon Regers.
By scrubbing furiously, Regers had only partially succeeded in removing the white chalky substance that caked his skin. It appeared to be some sort of resin or effluvia the heptadoria had jetted out as an excrement, or some foul ejaculation of fluid and flakes to defend itself much as an octopus would, squirting ink in times of trouble.
Regers would hunt the bastard Yul down until the debt was paid, discharged in full... This one savoury thought had kept him alive during these hellish trials and would continue to while his plan gathered momentum...
None had come to investigate the Orb until now. He had self-nourished, jumping back in an unoccupied tank to heal in the magic liquid. Everything had healed except his left hand. That was beyond repair, gone forever. No infection, no fever, just a throbbing agony as the cells multiplied and the ragged skin layers knit together. Angry raw scabbed flesh where normally his wrist would have been, formed at an unprecedented rate. It ached like a bitch, but he’d live.
The dragonfly had protected him, followed him wherever he went as he nosed his way around the ship. Once, twice, before self-nourishing he had managed to secure the door to the tank room before the thing could slip through. Then, he could hear it banging its iron-hard head against the metal, trying to get out, to get to him. It was as if the thing couldn’t stand the possibility of being without him. Regers cringed, shivering at the memory. Birthed with him in the Mentera tank, its place of entry into the world, it had seemingly identified him as a ‘guardian’, a stable force in its habitat, the dumb fuck thing. He guessed he was something of a mother or father to it. In the end he had had to trap it in an adjoining chamber. But soon enough he would have to return to that hellish room containing the bodies to get nourishment.
The starship Albatross was crippled. One of the captured lightfighters in the Zikri hold might have given him passage off this loathsome world, if the main drive hadn’t been blown out by a uro bomb. The other...well, at best it could operate with some repair and maybe his rudimentary flying skills. But a big if. The Orb—forget it—it was breached and crawling with Zikri once again, guards he guessed to protect it from scavengers. Even if he took off on impulse power, it would be tracked or flagged by other warships and gunned down.
Regers had explored the seemingly endless adjoining rooms and found hundreds of victims in the gruesome tanks. The resultant spoils of countless raids, they floated and bobbed in their greenish aquaria. The eerie ghastliness never failed to send chills up Regers’ spine. The machine parts of the raids were probably shipped to Zikri bases around the galaxy, which explained the hold’s relative emptiness at this time, whereas the humans had not been passed to the Mentera—yet. For this reason the ship would still be important to the Zikri. They would return with even more squids...and soon enough. With this in mind, Regers worked hard and fast. He had been spared an agonizing demise thus far by perverse fate alone. He did not want to push that luck. Freedom was his...for the moment...and there would be hell to pay when he was mobile...starting with that fucker Yul who had left him there to die in the tank room. Mathias would also be due a reckoning.
He had managed to seal himself off from the Zikri invaders by working the self-locking control to the door of the main Zikri tank room bordering the hall. The dragonfly had provided the rest of his backup. It had been fascinating to watch, as the insect sprayed toxic stuff more deadly than acid on the tentacled guards sent to protect the valuable cargo from looters. In a daydream reverie, he had recalled it cutting them to shreds with its fabulous wings. Such a wild instrument of death. Beauty in motion!
Regers named it ‘Shredder’, his pet dragonfly. He could hear it banging now against the sheeted metal, trapped in the adjoining room where he had last lured it.
In his requisitioned suit, Regers prowled about a new room of tanks, a hundred, maybe two hundred of them, whistling happily, moodily to himself... The time was ripe for action and he was the maverick who would pull it off. Finally, something of a large enough pool for his purpose. He had managed to seal the chamber, all monstrously dark and dripping, and the
