The low throb of machinery or something more sinister came to Regers’ ears. The interior, like the insides of a rotting whale, appalled him; it reeked of danger, casting in every corner unnerving shadows in a murky sepia hue.
But he set such distaste aside. He and his crew passed like wraiths, stepping over scattered Zikri corpses, and Regers began to grin. The remains were in various stages of decay, mutilated bodies beyond recognition, the work of Yul or someone like himself. The cold air had decelerated the decomposition. The arriving Zikri forces obviously weren’t capable housemaids. Regers snickered.
They rounded a bend and it was another 300 feet to the hold. Wait, what was that, a flicker?
Regers strained his eyes in the dimness. Nothing. Then he saw a slithering movement.
“Incoming! Stay alert!” he howled.
The ambushing squids wore masks but no suits. They seemed able to handle the cold internally and on their skin, damn them.
A tentacle came out to wrap around Regers’ faceplate. The grisly thing joggled his helmet and he could feel toxic air flooding his suit. He screamed, hacking with his E1, spraying useless fire. The thing locked him in an unbreakable grip. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the movement of a familiar shape. A coloured flying thing. Shredder. It swooped.
Never before had he been happier to see such a monster. The crafty git must have figured a way out of its prison. But how? No way it could have busted its way through those walls of steel. One of the squids must have let the thing loose by accident.
Regers could feel his shoulders on the verge of crumbling. It curtailed his ability to fight, compromised as he was with the use of only one hand and the effort needed to hold his breath. The squid’s ugly warted face pressed close to his. The thing suddenly went limp. A razor-edged fin of a wing had cut through the corded Zikri sinew, and a spurt of black fluid sprayed across his faceplate.
Regers reeled back in disgust, letting the terrifying mass slide to the floor.
He dropped his blaster and knelt, lungs bursting for lack of air, a trembling hand and rigid stub efforting to screw back on his helmet.
“Forward!” he croaked. Air began to flow once again in his suit. Staggering about like a drunken man, he dodged tentacle-flailing squids. “Get to the hold, you idiots!”
Deakes bulled his way through, blasting squid flesh and tentacles, making head parts fly. The fiends that slipped through the knot, he slashed with his bowie knife until the gleaming blade was dripping with black-goo. The youth was right on the man’s heels, picking off rippling targets.
Four of Regers’ men scrambled ahead, spraying fire into the clot of writhing shapes. Regers snatched up his rifle, blazing rounds into the fray.
Two of his men were down in a quivering mass of flesh and gripping tentacles, not expecting to survive. It seemed this batch of squids was not intending to take prisoners, having learned the hard way from their past mistakes. Bully for them, thought Regers. The fat fuck, as he had predicted, was joining the roll call of the dead, his arm twisted on a backward angle, his mouth arching in what he’d call an agonized cry. Zikri lashed at his defenceless body and punctured his suit.
More of the enemy would have followed had not the dragonfly kept them busy, slashing out at them, its colourful, knife-edged wings slicing down at their gruesome hides, dive-bombing them with merciless flair and feral skill. Swooping and rolling like some alien bomber, the thing was an iridescent queen, multi-coloured wings whirring like propellers, darting about the cramped corridor with hummingbird swiftness. It lay ruin to anything and everything with tentacles that moved forward to threaten its guardian.
Regers snorted. Damn it to bloody hell. The Zikri must have posted sensors in this hall. How else had they snuck up on them so easily? Didn’t matter. The corridor opened up into a dim, cavernous space—the hold. No time to lose.
He bolted toward the Albatross. Panting for breath, Regers motioned what few of his men were left, toward the chained lightfighter whose faded decal read ‘Xaromar’. The ship was a Daulk model. Simple, efficient, no bells or whistles: compact, sleek, smooth lines, capable of serious horsepower, armed with photon disrupters strapped to port and starboard. Chains with keyed locks securely anchored the landing gear struts to the plated Orb’s side.
Regers counted Deakes, Jennings, Vincent, Creib, the horned Jakru and one other amongst the survivors. “Saw off those chains,” he ordered. “You three. I saw cutting tools back there on that workbench.”
As soon as Jennings tweaked the circuit to force an entry and open the hatch, he and Deakes both clambered aboard. Regers stood at the foot of the craft, on the lookout for enemies, knowing that Shredder would be a capable back-up. He was pleased to note that the Jakru had discovered plasma cutters, or what passed for them, and all were busy firing them up. The loops of chains on the first of the four landing gear struts, blackened and weakened from blaster fire, were melting under the hasty ministrations of the men.
Regers gnawed his lip while they worked. The fact that the squids would leave such tools lying about implied they were not worried about security. The chains here were used more for anchorage. He massaged the raw ache in his neck from the tentacle attack with the back of his blaster hand. His right knuckles barely made an impression on the wound, even while pressing firmly on the liner of the suit. The tentacle would have wrenched his head off, if not for his helmet.
Of course, a moot point, given the timely appearance of the dragonfly. How many times had
