Maxim’s wristcomm vibrates, and he glances down at it before taking the next left. Just ahead there’s a ramp heading up to the level above. “Come on!”
Jor’ Lu is just behind him, and Prathea is behind her, with Gabe bringing up the rear. Gabe is holding two powerful rifles; one in each hand.
Jor’ Lu slows. “Did you hear that?”
Maxim looks at the Burzzad scientist and shakes his head, one eyebrow raised. She indicates her pointed ears. Max looks at Gabe, who points to his own lack of ears. Maxim shakes his head, and touches his comms. “Bennie, have you detected anything?”
“Anything, like…?”
Maxim frowns. “If I knew, I’d have asked you more specifically.”
“Fine, fine, fine! I don’t see anything. Well, anything outside the bulkheads closing and the ship powering up. Oh wait, I do see something! Woah, lots of somethings!”
“What do you—”
“Maxim! Down!” Gabe’s voice, much louder than usual, echoes through the corridor. Training kicks in—Max doesn’t ask, he just follows the order. A pulse rifle blast roars over his head as he ducks… slamming right into a mechanical, squid-like thing. It’s matte black, an oblong body with five glowing red sensors on the front and an array of metal tentacles emerging from the back of the device.
“Oh, shazbot!” Jor’ Lu shouts, raising her long arms. Prathea grabs her lanky companion, pulling her to the ground.
Maxim pushes the mechanical thing aside and fires at a half dozen more of the things behind it. “What are these things?”
Gabe is still standing in the middle of the corridor, calmly firing his two pulse rifles set to automatic down the corridor at the mechanical squids. “I do not know.” The last of the attackers falls to the deck as he speaks, tentacles twitching. “I believe we should increase our pace and hurry to the airlock.”
“Agreed,” Maxim says, standing and helping Prathea and Jor’ Lu up. “Let's go.” All four set off in the same direction they had been heading in before the attack.
“Heads up, Max and his team just encountered some kind of mechanical somethings. Metal, lots of tentacles, glowing red eyes,” Bennie announces over the comms.
“Uh, yeah!” Wil shouts over blaster fire. “We’re familiar with the mechanical calamari. Thanks!” He stands up from behind one of the mechanicals and fires off two shots into another oncoming squid-thing—it drops to the ground, glowing sensors fading to black, one tentacle twitching. Wil looks at his wristcomm; it’s showing the corridor, clear of hostiles. He motions to Murta. “Huey shows all clear, let’s go.”
They take off at a jog, following the small floating drone down the corridor.
Murta touches his own wristcomm. “Ben-Ari, do you know what these things are? How many of them there are? Can you track them? Why didn’t you warn us about them?”
Over the comms line, Bennie tuts. “Beats me, no clue. And I can only detect them when they’re bunched up. Their power signatures are masked by the ship until a few of them get together. I didn’t know they were there, and didn’t know what the readings were until they attacked.”
Murta scowls. “Can you at least guide us away from the ‘bunches’?”
“I’ll see what I can do—they seem to bunch up, then disperse into groups too small to track,” Bennie says.
“Well, do what you can,” Wil says, as they round a corner. Huey is one hundred meters ahead of them at a four-way junction.
Zephyr turns another corner. “Clear.” Xan pops out from behind the corner and follows her. They’ve been moving through the ship alone for a while, Zephyr taking point, Xan armed with one of Zephyr’s spare pistols.
“Do you think we’ll run into any of those—what did Wil call them? ‘Mechanical kal-a-marree’—before we reach the airlock?”
“I hope not. No offense, but I don’t like our odds.” Zephyr glances down at the meter-tall scientist.
Xan holds the pulse pistol out and examines it. “None taken.”
Suddenly, Zephyr stops. “Well, I guess I did tempt fate on this one.” Before Xan can ask what she means by that, three large mechanical squid-like things turn a corner. Their red, glowing sensors all turn to face the two women—and without a second’s pause, they lunge at the two intruders.
“Shazbot!” Xan shouts, pulling the trigger on her borrowed pistol, sending shots all over the place, most of which fail to hit their targets.
Zephyr drops to one knee, leveling her rifle. The first squid-like mechanism falls to the deck, three smoking holes blown through its main sensor array. Two of Xan’s shots find their mark, distracting one of the attackers long enough for Zephyr to finish it off. The third closes the distance and tackles Zephyr.
“Zephyr!” Xan shouts, as one of the tentacles swipes at her, sending her crashing into the wall, the pulse pistol flying from her hand. She slides to the ground, dazed.
Zephyr is struggling with a tentacle around her throat, squeezing her air supply, when a pulse pistol goes off. The mechanoid she’s fighting shudders, and a tentacle slams into her midsection, knocking the wind out of her.
“AYIAHHH!” Xan is a small, furry blur on top of the squid-thing. She crawls across it, firing into the machine, then rolls away from a lashing tentacle to climb in front of the glowing sensor array, firing directly into it. The machine shudders again and thrashes another tentacle toward the small and vicious scientist, missing as she crawls around the side of the device, firing two more times.
The tentacle around Zephyr’s neck abruptly goes slack, and she wriggles out from under the motionless squid-thing.
“Nice shooting,” she says, “and uh, scampering… and was that biting? You know there’s a face mask?”
Xan drops down off the machine, and dusts her suit off. Then she looks up at Zephyr. “No one needs to know about this.” Without another word, she turns and continues down the corridor.