“Run!” I shouted and tried to move but my gut picked that very moment to twist me with agony. Shots littered through the jungle canopy, their origin the exploded wall we had jumped out of.

“Marcus!” Nikhara shouted to me, as I dived to the ground and shuffled towards her. Then my mind lit on fire, screaming for me to rolled twice to my right and then once to my left. My body moved before I could register the bizarre warning blaring mentally at me. My vision edged with a verdant green.

I rolled twice to my right, passing over rocks and fallen vines, their ends charred with the cooling heat of laser fire. A beam tore up the ground where I’d just been. It zigzagged forming an M shape, and I rolled to my left as it went to continue. Timing my pass just so that I rolled as it moved to sweep over me.

“Marcus!” I heard Nikhara shout again.

“I’m alright—” I tried to reply but the deep whump of the anti-air cannons firing drowned out my voice. Crawling to my feet as laser fire and bullets pelted the ground all around me, I clutched at my gut and ran for it.

Almost tripping over some fallen vines, I spun and swept my aim upwards. Through the dense canopy of tree’s I spotted the origin of gunfire. Sighting them I snapped off two quick shots and tried for a third, but the pistol let out a loud angry hiss, as the heat vents in the gun glowed a dark red and steam emitted from them.

“Shit!” I hissed and turned back to running. Unfortunately my shots had given away my position. The jungle ignited with their concentrated fire as I sprinted onwards.

Ahead of me, I caught the bare glimpse of Nikhara’s forest green armour. The colour made spotting her difficult. She was crouch by a tree, one leg stretched out before her, the berinium plates mangled and charred. I could see the jade green of her skin through it. She had her rifle focused on the assholes trying to pepper me with death from above.

Four deep resounding Badoom blasted through the jungle, as the flack of the anti-air rounds exploded directly above our position.

Then Nikhara’s rifle ignited with a staccato cough of fire, smoke, and lead as she sent round after round, down range.

The encroaching gunfire nearing me, immediately snapped off towards my wife and I saw Nikhara dive six feet to her right and came up stumbling against a tree. Her leg dragging behind her as she moved.

Wincing, I ran at a crouch over to her side and helped support her. Her armour was far too heavy for me to actually carry her.

“Any news from Andii?” I asked her as we started to move to our right, out of the path of gunfire. I guessed it was only a matter of time before the security guards started to send teams to scour the jungle for us.

“Yes-” Nikhara started then hissed as her foot caught against something. “-she said there’s a clearing with a small stream not far south from here.” Nikhara pointed ahead of us and I nodded.

We were heading south. Understood.

“We’re to follow that stream easterly till we come to a waterfall and cliff. she will meet us there with the Erebus.” I grunted my acknowledgement, but walking was decidedly becoming a pain filled chore. It seemed as if every strain of effort I put into moving, was causing the Ghasra worm to freak the fuck out.

I didn’t rightfully know but I suspected I would be dead in the next minutes. The blood loss alone was killing me, adding in the intestine devouring worm wanting to lay eggs inside me, seemed more like a neutral factor to my demise at this point.

“How far away is it?” I grunted as we shuffled over a clump of roots that jutted out the base of a tree, like a hexagonal honeycomb.

“Less than half a mile,” Nikhara replied and I could hear the grimace in her voice.

“Well they’ve stopped firing on us at least,” I noted to her. Now that I took a second to really hear everything, I couldn’t hear the anti-air cannon’s either.

“They’ll likely sent out a search team to hunt for us,” Nikhara pointed out.

“Yeah … I was thinking of that a second ago. We need to move—Oh Fuck-buckinghamshit-balls,” I groaned as a spasm wracked through me and I collapsed to my knee’s almost dragging Nikhara down with me.

“Buckingham?” Nikhara asked me amusement lacing her voice. Without replying I reached out and flicked my against the charred plate on her leg.

A second later, Nikhara cried out and almost fell over. “Fucking ass!” she growled at me. Why the fuck did you—” I her cut by shushing her.

“Ssshhh!” I held my finger up to my lips. I felt it then, a rolling vibration running through the ground beneath us.

I heard the tree’s in the jungle let out a collective groan as the vibration grew in intensity. “Move!” we hissed at each other in sync. Then stumbling to our feet we shuffled onwards like a pair of drunks trying to find their way to life’s mysteries.

An enormous buzzing roar spun to life behind us, and we both turned to see a massive vehicle with a fifteen-foot horizontal buzz-saw blade spinning with such incredible speed that it cut everything in its path cleanly. What fell towards it, landed in a compactor of crushing steel jaws.

That chomp the felled trees piteously.

“Damn if these fucker’s aren’t creative in their means,” I said with some slight admiration lacing my voice.

“Come on!” Nikhara hissed and tugged on my arm, getting me moving again. We halted as we spotted a group of about five people scanning their gazes through the dense environment.

They spotted us at about the same time, and as Nikhara’s rifle snapped upward to fire. The lead woman, raised a small red handgun and fired a flare upwards. Nikhara’s weapon growled an angry retort and shredded the woman’s arm apart.

Without missing a beat, I snapped two shots and cursed as they both missed and sizzled a tree. Then my laser pistol was spent again the heatsinks flaring angrily in warning. Laser weapon fucking sucked. They were good to lighting unarmoured foes, as the shot’s cauterised any impact zones.

They sucked, because you could only get about ten shots off before it began warning about barrel deformation.

I ducked behind a tree as the facility guards split in all directions for cover. “We can’t stay here,” I shouted over to Nikhara.

My wife’s oval helmet nodded as she sighted her rifle and pulled the trigger, nothing happened. It simple clinked at her. “Fucking assholes!” she screamed furiously and threw her weapon down.

Then she reached for the slim blade on her leg and her helmet spun to face me. I didn’t have to see her face to know she was exhausted and annoyed.

Then her head tilted as she listened to something I couldn’t hear. Andrea I guessed. Reaching up, my wife clicked the release on her helmet and twisted it off. Her dark bluish-green hair fell out in a tangle as her jade-green-skinned features smirked at me. Her diamond shaped face, looked both fierce and amused as her lavender coloured eyes twinkled at me.

“What?” I asked her, and worriedly poked my head out to see the guard milling about. Behind us I could hear the buzz-saw vehicle blazing a trail through the jungle towards us.

“Andii picked up a new toy while you were gone,” she said mysterious and put her helmet back on. Then a sound assaulted the air, and it sounded like the angry whirr of a thousand bees.

I looked up just in time to catch a glimpse of four-foot long dark brown drone crash through the jungle canopy as the laser mounted minigun spat a sleuth of energy across the trees where the men were taking cover. Within seconds the triangular barrel of the laser minigun verged on melting, as thick yellow hot globs of metal drooled onto the jungle floor.

“Let’s go,” Nikhara waved to me and we left at a loping jog behind the drone as it led us through. Casting a look over my shoulder I saw no sign that we were being pursued.

Soon enough we came onto the small stream from which we were to head east for a waterfall. My pistol hadn’t cooled enough yet, so I shrugged and dunk the gun into the small stream. I wasn’t much a tech mumbo-jumbo, but I thought quick rinse of the weapon might do it some good.

The red flare of the heatsinks cooled within a heartbeat and I quickly wrenched the pistol back out. I did not want to tell Andii that I had basically flushed her invention. It just wouldn’t do my health any good. You’ll understand when you meet her.

Andrea is the definition of unassuming.

Several brief red flashes filled the sky above and a bit to our west. “I guess they’ve spotted something,” I suggested. We heard gunfire, as distant screams filled the wind and jungle.

“Spotted something alright,” Nikhara huffed as she fussed at her leg.

“You okay?” I asked her.

“Yeah… Just want to get off this underdeveloped planet and get back home.”

By home she meant Erebus of course. The black raven spaceship had been my own home for the last four years after retiring from Zarian empire military.

“We’ll see her soon enough,” I informed her and clutched weakly at my stomach. The worm had been decidedly quiet the last few minutes and that worried me more than it’s devouring.

I could only thank my regenerative ability to heal small wounds for not keeling over almost immediately.

A roar stilled the air, like a physical force.

Both Nikhara and I snapped to alert as we began to scanned the dense jungle. “You did a life-sign scan before coming to recuse me of course?” I asked her. When she didn’t reply I could only guess that meant negative.

“Damn it Nikhara,” I hissed into the quiet as we searched for movement. Andii’ drone swayed from left to right about two feet above us.

“Don’t you dare start with me,” she retorted, her lavender eyes flaring dangerously. “Might I remind you of Gull-317. Where you decided to have yourself a drink, even while we were in the middle of a gunfight.”

“Hey … it was really good whiskey,” I said lamely.

“You lost a finger because of it,” she pointed out and I had to nod my agreement. That had fucking hurt like hell. Luckily Andrea had been on hand to staunch the bleeding and keep my finger pressed to the wounded sight.

The only downfall to my regenerative ability was that if we hadn’t pressed the finger back against the wound. It would’ve healed over within minutes and I would be permanently down a digit.

The canopy above us rustled heavily then. And I snapped my pistol up to aim as a series shapes flittered through the tops of the trees.

“You seeing this?” I called out, as Nikhara stepped up beside me.

“You think these- what? Monkeys? attacked the search team.”

“Maybe,” I half-nodded. “Who knows what sort of shit could be out here. Some rejected splicer experiment?”

One of the shapes landed onto the ground before us. It was crouched over and looked to be some kind of malformed cross between a large grey ape and a crocodile. Its snout was covered in dark brown scales, with rigids below its orange predatory eyes that sprouted grey fur.

On its back were a pair of tiny bat-likes wings. It stood up with a hunch, leaned over with its large muscular arms knuckled against the ground and snarled a deep rumble at us.

The vertical slit in its pupil seemed to widen as it measured us.

My pistol was still aimed at the thing. But I was hesitant to shoot it. I could only guess this was some sort of product made by Lee Petrich.

“Yooooou-nooooo-like-them,” growled at us, elongating the O vowel. I heard Nikhara gasp from beside me.

“No we’re not,” I replied cautiously. Then some movement caught my eye and I looked up to see more like this one though not exactly the same. All of them were different cross-species.

Fucking about with xeno-biology had some interesting outcomes. “We’re trying to escape them--”

“The guards?” it asked interrupting me.

“Yes,” I said simply, and slowly lowered my aim, dropping my arm to my side. If they attacked us, we would be fucked no matter how many shots I got off. They’d simple dog pile both Nikhara and I, and Andii’s drone could little more than something ram them, maybe even tear them up with its propellers.

“Then gooooo. Escape this place. We handle guards,” the monkey-crocodile person dipped its head in nod. His head rose up, his snout yawning wide open as a roar started to emanate from him.

Then his head exploded and a second later the sound of a shot being fired went off.

The cross-breeds went nuts. Nikhara grabbed my hand as I tried to fire in the direction of the gunshot. But the press of the bodies charging what I guessed was a new search team was too much.

So we turned from them and ran as they charged a steady stream of gunfire.

“Through here,” Nikhara shouted ahead of me, when we came to be wide creek and beyond I could hear the encompassing sound of a waterfall.

We ran up to the right of the creek and passed through a thin opening between two trees, that seemed more like a well-used path. Once through we stumbled to halt at the edge of a cliff.

The precipice dropped off for possibly hundreds if not thousands of feet deep. I couldn’t even see the bottom just darkness. It was a wide snaking canyon hundreds of feet wide. Across from us on the other side, I noticed how it was sparser in vegetation and seemed more deserted than anything. The ground seeming a brownish-chalk-like dust.

I heard a deep blasting roar emanate from within the canyon, and a second later I saw the raven-like figure of the Erebus.

The ominous black ship was a joy to see, as it rose out of the canyon and levelled with us. I could imagine Andrea waving her through the cockpit of the ship, even though there was no possible way we could see her.

The one hundred thirty-metre long ship, fluidly spun about and banked towards our side of the canyon. And I could see the rear cargo bay’s ramp lowering. The sleek black ship reversed her thrusters and reared towards with the cargo bay open like an inviting tongue.

I felt the back draft of the spaceships proximity as it blasted the trees and sprayed the waterfall intensely. Nikhara clung to my shoulder as I stayed hunched slightly and pressed my hand over the wound in my gut.

Seeing my ship, knowing I was so close to another of the women that I loved deeply affected me more than I liked to admit. My head felt light woozy, my lung compressed as I tried to breath. But the air blasting around the stabilising thrusters felt super-heated and compact.

I swayed drowsily and felt Nikhara’s strong firm grip clutch at me.

“Rest, Marcus. We’re home at last,” she told me. So I closed my eyes, knowing my women would fix me up in no time. I just couldn’t help but feel a little reticent about the damage the worm had done to me.

But that could wait for another day.

Eventually I would find that fucker Petrich again and this time I would kill him.

This novel is the work of Rhys Thomas. If you are reading this and it has not been published by Rhys Thomas, then this work has been stolen. Please report this to Amazon and me at email: [email protected]