Page 27 of Her Wolves

Our leader was on his knees, bent over, fists clenched, eyes closed, taking deep breaths.Kris was crouched on one side of him; I was on the other.Instinctively, I kept myself bent low as I moved over to him, while Kris, keeping an eye on us, took his torch disk and started shining it in different directions, learning the layout of this space where we were.His light hit tunnels and branches going off into darker places in different directions.Any of them could be where Tara was taken.We would have to try to pick up her scent—or any scent that might lead us to her.

I got to Nick and put a hand on his shoulder.“You all right?”I was having a bad feeling about springing him from the infirmary before we were sure the meds they gave him had fully done their job.

Nick opened his eyes and took a last deep breath of air.“I’m fine.Good, good, I’m fine.Let’s get on with this.”He hauled himself up on his feet; I stood with him, taking him at his word about how he was feeling.But I had it in mind to watch him carefully just the same.

Then Kris’s voice rang out in the cavern, “There!”

We looked first at Kris, then at where his light was shining as he drew his two-gun.Seeing what he saw, Nick and I both drew ours as well.

Coming in from one of the larger branching tunnels were four floating, bowl-shaped mechanical objects, moving towards us.Each of the objects had four sockets on the bottom of it, and from these sockets waved huge, dark, supple-looking tentacles tipped with blue lights, just as we’d seen before.The outer,upper edges of the bowl shapes were ringed with blue lights that cast their glow into the cavern.We all raised our weapons, preparing to do battle with them—and with those who sat in the hollows of the bowl shapes.

At first glance, I could only think, and I could only guess that Nick and Kris were thinking the same, Who the hell are THEY?!

Whoever they were, they had blue skin, horizontal slits for eyes, and what looked like handfuls of tentacles for fingers.My next thought was, Where the hell did they come from and what are they doing here?

Then, the lighted tips of the tentacles on the bowl-shaped floaters aimed themselves at us and opened fire.

Only our lycanthrope reflexes saved the three of us from being hit on this first attack.Energy beams stabbed out, and we leapt and ducked, growling, as the bolts hit the places on the rough cavern floor where we’d been standing.They made harsh popping noises where they struck, and the flying splinters of stone told us we did not want to be where those bolts connected.

We scattered, as not to give our foes a single target.Nick dove behind the biggest boulder near him; Kris found cover behind the base of a twisted stone outcropping; I found one of the stalagmite growths about as wide as a tree trunk and ran behind it.That gave each of us some cover to work with, but the aliens, whoever they were, had the advantage and maneuverability of being airborne.Kris and I both watched Nick and followed his lead.From behind his boulder, Nick raised his two-gun and aimed not at one of the tentacled hoverers, but at its rider.That was the strategy, then:concentrate on the aliens themselves, not the vehicles.The beam from Nick’s two-gun seared through the air over one alien’s shoulder and hit the stone wall just beyond him, screaming against the rock and sending pieces flying.That alienpivoted his vehicle around in the direction of Nick’s attack, and the tentacles of his craft rained energy bolts onto the boulder protecting him.Kris and I went right on the attack.

I took aim at the blue-skinned rider nearest me and fired off two shots.One blazed in front of him; the other caught him on the shoulder.The shrieking sound was something I’d never heard before.He fell forward against what I took to be the controls of his vehicle; and it lurched forward and down, hitting the cavern floor with an unholy crash and sliding down an incline to stop hard, crunching, against a far wall.Its tentacles flailed randomly, lighted tips flashing.The alien riding it did not reappear.I took only an instant’s satisfaction at this little victory, because an instant later, another enemy craft was swerving in my direction, firing with all four arms.

Clenching my fangs, I stood still but with my weapon ready behind the trunk-like stone column that was my only protection.I heard the terrible crash and clatter of the alien’s attacks striking it and saw flashes around me.The next thing I heard was a vicious cracking sound.I looked up towards the cavern ceiling and saw the top of my column starting to crumble.Pieces of rock fell onto my head.Then I saw from the corner of my eye the shape of the craft that had blasted the pillar, coming around one side.I moved, lunging away from the crumbling stone formation, at the same time shooting at the alien in the floating device.My beams missed him, and he fired again.His blasts once again hit the column, this time breaking it in two places.Big, jagged pieces of it rained down onto the cavern floor.If I’d been still standing there, they would have hit me, but now I was backed up against one cavern wall and releasing a barrage of energy beams against the craft and the alien.The four arms of the hovering craft raised and took aim at me.For a split-second I stared into its blue lights.Then I dove to the floor and rolled under the thing.Lying beneath the center of the bowlshape, with its four arms spread out from there above me, I fired up right at that center spot.My beam punctured the underbelly of the device; and I quickly rolled away, just in time to stop the thing from falling right on top of me.

Across the cavern, Kris drew the fire of Nick’s attacker and had both that one and another one after him.The rock formation that was his cover was now in the crossfire of two of them.He stayed put and sent out a shot when he could, trying to hit one of the other of those riders.But with their attention on Kris, Nick leapt out from behind the boulder with the energy sword of his two-gun turned on and raised high.His blade sliced neatly through and severed the tendrils of one enemy craft.That one veered off, the front halves of the sliced arms falling to the floor and twitching like spastic snakes.Nick joined Kris behind his rock formation while the one with its tentacles intact swiveled in the air to maneuver itself to aim at both of them.From my place on the stone floor, I saw the one whose arms Nick had cut off swerving around the other side of the rock formation to box our leader and Kris in with no escape.Growling, I switched my own two-gun to blade function, launched myself forward, leapt into the air, swung my blade, and sliced off the two remaining arms of that device.

The alien riding that craft shouted something I didn’t understand, that sounded angry.Tough balls, I thought, serves you right.He pulled away while the one going for Kris and Nick got itself into place.What followed was dazzling.The alien aboard that craft opened fire, but Kris and our leader met and deflected his every bolt with spins and swirls of their weapons.Their duel sent sparks flying everywhere.Suddenly the alien changed his tactics and hit at, not the spinning energy blades of my partners, but at the rock formation between his craft and them.With a bludgeoning attack, he pulverized the twisted outcropping of rock, making them leap to safety in showers offragments.Before they could recover their balance and strike again, now they were out in the open, the alien took aim at them.In a brutal hail of energy beams, my two comrades dropped to the floor of the cavern.

In a howling voice of sudden terror, I cried, “NICK!KRIS!”The tide of the battle had suddenly and cruelly turned.I broke into a run to their side, but from behind me there was a shocking noise, and my body convulsed in a flash of light that felt like a blow from an electric fist.I flew forward and down, spinning painfully onto the rough stone floor and lying there, puffing, dizzy, feeling the strength leave my body.Looking groggily back where I’d come from, I saw the alien craft that I’d shot down from underneath it, lying where I’d left it.The four arms were raised and two were emitting a pulsating glow.In one moment of shock, I had thought only of my comrades, and not of the device that I’d shot down but not disabled, which had hit me from behind.I was paying for that now with darkness quickly dropping down on my thoughts, taking me to oblivion.

As that dark curtain fell over my mind, I heard what my last coherent thought took to be a translated alien voice.“We have subdued three of the alien metamorphs.We will now bring them to where the alien female is being kept.”

Three of those words I took into total blackness:The alien female.

The alien female…

CHAPTER 17

Tara

It wasn’t the happy and triumphant reunion that I’d hoped for.

I was with Kris, Nick, and Lon again, but now we were all prisoners.The Caloxi had somehow attached the four of us to a huge slab of some kind of crystal/ceramic/metal alloy that I couldn’t begin to identify, and I doubt any scientist from Earth would recognize.But either the slab itself or some mechanism inside or possibly behind it gave off some strange, tingling energy field that held us against the surface of it, facing forward, pinned there as if we were a part of the thing.It was an even better way to immobilize a prisoner than the force field column in which they had me at first.We were absolutely stuck.

My three Guards had recovered from being knocked out.We were on the slab in a much larger chamber than the one in which the Caloxi first held me.And we were staring out into the chamber at about a dozen of them, led by Neegan and Catrox, the ones who originally confronted me.The chamber was unfurnished, strangely, except for one chair.Catrox had a bag made of the same pearlescent fabric as his clothing, slung over one shoulder.This was an encore of my first minutes with those two, except with all four of us as prisoners engaged in a mutual staring session with many more Caloxi.

This worried me.The way the four of us were pinned could conceivably give the Caloxi the chance to be much more hands-on about “studying” us than when it was just me inside that force field.They could effectively do anything they liked with us, and we could do nothing about it except watchand wait our turn to be put through any kind of dangerous “examination.”

And that was why I spoke up.“Why are we here now?What do you plan to do with us now?”

Neegan and Catrox were standing out in front of the others.Neegan said, “You shall all now be subject to psi-empathic probes.”

I felt a shock of dread hearing that.Unable to turn my head to Nick, pinned at my left, or raise my head and look beyond him at Lon and Kris, I could only guess they felt the same way, especially when I heard Nick say in a wary tone, “ ‘Probe?You’re going to ‘probe’ us?What does that mean?What exactly do you plan to do?”

That word—probe—conjured some very disturbing and frightening visions.I could imagine some very invasive things being done, things that might feel like a kind of violation.A cold sweat broke out on my brow.I protested, “This isn’t right.You’re a civilized people.You must have morals.You must have principles.You have to know there are things that you don’t do, ways that you don’t treat other sentient beings.You mustn’t do this.”

“If you suspect we mean to probe your bodies, female, you are correct only in part,” said Neegan.“It is your emotions we seek:for it is in the emotions that all truths and intentions are found.Our probe shall be empathic in nature.”

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