Page 101 of Scorching the Alien Empire
My fists tighten as we trail his cackling laughter echoing from the darkness. The murder-bot fortress itself seems to mock us. Inside, the dim swallows everything. I can just make out the titanic walls looming ahead, the sharpening scent of chemicals making my nose wrinkle.
“Warvisors,” Dracoth commands, sliding his angular, silvered mask over his face. The others follow suit, donning their own like they’re playingDracoth Says.
A pang of jealousy twists my gut. No pervy x-ray mask for me. If Ididget one, it’d need to be prettier than these Easter-Island faced things. Oh! Like a masquerade mask—black lace, trimmed in gold.
Sexy-Lexie.
But it’s not to be, according to Dracoth, I’d have toearnone. Something about running naked through a dinosaur-infested jungle on Klendathor or some such nonsense.The Proofing, he called it. Yeah, well, screw that. I’d rather be blind than dead. A little mole safely burrowed underground.Molexie.
The silence lingers, heavy, broken only by muffled breaths and the rhythmicclankof hundreds of boots striking metal in our wake. Dracoth sweeps his masked gaze over the dark, clearly seeing what I cannot.
“Psst,” I hiss at him, drawing his attention. “This is like the worst nightclub ever. I can’t see a thing.”
“Wrist console,” he reminds me with a grunt and a quick gesture.
My face heats.
Right.
“Oh, yeah. Thanks Babes,” I whisper, fumbling with my device, still not used to it. A second later, blue shimmers burst forth, casting the corridor in eerie, rippling light.
I wish I hadn’t.
The sheer vastness of the space is suffocating. Polished black metal walls stretch endlessly, engraved with harsh, angular glyphs that seem to drink in the glow.
Statues loom above—silent, watchful, inhuman drones from a demonic ant colony. They’re weird and creepy, standing rigid, their four elongated arms ending in three thick fingers. Flat, frisbee-like heads sit atop thin torsos. But it’s theirlower halvesthat wrinkles my face with disgust. Segmented, and long, like an ironing board draped in armored plating, dozens of spindly legs beneath—a grotesque mockery of Todd’s perfection.
Barf!
“Fascinating!” Razgor exclaims, his voice brimming with excitement, like a schoolboy on his first trip to the zoo. He sweeps his wrist console over the glyphs, his open mouth catching the eerie blue glow. “With this many symbols on record, we may finally crack the secret to their language!”
“Probably just a death warrant in fancy squiggles,” I mutter under my breath, my gaze sweeping left to right, searching for any sign of trouble.
Razgor, oblivious to my concerns and everyone else’s lack of enthusiasm, gestures upward. “Look! Statues of their actual forms! Insectoids? An offshoot of the Glaseroids? By Arawnoth’s flames, some might still be aboard this very station!”
“No,” Dracoth rumbles without hesitation, deflating Razgor’s hopes like a popped balloon.
“But... but how can you be certain, great War Chieftain?” Razgor stammers, his voice laced with disappointment, his last ember of hope flickering.
“The Crucible.” Dracoth’s answer is as blunt as a fortress wall and as clear as smudged mascara.
“Would you looky here,” Drexios’s voice echoes from the distance, dripping with amusement.
I lean forward in Dracoth’s muscular arm, my heart pounding. My fingers twitch, ready to summon a hundred shields—shieldsshieldedby more shields—if it means surviving this nightmare waiting to happen.
“Scythian battle droids. Deactivated,” Drexios continues as we approach, rapping his knuckles against a machine’s flat, frisbee-shaped head. “Weird-looking voiders too. You boys ever seen ones like this before?”
His head snaps backward, hanging upside down croaking as he croaks out laughter.
Why is everything this guy does weird and annoying?
Not that I pay him much attention. My focus is locked on the array of murder-bots lining either side of the corridor. They stand eerily still, metallic reflections of the statues above—only these ones are armed. Insectoid in shape, as tall as me but much broader, with ominous barrels protruding from their three-pronged claw-hands.
“No,” Jazreal speaks up, scratching his head thoughtfully. “They’re not unlike the—”
“Exactly! Death Herald,” Razgor cuts in, bulldozing through Drexios and Jazreal like a runaway bowling ball of nerdom. The two massive warriors exchange a look, silently plotting revenge at being shoved aside.
“It’s obvious,” Razgor insists.
