Alien Freak - Calista Skye Page 0,70

“I’d rather die.”

“Shoot them,” I urge. “Your gun!”

She aims and fires, but nothing happens.

“How do I use it?” Averie asks, panic in her voice.

“You can’t,” I tell her, mentally taking stock of what else we can do. “It’s too old to hold a charge. We should have checked that.”

The Bululg at the end of the walkway are ducking back inside the station proper, and we have twenty of their servant goons coming after us. I can’t use my gun, and Averie’s doesn’t work.

We pass through the open airlock into the station.

The hall beyond is empty, and I slow down. Right here we should be safe from the decompression in the docking bay.

But it feels wrong. The air in here tastes differently from before.

“Let’s go back to the ship,” I decide, turning.

The other woman comes through the airlock, looking a little flustered, and an airtight door slams shut right behind her. Escape is now impossible.

The lights go out, rendering everything totally black.

My heat sensors see Averie and the woman as very warm creatures, and nothing else.

But my tongue tastes something vile.

“Escape is impossible,” says a cold voice from above.

Red emergency lighting comes on along the walls, and I realize we’re surrounded by Bululg carrying big guns and wearing heat-blocking armor.

But that voice wasn’t one of them.

A floating antigrav plate comes down from the ceiling, where it was disguised as machinery.

There are three aliens on it. Two of them are aiming guns at me.

The third is IruBex; the chief Gurandu hunter.

“That’s right,” I reply, aiming my own gun. “You can’t get away now.”

27

- Averie -

A dim red light comes on and reveals a whole lot of Bululg and their servant aliens.

But for some reason, the flying platform with the Gurandu hunter on it scares me more.

Everything is very quiet as it lands on the metal deck and the centipede aliens crawl off.

“Zaroc! You have been difficult to track down lately,” the chief hunter says. “You know that adds to my score. Elusive prey is more valuable. So thank you for that. But I think this has gone on for long enough now.”

Zaroc looks from the Bululg to the Gurandu, not replying. His gun is firmly pointed at the chief hunter, but if he fires, it will make a hole in both the hunter and the wall beyond, puncturing the station. It could be the death of all of us.

A cold determination settles in the pit of my stomach. It could be that the death of us all is the best outcome we can wish for right now.

Donna sneaks past me in her figure-hugging, yellow suit that should not make her look as elegant as it actually does.

“You pitiful traitor,” I snarl at her. “They used you to distract us so they could set up this trap.”

“If only you’d do as you were told, this would never have had to happen,” she says like the most perfect news anchor, overly emphasizing every third or fourth word. “I’m not going to go down with you.” She walks over to a Bululg, turns to face me, and kneels down at his feet.

“Be reasonable, Zaroc,” IruBex says. “You’ve had your fun. Your female even injured me, very briefly. That raised the points I’ll get for you even higher. Now, I could be satisfied with that. But I want the maximum number of points. The full six hundred thousand. It will make me a legendary hunter, surpassing even the mighty DurAmp. So I’m willing to negotiate.”

Zaroc glances at me, and in his eyes I see the same hopelessness as last time he was faced by the Gurandu.

“Here is my offer,” IruBex continues. “Stay where you are and willingly let me put a constrictor net around you, and I will let your female leave. She has no value to me — she will go free. I will buy her from the Bululg and let her go. Maximum points for me, because there will be a beautiful symmetry in how I killed you and your maternal grandparent. And the best possible outcome for you, because I know you don’t want your female auctioned off. Granted, the net is not a good way to go. But the pain will only last for maybe an hour before you die. Remember, I will be famous because of you. That gives you a little bit of my fame, as well. You’ll be remembered by my people as legendarily difficult prey. That’s almost immortality, Zaroc! The alternative is that you just die namelessly and