flung with great force against a flat bulkhead, bouncing off it to smack once again onto the metal floor. I tried to drag myself away from the oncoming footsteps but they caught up with me, chitinous digits dug into my hair, and I was yanked by it up onto my knees. Yissil Froon twisted my head around until I was looking into his ghastly face. His horns curled like those of a ram. His vertical lips gaped and the inner beak clicked in the rat-a-tat manner of Yatsill laughter.
Speaking English, he snarled, “Pitiful creature! You think to oppose me? Impossible!” He dragged me to my feet.
His hard right hand slapped my face, the serrated inner fingers ripping the flesh from my cheek, sending me reeling away and leaving him holding a clump of hair. I collided with a Mi’aata. Its tentacular limbs wound about me and hoisted me around to face Yissil Froon.
The Yatsill froze, then raised an arm and pointed at my chest.
“The crystal! You have the crystal! Where is Sepik?”
I managed a grin, and blood bubbled from my mouth. “He’s splattered at the bottom of Zone Four, you damned maniac, and good riddance to the wretch!”
The Yatsill Magician hissed venomously. “No matter. I can do without him!”
I laughed. “You poor demented fool. You’re delusional. Your machines are constructed from the imaginings of a child! The Zull have already incapacitated most of them. Your army is a barely controlled rabble! Do you really think Earth will fall to such a pathetic mob? Millions inhabit my world! Millions! We’ll design and construct superior machines. You won’t stand a chance!”
Yissil Froon gazed at me. His fingers moved slowly. “I can manipulate minds,” he said.
Three loud blasts rocked the aero-ship. The deck lurched and listed to the left. We all scrambled to regain balance, but my captor’s hold didn’t loosen.
“The Zull are attacking!” one of the Mi’aata crew reported.
“Retaliate! Kill them!”
The crewmember had spoken in Koluwaian and the reply was barked in the same language, but Yissil Froon switched back to English when he addressed me again, and I noticed that when he did so, one of the other Mi’aata, standing a little way behind him, gazed at the Yatsill’s back fixedly and moved its mouth as if silently repeating every word.
“Fleischer, you think you have the better of me, but you forget your own vulnerability. What I can do to you, I can do to all your kind.”
The pain of my fall suddenly blossomed, an abysmal flower, its razor-sharp petals slicing through me, its fiery stigma blazing up my spine. Horror, cowardice, and shame throbbed through my veins.
“No!” I moaned, and clamping my teeth shut, I summoned the will to resist. It rose up inside me, a dark and bestial thing, a sickening ferocity—a monster.
I faced it, accepted it, embraced it, and in an instant, there was nothing abominable about it at all.
Letting out the breath I hadn’t realised I’d been holding, I said, “You cannot coerce fear out of me. I no longer doubt myself. There’s nothing for your vile mind to latch on to.”
The vehicle pitched and weaved as the Zull fired more energy bolts into its side.
My captor’s hold momentarily loosened.
I snatched the stock of my pistol, pulled the weapon out of its holster, curled my wrist, and fired backward into the creature. Its tentacles fell away from me.
“No!” Yissil Froon shouted. “Succumb!”
Two Mi’aata came flopping across the sloping deck, their limbs outstretched. I shot them. They sagged.
I heard an exclamation, “We’re losing altitude!” and glanced back. It had come from one of two Mi’aata hunched over consoles at the prow of the platform. I swung my arm around, aimed, and fired. The creature staggered back, its four eyes blinking, its mouth opening slackly.
Yissil Froon pounced forward and knocked the pistol from my hand. He grabbed me by the harness and flung me sternward. I hit the deck and went skidding through broken glass until I bumped against the Mi’aata who’d been watching the Yatsill.
“I say! Steady on!” it exclaimed.
“Hold him!” the Magician ordered.
“I don’t bloody well think so, old fruit!”
I looked up in wonderment. “Lord Brittleback?”
The Divergent returned my gaze. “That’s it! That’s what I was trying to remember! Lord Upright Brittleback! Of course!” It raised its tentacles and examined them. “By the Saviour! What in the name of Phenadoor has bloody well happened to me?”
Yissil Froon addressed the only Mi’aata remaining under his control. “Get the ship moving! Fly into the storm. Fast!”