Chapter 18
They’d just cleared the last of the crew’s quarters when he heard the crackle of the ship-wide communication system. Jeffrey’s heart jolted in his chest when he heard the voice that followed.
“This is Lieutenant Yarr. I’m trapped in the engine room. My team is trying to move the obstruction but it’s too heavy. Please send reinforceme…”
Jeffrey started bolting for the corridor, pushing past the Zantharians accompanying him. Why had she been cut off? What the fuck was happening?
The comm crackled again. “I’ve located the Hareema. It’s in the engine room.”
The comm went dead.
“Motherfucker!” Jeffrey broke into a dead run, not caring if the men behind him could keep up. He burst into the cargo bay, kicking his way through anything that tried to impede him.
He saw the two Zantharian soldiers he’d left on the bridge. They were attempting to shift a large piece of metal sheeting that was blocking the door.
Jeffrey recognized the sheeting as a piece of the interior hull from the engine room. He had no idea how it could have fallen.
It didn’t fall, his inner voice said.A Hareema bastard climbed up there and tore it off, all to trap your female.
Rage boiled his blood in an instant. “What the fuck are you doing here?” he screamed at the soldiers, who stared at him with identical looks of surprise. “How could you let her go in there alone?”
He beat against the metal with all his might but it didn’t move at all. He realized it was wedged against the railings inside the engine room, and there was no slamming his way through it.
Jeffrey let his fury ride him, knowing that underneath was a fear so black, so deep, that he’d never crawl out from under it. “Get over here,” he yelled at the soldiers that had followed him. “We all need to try and lift this clear of the railings inside. That’s the only way in.”
The Zantharians managed to wedge themselves into position so that all the men could get a grip on the bottom of the metal panel. As one they lifted, using all their strength to push the metal clear of the railings so that it tumbled inward, allowing them entry into the engine room.
What Jeffrey saw filled his veins with ice. Something was crouched over the motionless form of his beloved. Its head turned around completely on its neck to pin him with a fearsome gaze.
The fucking Hareema bastard had taken on the form of his captain. His weapon forgotten, Jeffrey ran forward, ready to tear the thing apart with his bare hands.
“Wait!” one of the soldiers yelled from behind him, but he was beyond reason. He launched himself at the creature, knocking it off Kat and shoving it to the ground.
The thing’s face still smiled at him, disorienting him as it stared up at him while he pressed into its back.
Jeffrey wrapped his hands around the things neck and squeezed with all his strength. The thing continued to smile, and then it began to melt, turning into red jelly that ran through his fingers and through the crevices on the metal grating that comprised the catwalk.
It reformed on the other side, still smiling at the lieutenant, and using its hands to clamber along the bottom of the grating to get to the railing and pull itself up. By then, the Zantharians had reached him. One grabbed the unconscious Kat and picked her up.
Jeffrey wanted to snarl at him and pull his woman from his hands, but realized that would do no good. “Get her out of here,” he shouted instead, then refocused his attention on the creature.
It had managed to pull itself up onto the narrow ledge on the other side of the walkway and suddenly shot upward, clambering over the walls like an insect in human form.
“Blast it,” he yelled at his companions. “But don’t fry it. Only enough to knock it out.”
One nodded, then sent out a blast that hit the thing in its back. It screeched and lost its grip, tumbling down.
Without thinking, Jeffrey reached out and grabbed an arm before it fell over the edge and into the engine works. He recoiled in horror as the creature’s arm became a red tentacle that wrapped itself around his arm.
Then one of the Zantharian soldiers was there, pulling him back so that the creature landed on the catwalk and laying hands on the Hareema. It started to vibrate with the Zantharian’s bioelectricity, and Jeffrey felt the charge run through him as well.
His teeth clenched together as he tried to withstand the voltage passing through them. After what seemed like an eternity the tentacle uncurled itself from around his arm and he stumbled backward.
Another one of the soldiers moved forward and trapped the creature in a beam of current. It squealed as its form began to melt.
“Not too much!” Jeffrey warned. “I want it alive.”
He received a nod from his companions and then turned, lurching down the catwalk and back into the cargo bay.
