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The broken cable exploded in a shower of yellow sparks and a hot reek of ozone. Jagged blue-white arcs of electricity writhed over the ukkur’s body, and for a fraction of a second, Serenity could swear she saw the shadow of the creature’s skeleton inside.
But the ukkur was unfazed by the electrocution.
And the forcefield had disappeared.
A pair of dark eyes turned toward Patrick, smoldering with hatred and violence.
The young man’s scream cut off in a strangled whinny of fear. He tried to backpedal, but in his panic he tripped over his own feet and tumbled onto the floor with a thud.
The ukkur was on him in a flash.
Patrick threw his arms up to defend himself, but it did little good. The ukkur hammered his fists down on the young man with brutal, crushing strength.
Mercifully, Serenity found the strength to turn her face away from the carnage.
As much as she despised Patrick, as much as she felt he deserved to die, she couldn’t bring herself to watch.
But she was unable to block out the awful sounds of the beating. Noises like a hollow pumpkin being caved in and then pounded into mush.
Her stomach turned over in her belly.
The alarm klaxons were still howling through the ship, and the red lights were still strobing away like something from a nightmare.
It had all happened so quickly. Everything from the first impact against the hull of the ship to the ukkur pouncing on the defenseless Patrick had taken less than a minute.
The nith were only now beginning to respond. Serenity could hear them coming—a dozen pairs of feet running down some outer corridor within the bowels of the ship.
A door slid open on the far wall, revealing a rectangle of dim light and the silhouettes of hooded nith. The creatures snarled and chittered in their native language. The translator earpiece still lodged in Serenity’s ear translated the ugly sounds into English.
“Ukkur! Kill it!Kill it!“
Serenity saw the glint of high-tech rifles taking aim.
She flinched in anticipation of the barrage of weapons fire that she knew was coming.
But the ukkur was faster than the nith trigger fingers. He was so quick, Serenity didn’t even see him move. Between two strobes of the red alarm lights, the massive warrior simply appeared as if by magic in front of her. In his hands he held the jagged chunk of metal paneling that he had knocked loose when he crashed through the ship’s hull.
The nith opened fire.
The muzzle flash lit up the cargo hold, and the enclosed space resounded with the crackle of deadly energy.
But the ukkur deflected the shots with his makeshift shield, and the energy bolts ricocheted away in a burst of sparks.
Then with another savage roar, the ukkur flung the flat piece of metal like giant frisbee, and it flew across the room, its jagged edges cutting into the nith like a buzzsaw blade, scything the creatures’ bodies in half. They didn’t even have a chance to scream in pain.
Half a dozen nith dead in the blink of an eye.
But more of them were already on the way. Serenity could hear them shouting and chittering over the sound of the alarm.
The ukkur apparently had no interest in dealing with reinforcements.
Effortlessly, the beast lifted Serenity’s limp and nerveless body off the floor, slung her over his meaty shoulder, and carried her toward the opening in the hull of the ship.
As they made their exit, Serenity caught one last glimpse of Patrick. His body was so broken and mangled it didn’t even look like human remains. That vision chilled Serenity’s blood and sent a shiver down her spine.
That brutality had been committed by the alien creature over whose shoulder she was now being carried like a bag of sand.
In that moment, as they passed through the rent hull to the outer darkness of the night, Serenity was no longer sure if she was being saved, or whether she was falling out of the proverbial frying pan and tumbling straight into a raging fire that intended to consume her alive.
