Bay couldn't outrun these beasts. He'd have to pay up. Or fight.
"Mucking hell," Bay muttered, spinning Brooklyn around.
He faced the enemy.
"Um, dude?" Brooklyn said.
He shoved the throttle down, charged toward the grugs, and released the joystick.
"Dude!" Brooklyn screamed. "You're gonna get us killed!"
Bay grabbed the cannon controls.
He opened fire.
He had splurged a year ago. After snatching the golden watch off a dead exterminator—a tentacled son of a bitch who had tried to remove Bay from a bar—he had spoiled Brooklyn, buying her a good pair of cannons. Now shells the size of fists flew toward the grugs, leaving trails of fire.
The living asteroids shut their mouths and eyes, becoming balls of featureless stone.
The shells exploded against the beasts, chipping off bits of rock but otherwise doing the grugs no harm.
And now they were only meters away.
"Ra damn it!" Bay said.
He released the cannons. He grabbed the joystick. He tried to veer in time, and the grugs opened their jaws again, and—
He slammed into stone.
Sparks blazed across the starboard, blinding him.
Alarms blared.
The engine died.
A wing snapped off.
Brooklyn screamed.
Bay worked in a fury, reigniting the dead engine, shoving the throttle again. More grugs surrounded him. He managed to break free, to spurt outward like a wet fish from grabbing hands. But he was spinning madly. The stars spun around him. Only by miracle was the hull not breached, but ugly dents deformed it, and Brooklyn would not be flying through an atmosphere anytime soon.
"My wing!" Brooklyn said. "It's gone. I've been savaged!"
"There go my card winnings," Bay said. "It'll cost the full fifteen thousand scryls to replace your wing."
"Tough cookies," Brooklyn said. "Life is a hooch."
Indeed it was. And the grugs were still pursuing him.
Bay dared not face the aliens again. Maybe, with two hands, he could have piloted the ship and fired the guns. But until he could afford that prosthetic—which would cost more than ten starship wings—he would be running, talking, or outsmarting the bad guys.
Talking was pointless with grugs. Running was doing him no good. So it came down to smarts. The weegles were clever little parasites—not the most eloquent but cunning. Their hosts, the grugs, were no more sentient than chickens. The living asteroids cared for nothing but eating and breeding—which involved two grugs banging together until they chipped off baby rocks.
Bay couldn't help them with breeding, but as for food . . .
"They don't eat meat," he muttered. "The parasites eat meat. The asteroids just eat . . ." He gasped and scanned space, eyes narrowed. "Bingo."
He saw it in the distance. A cloud of luminous dust. The Cat's Paw nebula.
It was a small nebula. Not much larger than a planetary system. Bay sometimes used it for navigation. It was formed of glowing hydrogen, helium, and various ionized gasses—a grug's favorite foods.
"And you're hungry, aren't you, boys?" Bay muttered, flying toward the nebula. "This chase is wearing you out. You're mucking famished."
He held the throttle down with his elbow, allowing him to type.
"You know," Brooklyn said, "if you gave me admin status back, you wouldn't have to operate me with one hand."
"You know," Bay said, "if you shut up, I won't have to mute you."
"Hardy har har. So funny I forgot to laugh."
Typing furiously, Bay redirected power from weapons and shields toward the engine. He burst forward with renewed speed. He charged toward the nebula, bending spacetime around him. He was still paying off his warp drive, would be paying it off for years. It was easily the most expensive component on the ship, even more than the damn AI. But speed was priceless. Today speed would save his life.
The nebula grew larger ahead, shimmering gold and blue. Pillars reached outward like claws, tipped with young stars, giving the Cat's Paw nebula its name. From afar, it had seemed so small, a mere splotch in space, barely visible, but now it loomed before him, filling his viewport, a gleaming stellar nursery.
And the grugs saw it too.
The asteroids opened their jaws, revealing their innards of molten metal. Tongues of lava emerged to lick their chops. Their eyes widened. Drooling, the grugs swerved toward the nebula's delicious stew of gasses.
Inside the asteroids, the parasitic weegles were tugging on the beasts' tongues and cheeks, trying to redirect their hosts toward Brooklyn.
Bay opened a comm channel. "Trouble with your rides, boys?"
The weegles were shrieking something, but Bay could barely make out their voices. The grugs were howling with hunger. Their stomachs rumbled. The beasts were big and dumb but smart enough, apparently, to have learned one word.
"Food!" they rumbled. "Fooood!"
Bay slowed his starship. He turned Brooklyn around to watch the asteroids roll into the nebula. They began to feast.
"Hungry buggers," Brooklyn said. "Reminds me of you when you're eating."
Back on Earth, Bay had heard, the largest animals had been the whales. Despite their girth, they had subsided on plankton, creatures so small they were invisible. A handful of species roamed the cosmic oceans like the whales back home, and they too fed on the tiniest of meals—the atoms that floated through space and the microcosmic creatures that swam among them. The nebula's gasses swirled as the asteroids rolled through them like pigs in mud. Their stone jaws were opened wide, devouring the meal.
Inside the asteroids, the parasites were still shrieking, ordering the grugs to return to battle. Their hosts normally obeyed them, but during chow time, the asteroids ignored everything else.
Including Bay.
"Hey, boys!" Bay said, speaking into his comm. On his monitor, the weegles turned to face him. "Time for dessert."
Bay fired his cannons.
His aim was true. His shells flew into the open, feasting mouths of the grugs.
The grugs, still busy feeding, swallowed the projectiles.
An instant later, the shells exploded inside them.
On his monitor, Bay glimpsed the weegles torn apart before the transmission died. Through his viewport, he saw the grugs crack open, spilling lava, stomach acids, and bits of dead parasites.
The asteroids groaned, cracks gaping open across their stone bodies, revealing their raw insides. They coughed, spewing out burnt weegles. The parasites floated through the nebula. A few still twitched, then fell still. The wounded grugs rolled away to lick their wounds, vanishing into the nebula's depths.
Bay leaned back in his seat. He heaved a sigh of relief.
"Time for dessert?" Brooklyn said. "Time for dessert? Dude, that was a horrible."
"Shut up." Bay rubbed his temples.
The starship continued as if she hadn't heard him. "I mean, you could have tied it back into the card game. Something like: Read 'em and weep, boys! Or: You got worms, and here's your medicine!"
"Mine was snappier," Bay said.
"Or: Your breath stinks, have a Tic Tac!"
"I'm going to switch you off," Bay said.
He hit the mute button. Brooklyn flashed angry messages across the monitor, but Bay ignored them. She would give him hell later, but for now, he needed silence.
He rubbed his eyes. He was tired. He needed a drink. He needed a vemale or two, holographic girlfriends who could shove the loneliness aside for a night. His bad hand throbbed, but worse were the memories.
Fire in the grass.
Screams.
"Bay!" Her voice in the distance, and Bay running after her, lost in the smoke. Her skeletal hand, reaching to him, and—
Bay pounded his stiff hand against the dashboard. Pain blasted up his arm like a bullet, exploding in a crescendo across his shoulder. He winced and ground his teeth. Good. Pain drowned the memories. After every battle he fought, from bar brawl to space scuffle, those damn memories sneaked up on him.