The Varkari

Attack

I felt the blood rush out of my face and saliva pool in my mouth, gagging once. At first, I thought the body was completely covered in blood until I realized that the skin was actually red. What was a Sighli doing on Rahzgaur's private territory?

Fuck. They had followed us back. And after the crazy throw-down in the town, seeing their nasty needle teeth, and Rahzgaur telling me exactly what they had planned for humans there was no way I was going to try to use them to get back to Earth.

Aldar was staring at me, whipping his tail back and forth in pride as yellow slime oozed from the mangled neck hole. I could tell he wanted something from me, but I wasn't sure what to say.

"Uh, good boy, Aldar," I squeaked.

The mogka seemed to glow with the praise, chattering at me, until something slammed into his side. He staggered and almost went down, his head twisting around to snap at the attacker.

"Aldar!" I screamed.

The Sighli was fast and stabbed him twice more with a dagger before Aldar grabbed his thigh and flung him several yards. Another red alien jumped at him from the other direction while a short green one that looked a lot like a goblin attempted to lasso his muzzle. The new species had four arms which it also used to help him move around because his legs were very short and fat like soda cans. His skin was a very pale mint color, ears taller than the top of his head, with huge, black bug-like eyes. A nightmare.

There was a bang from the other end of the house that overlooked the flower garden, but I ignored it as I screamed for Aldar to fight. He opened his impressive jaws further than anatomically possible, unhinging them like a snake so they could take the entire breadth of the Sighli's chest in it, then body slammed him to the ground and shook him like a ragdoll. The screaming and shouting was muffled through the glass, but still had me covering my ears.

The goblin had picked up the knife and attempted to sever Aldar's achilles tendon, but was not strong enough to get through his scales. Aldar swung the meat of his tail hard enough that the waist-height alien was sent soaring off like a baseball. The first Sighli used that as a chance to dive back into the fold to save the other.

The whole house began to tremble and I was not sure how I was going to help when I sprinted through the kitchen, but there I stood, staring at the end-in-process. The fucking Sigli, with some sort of hover vehicle parked right on top of the flowers, were trying to cut through the plexiglass with a bright laser beam. The Varkari-made forcefield was holding, but they were definitely making a dent. A molten line was starting to appear where they had burned through, but it would take them a while.

They did not seem very concerned, sneering and waving at me, tongues flicking out to see if there was fear in the air for them to taste. There were two of them manning the machine while a third purplish alien with black stripes prepared what looked like a net. I assumed that was for me.

"Shit. Shit. Shit!" I ran back to the front of the house, but other than the first mangled body and part of a second, Aldar and the goblin were nowhere to be seen. With the way he had yeeted the green bogie, it might be splattered on a trunk somewhere.

I careened back into the command room.

"Rahzgaur! Rahzgaur! Help!" I shouted at the screens, waving my hands frantically, searching for a big red button that was not there. "Emergency!"

"User, Rahzgaur. Enter access code."

"You fucking bitch! Help!"

"Invalid. Please, try again."

I felt like I was going to have a panic attack or vomit, or both. It was going to be me against the Sighli outside. So be it. The first thing I did was to start dragging chairs from the living room to the most defensible place I could think of. The basement. Piling the Varkari-sized chairs into the stairwell while my muscles were already becoming sore was not easy.