“It’s got me worried. I admit it. I haven’t seen you since the party. You don’t answer my calls. Doctor… was I too forward? Why don’t you come to my quarters after you get back and I’ll make it up to—”

I let go of my collar. The connection broke and my ear-nanos went quiet, letting night sounds float back… including a faint rustling that I hadn’t noticed before. A creaking… then a scrape that might have been leather against pavement.

The captain halted abruptly and I collided with his back. Through his tunic I felt the tense bristles of demmie hackle-ridges, standing on end. Ohm’s pompadour just reached my eyes, so I couldn’t see ahead. But a glance left showed the ship’s healer also stopped in his tracks, staring, utterly transfixed by something.

Lieutenant Morell hurried forward and gasped, fumbling the dial of her blaster.

A sudden, grating sound echoed behind me, followed by a clang of heavy metal on concrete.

As I turned, a horrific howl pealed. Then another, and still more from all sides, baying like hounds from hell.

Before I could finish spinning about, a dark, flapping shape descended over me, enveloping my face in stifling folds and choking off my scream.

3.

Consciousness returned in fits and starts, accompanied by a rhythmic, irritating, “plinking” sound – the repetitive dripping of water into some pool. Even before I opened my eyes, mineral aromas and stony echoes told me that I must be underground, lying on some cold, gritty floor.

Spikes of yellow light stabbed when I cracked my eyelids, but I tried not to move or make a sound as blurry outlines gradually formed into steady images – a stretch of rocky wall; a smoldering torch set in an iron sconce; stacks of wooden crates covered with frayed tarps; a rough wooden table, where lay a platter, stacked with raw meat steaks. A glass tankard frothed with some kind of brownish ale.

A pair of pale, squinting eyes peered over the tankard’s rim as it rose to meet a broad face, nearly covered by a riot of dark fur.

The meniscus level of ale dropped swiftly, accompanied by slurping gulps as the tankard swung horizontal, draining down that hairy gullet. With a deep satisfied sigh, the furry one licked the goblet’s rim with a prodigious tongue. Overall, the shape of the skull was much like a person’s. The eyes, though recessed, were green and still somewhat humanoid. Only where Earl Dragonlord had possessed canine uppers even pointier than a demmy’s, this fellow had huge, heavy lower tusks, jutting up to graze his shaggy cheeks.

The flagon slammed down and he started toward the pile of steaks, salivating prodigiously… then he stopped, sniffing the air. A matched pair of splendidly huge eyebrows arched as he turned toward me, grinning impressively.

“Snarsh glimp? Naggle scraggle. Yowzuh nowzuh, whutchuh-briggle…”