CHAPTER FORTY-SIX:
ARMAGEDDON
Pleakley struggled fervently against Le'Kruune, pinning him down with all the strength he could muster, until long after Leera had fled from the room. Mutilated beyond recognition, Le'Kruune had become a primitive beast, bloodlust his driving force as he strove to satisfy his hunger for vengeance. There wasn't a drop of reasoning left in his ravaged body, not even to allow him to formulate a single coherent word. Roars and growls were his language as he fought to free himself from Pleakley's rather impressive hold. Between his injuries and Pleakley's determination, it seemed that the Fates were in favor of the little one-eyed one, at least for the time being. Rage overcame fear as he brought the once mighty Kaizaxx leader to his knees. Vicious jaws snapped at his face, but for once he was not fazed by them. Giving it his all, Pleakley beat Le'Kruune unmercifully, tearing at him with such horrific brutality as to put Le'Kruune himself to shame. Without reservation he returned to him all the pain he had caused; his own pain, his mother's pain, and above all, Leera's pain.
Detailed descriptions of what he had done to her fueled his fury, and that in turn fueled his passion to make Le'Kruune suffer for his sins. Scenes from her long-ago nightmare flared in his mind as though he were remembering them himself: a young woman's agonized screams… her heart-wrenching sobs as she begged for mercy… screams intensified as flesh tore and blood flowed freely… screams silenced by a blow to the mouth… tears flowing like blood; blood flowing like tears…
Nothing in the universe mattered at that moment except making the monster pay for her pain. Pleakley forgot everything around him as a consequence, so naturally he did not hear the four or five armed guards come barging into the room behind him. Before he realized what was happening, one of the guards ripped him away from Le'Kruune and flung him aside before returning to help his leader up. Completely out of his head, Le'Kruune snapped viciously at the guard, and the man screamed in pain. When he pulled away, Pleakley was shocked to see that half his hand had been bitten off. The man continued to scream, half in pain, half in horror at the sight of it, while the other guards went ballistic trying to either kill Le'Kruune or defend him. Out of nowhere, one of them turned and blasted the poor man in the head, silencing his screams. This caused an uproar from the other guards, and then one of them blasted him. And the fight was on.
In the meantime, Le'Kruune had gathered himself up and dragged himself across the room toward Pleakley. Terror returned full-scale as the smaller alien struggled to his feet to avoid another confrontation. Sudden weakness overwhelmed him, and his legs trembled under his weight before collapsing back onto the floor. But to his surprise, Le'Kruune did not attack him. Instead, he reached the control consul at his desk and clawed at it until a small panel opened up and a large red button was exposed. Without a second's hesitation he pressed it, and when he did, all hell broke loose.
When the alarm sounded, Pleakley's hearts sank into his stomach. He didn't know what to do, and he had no time to figure it out because Le'Kruune was descending on him again. His first instinct was to play dead, and that's what he did. It seemed to work, because Le'Kruune did not commence to ripping him to shreds like he was fully expecting him to do. Picking Pleakley up by the neck, Le'Kruune gave him a thorough shake, then turned and strolled rather peacefully out through a secret exit hidden behind a wall panel. The guards had all but finished each other off before the last one standing realized that the ship's self-destruction mechanism had been tripped, and that his leader was gone.
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Pleakley had no idea where Le'Kruune was taking him, but he didn't so much as flinch as he was dragged across the cold titanium floor toward the emergency escape bay. His grip around his neck was so tight he could barely breathe, but he remained calm and still, waiting for some golden opportunity to make his escape and find his way back to his mother and Leera. He encountered a somewhat pleasant surprise when the door to the bay opened up and he saw them there, alive and unharmed. But what Vay and Leera saw was the opposite of pleasant, and they did not waste time in attacking Le'Kruune. Pleakley felt himself dropped to the floor as the two women knocked his captor into the nearest wall. The few remaining soldiers that had not fled in the escape pods raised their weapons and prepared to fire at Le'Kruune. One of them shouted at the others, and they refrained. Clearly they did not wish to harm the women. Pleakley jumped up and threw himself into the throng, and was quickly joined by a handful of soldiers. The ensuing brawl consisted of three furious Plorginarians mauling Le'Kruune while three Kaizaxx men struggled to pry them away for their own safety, while a fourth Kaizaxx man tried to work in some brutality on his fallen leader. The three abstaining soldiers stood poised with their plasma cannons, ready to finish him off.
The grand councilwoman pulled herself out of her escape pod and staggered over to join the fight, but one of the soldiers held her back, insisting that she return to her pod immediately and be ready to eject before the ship exploded. According to him, it was timed at ten minutes from activation to detonation, and half that time had already been wasted in the brawl.
"Well, then, can't you ask them to speed things up so that we can all leave here in one piece and not in fifty billion?" she said loudly and impatiently. The man considered this for only a brief second before plunging into the scuffle.
Adrenaline rushed to his aid once again as Pleakley fell back into battle in order to protect his loved ones. Not that Vay and Leera needed any rescuing. They would have had Le'Kruune whipped if it hadn't been for the joint efforts of the Kaizaxx soldiers prodding and prying at them from all angles in frantic attempts to help them finish him off properly. Throwing himself into that scrap was like throwing himself into a thresher: poor Pleakley was flipped, flung, thumped, bumped, bit, biffed, pinched, punched, whacked, scratched, scuffed, nicked and kicked.
From somewhere far away he heard a child's voice… a little girl's screams as a small horde of soldiers flooded the bay, one of them bearing a frightened Lilo in his arms. Breathless and hobbling, Mackayl followed not far behind, but Pleakley saw none of this as a sudden blow to the head rendered him nearly unconscious. Next thing he knew, he felt himself being carried. Someone had picked him up off the floor and was shoving him into an escape pod. Vaguely he heard Lilo wailing at him to wake up. He felt her pudgy arms encircling him, then slender arms in contrast as the grand councilwoman held him also.
His dulled mind did not register what was happening in those fateful final moments aboard the Kaizaxx ship. He only understood that he was sharing a cramped space with two individuals with whom he was somewhat acquainted; that some women nearby were screaming and that he wished they'd shut up because he had a splitting headache; and that everyone around him needed to take a chill pill because they were all acting like it was Armageddon or something. The very last thing he was aware of before he blacked out completely was the blinding light behind his eyelid, followed by absolute darkness; the deafening roar of something large going kaboom, and then the deafening roar of silence.
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