by Logan Jacobs
“Baby, you know that’s my greatest weapon,” I said with some arrogant swagger.
“Only when it’s pressed against my lips,” she countered and kissed me.
Grizz appeared just as the final warning bell sounded.
“By the Great Sword steady your hand against the fear of the unknown,” he said like a prayer. “Take heed, everyone will be gunning for you both.”
“Then I guess we’ll just have to gun back,” I said and stepped into the pod.
“Amen, sugar,” Aurora said and winked at me through the plastic like teleportation tube just as the light swirled, and we were blown to subatomic bits and beamed across the stars.
A nanosecond later our particles reformed, and I found myself in the crew quarters of the Dauntless Spear.
I stood stock still for a few breaths just to take in everything around me.
Blue-green auxiliary lighting did little to burn away the shadows that seemed to cling to every corner of the room. In some areas it flickered and flashed in a staccato strobe that actually hurt my night vision and made it hard to acclimate to the dark. Smears of what looked like dried blood decorated the walls of the ramshackle room. Beds had been overturned. Locker doors ripped from their hinges. Lighting fixtures torn from the ceiling that trailed wires and cables like viscera.
The ship groaned and creaked as its metal and plastic parts rubbed and moved as the ship floated through space like a derelict. And beneath that I could hear things moving. Fast and sure and very quiet. And under that were the moans. Inhuman. Inalien for that matter. My fight or flight wanted flight very badly but there was nowhere to fly to.
Most of my occuhancers functions had been taken offline for this match but they still tried to compensate for the fluctuations in lighting and soon I was able to at least make out rough shapes in the dark. I unholstered my right Equalizer and slowly pulled the hammer back and held it loose at my side. The Ar’Gwyn flitted through my reflexes, and I felt PoLarr’s skills with a gun tickle my brain stem. It felt like cold blooded warmth, and the fight part of my brain told flight to shut the fuck up and put its big boy pants on.
I caught a faint ripple in the light by my side and smiled.
“Hey Aurora,” I said in a low, hushed tone. Not a whisper. Whispers were actually easier to hear than if you just spoke quietly. “How long you been there?”
The ripple dissolved, and Aurora materialized like she stepped through reality. She held her pulsar pistol in her hand, and her blue geometric tattoos beat with the rhythm of her heart. Her purple eyes shimmered. Her full, almost pouty lips, were pulled into the grin of a predator. She was in her element, and her Shriike was ready to flex its power.
“Just a few seconds, sugar,” she said in a voice so low it almost felt like it was only in my head. “You’re getting better at knowing when I’m near. I like that.”
“You see anything?”
“I teleported in one room over,” she answered as she lightly sniffed the air. “The showers. You do not want to know what it looks like in there.”
“I believe you,” I said and started to walk toward the half-open door. “Artemis said the controls to bring the reactor core back on-line should be in the bridge. I guess we should try to figure out where the hell that is and get there.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Aurora said and put her veil up. “I’ll take point.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I repeated and followed where I guessed she would be.
The hallway beyond the door was rather narrow and very long. It stretched on in both directions for as far as I could make out. The same intermittent blue-green light the only illumination.
“To the right,” I heard Aurora’s disembodied voice and turned right and started to walk slowly down the hall. The longer we went, surrounded by nothing but half heard noises and distant howls, the more I felt my heart race. The tension and suspense became thick enough to cut.
Finally the corridor ended in a T-section. There were arrows and strange writing that pointed to the left.
“Psst, hey Dark Willow,” I said. “What do you think?”
“I sense souls nearby,” said Aurora’s voice. It was husky, quiet, and full of hunger. “We follow the arrow.”
I felt her presence as it walked by me and saw the faint shimmer in the air that I had come to recognize as her veil.
“Copy that,” I said and held the Equalizer in a two-handed grip close to my chest, my elbows high and tight to my body. Combat instinct woke and whispered sweet nothings of impending violence in my ear.
About two hundred feet down, the corridor ended, and we quietly entered a mess hall. In the far corner, two champions huddled behind an overturned metal table. They had their weapons trained down another hallway.
They looked scared shitless.
I went into a low crouch and moved silently into the room with my Equalizer high in front of my face, and the barrel trained on the two champions ahead of me. I watched Aurora’s shimmer practically skate across the length of the room and then jump up onto the ceiling where it continued to move toward the two warm bodies. I was glad I couldn't actually see her because I was pretty sure the sight of her spider-crawling along the ceiling would freak me out.
She was about ten feet away from them when they both began to yell and send automatic weapons fire pouring down the hallway. I held up, about twenty feet away and slid in behind a support pillar.
The muzzle flash of their guns lit up the hallway ahead of them, and while I heard their bullets tear into the floor and walls, I had no idea what they were shooting at.
One of them ducked behind the table to reload and when he did, a silvery black arm reached down out of the darkness and pulled his buddy up by the head. The one who’d had his head palmed like a basketball began to scream, and his gun sprayed the room wildly. His legs kicked out spasmodically in a sick dance of pain.
Light flashed and I made out what held him and then instantly wished I hadn’t.
A creature made of slick, silver-black skin that looked almost exactly like a picture I’d seen on the internet of a bear with all its fur shaved off held the poor bastard a foot off the ground in its sinewy arm. It had a mouth full of needle-like teeth and long, almond-shaped eyes that curved up toward the temple like a McFarland Venom drawing. It stood on multi-jointed unguligrade legs, and its arms were obscenely long and thin but apparently incredibly powerful. They ended in six fingered hands that were little more than multi-jointed talons. Thick, clear saliva dripped from the fangs as the creature brought its struggling victim up to its mouth.
The other champion screamed in holy terror, aimed his rifle at the creature, and let loose with a deafening full auto blast. The bullets hit the creature’s skin and either stopped flat and fell to the floor or glanced off to ricochet around the room wildly. It looked down at the champion, and I swear its mouth grew wider into a tooth filled grin as its other arm shot out faster than the eye could see and it shoved its clawed hand through the champion’s chest. The gun fell to the floor, and his scream died in his throat as blood splattered from his mouth before his head lolled to the side like a rag doll.
The champion still in the beast’s grip screamed louder until the thing literally shoved his head into its mouth and chomped down with a sickening crunch of bone and brain matter. A long, thick, impossibly pink tongue slithered out of the things mouth to lick bits of grisly meat from its thin lips, and then it dropped the body on the ground.
The creature bent low over the other body, and I had to look away as the tongue flicked over the dead champions face and into his lifeless lips. That tongue had some strength because the body slid across the floor toward the creature’s open mouth.
I heard the crunch and looked back to see the shimmer in the air that I knew to be Aurora poised directly above the thing’s back. She was going to try to drop onto it while it was preoccupied and suck the life force from it.
Warning lights went off in my brain like a five alarm fire.
“Aurora, no!” I screamed at the same time as she dropped and hit the thing’s back. Her veil lifted and blue energy flowed from her mouth to sink deep into the things hide. Then I watched as her eyes went wide, her blue soul sucking energy turned black, and she flew off the beast as if she had been thrown.
The creature roared in pain and gazed around the room with teeth bared. It was like looking into the jaws of a phantasmic great white shark. Its eyes held no soul. No life force. They were as black and empty as the abyss, and they sure as shit looked back.
My Ar’Gywn took over and I fired on the beast. The gun bucked in my hand like a branded bull, the powerful shotgun like rounds loud in the enclosed space. The buckshot hit the creature with incredible force and knocked it back a few steps, but the round metal balls just bounced off its tough hide.
I saw Aurora in the corner of my eye as she pulled herself to her feet after she slammed into the mess hall’s wall. Her eyes shone bright purple, and her tattoos blazed with a blue fire. She was pissed.
Then the creature moved and I thought I heard a small terrified gasp escape my lips. It was faster than a cobra strike and as silent as a spider bite. One second it was stumbled back against a wall, and the next it had covered more than half the distance to Aurora. It made no sound as it moved. None.
Aurora pulled a defensive dark matter shield around herself as the beast rammed into her at full speed. She shot across the floor and bounced off another pillar while the beast crashed into what I assumed had been the food counter.
I holstered the shotgun Equalizer and drew my other gun left handed as I ran at the creature. My arm slid around in a wide arc, and I fired four fast shots of the incendiary rounds as the creature got to its feet and charged.
Three of my shots sliced through the air where the thing had been not an instant before and left small, quarter sized holes ringed with molten metal in the wall. The fourth bullet caught it square in the chest.
The skin on these things seemed like it was made from some kind of kevlar. The bullet managed to tear a hole in the front of the beast, but it didn’t explode out the back like I expected.
“Oh, shit,” I said and brought my hands to cover my face as the beast hit me with an outstretched arm. It was like being hit by the offensive line of the Ninety-Three Cowboys all at once. I flew into the air sideways and slammed into a pillar. Thankfully my armor took the brunt of the impact, and I was able to land on my hands and knees.
I’d managed to keep my grip on the Equalizer and I brought it up to fire again but stopped when I heard the ungodly howl that came from the creature’s mouth along with a thin tendril of smoke.
A bright, red light sat in the thing’s chest where the incendiary round had penetrated. It grew brighter and brighter, and the thing’s howls increased in pitch. It looked around at us, and I swear I saw actual fear in its unholy face before it turned around and ran back down the hallway it had emerged from. It made it halfway down before its legs crumpled, and its torso erupted into silver-red flames.
I kept my gun trained on the spot while I jogged over to where Aurora had finally come to a halt. She lowered her dark matter shield and hugged me suddenly.
“Marc,” she said breathlessly, “I felt my Shriike tremble in fear from that creature. It has never ever done that before.”
“Well, that will teach it to try to soul suck something that clearly doesn’t have a soul,” I said sternly. “Don’t do that again.”
“Don’t worry,” she responded as she stood up and pulled out her pulsar pistol. “I won’t. We need to get off this ship.”
“As you wish,” I said and grabbed her hand. I went to go back the other way down the T-junction but as we stepped foot in that hallway we ran into four aliens with their guns drawn. There was a large Chewbacca on steroids alien, a skinny vulture looking one, one with six arms that all held pistols, and a green skinned humanoid who resembled DC’s Sinestro.
They stared at us for a second.
“It’s Havak! Get’em!” Green-Sinestro yelled, and they all began to shoot at us.
Aurora threw up a small shield just in time to deflect the barrage of bullets and lasers as we backed into the mess hall.
“Soul suck any of those fuckers you want, girlie!” I shouted to her as I unholstered the shotgun Equalizer with my right hand.
“As you wish,” she said with an evil grin and sent our shield out in front of us while we dove for cover.
Aurora veiled herself as I rolled behind a long cafeteria table. I fired a few quick blasts over the top without really aiming to draw the enemy alliance’s attention. At least I assumed they were an alliance since they weren’t trying to kill each other.
“Havak, you are toast!” Roid-Chewy roared in a hysterically high voice as he rattled off a long burst from his machine gun. The slugs tore the table I was hiding behind to shreds. It was a good thing I’d dove for new cover the second he’d started to yell.
“What was that, Nancy?” I yelled back. “You shoot like whatever bad word you call females on your planet. Which you shouldn’t do by the way, it’s demeaning.”
I heard him roar, and I almost busted a gut laughing because it sounded just like Alvin from the chipmunks. Then he started to shoot his gun on full auto, and the rounds went all over the place.
I leaned out from cover and fired off two quick shots. One sent the buckshot into his furry shoulder and spun him around. The other took Vulture-Face’s legs out from under him as he tried to outflank me.
I caught a glimpse of Aurora’s glimmer as she grabbed Roid-Chewy from behind and took him to the ground where she pounced on his chest and drank deep from his life force.
“He brought the vampire hag with him,” Six-Arms yelled and fired all six of his guns at her. They were all plasma weapons, and six lines of bright red energy streaked toward Aurora. She looked up at the last possible second and flung herself into an amazing back handspring cartwheel move and danced between all six plasma bolts which instead tore Roid-Chewy to bits.
Aurora’s Shriike had just started to warm up, and she moved like a vengeful wraith, her movements like liquid metal under a hot flame. She flew across the distance to Six-Arms in the blink of an eye and jumped up into those arms from five feet away. Her legs wrapped around his waist, and she grabbed his head in her hands and pulled him close for a kiss of death.
His eyes went wide with shock and then the lids sank slowly until they were only half open and full of pure bliss. That was the cruel irony of Aurora’s succubus embrace, you knew it was going to kill you, but you wanted it anyway. Or so I assumed.
Green-Sinestro screamed at Six-Arms to no avail. He raised his assault rifle to his shoulder and took aim at both of them. I could tell Aurora wasn’t finished with her snack, so I leapt from behind the lunch table and fired at him. I was too far away for the full impact of my Equalizer blasts to have effect, and the shot glanced off his body armor. One ricocheted and grazed his cheek which leaked yellow blood down his face. I was pretty sure Neal Adams would roll over in his grave and the famous comic book artist wasn’t even dead yet.
“Havak! You annoying worm!” Green-Sinestro yelled and turned his gun on me. It fired almost silently, and bits of wall and lunch table flew into the air all around me. “Imma’ be rich as shit when I bring Irrus your head!”
I glanced over and saw Aurora jump from Six-Arm’s body as it fell to the ground. Green-Sinestro slammed a fresh mag into his rifle and opened up again. Whatever boost he’d gotten from Irrus, it clearly hadn’t been accuracy.
I danced past the rounds effortlessly as I rode a wave of parkour and Ar’Gwyn to come up just to his right. I fired off two shots at almost point blank range, and he held up his hand in front of him, and the buckshot stopped in midair and then shot back at me with twice the speed.
I barely managed to dodge most of them, and my armor took the force of the ones I didn’t. I guessed Irrus had bequeathed some kind of repulsion boost.
“
You can dine with that rat-bastard in hell, Green-Sinestro!” I yelled and laughed at him as I stood up and out from cover.
“What the hell did you just call me?” he asked with a very confused look on his face and raised his rifle.
“Dead,” I said just before Aurora twirled him around and kissed him. His body went rigid and then languidly limp as his life force flowed into her. A moment later, she dropped his lifeless corpse to the floor.
“I guess it’s the way of the flaming xenomorph then,” I tossed over my shoulder as I beckoned Aurora to follow me down the other hallway.
She caught up to me quickly, and I could feel her body hum with power from the fresh lifeforce energy as I checked the rounds on my shotgun Equalizer. These rounds took up more space, and I only had six left plus a fifteen shot reload. My incendiary Equalizer still had close to fifty rounds and a reload.
“You with me, Aurora?” I asked as we jogged past the smoldering creature. Given too much life force at one time combined with the excitement of battle could potentially overwhelm her psyche, and she could lose herself to the Shriike that lived within her.
“No need to worry, sugar,” she growled with barely contained ferocity. “If I’m gonna eat you, it won’t be with any clothes on.”
“Um, thanks, I think.” I shuddered in equal parts arousal and fear. It was a combination I was kind of growing used to.
The hallway led to a suspended walkway over what looked like the ships vehicle bay. Twenty feet below us were dozens of dune buggy style assault jeeps, hover-jet attack fighters, and armored personnel carriers.
We ran out onto the walkway, and I stopped dead in my tracks.
“Well, that’s great. That’s just fucking great, man,” I said as at least forty of the horrible alien creatures looked up at us in unison.
Chapter Fifteen
“Run!” I yelled and hauled ever-loving ass. Aurora was slightly ahead of me, and she took off with preternatural speed. There was fifty yards of walkway over a gaggle of unspeakably terrifying monsters between us and the next enclosed space. A space I wasn’t sure would be any safer than where we were now.