She slid through the two foot gap and dropped nearly fifty feet to the descending elevator floor. Several impacts shook the car, but nothing else made it through. As Maigo picked herself back up, Freeman crawled out of the ruined panel and jumped to the floor. “We need to get off this ship.”
“No shit,” Lilly said. “The B.F.S.s are going to eat it from the inside out.”
“B.F.S.?” Freeman asked.
“What were you talking about?” Maigo asked.
“In five minutes, the ship will fly into the sun.”
Lilly and Maigo stood still and stunned for a moment. Then Lilly shrugged. “Well, they deserved it anyway.”
“Right,” Maigo said, and then she chuckled. The Aeros mothership was doubly doomed, but long before most of them burned up inside a star, they were going to experience the kinds of horrors they had inflicted on others. “Guess I’m still in the vengeance business.”
“Fuckin A,” Lilly said.
“Uhh,” Freeman said, face scrunched up. “I’m sorry, but...what?”
The door slid open. They were greeted by the sounds of distant battle. The Tsuchis were rampaging through the vast ship, but how long would it take them to reach these halls?
A loud twang burst from Freeman’s railgun. The projectile struck and splattered a stark white Tsuchi that had leaped into the hallway ahead.
“Run!” Maigo shouted, sprinting out of the short hall and turning a sharp right. The B.F.S. Freeman had killed was the first of many, charging down the halls, running along the floor, walls and ceiling. Aeros could be heard shouting in pain as they were attacked. Others shrieked in terror and agony as they gave birth to Tsuchis of their own.
The endless hallway seemed to stretch on forever, the same repeating features passing every few strides. But then Maigo saw a circle where there should have been lines. Future Betty! We’re almost there!
“How much time?” Maigo asked.
“Thirty seconds,” Freeman said, no need to look at a watch.
Fifteen seconds later, Lilly reached the carved out hole. She sprang through without missing a beat. Freeman leaped up next, pulling himself quickly inside. Maigo took one last look back. The hallway was alive with death. She leaped up and was yanked inside by Freeman, who then slammed the hatch and locked it tight. Maigo slammed into the ceiling as she entered the zero gravity environment.
“Five seconds!” Freeman shouted.
“Hold on!” Lilly shouted from the cockpit, as the hatch was struck from the outside.
“Go, go, go!” Maigo replied, even though she had yet to follow Lilly’s warning.
Future Betty sprang away from the Aeros mothership, slamming Maigo into the floor. She clung there and toggled the broad surface to turn clear. She watched as Tsuchis were sucked through the open hull and sprayed into space. They twitched for a moment and then froze.
After another moment, Maigo turned to Freeman. “I thought you said five seconds?”
He looked down through the floor, watching the mothership bleeding Tsuchis. “I exaggerated the countdown, to motivate you.”
“What?” Maigo said. “How much time is—”
The mothership shimmered and then started rotating. A moment later it was hurtling through space, headed for the sun.
“It was a slight exaggeration,” Freeman said, but then his face screwed up. “What is that smell?”
Maigo sniffed the air and tensed. “It smells like death.”
“Do we have a B.F.S. on board?” Lilly asked, looking back, fear in her eyes.
“Calm down,” said a gruff voice. “Was just me.”
Maigo turned to Woodstock. He was still strapped in and motionless, but he had a funny grin on his face.
“Ate a burrito for breakfast,” he said.
“Oh,” Freeman said, looking disgusted and putting his hand up to his nose. “Oh, God.”
“Lilly,” Maigo said. “Take us home. Fast, please.”
41
NEMESIS
Nemesis was hard to surprise. With combined memories of Nemesis Prime, Maigo Tilly, Katsu Endo and her own chaotic life over the past few years, very little caught her off guard. But when Typhon soared over her head wielding two long, solid stone daggers, she reeled back in surprise. And then delight. Not just because it was a bold attack, but because she recognized the emotion fueling it: vengeance. It rolled off of Typhon’s body in waves, pulsing through the air with every beat of the kaiju’s heart.
That’s Hawkins, Endo told her, and information about the man slid into their shared consciousness.
Endo hadn’t known Hawkins well. Their interactions had always been surface level. But her Voice had researched the man and knew that he had singlehandedly killed a Grizzly bear—a creature that dwarfed his human scale nearly as much as Ashtaroth did Typhon’s—using only a knife. And now he had two.
As more information emerged from Endo’s research, Nemesis understood the thirst for vengeance. Hawkins had a mate. Avril Joliet. Mother to Lilly. She had been the Voice for Drakon. Nemesis saw the kaiju’s fate play out in her memory, torn in half. And in that moment, Nemesis felt Hawkins’s pain.
Her memory flashed back to young Maigo’s, walking into the kitchen, finding her blood-soaked mother clutched in the arms of her murderer. When humans lose a loved one, there is no other pain quite so pure. That was the intensity with which Typhon now burned.
Did Joliet die? Endo wondered.
It was a useless question that could not be answered, so Nemesis ignored it, and let Hawkins’s anguish roll through her, churning the engine that fueled her like nothing else.
All of this happened in the few seconds it took Typhon to reach his target. By the time he landed, Nemesis was awash in Hawkins’s pain, roaring as she shared it, and she reacted the way a goddess of vengeance should. She rolled back onto her feet and charged, running on all fours to rejoin the battle as soon as possible.
She watched Scylla, severed in half, the last of her life force seeping away, bury her long teeth into Ashtaroth’s arm. The sharp sting of the kaiju’s bite made the much larger monster flinch in pain. That final act created a window of opportunity for Typhon, and it wasn’t wasted.
The stone blades punched into Ashtaroth’s right shoulder, puncturing deep. The afflicted arm flailed, shaking Scylla’s torso, and the tentacle it clung to, away in a bloody heap.
Before Ashtaroth could recover from the pain, Hawkins brought Typhon’s hands back, one at a time, stabbing the giant repeatedly in a way that kept him from falling, while doing a good job of avoiding the orange membranes. But then he found himself under the colossal kaiju’s spiked chin. Ashtaroth thrust its chin down hard, puncturing Typhon’s back. The creature then snapped its head up, tossing Typhon into the air and catching him in its jaws. Even as Ashtaroth shook its prey back and forth, Hawkins stabbed at the creature’s face, over and over, drawing gouts of blood until Typhon’s body fell limp like a ragdoll. Ashtaroth flung the dead kaiju from its mouth and spun toward Nemesis, as she leaped into the fray.
Her enemy spun faster than seemed possible, given its size. The massive tail swept through the air, but Nemesis was ready for the attack this time, and Endo’s reflexes and skills provided the means to evade it. While twisting her body up, Nemesis reached down with her strong arms and shoved off the tail as it whooshed by. The move sent her higher, and she collided with her target’s left shoulder.
Endo had noticed the right arm had lost some of its mobility following Typhon’s attack. If they could do the same to the left, they would be one step closer to reducing the creature’s lethality. While Endo’s mind continued thinking along these lines, Nemesis put her fury to the task of attacking.
As she clung to the side of Ashtaroth’s neck, Nemesis’s tail rose up and down, stabbing the massive trident tip into her enemy’s unarmored shoulder. Blood sprayed each time the tail came out, filling the air with a purple mist. The Aeros champion thrashed in pain, snapping its massive jaws at Nemesis, but s
he remained just out of reach.
Karkinos returned with a roar, and while Ashtaroth was distracted by Nemesis, Collins’s kaiju resumed its assault on the giant’s inner thigh. Karkinos’s massive claws struck twice before unleashing a spray of blood powerful enough to knock the smaller kaiju down.
Turning its attention back to Karkinos, Ashtaroth kicked out hard. The claws at the tips of its toes, each one thicker than Karkinos’s powerful legs, punched through the creature’s midsection.
Collins! Endo thought.
Ashtaroth withdrew its foot, leaving behind a massive hole, spraying bright orange. The resulting explosions tore Karkinos in half, sending its body in multiple directions. The nuclear-force shockwave staggered Ashtaroth back, but did no harm.
Incensed, Nemesis nearly went into a blind rage, but Endo remained calm. And in that calm, he noticed several events that Nemesis had missed. The first was Scylla’s remains. They were moving, but not under their own power. The land around the body looked alive. It flipped the corpse over, opened the back of the neck with the delicacy of a surgeon and plucked out the kaiju’s limp Voice. The same thing was already happening to Karkinos’s torso.
But the most pressing observation was of Hyperion. The robot had wisely kept its distance, the massive cannon locked onto its head aimed at Ashtaroth. Not just Ashtaroth, Endo thought, at us. It’s going to attack the arm!
Endo directed Nemesis to savage the shoulder. With claws, teeth and tail, Nemesis released her pent up rage on the meat of the shoulder, inflicting grave, but not fatal damage. With a glance toward Hyperion, Endo saw the outer red circle on the robot’s chest glow bright red.
Now! Endo said. Jump!
Nemesis dove away from Ashtaroth, narrowly avoiding the white-hot energy beam launched by Hyperion. The powerful weapon punched through flesh, exploded out the far side and then traced a line up the shoulder. As Nemesis landed, the giant arm she’d leaped from fell behind her. She scrambled to the side, out of the severed limb’s path. The mountain it landed on crumbled, and as Ashtaroth wailed in pain, the tentacles shook with spasms, coiling around on themselves, still living, but separated from the mind that controlled them.
Though now lacking an arm, Ashtaroth was still far larger than Nemesis, and with Scylla, Karkinos and Typhon down, Nemesis was on her own until Hyperion recharged. But the mighty kaiju towering over her was currently lost in pain, writhing back as the stump of a shoulder gushed blood.
And that meant it was vulnerable.
But how can we kill it? Endo wondered. Assaulting its heavily armored legs would take too long. They needed a decisive killing blow. We need to reach its neck, but how can—
The answer came in the shape of a squat silhouette launching high above Ashtaroth’s head. It was Scrion. The small kaiju must have run up Ashtaroth’s back and leapt over the spine-tipped sail fin atop its head. As Scrion arched up over Ashtaroth’s head, he opened his powerful jaws and clamped down hard on the blade extending out of its forehead. Momentum and several hundred tons of unexpected weight pulled Ashtaroth’s head toward the ground.
Nemesis lunged onto the massive creature’s leg and then onto the side of its lowering neck, adding her weight to the descent.
But as the head lowered, Nemesis saw the giant’s toes dig deep into the earth. Its tail shot back, providing a counterweight. The beast would not be pulled to the ground. Seeing the futility of their attack, Nemesis bit and clawed every bit of exposed flesh that wasn’t covered in armor or wrapped around an orange membrane. An explosion might not kill her, but it would knock her free, and she wasn’t going anywhere until Ashtaroth was torn to shreds.
A sharp yelp sounded from below. Scrion had been impaled by the very same blade it had grasped. While the kaiju kicked and thrashed, its body dying, the back of its neck opened up—its Voice abandoning ship. But where could he go?
With an uncanny confidence, the man jumped away from the kaiju just as the blade sliced through the neck and head. He fell toward the ground, not a hint of panic. And then Endo discovered why. A massive hand rose from the ground, reached out and caught the man, gently lowering him to the ground before disappearing. He might not have known that would happen, but he certainly trusted it would.
Alone again, Nemesis tore into Ashtaroth’s neck above its ruined left arm, and out of reach from its injured right arm. Thick strips of flesh peeled away, exposing raw, glinting white skin beneath.
It has a second form, Endo thought, like us.
And then they were struck. The long tail wrapped up and around Ashtaroth like a whip, before yanking away. It was like being caught in the jagged blade of a chainsaw. The teeth bit deep, struck bone and pulled her free. Nemesis fell to the ground, injured and bleeding red, but not mortally wounded. She struggled back to her feet and glanced back at Hyperion. Two of three red circles were lit.
Nemesis flinched when a much brighter light struck her. She squinted and looked up.
The sun.
The mothership is moving, Endo thought.
Ashtaroth looked up at the mothership, watching it glide across the sky before turning back to Nemesis. The gargantuan mega-kaiju let out an angry roar that shook the Earth itself. When it was done, Nemesis replied with a roar of her own, somehow nearly as loud. But for all of Nemesis’s bravado, even she knew the fight was hopeless.
And then it wasn’t.
With no one left to save, whoever was manipulating the earth, turned their attention to the fight. The land around Ashtaroth came to life, enveloping the massive feet. Ashtaroth tried to yank away, but the stone solidified as new mountains, manacles to the land itself. The beast could not move. Could not spin to attack with its tail. And its limp arm posed little danger if Nemesis steered clear of it.
Ashtaroth bent down, massive jaws wide open, but Nemesis had no trouble dodging the bite.
As a plan of action formulated in Endo’s mind and congealed in Nemesis’s, the stationary monster caught them off guard again. The long tail whipped forward between the towering legs, but it wasn’t aimed at Nemesis. The tail wrapped up and over Ashtaroth’s body, puncturing skin. Then it withdrew, cutting deep as it zipped back.
A bloody line had been carved down the center of Ashtaroth’s body, from its back, over its head and all the way down to its crotch. Flesh split and fell apart. Sinews of gore stretched out and then snapped. The monster had carved itself in two, but not to the core. As the epidermis fell away in two great sheets, a gleaming white second form was revealed.
And it was as horrific a sight as Nemesis’s final stage was angelic.
The creature’s body pulsed with glowing orange membranes, all connected by thick, luminous veins. If one part of its body erupted, the whole thing would go up. And while the explosion would likely destroy Ashtaroth, it would kill Nemesis and everyone fighting by her side as well, not to mention hundreds of miles of New Hampshire and all the people living there. It was the ultimate dead man’s switch.
Nemesis glanced back, using her keen eyes to locate her human allies. They were gathered on a mountainside, just a mile away. Collins, Watson, Hawkins and the blond man who had been Scrion’s Voice had all been rescued, presumably by the young American Indian woman, who seemed to be speaking to the earth, and who looked about ready to pass out. Trapping Ashtaroth was taking everything she had.
Hyperion’s chest glowed red as it reached full power. Before the robot could fire, Nemesis reached an open palm out in a very human gesture, the meaning of which was clear: stop.
The robot held its fire, as Nemesis took a step back.
Endo tried to think of a way to beat Ashtaroth that wasn’t suicidal. Before he could come up with anything, the Aeros’s living WMD took away every possible option by reaching up with its hook-laden tentacles and slapping them against its own body.
The moment that arm came away, they would all die.
42
HUDSON
I must be in shock. Or something like it. Because as I stumble out of
the mountainous dump that broke my fall and saved my life, I feel a strange sense of elation. Not only did I destroy the shield keeping the Bell at bay, I also survived the effort. Sure, I smell and look like a dingleberry stuck to the side of Satan’s hairy sphincter, but I’m alive.
Then the chaos reaches me again. Dread and Aeros wage war. Blood and bodies are everywhere, most of them surrounding the small Neo-Prime, which seems to be in a primal rage in the wake of its fear-induced diarrhea. I dive to the side as an injured mothman crashes to the ground and tumbles away in a spray of bright red. I land on the hard stone ground, and push myself up.
A blur races toward me. I reach my hands up, guarding my face, but I’m not attacked. I’m picked up. Crazy’s strong grasp swings me around onto Mephos’s back. I cling to the man, covered in filth, once again happy to be alive. Crazy, on the other hand, is none too thrilled. Fearless though he may be, he still has a nose.
Before I can apologize, we shift into and out of the MirrorWorld faster than a sneeze. When we return, the fetid grime that had been covering my body, falls to the ground behind us.
“Where are we going?” I shout.
“We need to reach the black hole,” Mephos replies.
“But this place is huge,” I complain. How can we—”
The answer to my question lies ahead. Cowboy has appeared at the fringe of the open space. The Bell is behind him. As an Aeros pounds toward him, club cocked back, he draws both revolvers and fires just one shot from each. The .50 caliber bullets punch into the alien’s large head and don’t come out the other side. The Aeros staggers and falls, its head landing just a few feet from Cowboy.
The Czech smiles, holsters his weapons and turns to us. “Where is black hole?”
“I’ll take us,” Mephos says, as we slide to a stop beside the Bell.
Wasting no time, we slap our hands against the cold metal.
I look back as the small Neo-Prime topples over, its hundred foot body falling toward us. “Go, go, go!”
Project Legion (Nemesis Saga Book 5) Page 26