by Aaron Crash
Elle had created the syringes to power herself up, but it was her idea to give them to Trina to help her deal with her bloodthirsty ways. The serum, made from Onyx magic, had worked like a champ.
Cali threw her arms around herself and retreated toward Bill and Fernando. Ling took pity on the girl and drew her close. “It’s all right, Cali,” the Meelah said. “The succubus has us all on edge.”
Bill clicked disgustedly at the drama. They couldn’t understand him because he didn’t have implants and so his translator didn’t work. Also, Bill hated Humans, Meelah, and Clickers, and didn’t really like talking with anyone except for his brother and his beloved Lizzie. Bill crossed the room to retrieve the snare sphere with one of his metal hands. He hurled it to Fernando, who had recovered from casting the spell. The Clicker doctor put it in a pouch.
Blaze stood. “It’s not just the succubus. She said she was a Konobus of Nauzea.”
Fernando came over and inspected Blaze’s shoulder. The gunny deactivated his armor to let the doctor take a look. “Your joint has been completely destroyed. I’m surprised you’re still conscious.”
“Blondes do that to me,” Blaze said.
“I fucking heard that!” Trina yelled.
The doctor injected him with an electrical syringe. “That’s for the pain. I can’t fix you up until we get you back to the ship, but even then, you will need a new shoulder joint. Perhaps Lizzie can make you a prosthetic shoulder, as he did for my brother.”
Bill clicked. He’d picked up the remains of poor Ugly Betty and was inspecting the melted metal.
“Bill hates you,” Fernando translated. “But he liked your shotgun. He’ll try and repair it. And he can get to work with Lizzie to come up with a necrotechnological solution to your shoulder.”
“No, I don’t want that demon tech in me,” Blaze said. The shot had him feeling better, and his head was clearing. “If only we could get Elle to heal me. But no, that would be too dangerous at this point. I’ll heal. I’ll be fine.”
Comms came alive in his ears. It was Elle herself. Nauzea must’ve stopped jamming their frequency.
“Blaze,” his sister said, “I wouldn’t trust myself to do it. But we have other news, bad news, maybe. That Etrusca ruin is moving toward the planet’s surface. I don’t know what it’s going to do, but both Lizzie and I have a bad feeling about it.”
“Hhhello, Blaze,” his partially demon-possessed ship said to him. “I hhhave been wondering if my presence isn’t drawing the Etrusca ruin to us. Isn’t it strange we’ve been encountering them so much lately? Well, since I entered your lives as my former hhhorrible self.”
“Lizzie, what do you know about the Etrusca?” Blaze asked.
Bill had stuck the remnants of Ugly Betty to his back next to his fusion spear and went to inspect the windows. He clicked until Fernando had to click to shut him up.
The doctor then said, “My brother hates all of you and wouldn’t care if you all were killed when the glass broke. But we must get out of here. Even the technological superiority of the Clicker shields is about to fail. Human shields would’ve failed years ago.”
Blaze hated how arrogant the Clickers could be, but he could forgive them. Fernando and Bill had joined his crew after the Bug War, neither had fought in it, and both wanted to rid the galaxy of the evil Onyx energy.
The Bug War. Blaze had grown up in its shadow, his mother had been one of the first casualties, and he had joined the Astral Corps and fought the last battle with his buddies, the six voices that kept showing up on comms. They’d been tight. That had definitely changed.
Or was it just Nauzea, trying to torture him with memories and friendships turned sour?
Speaking of which. “Nauzea is here,” Blaze said. “She’s in the mines somewhere. If we could find her, we could get her before she gets us. Fernando, do you have another snare sphere?”
“I do,” Fernando said. “But casting another spell, a snare sphere, would be dangerous. It might kill me.”
Elle came on comms. “We could dose him with a syringe of Onyx. Trina, you think you’ll get thirsty again anytime soon?”
“Maybe,” Trina answered. “But I’m not sure Fernando is ready for that. When you suggested it, he turned pale.”
That was a laugh. Both Clickers were always the same yellowish-green color.
“I am taken aback by the idea,” Fernando said. “My dearest, sweetest Elle, your physiology has been altered by your years of exposure to the Onyx energy. I’ve only just begun studying the language and casting spells. Perhaps a shot would turn me evil. I would not want to chance it, but I will, if we can remove something as awful as this Nauzea creature.”
Not a creature and you do not understand the word awful, a voice whispered through their minds. A sister to agony. The mother of divine suffering. An archduchess of hell. But I am not your worst enemy. Your worst enemy is yourselves.
A wave of dark energy swept out from inside the mine, hitting them all in the face and driving itself into their eyes. They all dropped to their knees. Even Ling.
Blaze was back in the barracks on Overland Park Prime, and he stood over the body of Lieutenant Kent Jameson. Ian and the rest of his buddies woke up to find him like that, and those guys beat the holy hell out of him before dragging him out in chains. The betrayal on their faces, the rage, the sadness, it hurt like nothing else ever had.
And he was right back there.
But he wasn’t. No, he was in a Clicker mine under miles of half-frozen ocean.
Someone slapped him, and he blinked. It was Ling. The Shaolin sloth’s eyes were wide open, and it was clear he was shaken. “Nauzea is trying to trick us. She’s using her demonic telepathy to take us down with our fears and deepest wounds. Even me. Even me. But I won’t listen to her madness. It is only my own, and I am at peace. I am Meelah. I am the child of now, and now, I am not alone in the Shaolin temple, exiled from my people and bullied by Humans. No, I am me, and I am here, and I am among friends, comrades, brothers-in-arms. As you are, Blaze. As you are now.”
The window cracked open and water gushed through the flickering blue shields. The frigid liquid splashed down on the Clickers, but even that didn’t rouse them.
The only reason Blaze could repel Nauzea’s psychic attack was because of Ling’s teachings. They’d made him as tough on the inside as he was on the outside. As he focused on his breathing and surrendered to the moment, Blaze’s head cleared.
“We have to get everyone out of here, up the elevator,” Blaze said. He couldn’t use his left arm at all—the shoulder joint was destroyed—but he could pick Cali up with his right. He settled her on his shoulder and nudged Trina with his foot. “Trina, come on, we need you now more than ever.”
Trina, in her vampire form, muttered and murmured in her trance, “No, his blood. I can’t kill him, but I have to. His blood, no, murder…murder…murder. Captain Landau, please, no, I don’t want to kill you, but your blood, so hot, so good in my throat. It’s so warm in my throat and so warm in my belly.”
The way she said “belly” turned Blaze’s stomach.
She was remembering how Elle had used her to free them during their fight in the asteroid belt near what used to be Hutchinson Prime. Trina had killed the captain of the Relentless, and it haunted her still.
Fernando and Bill were clicking and clacking horribly. Those sounds reminded Blaze of walking through battlefields during the Bug War. The wounded, frightened Clickers would make those sounds before they died.
Ling tried to get both Fernando and Bill, but Bill, with his metal arms and leg, was far too heavy. Ling was strong, but not that strong. He dragged Fernando through the water toward the freight elevator.
Would they have to leave Trina and Bill behind?
The room was filling with water. The energy shields kept the entire ocean from crashing in, but it was already mid-calf to Blaze.
The whole mining structure shook from an explosion above them, in the elevator shaft
.
Elle came on comms. “Blaze, there’s another ship on the planet, an old Astral Corps SuperCobra, like from the Bug War. It found an access point to the ocean underneath the ice, and it’s coming at you. Oh, crap, it fired on the elevator.”
Water gushed down from the opening. Pieces of metal dropped down and splashed into the flooding sea. Whoever was in that SuperCobra had taken out their escape.
But Blaze knew who was in that ship: Ian, Tanner, and the rest of them. But why? Why? Why???
You will not leave me now, Nauzea said to them. You can’t leave me now. I will dance in your nightmares. I will sip your last breath and rejoice in your suffocation and the cold as it numbs then destroys your cells. Enjoy the pain, for it is at the very heart of life.
The water was up to Blaze’s knees. Ling was holding Bill’s and Fernando’s head above the water. Their nanotech armor would protect them from dying in the cold, since open space was far colder than the sub-zero ocean. The mine’s shields still protected them from the immense pressure.
The gunny glanced through the mine’s schematics. He found an emergency escape tube on the other side of the underwater mine. But it was miles of stairs, going straight up, to the surface. It’d be a hike. And then his display blinked out.
Elle confirmed his suspicions. “They took out that emergency exit, Blaze. We’re coming for you. Lizzie and me. We’ll have to blow through the ice, somehow, but we’re coming.” She showed him a visual of the Lizzie Borden, hovering over the ice. She was using a mixture of fusion torpedoes and plasma cannons to pound a hole into the steaming ice. But that ice was miles deep. Could she blast through it in time?
“That’s good, Elle,” Blaze said. He patched into the Clickers’ suits and triggered the nanotech to cover their heads with helmets and visors. He activated his own helmet, as did Ling.
Trina, as a vampire, didn’t need to breathe.
For Cali, Ling pulled an extra nanotech gauntlet from Bill’s gear and slid it on her arm. The microscopic robots did the rest, encasing her in armor and a helmet. The oxygen capsules in the fist then gave her air to breathe.
“We can wait here,” Blaze said through comms. “We can sit tight and wait for the Lizzie Borden.”
Ian laughed. “So you think, Gunny. Okay, boys, let’s take that murdering son of a bitch down. Let’s do it for the lieutenant.”
Long, furry bodies swam through the water toward them. Those things, those werewolves, had been swimming through the water all along, waiting for their chance to attack.
The lupine monsters in the water smashed through the remaining glass in the elevator lobby and tore into the room, mouths open, their fur covered in ice.
Nothing was going to stop them from tearing out Blaze’s throat and murdering his semiconscious, completely screwed crew.
SIX_
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Blaze dropped Cali and stepped back.
Five werewolves. One was bad, but five meant they were dead. These things had pieces of old Astral Corps armor on them, but it was piecemeal, a chest plate here, greaves there, a bracer on one hairy arm but the others were bare.
But there was enough armor on them for him to recognize each of them by the patterns he’d memorized during the Bug War. And the name tags.
These pendejos weren’t just werewolves, they were his old team, horribly changed.
Tanner McNair. Jared Dickey. Chase Schultz. Logan Nutgrass. Jacob Lau.
Ian wasn’t with them. No, he was piloting the SuperCobra. He was Human and laughing and goading Blaze. “We’ve all changed in the past ten years, haven’t we? But we didn’t forget about you, Blaze. We didn’t forget what you did to Jameson.”
The five werewolves stood tall in the growing depth of icy ocean water leaking in, eyeing him with fiendish yellow eyes, flexing taloned hands, showing long fangs like daggers in their canine maws. Their armor wasn’t just for show. Buried in the metal were bits of stone from Earth’s moon. That was the energy that turned them from Astral Corps jarheads into hairy murder machines. The lunar radiation was why, even before the Onyx Gate opened, those infected with the lycanthropy virus would mutate into wolves during the full moon.
Nauzea’s voice whispered to him. Their talons will hurt your flesh, but how much worse will it be to be slain by your old friends? The past rends us, and yet, we choose the pain. To replay the razor-sharp memories over and over. Pain is at the heart of life. Consciousness is suffering. Rejoice in the agony.
Blaze grabbed his ax, but he didn’t trigger the fusion blades. Instead, he hit a new button Bill had come up with. The gunny had gotten tired of fighting the wrong monsters with the wrong weapon, so he’d had Bill and Lizzie work up something special.
From out of the sides of the ax handle sprang two spring-loaded Terran silver spikes. His ax was now a pickax.
The space marine werewolves growled and snarled at the sight of the hated metal.
The silver would pierce their skin, it could damage them, but since they were powered by Onyx, they could heal almost any wound. However, silver to the heart would put them down for good.
“Ling,” Blaze said, “get the Clickers back into the corridors. There’s a conveyor belt that leads to a control room. We need to retreat there and wait for Elle and Lizzie.”
Tanner, as a werewolf, shook water off his fur, snarled, and threw himself forward.
At the same moment, Blaze deactivated Cali’s nanotech armor and snicked open her bracelets. She wolfed out, howling, all of Nauzea’s torture forgotten as she lunged forward and seized Tanner by the throat.
They thrashed around each other, ripping, shredding, clawing.
Jared darted forward, and Blaze swung a spike into the huge wolf’s side. The silver pierced his skin and smoked his fur. The wolf howled in pain.
Jacob leapt to take the place of his wounded partner. A gunshot blast drove him back. Peppered with silver shot, Jacob writhed in pain.
Blaze turned. Ling was standing over Bill’s body, a classic sawed-off double-barrel shotgun in his pink three-fingered claws. Yeah, it was a space sloth with a shotgun, like in those old movies about Mad Max if the hero were played by some ferret-looking motherfucker. The Meelah unloaded the other barrel into Chase as he jumped to take off Blaze’s head. Then Ling slammed the shotgun onto his back, pulling the Clickers back out of the water. They were still out.
A meow broke through comms, and Blaze recognized the cat’s plaintive sound. “Raziel, what are you doing on comms?”
Of course, the cat didn’t answer. It meowed again, though. Blaze couldn’t use his left arm, like at all. But with his right, he kept Chase at bay, threatening to spike the lupine creature salivating in front of him.
Logan was coming in from his left. That furry pendejo wanted to chew through his armor and snap his spine. A brilliant idea filled Blaze’s head. “Elle, I’m patching you into my armor. Control my left arm. I can’t move it, and I can’t focus on the nanotech long enough to make it do what I want. You can. Have Lizzie patch you into my implants and control my arm.”
Chase launched his long, muscled body into Blaze. Blaze pressed the silver spikes against the beast, branding it. Smoke hissed as the fur was vaporized.
At the same time, Blaze felt the nanotech in his left arm spin up, and Logan bit into the Nanotech on his arm instead of snapping off his head. The fiend’s teeth never reached his skin thanks to Elle’s maneuver. Blaze could picture her on the bridge of the Lizzie Borden, mimicking the movements of what she wanted his left arm to do.
Elle used his arm to shove the werewolf back and then drove an armored fist into his face, stunning the beast for a minute.
His sister buzzed across comms, “Ling, reload the shotgun and toss it to Blaze. I can use it.”
The Meelah’s calm voice replied, “But Elle, you are not in the room. I’m afraid this is a very strange request.”
“Just do it!” Blaze and Elle said at the same time.
Ling took a break fro
m pulling the Clickers out of the water and hurled the sawed-off shotgun to Blaze. His left arm caught it. Elle’s control and responses were amazing. It was a little weird having his left arm acting on its own. The pain was distant, thanks to the meds, but how much was he screwing up his already screwed-up shoulder?
Better armless than dead. Arlo had a motto like that.
Blaze whirled the silver pickax around and slammed a spike into Logan’s back. The blow drove the beast back. Cali flung Tanner away into the wall, then triggered her blue-fire anklets. She shot through the elevator lobby like a rocket and grabbed ahold of another wolf, shaking him around and clawing at his skin.
Again, Raziel meowed through comms. Where was that cat and why was the pinche feline on comms?
Then Blaze saw it. The mysterious calico cat with the bright yellow eyes was crouched in the middle of one of the tunnels, above the creeping waterline of freezing ocean water. The cat lifted a paw as if to say, “Over here, dickweed!”
“Ling, Raziel, follow Raziel!” Blaze yelled.
And then the gunny brought the spiked ax around and slammed it into another werewolf. Logan was back, jaws open. His yellow teeth gleamed.
The water was up to Blaze’s thighs. Moving was difficult because of the rising flood. Elle took control of his arm and blew a chunk of fur and flesh out of the werewolf with one of the barrels.
Jacob wheeled away from Cali, not liking her rough play. She’d turned off her blue-fire anklet engines and jumped and shredded another werewolf, going old-school on his ass.
Jacob bounded over Chase and came fangs-first at Blaze.
Blaze couldn’t get his right arm around with his ax fast enough, but Elle snaked the shotgun under his arm and shoved the shotgun into the incoming werewolf’s mouth. “Eat this!” she screamed through comms.
Elle unloaded silver shot down the gullet of the beast. Jacob flopped backward, howling, smoke pouring out of his mouth from the silver eating through his skin from the inside out. His chest was exposed. Blaze drove a spike into the heart of the beast, silencing him forever. One down, four to go, and Ian, goddamn Ian, in the SuperCobra.