by Aaron Crash
Blaze, Ling, and Elle bolted from the cargo bay and charged down the steps and into the cloud of smoke.
Ling hurled his two grenades, and they flashed with blue light, electrifying anyone in a twenty-foot radius. Shocktroopers caught in the area of effect went down, twitching. They’d be out for at least ten minutes. Ling had put a little extra sauce in the charges.
Elle had both of her pistols, one firing deadly golden fusion energy and the other blasting out blue circles of electricity. Was she really going to kill these doofuses?
No, she was aiming high, but that fusion energy was making the IPC goons duck and dodge. Blaze wondered at the gun barrel on his left arm, but there was no time to figure it out. He fired his own pistol and took out two troopers, but even now, the IPC soldiers fired on them. Cali loped ahead, leaving them open for a second.
Trina used her super vampire speed to dart forward, and she started catching plasma fire on her hands. It seared through her skin and bones, quickly reducing her arms to nubs. Ling tossed two more grenades, then entered the fray with nunchakus dangling. Twelve inches of glowing blue electricity erupted from the chains attaching the emitters to the handles.
In a flash, Ling was among the shocktroopers, taking them out with whirls of sparkling energy.
Blaze ducked behind Trina as her chest burned from the plasma attacks of the soldiers. Blaze focused on his combat display, watching carefully as Cali charged toward the assistant manager. His nanotech armor was the fanciest.
His soldiers pressed forward to protect him, drawing fire away from Trina, Elle, and Blaze.
At the very last second, with the remaining troops focused on the werewolf about to eviscerate Gary, Blaze shut down Cali’s bracelets.
She slid, half-naked, into Gary’s arms. The assistant manager’s visor was open. He was a normal looking guy, close-shaved, with a weak chin. And wide eyes and a wide mouth. Guy was probably married. And he was holding some hot blonde in his arms.
The soldiers paused. That was all they needed.
Trina, Elle, and Blaze charged in. Elle holstered her fusion pistol, transferred her blue-electric pistol to her left hand, and triggered her fusion katana, glowing blue. She swiped the energy through a guy, shot another soldier, and kept moving as the guns went from Cali to them.
Blaze triggered his fusion flail. The hydrogen shell in the handle of the weapon winked on. The emitters on the ends of the three short lengths of chains screamed to life, creating three glowing spheres of pure star energy. It was like Ling’s nunchakus, only more medieval. If he lost control of the flail, he could easily stun himself.
He swung the blue orbs into two troopers and both fell to their knees and slumped over, shivering and shaking. Ling flipped and slammed his nunchaku into two more guards.
Elle used her pistol and her flashing blue katana to drop soldiers. At close quarters, the soldiers tried to bring their plasma rifles around, but either they were too close, or there was the danger of friendly fire.
Blaze swung his flail and knocked out another shocktrooper. Gary had Cali by the arm and was screaming something in her face. It was hard to hear above the din of fighting, the screams of electrocuted troopers, the pounding footsteps, and the sizzle of fusion weapons working overtime.
Trina went for the throat of a soldier, and Blaze kicked her away. She hissed at him, a true monster, armless, full of smoking holes, bleeding black blood.
Cali first. Then Trina.
Blaze took down another soldier and then tossed Cali his fusion pistol. She shoved it into Gary’s face and pulled the trigger. The blue energy hit the assistant manager and he went down. Cali spun, and though she had tears on her face, she took aim and started taking down IPC goons.
Trina went for Blaze. Her Onyx levels had dropped into the single digits and were headed for zero.
“Elle!” Blaze called. “Order up!”
Elle tossed him a syringe. Blaze flung his flail, and the three whirling orbs brought down three more troopers.
He caught the syringe as Trina drove a shoulder into his breadbasket. He managed to get the syringe under her, though, and stabbed the needle into her neck. He slammed the plunger down and filled her with Onyx.
She fell to the side, her wounds already healing. New hands grew from her arms. The burns and scorch marks smoothed over to become translucent skin.
“Oh, yeah,” Trina gasped in pure pleasure. “That’s the stuff right there.”
Kinda made Blaze ponder, and he had to adjust his nanotech around the crotch of his armor. Elle cut down the last of the shocktroopers. Blaze tossed her the empty syringe. “Thanks, Elle.”
Every last one of the IPC troops had been dealt with.
Ambassador Randi broke through comms, but she was trying to talk through static, going in and out. “Blaze…IPC shocktroopers….more on the way. Get to the embassy north of the Promenade. As soon as you…Arlo…do you have a calico cat?”
“Goddamn Raziel,” Blaze sighed. “Must’ve raced out of the ship when we landed.”
“Or teleported like Granny and I did,” Elle said. She ejected a used training shell from her pistol and slid a fresh one in. “We’ll still not sure what Raziel is.”
Cali clutched the pistol to her chest. “More troops are coming. My arm is feeling better. And I didn’t murder anyone. So win, win.”
Elle went over and hugged her. Cali let herself be embraced.
Trina gave them both a weary I’m-so-over-it look. Then she pieced the message together. “Kind of convenient Randi has Arlo in a safehouse in the embassy. Smells like a trap to me.”
“Especially if my doubts about Randi are true,” Blaze said. “It’s totally a trap.”
“We love traps!” Ling spouted. “We’ll take the cheese and fuck their shit up!” He turned, frowning. “Was that correct? I never know when to curse about procreation and when to curse about the excretory functions.” The sloth sighed. “Fernando would know. He’s very good at languages.”
“You did fine,” Blaze said. “Trap or not, we’re going in, guns hot. Once we get the info from Arlo, he’s completely expendable.”
“Are you going to lose it when you see him again?” Elle asked. “If you punch his teeth out, he’s going to be less likely to talk to us.”
Blaze growled, “This is a job. I’m doing my job. I’ll be fine.” It sounded tough, but his insides were full of the sharp needles of bad memories. Nauzea was right. Physical pain was one thing, psychic pain quite another.
Lizzie broke through comms. “Gunny, I’m hhhard at work trying to fix communications with the ambassador. The IPC is suppressing your signal, but I’m nearly finished decrypting their security protocols. But if I do this for you, you hhhave to be nice to me. You hhhave to say you love me, respect me, and that you’d never uninstall me from your starship.”
More icy needles in his gut. “Lizzie, we can talk about this once—”
“Once you see I’m trustworthy?” Lizzie’s voice went breathy with laughter. “Hhhere’s a taste of hhhow I can hhhelp.”
Ambassador Randi came on, loud and clear, but sounding upset. “Blaze, can you hear me? If you can, please respond. We have barricaded ourselves in the Union embassy north of the Promenade. We have Arlo. More shocktroopers are descending on your position. One other thing, Blaze. We have a Terran Marine Astral Corps starship coming in with old codes. She’s a SuperCobra, named the Bad Becky. The IPC has taken control of the outer docking rings and are letting them through. Denning thinks they are reinforcements, but the codes are old, from the Bug War. I’m thinking they might be friends of yours.”
Not just friends. Brothers. Or that had been the case a long time ago.
Blaze’s mind seized. The ice in his gut turned to water, and he had a distant notion he might soil himself. “Ian,” he whispered.
And the others, his brothers in arms, Tanner, Chase, Jared, and Logan. Maybe even Jacob. In his dream, Jacob had come back as a zombie werewolf, fueled by Nauzea’s insane
powers.
Static returned to comms. Randi’s voice faded away into buzzing until comms went dark again. Even Lizzie didn’t come back online.
“We might have a problem,” Elle whispered.
A wide door opened behind the Lizzie Borden, and hundreds of IPC shocktroopers poured in.
SEVENTEEN_
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Blaze took a step toward the Lizzie Borden. With the werewolves coming, he had to get inside his ship and get the Terran silver weapons. At this stage, all he had was the silver spikes on his ax.
The first IPC soldiers knelt and fired on him. Fired to kill. Denning had given those shocktroopers orders to shoot on sight. Not that he expected Denning to come down to GaMeSpa himself to bring them in. The nutless pendejo was probably still on the Marcus Aurelius, cowering behind his shocktroopers and ships.
Trina leapt forward and caught the first round of plasma blasts. Other IPC soldiers surged forward.
Blaze realized they had to run, or better, fly. He simply couldn’t get to the weapons on the Lizzie Borden.
The gunny raced over to the starcycles. Elle, Ling, and Cali had read his mind. These weren’t the custom beasts that he’d bought from the best chop shops on Fleabugger, but they’d do. Instead of nanotech seats these had saddles of leather sitting on six feet of gun and engine. The blue-fires were battery powered, and the guns were simple plasma jobs. The shorter bikes would make maneuvering through the hallways easier.
Plasma bolts filled the air, slamming into their bikes or flaming across the floor.
A door down from them opened.
“Hurry!” Lizzie said through comms. “I opened that door for you. GaMeSpa’s tech isn’t nearly as secure as it should be. Still wrestling with the IPC’s jamming sequences.”
The gunny didn’t argue. He and his crew shot forward, Ling taking the lead, then Cali, and then Elle. Blaze took up the rear. Trina rode on his bike behind him. She acted as a shield, taking the fire for them all. The plasma sizzled through her skin but stopped at the bone. She healed the wounds as fast as they could deal them, but her Onyx levels were dropping.
And her head was very near Blaze’s jugular vein.
He tore through the doorway, then had to crank his bike to the left. He zoomed down a wide corridor. Problem was, they weren’t going up, where the Promenade was. They were heading for the starship residences of the space station’s working class of Humans, Meelah, and Clickers.
Pedestrians scattered as the four bikes and five passengers roared through their ranks. Female Meelah with babies in their pouches and exposed furry breasts calmly stepped out of the way. Meelah mothers had two sets of nipples, two in the pouch and two on the breasts. Meelah never wore many clothes. They weren’t the sexual deviants Humans were.
Speaking of which, Human merchants in three-piece suits cursed them and threatened lawsuits. Clicker engineers, with all six limbs working, scrambled out of the way.
“Lizzie,” Blaze called through comms. “We need to get to the Union embassy on the Promenade. Can you map me a route?”
No answer. Dammit!
Ling, with his amazing reflexes, hit a turn, but bashed his bike against a wall, and then so did Cali, then Elle. After watching them mess up, throwing sparks, Blaze adjusted the angle and zoomed right through without a scratch.
“Nice flying, Blaze!” Trina said.
“You getting hungry?”
“I’m always hungry!” the vampire yelled. “For your lovin’!”
“Ha, nice, but not now.” Blaze was going to have to swallow his pride and woo the goddamn operating system of his goddamn spacecraft. “Lizzie, I love you. We all do.”
Still nothing from Lizzie.
Blaze couldn’t believe this was his life.
Ling roared into a smaller alleyway—not a true alley, it was the old mess hall of an Astral Corps transport ship.
The Meelah had to bank his cycle, but he made it through a doorway. Blaze and the rest of them followed and slammed down the central walkways of a colonizer starship. The hibernation pods had been turned into fifty stories of apartments on either side with a big open central corridor.
Some were single beds. That would be cheap rent. Fifty bucks a week for a coffin room. Some pods had been removed and the living quarters of other ships welded into place. Some were multi-room suites. Others were one-bedroom apartments.
A female Meelah with red fur called out to them, “Excuse me, friends I’ve not met yet, it would most likely be a good idea to slow down. There are children playing on the walkways.”
“Thank you, Mother!” Ling said politely, following Meelah custom by calling any older female mother. The Shaolin sloth swerved off the walkway and engaged his horizontal thrusters to keep him afloat. They all followed suit and left the walkway to dash through the air past a do-it-yourself honeycomb of sleeping tubes the Clickers made from their spit, which hardened into their hexagonal homes.
Plasma bolts filled the air and scorched Ling’s cycle. He dodged the next blasts. Shocktroopers streamed out of a mid-level door.
He cut his vertical thrusters and plummeted toward the green grasses and crystal-glass gazebo in the parks of the courtyard below. At the last minute, he engaged them and then hit his horizontal thrusters hard and streaked down a roadway made from two freezer freighters welded together. The homemade road opened into a colonizer ship holding hundreds of apartments. The road then narrowed into a series of hamster homes made from Union embassy ships a hundred years old, decommissioned Clicker war machines, and even some single-pilot IPC Zeros that had seen actual battle. The dents, scorch marks, and melted metal was a definite giveaway.
The squirrel’s nest of derelict ships turned into low-income housing flashed by as they stayed on the road.
Until shocktroopers up ahead blocked their way. The IPC goons had built a blockade. They were setting up a big plasma cannon, laser-targeted, and if they got that thing going, it would melt their faces off. A gun like that could take mosquitoes off your skin at two hundred yards.
GaMeSpa had been completely overrun with IPC resources. This was going to be a major economic and political crisis. And that was before Bill and Fernando did whatever they were going to do with Nauzea. Throw in five werewolf marines, and oh, what a party!
From behind, Blaze watched Ling jam his starcycle to a stop, ease it into a doorway, and then down a staircase.
Yeah, down a staircase, inside one of the most famous space stations in the galaxy, on starcycles.
“Uh, Ling?” Blaze started. At least they could all communicate through their implants.
“Gunny, I know, it will be difficult, but those IPC soldiers got in our way. I’m not sure where I’m going, but this moment is very exciting!”
“Haven’t you been on GaMeSpa before?” Elle asked.
“Yes! When I was nine. But I was still a nursing Meelah feeding on my Meelah stepmother and drinking her Meelah milk! The memories are murky. And yet, I can remember her breasts perfectly.”
“Not the time for this,” Blaze growled.
“Not sure there is ever going to be a time for that,” Trina said with a grimace.
They needed a schematic of the space station. They needed help. But the IPC had jammed their communications, which included access to software GaMeSpa provided visitors for free. Their only hope was Lizzie, and she was being difficult.
They had no choice. Cali, then Elle, and finally Blaze and Trina followed the Meelah down the staircase. Blaze had to use a combination of horizontal and vertical thrusters, but they rode the stairs down in a din of choppy, crashing, metal-on-metal screeching chaos.
A door below opened and Ling closed it with a plasma blast. No need for any civilians to get hurt in their mad dash down, down, down to the bottom of GaMeSpa.
“We’re going the wrong way!” Elle complained.
“There is no wrong way!” Ling insisted. “We’re in the right place, at the right time, engaged in the right activity. Alwa
ys!”
“You weren’t with me in that bar outside of Barstow like five years ago!” Elle screamed back. “It was the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong pinche chica!”
“I would bet your orgasms turned out just fine.” Ling sighed. “Humans.”
Elle crashed into a wall but hung onto her starcycle. “You’ve got a point there,” she conceded. “Though I wish there had been less puking.”
“Focus, people!” Blaze ordered.
They reached the bottom, and Ling blew open the door with his plasma guns, taking out the hinges. The door slammed backward. He shot out into another suicidal turn. It nearly destroyed Cali. Elle made it and then so did Blaze. They found a bigger corridor, a road, definitely, though it was empty. Arrows flashed on the wall, and a holographic female Meelah appeared saying something that might’ve been a warning if she hadn’t said it in such a serene tone.
Blaze was going too fast to hear it. The road banked down and to the left.
And dumped them into oncoming traffic.
They’d reached the very bottom of GaMeSpa, which was a six-lane freeway made of glass. The roadway under the starcycles and bikes and blue-fire trucks was a transparent sheet of thick glass that allowed commuters views of the ice giant below. Several moons drifted through space against the backdrop of a methane storm sweeping across the equator of the massive blue world underneath. Sapphire winds caressed shiny white clouds as a red-rock moon drifted over the maelstrom.
Through the windows on the walls, the dust, ice chunks, and rocks of the ring spread out in either direction, as did more of GaMeSpa itself. To his left, Blaze saw the Clicker armada hanging there. One of the Cavalier-class attack ships floated into view. The Marcus Aurelius would be docked somewhere else, unloading its troops to find and arrest the crew of the Lizzie Borden. If they didn’t shoot them dead first.
Blaze Ramirez, wanted dead or alive. It was a cool concept…except for the dead part.
At first, Blaze was thrilled they’d found a highway after maneuvering through corridors and down staircases. But then.
No.