by Aaron Crash
They cleared the air as Arlo, the Meelah, Cali, Trina, Ling, and Elle cleared the ground. The first wave of attacks was over.
While Kosnowski had lost half of his soldiers, the Meelah had fared better. Magistrate Mack still stood, though he’d been wounded by a hook. His fur was wet with blood. Nineteen of his Meelah were on their feet, males and females, but all had been hurt in the battle.
Blaze closed Cali’s bracelets, and she turned back into a Human. She skidded into Trina and tried to slap her. The Irish vampire caught her hand. “No, I get to hit you since you’re a murderous demon-wolf. You don’t get to hit me.”
“Bitch,” Cali hissed.
“You’re the female dog, bitch,” Trina snapped. “I’m the bloodthirsty slut.” Her face and arms were gashed from Cali’s teeth, though she’d kept Cali’s fusion talons off her skin.
That was going to be a problem. Having Trina be Cali’s keeper wasn’t a very good idea. But as a vampire, Trina could heal any wound Cali dished out as long as the werewolf didn’t decapitate her and if the vampire avoided her fusion claws.
Trina bent, pushed a Human Konobi onto his back, and drank from his jugular. Her wounds healed immediately. That was good news in a grisly sort of way. There was plenty for Trina to eat as long as she got to the body before the blood coagulated.
Blaze walked by Denning and pounded him on the back. “Kinda makes you a believer now, don’t it, Denning?”
The security director sputtered, “I don’t understand. I can see them. I don’t believe in Onyx energy, but I can see them. Wouldn’t they stop coming at me since I’m a sceptic?”
Elle harrumphed. “As if. These are tortured people. They are real. The problem the IPC had was they would try and recreate Onyx events in labs using the scientific method. The Onyx energy wouldn’t manifest itself. Here? Outside the lab? Different deal.”
“It’s true,” Denning gasped. “It’s all true. Those people shouldn’t be able to walk, and they are running. They want to do to me what this Nauzea thing did to them. It’s evil. I was wrong. I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”
For a split second, Blaze felt sorry for the guy. But then he saw Raziel, further on up a path through the courtyard. She was pacing, frazzled, hissing at them.
It was clear they couldn’t dawdle. Nauzea had more insane things to throw at them.
And what was that ghostly dark-green glow pulsating in the distance? Blaze thought it looked familiar, but he’d fought so much shit in the past three weeks, it was hard to pinpoint anything.
And the werewolves were coming.
Now that they weren’t fighting, the memories, the trauma, the mental anguish was returning.
Blaze marched forward, and the remnants of the people still alive and untortured followed him.
Denning sidled up to the gunny. “I’m beginning to see why they follow you.”
The Astral Corps marine grinned. “I’m not sure why they follow me, but we all follow the cat.”
They crunched over the dead leaf litter. It was like autumn on Earth, but no wind scattered the leaves. As they drew closer and closer to the pulsating glow in the thickest part of the bare-limbed Meelah trees, they had to step over cast-off exoskeletons. At first, the husks of cast-off tissue were small, the size of a finger, but as they went, the pale-green shells grew to the size of a cat, then a dog, then a horse. Blaze thought they were Clicker casings at first, but the sizes were wrong, and the Phasmida shed their exoskeletons in grand rituals. These husks came from something different, demonic, big and burrowing.
Blaze noticed holes in the floor, wide enough for Elle to crawl inside, though not wide enough for him. The edges of the marble looked chewed. So, what could chew through the floor and create a hole like that?
Blaze didn’t know, but so far, Nauzea’s power had manifested itself in psychic attacks, control over the tortured Konobi, and the abattoir chains. She hadn’t summoned creatures or created monsters. So, what was this?
Then it slammed home into Blaze’s thick head. A demon generator. That was what glowed in the distance. Bill and Fernando had finished their little science project. And he knew what they would be fighting next. And what would be coming out of the holes in the ground. Shit.
Charles clicked into a commlink in one of his hands. A dizzying series of clicks answered.
Ambassador Randi asked, “Is that General Russell? Is he sending in troops?”
“No,” Charles replied. “He says it’s too dangerous and the Clicker population has already been evacuated. Everyone else has been killed or tortured into an insane bloodlust. General Russell is now waiting to see how we will fare against the Onyx entities on the station. He’s very interested in our chances. There’s a betting pool. He has bet heavily against us.”
Blaze sighed. “Crazy pinche Clickers, man. Hey, Denning, did you know the Phasmida know about Onyx energy but are waiting for it to take out Humanity? Then they’ll go in, re-colonize our planets, and deal with the demons. It’s what ended the Bug War. Clickers figured the demons would do their dirty work for them.”
Denning swallowed hard. “I…just…I’ve read reports on that. But I was paid, paid so very well, not to look too closely. And the promises, they promised me so much.”
“And kept you working hard, right?” Arlo asked. He lifted the green bottle of Barf Baby and squinted at the little bit of booze left. “Money, promises, and no time to think…and that’s what corporations are made of. Goddamn East India Trading Company totally fucked me the same way.”
Blaze couldn’t believe the old man was that old, but with those wrinkles and crankiness, well, maybe. What Denning said did make Blaze wonder if the upper echelons of the IPC had been infiltrated by Onyx entities. Or were they just greedy and stupid? Either option didn’t bode well for them.
Then came the next wave of horrors.
Shadows among the bare trees and naked bushes moved toward them in a rippling motion. The bottom part would contract, the top part would lengthen, and then the top half would pull the bottom half along. It looked painful. It was slow. But there were so many of the things. They were the size of starcycles, seven feet long, thick and round and furry.
A strong smell hit them in the nose: the stench of rotting meat, too much of your grandmother’s perfume, and milk left out in the sun on an August afternoon.
“What are those things?” Denning asked in a fearful, whiny voice. “They’re not…Human!”
“Or Clicker. Or Meelah,” Blaze said. “My Phasmida brothers built a demon generator. They’ve mutated the Meelah caterpillars. They stink as a way of protecting themselves.”
“That’s what smells so good!” Ling burst out.
The Meelah caterpillars, perverted by Onyx energy, emerged from the burrows around them. The creatures looked like the saltmarsh caterpillars Blaze had grown up with on Earth, but these were greener, and a whole lot bigger.
And there seemed to be millions of them! Fuzzy green spikes covered their squirming bodies. They had mandibles, razor-sharp jaws that were able to chew through both marble and metal. Their maxillae, the tiny mouth arms that guided food into their gullets, were under their mandibles. Their antennae, up top, worked and whirred in hungry anticipation. Long tentacles tipped their heads, which was another way they could shovel in their suppers. Each had three sets of thoracic legs with cruel hooked feet that allowed them to hold their food while they chewed it down. The four sets of strong prolegs in their abdomen had even more wicked-looking hooks.
Blaze and Elle exchanged glances. They knew what they had to do: destroy the demon generator.
That pulsating green glow was a magic-infused machine that concentrated and focused the Onyx energy into whatever creatures were around it. The Meelah worms had been the target. And while the Meelah worms had only eaten plants when they were small, these new caterpillar demons would have an insatiable hunger for living flesh.
Ling let out a laugh. “The irony is, we’ve eaten Meelah worms for h
undreds of thousands of years, and now they mean to eat us! That irony is as delicious as the worms themselves.”
“Ling, Cali, Trina, and Arlo, you get out front and push forward. We can’t retreat,” Blaze yelled. “The rest of you, circle up and hold your positions.”
From all sides the green demon caterpillars rippled toward them. Their green blood squeezed from their abdomens into their thoraxes, pushing them along.
Cali wolfed out and dashed forward to begin rending the caterpillars with her fusion claws and fangs. The mandibles snapped into her skin but couldn’t penetrate it. Tentacles circled her throat, but she clawed them in two. Hooked thoracic legs tore out her fur but she was unscathed. The Meelah worms, on the other hand, were soon thrashing and dying in pools of sticky green blood. When their fuzz and skin was ripped opened, the creatures smelled even worse. The spoiled milk stench mingled with a greasy-corpse odor.
Trina ran next to Cali. The vampire used her plasma rifle to blow apart other caterpillars around the pair, and when Cali wheeled on her, Trina shoved her into other worms. Once their hooks hit the werewolf, she had to extricate herself rather than go after the vampire.
Arlo had one of Elle’s katanas. Casually, he cut through green bodies, severing head tentacles and cutting off feet. When snapping mandibles came close to him, he either weaved away at the last second or cut them off with the glowing sword. He wasn’t sipping from his bottle, but he kept it cradled to his chest. He must’ve been saving his last sips for a special occasion…other than hacking through demon caterpillars.
Ling’s dual nunchakus spun in golden arcs of star energy. Watching him was dizzying. The circles of light cut easily through the flesh of the creatures as the Meelah danced among the demons, leaping, whirling, in constant motion, moving too fast for anything to touch him.
The four cut a path through the caterpillars. The Meelah followed and bashed away any monsters that were left behind, knocking the worms unconscious. They were still not using the more lethal settings on their staves.
Blaze found that interesting. The Meelah ate the worms, but most only ate them one day a week, on Sunday. And it wasn’t Sunday. It was clear the space sloths weren’t going to kill the worms if they weren’t devouring them, and the demon caterpillars were too big to eat!
Ling, however, didn’t have such qualms.
Blaze stood with Ambassador Randi, Denning, and Charles, who were too scared and untrained to fight. The gunny coordinated their defenses, ready to jump if the line broke.
Kosnowski and his IPC bluetroopers held the rear with their plasma rifles, blowing the rippling caterpillars apart. The smell of the burning fuzz and fried flesh of the worms was far better than their natural stink or the odiferous awfulness of their insides splashing out onto the marble.
But the numbers were against them. A caterpillar lunged forward and snapped off an IPC soldier’s head. The worm stuffed the helmet, skull and all, down its throat using its maxillae. Its head tentacles circled another soldier’s throat. Its thoracic legs ripped through his armor, through his ribs, and into his vitals. The hooks caught his lungs and ripped them out.
Blaze drove his fusion ax through the caterpillar’s head, frying the brain like worm bacon. He raised his left arm gun and again used the microbursts to blast into other worms. But their physiology was a lot less complicated and far tougher than Humans’. They took the blasts easily and kept on rippling toward them.
The gunny changed his weapon’s settings to three big blasts each. Those blew caterpillars in half, and while they flopped and flailed around in their own blood and guts, they couldn’t constrict anymore and were taken out of the fight.
With Blaze helping, the bluetroopers held their line and slowly walked backwards as the Meelah troops moved forward. They were doing well despite the vast numbers of the caterpillars and how slippery the marble was from the gallons of spilled green bug blood.
The Onyx-imbued monster caterpillars were everywhere, on every building, every stall, every tree, and every bit of marble. Some had even climbed up to cover the glass of the ceiling high above. The Promenade grew ever dimmer. The only light was from the glow of the monster generator, the red glow of the plasma rifles, and the flashing golden fusion weapons of Blaze and his hunters.
A howl broke through the battle, the long ear-piercing ghostly sound of a single wolf’s song. But not single for long. Another howl rose, then another, then another. Five wolves howled in the distance.
Ian, Tanner, Chase, Jared, and Logan.
His Astral Corps buddies were coming, and Blaze had the only weapon that could fight them in a sea of monster Meelah caterpillars.
Elle’s voice broke through comms. “Blaze, Bill and Fernando, oh shit. Come and see. Come and look. It’s so not good.”
Blaze’s heart dropped. Bill and Fernando…oh…no…
TWENTY-THREE_
╠═╦╬╧╪
“Kosnowski, hold your line. I have to go!” Blaze spun away as the IPC bluetroopers and their commander closed ranks.
A Meelah worm drove its mandibles into a Meelah cop. It chewed through the space sloth, disemboweling the poor guy. Blaze cut the caterpillar in half, blasted apart another worm high on its abdominal prolegs, and beheaded another one.
Cali and Trina had been pulled off to the right and were engaged not only with a tangle of caterpillars but also with more Human Konobi. They had crawled up from somewhere. These had been wrapped tightly in wire, so tightly they could barely breathe and their eyes were barely visible, and yet they shambled toward the werewolf and the vampire. The caterpillars chewed through the wire binding the Konobi and into their bones underneath.
Ling and Arlo were on the other side of the main path. The pair were cutting through caterpillars and Konobi. The poor Humans on the left side had been sliced repeatedly, and those shallow cuts were covered in salt; dark brown dried blood mingled with smears of white. These attacked with abattoir chains. Ling moved and flipped away from the hooks while Arlo merely dodged them, anticipating every attack, even those from behind him.
Blaze jumped over a worm, slid through its goo, and came to a stop next to Elle. She had her katana and her fusion pistol ready, but could they really fight Bill and Fernando?
The Clicker brothers stood next to a glowing metal orb made from scrap metal and junked electronics. Both had rusted spikes driven into their arms and legs. Both had their fusion spears glowing, ready to fight. Fernando held a snare sphere. Its lights blinked red, though it was apparent that Nauzea could wield her diabolic power from inside the sphere.
Elle sighed. “This is awful. I hate fighting our own.”
Blaze checked his display—still jammed, but he sent out a call anyway. “Lizzie, if you’re there, we need you. Bill needs you.”
Only static answered.
Fernando clicked. “Life is suffering, my friends. Come and rejoice with us in the agony.”
Bill followed Nauzea’s favorite saying with clicks of his own.
His brother translated. “Oh, and Bill hates you.”
The Clickers dashed forward, spears raised.
“I’m going to goddess out, Blaze,” Elle said. “It’s the only way. Your werewolf friends are coming, and our people are barely holding off the caterpillars. Nombre de Dios, I hate worms.”
“Not yet, Elle. Don’t give up hope yet. And technically, the caterpillars aren’t worms.”
Blaze sprinted forward and met Bill and Fernando together. He slashed apart Fernando’s spear and it clattered to the ground. Bill’s lower left plasma gun fired, but Elle was there to deflect the energy bolts with her katana. She used her fusion pistol to melt his big left arm cannon into slag before he could fire it.
Blaze ducked under Elle’s katana, slashed up with his ax, and cut off Bill’s plasma gun arm. Fernando feinted, then rammed an arm spike through Elle’s armor and into her arm.
She hissed at the pain. Blaze drove the haft of his ax into Fernando’s skull and dropped the Clic
ker doctor to the ground.
Bill drove his fusion spear into Blaze’s shoulder, but the gunny dropped to his knee, so the blade burned his skin, but he saved his joint. The pain brightened everything, and the adrenaline hit his system hard.
Elle went to severe Bill’s spear, but the Clicker engineer caught her katana with the fusion blade, and the two parried and blocked each other’s attacks. They moved away from Blaze, leaving the gunny free. He sped toward the monster generator to hack it apart with his ax.
He never had the chance.
Ian, as a werewolf, attacked.
Ian wasn’t just furless, he was skinless as well. The Astral Corps armor was gone, and the Terran moon stones had been shoved into his skull. There was no going back to being human for this werewolf. He’d outrun his comrades, loped over caterpillars, and pushed through Konobi to hit Blaze hard. The gunny was knocked to the ground.
On his back, Blaze looked into the eyes of the werewolf driven insane by torture. Nauzea had turned Ian and his fellow werewolves into Konobi. The gunny remembered his visions of what had happened to them.
Ian had been skinned alive, but his muscles and sinew were kept together by pure Onyx energy and the insanity of Nauzea’s depravity. That was why he hadn’t been able to heal back his flesh. The archduchess of torture wanted him in agony.
Ian’s voice filled his mind, another one of the archduchess’s tricks. You killed Jameson. You betrayed us all. We could’ve helped him. We could’ve saved him. We could’ve joined him. But no, you killed him.
The other werewolves were coming, Fernando was coming around, and if he got to his feet, Elle would have to fight both of the Clicker brothers. And Fernando could cast spells. He still wore his bandolier of pouches full of spell components.
More of the Meelah and more bluetroopers fell before the onslaught of demon caterpillars.