by Aaron Crash
It seemed so. But how could they even begin to fight that much evil shit?
Blaze called through comms, “Russell, Randi, you have to keep those werewolves away from that cube. If they hit it, we’re screwed. You understand me? And those Etrusca fish things, watch out for them.”
Blaze couldn’t wait for the response. His sister and her dogs attacked.
Ian, Tanner, and Chase bounded over the plane and went for Blaze. Arlo whipped out his .38 and with trembling hands, fired, and missed by a mile. Elle hit him with a stasis spell, and the old man was turned into a statue in cowboy boots. He was out of the fight for the spell’s duration. How long, Blaze didn’t know because the magic was based on the type of creature, and what in the fuck was Arlo anyway? They were all in spacesuits. He was in dirty jeans.
Trina fired her speargun, but before it could find a home in the heart of a werewolf, Elle disintegrated it with an Onyx missile. Fernando flung a spear and missed.
The three werewolves lunged at Blaze in unison. He plucked the shotgun off his hip and unloaded both barrels into Chase. The shot took the beast down, and he flipped ass over head until he rolled and lay still. He seemed dead.
Bill hurled his silver spear into Tanner, who went down, biting at the metal shaft of the weapon. But those knife teeth jutting from his jaws weren’t gonna do shit to free him from the silver hurting him. He rolled and bit and clawed up a storm.
Ian went to pounce on Blaze, only Cali pounced on him first. Both werewolves went down in a tangle, slashing with fangs, raking with claws, growling and barking and snarling.
Elle raked Blaze and his people with Onyx missiles. Ling whirled his nunchakus and deflected all the bolts aimed at him. Trina, however, was reduced to a sizzling mass of hurt full of holes. But she had the Onyx to heal her wounds.
Fernando tossed out a chunk of aragonite crystal and created a shield spell. But Elle’s missiles cut through the magic shield and peppered them both. Luckily, their armor took the brunt of the blows.
Fernando simply didn’t have the power to prevent Elle’s magical bolts from cutting through his protection spell.
Bill shook off the attack and opened up with his arm guns and did his best to kill Elle since, as they all knew, he hated her as much as he hated everyone else. Elle had a shield spell going, so his fusion and plasma bolts hit the shield and dissipated in flashes of red light.
Fernando, clearly, was torn. He took two steps toward Elle, then wheeled and went for Tanner. Tanner, with Bill’s spear still in his body, lunged at the Clicker doctor. Fernando ripped the weapon from the werewolf’s body and hammered it into his lupine nose. Tanner went down, out of the fight for a second. Then he was up, and the two continued to war.
Above, the Phasmida and Union starships unloaded onto the werewolves racing toward the initiator cube. The plasma blasts smacked into the wolves, frying off their fur and the silver covering them. Jared and Logan were thrown backward, but they adjusted their course. Jared tore through a Clicker ship and ripped apart the engines and the guns while Logan flew toward the cube, screaming through space.
Union ships opened fire on Logan, hitting him with lead bullets and with plasma bursts. He clawed through a machine gun nest on one of the Union ships and then rode his blue-fire engines up and over a newer Union vessel. When it got in the way, Logan used his fusion claws to burst onto the bridge, and Blaze could only imagine the slaughter taking place there.
Etrusca ruin tentacles ripped apart two Union ships that got too close. Ectoplasm tentacles destroyed two Clicker ships by pulling them into the liquid Onyx.
And the initiator cube continued its descent, as did the Etrusca sea creatures all making for the asteroid where Blaze and his crew fought Elle and her werewolves. The Onyx Gate would appear in eleven minutes. It was all going to happen at the same time.
And once the Onyx Gate appeared, they would only have fifteen minutes to close it.
The gunny cracked open the action of the shotgun, plucked out the used shells, and stuffed two more in.
Elle hurled honeycomb at Chase, healing the werewolf. The shotgun blast hadn’t hit his heart. Dammit. The silver pellet popped out of his skin. Chase roared to his feet and charged back toward Blaze.
“Gunny! The shotgun!” Ling yelled.
Blaze tossed the shotgun to the Meelah and figured he’d use his pickax to spike Chase’s heart.
Ling somersaulted across the rock, flipped around, and shoved the barrels into the chest of the werewolf. Chase twisted aside at the last minute. He was winged by the shot, but he was still hacking and slashing with the fusion daggers shoved through his stumps. Ling dropped the shotgun, got his nunchakus swinging, and blocked Chase’s attacks, but he was losing ground against the thing.
Trina sped toward Elle, and Blaze had no idea what she was thinking, but Elle tossed out handcuffs and stopped the Irish vampire with a stasis spell. She then hit the wounded werewolves with a healing spell. All grew a foot longer and a hundred pounds heavier. Using her telekinetic power, she lifted the spear that had been in Tanner and sent it hurtling through the air at Cali.
Blaze raised his arm gun and sent a full charge of fusion energy crackling across the landscape. It burned the spear to slag and hit both Ian and Cali. It singed off their hair, but both healed their fur back even as they fought.
Then Elle tossed bat guano mixed with egg shells out of her hand and fireballed Bill. It wasn’t normal fire, since there was little oxygen, it was a ball of burning Onyx getting bigger, blacker, and redder as it went.
Bill was sent sprawling across the ground, his nanotech and visor just scorched but his arm guns completely melted.
He tried to rise but then collapsed onto the asteroid plane. He didn’t get up.
“No!” the Lizzie Borden screamed. She was coming in hot.
That demon-possessed starship wasn’t about to let anyone hurt Bill, her love, her life, her everything.
THIRTY_
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The Lizzie Borden careened in, transforming like she’d done at the Promenade, coming to save Bill from Elle’s evil magic.
Once more, the starship became a giant robot, but this time, the bridge was the thing’s head, and one arm held a fusion torpedo as the other arm became every single gun on the starship. In disbelief, Blaze watched a blade of fusion energy burst out of the robot’s hand. It had a huge fusion sword.
Lizzie’s voice boomed through comms. “No, Elle, as a former demon, I can let you do a lot of really shitty things, but you can’t hhhurt Bill!”
The transformed starship stomped across the asteroid’s plane, going for Elle. The Onyx goddess looked tiny compared the giant robot wielding the fusion sword. Only she had almost infinite power.
Elle cast a consume spell, teeth clattering over the rocks, and she pulled in new power, draining the Onyx from the ectoplasm ocean no matter how far the distance. Powered up, she hit Lizzie with an Onyx missile and then a barrage of fireballs.
Balls of red and black Onyx flame drove the starship back, making her stumble from the sheer power. Lizzie’s shield flickered blue as it failed.
Lizzie returned fire with her plasma gun fist. The crackling red light hit Elle’s own shields, leaving her unharmed. Lizzie shot up into the air, hacking at the Onyx goddess with her fusion sword, but Elle levitated away. She had her own katana out, and the two fenced for a moment, Elle using her shield spell and her fusion katana to keep Lizzie’s gargantuan broadsword from cutting her in half.
The Onyx goddess and the starship floated above them. Lizzie’s glowing golden sword bounced off Elle’s shield in a spray of crimson sparks. Elle’s red fusion katana slashed through Lizzie’s midsection, and the robot ship screamed in pain.
Well, not pain, but a close relative of it.
Tanner streaked across the asteroid and bashed into Cali, throwing her off Ian. Both of the werewolves turned and sped toward Blaze.
“Gunny!” Ling called out. He was still fightin
g Chase, avoiding the fusion daggers, bouncing up onto the back of the wolf, and smacking him with a nunchaku before flipping off. In midair, the Meelah threw Blaze the shotgun back, and the gunny caught it. But he was going to have to load it. It was going to be close. Could he get the final two shells into both barrels before the werewolves hit him?
And with Elle healing them, he had to blow their hearts out.
Coming for you, Blaze. Ian again, in his skull, somehow able to keep his wits even though he was a fiendish beast.
Blaze ejected the spent shells and slid a fresh one in.
We chose this, Blaze. We chose to get bitten. We looked into why you killed Jameson, and we realized demons were real, that we could share in that power. We found a werewolf to bite us, and then we bit each other.
“I don’t mean to judge,” Blaze muttered, “but I was never much into dudes biting me. I like getting my nibbles from hot Irish vampires.” It was a good quip, but fury burned through Blaze. The hurt at being hunted by his former marine buddies was gone, and raw anger replaced it. These assholes had chosen to be evil. And they needed to be put down like the rabid dogs they were.
He got the second shell in. Tanner leapt. Ian leapt. Blaze jammed the shotgun into Tanner’s chest—hit him with both barrels to make sure—and blew his heart out of his back. The werewolf hit the asteroid rock in a slump of dead meat. Silver in the heart, and the heart of the wolf would beat no more. Dead, Tanner became human. The knives in his mouth remained, pin-cushioning his skull.
Ian latched onto Blaze’s arm. Wrong arm to bite, though, as the teeth only dug into his armor and not into his skin. Since the shotgun was spent, the gunny fired his arm gun into Ian’s mouth, and while it wouldn’t kill him, it would give him a bad case of indigestion. The werewolf was pushed back, his lips, teeth, tongue, and throat blackened from the micro blasts of fusion energy.
A second later, Ian was back on him. Blaze dropped the shotgun and gripped his ax, the silver spikes extended.
Cali had run back into the fight, but she was going for Trina. It was pretty clear by the evil glint in her eye that she was going to use this opportunity to get revenge against the Irish vampire.
Trina was still under the effects of the stasis spell and only had seconds left to live. She’d be dead meat if Cali got to her.
Blaze drove a spike through Ian’s neck. The werewolf howled and was thrown back. Blaze then triggered Cali’s bracelets, and she went from wolf to woman and slid down onto the rock. Her nanotech armor covered her completely in seconds before the cold could kill her. 2.7 Kelvin, -270.45 Celsius, -454.81 Fahrenheit—no matter what measurement you used, that was a wee bit chilly.
Ian dove for Blaze.
Chase left his fight with Ling and launched himself at Cali.
Blaze hacked a piece off Ian’s shoulder, but the werewolf clawed through the gunny’s leg.
Cali was even less lucky. She was now vulnerable to every attack. The dagger-fisted werewolf drove his fusion knives through the shy Mormon girl’s stomach. She let out a shriek.
Blaze went to help her but Ian, slavering and snarling, jumped on the gunny’s back. Both went down.
Arlo shook off the stasis spell and slammed a shoulder into the werewolf, but Ian laughed at the attack and backhanded the old man, sending him rolling across the asteroid.
Trina also came alive, free from the spell, and sent a silver spear through Chase’s heart. A cable was attached to the spear, and it spooled out from her speargun.
Chase let out a roar of pain and fell to the side. Trina deftly clipped the end of the cable to her last spear and sent it flying through Ian’s abdomen. She’d missed his heart, but now Ian had a hooked spear in his gut and he was connected to Chase’s dead body. In death, the werewolf reverted back to his human shape, which quickly iced over from the freezing cold. His forearms weren’t big enough to house the fusion daggers, and the emitters burst from the icy skin and rolled across the asteroid and winked off.
Ian snarled and lunged at Blaze again. Fernando batted him back with a fusion spear. His silver spear had been melted by Elle’s fire. On top of that, Ian was now tethered to Chase’s dead body.
Blaze rolled away. Fernando used a different tactic and slammed his fusion spear through Chase’s body and deep into the rock of the asteroid. Ian found himself on a short leash.
Blaze snapped open Cali’s bracelets and she wolfed out again, the nanotech running back into her bracelets to allow her body to grow. She let out a howl of fury and came charging up to Blaze. She was pissed, but in her werewolf form, the wound in her gut would heal. Blaze snapped closed the bracelets, and Cali fell into his arms.
She wept.
He held her. “I gotcha. You’re okay.” The gunny glanced up.
Elle and Lizzie were still battling. The Onyx goddess used her telekinetic powers to rip off sections of metal before crushing a leg and slamming Lizzie down onto the asteroid.
Lizzie moaned, half buried in rock, pummeled, but Elle didn’t care. She cast out handcuffs and froze the giant robot with a stasis spell. She drifted down to stand on the battered metal of the blue-and-black spacecraft.
Using her telekinesis, she plucked the giant fusion sword from Lizzie’s grip and sent it hurling through space up into the initiator cube coming down.
The two werewolves above, Jared and Logan, emerged from wrecking two more Clicker ships. Both flew and drove their fusion claws into the initiator cube at the same time. The star energy ignited the mysterious magic in the cube.
All that was happening in the far distance, so Blaze had to adjust his helmet sensors to magnify his vision. Then he could see what was happening more clearly. The tentacles on the cube’s surface sprouted, and its sea creatures flooded space.
The fifth Etrusca ruin came alive in an ocean of tentacles and creatures. Its flat surfaces lined up with the flat surfaces of the other four ruins. All came together to form a body, with the fifth ruin becoming the torso and the other ruins becoming arms and legs.
Hands and feet were forming at the ends of the rectangles, which weren’t solid rectangles anymore, but were bowing out, becoming jointed limbs. A giant helmet was forming at the top of the fifth ruin as well. For now, however, both the helmet and the other parts of the armor were empty. But Blaze knew it wouldn’t be empty for long.
It was armor that was part metal, part tentacle, and the size of five Australias put together. The last few Clicker and Union ships seemed like flies compared to the massive thing.
Blaze, holding Cali, was joined by Arlo, Trina, and Ling. Fernando helped Bill to his feet, and though his arm guns were melted, he’d survived his fight with Elle. They’d gotten lucky. Tanner and Chase were dead, and Ian was leashed. He was flying around with his blue-fire engines strapped to his legs, but he couldn’t tear Chase off the spear. The cable held him at bay for the moment.
Blaze and his crew all stopped to stare at Panashoat forming above them. They’d magnified their vision as well.
Elle laughed victoriously from the top of the Lizzie Borden.
As Panashoat’s armor came together, the sea creatures from his tentacles were about to swamp the asteroid, millions of the alien-faced fish monsters. They were Etrusca demons of unknown strength, but their purpose was clear. To kill Blaze and his friends, to follow the will of the Onyx goddess, and to worship at the feet of the All-Pig. Joining them would be Jared and Logan. Those werewolves would just love to snack on the crew of the Lizzie Borden.
Elle laughed some more.
Blaze re-adjusted his vision to gaze at his companions—all wounded, but all capable of fighting still. He checked their various VHIs, and they all were under one hundred percent. Bill was hurt the worst, at fifty percent, but seeing the Lizzie brought low had done far more to dampen his spirits than his wounds had.
Yet, they’d survived round one. Blaze wasn’t sure if they were going to survive round two.
In unison, all started walking toward Elle. All were grim-faced a
nd steel-souled. They had to put down one of their own.
Blaze jacked another shell into his arm gun and triggered the fusion blades on his ax. Trina vamped out, black-eyed and translucent skinned, every vein visible. Cali walked tall despite the tears streaming down her cheeks. She knew what she’d have to do once her bracelets were opened. Fernando and Bill had a mixture of spears and plasma guns. Arlo took up the rear, trembling so badly he could hardly walk. He had the katana and the fusion pistol, but they were still on the string over his shoulder. His .38 was stuffed in his front pocket. In his left hand was the green bottle. It would be weapon enough in the end.
All of them approached the Onyx goddess.
Elle Ramirez had to die.
THIRTY-ONE_
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Ectoplasm from the ocean around them swirled into the tentacled armor created by the triggered Etrusca ruins. The asteroids had been dissolved in the liquid Onyx and only open space remained. All that matter, all that energy inside the ectoplasm, rushed into the armor, forming something there, but Blaze couldn’t see what it was. And he had bigger problems to consider.
He barked out orders. “Fernando, we’ll need a shield spell. We have two werewolves coming in and a swarm of Etrusca creatures.”
“Yes, Gunny,” the Clicker witch doctor said.
“Bill, get to the Lizzie,” Blaze said. “We’ll need her back in action to close the Onyx Gate when it appears. That’ll be in about five minutes.”
Blaze switched to comms. “General Russell and Ambassador, if you can, slow that swarm down. Not sure what the Etrusca ruins are becoming, but you’re not going to be able to do a thing against it. I’m thinking if we kill the Onyx goddess in front of us, that might slow or stop more bad shit from happening.”
“We can’t, Blaze. We’re being overwhelmed,” Randi called out in concern.
General Russell was silent. But Clicker ships flew into the storm of creatures swirling down from the massive moon-sized suit of armor filling with ectoplasm. Plasma fire and explosions lit up the space. Stars were appearing as well as the shape of Jupiter and its moons far in the distance. The liquid Onyx ocean was nearly gone.