by Aaron Crash
He’d just have to hope for the best and get the Onyx Gate closed. Then, hopefully, things could go back to normal. How would he adapt to civilian life? No telling.
“There he goes, my brother thinking,” Elle said sarcastically. “Kinda fun to watch.”
“You guys are impossible.” Cali got up and approached Blaze with the cat in her arms. “Do you want to pet her, Blaze?”
The gunny reached out a hand and felt the orange, black, and white fur on his fingers. The cat was silky soft. It looked up at him with yellow eyes, but now that he was touching the feline, she didn’t seem so bad.
Cali pushed the cat into Blaze’s arms. It was awkward, he wasn’t a cat guy at all, but suddenly he had an armload of calico. Raziel snuggled up next to him and rubbed her cheek on his chest.
Blaze felt himself grin. “I think she might like me.”
Cali held his hand in hers. “I’m sorry for saying I hated you. I don’t want to fight. It’s just…I nearly tore off your arm. Elle and Fernando worked on you for an hour, and they said you almost lost the arm because of me.”
“Because of the fight, Cali, not because of you,” Blaze said. “I know the risks when I open those bracelets. And you’re not alone. Trina nearly fed on me, and now Lizzie is the leftovers of an archduke of hell. And then there’s my evil sister, the cherry on top of a dangerous sundae.”
Elle rose and joined them by the door. “Elle Ramirez, evil Onyx witch and demon hunter. Pleased to meet you.”
“Elle, what are we facing down on Hutchinson Prime?” Blaze asked. “I guess the IPC blockade really was for the two stars colliding.”
“I don’t think so. I get the feeling the IPC is spooked, and they were glad to get away from the planet to come get us.” His sister swallowed hard and went pale. “Blaze, something bad is on Hutchinson Prime. Maybe it’s this Chthonic, lord of haunts, master of death, or whatever. He’s down there, and we’ve seen how awful archdukes are. Maybe that explains why the entire planet is one mess of Onyx. Whatever is going on, I’m scared.”
“But not of some demon lord,” Blaze said. He knew his sister. “You’re scared about seeing Granny again.”
Elle’s eyes filled with tears. “I don’t think I can, Blaze. It hurts too much to think about her…about what she did to me. You’re going to have to deal with her. I’ll get us close, but you have to be the one to talk to her.”
“Why?” Cali asked in small voice.
“Because I really might kill her,” Elle said. “And she’s Human, I guess. My brother doesn’t want us killing any more Humans. But there’s so many of them around. And, I would like to add, Granny might not be a person. I mean, we both know Arlo isn’t.”
Blaze went to tell her about his vision, but the cat let out a sharp hiss. It clawed away from Blaze, leapt to the floor, and ran out of the room. Blaze wheeled and ran into the hallway. Once again, the cat had simply vanished, or that’s how it seemed.
Fernando broke through comms. “Uh, Gunny? Remember how I chided you on your stories about dragons? Well, it seems I was mistaken. I am seeing dragons. And it seems the neutron star, well, as odd as it sounds—”
“Out with it!” Blaze boomed.
“The neutron star is birthing the dragons, and they are incoming, Ling is still outside. If we don’t get our blue-fire engines fixed, we are stuck here. The SWD engine is down. Bill had to take it offline to work on the blue-fire mechanisms.”
Blaze turned to his sister. “You ready to slay dragons, Elle?”
“I thought you’d never ask!” Elle hit him with a heal spell, and Blaze’s VHI skyrocketed to a hundred percent. They sped away down the corridor.
Cali called after them, “Have fun being knights, guys. I’ll stay here.”
Blaze wondered about that. But Cali knew her limits. He couldn’t ask her to keep on saving their butts.
And the chance to slay a dragon, him, Gunnery Sergeant Ramon “Blaze” Ramirez? Hell to the fuck yeah. He swung into the weapons locker. Though it was in ruins, half full of hullfoam, he still found his plasma minigun and the silver spear gun attachment. Who knew what kind of stuff hurt a space dragon? No clue.
Elle shoved twisted stacks of metal and half-slagged shelves out of the way to get to a couple of fusion pistols and her katanas. Goddamn Lizzie could warp the entire ship and change every room, but she couldn’t fix the damn shelves. Demons. Computers. Same pinche thing.
They left the armory, sprinted up the steps, and ran into the cargo bay. Both sprang onto the starcycles still cooling from their last battle. They shoved on nanotech gauntlets, and the microscopic robots covered them in armor. Elle took a minute to inject herself with one of the three syringes. A bandolier of hydrogen shells, pouches, and the syringes crisscrossed her chest. Blaze checked his shotgun and his ax and attached the minigun to the nanotech on the clawed-up backseat. He was taking it just in case his fusion weapons failed to do the trick. Blaze looped the silver cable and attached it to the spear gun. They were ready.
The Lizzie Borden shuddered. Bill had gotten her shields back to working, but the blue-fire engines still had issues given the fact they weren’t moving. Was the dragon already on the ship or was it breathing fire on them? Only one way to find out.
Lizzie’s voice came over comms. “Dragons, drawn hhhere out of the neutron star, to stop you both from getting to Granny. Not the work of my brother, Chthonic, but of my father, I’m sure. And the Etrusca ruin is coming as well, also the work of my father. I hhhate him so, so much. Bill and I will kill hhhim, just you watchhh.”
Though the voice was definitely female, as in Lizzie, everything that was said seemed to come from the demonic part of her…him…Xerxes. “What do you mean the Etrusca ruin is the work of your father?” Elle asked.
“By midnight. The Etrusca ruin will be hhhere by midnight…when the ghhhosts are out!”
“Come on, Elle! It’s not the time to talk. It’s time to fight!” Yeah, the info was crucial, but they could interrogate their half-demon computer once they stopped the dragon from tearing apart their ship.
Ling’s voice broke through. “It’s very large. To think, I am seeing a dragon. In the Shaolin monastery, we learned dragon kung fu, and such mythological creatures fascinated me. I must join you in studying them.”
“We’re not studying them. If they mess with us, we’re going to kill them,” Blaze said. “You need to fix the engines.”
“I’m here doing that,” Fernando said. “You’ll need Ling’s help against the, um, dragon. Make that dragons. Plural. More are coming!”
The nanotech portal in the side of the cargo bay opened. Blaze and Elle shot out. They were greeted with their first glimpse of the creature.
It was big, about three times the size of their ship, with long wings that were semitransparent. Hooked claws topped each wing, as long and as sharp as spears. It had talons on its feet at the end of muscled legs. The skin of the thing was a putrid corpse-white and greasy looking. A colorless ooze bubbled off it. The dragon’s long tail slithered out behind it but then split into three long lengths of polished bone like swords. Great, the thing had bone swords coming out of its end.
Blaze wasn’t sure it had eyes, but it had opaque eye bulges, almost like what chickens had once their eggs broke. The thing opened its huge jaws to bare teeth of hardened glass. A bright light traveled up its chest, up its throat, and out its mouth. A stream of photons struck the Lizzie’s shields, slamming the ship down.
Ling soared up from the back of the cargo bay, using the carbon dioxide emissions stored in his spacesuit. He was already swinging his dual nunchakus. His plasma bow was on his back, stuck to his nanotech spacesuit.
In the distance, emerging from the neutron star, other winged serpents were streaking toward them. How were they moving? Blaze used his combat display to patch into the Lizzie’s telescopes and then he saw. Their necks were craned down between their legs, and they were using their photon breath as engines to send them through space. T
he ones emerging from the star were smaller than the big one slamming his ship.
As they flew, they grew. The things must’ve just hatched. Too bad their life was going to be so short.
“Ling, I don’t have a starcycle for you, but I do have a way for you to get to the dragon.”
Blaze whipped the minigun around and fired the silver spear with the cable attached. It streaked through space. The cable unwound and the tip slammed into the chest of the beast.
Ling sheathed one nunchaku while catching the cable. He swung up and around the dragon until he was on top of the thing. He swung his nunchaku and brought the length of starlight onto the wing, cutting into it, nearly severing it.
While the Shaolin sloth attacked its back, Elle fired her starcycle’s fusion cannon, and a blast of star energy pounded into the creature’s belly, blowing through it. Bowels and blood flooded through space, and the dragon shrieked photons. The deadly breath caught Elle, but she’d thrown out aragonite crystals, shielding herself. She was enshrouded in a sphere of red light.
Blaze already had the minigun out, so he started the six barrels spinning. Plasma bursts cut through the thick skin of the dragon’s neck. The thing was big enough for Blaze to engage it with his weapon without fear of hurting Ling.
The dragon lunged forward, wing dangling from Ling’s attack, head wobbling from its nearly severed neck. A hook clawed the minigun out of Blaze’s hands and sent him hurling through space. The nanotech on his bike glued him to it so he wasn’t sent off helplessly, but the blow stunned him for a second.
Elle zoomed up and around and finished blowing off the thing’s head with the plasma guns on her bike. Headless, the dragon went limp.
And then a dozen other monsters hit them, each as big as the leviathan they’d just killed.
“Good news, all of our weapons are effective against the beasts,” Ling said through comms. “Bad news, there seems to be a lot of them.”
All the new dragons opened their mouths, and each fanged cavern puked streams of radioactive light particles that could blast through their nanotech armor and melt the skin off their bones.
Twelve streams of photonic energy merged into one huge torrent of death. It would kill them all, destroy the ship, and leave nothing but dust floating in the vacuum of space.
Even if they survived the initial blast, how could they survive against dozens of the monsters?
Short answer, they couldn’t.
They’d have to run.
But, oh yeah, the Lizzie’s engines were offline.
Sometimes being a demon hunter sucked ass.
SEVEN_
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Elle tossed out more aragonite crystals, protecting them. The glare from the photon breath striking the red shield made Blaze squint, and the heat made him sweat.
More of the dragons emerged from the neutron star racing toward them.
“We’re going to have to run and regroup,” Blaze said. “Bill, how close are we to getting our engines back online? Either the blue-fires or the SWD engine, don’t care.”
Fernando responded. “Bill would like you to know he hates your incessant chatter and that your insipid drama doesn’t make him work any faster. The engines will be online when we can repair them.”
Blaze growled, “How long will that be? Give me an estimate!”
“Between five minutes and five hours.” Fernando paused. “According to Bill. He knows that will make you angry. I’m sorry my brother can be so difficult. We are working as fast as we can.”
“Trina?” Blaze said. “Are you on guns?”
As if to answer, the Lizzie turned, and a photon torpedo raced past them and ignited in the center of the dragons. Muscle, bone, and blood like pus burbled around those dragons still intact. Three were blown into their basic components. Others were sent flying, missing legs, wings, and tails, and only half of them still had their heads. Brains like yesterday’s oatmeal floated out of their smoking skulls. Still, the furnace in their hearts glowed, and they breathed out photons.
Elle, protected by her shield, drove her starcycle straight towards them. She peppered them with plasma fire and put one of the more wounded worms down with a crushing explosion from her fusion cannon.
Blaze drove his bike around and ripped the spear and the attached cable off the dead dragon and slammed it onto the nanotech fibers of his bike. Ling seized the cable, and both sped off toward the oncoming dragons.
Ling broke through comms. “Those creatures are not natural, clearly. Hence, they defy all we know about anatomy and astrophysics. They can function even while missing brains, moving through space at will, and exhale various substances without any kind of gaseous environment. I believe they were birthed from the neutron star and exist by utilizing Onyx energy.”
“So in essence, they’re demons,” Blaze said.
“Big demons!”
“Of course they’re fucking demons,” Elle screamed through comms. She leapt from her bike and drew her katanas. Both glowed red. She spun through space and drove both into the heart tissue of one of the beasts. The heart exploded. Chunks of flesh went churning through the void. “Kill the heart, fellas. Just like me on a Saturday night.”
One of the half dragons slashed at Elle with its sword tails. They skittered off her scarlet shield. She scattered Human teeth and then cast a consume spell. At the same moment, she had her slivers of cedar, which gave her magical bolts of sizzling Onyx. As the demonic energy flowed into her, she channeled it right back into her Onyx missiles and took out the hearts of two other dragons.
The next wave of dragons hit them. These were different, smaller, about the size of the Lizzie Borden, and a dark green color, but there were more of them. Their eyes wept a black fluid. When they opened their mouths, liquid boiled out. It shot through space, and some of it struck the cable holding Ling to Blaze’s starcycle. The cable snapped.
Three converged on Elle. Their hearts glowed green, and then they puked their acid goop on her. Her shield held for a second and then collapsed. The ooze splashed down onto her armor and it started to sizzle through. Smoke poured off her.
“Ling, my sister…”
One of the photon dragons flew around to breathe radiation onto Blaze. The Meelah sheathed his nunchaku and snatched up his plasma bow.
Blaze had to focus. He dodged the crackling line of energy and then floored his starcycle, racing to aid his sister.
She shed her smoking armor and must’ve been holding her breath even as her skin began to ice over. She threw rectangular magnets wrapped in thread out of a pouch and then made a fist. With a pulling motion, she ripped the rotten green acidic goopy heart out of one of the acid dragons. The ruined organ was the size of a Terran car. Without it, the acid dragon stiffened and died.
Elle plucked her fusion pistols out of their holsters and shot out the heart of the second acid dragon. But there was that third one coming toward her to snap her in half with its teeth like smoked nightmare glass. Blaze opened the thing’s chest with his bike’s plasma guns. Bolt after bolt ripped through the oozing skin to destroy the green heart inside.
Blaze tore an extra nanotech gauntlet out of his bike’s saddlebags and threw it to Elle. Like a perfectly thrown football, it spiraled through space. His sister caught it and jammed it onto her wrist. Then more teeth, another consume spell, and a photon dragon’s heart glow dimmed and winked out. That Onyx energy flowed into Elle, and her mojo shot up to above ninety percent. That was close to a hundred, and if that happened, his sister might join the dragons in trying to kill them.
Meanwhile, Ling rode on top of a photon dragon, shooting his plasma bow. His hand movements simulated a string, but the arrow of plasma energy was very real. Releasing the string shot the fusion arrow at his target. The end result wasn’t a very fast weapon, nor very logical, but Ling had spent years on end practicing archery every single day. Bill had made the weapon for him, and Ling never missed. Now that he knew to aim for the heart, a single arrow
of plasma energy was enough to take out dragon after dragon.
Until the beast he was on realized that the Shaolin sloth was using him like a winged horse. It whirled the three bone swords of its tail and tried to impale the sloth.
Ling slapped his bow to his back, pulled out his nunchakus, sliced off the tails, backflipped and drove a nunchaku into the thing’s skull, then used the chain to get enough momentum to spin himself under the dragon.
He punched his other nunchaku into the dragon’s heart.
Blaze drove his starcycle near to the sloth, snatched Ugly Betty out of its sheath, and slapped it against his thigh. He then jumped off the bike, making sure the trajectory was near enough to Ling that the sloth could grab it. “Here’s some wheels, brother Ling.”
The Meelah didn’t respond, which Blaze thought was odd.
But first things first.
Another photon dragon was flying in, mouth open, jaws extended to swallow Blaze whole.
Blaze raced toward the open maw. The velocity of the starcycle had transferred to his body since there was no friction to slow him down. He drew his ax and sank it into the upper lip of the thing. The fusion ax cut through the bone like it was peanut butter, but the haft of the fusion ax slammed into the notch he’d cut.
Blaze stood on the lower jaw. He watched the thing’s pinche epiglottis lower to cover his esophagus, and light from the dragon’s photonic heart lit up the back of its throat. Blaze, hanging off his ax, brought Ugly Betty down and fired a wad of fusion down the monster’s gullet. The star energy ate through the tissue in an instant, and the photon blast was consumed as the dragon’s heart exploded. Blaze was covered in gore and meat as he was sent spiraling away. He clung to his weapons, barely managing to jack another hydrogen shell into his shotgun before he careened into an acid dragon.