Neutron Dragon Attack

by Aaron Crash

  On the thing’s back, Blaze slashed an ax into its back, above the dragon’s heart. Shoving his shotgun into the wound, he pulled the trigger. The green glowing organ was sent exploding out of the dragon’s chest. It went limp.

  Another green dragon soared above, and Blaze whirled and lifted the twin blades of his glowing ax. The creature’s own momentum did the work. The fusion blades opened a seam in the creature’s stomach as it disemboweled itself in flight. Entrails poured out even as the thing turned and puked out a lake of acid. Blaze triggered his propulsion system and his own C02 helped send him spinning way. Another load of shotgun happiness from Ugly Betty ended the disemboweled beast’s life.

  Twisting around, Blaze watched Ling, armed with his bow again, hop from one photon dragon’s mouth to another to another to another, dodging streams of energy, shooting through hearts, and doing his best to bring down as many of the unholy creatures as he could.

  A warning light flashed in Blaze’s vision. Ling’s VHI was down, and the gunny knew why. The Meelah had used most of his oxygen in jetting around. That was why Ling hadn’t answered him.

  “Elle, Ling is almost out of oxygen. Can you get to him?” Blaze called through comms. “I don’t have a bike. Do you have one?”

  “Ling has to get to me,” Elle snapped back. “I’m a little busy. And have you seen what’s coming?”

  Another flashing light lit up Blaze’s display. In the distance, emerging from the neutron star, was a mass the size of a small moon. And around it swarmed hundreds of creatures.

  The gunny didn’t slow down. No, he sped up.

  Dragons were everywhere, breathing photonic blasts and acid pools. Blaze had to use some of his precious oxygen to maneuver around a cloud of the stuff.

  A little sizzled through his armor and ate into the skin of his shoulder. He grimaced at the pain, but his nanotech sealed the breach.

  Elle continued to use her shield spells to protect herself. She took out dragons with her Onyx missiles, refueling as she went.

  The Lizzie Borden also returned fire, her plasma guns blazing, her fusion torpedoes exploding. It was chaos.

  And it was about to get worse.

  Blaze switched to the Lizzie’s telescopic array to get a closer look at the new dragons. There was one big one and numerous smaller ones swarming around its back side. All were black and armored, almost as if they were coated in obsidian. Their weapons could get through the rock, but the large dragon was enormous. The main monster had orifices around its tail, which like the others had three long bone swords. But each of these was a hundred feet long. The thing could spear the Lizzie Borden like she was a piece of fondue meat.

  What kind of breath did the obsidian dragon have? And why were the smaller dragons clustered around the holes near its tale?

  Blaze wasn’t sure they’d live long enough to find out. He spun around and grabbed hold of Elle’s starcycle, which had floated away from her as she battled the maelstrom of neutron dragons.

  “Ling, you have to get to me,” Blaze ordered. “You’re almost out of air.”

  The Meelah didn’t respond. Probably because he was on the verge of passing out. You wouldn’t know it, though, as he fired his plasma bow, in constant motion, flipping through space and dealing out death.

  Blaze raced toward him.

  Ling then found a means to travel. Surrounded by dragon corpses, the Shaolin sloth found the plasma minigun that had been knocked out of Blaze’s hands at the beginning of the fight. The Meelah climbed onto the gun and hit the trigger with his feet. The barrels spun, firing plasma into a photon dragon below. It pushed Ling through space, but Ling was skillful enough to shoot dragons as well as fly the minigun toward Blaze.

  The obsidian dragon flew ever closer.

  A floating bubbling pond of acid melted Blaze’s fusion cannon and one of the plasma guns before he could turn out of it. His bike smoked. It had one plasma gun left, but losing weapons to dragon acid was never a good thing.

  The minigun tore an acid dragon in half and pounded a photon dragon’s head into bits of brain and skull. Ling even took out his bow, riding the gun like a skateboard, to fire a plasma arrow into the heart of an incoming acid dragon.

  When Blaze got close, the Meelah switched triggers and fired the spear gun with his toe. The spear shot out and struck the starcycle. The last bit of silver cable pulled taut, and Ling was again riding behind Blaze.

  Blaze got a micro-cannister of oxygen the size of his thumb and threw it. “Coming at you, Ling.”

  The Shaolin sloth easily caught it and shoved it into his gauntlet. Comms came alive with the Meelah taking in a great big breath of wonderful air. “Ah, now that’s the stuff. Remind me to add breathing to my list of favorite things about life.”

  “How about fighting a dragon the size of a moon?” Blaze asked.

  “Sounds like a good way to explore death. I’m with you!” the Meelah shouted happily.

  “You suicidal?” Blaze asked in disbelief.

  “No, just very skilled and enthusiastic!” Ling replied.

  Elle pulled the other starcycle toward her and joined Blaze in racing toward the incoming obsidian dragon. “Hey, fellas, I might get a stasis spell going on that thing, but if that doesn’t work, I think we need to cut and run.”

  Blaze spoke to the Clickers still on board. “Bill, Fernando, what about the engines? Either of them? Update me! And I know Bill hates me. You don’t need to tell me every single time.”

  “I love you, Blaze,” Fernando said. “And Bill loves Lizzie. They keep laughing. It really is a remarkable relationship.”

  “I ship it,” Elle murmured in a laughy voice. “Uh, literally. Ship. It.”

  “When will I have my pinche engines working?” Blaze roared.

  “Bill says that your constant cursing confuses him. He would like you to rephrase your question without referencing your reproduction or excretory systems.”

  An explosion ripped through comms. Lizzie’s voice came online. “Hhhull breach from acid, but I am hhhappy to fix it. Bill, dearest, we might want to try rerouting power through the secondary coupling. That level-four diagnostic you ran a month ago would still be valid. Try that. And to you out there in the darkness and cold of space, just a reminder, the Onyx dragons are so very rare. I hope you are enjoying experiencing them in their finest fury.”

  “Shut up, Lizzie,” Blaze growled.

  Trina joined the party. With bad news. “I…I’m…having trouble. Elle is far away. I’m getting thirsty. Cali can give me a little of her blood. She smells so good. Don’t you all agree? Doesn’t Cali smell good?”

  “It’s not just me, Blaze,” Elle said. “It’s the planet. Whatever is on that planet is hurting the magical hold I have on her.”

  “Keep it together, Trina,” Blaze said. “Cali, are you online?”

  No response.

  Blaze sighed. “Trina, focus on killing those dragons. We’re going to try and deal with the big one coming in. If we can’t put it down and fast, we’ll need to run. Fernando, get Bill and his girlfriend to fix my ship.”

  Winged creatures, some wounded horribly, others fresh, swarmed the Lizzie Borden. Trina continued to fire on the photon and acid dragons, and the Lizzie’s shields were holding. They only needed to hold a little bit longer.

  An instant later, Cali’s growls erupted. She’d wolfed out and left the ship. She’d managed to open her bracelets herself. Either she was coming to help, or she was fleeing Trina’s bloodthirst. Either way, as a werewolf with fusion claws and blue-fire boots, she ripped through a dragon’s chest and emerged out the other side, covered in black gore.

  She swam through a bubble of acid, and it smoked the hair off her but left her skin undamaged. Even then, the hair grew back in patches and the pain just pissed her off more.

  Blaze recalled Cali’s fears. Changing so soon again might have destroyed the Human Lupercalia Smith forever. If all that was left was the werewolf, they’d have no choice but to put
her down.

  Dammit. They needed a bit of luck. Not that the gunnery sergeant expected any.

  He switched his vision to the monster in front of them.

  The obsidian dragon came to a stop, blocking out the stars, the twin suns, everything, with his gargantuan frame. The smaller dragons crawled across the skin of the thing. They were headed for the orifices surrounding its tail. Layer upon layer of the winged creatures covered the obsidian dragon’s backside. Why? For what purpose?

  Blaze figured he would either find out or die.

  All light disappeared as the huge monster spread its wings. The darkness grew to an inky nothingness, anti-light it seemed, coalescing in the chest of the beast.

  “Nombre de Dios,” Blaze whispered.

  The thing opened its mouth, which was the size of the Grand Canyon, and exhaled pure and unadulterated horror.

  EIGHT_

  ╠═╦╬╧╪

  The alpha obsidian dragon was breathing out the half-digested corpses of the smaller beta black dragons crawling into its body through the puckered holes surrounding its tail.

  Puked-up bones, muscles, and body parts shot out at an incredible speed. The high-velocity vomit acted as a power washer. You could scrape cities off tectonic plates with the force of those vomited dragon parts.

  The gore-streaked offal blasted into Elle’s shields and sent her flying back. Blaze cranked his throttle. He sped up and over the thing with Ling dangling behind, still on the minigun, still attached to Blaze’s bike with the silver cable.

  The Meelah whirled and opened fire with the six spinning barrels.

  A dozen of the black dragons around their master’s tail swirled up, and they too vomited out bones and blood. Their own guts shot out and dissipated into bubbling pools of gunk coming apart in space.

  These beta obsidian dragons were puking out pieces of themselves. Blaze watched as one breathed out its own vertebrae and its tail slid up into its body as the inky-eyed monstrosity tried to kill Blaze and his crew. The smaller dragons were not only ammunition for the huge worm, they could use their own bodies for their high-velocity blood-spattered breath.

  “Damn, but demons are so gross,” Blaze spat.

  Ling didn’t comment. The minigun tore through several of the beta obsidians in a fusillade of hyper-heated energy. The barrage was effective only if the heart was damaged. Otherwise, the black dragons simply vomited up their wounded parts.

  Elle’s screams burst through comms. “We’ve got to go…we can’t…too many. It’s awful. These things are awful.”

  “Can you hit it with a stasis spell?” Blaze asked, cranking the handlebars left, right, up, down, using his right and only plasma gun when he could. Mostly, he was just trying to dodge the midnight bodies, the pools of their splintered bone vomit, and the whirring sword tails and spear hooks at the end of their wings.

  “I can’t…too many…and Cali is coming. I don’t think she’ll care what she eats. If we get in her way, we’re toast.”

  “Fall back to the ship,” Blaze said. “Ling, give us some cover.”

  The Meelah acted as a tail gunner, and the minigun continued to roar behind them as Elle and Blaze took the low road, racing away from the dragon.

  Overhead, Cali careened past them to feast on the obsidian dragons and their awful master. Even she was thrashed by the puke breath, and though the bones didn’t break her skin, they battered and bashed her.

  But Blaze could’ve sworn he saw a smile on the werewolf’s lupine face. She was enjoying having such a stupendously gross and powerful enemy. How would they ever cage her again?

  Most likely they wouldn’t. At this stage, Blaze just wanted to get out of there with his skin still over his own bones and his guts still inside him.

  But they couldn’t just run. They had to get to Granny on Hutchison Prime. The blue-green planet was nothing but a marble in the distance.

  “Fernando,” Blaze called through comms. “We’re retreating. If you don’t have the ship ready, we’re going to have to leave you.”

  “Clickers,” Trina whispered. “Clickers have blood. It might work. If I drained them dry. If I sucked and sucked and sucked.”

  Blaze’s heart sank. With Elle burning through her mojo, her grip on Trina’s vampirism had loosened. That and the distance as well as Hutchinson Prime. Hell, the douchebag Chthonic might even have been affecting her. If they didn’t find a solution for Trina, she’d wind up devouring Bill and Fernando even though it wouldn’t do her any good. Vampires needed Human blood.

  “Elle, what are we going to do about Trina?” Blaze asked.

  “Leave her. We have to get to Granny. Bill and Fernando can lock themselves away and she’ll just roam the ship.”

  Come and get me, Blaze. Trina was using her vampire telepathy. If you don’t, I’ll find you. I’ll drink you dry. I love you so.

  “I could go back and pick her up,” Blaze said. “Maybe give her a little bit of my blood. I have so much.” He blinked. He hated that pinche telepathy.

  “No, she’s messing with you, Blaze. Don’t listen to her.” Elle had to dodge a stream of high-velocity dragon puke and then she was next to him. “We have to split up. You, me, and Ling will have to get to the planet. The rest will stay aboard the Lizzie and lure the dragons away. Or just get away. And it won’t be long before the IPC comes back.”

  “Lizzie’s engines are down. I can’t leave my ship,” Blaze said. “I can’t leave Trina, Bill, Fernando. No, there has to be another way.”

  “What other way?”

  Again, here was his sister, telling him to cut out on his family like she had when Xerxes had nearly torn apart their ship.

  But she was right. Only one thing mattered: getting to Granny on Hutchinson Prime and getting the location of the Onyx Gate.

  He couldn’t leave Trina to kill the Clickers, though. Then he had an idea. “Trina, you can get into an empty torpedo. You won’t need to breathe. Get inside and have Fernando fire you at the planet. We can pick you up.”

  Bill’s clicks filled comms.

  Fernando translated. “Bill likes the idea. The torpedo casing should be able to withstand entry into the planet’s atmosphere, and if the pod hits the ground, that won’t kill Trina as she is already dead. Bill would like you to know that while he finds your plan brilliant, he still hates you.”

  “Every time,” Blaze sighed. “Get her ready. Bill, fix my ship, please. You might hate me, but you’re the best engineer in the galaxy. Fernando, once your brother gets the Lizzie working, try and lead the dragons away. Trina, Elle, Ling and I will make for the planet. Hopefully Cali won’t run out of steam fighting the dragons.”

  Fernando put on his teacher hat. “Muscular and cellular fatigue is purely a physiological phenomenon. Cali, as a werewolf, transcends such mundane bodily functions. She can’t get tired. Fueled by Onyx energy, she is indefatigable, indestructible, since the dragons she is fighting do not possess Terran silver. She will simply keep attacking them until they are all dead.”

  “After she kills all the dragons, how are we going to stop her?” Blaze asked.

  “I do not know. She has used the acid from the green dragons to fuse her bracelets open. There will be no closing them.”

  Blaze dodged dragons, pools of acid, streams of high-velocity worm vomit, and photon beams before they were past the battle. Some of the dragons had pulled away from the Lizzie Borden to converge on Cali and her battle with the obsidian dragons. She couldn’t get to the huge monster’s heart. Too many other creatures were in the way.

  The gunny couldn’t help but wonder if Cali would be their next sacrifice in their quest to close the Onyx Gate. Was her life worth the information Granny might possess? He hoped it wouldn’t come to any kind of bargain like that.

  Ling held onto the minigun and the cable as Blaze tore through space with Elle next to him.

  The Lizzie’s engines remained dead, but from her rear weapon ports, a torpedo screamed away from the ship and sp
ed toward the planet, which was getting larger and larger as they approached it.

  “We have a problem,” Elle said.

  “Is it a problem?” Ling asked. “Or is it an opportunity to test our collective genius and survival skills?”

  Blaze ignored the annoying positivity of that particular question. “Spill it, Elle.”

  “I only have a tiny piece of aragonite crystal left. It will let me cast a shield spell, but only enough to cover Ling and me on the starcycles. Sorry, but you’re too big. You’ll have to get into the torpedo with Trina and pray she doesn’t eat you.”

  Blaze growled and pulled further on his throttle. “Sounds sexy. You’re gonna have to catch me before I hit the ground. You still have magnets and thread?”

  “I do. And I hit myself with another syringe of Granny’s goodness. I’m down to my last rig, however.”

  “Don’t call it a rig,” Blaze said, a bad feeling in his gut. “You’re not a junkie.”

  “But I am, big brother,” his sister murmured. “I’m a hope-to-die Onyx addict, and there’s no going back.”

  Lizzie came online. “Blaze, I am configuring your starcycle to intercept the torpedo. If you adjust your vector, you’ll come alongside the torpedo, and you’ll be able to climb in with Trina. Hhhopefully, you aren’t on the lunchhh menu. If you are, you are climbing into Trina’s lunchhhbox.”

  “Shut up, Lizzie.” Blaze saw the vectors, and he brought his starcycle in line with them. The torpedo was slowing down, matching his speed.

  The gunny disengaged the nanotech holding him in and turned to pull Ling up to him. Blaze attached the gun to the rear and then let Ling take over driving the bike. The torpedo was next to him, blurry with speed. The planet filled his vision. The huge blue expanse of an ocean and the green of a vast continent. Already, it was getting warmer as they started their entry into Hutchinson Prime’s atmosphere.

  “Trina, are you okay in there?” Blaze asked.

  “Thirsty, so thirsty,” the vampire said, “but Elle is close. I know she’s close. I can feel it. She’s keeping me together. I think you’ll be okay.”