by Jamie Hawke
“A bunch of what?”
“Nothing, sorry—a term my brother always used from some books he used to read or something. Point is, back on Earth I was done with my time. It was like I didn’t have much of a purpose anymore. Here, whether it’s helping with the prophesy or fighting the enemy head-on, I’m doing something, I’m part of a plan, part of a movement much larger than myself. And it’s damn fun. So let’s not overthink it. Let’s do our best to fight the enemy, and do our best to fuck like we’ve never fucked before.”
“That’s your long-winded approach to trying to get my panties off?” She laughed, but the look in her eyes said it was working. “You’re not so bad.”
“Thank you,” I replied, then noticed her sister approaching.
Sakurai turned to see her too, then sighed. She leaned against the railing, watching as we drew closer to the surface. When Sacrada was with us, Sakurai turned to her and said, “He’s not so bad you know.”
Both Sacrada and I stared at her awkwardly.
“I never said he was,” Sacrada replied. “Saved you, and sacrificed his virginity to do so.”
“I wasn’t—”
“No shit,” she interrupted my attempted protestation.
“What gives?” I asked. “Before, you two came to me and were all flirtatious, making a sort of promise, if I remember correctly. I was a bit worn out.”
“She did,” Sakurai said, ignoring the look of betrayal from her sister. “She was totally fantasizing about you that night and all, the way she stares up at the ceiling and told me about you, I knew she’d been craving your D for some time.”
“Sis, that’s enough,” Sacrada interjected.
Sakurai grinned. “Just keeping you honest.”
“Yeah, well now I’ve had time to remember what I think of this stupid prophesy. We can show him our thanks by continuing to keep him alive and fight Ranger.” Sacrada motioned out to the planet’s surface. “Who knows what we’ll face down there, right? Best to stay focused on the enemy, not sexual relief.”
“She admits she’s sexually frustrated then,” Sakurai said with a wink.
“That’s not… shut up.” Sacrada was actually blushing!
“And the fact that sex and all that amplifies my powers?” I pointed out. “Makes me stronger and all that?”
“Call me old fashioned, but that shouldn’t be reason enough.”
“Call me new fashioned,” Sakurai countered, “I say we don’t need reasons.”
“I think I fall in the middle of that spectrum,” I admitted. “But, yeah. I’m not trying to convince anyone to put out, or I don’t mean to be. That’s Navani’s job.” That last part was meant as a joke, but neither of them laughed.
Sacrada stepped over to me, past her sister, and stopped so close that our bodies were nearly touching. “I’ve enjoyed kissing you. I’ve been there while you were fucking the others, and I might have snuck a peek, sure. Will this happen between us? I have no idea, but I know for sure it won’t happen just because it’s convenient for the mission. And it certainly won’t happen because some other woman thinks it should.”
“It was a joke,” I insisted.
She shrugged and spun on her heels. “Come on, sis. I think it’s time we all found our seats.”
Sakurai gave me a wistful smile, then followed her sister. Damn, watching those two walk off like that was hot, but they’d got me thinking—was I falling into one side of the spectrum of meaningless sex? If not yet, was I at risk of it? This whole idea of having the hottest women ever surrounding me, basically worshipping my cock… yeah, it was amazing. It certainly changed the dynamic I was used to.
But no, I insisted. Each time would be special. It wasn’t like I was going all out trying to bang everything I could. This was a special group, and I would keep it contained. They were my team, my lovers—at least Navani and Threed were, in a sense. Not like the ‘I love them’ type of lovers, but definitely more than fuck buddies.
I was determined to show that this meant more than Sacrada was giving me credit for, but when the timing was right. For now, she was right that we had a planet to investigate and likely some bad guys to fight.
Putting my game face on, I made my way back to the bridge to prepare for landing.
14
We landed in a world of darkness and at the edge of the landing field. No other movement, no enemies within sight.
Large rock formations rose in the distance, silhouettes against the night sky. Black metal buildings touched the clouds and blocked out floating strands of red, vibrant gases. Spikes of some sort jutted out of the ground in random places, and I had to assume they were somehow natural to the environment. In the distance was a larger shadow than the rest, angled with towers, and I assumed it had to be a fortress of some sort.
The air was strong, heavy, and at least two moons were in the sky. No ships were coming to check on us, but there still remained the fact that if we went out simply wandering around, we’d find ourselves in a fight. If this was their world, or even an in-between world that they owned, they might be able to take us with sheer numbers. Most of all, I didn’t really want to interact with anymore of those vampire things.
“We need a strategy,” I pointed out.
“Do you have a lead on this guy?” Threed asked, turning to Navani, and then Nyoka.
Nyoka approached the window and pointed at a series of dark shapes in the distance. “There. The Leader, the man you seek… he’s in there.”
“As before, I’m going to ask a stupid question,” I said. “If you say his name and he summons you, wouldn’t that be a great way of tracking him down?”
“He can, but doesn’t have to,” Nyoka said, clearly trying to hide her irritation but failing. “He could even wait and summon you when it’s really inconvenient, when you’re least expecting it. Or he could teleport you onto the end of his sword, and it would be over.”
I ground my teeth in annoyance at the situation. “Fine, then all we have to do is get over there without running into any major problems, get the hell out of dodge, and be done with this.”
“And find out if this is where you saw Lamb,” Navani reminded me.
“Of course, and that.” But a look around supported my suspicions that it wasn’t the place. When I’d seen her, it felt and looked different. My second best option here, then, was to find out where she could possibly be and how to get there.
Let them pursue whatever mission they wanted. I refused to leave without at least being one step closer to saving Lamb.
We started moving around toward the hills and away from the city, realizing as we went that we had no cloaks for concealment, no costumes to at least try and look like the Nihilists. If we had planned this better, we might have been able to stroll right through town and find our destination. It would’ve been great to have a super in our team with cloaking or illusion abilities, if those existed.
Instead, we had to rely on our ability to stay out of sight for now. When the shit would inevitably hit the fan, we’d just have to clean it up the old-fashioned way—with muscle and power.
Another three of their ships came in overhead, heading for the landing area, but couldn’t have seen us. It wasn’t until an alarm sounded back from that direction that I began to worry.
“They know we’re here,” I said.
“Must’ve found the ship,” Navani speculated.
Threed kicked at the ground, cursing as she stubbed a toe. “Should’ve blown it up.”
“I don’t see how that would’ve helped. It would have been about as bad as the alarm,” I countered.
“Not so sure,” Sakurai chimed in. “Think about it—they could’ve assumed it was a malfunction or something. Who knows? But this way they know for sure a ship that went missing from the Citadel is now here.”
“Fuck,” I said, drawing my blaster in preparation for whatever might come our way.
“Relax,” Sacrada said, turning and assessing the area. “They won’t be
able to sneak up on us, and judging by the darkness of this place… one blast of light from me and they’ll all be blind.”
“I’m not worried about them sneaking up on us,” I said. “You really think you’ll be able to hold off their whole army if they’re here?”
“Oh, they’re here,” Navani said, eyes flaring with a burst of brightness. “Quite a lot of them, actually.”
“Wonderful.”
“We’ll hold our own,” Sacrada said.
“It won’t be a problem,” Andromida weighed in. “All that matters is my revenge, and soon enough that will be one step closer to completion. I smell it.”
“You’ve dealt with many Nihilists, have you?” Threed asked.
“They’re nothing more than another type of twisted super. Corrupted, mutated… deformed, maybe. Not some monster we should fear.”
“Wait, what?” Sakuarai asked, frowning at this new piece of information.
“That’s just your theory,” Navani said, waving her off.
“One I have good reason to believe,” Andromida said. “One of my people, before they were killed off… he’d been gone for a long time, off on an adventure, an attempt to find himself and figure out how best to master his powers without going to one of the academies. But it didn’t go so well for him. We’d heard rumors that he’d fallen in with the wrong crowd, and then one day he showed up out of nowhere. Only, it wasn’t quite him. He was changing…”
“He’d become one of them?” I asked.
“Not quite, but he was clearly on his way—like one of those things you called a vampire. I think that’s an in-between step, maybe. He was starting to look like that—skin going grey, eyes blackening. Whenever someone would try to talk to him he’d explode at them, telling them to mind their own business, to not ask stupid questions. Then, one day he disappeared again… and three days later the attack came.”
“It’s a compelling argument for believing,” Sakurai admitted.
“If it’s true,” Navani countered.
“Andromida said it’s what happened,” Threed argued. “You’re challenging her?”
“Whose side are you on?”
“I wasn’t aware there were sides,” Andromida said, eyes narrowing at Navani.
“That’s not what I meant, but…” Navani turned back, now unslinging her rifle. “I refuse to accept that these things could be in any way related to us. Maybe they corrupt us, use us in strange ways, make us become their slaves, I don’t know. But I don’t for a second buy the idea that they were once supers like us.”
“You mentioned there being a lot of them,” I said, happy to change the focus of the conversation. Honestly, they were freaking me out—it was much easier to just think of the enemy as monsters from another dimension or far-away world. “They don’t happen to be coming our way yet, do they?”
Navani scanned, then turned to Sacrada. “Can you do that thing you do without them being aware of it? The scan that tells you how many of them there are?”
Sacrada glanced around at the sky, then shook her head. “Not in darkness like this, not without giving away our position, anyway.”
“Save it then.” Navani turned back to me. “There are a lot of them out there, but I can’t be certain what they’re doing. Some are headed this way, but it seems like they’re spreading out for a search. If we keep moving quickly, they might not find us.”
Everyone agreed that picking up the pace made sense, and soon we were descending into a bit of a valley that led off to the right and away from the main city, but was still in the general direction of our target.
Nyoka scanned with her hunter vision for the target more than once, but kept seeing him at the fortress at the outskirts of the city. At least, that’s how it went until the fourth or fifth time, when she froze, looking worried. She turned, looking first to the sky, then to our right, then behind us.
“This isn’t good,” she said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“I have no doubt about my powers,” she replied, but kept glancing around, now really starting to freak me out. “But what’s going on doesn’t make sense. He’s all over the place.”
“Unless…” Navani turned to Andromida, eyebrow raised.
“They’re saying his name,” Andromida said, nodding. “Meaning he can teleport to them at any moment he wants. Fuck, that might make him hard to find.”
“And if it’s you he’s trying to find?” a voice said, and then we spun to see a man in body armor and exo-skeleton, a large assault rifle in his hands. He floated toward us with the help of his thrusters. Green glasses covered his eyes and there was movement of white, like code scrolling across those glasses.
“Caldoran,” Andromida said, hands instantly out and at the ready. “You’re not stupid enough to have come by yourself, unfortunately.”
“I’d say no, I’m not.” He touched down on the ground not more than ten paces away, and then waved. A super with green eyes stepped forward and I figured he was an illusionist, because suddenly it was like a veil had been lifted and Navani cursed first, then the rest of us saw why—charging at us from three directions was an army of their vampire creatures. “Normally I’d leave them to it, but I wanted to see this end, as you’ve given me so much grief.”
“More’s to come,” she said, and thrust up.
Only, nothing happened. Andromida stood there, holding the moment, then glanced back at us in confusion.
“Shit,” Navani said, lifting her rifle and firing. The shot hit true, but a red shield rippled and no damage was done.
Caldoran’s thrusters shut off and he fell to the ground, using his tech to throw up a specialty force-field and then spun for cover, while laying down fire on us. Navani created her own force fields while Sacrada burst into the air. She sent a solar burst his way that obliterated half of the energy field. The blue light of the shield fizzled and then returned, followd by a laugh from Caldoran. When she flew directly overhead, he had to throw himself backwards and create a temporary shield above to protect himself from her next blow.
Now it was Andromida’s turn. She didn’t have metal out here away from the city for her tunnels, but I quickly learned she didn’t need it for all of her powers. The one that she’d seemed most afraid of worked just fine. As she stepped forward, she brought her hands up and suddenly there were red arms reaching out from the ground, grabbing her enemy, trying to pull and tear and do whatever they could to this evil supervillain.
A roar filled the night and Caldoran said something into his comms. Somewhere behind us I heard his name said, and then he was gone. I spun and shot, relieved to see him reappear right where I’d expected. My shot clipped him in the leg before he could get his shield back up.
Now he turned on me, but thrust up before Andromida’s red arms could come for him again. Sacrada was back on him, but he pressed a button that caused his helmet to unfold over his head, then faced her head-on—and completely took her blast without backing down.
When two Sacradas appeared flying around him, I could see he was worried, but he soon began to pick them off. They vanished when they hit the ground, so I was fairly certain they were replicas created by Threed, but my heart skipped a beat every time one fell.
The vampires were coming in fast, so instead of everyone focusing on Caldoran, Sakurai thrust out her hands and formed swords, then darted toward the closest vampires. I was taking shots at Caldoran, while Nyoka followed Andromida as beset she could, trying to intercept attacks to keep her safe. My best bet was on the ground, so I turned to help Sakurai.
I ran over, wishing we’d thought to charge up my ability to use the ladies’ powers before landing, not just my hype. Still, I had strength and endurance and was ready to show them what I was made of. They were damn fast, but I came in with a punch that knocked the head clear from the vampire’s shoulders, another that dropped a second one to the ground.
Several jumped on me and I felt their claws on the back of my head, on my cheek
, and heard them scraping on my armor. Tearing one loose and slamming my forehead into another, I broke free and rolled out of there, landing with my screen up to add a helmet to my suit. It folded out like Caldoran’s had, and I realized how stupid it was to not have done this a while ago. Not only did the next attack to my head simply scrape across metal, but my eyes were showing my stats screens and a mini-map of where we’d been so far.
If I could get up another level or two with this skirmish, I might as well. So instead of focusing on defense, I went on the offense. Hell, take the hill and all that, right? I pushed forward, blasting, kicking and punching.
Andromida was making quite the fuss nearby, and I overheard her shouting about the woman in Abaddon.
“You don’t know shit!” Caldoran replied. “You never have, you never will.”
“I know how to get to her,” Andromida said. “When I’m done with you, she’s next.”
My distracted focus caused me to take a hit to the gut that sent me stumbling, but I countered and killed another vampire, watching as my level went up, and then saw Andromida move in with Nyoka. Her threat seemed to have gotten to Caldoran, distracting him too, so that she thrust herself toward him. For a moment they were locked in each other’s grips and I lost track of them as I fought off more vampires.
More than once I turned and thought I was in the clear, only to be hit a second later and realize the green-eyed super was pulling his shit again. He needed to be dealt with. I had to fight my way past ten vampires before I could reach him, and even then I couldn’t see where the bastard had gone—it was only thanks to my suit’s scanning ability that I was able to locate him. Light flashed nearby and Sakurai’s sword lit up, the light flashing out like a dragon that moved as one with her sword. Nearby vampires backed off in fright, some ran. Others were torn to shreds as the light ripped through them.