by Aaron Crash
“Lizzie, don’t listen to us, ever,” Blaze growled. He then patched into Bill and Fernando. “Bill, your goddamn computer demon girlfriend is listening to us. We can’t have that.”
Bill clicked.
Fernando translated. “Bill says he hates you. But he will work on Lizzie’s etiquette protocols. He did say if you wanted privacy, you could leave the ship. Bill could adjust your implants so Lizzie couldn’t listen in.”
The Clicker doctor paused. “However, doing a spacewalk while we are surfing a spacetime wave would be unwise. If you came loose, we might not know where you end up. And you could ride your way right into a star. So, perhaps you should save your conversation for when we dock in GaMeSpa.”
“You in the mood for a walk, Hermana?” Blaze asked.
“Onyx addict here. I love risking my life. Come on, Hermano. Keep up.”
Blaze let Ling and the rest of his crew know that he and Elle were going to talk privately, outside of the ship.
They suited up in the cargo bay. Bill opened doors remotely, and the bending torrent of the fabric of reality was visible in the stream of stars streaking by. As long as they stayed connected to the ship, they wouldn’t be swept away. But the force gripping them was timespace itself.
It felt like ocean water splashing up against them. That was reality…just a day at the beach.
Hanging on cargo hooks, with spacetime swirling around them, he gazed into his sister’s face in her visor. She looked back.
“Bill, take us dark. No eavesdropping.”
The Clicker engineer responded with clacks, which sounded sarcastic and obnoxious. Then comms beeped three times.
“You might be able to hear me,” Fernando said, “but we can’t hear you. Have fun, Humans, with your primate chatter.”
Blaze shook his head at the arrogance of the bug.
“Let’s test it.” Elle grinned and said, really loudly and emphatically, “Lizzie and Bill are the worst couple ever! They’ll never last. Lizzie is going to cheat on him with the first Clicker freighter she encounters.”
Silence. Nothing.
Blaze was pretty sure if one or the other was listening, they’d break into the conversation to proclaim their undying love for each other forever. Didn’t happen.
Elle nodded and sighed. “We can’t trust Lizzie, can we?”
“Granny said it herself,” Blaze said. “We’d be stupid to trust the demon in our computer. I’ve been thinking, we need to set up an override routine. Remember Dave Figgens?”
“Our engineer before Bill, sure,” Elle said.
“He gave me a few lines of code I can put in as a kind of backdoor. Things have been going so well, I didn’t think to use them. Now? First thing I’m going to do is manually add them. That’ll give us a backdoor into the ship’s operating system if we need access.”
“Sounds good,” Elle said. She didn’t ask about Bill putting in the code. She didn’t have to. Trust had become a commodity on the Lizzie Borden.
Blaze went on. “So that’ll help me relax a bit, but there’s something else that’s really bothering me. It’s what Lizzie said when we used the Etrusca ruin on Shenyang Prime. She went off, something about how the Etrusca ruin listened to her. And then it got creepy, about her daddy, which we know is the biggest and baddest demon of all. She said, and I remember it word for word, ‘Four of five will keep us alive. Five of five and we’ll all die.’”
Ella smirked. “You can’t remember the names of the girls you bang, but you can remember the demonic rhyme of your spaceship.”
“Priorities, baby.” Blaze joined her in smirking. “But think about that. Lizzie talked to the Etrusca ruin. How can that be? And it listened.”
“Okay, then there’s the creepy daddy thing. Her father connected to the Etrusca ruin is bad. But do you know what’s worse?” Elle asked.
They were both rocked as a swirling eddy of some group of particles knocked them around for a second. Then Blaze asked, “What’s worse?”
“Four out of five keeps us alive. We’ve triggered four Etrusca ruins. Two when we fought Xerxes the first time. One during the dragon battle near Hutchinson Prime. And this last time, when we fought the werewolves. Blaze, maybe Lizzie didn’t talk to the ruin. Maybe the ruins have been showing up when we need them because if we trigger five of them, evil shit happens.”
Blaze swallowed hard. “We’re being played, every which way. And you know, if we confront Lizzie with this, she’ll start singing or reciting a menudo recipe, or tell us about the best place to get fish tacos in LSDO.”
“That last one is easy,” Elle said. “Everyone knows Matt B’s fish tacos in Los Silicon Diego Obispo are the best on the planet. In the galaxy.”
Blaze’s mouth watered. Matt B’s tacos were awesome.
“Not only are we being played,” Elle said, “but if we’re right, then the Etrusca were evil pieces of shit. They were demonic, or else their ruins are.”
“So we don’t trigger another one.” Blaze paused. “Elle, we know the IPC doesn’t believe in Onyx, though that’s pretty stupid of them. Supposedly, the Union does, though they don’t have the resources to help us. But Ambassador Randi, I think she sent us to Shenyang to kill us. Nauzea was there, my old Astral Corps buddies…” He had to wince at the pain. The idea that his Astral Corps friends, now werewolves, were gunning for him hurt like nothing else could.
Except for the memories of McCook, growing up, and the fight he’d lost. And the beating Arlo gave him because of it.
Elle shook her head. “That doesn’t feel right. Ambassador Randi is really cool. Really hot. A hot chica like that wouldn’t lie to us.”
“Remember Pattie Cakes Goreback on Hutchinson Prime?” Blaze asked.
“Good point.” Elle grinned. “I have to quit thinking with my clitoris.”
“Nombre de Dios, I’m your brother. You can’t say stuff like that around me.” But he was glad they were joking again, and that she wasn’t looking for an Onyx fix.
His sister was shameless. She didn’t even flinch. “Okay, so we confront Ambassador Randi on GaMeSpa. She’ll be there to pay us for saving her relatives and to broker our arrangement with the Meelah to give us Arlo. He’ll be there. Actually, from what she said, he is looking forward to seeing you again.”
A ball of white-hot spikes dripped from Blaze’s dry throat into the pit of his stomach. “Elle, you have to teach Fernando a basic telekinesis spell.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I’m afraid if I see Arlo again, I’ll have to kill him.”
Elle touched his visor. “It’s okay, I know how that feels. I went after Granny to kill her, but when I found her in the desert, something changed. I don’t remember much, but I do remember that. Who knows? Arlo might’ve changed.”
“Never,” Blaze said forcefully. “He’ll always be Arlo. Forever. And I’ll always hate him.”
“Always and forever.” Elle laughed, and it was a sad sound. “We use those words a lot. But we’ll never really understand them, not really.”
“You sound like Ling.”
“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Elle said. “Let’s get back inside. My arms are tired and all the timespace swirling around us is making me feel small and insignificant. It’s hard to go from omnipotent evil goddess to weepy little drug addict, but there you go. That’s our life.”
As they climbed into the cargo bay, Elle spoke through comms. “Maybe Arlo quit drinking.” Blaze howled laughter. “If he has, I’ll eat my fucking fusion ax.”
TWELVE_
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First thing Blaze did was go to the bottom deck, past Cali’s and Trina’s rooms, into a MATT pipe, otherwise known as a mechanical access tactical tube. There he found a rarely used terminal and uploaded the code that Dave Figgens had given him. Poor Dave. In life, the guy had been a contentious dickwad, but no one deserved the kind of death he got.
Once the backdoor was in place, Blaze cl
eared the log files and emerged from the MATT. He walked down the hall while checking on their progress.
They’d reach GaMeSpa in about eight hours.
Meelah space was located on the edge of the Huaxia Quadrant, and while the Meelah had learned the Human language, the space sloth language had been harder for Humans to acquire. The Meelah, trying to be helpful, had chopped up the names of their planets into Human abbreviations.
The home world was called TheMeHo, short for The Meelah Homeworld.
Ambassador Randi had promised to get Arlo to them on GaMeSpa, short for Gateway into Meelah Space. It was a flotilla of spacecraft built on a section of the ring of an ice giant, like Neptune or Uranus.
Blaze and his crew had been there before, but GaMeSpa was distant, and strange. It was one of the biggest crossroad colonies in the galaxy, where Clickers, Meelah, and Humans mingled.
Eight hours until they’d dock on GaMeSpa.
Eight hours until Arlo.
Blaze walked to Elle’s room. He felt so on edge, he welcomed getting inked by his sister. She planned on redoing the Ojo de Horus tattoos over his heart and re-tattooing his hands. On his left fingers, he had the word “Live” with the word “On” on his thumb. His right fingers had “No” on the thumb and “Evil” on his fingers. He liked the anagram. No Evil. Live On. It was a promise he’d made himself while locked up for years on end.
He would live on. And he wouldn’t let evil exist, not as long as he could draw a breath.
After Elle finished tattooing him, Blaze went to the library door, but Trina still wouldn’t answer his calls. For a mad minute, he thought about knocking on Cali’s door. But that would be emotional suicide. Elle and Cali were broken up again, but that didn’t mean Blaze should go sniffing around her.
And Trina and Cali had already been fighting enough, both verbally and physically. On Hutchinson Prime and during the dragon battle, they’d gone a few rounds. Trina had held her own. Going up against a werewolf? That was saying something.
“Nombre de Dios,” Blaze muttered, standing in the hallway, “I don’t have a pinche place to sleep on my own ship.”
He climbed the central staircase and went into the bridge, thinking he could crash on a chair there. But Fernando was working the holographic science station controls. Blue-colored schematics and sensor charts floated in the air around him.
The Clicker doctor was clicking to himself, clicking over and over. And every so often, the doctor would murmur, in Human, “The queen, my mother, the source of all life, the one goddess eternal.” Over and over he’d say that, and then chatter away in his Clicker language, which, per word, was five times faster than Human speech.
The Phasmida queen litany was something that all Clickers said every time they mentioned their queen. They were like bees in that sense, with a central matriarch they served and who made all of their decisions for them. It was only because Bill loved his brother and loathed everything and everyone not technological that they’d left their species to come and fight demons with him.
Otherwise, they’d have been serving the queen, the mother, the source of all life, the one goddess eternal.
Fernando, though, had changed the litany and had referred to Elle as his queen, and had used the same words. It had been after Elle goddessed out after the fight with Xerxes. She’d not been able to relinquish the power, and Fernando had pretty much told her he worshipped her.
“You okay?” Blaze asked the Clicker doctor.
Fernando didn’t respond. He wasn’t in his armor, had no real clothes to speak of, but he still had Elle’s spell-casting bandolier on him, with the pouches, the hydrogen shells, and one pocket bulging with a snare sphere. Probably was just an extra, in case they got bushwhacked by some Onyx monster on their way to GaMeSpa.
“Fernando,” Blaze said again.
The Clicker doctor slowly turned his head and looked at Blaze with his weird insect eyes, which could be surprisingly expressive. But not then. A blankness was inside them. But only for a second. Then Fernando shivered and shook out his wings, like a dog shaking off water. After the trembling, Fernando clicked, and his implants translated the sounds into Human. “Gunny! You should be sleeping! Your inefficient mammalian physiology needs a great deal of rest. Your already primitive brain functions will be further compromised if you do not get your required six to eight hours of sleep.”
“Thanks,” Blaze said. “But I can’t find a place to sleep.”
“No place to lay your weary head?” Fernando asked. “I can leave. Or you can use our room. Bill is in engineering making love to Lizzie.”
The gunny had no idea what that meant, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to think about that at all. He couldn’t sleep in the Clickers’ room, though. The smells would remind him of the Bug War, and the pale-yellow mud of their octagonal tubes would bring back too many memories.
And already, the past was threatening to consume him. He couldn’t stop thinking about McCook, the bullies, and the fight he lost. And the beating Arlo gave him for losing.
Little Angelo on his crutches. His sister Cynthia. And that autumn day, when the smell of cold, wet cottonwood bark mingled with the stink of a muddy creek’s banks.
Blaze sighed. “I’ll check with Ling. Our first order of business is to close the Onyx Gate. But if we have any of the Shenyang Prime cash left, I’m going to fix up the master suite. I’m talking a complete makeover. Or at least I can buy a hammock I can string up somewhere.”
“String you up, yes,” Fernando muttered. Then more clicks and fluttering of the translucent wings on his back. Another shiver. “Perhaps you can sleep with Ling.”
“Not how I would’ve put it,” Blaze said, “but that’s where I’m headed.” He triggered comms and a sleepy Ling responded.
“Hello, Gunny, are you having trouble sleeping?” the Shaolin sloth asked him.
“Haven’t tried yet. But can I crash in your room?” the gunny asked.
“You can. I’ll make up a bed for you.”
Blaze nodded. He headed for the door, turned, and saw a nightmare come to life on the bridge.
Nauzea, in the far corner, huddled in her robes, those moth-eaten, gray burlap robes, her hands pressed together even as the pins, needles, and nails pieced her infected skin. Stars streaked away through the window behind her. She seemed so small, and yet so huge at the same time.
She lifted her head, the cowl of her robes threatening to fall back to show the scabs and pus of her facial features.
Instinctively, Blaze closed his eyes. When he opened them, Nauzea was gone. “Lizzie!” Blaze gulped in air. “Where is Nauzea?”
Lizzie came on comms, breathing hard, though she didn’t need to breathe. What was that all about? Oh, the uh, lovemaking with Bill. Damn. “My sister is on the—” the demonized computer started to say.
Bill clicked into comms, followed closely by Fernando, who clicked as well. The translation took a bit to come, and then Fernando said, “Nauzea is in the cellar, Gunny. And my brother hates you, however, as you well know.”
A chilling doom pierced Blaze’s gut. “Lizzie, where is Nauzea?”
More gasping. Was that a moan of pure pleasure? Not that he wanted to know…
“In the cellar, Gunny,” the ship replied in a choked-out gasp. “We put her there, remember?”
Fernando removed the snare sphere out of his pouch. It blinked green, which meant it was empty of Onyx energy. “If she does manage to escape, we can catch her again. Now, you must sleep. Please. You are not feeling yourself.”
Blaze was exhausted. But something about Lizzie’s voice had changed. Or maybe it hadn’t. Nauzea was an archduchess of hell, and it was a real possibility that they couldn’t truly keep her contained. He wasn’t sure what they could do, but once he got some sack time, he could check in with Elle and they could come up with a contingency plan. Maybe Elle could find a spell in the cookbooks, decorating books, or craft books Granny had used to make up her strange set of tomes. Rathe
r than have a dedicated grimoire, Granny would use any old book and scrawl Onyx spells in the margins.
That was Granny. A complete chaotic mess.
“Okay, Fernando,” Blaze said. “You and Bill keep watch on things. It’s pretty clear Nauzea isn’t as contained as we want her to be.”
“Yes, Gunny,” Fernando said.
Blaze again went to leave, again turned around, but this time, Nauzea wasn’t in the corner. Good. “Fernando, Lizzie and Bill really weren’t, you know, getting sexual, right?”
Fernando clicked. “Xerxes was the archduke of necrotechnology. As you saw, he could fuse metal to flesh.”
“But Bill, since he’s not with the queen, wouldn’t have any kind of sex drive. You’ve said that over and over.”
“My brother Bill has odd notions of everything,” Fernando clicked. “There are many queens we Clickers can serve. And Lizzie has become very…imaginative.”
All sorts of strange images hit Blaze, but he didn’t want to focus on any one of them. Bill and Lizzie could have their own twistedly kinky relationship in the privacy of engineering. As long as it didn’t affect their performance, and he didn’t have to clean anything up.
THIRTEEN_
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Blaze left the bridge and knocked on the door to Ling’s room. It slid open, and Ling was in his pajamas, motioning to a pile of Meelah leaves on the floor covered by a wool blanket. Another green wool blanket lay on top with a pillow stuffed with more leaves. It wasn’t a military-grade MH3 hammock, but it would do.
Ling slept high in a Meelah hammock, near the ceiling, on a bare shelf overlooking the greenery of his tower gardens.
The Shaolin sloth patted Blaze’s arm. “Good night, Gunny. I will try and be quiet since your species needs more sleep than the Meelah. Goodness, it’s fortunate Humans live so long because you spend most of that time sleeping!”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Blaze sighed. “I heard all of that from Fernando. Humans suck. Whatever. I have to sleep. I’m seeing things, and I’m getting paranoid. Something seems off with the Clickers, but it’s probably okay.”