by Aaron Crash
More of the Meelah and more bluetroopers fell before the onslaught of demon caterpillars.
Ling was slowing down. But Arlo, damn Arlo, fought so slowly and methodically, it seemed he could chop up caterpillar and Konobi indefinitely.
Cali had turned on Trina, and the pair were fighting each other instead of the monsters around them.
It was the wrong time for a flashback. It was the very worst time to be pulled back into the painful memories of that day on Overland Park Prime in the Americatus Quadrant. But this was Nauzea, her power, her fiendish sorcery, at work.
It was after the Bug War, when Blaze’s unit had been sent to do a routine operation helping locals with flooding. Jameson walked into the wrong place at the wrong time. It had been an old house surrounded by black trees off a dirt road called Brooklyn Hill. Strange that Blaze remembered that, but that house had been downright evil. The demon must’ve been in the haunted house, and it had found a chink in Jameson’s spiritual armor.
That night, Jameson snapped. He’d come to murder them all in his sleep.
Blaze woke to find Lieutenant Kent Jameson frothing black ichor from his mouth. Jameson grew claws that could rip the stomachs out of a mad bull, and he had been talking backwards. He’d been possessed by a demon, clearly. He had already stabbed Corey Kaiser with his K-Bar knife.
Blaze leapt from his bunk and the two fought. The demon stopped his insane chatter and ordered Blaze to stand down. That was what his unit heard.
Blaze wasn’t going to follow that order. He wrestled the iconic Astral Corps knife out of Jameson’s hand and drove it up through his diaphragm, under his rib cage, and into his heart. The black eyes went back to being blue.
And his lieutenant died, wondering why one of his own men had killed him.
Blaze had turned. There was Ian, a look of fury on his face. “What the hell, Blaze? You bastard! You murdering bastard! Jameson was the best of us. And you killed him! You fucking killed him!”
Blaze had been taken down by Ian and their friends. He didn’t fight them, he tried to blame it on the demon, but all those guys knew was that Blaze had turned on them. It was clear Jameson had killed Corey, and Blaze tried to convince them about Onyx energy, but the IPC owned the Astral Corps and paid their bills. Blaze was sent to prison and then was dishonorably discharged.
Ian and the rest never contacted Blaze, and he’d lost track of them. But how had they been turned into werewolves? That was a question Blaze couldn’t answer.
Why had they shown up now? That was easy.
This Panashoat thing and his daughter Nauzea had enlisted Ian and the Astral Corps werewolves to stop Blaze from closing the Onyx Gate. The archduchess of torture must’ve been thrilled to use them against Blaze. The sense of betrayal and loss had opened the type of psychic wounds that she relished.
Now I end you like you ended Jameson. Ian’s yellow teeth and red gums were fully exposed because the werewolf had no lips, no fur, nothing. He could easily nip off Blaze’s head, helmet, and visor, nanotech armor and all.
Blaze heard Raziel yowl from somewhere, that damn cat, and it was enough to bring him to his senses. He slammed the gun barrel on his left arm into Ian’s jaw.
And opened fire.
The barrage of microbursts didn’t kill the werewolf, but the force of all that energy pounding into his head lifted Ian off Blaze, giving him a chance to roll away.
Ian whirled and came for him, but Blaze kept up the fusillade of star energy.
The werewolf was pushed back like he’d been hit with a fire hose, full pressure. His muscles smoked and sizzled from the attack but then the tissue healed just as fast.
Four more sets of wolf claws clicked across the marble, coming toward him. Blaze triggered the silver spikes on his ax and prepared to fight a battle he couldn’t win.
One space marine with a silver pickax against five werewolf Konobi tortured into a blinding, insane bloodlust? Not likely.
Blaze didn’t even try and argue with the wolfed-out former marine. Whatever had happened to Ian and his old friends, it was too late to save them, too late to reason with them. They’d wanted his blood even before Nauzea had tortured them. Now, they were Konobi, deranged and deadly.
Tanner leapt into the air and dove toward Blaze. Tanner’s lupine teeth had been removed, and metal spikes had been driven through his skull to act like fangs. Since they weren’t silver, his flesh had healed around the rows of sharp nine-inch nails. And since the nails were there, his teeth couldn’t grow back. Nauzea had taken full advantage of his lycanthropic ability to heal any of the wounds she didn’t want them to have.
Blaze stopped the assault on Ian, grabbed his ax with both hands, and spun like he was hitting a home run. He caught Tanner in his skull and drove the spike through the werewolf’s brain. Not just a home run, that was a grand slam. Tanner’s brains splattered out of his ruined skull and the dislodged spikes clattered across the marble.
That would take a minute for the pinche werewolf to heal. Silver in the heart was the way to kill them, but Blaze couldn’t make it over to end Tanner’s life.
Ian howled and sped toward the gunny. His claws slipped in the blood on the marble; he couldn’t get traction and ended up tumbling ass over teakettle.
Blaze reloaded his arm gun.
The last three werewolves attacked Blaze all at once.
Chase’s hands had been removed and rusted butcher knives slammed into his stumps. Jared’s fur had been replaced with needles. Every inch of his body bristled with sharp metal. Logan, perhaps, had the worst fate of all. Molten silver covered him. His fur smoked and spat while it burned through the fuzz and into the skin. And yet, his body continued to try and heal the wounds, keeping the silver molten. The silver dripped down, but it would never fully drip off him, thanks to Nauzea’s horrific magic.
All the werewolves had moon rocks slammed into their skulls, trapping them in their lupine forms and driving them insane.
Blaze saw how Logan’s silver torture could help him.
With all three werewolves attacking at once, Blaze dove to the side and somersaulted to his feet.
Using his arm gun set on micro blast, he slammed Jared’s needle-covered body into Logan’s silver-covered body. Two for the price of one. Both howled at the pain involved. The fusion bolts melted the needles in patches. But the silver touching Jared hurt far more.
Chase slashed at Blaze with the knives in his stumps. Blaze ducked one, wheeled his ax around, and cut one of the knives off with his fusion ax. Chase snapped at the gunny with his jaws. Blaze fired point-blank into the mouth with his arm gun. At the same time, he sank a silver spike into Chase’s leg. The werewolf yelped like a kicked corgi. He spun backward.
Ian jumped onto Blaze, knocking him to the ground and pinning him there. His claws dug into Blaze’s arms. Spittle from his grinning wolf maw dripped onto Blaze’s visor. This was the end.
Blaze had to chuckle. He’d figured he wouldn’t survive a single attack against his former marine buddies. But he’d been able to take down one while keeping the others off him. That was a pinche miracle in his book.
Ian licked Blaze’s visor and then took Blaze’s helmet between those massive jaws. His whole head fit inside the werewolf’s mouth. A little pressure, and the beast could snap off and swallow the gunnery sergeant’s head.
Magistrate Mack sped over and slammed his staff against Ian’s skinless frame. The bare, bleeding werewolf released Blaze. The creature was sent spiraling away, stunned by the concussive blast of a Meelah staff set on full power.
Such a strike would’ve liquified the bones of a normal Human.
The wolf shook off the attack seconds later. Other Meelah came running in.
Blaze warned them away. “No, Mack, call off your Meelah. Your weapons might stun these pinche pendejos for a second, but they won’t do much damage in the end. You’ll die.”
“We all die, Blaze!” Mack yelled out happily. “I have lived long enough! Wish me lu
ck on the grandest adventure of all! Death!”
Logan bounded up. He was leaking flesh and silver and one side of his body was covered with needles from the collision with Jared. He clawed through Mack’s head and ended the Meelah’s life. The space sloth slumped to the side, half of his skull gone. And yet, there was a serene smile on his face. Today was the day he was given the opportunity to explore death.
Other Meelah were hacked apart by Chase’s remaining knife hand. And Blaze knew what Ling would say. This moment, the Meelah were to fight the werewolves. And how amazing was it to get the chance to fight such monsters? The next moment…the next moment was their time to die. How amazing is the exploration of death, a journey both strange and wonderful?
Blaze tried to help them, tried to change the nature of their moments, but the werewolves were too savage.
Jared pounced on sloth after sloth, biting, scratching, or pinning them to the floor with the long needles bristling from his belly, then either biting them to pieces or clawing them apart.
Ian’s muscles, visible on his bones, worked to send him eating through other Meelah even as Blaze fought to save them. Chase was limping from the wound Blaze had given him, good, and Tanner was still healing his brains back into his skull. Blaze grabbed a sloth and sent him whirling back. “Back, all of you back now!”
Tanner rose, brains on his cheek, and opened his mouth full of nails to howl. He charged toward Blaze, while Blaze used his arm gun, on full power, to launch a spitting golden blob of fusion energy into Ian. The wolf was blown back into Jared and then onto Logan. First needles, then molten silver made Ian scream.
Blaze shifted and again bashed in Tanner’s re-growing brains with his silver pickax. The werewolf went flipping and flopping across the blood and bodies strewn across the marble mosaics. Damn, Blaze had to quit aiming for the head and aim for the heart. Fighting Hutchinson Prime zombies for so long had ruined him.
Mack and his retinue of Meelah were all dead, and yet they’d given Blaze a second to try and help his team and the remnants of the embassy survivors, though fewer and fewer bluetroopers fired plasma rifles into the monster caterpillars and the chain-wielding Konobi.
Blaze reloaded his arm gun, whirled, and targeted the demon generator. If he destroyed that, the caterpillars would be transformed back into helpless worms.
He sent a big bolt of star energy at the junky, DIY orb, but Jared leapt and took the blast instead. It sizzled through more needles, leaving patches of skin exposed. For a second. Then Jared grew more gray hair to cover the skin. After all the fighting, he was a mixture of fur and needles, a horrible combination.
From behind, Logan sank his fangs into Blaze’s armor, and the wolf thrashed the gunny like a puppy with a chew toy. Blaze was hurled left, right, and then found himself smashed into the ground. Logan stood over him, and the melting silver dripped down onto his visor, blinding him.
Luckily the werewolf’s teeth hadn’t broken his skin or Blaze would’ve found himself going furry. Still, on his back, blinded, wasn’t an ideal situation either.
All the werewolves roared in victory. It was over. And Blaze had lost.
We’re going to do to you what you did to Jameson, Ian’s voice whispered into his mind.
TWENTY-FOUR_
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Blaze couldn’t see. His visor was covered in cooling silver, but he heard the clicks of the other werewolves’ claws on the marble. All five stood over him, even Tanner, who had healed his brains back into his skull.
They all wanted to watch Blaze die.
Then, from behind them, a voice spoke, strangely clear in the din of the ongoing battle. “Little Ramon, always getting in fights with the bigger guys. It’s McCook all over again. But this time, I’m here to help.”
Arlo. But what could one drunk old man do against five insane werewolves?
Blaze wasn’t sure, but Logan was sent sprawling across the floor. Blaze rolled to the side, ripped off his helmet, and stood, but a wave of dizziness made him pause. Logan had got him good, he’d lost a lot of blood, but the nanotech was keeping his wounds sealed for the moment.
Arlo stood smoking the cheroot that had been behind his ear. He’d found a baseball bat and dragged it through the pools of Logan’s wasted silver, and that silver had hardened into a crust over the top. In the waistband of his filthy jeans was his Saturday Night Special, a .38 five-shot revolver that fired actual bullets. Silver bullets, if Blaze knew Arlo.
All the wolves turned from Blaze to leap on Arlo.
The old man, a wry smile on his face, cigar on his lips, dodged everyone. It wasn’t so much speed that Arlo used to avoid attacks as it was a slow sway. He simply would sidestep their attacks at the last possible minute, as if he knew when and how they’d strike. He then would smack a werewolf with the bat, sending it yelping to the floor. It was up in a minute, and he would weave away from its jaws, with that same funky little smile cracking his lips and the cigar set firmly in the corner of his mouth.
Arlo was fighting five werewolves at the same time, and it was like he was playing Frisbee in a park on Earth on a Saturday afternoon. He was holding his own, but why wasn’t he using his gun?
Blaze shook his head clear and went for the demon generator. Cali and Trina were still up to their necks in caterpillars, tearing through them, shooting out their brains or ripping off their mandibles. Ling’s spinning nunchakus cut off limbs and heads of Konobi but still more were coming at him.
Elle and Bill fenced and fought across the floor. Denning, Ambassador Randi, and Charles had been forced to join Kosnowski and his few bluetroopers left alive to keep their flank covered. Caterpillar bodies, oozing green blood, lay stacked about like cordwood. The dead bodies of Nauzea’s tortured Human servants lay unmoving next to the giant worms. Meelah and bluetrooper corpses were also scattered about.
There was no end to their enemy.
Blaze went to feed another shell into his arm gun, but he was out. Damn, but those microbursts used up the ammo quick. His ax was charged to seventy-five percent, which was good, and so he ran toward the blinking lights of the homemade demon generator.
Fernando tripped him. Blaze went skidding across the floor.
He turned, and the Clicker doctor rose above him, his arms full of spikes.
Fernando muttered Onyx speak while lifting the snare sphere over his head. In one of his smaller hands, he held a sticky bit of cobwebs.
The snare sphere flashed a white light, and a cloaked figure emerged into the air above them, growing in shape and size. The blinking red lights on the orb turned to green and then the thing exploded, sending Fernando back to the ground, covered in burning bits of metal. The doctor screamed, a sound filled with both pain and pleasure.
He was clicking even as he screamed. His translator managed to keep up.
“Life is suffering! Rejoice in the agony!” Over and over and over Fernando clicked in bliss and torment.
Nauzea’s cackles filled the air. The ghostly figure floating above them swept back her hood, revealing scabs for eyes, a ragged filthy infected nose hole, and a scabby mouth. Her diseased flaky skull oozed with sores and pus. Her hair was nothing but dank threads attached to a scalp plagued with a deadly psoriasis.
Then she let the robe drop.
There’s good naked and bad naked and awful tear-your-eyes-out naked. That was Nauzea. Every part of her skin, every part of her, had been pierced with thumbtacks, pins, needles, and nails. Pus dripped down onto the battlefield.
Blaze couldn’t move. Neither could anyone else. Every Human, Konobi or not, the last remaining Meelah, the last Clicker, all paused to take in the absolute horror of Nauzea, the archduchess of torture. She was using some kind of glamor magic, and it was working.
Except on Arlo. But he’d paused to suck cigar smoke into his lungs, and he was pondering the cherry on his cheroot as it if held the secrets of the universe.
The caterpillars didn’t care about the archduchess, and they fel
l onto the stunned bluetroopers, eating through their armor easily, as if it were only the skin of an apple and their insides the sweet pulp of the fruit. Other worms tried to eat through Cali, but she was impervious. Even she stopped fighting and let the caterpillars gnaw uselessly on her skin. Trina, vamped out, wasn’t affected, but she was pinned down.
Ian and his werewolves stopped for a second, but then rejoined their fight against Arlo, who had smoked his cigar down to the nub but still kept it screwed into the corner of his mouth. He had to squint against the smoke.
Raziel ran up from out of a caterpillar burrow and raced across to Blaze. Blaze wanted to pick up the cat, but he wanted to gaze upon the archduchess of torture more. It was like a car accident on Earth: he needed to stop everything and look, to look upon the horror, to look upon the agony at the heart of life.
Even Elle and Bill had stopped fighting. Slack-mouthed, they stared up at the tortured femaleish naked creature floating above them.
Ling was as well.
All of them were.
Nauzea let out a sinister laugh.
In a deep part of Blaze, he realized they couldn’t win against Nauzea. She truly was the most powerful of hell’s royalty.
And if she could wield so much power, both physically and psychically, what chance did they have against the All-Pig, Panashoat, the lord of hunger and master of appetites?
And how did Blaze even know those were his honorifics?
Because all life knew about the All-Pig and had for millions and millions of years. It was instinctual knowledge, like how baby chickens know to hide from shadows that look like hawks on the wing.
“Panashoat! Panashoat! Panashoat!”
Who was saying that?
Blaze realized Nauzea had started the chant, but all of them had joined in, chanting the name of the All-Pig.
“Panashoat! Panashoat! Panashoat!”
Then a wailing voice broke through comms saying another name, a simpler name, with such love and fear in her voice.
“BIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!” Lizzie’s voice drowned out all other sounds.