by Aaron Crash
Trina, though, seemed fascinated. “So, is that why you and Elle got together?”
“I’m not sure,” Fernando replied. “As I said, she was very intoxicated. And while I didn’t quite understand her reasoning, I did fall in love with her after our time together. The pleasure on her face, the gyrations of her mammalian form, all created a moment I will treasure forever. Not that I find her body attractive, for I have no inherent sex drive. However, I think her soul…if I can use that highly suspect term…is beautiful.”
The IV was working. Elle’s VHI was rising.
“Please, Fernando,” Blaze said. “This is personal. We don’t know Trina all that well. Elle is gonna be pissed you went into the details. And come on, it was two years ago. You have to get over her.”
“Never.” Fernando adjusted the needle in Elle’s arm, caressed her face with another hand, and with his other two arms, he checked on Bill.
“Losing a limb isn’t going to improve Bill’s mood any,” Blaze said. “He’s really going to hate us.”
Fernando tilted his praying-mantis head. “The idea of quantifying hatred is interesting, but moot in this case. I believe Bill loathes you all to the best of his ability, and that won’t change.”
“So why is he on the ship?” Trina asked. “Why are you both here? Clickers generally avoid Humans, or so I thought. Unless there is money involved.”
Blaze glanced down at the timer. They still had some time. But he did want to check on Cali. Hopefully she wouldn’t tear his head off. Or kiss him. Both were equally dangerous.
Okay, maybe he didn’t want to open her cage just yet.
Fernando answered Trina’s question. “There is no money involved. We do this because we were exiled from our home world. Bill doesn’t just hate Humans—he hates Clickers as well.”
“And Meelah,” Blaze added.
“Yes,” Fernando affirmed. “But his hatred for sentient life in the universe is only matched by his ardent love for starships and technology. And he believes in the hunting we do. We understand that evil is threatening the universe. I do not want life to end. Bill worries about our technology and the health of the Lizzie Borden.”
“Because of Onyx energy,” Trina murmured.
“You are correct,” Fernando said. “Onyx energy is an ocean of evil pouring across the galaxies. And the demons and other monsters are like great dangerous fish swimming in that diabolical sea. Bill doesn’t care about the demons hurting sentient life, but he can’t stand the idea of the demons ruining starships.”
Blaze tried to sum it all up. “Basically, Bill hated all of his Clicker family, so they kicked him out. Fernando was Bill’s brother and best friend, however odd that is. But while Bill loves Human technology, Fernando appreciates Human anatomy. So one is our engineer, and one is our doctor. Bam. Done.”
“Why did you stick with Bill?” Trina asked.
Fernando adjusted the dressing covering his friend’s stump. “Because we hatched together. He was my friend. He was my brother. I could not sleep without him next to me.”
Blaze tried to clear that up. “Not sleep together…you know…but they do sleep curled up. Because…bug…stuff.”
“Bug stuff?” Trina rolled her eyes. “Did you fight in the Bug War?”
Blaze nodded. “Only at the very end of it. By that time, the Clickers were already suing for peace. I saw a few months of combat, and then we had the treaty and the war ended. Because of the rise of Onyx energy.”
“Why did the Onyx energy end the war?” Trina asked.
Fernando clicked. “My people believe that the Onyx energy will kill the Humans and then our empire will sweep through and kill the demons. You see, demons cannot possess my kind or the Meelah. Only Humans are susceptible.”
“Because we have souls?” Trina asked.
“It would appear so, though there is no scientific evidence of anyone having a soul. The idea is highly suspect, as I’ve said.”
“And yet, you fell in love with Elle’s soul,” Trina pointed out.
Fernando raised his arms in defeat. “It is as you say. My kind officially doesn’t recognize the existence of the Onyx. But unofficially, the queen, my mother, the source of all life, the one goddess eternal, is merely waiting for the demons to wipe out the Humans. Humans are the only threat, as the Meelah do not care for conquest, and so the queen, my mother, the source of all life, the one goddess eternal, will spread our people across the galaxies.”
Blaze sighed. “Every time, that queen thing. Every single time. Crazy pinche bugs.”
“And is this something you want?” Trina asked Fernando.
“It’s something that will not happen. We are going to find the Onyx Gate and close it. Without the gate, the Onyx energy will dissipate, and the demon threat will be over. I’ve been studying the Onyx speak that Elle uses to cast spells. The vocabulary, grammar, and diction are dizzying even for me, and while I’m not a professional linguist, I do enjoy a good phoneme. As for the Humans and Clicker kind, already our economic ties have made another war unwise. The queen, my mother—”
“No!” Blaze tried to stop the litany. And failed.
“—the source of all life, the one goddess eternal, will see that trading with the Humans is the right course of action. But we must find the Onyx Gate and close it. Already, we are seeing more and more incredibly dangerous demons causing havoc. In less than forty-eight hours, we have fought two major entities, powerful beings, more powerful than what we have seen before.”
Trina tried to piece it together. “So, the Onyx energy is relatively new?”
“No,” Blaze said. “There’s always been Onyx in the universe given the fact that scary stories are ancient. It’s just that thirty years ago, when the 0n1x singularity exploded, it flung the gate wide open, and a whole mess of Onyx energy poured in. And it keeps pouring in, and so the demons and ghosts spread far and wide.”
“If the Onyx is such a threat, why does the IPC and the Union not recognize it?” Trina asked. “I’ve seen only one demon, and now I can’t sit by and wait for others like it to hurt us. No, we have to kill it.”
“Demons are bad for business,” Blaze said. “The IPC doesn’t want anything to disrupt their profits. Greedy motherfuckers. As for the Terran Union, some factions believe, but the Union is pretty pathetic. Useless motherfuckers.”
“The Union could be a wonderful thing,” Fernando said. “But Blaze is right. They are useless incestuous maternal lovers.”
“Uh, not what I said,” Blaze said.
“Close enough for your primitive primate chatter,” Fernando clicked. “If only Onyx speak was as simple as your monkey babble, I’d be a master sorcerer already.”
Trina shut her eyes and exhaled loudly. “I think…I think I need to lie down. This is all a little much. This morning I lived in a relatively safe universe, I had a good job, and I was on track to get a promotion. Now? Demons are real, I’m out of a job, most likely I’ll see jail time, and I’ve signed up to chase the Devil into the most dangerous parts of deep space. Lovely.”
“That’s if the IPC attack ships don’t destroy us,” Fernando clicked.
“Not helping,” Blaze said. He escorted Trina out of the sickbay and led her toward the guest room. They walked by Cali’s room. The metal door held. Spellwork, black etchings on the steel, glowed dimly as they passed. Long claw marks marked the entry and the walls around it.
“Who’s in there?” Trina paused to ask.
“Cali,” Blaze answered. “And we’re not going to talk about her or deal with her yet. Not yet.”
“She wasn’t on the ship’s roster.” Trina frowned. “That is against regulations.”
“Cali is best kept under lock and key. She is against regulations. All of them. Anything sane. Come on.”
He led Trina down the hall to the guest room. The door slid open. It was under the bridge, at the front end of the ship, and the window showed the swirling gases of Decatur V. More of the red rain spattered the reinforced glas
s. Lightning struck their shields, and the energy field flashed blue and held. They were protected for now. And Ling must’ve found a solid current, ’cause they were zooming through the storms, putting miles and miles between them and where they’d entered the gas giant.
Elle had decorated this room as well. It was done in greens, with a large forest green bed and a few Meelah plants anchored down. They were decorative but also useful, in case Ling ran out of his supply.
It was part guest room but mostly library. Walls of books, the tomes fastened down with leather straps built into the shelving, filled the room. Some of the more dangerous grimoires were locked in with iron bands of metal and locks. Elle had the keys.
“What’s with the books?” Trina asked. “Don’t you have digital copies?”
Blaze stood in front of the shelves and crossed his arms. “These won’t digitalize. Elle tried. The spells and rituals defy technology.” He motioned to the books locked up tight. “These are bound in Human flesh. It’s grisly, but I guess it focuses the Onyx energy into the right patterns. I don’t know.” He frowned.
“You don’t approve of your sister, do you?” she asked.
He shrugged. He wasn’t going to go deep right at that moment. He had to get back to the bridge and help Ling plot a course. They might have an old schematic of at least some of the anomalies inside the Sargasso expanse. Rumor had it, there were ancient Etrusca relics inside. Now that would be something, to see an Etrusca ruin. Union and IPC scientists both agreed that the Etrusca had been a massive interstellar empire six million years in the past. Inexplicably, they had disappeared. No one was sure if they were Clicker, Meelah, or Human, the only known sentient spacefaring species in the universe.
Trina interrupted his ruminations. “You do care for her, I know it. I saw you after she tried to exorcise Xerxes. You were worried.”
Blaze grinned. “I was worried. Do you know how rare it is to have an Onyx witch that is willing to fight against evil? Most of the witches are in league with one devil or another. Only Elle and Granny wanted to harness the Onyx to fight for the good guys.”
He saw her next question, but he cut her off. “And no, don’t ask about Granny. And no, I don’t want to talk about my sister. And I have to get back to the bridge and help Ling outwit your IPC buddies.”
“They aren’t my friends,” Trina whispered. “It was only a job. I might as well have been a Union undersecretary.”
“Who did you piss off to be working Fleabugger?” Blaze asked. “It’s pretty much the butthole of the entire Americatus Quadrant.”
Trina walked to the window and touched the glass, which wasn’t glass but a hearty polymer reinforced with transparent skeins of ultra-strong titanium. It had to be tough to withstand the rigors of space travel and stellar combat. It could take a theta-particle cannon as well as a class 8 solar flare.
“I took the job because no one wanted it. First of all, you’re right. New Oberlin is remote. Secondly, no one likes working for Denning. He’s like a bad stepfather, always in your business, with no real authority. But I knew if I could work the system here, I could work my way up to a nice job in the Sateel system. The Americatus Quadrant isn’t close to Clicker or Meelah space, so there’s less Union bullshit to deal with. Plus, it’s relatively new. Lots of work and IPC offices. Americatus has exponential economic possibilities.”
Blaze chuckled. “That all sounds like worlds of boredom to me. You use the word ‘exponential,’ and it’s like math class. I didn’t do too well in school.”
Arlo had beaten him for every “F” he got, that asshole. But he wasn’t going to start thinking about Arlo. Pearl was right. Blaze certainly hoped the bastard was dead. And if he ever found Arlo’s grave, he’d forgo pissing on it and take a huge dump on it instead.
“When did you start hunting demons?” she asked.
“Next question,” he answered. “Not going to go into my past now. And I really have to go.”
Trina turned and walked up to him, her green eyes never leaving his face. Her hair was frizzy from the battle, dirt marked her face, and her navy-blue business suit was torn here and there. Yet, she was still so unbelievably beautiful.
She eased his hand into hers. “What about Ling? The Meelah keep to themselves mostly, staying in their section of the five quadrants since much of it is already mapped. They like to explore, and they are pacifists. What’s Ling’s story?”
Her hand was so little and soft in his. And her smell? Damn, but her perfume was gone, swept away in the violence and adrenaline. Her scent was musky and strong, but he liked it.
Before he knew it, Blaze found himself talking about their Shaolin Space Sloth. “Ling is another outcast. He was found, orphaned, on an abandoned Meelah clipper, the only survivor. He was just a baby. No one knew what had taken out his parents and their crew, but whatever it was, it had been a bloodbath. His parents had secreted him away in a MATT pipe. The Humans who found him heard his cries when they were running salvage in the Huaxia Quadrant. Their kindness, well, Ling never forgot them.
“He grew up with the Huaxia scrappers until they found a Meelah ship. It was five years of his life. For a Meelah, that’s a long time. Meelah aren’t weaned until they are ten, and they only live until they’re around forty. Ling was six when he was given another mother, but he never forgot his Chinese foster parents. He got in an exchange program and went to Earth, and spent another ten years in a Shaolin monastery. Which was haunted. That’s how we hooked up. Elle likes to go back to Earth.”
While he talked, Trina took his other hand. Her eyes sparkled like emeralds. “You and Elle collect orphans. You are quite the family.”
That word again. Blaze shook his head. “No, I can’t look at my crew as family. You’ve only met the survivors. We’ve had a lot of hunting partners over the last three years, and most of them are dead. We’ve lost most people. A lot of people.”
The names, the faces, haunted him. Larry, Bernice, Quaxia, Yat-Sen, Natsu, Kirito. MBassu, the old man from the Afrique Quadrant, that had been the most recent, not six months ago. A vampire had got him. The creature had tricked MBassu into believing he was the man’s long-lost son. Awful. Once bitten by a vampire, there was no going back. Blaze had staked the old guy himself.
She let him remember in silence.
He gripped her hands. “You sure you want to go hunting with us, Trina? We’ll get you tattooed and implanted, and we’ll try and keep you safe, but you’ve seen Xerxes, what he is and what he can do. The odds are against us.”
Trina squeezed his hands back. “I can’t walk away from this. I know it might be stupid, but I can’t turn my back on you. Before today, my life was knowing regulations, doing audits, and hours of paperwork. That all seems so insipid now.” She smiled. “And we have to prove the Clicker queen wrong.”
She was so near him now, he could feel the heat radiating off her curvy body. “The queen, the mother, the source of all life, the one goddess eternal.” He fell into the Clicker litany without meaning to. This woman was messing with his head.
“You wanted me back at the bar, when we first met,” Trina whispered. “Do you want me now?”
Blaze couldn’t help himself. He bent and kissed her lips. They were soft, wet, eager, and in seconds, they had fallen into the kiss. He crushed her body to his and felt how supple she was, how wonderfully warm and alive.
But before they fell deeper into the kiss, he broke it. “Trina, I want you. I think you and I could have something, but I can’t take advantage of you like this. Your whole life was ripped away today. And battle can be the ultimate aphrodisiac.” He glanced at the counter. “I don’t want you to regret anything we might do. Besides, I have to get back to the bridge.”
She sighed and pushed her face into the silk of his shirt. “You’re right. I never do this. But after the fighting, and that thing, I feel how precious life is now. I don’t want to waste a second.”
“You sound like Ling,” Blaze murmured. “He’s alway
s talking about the moment we’re in as being the best possible moment.”
“We’re the children of the universe. We’re the children of now.” She quoted what Ling had said to Xerxes. “You’re a good man, Blaze.”
He brushed a hand through her red hair. “I’m a hunter, Trina. I can’t be too good. People die if I’m too soft.”
He left her and went to the door. Turning he said, “Take a minute for yourself. But we might need you up on the bridge. I’m hoping we can outrun the IPC ships, but if we can’t, we’ll need every hand.”
The doors slid shut behind him.
He paused by Cali’s scratched-up doorway. He was treading into dangerous waters with Trina. He’d made the right decision by not throwing her on the bed and getting busy.
And yet, regret crept into his gut. Life was precious and so stupidly short. And he liked Trina, not just for her looks, but for the grit inside her heart.
Cali’s voice called to him from inside her cage. “Blaze, are you there?”
He didn’t answer. He couldn’t deal with her right now.
Ling’s voice broke through comms. “Gunny, we’re about to become visible. I imagine you’ll want to pilot us out of the gas giant.”
Blaze moved down the corridor without answering. He didn’t want Cali to hear him.
That girl freaked him out.
TEN_
╠═╦╬╧╪
Blaze reached the bridge right when Elle’s hide spell ended, and all power returned to the Lizzie Borden.
“Hit it hard, Ling,” he said. “Let’s get a few thousand miles under our belt while we’re in the gas giant.”
Ling opened up the throttle, and the rain evaporated as their blue-fire engines engaged. They’d initiate the spacetime wave with their SWD once they were out of the clouds.
“I see Elle and Bill are recovering,” Ling said. “Losing a limb will not improve Bill’s mood any.”
“That’s what I said.” Blaze sat down next to Ling, taking the other main seat. He started up the command controls with his implants, and the golden holographic controls glowed. It was all very high-tech, though Elle had left some of her laundry next to his seat. That was his sister … she spent so much time decorating everything and then didn’t pick up after herself.