by Aaron Crash
But the way Elle talked about the new spells she found in the cookbook, his sister might be able to spare Trina the horrors of vampirism, but only if Blaze saved her first. In his dresser, he had an extra nanofiber gauntlet. He grabbed it and slid it onto Trina’s hand. The nanotech covered her, and she gasped in a breath. She wasn’t dead yet, but she didn’t have long.
Blaze went to pick up Trina to bring her to his sister, but then hell came crashing through the window above.
Xerxes landed on the floor of the room. The slender cylindrical head glowed red, displaying his holographic beast face, goat horns, donkey ears, and laughing jackal face. His incredibly long arms and massive hands dragged on the floor. Blaze saw that the P13rce unit’s robotic feet were gone, replaced with goat hooves. The hairy skin melted into the metal legs seamlessly. It seemed Xerxes was getting comfortable in his tech body.
“And you thought you were all so hhheroic fighting me and my pets in space. All the whhhile, you left your people here, alone. Lizzie and I hhhad some time to get more acquainted since my last stay in hhher circuits. And the woman, the auditor, hhhow she did babble, pleading for mercy, begging that you hhhelp her, Blaze.”
Blaze settled Trina on the floor, then wheeled. He fired his shotgun, missed, and the demon-possessed P13rce unit struck him, sending him flying into the wall. Xerxes whirled. Cables shot out of his arm, ensnaring Ling. Fernando tried to get away, but spiked fleas leapt from the robot’s body and caught the bolting Clicker, slamming him to the floor. The fleas transformed into handcuffs, locking Fernando in place.
Elle alone stood. She went to slice through Xerxes, but he caught her arm and broke it with a snap. “Hhhumans, so fragile.”
She let out a scream as her arm shattered. More of the spiked fleas leapt from Xerxes and subdued her to the floor. Her fusion katana, still activated, floated up within Xerxes’s reach.
The archduke grabbed it. At the same time, he plucked Bill off the wall, ripping him off the spikes.
All Blaze could hear was Xerxes’s voice and the hurricane sounds of his own breathing. Blaze had his ax up, ready to leap from the wall and attack the demon robot.
“Come at me, Gunny, and I kill your insect friend.”
Blaze paused.
Xerxes laughed. “This is the same bug I hhhurt last time. I took an arm. And he hhhas five limbs left. Not a spider, spiders hhhave eight legs. Hhhere, I’ll make hhhim Hhhuman.”
With a flick of the katana, Xerxes cut off Bill’s lower left arm.
Bill shuddered and writhed at the unimaginable pain. The nanotech closed over the wound, and the fusion blade cauterized the skin, so he didn’t bleed to death. However, that seemed little consolation given his situation.
Blaze streaked through his room, ready to chop the archduke into pieces with his ax. Xerxes jerked the cable holding Ling and sent the Meelah into Blaze. The wire then whipped his ax from his hands before snaking a coil around his throat. Like a living serpent, the wire snared both Ling and Blaze. As a last desperate act, Blaze got his legs under him and sprang off the floor, pulling Ling along. Instead of going for the demon, however, he went for the manual override switch next to his bed. He tore open the panel and struck the switch. Lizzie booted up.
Xerxes obviously didn’t care. He was still playing with Bill. The archduke tisked. “Oh, dear, I hhhave it wrong. Hhhumans have two legs and two arms, but not on the same side of their body. Well, I can’t fix the arm. But I can fix the leg.” With that, he sheared off Bill’s left leg. Bill twisted and convulsed. Only the three limbs on the right side of his body remained.
Gravity returned to the Lizzie, and everyone plummeted to the floor. Emergency hull shields covered the windows, and they had oxygen again. The sudden shift of energies must’ve overridden the last remnants of the vampiric telepathy. Blaze’s ocular implants sparked on. They had comms.
Bill’s clicking eclipsed all else. Fernando clicked back, trying to calm his brother, but then, mercifully, Bill went unconscious.
Blaze shouted to his sister, “Elle, is there anything—”
Lizzie’s computerized voice came online. “Onyx energy detected in the master suite. Onyx energy detected outside the ship. Onyx energy detected.”
“Lizzie! Flush ’em. Total flush. Trigger it now!”
Elle shrieked Onyx speak. A piece of bloody silk, the physical component for the flush spell, floated out of one of her pouches.
“Flush engaged,” Lizzie said back.
Black Onyx energy swirled around Elle. Even trapped on the ground, she was casting the spell, with a ton of help from Lizzie. Good thing she hadn’t slept. She’d said between catnaps, she’d tweaked the flush spell.
“Whhhat pathhhetic magic is this?” Xerxes demanded.
Then he was swept up in the growing tornado of Onyx energy. Two female vampires ran down the hallway, dry, dead hair clinging to their pales faces marked by the ink in their veins. Both were caught by the winds of the spell and sent screeching out the window in Blaze’s suite. Other vampires were being ejected through other ports. The ship was cleansing itself.
Xerxes spun around the room, reaching for the walls, his metal claws screeching. He was about to be ejected.
The cable holding Blaze and Ling retracted in a snap. Both fell to the floor. Spiked fleas were ripped away from Elle and Fernando, who stood.
Xerxes was helpless in the winds of the flush spell. His spiked fleas whirled around him. Shrieking, the archduke was thrown up and out the window from where he’d broken through. One arm caught on part of the hull and was torn off. His fleas, though, were already working on repairs.
“Nombre de Dios,” Blaze said. “That was close.”
“That was,” Elle said, half-smiling. The pain from her broken arm had her sweating and pale.
Xerxes’s cable snaked around her. Blaze and Elle locked eyes for a single moment. Then she was ripped from the room, pulled out into space. Before she left, though, she threw her fusion pistols to the floor.
Blue-fire jets on Xerxes’s calves sent him tearing away towards the Etrusca ruins. Elle, captured in the cable, trailed behind him.
“Ohhh, Blaze, your sister seems to be your source of power. I will see hhhow powerful shhhe truly is before I break her spine like I broke her arm. Meanwhhhile, my friends are coming for dinner. I would set a hhhearty table for thhhem.”
The vampires that had been ejected from the ship slammed back on top. Their impacts thudded from all around.
And from the colonizer above, others were coming.
Hundreds, if not thousands. Cold corpses, thirsting for gore, floated toward the Lizzie Borden.
TWENTY_
╠═╦╬╧╪
“Shields!” Blaze roared.
Lizzie calmly replied, “Shields are currently at zero percent. Life support and environmental controls only. All other system functions have been disabled by my lord and master.”
She meant Xerxes. Ironic that she called him the same name Xerxes called his superior, whoever or whatever that might be. King of Hell? Emperor of the Damned? Prince of Flies? Father of Lies? Didn’t matter. One pinche cabron at a time. Blaze would get to them all.
First, though, he had about a thousand vampires to fight. Already, their telepathic voices were trying to access his mind, pleading with him to let them in, to surrender and join them in the ecstasy of death. The voices came together to ask a single question: how can you fight a thousand vampires with only a few of your crew on their feet?
Blaze did what Ling had taught him: he focused on his breathing and the next task at hand. Which was to seal off the imminent threat.
“Close all ports and doors, Lizzie. Can you do that?”
“Affirmative.” The doors clanged shut. But…all across the vessel came the scratching of vampire talons on metal. Translucent bodies, veins pumped full of black Onyx energy, clung to every part of their ship. Those midnight-eyed, inky-mouthed creatures licked at the windows with dead tongues. The palms of t
heir scrabbling hands squeaked and whined.
One, though, the corpse of an old man, floated in the background. His long hair stuck to his face, and his eyes showed a vile intelligence. A tattered Union uniform, the chest full of medals, covered his spare frame. Blaze recognized the insignia…an admiral in the Union’s fleet. The admiral’s feet were bare, his toenails gnarled and decrepit like the rotted roots of a dead tree. Obsidian darkness painted the cruel claws his fingers had become.
Trina lay on the floor, unmoving in her spacesuit. Fernando cradled his unconscious friend. Ling stood stock-still in front of the nightmare of vampires clinging to the bridge’s window. The Shaolin sloth regarded them with mild eyes as if he were gazing at a particularly pretty sunset.
“Whatcha doin’, Ling?” Blaze asked.
“I believe I’m looking at my death,” the Meelah whispered. “Life has never felt more precious to me. It’s a shame we only get to live such a short time. Every minute is a banquet of wonders. Even this. Even now.”
“We’re not dying,’ Blaze growled. “I’m getting my sister back, and I’m going to hack Xerxes into tiny pieces with my ax. We need to get Bill back online and get him to the engine room. He can undo what Xerxes did to my ship.”
The shrieks and squeals of titanium shredding echoed through the ship. Lizzie told them what was happening. “The top hatch has been compromised. Intruder alert. There is a high concentration of Onyx energy surrounding the ship.”
With his implants back online, Blaze saw the vampires flooding into the ship. His entire vessel was covered with wriggling bloodthirsty corpses, every square inch, every welded panel. It was horrific, the dead men, women, and children, all pulling at the seams even as their fingers were ripped off to join the rest of the trash around them.
Trina let out a shriek, lifting her body as death came to claim her.
Blaze bent, scooped her up, and tossed her over a shoulder. She was too weak to fight him, but that would end when she changed. He knew the logical course of action was to end her life. And yet, Elle might be able to fix her. Too bad she wasn’t around.
Fernando managed to gather up Bill in his four arms. Ling led the way out of the master suite. Vampires filled the corridor, coming toward them. Ling had picked up another fusion pistol. Two-fisted, he blasted into the crowd. Vampires couldn’t heal wounds caused by star energy. The powerful blasts removed heads and disintegrated limbs, making the vicious things scream in pain.
Blaze followed behind with Trina. “Remember, head shots will put them down.”
Blaze used Ugly Betty to blow two to dust. Holding Trina on his shoulder, he jacked another shell into his shotgun, one-handed, and disemboweled a vampire girl in front of him. With her stomach and back gone, she folded in half and fell to the floor, yet she was still alive, crawling pathetically toward them until Fernando used Elle’s other fusion pistol to blow off her head.
A dozen more dashed forward. Too many.
Blaze and his crew were forced back into the master suite.
Ling was already using a nunchaku to cut a hole through the floor. He chose the same place where the spider demon had spit his acid to escape down into the bridge.
“Zero gravity, Lizzie,” Blaze commanded. The vampires rushing down the corridor were sent floating upward while he and his crew retreated down into the bridge.
The vampiric hoard paused in the master suite, a dozen nightmare faces hissing at them through the jagged hole.
A new voice filled Blaze’s mind. We have all the time in the world to get you, Gunny. The demon drew us to him, and we serve him, but we will not recklessly lose so many of our kind to your weapons. Especially since Xerxes had us plunder your ammunition supply. The gunnery sergeant knew it was the admiral talking to him, the old man who had stayed back while the dead colonists pummeled the Lizzie.
Blaze’s heart fell into his stomach. The vampires had taken the hydrogen shells from the weapons locker on the bottom deck. Getting to the secret weapons cache on the top deck would be damn near impossible. They needed to get the ship’s computer back under their control. Then they could trigger the shields, use their fusion torpedoes, and kick some ass.
Blaze reactivated the ship’s gravity.
“To the engine room,” the gunnery sergeant said. His crew followed him into the second-deck corridor, which was empty, thank God. The battered crew reached the central staircase. On the landing, Blaze peered up at glittering eyes and gnashing faces as the vampires gabbled at them.
“Save your ammo,” Blaze said to Fernando and Ling. “Getting more is going to be an issue.” His bandolier of shells hung from his shoulder, but he only had ten remaining. Four more were in his shotgun. He’d have to remove those and use them in the pistols so they could take more shots. Good thing all of the fusion weapons used the same ammo. And it was a good thing that Elle had thrown her pistols before she’d been captured, though both were empty.
With only fourteen shells left to deal with hundreds of vampires, the odds were against them.
Lizzie buzzed, “Cargo bay doors are losing structural integrity. Breach imminent. Emergency hull and pressure seals engaged and holding.”
“Fernando, can you manage Trina and your brother?” Blaze asked.
The Clicker clicked. “Yes, I am damaged, the rivets…in my body…that were pinning me to the wall. I kept thinking of butterfly collectors on your world, and the irony was very bitter.”
“Sorry,” Blaze muttered. “Take them the back way to the engine room. We have to keep the admiral guessing. Then get Bill awake. Strap Trina down. She might turn at any moment.”
“Shouldn’t we remove that threat?” Fernando asked.
“Not yet,” Blaze said. “Not until we have to. Ling and I will take out the vamps while they are bottlenecked at the cargo bay doors. We’ll meet you in the engine room. Seal the doors behind you. Got it?”
“Roger that, Gunny,” Fernando said.
Damn, but his crew was tough. Even though Bill was far happier unconscious, Blaze knew Fernando would wake him despite the pain. Bill would have to talk to Lizzie and fix whatever Xerxes had done to her. As for Trina, Blaze needed to buy her time.
Fernando hefted Trina and Bill into his four arms and took off, going through the Clickers’ bedroom to get into the engine room. Hopefully, Cali was still asleep. If things got bad, Blaze would need her to power back up and start chomping on bloodsucker meat.
Ling and Blaze slid through the doors into the cargo bay. Blaze opened a panel and manually closed the doors to the corridor behind them, sealing them in. The vampires on the third deck wouldn’t be able to get to them.
They hurried through the bay. Vampire arms snaked through the cracked opening, arms of all different shapes and sizes, with black claws and inky veins on pale wrists. The pressure from all those preternaturally strong limbs was forcing the bay doors open. The hull containment protocols were holding, so the room wasn’t being depressurized. Yet.
Ling deactivated his nanofiber armor, preferring to fight in his tunic. Ling’s greatest strength was his speed and agility. Blaze would keep his armor on and use his ax. He ejected the shells from his shotgun, handing them over to Ling, who sneaked them through a slit in his tunic to secret them in his pouch.
Blaze stuck his shotgun on his back, the nanotech latching on. Then he and Ling barreled forward and chopped off arms. Ling whirled both of his nunchakus while Blaze wielded his ax. Hands appeared on either side of the crack and yanked the door open wide enough for the first vampire to try the opening—a young adult male with gray pimples on his pale face.
Blaze, using two hands, swung his ax down and cleaved the kid in half. Ichor splashed down where there was atmosphere, but then bubbled away into space as it left the hull containment field. Parts of the male were thrown aside as others tried to get in.
Unwanted thoughts flooded Blaze’s mind.
Let us in.
We will love you.
We will save Trina.
We will help you rescue your sister from Xerxes.
Don’t fight.
Give up.
Blaze paused as the voices attacked his mind. Two twin boys tried to clamber inside. Ling decapitated one and sliced the hands off the other. While the body of the headless vampire couldn’t function, the severed head continued to bite at them until Blaze sank his ax into it. The handless boy shrieked and darted forward, fangs first, to bite the Meelah.
Ling sprang to the side and bashed through his skull.
“Blaze, don’t listen to their nonsense. Our own mental chatter is suspect enough.”
Blaze took in a deep breath and shook off the psychic attack. The doors opened wider, enough for the vampires to come in two at a time.
Ling on the left, Blaze on the right, the pair hacked and slashed at the oncoming horde. The gunnery sergeant kept an eye on the power readings of his ax, and when he was below two percent, he ejected the spent shell and slammed in a new one. Ling had to do the same with his nunchakus.
Still vampires hustled forward to the slaughter. Most of the wounds were cauterized from the fusion weapons, but some black blood splashed out, flecking Ling and Blaze. Most of the blood bubbled around the ship along with the severed bodies. Blaze noticed some of the waiting vampires gnawing on arm bones, ripping off skin and slurping it down, or gorging themselves on thigh meat. Others yanked on the cargo doors to open them further, and if they opened much wider, he and Ling would be overwhelmed.
From behind him, Blaze heard vampires banging and scratching on the internal doors of the cargo bay. If those putas could get through the cargo bay doors, they could get through the inside doors, however well sealed.
“Fernando, report!” Blaze raged, his arms starting to ache as he sliced and chopped vampire meat.
“Bill is awake. He is engaged with the Lizzie, but he cannot unravel what Xerxes has done. I have helped him with the pain, but losing so many limbs has obvious psychological consequences. He is having trouble concentrating.”