by Aaron Crash
Blaze’s fusion ax chopped through a male vampire’s skull, revealing black brains that floated out of the skull and into space. “What about Trina?”
“I have tried to sedate her. But I can’t. She is in incredible pain as the vampiric virus, infused with Onyx energy, is altering her cells. She’s still alive, in Human terms, but just barely. I would like your permission to euthanize her. It would be the kind thing to do.”
It would, but Blaze couldn’t give up hope. Not yet.
“How is Cali?” he asked. They had left her in the engine room.
“She’s not here,” Fernando said simply.
Blaze’s sweat turned cold. Cali wasn’t there. Then…where was she?
The cargo bay doors were giving way, allowing three vampires to attack at a time. Blaze was down to nine hydrogen shells.
The internal doors creaked open. Blaze didn’t have time to look, but he knew the vampires inside the ship were forcing their way in.
Then Xerxes’s voice blasted through comms. “I was wondering when you’d think of the wolf girl. Hhhonestly, a werewolf, onboard, seems rather foolishhh. Especially when she can be used against you.”
“Cali!?” Blaze called through comms. Her VHI was at a hundred percent. But he couldn’t find her on board. Xerxes, dicking with their tech, obviously.
“Blaze,” Cali whispered. “Xerxes can open my bracelets at any time. You must leave the ship. You have to—”
The gunny cut her off. “Where are you?”
“Outside the cargo bay…in the hall…the vampires have me, their skin is so cold, Blaze. And they are in my head. They are making me hate you…making me hate Elle…if I turn, I’ll come for you, and then I’ll find her. I’ll kill you both. I’ll have to kill you both.”
Xerxes’s laughter roared through comms. “Let’s end the suspense, shall we. Admiral, pushhh…hhher…throughh.”
The internal doors cracked open further, and Cali was thrust inside.
She crumpled to the floor. Her armor had been removed, and she was in her sweaty, ripped blue dress. She stood, barefoot.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Her bracelets snicked open.
TWENTY-ONE_
╠═╦╬╧╪
Blaze tried his Cali Bad Dog routines to close them, but of course, Xerxes wasn’t about to allow that.
Cali let out a howl that started out Human and ended in the fury of a wounded wolf. Her bones snapped and cracked as her entire physiology changed in response to the Terran moon rock on her wrists. Fur covered her flesh in an instant as her face elongated into a snarl, and her eyes went from blue to gold to glowing.
Saliva dripped from her fangs, and her hands sprouted enormous claws.
Blaze and Ling fell away from the doors and started backing toward the side entrance to the engine room. He’d told Fernando to take the long way so he could seal doors as he went and to keep the vampires guessing about where they were.
It had all been for nothing. They were beaten.
Cali’s transformation was so horrific, even the vampires paused, both outside the ship and inside.
“Ling, fall back to the engine room,” Blaze ordered.
Ling chuckled. “Never, Gunny. I will not leave you alone to face her. And correct me if I’m mistaken, but you don’t have silver on you, do you?”
“No, but this is a direct order! Get to the engine room. We have to fall back to the cellar airlocks. It’s the most secure part of the ship. Bill will have to use a remote connection to fix Lizzie.”
Cali snarled and dashed toward them on all fours. She was eight feet long and several tons of pissed-off werewolf. Her claws would go through Blaze’s nanofiber armor like a heated razor through soft butter.
Vampires poured in behind Cali. Even if they somehow knocked out the werewolf, the vampires would drink them dry.
“How about we take a run at Cali together?” Blaze suggested to the Meelah.
“If we can, Gunny. If we can.”
“I’ll hit her low, you hit her high, and then we bolt!” Blaze deactivated his ax, snatched Ugly Betty off his back, and fed her one of their precious shells.
Cali leapt. Ling dashed up Blaze’s back and sprang into the air.
Blaze triggered his shotgun and sent a sizzling burst of energy right into Cali’s exposed chest. At the same time, Ling hit her across her face once, twice, with both of his fusion nunchakus. The smell of burning fur filled the room. The fury of their combined attack worked to knock Cali senseless for one brief moment.
It was enough. She was thrown back, crashing through vampires and knocking them akimbo.
Blaze and Ling turned and ran, through the doors, into the engine room. Blaze grabbed Trina.
Bill clicked jaggedly, apparently dazed from the pain meds and the trauma of losing half his limbs.
“Yeah, Bill, you hate me, but you love this ship. We’re going to lose her unless you can talk some sense into Lizzie. She met a bad guy and can’t quit him. Fernando, grab your brother.”
Ling spun. A fat old lady vampire, moving like she was sixteen and in love, broke through the door. The Meelah removed half her head with a pistol blast. It was his last shot. The shell ejected automatically and Ling, just as automatic, reached into his pouch and slid in a new one. In a flash, he had six more shots of star power.
No time to count how many shells they had left, but they were using them up fast.
It wouldn’t do a thing to Cali’s Onyx-reinforced skin. And already her fur was growing back as she rammed into the door. Lucky the old lady vamp had been so fat—Cali got wedged between her and the door fame. Vampires bustled around her, trying to crawl over the werewolf to get at them. Cali thrashed and popped a slender female vamp trying to crawl over her. Black blood spurted onto Cali’s fur. The female vamp let out a shriek but slumped backward, onto the floor of the cargo bay. She was mangled, but she wasn’t dead.
“Into the MATT access pipe,” Blaze called. “The vamps can fit but Cali can’t. Do it! Now! Ling, grab Trina. I’ll hold off Cali for a minute.”
Cali still struggled to get into the tube, tossing away writhing, chattering vampires or shredding them to pieces. She couldn’t get through despite the monster gore lubricating the opening.
Blaze struck at Cali’s wrist with his ax. If he could sever the bracelets, get them away from her, then she would return to normal. His ax cut through the nanofiber but not her flesh. A bracelet came loose, but Cali as a wolf was too intelligent to be taken out so easily. She grabbed hold of the length of nanofiber, and the bracelet was back on her wrist in a second.
She was ready for his next swing at the other bracelet. She grasped at the haft and Blaze nearly lost his ax.
So that wasn’t going to work.
She lunged forward, snapping at him. Her teeth clacked inches away from his nose.
Blaze tried a different tactic. He drove his ax into the ceiling above her. The steel turned to red-hot slag and dripped down on her and the vampires. As it cooled, it hardened, trapping them in a crust of metal for a minute. But it would only be for a moment. Cali would tear free.
Bill, Fernando, and Ling were already in the access tube with Trina in tow. She’d gone quiet. She was probably dead, but not turned yet. If she had turned, her voice would be the first to whisper into his mind, begging to be spared. Newly turned vampires understood that the people closest to them were the easiest targets. If freed, Trina would find passage on a ship and try to get home, to turn her mother, her father, any of her siblings or past lovers. All would be easy prey for a vampire thirsting for blood.
Blaze skirted the glowing cylinders of the SWD engine, but the cores were dark. Of course, since the pocket anomaly had robbed them of faster-than-light travel, the engine room would be cold. He jumped over a seat and then was in the access tube, on the ladder, crawling down to the third deck, where they could run to the cellar airlocks.
And regroup.
And hopefully not die.
>
If Bill could wrench Lizzie’s computer out of Xerxes’s control, then they would have a lot more options. But Cali was the problem. How to deal with Cali without putting her down?
They emerged through an access panel, into the third deck’s main hallway. “Get to the airlock,” Blaze said.
“Let’s end Trina’s tortured existence,” Fernando clicked. “Please, Blaze. You’re not thinking clearly.”
He turned on Ling. “Should we?”
The Meelah looked thoughtful. “We shouldn’t. Not until she turns. The woman is fighting the change. I’ve never seen such a thing. As long as we have hope in our hearts, we are stronger than the things we fight. If we lose that hope, we are lost.”
“Hope it is,” Blaze said.
Footsteps clanged above them. Other vampires were coming down the stairs.
While his crew fled to the cellar’s entrance, Blaze hit the weapons locker. As he thought, the hydrogen shells were all gone. He picked up a fusion spear for Fernando, then snatched up his sawed-off shotgun and stuck it to his thigh. He grabbed boxes of silver shells as well as a silver-tipped spear gun. Then he slammed the spear gun into the customized housing on a plasma minigun, six barrels ready to destroy. The plasma couldn’t kill the bloodsuckers, but there was enough firepower in the minigun to slow them the fuck down.
And he had the spear gun attached to the massive weapon if all else failed with Cali. But he had a plan forming in his jarhead skull. He’d killed his own before, and every time he swore he’d never do it again. He was going to take Cali alive, or least find her a cage where she couldn’t escape. It wouldn’t be pleasant for her, but agony was better than death. Pain ended. Death was permanent. Most of the time.
As he emerged from the weapons locker, vampires flooded the corridor.
Blaze grinned. “Hey, fellas, have you met my minigun? She’d like to say hello.”
He gripped the trigger, the barrels spun, and a second later each one sent superheated plasma into the mob of shrieking translucent-skinned vampires. The energy cooked their flesh then blew it off their bones in chunks.
The stench of BBQ followed. Cooking Humans smelled like pig. It was sad that he knew that. However, he did enjoy the smell of Human hair burning.
He started forward, driving the vampires back. Those badly burned and blasted apart writhed on the floor, but their wounds were healing before his eyes, the black Onyx in their bloodstream repairing tissue as fast as he could dish out damage.
The minigun continued to throw body parts back and eviscerate the animated corpses. Bowels were blown out the back of bodies, the flesh sizzling like a Sunday afternoon cookout. Arms went flinging against the wall, meat smacking hard steel and leaving tracks of black Onyx ichor. Heads folded in around the plasma bursts and pummeled legs came off completely.
Damn, but miniguns were fun.
The bloodsucker mob was driven back from the entrance to the cellar, and Blaze leapt inside. He slammed the door closed behind him and the locks engaged.
Down the tight staircase he went, hefting the minigun up, the mounted spear gun and Fernando’s fusion spear screeching where they scraped the metal ceiling. Down he went to the next airlock. That one he opened and closed behind him.
The third door held, the one sealing the ghosts in the cellar.
His people lay on the floor, exhausted. Trina let out a tortured gasp, and her body went rigid. Then she lay back down, relaxing into an uneasy stillness. Blaze checked her VHI in his display. It hovered above zero, between point zero five and point seven five. Once again, the auditor was far tougher than she seemed. She wasn’t giving in. He’d never seen anyone fight the Onyx so hard.
Bill had a panel open. He was going old-school, the wires of the ship plugged into an old computer tablet. He held it in one of his remaining arms and scrolled through with his other arm. Same side of his body. He’d go unconscious, but Fernando was there, to ease him awake.
Bill would click and get back to work.
Blaze slumped down next to Ling.
Metal howled above them. It was Cali, ripping through the first airlock. Or trying to at least. It was thick steel, triple locked, and warded by Elle’s magic.
If she got through, even if Blaze killed her with the spear gun, even if he made that impossible shot, they still had hundreds of vampires to fight and only a few hydrogen shells left. Betting on the auxiliary weapons locker on the top deck having shells was a long shot.
They were trapped. And his sister was gone. He couldn’t imagine what Xerxes was doing to her.
The admiral vampire leapt on that thought. He’s hurting her in ways you can’t imagine. If you surrender, we could help you rescue her. We could help you stop Cali.
Blaze inhaled deeply and let go of his fear for a minute. Focusing on his breath ejected the admiral out of his head.
“Ling, things look bad,” Blaze said.
Ling chuckled. “We have done really well today. We have fought valiantly. And if our time is cut short, other hunters will come. The Onyx Gate will be closed. And we can die peacefully and explore. How interesting that will be.”
Blaze thought of them all dying. And he looked over at the Clickers, working so hard, Bill struggling to stay lucid to save the ship. Fernando held his brother in his arms. While his insect face didn’t reveal emotion, Blaze could see the love.
“We really were family,” Blaze whispered.
The squeal of torn metal sounded from above, so loud it hurt his teeth.
Blaze accessed a camera in the first airlock, and he watched as Cali shredded the door. She was through and squeezing down the spiraling stairs to the second door, next to them. She clawed at the steel. She had used most of the fusion in her claws fighting Xerxes during their first battle with him in the graveyard of ships, yet she still had some power in her talons. There wasn’t much, but every third strike scraped away a layer of the door. The wards flashed, but the damage was mostly physical rather than magical.
Ling patted Blaze’s leg like a patient father. “No, my friend and my comrade. We weren’t a family. We are a family. Present tense. And we will live. Do not give up hope.”
The admiral’s voice returned. There is no hope. You can join our family. You can live forever.
For a second, the idea made sense to Blaze.
Then Trina struggled up. Her VHI was just above one percent. Her eyes were open, but they were a solid black color, and the veins in her temples, filled with Onyx ink, were clearly visible. But her mouth was still Human. She motioned for Blaze to come closer.
Cautiously, he went over, and she touched his face. She was still in her armor, but he thought her touch felt warm despite the gauntlets. Her voice was a murmur over comms. “Don’t give up on me, Blaze. I can fight it. That colonizer…it has hibernation pods. If you stick me in one, I can sleep. And it’ll stop the transformation. And for the record, I’m not family to you, Gunny. I’m your friend. But I want to be more than that.”
Blaze knocked his visor gently against hers. “So do I, Trina. So do I. Once this is over.”
“Bill has it,” Fernando clicked. “We have to get to the bridge, but then we should have full control over the Lizzie. However, Bill would like you to know that…”
“He hates us all.” Trina smiled and then she let out another agonized cry. But she was holding steady.
Blaze stood and laughed. “You all are tough bastards. Ling, we are going to live. All of us. I’m going to trigger the doors, both doors. Those ghouls in the cellar are going to try and break free, but I’m going to feed them a werewolf. If I can time it right, and if we can bash Cali hard enough, we can throw her in there and lock the door. It’ll be awful for her, but if she stays in her werewolf form, none of those evil putas can do much to her. Let’s get into position.”
They stuck Bill and Trina next to the wall by the doorway, out of the way. Ling stood on one side with a silver-tipped spear, an extra taken from the spear gun, while Blaze stood on the other,
his sawed-off ready. Fernando manned the door to the cellar. He had his fusion spear ready, though it wouldn’t do much against the werewolf.
Cali’s claw, barely augmented by the dregs of star-fire energy left in the hydrogen shell, broke through the door. Her other talon followed, and Blaze watched the glow fade. Good, her claws would be normal, and she wouldn’t be able to claw out of the cellar.
“Here we go!” the gunny thundered. He checked the display, and the spiral stairs leading to the cellar were clear of vampires. They seemed to be regrouping. Or they’d learned not to get in Cali’s way.
Blaze opened the door. It slid open, and Cali leapt through. Blaze stuck the shotgun into her back and pulled the trigger. The silver shot splattered blood, skin, fur, and flesh out of her, and she yelped like a kicked dog.
She bit at him, but there wasn’t all that much room, and she was enormous. Ling drove the spear into her leg, and she yipped again.
Cali hadn’t felt the bite of Terran silver in a long, long time.
She skittered away, wary of their weapons, moving toward the open door in the cellar.
Ghostly shapes, horned figures, and hundreds of other wretched monsters stood in the shadows, deep in the shadows. A little girl in a party dress started forward. But she wasn’t a little girl. She had spiders crawling out of her nose and mouth, and her hands were meat hooks.
Blaze and Ling dashed forward, menacing Cali with the only metal in the known universe that could hurt her. The golden eyes showed fear, and she winced, stumbling backwards. Blaze fired into her other leg. She fell and slid into the cellar.
Fernando closed the door.
Cali howled, and the ghouls inside howled with her. Was that fear in their voices? As for Cali, she sounded infuriated.
That little spider girl with the rusty hooks for hands was about to meet her match. Yet Cali wouldn’t be able to stay in her werewolf form forever. She had a couple of hours at most before she would have to return to a Human. And when that happened? The sweet, gentle Cali would be driven insane by the horrors in there with her.