by Aaron Crash
Blaze set a timer and started the clock ticking. “No time to lose. Up the stairs. We can’t risk going up the central staircase. There’s a MATT access pipe that connects to the bridge. Fernando, take Bill there and get us going. Ling and I will offer cover.” He tossed Ling a couple hydrogen shells for his nunchakus.
The Meelah caught them and grinned. “Thanks, Uncle Ramirez. I can’t help but be a tad disappointed. I thought I would get to explore death today.”
“Not today,” Blaze growled. “No one I like dies today. We’re going to get my sister and take care of Trina, and nothing is going to stop us.”
The admiral vampire laughed at that.
Xerxes, however, was oddly quiet.
Maybe he was afraid. Well, the bastard should be.
TWENTY-TWO_
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Blaze and his crew burst out from the cellar stairway.
The bottom deck was packed with vampires on either side. They’d been waiting. Which was fine with Blaze.
They’d done an ammo check before caging Cali. Blaze had two shells, Ling had two shells, and Fernando had one. All of their weapons were at one hundred percent: ax, spear, and dual nunchakus. Their sunlight weapons gleamed, and of course, vampires hated the sun.
Trina and Bill lay at Fernando’s feet along with the plasma minigun and spear gun attachment. Fernando was in the middle, protecting their wounded. His two longer arms could stab his spear over Blaze and Ling. The Clicker’s auxiliary arms held two fusion pistols. Blaze took the right, and Ling took the left.
The interstellar vampires rushed forward.
Blaze sank his fusion ax into the skull of one and into the chest of another. While a wooden stake worked the best when it came to vampirical hearts, a fusion blade also worked wonders. Ling’s nunchakus flashed in spirals of blinding light. The lengths of fusion power cut through legs, arms, and necks, creating wounds the vampires couldn’t heal.
Fernando’s spear drove through a female vamp’s face, reducing her head to ash. She flung her hands out, and Blaze cut them off. Dead, she was thrown back into the other oncoming fiends. Two teenage girls went down from Fernando’s pistols. A fat man, leaking Onyx out of his pores, shambled forward. Blaze split his head, then neck, and sank his ax down into the thing’s belly. It too was thrown back as more vampires hurtled forward.
They fought on and on until Blaze’s weapon status flashed on his display. Below five percent. Another swing, another vampire gutted, and he was below three percent. More chopping and hacking and he was out.
“Reloading!” Blaze yelled. Fernando covered him while he ejected the shell and slammed in a new one.
Ling called out next. “Reloading!” And the Clicker covered him as well.
They were clearing the hallway, slowly, vampire by vampire. Piles of corpses mounted. Some weren’t dead but writhed as if they wished for death. Others lay still. Severed hands, feet, arms, legs, and heads littered the floor. The bottom deck’s main corridor had become a vampire slaughterhouse with Blaze, Ling, and Fernando signed on as the butchers.
Things looked good until Blaze saw the admiral shuffle out of the weapons locker. The old man had been horribly altered…by Xerxes no doubt. Blaze had to swallow his gorge. The thing…the vampire…it was awful.
Look upon me and despair, the admiral screamed in their minds.
And he should be screaming. Xerxes had created a cyborg monstrosity, part machine, part vampire.
The admiral stalked out on bare feet, but even his feet had been altered. Nanofiber plates had been fused with his skin, but the pale flesh around the armor was bright pink with infection. Pus oozed at the junctures where weapons had been jammed into his skin. He still had hands, but stabbed into his Human arms were plasma rifles. Xerxes had spliced robotic arms into the admiral’s knees, elbows, and shoulders. In total, the admiral had two Human arms and an additional six robotic arms, each stained with Onyx blood and holding a variety of weapons.
Instead of eyes, the admiral had gun barrels, the pistol barrels from the old .44 Magnum handguns Blaze had kept more as a memento than as real weapons. Arlo had loved the old, powerful revolvers, though getting ammunition for them was difficult.
A three-inch-wide flexible steel hose pushed through the admiral’s mouth. Long fangs tipped the end of the two-foot-long pipe. The admiral chomped those slathering teeth, whipping his elongated mouth left and right. It reminded Blaze of an old Earth movie about aliens with a vicious retractable inner mouth.
Every weapon on the cyborg vampire opened fire, filling the air with enough plasma to take down a starship. Blaze leapt behind a pile of bodies. He dragged Bill and Trina along with him. Ling and Fernando dove for cover.
The flesh smoked and sizzled around him. Those chopped-up vampires that still had vocal cords screamed.
The admiral marched forward. They wouldn’t have cover for long. You are outgunned. I am unstoppable. Yet, if you gave up, I would show you mercy. Join me. Join my family.
“Already got a family of my own, pinche puta!” Blaze rolled across the floor, snatched up the minigun, and got its barrels spinning. He was going to fight plasma fire with plasma fire. The monster in front of him had six barrels, well, so did he. And a silver-tipped spear gun.
Fernando rose and fired his pistols. Ling flung one of his nunchakus.
Blaze’s spinning barrels tore through three of the robotic arms while Ling’s nunchaku sliced through another. Fernando took out the other two. And yet, the thing still had the rifles shoved through his Human arms. The admiral returned fire, and plasma bursts melted the minigun and burned through Blaze’s armor, scorching his skin.
Blaze ignored the bright burning pain and sent a spear through the vampire’s head. Silver didn’t do much to vampires, not like werewolves, but the admiral was going to have to function with a two-foot projectile sticking out of his skull.
Fernando hurled his spear. It bounced off the nanofiber armor and clattered to the floor. Blaze was up on his feet, charging forward with his ax ready. He cut through one arm, but the other’s plasma rifle fired on him, point-blank. Blaze was thrown back against the wall, his armor smoking from the blast.
A vampire on the floor, just a head, a shoulder, and an arm, reached forward and gripped Blaze, bringing him down. The cut-up thing pulled itself onto him, black fangs gnashing against the armor on his neck. Another vampire, still alive, but cut in half, scrambled onto Blaze. Within seconds, he was covered in bits of vampires still thirsty for the blood in his veins. His ax was plucked from his grip as was the shotgun off his back. He was weaponless.
The admiral stepped forward, the gun barrels in his eyes firing in deafening explosions to keep Ling and Fernando back, behind piles of corpses.
Black claws cracked Blaze’s visor. Others ripped Blaze’s helmet off and pulled down the collar of his armor. The things on him stank like rot, like cooked meat and burned hair, and their breath was a mixture of coffin stink and shit.
Blaze fought, punching and kicking, but the pain in his back and chest was sapping his strength. The things, even cut to pieces as they were, had a supernatural strength turning their fingers into high-tensile titanium.
Fangs nipped his chin, trying to get to his throat. Thank God, the teeth didn’t break the skin. If they bit him, he would get the infection, and he would be in a similar state as Trina. Without his armor, he would’ve been dead, drained, in minutes.
A baby vampire crawled like an awful dog across the bodies of the others. At first, Blaze thought it didn’t have any teeth, but then he saw two tiny black fangs break from inside the dead baby’s black gums. The fangs were small but needle-sharp, and the little thing would infect him as easily as an adult.
They’d turned an innocent baby into a vampire. That pissed Blaze off. Messing with kids was something he couldn’t tolerate.
He elbowed a face, head-bashed another, and he wrestled and struggled, but the body parts kept him down as the baby came closer. He could
smell its putrefied remains. It smelled worse than all the others put together. It was innocence turned to filth.
Fusion light blinded him for a minute. Fernando’s spear stuck into the baby, and it squealed around the glowing point. Then it was hurled off him. Head after head felt the sting of the Clicker fusion spear until Blaze was cleared.
He turned. Bill, on his side, had recovered his brother’s spear and had used it to great effect. Even cut apart, the Clicker engineer had saved his life.
Blaze retrieved his ax. It was down below fifty percent. Ling had engaged the admiral. The stumps of its robotic arms still had sharp stabbing points that could impale the Shaolin sloth, and it had the remaining plasma rifle shoved haphazardly into the ruins of its right arm.
Fernando lay on the floor, plasma burns on his armor. He was alive but in excruciating pain. It looked like the admiral had hit him hard. Fernando’s four hands clawed at the floor spasmodically. He needed medical, and yet he was the medical officer. First things first. They had to put down the cyborg vampire.
Ling only had one of his nunchakus. And every blow was repulsed by the nanofiber armor covering the vampire. The admiral peppered the walls, the ceiling, and the floor, trying to shoot the Meelah warrior. But Ling was too fast, leaping off bodies, leaping off the wall, tumbling down, deflecting plasma blows by using his spinning nunchaku as a shield. Blaze had seen that trick before.
But from one of his eyes, the admiral shot a bullet into Ling’s shoulder. The unexpected pain made the Shaolin sloth drop his nunchaku. The admiral drove a foot into the Meelah, sending him flying back under the legs of a vampire that didn’t have arms but could scissor the sloth between his knees. Ling squeaked in pain as the legs crushed him.
Blaze let out a yell and dove forward, ax raised.
The admiral turned, mouth gaping in surprise. The silver spear still stuck out of his skull.
Without warning, the cyborg vampire disappeared in a stinking sulfurous cloud of piss-yellow smoke. Blaze ignored the rotten egg smell to behead the armless vampire squeezing Ling to death. Xerxes must’ve teleported the admiral away before Blaze could end his life with his ax.
Was Xerxes still watching? If so, why was he so quiet?
The gunnery sergeant helped Ling up. The Meelah winced at the pain. Blood covered half of his body from the bullet wound. Blaze grabbed a shredded bit of cloth from a relatively clean-looking vampire and gave it to the Meelah. “Press that against the wound while I doctor the doctor.”
Fernando was breathing hard, clicking jaggedly and loudly from the pain. That brought back bunches of bad memories. He’d heard hundreds of Clickers make that sound on a dozen battlefields during the Bug War.
Blaze knelt by the Clicker. “In my pouch…painkillers. And we can treat the burns with synthetic skin. If I don’t…lose…consciousness.” And that was just what happened.
“Great,” Blaze sighed. He found the electric injectors. He hit himself first, to treat the agony of his own burns. A second later, he felt worlds better. He then pressed the injector against Fernando’s neck. The tech inhibited the pain receptors inside the brain.
Ling held the bloody cloth against his bullet wound, but he wasn’t standing around. He was using his nunchaku to bash the brains out of any vampires still wriggling. Leave it to Ling to keep on working even while bleeding out. And Blaze heard the Meelah whistling while he did it.
Damn, but his crew was tough.
Ling glanced up. “We can’t have these things alive on our ship. I saw how you went under a pile of them. Bill was very brave to save you.”
“He was,” Blaze agreed. “But Ling, you have to rest. We have to get the bullet out of you. You must be in worlds of pain. I can give you a shot to help.”
Ling blinked. “It would be nice to be free from the pain. But, ha, I was already getting used to it. How wonderful that we didn’t die. But Cali won’t be able to stay in her werewolf form in the cellar. We have to…” Ling blinked again, then fell to his knees before passing out completely.
Blaze was the only one still on his feet. His sister was still gone, and all of his crew were unconscious. Well, except for Cali. A bloodcurdling scream echoed through the halls of the ship. He couldn’t be sure if it was her or one of the demons she was terrorizing. Goddamn Cali.
The gunny checked Lizzie’s external cameras. His ship was free of vampires, but he knew they hadn’t killed them all. So, where were they? He then checked on Trina. She wasn’t dead yet. Yet she was only one-hundredth of a percentage point away from oblivion. And then he’d have to cut off her head. No time.
Blaze hefted Bill onto his shoulder. The Clicker’s mandibles clacked weakly. “Yeah, I know you hate me, Bill. But you love Lizzie. And we need you to get her going.”
He thought he heard Bill chuckle in anticipation. That Clicker engineer sure loved his ship.
Blaze hurried through the piles of vampire corpses, up the stairs, and down the middle deck’s corridor to the bridge. He laid Bill on a command chair. Bill was conscious for a moment, and he blinked as the gold glow of the command controls came online. The Clicker turned, broke open a panel, and pulled out handfuls of wire. He untangled a few and plugged them into a tablet.
Back to running, Blaze sped down the corridor, collected Ling and Fernando, and got them to the sick bay. He hit Fernando with an electric injector full of a regulated amphetamine. The Clicker’s eyes jumped open. “Dangerous, Blaze, to use such a drug on me. But we have no choice. I’ll tend to Ling. If you bring Trina in here, I’ll see what I can do for her.”
“I appreciate your medical skills,” Blaze said, “but right now I’m missing Elle’s magic. We haven’t been this busted up in a while.”
“There’s no telling how the Onyx cures affect us on a microcellular level,” Fernando countered. “However, I agree with you. The magic is more effective. Like I said, I’ve been trying to translate the Onyx speak into a recognizable language I might use. Who knows, someday I might be able to cast spells. Or at least converse with the Onyx entities we encounter.”
“That would be something,” Blaze said. “But, yeah, I’ve had my own doubts about Elle healing us with Onyx magic.” Blaze deactivated his battle armor for a minute. The nanotech crawled down his body and back into the gauntlet in seconds. His scorched clothes remained. He peeled off his shirt. His skin was a fried, bubbled mess where the plasma bolts had hit him. “Hit me with some synthetic skin. And an antibiotic or two.”
Fernando hurried to comply. Once he was done, Blaze’s VHI hovered around sixty percent. It would have to be okay. “I’ll go get Trina,” the gunnery sergeant said as he activated the nanofiber armor.
Blaze left the sick bay, hurrying to get to the former IPC auditor.
When he got back to where he’d left her in the hallway, Trina was gone.
TWENTY-THREE_
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Blaze initiated comms. “Trina, are you still with us? You still Human?” He searched for her signal on the ship.
Something flickered in the library but then faded. Another signal glowed in the airlocks leading to the cellar. That too flashed away.
The ship was still compromised. Hurry, Bill, Blaze thought.
To the auditor, he said, “Come on, Trina, answer me. Don’t give up on me. You there?”
Her voice cracked through, but it sounded different, more jagged. “I’m here, Blaze. Still here. Still me. For now. I’m in the library. Come and get me. And come…alone…”
Blaze checked the energy level on his ax. Twenty percent. That wasn’t great, but it would be enough to take care of Trina.
He jogged down to the bottom deck and then paused at the library door. He grimly took hold of his ax. She’d said to come alone. Her VHI wasn’t zero, so she wasn’t dead, but she might’ve already turned. He opened the door and stepped inside, ready for a fight.
In the end, his suspicions were unfounded.
She was sitting in a chair, with a photo album on he
r lap, staring out the window at the colonizer rolling in space. It dipped below the window, showing the debris-strewn horizon and the neutron star, gray and blue, in its death throes.
Blaze bent next to her chair. “Let me get you to the sick bay. Damn, girl, I’ve never seen anyone fight the change like you.”
“My dad drank,” she whispered. “I grew up fighting him even while he surrendered, every day, to the bottle. I won’t give up, but I’m dying. Fernando isn’t going to be able to help me. You have to get me to a hibernation pod in the colonizer.”
“I think you’re right,” Blaze said. “I’ll get you to the colonizer, then I’m gonna get my sister, put Xerxes down, and get back here to save Cali. But you’re at the top of my to-do list.”
“Why is there such evil in the universe?” Trina asked. Her lips were turning black. And when she talked, he saw fangs. “I’ve been going through your pictures of your old crewmembers. So many dead. Elle marked how they died and the date. They all lost their lives fighting evil, but why is it there in the first place?”
Blaze sighed. “I wish I could tell you. But I can’t. All I know is I’ve been given a chance to fight the evil, and that’s what I’m going to do.”
“It’s a bullshit answer,” Trina said. “What would Ling say?”
“Ling would say there isn’t evil. There’s just this moment and how wonderful it is. And if we want to fight the true enemy, we should look inside ourselves. That’s where the true battle is. But for me, that’s a bullshit answer because whatever darkness there is inside me is nothing compared to the demons out there.”
“I think he meant losing hope,” Trina whispered. “That’s the battle, hope versus despair. The admiral keeps whispering to me, telling me to give in. Well, fuck that guy. I won’t do it.”
“Neither will I,” Blaze agreed.
The ship rocked, and the lights flickered then brightened, stronger than ever. Blaze picked up Trina and carried her down the hallway, up the stairs, and into the cargo bay. He laid her against the bike. “Don’t go anywhere. I’m going to check on Bill and grab some ammo, hopefully. But I’ll be back.”