Damnation Robot

by Aaron Crash

All he’d be was a smear of blood on the side.

  Yet he didn’t dare break or change course. He’d have to make it. He had to. No matter what.

  He went faster, pushing the starcycle into dangerous territory. The blue-fire engines threatened to explode under him.

  The entrance into the ruins was an open maw of darkness. He wasn’t going to make it inside.

  And then, just as he thought he would hit the metal lip, he bounced into the passageway, skidded off the floor, the engines caught him and lifted him up, and he darted inside. He couldn’t see the sides of the place, but the floor was bare metal…at first. Then he watched as it seemed to turn into a black liquid, revealing ropes of tentacles and the frozen screams of faces. It was changing right before his eyes. Luckily, the metal friezes hadn’t been animated.

  He kept his starcycle redlined. He didn’t care. If the bike exploded, fine, but he wasn’t going to slow down, not for an instant.

  Damn, he could hardly see a thing. The lights on his helmets and the lamp on his bike barely made a mark in the darkness.

  Then plasma guns erupted.

  He saw the vampires that had left his ship. Hundreds flew toward him, but they weren’t simple vamps anymore. They’d all been upgraded to cyborgs like the admiral had been. Arms had been replaced with rifles. Heads had been augmented with metal and nanofiber. Most were naked, but it was hard to tell what was skin and what was plastic.

  He saw one vampire whose entire body was whipping cables attached to his spine, a dozen lashing ropes of iron reaching and grasping. Next to the whipper vampire, another of the undead creatures had a grenade launcher implanted in his chest. His arms had been cut away, and instead, it had long swords of sharp metal. Dangerous at a distance and deadly up close.

  One vampire was made up of a cluster of children, all shoved together, connected by metal and weaponry. It was a mishmash of limbs and firearms, a dozen screaming heads sprouted around a fleshy thorax. Once innocent faces now shrieked silently though black lips and obsidian fangs.

  Xerxes had been quiet because he’d been busy making a new batch of cyborg vampiric nightmares. The corridor had been shrinking, not that Blaze could see either side, but the grand hallway was now only a hundred yards across. And cybernetic vampires had formed a firing line.

  He set the autopilot on the bike, giving it the coordinates of Xerxes and his sister. Then he gripped his shotgun and his fusion ax.

  He hit that awful gauntlet at a hundred miles an hour. A rain of plasma fire hit him, but his armor held.

  A two-headed fat vampire with chainsaws for arms reached for him, and it went down as Ugly Betty talked dirty. The hole in the fat thing’s belly sizzled as it fell back. A dozen more nightmares ran forward. Blaze swept his ax around, lopping off limbs. Hands, guns, and hooks all grasped at him, but he kept his bike moving.

  A whipper vampire swept his cables around Blaze like a lasso, but Blaze ducked away, keeping low. Another whipper vampire got in front of his starcycle, and Blaze triggered the front fusion cannon through his display, disintegrating the whipper and a few vamps around him. Five smaller females rose up in front of him. All of their hair had been replaced by silver filaments with LED lights on them. They glowed. Gave him a better target. Not one of them had hands. Instead, their right arms ended in plasma pistols, and their left hands ended in butcher knives.

  Blaze slammed his shotgun into the nanotech housing, jacked in a new shell, then raised it and fired. At the same time, he triggered the plasma machine guns and the fusion cannon of the bike. He hit those five vampires with everything he had. The fusion knocked out two, and the plasma guns removed the arms and crumbled the head of another. His ax took off the heads of two more as he passed through them.

  He had broken their lines and was speeding away when he noticed he was being followed by dozens of the enhanced vampires. Some of the creatures had blue-fire engines surgically installed in their backs and legs and even their asses it seemed. They were coming up fast, blasting after him in the passage of the Etrusca ruin.

  Something rushed toward him. It looked like a missile. Upon closer examination, it was a teenage boy, the back of his body converted into a rocket. His arms had been reinforced with plasma pistols, and instead of fingers, iron grappling hooks sprouted from the dead skin of his wrists. His mouth and his eyes were elongated out of his face on long steel stalks, flexible hoses, like the admiral had. Black venom from his fangs bubbled off into space. One of the hooks crunched into the back of Blaze’s starcycle. Then another. The snapping extended mouth of the vampire fanged into the armor covering Blaze’s bicep. The mouth ripped off a plate, leaving him exposed for a second. Another bite and it would pierce Blaze’s skin and infect him with vampirism.

  Blaze’s starcycle jerked backward. The boy missile had a tether attached to him. Two huge bruiser vampires, big soldiers by the look of them, had been mashed together to form a four-armed, two-headed beast that had rockets for legs. The bruiser had the end of the tether, and it was pulling on the cable with all four of its arms even as its blue-fire legs blasted backward to stop Blaze from escaping.

  Blaze twisted in his seat. He severed the pipe of the vampire’s extended fangs with his ax as his nanofiber armor sealed the breach. He then sent a burst of star fire at the bruiser. It took off one of the thing’s heads while the other leered and continued to pull Blaze backward. The dozen other flying vampires all grinned in bloodthirsty glee. Blaze grinned back at them. Then he hacked through the rocket-teen vampire’s arm, severing the connection and leaving the one-headed bruiser holding a limp leash.

  Blaze pressed down on the throttle and hurled away. He checked his display. Five hundred yards to Xerxes.

  Four hundred yards…three hundred…two…one…

  He broke from the corridor and into another chamber with mile-high ceilings and walls running for miles in the distance. A cube of faces and tentacles hung suspended and motionless in the space.

  Elle was wired to an outcropping of tentacles on the front of the cube. She looked crucified to the writhing snake coils frozen in time and metal.

  And Xerxes emerged from a secret room inside the cube, but he wasn’t metal anymore. Not completely.

  Blaze blinked, his mind unable to comprehend the insanity and cruelty of the hellish archduke of necrotechnology.

  In that second, a fusion blast struck Blaze and sent him and the starcycle against the wall.

  The bike spun, and its engine automatically shut off. Blaze, dazed, floated while struggling to keep ahold of his sanity.

  Xerxes…what he had done…so wrong.

  Inhuman.

  TWENTY-FIVE_

  ╠═╦╬╧╪

  The archduke floated up over Blaze.

  Xerxes had made himself a suit of vampire parts.

  Like Humans made battle armor, so Xerxes had crafted himself a walking matrix of vampire pieces. Dead Human legs, cabled and welded together, covered the P13rce unit’s robotic appendages even as vampire arms had been fused together to make coils of muscle and bone. He had six arms and six dead hands, big and small, young and old, dark-skinned and light. His front and back were also covered with body parts from both male and female vampires. The spiked fleas still busied themselves fixing this and that. Needles on the fleas jacked up and down, sewing together torn flesh. Other fleas were like staple guns, snapping wounds together while a nozzle on the machines sprayed on synthetic skin. Still more welded metal parts and pinched together steel seams in showers of sparks.

  The archduke’s crimson hologram face of goat horns, donkey ears, and a jackal-pointed mouth rose from the mix of flesh and metal.

  As if that wasn’t horrific enough, two heads emerged from his shoulders, one a woman with long hair and the other a male with a shaved head. Both faces had inky eyes, dark fangs inside midnight mouths, bubbling froth.

  “Say hhhello, Adam,” Xerxes laughed over comms. The male head opened its black lips and hissed. “And say hhhello, Eve.” The female
followed suit, mouth opening and closing like a fish dying on the shore.

  Both their voices penetrated Blaze’s mind. We love our Xerxes. We love him so much. And you will, too. Once we feed on you, you will come to love him, too. You will join us in this dance of lovely, cold flesh.

  Blaze found his sense of humor. “Well, that convinced me. I’ll think I’ll join up right away. Who wouldn’t want to be worn around like someone’s thrift store massacre?”

  A dozen of the blue-fired cyborg vampires roared into the room, guns pointed, all circling around him. The one-headed bruiser still had the length of cable in his four arms with the grappling boy dangling off the end. A whipper was behind him, cables lashing around from where they were attached to the thing’s spine. The cluster children snapped and thrashed around in their ball of arms, legs, guns, and spiked baseball bats. The two-headed fat man with chainsaw arms buzzed up.

  And then coming from the shadows, the admiral. Someone had removed the silver spear from his skull. Xerxes had reattached the six robotic arms on the alpha vampire but now each were tipped with a severed head, fangs gnashing, obsidian eyes rolling.

  The pistol chambers in the admiral’s eyes spun, chambering .44 caliber rounds. Those guns would work even in space. The ammunition in the bullets had their own oxidizer, so atmosphere wasn’t needed.

  The admiral’s voice whispered in Blaze’s mind. You have come back to join us. You have come for our cold love. Why else charge in alone against overwhelming odds?

  “Because it’s in hhhis very name,” Xerxes said through comms. A click later and Blaze heard a recording of Lieutenant Kent Jameson, his old CO, now dead by Blaze’s own hand. He wasn’t sure how Xerxes got a copy of the audio, but there it was.

  “Boys, Ramirez here isn’t a Ramon. Not a chance. Goddamn guy goes in alone, blazing the trail. Goddamn, the guy is always the first to fire, coming out with guns blazing. He ain’t a Ramon. Goddamn guy is a Blaze.” The recording clicked off.

  “That’s me,” Blaze said. It hurt to hear Jameson’s voice, but it also made him remember how it felt to be such a badass among the toughest bastards in the universe. He stood, ax and shotgun ready, ready for the fight of his life. “Now, if you want to give me my sister and tell me what you know about the Onyx Gate, Granny, and Arlo, I’ll take off and leave you all to jerk yourselves off with your cold, cold hands or whatever.”

  The shotgun whined in his hands, getting ready for battle.

  A toddler vampire, whose body was mostly gun, flew up to Elle tied to the tentacle cube. The mini-monster could undoubtedly smell the blood in her veins and hear her heart beating, but as it got close, a scarlet energy field repulsed it. The thing opened its mouth in a silent hiss and flew back around to the ball of children parts to hang there.

  The repulsed attack woke Elle. She whispered, “Blaze, thank God, you’re here. I healed my arm, I’ve kept my shields up, but I’m almost…out of…strength…”

  Xerxes chuckled mechanically. “Yes, your sister, whhhile I could capture Elle, I couldn’t touch hhher. Hhher power is beyond anything I’ve seen outside of hhhell. My lord and master is right to fear you. And if shhhe were at full strength, undoubtedly, my vampire friends and I would be in trouble. But she is weak. And you are alone. It is a hhhappy day for us. And my chhhildren are so hhhungry.”

  Blaze noticed the three syringes of Onyx mojo were still on Elle’s bandolier. She hadn’t used them yet. Good, because she needed her last trick of the day to be a big one.

  Blaze had tricks of his own. If things went like he thought they might. That was one big “if.”

  He was running out of time. In the cube room, their only enemies were Xerxes in his vampire suit and about twenty of the blue-fire engine vampires, the toughest of the cyborgs. However, hundreds of other cybernetic vampires were on their way, running down through the corridor.

  “So, Xerxes,” Blaze said. “Tell me about your lord and master. How does he know where the Onyx Gate is gonna be on March sixteenth of this year?”

  “I will tell you everything I know and that I’ve hhheard,” Xerxes said. “Whhhy not? For your cause is hhhopeless. Even now, I have created a monster using the two colonizers and fifty starships orbiting the neutron star. It is guarding us against your crew. There will be no one coming to save you.”

  “Okay, baby, tell me everything.” Blaze grinned. “I’m ready for the over-confident villain’s dialogue.”

  “Not overconfident.” Xerxes floated closer. Spiked flea robots busied themselves on the patchwork vampire suit while the fingers on all six hands flexed. From each fingernail glowed a six-inch length of fusion, creating a forest of deadly star fire.

  The fusion emitters weren’t good news for anyone. No doubt, Xerxes was using the hydrogen shells he’d stolen to power himself up.

  The archduke grimaced. “Perhhhaps I do not like being an errand boy sent on a suicide mission. My lord and master assured me that you were pathetic Hhhuman trashhh and very easy to annihhhilate. Bullshhhit. Utter bullshhhit. I shhhould tell you everything.”

  “Then hit me,” Blaze said.

  “Sacrifice your sister to me, and I will tell.”

  Blaze shook his head, smirking. “Maybe a few days ago I would have seriously considered your offer, but not now. And it sounds like your lord and master knows what we need, but you might not know shit. You’re just the hired help.”

  The demon’s jackal mouth snarled, and the two heads on his shoulder snarled right along with him, though Blaze could only hear the hologram through comms. The other voices were lost in the silence of space.

  “I found Granny on Hhhutchinson Prime before my brother claimed it for hhhis own.”

  Blaze sighed. Of course, the goddamn archduke would have a brother. He kept quiet, though, because the villain was about to spill the beans.

  “Shhhe said she saw you both at the Onyx Gate, on March sixteenth. Granny said that shhhe sees the Gate now, whhherever and whhhenever it is. The knowledge of it is driving hhher insane. No hhhunter goes near hhher because she has a hhhell of hhher own inside her skull. She thought I wanted to hhhave my way with hhher, but I find sexual intercourse a messy business. All that blood and mucus and tears. You Hhhumans are gooey things.”

  “What about Arlo?” Blaze asked.

  The demon wasn’t about to stop talking, he needed to prove that he had some worth outside of his lord and master, whoever that might be.

  “Arlo? He’s been harder to catch, now that he’s sober. And the Meelah, for being soulless animals, are remarkably hard to torture. They gave us no information about him at all.”

  Blaze felt his mouth open. Arlo? Sober? Couldn’t be. And in Meelah space? Even more of a surprise. Well, he’d be easy to find there. Humans didn’t exactly flock to Meelah space, and the Meelah were mystified and upset, in general, with Human behavior.

  “I am not a lapdog for my lord and master. I am an archduke of hhhell, the greatest of the ancient necrotechnocrats, a god for the flesh as well as the machine. You hhhave no idea whhhat I am or whhhat I can do!”

  “I know you just pretty much told me everything,” Blaze said. “I got you talking, but I’ve kept my own plan a secret, since dammit, it does look bleak for me. But I have to get on over to Hutchinson Prime, beat the shit out of your brother, and find Granny. Then we’ll find the Onyx Gate. May or may not see about Arlo over in Meelah space. See? You told me all your secrets, and I kept my mouth shut. But now I’m ready to talk. Do you want to know how I’m getting out of here, Xerxes, old buddy?”

  Xerxes laughed, maybe at himself, or maybe at the idea of Blaze escaping. The two extra vampire heads, Adam and Eve, guffawed along with him.

  The admiral answered. Show us your plan. It will fail. And we will give you and your sister a little of our suck. Isn’t that what Trina said to you? All she wanted was a little of the suck. And it’s what you want as well.

  “You all are creepy pendejos,” Blaze said. He raised his fusion shotgun.
>
  “If you shoot me or my children, you will die,” Xerxes said. “But not right away.”

  “Not aiming for you. Just gonna get a little help,” Blaze said.

  “Hhhelp? From whhho?” Xerxes scoffed.

  “The Etrusca bastards who built this pinche funhouse of horrors.” Blaze sent a blast of fusion energy into the tentacle cube.

  Like before, the star energy immediately permeated the ancient metal. The eyes on the faces blinked, the mouths twisted in leers, the nostrils flared. The coils of scaled tentacles rolled and then came loose. Elle, protected by her shield spell, was flung away.

  The ceiling, a mile overhead, unraveled as the tentacles all came alive after uncounted millennia trapped in silence and stony metal.

  Blaze could only hope he could escape the fury of the Etrusca ruins and keep one step ahead of the tentacles while they crushed the archduke of necrotechnology and his vampiric cyborg horde.

  TWENTY-SIX_

  ╠═╦╬╧╪

  Blaze spun and rolled through space while remotely triggering his starcycle. Immediately, the blue-fire engines lit up, and the bike came within his reach. He grabbed a steering grip and managed to throw a leg over the seat. Half on it, he fired plasma machine guns into the oncoming cybernetic vampires.

  Plasma bolts sliced into the cluster of children, cauterizing mouths closed, piercing limbs, blackening eyes, and blowing through brains. But those wounds they could heal.

  The whipper vampire lashed cables around the bike, but the engines were blasting too hot for the thing to slow it down. The whipper was jerked along for a ride. He bounced into the bruiser and then bashed into Xerxes.

  Blaze rode up and snatched Elle as she floated amid the faces and the unfurling tentacles. The faces were attached to the bodies of what looked like sea creatures: crustaceans, crabs, fish, a shark here and there, a lobster with long legs. Sea creatures with Humanish faces fashioned out of ancient metal came to life, though the things weren’t attacking.