Crimson Strike

by Peter Bostrom

  “I mean precisely what I said,” Winnifred responded. “If you do not set me free at once, the lycanthropes will be your doom. I told this to my captors—your superiors, apparently—but they seemed more interested in asking questions about the oculus and philosopher’s stones than about the present threat.”

  She cocked her head and her raven-black hair shifted to the side. “It is the lycanthropes you’re running from, is it not?”

  I glanced back at the door I’d come through, which was still open a crack. Through the door, the sound of small explosions, screams, and snarls grew steadily louder. There was a fluttery feeling in my stomach, but I couldn’t tell if it was from the danger outside, or the woman inside—who, I guess, was a sort of danger, too.

  “Yeah . . .” I said, uncertain of what her angle was.

  She leaned forward in her seat said, “How many of them have you actually killed?”

  “At least one for sure,” I said. Then, scratching my head, I continued, “Back on Pluto. At least, I think he might have been a—lycanthrope?—he had really red hair all over and it all shrank back after I killed him.”

  Her bright eyes widened. “It was you who killed Monstros?”

  “Yup,” I said, reaching back and patting the hilt of my rod-sword. “With this baby right here. And I’ve taken out a ton of Dominion troopers, but I have no idea how furry they were under that armor. Do you?”

  She nodded slightly. “Our latest intelligence suggested about one in four. However, any lycanthrope the Dominion uses as troopers are half-breeds—the purebred refuse to wear armor.”

  She leaned back in her chair and looked at me from head to toe and back again. “How many more are there like you?”

  I felt my shoulders square themselves without any effort and stood tall. “I’m the one and only,” I said, extending my arms. “And so far, there’s only one other person who can use Dominion weaponry like me, and that’s Kovac. You know—the big one. But he’s still figuring it out.”

  “I see,” she said, nodding slowly. “You must be very special, indeed.”

  I felt myself blush and shrugged my shoulders. “I dunno,” I said, looking down at my boots, unsure of how to act now that I’d actually gotten Kayla’s—I mean, Winnifred’s—attention. “I guess.”

  She raised her shackled wrists until they came to an abrupt stop when her metal cord reached its end. “Then you must be the one to set me free.”

  She looked at me with her beautiful, nebula-colored eyes. “You are the only one who truly understands what is at stake. You cannot leave the fate of your world up to those who have no idea what it is like to come face to face with Monstros—one of the Dominion’s most feared generals.”

  I felt myself standing taller as she continued. “And you certainly cannot leave it up to one who has never felt the thrill of holding a light sword.”

  I smirked. “And you have?”

  “Oh, I have wielded powered weapons in my day,” she said, now nodding vigorously. Finally! Someone else who used the word “wielded!”

  She continued. “I have killed bloodthirsty lycanthropes. And I have faced Magi whose appearances would drive you mad. But now . . .”

  She tugged once more against the metal cord connecting her restrained wrists to the table. She bowed her head and said, “Help me, fair warrior. You are my only hope.”

  And there was that phrase again that I couldn’t ignore—it made me feel like I was actually in a space warrior story and that I had been chosen to topple an evil empire.

  “Okay,” I said, pulling out my sword and activating it at the same time. “You’re going to want to stand back.”

  She stood and slid her chair to the side with a short kick. She took a long step backward, arching her back and tugging upward against the metal cord. I took a quick step forward, sliced cleanly through the cord, and then held my sword at the ready.

  Winnifred’s full, red lips curled into a smile. “My hero,” she said. “Now, what about these?” She held her wrist restraints out at me.

  I bit my lip, trying to decide if my aim was good enough to chop those in half. Sure, it would be awesome, but there was also a pretty good chance I might slice one of her hands off in the process. Then, inspiration struck.

  I summoned my purple stone’s slow, brassy music and raised my Power Glove. I touched my thumb and forefinger together, concentrated on the two wrist restraints, then quickly separated the two fingers with an exaggerated flicking motion.

  The restraints shook for a moment, and I started to lose my nerve. But then there was a small click of snapping metal, and Winnifred’s hands fell freely to her sides. Her eyes went wide—maybe in surprise. Or horror. I really hoped it wasn’t horror.

  “You . . . can use a philosopher’s stone?” She asked.

  “Yeah, sort of,” I said, blushing again. “I mean, I’m still figuring them out, too. The red one’s especially tricky.”

  There was a crashing noise somewhere outside the command unit and I heard Panthra snarl loudly. That was enough to bring me back to the situation at hand. I glanced around the room quickly and saw Rand’s black equipment bag laying in the corner. I grabbed it and headed for the door.

  “Come on,” I said. “It’s time to see what you’ve got.”

  As I headed to the door, I pulled from my pocket a pack of hyper-frosted Twizzle Stix, tore it open, and dumped the white-coated, sugary goodness into my mouth as I bounced down the makeshift stairs and hurried over to Rand. He was right were I left him, next to Panthra’s cage, fiddling with the locking mechanism. Rand’s eyes lit up when he saw the duffel bag. I tossed it onto the ground next to him.

  “Excellent,” he said as he rummaged around inside. “I should have her emancipated in no time.”

  “Good. We could definitely use something with claws to tear into those—”

  There was a loud explosion somewhere to my right and bits of concrete rained down on us. I jerked my head up just in time to see a squat werewolf with a white-striped mohawk break through a pile of rubble. He howled and leapt up onto his powerful hind legs before wildly shaking the dust from his fur. His eyes narrowed as he looked over and then began bounding across the street toward us.

  I stared for a moment at the evil mogwai-looking werewolf before reaching behind me and grasping my sword. But before I could pull it free from its sheath, a light blue blur of a figure whizzed past me and collided with the werewolf, sending the creature sprawling backward. I blinked hard, and when I opened my eyes, I saw Winnifred raising herself from a crouch a few yards ahead of me. She rolled her neck and shook out her arms.

  “Well, that was exhilarating,” she said.

  “Whaaat—” I said, my inert sword dangling at my side. But before I could finish my half-formed thought, I heard a violent growl. The Mohawk had recovered, but when I looked over, I saw that another werewolf was flanking him—a reddish one, shorter than the first, but who wore the short, dark pants of the Dominion’s original werewolf squad.

  Mohawk bounded toward Winnifred. She faced the oncoming terror, but didn’t budge. What the hell was she doing?

  “Careful! That’s one of the—” I started to say as I ignited my sword and stepped forward, but at the last moment, she swung her left arm upward and there was an audible crack as the metal restraint on her wrist connected with the werewolf’s jaw.

  “—civilians,” I finished.

  He toppled backward, his now-crooked jaw hanging limply to the side. Winnifred leapt high into the air, clasped her hands together, and brought both of the restraints down hard onto the werewolf’s skull with a dull crunching noise. The monster’s limbs went rigid momentarily, then immediately slackened.

  In another heartbeat, Winnifred did a back flip and landed lightly by my side. I let out an involuntary gasp. She turned her head toward me, and I was pretty sure I saw the traces of a grin on her face.

  A rumbling voice came from behind me. “What did we miss?”

  I glanced
over my shoulder briefly and saw Kovac lumbering forward with Lopez close behind. When I turned around, the remaining, reddish werewolf was crouching low, her muscles tensed.

  The beast sprang, but didn’t charge directly toward Winnifred and me, like I had anticipated. Instead, the reddish wolf bounded forward in a wide circle to our right, picking up speed with every stride.

  I tried summoning the powers of my glove’s gems, but the wolf’s speed made it nearly impossible to focus. I raised my sword and braced for impact, but quickly realized she wasn’t headed toward me—she was headed toward my teammates, who were several meters behind me.

  Lopez was frozen in place—Peacekeeper training didn’t drill us on what steps to take when you’re faced with a snarling, half-wolf, half-woman who wants to disembowel you with her teeth. Kovac stepped in front of Lopez and drew his plasma gun, but couldn’t draw a bead on the lightning-fast werewolf, even though she was getting closer by the moment. Kovac fired several desperate shots, but his slugs all missed.

  The werewolf was less than ten meters away when she suddenly leapt onto a broken-down transport directly to Kovac’s right. As soon as she landed, her claws dug into the roof, making a screeching sound as she pivoted in the blink of an eye and leapt—not at Kovac, but behind him, at the frozen Lopez.

  My mind was racing to find an image I could use to protect her, but the wolf was moving too damn fast and I was sure I was already too late. Then, like before, a blue blur of a figure streaked across the road and caught the werewolf in midair. There was a jumble of red fur and light blue cloth as Winnifred and the the werewolf bounced and tumbled one over the other.

  Unintelligible snarls and hisses came from the rolling mass as their momentum soon slowed. I don’t know exactly what happened, but the next thing I knew, the werewolf was sailing backward through the air and bent in half backward as she slammed against a streetlight pole and dropped to the ground.

  Winnifred was already on her feet and sprinting toward the fallen monster. She scooped up a long, thin piece of broken concrete from the ground and sped toward the fallen beast. The reddish werewolf was struggling to get up when Winnifred’s makeshift weapon plunged into the creature’s chest. The wolf’s eyes widened in terror, but I thought I saw confusion there, too.

  With her dying breath, she howled. This was answered by several more howls, which sounded surprisingly close. Sure enough, a group of ten or so wolves of different colors and sizes tore around the corner of a tall, faded gray factory building. It was like a furry wave that was about to crash down upon us.

  That gave me an idea.

  I summoned the purple gem’s brassy music and, in my mind, I pictured a roaring wave that swelled behind me and then quickly fell forward. A faint purple haze rose and then crashed against the line of werewolves, knocking them backward.

  “Rand . . .” I yelled impatiently.

  My stomach rumbled loudly—I didn’t have enough left in the tank to make another wave or do anything else on such a large scale with my gems. I watched helplessly as the wolves got back onto their feet.

  “Almost there!” he shouted back.

  The werewolves were now running wildly toward us, their muzzles flecked with white foam.

  Then, after a loud clicking noise, Rand said “Got it!”

  Suddenly, with a fierce growl, Panthra leapt in front of me. In another moment, she had met the large group of werewolves, who turned their feral attention to her. I took this chance to quickly check on my crew. Lopez was glaring at Winnifred while Kovac was helping Lopez to the command center for at least some sense of safety. It looked like Rand had the same idea. Winnifred, on the other hand, was casually walking up to me, and this time, there was definitely a smile on her face.

  When I looked back at Panthra and the werewolves on the road ahead of me, I saw my favorite semi-autonomous Battle Steed slashing and jumping and batting and tearing for only a few more seconds before something strange happened.

  All together, the werewolves turned tail and ran away.

  “Well done, warrior,” Winnifred said. “We have the enemy on the run.”

  It was my turn to smile. “Yeah—thanks for the help. We couldn’t have done it without you. Now they’ll probably scatter and we’ll just need to hunt down stray vampires and werewolves until there aren’t any left, right?”

  Winnifred nodded with a smile. “A decisive victory for a worthy hero.”

  She threw her arms around me and squeezed me tight. Through her light blue medical patient clothing, I could feel the curves of her body pressing against mine. I pulled back and saw her multi-colored eyes staring back at me. My eyes flicked down to her full, red lips and I felt myself drawing toward them when Patel’s voice sounded loudly through my helmet’s comm speaker.

  “Sergeant Walker—a large group of werewolves is retreating.”

  I sighed, let go of Winnifred, and tapped the side of my helmet. “Yes, Captain—we just sent them your way,” I said, maybe a bit too impatiently.

  There was a muffled curse on Patel’s end.

  “Well,” Patel said, “then you’ll need to get your asses over here on the double to clean up your mess, because those monsters are headed directly toward a public park!”

  20

  THE COSMART FACTORY was in flames when my team—including Panthra and Harker—made our way back to Patel and the rest of the Peacekeeper soldiers. Kovac was walking next to Lopez, who was still shaken from her near-miss with Mohawk and upset that it was Winnifred who had saved her. Rand had slung his duffel bag over his shoulder as we walked and was examining Panthra’s green- and orange-striped coat for damage from her battle with the werewolves. Winnifred and I brought up the rear.

  “So,” I said, taking advantage of the few moments I had with her. “What’s the Dominion like in your universe?”

  “More powerful than you can imagine,” she said. “And twice as evil.”

  “And the Resistance?”

  “Heroic,” Winnifred said. “Just as you would expect. But our numbers are dwindling.” She frowned. “Hence, this desperate mission.”

  I wanted to ask more, but just then, we arrived. A large group of soldiers had circled around Patel, who was standing on the square hood of a Peacekeeper transport and addressing the assembly. The moment shes saw us, she stopped talking abruptly and, raising her voice, said, “I assume the mobile command center was compromised?”

  I shrugged in response, hoping that didn’t qualify as falsifying a military report. I had enough strikes against me already.

  As Patel tilted her head to the side, I could practically see the gears turning inside. It was as if she was calculating exactly how much time she would lose by berating us in front of the others.

  At the same time, one of the soldiers closest to us turned around, his eyes widening upon seeing Panthra. The moment he raised his plasma rifle, Kovac stared hard with his watery blue eyes, raised his weapon, and boomed, “Don’t do it, soldier. She’s on our side.”

  Two back to back four-word sentences. I gave him a mental high five.

  The soldier sheepishly lowered his weapon and turned back around.

  “As I was saying,” Patel said, turning her gaze back to the other soldiers, “we still don’t know what their strategy is, so our mission is to first contain, then eliminate the enemy—and right now, anything with fangs is the enemy, even if it used to be a civilian—or a soldier.”

  There was a nervous mumbling among the assembled group, but Patel kept talking. “I’ve sent a small team ahead to make sure the locals have all been evacuated. Three transports are also carrying advance teams into position—Kappa and Lambda squadrons will flank the north side of the park, while Sigma and Tau squadrons flank the south side. I’ll set up my command just inside the entrance.”

  A couple of soldiers toward the back of the circle kept looking back at Panthra and nervously played with their plasma weapons. She let out a long, deep growl, and the two quickly returned their attent
ion to Patel’s direction.

  “The rest of you,” she continued, “will proceed forward according to the order of your unit designation. And our favorite team of fire-starters will bring up the rear—along with their pets.”

  Murmurs of approval and chuckles ran through the crowd. I saw Kovac clench his jaw, and Lopez’s face redden, so I knew I had to do something to diffuse the situation. But what?

  “Captain Patel,” I said loudly from the back, still uncertain of what I was going to say. “Scoundrel Force won’t let you down. I promise that when this is all over, you’ll never want anyone else watching your rear.”

  Snickers erupted from the gathering of soldiers and got so out of control that Patel had to yell to restore order. “Enough! All squadrons, to the park. On the double!”

  The circle dispersed quickly, but in an orderly manner. Through the rush of soldiers, I saw Captain Patel drop from her perch on the transport, where she was met by Lieutenant Stanton. After a moment, he saluted her, then made his way against the flow of soldiers toward us.

  “Uh, oh,” I said to Winnifred. “Here comes His Royal Stick-Up-His-Ass-ness.”

  She stifled a giggle as Stanton came to a sharp stop in front of us. He looked at us with narrowed eyes and said, “The captain would like to know why you’re allowing the two enemy acquisitions to walk freely and without restraints.”

  “I’m not sure I follow.” I gestured to Winnifred’s wrists. “Those look like restraints to me, Lieutenant.”

  Stanton’s face grew red. “You know what I mean, Walker.

  “Well, we can certainly fix that back at base,” I said. Then, fixing his eyes earnestly, I said, “Now, would you like send us back and counter the captain’s orders for us to join the battle?”

  Veins began to bulge on Stanton’s forehead. “Very well,” he said through gritted teeth. “And what about the metal feline?”

  Rand had removed an industrial-size tube of adhesive from his duffel bag and was patching up the largest of Pantra’s scratches.