Lars Breaxface- Werewolf in Space

by Brandon Getz

  That static-fuzzed voice welled up from the robot’s steel throat. “We are waiting.”

  “Okay,” Lars said. “Waiting.” He took one last pull off the jug, down to the bitter dregs, and pitched it into the dust. Above them, in the purpling sky, the pale outline of the Embassy was barely visible, making him nostalgic for a good old-fashioned moon. The lunar batteries were doing their trick—he felt the energy in his blood and bones, the power to wolf out returning. He wasn’t running on empty anymore. “Waiting on what, death by slug laser? Bet those Embassy fuckers are getting pretty antsy up there. They want you gone yesterday. You and the wicked witch.”

  “Mother can handle the Embassy,” Boris said. “She always has. They are afraid.”

  A few meters away, a fox crept up from some subterranean den, rippled its armored coat, and sniffed at the empty growler. A low percussive revving, then a flash of blue light, and the fox exploded into ash and cinders. Lars jumped, and his bladder threatened mutiny, sloshing and swollen from all that ale. Boris’s gun-arm dropped, the mouth of the barrel still glowing white-hot.

  “Cosmic Christ, bolts. That could’ve been dinner.”

  The robot turned, continuing its patrol, not even bothering to shrug. Frank took a cue from the iron giant, lurching the opposite way into darkness, and Lars unzipped, pissing into the dust as the sun disappeared and the ashes of the fox grew cold.

  

  The stench of witch’s brew in the dome had gone beyond suffocating as the so-called tea burned to a tar on the stove coils. Lars slunk amid the hut’s array of knickknacks and slug junk, hazy from the beer. Finally, after bumping into a shelf or two and getting dizzy on the turbulent blooms of the quicksilver walls, he found Jay and the Hand. The space vamps sat on opposing sides of the hardslime slab, fangs clenched.

  “The Library,” Jay said. “You want to go back to the Library.”

  “Se’grob and his gaggle of dusty old corpses,” the Hand spat. “Holier than thou in their castle of books. No, I don’t want to go back there. But the key—”

  “You have the key. You’ve had it this whole time and you didn’t tell me. Why send me halfway across this universe searching for something you already had swimming in your robot’s guts?”

  “I didn’t trust it,” said the witch. “I still don’t. It was damaged in our transit across the breach. And even if it hadn’t been—all these years, I don’t remember the sequence. I only used it that once, little bug, to save you.”

  “But,” Jay scratched at a crack in the hardslime, “it’s in the book. And the Librarians have the book.”

  “I’ll make a queen of you yet,” Auntie Hand grinned. She turned to Lars, who was picking through a bin of old bones. “Don’t touch that.”

  Lars held one up—a long, curved tooth or claw, patinaed with age. “What’s all this for? Just jangles for your dresses?”

  “Those are the remains of a slug’s time antennae,” Hand replied. “Tumor teeth. Invaluable for divination and chronometric echo-location.”

  The wolfman tossed the tooth back into the bin. “Whatever, lady. You guys ready to split? All this dust is starting to make my dick chafe.”

  Auntie Hand stood, fixed her red glasses, and leaned on her twisted cane. “Let me get a few things.”

  The witch turned, but before she could even switch off the flame on the boiling stove, gunfire erupted outside the hut. Glowing bursts of plasma tore through the hut's canopy, raining red-hot globs of quicksilver ants. In a flash, black blood ballooned from the witch’s good hand, forming a shield to protect herself and the princess. Lars ducked behind a half-toppled stack of shelves as tumor teeth clattered around him. Somewhere beyond the walls, an alert blaring from Boris the android stated the obvious—they were under attack.

  Chapter XXVII

  Galaxy light illuminated the edges of the night, and the hardslime Embassy shone in the darkness like an irradiated space yam. It would’ve been pretty except for the chrome-plated starjet strafing the desert in an effort to turn Lars and crew into plasma-scorched corpses. From the doorway of the hut, Lars could see Boris and Frank taking cover in the field of windmills. The robot was letting loose burst after burst from its gun-arm, while the tremuloid tottered beside it, hurling rocks.

  “Jeezus, Frank,” Lars muttered, “at least grab a blaster or something.” Then he turned to Jay and the Hand. “I thought you said this rock was locked down. ‘Vessels without clearance are vaporized,’ I think were the exact words. How is it this joker’s raining gunfire on us right now? He get his passport punched?”

  “I–I don’t know,” Jay stuttered.

  Auntie Hand scowled. “Slugs are getting lazy.”

  “We’re sitting ducks out here in the dust. Let’s haul ass to Sheila and burn atmosphere,” Lars said. “A lot more firepower on the cruiser than what we’re packing in our pockets.”

  A volley of plasma bounced and sizzled across Sheila’s shields, and Lars gasped—it was one thing to shoot at him or one of these other meat bags. It was another to shoot his baby. That bastard was gonna scuff his paintjob. The wolfman tore off running toward the ship, pulling his revolver from its holster, and felt infinitely stupid wearing his two dozen knives. He never liked being the asshole who brings a knife to a laser fight. The chrome jet made another pass over Sheila, her shields still holding, Boris shooting so much at the incoming ship that the barrel of his arm glowed red. But it was a well-placed rock that knocked the jet’s stabilizer loose. The attacking craft’s wings wobbled. It turned, heading into a tailspin. Just fucking explode, Lars thought, save us all the hassle. The jet didn’t explode—not even a little fire on the wings for effect. It pulled its nose up just enough to crash-land on its belly in a stretch of desert between the windmills and the red river, throwing up a thick cloud of dust in its wake.

  “Jeezus, Frank,” Lars said, catching up to the old tree. “Nice aim.”

  Boris’s gun-arm was still smoking. “Target neutralized.”

  “Doubt it, bolts. Simple airbag could’ve saved that dude from mega-death.” Lars cracked his knuckles, the tattooed letters badd wolf stretching across his fingers. He kissed one fist, then the other. “Time to blow this piggy's house in.”

  “Lars, stop.” It was Jay, with the witch hobbling right behind her.

  “Motherfucker tried to blast up Sheila. He’s losing a couple teeth, maybe an arm or two. End of story.”

  “We need to go. Whoever it is, leave him for the scorpions. We’ve got bigger problems.”

  The wolfman clenched, head to asshole. He didn’t like leaving chins unpunched. It went against his whole code of justice. Eye for an eye, chin for a chin. Fuck with me and you get fucked. But the princess was boss—and following her gaze up to the night sky, he knew she was right. Streaks of fire were raining down from the Hive. Embassy dropships inbound, heading right for them.

  Chapter XXVIII

  Sheila was close but not close enough. In seconds, they’d have a whole army of Siskelian mercenaries up their asses. Even with the witch and her war droid, Lars didn’t like the odds. Not on a planet without a moon.

  “I’ll deal with this,” Auntie Hand grumbled. “Just stay out of my way.”

  “Those are whole dropships,” Lars said. “What are you gonna do, serve them some of your black-tar brew?”

  The Hand stepped out of the field of windmills and dropped her cane. With her wood-and-wire hand raised high, she said, “Watch and learn, beast.” She brought her other hand up and bit into the palm like Jay had back in Canal City and Victor’s Halo, black blood oozing from the wound. She threw the bitten hand skyward, and blood sprayed.

  Lars turned to Jay. “Is she serious? She thinks she’s gonna bloodwall these fuckers?”

  The princess’s white, scarred hand clenched around her dryslug dagger. The Embassy, the stars, and the streaks of dropships

  dragging through the atmosphere reflected in her eyes, and it was pretty, sort of. Minus the chemtrails from the d
escending merc army.

  “Just shut up, Lars. Let her do this.”

  Blood bloomed from the witch’s hand. It stretched, a black sheet, razor-thin and pushing starward. Hand’s scarred brow creased with effort. Her skin, even paler than its usual paper-white, sucked at her bones. The dropships were more than streaks in the sky now. They were heavy things, three of them: Hardslime cocoons festooned with spotlights and growing quickly as they descended to the surface. Beside Lars, Jay unsheathed the Cairnish dagger—and slashed her own palm.

  “Jay, what—” Lars started, but she was already a step ahead.

  “Auntie!” Jay called, throwing the whip of blood she’d woven. It exploded into droplets, combining with Hand’s blood, each drop miniscule but calculated, a matrix of bloodhex casting toward space like a net.

  Hex like that was myth—intergalactic fairytale. If the witch could hold back three ships dropping full-speed from orbit with her bloodwall, then it was magic nobody in the Federation or otherwise had seen in generations. Sure as fuck it’d never been seen on Terra, except on the library’s old TV. It might have saved the planet, held back the oceans, cleared away the black clouds of orbiting debris. The bloodnet disappeared into the darkness, and Lars thought of his mother, caked in dirt from double shifts in the floodyards, and the bullshit cosmic roulette that gave some people, whole races, hex and hocus-pocus while others were left to drown and rot. Lars gritted his teeth, pointed the revolver at an incoming dropship, and squeezed the trigger, blasting plasma till the power cell beeped empty.

  “Take that, motherfuckers,” he spat at the sky. Frank was looking at him with half his yellow eyes, looking as concerned as a mute tree could look. “Just getting into the spirit, Frank. Doing my part in the war for the wasteland.”

  He threw the empty pistol to the dirt and turned to Jay. She stood with her hands out, feeding blood into Auntie Hand’s spell, eyes starting to take on a grayish haze.

  “Jay,” he said, “Hot Cosmic Christ, put a band-aid on that—”

  A crash. The princess wavered, but her blood kept pouring. Out in the desert, one of the dropships lay wrecked and burning, its flickering spotlights illuminating black bloodspatter across its hull. But there were still two more ships, and both Jay and the Hand already looked half dead.

  “Jay,” Lars said, “Jay!”

  Her blood laced with the witch’s. Another net was forming. They’re gonna bloodhex themselves to death, Lars thought. No time for diplomacy. They had to get to Sheila and split.

  “Frank, a little help?” he said, nodding toward the princess. Frank’s sallow eyes widened when he saw her, and the branch that knocked her out was so fast Lars thought the old tree might’ve killed her. But when the tremuloid’s limbs cradled her, she was still breathing, the wound on her palm barely dripping black.

  Next to the Hand, Boris’s disconcerting robot voice repeated “Mother? Mother?” The Hand was a powerful hexsmith—might’ve been the premier hemomancer in this universe or any other. But she’d shed too much blood taking one ship down. Before the net could wrap around the next incoming slug vessel, the witch fainted, and the un-enchanted blood of the net splashed across rows of bone windmills.

  Boris caught her in the crook of its gun-arm, its candy-striped gripper reaching to pick up her cane.

  Lars nodded to Frank. “Can you run?”

  Some combination of branch and foliage gave an affirmative reply. The tremuloid took off in lumbering jog through the windmills, Jay dropping in his branches, and behind him the robot Boris, pistons wheezing as it sprinted mechanically for the cruiser. With the batteries on his back, Lars felt currents of moonpower in his veins and fought the urge to wolf out and race to the head of the pack. In wolf form, he could’ve lapped them twice, but what was the point? Waste of good moon juice. And anyway, nobody was going anywhere without him. He was the one with the keys.

  Chapter XXIX

  By the time they reached her, Sheila was under an inch of dirt. You could hardly see the pinup girl or the yellow flames beneath the grime. The dropships were landing, sending clouds of dust in all directions. Lars fumbled in his pocket for the keys, smiling as he touched the lucky rabbit’s foot. Unlocking the door, the wolfman ducked into the cruiser, kicking cans and rubbish out of the way to make a path for guests.

  Boris clumped in with the knocked-out Hand, then Frank with the knocked-out Jay. The princess was already starting to stir.

  “Throw them on that pile of cargo netting,” Lars said. “That’s where I sleep it off when the bunk’s a million miles away.”

  The robot and the tree plunked their vampire cargo onto the nets, then stood side by side like soldiers awaiting orders. Sheeeit, Lars thought. He wasn’t a fucking commandant. He didn’t give orders, he took them—begrudgingly, and only for a paycheck.

  “You two keep an eye on our bloodsucking Sleeping Beauties. I’m gonna haul my ass to the pilot seat and blast us off this shithole planet.”

  The planet shook—the Embassy dropships making their landing, he figured. The vamp women flopped a little, and empty cans rattled across the floor. Frank wrapped his branches protectively over the pallet of kegs.

  “Pour me one, Frank. I’ll be back for it when we’re spacebound.”

  

  Two inches of dust caked in the windshield, but there were no cracks or beeping alarms, and all the gadgets and gizmos of the pilot deck looked to be in working order. Lars plugged the key into the ignition and revved up the engines to the tune of that old muscle car. In a minute, they’d be jetting past the Embassy and futtling off to wherever the fuck and it wouldn’t matter if there were ten Siskelians or two hundred marching across the desert. It wouldn’t matter who the asshole in the chrome wreck was either. They could all circle jerk onto a time scorpion for all he cared. Engines ready. Zoom zoom.

  The speakers around him—normally reserved for crunching heavy metal tunes—crackled to life and issued a warning: “We have our satellites locked onto your location. If you attempt to escape, we will be forced to fire.”

  Some Embassy lackey. Probably a slimy Siskelian twerp picking his nose in front a trid display. Lars smacked the switch on the interstellar comms. “Bullshit. If you wanted to roast us, we’d be fifty shades of ash already.”

  A pause. Then another voice, hissing and strained. “You have destroyed our ship and further defiled our sacred home. The deal is no more. The Ambassador desires the Hand. Release her to the hirelings surrounding your vehicle.”

  He couldn’t be sure, but he figured it was the same slug that’d met them at the docking port. He imagined what the thing’s tumors were doing just then, biting at the air like hungry worms. Lars scratched the back of his neck and grumbled. “Wait a minute. Defiled, huh? You sluggos watching me piss from up there?”

  “The intruder. You have brought another trespasser to our lands. It tracks you. It follows you.”

  Cosmic fucking Christ. The slugs were in a tizzy over the cocksucker in the starjet, and throwing blame on Lars and crew. Weren’t they supposed to be the ones with the space guns? Pew-pew and down comes anything inching into orbit? Way Lars figured it, the mercs should’ve been poking at the jet crash and burning laser holes through any survivors, instead of circling Sheila. Captain Chrome wasn’t his problem.

  “Listen, we don’t know that pilot from fuck-all. We just want to blast off. We can still do the deal as planned—no more Hand on your planet, no worries. Call off your dogs and we’ll mosey.”

  “The Hand destroyed our ship, killed our hirelings. Intruder or no intruder, the deal is rescinded. Release the Hand,” the slug hissed. “The hirelings are waiting.”

  On the cam system, he could see the ring of mercs lined up around Sheila’s back door, rifles all nasty-looking and ready to fire. The goddamn witch. He knew she was trouble, and tossing that dropship had done zero except piss off the slugs. What’d they need her for anyway? Jay had him, and with Boris aboard she had a puzzle box. Instruction booklet waiti
ng on some Library someplace. Sounded like the princess knew all about it. No blood witch required. Why not hand her over, let the Cairnish do their thing? The old bag could take care of herself. Choke the whole slug lot with a couple of bloodropes. He checked the gauges on his lunar batteries. Still up and running, maybe half strength with the recharge they’d had to give him after the incident with Fish on that backwater spinner. He still felt the lingering drain of turning wolf in the chapel of the Cosmic Christ. That had been fucking stupid, he knew, wolfing out so far from lunar recharge. The batteries had filled him back up, but it was a weaker sauce. Still, it would have to do. He ducked out of the cockpit toward the cargo hold, and left the engines running.

  

  In the hold, Jay was awake and already lifting the tech-laced sword from one of Fish’s Rubber Room sacks. She smiled, testing the weight of it in her scarred hands. Auntie Hand was still KO’ed, the ‘droid in sentry mode beside her. Frank was in his corner spot sucking beer from three cups.

  “One of those is mine, Frank,” Lars said. To Jay, he added, “Slugs want your Auntie. Got a platoon of blue-skinned sellswords knocking at our door to deliver. They say we fouled the deal by crashing that dropship.”

  “I heard.”

  “So? Must’ve gotten their sats back online after the jet got by—they’ve got sights on us. Space lasers pointed right at my baby.” Lars swiped a cup from Frank and guzzled. “I say we make the trade. Show the slugs we wanna play nice. What’s one old lady against the whole mission of righteous vengeance, right?”