Armageddon

by Erik Schubach

  Now they were mine forever, bound by holy matrimony. Though the current mortal laws see this as polygamy since there are three of us sometimes and sometimes two, but Perchta's laws of nature saw it simply as love so she, a goddess, our sister, and friend had performed the ceremony. Let's see someone dispute the word of a literal god.

  The months which followed the battle were so hectic, with every military and law enforcement agency around the globe trying to get to the bodies and gear of the fallen soldiers from all the other realms. There were still thousands of stranded conscripted beings in Australia. Our own government tried to take our space guns from us. And the fallout, both political and nuclear from Russia's unauthorized nuking of London.

  The blast polished land that had once been Seattle was chosen as neutral territory and New Seattle would be constructed here, serving as the headquarters for the new United Earth Alliance. It was going to be years before any sort of normality returned to the mortal realm and a single governing body was approved, especially since the First along with our Red, were negotiating treaties for free travel for the demons between realms. Believe it or not, there were even scientists and humans who wished to visit the demon realm.

  I looked around to my family, the Avatars who I loved like sisters, and wiped a tear from my eye. “To my family on my wedding day, I wish a long and...”

  I was interrupted by the heavy oak doors of the meeting room we were using for the reception slamming open, a figure striding through. We were all standing and had our weapons and magics brought to bear in an instant. I had my space gun in one hand, a crystal spear in the other.

  A silver-haired gentleman in a tweed suit called out to us in urgency. “Avatars, I am Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Miss Holmes is in need of your assistance right away. It is a matter of...”

  I holstered my weapon and the spear melted back into my hand as I held it up to the others who looked ready to flay the man alive. Just what we needed, another one of these cryptic author watchers messing with our lives. This was my wedding day!

  I stepped up to the man who panted from the exertion of running and said to him as I saw humor flicker in his eye just like all the other damn watchers, “Sir, I mean this with all due respect...”

  I grabbed his crotch and squeezed hard as his eyes bulged before he fell to his knees. “Fuck off.”

  He squeaked and nodded once and I released him as I patted his cheek. “Good boy, now come back after my honeymoon and we'll listen to whatever you have to say.”

  He fell forward onto his face, clutching his dangly bits, speaking into the floor, “Fair enough.”

  The women looked at me in shock when I turned back around to join them. What? I can be crass at times, I'm not all sweetness and light. I picked up my glass and the others joined me and I toasted the same four words which brought our loves back to us, “Once upon a time.”

  They cheered and we clinked our glasses. Whatever may come, the Avatars of the mortal realm would be here to keep evil at bay.

  The End

  Novels by Erik Schubach

  ----------------------------------------------

  Books in the Worldship Files series...

  Leviathan

  Books in the Techromancy Scrolls series...

  Adept

  Soras

  Masquerade

  Westlands

  Avalon

  New Cali (2019)

  Books in the Urban Fairytales series...

  Red Hood: The Hunt

  Snow: The White Crow

  Ella: Cinders and Ash

  Rose: Briar's Thorn

  Let Down Your Hair

  Hair of Gold: Just Right

  The Hood of Locksley

  Beauty In the Beast

  No Place Like Home

  Shadow Of The Hook

  Armageddon

  Books in the New Sentinels series...

  Djinn: Cursed

  Raven Maid: Out of the Darkness

  Fate: No Strings Attached

  Open Seas: Just Add Water

  Ghost-ish: Lazarus

  Anubis: Death's Mistress

  Sentinels: Reckoning (2020)

  Books in the Drakon series...

  Awakening

  Dragonfall

  Books in the Valkyrie Chronicles series...

  Return of the Asgard

  Bloodlines

  Folkvangr

  Seventy Two Hours

  Titans

  Books in the Tales From Olympus series...

  Gods Reunited

  Alfheim

  Odyssey (2020)

  Books in the Bridge series...

  Trolls

  Traitor

  Unbroken

  Books in the Fracture series...

  Divergence

  Novellas by Erik Schubach

  -------------------------------------------------

  The Hollow

  Novellas in the Paranormals series...

  Fleas

  This Sucks

  Jinx (2019)

  Novellas in the Fixit Adventures...

  Fixit

  Glitch

  Vashon

  Descent

  Sedition (2019)

  Novellas in the Emily Monroe Is Not The Chosen One series...

  Night Shift

  Unchosen

  Rechosen (2019)

  ---------------------------------------------------

  Short Stories by Erik Schubach

  (These short stories span many different genres)

  ----------------------------------------------------

  A Little Favor

  Lost in the Woods

  MUB

  Mirror Mirror On The Wall

  Oops!

  Rift Jumpers: Faster Than Light

  Scythe

  Snack Run

  Something Pretty

  Romance Novels by Erik Schubach

  Books in the Music of the Soul universe...

  (All books are standalone and can be read in any order)

  Music of the Soul

  A Deafening Whisper

  Dating Game

  Karaoke Queen

  Silent Bob

  Five Feet or Less

  Broken Song

  Syncopated Rhythm

  Progeny

  Girl Next Door

  Lightning Strikes Twice

  June

  Dead Shot

  Music of the Soul Shorts...

  (All short stories are standalone and can be read in any order)

  Misadventures of Victoria Davenport: Operation Matchmaker

  Wallflower

  Accidental Date

  Holiday Morsels

  What Happened In Vegas?

  Books in the London Harmony series...

  (All books are standalone and can be read in any order)

  Water Gypsy

  Feel the Beat

  Roctoberfest

  Small Fry

  Doghouse

  Minuette

  Squid Hugs

  The Pike

  Flotilla

  Books in the Pike series...

  (All books are standalone and can be read in any order)

  Ships In The Night

  Right To Remain Silent

  Evermore

  New Beginnings

  Books in the Flotilla series...

  (All books are standalone and can be read in any order)

  Making Waves

  Keeping Time

  The Temp

  Paying the Toll

  Books in the Unleashed series...

  Case of the Collie Flour

  Case of the Hot Dog

  Case of the Gold Retriever

  Case of the Great Danish

  Case of the Yorkshire Pudding

  Case of the Poodle Doodle

  Case of the Hound About Town


  Sample chapter from my new scifi paranormal space adventure Worldship Files: Leviathan...

  Chapter 1 – Irontown

  I navigated my hovering Tac-Bike through the streets of Irontown on C-Ring, Beta-Stack. Another disturbance was reported in the bulkhead corridors. People moved out of the way as my warning beacon strobed. Air traffic was light and I considered heading above street level. This inner ring, like most of the inner rings, was inhabited mostly by Humans and a few unsavories like Sprites, witches, and a few shifters. Which is why I get dispatched here.

  I usually get the shit calls, since I was Human too. Why should the Enforcers Brigade be any different than anyone else on the Worldship? Equal opportunity bigotry is the one thing leftover from the old world, that old home called Earth that is just a legend to most of us here on the Leviathan.

  I've always thought the stories were just old folktales to keep us lower races in line, that idea that there ever was a place of Open Air, where machines and the ship's oxygen processing systems were not needed to keep us breathing, to keep us alive. But I have questioned it a few times when I've met a couple of the Old Earth Fae who say they were there on the day five thousand years ago when the Leviathan left the orbit of that dying planet.

  And Fae... well everyone knows that the Fae cannot lie. Which makes them the best deceivers of all the races, they can spin the truth to make you believe anything they wish and not tell a single lie while doing it. And being in the Brigade, I've seen the outer rings, the lush forests and villages, and rivers that they modeled after Earth. I can almost imagine what it would be like if those forests went on forever instead of being constrained to just a mile wide strip in the fifty-mile diameter torus of the A-Rings.

  It is hard to believe that each of the four A-Rings has almost two thousand square miles of space, four times that of the crowded C-Rings. Even more than the surface of the seven-mile diameter asteroid encased in the Heart sphere located... well located in the heart of the Leviathan. The workers and ore extractors there have virtually no gravity, so they can't even come farther out than the small D-Rings without requiring exoskeleton support or magic buffs to support their brittle bone structure in the higher gravity of the spinning rings.

  I went past the outer markets then parked and mag-locked my Tactical Bike at one of the many entrances to the labyrinth of corridors, living, and working units of the slums in the bulkhead spaces, assigned to the people who couldn't afford to live outside in the cities and villages crowding the ring's environmental envelope.

  An advertisement for cybernetic eye implants was playing across the door, damn taggers with their interactive graffiti were getting so commercial lately. Whatever happened to simple gang tagging or art expressionism? Now it was all about making an extra token chit or two.

  I tapped a code on my wrist panel, to inform engineering to come out and strip the programmable paint from the structure as I just shook my head. It's no wonder us humans have such a bad reputation for being slacker trash that's only good for reclamation for fertilizer for the farms, or sucking hard vacuum in space.

  It wasn't worth reviewing the surveillance footage to track down the tagger, it was a minor offense and wasn't worth having his or her meal cards set to rationing mode for a month. That sort of thing just promotes the rash of homeless in the lower rings when they can't eat properly to stay healthy enough to work. Not everyone had jobs that made enough chit to supplement their meal cards with fresh food if needed.

  Sometimes as an Enforcer, we have to choose our battles. The others from Beta Squad, either call me soft because I let minor infractions like that slide, or null because, like all humans who weren't witches or shifters, had no magic of my own. Ahhh there's that Leviathan bigotry in action again.

  Speaking of... a large tiger saw me step into the bulkhead corridors and it hissed and backed off as it changed to human and slipped into a living unit. Ok, maybe the Brigade isn't as popular here in the lower rings as elsewhere on the ship, or 'on the world' as we locals say.

  I checked my wrist unit again, and muttered, “Oh go suck vacuum, Bulkhead J?” Of course, it would be the maintenance corridors out by the Skin. I sighed and started jogging through the semi-crowded corridors, people moving aside as I started the quarter-mile journey. I should have just taken my Tac-Bike like the entitled asses of the other squads do, siren wailing and forcing people out of the way.

  The deeper I went, the fewer people I passed, until it was only the back hall vagrants. I kicked the hoof of a Satyr just to make sure he was still breathing. What the hells was he doing down here? When he groaned and opened his eyes, he started cursing me in Old Fairy. Who used Old Fairy anymore?

  I snapped at him in the same tongue, “Get up, get out, and get sober.”

  He staggered to his hooves and took the bottle of spirits with him, muttering, “Fuckin' null.” Ok, apparently he spoke Ship Common too.

  I snorted and sighed, then started jogging toward the reported disturbance. Could they at least have classified it? Was it just someone shitting in the corridor or someone threatening to open a breach in the Skin?

  On that thought, I paused at one of the massive breach seal blast doors as I passed from the section, at a sound. I saw flickering lights around the door seams of the emergency manual door release. I stepped over, shook my head then pulled the small door open and growled out, “Hey, get out of there, now! I'll pin your wings and haul your little asses in right now if you don't make yourselves scarce. And hey! Put that linkage back! We'd all be sucking vacuum if there was a meteoroid strike and this section decompressed without us being able to operate the door.”

  One of the glowing, five-inch tall humanoids with large moth-like wings hissed at me and waved me off. “Get lost, null.”

  I muttered to myself, “Sprites.” Then I said as I pointed back toward the exit, “Out now, you filthy scavengers.”

  Two of the trio looked up from where they were trying to pull a linkage free, their eyes shooting from my face to my scatter armor to the badge and guns at my waist. They looked at their companion then took flight, leaving a trail of that damn itchy wing dust in their wake.

  The third called after them in his... or her... or its squeaky voice; I always got pronoun headache with a three sex-species like Sprites, “Cowards! We can get ten chit for this!” Then it looked at me, harrumphed, then slammed the little access door in my face. The cheeky little shit.

  I yanked it open again and the Sprite had the balls to cast at me. I didn't even bother dropping my talisman reinforced visor on my helmet with a thought. The spell sparked from its finger and dissipated against my scatter armor as it lived up to its namesake.

  I reached into the box and grabbed the little ass by the wings, pinching them together as I hauled it out to hold up in front of my face. What had it been thinking, even without my armor, Sprites were the bottom of the magic community food chain, right below Faeries. The most it could accomplish against a human is to sting or make a slightly uncomfortable rash with its magic.

  I asked as I cocked an eyebrow, “You want me to add assaulting an Enforcer to the list of charges? If you're lucky, they'll have you cleaning out grease traps in the food districts instead of the urinals in the D-Ring.”

  It swung little fists at my fingers uselessly as it dangled from its wings. “You're like all the other Bigs. If I were your size you'd be quaking in your fancy-schmancy boots like every other man.”

  “I'm a woman, are you visually impaired as well as stupid?”

  It growled, “Man, woman? All you nulls look the same to me.”

  I sighed and said, “You aren't winning any points here.” I scanned it with my wrist unit and an ID popped up. Ah, a third gender, a pollinator, I would have mistaken it for a girl, but I could see the feminine androgyny in it now. “Graz. No surname? You're not that old are you?”

  The Fae and other preternatural races became known to the humans of Old Earth when they stepped forwar
d to help construct the Leviathan so that all the races could escape the slowly expanding sun. In those days most preternatural people had only a single name. They didn't start taking surnames until a few hundred years after the Exodus launch to Eridani Prime, the new world our people will call home at the end of our ten thousand year journey.

  We were only halfway there, and I and every Human on board would never see it, only the Fae and the Vampires had the chance of seeing the end of our voyage. Us Humans were not blessed with long lives, we burned bright for just around two centuries, then died. So it would still be thirty or forty generations before a human would set foot on the Ground, under Open Air.

  It harrumphed and crossed its arms over its chest, and gods be damned if it wasn't cute as hell. “My parents were traditionalists, living on a farm, and couldn't pronounce grass right.”

  Answered like a true Fae, it wasn't exactly a yes or a no, why were they always so evasive? The lesser Fae could lie, unlike the Greater Fae.

  I sighed and said, “I tell you what Graz, I'll overlook your little indiscretions if you just make yourself scarce and promise not to scavenge from critical emergency systems again. I'm on a disturbance call right now back at Bulkhead J, and don't have the time or desire to deal with you too, besides the paperwork is a bitch.”

  The purplish-pink color drained from Graz's face and it said, “Bulkhead J? The screaming? You don't want to go back there, it's...” The Sprite trailed off, shook its head and asked, “Just... it's better to walk away officer...”

  I offered, “Shade, Knith Shade.”

  “Shade.”

  Letting the Sprite go, it buzzed its wings to stay in my face and asked, “You're going back there anyway, aren't you?” It actually looked scared... even though it was virtually immortal... well as long as nobody killed it.