by Aaron Crash
Elle still had control of Blaze’s left arm, which was free. She caught Ling’s nunchaku by the handle and cut Blaze free of one chain, but another chain impaled his leg, then another, then another.
Fernando went to help with his fusion spear, but a werewolf seized him around an arm and flung him away, into chains waiting to hook him.
Bill whirled, clicking.
Fernando, gasping from the pain of the hooks, translated. “Ling, my brother can use the shotgun on the wolves, hurry!”
Ling was too fast for the chains, faster than the werewolves, and he was their only hope. Tanner had come around, his chest bleeding and smoking from the first silver pellet blast he’d taken. The wolf pounced on Ling, and the Meelah gave him another blast to add more silver to his skin. Tanner howled and was thrown back.
In the same moment Ling tossed Bill the shotgun. He also spun his bandolier off him and threw it as well. Bill caught both in his collection of insect arms and metal prosthetics. His left plasma pistol hand kept the chains off him as he reloaded the shotgun with his other hands.
Sometimes being a big stick insect with lots of hands could really come in handy.
Blaze struggled against the chains that were trying to rip his limbs off his body. “Elle!” he hollered. “Any time now!” A hook caught his left arm. The nunchaku dangled from his hand, lifeless. Fernando struggled against the chains, but he too was caught. Only Bill and Ling were free to fight.
While Bill loaded the shotgun, he fired both his fusion cannon arm and his plasma pistol hand to keep the chains off him and Ling.
The Shaolin sloth rolled across the floor and holstered his remaining nunchaku. The Meelah seized Blaze’s ax, deactivating the fusion blades and activating the silver spikes.
He turned to face the werewolves. Tanner wasn’t dead, but he was hurting from taking both barrels of the silver shot.
It was Ling against three werewolves. One chomped at him, and Ling darted through his fangs. He slammed a silver spike into a leg, leapt past talons, blocked a blow with the ax’s handle, and punched another giant head coming at him. A werewolf tooth clattered to the ground.
An abattoir chain reached up from the floor, and Ling triggered the fusion blades and cut through it. More hooks threatened, but he cut through them, sprang over a werewolf, and ran across its back before sinking a silver spike into the hindquarters of the wolf, Chase to be specific.
Ling flipped off the wounded wolf and hit the ground, both fusion blades glowing and silver spikes dripping black werewolf blood.
The Shaolin sloth grinned. “I am Meelah. I am a child of the universe. I am the child of now. And right now, I’m kicking ass!”
Another wolf attacked, and more chains darted toward him. Ling was swept back into battle.
The glass dome cracked farther. Water poured down in waterfalls of saltwater slush. The cold cut through Blaze’s senses like a knife. The energy shields were failing.
Raziel appeared, charged through the battle and chains, and leapt onto Fernando, pawing at his pouches. The calico’s meows filled comms. What was the cat trying to tell them?
Bill blasted a werewolf, Jared, who chomped at Ling. The silver blew him back, but then Logan was right there, clawing at the Meelah. Logan took a shotgun blast to one shoulder and Ling hammered a spike into the other. Logan was down, unable to move, as both shoulders smoked and bled.
The pain of being pierced by so many abattoir chains was finally getting to Blaze. Dots crowded his vision. He was about to pass out. He was close to a vertical conveyor belt of buckets. He reached out for a bucket to try and get free, but the chains held him tight.
The platform gave way completely, becoming a writhing lake of twisting chains and sharp barbed hooks. The floor bucked like an untamed living thing under Bill and Ling’s feet.
It would be hard to fight Nauzea and those werewolves without solid ground under their feet.
Raziel continued to paw and meow at Fernando’s bandolier. What was the cat trying to tell them?
Nauzea continued to howl laughter out of her infected cakehole.
Pinche puta.
The attacking werewolves were caught in the abattoir chains. But the lycanthropes could snap through the links with their supernatural strength, and the metal of the hooks couldn’t pierce their skins. Still, the Astral Corps werewolves were taken out of the action for a minute.
Bill used his fusion cannon to melt the floor in front of Nauzea into slag. Ocean water gushed down and cooled the metal, allowing Bill a place to stand. He then whirled and shot through the chains holding Fernando. The Clicker doctor fell onto the cooling metal of the fused chains. Those hooks had cut through a lot of his muscle tissue, and Fernando was having a hard time standing. Raziel clung to the Clicker doctor’s armor with every claw she had.
“Elle, you’ll need to take full control of Blaze!” Ling shouted. “Ready yourself. This is going to be awesome!” The Meelah dodged a waterfall of ocean water, ran across the chains, and hurled himself through space. In midair, he dropped the ax, whirled his nunchaku, and cut through the chains piercing Blaze’s arms and torso.
He was jerked upside down. Blood rushed to his head. But then Elle took over the nanotech. Blaze’s arms reached out to seize the falling ax. She hacked through the chains in his legs, and Blaze found himself falling.
Elle forced both of Blaze’s arms out, and he caught a vertical conveyor belt bucket, riding upward.
Ling caught the bucket under him.
Below them on the fused chains, Fernando whipped out a snare sphere along with a handful of cobwebs. He hurled both at Nauzea and growled out Onyx speak.
That’s what Raziel had wanted!
The snare sphere glittered with green lights.
Nauzea raised her horribly mangled hands to cast a spell. But when she went to speak, no words left her mouth. A blinding white light flashed from the sphere. Her figure became indistinct, grew shadowy, and then was sucked into the orb. The blinking lights on the snare sphere changed from green to red. They’d caught Nauzea. They’d done it.
Fernando collapsed onto the chains, but with Nauzea gone, the floor went with her, even the section of chains Bill had fused together.
Fernando might’ve captured Nauzea, but he was going to pay the ultimate price for such a victory.
EIGHT_
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Blaze, clinging to the conveyor belt bucket, watched Bill save the day. He’d forgotten how much of a badass the Clicker engineer was.
Bill raced across the collapsing floor, snatched up the sphere, and then dove for his brother. Bill’s big left mechanical arm changed into a metal whip, and it circled his brother. With his left arm, he caught a conveyor belt bucket and held on.
The ocean had filled the mine shafts, the water rising, higher and higher until it flooded the platform and consumed the control room.
“Elle!” Blaze gasped, trying to hold onto his consciousness.
His sister answered, exasperated. “Oh, Blaze, we’re not going to make it. We’re trying to get around the Etrusca structure. Then we still have to fly under it, while avoiding the goddamn tentacles. Doesn’t the fucking thing know it’s on our side?”
That was the thing. They had no idea whose side the Etrusca ruins were on or if the Etrusca had been demons themselves.
The werewolves swam through the water toward them. The vertical conveyors were still working despite half the mine being flooded. Good ol’ Clicker engineering.
Blaze was in bad shape, unable to move himself, and Elle could only control him so much. Fernando was barely conscious. Casting the snare spell had taken a lot out of him. And those hooks hadn’t helped.
Ling and Bill had managed to avoid being wounded, but once the mine flooded, the pressure would crush them into nanotech tins of tuna fish.
And Blaze was betting those werewolves liked tuna fish. They’d swallow them all down, flesh, bones, nanotech, and all.
The outside lights on
the mining colony flickered, then grew brighter in some kind of last gasp. Those bright lights illuminated the shadowy miles of the Etrusca ruin descending upon them. Tentacles, some the size of skyscrapers, others as thin as a pencil, smashed through the glass and the energy shields above the drowned control room.
The conveyor cable of buckets rose higher and higher, but they were nearing where the buckets flipped onto the horizonal conveyor belt to be loaded onto the freight elevator. If they didn’t come up with a plan soon, they’d all be sent sprawling into the frigid water and hungry werewolves below them.
Raziel was still on Fernando. She used her claws to grip his nanotech and she was yowling something awful again, pawing at a pouch when she wasn’t clinging to the Clicker for dear life.
Fernando had cast the snare spell. What did the cat want now?
Then it hit Blaze. “Shield spell. The aragonite crystals. Fernando, you have to use a shield spell, a bubble. It’ll save our lives.”
“I can’t,” wheezed the Clicker through comms. “I’m out of mojo, and another spell would kill me. Snaring Nauzea took everything out of me and then some.”
Bill clicked, and his brother translated wearily. “Bill says he hates you, and if I die, he’ll help Lizzie to destroy you all.”
“Nombre de Dios!” Blaze sputtered. “Can we not threaten each other when we’re about to die?”
There was no hope. Either the Etrusca tentacles would grab them and squeeze them to pieces, the werewolves would slaughter them, or the intense pressure at the bottom of the frozen ocean would crush them.
Above them, where the buckets flipped, a familiar face rode through on the conveyor belt. Trina! She was vamped out, impervious to the cold, though not to the pressure.
Better yet, she could save them.
“Trina!” Blaze yelled in happy desperation. “Hit Fernando with a syringe. He can cast a spell and save our asses.”
Tanner, Chase, Jared, and Logan snarled and growled at them, coming closer.
Well, a shield spell would help them in the water. Might not help with the werewolves, but one fucked-up pinche crisis at a time.
Trina tumbled off the conveyor belt, grabbed a bucket heading down, and got a syringe ready. She had two left.
“Blaze,” Fernando sputtered in a series of clicks, “I have no clue how my system will react to the Onyx serum. It might destroy me.”
“Might is better than will, Fernando,” Blaze said. This was no time for doubts. This was their asses on the line. Any chance was better than no chance.
Elle gasped in comms but was wordless. She knew this was their only chance.
Fernando’s sputters turned into chuckles. “Semper fi, pinche puta,” the Clicker doctor cursed, borrowing Blaze’s slang.
Fernando snatched the syringe out of Trina’s hand and used his big right hand to slam the serum into the veins of his small left arm while clinging to the buckets with his other limbs. His round beady eyes glowed dark scarlet with Onyx energy.
“Jump to me!” the Clicker doctor shouted, amped up on Onyx.
Elle moved Blaze’s body via the nanotech, and he leapt down toward Fernando. Ling followed, as did Trina. Bill climbed up the cable, from bucket to bucket, to join them.
Even as the werewolves swam toward them in the rising water. Even as the Etrusca tentacles broke through more of the glass ceiling, reaching for them.
Fernando hurled aragonite crystals from a pouch and shouted in Onyx speak. A red circle of powerful energy enveloped them all. The ceiling gave way, the energy shields gone, and the entire ocean filled the mine. The control room immediately crumbled, cracked, and was smashed into nothing. Buckets popped around them and were crushed into marbles. Chains became limp strands of metal. The pressure turned hooks into pocket lint.
Tanner and his gang of werewolves were unhurt. They swam up, claws and fangs and gleaming yellow eyes. Their fur flattened against their muscular bodies as they tore up through the frigid water toward them.
Blaze was able to pull himself up from the tangle of bodies in the red Onyx bubble Fernando had created. They floated out of the mine, toward the Etrusca tentacles. But those tentacles streaked by them and grabbed the werewolves instead. In seconds, Tanner, Chase, Jared, and Logan were seized and squeezed. Their tongues burst from their mouths, and though he couldn’t hear it, Blaze knew those bastards were whining like whipped curs.
A huge tentacle struck the bubble, sending it spiraling down and away.
Fernando was clicking and clacking, struggling to keep the bubble not only together but also moving. “I can…I can control our movement… But the pain, the pain of it, I am tiring.”
They floated away from the Etrusca ruin and the werewolves. The massive tendrils of living Etrusca metal grabbed at the mine and started ripping it apart, all of the hamster-pipes, the hexagonal corridors, anything not already crushed by the pressure.
Blaze touched the energy surrounding him, and it was surreal. On the other side was partially frozen water and ice under amazing pressure. Inside the bubble, they had oxygen and were relatively safe. The bubble didn’t have hard edges—it actually felt kind of spongey.
He was lying on the hard metal of Bill’s leg. Ling had his helmet off and his wet fur had a distinct doggy smell to it. Trina faced Blaze, frowning, her veins visible through her translucent skin. She was probably still pissed about catching Cali kissing him. Or she was trying to control her vampire instincts and not drain him dry.
Blaze checked her mojo levels. She was at fifty-three percent, so she should be okay. Hopefully.
Above them stood Fernando, stick-insect legs spread, all four of his arms outstretched. Raziel was still on the Clicker doctor’s back. She looked so regal on his shoulder, like an imperial cat on an Egyptian pharaoh. That damn calico looked right at home in their magic bubble underneath miles of frozen ocean.
“We’re coming in fast!” Elle screamed.
“Bill, my hhhoney bee!” Lizzie said in her breathy voice, part spaceship, part ancient demon. “Ohhh, hhhow our time apart has hhhurt me so. But the Etrusca ruin listened to me…Daddy, Daddy, Daddy. Four of five will keep us alive. Five of five and we’ll all die.”
Blaze blinked. He’d been battered and bruised and pierced and impaled, and he couldn’t help but think everything Lizzie/Xerxes had just said meant far more than her usual ramblings.
Coming out of the tangle of tentacles, avoiding alien-faced fish, octopi, sharks, lobsters, crabs, and crayfish, the Lizzie Borden streaked through the slush of the ocean. She had never looked more beautiful to Blaze. His beloved starship was a mishmash of metal plates, mostly black, some blue, linked by silver welding scars.
Away from the Etrusca tentacles, the Lizzie spun around, and the cargo bay doors opened. Lizzie might be batshit crazy and somewhat demonic, but she could fly that starship like nobody’s business.
She swung around at such an angle that Fernando’s shield bubble was swept inside the cargo bay and those doors closed. Immediately, the water was pumped out, Fernando’s shield failed, and they were all dumped onto the floor, breathing hard. Well, those who were alive were. Raziel avoided all the bodies and walked away from them, appearing slightly annoyed. Then the calico disappeared. Faded right out of existence. What was Raziel anyway? A question for another time.
Trina leapt to her feet.
“We’re going for Cali!” Elle said. “Get out of the cargo bay. Like always, she’s going to be coming in hot.”
“Not sure I want that bitch back on board,” Trina hissed. But she helped Ling and Bill collect Blaze and Fernando, and they all stumbled out of the cargo bay and into the hall by the central spiral staircase of the starship.
Blaze switched his display to see what Cali was doing to the SuperCobra. She had made it on top of the ship and was ripping through the hull with her fusion claws.
Until a fusion torpedo slammed into her, not the ship, blowing her off and stunning her for a minute. Lizzie did another collection mane
uver and scooped up the hairless, blasted werewolf in the cargo bay.
The minute she was in, and the cargo bay was drained, Lizzie sent the command to close her bracelets. Over comms, came Cali’s weepy voice. “Guys, did we make it? Did everyone make it? Oh, Blaze…what we did…what you and I did…” Then her voice was silenced. She must’ve passed out. But the damage had been done.
Blaze winced. Trina had heard all of that.
“We’re all alive,” Elle replied, “but Blaze might not be in a few minutes. His VHI is almost at zero. He was hurt bad.”
“Not that bad,” Blaze said, but his consciousness felt like a balloon about to pop.
He nodded. This was how it should be. He’d gladly take the brunt of the beatings as long as they all got out alive and victorious. And they had.
Nauzea was trapped in a snare sphere in either Bill’s or Fernando’s pouch.
“Well, Ramon,” Ian called through comms. “Looks like you got some evil shit on your side as well. Didn’t know that Etrusca could do anything but clutter up space. I’ll collect my boys, get my ship fixed, and then we’re coming for you, Ramon. We’re gonna kill you, your bitches, your bug friends, and your monkey.”
Ling made a face. “As if I were a mammalian primate. I’m pure Meelah marsupial wonderfulness.”
“Bring it,” Blaze growled. “I don’t know what kind of sick deal you made to become werewolves, but you and I both know Jameson was possessed by a demon, and what I did, I did to save all of us.”
“Keep telling yourself that, you bastard,” Ian spat. “You keep telling yourself that.”
And then comms were cut off. Lizzie streaked out of the ocean, erupted through the hole the Etrusca ruin had punched in the ice, and then surfed away on a spacetime wave, heading for Meelah space and Arlo.
Blaze wanted to disengage his nanotech armor, but if he did, he might bleed to death. The microscopic robots were keeping his wounds from bleeding. And he had dozens of them. His armor was also probably keeping his arm attached to his body since his joint had been fried. He felt tenderized, like a side of beef too tough or too stupid to die.
