The Vampire War

by Eric S. Brown

  Heather wasn’t faring much better; she’d been overrun as well. The vampires clung to her Psi-mech, and two of them had managed to pin its arms at its sides. Servo motors whined and howled, unable to overcome the supernatural strength of the two vampires holding her arms. The third vampire came at her Psi-mech’s faceplate with the intent of tearing it open. Heather was ready for it, though. The shoulder-mounted cannon of her mech swept around on its small turret to fire into the snarling vampire’s face. Its head blew apart in a shower of gore and stale black blood. The vampire’s headless body erupted in flames and burned away into nothingness. Metal squealed and gave way as the two vampires holding onto the arms of her Psi-mech ripped them away from its body. Heather screamed as her own arms went with them. Her Psi-mech toppled forward onto its knees as she blacked out from the shock.

  Zach couldn’t do anything to help her. The two vampires wrestling with him had driven his Psi-mech against the far wall of the tunnel and continued to tear bits and pieces of its armor away. Zach shook an arm loose from the clutches of one of the vampires and raised it above his Psi-mech’s head to bring it down on the undead creature’s back. The vampire’s spine snapped under the force of the blow, sending it crashing down onto the floor. Zach lashed out at it with a heavily-armored foot. His kick caught the vampire in the face, smashing its nose inward, and the wounded vampire went rolling across the floor, already healing from the damage Zach had inflicted upon it.

  Getting free of one of the vampires gave Zach the leverage he needed to free himself from the other. He threw his mech forward, pouring power into its arms and legs as he barreled over the remaining vampire that was still trying to pin his suit to the wall. He lost sight of Heather’s Psi-mech as several other vampires piled onto it. Realizing Heather was surely dead and he was alone, Zach was at peace with the knowledge he was surely about to die. There were too many of the vampires for him to fight alone. He wasn’t just going to roll over and show them his throat, though.

  The right hand of his Psi-mech grabbed a vampire by its face. Thick metal fingers forced their way into its skull through the vampire’s eyes. The creature spasmed violently as they pierced its brain, and Zach flung its twitching form away from him. He managed to bring his one functional arm cannon around in time to fire a blast into another charging vampire. The silver rounds punched holes through the vampire’s chest. It reeled backward away from him, leaking blood from its numerous wounds. Those wounds wouldn’t be healing.

  The thought made Zach smile, even as a vampire he hadn’t noticed dropped from the tunnel’s ceiling onto his Psi-mech. The vampire grunted, using all its strength, as it crushed the head of Zach’s suit between its palms. He didn’t even have time to scream before his world went black and his life came to an end. Zach’s arm cannon fired a final burst as his now headless mech collapsed.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 29

  Coils of smoke drifted upward from the cannon mounted on the shoulder of Mina’s Psi-mech. The heavy weapon was spent, both out of ammo and overheated. The tunnel around Mina and Tim was coated with black ash from the dozens upon dozens of vampires that had burned.

  “Well, that went better than it could have,” Tim commented. The hands of his Psi-mech held the large modified SAW Tim had used during the battle.

  “How you doing on ammo?” Mina asked.

  “Better than you are.” Tim chuckled.

  “Seriously, man,” Mina demanded. “This isn’t a place to be joking around. More of those bastards could be on us any second.”

  “Relax,” Tim urged him. “How many more can there possibly be in this mountain? You know there have to be entire groups of those things engaging the other two groups in our squad right now not to mention the psychic guys that came in through the rear door.”

  “That’s it,” Mina huffed. “I’m pulling rank. Shut the frag up.”

  Mina was the senior officer between the two of them, despite the fact that Tim was better when it came to cutting off heads and taking names.

  “Yes, sir,” Tim answered, grinning inside his Psi-mech.

  “And…?” Mina waited.

  “What? You ordered me to shut up, sir?” Tim tried not to laugh.

  “Your ammo count, pilot!” Mina snapped.

  “I’m out.” The shoulders of his Psi-mech shrugged as he tossed his SAW to the floor of the tunnel. “I’ll be switching over to arm blades for the next group we run into.”

  Mina made a mental note to bring Tim up on charges when they got back—if they got back.

  “Then keep behind me,” Mina ordered. “I’ve got a flamethrower unit that needs to be used up.”

  “Yes, sir,” Tim responded as Mina’s Psi-mech took the lead, and they continued deeper into the mountain.

  They’d barely gotten moving again before Tim felt the temperature in his suit start to drop. He shivered from the cold that came out of nowhere.

  “You reading any temperature changes?” Mina’s voice asked over the comlink.

  Tim was through with screwing around now that things had gotten serious again.

  “No sir, but I think I must be feeling what you are,” Tim reported. “It just got colder than hell in my suit. That shouldn’t be possible.”

  “A master?” Mina asked himself as much as Tim.

  “I don’t think so, sir,” Tim replied. “Odds are we killed a master or two in that last batch. Nothing like this happened when we met up with them.”

  The torches that lined the wall of the tunnel began to flicker out and die, one by one.

  “What the frag? Mina muttered, using his suit’s scanners to search for a target that might be causing the weirdness they were facing. His scan of the tunnel didn’t produce anything, and he couldn’t see anything with his eyes, either.

  “This is creeping me out, sir,” Tim commented.

  “Keep a cool head, solider,” Mina cautioned. “Just stay alert, and be ready for anything.”

  “Are you ready for me?” an angelic voice sang from above the tunnel’s ceiling above them.

  Tim and Mina looked up and wished they hadn’t. The appearance of the monster that hung from the ceiling was the polar opposite of the sound of its voice. It was like something out of a nightmare, a creature that had crawled out of the very depths of Hell itself. The thing’s eyes, millions of them, were clustered in insect-like globules on the sides of its head. The razor-sharp teeth shining in its open mouth gleamed in the distant light of the torches that still burned up ahead of them. Bending at unnatural angles, its multi-jointed arms curved around the torso of its body, their claws sunk into the rock of the ceiling. Its legs were like those of a spider, though there were only six of them. Each ended not in a foot but in a sharp spear-like point.

  Mina found himself paralyzed inside his Psi-mech as he stared up into the creature’s eyes.

  “Kill it!” Tim shouted, popping his suit’s arm blades and longing for a weapon that didn’t require getting close to the monster.

  The sound of Tim’s horrified cry snapped Mina into action, and he jerked the barrel of his wrist-mounted flamethrower unit up at the creature, unleashing a geyser of liquid fire. The ceiling blazed where the flames struck it, but the monster, whatever it was, had already dropped to the floor of the tunnel between them.

  Before either of them could move, the monster’s hands altered into giant pincers. One of them snaked out to grab the wrist of Mina’s mech, right on his flamethrower unit. The pincer crushed the unit, destroying it, and the arm of the mech blew apart. The flames and explosion didn’t seem to bother the monster at all. It released Mina’s arm and threw itself at Tim.

  Tim stabbed at the monster with one of his arm blades. The blade struck the creature’s body but didn’t pierce it, turned aside by the thick armor of the thing’s exoskeleton. Countering with a swipe of a pincer, the monster backhanded Tim’s mech, knocking the heavy suit from its feet. Tim bounced about inside the mech as it hit the floor.

  The monst
er was on him in a heartbeat. One of its pincers closed on the left wrist of his sword, breaking the blade embedded there. Tim screamed in pain and horror as the monster’s other pincer came hammering down on his mech’s faceplate. The faceplate held, but spider web cracks spread across it, obscuring his view. Tim flailed about beneath the monster, trying to force it away from him.

  Mina had recovered, and his mech was on its feet again, although most of the suit’s right arm was nothing more than a mess of blasted-apart metal. Thankfully, the mech’s internal fire suppression system kept him from being cooked alive inside it. Popping the suit’s left arm blade, Mina charged the monster where it sat atop Tim’s mech. Howling a battle cry, Mina thrust the blade into the thing’s back. It took most of his suit’s remaining power, but he got the blade through the armor of the monster’s exoskeleton. The monster shrieked as it leaped away from Tim, scurrying out of sight down the tunnel ahead of them.

  “You okay?” Mina asked as Tim struggled to get his suit’s systems back online. The thing had damaged his suit’s central power core somehow while they’d wrestled with each other for dominance.

  “My Psi-mech’s had it, sir,” Tim said, realizing whatever damage the monster had done was beyond his suit’s auto-repair systems to deal with. “I’m coming out.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Mina cautioned, but Tim had already begun the ejection process. The front of his Psi-mech slid apart as Tim came crawling out of the suit. Once he was out, Tim turned around, reaching for the emergency backup weapon every suit contained for situations just like this one, and pulled it free.

  “That thing is coming back!” Mina shouted, his attention torn away from Tim by the sound of the monster’s spear-like feet clicking along the tunnel toward them. They were in no shape to fight the thing, whatever it was, but there was no other choice. “Run!” Mina ordered. “I’ll hold it!”

  Tim didn’t argue. Pistol in hand, he ran back the way they’d come, while Mina stood his ground. The monster poked its insect-like head around the bend in the tunnel.

  “Well, hello,” it said in its totally inhuman voice. “Nice to see you again.”

  As the monster came fully around the bend, its body morphed and shifted before Mina’s eyes. No longer was it a monster, but a handsome man in an expensive white suit, wearing a cowboy hat.

  “I don’t think we were properly introduced yet.” The man smiled, showing his perfect teeth. “My name is Nazar. What’s yours?”

  Mina didn’t understand what was happening, but he recognized the name from the pre-op briefings he’d sat through.

  “You…you’re a demon,” Mina stammered.

  “That I am.” Nazar chuckled. “And you are a human in a high-tech war suit. I must say, it’s going to be fun peeling it off of you.”

  Mina sank into a defensive position, his suit’s one arm blade up and ready, waiting on the demon to make the first move.

  Nazar strolled calmly toward him. “I can read your mind, human. I know that you want me to come lunging forward so you can have a go at me with that silver sword of yours.”

  “I wouldn’t object to that,” Mina said, trying to sound braver than he felt.

  “Ah, but what if I don’t?” Nazar asked. “What then?”

  Mina found he had no answer to the demon’s question. Fear had him in its claws. He couldn’t bring himself to move forward to engage Nazar. He could only wait for the demon to come to him. Sweat slicked Mina’s skin and drenched his hair inside his Psi-mech. The hair on the back of his neck stood up as Nazar began to whistle a tune. Mina was sure he recognized it from somewhere but couldn’t remember what it was. Nazar continued to walk closer and closer to him, finally coming within reach of its arm blade.

  Screaming, Mina found the courage to lunge forward at the demon, thrusting his arm blade toward Nazar’s heart. A tentacle grew out of Nazar’s side, snaking up to wrap around the blade and jerk it away from its intended path. The tentacle grew, wrapping further and further around the arm of Mina’s Psi-mech, holding the arm in place and helpless. Nazar stood grinning, the tentacle writhing from the side of his body, pulsing as if something were moving inside it while it held the arm of his mech. Nazar steepled his fingers together in front of him as he spoke.

  “This can end but one way, human.” Nazar smiled. “Shall we finish it?”

  Servo motors blew out inside the arm of Mina’s Psi-mech, overloaded from straining against the tentacle. Mina grunted in pain as sparks inside the arm scorched his flesh. Mina blinked, and in that brief time, Nazar had moved to stand peering through his mech’s faceplate at him. Nazar’s breath fogged the reinforced glass of the faceplate.

  “Bye bye,” Nazar cackled, the tips of the tentacle holding Mina’s arm plunging through its armor and invading the interior of his mech. The tentacle slithered through the suit, moving up the arm, then into the pilot compartment, where it wrapped around his throat. Mina fought for breath as his eyes bugged out, and the tentacle twisted tighter and tighter around him, until the force of the tightening tentacle severed Mina’s head from the rest of his body. Nazar licked at the mech’s faceplate, its interior now red, before the tentacle vanished and Mina’s Psi-mech thudded to the floor.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 30

  The right arm blade of Scott’s Psi-mech sank into the heart of the hissing master vampire that had lunged at him. The master died in flames. Hank had upgraded his blades with wood, in some way Scott didn’t understand, and the death of the master was proof it worked. The tele-mechanic often defied most folk’s conventional understanding of physics, and the new blades were no exception. Scott grinned inside his mech as he swung his left arm blade to take the head off another vamp. Combat made him feel alive. Many at Psi-Mechs, Inc., including Hank, often told him he’d been born to pilot a Psi-mech. Scott couldn’t deny it came naturally to him. As long as he had a Psi-mech to suit up in, he was never jealous of the psychics he worked with, either. They had their place, and he had his.

  Melissa fired a burst from the modified SAW her mech carried, dispatching the last of the vampires they were engaged with. She lowered the weapon, watching the vampire burn, having put a dozen wood-laced silver rounds into its heart.

  “All clear!” Melissa reported over the comlink.

  “Roger that!” Scott laughed. He hoped things were going as well for the rest of his pilots. The squad had split into three groups of two upon entering the mountain that served as Mavet’s base of operations. Whether it was the density of the mountain itself, something inside the rocks that composed it, or magic, the comlinks were only working at extremely short ranges now that they were inside. He was unable to touch base with the others, and it worried him.

  So far, Scott estimated he and Melissa had slain eighteen vampires since entering the mountain, two of them masters. There had been a touch of resistance from the dark-robed disciples of Elick, too, but none of them had thrown around any heavy magic. They’d stuck to using conventional firearms, which were next to useless against the heavily-armored Psi-mechs.

  “What now?” Melissa asked.

  “We keep moving forward,” Scott told her. “I’ll take point.”

  Scott led the way as their two Psi-mechs advanced deeper still into the mountain.

  “I’ve got movement up ahead,” Melissa said.

  Puzzled that her suit’s scanners would pick up something his hadn’t, Scott did a double take. Scott supposed he was getting overconfident, because the movement had registered on his suit’s scanners too; he just hadn’t noticed it. That’s the kind of sloppy that could get you killed quickly. Cursing himself, he let Melissa move up to join him side by side in the tunnel. If something was coming at them, it made more since for her to engage it first with her SAW before whatever it was got into melee range where he could engage it.

  Scott made up for his earlier error, the hand of his Psi-mech grabbing the barrel of Melissa’s SAW, shoving it upward as he saw that the approach
ing figure was one of his pilots. The rounds Melissa fired hammered into the tunnel’s ceiling instead of cutting Tim to pieces.

  “Whoa!” Tim yelled at them, thrusting his hands into the air but still holding onto the pistol he carried. “Don’t shoot!”

  “Tim!” Scott barked through his mech’s external speakers. “What the heck, man?”

  “Where’s your mech?” Melissa asked in disbelief.

  “Something hit us. Don’t know what it was, but it sure wasn’t a vampire!” Tim told them. “Mina stayed to hold it off while I made a run for it.”

  Before any of them could say more, a well-dressed man in white came calmly strolling down the tunnel behind where Tim stood. The man was whistling a merry tune as he walked. He was a handsome gent and stopped to tip his hat at the two Psi-mechs.

  “Howdy, pardners!” The man said with a smile. Scott would have believed he was human, except for the strange orange glow around his eyes.

  “Oh, frag,” Melissa heard Scott mutter over the comm.

  “Should I engage?” Melissa whispered.

  Tim had turned to face the man, staring at him in utter horror. The man in the white suit grinned at him as Tim leveled his pistol at the man’s chest. Tim squeezed the weapon’s trigger. The auto-pistol barked in rapid succession, firing on full auto. The man in white vanished before the bullets reached him. They sliced through the air where he once stood.

  “Where in the devil did that guy go?” Melissa exclaimed.

  “The devil is right,” Scott replied. “That’s the demon, Nazar, that tried to kill Ms. Grimm.”

  “Holy crap,” Melissa said, her Psi-mech swinging round in search of the man in white. She didn’t think it was possible that he’d gone very far. And he hadn’t, he’d merely leaped onto the tunnel’s ceiling like a vampire might have done to elude them.