“Is that the shield thingy?” I whisper to Mephos, motioning to the tower.
He nods slowly.
“So we just need to take it out. Think we can reach it?”
His nod becomes a shake.
“Then what should we do?”
“I’m open to suggestions,” he says, body tense and ready for action.
“Banter,” I suggest. “Buy us some time.”
Mephos snarls at me. “I don’t banter.”
Okay, I think, I can banter.
I take a step forward, trying to figure out how to get these oversize squid-face jerkoffs talking, but I’m jolted to a stop when a booming voice says, “Is that you, Mephos?”
Mephos stays quiet.
The largest of the Aeros steps through the throng. Unlike the rest of the Aeros warriors, their armor black and maroon, this creature’s armor is gilded. Very royal looking. This is their leader.
“You look well.”
I flinch when Mephos says, “It has been a long time, Pentuke. You look...bloated.” Mephos steps up next to me and gives me a disgusted look, like I’m the one making him have this conversation.
Pentuke looks down at his prodigious belly, bulging out from the sides of his armor. He pats it with his three fingered hands. “The spoils of war.”
I lean toward Mephos and whisper. “Why is he speaking English?”
“It is the common tongue throughout the universe. He means to insult me by using it.”
The Ferox didn’t just influence human warfare, they also created our languages. And English is the galactic peasant language? Not cool.
“Are you insulted?” I ask.
He gives his head a shake. “It is who we are.”
We. Ferox and Humanity. Peasants both. Rising up against those who would dominate us. It’s a classic tale that’s been retold over generations, and now I know why.
“You have put your hope in the hands of pathetic creatures. They are weak. And frail. Barely fit for the arena.”
“And yet your son was slain by a human,” Mephos says, baring his teeth.
Pentuke’s tentacles stop twitching. “What do you know of my son?”
“I know Artuke died naked, and alone,” Mephos says.
“Banter ends when someone gets pissed,” I whisper.
My warning goes unheeded. Mephos takes a bold step forward, low to the ground, like he’s about to attack, or at least like he expects to be attacked. “Slain by Marutas and a human.”
“Marutas.” Pentuke all but spits the name. “Artuke may have fallen, but not before completing his mission and ensuring your destruction. If his fate brings about your destruction, his name will be exhalted for ages.”
Hudson.
My name, in my ear, as though spoken by a ghost, sends goosebumps up my arms.
The hell was that?
We’re here, the voice says.
“Who?” I ask.
Be ready.
“For what?”
My conversation with myself has gotten Mephos’s attention. The Aeros’, too. All of their alien eyes turn toward me. I hold up an index finger the same way Collins does to me when she’s on the phone and I have a question for her, telling them all to wait.
Fear.
The answer identifies who’s speaking, and gives me a clue about what’s about to happen.
“If anyone had a big lunch,” I say to the gathered Aeros. “You might want to clench for this.”
Pentuke looks at the Aeros warrior beside him. They look equally befuddled. And then, in the blink of an eye, befuddlement becomes surprise, and then rapturous fear.
A chain of Dread-crocs, bulls and mothmen wink into the real world, all in contact with each other, and with Crazy. While most of them are out-sized by the Aeros and the Neo-Prime Jr., they have the numbers. They stretch from one side of the massive circle to the other. Crazy is a few feet to my right, holding hands with a buzzing mothman.
“How?” I ask, during the brief moment of stunned silence.
“I told them who was responsible,” he says.
“For the matriarch?”
He shakes his head. “The Dread have a precarious relationship with the human race. Sometimes it’s hostile. But there is a strained kinship there, and when the Aeros wiped out the human race on this planet, the Dread felt it, and shared in the anguish. They’re here for revenge.”
I motion to Mephos with a raised finger. “Do you mind if I...?” I point back and forth between myself and Pentuke.
Mephos grins and motions me forward.
I step just beyond the front line of the Dread creatures, trying not to look petrified. I know what’s about to happen. Pretty much everyone and everything here is going to be brutally killed. But I can’t let this end—win or lose—without delivering an old fashioned Hudson mic drop. I clear my throat, and say, “Red rover, red rover, send Pentuke right over.”
Mephos groans.
I look back. The Dread are all still reaching out, holding onto each other. “What, you never played Red Rover when you were a baby Ferox?”
“Fuck’s sake,” Mephos says, and he charges forward with a battle cry that triggers the pent up Dread aggression. The Aeros come under attack from all sides. At first, it’s a slaughter...in their favor. But then Crazy enters the fray, lashing out with waves of fear that reduce the Aeros to whooping Zoidbergs. I almost expect them to shed their skins and skitter off. The Dread remove it for them instead.
Mephos scoops me up and plants me on his back as he runs. We pass several Aeros warriors engaged with Dread. He could dispatch them in just a few seconds, but he pushes forward, darting left and right, bounding onto and off of combatants on both sides. I do my best to hang on and not cry out like one of those shrieking sheep I spent too long watching on YouTube. I nearly succeed.
“Mephos!” The voice booms behind us. “Face me, coward!”
Pentuke is right behind us, futuristic battle axe raised high to swing. We’re easily in range. The massive blade comes down like a guillotine.
“Right!” I shout at Mephos, and I’m relieved when he listens, darting to the right. The massive blade strikes raw Antarctic stone, sending grit and sparks flying.
The blade swings around and low, angled for Mephos’s limbs. “Up!”
We go airborne, the blade passing just below us.
“I’m going to throw you,” Mephos says.
“What?!”
He points to the shield spire, just a hundred feet away. “I’m going to throw you!”
He’s insane, I think, and then I realize I’ve started thinking of him as him, and not it. I’m not sure how I feel about that, but I decide to roll with it, because I’m benevolent like that, and he’s risking his life to save all of humanity.
I’m about to remind him that I’m not super human when he follows through on his plan. His talons dig into the armor covering my back, rip me from my bareback mount and toss me across the battlefield.
I arc through the air, screaming the whole way, as I pass by the confounded faces of both Aeros and Dread. The Neo-Prime sees me coming and opens its jaws to snap at me, but it doesn’t see Crazy below. He sends out a wave of abject fear that makes the kaiju stagger back and vacate its bowels. The discharge is a thick lumpy mess, and it’s also my landing zone.
Ignore the shit, I tell myself. Ignore the shit. It’s hard to do, but I manage. As my flight turns downward I see a control panel, thirty feet up on the spire. I’ll never reach it, since I can’t fly, but I have something that will. I reach over my shoulder and bring the AA-12 to bear. I aim at the panel and hold the trigger down. The weapon unleashes its remaining fifteen HE rounds, straight at the panel. There are sparks, and then explosions. I don’t just take out the panel, I take out the whole tower.
I smile as it starts to topple.
And then I land in a glob of crap the size of a VW Bug.
40
MAIGO
Maigo and Lilly stood still, waiting for th
e charging beasts. Their casual attitudes seemed to enrage the Aeros, who were clearly expecting a much different reaction.
Let them be angry, Maigo thought. It will distract them from what we’re really doing.
“Up or out?” Lilly asked, debating which direction they would leap to evade the charging beasts.
“I think out,” Maigo said. “Let them crash into each other.”
“Up is way more dramatic,” Lilly said. “If they don’t die, we could ride them.”
“Mmm,” Maigo said, and she held out a fist. The pair had settled many of their differences using an age old competition.
“Fine,” Lilly said, holding out her fist. “Winner takes all. We don’t have time for three out of five or even two out of three.”
“Ready?” Maigo asked, raising her fist. They punched the air between them three times, speaking in unison. “Rock, paper, scissors, shoot!”
Maigo thrust out a clenched fist: rock.
Lilly put her hand out straight: paper.
“Yes!” Lilly said, and then they launched toward the ceiling, leaping straight up at the last second, as the two multi-headed rhino things slammed into each other. One of the creatures grunted from the impact. The other, who got three horns driven through its throat, wailed.
Lilly landed on the hard, metal arena floor. Maigo came down on the creature whose horns had impaled its counterpart. She reached her hands around the armor plate at the base of the creature’s neck and yanked back. The tough fold of skin resisted for a moment, but then started to tear away. The creature reacted as she’d hoped, rearing back—in pain and enraged. She pushed down hard, and the big beast started running toward the stands.
The Aeros, still protected by the invisible shielding didn’t look worried at all. Their expressions were hard to read, but the big black eyes tracking her seemed entertained. Another horn blast filled the vast chamber. Gates opened on four sides of the arena, each one sending a different species of monster into the fray. Maigo ignored the others, but focused on the one in front of her, and her two-headed steed.
The creature stood fifty feet tall, and it had a barrel chest and arms like tree trunks. It was covered in clumps of mottled fur that hung in dreadlocks fused by the dried gore of enemies past. She saw no armor. No horns. No spikes. She couldn’t see a mouth, and its bold white and black eyes looked frozen in place. She had no idea what it was, or what it could do, but she still wanted her horned friend to plow straight into it, so she shoved forward, directing its charge.
“Freeman!” she shouted, hoping the man’s ears were sharp enough to pick up her voice over the distance and the roar of the crowd. When he didn’t reply, she said, “Stupid!” and she toggled the comm device she’d forgotten about. “Freeman.”
“I hear you,” he said, sounding calm.
“I need the shield down in...” She looked forward, gauging the distance until impact and then the stadium seats beyond. “...five seconds.”
“Understood,” he said. “This technology is fascinating. I think—”
“Freeman!” Maigo shouted.
The creature ahead of them sprang to life. What she thought was a head was actually a second pair of arms, raised up like a shield. The eyes she had seen were a pattern. An illusion. All designed to hide the terrible secret that was this creature’s embrace. The arms were covered in long, sharp hooks. At the core of the creature was a massive, double beak, snapping open and closed, non-stop. And her poor beast was headed straight into the grinder. But he wouldn’t go down without inflicting his own damage.
As horns, teeth, claws and beak slammed into each other, ripping and tearing, Maigo leaped into the air. She reached into her pocket and searched the crowd ahead, wondering if she would reach them, or if she’d splatter against an invisible wall. The Aeros would get a good laugh if that happened.
But it wasn’t meant to be.
“You’re clear,” Freeman said.
There was a strange gasp from around the arena, as Maigo soared through open space, where there should have been a wall. Then the Aeros seemed to recall that they were the conquerors of worlds and destroyers of universes. The huge aliens stood and drew weapons, ready to fight.
Maigo had hoped she would land atop an Aeros, but the creatures had moved aside. She slammed into a solid wall, and fell to the floor. Only it wasn’t a wall, and it wasn’t a floor. The vast space was simply one of the metal bleachers. A seat for the forty foot creatures.
A shadow fell over Maigo, drawing her eyes up. The nearest Aeros wasted no time attacking her, and there was no time to move.
Embrace the monster, she told herself, raising her hands up. Be who you are.
The impact felt like a building had toppled on her. Her legs bent. Her arms were pushed down. But the giant foot never reached the floor. Gritting her teeth, Maigo held the foot just above her head, one knee on the floor.
She felt a strange kind of energy flow through her arm. A tingling strength. For a moment, she feared that her body was changing, and she expected to see thick black skin growing over her body. But that was not what was happening. Like Nemesis, she was gaining strength from rage. Holy Incredible Hulk, she thought, and then she shoved.
The Aeros toppled backward into some of its comrades.
Maigo got to her feet. “Who’s next?”
She pointed at one of the creatures. It looked surprised to be chosen. “You?”
Then another. Its forehead wrinkled up, the tentacles twitching in a sneer. “You?”
“How about...” Maigo pointed at the biggest and toughest of the bunch, who looked about ready to press the attack. But instead of pointing her finger at the alien, Maigo held a small dart gun. “...you?”
The Aeros she’d picked out stepped forward and let out a roar. Its tentacles splayed wide, the display no doubt meant to be intimidating. But it was really just an easy target.
Maigo pulled the trigger.
The dart soared past the tentacles and punctured the back of the creature’s throat, delivering its deadly payload. Maigo’s eyes widened. The liquid now injected inside the Aeros’s head contained Tsuchi spores. They would grow to maturity, hatch and then inject their own young into any flesh they could find. Depending on the host, and the availability of new hosts, generations of Tsuchis could be spawned in minutes, each new generation adding three young, which then added three of their own.
But the Tsuchis also adopted the genes of their host, so she had no idea what was about to happen. All she really knew was that she didn’t want to be around when it did.
Maigo leaped back toward the arena. Several Aeros turned to reach for her, but jolted to a stop when a high-pitched shriek tore through the air. She landed beyond the mass of twitching flesh that was the two-headed rhino and the thing it had collided with. The shriek behind her built in volume.
The Aeros, and the creatures they used for sport, would no longer be the most dangerous monsters in the arena.
The impregnated Aeros arched back in pain. Its scream was cut short as something blocked its airway.
“Freeman,” Maigo said.
“I’m here.”
Maigo backed away from the bleachers. “Can you get the elevator working?”
“I’m fully integrated with the system now. That shouldn’t be a problem.”
Maigo was about to ask if he could raise the shielding around the arena again when the Aeros popped. At the core of the fleshy explosion was a trio of stark white Tsuchis. They had the familiar arachnid legs, snapping turtle shells and scorpion tails, but they also had masses of tentacles at the front of the shells, and instead of being the size of small dogs, they were closer in size to polar bears. But that wasn’t all. Amidst the three large Tsuchis was a horde of smaller, still growing Tsuchis. The original three had already multiplied inside the Aeros.
And some of them landed in the arena, just a hundred feet away.
Chaos swept through the stands as the Tsuchis attacked. Some of the quicker thinki
ng Aeros launched a counter attack, severing limbs and even killing a few of the smaller Tsuchis. But they were also the first to be injected, and the first to give birth to the second generation, which continued the rapid proliferation around the arena.
Maigo sprinted for the elevator, where Lilly was finishing off a snake-like creature. The pair were locked in mortal combat, oblivious to the chaos around them.
“Lil,” Maigo shouted.
Lilly swiped her claws through the creature’s throat. It writhed and twisted in on itself. “I’m okay. Did you—” Lilly looked toward Maigo, her yellow feline eyes springing open. “Holy B.F.S.! You did it! Oh, shit! You better hurry!”
Maigo glanced back over her shoulder. Newborn Tsuchis erupted from the pair of fallen arena combatants, some of them having two heads, some having horns, some having beaks. All of them were hungry. They leaped to the arena floor and joined their Aeros Tsuchi brethren in pursuit of Maigo.
“Freeman!”
“We’re on comms,” he replied. “No need to—”
“Start the elevator! Head back down!”
“Are you inside?”
“Do it! Now!”
The elevator that had delivered them to the center of the arena began sliding down, moving faster than Maigo expected it to. She tried to suck in a deep breath, but her lungs felt heavy. It’s the air, she thought. If they didn’t leave soon, fluid would build up in her lungs and she’d drown without being anywhere near water.
Lilly hopped inside and waved her on. “Move your ass!”
Maigo tried running faster, but she was already at full speed. There was just ten feet of elevator left when she was fifty feet away. At the twenty foot mark, with just five feet of open space remaining, she slid like a baseball player stealing second. As she slipped across the metal floor, she glanced up and saw a Tsuchi gliding through the air above her, its tail extended, spraying the white goo containing its larvae into the space where she’d been standing just a moment before.
Project Legion (Nemesis Saga Book 5) Page 25
