by Aaron Crash
When Ling ran by the food stall, the fat Meelah threw out a three-fingered pink hand in greeting. He sang a few words in the Meelah language, which was a slow, tonal language that sounded like whale song. Each word was stretched out slowly and precisely. Ninety-nine percent of Humans didn’t have the ear to speak it, and even Fernando had trouble with it.
Fernando was always complaining how slow it was. While Clickers spoke five times faster than Humans, the Meelah spoke five times slower. Compared to either language, Human was ridiculously simple.
Fernando. Bill.
Blaze was worried about them. He’d grown to think of them as his two weird older brothers. They were hundreds of years old. Clickers could live well past a thousand Terran years. Meelah, on the other hand, only lived to about forty.
Ling waved at the fat Meelah and they kept on going.
“What was that about?” Blaze asked.
“That’s Fat Pie,” Ling said. “He got kicked off TheMeHo for selling food. You see, some people think it is very unMeelah to eat anything other than the raw Meelah leaves and the raw caterpillars. As you can see, many disagree.”
“You two seem to be friends,” Blaze said.
“We are,” Ling agreed. “We both are oddities. The Meelah are very curious creatures, and we value cooperation, but sometimes we can take it a little too far. As oddities, we become objects of study rather than people.”
Blaze thought about what Ling had said when Nauzea had gotten to him and he’d been scarfing down Meelah leaves—how his foster parents had treated him like a pet and his own people hadn’t accepted him back into the fold.
“Yeah, being an outcast isn’t much fun,” Blaze said.
“But there can be benefits. It was Fat Pie who introduced me to my one vice—red bush tea with Afrique yak milk and dried poco leaves. So sweet, so creamy, and so good. But only taken in moderation and only on special occasions.”
“Yeah.” Blaze laughed. “Don’t want to get caught up in that tea business. Next thing you know, you’ll be using Elle’s granny syringes to inject it right into your veins.”
“Not funny,” Elle pouted.
They ran through the market and then stopped when they got to the wide gates in front of the Terran Union Embassy. Armed guards stood there, five Humans deep.
All were in O.D. green Union uniforms, which looked cheap after seeing all those IPC shocktroopers in their white nanotech armor.
Blaze and his crew were hustled in through huge massive doors, escorted by a contingent of Union guards, Meelah cops, and even a few Clickers in GaMeSpa police uniforms. The lobby was a wide-open space. The marble floors were covered in thick carpets that were red and plush as long as you didn’t look too close. In places, they were threadbare. A grand chandelier dropped from the polished wooden ceiling high above. At first glance it was gorgeous and grand, and then you noticed the crystals missing and the tarnished metal that polish couldn’t cover because it had been cheap in the first place. Some of the furniture still bore the scratches and marks of when it had first been brought here a hundred years ago.
In the last century, the Terran Union was going to be the next big thing. All those promises had collapsed in endless discussion and subcommittees, hamstrung by the IPC, which was just fine being the governing force of the galaxy.
The whole place had an old-world dusty smell to it. All conversations hushed. All doors shut. They wound their way up a grand central staircase to big oak doors.
Blaze pushed through before anyone could stop him. The room was narrow and long. Chairs sat around a long conference table. The back wall was a window that showed a view of space and three of GaMeSpa Prime’s moons.
The front part of the room was full of Meelah officials, a few Clickers who were part of the GaMeSpa’s Council of Cooperation, and Magistrate Mack. He was an old Meelah in his upper thirties. His fur was going gray, and the white patches that covered his neck, shoulders, and the back of his head had yellowed as he approached the day when he would get to explore death. In a few years, GaMeSpa would need a new magistrate.
One of the Clickers held Raziel in two hands while his other two caressed her orange, black, and white head. The calico was purring loud enough to be heard over the murmuring. Crazy pinche magical, mysterious cat.
Ambassador Rajanigandha Randhawa and a few other Union officials, old and young, male and female, stepped forward, blocking Blaze’s path.
Ambassador Randi was the type of older woman that only grew more beautiful with each passing year. He figured she’d been some dorky grad student a decade ago, studying interstellar politics and banging adjunct professors, but now she was a strong woman. She had lost her husband to a ghoul in the Austrolio Quadrant, and had nearly lost a brother and cherished nephews to a succubus and the archduchess of torture on Shenyang Prime.
She had flashing brown eyes, dark hair, and brown skin that seemed to catch every bit of light in the room to make it glow. It was as if she was continually in firelight. She was tall, thick, and had hips, proud hips, that you could sink your teeth into, hips you could grab when you needed to hold on for dear life, hips that would be warm on cold winter nights.
Blaze smiled at her, forgetting most everything that mattered in the entire galaxy. What Onyx Gate? Archduchess of what? Trina who?
Blaze pushed by Ambassador Randi because, in the end, he was in love with an Irish vampire, he had the universe to save, and he couldn’t trust her, not after what went down on Shenyang Prime. The gunny headed toward the whole reason why they’d come to GaMeSpa in the first place and endangered the lives of so many people. That reason was a thin wisp of ass meat sitting at the head of the long polished wooden table.
Arlo had his snakeskin gold-buckled shitkickers on the table. He was leaning back in his chair, and he was chewing on a cheroot. In his fist was a big, wide-mouthed bottle of Barf Baby Malt Liquor. His beard was lazy and thin, but he had thick black hair, oily and in need of shampoo. Not a little. A whole bottle. What wasn’t beard on his face was acne scars. His skin was desert cooked into a dark brown and his lips chapped to nothing. He could’ve been Arabic, maybe Colombian, or maybe he’d been born in Mexico. His ethnicity was like a crap game where you rolled snake eyes. That might’ve been why his own eyes were so black and so unwavering.
Most of the time Arlo didn’t give a shit about anyone or anything that wasn’t liquor, didn’t have a big ass, or wasn’t a demon. But when he did notice you, he gazed into your soul and saw what you wanted to hide, the things that shamed you, the one thing in the world you would change if you could.
His jeans were filthy, but then he’d said you ruined the denim the minute you washed it, and it was better to buy a new pair than to feel that freshly washed denim discomfort. He was wearing an old ornate Colobraska cowboy red shirt with pearl-snap buttons. He was a skinny smart-ass, but his forearms were knotted muscle, thick and hard and unforgiving. Even the white hairs growing out of them seemed plagued by his sick strength.
Arlo might have been in his early sixties. He might’ve been forty but had packed a lot of hate and puking into those forty years, or he might’ve been ancient, pushing ninety. Maybe God didn’t want Arlo to die. Maybe God didn’t want Arlo around in the afterlife, picking fights, picking his nose, or swearing so outrageously that all of heaven would have been poisoned by his nasty filthy spew.
Arlo took in Blaze, for a second, then glanced away as if the gunnery sergeant wasn’t anything he wanted to waste a good glance on. He pulled the slender cigar from his mouth and slid it behind his ear.
Blaze knocked the bastard’s gaudy snakeskin boots off the table, shoved him back in the chair, and leapt on him. He raised a fist. “We know where the next Onyx Gate is going to appear, but you need to tell us when it’ll show up. You’re gonna spill the beans. And then we’re gonna go close it.”
Arlo grinned. His teeth were nearly gold from a lifetime of tobacco products and diner coffee. “Hey, Ramon. Damn, but you’ve grown up all
big and marine-y.”
Blaze grabbed his ax and triggered the fusion blades.
Guns clicked behind him, people were yelling, and it was all chaos and fear. But only behind him. In front of him was the man who’d beat him for losing a fight, a fight he’d had no chance of winning.
“You talk now,” Blaze spat, “or I’ll start cutting off body parts until you do. And with each piece of you I cut off, I’ll name a town where you hit me. And I’ll start with McCook.”
Arlo’s eyes softened, and his face changed, ever so slightly. It was so subtle, such a slight change, like a warm breeze rippling across a pond, there one second, gone the next. “McCook was my fault, Ramon. I got scared. The other times was just me being a dick, drunk, and acting like the drill sergeant you needed. I was never gonna be a good father to you. I was a father, once, a long time ago in the desert. Fatherhood is a real motherfucker, if you do it and do it right. It takes everything out of you but leaves good memories behind. There’s a pride in that. A hard job well done and children who love you even when they’re adults and should know better.”
The change, those words, this old man had seemed like he was made of iron and scorpions, but he was now thin and drunk and stinking. The brewery odor of malt liquor leaked out of his pores. Made him smell like bread baking, a high school locker room after a wrestling match, and the floor of a worst dive bar you’ve ever been to.
Growing up, Arlo had been a swaggering six-foot-tall two-hundred-pound wall of iron-solid muscle, arrogantly impervious to any kind of insult or injury. Not anymore. Blaze was taller, bigger, and tougher. The gunny didn’t soak his brain in grain alcohol on a daily basis. Arlo did. It had weakened him.
Blaze deactivated his ax. He backed up and felt gun barrels in the back of his head. “We’ll need your weapons,” some jagweed said. The gunny ignored him.
Elle was saying stuff, and that didn’t matter either. She must’ve called off the Johnny-be-good soldier, since he backed off.
Arlo, it was Arlo, and they were in the same room. Decades of memories and hate washed through Blaze, making it hard to think. His heart felt like it was burning hydrogen shells. His belly twisted from the acid hurt of so much time and violence.
There were a dozen people in the room at least. They were talking about the IPC, Ian and his werewolves, and Nauzea, but that didn’t matter. Even when Ambassador Randi thanked Elle for rescuing her brother and her nephews from Shenyang Prime, that didn’t matter. Only Arlo mattered. Only closing the Onyx Gate.
Arlo stood and sank into his fuck-you slouch. “I don’t suppose I can sip my Barf Baby while we chat.”
“We saw Granny,” Blaze said.
“Oh, she still as beautiful? You can’t imagine her beauty when she was young and firm as a peach just going ripe. It was angels, Ramon. When we first met, we was blessed by angels.”
“She hates you.”
“I hate her. Naw, hate’s too kind of a word. I wouldn’t piss on that bitch if she was on fire.”
“She told us the locations of the Onyx Gate. She said you had the timestamps.”
“If that whore was the last woman in the universe, I’d rather pull my pud than spend one more second with her. Crazy fucking bitch. Calls herself Granny. Shit.” Arlo got back in his chair, his eyes pink and the eyelids lowered. He lifted his big bottle of malt liquor and guzzled until the room fell quiet to watch. Then he swallowed, burped, and then swallowed again, making a slight gagging sound.
Arlo grinned. “Barf Baby! Tastes as good coming up as it did going down! That there is trademarked and patent pending, bitches.”
Blaze took a step back and came to his senses. This was what Arlo wanted, an audience, to be important, to forget the drunken slob he’d become. Like Granny, he wasn’t going to just tell them what they wanted to know. So, they’d take Arlo with them.
Blaze turned away from the old man. Turned away from the hate and violence inside his own heart. And let the resentments go. Like Ling always said, if we cling to hate and vengeance, we become hate and vengeance. And nothing more.
“Elle, do you still have handcuffs for your stasis spell?” he asked.
She nodded. “I do.”
“Cuff him. We’ll take him with us.”
Elle hurried forward along with Ling.
Magistrate Mack sighed in a very Human way. “We would be very grateful. This Arlo person has caused the Meelah undo frustration. We are a patient species, but even our tolerance has limits. We did study his physiology to see the effects of long-term inebriation, and we found that he is not aging as we age. We can’t explain why. It’s clear he is not human.”
Arlo hadn’t heard any of that. He was flirting with Elle, which was like a polar bear trying to sex up an iceberg floating by.
Ambassador Randi stepped up. “Blaze, I’m sorry for what happened on Shenyang Prime.”
“Ancient history,” Blaze said, “but Randi, I’m not sure I can trust you. Seems like you sent us there to die. Not sure you’re in league with the bad guys, but I guess we’ll know soon enough. Did that SuperCobra dock yet?”
Ambassador Randi colored. “But I wouldn’t…I didn’t…I’m not possessed by a demon.”
“Said like a woman possessed by a demon,” Blaze said. Too bad Elle wasn’t casting spells, or she could run a detect Onyx spell on the ambassador. If they got her on the Lizzie Borden, they could do it there, but it was small potatoes when compared to what they are facing. “Randi, it doesn’t matter. You need to evacuate GaMeSpa. And you need to do it now.”
The Clicker holding Raziel flung out his arms. Two of them at least. The other two held the cat. “That is impossible!”
“Calm down, Charles.” Magistrate Mack bustled up surrounded by his retinue of clerks, advisors, and counselors. “If the threat were imminent, we would. But with the IPC shocktroopers here, surely they can handle anything that might destroy the city.”
“Couldn’t handle us,” Blaze said. “But the SuperCobra, what’s their ETA?”
“Five minutes at most,” Randi said. “We’ve kept them at bay with rules and regulations, but the IPC undid all that.”
“In five minutes, thousands of people are going to die. Only silver stops them. Do you have any silver stuff in this museum?” Blaze asked.
“Not Terran silver,” Randi said. That made Blaze feel better about her. Randi was a believer. But he couldn’t let his guard down around her. No matter how smoking hot she was.
The Meelah police chief’s holographic screen went red in his hands, and over loudspeakers, a Meelah sang out a series of long words.
Magistrate Mack grimaced in a very serene way. “Denning and his shocktroopers have disarmed our guards. They are coming in.”
“Into the embassy?” Randi asked, blinking in shock. “That’s a violation of intergalactic law. That bastard.”
“I will call General Russell,” Charles clicked, and his translator translated. Raziel glanced up at his mandibles and then continued to clean herself with a paw.
General Russell? That was the name of one of the Clicker generals Blaze had fought during the Bug War.
Before he could ask if it was the same bug, the doors were thrown open and Security Director Alvin Denning waltzed in. Behind him were dozens of elite blue-armored bluetroopers. Every one of them had a plasma rifle aimed at Blaze.
Raziel leapt from Charles’s arms and streaked through the open door.
One of the moronic troopers lowered his rifle, but his buddy stopped him from blasting the cat, though Blaze was pretty sure Raziel would be just fine.
The gunny thought about fighting his way through the IPC soldiers. But then he had another plan, one that might finally convince the dipshit IPC executive that Onyx energy did indeed exist despite the IPC’s profit margins, spreadsheets, and greed.
“Cali, Trina, get ready,” Blaze said. “Let’s expand Alvin’s horizons a little bit. Can I get an amen?”
TWENTY_
╠═╦╬╧╪
Security Director Alvin Denning stood at the front of the room with his arms crossed. He was in a dark silk business suit and a red power tie. You could sell that outfit and feed a whole planet for a month. He had the haircut of a middle school evil genius, short, parted on the right, greased and glopped into place. The smug smile on his lean features matched it. It was arrogance and power and a crafty intelligence to see what he wanted to see and do what he wanted to do.
Denning was six feet tall and six inches wide, or that’s how it seemed. You could play badminton with his Adam’s apple, it was so prominent.
Blaze didn’t much care for Denning or his gun-toting lackeys. They’d met before. They’d meet again. Who cared?
The gunny turned on Randi. “Can you get people to my ship? Lizzie can direct them to where we keep our Terran silver.”
Ambassador Randi opened her luscious red lips, but Denning spoke first. “You are under arrest. We have a warrant from the Union’s third judiciary subcommittee on interspecies affairs which allows us access to Union facilities. You see, Ambassador, we are here legally.”
The security director pursed his lips and sneered. “Your days of fighting ‘evil’ are over.” He air-quoted the word. Trina had done the same thing not too long ago.
“We’re ending your skepticism here and now,” Blaze said.
“Oh, yes we are,” Cali and Trina said at the same time. Both glared at the other but then smiles replaced the animosity between the two for a second.
Elle had finished cuffing Arlo, and he sat in chains, but he still gripped his green bottle of malt liquor, watching with twinkling eyes. Elle pulled the ambassador and her people back. Ling did the same for Magistrate Mack and Charles.
They all backed up. Denning and his bluetroopers threaded in.
Trina vamped out. Blaze hit his Cali Bad Dog command.
The bracelets snicked open.
And it was complete and utter chaos for a few short adrenaline-blasting seconds.
Cali went from unnoticeable blonde waif to an eight-foot-tall lupine creature with fusion claws glowing. She threw back her gigantic head and howled. It left Blaze’s ears ringing.
