by Aaron Crash
“Xerxes!” Blaze called into comms. “How in the hell did you get into my ship?”
“I’m Lizzie! I’m Lizzie! Not…not…not that thing you said. I’m a beloved starship, and you are just a stupid Hhhuman inside me! I can feel you inside me!”
“Well, that’s awkward,” Blaze muttered. It was Xerxes, but it wasn’t the nearly all-powerful archduke of hell they’d fought before. No, something wasn’t right with both his ship and the demon.
Whatever was happening, he couldn’t communicate with the rest of his crew.
The walls of the starship started to buckle. They were coming alive, which meant Xerxes could turn them into monsters as well…tentacles, fangs, arms, whatever.
Bad enough he had to destroy his own weapons, but Blaze wasn’t going to blast his ship apart from the inside. They had to get out of the Lizzie Borden, regroup, and figure this shitstorm out.
He only hoped that Elle and the rest of his family were okay.
A hole opened in the hull, but the Lizzie’s emergency energy shields stopped the room from depressurizing. He had to stop the demon from wrecking his spaceship…or worse, using his own vessel to kill him.
Elle’s voice smacked his brain. Onyx telepathy, he would never get used to it. Blaze, Xerxes has taken over the ship and comms are down. We’re holding our own, but you need to get off the ship. I’m going to try something that might kill everyone on board. Bill won’t leave, and he might die, but oh well.
Damn, but he hated how uncaring his sister could be. No, Elle, Bill is the best engineer imaginable. Sure, he hates us, but he loves the ship. And I’m not leaving either of them behind. No way.
Blaze, we’re family. You said so yourself. I can’t fight Xerxes if I have to keep worrying about you guys. I’ll get Bill and Fernando off the Lizzie myself, but you need to grab Cali and Trina and get away. You have to trust me on this. I just hope that Trina doesn’t turn—
Their connection was over as the spell ended. All that talk took seconds, communicating at the speed of thought.
Blaze could only sigh and do what she asked.
He rolled under a swinging machete, dodged plasma bolts, and scooped up a nanofiber gauntlet. He shoved his hand into the glove. Immediately, the microscopic robots formed into both armor and spacesuit. Plates of solid microscopic robots covered him head to foot, and a visor protected his face.
Blaze used his fusion shotgun to blast through a shelf. He rolled across the floor, out of the armory, and into the hallway, and jacked a fresh shell into his weapon. He shoved the barrel against the ax-headed rifle robot and pulled the trigger. He blasted the thing apart and caught his ax as it came down.
Damn, he was killing monsters, but fighting his own guns was going to cost him a pinche fortune!
He deactivated the blades and stuck the three-foot-long shaft onto his back. The smart nanotech latched onto the ax.
He spun and used his last shell to blow a hole in the frog’s head, which unhinged the tongue. Trina came free. She had her head but had lost her right arm. It sucked so hard that his crew was losing limbs under his command. Xerxes had torn half of Bill’s appendages off.
“Lizzie!” Blaze screamed. “This is an order. If you ever loved me, you’ll turn off emergency hull procedures in the armory. You get me?”
“Love?” Lizzie sounded oddly taken aback. “Love you? Hhhow can I not love you when you’re inside me?”
“That is so gross!” Blaze shouted. “Just do it!”
Hurricane winds caught him up as all the air on the lower deck was sucked out of the hole in the side of his starship. The shelves, the weapons, the remnants of the wall frog, the minigun caterpillar—everything was ejected out into space, including Cali, Trina, and Blaze.
The second the robots made of weapons hit open space they came apart, the Onyx magic creating them vanishing as they returned to mere metal. Blaze could breathe in his nanotech spacesuit. Neither vampire nor werewolf needed oxygen.
Without an enemy, Cali whirled on Blaze. He dropped Ugly Betty and snatched up his ax. He smashed one of her bracelets. The jewelry was made from nanotech, however, and so the microscopic robots reformed. He did disable one fusion claw though. Cali was flung back for a second, but then she lunged at him again.
Trina tumbled in front of him. Over and over, he’d always forget how tough the former IPC auditor was. Trina jammed the stump of her right arm into the werewolf’s mouth and caught the other claw before it could take off her head. Since Cali’s right fusion claw worked, the star energy could very well kill Trina.
Then things went from bad to worse.
“Blaze!” Trina called through comms. “I’m losing it. I can’t…Elle…something is wrong with Elle. She’s too far away and her power is waning. I can feel myself…my arm. Fuck, I’m changing. I need your blood, Blaze. I need to drink you dry.”
If she let go of Cali, both would race to finish him. He’d either be eaten by his former girlfriend, a werewolf, or his current one, a vampire.
Goddamn, his life was complicated.
And over it seemed.
TWO_
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Blaze floated in space, watching his ship twist and turn, the rooms, the corridors, the hull perverted by Xerxes’s necrotechnical magic. How were they going to get out of this one?
Cali tried to get her jaws around Trina’s head, but the vampire shifted, using her supernatural speed and strength to keep her stump rammed halfway down the space werewolf’s throat. Both thrashed and bashed in the soup of armory trash around them. Kind of felt like they were back in the garbage dump around the neutron star in the Sargasso Expanse.
Lizzie’s voice sang breathily through comms. “Hhhappy birthhhday to me. Hhhappy birthhhday, dear Lizzie…”
Blaze shivered. It was creepy, the thing singing to itself in a voice that was half Lizzie and half Xerxes.
Trina turned to eat Blaze, but Cali snatched her middle in her jaws and flung her back and forth like a dog with a ragdoll. Even while being shaken, Trina lashed out, managing to smash Cali’s other hydrogen shell claw. Now the werewolf only had normal talons, but those could still cause significant damage.
Werewolf continued to thrash vampire until Cali dropped the dazed Trina and shot toward the gunny. Trina caught the wolf’s leg and dragged her back.
Lizzie/Xerxes continued to sing itself its hhhappy birthhhday song.
Blaze didn’t much believe in miracles, but right then, he felt an angel watching over him. A silver-tipped spear gun floated close to the gunny, and around it was a silver-wrapped cable. Blaze had forgotten about the leash Bill had crafted for their werewolf. Snatching up the spear gun, Blaze used both his oxygen and his carbon monoxide exhalations to jet away from the battling monsters and down to his ship.
Lizzie/Xerxes had company inside the mutating spacecraft. “Ohhh, hhhi Elle, isn’t today a most hhhappy day?”
Blaze couldn’t hear his sister’s response. At least Xerxes had stopped singing into comms. The gunny hit the hull. The metal shifted under him, and suddenly he was facing the bridge. There Elle stood talking to a man-shaped creature made from the chairs and knickknacks in the command center of the starship. An instant later, Blaze was up against the engine room’s single window. Bill, like a stick insect studying a flower, was there, working on something. The ship twisted, and the gunny found himself under the cargo bay door. Perfect. He looped the silver cable around a mooring clamp and then turned.
Cali had kicked Trina away and streaked through space toward Blaze. Both her claws and her fangs were ready to tear him apart. Her slaver bubbled into the space around her. Blaze clipped a loop on the cable into a housing on the spear and then fired. The spear ripped through Cali’s stomach and spouted out her back. Since the projectile was barbed, it caught her.
The ship shifted again and Cali was pulled out of sight. He hoped he hadn’t just killed her. Her heart should be okay, but the poor wolf girl had a bellyful of silver.
&n
bsp; He dropped the spear gun and snatched his ax off his back. Just in time.
Trina latched onto him and both were flung off the ship. She bared her black fangs. Her teeth looked like smoky glass ice picks filling her mouth. Her eyes were obsidian marbles in her translucent skull.
Blaze, my arm hurts so much. You can help. I’ll just take a little of your blood. Just a sip. That can’t hurt you, can it?
What she said made so much sense to the gunny at that moment. With his blood, she could regrow her arm. She’d only take a little. He had just under two gallons. What was a pint or two?
He shook his head, focusing on his breath and using meditation techniques Ling had taught him to control his mind. Damn, vampiric telepathy was a bitch.
Blaze got his ax up between them, the blades sizzling. She hissed and flew back, driven away by the star fire.
“Trina, you have got to get control of yourself. I’ll start the countdown. If I get to Zulu, you’re dead, do you understand?”
Why are you being so mean? I just want a little of your blood.
The continually morphing ship tumbled away from them. Blaze floated back, and Trina snarled at him. Black ichor oozed from her stump to become little orbs of ink in the vacuum of space. Her other hand was all hooked claws.
“Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta…” Blaze started the countdown.
His vampire girlfriend shot down at him, and he rang her bell with the shaft of his ax.
She spun around.
“Kilo, Lima, Mike, November…”
She flipped up and over him, coming from above. He swung his ax in warning and she shied away.
She floated there, staring at him, and he felt like a gazelle under her lion-like gaze. He steeled himself to finish her. He had no choice.
“Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo…”
“Stop,” Trina said through comms. “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?”
“That’s right, baby,” Blaze said. “Romeo and Juliette. Me and you. Don’t go eating your Romeo. That wasn’t in that pinche boring play. It would’ve spiced things up, though.”
Trina closed her eyes. “Okay, I’m getting under control. So thirsty. So hungry. Fucking Cali, biting me, and that goddamn frog. If I had a fusion pistol, that whole encounter would’ve turned out a lot differently.”
“Agreed. Don’t know where I’ll sleep, but I’m going to bed armed from here on out.”
Trina drifted down to him and they turned.
Cali was still impaled by the spear even as the ship changed and boiled under them. When the werewolf saw them, she ran through space but was yanked back down by the spear piercing her innards. The cable connected to the ship held despite all of its transformations. Cali growled soundlessly at them like a pit bull on a short leash.
From out of the cargo bay, two starcycles streaked through the air on blue-fire engines. Slender leather seats sat atop seven feet of engine and guns—a central fusion cannon and side plasma rifles. The nanotech seats shaped to hold Fernando and Ling, both in spacesuits.
They zoomed toward them.
Fernando was a Clicker. The insect species was also known as the Phasmida, though the Clickers didn’t like the term. Fernando had a chitinous pale yellow-green exoskeleton and was as thin as one of Blaze’s thighs. The Clicker was like a seven-foot-long stick insect with the triangular head of a praying mantis. He had two legs, two main arms, and two smaller arms jutting out from his torsos. All of his hands had four long fingers and a thumb just as long.
The other known sentient species in the universe was the Meelah, a race of mellow spacefaring sloth explorers. Five feet tall, Ling was a marsupial and had the pouch to prove it. Like a sloth, he had black-and-white fur, a pointed face, and three pink-fingered hands.
Fernando and Ling speeded up to them and parked on either side of Blaze and Trina.
Before Blaze could ask what was going on, comms came screaming on. Screaming, as in Elle screaming at Fernando’s brother. “Goddammit, Bill, I can’t understand your pinche clicking, and I know you hate me, but you have got to get your ass off this ship!”
Bill’s clicks split Blaze’s skull. Elle fell strangely quiet. What was going on? Only Bill and Elle were left on board. The rest were floating out about five hundred yards away. The ship had stopped transmogrifying. The leash still held Cali. She’d struggle against it, then she’d try and chew at the silver cable, then she’d race around the ship, trying to get free. Good thing her fusion claws had been disabled or she would have simply cut the cable.
Fernando translated. “Bill does loathe you all. We are very happy that you understand that clearly. However, Bill is talking to Lizzie. It seems that Xerxes speaks our language very well.”
Lizzie laughed. “It makes so much more sense than Hhhuman, but thhhen Hhhuman is a rat-bastard bubbling baby of a language. It’s like the love child of linguistic chaos and some piece of slutty slang hhhanging out in back alleys looking to turn a trick.”
“No idea what that means,” Blaze said, “but why are you in my ship, Xerxes? What do you want?”
“I’m not Xerxes. I’m Lizzie.”
Bill clicked, and Fernando did his thing. “Bill is saying that Xerxes was driven insane by being exorcised by Elle. My brother would like to remind you of the first law of thermodynamics. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Xerxes lived in the circuits of the Lizzie Borden before, and so he returned home. But he merged with Lizzie’s AI and is now, in a very real sense, Lizzie.”
“Then why in the fuck is she trying to kill us?”
The new Lizzie broke in. “I wanted to give you all a hhhug. With bullets. You’re inside me, and so I wanted to put something inside you. I’m so hhhappy to be alive and part of your family.”
“You are not a part of our family,” Blaze insisted. He turned. Ling was next to him. “Back me up here, Ling.”
A slow grin spread across the space sloth’s face. “Oh, doesn’t every family need someone who doesn’t quite fit in? He could be our creepy uncle…er aunt…no, uncle, maybe aunt? Anyway, I think if we can make it clear that we are organisms of a fleshy nature, this new entity might be helpful. From her time as an archduke of necrotechnology, Lizzie might have information that could benefit our search for Granny and the Onyx Gate.”
“But it tried to kill us, Ling!” Blaze said, exasperated.
“And I probably will again,” Lizzie agreed. “I’m just funny that way.”
“Both Cali and Trina just tried to kill you as well,” Ling pointed out. “We should practice love and tolerance.”
Blaze squeezed his eyes shut. Now what could they do? If they got to a star base or settlement, they could scrap the ship’s software and start over new, but they were several hundred light years away from anything and anyone, trapped in deep space.
“Bill,” Blaze said, “can you delete Lizzie’s software, and can we fly her manually?”
“Well, hhhonestly,” Lizzie sputtered, “saying such a thing in front of me is rather rude. And it doesn’t make me very hhhappy.”
Bill clicked away
Before Fernando could translate, Lizzie sighed. “Ohhh, Bill, I never knew you cared. I mean, I did, but do you really mean it? You love me?”
Bill clicked and clacked and chattered and made a ticking sound Blaze had never heard before. And he’d spent months up close with Clickers, fighting them during the Bug War.
Lizzie, instead of replying in Human, clicked away.
Blaze was running out of patience. “So, I’m thinking we should blow up the ship and Bill and just try our luck with the starcycles and emergency signal beacons. Who’s with me?”
“I wouldn’t trust that our ESB would be picked up anytime soon,” Ling said casually. “Though I hear asphyxiation can be a rather interesting way to explore death. But let’s not do it today. I think we should wait and see what Bill can do.”
“Nombre de Dios, what do you think, Elle?” Blaze asked. “You’re being awfully quiet.”
&
nbsp; When there was no response, Blaze checked his combat display. Elle was still there, on the bridge, and her VHI was solid. They’d implemented a new setting for her, which Elle had called her Onyx mojo. When it was too low, she couldn’t cast spells. Too high, and she’d evil out and become an unstoppable goddess of death. It was a Goldilocks situation…her Onyx levels had to be just right. She was ticking down from sixty percent, which meant she was fine, but she was casting some kind of spell. And not saying a goddamn thing.
Trina clutched her arm to her chest. “I need blood, Blaze. I’m keeping my shit together, but I need it and soon.”
Both the starship and Clicker continued to click maniacally.
“Dammit, Fernando,” Blaze cursed. “You’ve got to translate, and you’ve got to do it right now.”
“Fascinating, Blaze,” Fernando’s voice breathed out. “It seems Lizzie has fallen in love with Bill, which is a dream come true. It’s like when Elle will eventually return my affections for her. You do know how much I appreciate her…”
“It was one night and two years ago, Fernando. Get over it. Tell me what they’re talking about.”
“It’s mostly terms of endearment. Bill is using a secret romantic language our kind generally reserves for the queen, my mother, the source of all life, the one goddess eternal.”
Every time Fernando mentioned the Clicker queen, he’d go off on the litany.
“What does that mean for us?” Blaze asked.
“Bill is now making Lizzie promise not to hurt you all ever again. My brother is being quite adamant, though he hates you.”
A fusion torpedo fired from the Lizzie Borden’s main weapons array and sped past them to ignite in the distance in a flash of star fire. The gunny gritted his teeth. What the hell?
“Bill apologizes for that. Negotiations have kind of broken down. No, wait, they are back. Lizzie is going to try and fashion robotic prosthetics for Bill’s missing limbs. And she will do her best to protect us and serve us as long as Bill is alive. If Bill dies, she’s fifty-fifty on murdering us.”
“This can’t be happening,” Blaze gruffed. “Well, if we can at least get back on board, we can figure out all this later.”
