by J. C. Diem
Eventually, they had run out of worlds to destroy and had turned on each other. Their planet had become all but uninhabitable beneath the toxic clouds of yellow gas. In desperation, they continued to send out ships to search for new planets to destroy. One of these Seekers had crash landed on Earth. The droid on board had waited through the millennia until humans had developed enough intelligence to be turned into imps. It had injected the First with the nanobots that would eventually turn him into a Viltaran clone. The fact that he hadn’t been instantly converted into a grey skinned imp strongly hinted that the micro-robots had been faulty.
According to Gregor, fate had screwed up when it had allowed the ship to land on our planet. It had taken steps to ensure the error would be rectified and I had been the solution that it had come up with. With my coming, events had been started that would end up with my friends and I being the only survivors. Now here we were, heading back to Earth to end the cycle.
“Is it just me or is fate suffering from some kind of major malfunction?” I asked the others.
With his fist still beneath his chin, Gregor was slow to answer. “I am no longer sure of anything when it comes to our destiny.”
His words were heavy and far from reassuring. If the most intelligent of us had no idea where our destinies now lay, then there was no telling what would happen to our small cadre of vampires. Whatever chance had in store for us, I doubted we’d be in for an easy ride.
·~·
Chapter Four
“How long will it take us to reach home?” Geordie asked after the contemplative silence stretched out for longer than he could bear.
“There is something you need to know,” Gregor replied, instead of answering the question directly. “I discovered quite by accident that M’narl’s droid had been withholding information from us. I asked him to repeat the diagnostic report that Robert the robot first ran on our spaceship. He did so, but very reluctantly.” No one showed surprise at learning that. While the droid’s return uplink to its former masters had been severed, it could still access information from the other robots on the planet. “It seems that we had been drifting through space for a number of years before the Viltarans found us.”
“How many years?” Kokoro asked. Her trepidation was shared by us all.
“Nearly ten.”
My mouth dropped open in shock. “Ten years? But I was only asleep for a short time before I woke up to find myself a vampsicle.”
Wry amusement glinted in Gregor’s dark eyes. “Your slumber must have been far deeper than it seemed.”
I’d left no family or friends behind to mourn me when I’d been bundled into the spaceship and sent into outer space but I was still shocked at how long we’d been gone. At least you weren’t asleep for a thousand years, my inner voice ventured. Who knew what sort of changes might have occurred back home during that length of time? “It won’t take us another ten years to return, though, will it?” Our fuel had run out after a few days so I wasn’t sure how fast we’d been moving through space. Hopefully, the Viltaran Seeker ship would have enough fuel to carry us home far more quickly than it had taken us to arrive in this distant galaxy.
Gregor shook his head. “These ships can move very quickly, according to the droid. It should only take us a little more than four months to reach home. Apparently, this will consume almost all of our fuel. On the bright side, the Viltarans’ fuel will also be greatly diminished. This will be a one way trip for them and they will never be able to return home again.”
I wasn’t sure how that was a plus for us. The aliens would be left with no choice but to succeed in taking over our world or to die trying. Their desperation would make them even more dangerous, not just to us but to the humans they were intent on conquering.
“Didn’t they carry any extra fuel with them?” Ishida asked.
“According to the droid, their fuel is extremely rare and is difficult to manufacture,” Gregor explained. “Their reserves were almost gone and the rest was stored in the factory we destroyed. Apart from the fuel that was already in their ship, and ours, there is no other fuel left.”
“If Earth is just within their reach, why have they not discovered it and invaded long before now?” Ishida asked. Understanding dawned and he answered his own question. “They sent their Seekers out searching for worlds to conquer and did not hear back from the one that crashed on our planet.”
“I have a question,” Kokoro said. From the way she was looking directly at me, I suspected it wasn’t going to be about the Viltarans. “How did you break free from your glass prison?”
That was a question I had been hoping to avoid simply because I didn’t have an answer to it.
“I want to know how you can now sense the robots,” Geordie added.
Looking down at me from his seat high on the chair, Gregor’s expression was shrewd. “What happened to you when you went hunting for the Viltarans by yourself?”
I mentally squirmed beneath their stares. Only Luc wasn’t watching me. He stared out through the window into the darkness of space. We were moving so fast that the stars were just a momentary blur as we streaked past them. My beloved’s expression was serene but his jaw was tightly clenched. I wished I could probe his mind and see if there was any chance that we could ever be a couple again.
Knowing that they would pester me until I answered their questions, I surrendered to the inevitable. “After I killed a bunch of them, I sensed all of the Viltarans gathered in one room. I fought my way past a giant octosquid imp and found them waiting for me. There were no droids in sight and it looked safe enough so I figured it couldn’t hurt to hear what they had to say.”
“It was a trap,” Igor guessed.
“Yep. They waited until I was halfway across the room before springing it.”
I was alive and well yet Geordie’s chin trembled anyway at the thought that I might have come to harm. “What did they do to you, chérie?” he asked in a small voice.
“They’d rigged up dozens of nanobot guns in the walls. They didn’t appear until after Uldar told me I was a worthy warrior but I’d made the mistake of underestimating their technology. I outran the first wave of darts but the door closed just as I reached it. I was hit by about fifty or so flying syringes.”
Gregor winced, most likely remembering what had happened to Aventius. The former Councillor hadn’t been transformed from a vampire into an imp smoothly. His body had fought against the infusion of new nanobots. His flesh had bulged and swelled while it tried to decide what form would take precedence. He’d suffered horribly before his follower, Cristov, had put an end to his misery.
“How did your system react to the nanobots?” Gregor asked.
I gave a half shrug. “Apart from feeling like my veins were being eaten away by acid, there were no physical changes.” None that I’d noticed anyway.
“How did they get you into the container?” Ishida asked.
“Uldar shot me with a death ray and then sucked my particles up by some kind of vacuum cleaner.” Uldar was the self-appointed leader of the remaining Viltarans and my new main target to kill. “I managed to form a hand and an eyeball but the space was too small to reform my whole body. Then they transferred me into the larger jar. My hand wouldn’t fit through the opening into the container so I had to break it down into chunks. My eye stayed whole so I could see what was going on, but they had air blowing around constantly so it was almost impossible to put myself back together.” I’d have found a way out eventually but my friends had come to the rescue before I’d managed to think of a way to escape.
“I saw your eye whirling around inside the jar,” Geordie said. “Then the Viltaran tore my head off and I didn’t see what happened next.” Kokoro put her hand on his arm in silent commiseration when he shuddered at the memory of being beheaded.
Even Luc turned to look at me as they waited for an explanation for how I had escaped. “I’m not sure how I broke out of the container,” I confessed. “When I saw
what the Viltaran did to Geordie, I kind of went berserk. One second I was trapped and the next instant I was free and whole.”
“And naked,” Ishida interjected. The teens shared a snigger then quailed at Igor’s warning frown.
Kokoro shivered at the memory of what I had done next. “You moved so fast to tear out the alien’s heart that I was unable to follow you with my eyes.”
Gregor’s chin rested on his fist, deep in thought. “The nanobots have altered you in ways that I would not have thought possible.”
“I’m Mortis,” I reminded him unnecessarily. “I’m pretty sure nothing is impossible when it comes to me.” I wasn’t bragging, it was a factual statement based on the weird and wacky things that I was able to do.
Igor shrugged off Gregor’s misgivings with his usual gruff practicality. “Your new ability to sense the droids should come in handy when we reach Earth and start hunting them down.”
“Do you think we will have to cooperate with the armed forces once more?” Ishida queried.
Again, my upper lip curled at the thought of seeing Colonel Sanderson. He and three of his men had tossed me out into the sun then had shot me in the back with their prototype weapons that had been designed exclusively to kill our kind. What they’d done to me had been pretty bad but what they had done to my friends and allies had been far worse. “The instant I see Sanderson, he’s a dead man,” I vowed.
I wanted to eradicate the entire U.S. government but, after nearly a decade, new people would most likely be in charge by now. I was brewing a quiet animosity towards all humans but even I couldn’t justify killing the innocent for something that their predecessors had done. Can I? I asked my inner voice. Probably not, it responded. Not unless you want your friends to think you’ve gone nuts. It had a point so I shelved the idea of murdering hundreds or even thousands of meat sacks in revenge.
“Is that your answer for everything now?” Luc asked, interrupting my short internal debate. “Kill everyone who displeases you?”
Numbed to silence by his sudden accusation, I couldn’t think of anything to say. Close to tears, I turned and walked out of the cockpit.
“If Nat kills everyone who annoys her then why are you still alive?” Geordie said nastily to my one true love.
“Children,” Igor warned as the door slid open before me. I almost smiled at Luc being called a child but my lips refused to move. The door closed behind me and I was as alone as I could possibly be on a small craft that had only two rooms.
Murmurs came from within the cockpit but they were too low for me to make out. Luc’s jab had hurt, just as he’d intended it to. Where did that accusation come from, I wondered. I had never, to my knowledge, killed anyone who hadn’t deserved it. Oh, really? Are you sure about that, my inner voice asked. To be completely honest with myself, there had been one death that might not have been completely justified. A young vampire by the name of Joshua had been killed at my whim. He’d been brash, hot headed and a general pain in the butt. He’d been warned not to cause trouble but had been unable to keep his mouth shut and his opinions to himself. The truce between the Japanese and European vampire nations had been precarious at the time and Joshua had opened his mouth once too often. Aventius had sired the young vamp and he had also been the one to execute Joshua. If he hadn’t done the job, I would have.
Belated guilt hit me that I had so casually dismissed the life of one of our own. Joshua, along with most of our kin, had been doomed anyway but that didn’t excuse what I had done. I hadn’t turned power mad when I had voted myself to be the temporary leader of our small army. It had just seemed to be a necessary action at the time. In hindsight, I wasn’t sure what I would have done differently. If Luc thinks I make such horrible decisions, then maybe he should be in charge. As soon as the idea hit me, I felt a weight drop off my shoulders. From now on, someone else could make the decisions that would affect the few of us that were left. Since I was being so honest at the moment, I had to admit that I was vastly underqualified for the job.
Backtracking to the cockpit door, I poked my head inside when it whooshed open. “I’m stepping down as your leader.”
The momentary silence inside the small room was short but profound.
“But you are Mortis,” Kokoro pointed out. “It is your destiny to…”
She trailed off as I cocked an eyebrow at her. “It was my destiny to get most of our kind killed. That mission has been accomplished and you guys are ‘the remnant that remains’. My job is done, unless there is another prophecy that I’m not aware of?” I waited for someone to drop a bombshell that there was indeed another prophecy that I didn’t know about but they remained silent. “Then I quit. Pick someone else to be in charge from now on.”
Feeling free for the first time since I’d realized I was chained like a beast of burden by fate, I left them to discuss their options. Choosing a chair, I jumped up and made myself comfortable. Closing my eyes, I forced myself into a sleep that I didn’t really require.
·~·
Chapter Five
Opening my eyes what seemed like only a second or two later, I was slightly disoriented when the room seemed to be moving. A narrow bunk bed was above me, matching the one I was lying on. Springs from the cot above sagged down almost to my face, which probably meant the bed was occupied. A loud, wet fart from above confirmed my suspicions.
Rolling sideways, I escaped from the noisome yet invisible butt fog before it could completely envelope me. My feet hit the floor and I cautiously stood. I pin-wheeled my arms to keep my balance when the floor pitched sharply. Spying a small, round window, I lurched over to it and grabbed hold of the rim. Pressing my face up against the glass, I saw only darkness outside. I jerked back as water splashed against the pane. I finally realized that I was on a boat when it wallowed and almost tipped over beneath a large wave. The reek of fish should have alerted me to where I was but the fart had momentarily drowned out all other smells.
Several more men slept on the bunk beds that lined one wall. All were unshaven, grizzled and dark skinned. I wasn’t sure what their nationality was and I wouldn’t be able to tell unless one of them woke up and spoke to me. None woke as the ship tilted back once more as it climbed another wave.
Unused to walking around on a floor that pitched and rolled, I kept one hand on the wall as I made my way to the hatch. The door was open and had been pinned in place to stop it from banging backwards and forwards and waking up the crew. Stepping through the opening, I looked up and down the narrow corridor. Stairs at one end most likely led to the upper deck so I negotiated my way over to them. I held onto the railing with both hands when we crested the wave and went into a short fall. Curses sounded from someone who was tossed out of his cot to the floor. Other sailors grumbled at being woken from their slumber. I felt a momentary pang when I realized they were Italian. Luc had been born in Italy over seven hundred years ago but I’d rarely heard him use his native tongue.
When the ocean smoothed out again, I quickly climbed the stairs. The hatch squealed in protest when I shouldered it open. The door was instantly ripped out of my hands by a howling wind and rain drenched me. A wave slapped at my feet and I closed the door before the boat could become flooded. I knew I was dreaming but it was so realistic I might have actually been there in person.
For a moment, I marvelled at the sight of a sky that wasn’t a sickly yellow. Low clouds hovered above the boat as the angry sky lashed us with rain and wind. The boat turned into another wave that threatened to tip us over. I stumbled back against the hatch as the nose of the boat rose. The wave grew and almost seemed to hover over us before it came crashing down. A torrent of water swept over me, knocking me to my knees.
A dark form appeared and at first I thought it was another, much larger wave. Then darkness enveloped the boat and a stench unlike anything I’d ever smelled before assailed me. The wind and rain disappeared, leaving an eerie silence behind. Tilting my head backwards, I could no longer see the sky at all.
I think we just sailed into a cave.
We drifted through darkness for a short while then the bow of the boat began to tilt downward as we reached a precipice. Still on my knees, I slid across the deck. Sailors screamed in terror from the bridge behind and above me as the boat tilted forward at a sharper and sharper angle.
Landing against the railing, I held on tightly and stared down a vast, dark waterfall that didn’t seem to have an end. I closed my eyes as the boat fell into the void.
A hand on my shoulder woke me from my dream before the boat could hit the ground, assuming there eventually was a ground. “Are you alright, Natalie?” Geordie asked me quietly.
Looking around, I saw that everyone but Luc was strapped into their seats. My beloved was still in the cockpit. “I’m fine,” I reassured the teen. “I was just having a weirder than usual dream.”
“Was it another premonition?” His dark eyes were large with apprehension.
“I doubt it. I was on a boat and we sailed into a cave then fell over a really long waterfall.”
Relieved that, for once, my dream had been just a dream, Geordie checked that no one was listening to us then dropped his voice down to below a whisper. Even sitting right beside him I could barely hear him. “When are you going to fix things between you and Luc?”
My expression hardened slightly but that was to prevent myself from bursting into dry sobs rather than in anger at my love life being put to the question. “I’m open to suggestions,” I said.
I had a feeling that the teen’s experience with romance was even more pathetic than mine. Realizing he had no suggestions to offer me, his face fell. “Why can’t you just apologize so he can forgive you and you can go back to being happy again?”
