Damnation Robot_A Paranormal Space Opera Adventure

by Aaron Crash

  Arlo was a demon hunter, and that was all he was. And he figured it was all anyone should be, given the amount of evil in the universe.

  And Blaze was experiencing a nasty piece of that evil at the moment.

  The screaming, sparking, smoking, and shrieking of the steel rims eating through the nanofiber was all he could see and hear and smell. Sparks flew onto his jeans and burned through the fabric and into his skin. His arms also felt the sting of burning metal.

  And then, a miracle. Fusion blasts from Elle’s pistol pounded into the bike, blowing pieces of it off him. A wheel came loose and bounced across the street. Blaze grabbed the remnants of the Streetsinger and hurled it away from him.

  He retrieved his flail, leapt to his feet, and saw Elle was still straining under the metal mask. Who had shot up the murderous motorcycle?

  Senior IPC Auditor Katrina O’Reilly had Elle’s fusion pistol. She spun and emptied the gun into Xerxes. Dang, the ginger was tougher than she first appeared. And she knew how to reload a fusion pistol.

  The demon robot shuddered as it lost metal and limbs and spiked fleas. Back, back, back it went, against a hoverbike stand. Metal from the hovers tore away, and the spiked fleas used it to fix their smoking and steaming master. In a flash, Xerxes had the hover technology for feet. He floated into the air and took off down the street.

  Once Xerxes was out of range, the metal mask dropped from Elle. She bent over, sucking in air. She was still armored, still had her helmet, but her visor was gone.

  The street had cleared. Frightened faces peered from various hidey holes and stalls. People in their homes, rooms carved into the moon rock above the canopies, gazed at them. Of course, no one was going to blame demonic forces for the battle. They’d say it was bad technology gone awry. People, such idiots.

  Blaze ejected the spent hydrogen shell from his flail and slipped in a new one from the box on his thigh. “You both stay here. I’ll go and get this bastard. If I can get him next to stone and wood, he won’t be able to rebuild himself. A snare spell isn’t going to work.”

  “You are high!” Elle gasped. “You are going to need both of our help. If Trina hadn’t shown up, we’d both be dead.”

  Trina didn’t say a word. She was staring lustfully at his chest through the strands of his ripped shirt. Well, that only gave him more incentive to stay alive. He clipped his inactive flail to his belt.

  The auditor blushed. Then dropped her eyes. She worked the action of the pistol, breaking it open and letting the shell fall. She stuck out a hand, and Elle gave her a couple of shells from her bandolier. “Elle’s right,” Trina said. “You’ll need our help. And I hate the fact that I’m the one who let that dick onto your ship. I had no idea Denning would turn out to be a demon.”

  “Not Denning,” Elle said. “Your boss’s robot is possessed by some hellspawn. I’ve read the lore, and I think we’re dealing with an archduke of hell. We’ve never encountered anything so powerful before.”

  “Should we let New Oberlin security handle it?” Trina asked.

  Blaze laughed outright.

  Elle was more diplomatic. “Xerxes would murder them all. We’ve been doing pretty well. Enough to keep him running. We need to get to him because he might have vital information on how to end evil in the universe forever. If he can tell us where the Onyx Gate is, we could stop demons from terrorizing—”

  Blaze cut her off. “Not the time for a history lesson! If you two are coming, keep up!” Blaze took a hoverbike, threw a leg over it, and chased after the demon. He heard the whine of two other hovers as Trina and Elle took up the chase. They’d return them to the merchant if they could, hopefully in one piece.

  Blaze glanced at his combat display. He triggered communication to his starship. “Lizzie, you online yet?”

  “I am, Gunny,” the voice buzzed mechanically.

  “Thank the Lord. If you have sensors, we need to find the largest concentration of Onyx energy in Fleabugger. Can you get a lock on Xerxes?”

  “I can. Transmitting.”

  Across his implants, he saw a map of the tangle of corridors inside the moon. A winking red dot showed him Xerxes. And he saw himself and Elle as blue triangles. Trina wasn’t plugged in, so Lizzie couldn’t find her.

  They tore down the street, took a left down an alley, then took a right, following the blinking red dot. But even without Lizzie’s help, they could’ve tracked down the demon P13rce unit. People were screaming in front of their houses, and large swaths of metal and circuitry had been pulled from the walls and vehicles of Fleabugger’s residents to help fix the demon. Which meant he’d be back to full strength when they finally found him.

  “Elle, how about an exorcise spell?” Blaze asked through comms.

  “I thought you could do this alone?” Her voice was annoyingly sarcastic.

  “Focus!” Blaze slammed through a small alley, and his hover smacked into moon rock. He swerved to the side to avoid a dumpster, part of its metal torn away…for Xerxes no doubt.

  Elle and Trina crashed through behind him. The alley had Clicker saliva-hives on either side; stick-insect people watched them race down the tight street. Clickerville in Fleabugger would be a perfect place to trap Xerxes. Let him try and repair himself with mud and Clicker spit.

  But Blaze figured the demon was making for Pearl’s Jewel. That was a worst-case scenario. Pearl’s had slot machines, video monitors, and beefy, well-armed bouncers. Pearl and her crew might even have some fusion weapons, and if Xerxes incorporated them into his body, he’d be even harder to take down.

  Blaze floored it, zooming into an enclosed tunnel; Clickers chattered on all sides of him. According to the readout on his display, it might prove to be a good shortcut.

  But it was no good. The blinking dot was flashing quickly toward Pearl’s.

  The tunnel narrowed then opened onto a broader avenue just on the other side. The opening was so small he wasn’t going to be able to squeeze through. He unclipped his flail from his belt and whirled it toward the slim opening in the Clicker wall. The spinning orbs obliterated the mud, and he streaked through. Out on the street that led to Pearl’s, he slammed the hover around, bent and scooped up his flail from the road, then screamed away as Elle and Trina raced out of the tunnel.

  Then they all three were neck and neck, gunning their bikes toward Pearl’s triple X signs and monitors showing half-naked Human women and stacks of dollar bills. God had blessed American money. Nine hundred years later, Humans were still using it.

  Clickers and Meelah thought Humans were crazy about sex. And they were probably right. Clickers, though, loved money enough for all three species. It seemed only the Meelah cornered the market on morality.

  Xerxes had bashed a hole in the front gates. Had the thing gotten bigger? What were the limits of this new demon’s powers?

  Well, it wasn’t going to get any easier. And Blaze was only in jeans and a shredded T-shirt. He wished he had his ax and his shotgun. Oh well.

  Elle and Trina stopped their hovers in front of the wrecked entrance to Pearl’s Jewel. The place was huge inside, with multiple rooms, a big central space, and cubbies built into the moon offering every kind of sin you could imagine. And some you couldn’t.

  Blaze didn’t pause with the ladies but jetted inside, his flail ready. Good thing. A slot-machine shamble reached out with a metal pincher the size of his hoverbike. Blaze took off the thing’s arm with a swing of his flail. This tech shamble was scorpion-shaped, and its stinger was a plasma rifle. Bursts of energy blasted around him.

  Human customers caught in the fight hid under tables in the bar area while Clicker gamblers fled behind various gaming tables and machines. A few of the Clickers held chance sticks and stones, their game of choice. Blaze had tried to play it, but damn, the rules escaped him, and the permutations boggled the mind. You needed a Clicker mind to work that shit.

  The scorpion swiped at him with the remaining pincher, forcing Blaze to leap from the hoverbike. He
struck the floor and rolled with the momentum. The pincher caught the bike and crushed it into pieces, but then subsumed those pieces into its body.

  Blaze was on his feet. Plasma and fusion guns roared as Elle and Trina joined in the fight. Their gunfire smashed into the scorpion.

  Xerxes floated above them, his hover feet giving off a blue light even as the red glow of his jackal face leered down. The robot had rebuilt itself, and though it looked like a patchwork quilt, it was still deadly. The thing now had a plasma rifle built into the metal of its arm. It fired on Blaze, who ducked behind a slot machine. Metal and debris pinged and pocked him.

  The robot gave a mechanical laugh and hurled himself through beaded curtains. Well, at least the demon robot wasn’t any bigger. But he was heading to where the women entertained their johns.

  Blaze left the scorpion to the girls and sprinted through the curtains. Gauzy fabric hung from the ceiling, and the walls were gorgeous with mirrors and silky decorations. Corridors in the warren of sin branched off in every direction.

  Blaze followed the screams. Deeper and deeper he went, into the red light. A woman in a room clutched her torn dress to her. “Hey, Blaze!”

  Blaze paused to smile at her, though he couldn’t remember her name. Not that he ever paid for sex. It was a small moon, so he’d hooked up with some of the working girls on their off hours. Also, he had done work for Pearl on many occasions, tracking down bounties, busting ghosts, and generally helping her out.

  “Hey,” he said.

  She scowled. “You don’t remember my name, do you?”

  “Birthmark on your left shoulder blade, right?” he asked.

  She nodded, softening.

  “Sorry, can’t talk. I got a demon to kill.”

  He raced away and bumped into Pearl. The old woman, dressed in a flowing gown, held a smoking plasma rifle. She was thin, withered, but her eyes were a startling violet and her hair a blizzard white. She worked the action. “It has shielding, Blaze. I emptied my rifle into it, but it just laughed at me. And what’s with the speech impediment? You’d think the AI could fix that.”

  “It’s not a robot, Pearl,” Blaze said. “It’s a demon.”

  “Well, that explains a great deal.”

  Blaze snatched the rifle from the woman. “I’ll need that, Pearl, but I promise to give it back.” He ran from her, taking steps down.

  “You bastard!” she called to him.

  He grinned. It wasn’t the first time he’d been called that.

  Xerxes spun on him, firing his plasma rifle. The thing had bent in half, using its hover feet to float above the stairs.

  Blaze dodged the attack and returned fire. Superheated energy struck a red shield spell, leaving the robot unharmed.

  The demon spun and disappeared down the steps.

  The thing was leading Blaze into a trap. But that was okay. Blaze liked traps. He liked the looks on the faces of the villains when he ruined their carefully laid plans.

  Sweating, inching down, he kept both the rifle and the flail ready.

  Water dripped from somewhere. He smelled perfume, sickly sweet and cheap. Still he crept down, going slow, listening.

  He turned the corner and more fabric, silky, soft, and pink, covered the entrance to a room. It was Pearl’s Pleasure Room, at the very bottom of her sin palace, above the core of the moon. Blaze triggered his rifle and flamed up the gauzy material, which allowed him to see into the room.

  Red satin couches, silky beds, and fur carpets covered the floor. More mirrors on the walls and even mirrors on the ceiling. A fountain gurgled in the center of the room, and by the smell of it, Blaze could tell it was champagne. The incense burning couldn’t cover up the alcohol smell.

  The floor was reinforced glass, showing the molten core of the moon. Glowing magma gave the room a hellish light.

  Xerxes floated above the fountain on his hover feet. In his arms was a dead woman, some working girl he’d killed just for the fun of it.

  Stacy. Her name Blaze knew. He’d had one-night stands with most of the single women in Fleabugger—space was huge, the moon wasn’t—but Stacy had been different. Not a long-term thing, understand, but a longer-term thing. She was a sweet lady, smart and funny, even though life had given her a lot of tough breaks. She had a four-year-old rugrat with pigtails who depended on her. And now Stacy was dead.

  Red-hot rage built inside Blaze’s chest like a volcano on the verge of bursting.

  “You’re gonna pay for killing her,” he said.

  Xerxes let the dead woman fall from his metal hands and onto the floor. Blood pooled around her on the glass above the rivers of lava.

  “I must say, Blaze, thhhis is the fight I wanted. It hhhas been so very thhhrilling. But now, it’s over. You are over.”

  “It is,” Blaze said. “No tech here. No metal either. Silk and wood and wine. Try healing using all that!” Blaze triggered and flung his flail. The glowing sun-fire spheres whirled through the air. The flail broke through the Onyx shield, and one of the orbs struck the demon’s rifle arm, disabling it in a crash of molten metal.

  Spiked fleas raced for the arm, but Blaze used the rifle to shoot them off the robot. More emerged from various parts of the demon’s body, but the robot’s rifle was offline for now.

  Xerxes banked to the right and then skated down toward Blaze. The gunnery sergeant scrambled over a couch and a divan, then dove to the floor by the fountain just as the demon robot rushed over him. The archduke jerked Blaze’s rifle out of his hands.

  “I hhhave your rifle now, Blaze. It is tech enough. Though not your flail, blessed I would say.”

  “Just like me.” Blaze reached his flail and then dove behind a bed as Xerxes lit up the furniture behind him. The smell of burning silk filled the air.

  Activating the flail, he rose and whirled it at the demon again. This time, two spheres hit home, striking the bot’s head. The ghostly crimson jackal face winked off.

  “I can’t see, but I can hhhear you.” The plasma rifle chopped into the floor. The glass held; otherwise, he might’ve been cooked by the magma underneath. Blaze skittered out of the way and found himself next to the fountain. He was a little thirsty. He had a second. He scooped champagne into his mouth, savoring the taste and the bubbles.

  Of course, the beastly machine heard that. More plasma bolts smoked into the floor, creating holes, but not blasting all the way through. Blaze stomped through the fountain and retrieved his flail. He activated it and hurled it again. And again, his aim was true.

  The sun-fire spheres disintegrated more of the spiked fleas.

  “So much fun!” Xerxes laughed. “I hhhaven’t had this much fun in millennia.” More fleas emerged from the robot’s body, and in seconds they dismantled the rifle and used the pieces to repair the head.

  Blaze realized the demon was toying him. At any moment, Xerxes could find him and tear him limb from limb. Fear crept into his belly. How were they ever going to defeat this foe? And how was he going to do it alone?

  The answer to that last question was easy. He wasn’t.

  Elle and Trina burst into the room.

  Elle flung a silver cross at the demon robot floating above the fountain. She then growled Onyx speak and cast her exorcise spell.

  The demon let out a howl of fury. Bits of the thing as well as spiked fleas rained down. Superimposed over the robot’s frame was a jackal-headed crimson figure—goat horns, donkey ears, cruel clawed hands, and goat feet on crooked legs. The true shape of Xerxes. This wasn’t the hologram of the demon’s face, but the wicked thing itself. The maliciousness of the creature had been muted by the robot, but Elle had pulled it out.

  Seeing the thing’s awful form was too much for Trina. She fell to her knees, weeping. If she hadn’t already cleared her system, she would’ve been barfing again.

  Blaze’s skin crawled, and he felt his stomach lurch. The thing, that awful thing, didn’t belong in this world. It was rot made flesh. It was chaos worshipped. It w
as decay personified.

  Xerxes shrieked, and Elle let out a shrill weeping sound. She was pulling the demon from the body even as she tried to tear it apart.

  “No!” Xerxes screamed.

  Though on her knees, Elle had her fists up, straining at her spell. Tears streamed down her cheeks and blood ran freely from her nose.

  “I am this body!” Xerxes wept. “I can’t be removed. Too much, too much, clinging, I feel the metal clinging to me. Killing me. Killing me to leave it! No!!!”

  Blaze clapped his hands over his ears and closed his eyes. But still he saw the awful form of the demon lord and could feel its malevolent energy. This was pure Onyx, and it was poisonous to all life in the universe.

  Elle let out a yell and slumped down.

  Instead of attacking them, Xerxes fled out of the room, up the stairs, dropping metal and body parts as he went.

  Still, the shape of his true form, the feel of his true spirit, filled Blaze’s mind with revulsion. Would he ever be able to unsee it?

  What had they been fighting?

  Had it been the Devil himself?

  No, Xerxes had talked of a father, a lord and master, but what could be worse than the awful thing they’d seen exposed when Elle had tried to pull it out of the P13rce unit?

  Blaze didn’t want to find out.

  For the first time since he’d started hunting demons, at the age of thirteen, Blaze didn’t want to hunt; he had zero desire to meet what Xerxes had called his lord and master.

  Blaze didn’t want to know more. Anything more powerful than Xerxes would undoubtedly kill him or drive him insane.

  The gunnery sergeant crawled over to Elle, who was gasping, on her back, sniveling. Her face was a mask of gore. She wasn’t just bleeding out of her nose, but her eyes and ears as well. Her helmet had been torn off, and the blood congealed in her dark hair.

  She was gibbering, weeping, and Blaze took her face in his hands. “Open your eyes, Elle. Open them. Look at me.”