by Logan Jacobs
“Hey, Havak,” Roku said. Her voice was high, nervous, caught. “So, this doesn’t look like what it is, huh?”
“Oh, so you are not stealing our remaining fuel and going to leave us here in the middle of the night like we were some one-night-stand?” I shot back.
“Okay, this is exactly what it looks like,” she admitted, and her fake niceness faded in a flash as fast as the lightning in the sky.
“Well, we have a bit of a problem then,” I said, low and ominous.
“Not really,” she smiled and made a chirping noise in her throat like a bird in spring. Above us, on top of the trailer, a cone of light shone down to illuminate the whole area. I shielded my eyes and looked up. Blowfish stood on top of the trailer, his eyes blazed like spotlights on the area. In his hands was a double barreled submachine gun pointed right at my chest. “I had an ace up my sleeve the whole time. Thanks for playing though, Havak. Looks like your luck has finally run out.”
“I don’t think so,” I chuckled arrogantly.
“Oh really, how’s that?” Roku asked as she looked around. “My guy will blow you away before you can move.”
“You aren’t the only one with an ace up your sleeve,” I grinned. “Aurora?”
The air behind Blowfish shimmered, and the sultry space vampire seemed to step through a rip in the very fabric of reality. Her arm slid around his throat, turned his face toward her, and the familiar light blue steam of life force began to flow from him to her. A second later, and his spotlight eyes faded, flickered, and then went out. A second after that, his gun fell from his lifeless hands and clattered harmlessly on the roof of the trailer. Aurora stood to her full height, her eyes bright purple, her tribal tattoos pulsing bright blue, and let Blowfish fall from her grasp. His limp body fell from the top of the trailer and landed in the dirt at Roswell’s feet. A moment later Aurora floated down and landed next to the body. Rowell backed away from her slowly, their eyes wider than normal.
“Aurora has an insatiable appetite,” I taunted. “I might be able to curb her hunger if you guys put back the fuel you stole and drive out into the desert. If we see you again, we won’t hesitate to blow you to bits.”
“We won’t make it another twelve hours without that fuel,” Roku explained.
“I don’t care,” I said simply and meant it.
“How about now?” Roku fluttered from deep in her chest as she held out her right hand. In it was a tennis ball sized object with blinking red lights. “I’m holding an armed implosion grenade. I let this go and anything within a hundred foot radius is going to go bye bye.”
“That means you too,” I countered with more confidence than I felt. Implosion grenades were seriously bad news. They created a swirling vortex that sucked anything, no matter the size or weight, into its twisting core for five full seconds where they would just cease to exist.
“I can take her, Marc,” Tempest said from my right flank. She stood with her back against the trailer of the truck and had her sniper rifle tight against her shoulder. The sling was wrapped around her left forearm tightly and provided a stable shooting platform for her. The barrel didn’t waiver one centimeter even in the strong wind.
“And then the vortex will take you all and your truck,” Roku growled. “Chiba, get in the buggy, we are leaving.”
Nova and PoLarr circled around the group, their guns trained on the three remaining thieves. We had an interesting little Mexican standoff.
Then three things happened all at once like a stutter strobe at some nightclub from the pit of hell.
A brilliant bolt of lightning struck the crested butte and bathed us in a million-watt flash of light. The thunder crack was like the hammer of god on the anvil of the world and seemed to rend the night in two.
It must have been the cue the storm clouds had been waiting for all day, and they opened up as if slit from below with a jagged scalpel. Raindrops the size of gumdrops hailed down from the low-hanging, roiling clouds to explode on the dusty ground like bombs. Within an instant we were all soaked and suddenly chilled to the core as the wind whipped the rain in needle like sheets across our bodies.
Amid all of this, the ground under the dune buggy exploded outward, tossing the lightweight desert vehicle into the air where it spun like a discarded tin can and crashed down on its side twenty feet away. The fuel hose ripped from the side of the trailer, still connected to the dune buggy, and began to leak fuel all over the desert floor. Thankfully, our truck was equipped with a cutoff valve like those at Earth gas stations to prevent a massive spill. Where the dune buggy had once sat there was a mutated scorpion the size of a rhino. It had a slick, jet black carapace, six legs that skittered across the wet desert ground and creaked and clacked like a Brazillian rhythm section on speed. Four massive claws grew from joints near its mandible mouth that dripped some kind of fluorescent red slime. A giant, sectioned tail stretched out eight feet and curled up over the top of the monster arachnid’s body. The stinger was at least eight inches long and tipped with vicious venom.
Before Roku could even blink, the mutated scorpion’s tail flashed out and stabbed her through the chest. A surprised look of “oh shit” came across her face as her body was lifted into the air by two of the scorpions’ claws which then ripped her in half. Her torso flew over to where the dune buggy had come to rest.
“Grab onto something!” I screamed and waved the rest of my team over. Nova, Tempest and Aurora all joined me but PoLarr’s way was blocked by the scorpion.
I ticked off the seconds in my head before the grenade went off.
“PoLarr! Jet pack out!” I yelled as loud as I could. She nodded in grim determination and, with a burst of blue flame from the bottom of her pack, shot into the air like a roman candle.
Two seconds later the implosion grenade detonated.
There was a soft thump, and then a growing bubble of red light that expanded quickly from the epicenter where the grenade had been. It engulfed the dune buggy, the scorpion, what was left of Roku, Roswell, and marched steadily toward our truck. I watched the exhaust trail as PoLarr soared higher and higher while the red bubble seemed to chase after her like a long-lost lover. Just before it nibbled at her heels the outward expansion stopped, and it held there in an expectant breath of uncertainty.
“Hold on!” I hollered and shoved myself between the wheels of the truck.
When the bubble burst there was no sound at all. In fact it was as silent as a sensory deprivation chamber. Then everything within the bubbles radius began to twist and spin in tie dye swirls and got sucked into the brilliant point of light where the grenade had been. Soon all of it was gone in a final tidal wave whoosh. Nothing was left. Not the dune buggy, not the scorpion, none of the other alliances, hell not even the sand and rain. They had just ceased to exist in this plane of reality.
Sound roared back in as the wind and rain filled the vacuum. A moment later PoLarr crashed into the dirt in front of us and skidded to a halt at my feet. I reached down and pulled her under the truck with the rest of us. That’s when I noticed she didn’t have her boots on anymore.
“I got a little cooked but I’m okay,” she said and smiled in relief.
“Holy shit that was close,” Tempest said from behind me. We all sat down under the relative shelter of the truck as the rain continued its torrential downpour.
“Never a dull moment with Team Havak,” Nova sighed.
“I may be many things, but boring isn’t one of them,” I winked at Tempest.
We watched the rain for a moment as we caught our collective breaths. I had just let out a huge sigh of relief when the sand twenty feet in front of us exploded outward, and three more of the giant scorpions burst from their hidden underground homes.
“Oh, fuck this shit,” I grumbled, “everyone into the truck!”
I pulled the Eradicator off its sling and poured full auto fire into the nearest scorpion. The bullets, powerful as they were, just ricocheted off the creepy thing’s armor-like exo
skeletons. Nova and I laid down enough cover fire for the rest of the crew to crawl back through the access hatch and into the trucks interior.
“Go go!” I urged Nova and took more careful aim. I tried to hit the skittery bastards in the mandibles, which made them back up a few feet, but they were not to be deterred. “Start her up and open the door!”
My gun clicked empty right when the big twin, turbo charged engines of the truck grumbled to life, and I sprinted from cover toward the door.
I knew the scorpions were fast but just as I leapt up into the cab of the truck I felt the vice grip of a pincer claw around my ankle. It hurt like a motherfucker and had it not been for my regen modification that helped me heal at a stellar pace, I was pretty sure it would have broken my ankle. As it was, the scorpion tried to pull me down to the ground. Just before my grip on the doorframe broke, I grabbed what I hoped would be my saving grace.
As I fell to the muddy desert ground, I twisted as hard as I could, flicked the button on the cool metal handle in my hand and heard the satisfying whine as my chainsaw sword jumped to life. I whipped my hand down and the whirring, metal toothed blade of the chainsaw neatly severed the pincer claw in two. The scorpion squealed in agony and backed away for a second.
With another button push on the handle the chainsaw blazed with a glorious flame that not even the rain could extinguish. I began to swing it over my head in an ever faster circle. The scorpion, not knowing any better, jumped at me in rage and pain.
It caught the full force of the flaming chainsaw, and I cleaved the damn thing in half. Brown, ichorous guts spilled onto the ground and mingled with the mud and rain.
The other scorpions must have sensed danger because they backed off cautiously.
I stood there and continued to spin the flaming chainsaw like some deranged lumberjack Viking as I backed up to the door of the truck. I climbed up by feel alone and with half of my body still hanging out of the truck used my right foot to floor the gas. The truck lurched forward and began to pull away from the remaining scorpions who skittered forward and began to devour their fallen comrade.
“Leroy Jenkins, you six legged freaks!” I shouted back at them, turned off the chainsaw, sat in the driver's seat, closed my door and drove on into the black expanse of night.
Chapter Eleven
The storm continued to rage as we raced away from the hive of mutated scorpions near the rocky butte. The wind buffeted the trailer and made it hard for me to steer and keep the truck in anything resembling a straight line. I was barely doing fifty miles an hour because of the sheets of rain that slammed into the windshield and the desert sand that had become a muddy morass that our all-terrain tires struggled to find traction in.
Inside the cab it was cramped and humid. Tempest sat in the passenger chair while Nova, Aurora, and PoLarr were crammed next to each other behind us. Because of her very long legs, PoLarr had stretched them up through the space between the driver and passenger seats. She wiggled her toes absently and for some reason it struck me as stupidly adorable, especially when juxtaposed with our current condition.
“This little piggy went to market, and this one stayed home,” I said jokingly as I reached down and tugged on her big and index toe while I recited the children’s rhyme. She burst out in unexpected giggles.
“My toes are very sensitive,” she said and curled her feet into toe fists.
“That is good to know,” I winked as I tossed a look her way. “We have an extra pair of boots for you, right?”
“Yeah,” PoLarr answered. “They are just in the back. We all have a full spare set of clothes.”
“Thank god, sugar,” Aurora drawled. Her eyes still blazed bright from the life-force she had drained not long ago but the excitement of the confrontation had begun to fade. “I do believe I’m starting to rust.”
I burst out laughing, and it soon caught on. I imagine we looked like a caravan of escaped mental patients as we drove our tricked out space semi-trailer through a desert hurricane after having fought scorpions the size of a couch. But it was such in the Crucible of Carnage. After a few seconds our laughter faded, but it had served its purpose to help us release the valve on our stress and anxiety.
“Who is Leroy Jenkins?” Tempest asked. “Friend of yours or what?”
“You could say that,” I chuckled.
“Tempest, it is indeed a very long and, as Marc certainly tells it, a very long story,” Nova groaned and patted me on the shoulder.
“Three words,” PoLarr added. “Dolemidian Lure Spiders.”
“Gah!” Tempest uttered as she physically recoiled. “Those nightmare things make the scorpions seem like ladybugs.”
“Our handsome hero here,” Aurora bragged while her finger played delicately in my wet and tousled hair, “defeated about ten of them soon after her became a champion with that little flaming wood chipper thingy.”
“Get the fuck out of here!” Tempest exclaimed. “You did not.”
“I did too,” I answered without taking my eyes off the road. A swell of pride filled my chest.
“He’s been rushing head first into overwhelming odds like some kind of stupidly brave and reckless fool ever since,” Nova commented. “I happened to be watching it live when it happened. I was equal parts amazed and slightly aroused.”
“Really?” I asked. My voice had come out higher than I had intended. “Um, I mean, really?”
“Yes,” she answered simply and then kissed me on the cheek in an unusual display of public affection. “Now try to keep the head on your shoulders from getting any bigger than it already is.”
“His other head can get as big as it wants,” Aurora whispered almost as a throw away, but in the close confines of the cab, everyone heard it.
The ladies all looked at each other knowingly and then smiled at each other. I felt my cheeks flush hot and red. I was in a car surrounded my strong, smart, sexy, sultry warriors who were comparing notes on my manhood. Which, when I thought about it, was kind of freaking awesome.
I was going to make a rakishly witty comment to cover my slight embarrassment, but that’s when a bright red light began to flash above the fuel gauge. I looked down and saw that we had just dropped to below a quarter of a tank. At the rate the twin engines drank gas, that wasn’t going to last us very long.
“Well gang,” I grumbled as I downshifted and slowed the truck even more to conserve fuel, “we need to find us a full- service gas station or figure out how to steal some fuel pronto or we are going to be dead in the desert. Has your navigation mod kicked in yet, PoLarr?”
“I was three quarters of the way there when the storm finally rolled in,” she admitted. “Think I need maybe another thirty minutes with no clouds to get the calibration right for this part of the universe.”
“Gotcha,” I nodded. In a stroke of good luck the rain began to lighten and then, with a final massive gust that had me wrestling with the steering wheel, it stopped altogether. I peered through the windshield and up at the sky which was now full of a million pin pricks of light as stars pierced the thick blanket of endless space. I slowed the truck to a complete stop, popped open the door, and leaned out.
The air was cool and fresh with the faint scent of some unknown desert flower miles away. Behind us, the storm raged on as it moved its way to some other part of the desolate planet.
“Will this work?” I asked, and PoLarr poked her head out of the window and gazed up at the sky.
“Sure will, Marc,” she smiled.
“Okay, let’s regroup here for a bit,” I said as I made the decision. “Stay alert though. After those freaky scorpions, who knows what lurks under the sand.”
We all piled out of the truck and stretched. Nova passed around a canteen full of cool water, and we broke into some of our meal replacement bars. They tasted like shit but would provide the energy we needed to get through whatever was gonna come our way next. PoLarr grabbed her extra boots and hopped up on top of the truck while she gazed unblinking
at the night sky.
The rest of us reloaded our weapons and knocked the quickly drying mud from our clothes.
“Tempest,” I called over to the sexy sniper con-woman with brilliant orange hair, “you wanna give the truck a quick once over? Make sure nothing got damaged?”
“On it,” she threw over her shoulder as she bent over to inspect one of the wheel wells with her ass high and tight in the air.
“Damn,” I whistled to myself as I walked past her toward the back of the trailer. I crouched down and looked at the damaged fuel reserve. The gauge read completely empty. “Why does everyone gotta be a double crossing dick?”
“Because we are in a fight for our lives and the survival of our home worlds?” Nova answered from behind me.
“I know, I know,” I muttered. “It was rhetorical.”
“Could have been worse,” she pointed out. “If you hadn’t been wary of them from the start. We at least got some better tasting self-heating meals.”
“They tasted like dirt,” I pointed out.
“Hot dirt,” she countered. “Better than cold dirt.”
“Fair point oh knight of the order of glass half full,” I joked.
“That is not my knightly order in the least,” she responded as her brow furrowed.
“Kidding, Nova,” I smiled. We were all tired, and our nerves were starting to fray a little.
“I know,” she replied and pulled her auburn hair out of her face. “Sorry, Marc. It has been a long time since I’ve been on an extended campaign.”
“Was that common as a knight on Paladin?” I asked while I attempted to salvage what was left of the refueling hose.
“Yes, very,” she replied and moved over to help me change it out. We had an extra, but the coupling was bent so it was going to take a little finagling to get it back together. “I remember one seige when I was a young knight that lasted for over two months.”
“Good lord,” I said as I finally pulled the damaged hose from the side of the truck.
