When she reached solid ground she panned the bell-shaped muzzle of the pistol across us vampires. We appeared to be outgunned so Jolie and I lowered our weapons.
Carmen glowered at Moots. “What’s this about?”
Moots pointed to the cylinder. “Inside.”
“Sounds like a damn good idea,” I said. “And about time.”
“Quickly,” Moots added. “Before you escape.”
I was about to summon the chalices when I froze in mid-cue. “Before we escape? I thought we were escaping.”
“I mean escape off the planet,” Moots replied.
The hairs on my arms tingled again, and my shoulders clenched for another psychic attack. Inexplicably, the air darkened, then turned into a deepening shadow, and I sensed a new threat, from something huge looming above. All of us, Moots included, tilted our heads back to see.
A flying saucer descended toward us, a wide flat circle a hundred meters wide that seemed to fill the sky. My bewilderment congealed into one big Huh?
Phaedra interrupted our gawking by unleashing a psychic attack. The keening noise returned and it lanced through my head from ear to ear. My mind wobbled and my knees buckled, but I managed to keep from falling. Jolie and Carmen staggered in place. Moots let her pistol drop and clang on the patio pavement. It rolled into the pond and sank. She put both hands on her chest—where her brain was—and pressed against the carapace. Her head tendrils writhed like the tentacles of a spastic octopus.
The saucer kept descending, slowly until it touched the top of the yellow cylinder. The disk continued to lower and the cylinder crunched and crumpled beneath its great weight.
Fearing the saucer would squash me, I tried to run for cover but the keening had short-circuited my legs. The chalices, unaffected by the psychic barrage, rushed to drag us vampires out of the way.
Carmen brushed them aside. She tightened her jaw to keep her face set and rigid, then stood proud. The keening softened to a dull hum, and my body managed to relax. Moots’ tendrils settled around the back of her head.
The disk was right over us, as close as the ceiling in a house. A long rectangle glowed on the disk’s belly, outlining a ramp that lowered to the patio. None of us were certain who the ship belonged to—Blossom?—but it represented our only chance to escape. We hustled toward the ramp.
“Don’t do this,” Moots shrieked at Carmen. “You were our last hope. Leave and you doom us … me … to extinction.” Our Nancharm minder had recovered her pistol and aimed it at us. She hollered, “Don’t do this!” I could hear tears in her voice. “Please. Don’t leave us.” She glided toward Carmen.
Jolie was first up the ramp and I tried to shepherd the chalices between us. But they stumbled from me, looking overcome with fright and confusion. Tears staining her eyes, Juanita dropped to her hands and knees and crawled beside Moots like a helpless puppy. Cassie waited on the edge of the ramp, trembling.
Carmen turned and faced Moots. “You kidnapped us. Kept us prisoners. You offered other chalices no relief from their misery so they had to kill themselves. And when you were done with us, we would’ve been exterminated.”
“Recycled,” corrected Moots.
Carmen motioned us to continue up the ramp.
Moots steadied her pistol. “I’ll kill you. Stop. Now.”
Cassie leapt and hooked her hands around Moot’s gun, angling it down. Juanita screamed, “Get up the ramp, Carmen! Get away.” She palmed the chef’s knife and jammed it into a gap of Moot’s segmented carapace.
Moots backed away, her tendrils quaking in a silent shriek. She knocked Cassie aside and brought the pistol up. Its muzzle strobed and a brilliant light dazzled my eyes.
“No. No,” I heard Carmen shout.
I smelled burnt meat. As I blinked my eyes back into focus, I saw swirls of sooty dust where the chalices used to be. Juanita and Cassie were gone.
“What have you done?” Carmen screamed.
Moots seemed taken aback by Carmen’s reaction. Moots waved her pistol erratically, like she wasn’t sure of what to do next.
But I was.
I aimed and fired once. The bullet knocked a neat hole in the upper center of her chest carapace. She quivered for a moment and then steadied the pistol.
Jolie pushed me aside. “Let’s finish this.” She blasted Moots with a barrage of .45 slugs. Moots staggered backwards and fell into the pond, splashing, a puss-yellow stain spreading from her many wounds.
Carmen tried to lunge past us. Jolie and I held her back. She shrieked, “Moots. Moots. Why did this have to happen?” She collapsed into our arms as if she’d taken one punch too many.
A light flashed in the distant sky, the light so bright it momentarily blanched everything to a dazzling white. My face felt a flare of heat. The light faded into an orange ball that corkscrewed upward into a mushroom cloud of fire and smoke. Had Phaedra gotten her hands on a nuke? The obscene growl of the explosion echoed to us. A gust of turbulence mussed our hair, made us wince, and rocked the saucer perched overhead.
Jolie and I dragged Carmen up the ramp. No time for reflecting on what had just happened. We had to get out of here now.
Once at the top of the ramp, we entered into a compartment similar to the one in the saucer Blossom had piloted from D-Galtha’s moon.
The ramp lifted, closing the opening, compressing the outside world into a narrowing slice. Moots floated face up in the pond. Her blank white eyes revealed nothing. The opening kept shrinking until she disappeared from view. The ramp closed with a hiss, and a hatch slid across the top to seal the floor. Overhead panels provided illumination.
Jolie and I rested for a moment, unsure of what to expect or that we weren’t in a bigger mess. I was still processing the loss of the four chalices. We were the badass vampires and yet they had saved us. Carmen sagged between us, limp, drained.
The light in the compartment dimmed, the saucer swayed and a lifting sensation pushed up through my guts. A door to our right opened. Green lights blinked along the floor, forming a trail that snaked out from the compartment.
Carmen found her strength, pulled loose from Jolie and me, and squared her shoulders “I’m all right.” She studied the trail of green lights. “Someone’s laid out the welcome mat.”
“Blossom?” I asked.
“Let’s hope so.” Carmen led us out the compartment, through a winding corridor lined with conduits and consoles until we reached another wide door. This door split down the middle and opened with an old-school Star Trek-like shoosh.
No surprise that Blossom waited on the other side, standing on all fours and beaming with enthusiastic cheer like a big, fat retriever. She wore a shiny, crinkly helmet. With her trunk curled to one side, she presented a toothy grin. “Welcome, welcome, dear friends.” She spoke through a translator box attached to the front of her harness. She shifted her weight onto her haunches to stand and crane her big head above ours. She beckoned with thick, bejeweled fingers that we enter the bridge. The door shooshed closed behind us. She acted oblivious to our guns.
Two other Wah-zhim crewmembers straddled the couches facing the controls. An animated display of D-Galtha, its moon and the crisscrossing orbits of numerous spaceships filled the forward control panel. The two Wah-zhim were busy adjusting levers, twisting knobs, and swiping small panels, and their frenzied motions mirrored the chaos engulfing the planet. All that was Phaedra’s doing?
Blossom clapped her hands. Our host’s sunny mood was the opposite of our gloomy wariness and the loss of the chalices. “It’s a great day in the Wah-zhim continuum,” she said. “The Nancharm are done. Finished. Dead as desiccated bung worms.” She twisted a heel against the deck. “Your Earth friend has done the impossible. She so dis—”
“Earth friend?” I interrupted.
“Yes. Phaedra,” Blossom replied, sounding surprised by my question. “She so disrupted the Nancharm defenses on D-Galtha that they panicked and diverted forces to contain her attack. And then we struck.
” Blossom pounded a fist into her other hand, jangling her many bracelets. “No mercy was ever shown by them. And no mercy given. We caught them bare assed with their skirts up. Like this …” She reached for the hem of her skirt and started to lift when I grasped her wrist.
No way did I want to see her voluminous junk. “That’s fine. I get the idea.”
“Wait a minute,” Carmen said. “What’s this scheme with Phaedra?”
Blossom became quiet, sullen. She then squeaked out her trunk. One of her co-pilots glanced at her and squeaked back.
“Uh … well … uh.” Blossom brought her hands together and tapped the fingertips. “She contacted me and we made a deal.”
“Contacted you how? What deal?” Carmen asked.
I slyly cocked back the hammer of my revolver. Our escape from D-Galtha might not be an escape at all.
“She didn’t contact me exactly.” Blossom caressed her foil cap. “It was a scientist working in our psychotronic intelligence unit. Phaedra used her mind connection or whatever you call it. Since I knew you best, I was ordered to find you and …”
“Narc our location to Phaedra,” I said.
Blossom wrung her hands, her bracelets ringing like jingle bells. “Something like that.”
Jolie tensed, ready to shoot. I glanced about the cockpit to decide how to unload my magnum.
Carmen sensed our tension. She put her hands on ours, gesturing that we remain calm. “Phaedra had us cornered. Why did you rescue us? What’s this deal that you made?”
“Even if Phaedra found you, she couldn’t get to you without help,” Blossom said. “She used a wormhole to travel to Star B-43, where another Wah-zhim ship picked her and her minions up, and then she used another wormhole to arrive on D-Galtha.”
“And you guys provided the bubble tractor?” I asked.
“Bubble tractor?” Blossom replied, bewildered. “Ah yes, the Iron Fist Assault Penetrator. She needed that to breach the Nancharm defenses.”
“You haven’t told us about the deal,” Carmen reminded.
Blossom cleared her throat. “Yes, that. In exchange for Phaedra helping us beat the Nancharm, we would let her kill you.”
Jolie and I brought our pistols up. Carmen tightened her hold on our wrists to keep us from shooting. She continued, “Is that what you’re doing?”
“That was the plan.” Blossom glanced at our guns and blew a dismissive snort out her trunk. “Put those away before you shoot yourselves.”
Carmen nodded, signaling that Jolie and I stow our pistols.
“But we’ve changed our minds. You three are headed to Wah-zhim.”
“For what purpose?” I asked.
Blossom laughed. “For making whoopie, what else? Oh Felix, you have so much to learn.”
My butt clenched and my pecker shriveled. I wanted no part of Wah-zhim whoopie.
She waddled to a couch mounted on a dais between us and the other two crewmembers. A control panel on a console stood at the front of the dais. She pivoted to face us and then planted her wide can on the couch.
“Is Moots dead?” Carmen asked.
“You tell me,” Blossom replied, a shrug evident in her tone, “you guys are the ones who shot her.” She reached for a tall cup resting in a holder attached to the console. She slipped the thick straw from the drink between her lips and slurped.
She touched buttons on the console. “Everything is under control.” A hologram appeared in a sizzle of lights in front of Carmen and me. The image sharpened and showed a green bubble rolling over a landscape dotted with wrecked buildings and burning saucers, an overhead view of a battle between Phaedra and the Nancharm on D-Galtha’s surface, the details rendered in small scale. Saucers in tight formations unleashed more destruction on the planet’s surface. “We’ll let your friend run amok for a bit to keep the Nancharm disorganized. In the centuries we lived under their lash, never did we imagine that our freedom would come from a young girl from such a backwater planet. I mean, really, Earth?”
We three vampires cleared our throats in unison.
“And then?” I asked.
Blossom made a loud ka-blew-wee sound, complete with hand choreography, followed by, “Adios, muchacha. Phaedra and the Nancharm are history. I won’t need this anymore.” She skinned the foil cap off her head and balled it up, dropping it on the floor. “Pretty good double-cross, don’t you think?”
“All of the Nancharm?” Carmen asked.
“Eventually. Of course they’re scattered all over the galaxy so it’ll take a while to hunt them all down. Statistically, it’s highly improbable that we’ll get each and every one of them.” Blossom heaved her shoulders for a long sigh. “The cost-benefit algorithm will argue against a prolonged campaign of extermination. But no worries, since Nancharm can no longer reproduce, the survivors will eventually die out on their own.”
“Rather cold-blooded,” I said.
Blossom shrugged. “Like I’m going to lose sleep over it. All the planets in the Galactic Union kept a standing military force, ostensibly under the command of the Nancharm. But the union was a simmering keg ready to explode. The moment the Nancharm got distracted, we turned our weapons around and bang.”
The back of the couch swung up and Blossom leaned against it, reclining like a smug princess. She crossed her ankles. Her bejeweled anklets and many toe rings sparkled.
“Look,” Carmen exclaimed. She gestured to the hologram. Phaedra’s emerald bubble started to shrink, becoming a pinpoint of light, then disappeared.
Blossom’s bulging eyes searched the miniature landscape. “Where did she go?”
“A portal,” Carmen answered.
“And went where?” Blossom drew close to the display and squinted.
“On her way to Earth, I’m sure,” Jolie replied.
A hearty guffaw exploded from me.
“What the hell is so goddamn funny?” Blossom looked up and groused.
I rubbed my stomach, the laugh cramps ached but I managed to say, “Blossom, Phaedra has forced your hand.”
Blossom curled her trunk and frowned. The wrinkles on her elephantine face deepened into craggy features. “I am not amused. Explain yourself.”
“It means you are fucked unless you cooperate with us.”
***
Chapter Thirty-six
Blossom repeatedly uncurled and curled her trunk as she stalled for time while deciding if I was bluffing.
Which I wasn’t.
“In my culture,” she said, “when one is told they’re about to be fucked, that’s a very good thing. We Wah-zhim spend most of our time anticipating getting fucked. But I know among you humans, that getting fucked is a euphemism for finding yourself in a difficult situation.” She tapped the translator box dangling in front of her throat. “I do not believe I am in a difficult situation. So tell me, little human, how am I about to get fucked unless I cooperate with you?”
I hustled to the hologram and raked my finger through the ghostly image of the destruction on D-Galtha. “See what Phaedra did to the Nancharm? Cracked them wide open so their enemies could attack. What makes you think she can’t do this to you?”
“Why should she?” Blossom asked, sounding worried.
“Because you tried to kill her and now she’s escaped,” I explained. “She learned the Nancharm’s weakness, she’ll learn yours.”
Blossom leaned forward and her trunk groped for the ball of metal foil she had discarded earlier. “You’re exaggerating her abilities.” She scooped the foil from the floor and began to unwad it. “You have no proof that we’re vulnerable.”
I fought back a grin. “Fine, if you want to be the one who brought Phaedra to Wah-zhim, then be prepared to suffer the consequences.”
Worry deepened the already substantial wrinkles that crosshatched Blossom’s face. She smoothed the crinkled foil over her head to reform the aluminum cap. She snapped her fingers, the hologram clicked off, and she wrung her hands. The bangles on her wrists clinked toge
ther. “If I take you to Earth, you’ll stop her there?”
“That’s what we intend,” Carmen answered.
“Or we’ll die trying,” Jolie added.
“That goes without saying,” Blossom snapped. “If I return you to Earth, Phaedra won’t follow me to Wah-zhim?”
My thoughts rambled over unpleasant ideas that I decided to keep to myself. The Wah-zhim weren’t completely safe. Phaedra might well raid the Galactic Union to extort help or confiscate weapons. “I can’t promise that. But this fight is between Phaedra and us. Your best bet is to head to Earth and let us fight her there.”
Blossom steepled her fingers. Her trunk swung back and forth like a windsock searching for the prevailing wind. “How will you defeat Phaedra? If the Nancharm didn’t have a chance with their weapons, what can you hope to accomplish with your puny earthling weapons?”
“The difference,” I replied, “is that we know what we’re up against.”
Blossom returned to swinging her trunk, unconvinced.
Carmen said, “We’ll be fighting her on our home turf.”
Blossom caressed her chin with her trunk. “I could drop you guys off, fly into orbit, and when Phaedra shows up, nuke Earth with a volley of thousand-megaton planet wreckers.”
“Wouldn’t work,” I said. “You just nuked D-Galtha and Phaedra got away.”
She stamped one foot on the dais and uttered a string of commands in her language. The two pilots danced their fingers across the forward controls. The saucer swung around. A new panorama of space with constellations and gas formations panned across the view screen.
I asked, “Where are we going?”
“Earth. Via the 3 Kiloparsec Arm Highway.”
The view screen aligned on a cluster of blurry glowing objects.
Rescue From Planet Pleasure Page 22
