Criminal Core

by Nick Broad

  “And we definitely won’t be soaking our panties while you do it,” the fairy added.

  I’ll settle for that, I thought with a grin. I advanced into the chitin like the robotic badass I was, slashing big hunks of the stuff into nothing with every cut of the blade. Even so, it took so much longer than I expected. Another twenty minutes and I’d barely revealed the contours of the reactor. Cleaning the place up was going to take an entire day by itself - at least.

  “Look at him go,” I heard Meiko murmur from somewhere behind me. “He’s like a machine.”

  “He is a machine,” Ruby tittered. “For all that’s wrong with her, I’m glad Shay uploaded a guy with a half-decent work ethic.”

  “Same.” Meiko yawned, leaning back against a cleared section of the wall. “What should we do while we wait?”

  “I dunno,” I heard the fairy say. “Want to make out?”

  I nearly dropped my blade mid-swing. “Excuse me?”

  When I turned, both girls were staring at me with huge smiles. “I told you he was paying attention,” Meiko snickered.

  Ruby ran two fingers down her cleavage, her cheeks flushed with telltale dots of warmth. “We were wondering if maybe you wanted to take a little break,” the fairy purred.

  “If you’re not too into your work,” Meiko added.

  I definitely was not. I yearned for both women’s forgiveness - and getting it inside of their tight, sexy bodies was possibly the best way to earn it. The vibrosaw clattered to the ground beside me, the power source cut the instant my fingers left the hilt.

  “Sounds like a plan,” I said, reaching for the zipper of my shipsuit. “Have you two already decided which of you gets to go first?”

  The two women shared a look.

  “Actually,” Ruby said with a wink, “we were thinking we’d go first.”

  “Huh?” I didn’t understand. Then, a moment later, the two girls embraced, and I did.

  Oh wow. God damn...

  Meiko and Ruby made out, hot and heavy, right in front of me. I wasn’t surprised at the gusto with which Ruby threw herself into the task - after all, she’d made no bones about how badly she wanted a threesome - but what did shock me was the change in Meiko. She was like a live wire, her hands going everywhere as she explored the Fae’s gorgeous, curvy body.

  Fuck, I thought, stepping towards them. I am the luckiest fucking man in the galaxy.

  Only I wasn’t. Because I was no more than two or three steps away from them when something rippled underneath the chitin.

  For a fraction of a second, I didn’t want to believe it. And that fraction of a second nearly killed us all. My dumb, horny caveman brain wanted to dismiss the intrusion standing between me and a red-hot threesome, so it wasn’t until the thing actually emerged from the black mass in an angry, hissing shadow that I ducked to the floor and grabbed my vibrosaw.

  “Ruby, Meiko!” I shouted. “Get down!”

  The warning came just an instant too late. Meiko reacted to the charging figure with superhuman grace, launching herself into a crazy mid-air pirouette that sent her over the creature and down onto an outcropping of the black growth. But Ruby wasn’t so skilled, or so lucky.

  The shadow was upon her, then it was gone - down into the chitin.

  “RUBY!?” Meiko’s face was a mask of horror. As one the two of us plunged into the spot where the creature had burrowed. My vibrosaw flickered in the air, slicing away huge chunks of the black mass. Meiko’s own sword moved like a living thing in her hands, clearing the spots I missed faster than I could blink.

  We were moving like a team. In perfect fucking sync. And it wasn’t going to be enough. Whatever had grabbed Ruby was fast - faster than thought. And it was angry.

  “We have to get her,” Meiko cried desperately. Her face was wild, crazed, that strange smile struggling to rise behind her expression. “We can’t let that thing have her!”

  I could tell she knew, exactly as I did: it was hopeless. If we had to race that creature, there’s no way we would win.

  To this day, I don’t know why it stopped. Maybe we’d cut away enough of its habitat that we pissed it off - maybe it had been moving on instinct when it grabbed Ruby and decided the two predators in its den needed to be dealt with once its frenzy cooled. All I know is that Meiko closed her eyes, tears starting to form in the corners, when there was a roar like the whole station splitting apart and that black shadow charged.

  I struck out, blindly, with the vibrosaw. Meiko didn’t - probably because she sensed any strike had just as good a chance of hitting Ruby as it did the monster. I was lucky. The blade suddenly hit resistance - howling, horrifying resistance. The monster screamed, black ichor pouring from the wound, and tossed something across the room. It’s cargo had already hit the wall, pinged off it and collapsed to the floor when I realized it was Ruby.

  “Ruby! Fuck!” The world narrowed in my vision. Meiko drew her sword, confidant now that the creature was no longer using our friend as a shield, but all I could think was Ruby’s hurt. Ruby might be dead - oh shit oh shit oh shit...

  I raced across the chitin, shattering it beneath my heel with every step. I didn’t care. I bent down over Ruby, praying for a heartbeat as I felt for the pulse at her neck. There was a moment of panic - did Fae even have the same veins as humans? Did the Fae have heartbeats?

  Then Ruby gasped. She rolled onto her side, coughing up a black, sticky substance. Relief flooded me. She wasn’t dead.

  “I’m getting you out of here,” I said, picking her up. She was surprisingly light in my arms. The world dimmed to the area directly around her as I watched her for any sign of trouble, certain she was about to keel over and die any second. I’d never been in a situation like that before, so I didn’t realize the kind of panic going through my veins until later.

  Ruby’s eyes went as wide as saucers. She was staring at something behind me. Her jaw dropped open.

  “Master, look...!”

  I did - and what I saw made me nearly drop Ruby. Meiko was in combat with the creature, and she was moving like nothing I’d ever seen. But even that wasn’t what shocked me to my core.

  It wasn’t a creature she was fighting. It was a woman.

  She was pale, shockingly so. Pale and tall - tall enough that she loomed over Meiko even as the lithe obake’s sword flashed again and again. Her skin was the color of milk, which made the contrast of her jet-black outfit even more striking. After a moment, I realized it wasn’t an outfit - it was the growth. She was wearing it like a suit. Except a suit stayed where it was put once you started to wear it. The woman’s outfit rolled and reformed itself, growing spikes and claws and makeshift shields every time Meiko swung her sword.

  As I watched, the woman deflected one of Meiko’s thrusts with a pillar of chitin. Her black lips twisted into a fanged smile as she punched my friend square in the stomach. Meiko’s face went slack as she tipped over, falling back into the roiling black floor.

  “Oh hell no,” I snarled, setting Ruby aside. My hand went to the vibrosaw, flicking it to life in an instant. “Stay here, Ruby. I’m going to go kick that thing’s ass.”

  “Yes, Master,” Ruby whispered, her eyes wide as she watched.

  I crossed the room with a roar, swinging the blade. The woman didn’t see me until the last possible moment, but the last possible moment was enough. Her arm came up, and suddenly there was a massive bracelet made of the black material around her wrist. The sword hit it, kicked up a shower of black sparks. She twisted away with a growl, shifting her stance.

  “Oh no you don’t,” I yelled, following her across the cell block. “You’re not getting away from me!”

  My feet sank into the chitin, smashing it to bits as I chased the creature. She made it to the end of the cell block, then turned around. An all-too-human look of surprise lit up her face when she saw me in pursuit.

  Got you now, bitch, I thought triumphantly.

  Then the world stopped making sense for a bit.
<
br />   All of a sudden, I wasn’t stomping through the stuff on the floor anymore. I was splashing through it. The floor was melting.

  The creature sneered in triumph, black wings unrolling from her back.

  Shit, I thought, panic filling me. Not good...

  She raised a black-nailed hand to chin level, then lifted it to the ceiling - and all at once, what had been room-filling growths of black stuff turned into goo. It melted and ran together, clumping around me and slowing my movements. It shouldn’t have been possible, there was no law of science I knew of that could affect such a transformation, but the woman looked like this was something she did every day. Her grin was huge and feral as she watched Meiko, Ruby and I struggle.

  I took another step and felt something wrap around my legs. When I looked down, the goo had started forming itself around me, wrapping thick tendrils of itself around my boots. I let out a scream and slashed at it, cutting it in dozens of places - only to watch it reform like liquid poured into a glass.

  The tide rose to my knees. Thinking of Ruby, I glanced over my shoulder. With a feeling of relief, I saw her climbing the stairs to the next cell block, watching the flood with a kind of mute horror.

  “Save yourself!” I yelled, gesturing when she caught my eye. “We’ve got this-”

  A tendril snaked up my body and wrapped itself around my neck. We very much did not have this.

  I went down on my knees. Black goo covered my vision. I slashed and slashed, then when that failed, I tore at the stuff with my nails. It was no good - it was too stretchy, too capable of reforming itself when broken. I was going down.

  I knew I couldn’t really die, but I was not looking forward to the next few minutes.

  A tendril pressed against my lips trying to force its way into my mouth. My resolve broke. I started to scream, writhing and thrashing against the stuff as it covered me a jet black tide. Lips shut tight, I screamed my head off, closing my eyes as hard as I could.

  Then, all at once, the tendrils retreated. I felt bare floor beneath me.

  What? I looked at my hands as the inky black pulled back from them, unable to believe it. Had I fought them off somehow?

  I looked up - and realized what was happening. I hadn’t stopped it. Meiko had.

  Meiko and the creature were in single combat. Whatever power the strange, winged woman had over the black mass, she must have needed to concentrate to control it. Meiko was eating up all that concentration at the moment - the two were practically a blur.

  They moved, struck, and moved again. Every time Meiko took the offensive, the thing shrank back, creating more and more of that hard black chitin to defend itself.

  In my head, I was cheering Meiko on. Outside of it, I needed to take action. I searched the floor around me for the vibroblade, but the black tendrils must have carried it away with them. It was gone.

  Shit, what was I supposed to do? Just toss myself at the thing?

  The goo continued to recede as Meiko and the creature fought, forming a makeshift ring around them. It slowly rolled backwards as the thing’s concentration broke, giving Meiko more space to maneuver and strike. And strike she did. The creature was weakening for sure: all of its moves were on the back foot, purely defensive. Meiko’s all-out assault was starting to win.

  Only it wasn’t. Because I realized something as I watched them go. Meiko wasn’t just fighting the creature.

  She was fighting something inside of herself. Fighting it even harder.

  That weird smile was back on her face, brimming just beneath the surface. Whatever it was inside of her that she’d been holding back so long - the thing she was almost desperate to keep me from seeing - she was losing her battle with it. Her control was superhuman, but she was beginning to break. She was too tired, too strained to fight the beast inside of her along with the beast in front of her, like a candle burning at both ends.

  She risked a momentary glance at me, and the look I saw in her eyes was frantic. Help me, those eyes begged. I can’t do this anymore...

  Part of me wanted to see what was going to happen to Meiko when she finally broke. But that moment of connection made me certain it wasn’t going to be anything good. Her inner monster, whatever it was, wasn’t something that could be controlled. Maybe it would hurt me and Ruby the second she tore the creature to shreds, maybe not. Whatever it was, I respected Meiko enough to keep her from losing that control. I had to help her.

  And I didn’t have a weapon.

  There was only one thing I could do.

  Squaring my shoulders, I charged forward like a fucking linebacker. A savage, primal growl rose in my throat, becoming a roar as I stomped across the thin line of black tendrils into the ring. Tunnel vision hit me hard, the world shrinking to the single point where the two figures fought.

  I aimed my android body at the creature and fought every instinct to stop running.

  Meiko saw me out of the corner of her eye as she ducked beneath the creature’s claws. “Noah,” she yelled, choking the word out from under her insane smile, “don’t-”

  Too late, I thought with a grin.

  At the last moment, I jumped. I tackled the woman with my entire half-ton weight, sending her off the ground and flying in my arms. Her claws raked me blindly as she tried to adjust to the situation, but it was too late for her. She was strong, sure - insanely strong, tougher than any woman her size ought to be - but I was stronger. She wasn’t breaking my grip - and she wasn’t going anywhere.

  The two of us plunged into the thickest outcropping of the chitin and disappeared.

  Black filled my eyes, but I kept on holding the woman tightly. We hit the floor, and the woman instantly went limp beneath me. The chitin around us melted, running over us both like thick syrup. It was a cocoon - maybe one I couldn’t escape. But it didn’t matter. I’d pinned her. I’d won.

  To my surprise, the creature seemed to realize this as well. She stretched languidly beneath me, almost casually, and to my shock leaned back and pursed her lips.

  Then she yawned. Like for all the world she’d just gotten a little sleepy.

  Her eyes flashed red. I felt something predatory in that gaze; something that was sizing me up. There was approval in that look, as if I met some sort of criteria I hadn’t heard about yet.

  As if this was some kind of test.

  The pale woman smiled, showing off a vicious-looking set of fangs. “I have been bested,” she whispered in a silky voice. “By a male.”

  “You’re damn right,” I growled, holding onto her shoulders. “You fuck with my friends, you get fucked with.”

  She didn’t seem bothered by this at all. “Very well,” she said, resting her head against the floor. “I accept your service.”

  Sixteen: Queen of the Dark

  “Your service?” I said in disbelief.

  Around us, the melting chitin dissolved. It hit the floor and reformed, wrapping around the woman’s body in thick strands. I couldn’t hold onto her any longer, so I let her go. She didn’t seem to be a threat anymore, in any case.

  “What the fuck does that mean?” I said, glaring down at her.

  She licked her lips, stretching out in her makeshift cocoon. “Not now, servant. You have tired me out. I must rest.”

  As she spoke the black stuff formed a protective coating around her. I couldn’t help but notice that as it wrapped itself around her pale body, the clothing she’d made for herself dissolved. I caught a flash of bare breasts and smooth, hairless folds so brief I wondered if I’d imagined it. For a second, my brain filled with thoughts of sex. Then I got a grip on myself.

  “Like hell you will,” I growled, tearing at her shell. It looked like a big, black sleeping bag, only made of stuff that was both sticky and strong. “I need answers! You almost killed my friends! What are you doing down here, what the fuck are you doing in the reactor...”

  I trailed off. Because the woman had just fallen asleep.

  I kept right on clawing, but nothing happen
ed. There was no progress. A few moments later I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  “I know who she is,” Meiko said. Her voice was weak and unsteady, and it was clear the hand on my shoulder was the only thing keeping her upright. “She’s not dangerous anymore. Not for a while, at least.”

  Concern for Meiko flooded in. She looked like she could barely walk, so I picked her up and carried her to one of the nearby cells, setting her down gently on a cot. The room was still full of the woman’s black goo, but it looked like it had just stopped when she fell asleep - like it froze in the middle of retreating. In any case, there was much more space now.

  Ruby entered the cell, carrying a canteen. “Here,” she said, her eyes brimming with concern. “Drink this. Get your strength back.”

  Meiko accepted it gratefully and took a big swig. When she did, her eyes widened and she nearly spat it out. “This is nectar,” she said, her voice tight.

  “I know,” Ruby shot back. “You need it. Way more than I do. Now lean back and relax, for God’s sake.”

  Stunned by the improbability of Ruby taking charge, she did. I sat on the floor by the cell, while Ruby arranged herself at the foot of the cot, tittering over the prone Meiko.

  “I hate to be a dick,” I said, leaning out of the cell, “but I have no idea how much time we have before that thing attacks us again.” I watched the small black cocoon warily, expecting it to burst open at any moment. “I need answers.”

  Meiko finished the nectar, then closed her eyes and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “We’re fine,” she whispered. “Xenian Queens have long hibernation periods. Particularly when they’ve been bested by a suitable male.”

  I glanced back at the cocoon one more time, then leaned back into the cell.

  “Is that what that is?” I asked sarcastically. “A Queen? Doesn’t look like any Queen I’ve ever heard of.”

  Meiko sighed with exhaustion. “Not many people have heard of them,” she said, taking Ruby’s hand. “They’re...well, they’re not from around here, Noah. They make Ruby look like a local, in fact. Xenians live out on the fringes of explored space, and they’re still poorly understood by most governments.”