by Aaron Crash
Arlo would laugh at that. Blaze’s foster father was a guy who figured the worst would always happen, hope was for suckers, and when in doubt, prepare for Armageddon and laugh when it came. Good thing Blaze wasn’t Arlo. For one thing, the gunny could sleep at night without Ancient Age whiskey.
Blaze didn’t know he was sleeping, it seemed like he was awake, but the dream, the dream hit him hard. Dragons. There were dragons, like in space, what the hell? Vampires, he knew about them, and while he hated vamps, sunlight weapons to the brain did the trick. Otherwise, an old-school wooden stake to the heart put ’em down for good. Werewolves…they were the real problem. In his dream, the dragons became werewolves, but these bad dogs morphed into his buddies from the Corps. Goddamn Trina, for bringing up the past.
Arlo’s sniggering filled the halls of the Lizzie Borden, but the Lizzie was gone. Some kind of demon thing whispered madness through his comms. Coming to get you, Ramon. Coming to get you. Coming to get your sister, coming to get your girlfriends, the ginger and the blonde girl you keep in a cage. Coming to get you.
He was up on the top deck, trying to get to his room. Standing in the middle of the corridor, blocking his way, was his father, Miguel Antonio Ramirez, Ph.D., looking like he did when the video was taken of him standing next to the viewing area of the 0n1x singularity.
His father was talking, but Blaze couldn’t make out the words. That goddamn voice, slithering in his ear. What was his father saying? Was it the location of the Onyx Gate? What was he saying?
Coming to get you, Blaze. You think you are coming to get me, but I am coming to get you.
Alarm klaxons blasted, rousing Blaze and sending him flailing out of the hammock. He was up in an instant. “Status report.”
Ling answered. “Good news is we’ve traveled seven hundred billion miles in the last three hours. Xerxes is on our scans. Bad news is we’ve hit a pocket anomaly, and it has dissipated our spacetime wave. Our SWD engine cannot create another one. Bill isn’t sure, but he thinks the closest space that could handle a wave powerful enough to get us near the speed of light is a hundred years at our present speed. That is a large pocket with no loose coins in it. I don’t know about you, Gunny, but a hundred years will not improve my good looks. And as a monkey, you’ll not win any beauty contests in a century.”
Blaze tried to swallow his fear down. It wouldn’t go down. Terror stayed at the top of his throat, choking him.
This was why only maniacs dared to cross the Sargasso Expanse.
TWELVE_
╠═╦╬╧╪
He slung his shotgun over a shoulder, snatched up his ax, and clipped it to his belt. Having his weapons on him made him feel better. He headed out of the weapons locker and started running toward the bridge. On the central stairs, others joined him…Elle, Trina, Fernando. Ling was already there. Bill would be in the engine room doing his thing.
Fernando had done a bang-up job on the bridge. The walls had been patched, the clutter from the shamble battles cleared, the blood wiped off the command chairs, and things looked relatively normal. Someone had even stowed Elle’s laundry. Ling’s workstation glowed blue from the science station holograms around his hands.
“Is Xerxes still in range? How long before we lose him?” Blaze sank into a chair, and golden light erupted around him as he triggered the command controls. His implant display gave him the ship’s schematics.
Ling answered, “The IPC’s scanner array in the Sargasso is very effective, but its distance is limited. We will lose track of Xerxes in forty-five minutes.”
Fernando clicked in response. “Bill found an Etrusca ruin twenty minutes away. He thinks we can use it to trigger a spacetime wave that might get us out of the pocket anomaly that has disabled our SWD engine. You see, the real issue is matter. The pocket anomaly disrupted the wave of spacetime that was pushing us through space. Once we lost the wave, generating another takes a certain amount of matter. In normal space, this isn’t an issue. In the pocket anomaly, it is. Now, the ruin ahead is enormous. We should be able to use it to trigger another spacetime wave. Solid matter is very effective at being solid.”
“Bill is such a genius. And I see we’re on our way there now.” Blaze let out a breath. Bill had altered their course from the engine room. He hated when the Clicker engineer did that.
Elle sat next to him, and her workstation hologram controls turned blue as she joined Ling in scanning. “I see the ruin. It’s…huge…twenty-five hundred miles by twenty-five hundred miles. Perfectly square. That’s roughly the size of the Australian continent back on Earth. It’s a thousand miles deep. The Etrusca must’ve been an amazing civilization.”
“Not amazing enough to survive,” Blaze muttered. “Six million years later, and where are they? Nowhere. And their shit is cluttering up the galaxy.”
“Big shit,” Ling whispered. “Large amounts of Etrusca excrement.”
Elle’s voice changed from interested to concerned. “Hold up. Onyx energy. In the exact middle of the structure. Maybe Xerxes dropped something? Or maybe some ghost is there. An Etrusca ghost? It could tell us so much.”
They all went silent. Blaze recalled his dream from the night before, where his father was in the top-deck corridor, mouthing words. A real ghost. Blaze shivered. Demons he could blast the crap out of. Ghosts, though, ghosts were something else entirely.
“How do ghosts work with the Onyx energy?” Trina asked. “I get that demons are like fish swimming in the Onyx, but ghosts are Human souls, aren’t they?”
Elle fielded that question. “That’s right. When a troubled spirit dies, well, in the past, unless they were particularly wretched, they would disappear into whatever afterlife there is. But now, with the Onyx energy, a Human soul can use the Onyx as a tool to stick to the material world. And they can be just as deadly as a demon, though far more chaotic.”
Fernando clicked out a chuckle. “After the Monkey War, we created a new word for chaos, and in our speech, it means Human. Chaos equals Humanity. Which is why my people tried to eradicate the troublesome species.”
“Failed at that.” Blaze smirked. “Couldn’t guess what we primates would do next. But we could always anticipate you bugs. It’s why we should call it the Bug War and not the Monkey War.”
“It’s the Monkey War,” Fernando insisted.
“Bug War,” Blaze insisted. “You lost.”
“We let you win.” Fernando clicked out another chuckle with his mandibles. It was an old bit between the two of them. He turned serious. “All quipping aside, if we don’t close the Onyx Gate, the Human species will undoubtedly be wiped out. And while the queen—”
Everyone jumped in, reciting the litany, “The queen, our mother, the source of all life, the one goddess eternal.” Their voices echoed through the bridge.
Fernando seemed happy at the respect shown to his mother and continued. “While she believes the Clickers will be able to repulse the evil, Bill and I have our doubts. Like our gunny pointed out, the Clickers can be predictable. We are methodical and logical and very lawful. That can be a weakness in war.”
“There aren’t Clicker or Meelah ghosts?” Trina asked.
“No,” Ling replied. “I believe that the Meelah have the same core energy as Humans, but we are a peaceful species, and our internal serenity repels the selfish desire and self-centered fear that create ghosts. Demons cannot possess us because they cannot find a foothold. Regardless, I care nothing for an afterlife. I am here, now, and that is enough.” The Shaolin sloth switched gears. “I would imagine you want to investigate the Onyx energy on the ruin.”
“I think we have to,” Blaze said. “I want to make sure it’s not Xerxes or something he left behind. We’ll do it quick.”
Ling nodded. “I will insert a sexual quip here. You had better make it a ‘quickie.’ Is that the right parlance?”
“Two jokes there,” Elle jumped in. “Insert and quickie. Is being around us giving you a dirty mind, Ling?”
&nb
sp; “Hardly.” Ling rolled his eyes. “You Humans are obsessed with your own genitals. So, to sum up, we will investigate the Onyx energy cluster and quickly. We don’t have time for an extended altercation. I would suggest you take Cali with you while Bill, Fernando, and I configure the SWD engine to use the ruin to create the space-time wave.”
Blaze agreed with taking Cali, however awkward the next fifteen minutes would be. “Is the Etrusca ruin big enough to create the wave? And has anyone ever tried to do this?”
Fernando chattered in clicks, discussing Blaze’s question with Bill. “Bill says, first off, that he hates all of you. Secondly, he does apologize if he accidentally kills us all. To use Terran parlance, he is going to, and I quote, ‘hot-wire’ the SWD to trigger a wave. It might destroy the ruin, but it will save our lives and let us continue our pursuit of Xerxes.”
Blaze didn’t care at all about the ruin. Such artifacts, however large, littered the known universe. “But has anyone tried this before?”
“No one travels in the Sargasso Expanse. We will be the first,” Fernando said.
Trina leaned forward. “Bill could write a paper on the operation. It might help others who are stranded.”
“Bill doesn’t care about others. He loves me and the Lizzie Borden,” Fernando said. “That is all my brother cares about.”
Blaze stood. “Let’s get on with it.”
Elle and Trina exchanged glances. Trina spoke first. “So, are we really going to destroy such a beautiful, ancient piece of art?”
Elle went next. “I agree with Trina. Maybe Xerxes isn’t worth it. Maybe we can find him again. We could send out a distress signal and hope someone responds.”
Blaze gave his sister a long stare. That changed her mind. “No,” she said, “we have to get to Xerxes. One Etrusca ruin doesn’t mean much compared to the lives of so many people. We have to shut down the Onyx Gate, no matter what.”
“Ling, you’re in command,” Blaze said.
He and Elle hurried from the bridge.
“I like that Trina girl a lot,” Elle said as they jogged down the corridor, headed toward the weapons locker and Cali’s cage. “Do you have a thing for her?”
“We kissed,” Blaze said immediately. “I like her. Back off.”
“You know I’m not going to. So, we’ll see who gets her in the end. She is off-the-charts hot.”
Blaze felt anger blast through his guts. But it wasn’t the time to confront his somewhat-evil sister and her insatiable appetite for his girlfriends.
At the weapons locker, they grabbed single gauntlets, which when activated would create spacesuits made from the same nanofiber as their armor. Blaze noticed these gloves had magical warding glyphs to prevent anything evil from possessing them. Elle had been busy doing something constructive and not trying to mess with his romantic life. Too bad the gear he’d had on Fleabugger hadn’t been blessed—his encounter with the demon motorcycle would’ve gone better. He’d have to make sure his crew used the blessed armor in future scuffles with Xerxes.
Blaze grabbed an extra glove for Cali. Elle had her fusion katanas, her fusion hand cannon, and a plasma rifle. Blaze would take his ax and Ugly Betty, but he also snatched up a double-barrel sawed-off shotgun, which he slipped into a holster. One chamber was loaded with salt, the other iron shot, in case it was a ghost. Into his pocket, he crammed a few shells filled with Terran silver, one of the rarest and most powerful commodities in the universe.
Sure, there was silver all over the galaxy, but Terran silver had unique properties that were critical when fighting certain monsters.
Weaponed up, it was time to confront Cali.
They stepped in front of the shredded metal of her door. Blaze’s sigh turned into a growl. “Let’s just get her suited up, and we’ll talk about all the romance bullshit later. We don’t have time for tears and processed emotions.”
“Processed emotions. Like hot dogs.” Elle shook her head. “You’re a pinche Neanderthal, Blaze.”
“Am not. They’re dead. I’m alive.” Blaze used his implants to override the lockout codes for the door.
The door slid open.
The room looked like it had been in a blender. The beds, every stick of furniture, the tapestries on the walls, the walls themselves, all had been chopped, sliced, diced, and then stirred vigorously. Despite the wreckage, the place smelled good, perfumed, with the slightly damp sweetness of someone recently showered.
Standing in the middle of the wreckage was Lupercalia Smith. Otherwise known as Cali. Her blonde hair fell to her shoulders, clean and recently combed. She was a wispy thing, barely over five feet tall. She was wearing a sky-blue tunic, one shoulder bare, her nipples showing in the thin fabric. She lifted her striking cornflower-colored eyes as blue as a winter morning sky. She was still as cute as the day he and his sister had met her on Deseret Prime. She had a little nose, slightly upturned, and a crooked smile—when she smiled, which wasn’t often. The only thing off about the slender woman was the thick iron bracelets on either wrist. They looked like manacles. In a way, they were, and they chained her down to her very soul.
“Hi,” Cali whispered. “Long time, no see.” Tears filled her eyes.
Like he’d said, Blaze didn’t have time for tears. “Listen, Cali, this is crappy for us to do, I know. But we might need you. We have about fifteen minutes to go down and investigate an Onyx energy cluster, don’t know if it’s a ghost, a demon, or something new. Will you help us?”
Cali nodded. The motion spilled tears down her cheeks. “It’s why you didn’t kill me, right?”
Elle couldn’t stop herself from running into the room and throwing her arms around the Mormon girl. The two embraced. “Cali, you don’t have to do this. You’ve proven yourself over and over. If you’re not ready, you can stay.”
“I’ll go, Elle. I want to help. I hate being trapped in this room.”
Blaze cleared his throat. “Come on, ladies. Time is ticking.”
The two broke apart, and Blaze tossed Cali the nanofiber glove. She eased it onto her hand, where it knocked up against her heavy iron bracelets. “Thanks, Blaze.” She came up to him and pulled him down so she could kiss his cheek. She smelled so good, fresh, and yet there was a hidden musk to her, something animalistic and dangerous.
“You’re welcome, Cali,” he said thickly. His brain was clouded with lust for a second, and he blinked it away. Not with Cali, not again, and he had Trina to consider now. “Okay, let’s go.”
The three moved down the corridor, Blaze and Elle loaded down with guns.
Cali didn’t need guns. She was a living weapon, the most effective piece of violence on the ship.
The vessel shuddered and landed on the ruin, the mooring clamps locking into place, which sent noise and vibrations through the Lizzie Borden. Ling spoke over comms. “We’re in position. There is an entryway directly behind the cargo bay. Doors are open. You are a go. I’ll set a timer. Fifteen minutes.”
The timer flashed in his display. He saw that he, Elle, and Cali were all at a hundred percent VHI. They would start out healthy, but he knew it wouldn’t be long before those VHIs would be flashing red and dropping fast.
“No spells,” he told Elle.
She patted the bag where she kept her snare spheres. “Only snaring spells. They don’t take much out of me, and we have to make up for the three ghouls you let loose.”
“Drop that right now,” Blaze said, tight-jawed.
On the second deck, the three triggered their gloves, and reinforced nanofiber armor spread out over their bodies, hardening into plates and creating helmets with transparent visors. These gloves had canisters of compressed oxygen on the back of the master gauntlet. The carbon dioxide they exhaled was stored in compartments and was used as propulsion in zero-gravity environments.
Cali touched her wrists, making sure her bracelets could open.
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Blaze told her.
She nodded. “Let’
s hope. But that’s why you are bringing me, isn’t it?”
“That’s the truth,” he said.
“And you’re super cute,” Elle quipped.
Cali blushed behind her visor.
“None of that now,” Blaze said. “We have shit to do.”
“Ruins to explore,” Elle added.
Cali finished it off quietly. “And ghosts to snare.”
THIRTEEN_
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Blaze opened the door into the cargo bay. It still showed signs of the battle with the spider breeder demon, scorched marks on the walls, a few random threads of spiderwebs littered the floor and mucked up the corners near the starcycle launch bays. However, Bill had welded a plate over the floor above the cellar, and all the spider corpses had been swept away.
Blaze thought about using the starcycles, but it seemed overkill. The ghost was only a few hundred yards down inside the Etrusca ruin.
The back doors were open, revealing the black metal of the mysterious structure. The exterior of the relic stretched off in the distance into darkness. The three walked through the cargo bay, onto the ramp, and then onto the metal. Their boots were magnetized, and the nanotech was smart enough to clamp and release, so it felt like walking. If the Etrusca structure hadn’t been metal, they would’ve had to trigger the carbon dioxide jets from their CO2 storage.
Blaze glanced up. His poor ship. The Lizzie Borden had survived the fight with the IPC, but it had left her wing clipped, and there were various holes and gashes across her gray, blue, and black surface. He’d fix her up right once they captured Xerxes.
The stars above them were faint, lost in the absolute blackness. The metal was smooth underfoot, millions of years old. Without oxidative stress or any kind of weather or friction, in the absolute void of space, the strange material could last another billion years. One thing about the Etrusca, they’d built their crap to last.
The gargantuan entryway into the structure was up ahead. The three crept along, lights from their helmets plunging through the vacuum and lighting their way. Blaze kept his fusion shotgun ready. Elle held her plasma rifle in both hands, though she’d attached a snare sphere to the side of her hip for easy access.
