by Aaron Crash
“I’m an auditor,” she said, pulling him along. “We ask questions while figuring out how systems and processes work, so talking a lot is in the job description.”
“Have fun mating!” Fernando called as they left the room.
Blaze had to grin at that. Neither the Clickers nor the Meelah would ever truly understand Human sexuality. But he didn’t think mating was on the agenda. He had to find Xerxes, with or without spells or Clicker genius.
“So, did Elle tell you that she kissed me?” Trina said.
“Yeah, not happy about that. But it has more to do with Elle than you. She always does this. I like a woman, and she comes in and tries to seduce her away.”
“Like with Cali?” Trina asked.
“She told you?” Blaze was dumbfounded. “I don’t get it. She’s so transparent, but you fell for it like a new mark on Fleabugger.” He shook his head.
“I didn’t fall for a thing,” Trina said sharply. “I know the score. And I also know that you aren’t Mr. Purity, Blaze Ramirez. Your sister is gorgeous, and in my line of work, I’ve rarely had beautiful women throw themselves at me. Men, sure, your gender are dogs. But someone like Elle? I was curious.”
“I don’t want to know about you kissing my sister. If you dig her, that’s fine. But I don’t want the details.”
They walked past Cali’s room. The door was closed. And locked. For all their safety. Blaze found himself back in the library room, alone with Trina. She was looking good. And though he knew she was full of painkillers, her eyes were clear. And green. Those green eyes, that red hair, and her pink freckled skin…all of it was making him woozy. Where did all those freckles go? He was dying to find out. Okay, maybe mating might be on the schedule.
Trina grinned shyly. “The kiss was okay. But I don’t want her. I want you.”
Blaze’s heart beat faster. “Well, I can help with that.”
“I bet you can,” Trina said. “But with everything going on, I don’t want to rush it. And I want to know about Cali. Do you still have feelings for her?”
Feelings. The F-word. That killed his mood. And Trina was right, the time wasn’t right for sex. He had to keep his head clear and focused.
“Okay, so, Cali.” Blaze was going to rip the band-aid off. “She was running with some bad people, though it wasn’t her fault. She’s from a Mormon pioneering family way off the beaten path. Deseret Prime is like New York City in comparison. She was in some backwater system called Millard, and her family got killed. She’s young, maybe sixteen, when the bad guys cart her off and teach her to be bad. Flash forward five years later, we get called in on a bounty, kick some ass, taking the pendejos in dead because they weren’t gonna come with us alive.
“That was on Deseret Prime. We take out the gang, we find Cali, and we’re about to put her down too, when she turns weepy and tells us her sad story. We take her with us. She comes on to me, and I tried to say no, but Cali was insistent, and I’m only Human. We get together. Elle sees it, steals her away, we have this huge fight, and Cali freaks out and tries to kill us all. We cage her. Elle is pissed. Cali’s hurt. And I just want out of the pinche drama. End of story.”
Trina smiled. “And yet, we have more drama than ever. So you and Cali are done?”
“We’re done,” Blaze said. And meant it.
“Then kiss me,” Trina said.
And Blaze kissed her until both were panting, and Blaze found himself shirtless. Trina was on him like his own sweat. They moved to the bed, pulling at each other, their skin on fire as their hearts pounded. Both were in their clothes, but they were in a full-on grind as they kissed, tongues touching and tasting.
Fernando came in on comms with the exact right news at the exact wrong moment. “Hello, my crewmates. I just received word from Bill. We found Xerxes.”
Trina winced. “Ouch. That was loud. But I heard it. The implants are working.”
Blaze sighed and tried to get some blood out of his groin and back into his head. “Send us the specs, Fernando, both to me and Trina. She’s online.”
“Oh, I see her,” Fernando said.
His display showed him a schematic of the Sargasso Expanse, the little that was mapped. Xerxes’s energy signature was in the exact middle of the expanse, waiting there.
“Fuck yes!” Blaze said. The demon was there, and he seemed to be waiting for something. Then the truth dawned on him.
It was Trina who said, “That’s a trap, Blaze. He lured us out here, and now instead of escaping, he’s waiting for you.”
“I love traps,” Blaze growled. “He thinks he can hunt us? Well, this pinche puta has no idea who he’s dealing with.”
“Kiss me again,” Trina said, smiling. “You’re sexy when you’re playing up the badass marine.”
“Baby,” Blaze smirked, “I ain’t playing up nothing. This is who I am, and it’s time I got back to work. The drama is over. Now we get our shit together to go take out the bad guy.”
Trina’s smile widened. “Fuckin’ A right.”
Blaze nodded in approval. “Fuckin’ A right. I’m gonna take a rain check on this action, but don’t kiss my sister again.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
Blaze stormed out of the library, walking tall and proud, carrying his shirt. He found Ling and Fernando on the bridge. They had the hologram emitters working to display a map of the Sargasso Expanse across the bridge.
Blaze walked around the hologram. The only thing on it was the red dot of Xerxes and a neutron star. He didn’t think that was by accident. Space around dead stars was strange. Lots of gravitational forces at work could cause some seriously wacky shit. “Trina and I think it’s a trap.”
“Undoubtedly,” Ling said. “The gravity well of the neutron star will have attracted any number of objects.”
“Like a graveyard of ships?” Blaze asked, remembering what the ghost guy on the Etrusca ruin had said.
“Potentially,” Fernando clicked. “The pocket anomalies could’ve hit any number of ships, disabled them, and once the crew died of thirst or oxygen deprivation, the derelict spacecraft could’ve drifted into the gravity well of the neutron star. Yet this star is strange, the dying light muffled somehow. As if something were around it.”
“I’m hating the Sargasso,” Blaze said. “Remind me to stay away from this funhouse of bullshit in the future.”
“Once we close the Onyx Gate, certainly,” Fernando said. “Did you tell Elle I was thinking about her?”
“That drama doesn’t matter now. We have our guy. How long before we reach him?”
Fernando checked with Bill, still in the engine room. “Bill hates you. And he says that we have about ten hours if our spacetime wave isn’t disrupted.”
Blaze laid out the plan. “We sleep. We wake up. We go in, weapons hot, and with Cali on point. No matter what, we get to Xerxes. Elle should be close to full power by then. Our job is to get my sister close, and she can exorcise him. Maybe once he’s out of the P13rce unit, we can snare him. Then we get the hell out of there before the neutron star grabs us. How does that sound to everyone?”
Fernando clicked a bunch. “Most likely, the neutron star will have a nebula around it, the remnants of its supernova. Vision is going to be troublesome, and our scanners might not function at optimal levels. We might not be able to see Xerxes before it’s too late.”
Blaze offered a solution. “We can track the Onyx energy despite the nebula, with magic if necessary. Elle will have her spells.”
“It’s not ideal,” Ling said. “Our enemy will have prepared his defenses. He will be waiting. As we’ve seen, he can imbue technology with demonic power. If there is a starship graveyard around the dead star, he will use it to kill us. That was his original intention when he boarded us during the IPC inspection. He was an assassin sent by his lord and master. He underestimated our prowess. He will not make the same mistake again.”
“No, he won’t,” Blaze said. “But I’m not sure he knows about Cal
i. She’s our ace in the hole. We unleash her, so to speak, at the last possible moment. And that gives us our surprise attack.”
“And once she is unloosed, how will we contain her after the battle?” Fernando asked. “Bill will be very cross if she does to our ship what she did when you all had your lover’s quarrel.”
“Humans,” Ling tsked, “your horniness removes you from the moment and causes you all sorts of trouble.”
“We have the bracelets,” Blaze said. “Once she’s ripped Xerxes a new asshole, we close them. Simple.”
They had their plan. It wasn’t great, but it was workable. And they’d done more with less on countless occasions. At least they knew some of what Xerxes could do.
Better yet, the demon was afraid of them. It had fled, and not too elegantly, after Elle had nearly captured him with her exorcise spell.
But hunting frightened prey did come with drawbacks. Push a thing into a corner, and terrible shit could happen.
But not this time. They were too close to getting some real info on the Onyx Gate, Granny, and Arlo.
Blaze left the bridge, hit the showers, which were near the cargo bay, and returned to the weapons locker and his hammock.
He was exhausted, but things were coming together. He and Trina just might have something. Things with Cali were better. His sister was still an evil bitch, but her wickedness might save their asses and the universe.
He had nothing else on the agenda except to sleep and pray a pocket anomaly didn’t screw up their spacetime wave or their plans.
He was just drifting off, enjoying the gentle sway of the hammock, when the door to the weapons locker opened. He knew who it was without opening his eyes.
“You should be sleeping, Elle,” he growled, majorly annoyed.
“We need to talk.”
“You are a bad dream,” Blaze said, eyes still pressed tightly shut. “If I ignore you, you’ll go away.”
“Yeah, probably not going to happen,” Elle said and rocked his hammock until he almost fell out. “Though you got the bad dream part right.”
He jerked upright. “Dammit, Elle, what? I need to sleep. You need to sleep and get your mojo back. Like you said, casting that little snare spell had you bleeding from your eyes and seeing things. So out with it, already!”
Elle sank her fist to her hip. She was in a gossamer-thin gown with little if anything underneath. And dammit, it was his sister, so it wasn’t like he wanted to look. He got up and started doing push-ups. It was better than hitting her. And he was behind on his daily exercises.
“Out with it,” he grunted.
“I couldn’t sleep. I’ve been going through Granny’s spells, the ones she gave me in the cookbook.”
“Cookbook?” he asked, pausing at the bottom of a push-up.
“Yeah, Granny wrote her spells in whatever book she was reading at the moment, which makes no sense, but Granny never cared much for sanity. Anyway, under a recipe for adobo pork, I found a cocktail for cooking up an Onyx booster, so I can inject myself and increase my mojo. She even left me three blessed silver syringes.”
“Sounds dangerous,” Blaze said, pausing at the top to flex his chest muscles while they were engaged. “What would that do to you on a spiritual level?”
“Nothing good,” Elle said. “But the other thing I found, under a chili Colorado with potatoes recipe, was a stasis spell. Basically, you can alter the Onyx energy in such a way to freeze your opponents, though it might have more mystical applications.”
“Cut the shit, Elle, it’s late. And once I do my sixty push-ups, you are going away. What do you mean mystical? I get the freeze part.”
His sister sighed. She walked right up to him so that he could see her red-painted toes and the black tattoo of a pentagram on her foot surrounded by red ink in a Celtic knot pattern. On the left side of her body only.
“So, I might be able to freeze whatever mini-me robots Xerxes throws at us. But the more mystical aspects? I might be able to subdue Cali. And I might be able to use it on vampires. Like if someone we know vamps out, I might be able to either slow down the process or, best-case scenario, reverse it.”
Blaze stopped halfway up. He then threw himself up, caught himself on his feet, and stood up. “Nombre de Dios, Elle, this is a game changer.”
She rolled her eyes. “See why I had to talk with you right away? Last but not least, I found a consume spell under a pork green chili recipe. I might be able to take demons or ghosts and incorporate them into my witchcraft. Use the bad guys to power up. It’s dangerous, it might kill me, but it’s possible.”
Blaze didn’t like the idea of that. Give Elle too much power, and she really might mutate into something as evil as the things they fought. But he wasn’t going to warn her. It would just piss her off, and he didn’t want them to be fighting all night. Instead, he asked, “Why haven’t you seen this before?”
“I generally go through the spells she wrote in craft and decorating books. Cookbooks? Who knew? I’m not much of a chef, so I only look at those when I’m bored, or I need to sleep. But tonight, I found it. Seems like fate to me. And I found a recipe for menudo that I’m totally going to make once I find some cow stomach.”
She was going on and on, but Blaze was caught up in the moment. The Onyx infections and consume spell troubled him, but not the stasis spell. That could be incredibly useful, especially when it came to vampires. They’d had to stake the hearts or stick fusion weapons into the heads of every single one of their crew that had ever been bitten. Blaze had staked MBassu and buried his ax into Natsu’s skull.
“No growling at me for talking too much?” Elle asked playfully.
“No, Elle. This is great news.” And Blaze meant it.
“I know, brother darling. But the spells are pretty complicated. And they’re going to take a lot out of me. I’m trying to figure out how to use the stasis spell on Xerxes. If we can’t beat him, maybe I can freeze him in the P13rce unit.”
Blaze pondered that. “Not sure we want that. I think you exorcise the bastard and then we snare him. But if you can at least slow him down, that would help. No, this is great news.”
“I thought so.”
The gunny nodded. “Okay, thanks for telling me, but good night. We need you at full power. A lot of this fight is going to come down to you.”
Elle smiled, and it wasn’t nice. “I’m glad you understand how important I am. Did Trina tell you about our kiss?”
Blaze frowned. “And there you go, ruining the moment. I’m just starting to like you, and then you go and screw up everything. You do know that Cali blames herself. She feels awful. That’s all on you.”
Elle sighed. “It is. I admit it. As to Trina—she’s not into me. I felt that right away. Didn’t stop me from Frenching her, but I admit defeat. You win this one. And Cali…” She paused to lean against a rack of plasma rifles. “I talked with her. I tried to convince her it was my own twisted choices, but she’s blaming herself. I messed up. Big time.”
Blaze didn’t respond. He was waiting for her to leave.
She saw what he was doing, and she left the rack and grabbed his arm. “Maybe I go after your women so you notice me. You only see me as a gun. If you had your way, after a fight you’d hang me up in this armory, so you wouldn’t have to deal with me.”
“God, you want to do this now?” Blaze thundered. “Can we not go into dramatics before the most important fight of our lives?”
Her nails dug into his skin. He showed no reaction. She went on with her rant. “Maybe I’m so twisted because like you, family has broken my heart, and I want to hurt you before you hurt me.”
He grabbed her arm. Her goddamn nails were hurting him. He bent her arm back, and this time, she showed no emotion other than the hatred on her face. “You need me as a weapon. I need you to be my brother. I need you to be kind to me. I need you…to love me.”
He let go of her arm and backed up. She was asking him to be vulnerable, and Arlo had whipped a
nd trained that out of him.
“Can you even say it, Blaze? You’re my big brother. Can you even tell me that you love me? We’re the only real family we have left. Either one of us might die during this fight. Tell me you love me at least once. In three years, you haven’t said it once.”
It was just three words, but he couldn’t make himself say them. Instead, he muttered, “We have to sleep, Elle. You and I won’t die. After this shit with Xerxes, we can talk. But not now.”
She cackled, sounding like the Onyx witch she was. “How typical. Good night, Blaze. You’re such a badass when we fight. But when the fighting is done, you are the biggest pussy I know.”
She left without another word.
Blaze was kicking himself as he got back into his hammock. He’d messed up. The regret kicked in, and his mind started up, chirping at him.
And yet, Arlo had taught him that sleep was the ultimate weapon. If you rested while your enemies dicked around thinking, worrying, or obsessing, you’d defeat them every time.
Blaze forced himself to sleep. And sleep he did.
Until the call came in.
Fernando clicked through comms, “Good morning, Gunny. Has your mammalian brain had enough rest so you can be your fullest and most creative self?”
Blaze was too tired to tap behind his ear, so he blinked on his display. He’d been out for ten hours. “Yeah, I am. Did you and Bill get any sleep? Or did you just cuddle for a couple of hours?”
“While I hear the sarcasm in your voice, I don’t understand why you think our sleeping arrangement is odd. Bill and I are brothers, friends, egg mates, children of the queen…” Then came the litany. “We did sleep, but since Clickers are so efficient in everything we do, we only needed two point five hours of rest. Bill’s arm is healing nicely. He would like me to pass on how much he despises you.”
“Good morning, Fernando. Give my regards to Bill,” Blaze said. “I’ll be up on the bridge soon. Are we in visual range of the neutron star’s nebula?”
There was a long pause. “Yes…but…the nebula. We entered it a couple of hours back. It’s extraordinary. Bizarre. The debris we see now isn’t a nebula. You…” Another long pause, which put needles of icy fear through Blaze’s stomach. “You need to come up and see for yourself. It’s quite disconcerting and inexplicable.”
