www.thevalentinechronicles.com presents:
Bad Blood
by Paul L. Mathews
In the Garden
Once, she’d been a
beautiful and healthy young woman, but now Petrid was
an animated mannequin of stained wood and bent wire. Externally, all that
separated her from any other wooden puppet was an absence of strings and one
organic eye that stared out from her carved face. Unable to blink, her eye wept
constantly, tears staining the dark material of her high collared Victorian
dress.
She stood deep within Crepitus’s flagship—the Balefire—on the threshold of
the ship’s garden, the door to which was composed of bone and exposed muscle.
Like the rest of the vessel about her, the door bled. The ship had taken an
awful lot of damage escaping that black hole, she reflected, and now the red
muscle and pink flesh that made up the walls, deck and ceiling wept blood
whilst leaking tacky lymph fluids. The arching ribs that made the walls had
splintered, and the light provided by pearlescent
globes that nestled amongst the flesh was fitful and weak. The bones beneath
her feet were sticky with blood, and the air was tainted with the smell of
burnt flesh. She could feel her father’s ship struggling for breath as the
usual steady rhythm of its heartbeat slurred and skipped.
The Valentines, she
concluded, would pay for this.
Finally, with a protracted
squelch, the door opened, and Petrid stepped into the
garden beyond. It was like stepping into another world, and she often wondered
how her father managed to install such an oasis into his ship. But then, Crepitus was capable of many incredible things.
She now stood in a delicate
wooden arbour, the vivid green of its vines contrasting with the red of the
muscle door that flexed shut behind her. All she could see were high, solid
oaks which rose from amongst thick bushes and wild flowers. Yellows, purples,
pinks and blue stippled the vista about her, and the aroma of flora and fresh
rain wafted over her. The air was humid and damp, and condensation trickled from
the high ceiling—lost beyond the garden’s canopy of leaves—in a gentle summer
rain.
Petrid, however, hated this place, and had done ever since she
had been reborn here. The picturesque veneer was soon dispelled if one knew
where to look, subtle reminders lay hidden amongst the greenery. Amongst the
branches and plants, spiders nestled in thick, glistening webs, their thorax’s
dominated by eyes bloodshot and glaring, and flies with eyeballs for heads
swarmed about the bodies of small children almost lost amongst the fauna. Her
own eye flicked from side to side, and she could see her father’s bodyguards
stood amongst the trees, regarding her silently. Known as the Bone Valentines,
they were three skeletal representations of the hated Ivan, Gregor
and Vassilissa. Their precise nature escaped Petrid, as did many of father’s machinations. Were they
simulacrums? The Valentines from a parallel reality? Glimpses of the future? Whatever they were, they studied
her, stock still and silent. Closest was Bone Ivan, his skeletal hand resting
on a pistol that hung by his side. That, and the
symbol of the Omega Hammers on his camouflaged parka told her this was an Ivan
from an older time, when he had been a man to fear and loathe.
Before her lay a path paved
with the skulls of kittens and puppies. Her father’s voice drifted down it
asking, “What news?” Brittle and strained, his voice scratched at the air like
wire-wool.
She moved forward as the
Bone Valentines watched her. With her feet an inch from the path she glided
into a clearing at the centre of the garden. There she found her father stood
amongst a glut of potting benches, head bent as he focused on the tiny pots of
soil and seedlings before him. He didn’t bother to look up.
She clasped her hands
together behind her back and lowered her head. “We’ve *tk*
We’ve *tk* We’ve found the Troika,
father.” Her voice materialised before her wooden face, crackling and scratched
like an old gramophone.
He didn’t look up, but he
did pause. With his uniform jacket removed, his shirt sleeves were rolled up,
revealing wooden arms and hands. The rolled collar of his shirt betrayed the
point his frail head was stitched to his wooden neck. “Where?”
He began to work again, pushing a seedling into a hole with his wooden fingers
before kneading the soil to secure the fledgling plant.
“A *tk* A backwater planet near the D’Kothren
border. It doesn’t have name, just a
designation: JL *tk* JL *tk* JLY
751V. We are in position over the Troika and I have dispatched Calci to capture *tk* capture the
Valentines.”
He worked on a further pot,
dibbling a hole with his little finger. “How many units?”
“Ten
skeletal.”
“Not enough. Send more.”
She hesitated. “Father…
We’ve lost a lot *tk* a lot *tk*
a lot of units in both the fight with the Jaroth Pha and the escape from the black
hole. To send more *tk* more units would leave us
expose—”
“I don’t care. I won’t
allow Ivan and his pretty little nieces to escape me again. They are to be
brought before me so that I may kill them slowly. Do you understand?”
She nodded dutifully. “Yes,
father.”
They fell into silence, her
father concentrating on his plants. She waited as long as she dared. Perhaps he
would ask how she was, if she had been hurt in the battle against the Jaroth Pha’s
ship, or the escape from the Black Hole? Perhaps he would congratulate her on
finding the Troika?
But the silence remained.
Head still bowed, she stepped back. She cited the family motto, “We are the
dead,” as—with one last glance at he father—she turned and left, a tear rolling
down her wooden cheek.
Part One
Red Rain
The hammer’s engines were
at full throttle as Tatiana tried to outrun the Tower’s explosive death,
but the tiny gunship was subsumed by the brief, infernal wave of fire that
flashed across the lagoon as the Tower erupted. As the explosion receded,
the damaged gunship continued in a spin, the rear of the craft ravaged and torn
and the engines ruined. Smoke poured from it as it ploughed on, losing
altitude, before spearing through the trees that lined the lagoon and hitting
the ground. Momentum bore it forward, gouging a trench in the ash and dead
soil, until, still sheathed in smoke, it came to a halt, the hammer-headed nose
battered and bent, and the canopy smashed.
“Please, Boyd? Are you
there? Tatiana? Are you there? Do you copy?”
Katarina’s voice sounded
small and weak over the hammer’s radio. Tatiana’s eyes fluttered open. Thrown
clear of the hammer and lying in ash, she was numb,
the agony of her knife wound vanished. She couldn’t feel the bits of plexiglass she saw poking out her body. The earth beneath
her head vibrated and pulsed, rattling her teeth. She managed to lift her head
and focus on the hammer. It was still smoking, and a fire had broken out in the
rear of the craft, the black and Halloween orange muted by a disturbed ash
hanging in the air. Of Boyd and Stanztrigger there
was no sign.
Her head fell back to the
ground, and she looked into the sky. The haze hung over the whole island,
muffling the sound of the howling wind and thunder, and of the deep throb of
colossal engines that reverberated through the island beneath. Focusing above
that pall of ash, she could see the black clouds that hid the sky parting as a
mass of stained ivory began to emerge.
Finally the clouds
dissipated, consumed by intakes, vents and docking bays that punctuated a vast
expanse of bone—the underbelly of Crepitus’s
flagship—which blotted out the sky. It was scarred and cracked, fires burning
within its dreadful mass as it rained blood upon the island. Spotlights lanced
from the ship, sweeping the island beneath, and those all too familiar
troopships—built to look like sheep skulls—began to descend from its hangars.
“Is anybody there?” Still
Katarina’s voice bleated over the hammer’s radio. “Please. Is there anybody
there? Anybody at all?”
The answer was metronomic
and uniform. At first they were a vague outline in the curtain of ash that hung
about Tatiana, the impression of their bodies solidifying as they emerged from
the haze. Skeletal warriors moved with perfect synchronisation and purpose,
their bodies boosted by grafts of metal and cybernetic joints, their weapons
trained on Tatiana as they formed a circle about her and the hammer.
Tatiana laughed a shallow,
sardonic laugh. It was all over. Crepitus was here.
She forced herself onto her
hands and knees, then rose unsteadily on weak legs.
Her side began to pain her as she moved, penetrating the fugue that crowded her
senses. On her feet, hand going to her wound, she drew herself up to her full
height. As Crepitus’s skeletal warriors aimed their
guns at her, she appraised each in turn, turning in a slow circle as she
brought the full weight of her disdainful glare them.
Done, she stood whilst the
red rain fell upon her, coating her hair and her blue skin. There was no quip,
remonstration, or clever sound-bite as she set her jaw in defiance and awaited
the inevitable. She merely faced her death with dignity and poise.
Then the firing started.
#
Ivan and Vast forged
through the water as they bore down on the Troika’s flight-deck,
ignorant of the bulky vac-suits that would have burdened those less driven.
With the bodies of zombie Calci pricking its surface,
water—thigh high and dirty—choked the corridors. Ivan ignored them. Katarina. She was all that mattered. He had to reach her
before the Calci did.
Ivan and Vast reached the
flight-deck door, and Ivan punched at the door’s pressure-pad. The door slurred
open, and they pushed through. There stood Katarina, mesmerised as she watched
a tide of Calci advance across the beach. Through the
rain they marched, rhythmic and inexorable, illuminated by spotlights from Crepitus’s flagship.
“Katarina! Get down!” Ivan seized her shoulders and pulled her
backward, forcing her into a crouch with her back against the flight-deck’s
security console.
Ivan heard a metallic sha-chik beside him and crouched, interposing
himself between Vast and Katarina as he grasped the leading edge of the console
to smother her shaking body. With a heavy machine gun braced against her
expansive shoulder as its bullet belt trailed after her, the tattooed Vermiddion scowled and bared her teeth at the Calci, glaring through narrow eyes. With a mighty boom boom boom, she began to fire,
the report of her gun magnified by the confines of the flight deck.
Katarina cried out, hands
going over her ears as she fell forward in to Ivan
#
Tatiana dove to the ground
as soon as the fighting started. Falling heavily, she ignored the pain and
looking up. From behind the ring of Calci, from
amongst the dead trees and the smoke from the crashed hammer, Moreaus emerged, guns blazing. Ramshackle they may have
been, but they’d come to fight, fangs bared and snarling as they settled into
two rows, one knelt and one standing. The muzzle-flash from their guns daubed
the night orange and red, and the lattice work of bullets threaded the
clearing.
The Calci
fought back, turning to face their new assailants and firing, their masers
spitting invisible death at the marauding Moreaus—but
the Calci were outnumbered two to one. Taking out
only a fraction of the Moreaus, the Calci fell, their bones shattering and their cybernetics
failing as they hit the ground. One staggered by Tatiana, collapsing to the
ground beside her as its skull vanished in a corona of bone. Its
maser-rifle—hot and steaming in the drizzle—fell by her hand.
The heat pricked her skin,
and instinct told her to take it, to use it. Her little finger twitched, moving
to touch the gun, but the thought of Ivan and his disapproval flashed though
her mind. She moved her hand away.
She looked up again. With a
howl, three scythes—thin and dirty gunships with an
array of weapons packed into their noses—settled above the clearing, running
lights blinking in syncopation with the resonance of their
Behind her a camouflaged
armoured troop carrier smashed through the trees, headlights blazing as it
stopped beside the downed hammer. More Moreaus spilt
from a door in its side, and a dog-headed gunner trained its turret-mounted
machine gun upon Tatiana. As the Moreaus left the APC they brought up SMGs and
side-arms, aiming them at Tatiana as they shouted, their voices lost under the
uneven rumbling of the vehicle’s engine.
Wide-eyed, she watched them
move toward her, trying to gage their intentions. What were they going to do?
Would they kill her? Eat her? Her hand moved back to the fallen maser-rifle.
#
Still shielding Katarina,
Ivan looked over his shoulder and out of the flight-deck’s smashed canopy. Vast’s bullets spewed forth, sweeping across the beach and
the Calci. Through the rain and ash he saw the
forward most Calci convulse as their bodies
splintered and snapped under the withering fire, falling to the floor in shrouds
of fragmented bone and sparks. The rows behind returned fire, the pitter patter of their maser rifles almost childish and
petulant compared with Vast’s monstrous gun.
Their invisible maser beams
splashed across the hull of the flight-deck, jabbing ineffectually at its
armoured hide. Little blossoms of sparks flowered around the canopy, and about
Ivan panels and consoles buckled and melted as beams of invisible energy tore
into the flight-deck’s interior.
He turned back to Katarina,
and kissed her hair, shouting over the sound of Vast’s
gun. “It is okay, Katarina. I am here, yes? I will protect you.”
And that, he reflected,
means finishing off Crepitus. Once
and for all.
#
The Moreaus
closed in on Tatiana, forming a circle about her and the hammer. Her hand
closed about the maser-rifle. Gripping it, she took a deep breath, trying to
find her calm place. Calci were one thing, but these
flea-ridden scum-bags? If they wanted her, then they’d have to fight for her.
She hesitated. What would
Ivan think? What he say if he knew she’d resorted to
using a gu—
A boot came down on her
hand, trapping it against the rifle. She yelped in pain, looking up. A mangy
lion-headed Moreau—young and malnourished—glared down at her, teeth bare. She
had the briefest moment to realise she’d seen this one before—back on the Tower
as he’d been dragged her off the Dogfish—before he crouched, shifting his
weight onto her hand as he forced the barrel of his pistol against her neck.
“You!” he said. “You
brought the Calci here. Why?” She couldn’t answer,
agonised as her hand was slowly crushed beneath his boot. “Answer me!”
Pawing ineffectually at his
ankle, kicking feebly, she looked onto his glaring face. “Get…” She winced. Her
voice was stretched and hoarse, her throat scarred by her screaming in the
Cook’s galley. “Get your damned foot off my hand, you animal,” she said through
clenched teeth.
“Do as she says.”
Tatiana froze. Boyd! She
shifted again, looking over her shoulder toward the smashed hammer. Sure
enough, he stood by its nose, leaning heavily against its blackened hull. With
one hand he clutched his shoulder, blood seeping from between his fingers, with the other he aimed a SMG
at the lion.
“Do as she says, or I blow
your bloody head off!
With a uniformity of
movement worthy of the Calci, the Moreaus
raised their weapons and trained them on the Scot. Above them, the scythes shifted, weapons and spotlights zeroing on him. Unfazed, his
aim didn’t waver. “I’m not in the mood, boy. Let the girl go, and no-one dies.”
“That’s enough.” Emerging
from the smoke as the rear of the crashed hammer, Stanztrigger
moved toward them, his goat-legs unsteady and wavering. He too nursed a wound
on his arm, and his long nose, torn ears and horns were lost beneath a choking
of blood. “Leave the girl be.” Head lowered, jaw
clenched, his stare and the baring of his bloody teeth told everybody he
wouldn’t ask again.
“Stanztrigger?
You’re alive?” The lion’s voice rose an octave.
Tatiana looked back to the
lion, who, in turn, looked at Stanztrigger,
forehead creasing as his eyes narrowed. Then his ears twitched as he looked at
Boyd and Tatiana in turn. He shifted his head to one side to spit, then stood,
lifting his foot from Tatiana’s hand as he lowered his pistol.
Stanztrigger limped forward. As Tatiana curled up and hugged her hand,
she watched the goat-headed Moreau. His movements were pained and slow, and he
winced with every step as he said, “How many?”
“Twenty
five of us, with three scythes and the APC.”
Tatiana almost didn’t hear
the answer. Boyd had reached her now, and he knelt to take her up in his strong
arms. She melted into him, and a painful pressure gripped her chest and throat
as she began to sob, bravado stripped away as she was momentarily overtaken by
her fear and relief. “It’s okay, Princess,” he
whispered, kissing her hair as he stroked it. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
“You’re bleeding!” Her
damaged voice rose in pitch, and she made a futile attempt to grip the rent
flesh on his shoulder together. Her fingers merely slithered amongst the blood.
“I’m… Stop it.” He took
hold of her wrists, pulling her hands away as he looked at her. “Never mind me.
Look at you. You’ve half the hammer’s bloody windshield sticking in you!”
Walking past the lion, Stanztrigger knelt beside Tatiana and Boyd, arms resting in
his thighs. “You are both okay?”
“We’ll live, but the
Princess needs help—”
“I’m fine—”
“My
arse!” He turned toward the Moreaus, calling out, “Medic? Medic!”
Tatiana watched his mouth
as he talked. Oh, to taste those lips again. She gathered herself, forcing
herself to concentrate. Reaching into his flak-vest to produce his pince-nez, Stanztrigger tried to fix their tiny golden frames across
the bridge of his nose, only to discover they were bent, the lenses shattered.
With a baleful look, he put them away, squinting hard to see Boyd. They looked
into each other’s faces, and a silent communication seemed to pass between
them. The Moreau’s eyes flicked to Boyd’s wounded shoulder, and the Scot gave a
weak smile and a subtle nod. Meanwhile a scrawny looking Moreau with an otter’s
head and a first-aid kit crouched beside Tatiana and began to examine her
wounds.
Standing with a grunt of
pain, Stanztrigger patted Boyd on the other shoulder
as he turned to converse with the lion.
“How are you, young lady?”
The otter was unpacking dressings from his kit.
“She’ll be okay,” Boyd
said, “but she needs these shards removing. The wounds will need to be
sterilised and dressed.”
Their voices faded into the
background as Tatiana turned to Boyd and just stared at him, almost unaware of
the otter beginning to gently extract the plexiglass
from her numb body. His breathing was strained and raspy, his arms were shaking,
and he smelt of…cologne?
She stiffened, eyes
narrowing. Why would he smell of cologne?
#
Vast
ceased firing, smoke coiling from the red-hot barrel of her machine gun. Satisfied the Calci must be
destroyed, Ivan stood, muscles shifting like an antiquated steam train. He
squinted through the smoke, surveying the beach. It was a scrapheap of
decimated Calci. Their ruined cybernetics spat sparks
into the night, and the blood from Crepitus’s ship
ran down the bone and metal like rain on a windshield. The smell of burnt
copper and gunpowder overpowered the night air.
Even Ivan, with his history
of violence and martial experience, felt his stomach lurch at the sight of this
crimson downpour. He squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath to calm
himself. “Good work, Vast. Now get to hangar, yes?”
Vast nodded, and left the
flight-deck, the dirty water that rose to her thighs doing little to arrest her
swift, powerful strides. As the Vermiddion left, Ivan
turned back to Katarina, reaching down to take her under the arms and help her
stand.
“You’re alive! Thank God!” Katarina said, voice choked. She threw her arms about him.
“I thought you’d been killed!”
“I am fine.” He pushed her
away, looking at her. She was sodden and shivering, wet hair plastered to her
face. Her thin stripy jumper clung to her body, and her make-up had run,
leaving black trails of mascara down her face. She needed to get into some dry
clothes—but not yet. There was still much to do.
He smiled at her and gave
her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. With his other hand he tapped at the comm set in his hear. “Dolly? Do
you copy? Are you there, Dolly, yes?”
A brief burst of static in
his earpiece heralded the serf’s response. “I am here, Master Ivan.”
“Where is ‘here’?”
“Engineering. I’m currently jacked into the Troika’s systems.”
“Can you get her airborne?”
“Affirmative. The
“Do it, yes?”
“Very
good, Master Ivan. Doll Two out.”
#
Stanztrigger knelt beside Tatiana and Boyd once more. “Princess
Tatiana, your vessel, the Troika, will it still fly?”
“Um .…”
“It was buggered when I
left,” Boyd said. Tatiana still stared at him. He was almost ashen, and she
could have sworn he’d lost some of the weight about his face. And what was that
strange sheen on his skin? Sweat? “But it may still be able to go sub-orbital.
Why?”
Stanztrigger turned to look at the Scot. “Because we
need to get up there.” He jerked his thumb toward Crepitus’s
ship as it brooded over them. “The island’s crawling with Calci.
To have any chance of killing Crepitus, we need to
get off the ground and take the fight to him.”
“Agreed,” Boyd said,
nodding. “I’ll need to contact the Troika.”
“Comm
set,” Stanztrigger said, turning and snapping his
long fingers at a further Moreau. “Now.” The Moreau—a
feline female—moved quickly to stand beside him. Tatiana fancied her gaze
lingered on the lion, a shy smile touching her lips. She removed a comm set nestling in her ear, and began handing it to Boyd.
The cat paused. “You?” the
Moreau said to Boyd. “You’re the one who killed Stat.”
“Not now, Lorelei,” Stanztrigger said.
“Just give him the set.”
#
“Ivan? D’ya
read me? Are you there, over?”
“We’re here, Boyd.” Sitting
at the Troika’s engineering station, up to his chest in dirty water,
Ivan stabbed at the consoles intransigent instruments. They were loathe to surrender anything more than garbled fragments of
diagnostic reports. “Where are you?”
“I’m not sure. Somewhere on the island.”
“Is Tatiana with you?”
Afraid of the answer, the question almost caught in his throat. Out of the
corner of his eye he saw Katarina—sitting at the Troika’s flight
controls and strapping herself in—pause, her hand going to her comm set as she too awaited the answer.
“Yes, and she’s alive.”
Tatiana was alive! Thank
God! Ivan weakened slightly, and he squeezed his eyes shut. He took a deep
breath and exhaled through purse lips. Tears welled in his eyes. “Is she okay?
Is she hurt?”
“Not now, Ivan. We need the
Troika. Can it fly?”
“We’re working on it now,
yes?” Even as he spoke, the water about him shivered, and he could feel the
throb of the
“Get the Troika
airborne, and home in on this signal. Boyd out. ”
#
“Calci!” Tatiana
shouted as one of the scythes hovering over the clearing shuddered and yawed
whilst festooned in small wreaths of flame.
In typically uniform lines
they emerged firing from the trees. Surprised, a handful of Moreaus
fell instantly, eviscerated by the molecular agitation of the Calci’s masers.
“Return fire!” Stanztriger shouted. Knelt on the ground, a fresh
tourniquet about his bicep, he sprang to his feet, shrugging the startled medic
aside. “Single rounds! Selective
fire!”
An explosion rocked the
ground as the damaged scythe—spinning out of control—thundered into the midst
of the Calci and vanished in a ball of flame. Bits of
Calci and hot metal whistled through clearing,
bouncing off the hull of the downed hammer and tearing holes in a handful of Moreaus, the APC, and the dog
handling its heavy machine gun.
“Stanztrigger!
Here!” Tatiana rolled away from the medic attending her wounds and snatched up
the fallen maser rifle. As the Moreau turned to her, she tossed him the weapon.
With a fluid motion he caught it and turned back, opening fire.
“Perimeter down!” the lion shouted.
“Grenades and support fire!”
On cue, the outer Moreaus dove to the ground, firing. Those at the centre of
the formation let loose with grenade launchers and SMGs,
as a fresh Moreau manned the APC’s heavy machine-gun.
Above them the two undamaged scythes spat streams of bullets at the besieging Calci.
A Moreau fell beside
Tatiana, and its blood splashed her. She couldn’t contain a startled shriek,
and she kicked against the ground in an attempt to crawl away from its rent
body. Boyd stopped her, however, wrapping a thick arm about her.
“Tatiana! Take this!” Boyd
shouted over the furore, thrusting a pistol in her hand. “No arguments!”
“N…” She faltered,
Suddenly the smell of cologne was so much stronger. She felt a little
light-headed. She looked at the pistol in her hand with a dim mixture of
curiosity and revulsion.
“Take it!” He paused as he
began to fire again. Three rapid shots decimated three Calci
skulls.
“No, Boyd,” she said.
Shoving the pistol into his belt she gritting her teeth and—by instinct
alone—put her wrist under her nose to block the smell of after-shave. “But I
will take this.”
She snatched the comm set from his ear and put it on. Ignoring Boyd’s
exasperated look, she crouched low as bullets, shrapnel and maser beams stabbed
by her. “Kat? Can you hear me? Is the Troika
ready?”
If there was a response,
she didn’t hear it. One of the scythes was torn in half by a fierce flurry of
explosions, the flaming wreckage spiralling through the raining blood to fall
on the battle beneath.
A pair of Calci gunships burst out of the
curtain of rain and hanging ash. Skull shaped and with an exhaustive array of
weapons, one circled the remaining scythe, the other settled over the Moreaus. Bullets pinged off its hide as it lowered its
nose, training its weapons on Tatiana and Boyd. Frozen in place, Tatiana stared
at the vehicle—at its blank, soulless eyes—and waited to die.
To be continued...
© 2008
Mathew David Spaull. All rights reserved.