Brash and the Schrodinger Snare Ch. 07

But the Von Braun and the Rickenbacker had been built with an eye towards space, and they had been built good.

The Rickenbacker was basically a brick with guns. But like, one of those cool bricks that people threw at stormtroopers during a riot against dictators. It had four huge engines on the back for sublight travel and the back and belly were studded with huge railgun emplacement. The front was studded with laser focusers that looked like they'd be able to turn basically everything infront of the Rickenbacker into smoldering wreckage. The Von Braun was a lot bigger, but had fewer guns. And from the bridge – which was circular and based around a big old table in the middle that had projections of triangles and squares and lines – it was clear the Von Braun was a carrier.

Her captain was a tall, beautiful, busty redhead with a huge scar along her cheek which furrowed up to a gleaming red cybernetic eye. She eyed me as I walked onto the bridge with my friends. Her lips pursed. "Welcome aboard, Mr. Miles," she said.

"Hi!" I said, cheerfully. "Your ship is cool!"

"Thank you," she said, primly.

"Did you guys come all the way out here to find me?" I asked.

"Yes and no," she said. "UIS has detected a build up of various evil-aligned races and their forces out here – drow, duergar, orcs, ousters, mind flayers. And the UNN wants to get you home, young man." She put her hands on her hips. "Your parents would be mortified if they found out you'd run away from home!"

"I didn't run away from home!" I exclaimed. Then I kicked at the ground. "I was helping a space princess."

"It's true," Kira said, clasping her hands behind her back.

"Subspace portal opening, Captain!" A very Harry Kim-ish looking guy shouted from one of the consoles – at the same time, a bweep bweep bweep sound rang out. Captain Ryan swung around, frowning.

"I want the CSP on high alert – weapons free and missiles ready to lock."

"Aye aye!"

"Put the Rickenbacker on yellow alert," Ryan said, thrusting her finger at another few officers. "Tell Commander Fontaine that his forward lasers should be primed for missile attacks. The drow love to over-nuke."

"Aye aye!"

I leaned against the wall, beaming.

Ryan strode over to the table. "Bring up the portal."

The table's touchscreen flickered, then showed a visual representation of Junkstar and the surrounding space. The subspace portal was rippling about at the same place that the Rusty Dragon had emerged. I stepped over to the table when I saw that. "Oh, I bet it's that jerk Drow who came after us!" I said, nodding. "What had her name been?"

"Tizit," Alex said, grinning.

"More like Dumb...zit..." I paused. "No, it feels bad to make fun of her. She had a speech impediment. It's not nice to make fun of people with those."

"Well, she was also an evil tranch," Alex said, nodding.

"True!" I said, snapping my fingers.

"I don't like this," P90 said, quietly. "Why is there only one subspace portal? If there's been a buildup, wouldn't an entire fleet be coming through to nab you. Or do you think that the flayers, the orcs, the ousters and any other drow that are involved with this are just going to let Tizit get first dibs?"

"Maybe they're sending her into the Rickenbacker's guns as a funny prank?" Alex said. "I mean, evil is known for being...evil. And, ya know. Dumb."

"Hmm..." P90 frowned.

"The portal opened!" Ensign Faux Kim shouted. "Squad Beta has a camera on."

All of us craned our heads forward, Ryan narrowing her eyes as the video screen flicked to the crisp, clear footage of a go-pro stuck to the snout of a space fighter. The subspace portal was invisible to human peepers and dragon eyeballs (or at least, it was invisible to the camera, and since the camera was what I was seeing through, it was invisible to me.) Either way, it just looked to me like empty space was suddenly filled by a drowish frigate. The drow built big, ornate, and spiky. This profusion of spikes and cobweb filigree, combined with black on red color scheme, made it nearly impossible to tell which way was up on the ship. But, slowly, it dawned on me. That was up. That was back. And those were engines. But that back was invisible a moment later – the ship was spinning, slowly, on multiple axii. Axises? Axsis?

Ryan frowned, then looked to her sensor crew. "LIDAR and infared?"

"LIDAR shows no hull damage, no obvious hull breaches." Faux Kim tapped at his keyboard. A few other voices chimed in – he wasn't the only person operating the scanners. Soon, more words joined in. "Minimal heat signatures." "Laser bounce shows the ship's still pressurized, ma'am." "Minimal sound from the hull." "We're not reading any active weapons on the thing." "Magic sensors are being occluded by the hull's construction."

"Great," Ryan muttered. "We have a drowish frigate tumbling towards a populated planet..." She shook her head. "Commander Fontaine?"

"Yes, Captain?" A voice spoke from the table.

"Target that ship. I want it blasted into fragments," Ryan said.

"Captain!" Faux Kim cried out. "We're picking up a radio signal. Dash, dash, dash..." He paused, his lips moving silently as he counted out the sounds. "It's SOS. IT's coming from amidships."

Ryan looked like she had bitten into a lemon. Slowly, she saw me raising my hand and waving it at her.

"Me! Me! Me! Send me!" I squeaked.

Ryan sighed, loudly.

***

In the end, the argument had been way longer than just me waving my hand around saying 'me.' But Captain Ryan had to, eventually, admit that me, Alex and P90 were the best people to send. Her marines were all fairly green and didn't have flipping superpowers. Alex was a top tier Tremere blood sorceress and shapeshifter. I could teleport and throw around arcane and psionic powers. And P90 was fucking strapped. And I don't just mean her sick rad girl-abs!

But Ryan had still given us very specific orders: Find the SOS signal, then get out, then they blow the ship to hell and back again. Also, we were to stay as close to the skin of the ship as possible and if anything went wrong, to use the T-bombs that her armory officer had given us. The thermite packages would basically pew pew holes in the walls. Then, thanks to us being tough hombres, we'd just tumble out into space and our shuttle transport would scoop us up.

Boom!

Simple plan.

Alex was strapped into the wall of the transport across from me. "This is so cool," she said. "Is this what your life is normally like?"

"Nah! Sometimes, there's like, surprise tests in math class." I shivered all over. "That's the true terror."

"You three are all absolutely bugfuck insane," the shuttle pilot – a broad, tawngy, Texan-ey sounding man – said. He looked back over his shoulder at us. "If ya'll don't mind me saying so."

"Nah, it's cool!" I said, giving him a thumbs up.

Two minutes later, the shuttle had docked up against one of the drowish ship's airlocks. The pilot said that he'd undock the instant we were through and be back the instant we were back. I gave him two huge thumbs up, turned to face the airlock, then thumbed the open button. The airlock door cycled. P90 and Alex and I stepped in. The airlock door closed, then started to cycle. As we all stood there, watching the Drowish runes counting down to when the inner doors would open, P90 sighed.

"So, think it's safe to fuck Brash while he's got the Beast in him?" she asked.

"Fuuuuck, that's what I should have asked Dr. Polito!" Alex groaned, clutching at her face.

"Well, I should be safe. I'm a golem," P90 said, grinning. "And you're undead."

"Do you want to risk your lady bits being eaten by moss?" Alex asked, her hands over her face.

P90 shuddered from her pink hair to her pink toes. "Oh gods." She made a face.

"Ladies!" I said, holding up my hands. "There's a very simple solution! I'll just wear a Quarian style skintight space suit! Then I can bang you like how Rogue from X-men bangs people. With a full body, super skintight body condom!" I giggled. "It'll be like a new kink!"

P90 glanced at Alex. Alex looked less than satisfied.

"What?" I asked.

"Well, I mean, your cum's like, half the fun," Alex said, grinning.

"It's...I mean, half is a bit much..." P90 muttered.

"That's cause you're not a vampire," Alex purred. "Nothing like a rush of hot cum filling you up." She slid her finger from her short shorts to her belly, dimpling her red shirt invitingly. "Rrr."

Captain Ryan's voice rang out in our ears. "Ahem I say again, do you read me, Away team? Over." Her voice sounded like she was blushing. P90 looked mortified. Alex was giving me finger guns. I grinned.

"You're cuming in loud and clear!" I said.

"Belay that U, Mr. Miles," Captain Ryan snapped.

Which was when the airlock door opened with a hiss and the horribly desiccated drowish corpse fell, face first into the room, right onto my chest, his mouth open in a silent scream, and his eyeballs sunken pits right into the depths of Hell.

I did not scream like a girl.

I screamed like a very dignified dragon, thank you very much.

When we had gotten the horrifyingly desiccated corpse on the ground, P90 and Alex and I knelt down around him, looking him over. I frowned. "You recognize this kind of...corpsification, P90?"

"If I didn't miss my guess," P90 said. "It looks like he was level drained to death." She tapped the eyes. "But this? This looks more like pure necromantic energy. Nothing, and I do mean nothing, combines level drain with this amount of necrotic damage."

"Maybe it was finger of death?" Alex said. "That's a level 9 spell."

"...maybe..." P90 muttered, rubbing her chin. "But who the fuck uses a level 9 spell on a fucking common spacer?"

"Well, he was a drow spacer," I said. "They have, like, spell resistance. And innate magic."

"Yeah, but not 'I better hit it with a spell normally used to kill gods' spell," P90 pointed out.

I held up my finger, then stepped to the airlock. There, I tapped on the wrist light of my suit and shone it down the corridor. Four more Drow were sprawled on the ground in different poses. Some had fallen on their faces. Others were curled up against the walls. They all had that desiccated look to them. I gulped slightly.

"Is it possible to memorize a level 9 spell, like, a hundred times?" I asked, quietly.

"Nope," P90 said, her voice grim as she pulled out her fireball pistol. She held it up to her chest, then pressed her back to the wall, taking cover as she snapped up her pistol. "Lets figure out what happened here and get out fast."

"Yeah..." I whispered.

Alex held up her finger, stepping out into the corridor. "Wait, my bubbles and my scales." She smiled, slightly. "Before we get to stomping, lets remember: This is totally poots." She pointed down at the corpses. "Something big and real scary stomped through here and killed the entire crew. Do you really think it left someone alive?"

P90 and I exchanged a glance.

"No..." I admitted.

"So, that SOS is..." Alex waved her hand to me.

"Totes a trap," I said, frowning. "But this is also major necromantic mojo." I nudged one of the bodies with my toes. "And that gnome cultist had been turned into a brainless remote controlled flesh puppet weeks ago. So...the bad guys are hunting Kira. They knew we'd try and get rid of the bug, so one of them laid this trap. And now they've used one of their competitors to set even more of a trap. And you know what?"

I put my hands on my hips. "Someone who throws around ancient bioweapons as part of a trap and is willing to slaughter a whole bunch of drow who are nominally their allies is not someone I want to give a second chance. I say, we go and we kick his rump."

P90 grinned. "I like this plan."

"Captain Ryan here," Captain Ryan said over our earbuds. "Indiscriminate weaponsfire has been historically less than successful when used on high level threats. Mr. Miles, can we tie the Rickenbacker's weapon systems?"

"Absofruitly!" I said, cheerfully. "Okay! I have a new rad plan!"

Then, off we started.

Walking through the spooky ship would have been really spooky if I hadn't been with P90, a sexy badass candy golem, and Alexandress the Vampire Princess, my rad cool wife. And, also, if I hadn't been a flipping dragon. But even with all those cold hard anti-spook facts, it was still eerie to walk past so many corpses. Some had died running away. Others had died in their work stations. A few bulkheads had been slammed down, then blasted apart with some great, terrible force. And through it all, the only light came from red emergency lights, casting dark shadows as the lights shone up from the floor and cast our bodies up on the ceilings. We walked past mess halls and past armories and, finally, came to a narrow stairway leading up towards the bridge.

Here, the driders had died.

Desperately. With weapons and swords and guns in their hands.

But they had died.

I gulped, slowly, then checked the map of the ship – well, the scan of the exterior that showed where we were and where the SOS was coming from. My brow furrowed. "It's coming from near the bridge."

P90 checked her weapon. I summoned my psi-sword. Alex cracked her knuckles.

We came to the door leading to the bridge. I opened it and stepped in, looking around. The bridge was empty of corpses. The consoles were unmanned, and the large vid-screen showed nothing but blackness. However, hanging from the ceiling were several chains that had human sized cages hanging from them. And in one of those cages was...Captain Blackheart. He had managed to use a bit of string and some wire to grab onto the communication console's buttons and had adjusted them to send out the SOS. He looked over at us.

"Oh you," he said.

"Hey Blackheart!" I said, cheerfully.

"Ah. What a touching reunion," a cheerful voice said from the captain's command throne, which was faced away from us. The throne spun around, and for just a few seconds, I saw a humanoid figure seated there, a cat in their lap. But they accidentally pushed too hard and the chair spun all the way around back to the front. "Ah, damn it. Uh, one second." They pushed again – and the chair squeaked a quarter of the way around. "Uh, shit. Fuck." They pushed again and finally came to a stop.

Seated in the chair was a skeleton. They had clean white bones, but most of them were hidden, since they were wearing a tuxedo and a tophat. Their eyes glowed with two reddish coals of light and their cat, I noticed, was also a skeleton. Their skull's shape was clearly not that of a human, since they had two tiny horns. But in all, it was hard to tell what their original race was, considering they were missing all the muscle and skin. But they did have the bones!

"Ah..." The skeleton purred. "What a touching reunion."

I narrowed my eyes. "The Lich King, I presume?"

"In the bones," the Lich King said, clicking his jaw.

"I expected you to be spookier!" I said, thrusting my finger at him.

The Lich King's coal-eyes winked out, then flared back. "Excuse me?"

"I mean...you're not even in an evil robe or anything!" I said.

"...I...I slaughtered an entire ship of drow," the Lich King said, sounding a bit befuddled. "I infected you with the Beast. I've captured the souls of this ship in a phylactery, to torment for unspeakable research! I-"

"Yeah, but, like, you can't even wear a crown or some bling?" I asked, turning to Alex. "Seriously, what is with this guy?"

"I'd rate him as a ten out of ten," Alex said, nodding. "On the disappointment scale."

"Well, that's just hurtful..." The Lich King said.

"Yeah..." I said. "Captain, have you got a target lock?"

"A target what?" the Lich King asked. Then he sprang to his feet. "No, wait!"

Which was right when the railgun slung punched through the frigate's armor, five decks, the top of the Lich King's skull, through his ribcage, past his feet, and through ten more decks and out the other side of the ship. A glittering crystal phylactery flew from the Lich King's body and right into my palm. "Snatch!" I said, cheerfully. "Can I call a shot or can I call a shot?"

"You called that?" P90 asked as, in the distance, we heard the slurp and plorp of automatic sealant being deployed.

"Well, yeah, I wanted the railgun slug to fling the phylactery at me, all cool style!" I said, cheerfully.

"You did not," Alex said, sticking her tongue out at me.

"Fine, I didn't," I admitted. "But it was freaking cool! Now we have the..." I looked at the phylactery. Written across it was the word: Decoy Phylactery. My brow furrowed. "...the..." I slowly turned the phylactery around. I saw a ghostly figure in minature, slamming their fists against the glass. They were mouthing the words: Run! Run! Run!

My stomach slowly did a flip flop as a ghostly wind blew through the whole bridge. The cages creaked and squealed as the chains were shifted about. Alex looked back over her shoulder. She gulped. "Anyone else hear that?" she whispered. We all craned our heads and perked up our ears while, in the background, Blackheart desperately started to work his makeshift picklock at the cage's lock, muttering under his breath.

RRRT RRRT RRTT! The sound made each of us jump. One of the consoles had come to noisy, chattering life. Green text started to scroll across the screen as the drowish computer warmed up it's shockingly primitive screen technology. I leaned over. The green text said.

HELLO BRASH

I gulped.

DO YOU SEE THE STARS OUT THERE, BRASH?

The screen winked on – showing the view of the outside of the ship. The ghostly wind grew brighter and, in the very distant bowels of the ship, I heard a faint clink clunk. Clink. Clunk. Clink. Clunk. Clink clunk.

THEY WILL GO OUT, BRASH.

I looked up and the stars were starting to wink out. One after the other after the other, until the whole sky was nothing but a blackness.

AND YOU WILL BE ALL ALONE

"Uh, guys?" I looked back.

Alex was gone.

P90 was gone.

"...oh boy..." I whispered.

ALL ALONE IN THE NIGHT

Clink clunk. Clink clunk clink clunk. The noise was louder and louder now. I turned and saw that Blackheart was still there. I sprang forward and slashed once, cutting the bottom off the cage. Blackheart fell to the ground with a grunt. It was only then that I noticed he was dressed in nothing but a loincloth, with a lot of red welts on his back. He looked at me, then shrugged sheepishly, and suddenly I realized why he had wanted to get captured by the Drow. Hey, more power to him! Then I turned and saw that the ship had gotten even darker, if that were possible.

"Come on," I whispered, starting forward.

The stairs leading out of the bridge were empty.

Clink clunk.

The sound was coming from the bottom of the stairs. My heart ratcheted its hammering from slow to fast as I realized that, at the very edge of the ruddy red glow cast by my beamsword, there was a great hulking shape. It was all the more horrible for being undefined. I could have strained my eyes to see more details, but the scant sight of curved bone and sharpened horn, of glistening muscle and twisted sinew, of gaping holes and slowly breathing mouths, of glittering chain and rotten fur...all of it was enough to make me back up. I slammed the door to the bridge shut with a loud: "NOPE!"