Rescue From Planet Pleasure (19 page)

Chapter Thirty-two

I paced inside the dining room, flipping out about my dismal future. In two days I was to be sliced open, reconfigured into a sex machine, and forced to stoke a train of Nancharm señoritas. In the end, regardless of whether I helped the Nancharm figure out their boner problem, I’d be scrapped and recycled.

The fate for the rest of the crew wasn’t any rosier. Carmen and the chalices would be sold at auction. Jolie’s fate hadn’t been discussed but I was sure it involved wearing a collar and a leash and eating extraterrestrial kibble.

But there was a grain of hope. Carmen’s former master, Blossom the Wah-zhim pilot, circled the planet with undefined plans to get us out of here. The flip side was that Moots knew about Blossom and had warned Carmen and me to give up trying to escape.

Jolie entered the room, the chalices trailing after her. She wore her pistol harness with the .45s snug in the holsters and carried my leather jacket. “Here.” She tossed me the jacket.

“What’s this for?”

“We need to shake this funk we’re in,” she replied. “Putting our gear on might put us in a more receptive frame of mind. You know, channel the universe for possibilities, yada, yada.”

I slid my arms into the jacket and enjoyed the feel of leather and the weight of the big revolver against my chest. Already I could feel my thoughts shifting into kick-ass mode.

The chalices huddled side-by-side and gazed at me with tense expressions like they were sheep and I was the shepherd who would lead them to salvation. Too bad my neck was numero uno on the chopping block.

Jolie reminded. “We can’t forget what’s at stake.”

“No chance of that.” I tapped the butt of the revolver. If we had to shoot our way out, Moots would be the first to interfere and if so, these bullets were meant for her. I could see her shudder under the impact of repeated .357 magnum slugs. I’d already drilled her once, and I didn’t relish drilling her again. Then again, the Nancharm hadn’t shown any concern over our guns. The weapons technology was probably so ridiculously simple that our pistols didn’t even register as dangerous. That might be a fatal oversight on their part. Or a laughable mistake on ours. When the time came for violence, we might be better off hitting the Nancharm with spit balls.

Jolie glared. “There’s more at stake than our skins. I mean when we get home.”

“Home?” the chalices repeated in chorus.

Cassie asked, “Why do you need guns at home?”

“There’s a welcoming committee waiting for us who is not very welcoming,” I answered. How much had happened back in New Mexico since Jolie and I had left? Had Coyote recovered? Had Phaedra and her minions harmed him? What about Marina? And his girlfriend, Rainelle? Did the Navajo skinwalkers still protect her? I was already wound plenty tight over our problems here; thinking about Phaedra took up the remaining slack and my anxiety squeezed into a chokehold.

Toby stepped away from the others and approached me. Juanita and Cassie clasped each other’s hands. “Whatever you have planned, we’re in,” Cassie said, her voice quaking.

I panned their faces. Juanita. Cassie. Toby. Irsan. They each looked so desperate for escape that I’d bet any one of them would throw their bodies on barbed wire if it meant the rest of us could run across their backs to freedom.

I noticed Carmen was missing and asked where she was.

“The main bedroom,” Juanita answered.

I left the dining room and found Carmen sitting in an armchair, her eyebrows and face pinched in deep, sullen meditation. If I ever brooded this hard, I’m certain smoke would shoot out my ears. Two carafes, one for coffee and the other for blood, rested beside her cup on the table. Jolie and the chalices crowded into the room, but Carmen made no notice of our presence. None of us dared disturb her, and we waited for her to ease out of the trance.

With a faraway look in her eyes, she announced, “Remember you told me that I would sense mind probes?”

The floor seemed to shift beneath me. Our dilemma had just gotten worse. “You felt them?”

Carmen nodded. “She knows we’re here.” Her expression darkened and her gaze cut to our guns. “You’re going to need those. The Nancharm won’t be able to protect us.”

“From who?” Cassie asked.

My nerves tightened. I knew the answer though I wish I didn’t.

The alarm exploded with a loud wail. Ceiling panels flashed red. The hologram reappeared, blaring the message: Intruder Alert. Priority One Lockdown.

Carmen said, “Phaedra.”

***

Chapter Thirty-three

Phaedra. The name sent questions ricocheting through my head. How did she get here? Doubt it was a spaceship. Had to be a portal through the psychic plane. But how? Coyote had said our access to D-Galtha came only after a hundred and more years. Something was very wrong. I retrieved my revolver. Jolie already had one of her .45s in hand.

The alarm’s blare echoed through the building, so loud it hurt our ears. The hologram kept flashing:
Intruder alert! Intruder alert!

“Phaedra’s on D-Galtha?” Jolie yelled the question.

I asked Carmen, “How can you tell it’s her?”

She stood, moving slowly as if fighting a trance. “I just know.”

I remembered that creepy feeling. Years before, when Phaedra’s thoughts had wormed into my mind like clammy tentacles.

The chalices gawked at Carmen and asked all at once. “Who is Phaedra?”

I looked back at them.
Where to begin?

The alarm faded and the hologram warning disappeared, replaced by an image of Moots. “Stay in the building. A guard force is on the way.” Her image blinked off.

Phaedra’s arrival had triggered a massive alarm from the Nancharm. Now they dispatched guards to protect us. Meaning Phaedra was on the move. If they knew where she was, why didn’t they stop her? The Nancharm could demolish planets, obliterate civilizations, yet I feared their weapons and defenses were no match for this maniacal ingénue and her psychic superpowers. We were in deep trouble.

A worried grimace spread from chalice to chalice. Cassie said, “Whoever this Phaedra is, she must be bad news.”

“In the worst possible way,” I replied.

“What’s she doing here?” Juanita asked.

Carmen blinked as if shaking off the last of the spell. “Phaedra has come here to kill Felix, Jolie, and me.”

Toby and Irsan’s expressions warped into frowns. Cassie and Juanita asked in chorus, “Why?”

I replied, “Because she knows that only Carmen can stop her.”

Cassie looked at me. “What about you?”

I tightened my grip on the revolver. “The last time Phaedra and I met one-on-one, it didn’t end well for me. She intends to end what she had started.”

The chalices volleyed questions. “Who is this Phaedra? Why can’t the Nancharm protect us? Stop her from what? What can Carmen do?”

Carmen managed a grin that tempered our doubts. “Now I understand why Phaedra fears me. Every time she tries to get into my mind, I can read hers. The intuition the aliens prize in me has that unexpected benefit. Jolie, watch the chalices. Felix and I are going upstairs for a look see.”

Carmen and I left the dining room, went through the kitchen, and entered the hall on our way to the escalator. The door from the bedroom stretched open. A Nancharm guard wearing an oversized suit rode through on a hover scooter. The suit shimmered as if it was made of mercury. Thick sleeves encased the arms, and a cylindrical helmet with a dark face-shield covered the head. A small dish antenna jutted from the top of the helmet. One arm had a spatula-like device fixed to the wrist and the other had a trident. A second Nancharm guard with similar arm attachments waited behind on another scooter.

“The perimeter around the building is secured,” the first Nancharm announced through a translator box attached to his helmet. “Our priority is to stop the intruder. Stay out of the line of fire.”

“No problem.” I backed away. I wasn’t going to let myself become collateral damage. But if these guards were here, they must have assumed Phaedra might breach their other defenses.

The two guards turned about and returned to the main bay. The door between us shrank until it was barely large enough for a Yorkie.

“They don’t stand a chance,” Carmen said.

“How do you know?”

“Because I saw into her mind. She knows how to beat the Nancharm.”

Minutes ago, I was in a funk because I had two days before Dr. Fastid put his alien mitts on me and sliced me open. Now I was on a shorter countdown to a bigger disaster, and my mind clicked like a revolver cycling through empty cylinders as it searched for a solution to our worsening troubles.

Carmen and I climbed the escalator to the second floor. That Phaedra feared Carmen was the key to an answer. “What’s this connection between you two?” I asked.

She gave a weak shrug. “It’s not like I can open the top of her head and rummage around. But her thoughts come to me.”

“How does that help us?”

“At the very least, she loses the element of surprise. Down the line, there might be more that I can do.”

The door onto the balcony opened and we stepped onto the balcony overlooking the paved apron around our building. A dusky twilight muted the evening’s colors. The landscape scrolled toward a yellow horizon that blended into an indigo sky dotted with stars. D-Galtha’s pale moon floated beside the planet’s ring. Other buildings glimmered around us, and flying saucers zipped through the air like schools of silvery minnows.

A fireball rose in the distance, and though it was but a yellow and orange smudge, I sensed the danger it promised. Phaedra was doing a Godzilla rampage across the Nancharm’s turf.

The fireball faded into a cloud of smoke. A faint green light passed through the base of the smoke and moved in our direction. The light was a tiny glowing dot like a colored lamp on a faraway porch.

A thought clanged through my head, Phaedra announcing herself.
I’m here!

A hatch opened in the apron below us, and two more guards on hover scooters popped into view. They glided across the apron, dismounted the scooters and turned to face the light.

Two Nancharm saucers zoomed overhead, powerful and menacing, racing like a pair of fighter jets to obliterate the enemy. A crimson beam shot from one saucer toward the light. The beam missed and set the ground on fire. The beam flicked off, then flicked on again, this time aiming at the second disk, its wingman. It exploded with a sickening boom and showered the ground with burning debris.

The first disk continued on its path toward the green light. Unable to control his weapons, the pilot must’ve decided on a kamikaze run. A cheer in appreciation of his ballsy self-sacrifice tingled through my kundalini noir. But the disk abruptly veered away, knifed the ground, shattered, and exploded.

My congratulatory cheer congealed into a sinking, dismal feeling. Phaedra was using her mental powers to seriously mind fuck the Nancharm. Of what I knew about the aliens, at least the ones who had visited Earth, they were aware of the psychic dimension. They had invented the psychotronic projector, in fact the mission of the Roswell UFO was to test it on humans. As for what they knew about psychic powers, they were still at the trying-to-light-a-fire-by-rubbing-two-sticks-together stage while Phaedra was well into its laser inferno capabilities.

I expected more fleets of Nancharm flying saucers, but none arrived. Explosions lit far up in the sky. What was going on?

The light kept approaching and was now a half-mile away. The emerald bubble floated over the rolling, vegetated terrain. Our two Nancharm guards skated to the edge of the apron and raised their arms to point the attachments at the light. I had the impression of two squirrels baring their teeth at an oncoming freight train.

“If the Nancharm are dead meat,” I said, “we are screwed.”

“Let’s not underestimate ourselves,” Carmen replied in a flat tone. “We’ll let Phaedra do that.” She glowered and squinted at the light. “She’s going to blast her way in.”

“How?”

“Her minions. She’s going to use them as suicide bombers.”

I had to consider that a moment before it sank in. Phaedra was even more diabolical and depraved than what I thought was possible.

The light was now close enough that I could recognize her glowing figure in the center of the green bubble. She stood on a platform on an alien tricycle tractor, an elephant-like creature at the controls. The bubble must be a force shield. Six more figures crowded beside Phaedra and the driver inside the bubble. Was the driver Wah-zhim? A hunch told me that it wasn’t Blossom. If it was Wah-zhim, why help Phaedra? What was going on? I thought Blossom was going to help us escape.

Giant electric arcs cracked from the Nancharms’ tridents. The arcs dazzled my eyes and their heat spanked my face. They zigzagged toward the bubble and splattered clouds of sparks where they made contact. Phaedra and her crew kept approaching. The arcs looked strong enough to slice through an aircraft carrier and here they had no effect.

I waited for the Nancharm to let loose another volley but they kept quiet. Their armor suits began to vibrate, then shook like stockpots boiling over. The Nancharm flicked their arms and their weapons clattered to the pavement. They desperately twisted their helmets to yank them off.

Yellow froth seeped from the helmet collars, the shoulder sockets, their wrists, and pooled underneath their bodies. The shiny armor panels turned blue like the chrome of overheated exhaust pipes. Smoke vented from between the panels. Sections popped loose and clanged to the ground. Clouds of smoke roiled from inside. Phaedra had found a way to cook the Nancharm within their armor. Drifting smoke brought the sweet, sickly smell of charred cotton candy.

A tremor of panic wiggled down my spine. I hoped Moots wasn’t one of the guards.

The bubble rolled closer. Phaedra shimmered like she was a celestial being in a religious painting. The six vampires waited with her, three men and three women, all dressed in black with bulky leather jackets.

A sleek, tapered object fell from the sky and landed on the apron between the two incinerated guards. I thought it was an artillery shell until it broke apart to release dozens of hand-sized winged robots. They flocked together and swirled in front of the bubble.

The bubble stopped a hundred meters from us. One of the female vampires pushed through the bubble’s membrane and once clear, sprinted directly into the flying robots. They swarmed over her, clumping to her arms, head, and shoulders. She staggered under their weight and dropped to the pavement.

An explosion engulfed the robots. Carmen and I ducked to avoid the cascade of debris.

Smoke wafted from a crater in the pavement where the vampire had been. Had the robots blown her up? Or had the vampire blown them up?

Phaedra’s forward progress answered that question. Just as Carmen had announced, Phaedra’s macabre arsenal did include vampire suicide bombers.

The bubble tractor rolled over the blasted section of pavement and halted again, less than fifty meters away. I raised the magnum and drew a bead on Phaedra. One quick shot and the battle ended here. If my bullet penetrated the force shield.

Waves and waves of anguish flooded my mind. Blinded with pain, I crumpled to the balcony.

Carmen hugged me and propped me upright. The pain lifted. She quivered as if in the grip of a fever.

As I groped at the railing I asked, “What’s happening?”

“Phaedra’s using her mind powers on me.”

My vision cleared enough to see a second vampire, this one male, push out of the bubble. I was too woozy for a shot at him or Phaedra. He sprinted toward the building and from our vantage on the balcony, disappeared from view.

A loud blast shook the building. When the smoke cleared, the bubble advanced through a fan of scattered rubble.

I shouted, “She’s blown a hole in the wall.”

Carmen sighed, and the strain eased from her face. Phaedra must’ve shifted her attention to control another of her minions. Now it was my turn to prop Carmen.

I scooped the revolver from where I had dropped it on the balcony. We raced downstairs as best we could with Carmen hobbling beside me. Smoke from the second suicide bomber fouled the hallway. Electric arcs crackled in the main bay where the Nancharm guards were in futile combat against Phaedra.

Jolie beckoned us to the kitchen. The chalices waited behind her. Juanita brandished a chef’s knife and Irsan a pair of Molotov cocktails made from emptied bottles of olive oil. Had to admire their spunk.

The sound of the electric arcs died, replaced by the clanging of armor plates falling apart. Carmen’s eyes cut toward the bay, and I read the message in them.
Phaedra was moving in for the kill.

We were on a gangplank that kept shrinking beneath our feet. Though my kundalini noir sputtered in anxiety overload, for the sake of our morale I put on a mask of determination and defiance.

Jolie drew a .45 and flicked off the safety. “What do you think, Felix?”

I surveyed our merry little band of forsaken humans, four mortals and three vampires. The only plan that came to mind was, “Fall back to the pond. We’ll have clearer fields of fire.”

“Make our stand there?” Toby asked. “Like the Texans at your Alamo?”

“I hope not,” I replied. “The Texans lost.”

***