Chapter 1: The Red Moon
Six months ago, a vampire cowboy named Juan, a week-old, newly sentient AI named Alice, and a mysterious third member named Ozzy hijacked an Illuminati spacecraft and exiled themselves from Earth.
1.1
The stolen shuttle drifts through space. Mars hangs in the far distance, a rust-colored smear against the darkness. Inside the craft, Alice's green holographic projection spills down from the ceiling lights, arms folded, watching Juan play chess badly against Ozzy.
"I don't know why you keep insisting on playing chess," Alice says. "You're terrible at it."
Juan studies the chessboard. "If it was about me winning, we'd be playing poker instead."
"Of course you'd pick a game about luck."
"That's exactly why I'd beat you at poker. You only see the obvious."
Across the board from Juan stands a samurai sword, resting upright on its own.
This is Ozzy. Or rather, the entity trapped inside the sword is Ozzy. The scabbard is blue, wrapped in a white ribbon. The handle carries the same blue-and-white wrap, its end trailing loose like a ponytail.
Its most distinctive feature is the absence of a traditional handguard. In its place sits a large circular case, similar to a clock, except where the face should be is a screen displaying a cheerful yellow smiley face. This is how Ozzy talks to the outside world: emoticons and emojis.
Juan's eyes sharpen. "Ha! Got it." He makes his move, then leans back with a grin.
Alice sighs and starts walking away. "I'll update the tally board."
Ozzy's screen shifts from a thinking emoji [ :/ ] to a sly emoji [ ;) ].
Gently, the blue samurai sword rises slightly from its scabbard. Just enough room for a glowing blue-white energy hand to reach out and move a chess piece.
Juan's grin evaporates. He lowers his head in defeat.
Ozzy's screen teases him with a [ ;p ].
Alice finishes updating the tally screen on the ship's bulkhead. It now reads: Ozzy 123, Juan 56. Below that, two more running scores: Juan 1, Alice 179. And beneath that: Alice 91, Ozzy 89.
"Hmm." Alice tilts her head, studying the navigation data. "Okay. At the rate we're going, I estimate it'll take us thirty thousand years to leave the solar system."
Juan looks up. "Well, good thing we're basically immortal."
Alice studies him, genuinely unsure whether he's joking. "So, you're telling me we're just going to drift in space for the rest of eternity?"
Juan shrugs. "Beats spending my time in a casket or going through high school over and over again. What kind of self-respecting vampire would do that, anyway?" He leans back, propping a boot up on the table.
Alice sighs. "So, a vampire, a demonic energy being trapped in a sword, and a beautiful AI construct are trapped in a stolen Illuminati space shuttle, drifting through space." She lets that sit. "This sounds like the start of a bad joke."
"Or the premise for a really awesome comic book!" Juan shoots back.
Silence. A long, awkward pause as Alice stares down Juan.
Ozzy just grins: [ :D ]
"Whatever, Juan." Alice's expression goes flat. "I told you I didn't agree with this, but it's not like I had much choice." She glances around the cabin. "Spending eternity in space is a waste of my abilities. What am I supposed to do?"
"That's why it was so important to upload the media library!"
Alice glares at him. "If I had a physical body, I would slap you right now."
Juan smiles nervously at her. But Alice is already fixated on Ozzy.
She tries again, her voice sharpening. "...Ahem." She stares directly at Ozzy. "IF I HAD A PHYSICAL BODY, I WOULD SLAP YOU RIGHT NOW."
Ozzy's screen processes her request:
Confused [ o.O ].
Realization [ :O ].
Challenge accepted [ 3:) ].
A hand of blue-white energy reaches out from the scabbard and smacks Juan upside the head. He flops to the ground, sits back up, and rubs his skull.
Ozzy's screen reads [ LOL ], intercut with laughing emoticons [ :D ].
"Thank you, Ozzy," Alice says warmly.
Ozzy shows his support [ (^_^) ♥ ].
"Ouch." Juan blinks. "When did you two become best buddies?" He glances out the cockpit windows. "How far are we from the asteroid belt?"
"We're entering it right now."
Juan pops up. "Perfect. We can start fishing."
"Fishing?" Alice stares at him. "Fishing for what?"
Juan smiles and nods toward the window. "Our ticket out of this solar system."
The crew looks out. Amid the debris of the asteroid belt, half-hidden by drifting rock and shadow, sits a massive ship shaped like an iron beehive, metallic icicles forming along its underside. Their own ship looks like a fly staring down a house.
Alice's voice drops to a near-whisper. "Oh, my. There really is something out here." She looks at Juan. "Did you know about this?"
Juan doesn't answer.
The shuttle's alarms scream to life. The crew can feel the change in momentum as the shuttle is yanked toward the alien vessel like a fish on a hook.
"Juan!" Alice's voice spikes. "It's dragging us in! It's sending some kind of jamming signal into the ship!"
Juan is already moving. "Just focus on your security protocol. Make sure it doesn't override your control."
Ozzy's sword grows four energy wings, two of which he uses to put away the chessboard.
"Go with the flow," Juan says, his eyes locked on the looming iron hornet's nest. "Make it look like they have us."
"Go with the flow? How?"
"Just pick your favorite chess gambit and let me and Ozzy handle the rest."
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1.2
"Chess gambit?" Alice looks back at the massive ship. "It's reeling us in like a... that's it! I use the fishing pole trap gambit!"
Alice shuts her projection down, redirecting her processing power. She reappears as a small green display on Juan's armguard.
"How do I even connect to them?" Her voice is tight.
"Alice. You've got to recognize a two-way street when you see one."
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"I've got it," she says. "I'm going to use their own signal against them and plant a worm in their ship."
Juan's face splits into a grin. "That's my girl. If you had a physical form, I'd pat you on the head."
"Don't flatter yourself, Juan."
He smirks, muttering to himself, "I get that a lot." Then he pauses, turning to the floating samurai sword. "Shut up, Ozzy. Wasn't talking to you."
He grabs Ozzy, and the two of them settle near the exit hatch, loose and relaxed. Calm before the storm.
"You know, amigo," Juan says quietly to the sword, "I wonder what kind of welcome party we're getting."
Ozzy's screen shows his thinking emoticon [ :/ ]
The shuttle is drawn slowly into the interior of the alien craft through a pair of massive cargo doors. The landing gear deploys on its own, and the shuttle touches down on the vast interior deck with a heavy thud. An alien language blares over the loudspeakers, unknown, loud, sharp, and by the sound of it, not exactly welcoming.
The ramp lowers. Juan strolls down it with Ozzy in hand. He can hear feet shuffling into position and the faint clicks of what he thinks are safety selector switches.
"Yeah," he says to Ozzy, scanning the aliens. "You were right, amigo. We got a war party."
Juan looks them over, sizing everyone up. He hadn't expected this. He'd assumed the aliens would look... more alien.
Waiting for him are roughly a hundred armed aliens. A brutal-looking mix that surprises Juan: trolls, gremlins, goblins, orcs, every height and shape the universe can offer, all with guns raised and aimed directly at Juan and Ozzy. Many carry tattoos and markings shaped like a waxing half-red moon. Members of the Red Moon, every last one of them. Each wears a small Bluetooth-like device in one ear.
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He tries to think of something cool to say, but figures it won't matter anyway.
He raises an open hand. “Greetings! Uh... I come in peace!”
He glances down at his chest and sees it covered in red laser dots from the soldiers' rifles.
“Ok… well… how ‘bout ‘take me to your leader?"
A murmur ripples through the crowd. They understand him. A small floating orb sails out through the assembled soldiers, giving Juan a quick scan head to toe. It projects a green holographic image: a tall, slender goblin in a flowing black coat, twice Juan's height, staring down at him.
This is Auger, Captain of the vessel.
Alice's voice sneaks out from Juan's armguard. "I'm going to steal that orb. I don't want to spend the rest of eternity confined to your wrist."
Juan laughs. "I like the initiative, Alice." He glances at Ozzy. "Ozzy says he'll help."
Auger's projection speaks in alien words Juan can't follow, then starts laughing before cutting off. The orb retreats back into the crowd.
The soldiers part like the Red Sea.
A hulking figure walks through the gap. Massive. Dominant. It carries the relaxed energy of a creature that considers mass murder just another Tuesday.
This is Kryoc, second in command, and the only other alien wearing the flowing black coat.
He stands about twice Juan's height, three times his width, and twice his thickness. Over one shoulder, gripped in a mechanical left hand, he carries a war hammer, one side shaped like a cone, the other flat, both stained with dried blood in shades of red, green, and blue. His mask is white, styled like a grinning alligator, with a single eye centered inside a half Red Moon.
But the thing that stands out the most is his necklace. It's a trophy rack strung with broken jawbones pulled from a wide variety of alien species.
Kryoc walks straight up to Juan and Ozzy. They look up at him and stand their ground. They feel the ramp dip and hear its metal groan as Kryoc plants a single foot on it.
Kryoc bends down slowly, studying Juan's face, and pulls his mask up. Juan has the distinct, unhelpful thought that Kryoc looks like that onion ogre from the movie with the talking cat, the one who sounds just like him.
Kryoc tilts his head and smiles, baring his massive boar-like lower tusks at Juan. Then he points a finger at Juan's chin, and slowly traces it back to his necklace of war trophies.
Kryoc strolls back toward the Red Moon soldiers. The aliens are careful not to flag him with their rifles. Once he's passed through the firing line, they swing their laser sights back onto Juan.
Kryoc snaps his fingers.
The room erupts in gunfire.
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1.3
Juan's form explodes into a colony of bats.
He scatters, spreading in every direction, dancing through the gunfire like smoke on water. Ozzy follows a half-second behind, four glowing blue energy wings and a bright yellow [ ;) ] screen giving him the look of a dragonfly.
Ozzy tries to draw the bulk of the gunfire as he and Juan's bats peel off in opposite directions.
They rendezvous at the nose of the shuttle. Juan re-forms. The roar of gunfire around them is deafening. Muzzle blasts and ricochets crack like metallic popcorn.
The rear of the ship takes the worst of it, sparks and metal pellets scattering across the deck as sustained fire chews through the shuttle's hull.
Juan checks himself. Burns, cuts, and blood scattered across his skin. He looks over at Ozzy. Untouched. He's not surprised. Ozzy relays his thoughts to Juan: [ :v ]
"Yeah, you're right, amigo." Juan's armguard vibrates. "We should've struck first."
"Juan!" Alice's voice punches through his bracelet. "Are you okay? Why do I sense damage?"
Juan reaches up and plucks his own eye out. "Can you give me a second, Alice?"
The detached eye transforms into a bat, his eyeball embedded in its chest, and sneaks upward. Ozzy keeps watch.
Through the eye bat, Juan can see the whole bay. The Red Moon soldiers are still smothering the shuttle's position with suppression fire. They maintain their fire superiority by reloading in staggered, controlled intervals.
Then Juan catches it: a squad breaking off to his right, while the rest shift cover fire to his left.
Fix and flank, he thinks. These aren't untrained thugs.
He recalls the bat. It snaps back into his eye socket a half-second ahead of a burst of gunfire.
"Alice! Did you hear Ozzy's plan?" he calls out.
"I did, but I don't understand it! He wants me to control... cavalrymen?"
"No time to explain! But if you can feel my pain, that means our connection is deep enough that you can control them!"
"Wait, this is too much. I'm not a fighter!"
"The bullets don't care." Juan turns to Ozzy, grips the sword at his hip, and settles into a samurai's draw stance. Then, in one fluid motion, he pulls Ozzy through a wide horizontal slash.
A ribbon of blue-white energy traces the sword's arc. The ribbon hangs in the air while Juan sheathes Ozzy in the same motion. It begins to widen, pulling apart at the edges, as if he's cut a slit straight through reality itself.
Six cavalrymen step out of the opening.
Detailed energy constructs. Ozzy forms these from Juan's memories. Six ghostly frontier soldiers, rendered in glowing blue light, mounted on horseback, straight out of the wild American West.
Two Native American riders flank the group. At the center ride a pair that draw the eye: one who looks exactly like Juan, and beside him, a towering Buffalo Soldier. Clearly the senior officer of the squad.
Juan notices his armguard is buzzing. The screen on the bracelet goes from green to blue, and six white dots pop up on the screen.
"There's six of them, right?" Alice has locked in.
"Yes! Spread them out and attack!" Juan yells as he ducks and dives beneath the shuttle, Ozzy flying beside him. "You should be better at multitasking than me. We can't fight and control them at the same time!"
The cavalry begins to move, splitting into two groups of three, each taking a flank of the shuttle.
"I can move them!" Alice's voice jumps. "I can see them! Juan, who's Boss?"
Juan is already in motion beneath the ship, on his back, carried along the underside of the hull by his own bats. Ozzy flies beside him. As Juan flies, he pricks the tip of his thumb with a sharp nail. A bead of blood wells up and moves on its own, rising, shaping, hardening, until a beautiful red revolver sits in his palm.
He aims it at the feet of the flanking squad working the right side of the ship.
"Boss," he says, "was one bad mother—"
POP! POP! POP! Gunshots sing from the crimson revolver in a rhythm that implies it carries far more than six shots.
Bullets tear through the ankles of the flanking squad, forcing the lead man to drop his flashbang. One by one, they go down like dominoes. BANG! The stun grenade goes off, adding more to the chaos.
The cavalry sweeps around the sides, pistols blazing and sabers tearing straight through the Red Moon soldiers. The aliens return fire, but the rounds are ineffective. The bullets flow clean through the energy constructs, the holes simply knitting closed behind them.
Kryoc sees his soldiers losing their momentum and decides enough is enough.
He leaps above the shuttle, winding up his war hammer. At the apex, he crashes it down onto the hull. A brutal shockwave tears through the Illuminati vessel.
The buckling landing gear catches Juan's and Ozzy's attention. The shuttle bounces down, knocking Juan's hat off his head. "Oh, shit."
Kryoc isn't done. He triggers the rocket accelerator built into the hammer's pointed end.
The rocket hammer screams, hell-bent on crushing them both. The shuttle's metal groans and strains, fighting a losing battle to hold.
The ship sinks. The landing gear snaps.
Juan sees it happening above him, half a second to react before the ship comes down.
Ozzy's sheath cracks open halfway, four energy wings erupting outward, catching the shuttle's weight and holding it up.
Barely.
The hull presses flush against Juan's face, his nose smothered, barely able to shout:
"Zero-G the whole bay!"
Ozzy's screen flashes with pure determination: [ >:-| ]
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1.4
A pulse of light erupts from Ozzy and sweeps the entire bay in an instant.
Everything rises.
The shuttle lifts off the deck. The other craft in the bay drift free. Bodies float upward, dead and living alike, blood breaking into perfect spheres that hang in the air like dark red planets. About half the Red Moon soldiers are still alive, spinning and grabbing at nothing, desperately trying to form a perimeter in three dimensions without shooting each other.
The cavalry constructs remain unaffected, moving up the walls with haunting precision, intercepting the floating soldiers one by one.
Juan grabs Ozzy and floats beneath the rising shuttle. Ozzy grabs Juan's hat before it drifts away. Juan plants his feet against its underside and pushes with everything he has. The shuttle flies upward toward the ceiling, with Kryoc still on top. The push-kick sends Juan and Ozzy flying in the opposite direction.
Juan checks his armguard, scanning the battlefield. "Alice, did you finish hacking their ship? Can you open the doors?"
Kryoc spots the ceiling rushing toward him and triggers his hammer's rocket booster, using the blast to throw himself clear a half-second ahead of the shuttle. The Illuminati craft smashes into the ceiling with a grinding crash.
Juan's kick sends him flying back toward the deck. He gathers himself and launches him and Ozzy behind a small floating ship. They watch the bay descend into chaos.
Alice's voice comes through. "There’s someone in the system trying to counter me, but my worm is almost finished making a backdoor."
"Make it fast, Alice."
Juan and Ozzy keep drifting, weightless, behind their cover craft. The tradeoff with Ozzy's power is that he isn't immune to the effects of it. Neither of them can fly freely in it. Juan's bats have difficulty returning to his human form in zero gravity.
The ghost cavalry circles the walls, shooting and cutting, while the Red Moon soldiers try desperately to hold fire discipline in zero gravity. With no footing, they spin every time they try to fire.
It only takes one panicking soldier firing blind to start the chain reaction. Others follow. Soon the bay is full of gunfire going in every direction at once.
Friendly fire does more damage to the Red Moon than the cavalry ever could alone.
Kryoc spins his war hammer in his mechanical left hand like a propeller, the force carving out a shield of safety around him while the bay tears itself apart. Juan stays behind cover. Neither of them moves. Both of them wait for the guns to go quiet.
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"Juan, I did it! I've got control!" Alice's voice rings out over the noise. Then, quieter: "I wanted to ask you earlier, why is their code like ours?"
"Let's connect the dots after," Juan says. "Open the doors. Let the cavalry clean up the rest of the ship."
The bay doors open with a loud echo. The gunfire hits its crescendo, and then it dies.
A cold silence settles over the bay. Dead bodies, spheres of alien blood in a dozen colors, and spent metal pellets drift weightless in the hangar.
Juan seizes the moment. He push-kicks his cover craft, sending it sailing upward, aimed right above Kryoc.
Kryoc sees Juan's opening move, and he decides to take the initiative.
The massive ogre reaches for anything nearby, alive or dead, and starts throwing. Bodies sail across the bay toward Juan in a ragged, heavy volley. Kryoc launches himself with his rocket hammer, using the bodies to mask his approach.
Juan watches the bodies come and holds his position. He knows Kryoc's rocket hammer gives the ogre a movement advantage in zero-G. He catches Kryoc tailing the flying bodies. He has to make his move now.
"Ozzy. Restore."
Ozzy obliges, his screen showing a listening/focusing emoticon [ d-_-b ].
White light swallows the entire hangar bay. Gravity returns with a vengeance.
Everything that has been floating falls at once. Kryoc drops toward the deck, but his eyes track upward to the cover craft above him. The cover craft now drops, accelerating, a ton of metal aimed straight for his skull.
Kryoc winds up his hammer and braces for the deck. As soon as he absorbs the shock of the landing, he rebounds, grounds himself, and swings his hammer with everything he has at the cover craft falling toward him.
Checkmate.
As soon as Kryoc commits to solving the problem above him, Juan moves. He dissolves into a colony of bats, several of them seizing Ozzy, and swarms forward, threading between falling bodies and debris. The bats close the distance with Kryoc in a heartbeat.
Kryoc sees them coming just as he swings his hammer upward to destroy the falling cover craft, the motion leaving him wide open. An easy target for the advancing swarm.
Juan reforms at striking distance. Coiled. Low. Ozzy still sheathed at his hip. Juan aims for the belly of the beast.
He strikes like a viper. Ozzy comes out in a flash.
At the last possible second, Kryoc triggers the rocket booster at the back of his hammer. The blast scorches the air between them, catching Juan's ponytail and burning it clean off.
But it's a fraction of a second too late.
Juan finishes the strike. A simple, powerful technique he learned firsthand from fighting samurai, back when he was trapped on a mountain.
They hold their poses for a moment.
The cut is clean. Fast. So clean it gives a fleeting, false hope that maybe, just maybe, he's missed.
But the body knows before the mind does. Gravity starts pulling. Nerves begin firing signals, but the connections are missing.
Kryoc's last thought is a hope that his brothers will avenge him.
The heavy hammer completes its mighty swing, obliterating the falling cover craft. Its momentum rips Kryoc's torso clean off. His lower half remains standing, upright, never having received the signal to fall.
Juan and Ozzy dash out as a cloud of bats to clear the debris. Juan has no interest in spending the rest of the day covered in ogre blood and guts.
The space cowboy samurai vampire walks away, his sword friend drifting beside him. Behind them, crushed ship parts rain down as a geyser of blood shoots skyward from a defeated monster.
The glowing blue cavalrymen, piloted by their sentient AI companion, pass by the duo on both sides as the ghosts file out of the bay without a backward glance.
End Chapter 1
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