Crimson Stars - 2 (Patreon)

[Fair warning, this gets a bit bloody and violent. Because Vampires.]

2. Rendezvous

Yamaloka System

We were the Resistance. We were fighting the good fight. Showing the Vampires that humanity was not broken, even after all these centuries. We still had spines.

I’d signed up in the name of vengeance and justice.

And somehow that had turned into my sitting in a warehouse, cleaning my scattergun while we waited for a dealer to pick up the narcotics we’d been manufacturing.

It made money, sure. On the other hand, it wasn’t exactly morally clean.

The contact was late, no doubt delayed by the dust storm outside, kicked up by the barely breathable atmosphere outside. The results of a long stalled terraforming attempt. The planet was too hot and too low gravity to ever become properly habitable, but earlier colonists had decided they liked having a breathable atmosphere outside their walls, and who was I to blame them? It had advantages.

Even if standing outside during the day was hot enough to kill a human nearly as fast as it killed a vampire…

Alright, that was an exaggeration. You could survive for short bursts out there. People could actually do work if they wore coolant shirts. It was dangerous, but it didn’t fry a person like high energy light fried vampires.

Nighttime on Samhata, was a different matter. Despite the whipping winds, bringing whatever heat they could over from the day side, frostbite would hit in minutes if you didn’t bundle.

Even inside, I was chilly.

“How much longer are we going to wait?” I muttered, rotating the scattergun to clean the axe-head bayonet.

“He’s only twenty minutes late,” Sef replied, the thin technician not even looking my way while he replied. “Anything under an hour is acceptable in this weather.”

I let out a quiet grumble, exchanging a glance with Okol, the large man serving as the other half of the ‘security unit’. He gave a small shrug. He wasn’t really the talkative type. Not that I was either, but I could do with a little conversation.

The howl of the wind shifted. It was probably just changing directions, but… it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

There were too many shadows in the warehouse for a human to feel comfortable.

“We should have done the trade during the day,” I said, standing up and walking over to check the back door.

“Our contact in the security company was assigned nights. So it’s what we’re stuck with,” Sef replied, repeating information I already knew.

It didn’t mean I was wrong. Just that we hadn’t had a choice. We’d been forced to make the wrong decision.

The back door was still locked, though. No signs it had been tampered with. So I moved over to check the metal grate-floored loft. There were too many boxes up here, and I didn’t like it. Too many places for a creature of shadows to hide in.

Movement down on the ground level caught my eye. Looking down, I saw that Okol had decided to provide me backup. Just in case my hunting phantoms proved to actually have a meaning to it. We both knew I was probably just being paranoid, but our enemies were things that went bump in the night. It paid to be a little paranoid sometimes. Vampires could be weird.

I had seen one squeeze its way through a pipe that a human its size never would have fit through.

Having checked most of the corners, I turned my attention to the one ventilation grate. I could feel the air being sucked out of it, into the thinner atmosphere outside. Half of a vent system that kept a flow of fresh air, so that the employees didn’t get sick from CO2 poisoning. The other half had a bunch of fans and whatnot to compress the air from outside into something a person could actually breathe. This side, though, just let the pressure difference suck air out.

Which meant it was probably the easiest way for a vampire to get in. Well, other than the front door, but we were watching that.

“If you’re quite done feeding one another’s paranoia,” Sef said, interrupting my thoughts, “I would like to point out that it’s rather unlikely they would actually send a vampire to investigate our current activities. Also, the motion detector I set up at the facility entrance has picked up a vehicle. Our contact is likely here.”

Letting out a quiet grumble that mixed annoyance and relief, I stared into the darkness of the vent for a few more moments. It was pitch black. I tapped the grate on it with my scattergun, blindly threatening anything hidden in the darkness. Just in case.

Then I headed over to the stairs. I was back on the ground level as another shift in the wind revealed something had pulled up outside, the hover-engine disrupting the air currents. A moment later we heard the outer door open, and felt a chill run through us. The double doors common to Samhata weren’t exactly airtight, after all. Airtight was expensive, and no one bothered with that if they didn’t have to.

Okol and I both ready our firearms, just in case. He let out a small sigh of relief at the sight of the well dressed man who emerged from the inner door, however. A sharp featured tall man who was probably good looking. Even with his face red from that brief exposure to the frigid temperatures outside.

His two bodyguards weren’t quite as well dressed as he was, but their clothes still looked nicer than what any of us were wearing. Even the suitcases they were carrying looked expensive.

“You’re late,” Sef said.

“The storm is pretty nasty out there,” the dealer muttered, brushing some dust off his long coat.

“Any chance you were followed?” Okol asked, the large man eyeing the dealer suspiciously.

“We lo—” the one bodyguard started to say.

“There was nothing to worry about,” the dealer said with a smarmy grin. “A car happened to travel in the same direction as us for a bit on the edge of town, but there was no reason to think they were following us. And no way they could have followed us in tonight’s dust storm.”

I didn’t like him.

I hadn’t expected to like him. The narcotics dealers we had to work with were rarely much better than vampires themselves. Any feelings of compassion were squashed in their hearts. This guy was extra fake, though. The type who would probably sell out everyone he knew to save his own skin.

“Do you have the product?” he asked, strolling over to the table where Sef was sitting.

There was a rather less fancy briefcase sitting there, which Sef popped open to show. Packet after packet of cobalt-coloured crystalline powder. Blue Tears. Addictive, mood lifting, but surprisingly safe to use.

If you had the pure stuff.

Men like our dealer friend were likely to cut it with a wide range of mildly toxic substances. Then pass it down to their underlings who would probably cut it further.

“See, that’s why I like you, Sef. You splurge and put things in plastic,” he said, lifting up one of the packets to flit about in his fingers. “It’s so much more user friendly.”

I swore I heard something while he’d been talking. A quiet tink of metal on metal.

It had been too quick and quiet for me to work out where it had come from, though. Especially in the hard echoe-y space of the warehouse. For all I knew, it was just keys clinking in one of the new arrivals’ pockets.

“You’ve brought the money, then?” Sef asked.

The dealer gestured to his guards. They both opened the briefcases they were carrying. Cases flush with gift-chips.

Hopefully they were all properly activated and still full. Okol headed over to inspect them, before giving a small nod. Apparently they looked like the right general values.

“If you do have any issues with any of them, you know how to contact me,” the dealer said to Sef, before closing the case full of Blue Tears. “Just like I can contact you if there’s any purity issues.”

“Of course,” Sef replied, and I could see he didn’t like the dealer much more than I did.

Again, I swore I heard something. Possibly from upstairs. A quiet groan of metal. Like a footfall. Or like metal shifting in the cold, still cooling down after the heat of the day.

My grip on my scattergun tightened all the same.

“I will say, though…” the dealer trailed off, giving each of us a once over. “You ‘Resistance’ folks should learn to enjoy your funds a little more. You’re too serious. Stop playing soldier all the time and treat yourselves to some luxuries.”

With my stress levels raised by the wrongness in the air, I had gotten rather annoyed with this dealer. I was about to open my mouth to give him a piece of my mind when I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. It was above me.

I had time to look up before I was slammed against the ground. I felt a rib crack from the force. There was a figure standing on my chest. It stomped onto my right arm, dislocating my shoulder. Then it was off again. It had tackled one of the dealer’s bodyguards by the time my brain processed what had happened. By the time any of us had.

There was a crack of gunfire from Okol and the other bodyguard. A spray of bullets slamming into the new arrival. It swerved, pulling up the first bodyguard as a shield for a moment, before lunging towards the second. There was a splash of blood as the second man fell.

A vampire. They were too fast. Even if they didn’t catch you by surprise, they moved in ways that were all wrong. Like a corpse being puppeted by high powered winches that had no regard for the strain they were putting on the human body.

Scrambling for my pockets with my still good arm, I pulled out a small metallic capsule. Ignoring the pain in my chest, I lifted my arm up to bring the capsule to my nose. Then I sprayed the Bloodshot while inhaling, despite the freezing cold of the spray.

Gunfire continued during the few seconds it took the reagent to hit my system properly. I let out a hiss as my lungs and then veins seemed to burn. Then the pain, both from the Bloodshot and from the attack a moment earlier, vanished.

Almost before I realised it, I was on my feet. The scent of blood and sweat filled my mind for a moment. My vision was also impossibly crisp and tuned to movement. I could see the bullets flying through the air as Okol, Sef, and the Dealer fired desperately into the Vampiric assailant, hoping to wear him down.

The shots were having some effect. The dealer was apparently packing a surprisingly high calibre pistol and was a better shot than I’d given him credit for, while Okol had his own scattergun.

Not that it was likely to do them much good for more than a few more seconds.

Fighting back the Bloodshot fueled urge to attack the closest target, I rushed ahead, kicking the table at the Vampire. It would distract him for a moment while hopefully getting the others to hold their fire for a moment. Okol and Sef both began to take their fingers off their triggers and I rapidly flicked the trigger on my scattergun.

The wall of lead that followed caused the vampire to stumble for a moment, and I rushed ahead. The dealer had run out of bullets on his clip, which meant I wasn’t likely to get mowed down by friendly fire before his still baseline reflexes noticed I’d charged ahead.

The Vampire looked up in time to see me coming. His eyes registered I was a genuine threat, which clearly surprised him. One of his hands flicked down towards his hip, but he’d hesitated in surprise for too long.

Drawing the scattergun back, I was already charging, swinging the axehead bayonet for the Vampire’s neck. He caught it, but not without the blade slashing into one of his hands. That had been lucky on my part. As much as Bloodshot pushed the human body to its limits, a vampire was still going to be stronger. At least one that hadn’t been filled with a respectable dose of lead.

“You’re a blood-huffing vermin,” he hissed as I pulled the gun back for another swing.

“And you’re a soul-sucking slime,” I countered, hacking once again.

Axes were not known for their elegance. There was a reason why vampires never used them. They were, however, known for their efficiency, if you were mad enough to get close to a vampire. The vampire’s second block attempt saw him suffer further injury to his arms. He tried to lunge with that block, fangs bared with the goal to latch on and drain my soul. Instead he got an elbow to the chin, my reflexes just barely fast enough to block him.

Then several more hacks with the axe to put him down.

It took three swings to get through his neck, though. Vampire spines were tough.

Only once he was dead did I realise what he was wearing. A militia uniform. Not the elegant tunic of a vampiric officer. It seemed he’d decided to trade his humanity for career prospects, and we had been his test hunt.

I had always hated worms like him, even back when I had been on their side.

“A fresh traitor,” I said, spitting on him. Or what was left of him.

The rush of battle fading, my mind was filled with the sound of four hearts beating. My own was louder than the others, but I could hear theirs all the same. The flush sound of blood in all of us. My whole body twitched, craving further violence.

The Bloodshot was still running through my veins.

“She—you’ve got a ‘shot-junky on your security, Sef?” the dealer hissed.

“Skoda is no junky,” Sef replied flatly. “Though I would still advise against insulting her while she’s buzzed.”

Their talking was too slow. It was annoying to listen to.

At least the vampiric corpse in front of me could still be a target for more violence. A few dozen more axe swings might get the violence out of my system.

-

I puked up my guts fifteen minutes later, the fall from the Bloodshot rush hurting worse than the burn of it starting. After that, things were a bit of a delirious blur. When I slowly regained my grounding, I realised Okol had put a cold cloth on my head. And I gradually realised we were in Sef’s van, slipping back towards our outpost.

“I am not as young as I used to be,” I groaned, a sweaty shiver running through my body.

The fall off from Bloodshot hadn’t hurt half this bad back when I’d been… back when I had first gotten access to it. Fifteen years of natural aging and burning my body past what a human was meant to do was clearly starting to take its toll.

“Maybe you’re not,” Okol replied, after a moment, “but we’re all going to get older than tonight thanks to you.”

“True,” I mumbled.

At least, as another convulsion ran through me, I realised that the Bloodshot had mostly healed up my ribs. As well as pulling my shoulder back in place I decided to lay back and, when my mind was clear enough for it, I thought about how lucky I’d gotten. We’d all gotten.

Freshly turned vampires were at least half feral. No wonder the idiot had relied on physically attacking us, instead of shooting us. He probably wanted the primal rush of it.

Like a Bloodshot junky on a high.

Because that’s what Bloodshot was. A taste of vampirism. A taste created through flushing a living body with Vampire blood. Also, a taste I hated having, but knew I needed whenever I fought them.