Dark Wolf

Book One: Chapter 18

After John stepped out of Alexis's quarters, he spotted Kara standing outside the entrance to the cockpit. He sighed and approached her. "Hey..... Kara."

She turned to him. "What's up?"

He rubbed the back of his head. "I..... want to apologize..... For what I did to you..... When I was....."

Kara giggled and stepped up close to him. "It's all right."

She rubbed his chin, smiling seductively into his eyes. "I like it when a strong man goes rough on me. Even a wild, sexy wolfman type."

John glanced into her foxy red eyes next. Although he killed many vampires during his previous missions, he fantasized about getting laid by one. Kara should be his perfect candidate for his experiment.

"Come on, you two!" Alexis shouted. "There is no time for smooches!"

Kara giggled and followed Alexis into the cockpit. John watched her back until he stepped into the cockpit next.

"Where is he?" John sat down behind Lena.

Lena stared at her computer near her flight panel. "He is reaching Gearia."

"Isn't Gearia a moon?" Kara asked.

"A trash moon," Alexis corrected. "Nobody lives there, except for the recycling machines."

In most colonized space quadrants, dumping trash on planets became illegal. Millions of environmental activists argued that too many worlds were being destroyed by corrupt companies and careless space tourists. To end the head aching complaints, the United Planetary Federation banned the companies from dumping trash on colonized worlds. Instead, only barren worlds and moons could have trash dumped on them for free. Nobody gave a damn about moons.

Gearia was one of the biggest trash moons ever known by the colonies. Robots only worked on the moon because there was too much trash to build a settlement there. But the moon has factories and maintenance to keep the recycling processes in operation.

"Why is he heading there?" Kara asked. "There is nothing there."

"Whatever is supposed to open the hell portal is probably there," said Alexis.

"And there are plenty of techs he could use to control," John added. "Take us there, Lena."

The zombie girl typed on the computer and pushed a button. "Here we go."

A black portal appeared in front of the ship, and then it sucked the ship through a tunnel of swirling darkness. Purple and stripes of blue whirled around the vessel until it reached the other side.

At the end of the wormhole, the Undertaker entered space where it approached a blue gas giant, glowing like a sun. Near the gas giant was the moon, about the same size as the Earth. It has mountains of trash, covering the entire surface, like a giant ball of garbage. And a ring of racked spaceships floated around the moon in orbit.

"Do you know where he landed?" John asked.

Lena checked her computer. "His ship landed on the moon's equator. I can land our ship near it if there is a clear spot to land."

"Let's hover down and check it out," said John.

Lena pushed the flight handles forward. The ship descended toward the surface of the moon past the floating junk ring.

The ship soon flew forward, flying over mountains and mountains of trash piles, almost impossible to count. Broken down ships, vehicles, crates, and mostly metal stuff. If a kid loses a toy on the moon, he or she would never see it again.

Each day a garbage ship arrived to dump all the trash at the moon's gravity level so the trash wouldn't float away into space. After the ship leaves, a recycle bot collected the trash and carried it to an incineration facility. Then the cycle continued, taking days or even years to clean up the moon from the trash. No wonder nobody wanted to live on Gearia, except ghosts and monsters. Nothing could convince John that any place was untouchable from the supernatural. Since Dragmorath was on the moon, something sinister was there.

"I see the ship," Lena announced.

Between two junk mountains was the passenger ship, which the demon had hijacked from Zenus. The ship was still intact while remaining still.

John wondered why it took so long from Dragmorath to reach the moon. With wormhole transportation, any ship could reach a destination within a minute. Maybe the demon was still learning how to fly the ship until he pushed the correct button. Now the demon was on the moon, something would happen.

"Any readings from the ship?" John asked.

Lena typed on the computer. "I am picking up some ecto activity aboard. He might be on the ship still."

"Why would he still be on the ship?" Kara asked. "He reached his destination."

"It could be a trap," said Alexis. "He detected us and waited for us to attack. He knows we are the only ones after him. If he kills us, nothing will stand in his way."

"That is a good point," said John. "But we can only find out if we go in there to check it out."

"What if he already left the ship?" Lena asked.

"Then why are you picking up ecto energy activity from inside the ship?" Kara asked. "No ambush can scare me."

"A demon can leave ecto traces behind," said Alexis. "If we check out the ship, he will move on ahead of us."

John rubbed his forehead. "I do not want to take any chances of leading to the very destruction of our existence. We will go into the passenger ship first. If he is not in there, we will move on across this moon. That bastard can not escape from our ecto energy trackers."

"But we are also on a moon full of useless techno crap," said Kara. "He will have a strong advantage against us."

"Then let's make sure we get the upper hand as quickly as possible. Let's move out!"

"All of us?" Lena asked.

"You stay here till we come out of the ship. Okay?"

"Okay."

John smiled at her and followed the two girls out.