Emberclaw Protocol

Chapter 9: Shackled in the Clouds

The blasted glass of the federal courtroom was reflecting their overlapping silhouettes as Cole licked the blood off the back of Erin's hand. The quantum cuffs hissed around his wrists, burning scorch marks into his skin with each struggle.

“Mrs. Black, please explain why the genetic profile of a newborn baby resonates at the same frequency as an antimatter bomb?”

The Chancellor's holographic projection suddenly distorted into Kayden's face, and Erin's scalpel instantly nailed through the operating table-just in time to cut off the stealth sniper's laser sighting.

“The answer is in your assistant's mechanical kidney.” She ripped away the judge's bionic skin to reveal the countdown pulsing on the military chip, “By the way, your transplanted wolf liver is having a rejection reaction.”

Cole curled his tail around his wife's waist and yanked her toward the gallery as three rounds penetrated the spot where they had just been standing. Little Erin giggled in the blast pod and slammed her quantum pacifier into the surveillance probe above the prosecutor's head.

“Honey, you're scaring the jury.” Cole licked the new abrasion behind her ear, his canines deliberately grazing the sensitive band. There was a huff from the mechanical nuns in the gallery, and Lilith crushed the rose rosary in her hand.

Erin tied the hem of her blood-stained shirt into a knot, revealing the holy tattoo at her waist, “How about worrying about the cardiac load of your fan club?” She deliberately straddled her husband's lap to adjust the quantum monitors, “That mechanical nun in the third row has drawn the cross at your tail seventeen times.”

Cole suddenly bit the back of her neck, the military chip piercing the skin and oozing blue blood, “Jealous?”

“Calculating how soon they'll realize you're missing three scales from your tail.” She backhanded him and stabbed the tranquilizer into his thigh, “They fell off last night when someone went crazy and collapsed the nursery.”

The holographic projection suddenly switched to the children in the isolation chamber. Little Cole was gnawing on the Confederate flag with his milk teeth as quantum fluctuations set the flag ablaze with iridescent light. Erin felt her husband's mechanical heart skip two beats.

“Silence!” The Chancellor's mechanical tentacles slapped the table, “Does the defendant admit to genetic contamination through...”

Cole ripped the quantum handcuffs apart the instant he bestialized, but Erin was faster than him. She leapt across the twelve rows of the gallery, scalpel against the judge's throat, “Three things.” The tip of the knife picked through the artificial veins, “First, my husband's tail scales are cleaner than federal law; second...”

The blast pod suddenly crunched, and the pupils of her daughter's eyes turned Kayden's characteristic icy blue, “Mom, can this toy be disassembled?” She held up the antimatter core that was counting down.

“Thirdly,” the tip of Erin's blade stabbed into the Judge's energy hub, ”my daughter hacked your defenses two minutes ago.”

The courtroom collapsed into a data stream in a quantum explosion. Cole wrapped his wife and daughter in his tail and crashed through the glass dome, with Lilith's fervent prayers behind him, “May the god of machinery protect my king!”

As the hovercar sped through the clouds, Erin realized that her husband's tail was always straddling her and the children.” The military chip is cauterizing your synapses.” She injected holy blood into his spinal junction, “Why did you hide it from me?”

Cole suddenly put the hovercar on autopilot, the metal seat flattening with a scraping sound, “Last time you were in labor you said you hated the smell of disinfectant.” He ripped open his tactical undershirt, his chest covered in laser-engraved scans of stretch marks, “I modified the medical bay's spice system.”

Erin's fingertips brushed over the bumpy patterns, “With an arms dealer's circuit board?”

“And holy oil from Lilith.” He stifled a grunt and grabbed her wandering hand, “Can you smell it now? Cedar mixed with...”

Alarms blew as the quantum net of the Federation battleship enveloped the hovercar. Little Cole suddenly climbed into the driver's seat and slapped his milk-stained hand on the control panel. In the iridescent light bursting from the dashboard, Erin saw the stream of Kaiden data coursing through her son's pupils.

“Hold on tight.” Cole wrapped his tail around the whole family and crashed through the roof of the car to leap into the thunderstorm clouds. Erin kissed his oozing lips in weightlessness and ferried the nanobots into his mouth, “Teaching the kids...” Lightning split the clouds, illuminating the tears under her eyes, “Stop using self-destruct programs as lesson plans.”

As the federal penitentiary opened its massive mouth at her feet, her daughter suddenly let out the first full word of her life, “Home.”

Mechanical guards all over the city turned their guns at the same time. Cole looked at the sleeping children in his arms as the scales on his tail began to peel away, “Maybe it's time to give them real stars?”

Erin pressed her wedding ring into the engraving on his chest, “No, we need to teach the stars to be tolerant.”

The quantum storm formed a barrier around them as Lilith's mechanical legions were breaking through the clouds. Erin pulled her husband's tail for a string and condensed the holy blood into an arrow, “This course is called...”

“The Physics of Love.” Cole bit into the virus capsule and animalized into a rainbow-lit giant wolf.

The sound of his daughter's snoring came from the blast bay as the arrow penetrated the Federation's main ship. Erin counted her husband's new wounds, suddenly realizing that each one overlapped exactly with the course of her stretch marks.

“This is...”

“A star map.” Cole licked the bite mark under her collarbone, “The coordinates that guided me home.”

Lilith's guns turned to fireworks at that moment as the Mechanical Sisters formed their fighters into a courting matrix. Erin pressed her husband's proposal ring through the smoke, “Tell your fans that the Queen approved the hugging concession today.”

Cole's laughter shattered the last of the dark clouds, starlight leaking in to illuminate the milk stains at the corners of the baby's mouth. As the remnants of the Federation ship crashed into the Quantum Sea, they heard their son murmur in his sleep, “Daddy's tail... glows...”