Author: D. J. Butler; Robert J Defendi; Nathan Shumate; Howard Tayler; Brad R. Torgersen; David J. West
Date: 2012-12-14 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror; Sci-Fi; Pulp; Space Opera; Lovecraft
Description: Science fiction goes occult in SPACE ELDRITCH, a volume of seven original novelettes and novellas of Lovecraftian pulp space opera. Featuring work by Brad R. Torgersen (Hugo/ Nebula/Campbell nominee), Howard Tayler (multiple Hugo nominee), and Michael R. Collings (author of over 100 books), plus a foreword by New York Times bestselling author Larry Correia, SPACE ELDRITCH inhabits the intersection between the eternal adventure of the final frontier and the inhuman darkness between the stars. **
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

SPACE ELDRITCH

D.J. Butler ● Michael R. Collings ● Robert J Defendi ● Carter Reid ● Nathan Shumate ● Howard Tayler ● Brad R. Torgersen ● David J. West

Foreword by Larry Correia

Published by

Cold Fusion Media
http://www.coldfusionmedia.us

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

All contents are copyright ©2011 their respective authors.

Cover design and illustration by Carter Reid

Cold Fusion Media Empire
http://www.coldfusionmedia.us

Table of Contents

Foreword – Larry Correia

Arise Thou Niarlat From Thy Rest – D.J. Butler

Space Opera – Michael R. Collings

The Menace Under Mars – Nathan Shumate

Gods in Darkness – David J. West

The Shadows of Titan – Carter Reid and Brad R. Torgersen

The Fury in the Void – Robert J Defendi

Flight of the Runewright – Howard Tayler

Contributors

Acknowledgments

Michael R. Collings sends his thanks (and love) to Judi and his family, who have lived in a house of horror and survived to tell the tale.

Howard Tayler would like to thank Drew Robbins for his invaluable copy editing assistance.

David J. West would like to give an extra-special thanks to Douglas Duane Dietrich, as well as grateful acknowledgments to Piers Bizony, Jack Parsons, the Cordiglia Brothers, Clyde Lewis, and Debi L. West.

Nathan Shumate would like to offer thanks to Christopher Jackson and fellow contributors D.J. Butler and Robert J Defendi for helpful comments, and to all of the Space Eldritch contributors for their participation in this crazy project.

Foreword

Larry Correia

“With five feeble senses we pretend to comprehend the boundlessly complex cosmos.”

– H.P. Lovecraft

When Nathan Shumate, the publisher of Space Eldritch, approached me about writing a foreword for this anthology, he told me to think of it as Lovecraftian Space Opera.

That certainly painted an odd picture…

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized just how well the idea of Lovecraft’s mythos mixed with science fiction clicks. It’s appropriate. It’s like peanut butter and chocolate, or maybe peanut butter and a dark sinister concoction of wailing madness with a hint of cocoa. Whatever, but it fits.

Lovecraft’s works were all about looking outward, dwelling on horrors that lived beyond space and time, out way past that point where human understanding called it a day. Science fiction was all about looking outward as well, to the stars and beyond. Both of which can make mankind seem remarkably fragile and insignificant. Floating in infinite blackness and encountering a gigantic unblinking hungry eyeball, it doesn’t matter if you are a space marine in power armor or a college professor on a very bad field trip, that makes for some good reading.

Several of my own books have borrowed elements from Lovecraft’s mythos. There is just something awe-inspiring about antagonists so big, so alien, and so mind-bending that the most common way to respond to them is to descend into gibbering madness. Nearly everybody has an ingrained irrational fear of things with tentacles, chitin, or too many mouths... for good reason. Slimy, nasty tentacle monsters are gross and terrifying. Now put them on steroids, make them the size of blimps, arm them with science so advanced it might as well be magic, and then give them the alien equivalent to PhDs in theoretical physics and mammal dismembering, and you are talking about some scary-ass villains. Only I hesitate to use the word “villain,” because most of the time humans are too insignificant to attract enough attention to deserve a proper squishing, but when we do, watch out.

I discovered Lovecraft when I was a kid. It scared the living hell out of me. I read every horror novel I could, and nothing moved me like Lovecraft. Even if the story was basically a couple of well-spoken New Englanders doing nothing but sitting around in the dark telling each other stories, nobody conveyed menace and isolation like Lovecraft. Nobody.

You know what else is menacing? The cold vastness of outer space... See? Peanut butter and shoggoths right there.

Science fiction gets all the cool toys, starships, robots, artificial intelligence, even really snazzy unicorns, but it doesn’t matter in the end, because ancient squid gods don’t really care about our toys. To them, we are the toys, and ancient squid gods are notoriously hard on their toys.

Space Opera often features themes of exploration or the expansion of knowledge. You know, exploring brave new worlds, meeting new civilizations, all that jazz. However, when you bring in the Lovecraftian mind-bending tentacle horrors, then it makes that exploration a lot more dangerous, the knowledge we’re finding might not be so good for our sanity, and that brave new civilization may just want to sacrifice us to their dark idols.

Space Eldritch is all about going out there and exploring a little too far anyway.

Sign me up.

Arise Thou Niarlat from Thy Rest

D.J. Butler

“Is this enough blood?”

Sa-Niarlat, born Senwosret, high priest of the venerable complex of Huut-Niarlat, gazed down from the height of the valley temple. Once, the plains behind him and across the river’s gorge had been lush and wet with rain. There had been no valley temple then, and no need for one. Men had traveled freely on roads that cut through meadows and forests to bring them to the temple overlooking the river. Sa-Niarlat knew, for he had seen it, lying in utter darkness in the god’s heka-barge and breathing in the greasy yellow fumes of durhang.

There had been sacrifices, yes, blood shed under the eyeless gaze of the god. And the sacrifices had been effective. Blood had whetted the god’s appetite, and his saliva had watered the plains and raised the emmer, the einkorn, the barley, and the sheum that had given life to tens of thousands.

Now, below the gates of the valley temple, angry men took each other’s lives in tens of thousands. The incense-stink of hot blood filled Sa-Niarlat’s head with giddy delight. Almost, it gave him visions.

When the new gods had come, the plains had dried up; there had not been enough sacrifices to water them and the god’s presence had withdrawn, into the void and his state of black, blessed rest. Other sanctuaries to the god had been burned but not sacked, their treasures left to rot and tarnish as cursed. The sands had come and covered the land. The roads had been lost, and the river had replaced the road. Then the valley temple had become necessary, a gate at the river of the level that opened into a passage sheltered by long sandstone walls leading up to the temple at the bluff behind it.

The valley temple had become necessary, and the deception. Sa-Niarlat, who rejoiced in a name bearing his god’s blessing and the glorious titles Helmsman of the God’s Black Barge, Feeder at His Father’s Teat, and Lector of the Black Book, passed before the world as the humbler, poorer Senwosret, Keeper of Secrets of Sebek the Crocodile.

It was Sebek’s image that adorned the valley temple, in two immense statues flanking the valley temple’s gates, and in plaster-and-paint murals within it. To a careful observer with an eye learned in the ancient signs, the statues and murals would have revealed something else: a Sebek hexed and impotent, a puppet, and behind him, a true, ancient, and hungry power, waiting with cold thirst for a sacrifice large enough, satiating enough, to bring it and its blessings back to its ancient lair.

But there were few such eyes that might see the statues and murals, and fewer still that were not themselves adepts of the temple. Most of the traffic through the valley temple, up the long passage and into the Forecourt, consisted of supplicants of the crocodile, and they had no idea who really heard their prayers.

Heard them and laughed, hungry, and waiting to make his black return.

Of the temple’s staff, the large majority did not know whom they truly served. Even Pa-Ankhi, Captain of the Gate, the burly Asiatic at Sa-Niarlat’s side.

“Enough blood for what, Pa-Ankhi?”

The soldier gestured below. The last of the temple’s defenders outside the walls were subdued. Screaming men were dragged beneath one of the statues of Sebek even as the attackers threw ropes around the monument. Dozens of arms gripped the ropes and pulled, chanting effeminate Theban hymns in unison.

The screams ended in a single wet thump.

The temple would fall, Sa-Niarlat saw. The fire-eyed zealots of Thebes would desecrate the god’s earthly darkness, the valley’s last hope of fertility and abundance would disappear, and the sands of the infinite desert would well and truly come. Sa-Niarlat and the god’s other disciples had not yet amassed enough heka, the vital power-within-the-blood, and did not have a large enough flock of sacrifices, willing or unwilling, to supplement. The god was too far away, and Sa-Niarlat could not summon him.

Unless...

Sa-Niarlat reached within his robe and laid his hand on the obsidian knife that always lay next to his skin.

“Enough blood to convince you that I was right, Keeper of Secrets? That your mysteries are not worth the price it would take to preserve them? That you should have cooperated with the priests of Amun, and permitted them into the sanctuary of Sebek, as all the other priests have done?”

The Asiatic leaned forward and spat over the parapet at the jeering Thebans. When he turned back to face Sa-Niarlat, the high priest slashed him with the knife across his throat.

“Ia Niarlat!”

Pa-Ankhi sank to the stone with a look of surprise on his face.

“No,” Sa-Niarlat told his dying Captain. “There has not been enough blood. Not yet. Not nearly.”

***

Blood.

He wiped with numb hands at the crystalline firmament in front of him, looking for a revelation in all the red globular brilliance. He found a face.

Did he know the face? He couldn’t be sure. It was a woman’s, not particularly pretty, but somehow dear to him. Or hated.

No, not hated. The face he loved was meat, the meaningless face of a cow.

He realized that he was floating.

But he... he... who was he? He realized in a moment of total loss that he had no idea.

Worse, he had a terrible feeling that there might be more than one answer to the question.

Who are we? he thought, mind flailing.

A shriek stabbed his ears.

The woman behind the crystal firmament opened her eyes. She stared at him through the firmament, slapping long nails against the clear barrier that restrained her.

He smiled, feeling turmoil within himself he couldn’t identify. In his hand he found he had a stone.

Raising it behind his head, he smashed it down on the crystal. The force of the blow pushed him backward, away from the woman. The sack of blood.

She screamed again.

***

Captain James Rodriguez sat up and smacked his face into the lid of his Hypnotube.

“Ouch!” He tried to rub his nose but couldn’t reach it in the narrow slot that carried him while the NACSS Temerario traveled in Nullspace. He heard the soft hiss and felt a gentle sucking at his hip and then a hypodermic needle jabbed him.

“Edison!” he cursed.

The Hypnostasis emergence procedure had gotten garbled. He was an experienced Nullship pilot, and had been through Hypnostasis many times. At the end of the voyage, the ship injected you with a stimulant that slowly brought you up, and by the time you were awake, the Tube was open.

That was true whether the ship’s systems woke you up because you had reached your destination, or because some combination of data gathered by the ship’s sensors triggered emergence.

James caught his breath.

The hypodermic had jabbed him when he was already awake.

So what had brought him out of Hypnostasis?

James put his fingers to his hip and probed. He only felt one tender spot. Could the hypodermic have poked him twice in the same point? And what side effects would a double dosage of the emergence cocktail have?

He shook his head. He’d ask Chaz. In any case, the Temerario was a long way from the nearest Terran system, and it was a bad thing if any of its systems was malfunctioning. The North American Confederacy’s colonizing ship had left the fringes of Terran space behind at its last entry into Nullspace, twenty-five hundred hypnostatic souls aboard and bound for a recently terraformed Class M planet owned by the Confederacy. Captain Rodriguez was to christen the planet (Wellman’s World, and when asked by the curious to explain the choice, he shrugged the blame off onto the inexplicable whimsy of bureaucrats), deposit the colonists, remain in orbit until they had shelter and a Nullspace Communicator in place, and then return.

In and out, a freight run, nothing to write home about. Certainly not as glamorous as the actions against pirates James had flown as a young Navy officer, or even his later Customs work shutting down smugglers making the lucrative Mars Run through the asteroid belt of the Terran Home System. Though if the Temerario were malfunctioning, this freight run might be about to get significantly more exciting.

But really, all the Hypnochamber had done was garble up its awakening sequence slightly. There was nothing to indicate that anything had gone seriously wrong aboard ship.

He forced aside the nagging question of what had awoken him.

The Hypnotube chunked cheerfully and its lid split down the middle, parting and sliding open in both directions. The inrushing canned air of the ship’s Hypnochamber made James realize how much worse the Hypnotube air smelled. It was the stink of his own body, too much, too close, and too long.

He threw one leg out of the Hypnotube, then the other.

The light in the Hypnochamber was amber. He raised his head enough to poke it out of the Hypnotube and look around; the other Tubes were open, but the rest of the crew lay still asleep. They’d been injected like James, but were waking up at the normal, gradual rate. The Temerario’s captain relaxed, just a little. There was no indication that the ship’s malfunction, if there had even been one, had been anything other than limited.

He pushed with elbows and shoulders and forced his body out of the Hypnotube in a ragged lurch.

James shook his head. Maybe it was the dream that had woken him. You weren’t supposed to dream in Hypnostasis. He never had, and he’d never heard of anyone else doing it, either. And what in the name of Leibniz kind of dream had that been, anyway? So much blood. Actual spilled blood was a rarity in naval warfare, mostly seen in boarding actions, which were uncommon—space was large, and ships shot at each other over great distances. A Navy man saw gore mostly in accidents, or dirtside brawls.

A wave of dizziness and nausea swept over James. He thought he smelled blood for a moment, and hot sand. The tight ultraceramic walls of the Hypnochamber swung around him like the enclosure of a G-force training simulation. He sucked in the plastic-tinged air of the Temerario’s recycling tanks, feelings its stale tang tickle his lungs.

Amber light meant that the Temerario had terminated Hypnostasis early for some reason, so James touched the interactive wall panels to find out why.

Or he tried to touch them, anyway, and discovered that he couldn’t. His right arm hung numb and useless at his side.

“Newton,” he cursed, and used his left. He shook his arm at the shoulder as he worked, trying to get blood to flow back into it. Must have cut off circulation, wedged into the Tube like that, he thought. Or maybe this was the result of getting the emergence injection twice.

The touch panel lit up under his fingers, in Basic Mode. He tried to direct it to activate Standard Mode, but the icon remained stubbornly inert as he punched it over and over again.

“Chaz,” he said, and because the computer didn’t answer to its nickname, he shouted it: “Chaz!”

Nothing.

“Computer. Ship’s computer, NACSS Temerario.”

Still nothing.

He growled under his breath. Fine. He could do this; it would just take a little longer.

Dredging more complicated procedures from his memory, procedures designed for emergency situations in which the higher functions of the ship’s computers had been disabled—usually by power loss—James asked for more information.

He would have liked visual representations of the data, schematics he could rotate to view at any angle, colored spectographic reconstructions. Instead, he got line after line of numerical data. His eyes blurred trying to read it, his head hurt, and his breath came short. He leaned against the bulkhead, smelling again the unexpected combination of heated sand and blood. Far away, he thought he heard screaming in a language he didn’t understand. Olfactory hallucinations, he thought grimly, and now auditory.

James sighed and ran the fingers of his left hand through thinning hair, letting his senses drift back to normal. He’d ask Chaz for a sedative, he resolved, just as soon as he was sure it was safe to do so.

He forced himself to look at the numbers again. It wasn’t immediately obvious to him what they meant. Gravity. Gravity and mass, as if there were a planet, he thought. Only there was no planet. Wellman’s World was still lightyears away. From James’s recollection of the time-adjusting star charts and data over which he’d pored back at Dunsany, he thought the nearest significant mass of any sort should be lightyears away.

But there was something. If it was an asteroid or similar mass, it had moved awfully fast to get into the Temerario’s path, which had been carefully charted through empty space. If it was a ship... James looked at the data again and blinked... it was enormous.

“Sandhu...” He turned back to the Hypnotubes to see if the Temerario’s science officer was awake and functional yet.

Blood.

There was blood spattered on the floor of the Hypnochamber, and the rest of the crew was gone.

Except one. One of the Hypnotubes had someone in it.

“Vito?” The Tube belonged to Vittorio Moroni, the ship’s medical officer.

James stepped closer, feeling a knot of dread in his chest.

Vito looked peaceful. He might have been still in Hypnostasis but for the fact that his throat was slit and blood soaked the blue tunic of his uniform.

“Vito!” James reached for his fellow-officer’s corpse, again instinctively using his right hand—which didn’t respond.

James looked down at his own hand, biting back a curse.

The hand was red with blood.

***

“Hop to it, Doc!”

Jack Kale roared like an angry ape as he threw his heavy shoulder against the door. The howling on the other side was inarticulate, deprived of consonants, and mad. The door shuddered, nearly throwing Jack to the floor.

The frayed veteran of the Great War and sometime private man of violence threw aside his Thompson. Without a loaded drum, the gun was useless, anyway. He drew his service pistol, a battered but meticulously cleaned and oiled M1911, and jerked back the slide.

“I am hurrying.”

“I’m saving two shots for us, Professor!” Kale yelled. “No way I’m having my liver plucked out on some ginny altar!”

“They’re not Italians.”

“No? Coulda fooled me.”

“Did they seem particularly Italian to you when they were eating Carver’s intestines?”

Kale snorted. “Put garlic on it, and a wop’ll eat anything.”

Randolph Choate nodded his retreat from the argument, trying to ignore the tumult and focus. Lemurian was hard to read in the best of circumstances, with its obscure determinatives and its recursive ergative syntax. It was harder when a bloodthirsty mob of worshipers of a dead god wanted to distract you.

Or sacrifice you to their blasphemous anthropophagous deity, as they had done to so many others. The kidnappings, the newspapers’ “mob violence,” the rash of murders and the warehouse fires on the Miskatonic—all sacrifices, all feeding and summoning the god.

He blinked away a sheet of orange. The colors in Randolph’s vision were beginning to bleed into each other, fade, and sometimes shimmer. Objects telescoped closer and further away as he looked at them. He wasn’t sure how well his mind was holding together, at this point. Too many revelations. The truth was dangerous, and an open mind was a vulnerable one.

The god was emphatically not dead, he reminded himself. Remote, perhaps. Trapped, hopefully. Dangerously close to emerging. The stars pointed to it, with their conjunctions in forgotten constellations. The ancient Lemurian prophecies were emphatic, and the enthusiastic activity of the cultists certainly suggested they thought something was about to happen.

The mob hit the door again and one of the hinges burst free, pinging across the room and disappearing in darkness.

The basement of the Burroughs manor was lit only by the kerosene lamp Randolph held over the stone tablet in his hand. Kale had brought a flashlight, but, as Randolph had predicted, the electricity in the device had begun to fade as the Gate opened. Even the lamp guttered, as if an unfelt wind sucked at its flame.

The cold, dark thing on the other side drank in the power and grew. Power and blood, Randolph thought. On some level, the same thing, as the ancient Hebrews had well known.

Carver had been right; the museum had been easy to rob. Randolph only wished he’d foreseen that the Burroughs Coven would be after the same tablet. He didn’t know what he would have done differently, but something, he was sure. He would have proceeding more cunningly, and Carver would not now be dead.

Carver had made a sacrifice, Randolph thought. A choice, a hard choice, showing willingness to give life for the greater good. It was up to his friends to make the journalist’s death meaningful. Also Delilah’s, he forced himself to articulate in his mind, and he willed himself not to think of the writer hanging herself by the neck from the hotel balcony after reading a mere Latin paraphrase of the very tablet he now held in his hand.

The lamp illuminated the tablet and picked out in yellow a ragbag of details in the basement. Randolph couldn’t explain them all, or interpret them. The two chipped and eroded statues of the Egyptian crocodile deity Sebek, for instance, that squatted on either side of the black, lichen-crusted wall seemed out of place, though the Egyptian incantations scratched about their bases were appropriate enough. Niarlat live, Niarlat watch, Niarlat come, over and over. Arise thou Niarlat from thy rest was as eloquent as the graffitoes got. Between and before the statues lay a broad, low altar of stone, and the lamp cast enough light for Randolph to see the runnels carved in its surface and in the floor, leading away into dark, unpenetrated corners of the hall.

The air was damp and cold from the proximity of the Miskatonic. Randolph squeezed his fingers into fists to force blood into them and ran a chewed fingernail under a row of elusive characters.

“Blood,” he said out loud. “Blood opens the gate and awakens the monster. Enough blood, and the right incantations. Blood there has been.” He peered into the darkness between the Sebek-idols. “And if the gate opens? What closes it?”

“Toldja we shoulda brought dynamite!” Kale skidded six inches away from the door as a force on the other side pounded into it, then fought his way back, the hem of his stained trench coat flapping around his ankles. “Or a cement truck! Fill this whole damn cellar with wet cement, it’d take the ginnies twenty years just to dig it out, much less fill it with blood.”

“If only I had a time machine,” Randolph lamented. “I could have driven here in a cement truck.”

“If you had a time machine,” Kale grunted, “we coulda gone back to when this Niarlat’s ma was pregnant, and whacked her.” He pronounced the name in a way that rhymed with beer hat.

“Niarlat, you mean.”

“He and his ma got the same name? That’s messed up. No wonder he’s so pissed off.”

Randolph found the line he needed, and reread it. An incantation, a hex that would damage the gate, and maybe destroy it altogether.

As Jack Kale spewed a stream of obscenities directed at all of America’s immigrant communities, he read it again, to be sure he’d understood.

“Jack,” he said slowly. “I’m going to have to leave you for a few minutes.”

“Leave?” Jack snorted. “Where you going? There ain’t but the one door—” he grunted, slamming his full weight against the door in question, “and that way is suicide.”

“There are two exits from this place.” Randolph sighed.

Both doors might be suicide. It was a hard choice, but he had to respect Carver’s sacrifice. Whatever the cost, he had to stop the black god.

***

The sun edged towards the Akhet, and beyond the line of the horizon the darkness of the Duat, to be caressed in the sacred, penetrating embrace of the god. Almost, salvation could be called. Sa-Niarlat climbed down from Pa-Ankhi’s roan horse at the pylon giving entrance to the Forecourt. A young initiate, head shaved but the tattooing not yet begun, took the animal’s reins.

“Master,” the initiate whimpered, brown eyes liquid with despair, “we’re all doomed.”

“Child.” Sa-Niarlat smiled benevolently. “Though the time is not of my choosing, I believe I must now teach you the sacred knowledge of the Dark Chamber.”

“Will you take me into the Inner Court?” The boy’s chin trembled. He was a merchant’s son, an innocent, an idiot, a beast. He was blood only, worthless for any other purpose.

Sa-Niarlat shook his head. “Kneel.”

The boy knelt, and Sa-Niarlat chanted a quick hymn to the god. The boy’s brow furrowed at the words he didn’t recognize, words older than Narmer, older even than Huut-Niarlat itself.

“What sacred knowledge?”

“You already possess this knowledge,” Sa-Niarlat said. “My errand is only to point it out.”

The boy frowned. “What knowledge?”

“We’re all doomed.”

The knife flashed black in the reddish glow of the sun sinking into the western desert, and the boy fell to the sand.

The horse, an animal trained for war, snorted patiently. Sa-Niarlat killed it too, mingling its blood with the boy’s. Hot red liquid spurted over Sa-Niarlat’s sandals, and he let it, reveling in the feeling of warm, sticky toes.

Below, the sound of the valley temple’s gate crashing to the ground came as a muffled, faraway tumph. One gate opened, Sa-Niarlat thought, with satisfaction and sacred, ecstatic despair. Soon he would open another. Men and horses flowed into the opening, singing a song Sa-Niarlat did not know and did not fear. His god was coming, and his god would silence the squealing of the piglets of Thebes.

The Keeper of Secrets carried the dagger openly in his hand as he strode into the Forecourt. Papyrus columns bordered a square space that was open to the sky. On the inward-facing sides of the pillars were carved and painted the stories of Sebek familiar to his worshipers.

On the reverse sides of the columns, facing into the shadowy, star-speckled passage that surrounded the court, were more surprising images.

Adepts and initiates gathered around Sa-Niarlat. The true ignorant followers of Sebek stared in awe at the weapon in his hand, no doubt imagining that he had bloodied it in defense of their blind and impotent crocodile idol.

Those who had been to the Dark Chamber merely looked at his red footprints and nodded.

“Brothers,” Sa-Niarlat addressed them. “Children. It is time.”

***

“Gabe! Sandhu!” James banged on the intercom panel, but no one answered.

Wait... were they dead? Someone was dead, he dimly thought, but he couldn’t remember who. He had heard screaming. Was it someone far away, maybe? Someone a long time ago? Someone on a hot, sandy beach?

His face itched. His heart screamed dully into his throat. Was it the Temerario’s passengers? He remembered something wrong with the ship’s Hypnostasis system. Had Chaz murdered the entire population of Wellman’s World?

Who was Chaz?

Maybe the science officer and first mate weren’t answering because they had been killed on burning sand, their blood seeping into the path of the oncoming Theban horde, a warhorse sacrificed on top of their bodies.

He shook his head, snapping the fog back into the corners of his consciousness. Nightmares. He’d never heard of the emergence cocktail having side effects like this, but then he’d never heard of anyone overdosing on it. “Tesla!”

Something had gone wrong in Nullspace. There was something... he tried to remember... outside the ship, and it had made things go wrong. He was jumpy, sick. Crazy? Overdosing. In Basic Mode, Chaz wouldn’t dispense the sedative that James desperately needed, because James couldn’t remember how to give it the right instruction. Especially not in this state; the more he tried to focus, the more vague the details of Chaz’s operation became.

But he remembered this: The bridge had an emergency kit, a physical box bolted under the captain’s chair that could be accessed without any assistance whatsoever from the computer.

He lurched into the passage outside the Hypnochamber.

Had he killed someone? How many people? He felt numb.

The passage was lit by the white emergency strip at floor level. Even the ceiling emergency strip was dead, which meant something had really leeched their power. James racked his brain, trying to think of phenomena that could have done this. Had he mischarted their course, and flown them through a star? But Gabe had checked his figures, and besides, if that had happened, they’d be dead and atomized, or in a bottomless wormhole of their own creation, or... he racked his brain, trying to remember all the nightmare scenarios the astrophysicists had played out for his Nullspace Navigation classes at the Academy. They were terrible, but they all resulted in destruction or isolation, permanent exile from physical reality. None of them led to drained batteries.

The lift didn’t respond.

Behind the lift’s tube and all along it ran an emergency ladder. Even without the lift, the entire ship was accessible. Downward lay the twenty-five hundred Tubes of the colonists, as well as the escape pods and most of the functional parts of the ship. Engines, life support, the minimal weaponry that the ship carried, mostly to deter the pirates that travelers outside of Terran space occasionally encountered. Upward lay the bridge.

James grabbed the rungs of the ladder just as the Temerario’s artificial gravity gave out and up and down ceased to exist. He didn’t really notice the sudden weightlessness, though. He was anchored to the rung, and besides, he couldn’t take his eyes off his hand.

It was covered in blood, and held a large, black flake of stone. Like a caveman, he thought. Like a caveman, slaughtering animals to eat. Or sacrificing to his ancient beast-headed gods.

He felt a warm feeling in his heart at the thought, and smelled sand again.

He flexed the limb’s muscles. His arm was strong. That seemed wrong to him, but he wasn’t sure why.

Launching himself with toes against the rungs of the ladder, James ascended towards the bridge.

***

Blam! Blam! Blam!

Jack Kale leaned away from the door with one foot jammed under it, his M1911 punching thumb-sized holes through the wood. If the door were bigger, and there were more room on the other side for the cultists to mass together and pool their efforts, Randolph guessed that they would already have trampled his brawny friend into the mud and be in the room.

As it was, Kale looked exhausted.

“I could use a hand here!” Kale shouted. “Like a magic sword! Or a big fighting wolf! Or grant me three wishes, so I can wish these freakin’ ginnies into guinea pigs!” He leaned into the door again to eject his clip, then rummaged for bullets in the pocket of his trench coat. “Ain’t you supposed to be a wizard?”

“You’re no fencer, Jack. What would you even do with a sword if you had one?” Randolph dug into the deep pockets of his coat, looking for the things he needed. A tallow made of human fat, with its wick fashioned from a grave shroud that had wrapped the same corpse. A ball of his own hair, carefully collected over weeks. A knife only ever sharpened on flint. Chalk he had dug from the earth himself. Other collected oddments he shoved aside, not needing them for the conjuring he planned.

“I’d stab me some ginnies, is what I’d do. It’s a sword, whaddya think I’d do with it?”

“Touché.”

Randolph Choate was not so naive as to believe in anything like white magic, any more than he believed in fairies, angels, happy endings, or beautiful women who were attracted to gangly professors of Hellenistic esoterica. Magic started at gray, and shaded quickly into a blackness darker than most people could imagine. Randolph tried his best to stay in the gray.

Whenever possible.

He knelt and wedged his hair under the door. The muttering on the other side didn’t sound human, but like a muffled and half-heard argument among goats.

Curiosity stopped him for a moment to listen, and he would have sworn that the sound of the chittering, howling voices on the other side was pink.

Pink soft, pink warm, pink inviting. Come join us safe join us lovely join us pink pink pink.

He tore away his attention. He was, he knew, running out of mind.

Time, blast it. He was running out of time.

He jammed the candle under the juddering door and chalked four Lemurian glyphs on the crumbling gray cement of the floor. Then he cut himself, and bled onto the spell-contraption.

“Jiminy,” Kale muttered. Randolph ignored him.

He felt strength ebb from his body as he chanted the words of the spell. This exercise had seemed like a game, back at the University. Now, any minute he could gain in holding back the horde was a minute more he had in which to defeat their god.

Not defeat. Thwart, misdirect, close the path before. It was the gate that was his target, not the Sleeper in the Void. Anyone foolish enough to attempt to defeat the great Resting Niarlat of the Abyss deserved what he got.

A tiny part of his mind saw his flowing blood and felt there was something... mistaken... about it. An error.

The door stopped shaking. Thumps and crashes from the other side suggested that the parties that wanted entrance continued to pound on the door, but it now held firm as if it were a stone wall.

Randolph stood.

He turned and headed for the idols. “It won’t hold long.”

“Thanks. Hey, uh... you’re still bleeding.”

Randolph held up his hand and looked at the gray ichor running from his palm. He smiled, ignoring the failure of his eyes. “I’ve never known a magic spell that was ruined by the addition of a little blood.” He continued towards the gate, limping from exhaustion and pain.

“I’d feel a lot better if you’d tell me what you’re doing.”

“I’d feel a lot better if I knew.”

He knelt before the gate. Unsure what to do about the statues of Sebek, he knelt between them rather than in front of them, to face the darkness beyond rather than the idols themselves.

It was a scientific operation, he told himself. It was taking local action in ways that produced remote effect, according to known and predictable patterns, following the scientific, procedural instructions on the Lemurian tablet. You could call it magic, if you liked, but that did nothing to change its essential character.

And it definitely wasn’t prayer.

Pretending he wasn’t lying to himself, Randolph Choate began to chant.

He couldn’t wait until the god arrived. If the god arrived, it brought utter ruin with it.

He had to go where the god was, and lead Niarlat astray.

***

“This is astonishing.”

Gabe yanked the emergency kit from underneath the captain’s chair. In the sudden aftermath of gravity loss he yanked too hard, and sent himself gliding across the small bridge, thumping into one of Chaz’s inert panels. The emergency kit banged him in the chest, and droplets of blood from the wounds he’d sustained trying to save Vito’s life scattered in a fine red mist about the bridge.

He was painfully aware that between him and his wife prowled his batshit-crazy captain, with Vito Moroni’s blood on his hands. This was supposed to have been Gabe’s last haul with the Navy. At Wellman’s World he retired, so he could farm and Annie could teach school.

“I’m interested in two things right now,” Gabe grunted. “If you can get the power on again, great. If you can help me subdue the captain, great. Anything else, right now, fails to make my give-a-damn list.”

“I think it’s a wormhole,” Balbinder Sandhu said, ignoring Gabe. “But there’s something inside it. Something huge.”

“Huh.”

“And maybe organic.”

“Congratulations. You’ve discovered space whales.”

Sandhu missed both the joke and the irritation in Gabe’s voice. Gabe undid the latches on the captain’s emergency kit, scattering tubes of antiseptic cream, painkillers, and adhesive bandages in all directions around him in a slow-moving cloud.

He grabbed the stungun.

Gabriel Goldman had just watched Jim Rodriguez slaughter his own medical officer like a farm animal. Not watched as a passive bystander; Gabe had tried to intervene, and for his trouble had been beaten and cut by his captain, who somehow had a big bit of sharp stone in his hand, like volcanic glass.

And...

Gabe felt dizzy. He sucked canned air into his lungs and drifted, thumping his skull gently against the bulkhead. The gray light of the bridge faded to a dimly-pulsing black and he struggled to hold onto the stungun.

It was the sudden shift to zero-g, he thought as he fought back from the brink of unconsciousness. And the Hypnostasis emergence cocktail still coursing through his veins.

Gabe caught himself against an inert computer panel and shook it off.

“What have you got there?”

Gabe grunted. “Glad you can tear yourself away from the screen, Bal. It’s the stungun we came for.” He held up his hand with the stungun in it—
only it wasn’t the stungun.

It was a stone tablet.

The tablet was the size of Gabe’s two hands put together and worn smooth all around its edges. Glyphs that might have been little letters and might have been little pictures marched up and down both sides in columns, surrounding two different central images. On the obverse side was what looked like an opening between two doorposts. The space between the two posts was carved out and flakes of some ancient paint lingered in the depression. On the reverse was a... a monster.

Gabe shook himself, feeling an uncomfortable tingling in his spine. Monster? Why a monster? Tentacles for a head and three arms and legs didn’t make a creature a monster. It was just a nonhuman life form, unknown to Lieutenant Gabriel Goldman, despite his long years spent getting to know the worst bars in every ragged port of known space. But there was something about the image that was troubling. Wrong. It seemed different each time Gabe blinked, and the shape of it... didn’t work. The geometry of it was tangled. Things that had to be behind were before, and vice versa.

A thing of too many dimensions. Gabe shuddered. Just looking at the images made him feel... uncomfortable. Out of place. Wrong.

“That’s doesn’t look like NACSS issue,” Sandhu said. It might have been a joke, but there was a strong note of fear in his voice.

Thud!

The sound came from the emergency ladder.

Gabe had a moment of panic, but then found he did have the stungun after all, in his other hand. Where had the tablet come from, then? Had it been inside the emergency kit? Was that someone’s idea of a joke? Or was someone in the crew hiding it?

But who would have access to the bridge? For all his war stories about busting tariff runners above Mars, was Jim Rodriguez an antiquities smuggler? It made no sense at all. Even if he was, there was no one on Wellman’s World to smuggle antiquities to.

It didn’t matter now. Gabe pushed gently off the wall and drifted parallel the opening of the shaft.

Jim Rodriguez banged his way bridgeward in the ladder’s tunnel. He didn’t move like the trained and experienced astronaut that he was, though. He moved like the worst of dirtsiders, like an untrained bear, slamming his elbows and head against the walls and muttering words Gabe could hear but didn’t understand, or even recognize. It might have been the same gibberish he’d been shouting when he’d slit Vito’s throat and tossed Gabe across the Hypnochamber.

It wasn’t just the words that were wrong, though. His voice sounded raspier than it should, and deeper.

“Stop right there, Jim!” Gabe called. He tucked the queer stone tablet under one armpit and aimed the stungun at his drifting captain.

He felt dizzy again and sucked air through his teeth. Sandhu watched at his shoulder.

The Temerario’s captain shouted his strangled, violent babble again.

“Full stun,” Sandhu suggested.

“That your scientific opinion, Bal?” But Gabe had already set the stungun to its maximum setting. At that level, in the best of circumstances, he’d only get off a dozen shots before the energy cell gave out. Given that the something seemed to be draining the power out of the ship, he had no confidence that the gun’s wasn’t also depleted.

Jim shook his fist, spraying blood around the ladder tube, and kicked himself forward.

Gabe hit the fire switch. Golden light flashed in the bridge and in the ladder shaft, and the beam hit Jim—
who kept yelling.

“Again!” Sandhu yelled, pointlessly. The science officer pushed off a wall to throw himself out of the captain’s irregular, tumbling path.

Gabe fired twice more, and then he depressed the switch a fourth time and nothing happened.

Jim hurtled out of the shaft in his direction, swinging the object in his hand. The object with which he’d killed Vito, some kind of caveman knife. He still moved like a lubber, showing no sign of his zero-g combat training, which was a blessing. Gabe twisted to one side, the knife narrowly missed him, and he threw his captain against the wall.

Jim hit hard, and for a split second as he impacted into one of Chaz’s larger interfaces, all the lights of the bridge snapped on, as did the viewscreens. Gabe saw the impossibly dark black of deep space, the distant twinkling of remote stars, and a thing.

And then the thing was gone. And then it was there again.

It looked like a pit...

...deep... as infinitely deep as the space around it, but in a different direction.

Motion within the pit—a maw—tentacles?

His mind couldn’t process what he saw. He felt a ball of ice in the pit of his stomach.

“Help me...” Jim Rodriguez moaned. His voice was streaked with despair, but it sounded like him again.

Gabe jerked his eyes away from the viewscreen. He found he was breathing hard and sweating. “Chaz,” he said. “Distance to anomaly?”

“Ten thousand kilometers and closing.” Chaz’s voice crackled, its North American Standard accent thrown off by the warble.

Sandhu cursed in Punjabi.

“Degree of magnification, Chaz?”

“Zeeeerooooo.” Chaz’s voice slowed and dropped in pitch. The lights snapped off, and the ship’s computer’s voice disappeared with them.

Gabe slammed the nearest panel, then kicked it, trying to resuscitate the computer again. Nothing.

“Not enough power,” Sandhu said, reading the minimal data that still marched down the dark viewscreens.

“No kidding.” Gabe kicked the wall, knocking himself away from it.

“Just about everything we have left is going into life support.”

“I’m siiiick,” Jim Rodriguez groaned. “Help me.”

The Temerario’s captain trembled, pawing at the bulkhead. He reached out to his science officer with quavering fingers.

“Dammit, Jim,” Sandhu whined. “I’m an astrophysicist, not a doctor!”

“My head...” Jim rubbed his temple and squeezed his eyes shut, curling slightly towards a fetal ball as he did so.

Gabe mentally cursed the stunner. Was it broken? Was the cell so depleted that the stun had been ineffective? Or had Jim Rodriguez just shaken off three stungun blasts, any one of which should have dropped a horse in its tracks?

And was it the monster outside that was drinking the ship dry? The same monster that was incised into the stone tablet with the glyphs?

But that was ridiculous. That was impossible.

“Okay,” Sandhu agreed. “There’s a sedative in the kit.”

Gabe laughed, looking at the medical supplies drifting all around the bridge. “Good luck finding it.”

Jim whimpered. “The dreams,” he said. “Sand and blood.”

“There it is.” Sandhu dragged himself along a wall towards a spinning sliver, just above Jim’s shoulder. Gabe wouldn’t even have spotted it in the gloom, barely relieved by a single guttering emergency strip, but it certainly might be a hypodermic. “Got it.”

Jim lashed out. His motion was sudden, swift, and sure, and the blow sent Balbinder Sandhu spinning away in a graceful backwards arc, head first, arms out to his side, and fat globules of blood trailing behind him.

Throat slashed open.

“Ia Niarlat!”

The same kinetic energy sent Jim spinning back the other way, into the far corner of the bridge. He hit the bulkhead flat against his back and bounced.

Gabe almost jumped at him then, but in the strangeness of the moment he hesitated. Then Jim regained his balance. The captain glared at his first mate and co-pilot with a malevolent sneer. “Sand and blood,” he hissed.

Sandhu’s body struck the bridge’s main viewscreen in a splatter of red.

Gabe hurled the useless stungun at his captain, gripped the stone tablet tightly in one hand and kicked himself into—down—the ladder shaft.

He had to protect the passengers.

“Sand and blood!”

***

Sa-Niarlat led the entire staff of the temple across the Inner Court. Those who had never seen it before might have stared if they’d had more time; here the papyrus columns were identical to those in the Forecourt, only rotated one hundred eighty degrees, so that the esoteric versions of their tales faced the viewer, and the exoteric versions were turned to the walls.

The esoteric tales were still lies, of course. But they were lies that taught in the direction of the glorious black truth.

The Inner Court had a ceiling, and on it were carved and painted stars. Sa-Niarlat looked back to see some of the Sebek worshipers staring upward as they walked, trying to puzzle out the constellations that were represented. Sa-Niarlat had done the same thing as a youth. Only later, after many sacrifices, had he learned what those stars really were.

He stopped at the Veiled Passage and turned to face the temple staff. The crashing sounds of the Thebans hammering at the doors of the Forecourt were still audible after priests closed the Inner Court’s doors.

“The time has come for your ascension to the god’s great bark,” he told them all.

“Sebek will save us.”

“If he does not, we will swim with him in the waters of the sky.”

Sa-Niarlat nodded piously. “We will swim with the god,” he agreed. “One at a time,” he told a Brother of the Dark Chamber, and he ducked to pass through the veil. “As initiates.”

***

He wandered along the row of tombs, trailing blood in his wake, looking into the frozen faces of the dead.

Not dead, something told him. Sleeping, behind plates of glass. He asked himself how he knew that, and found he had no answer.

If they were not dead, he wondered, then why was he flying?

And where did all the blood come from?

He looked into the crystal shroud of one of the bodies and saw that it had been scratched repeatedly with a sharp tool. Long, deep gouges crisscrossed the window, marring the dull light that flowed around the sleeper’s face and up into his hand as he traced them with one fingertip.

In the tomb beneath his fingers which was not a tomb, the dim light illuminating its occupant flickered and died, and then the gouges were no longer visible.

The air felt thick in his lungs. Because it seemed like the right thing to do, he took the stone in his hand and began scratching at the crystal. His stone blade cut deep grooves, but he slammed it with too much force and it flaked, shooting splinters of black glass tumbling in all directions, slicing into the flesh of his own cheeks and forehead.

Under his hands, the tomb shook violently.

A portion of his heart exulted.

***

Jack Kale finished reloading the drum of his tommy gun and spat on the floor.

The door rattled. The huddled masses yearning to eat his flesh on the other side of it yelled their crazy gobbledygook and howled.

“Go to hell,” he told them, and mimed shooting through the door. He held his fire, though. Every second the door could buy them was time for the professor to do his professorish bit. Jack didn’t really believe in magic, but he’d seen old Choate stop the door from caving in, and he’d seen him drive away that scaly flying thing with some weird words and the wave of a bit of chicken guts, so who was Jack to judge?

Anyway, whatever it was, Jack’s job was simple. Watch the door until it burst open, and then blow as many foreigners to kingdom come as he could manage.

Better light wouldn’t hurt. “Professor? You still using that lamp?”

No answer.

Jack tiptoed over the scabby wet cement to Professor Choate. The gaunt old guy lay on the floor, tightly clutching the bit of stone they’d lifted from the museum to his chest. His lips moved and Jack could hear mumbled words, but he couldn’t make them out over the howling of the wops. Anyway, Choate wasn’t talking to Jack.

He also didn’t seem to be using the lamp, so Jack stooped to pick it up.

In the illumination cast down by the raised light, he saw that there was something under the professor.

Not an object, he realized, but an image. That crazy old ginny Burroughs—Burroughs was an Italian name, wasn’t it?—not only had statues of giant crocodiles in his basement, he’d painted a picture on his basement floor.

Jack squinted. Through the lichen and the damp it was hard to be certain, but as best as he could make it out, the painting was of some kind of boat. It was curled up at the front and the back, and it had a canopy on its deck like a tent, and a bunch of bald men pulled at its bank of oars, rowing the boat through a field of stars.

Jack snorted.

“Ginnies.”

***

Randolph Choate blinked and tried to focus. He was seeing through a veil of aqueous humors, he knew, his own perceptive and elective faculties—he hesitated to call them his soul, for the metaphysical and even theological implications of the word—using another man’s eyeballs.

He hoped, at least, that his vessel was human.

He looked down, flexing muscles and feeling relief that what he saw were indeed forearms and hands.

But he was flying. Gray walls, featureless but for the rungs of a ladder, flashed before his flooded vision.

He realized he had no sense of up and down. Was this the void? He had expected to find himself in coruscating energy, or the cold depths of space, not a tunnel. Was this hell? Randolph’s stomach fluttered, and he thought, for a split second, that it had been too long since he’d been to church.

Not hell, though. Far too prosaic for hell. And yet he was within a tunnel, and moving.

In a cloud of dark mist. Blood?

The vessel struggled to resist. Randolph felt his arms flap spastically, grabbing at the rungs. He missed the catch, but snagged himself and threw off his trajectory. He bounced against the passage wall, spun, hit again, and lost his grip on the Lemurian tablet.

The tablet spun away from him in the weightless void.

Randolph clamped his will hard on the vessel, forcing the enslaved jaw and tongue to utter another Lemurian incantation. The spell took effect and the vessel relaxed; control became easier. With more grace, though not much, he caught himself on the ladder. Flailing in a passage too small for his purposes, he struggled to force the body around and return to where he’d lost the tablet.

The tablet was gone.

Then Randolph saw an opening in the side of the shaft. It was as large as a doorway, and he hadn’t seen it because he’d been flying so quickly without gravity. This void, this strange hell-though-there-was-no-hell, was a warren. He pushed himself through the opening and found the tablet, spinning like a top in mid-air.

The vessel seized control of itself. It kicked off one wall, throwing Randolph against the facing surface and slamming his head against it. The wall was made of something that looked like china but felt like metal, and Randolph hurt.

Randolph willed his mastery over the vessel’s vocal cords. He chanted in Lemurian again, trying to subdue the vessel. He needed the vessel’s body, to get him into position to misdirect the rising demon. And if he couldn’t even control the host, how was he to stop the dark god?

The vessel’s hand gripped the vessel’s throat, trying to squeeze the incantation into silence. Randolph chanted faster, batting at the vessel’s free arm with the one he commanded.

The force of the struggle spun him around in the air, and as his vision began to grow dim he saw words clearly stenciled on the wall: HYPNOSTASIS.

The characters and the roots were Latin. Was the word English?

“Stop!” he croaked. “I’ve come to help!”

It was a gamble; he knew nothing about the person whose body he inhabited.

But the hand eased off, and then the vessel reached over to steady their shared body by touching the wall.

Randolph relaxed his control over the vessel’s muscles, clinging tightly with his will to the thread of energy that bound them together. He saw more of the chamber now. It was vast, it curved out of Randolph’s sight in two directions, and it was full of steel and glass tubes. Tubes the size of coffins. A red-black cloud of globules slowly spread out into the room from the space Randolph and the vessel occupied together.

“Who are you?” the vessel asked. It was accented strangely, but it was English. “Are you some kind of... what are you?”

Randolph took over the talking by a brute exertion of his will. “Randolph Choate. I’m a man. I’m a Virginian, I teach at a university in Massachusetts. I’m here to stop the monster.”

“Jim?”

“Niarlat.”

Randolph waited through a prolonged silence. He began to wonder if his spell had damaged the vessel’s cognition.

“Jim said that name when he... killed people. Niarlat.”

“Is Jim an immensely large creatures with tentacles for a head?” The conversation was draining on Randolph. He wanted to get it over with, find the dark god and confuse its path. “What powers does Jim serve?”

“Jim is a spaceship captain. He’s human. As far as I know he serves the North American Confederacy. But there’s a monster outside. I... I can’t really describe it.”

Randolph considered. He didn’t know what outside meant in this context, but he didn’t want to take the time to find out. The void, he assumed. And he knew the image of the ceremonial bark on which his body lay in the basement of the Burroughs manor was a sort of spaceship, if by spaceship the vessel meant the sort of thing that emerged from the fevered imaginations of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells.

“What’s your name?”

“Gabe. Lieutenant Gabriel Goldman.”

“Take me to the monster, Lieutenant.”

“Uh... that’s not possible. Anyway, it’s a bad idea, and it would take too long. We’d have to suit up, and that’d take an hour. The monster’s outside the ship.”

Randolph considered. “Then take me to Jim.”

“Jim’s dangerous.”

“So am I, Lieutenant.” Randolph took control of one arm long enough to reach out and grab the spinning tablet. “So am I.”

***

Sa-Niarlat knew the way, and those who would follow him did not. It didn’t matter; the way was a straight corridor, with no turns or exits but the door at the end, and the lambs could not get lost.

He had come down this corridor the first time on hands and knees as a young man. He remembered now with a thrill the black terror of that moment, believing still that he was an acolyte of Sebek, though an acolyte who understood that Sebek was a hungry god who sold his blessings to man for blood. He remembered being seized at the doorway, held, threatened, and then cut—but only enough to make a personal offering to the god. Lying on the runnels, feeling the blood drip from his neck, he’d thought himself doomed. Instead, he’d been dragged to his feet and taken aboard the god’s bark, to learn the first oaths of the prow, the mast, and the helm.

He kicked aside his sandals in the darkness, hearing them thud softly against the stone wall of the chamber. With his feet bare, he could tell where he was by the patterns of the channels carved into the floor. He positioned himself beside the entrance into the Dark Chamber, knife in his hand.

He lit no torch. No man had lit a torch in the Dark Chamber, the mooring quay of the god’s astral bark, since the first stones of its ceiling had been laid, millennia earlier.

He breathed deep the thick and clotted air. Traces of durhang, and the rich loam of blood.

Sa-Niarlat heard the shuffling scrape of hands and knees patting on sandy stone. He knew from the volume exactly how far away the first lamb was. He knew from the runnels under his toes exactly where to stand, and where to thrust his hand in the darkness, and where to slash with the knife.

He held back the lamb’s head to open the throat wound as wide as he could, and thrilled to the feeling of hot blood over his bare feet. He heard with tremulous joy the soft splash of the same blood spilling into the pool in which the bark rested.

Before the second lamb could overtake the first, he dragged the exsanguinating body itself to the lip and threw it into the pool.

“Ia Niarlat,” he whispered throatily, his body gripped with lust.

None of the lambs struggled. He had not struggled, when he had been the lamb, but then his sacrifice had been one of consecration and devotion, requiring his whole soul but only a little blood. These lambs served a different purposes. These lambs sacrificed in order that the god’s bark would float.

***

“Why is everything pink?” the vessel Lieutenant Gabriel Goldman asked.

Stop wasting my energy with useless queries. “Because my grip on my sanity is tenuous at best. Apparently the eyesight is the first thing to go.”

Gabe chuckled. “You’re crazy? I’m the one talking to a voice in my head.”

“Touché, Lieutenant.”

“Call me Gabe. Since we’re sharing the same body and all. Seems too personal to stand on rank, doesn’t it?”

“As you say, Gabe.”

“We should be armed. There’s twenty-five hundred people sleeping on this ship, including my wife, dammit. I’m their only defense against a crazy guy with a rock.”

“We are armed.”

“I forgot, I’m a crazy guy with a rock, too. What are you going to do, Choate—what am I going to do—throw it at him?”

“I’m going to read it.”

Randolph didn’t know whether he’d be able to read anything. The passage spun and bucked in his visual field. Through the glass panels of the tubes nearest the vessel, he saw pale, ghoulish faces, faces that might have been human. He was afraid to look closer.

“This is all so totally wrong.”

“Please.” Randolph relaxed, focusing just enough to stay attached to Gabe. “You are a man of earth, yes?”

“I’m a North American.”

“That... thing... outside your spaceship is going to North America if we don’t stop it. To a small town in Massachusetts, as it happens. It will kill your twenty-five hundred sleepers first, with as little remorse as if it had swatted a fly. I need to see the thing to stop it, or at least its summoner. Maybe, in his presence, I can cast... I can do what I must.”

“Summoner?”

“Jim, I think.” It was just a guess, but it was the best Randolph had. “Please.”

“Okay,” Gabe agreed. “But he’s armed, and I’m not, and I’m pretty close to vomiting.”

Randolph felt sick, too. His vision swam completely away from him for long seconds.

The vessel Gabe maneuvered himself into the shaft and looked along it. Randolph relaxed; the spinning and the shifting of colors continued, but when he let Gabe be in control it was better. Gabe was comfortable in this unreal environment, and with a flick of his wrists, sent their shared body sliding along the tunnel.

Another man’s face appeared at the shaft opening. With him came a swarm of blood droplets, and an obsidian knife glinted in his hand. Randolph almost shouted a warning, but he realized that Gabe must see the other man, too, and he conserved his energy.

Still, Gabe slid towards the end, and the other man seemed to be gathering his body to pounce, raising the knife—
closer—

Randolph tried to seize control, but the vessel Gabe shut him out with an effort that made them both gasp—
the raised knife—
the slash—
at the last second, Gabe grabbed a ladder rung at the lip of the shaft and caught himself. The other man, who must be Jim, attacked the empty space where he expected Gabe to be, and missed. In the weightless void, the energy of his blow turned his motion into a forward leap, his face slamming into the floor and his body rebounding and spinning away from the shaft.

Gabe snapped his wrist and slid smoothly out of the tunnel. The chamber they entered was shaped like a gumdrop or a mushroom cap. A cloud of garbage drifted about in the air.

Jim crashed into the wall. He lost his grip on the obsidian flake, which whizzed away from him into the junk. He grabbed a ridge in the wall paneling and stopped his motion.

Gabe reached out and snatched the knife from the air. Randolph felt heartened, though he knew that this defeated Jim was only a mortal servitor, a cultist, or maybe even a vessel like Gabe.

“Come easy, Jim,” Gabe said. “I’ll give you a sedative.”

Jim nodded slowly, then let himself drift away from the wall. He reached out a hand submissively to Gabe.

Gabe tucked the tablet under his arm and grabbed Jim’s hand.

Excruciating shock torture spasms electricity blood’s on fire—
engulfed in the sudden onslaught of pain, Randolph struggled not to lose consciousness.

***

Choate spasmed. White foam spewed from the professor’s lipless old mouth and his knees slammed repeatedly into his own chest.

Jack dug into his pants pocket, then shoved his wallet into the professor’s mouth. Choate was already on his side, so he wasn’t going to drown in his own... foam.

“Easy.” Jack patted Randolph Choate on the shoulder.

CRASH!

Behind him, Jack heard the door give way.

He turned and opened fire. Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat, the tommy gun chewed into the foremost members of the rampaging mob.

Funny, Jack thought. They didn’t really look like ginnies. They wore suits and frocks, and except for the bloody and totally messed-up state of them, they might have been the kind of people who’d get invited to Burroughs Manor for dinner.

Until Jack mowed them down. Then they looked like oversized rag dolls, banging into the walls and dropping to the ground. Their blood ran across the floor in straight lines, like it was pouring into tiny irrigation canals. Which, Jack realized, it was.

Jack walked slowly forward and dropped every one of the creeps in the basement with him and then the first few in the hall. As the tommy gun ran dry he hurled the kerosene lantern into the hall for good measure.

The crazies ran away. Not so crazy that they liked being on fire, at least, Jack thought with some satisfaction.

“How do you like that?” he yelled after them. “Screw with the troll, you get the horns! I mean bull!” Jack faltered. “Screw with the bull, I said. I meant. Ah, hell.”

He picked up the door and grunted with the effort it cost him to shove it back into place, kicking aside the body of a man in a priest’s collar. It only occurred to him as he snapped the door upright that he had thrown away the light, and would be plunged into total darkness.

Only he wasn’t.

The thing the professor was lying on—the picture that looked like a boat—glowed a smoky green. And above the professor, also glowing in dull green, the ceiling of the basement was spangled with dots that might have been stars.

***

He gripped the stone fiercely, wondering what it was and dimly remembering that it was something important. His face burned, and the skin of his hands.

The god, the god was coming.

What god?

He looked into his left hand and saw that he held a severed woman’s head. He thought the sight should shock him, but it didn’t. He pulled the head to him by the hair and looked into its eyes as it bobbed around, floating with him in space. Just a thing. Just a head. Just a blood head thing blood.

Blood flowed through the air around him. His arm burned, and looking down at it, he saw that the flesh of his forearm was slashed open. He looked up, and the lights shut off completely.

In the darkness, he screamed.

***

The first Brother of the Dark Chamber announced his approach with a hymn. Now that the slaughter of the lambs was done, the blood pounded less in Sa-Niarlat’s ears and he could again hear the sounds of the Theban army above.

“We are doomed,” he said joyously to the Brother, “but it is the god who dooms us.” He crossed the plank bridge to the god’s bark and stepped unerringly to his position at the helm.

The deck beneath his feet rocked slightly and the rudder felt like gnarled and carved bone in his hands. The hymn grew in intensity as more Brothers entered the room, and spread in physical space as they arrayed themselves out around the edges of the pool, chanting together.

Niarlat, live

Niarlat, watch

Niarlat, come

Arise thou Niarlat from thy rest

Overhead, dim lights swirled into being. They were stars, and Sa-Niarlat instantly recognized the constellations.

The stars were in the same alien pattern as the stars in the ceiling of the Inner Court. You could not see such constellations in the skies above Huut-Niarlat.

Sa-Niarlat joined the hymn.

Niarlat, live

The stars seemed to rise into the distance above his head, to become true astral bodies, cold and unimaginably remote. Sa-Niarlat’s heart again roared like thunder in his own hearing, joy exulted his frame.

Niarlat, watch

The boat under his feet began to glow. Sa-Niarlat had chanted this hymn in this spot a hundred times before. He had smelled the blood of sacrificed lambs and the hot sand upon which it spilled, seen the stars above show their light. The boat had always remained inert. His eyes drank in the details; the leather sail, the railing around the deck of long bones and skulls, the lichen-encrusted twisting mast, like an olive tree or the split tentacles of the god himself.

Satisfaction.

Niarlat, come

Blood, thick in his nostrils. His own death was imminent, but it had always been inevitable. He had been marked as a sacrifice to his god many long years ago, and the knife at his lamb-like throat had only been stayed for a time, to permit him to complete greater service. This was his moment. He would feed the god not only his own soul, but the soul of every Theban at the gates and every Sebek worshipper who fell to a Theban sword. The blood would summon the god, open the door for him. The impatient and foolish Thebans were creating a mass sacrifice to their enemy on a scale that the god’s own priests, in hiding for centuries, had not been able to achieve.

Was it enough blood? Sa-Niarlat’s god was a thirsty god. Then Sa-Niarlat’s heart skipped a beat as the deck of the bark rose into the air.

Arise thou Niarlat from thy rest

***

James ripped his hand away from Gabe and bit his own lip.

He’d been yelling something, but they were words he couldn’t make out or control.

This is madness, he thought. The white-jumpsuit boys in the Academy and the NACSS claimed that Nullspace was safe, but there were always whispered stories that suggested otherwise. Crewmen who murdered mates in their sleep. Cannibal ships. Captains who willingly flew their own ships into stars.

Space-sickness, they said. Cabin fever. Fables.

Or an overdose. His hands trembled, and he couldn’t remember from one moment to the next where he was or what he had done. Wasn’t that what a junkie experienced? He’d been injected twice with the Hypnostasis emergence cocktail, hadn’t he? Hadn’t he? Was he the galaxy’s first emergence cocktail junkie?

Maybe. An emerger. He shuddered and laughed. They’d study his case in the Academy.

But maybe not.

James felt another person inside him. Sometimes his body did things, and it wasn’t him giving the orders. But that was a crock, he knew; he was dodging responsibility for... for something. Had he killed people? No, the other person inside him had.

But the other person could only be James himself.

James laughed, trying to exorcise his unsettled, whirling sense that everything was shattered. Instead, he heard his own cackle and cringed.

Had he always had a split personality? he wondered. He didn’t think he’d experienced missing memories before this fateful trip, but he didn’t know how much he could trust his own mind. Maybe he’d forgotten his prior forgetting.

He cackled again.

Something inside James grabbed him and impelled him forward awkwardly. His arms flailed, and though it seemed a directionless movement at first, it ended with the obsidian flake in his hand. Images of burning white sand flashed through James’s mind, and men on chariots with spears and shields.

A ship. A ship that flew.

Murders.

“Blood and sand,” he gasped, and then spat out an incomprehensible stream of gibberish.

He bounced off a bulkhead, and the Other inside him relaxed his grip. James swooned and nearly fainted at the sudden absence, but steadied himself by inhaling big gulps of air.

He tried to throw away the stone, and found that the one part of him the Other still held tightly was James’s weapon hand.

“Sagan,” he muttered.

Gabe anchored himself to the captain’s seat and stared at James.

“I’m sorry,” James told his first mate. His entire body shook with the effort. “I need... relieve me of command.”

Gabe shouted a series of nonsense syllables back at him, and the Other seized James’s jaw and shouted back.

Darkness filled the bridge, though the emergency lights seemed to be burning as bright as ever. James felt his body wracked with pain like a thousand hot needles stabbing him. Gabe writhed, let go of the captain’s chair, and drifted.

His arm, the arm James had touched, withered and aged before James’s eyes.

The Other kicked his feet against the bulkhead and made James lurch forward. He spun slowly head over heels forward, stone knife slashing. I have to stop the Other, James thought. Even if he is me. I can’t let him—me—kill Gabe.

Gabe shouted more nonsense. Then: “Stop! Jim, stop!”

James collided with the captain’s chair and the Other caught himself. Gabe cowered before him. I must stop him, Jim thought, and didn’t know who him was.

The Other raised his weapon in James’s hand.

“No!” Jim howled, and made his final move. He seized control of his weapon arm—
twisted the blow as it fell—
and slashed his own wrist.

***

In this queer weightless void, blood didn’t spill or flow. It exploded out of a body in heartbeat-powered jets, each burst articulating into a swarm of discrete balls like a barrage of shotgun pellets.

Jim stabbed the obsidian knife into his own arm and bounced away shrieking. The blood that squirted from his veins was blue. For a moment, Randolph wondered whether the man was inhuman, but then the blue became a colorless gray, the chamber rippled before his eyes, and he remembered that he was losing his mind.

“Jim!” shouted Gabe the vessel.

“Leave him!” Randolph barked through the same lips. “We have no time!” He wondered if Jack Kale had already joined Carver in death, and then he wondered if the word already had any real meaning in this context.

He didn’t let himself think about it.

Jim drifted towards the shaft, convulsing. Some of the curses that came from him might have been Egyptian. Others sounded like a history of science lecture alternating with gibberish. “Kepler! Feynman! Franklin! Hawking! Darwin!”

Randolph noted distractedly that the man’s voice modulated back and forth between a strained tenor when he spoke English and a growling, raspy baritone when he spewed out Egyptian.

“Show me the monster,” Randolph said. He felt like throwing up. The wall of the spaceship slid away from him and rushed back in irregular contractions. “The beast... outside this... craft.” He relinquished control, struggling just to stay awake.

Gabe pushed to a panel in the chamber’s wall and pressed buttons. “There it is.”

Randolph looked and guffawed. “That’s not a beast. That’s a row of numbers.”

“That’s data. Look.” Gabe pointed their shared finger at a number that rapidly decreased. “That’s our distance. The wormhole, and the thing inside it, are getting closer.”

“I can stop it.” Randolph said the words though he didn’t know whether they were true. “I can turn its path aside, but I need to see it. Is there a vantage point?”

Gabe laughed hollowly. “You open the door for a vantage point, you, me, and everyone else on this ship dies instantly.”

“A window?”

Gabe pressed buttons. At the shaft entrance, Jim thrashed and screamed, throwing out drops of blood like a centrifuge.

“There’s not enough power.” He pointed at another number. “I can’t get the visual up without shutting off other systems.”

“Shut off other systems.”

Gabe tried. “I can’t.” Randolph felt sweat beading on the vessel’s skin. “There’s too little juice in the system. To turn on the visual, I have to shut down life support for the rest of the ship.”

“Do it.”

“I’ll die. You’ll die... if you can die.”

Randolph thought of Delilah, swinging slowly by a knotted hotel sheet in the rain. The face of Mr. Burroughs himself, smeared with Carver’s blood and belly fat as he ripped out a length of intestine with his teeth. “I can die. Do it.”

“There are twenty-five hundred people down there!”

Randolph considered for a moment. The vessel Gabe, he remembered, had mentioned his wife. Small wonder he was distraught. “Is there enough juice to withdraw from the... wormhole?”

“Maybe.” Sullen and defiant. “Maybe we can make one push, and get out of this thing’s way.”

Randolph looked for the right words to say. He would have sighed, but he lacked the energy to be that much in control of Gabe’s body. Instead, he drifted as he ordered his thoughts. “In the United States,” he finally said, “there are one hundred twenty million people. The earth with her billions is at risk. Twenty-five hundred lives are a terrible loss, but they are twenty-five hundred doomed lives anyway. You and I, Gabe, must make a choice. I am sorry that your wife is with us, because it means we must make a choice for her, too. It is a hard thing, and I resent that it is our fate, but there is no avoiding it.”

Gabe said nothing.

“I too am tempted by this will o’ the wisp hope, but I cannot take the risk of being deceived. Much blood has already been shed,” Randolph added. “To make the sacrifice worth it, you and I must choose to shed a little more.”

Silence.

“We sacrifice twenty-five hundred,” Randolph said. “We save the earth.”

“Schrödinger!” Gabe pushed off from the bulkhead and glided to the shaft opening, where Jim tossed and turned in the air. He’d stabbed himself again, and yowled like a cat on fire.

“Blood and sand!”

“Goodbye, Jim,” Gabe said. He hooked a foot into the struts of the captain’s chair, grabbed Jim by the ankles and pushed the other man head-first into the shaft. Jim drifted away, shouting nonsense.

Randolph was impressed with the ease with which Gabe moved in the void. He continued to be impressed as Gabe punched the glass from a small panel he hadn’t noticed and yanked the lever inside. With a muffled thump, a plate snapped across the shaft opening from where it had lain hidden in the shaft wall.

“Mechanical trigger,” Gabe explained. “Explosive-powered. It’s an emergency system, uses no power. He won’t bother us again.”

Unspoken: Jim was now locked in the same part of the spaceship as Gabe’s wife. Randolph felt a heavy, heavy weight upon his soul.

They returned to the wall panel. Randolph sensed tears on the vessel’s cheeks and his vision threaten to dissolve into tatters of blackness and static.

“Thank you.”

“What are you going to do?” Gabe asked.

“Tangle its path. I can’t kill this thing. Nothing can kill it. I don’t even know if it is alive, in any sense of the word you and I would understand. But I think I can keep it from its destination, send it somewhere else.”

Gabe nodded. “You ready to kill twenty-five hundred people, Choate?”

Randolph hesitated. “Yes.”

Gabe touched the panel again. Nothing changed that Randolph could detect with his wrecked vision, but Gabe’s shoulders slumped.

“Now what?”

“Now we run out of oxygen. A few minutes at most, I guess. But you’ll have more power for other ship systems.” Gabe laughed hollowly. “At least only one of us is breathing.” He touched a spot in the wall. “We’ll last longer.”

The panel filled with an image, and Randolph shuddered.

It rocketed away from him and then lurched back, blurred, shifting in color and spinning, but Randolph recognized the thing on the screen. He knew the writhing tentacles, the mouth, the body in too many dimensions. He knew this beast from the Lemurian tablet. He knew it from other ancient images, and he knew it from his nightmares.

Niarlat-Hetep, the resting Niarlat, Niarlat in his prison.

Arise thou Niarlat from thy rest, he thought. This was Niarlat’s rest, a light-shot, trembling, extra-dimensional cocoon in the vast darkness of outer space. Here it had lain for eons, and from here madmen sought to bring it to Earth. A golden-black, coruscating ribbon of light and void crossed the vast nothingness of space, between the cocoon and the spaceship. It was as if a great cone of the void had been seized and twisted into a hank of cosmic rope, an umbilical and a highway for the dark god.

That ribbon, Randolph saw, was the gate. His spell in the basement of the Burroughs Manor had been successful, and had brought him here, into the very path of the god.

“Curie.”

And before Randolph’s eyes, the crackling energy around the colossal elder god split and dissipated. Niarlat stretched, snapped its vast tentacles in the void, and began to move. Like a swimming jelly, it devoured the darkness with swallowing movements of its tentacles and dragged itself forward, up the ribbon of light and darkness towards the spaceship and an ignorant humanity.

Randolph seized control of the vessel Gabe. He was weary and he could barely see, but if he didn’t act now, the thing before his vision—the thing towards which he was rapidly hurtling—would devastate the Earth.

He couldn’t hurt the elder god, but he could tie a knot in the path at its feet.

Randolph tightened his grip on the Lemurian tablet and began to chant. The tentacles snapped through space at a speed that Randolph would have thought impossible had he not seen it, rushing towards him in the viewing screen. Or was it only Randolph’s withering sanity that made it seem so?

He resisted the temptation to chant faster, knowing he would only garble the difficult language. He heard a soft banging and scratching sound and realized that Jim was outside the emergency gate, pounding on it with fist and stone.

The tentacles hurtled nearer. The gold streaks in the ribbon glowed brighter and the black was blacker still, and the ribbon seemed taut and full.

Randolph Choate chanted firmly and clearly, articulating each syllable for his dead friends, and for the entire human race. He felt his soul slipping away as he chanted, and he realized with a moment of awful horror that the spell was stealing it. The enchantment by which he would entangle the gate was killing him.

He persisted. He would make the sacrifice, for Delilah, for Carver, even for Jack Kale.

He could do it, he knew. He bit off the last syllable with his teeth, and then he had done it. In his view, the shimmering ribbon twisted, an elbow of ninety degrees kinking suddenly into existence. The gate was entangled, the path dragged aside. Whatever Niarlat did, it would not reach the destination its cultists imagined.

Randolph looked up at the viewing screen at the dark god flying in his direction, feeling life, time, vision, and mind all slip away from him. As Niarlat grew closer he felt his own breaths coming harder; this was it, asphyxiation, the end he had chosen. The heart he shared with Gabe raced. The angle of the viewing device changed perceptibly as Niarlat changed its angle relative to the spaceship, and for the first time Randolph saw the long knobbly body of the vehicle in which he rode the cosmos. It look like a string of silver bubbles against the black.

Silver bubbles full of people. Full of people, full of blood. Blood was power.

A horrible doubt seized Randolph Choate.

“Planck.”

Niarlat smashed into the hull of the spaceship. Tentacles grasped and tore, shattering the craft. Sudden motion spun the conical chamber violently, slamming Gabriel Goldman’s body against the bulkhead.

The viewing screen went blank. Randolph’s vision began to follow.

In the last horrible second before it all left him, he wondered what he had done.

***

The ground trembled.

“Earthquake, really?” Jack shook his head. When it rained, it really hit the fan.

The stone crocodile statues on each side of the professor teetered back and forth too much for him to be comfortable, so he picked up Choate’s unconscious body and slung it over his shoulder. The professor was still foaming at the mouth, but he was still breathing, too, so Jack wasn’t too worried. Also, he was muttering in his sleep. It didn’t sound like American, but half of what old man Choate said didn’t sound like American, even when it was.

Jack set the professor on the floor again when he was sure he was out of danger from the statues, and turned his attention back to the rattling door. It would have been nice if the earthquake had killed the crazies outside, but no such luck.

“Ginnies.”

He pointed the tommy gun at the door and got ready to fire.

BOOM!

A sound like thunder exploded into the basement of the Burroughs Manor, and the air became thick with dust. Dust, Jack thought, and the smell of blood. Only the dust smelled wrong. It smelled like hot sand, of all things. For a second, he thought the earthquake might have toppled the house above him, but that was ridiculous—whatever sand there might be on the grounds of the Burroughs Manor, it wouldn’t be hot, not at this time of year.

He turned to check on the professor and discovered something much more unexpected.

A boat.

A frickin’ boat, with oars and a sail and everything, sitting where the picture of the boat had been. Its mast was jammed up into the ceiling, bringing down cement dust, and its gunwales had knocked over the two crocodile idols.

If he hadn’t moved the professor, Choate would have been smashed flat.

The door shook, its planks groaning.

Choate coughed, spitting out dust, and sat up.

“Oh, good, you’re back. Everything go according to plan, Professor?”

Choate grinned. He had a stone in his hand, but it wasn’t the one Jack remembered. It was chipped and flaky, like a big old Indian arrowhead, and he didn’t see any pictures on it. Maybe the ship had knocked this rock out of the wall, he thought. Maybe this arrowhead was one of the piles of junk and trinkets the professor always seemed to be able to produce to work his mumbo jumbo.

Jack turned back to face the door again, away from the professor, and aimed his tommy gun. “We saved the day, then. There’s still nutjobs outside the door, but don’t you worry about it none, the tommy’ll take care of ’em.”

He heard Choate climb to his feet, spit, clear his throat, and spit again. Then, just as the door rattled hard because something on the other side slammed into it, Choate spoke. Only it didn’t sound like Choate; the voice was deeper, and more raspy, like the voice of a dedicated smoker and drinker.

And the words it said certainly weren’t American.

Jack was glad to have the professor back, anyway. He didn’t like being alone in the basement, with the shadows and the statues and the stars glowing on the ceiling, and however queer the bag of bones got with his bits of string and foreign jabber, there was no denying that Randolph Choate could do things. Things that really ought to be impossible, like jamming the door shut with a ball of hair.

“Ia Niarlat,” Choate said, behind him.

“Yeah,” Jack chuckled without enthusiasm. “Let’s get ’em.”

Space Opera^1

Michael R. Collings

“Ah, when once we breach the boundaries of known space, what Works, what Wonders, we will achieve!”

- Torq, Farewell Address to the Koleic

1Opus: work, composition, esp. music, from L. opus, a work, labor, exertion; from Proto-Indo-European *op- ,to work, produce, originally of agriculture later extended to religion (cf. Sanskrit, apas—work, religious act). The plural is opera.

***

Most numbers would have at least muttered a vituperation, if not an outright blasphemy, when the klaxons sounded.

Most, perhaps. But not Torq.

Without a pause, his eyen split, half to the left, half to the right, while his first hands were already reaching for the buttons that would simultaneously silence the klaxon, perform an infinitesimal shift in the ship’s course that would make collision with the asteroid ahead impossible, and, the danger avoided, restore the ship to course and trim.

His second hands never once left the complex screencaps of their destination—the point at which the flash drive would take over and, for the moment, at least, the entire vessel and all of its contents would cease to exist within known realities.

His first hands slapped at the buttons. The klaxon ceased, and sudden, almost unbroken silence reigned once more on the command deck.

Almost unbroken silence.

Torq swiveled one eyen. Several stations to his left, one of the crew-hammocks was empty. The screen above it buzzed slightly, as if indicating its irritation at the disruption of its function.

Beneath the hammock, one of the crew—a seven, Torq noted wryly—had curled almost completely, now resembling more a glistening brown ball than anything else. A thin mewling rose from within the ball, and a dribble of something pungent and black already stained the otherwise pristine floor.

It would be a seven. Figures.

The asteroid emergency safely averted, Torq swiveled to face the crew.

He did not speak. He did not have to. Everyone present knew what had just happened—that a feckless seven had failed in the number-one priority for command deck: Absolute Trust in the Name at the helm... The Chaptain is always right. The first lesson instilled in every number that emerged from the pupal crèches at the academy.

Most had probably heard tales of failure. Few had ever seen it happen, however, given the evidence Torq saw reflected in their eyen. Part of each focused on the inert seven, communicating enough of its anguish that every crew member felt an insistent yank on its own nervous system, the ages-old clash-or-curl instinct each knew and dreaded.

The other part focused on Torq. The lenses glittered in the diffuse light, a thousand sparks of fear and determination.

He waited.

Gradually, the split eyen joined, and all of the compounds were trained on him.

As they should be!

Without a word, he withdrew a thin metal rod from his carapace pouch.

A sudden susurration, almost but not quite inaudible, swept the deck, then ceased as Torq raised one of his second hands, pointed directly at the miserable ball of chitin just visible beneath the hammock, did something with his tarsi than none could quite distinguish, and lowered the tube.

There was another moment of silence before the unconscious seven tightened even further, so much that the faint crackle of bruised and broken chitin filled the deck as the thing—no longer one of them but merely so much tissue and ichor—compressed beyond the limits of possibility and finally, soundlessly, fractured into a mass of brown fluid.

“Clean that up.” Not waiting to see that the order would be carried out, Torq turned back to his consoles and continued to manipulate data on the dozen or so screens.

“We won’t flash for some sleeps yet,” he said, almost as an afterthought. “Decant another seven.”

His voice had not died out before three sixes were attending to the unfortunate seven, and an eight jumped to send a comm to the Hatchery.

***

Coming out of the flash was the same as it had been described by the techs, the same as it had been the previous three times: first, absolute nothingness; then an instant—too short to be counted by any time measurements—in which there was the faintest awareness of constituent molecules re-joining into muscle and tissue; and finally the almost overwhelming effect of life-experiences reconstituting themselves as memory.

Torq stretched. Nothing felt quite as good as a post-flash stretch, he decided, wondering how many times he would be blessed by the God to relive such moments.

The God.

She would be reconstituting as well, perhaps already resuming her never-ending calling of providing new Koleic for new worlds. Torq felt as if he could commune with her mentally, imagining her stretching her vast length—fully one-quarter the length of the ship itself—then consuming the tens that would have appeared as if by magic by her side. She would need the nutrients to begin laying eggs.

Torq depressed a switch on his control module. If there were anything wrong—Gods forbid—in the Hatchery, he would be notified immediately.

For the moment, though, command deck was empty. As with all of the seeding ships in all of their flashes, the crew would not appear for some short while, enough for the commanding name—Torq bristled slightly with pride, perhaps his only vice—to be assured that all was functioning normally.

As it should be!

His eyen scanned multiple monitors simultaneously, his tarsi seeming to fly over the command board as he checked and re-checked readings from the flash.

All normal.

He relaxed slightly. For the moment, he was alone, truly alone in ways that almost none of the Koleic ever experienced. Alone with himself and with his thoughts.

His eidetic memory flashed pictures almost as rapidly as the drive had transported the ship through the emptiness of space to an unknown sun-system, where another planet orbited, waiting for its new overlords.

The first world. Desert. Sand, although of a curiously odd brown, quite unlike the emerald sands of the Koleic home. Very little moisture, but that meant nothing; that would change once the apparatus got under way to create a more congenial atmosphere. Otherwise, the seeding proceeded as outlined, no problems at all. In fact, slightly boring.

Then the second flash... and the awakening.

The second world was different. Almost all water, deep and scarlet, tinged by some unknown microscopic creatures barely more complex than the fringes of plant life that surrounded the scattered islands. Again, though, the task was completed with little difficulty. The apparatus settled securely on one of the islands, the egg cases prepared for the moment when the environment would awaken sensors and the grubs would emerge, followed shortly thereafter by the newborn God, already prepared to multiply and fill her world.

The third flash... and the awakening.

The third world... ah, that was a memory that would have made Torq smile had his physiology allowed such a contortion. As it was, it was sufficient to generate a repetitive tingling along his ventral plates, a vibration almost—almost—as pleasant as what he had experienced that once and only time as he and his God shared essences during their brief mating flight.

He consciously pulled his mind away from that premier moment in his life, never to be repeated, and concentrated on something nearly as wondrous.

There had been living beings on the third world. Strange, multi-limbed creatures that resembled nothing Torq had ever seen or imagined. But they were marginally intelligent, instinctive builders on a vast scale that had dwarfed even the greatest Koleic nests.

As far as the eyen could see, structures, above-ground structures, into and out of which the creatures had scuttled when the lander first cleared the atmosphere. They seemed not to have known of the ship hovering above them, even though the most rudimentary of equipment would have alerted them... but apparently they had had no interest in such things. After the cleansing, nothing resembling the needed machinery was found amid the rubble.

But the first sight of the new world was not what had brought Torq such pleasure.

No, it had been the smell and the sound. Torq had never experienced such things, never imagined such pleasures.

The smell—the piquant scent of flesh, alien though it was and disgusting to look upon, as it was consumed by the meticulously aimed bursts of energy from the ship. Everywhere, every transpiration... ambrosial, although in truth the God lacked the senses to enjoy it even had she been planet-side during the aftermath.

And the sounds—first the screams, full-bodied screams ripped from hot-blooded throats as the bursts struck buildings and creatures alike, the echoes of terror as the uncouth brutes dashed mindlessly around, more often than not running headlong into another wall of flame. That was pleasant.

But even better, the slight crackle of roasted tissue as Torq and his numbers strode triumphantly across the blackened landscape, treading on the remains of the now-vanished people.

His ventral plates quivered rhythmically.

What a blessed memory.

And now, the fourth world drew near.

***

As he stood at his console, reliving his conquests—and his God’s slight nod of acquiescence as he had reported to her of the three successful seedings—the numbers appeared at their terminals, silently, already seeing to the millions of minor tasks that the ship required.

They did not speak.

They knew their jobs.

And they knew that Torq would handle everything exterior to the ship that might...

“My lord.”

For an instant, Torq could not quite comprehend what had happened.

“My lord.”

He turned his left eyes toward the bank of terminals.

A five was staring at him, quivering (although, thankfully, not retreating into insentience as had the pre-flash seven). Its compounds were all trained on Torq.

That was enough to let him know that something truly unanticipated had occurred. The rule-of-tarsus was that at least one-half of one eyen should remain trained on the monitor.

Unless the name required full attention.

This time, though, the number had initiated the communication.

Now it was trembling in every limb, first and second arms nearly useless even had it tried to perform some small bit of business.

Torq waved a first leg. Permission to speak granted.

“My lord, there is... there is... something... unusual about this system...” The number stuttered to a halt.

Torq chose not to help it out. He waited in silence.

“My lord, there is a... I feel a terrible... disturbance... in the... charges that...”

“Feel?”

“My lord, yes, my lord. Nothing... certain... It is as if there is... something both... there... and not there.”

Torq felt his ventral plates quiver. “Like the old conundrum about the twelve in the closed box? Neither dead nor alive, but both?”

Wisely, the five did not respond.

Keeping a good three quarters of his compounds on his own consoles, Torq scanned the command deck.

“Other reports?”

No responses.

“Anomalies?”

Again, silence.

He turned his attention back to the five. It sill quivered violently but showed no other signs of retreating, in spite of the intense distress it had to be feeling.

“One last attempt. What have you to report?”

The five waved its second arms meaninglessly as its firsts raised helplessly above its head.

“My lord, I... the scans... sometimes they... and then...”

Soundlessly, Torq removed the thin metal rod.

A moment later, he said flatly: “Dispose of that.”

Then: “Decant another five.”

***

It was more than unusual for his God to demand that he attend upon her personally. This would, in fact, be the first time he had seen her since his farewell address in the portico near the ship, where she had lain in silent grandeur on a long, drapery-bedecked structure, built specifically for her body to recline upon during the ceremonials. It had been burned the moment she had left it, lest some lesser Koleic deign to touch it, much less rest upon it.

Such was standard for all of the seeding ships and their Gods.

Torq, in spite of being the Chaptain of the ship, had never expected to see her face-to-face again.

One did not see one’s God face-to-face... and live.

Just ask the tens that attended upon her.

No, wait. There would be no answer. They were—eventually, to be sure, but invariably—dead.

Now Torq stood within the Hatchery for the first time since the ship was completed. Then, it had been little more than a huge, empty chamber, lined front, back, and both sides with narrow shelves into which eggs would be inserted and sealed.

When the time was right, when the ship had reached a promising world, the correct number would be decanted—although the official term for these eggs was released—along with a prepubescent God, and placed in special containers until planetary conditions were optimum for their survival.

If they survived.

Torq had no way of knowing how many seeding ships had actually succeeded, how many worlds might even now harbor nascent communities of Koleic. But neither had he any interest in knowing.

He merely guided this ship and served his God.

As she commanded.

“My God.” He said no more, merely stood waiting for her to acknowledge his presence. She did so with a flicker of a handful of her compounds, the rest remaining focused on some unseeable spot on the ceiling... or perhaps into the future, or the past.

The Gods only knew.

He took the flicker as permission to speak.

“My God, I have come as you have requested.” One never spoke to the Gods about commands; to do so reeked of insolence.

The flicker returned, rested on him momentarily, then drifted away again.

“My God, how may I please you?”

The flicker returned once more, but this time the compounds remained trained on Torq. He could feel her wisdom surrounding him. It made him immensely uncomfortable.

“I... have... heard,” she said finally, taking deep breaths every few word, “...of the seven... and the... five... Why?”

“My God, the first curl— withdrew into itself until nothing more remained of it. I performed a mercy.”

There was a long, nearly painful passage of time, as if she were considering each of his words for every possible level of meaning. Suddenly, Torq found himself almost empathizing with the unfortunate seven. He almost wanted to curl himself.

He stood straighter.

“Accept... ed.”

He waited a moment, then: “The five. That was more troublesome. It appeared to have... broken... in some unaccountable way. There are no records from other ships of such behavior.”

“I... have... seen... and heard...” A long release of breath. “It... troubles...”

“The five...” Torq said, then stopped.

She had turned fully half of her compounds to him.

“Not... the... five... They live... to serve. If... broken?... they die.”

“Then what?”

“The... other.”

“The oth—. My God, there was no other. Only the broken five reported—‘felt’—anything. All other monitors read clear. I warrant this to you.”

“So... be... it...” She remained silent for a long time, too long for Torq to feel anything approaching comfortable. The only sounds in the huge chamber—now fully half full of sealed eggs awaiting planetfall—were her labored breaths.

And something more.

Something tiny, insignificant almost.

A soft, wet plop just before each exhalation.

Every time.

It took Torq—name though he was, and Chaptain of this ship—a long while to figure out the sound.

And when he did, his chitin quivered with embarrassment, even though logically he should have known, should have anticipated...

She was laying eggs.

The mysterious rite only the Gods could perform and that few—outside of the comestible tens—would ever see.

He swallowed convulsively.

After what felt to him like at least an infinity, he was about to ask permission to withdraw, when she spoke again. Now that he understood more, each of her harsh respirations left him feeling...

But she spoke: “About... this... world.”

He recognized the intent of her words.

“My God, this is the nearest to a habitable planet we have found yet. Investigations suggest that air, water, land are all suitable for seeding.”

She may have nodded. At this point Torq wasn’t certain that he could trust his eyen.

“In... hab... it... ants.”

“My God, yes. Two legs. First arms only. Soft-bodied. Telemetry can only tell us so much.”

Another long silence.

Plop.

Plop.

Plop.

“Per... haps...”

When he was convinced that she had said all that she wished to, he responded: “My God, what do you wish?”

“Com... mun... i... cate.”

“The trans-comm? I mean, the translation-communicator? We haven’t used it yet. There were no inhabitants capable of speech on the first two worlds; and on the third, somehow the aboriginals seemed not to need language.”

“Not...?”

“My God, what remains we... found... indicated no organs of speech or hearing. That we could identify as such. And nothing suggesting writing. Nothing except huge buildings, bare and empty when we came, barren ash when we left.”

In spite of himself, Torq was particularly pleased with his answer. He almost preened.

“No... speech...?”

“No, my God. None.”

Plop.

Plop.

Plop.

“This... world... Try...” The final word tapered off into a breathy sibilant.

“But why... I mean, so be it.”

The compounds had flickered back. Now both eyen, and all of the faceted compounds within each, stared toward the ceiling. Toward the past. The future. Infinity.

Torq backed out of the Hatchery. He heard the door iris behind him but even then did not tear his glaze from the God.

He had spoken to her.

She had answered him.

All was well with the ship.

With his world.

***

“Report.” Torq’s voice sounded throughout the command deck, restored to perfect placidity after his meeting with the God. He hadn’t expected the meeting, much less the way... well, the way things might affect him. His eyen, however, skittered back and forth in a wholly uncharacteristic display, almost as if he had lost command of his compounds.

Even so, the crew knew immediately what was needed.

“My lord, approach is flawless.”

He had expected nothing less.

“My lord, except for...”

A thin voice from the far side of the deck struggled against the speaker’s natural impulse to silence.

Torq turned one full eyen toward the speaker, a six, who should have known better than to interrupt the Chaptain’s thoughts.

“Well?”

“My lord, something... unusual.” Torq wasn’t certain, but it did seem for an instant that the six flickered more than a few compounds toward the station where the previous five had been seated. The newly decanted five seemed not to notice.

But Torq did.

And that small movement disquieted him more than the stuttering voice.

“More.”

“My lord, it may be a problem with the investigators, but there seems to be a... a shell of some sort.”

“Where?”

“My lord, surrounding the planet.”

Torq fell silent, unwilling to share his sudden apprehensions.

“Around the entire planet?”

“My lord, yes.”

“My lord...” This time the voice came from the other side of the deck. “I too... my monitors show... something I... they cannot explain.

“My lord, and mine.”

By now, half a dozen of the numbers were nodding slightly or waving second arms to indicate agreement.

“Silence!”

Perfect silence reigned.

“You, four, explain!”

“My lord, I can’t...”

“As best you can, then,” Torq said. His chitin quivered with exasperation. Truth be told, his tarsi flexed and involuntarily twitched toward his pouch, where the thin tube still rested, but he restrained himself. If this many numbers dared to speak, there must be something.

“My lord, my monitor, and, I assume, the others, show nothing.”

Torq started to interrupt but the four continued, speaking rapidly to get to its point.

“Nothing physical... at least nothing tangible. But it also reports that there is some kind of interconnected... field?... that begins at the atmosphere terminus. And it extends entirely around the world.”

“How soon?”

There was a distinctly awkward silence, even with the faintest shuffling of scales against hammocks.

“How soon?”

“Any momen—”

The ship lurched, hung motionless, then lurched in the reverse direction. Lights overhead wavered in intensity. First singly, then in sections, glowrods burst, showering the deck with glittering bits of crystal. Sparks flew everywhere, some igniting the material of several hammocks, which threw the nearby numbers into mindless panic. Three of them curled instantly, and before the sparks had died, black ichor had begun oozing through carapaces.

Half a dozen monitors winked black, flared with static, then resumed their normal purple. The ship twisted once again.

A single bulb on Torq’s terminal blinked on, accompanied by the sound of a different klaxon, one which no one on the ship had ever actually heard activated before.

The Hatchery.

The God was calling.

And Torq did not know what he could tell her.

He started to depress a switch with his tarsi and... the ship righted itself. What lights were still intact shimmered, grew brighter, dimmer, then settled at normal illumination. Most of the remaining black terminals came on again.

Most... but not all.

And overriding all was the unending whine of the klaxon, disquieting the numbers perhaps even more than the shipquake had.

Torq punched the button savagely, hoping against hope that nothing in his voice would betray his agitation.

“My God, I listen.”

The control room went quiet, except for the faint drip, drip, drip of ichor against metal. Two more numbers had curled. Several looked unsteady.

“Chaptain Torq.”

“My God, I am here.”

“What?”

Torq hesitated, then: “An... anomaly, my God. An atmospheric anomaly encountered when the ship entered...”

“Now?”

Torq glanced around the command deck. All seemed under control, except, of course, the dozen or so curlers. Lights were stable. Monitors flickered with messages and normal data. No fires. And the remaining numbers’ eyen were split as they should be, one eyes watching their duty station, the other—all compounds active—focused on Torq.

None of them spoke.

“My God, all is now as it should be.”

There was no answer, but the comm light blinked out. She had returned to her eternal round of creating new life. She was satisfied.

Torq was not.

There had been... something indefinable there. It had momentarily derailed the ship from its planet-fall course. The fact that the ship was now on course and apparently unharmed did nothing to placate him. His ventral plates quivered, not with pleasure this time but with apprehension.

What was going on?

***

The Crwth chittered, oblivious to the accompaniment of the clumsy trans-comm taking up a fair amount of the space just before the dais upon which it—she, Torq reminded himself—stood alone.

Even before her words rustled from the device, however, Torq recognized the short complex of whistles, breaths, and musical tones.

He should.

He had heard it often enough since that moment half-a-day (current planet-time) past when the lander had set down and he, followed by his minion of numbers, had set foot on the fourth world.

It had been an eerie experience. The first three times, the planets had been dead, either as they were originally, or as they became after the blasts from the ship. On the third world, everything had been black and twisted. And there had been the sounds... and the smells.

Here, nothing had been touched. Almost, almost, Torq found himself doubting the wisdom of trying to communicate with this alien, this sub-Koleic species.

The trans-comm began its own twittering, but Torq did not need to listen. He had heard that same complex of sounds often enough since he had arrived in this great, empty, drapery-hung hall to confront the single creature that awaited them.

“So be it.”

Torq sighed, feeling the fluttering movement of transpiration along his plates. His first and second hands each flexed, contracted, flexed again. He grimaced inwardly at his own unease.

The creature before him stood as pliantly as ever, as pliantly and acquiescent as melting wax. The two of them had long since dispensed with cool formalities. For the past while, Torq had been addressing the alien as conqueror to the conquered.

And she had simply replied with her unchanging, infernally undeviating chittering: “So be it.”

Torq stared with one eyen at the Crwth’s silhouette, then through one of the seven oppressively narrow windows in the huge heptagonal chamber. Beyond, he could see only cloudless skies, even though he knew that the ship hung, tiny but visible, somewhere above them.

He shivered. The angles in the room were wrong. He was used to angles, of course. The square, the triangle, even the hexagon. But the unnecessary asymmetry of this room bothered him.

He forced himself to ignore his unease and return to his duty.

“You understand our demands, then?”

Again the whirr of the trans-comm filled the room. As he finished speaking the translator broke out in a volley of inarticulate sounds, random sounds to Torq but apparently intelligible to the Crwth.

Crwth.

Even the name echoed abominably in Torq’s mind, almost rattling loose segments of his exoskeleton. Cwrth. An impossible collation of sounds equally impossible to speak or to understand. Still, it was good an approximation as any for the particular set of sounds that came through the trans-comm as “untranslatable.” It was what she had first called herself, but there was no cognate for it.

So. Cwrth.

Well, it would soon make little difference. The enclave would cease to exist as an independent community soon, and whatever names they chose to give themselves would become irrelevant.

But enough linguistics. Torq understood enough of the technicalities of translation to know that he didn’t know enough. And besides, a ten by any other name was still a ten.

Cwrth was sufficient.

Now, however, for the business at hand.

She was listening patiently—eternally patient, damnably patient. Her horrible dual eyes—compound-less, fixed in bony sockets and therefore unable to split and take in more than what stood directly before her—her eyes turned slightly away from him, as if she found his form unpleasant.

Her tall, fragile-looking, soft-fleshed body—naked in spite of its filmy covering of some sort of glistening cloth—towered over him. Folds of the scintillant white material as still as columns of opaque crystal fell to her feet.

Her feet.

Another abomination. She had only two hands, apparently firsts. Where the seconds should be, there was only smooth, vulnerable-looking tissue.

Then those two clumsy, flat appendages, altogether too broad and short for substantial support as they were, without dividing into even smaller, less efficient-seeming minor appendages at the ventral end.

He shuddered.

On her breast, a single faceted stone sparkled coldly.

He did not know what the stone was called. He did not care. But in the broad central facet, he could see himself in miniature: a compact, dark, impenetrable body, designed for gravitational forces many times that of this small clot of dirt. His image gleamed dully.

The trans-comm clattered into silence.

The Cwrth remained silent for a moment.

She was apparently considering what the trans-comm had just said.

Then, as she had done so often before, she repeated the incessant pattern that Torq had grown to despise.

“So be it.”

He moved. He paced slowly around the single visible bit of ornamentation in the room, a wooden pillar just over his height, polished until it shone, and surmounted by a piece of hideously carved stone of some sort.

Just glancing at the carving with a handful of his compounds made his blood heat. It was as loathsome as everything else here, even though it bore no resemblance at all to the tall, attenuated lines of the Cwrth. It was lumped, awkward, barely more than the suggestion of something that seemed implicitly ancient and terrible.

At least that was how it affected Torq.

In passing, he reached out one of his second hands and dug deeply, mercilessly into the wood, gouging up long splinters of red-grained wood.

The Cwrth flinched. Torq was pleased. That was the first sign of perturbation she had shown during their interchanges.

Just as a matter of principle, he flicked the pillar with a first hand, causing it to rock perceptibly. The carving seemed to slide a bit, then stop, as if there were come low barrier he couldn’t see that kept it from crashing to the stone floor.

This time she held herself in check. She was again unflappable, calm.

He continued: “This is our final requirement. Before sunfall, you will surrender to us—that is to say, to me—all armaments and other implements that might be used against the Koleic. You will acknowledge us as overlords, without reservation, and you will accept your condition as tributary, permanently and without question. You will turn over such materials—metals and minerals—as we require, as well as any fuel elements adaptable to our needs.

“You—and here I include all of your people—will do these things without complaint or rebellion. Otherwise, and this I promise, I will destroy your world. Koleic do not threaten. They do. We destroy what we cannot subjugate.”

He paused. The trans-comm began its task of morphing his clear, precise words, his meticulous diction, into meaningless streams of unintelligible sounds. It whistled and screeched, enough to drive even a name mad... had he not been standing there to fulfill the commission of his God.

He allowed his eyen to gaze around the room. The Cwrth’s servants—no more than a dozen when he had arrived—had all withdrawn from the chamber, leaving it even emptier than it had been when he first strode in. His numbers had stationed themselves around the walls, standing a few tarsi-lengths from the ubiquitous drapery that obscured everything except the central window in each wall.

He twitched. The room still felt... wrong. Bad?

He wasn’t certain that he wanted to attach moral value to mere architectural curiosity—this was an alien world, after all, unused to the higher refinements and beauties of the Koleic.

The Cwrth straightened slightly, making her form look even more drawn, more vulnerable.

He liked that.

She opened her mouth to speak.

Would she?

She did.

“So be it.”

He started to respond, when she turned to face him directly.

He was shocked anew by the awfulness of those dual eyes—soft, colored, fluid-filled spheres without compounds, without the familiar flash of faceted black. Flaps of tissue dropped down over them from time to time, even though in battle, those ridiculous flaps would clearly provide no protection from blasts or thrusts.

And more.

Her already impossibly fragile body was especially marred by one grotesquery that the draped fabric half-hid when she was turned away but now opened slightly to reveal in all of its odious detail.

Just above the jointure of her lower limbs, her body was swollen. The body covering—that was the word the trans-comm devised for what was obviously not exoskeleton but somehow performed many of the same functions—the body covering was tight, taut, bulging enough to nearly double her girth and to throw the rest of her body out of symmetry.

He had never seen such an abomination before... and had been even more horrified, shocked almost beyond words, to discover early in their interchanges that she was... that is, the she would... that she was in the process of bearing young!

His tarsi clicked faintly, disapprovingly.

His God was one thing. She performed her function discretely, almost silently, and none were there to observe except the chosen tens... excepting, of course, that single emergency that had brought Torq before here.

And even then, he had seen nothing except her upper carapace; the rest of her long body had been covered, as tradition demanded, by sumptuous cloth.

There had been nothing to indicate, to suggest, that ....

Well, truthfully, there had been something:

Plop.

Plop.

Plop.

But this, this public posturing.

It was bad enough to have to treat with an admitted female, but this was not even an egg-layer. No, she was bringing something alive from within her body.

He tried not to look at the shiny, stretched tissue, or notice that it occasionally rippled, almost heaved, as if something inside were struggling to escape its imprisonment.

And something was.

He had no idea what a Cwrth-grub would look like. And he had no interest in finding out. This creature, this... thing... had no business even appearing in public in such a state, let alone accepting the conditions that would permanently subjugate herself and everything like her on this world.

She should have long since retired to the sanctity and the privacy of a Hatchery.

Or whatever she called a place where she could...

The trans-comm interrupted his thoughts with a short burst—damnably familiar—then a slightly longer staccato of sounds.

“So be it.... Thus it is to call outward in, spew inward out.”

This was different.

The trans-comm faltered slightly on the final phrases, as if unsure of the translation. When it did repeat them in Koleic, there was still a hesitancy, along with a certain feeling of ritualism.

The tone itself grated on Torq. He crossed the room to stand before one of the seven windows and stared at meticulously tended fields fanning out between the convergence of two rivers.

In fact, the richness of the enclave—large as it was, expanding southward well beyond the limits of vision—had startled Torq when he had first arrived.

From space, the ship had transmitted crisp images of most of the planetary surface. Anomalous clouds had seemed to hover over a few specific areas, never moving, as far as the ship’s instruments had reported. They seemed lower than clouds should be, almost but not quite touching the land, and within them the instruments reported frequent flashes. Torq might have passed the phenomena off as lightning—or this planet’s equivalent—except that the instruments also indicated that the flashes consisted not only of light but of color. It some way the instruments could not define, it was physical color. Torq did not understand.

When Torq ordered several numbers to test further, he received even more anomalous responses:

Yes, there are definitely colors associated with the flashes.

But no, they do not fit into the spectrum of light as we understand it.

One of the numbers had allowed its carapace to curve slightly when Torq questioned further but had ultimately remained standing.

Still, there was something about those flashes that had startled, upset, and frightened—or terrified—the numbers.

In addition to the clouds there had been huge patches of grey spreading over whole quadrants of the surface, looking like the horrible fungoid growth that occasionally tormented the oldest and weakest of the Koleic. Tests had confirmed that these vast expanses were covered with dust, ash, something of that sort. But even there, there were suggestions of the indescribable color. Much of the planet was already afflicted by the devastation. From all indications, it was spreading.

And then, nestled among them, surrounded by an unbroken chain of mountains and glittering with colors that felt normal to Torq’s eyen, lay the enclave. In itself, it was huge, covering perhaps an eighth of the planet’s visible surface, but compared with the clouds and the dust bowls, it seemed fragile, vulnerable.

Torq turned slightly.

To his left, the squat outline of his lander shimmered in the late afternoon light. It seemed... wrong, he suddenly realized, out-of-place, alien.

He shifted his compounds, then focused back on the lander, and saw it as he had always seen it. For an instant, he decided, he had been so overwhelmed by the incongruous angles and surfaces of the enclave that he had almost perceived it as the Cwrth might have.

His ventral plates rippled.

The idea was absurd.

He stepped back two paces but spoke without turning to face the Cwrth.

“This place, this community, is rich. It is fertile. It has extensive reserves of minerals and elements that will be useful to use. Even the waste lands surrounding you are rich, although no longer capable of growing crops.”

He stopped and allowed the trans-comm to repeat what he had said.

The Cwrth did not respond. She did not even allow the eye-flaps to flutter down but stared at him disconcertingly with her dual orbs. They were, he noted, almost the same color as the sky outside the windows... blue but tinged with the fire of sunfall.

He waited a moment.

She did not speak.

He continued: “You have told me that you have no armies, no government. That you yourself are merely a... I have forgotten.”

He turned to the trans-comm and entered a search-memory command, then waited until it replied.

“Ah, yes. You are a ‘distal-appendage/female-that-has-not-yet-given-birth.’ You claim you hold no office other than Cwrth—‘talker’—yet it is with you that I must deal.

“Who governs you? To whom do you take conflicts? Who monitors wealth to ascertain that all have sufficient according to their station?”

Again he paused and waited for the trans-comm.

This time, when it had completed its litany of whistles, gurgles, wheezes, and crackles, the Cwrth began to speak.

And this time he did not hear the repetitious sounds that signified, “So be it.”

Line by line, the trans-comm iterated her alien thoughts in Torq’s own speech.

“We of the enclave are content. You are correct... and you are incorrect. We have no one to take our conflicts to because we have no conflicts. We have no armies because we have no one to fight. We have no riches because we all have what we need. We use our world as we require, not as we wish. We live well.”

The trans-comm fell silent.

“No conflicts? No enemies? And the Koleic are the first to come upon you?”

A moment later: “No. No, we have no conflicts. No, we have no enemies. And no, you”—here the term was not Koleic but something untranslatable, although the trans-comm indicated that at the base of the Cwrth word were undertones of disgust, revulsion, aversion, and dislike of something that scuttled upon the earth—“And no, you are not the first to come upon us. We have received visitors”—invaders, attackers—“before. We have received demands before. We have been warned, threatened, intimidated. But each time, the visitors have failed.

“We have been succored.”

Torq tensed as he heard her tone alter. Absolute certainty radiated from her even before her words filtered through the trans-comm. He dreaded what he would hear next. Sufficient reports had come back to the home world from earlier seeding missions for him to recognize the pattern, as little as he had expected it on this world. There had been none of the obvious signs, no panoply, no paraphernalia, no ceremonials. Yet her words were inevitable, invariable in sense if not in form. They had been heard by other Chaptains on other worlds—and the Koleic had invariably, systematically destroyed the unspoken hope implicit in them.

“Our God stands with us. He will suffice. Surely.”

She had spoken.

A religious cult.

In spite of his certain knowledge that he was following the God’s commands by being here and, eventually it now seemed, destroying this world—and in spite of his attempts over and again to educate her about his God—she had held onto some secret soteriology.

No wonder she had been so calm.

And no need to waste time on any more questions.

He didn’t care which of the infinite permutations of belief her god might take. He didn’t care what natural, physical manifestations the Cwrth had misunderstood as miraculous, magical, mystical. He didn’t care to debate with her.

His God was waiting.

He had seen her, had spoken to her.

For Her sake, he had mated with her on that single never-to-be-forgotten flight.

His knowledge was absolute.

He did not care to hear the minutiae of this... this creature’s faith.

He shifted into command mode. He was after all, the Chaptain, the possessor of all power on this world, the single individual who would decide whether this creature should live or die, whether her entire world would be allowed to exist or would become what parts of it already were—lifeless, dust-and ash-ridden wastes.

“I have power you cannot understand. My ship sits within the sky. I can order it to incinerate you, yours, everything you hold dear. I could incinerate the planet if I so chose, reduce it to a glowing ball of cinder.”

He stopped. The trans-comm chittered away, although Torq thought he heard more rigidity, more authority in the sounds that emerged from it.

The Cwrth did not change her position, her mien. Nor did she answer.

“My numbers—my warriors—carry weapons you cannot imagine. We are many, almost infinite; you are few and fragile. You cannot withstand us. Do not oppose us.

“Do not place hope in an impossibility.

“I have already shattered worlds.” As he spoke those words, he realized that he had made up his mind. He knew how his God would want him to act. “I shall shatter yours as well.”

***

As the trans-comm stuttered out Torq’s warning, he stared without moving out the window.

Silent, impervious, unassailable—the epitome of the Koleic.

His gaze rover over the impossibly slender spires of the enclave, often canted at angles that made his head seem to ache, as if at any instant they might shiver into fragments, and then—perhaps even before the fragments struck the ground—into dust.

He stared at the stark, barren mountains. They surrounded the plain where the enclave was situated, he knew, but were much closer here than further south. He could see their lofty ramparts, their razor-like ridges. As far as he could tell there were no cuts in the chain of peaks, no exit from here into the wastes that were the rest of the world.

From there he looked into the sky. His element now. His universe. His memory flickered through the planets he had visited... and conquered... and destroyed.

As was his Destiny!

The Cwrth began humming in her typical, monotonous way.

He turned to watch her now, instead of the landscape.

Her mouth was... was twisted. Elongated somehow. The ends where the two mouth-flaps joined were slightly raised. Vertical creases deformed her face there and elsewhere. It was hideous, the way their boneless flesh manipulated itself. Never had Torq felt prouder of—or so protected by—his unmoving ventral plates, his glossy chitin, even the thin, barbed lengths of his tarsi. Everything about him, about the Koleic, was immeasurably superior to this... this...

Her voice stopped, and the machine began.

“We have heard this before.” Even through the metallic translator, Torq thought he could detect the thrumming of strong emotion, something the Cwrth had not yet shown. She had always remained patient, gentle, even resolved to her obvious fate. And the fate of her people.

She repeated the first phrase, perhaps for emphasis, perhaps for clarification: “We have heard this before. Not often. Twice. Perhaps three times in our long, long history. None alive remember such things, even though we also live long, long lives. But the stories have been handed down.”

The machine pause, sputtered meaningless hisses and gurgles, almost as if it were sentient and did not want to say the next few lines.

“Such invaders”—she had apparently used a different word than “visitors” and in doing so made her attitudes toward the Koleic clear for the first time—“such invaders did not succeed. They died. As will you. Our God will succor us. He will suffice.”

Torq clicked his tarsi. He had tried to prepare himself for such a moment, given the reports of earlier Chaptains. He had never had to speak the words; the first worlds he had conquered had not risen to the sophistication of religions, even such a patently absurd one as was practiced here.

Stand up to the might of the Koleic, indeed!

Yet in spite of his preparations, he felt... unquiet. Even numbers died for reasons. They might forget themselves and curl. They might disobey a name. They might even have been born to supply nutriment to the Gods who even now were questing through the depths of space, scattering their seed far and wide.

But to die for an imaginary guardian.

Still, the needs—the requirements—of the Koleic came first. No one could circumvent Destiny.

He spoke a harsh command. The three stationed at the exit to the chamber hastened forward, its carapace glistening and burnished in the evening light. It carried a comm in one first hand. The second was outstretched toward Torq.

“Report.” Torq’s voice was rougher than usual, not because of anything the three had done but because of his frustration with the Cwrth, the one standing stock-still before him and all of them on this pitiable ball of dust.

The three clicked nervously, chitin against chitin.

“Report!”

“My lord!” Several of its compounds just might have flickered toward the pouch where Torq carried the thin metal rod. But it said nothing more.

“Report, I said.” And this time the anger in his voice—in his whole demeanor—was indeed directed at the three.

“My lord, they have... they have... disappeared.”

“What? Who?”

“My lord, scanners onboard the lander indicate that virtually all life forms in this enclave have... have... disappeared?” It was as if the guard had searched for a different word, a better word, and finally gave up in defeat.

“But when we landed, there were hundreds, thousands clustered around this building.”

“My lord, yes. But as the time has passed, and no order being given from you to the contrary, they... withdrew, yes, withdrew into their domiciles. Guards posted outside reported that we were being watched, observed, but none of the creatures made any gestures or overtures that we could read as threats. And...” The three stopped abruptly, as if it were afraid of the consequences of what it had already stated and was terrified to continue.

“And!”

“My lord, when we checked a few breaths ago, guards discovered... Well, my lord, they discovered that the habitations seem cluttered with mounds of combustibles. Several thought they saw movement in the deepest shadows within the domiciles, but none of”—it gestured toward the Cwrth with a movement of the tarsi that in any level of polite society would have been not polite—“none of them were visible.”

Torq stared. The guard—even though a three—showed imminent signs of curling. Torq did not care.

“Cretin! ‘Mounds of combustibles,’ and the creatures had vanished? Didn’t you think to...?”

No, they hadn’t thought. The numbers outside were mostly eights. They did not think. They followed orders explicitly. Or died.

With a gesture suspiciously like drawing a tarsus across a vulnerable ventral plate, Torq dismissed the three.

He scuttled heavily toward the center of the chamber, where the Cwrth stood silently. She seemed sad, her angles canted slightly earthward, her dorsal surface curved just as slightly in what in a Koleic would have been interpreted as the first signs of curling.

Yet something in her orbs—those loathsome twin balls of moisture—told him that she was not in fact defeated. She might be sad, although he could not understand why. But she was still not defeated.

“What has happened? Where are your people?”

He cursed the delay as the machine translated each sound he had made.

She spoke, and there was another delay.

“They are gone. Into the mountains, following trails known only to us. And you”—Torq shuddered at the venom in the word—“you will not destroy this place. We will. It is ours, and we will destroy it, if our God requires our sacrifice.”

“You will die...”

She began that eerie, eldritch twisting of the mouth-flaps even before the trans-comm had begun. It was as if she already understood what Torq would say next and was ready to respond.

The trans-comm chittered and whistled at her, however; and she chittered and whistled back.

“Of course I shall die. That is why I am here. I am the least, the”—the trans-comm nearly ground to a halt before spitting out a long sequence of words—“the one-who-sheds-ichor-willingly-in-order-that-all-others-may-survive. I am the distal-appendage/female-that-has-not-yet-given-birth. Through me my people will survive.

“If my God wills it.”

“I do not so will,” Torq screamed. “I do not so will! I am your God! And she”—here he gestured toward where the ship had just become visible through the top of the tallest window—“she is my God!”

The trans-comm struggled but it had not been designed to communicate such intensities of emotion. Gears ground in the effort, and whiffs of smoke appeared around the speaker. The chittering and twittering and musical tones sounded distorted, gravelly and harsh.

Even before the trans-comm fell silent, he snapped a gesture toward the nearest guard.

“Order the ship to prepare all force beams. As soon as the lander rises, destroy this place!”

“My lord, yes!” The three clicked a sharp salute.

Torq glared at the Cwrth... or rather, at the place where she had stood an instant before. During his outburst, even as the trans-comm had begun translating his command, the Cwrth had silently moved to stand immediately next to the wooden column. One of her hands touched the surface of the hideous carving, caressing it as if it were the most gorgeous thing in existence. The facet stone at her breast shone with its own internal light.

And she was speaking, whispering in a tone so low that through all of his screaming, Torq had not heard a thing.

He started to moved closer to her, infusing his bodily stance with all of the subtle signals of hatred for her stubborn, presumptuous species that he could—tarsi fully extended, as if he would rip her body covering from whatever structures supported it; carapace divided just enough to reveal the ichor-green of his wings; mouthparts quivering with suppressed rage; eyen glistening as his compounds flared toward her.

He almost began to speak.

Then he stopped.

There was something about her voice, about the words she was obviously uttering. He concentrated.

This was not the language she had been speaking to him!

Her words now contained almost none of the flighty high-pitched twittering, none of the rhythmical whistles that he had become accustomed to hearing and that at times he almost felt he could understand on his own. No, these sounds were harsh, guttural, her mouth-flaps quivering in tight little movements, up-down, up-down, nearly faster than his eyen could follow.

And she had altered physically.

The thin stalk that divided her head from her thorax stiffened. Thick ropes of tissue swelled from within, moving up along each side and pulsating as if with a life of their own.

The twin lumps of flaccid tissue on her thorax—Torq could imagine no possible use for such protrusions—tightened, the cone-shaped tips rising slightly in defiance of even the weak gravity.

She had spread her two body-supports until they were farther apart than the widest part of her body. In doing so, she had revealed even more of the unsightly swelling just below the tissue-lumps. The covering was visibly tighter, shining and beginning to turn a faint red. The earlier random movements within the swelling had become rhythmical, repetitive, as if a dozen tarsi were probing the tissues from within. He nearly retched at the sight.

Painfully he brought his eyen up to concentrate on her upper features; what was happening below was horrendous beyond all words.

She was still caressing the horrible carving, but now her tarsi were flitting so rapidly over the surface of the stone that it seemed as if the stone itself were moving, shrugging pleasurably beneath her touch.

And her voice dropped even lower, rumbled almost, as it reached depths that would have ripped at a Koleic’s speaking organs with their throbbing, ragged intensity.

The words became more rapid, running into each other until they became a litany of horror unbroken by breath.

Torq strained to recognize something—anything—in the confusion of deranged sounds but could not. His first hand dropped to his carapace pouch.

The monstrous carving seemed to wriggle obscenely beneath the Cwrth’s hands.

Her swelling expanded, contracted, expanded again, and Torq realized with horror that its movements were somehow connected with—controlled by—the rhythms of her unknowable, unspeakable words.

His tarsus touched the thin metal rod and began to withdraw it.

“My lord!”

The voice of the three—strained and dismayed as it was—calmed Torq for an instant. It was familiar; its rhythms were of his species, within his experience. Then he registered what the three was saying. Screaming.

“My lord! Something... a... it comes!” And with a final shriek that Torq would have thought beyond the capacity of a Koleic to utter, the three curled!

Torq glanced back at the Cwrth.

She had not left her place near the pillar. She was still stroking the stone creature, still muttering in that strange, uncanny tongue.

He turned and approached the window at the farthest side of the chamber.

And stopped. Stunned.

Beyond the distant mountains, a cloudy mass—billowing, roiling, lit from within by preternatural flashes of unnamable hues—a cloudy mass, such as had been charted elsewhere on the planet, descended, grazed shadowed heights, undulated across fields as if it were alive, and hungry, and angry.

As it approached the buildings of the enclave, it spread murkily, thinning but in the process becoming opaque and—if such a thing were possible—even more threatening as its lower surfaces bubbled and boiled, touching and shattering the thin spires, hiding the horrible angles of building after building.

The unnamable colors increased, joined with others familiar to Torq’s eyen—red, yellow, bile-green.

Part of his mind dissociated instantly. It began dispassionately, and entirely irrationally, to consider the curious modifications in wave lengths as the lights—the colors—filtered through the crystal panes.

Another part of his mind registered amazement and horror at his objectivity at such a moment.

This cloud, this... thing... could not possibly exist.

But it did.

It approached rapidly.

And stopped.

It contracted, compressed itself into a mist, a fog... thick, impenetrable but still motile. It now approached slowly. Frighteningly slowly.

Within the grey-blue fog—still lit, though less brilliantly—by the flashes of abominable color—lay a central core of absolute blackness that even Torq’s numberless compounds could not penetrate.

***

The Cwrth’s voice patterns had changed again. Though the sounds were still those of the strange language—and to Torq it felt immeasurably ancient—they were slower, more distinct.

They now held notes of command.

The first wisps of mist settled lower outside the chamber.

Torq watched with horrified amazement as the tendrils solidified, became tentacle-like, then solid, questing tentacles that stretched and expanded—even though the central core of darkness remained stationary.

They twisted in and over each other, curled and straightened as if they were feeling their strength for the first time, then dropped.

In an instant, they had encircled the lander.

Torq had just time enough to notice that the ground between the building in which he stood and the lander was littered—was covered by a chaos of small black nodules. It took him a breath to figure out what they were.

His entire squadron had curled.

Threes, fives, sevens, nines... all drawn tightly into themselves.

All lost.

Then, even as the magnitude of the disaster settled into his mind, the grey-now-black-now-midnight-purple clenched. Once. Convulsively.

And in a monstrous shower of flames and smoke and consumption, the lander was no more.

***

Torq pulled the thin metal rod from his pouch as he swiveled away from the window.

He raised it and pointed it toward the Cwrth.

And stopped.

She suddenly seemed to catch fire, to flame and glow, her white dress transformed into a living column of opalescent majesty. Her voice shifted again, grew even more intense, as if before she had only recited but now she saw and knew.

The trans-comm made a single attempt to begin translating, and the statue—just as had the lander—exploded.

Torq felt hot metal on his carapace, brushed it absently off of his first arms with his second. He felt no pain.

The Cwrth ceased her... incantations... for a brief moment, long enough to raise both of her hands high above her head and repeat one phrase over and over: Yog-Sothoth! Yog-Sothoth! Yog-Sothoth!

With a muffled thud, the drapes that had curtained most of the great chamber fell from their fastenings and lay in muddled heaps on the floor.

The Crwth seemed transformed, glowing even more brightly as the hidden walls were revealed as windows, wider, larger, infinitely more imposing than those that had before been visible.

Seven impossibly large windows... onto nothingness!

Each held within its crystal plane a blackness that exceeded blackness. It seemed palpable; it seemed to shout emptiness and abomination and monstrosity.

Torq felt his dorsal tissues struggling to curl.

In the deep blackness, he saw... movement.

The blackness roiled and writhed and agitated, until from the depths of each window into reaches beyond space and time, infinitesimally tiny tendrils began to form.

The Cwrth spoke, and even without the now-defunct trans-comm Torq understood that she was speaking his name as it would be pronounced in that ancient, archaic tongue.

He tore his eyen from the nothingness around him to stare at her.

She touched the carven image lightly with her appendages... and this time, Torq knew that the hideous thing had in fact moved.

From beneath its stony body, thin tentacles began to emerge.

One.

Two.

Many.

Then she directed his eyen upward and outward, toward the distant sky where his ship hung motionless, the sole remaining star in a nighttime of blackness. There were no other lights; no stars. Sunfall was complete but there were no stars.

And something formed out of the blackness.

Torq knew without knowing what he was seeing.

More tentacles, an infinity of tentacles stretching upward and outward until they seemed more elements of sky than of earth, until they twined and twisted and formed an almost impervious net over the world.

Then, in an instant, one of them dropped slightly, looped itself several times around the single source of light in the eternal calignosity that lay beyond Torq’s universe, tightened, and the ship—and everything within it—disappeared.

“My God!” he screamed.

He had no time to notice that equally spaced around the chamber, some half-hidden by the fallen drapes, lay dark spheres, oozing black distillations that the shimmering drapes seemed to absorb without any change in their own coloration.

He had no time to notice that as the Cwrth stood there in her triumph, her features twisted in pain, the grotesque swelling abruptly grew even larger, her covering more stretched, now burnished with a red deep beyond belief—that even as she stood there, a thin line formed from the jointure of her supports, questing upward with all of the determination of the universe of tentacles that now surrounded her world; questing upward and thickening until her covering split and... some thing... reached out with its own tentacles and wrapped itself around one of her supports and, still sticky and putrid with her scarlet ichor, lowered itself slowly, almost painfully, to the floor.

He had no time to notice it draw nearer and nearer where he stood, gaining in speed and power with each passing instant.

He had no time to notice any of these, because he was already galaxies away, wrapping himself in impossible memories that flooded and ebbed leaving nothing but darkness as his carapace cracked and his ventral plates folded in upon themselves.

And he curled.

The last thing he knew was the feathery touch of things icy and leathery and altogether evil invading his body through every fracture in his chitin, sucking , almost inhaling the very ichor of his being.

He did not hear the Cwrth’s words as she lowered her arms, as the long gash in her ventral plane—now flat and sagging—closed itself seamlessly, as the monstrous carving became again a moveless bit of stone ... as she shut herself off to all but the ethereal music that she alone in the chamber could hear.

“No,” she said, her voice full of pity, almost mournful. “My God!”

The Menace Under Mars

Nathan Shumate

Saxon didn’t want to look at the half-dozen oversized sheets of thin printout paper that Caldwell had laid out on his desk. He wanted to stare out the plasteel window punctuating the blocks of Martian stone that formed the wall of his work area, out to the dry orange Martian landscape beyond, watch the eddies of the thin, dry atmosphere half-heartedly stir the dust of this planet—this lifeless planet—and ignore Caldwell until the man decided to leave. But Caldwell would never decide to leave. He had Martians on the brain.

Saxon stifled his sigh and focused on the the tissue-like printouts of satellite data that Caldwell had spread across his desk. He watched as Caldwell’s finger traced a smudge in the center of one sheet.

“At first it was just some odd thermal readings,” Caldwell said, “and that doesn’t mean anything by itself, especially in the Martian summer, this close to the equator. But I was curious, and there was room on the satellite schedule—”

Saxon doubted that was strictly true. More likely, Caldwell had suborned Chatterjee, who was directly responsible for control of the monitor satellite, into bumping some other scheduled scans in favor of his quest for the fabulous Martians.

“—So I checked the thermals against density fluctuation readings,” Caldwell continued, “and then against the archived penetrative radar data from the last full survey.” His finger bounced from the first printout to the second and then the third, each time indicating a smudge or other blurry-edged area standing out in the center of the printed grid. Saxon could see nothing noteworthy in the smudges; they were all smudge-shaped.

“How is this different from the time you found the Martians on the far side of Mareotis Fossae?” Saxon asked.

Caldwell’s face fell. “You don’t have to keep throwing that back in my face. I was hasty on that one, I’ve admitted that. But look.” He shuffled a fourth printout to the top of the other three. “All three data sets, superimposed.” He spread his hand over the now-multiplied smudge, which stood out as the darkest area of the paper. There was a certain angular character to the overlapping smudges, as if a warren of rabbits who adored straight lines had dug out a cubist burrow.

This time Saxon couldn’t keep his sigh inaudible. “Joe, you have to expect readings to be out of the ordinary here and there,” he said, conscious of the need to keep condescension out of his voice. “Mars is a big enough planet to account for all kinds of natural—natural—variations.”

Caldwell said, “If I showed you an imaging scan done on Earth in which thermal, density and radar all showed a bunch of hollow chambers linked together at regular angles underground, you’d assume it to be man-made, right?”

There was a flaw in Caldwell’s logic, Saxon knew, he couldn’t put a label on it.

“So, we’re on Mars,” Caldwell continued, “and we see that kind of data, the most reasonable conclusion, really, is Martians!”

“Joe,” Saxon said, jerking a thumb toward his window, “take a look out there. We’re looking at a planet with thin atmosphere, intense cosmic radiation bombardment, few hydrocarbons, and no free liquid water since the dinosaurs were stomping all over Earth. Has it occurred to you that there don’t have to be Martians—that in fact it’s damned unlikely that there could be?”

Caldwell’s smile didn’t diminish. He looked like a man who’d just received what he took to be a social nicety in a language he didn’t understand, and presumed that simply continuing to smile was a a sufficient response.

“I’m not getting through to you, am I?” Saxon said.

“I’d like permission to requisition a skimmer and the necessary equipment for an expedition,” Caldwell said brightly. “Ishida has agreed to go with me. And I think I could persuade Cooper without too much trouble.”

“Let me get back to you in two or three weeks,” Saxon said. “I want everyone’s head—including yours, Ishida’s and Cooper’s—to be focused on the melt migration.”

“But that’s just it—we can’t wait! You didn’t look close enough!” Caldwell jabbed at the borders of the topmost printout, where coordinates and other numerals occupied the margin in blocky type. Saxon picked it up to look at the coordinates, and his heart fell; they were the numbers that put him to bed at night and shook him awake in the morning.

“Right in the middle of Isidis Planitia,” he muttered.

“Exactly,” Caldwell said. “Wait three weeks, and the place’ll be under water, with raging currents and soil debris. Another month, and it’ll be deeper than we could get to without a top-notch bathysphere.”

Saxon examined the printout again, his brain putting the square smudges into the context of his mental map of the thousand-mile-wide Isidis Planitia crater.

“I know you want this to be artificial,” Saxon said, “but believe me, I want this to be natural twice as much.”

“Why?” said Caldwell.

Saxon’s eyebrow arched. “What do you mean, Why? Two and a half years here, all scrapped if we discover something right in the middle of our target zone?”

“Yeah, but—Martians!” Caldwell smiled broadly again, and Saxon suddenly had a vivid picture of what Caldwell would have looked like twenty-five years before, with summer freckles and missing teeth, enjoying the hell out of a tire swing. “Terraforming is a huge thing, but does it really compare to confirming the first other intelligent life in the solar system?”

Saxon looked from the blurred shapes indicated under the Martian surface to the huge blocks of Martian stone which made up his own work area and most of the Sabaea Base besides. It would be something, of course. Right now the personnel of Sabaea Base were pioneers, but if they discovered Martians—or even the traces of Martians—they’d be heroes, practically demigods to future generations of explorers and immigrants.

He dropped the pages back over his desk, watching the thin paper take its sweet time to settle to the surface in the weak gravity.

“Not Cooper,” he said finally. “She’s going to be too busy prepping for transition. You and Ishida make up a full requisition plan and schedule, and show it to me in the morning. You are going to log this as a geological examination—if I see the word ‘Martian’ anywhere, your requisition is toast.”

“Yes, sir!” If Caldwell’s smile had gotten any broader, he would have needed reparative surgery.

***

Saxon knew that he had no hope of redirecting Caldwell’s passion for Martians. The man was a proxy for the large fraction of Earth’s population who dreamed of finding aliens within the solar system.

By the time the first manned Mars mission had landed in 1953, almost everyone knew already that the “canals” and the rich biosphere that went with them were the child of poor optics and overwhelming imagination. But even those astronauts had been underwhelmed by what they found: A cold and dingy planet whose only form of life was the pseudo-lichen which changed colors with the seasons across the southern hemisphere. Earth’s centuries-long fixation on Mars as their potentially inhabited neighbor was quickly transferred to Venus, but that didn’t last; three years later, when Venus received its own expedition of curious earthlings, the only animate life found was a photosensitive slime mold which formed colonies the size of a Brussel sprout. So now they were salving humanity’s collective disappointment by putting in motion the first steps toward terraforming Mars into a habitable planet.

And that’s where the dreams of alien contact within the solar system would have ended, if not for the Artifact.

Both scientists and politicians had tried to popularize other names—the Anomaly, the Obelisk, even the Megalith—but it was “the Artifact” that stuck to the jutting shard of crystalline metal noticed from afar on Mars’s moon Deimos. This despite the fact that no manned expedition had tried to set down on the asteroid moon to determine firsthand if it was, indeed, any sort of artifact. What flybys and probes had shown was a many-surfaced pillar or spike of some heat-crystallized metal with a green shine, its surface etched with crosshatches which to the imaginative clearly indicated written language, a sign hung out to the cosmos by ancient inhabitants of the red planet, and which to skeptics were likely nothing more than evidence of micrometeorite strikes during its long tenure in orbit.

Compared to speculations about the origins and purpose of the Artifact by the legend-spinners and crowd-pleasers of Earth, the straightforward engineering of the terraforming project, thawing Mars’s own carbon dioxide from its south pole to increase the atmospheric pressure to hold in the water vapor that would shortly be liberated from its north pole, seemed like constructing a hydroelectric dam: a massive and important undertaking, of course, but not one to capture the imagination and speculation of Earth’s billions. Thankfully, clear out on Mars, Saxon didn’t have to fend off the constant sensationalism of terrestrial media. But he had Caldwell, and that was almost as bad.

***

The next morning, before Caldwell even presented his proposal to him, Saxon visited the garage to confirm with Rigby the condition of the skimmers. Rigby was the pudgiest person on the team—it was rumored he had just squeaked past the physical requirements for the mission—but he was also the best hands-on paragravity technician that the League of Nations could agree on. His smile when Saxon entered told him that Caldwell had already been there, probably the night before.

Annoyed, Saxon instead began the conversation elsewhere. “How do the pre-check metrics look on the paragrav satellite?”

“Better than standard by an order of magnitude. Precise enough to swat a fly. If a fly could get enough lift to stay aloft outside, naturally.”

Saxon nodded and crossed the work area to the viewscreen mounted on the wall to look at the satellite displays for himself. The current and projected orbit of the paragrav satellite showed as a red line corkscrewing around the planet until it arrived above the arctic. A circle outlined in green, outside the orbit of the paragrav satellite, showed where the six solar aggregator satellites hung in formation over the north pole like synchronized swimmers, each the center point of a huge network of reflective polymer sails which focused the sun’s energy on the water-ice cap at the pole, transforming the ice into liquid water for the first time in eons. The aggregators had previously done their work for a good Martian year above the south pole, melting the solid carbon dioxide there until enough of it had entered the atmosphere that its own greenhouse effect would keep it from re-freezing before the water could be freed from the north pole. Then the paragrav satellite would make the water think that “south” was “down,” and migrate it to the massive impact crater of Isidis Planitia—a perfect reservoir that would become the Isidis Sea.

“Have you had a chance to go over the skimmer Caldwell requisitioned?” Saxon asked.

Rigby indicated the other end of the garage space, where a two-person skimmer sat on a transport rack, ready to be moved out the doors into the launch bay. “Everything checks out. Ishida is an expert pilot, and Caldwell is certified for this model, so it should be a piece of cake.”

“Maybe, but double-check it anyway,” Saxon said. “I’m not repositioning the radio satellite just for their little excursion, so they’ll be out of signal range. I want this skimmer one hundred percent guaranteed to get them back.”

“Moving the satellite wouldn’t be a hardship. If I input the orbital changes now, it can be in position just after they get there. If you want, I can—”

“No,” said Saxon.

Rigby arched an eyebrow. “Because changing the orbit would require a log entry with your approval,” he said knowingly. “And you don’t want any paper trail that contains both your name and the word ‘Martians.’ Or even its implication.”

Saxon hoped that the heat he felt in his cheeks hadn’t become a visible flush. “The fewer resources committed to this goose chase, the better. That’s all.”

“Well, I’ll go over the skimmer again,” Rigby promised. “I guarantee that the skimmer won’t give them any problems. If they end up stranded, it won’t be its fault, or mine.”

***

If Caldwell and Ishida had hoped for an official send-off an hour later, they were disappointed, as only Rigby was there to watch them go through the pre-check in the launch bay, raising the skimmer on its paragrav pontoons and testing pitch and yaw. Saxon was hip-deep in the bureaucratic paperwork that he had known would be the mainstay of his Martian existence when he had thrown his name in for the base administrator post, and by the time he came up for air, the skimmer had retreated over the horizon. The plan Caldwell had had approved called for a day of travel out, a day of exploration and recording, and a day back.

The launch bay was prepared for Caldwell and Ishida’s return on the afternoon of the third day.

Saxon started pacing his office on the morning of the fourth day, and late that evening he recorded and filed a memo assigning responsibility and culpability to himself for approving the expedition outside the radio satellite’s range.

Before dawn on the fifth day, as Saxon lay in bed mulling the logistics of a search and rescue mission, the voice panel beside his bed buzzed.

“Got something incoming,” said Rigby without introduction. “Must be the skimmer. It’s flying erratically.”

Saxon grunted acknowledgment, threw back the blanket, and found his pants.

In ninety seconds he was at the garage, staring at the viewscreen from behind Rigby’s shoulder. Rigby looked like he hadn’t slept.

“I don’t like it,” Rigby said. “Obviously the skimmer, but the harmonics are all off. The paragrav’s about to fail—I don’t know how it’s still in the air.”

“How far out?” Saxon asked.

“Kilometer and a half.”

On Earth, the pilot of a small airplane of about the skimmer’s dimensions and weight would have a chance to make the remaining distance even if the propulsion gave out, or at the very least to glide to a safe landing on the rocky plain. But Martian atmosphere wasn’t thick enough to support gliding; a skimmer which lost all power would only stay in the air for as long as it took to hit the ground, like a jeep going off the edge of a cliff.

Saxon punched the voice panel beneath the screen. “Kay-Kay, grab your kit and your pants and get to the garage.”

“Will do,” said a female voice.

“Left paragrav pontoon is out,” Rigby said. “It’s corkscrewing now. Definitely going down.”

Saxon pulled a breathing mask and harness out of an equipment locker and handed it to Rigby, then grabbed two more and tossed one to the figure who had just come through the door.

Kathy Kettrick, the base’s medic, caught it smoothly with the hand that wasn’t hauling her portable med kit. Her hair was messed and the skin around her eyes was puffy with sleep, but her eyes themselves were alert.

“Skimmer coming down,” Saxon said curtly, following Rigby to a rover jeep near the doors to the launch bay. “We’re going to meet it.”

“Any radio contact?” Kettrick asked as she slung her kit into the rover’s rear.

Saxon looked to Rigby, who tossed him a fur-lined jumpsuit and shook his head. “I thought they’d radio when they were in range, but nothing so far.”

Saxon pulled the elastic of the breath mask over his head, adjusted the attached goggles over his eyes, and made sure the radio earpieces were firmly seated before he flipped up his hood. The mask’s oxygen bottle sat against his chest, and he zipped the jumpsuit over it. Melting the carbon dioxide at the south pole had increased atmospheric pressure enough that full pressure suits weren’t required outside, but the frigid air with its whipped-up cargo of sand particles irritated exposed skin. If there had been more time, all three of them would have used the medical gel meant for covering and protecting the uncovered skin around the edges of their masks, but they couldn’t afford the delay.

With Rigby at the wheel and Saxon and Kettrick in the seats behind him, the rover jeep rumbled to life and crawled toward the jointed slats of the door to the launch bay. The door rolled jerkily up when they were a couple of yards away and clattered back down as soon as they passed under. The launch bay was a dark square of metal with a native stone floor, illuminated by sand-scoured skylights. Saxon’s ears popped as vacuum fans drew back a good proportion of the oxygen they had brought with them into the bay, bringing the air pressure down to the current surface norm. Then the outer door clanked up as the inner door had, and Rigby guided the rover out onto the gritty plain which was already reflecting its constant palette of dull oranges and creams and ambers under the recent dawn.

The dark dot in the sky was growing larger even to their unaided eyes, pinwheeling toward them like a poorly folded paper airplane. Rigby consulted the scope on the rover’s dash, then turned the rover to the left and flew through the gears as quickly as he could while maintaining traction on the sand.

They were still far enough from the skimmer when it crashed that they saw it skip across the ground silently before noise reached them—embarrassingly anticlimactic in the thin air, like an empty can being kicked. Rigby adjusted his course minutely toward the skimmer’s final resting place, half buried in the sand. As they got closer, Kettrick pointed to a smaller dark shape another thirty feet beyond the crumpled nose of the skimmer.

“Someone got thrown clear!” Her voice was close in Saxon’s ears, in contrast to tinniness of exterior sounds past his earpieces.

Rigby adjusted his course again toward the human shape.

“Kay-Kay,” Saxon said, “you jump out by whoever that is and start treating him while we check out the skimmer.”

The rover swung close to the body in front of them crumpled in its own skidding impact crater, and as soon as Rigby slowed down to turn, Kettrick jumped off the back with her gear.

Saxon watched the scope as Rigby spun close to the twisted skimmer, alert for any sort of energy spike or dangerous heat signature, but the skimmer didn’t seem to be in danger of exploding or bursting into flames—not that fire would last long on the surface of Mars. The canopy had sprung when the metal chassis had corrugated on impact, tossing the pilot. As Rigby and Saxon hopped out and approached the skimmer from opposite sides, Saxon could feel the warmth of the overtaxed paragrav pontoons against his exposed forehead. Both the seats were empty, and the cargo area as well; whoever was lying out in the red sand, he had been the only occupant of the skimmer on its return journey.

“I’ll need to know why it crashed,” Saxon said.

Rigby nodded. “I’ll come back out with the flatbed.”

Kettrick called through the radio link. “Hey, Saxon, need some help.”

Rigby and Saxon trotted to where she was kneeling beside the crumpled form. It was Caldwell. He was breathing raggedly, and finger marks in the red dust showed where Kettrick had readjusted his breath mask to fit over his face again.

“How is he?” Saxon asked.

“All I know is that he’s unconscious and breathing,” Kettrick said. “But look at this.”

She pointed to his right hand, gloveless and red from the cold. His fingers were fastened so tightly around a shard of metal that its edges had cut into his hand, and clotted blood now glued it into his grip.

“I’m going to need help getting him back.” She pulled a small bundle out of her kit, and with the flick of her wrists, two collapsed rods extended and became the poles of a lightweight webbed stretcher. “I don’t know what kind of internal injuries he has,” she said, gesturing the two men to positions around Caldwell and the stretcher. “We need to get him onto this without making any breaks worse.”

Under her directions on the count of three, they rolled Caldwell onto the stretcher. Kettrick pulled the webbing over the top to strap him in, and she and Saxon positioned the stretcher in the back of the rover, holding on while Rigby got back in the driver’s seat.

“You two can consider yourself in a race,” Saxon said. “First one to tell me what’s wrong, either with the skimmer or with Caldwell, wins.”

***

Rigby won hands-down. He had Chu drive out with him on the flatbed and a paragrav forklift—a tricky operation, Rigby said, maneuvering damaged paragrav generators by paragrav—and while Chu drove back, Rigby started examining the wreckage. He barely waited for the garage doors to seal before he buzzed Saxon and had him come down.

“I can tell you exactly what went wrong with the skimmer,” he said as soon as Saxon came through the doors. “The damned fool skipped his pre-flight. No warm-up, no cycle-through, no power-balance routine. Just hopped aboard and shoved the thing into drive.”

“You said Caldwell is certified. He knows how to operate it.”

“I know that and you know that, but he sure as hell acted like he didn’t know that. See these lengthwise fissures in the pontoons? There’s no other way to get them.”

“Was he trying to escape from something?” Saxon asked. “He might have needed to get out of there in a hurry, wherever they were.”

“That’s what I thought, too.” Rigby motioned to a diagnostic box that he had plugged into the skimmer’s cracked instrument panel. “But what I see here shows a steady power consumption record from the time it went up, and it was nowhere near full speed. He wasn’t in a hurry. It’s like he just didn’t know or didn’t care how to run the thing right.”

Saxon punched the voice panel. “Kay-Kay, it looks like Rigby wins the contest,” he said. “What have you got for runner-up?”

“A whole bunch of half-answers,” she replied. “Come on up and I’ll share them.”

***

As Saxon walked into the medical bay, he said, “Got the coffee ready yet?”

Kettrick smiled from polite habit. As the medical director, Kettrick was also in charge of the base personnel’s nutritional regimen, which included vat-grown yeasts, attempts to find a terrestrial crop that would yield produce in the Martian soil, experiments to make the native pseudo-lichen both edible and palatable, and their carefully rationed store of freeze-dried foods brought from Earth, kept in a secure storeroom accessible only by Kettrick. For two years Saxon had been hoping she’d find some secreted coffee, despite her denials that there was any such luxury in the inventory.

Caldwell lay on a bed tipped up at an angle for ease of examination, with goose-necked lights aimed at him from various directions. An inflatable pad had been bandaged around his right shoulder, and an oxygen tube supplemented the base’s air; his lungs still sounded labored, but his chest didn’t rise and fall so violently anymore. His right hand, outside the thin sheet covering him, was bandaged as well.

“He’s got a broken clavicle,” she said, “probably from the impact. Bruises on the head, so he might have a concussion, but no other fractured bones that I can find. His lungs have sand in them from breathing through an unsecured mask, but it should work its way out, and his blood oxygen’s almost up where it should be.”

“Has he been conscious?”

Kettrick shook her head. “I’m about to run some X-rays for head trauma.”

A surgical tray sat on the side table, and on its blue paper liner, Saxon saw the shard of metal. “That was what was in his hand?”

Kettrick nodded. “I haven’t had much of a chance to look at it, aside from making sure that it isn’t radioactive.”

Saxon picked it up by the surgical tongs, then ran it under the pressurized nozzle in the sink to remove the clotted blood and sand. Outside, under the warm rays of the Martian dawn, it had looked just as red as its surroundings. Now, under the white clinical light of the examining room, Saxon could see a distinct greenish gleam to its reflective surface.

“This isn’t a part of anything on the base,” Saxon said.

“A mineral sample, maybe?”

Saxon held it up and examined its flat outside surface against the lit ceiling. “It looks refined and machined,” he said. He reached to the voice panel on the wall and called the garage. “Rigby, you didn’t find anything in the skimmer that didn’t belong, did you?” he asked. “Like maybe some more pieces of metal?”

“Nothing at all,” Rigby said. “Not even any of the equipment they took, and definitely nothing that’s not supposed to be there.”

“Thanks.” Saxon thumbed the panel off and scowled at the metal fragment.

“You want to say it, or should I?” Kettrick asked.

“You go ahead,” he said. “It gives me plausible deniability.”

“It looks an awful lot like the metal that makes up the Artifact,” she said.

Saxon nodded. “Noted and seconded,” he said.

***

“Could it be the Russians?” asked Rigby, turning the shard of metal between his fingertips. Around the conference table—which was, three times a day, the meal table—the rest of the Sabaea Base personnel watched the green gleam that played off the mirrored sides. At the very tip of one end of the shard was a ninety-degree bend in the surface, as if it had been splintered off a metal box or cube.

Saxon said, “Command on Earth says that no intelligence points to the Soviets paying any attention to Mars. They’re still putting all their efforts toward a foothold on Venus.”

Rigby nodded as if he’d expected that answer. “I suppose it could be the Chinese...”

Chu said, “The Chinese government is a full partner in this present expedition. We have no interest in also funding a competing project.” His voice lost some of its officiousness as he added, “Or, frankly, the resources.”

Saxon said, “I think we can safely conclude that that—” he nodded his head toward the shard, which Rigby had passed to Cooper beside him “—isn’t evidence of any other government trying to establish a Martian toehold.”

Cooper hefted the shard, then rotated it between her fingers as Rigby had done. “That leaves us two possibilities,” she said. “Either it’s natural, and just resembles incredibly well a fragment of refined metal by happenstance...”

She reached across an empty chair to pass the shard to Huyck. There were fourteen chairs at the table, of which three were empty: Caldwell was in the medical bay, Kettrick was with him to monitor his condition and Ishida was still unaccounted for.

There was an uncomfortable silence, as no one wanted to be the one to put into words what they were all thinking.

“Or someone else made it,” Saxon finished simply.

“I think we’re misfocused,” said Draney, arms folded across his chest at the far end of the table. “Yes, evidence of an alien intelligence would sell the tabloids like hotcakes back on Earth, but in the meantime, we have a man missing, and that needs to be our priority.”

“And it absolutely is,” Saxon said. “We don’t know what happened to Ishida, where he is, under what conditions. That—” he gestured to the shard, which had now made its way to Draney, who examined it grudgingly before passing it on “—is the only clue we have—a pretty poor one, but I’ll take what I can get.” The shard passed around to Swann, Mendez, Duchesne and Chatterjee before ending up back in front of Saxon.

Chu raised his hand. “Ishida isn’t the only mystery,” he said. “What’s with Caldwell? If there was an emergency or accident, why didn’t he radio in as soon as the skimmer got in range?”

Saxon looked to Rigby. “Anything wrong with the skimmer’s radio?”

“Well, there is now,” said Rigby. “But as near as I can tell, it was working fine before Caldwell plowed a ditch.”

Saxon looked around. “Before I start putting together a search and rescue detail,” Saxon said, “is there anyone who doesn’t want in?”

No hands were raised.

“Then let’s get ready.”

***

Forty-five minutes later the meeting broke with each person, whether tapped for the rescue mission or not, diving into his or her assigned tasks. Saxon went straight to the medical bay; he had left orders with Kettrick to buzz him in the conference room if Caldwell showed signs of responsiveness, and the silence of the voice panel annoyed him.

Kettrick was staring at an illuminated set of X-rays, a sacrificial pen being mauled in the corner of her mouth. She didn’t bother to look up. He stood behind her and surveyed the X-rays.

“What am I looking at?” he asked.

“Absolutely nothing.” She scowled at Caldwell, lying in the bed with no change in position. “No evidence of concussion or any kind of head trauma. According to these, there’s no reason he shouldn’t be conscious.”

“Just like Caldwell to be sleeping on the job.”

“Hey! Caldwell!” Kettrick yelled. “Stop goldbricking and scaring the crap out of us!”

Saxon glanced over to the medical scope which showed heart rate, temperature and blood pressure in a series of rhythmic green lines. There wasn’t so much as a burr in the readings.

Kettrick sighed. “Worth a try, I suppose. What came out of the meeting?”

“We leave in two hours in the six-man,” Saxon said. “You’ll be in charge here while we’re gone.”

“You’re leading it yourself?” Kettrick asked.

Saxon answered with his expression.

“I just hope we’re not throwing personnel down a hole, one after another,” Kettrick said, grinding the pen between her canines.

“Chatterjee is sending the radio satellite up over Isidis Planitia,” Saxon said. “It won’t hit its position over us until two hours after we get there, but at least we won’t be operating in complete radio silence the whole time.” He glanced at Caldwell, to all appearances a man just catching up on his rest. “I should have done that for Caldwell and Ishida.”

“Of course you should have,” Kettrick said. “One of the qualifications for your position was precognition, didn’t you know?” She changed the subject with a look, staring at Caldwell’s passive face. “Well, I’ll let you know as soon as anything changes. If it does.”

Saxon left medical with Kettrick’s offhand words echoing in his head: “I hope we’re not throwing personnel down a hole.”

***

In two hours, the six-man skimmer was loaded. If Ishida were still alive, he must have encountered some sort of problem in the caverns he and Caldwell had meant to explore, either a collapse or some other injury which had trapped him. With that in mind, the skimmer had been loaded up with plasma saws and the smallest paragravity winch—the same equipment used to create Sabaea Base from native Martian stone. Every time someone had mentioned the possibility of using paragravs while under the surface, Rigby looked like he was suffering from indigestion, so Saxon had tapped him, the paragrav expert, as second in command of the team. Chu had paramedic training and functioned as medical backup to Kettrick, so he came along as field medic. Mendez had had some cave-exploring experience back on Earth, and Swann filled out the team more as an extra pair of hands than for any particular expertise. Cooper had protested being left off the roster, but Saxon couldn’t afford having both paragravity specialists on the same mission with its unknown hazards. One seat was left empty for Ishida; Saxon hoped he wasn’t in any condition which required the stretcher, as there simply wasn’t room for it within the skimmer’s canopy.

Just after the anemic sun reached its noontime zenith, the six-man pushed through the garage and out onto the Martian plain. Rigby went through a quick but meticulous pre-flight, and then they were airborne. Saxon felt the now-familiar lurch in his stomach as their quick liftoff and the rapid acceleration, evident to his eyes, clashed with the completely inertia-free operation of the paragravity propulsion.

“Barring some storm snarls,” Rigby said, “we’ll make Caldwell’s landing point about two hours before sunset.”

Saxon grunted acknowledgment, then busied himself with the in-flight task he had assigned to all of the skimmer’s other occupants: scanning the landscape as they passed over it for any sign of Ishida or anything else unusual between Sabaea Base and Isidis Planitia.

The Martian landscape they passed over displayed variety. The base had been built on a high plain, selected because the thin winds scoured away as much dust and sand as they deposited. As they flew northeast, the shadow of the skimmer gradually pull ahead of them on the surface below, Saxon saw depressions which had been sculpted into gentle whirls of dust in manifold warm hues, pebble- and cobble-strewn steppes, and weathered crevasses dating from the last time that liquid water had molded the face of the planet hundreds of millions of years ago. All of it was lifeless; none of the lichens from the southern hemisphere extended this far north except as part of the experimental transplant patch at the base, and there was literally nothing native alive up this far except some scattered proto-microbes that an earlier exploration had described as “like viruses, but stupider.” It was an old world, an ancient world that wore its years brazenly, unmediated by dense atmosphere or oceans; but at the same time it seemed unfinished without the skin of life that the Earth bore rampantly all over, life which colonized and persevered and thrived even in extreme conditions. It was as if a careless and unknowable creator had lost interest in Mars and abandoned the project without finishing it, leaving it forever half-completed.

Until they had arrived—they and their ambitious terraforming plan. Saxon rarely looked beyond the engineering schedule he had been hired to administrate, seeing their mission as one of problem-solving and construction, of twisting solar energy and gravitation to consciously designed ends. But watching expanses of the planet’s skinless surface pass beneath him forced a perspective upon him that placed all their solar aggregators and paragravity emittors against a vast backdrop of time and space that disappeared beyond the horizon in all directions. They were a speck on a wide heedless canvas, just like the shadow of the skimmer beneath them, preceding them across the endless expanses of sand and rock that were themselves artifacts, each particle of them, artifacts of a planet that had not sought out human hands to remake it, and ahead of the shadow of the skimmer was an ancient pit in the sand, a huge orifice that sucked the shadow in and closed its lipless rim around it, chewing and devouring it—

Saxon jerked awake. There was no mouth-pit in front of them, only the shadow of the skimmer which skipped ahead like an energetic child ahead of its parent. The area they were entering was covered with irregular rocks large and small, and their shadows were growing and merging into a thatch of twilight that indicated to Saxon that the skimmer had entered the Isidis Planitia depression.

Rigby glanced at him, and he realized he was panting slightly, and his forehead was damp.

“You okay?” Rigby asked.

Saxon nodded. “How close?” he said. The back of his throat was bitter and metallic.

Rigby indicated out the transparent canopy with his chin. “Inside of ten minutes,” he said. The scope on the dash showed their progress as a green dotted line with a circle at the end, almost on top of a red square. Rigby had said earlier that they would have about two hours of daylight once they got there, but sunset would come on sooner as they descended into the basin of the crater, and the atmosphere was still too thin to let twilight linger.

“Let’s search from the air as much as we can,” Saxon said. “Get as close as you can to their touchdown site—” he tapped the scope “—and circle while we still have light.”

Saxon looked behind him to confirm that they had heard him. The three men nodded. From the way Mendez rubbed at his eyes with his thumb and first knuckle, Saxon could tell he’d napped as well.

“Everyone better dose up on some caffeine,” Saxon added. “We don’t stop until we find Ishida, and then it’s straight back to Base.”

***

The broken, rocky expanse that was Caldwell’s indicated landing site was almost at the bottom of the thousand-mile crater, an area broken up by mounds and hillocks where any detritus or wind-loosened stones from further up the slopes had rolled in the last few million years. The red square on the scope was only an approximation, so Rigby picked an arbitrary spot as the center of the spiral he then followed. Four pairs of eyes examined the ground for the next forty-five minutes until dusk robbed them of confidence. At Saxon’s instruction, Rigby returned to the center of his search spiral and brought the skimmer down into as stable a position as he could, though the whole craft canted to the right as he leveled off the paragravity and let it settle under its own weight.

Everyone strapped their masks to their faces, connected the hoses to their chest packs and smeared any exposed skin with medical gel; it stung Saxon’s face where his skin had been unprotected around his mask at sunup, and he realized that he had never even stopped to glance in a mirror to see how bad he looked. Once they were all in their masks, a slight whistle of vacuum preceded the unsealing of the canopy, and all five men clambered out and around to the unpressurized cargo area to strap on their loaded gearbelts. Already it was dim enough that flashlights were necessary to keep from turning ankles on the densely strewn stones.

“Let’s fan out from here,” Saxon said. “Sing out if you find signs of either Ishida or a cavern.”

Night had fallen precipitously, and now five flashlight beams jiggled as the men tried to tell what was shadow and what was solid in front of them. As the men radiated out and grew farther apart, Saxon felt the darkness here in this high-horizoned landscape draw in, the starry sky above separated distinctly from the unbroken blackness beneath. Only Deimos, the smaller of the two Martian moons, was visible in the sky, no brighter than a notably large star. Saxon knew it was only his imagination that seemed to infuse Deimos’s reflected light with a slight greenish tinge.

“Hey!” came Swann’s voice over the radio. “I think I found a cave.”

“Has anyone seen any sign of Ishida? Any clue?” Saxon asked. The men each sounded off in the negative.

“Swann,” Saxon continued, “aim your light straight up so we can find you.” He did so, and shortly the other four flashlights had converged on him.

The opening in the ground was on the lee of a small hump of soil; from any angle but straight in front of it, it just looked like yet another inky black shadow in a field of shadows. The opening was like a small crevasse, a crack in the dry surface. Saxon stuck his light inside the opening and shone it downward. The bottom dropped away at an angle. Scuffs covered the surface of the slope down, and Saxon could pick out the tread of standard-issue exploration boots.

He straightened. “Mendez and Chu,” he said, “get the saws and backpacks from the skimmer. Swann, set up the radio relay for when the satellite gets into range.” The men immediately returned to the skimmer, their lights bobbing over and around the lumpy blackness in front of them. Saxon knelt back at the cave entrance with Rigby, and they both examined it in their lights.

“Doesn’t look artificial,” said Rigby. “I mean, there are no signs of digging or drilling. Could just be a natural fissure.”

“Yeah. Could be,” said Saxon. He pulled his hood back, removed one earpiece, picked up a small stone from the ground, and dropped it down the passage. It clattered out of view.

“I guess that means there’s not a drop-off just out of sight,” said Saxon, standing and dusting his gloved hands. Swann came back with the radio relay, a cylindrical device about two feet tall, and set it on the ground on four telescoping legs. Once the radio satellite was in position between them and the base, the relay would boost the signals from their masks, even—Saxon hoped—if they were underground.

Mendez and Chu returned more slowly, carrying awkward loads of backpacks and two plasma saws. The backpacks held extra rations of food and water, polymer cable lines they could use for climbing lines, and extra flashlights. Chu also had a compact med kit, smaller than the one Kettrick had taken out to the crash site which was now in the back of the skimmer. If they found Ishida alive, with any luck they could get him to the surface using what Chu carried and stabilize him for transport at the skimmer.

With Swann holding a light for him, Mendez quickly looped his line around a craggy stone poking from the sand and tied a secure knot with hands that were confident even in gloves, then strung the line back and tossed the coil into the black hole where it unspooled as it fell out of flashlight range. Saxon motioned for Mendez to lead the way.

Mendez hesitated.

“Something wrong?” Saxon said.

After a moment’s hesitation, Mendez shook his head and stepped forward. “Sorry,” he said. “Just... steeling myself before we’re swallowed up.”

Saxon felt an electric tickle somewhere below his ribcage. The image from his dream in the skimmer came back to him with surprising intensity: a giant mouth-shaped hole in the Martian surface swallowing him eagerly as he fell into it without volition or hope of rescue. Why had Mendez used that exact phrase? Was it just something spelunkers said? Mendez had been the other one asleep in the skimmer beside Saxon. Had he—

Mendez descended into the hole, one hand on the line for stability and the other aiming his flashlight. Before his light had faded entirely down the hole, Swann followed him, then Chu. Rigby glanced back at Saxon, and Saxon thought he could see a question in the man’s posture. Then Rigby grasped the rope in one hand and slid his feet over the invisible demarcation between the plain around them and the mouth of the cave.

Saxon could see the reflections of their lights when he looked down the hole—none directly below him, but close enough that there must be some stable place to congregate not far out of sight. He wrapped the line around one gloved hand, took a last look out at the irregular horizon standing black against the star-specked sky, and slid himself down.

It was only about twenty feet to where the others waited on a flat stretch of stone, the roof arched not far over their heads. The far side of the small natural chamber was fissured with cracks and crevices, some large enough to conceivably be tunnels. Mendez was crouching in front of one, his light held at an oblique angle to highlight the dusty rock in front of the fissure.

“Looks like they came through here,” Mendez said.

“Hold on just a second,” Saxon said. “Swann, I want you to stay in contact with the relay. Let me know when the satellite comes in range, and tell me if we ever lose contact ourselves.” Swann nodded.

Saxon stepped forward to the fissure and shone his light. It was a vertical crack, with no level surface to place one’s feet, but wide enough that they could half-walk, half-climb through, even with their packs on. He leaned in, placed first one foot and then the other against the sloping walls, and led the way into the fissure.

After ten yards roughly downward, Saxon saw the fissure open out again into a dark space beyond that swallowed his flashlight beam. When he got to the open end of the fissure, he peered out and shone the light around.

The floor was smooth and level. The walls angled inward, but were also smooth and regular.

He stepped onto the floor and straightened his back. The ceiling was flat and featureless.

This was no cave. This was a room.

Swann gasped as he followed Saxon out of the fissure. “This is...” he trailed off, instinctively keeping his voice to a whisper.

Saxon laid his palm against the wall, feeling the machined texture through his glove. “Definitely artificial,” he said, “but not done with a plasma saw.” Behind him, Chu, Mendez and Rigby stepped from the fissure into the chamber. Their lights traced the square junctures between wall and floor, wall and wall, wall and ceiling. The room was five yards on a side, though the inward slope of the walls toward the ceiling three yards up made it feel tighter. A triangular passage opened on one side, the walls sloping in at the same angle to meet at a point at the top. Another passage led from the room in a direction roughly, but not exactly, opposite.

Rigby pulled a small cylindrical extra battery from his belt, set it on the floor, and nudged it one direction, then another. He rotated it ninety degrees and nudged it again, back and forth.

“Perfectly level, as far as I can tell,” he said.

“This is phenomenal,” said Mendez. “I owe Caldwell twenty clams now.”

“I think we all owe him a lot more,” Saxon said. “And Ishida, too. We still need to find him before we hand out medals.”

Mendez hunkered down in front of one of the two passageways. “Footsteps through here,” he said.

“How many?” Saxon asked.

Mendez shrugged. “It’s all scuffed—I can’t be sure. But there’s none at the other passage, so if Ishida’s still down here, he’s this way.”

The passage ahead went straight beyond the reach of their lights. From where they stood, they couldn’t see any more doorways or other features in the leaning walls before the turn.

Suddenly Swann clapped his hand to his ear. “The relay’s picking up the satellite,” he said. “Sounds like Kettrick’s got a repeater for you to call in.”

Saxon dialed through to the repeater and opened the channel so the men with him could listen in. Kettrick’s voice simply said, “Base to Saxon, please respond,” in a loop.

“Kay-Kay, this is Saxon.” It took a minute before Kettrick’s recorded voice was replaced by a pop of static, then a live transmission.

“Saxon. What’s your status there?”

“We’ve found... where Caldwell and Ishida went underground,” Saxon said, holding up a hand so the others would stay quiet. “What’s going on at your end?”

“I just thought you’d want to know,” Kettrick said. “I hooked Caldwell up to an EEG to see what was going on neurologically, and... Do you know anything about brainwaves?”

“Only that I have them,” Saxon said.

“Then I won’t bore you with details. But his are all screwed up. If I hadn’t checked the wires three times, I’d never believe that what I was seeing came from someone’s head. The delta waves aren’t even waves anymore, they’re—Well, I said I wouldn’t bore you. It’s just very strange, and very disturbing.”

“What could cause that?” Saxon asked. “Head trauma? Radiation? Toxins?”

“I’m not specifically a neuropathologist, you understand,” Kettrick said. “But as far as I know, and as far as my medical references here can tell me, the answers are no, no and no. Permission to transmit these readings to Earth and see if I can get help?”

Saxon hesitated. The last thing he wanted was terrestrial news media earning their salaries by trumpeting about one of the Mars personnel’s weird brainwaves.

“Hold off,” he said. “When we find Ishida, maybe you can learn more from him.”

“Okay.” Even through the radio, Kettrick’s reluctance was obvious. The transmission ended.

“Mendez, you’re the cave guy,” Saxon said. “You go first. Chu, you’re right after him—when we find Ishida, I don’t want anyone else in the way.”

Mendez said, “Okay, but we’re really not dealing with a cave anymore, you know.”

The passage went about twenty yards before intersecting with another passage at an odd angle. Mendez crouched to examine the dust.

“The tracks go that way,” he said, indicating to the left with his light. “I think.”

“You think?” asked Swann.

“There’s something else in the dust,” Mendez said. “Like brush marks, or... I don’t know. They go all the way up and back, over and under the footprints.”

“Could they have been dragging something?” Saxon asked.

“It doesn’t look like heavy drag marks,” Mendez answered. He stood up and leaned against the corner of the junction as he played his flashlight beam first one direction, then the other. Then he removed his hand from the corner and stared at it.

“What?” Saxon said.

Mendez played his beam across his gloved palm, and Saxon could see the weak reflection of moisture there. “Water,” he said. “Just a bit.”

“Stands to reason,” said Rigby. “Even before we start moving the polar water, the melt has put a lot of vapor into the air—a lot by Martian standards, at any rate. And with Isidis being the lowest spot in the whole area, there’s bound to be some condensation.”

Mendez wiped his hand on his pants. “Just caught me off-guard, is all.”

“Scratch a mark on the corner there,” said Saxon. “If these passages are any indication, things aren’t going to be at right angles down here, and it’ll be easy to get lost.”

“I’ll get it,” said Chu. He pulled out a utility knife and scratched a shallow arrow back the way they had come at eye height on the stone wall.

“Mendez?” said Saxon. “Where from here?”

Mendez flashed his light to the left. “That way, I guess. We can always go back if—”

“Shh!” Rigby hissed. He pulled back the side of his hood and tugged his earpiece from his ear.

Saxon and the rest stood still, not moving. Saxon suddenly felt deafened by his earpieces; he could hear the muted breaths of the others through their mask pickups, but anything beyond that—anything in this unknown complex around them—was muffled and distanced. He felt abruptly vulnerable, as if something could creep up on them, soundless in the meager dust of millions and millions of years, until it was right next to them in the darkness and he would never know it until...

“Huh,” said Rigby. “Nothing.” He moved to put his earpiece back in, but Saxon laid a hand on his shoulder and pulled his own right earpiece out, leaving the left one in place.

“If Ishida’s conscious, he might make some noise to help us find him,” Saxon said. “And who knows how stable this place is? We might weaken some supports that haven’t borne any weight for millions of years. I’d like some warning. You and I, we’ll keep one ear open.”

Saxon led to the left and the rest followed. He felt claustrophobic at the top of the corridor, where the sloping sides came together in a peak that was just high enough for him to walk upright. He hadn’t thought about the possibility of structural weakness until he’d said it, but now he was very aware of the weight of Martian soil above their heads—only half a dozen yards at most, but enough to crush them to death quickly if this ancient masonry very reasonably decided to give way. He kept his hands off the walls and consciously tried not to hunch his shoulders.

Rigby, walking in front of him, stopped suddenly and whirled, his flashlight shining back down the way they had come. Saxon pivoted to follow the beam, and saw—or thought he saw—the afterimage of movement crossing the corridor mouth, something lower to the ground than a person that blended in with the shadows in the chamber they had just left.

“What?” he hissed to Rigby.

Rigby said nothing, every muscle taut like a hunting dog alert to motion. Then he stepped silently past Saxon, back toward the corridor mouth. Saxon motioned the others to stay put and followed Rigby.

Rigby stopped for a heartbeat just before the corridor opened into the chamber, then stepped out and swung his light to the left, where Saxon had half-seen the movement.

There was nothing. Their footprints were the only ones in the gritty dust.

“Did you see it too?” Rigby asked.

“I saw something. Maybe.”

Rigby peered at his flashlight beam as it disappeared down the other passage leading from the room. The air seemed thicker, as if their passing had stirred up the darkness itself to hang and swirl in the air.

“Look at this,” muttered Mendez, and both Saxon and Rigby jumped. They hadn’t heard him come up behind them and crouch at their feet. Now he pointed at the floor.

“You were supposed to stay back there,” Saxon said.

Mendez ignored him and held his flashlight almost parallel to the floor.

Saxon saw that his initial observation was not quite true. There were, as he had said, no new footprints in the room after their own. But Mendez’s light followed a faint trail of brushing or sweeping marks in the dust that partly erased their prints as it crossed over them at right angles, going toward the passage that still swallowed up Rigby’s flashlight beam.

“Hey,” came Swann’s urgent whisper in Saxon’s left ear. “Either you come back, or we’ll follow you. We’re getting spooked.”

Saxon hefted his flashlight. It was thick and sturdy, with dense power cells that could provide hours of continuous light. It was, he realized, the only thing he was carrying that could reasonably function as a weapon. A terraforming base staffed by fourteen persons on a lifeless planet didn’t need offensive weaponry.

Unless the lifeless planet wasn’t lifeless.

Saxon tapped Rigby and Mendez on the shoulders and motioned them back to where Swann and Chu waited anxiously. He pulled everyone’s heads together—a comforting but pointless gesture, communicating as they were through the radio link—and spoke softly.

“We need to find Ishida and get the hell out of here,” he said.

***

The next chamber was barely more than a turning point in the corridor, and Saxon knew he was in danger of getting hopelessly lost. The sixty- or seventy-degree angles on which everything was laid out played havoc with his sense of direction.

Mendez stepped forward into a chamber which opened directly off the small one, and gasped. Saxon immediately stepped up behind him, flashlight held backward over his head like a club.

Unlike the previous empty rooms and corridors, this one had actual objects in it. Along one wall a stepped series of mounted stone slats functioned as shelves, filling the surface—the first truly vertical surface they had seen—from ankle- to shoulder-height. And on the evenly spaced shelves were metal cubes, glossy under their layer of slow-accreting dust, reflecting the flashlight beams with what was becoming a familiar greenish tint. They were roughly four inches on a side, haphazardly stacked in no discernible order.

Saxon took the lead, stepping cautiously into the bare center of the room. The passage had felt close; now, as he crossed from the entrance in which the rest stood—the entrance from what had actually been some sort of antechamber—he felt exposed on all sides to the darkness that owned these catacombs.

He bent so that the cubes on the topmost shelf was at eye-height and examined what was in front of him as closely as he could without touching. The cubes each had identical dimensions, and yet looked slightly irregular on their mirrored surfaces, as if geometrically precise forms had been dipped into green-tinted liquid chrome that slightly softened the corners and distorted the reflections of their lights. The dust had only settled in a thin layer on the cubes. As he stepped closer, Saxon could see a confused set of footprints in the dust, and more indistinct marks on the shelves that would have been most convenient for a grown man to reach.

“Rigby,” Saxon said softly, and Rigby advanced shoulder to shoulder with him. Like Saxon, he moved his head from side to side, examining the shimmering surfaces in the beams of light.

“Dangerous?” said Saxon. “I think it was part of one of these that Caldwell had in his hand.”

“You think it blew up or something?” Rigby asked. “There’s no sign of fragments in here, and they’re not being stored with any sort of precautions.”

“Maybe they weren’t volatile originally,” Saxon said.

Rigby removed a plastic-handled ballpeen hammer from his belt, reversed it in his hand, and tapped softly on the top of one cube with the handle.

“Boom,” he said under his breath.

The other three men stayed in the entrance, craning their necks but showing no eagerness to get closer.

Rigby placed the hammer handle against the side of the cube and pushed. It scuffed an inch along the shelf before it hit its nearest neighbor.

“Not heavy enough to be solid,” said Rigby. He slung the hammer back at his belt, then reached out slowly with his gloved right hand. He touched the nearest cube on an upper corner with one finger and held there for a breath. Then he slid that finger to the corner on the right, and extended his left index finger to the opposite corner. He lifted the cube between his fingers, held it a moment, then set it down again.

“Nope, not solid,” he said. He bent over before lifting again and peered underneath, at the bottom face of the cube. “Same as the other sides,” he said.

Rigby set the cube back down, then adjusted his grip and picked it up with both hands. As he turned it in the stream of light from Saxon’s and the others’ flashlights, the reflected green gleam danced and jumped across the other dust-matted cubes.

“No openings or obvious seams,” Rigby said. “No real up or down that I can see.” He slid his hands across the flat surfaces of the cube. “There do seem to be two shallow dimples on opposite—”

His teeth slammed together and his back arched violently, as if he had been struck by lightning. His hands clenched, and the cube popped out of his grip. For the longest instant Rigby stood there, balanced, like a statue of an athlete in motion. Then he toppled backward. His head hit the stone floor with a meaty thud right before the cube clanged down beside him and bounced twice.

Saxon jumped for him, too late to catch him or ease his fall. Chu also dove forward, swinging his med kit from his back to his front. Swann and Mendez took either side, as if they were sharing a wavelength, and aimed their lights down. Chu shone his own light into Rigby’s half-closed eyes, checking the pupils as best he could without moving the goggles, then gingerly worked his hands inside Rigby’s hood to the back of his head.

“What was that?” shouted Saxon, louder than he’d intended. The fallen cube was spotlighted in his flashlight beam, looking harmless and innocent. A crack ran up and branched on one face.

Chu grabbed one of Rigby’s still rigid hands and massaged it. “Don’t think it was electricity,” he said. He felt Rigby’s ribcage with one hand while he struggled to pull out a stethoscope with the other. “Heartbeat’s strong and fast,” he said, more as a checklist to himself than to Saxon. “Breathing’s shallow—maybe just adrenaline, but...”

Rigby’s breath hissed in jolts through clenched teeth, and his eyes hadn’t moved or refocused since he had collapsed.

“Rigby!” said Saxon. He leaned down, pulled Rigby’s hood away from his exposed ear, and moved his own mask aside for a second. “Rigby!” Rigby didn’t respond.

Saxon looked up to Chu. “Can we move him?”

Chu shrugged helplessly. “I don’t think he’s got a concussion. We could try the stretcher—”

“Let’s do it,” said Saxon, standing. His flashlight went from Rigby’s unseeing eyes to the innocuous cube on the floor, to the passageway through which they had entered—

Something was there.

His mind tried to recognize it, to categorize it, but it couldn’t. The thing was maybe waist-high, a mass of something leafy or fibrous that gave no reflection back from his light. Its top—its head?—was a chitinous, segmented dome.

Saxon froze. No one else had noticed yet, and he couldn’t get any words out, as if his brain were stymied as to what he could possibly say.

The thing moved out of his flashlight beam, not in a surprised rush but with deliberate movement, its hundreds of leaf-like appendages carrying it smoothly back into the darkness that filled the small antechamber. Saxon thought he could hear—but could he, past the activity of the others?—a dry swishing on the stone as it retreated.

Then Saxon felt something like a change in the air—which made no sense, very little of his skin was even exposed, but it was there nonetheless—and Swann and Mendez turned and looked at the opening where the thing had been. Even Chu faltered in his ministrations over Rigby, though his eyes never left his patient.

Rigby gasped, and his fingers twitched like a man warming up to play the piano.

Saxon dropped to his knee beside him. “Rigby! Can you hear me? Can you speak?”

Rigby’s breath came in punctuated gasps that gradually resolved into random words. “The... the... it sees... the...”

“Swann, help me.” Saxon grabbed one shoulder and Swann the other, and together they eased Rigby upright. The shocked rigidity had left his body stiff; Saxon thought insanely of a half-cooked noodle. Rigby al dente.

Saxon swiveled Rigby’s head until their eyes met through their goggles.

“Rigby. do you know where you are? Can you walk?”

Rigby blinked clumsily. “You... you don’t know...”

“Rigby!” Saxon shook his shoulders. Rigby’s eyes snapped into focus.

“Saxon. Oh lord, Saxon...”

Satisfied for the moment that Rigby was still with them, Saxon turned his head back toward the entry, now their exit... But he knew there was something out there. He couldn’t see it now, and he didn’t know if it was hidden somewhere in the palpable darkness. But even if it wasn’t there, it was there—the unquantifiable change in the air somehow told him so. He had that bitter metallic taste at the back of his throat, but it wasn’t in his throat at all, it was a taste in the back of his brain, and he knew he didn’t want to stop and examine how he could feel something like that. Instead he looked at the other men.

“I don’t think we can get out that way,” he said. The others nodded in silent agreement. They knew, just like Saxon.

Every chamber they had encountered had had at least two exits, and the cube chamber was no exception. Saxon hoped that that meant that there was a way to get back around to the mouth of these tunnels without passing the antechamber, but he wasn’t confident in his ability to maintain even a marginal sense of direction in this labyrinth. He was about to ask for suggestions from the others when Rigby lifted his hand mechanically and pointed to the second exit.

“Left,” he said in a dry voice. “Then right and right and...”

He trailed off, his lips still making sibilant sounds with no breath behind them. He gasped again. Saxon glanced at Swann, and together they guided Rigby to the far opening. Mendez was right behind them, shining his light past them into another claustrophobic passage. Chu threw his equipment into the med kit and hurried to keep up with them.

The passage went past their doorway, crooking just a little as they met. Rigby’s hands were suddenly strong on their shoulders, turning them to the left.

“Rigby,” said Saxon, “how do you know where to go?”

“The memories...” Rigby trailed off. As they stepped fully into the corridor, Saxon caught a last glimpse of the cracked metallic cube, winking in their retreating flashlight beams.

“From that?” Saxon asked. “The cube?”

Rigby nodded, then his chin fell, and Saxon could hear the man’s stomach gurgle.

“He’s going to vomit!” yelled Chu, behind them, unable to help. “His mask—”

Saxon wrenched Rigby’s breath mask away just in time for a stream of yellow bile to project itself from Rigby’s mouth, all the way from the center of Rigby’s clenched body. He heaved again, and between heaves he gasped hard. Saxon didn’t know how they were going to give Rigby air to breathe when his every exhalation carried a payload.

After three heaves, though, Rigby threw his head back and sagged more heavily on Saxon and Swann’s shoulders. Saxon wiped his sleeve across Rigby’s mouth and twisted the face mask back into place. Rigby didn’t even seem to notice the thin, unbreathable air his body had been trying to take in.

“He needs rest,” Chu said. Swann pointed ahead where the passage widened out into another chamber. The four men moved the fifth one down the passage. The chamber was empty and featureless, and two more openings yawned in the blackness on the opposite side.

Saxon and Swann tried to be gentle as they disengaged Rigby from their shoulders and lowered him to where the wall met the floor, but still Rigby collapsed and fell to the side, as if even the weak Martian gravity were too strong for him to fight against. Chu positioned himself beside Rigby and raised him back to a sitting position. Despite how completely limp his body was, Rigby’s eyes darted frenetically behind his goggles.

Swann put his hand to the side of his head. “Saxon,” he said, “I’ve got no signal from Base.”

“We’re still hooked to the relay?”

Swann nodded. “I’ve got bounce-back from the relay, so I know the transmission’s going through, but there’s no response. They didn’t turn back on the repeater, either.”

Saxon knelt in front of Rigby, right in the line where his eyes were already moving. “Rigby,” he said, calmly and deliberately. “You need to tell us what’s going on.”

“It sees...” Rigby began, then trailed off into wet, thick coughs. Saxon gripped the edge of Rigby’s mask, ready to yank it to the side if needed, but the coughs subsided into labored breathing, as if every breath required conscious thought and effort.

“What’s down here, Rigby?” Saxon asked.

“From... the fifth planet.”

“Not likely,” said Swann. “Jupiter doesn’t have any solid surface, and it definitely doesn’t have ores to mine.”

“Not Jupiter,” said Rigby with surprising vehemence. “The fifth one... the last rocky one...”

“You mean—the asteroid belt?” Saxon asked. “That was their home world?”

Rigby nodded. “Came here when it... fell apart. Escaped on a piece... on an asteroid.”

“Deimos,” said Saxon. “It’s an asteroid—it’s part of their planet, and they just rode it away.”

Rigby nodded again.

Mendez said, “And then—they just buried themselves here, millions of years ago? Why not come to Earth instead, if Mars is so inhospitable to them?”

“Maybe Earth was on the far side of the sun when they needed to escape,” Saxon said. “Or maybe they miscalculated—I can’t imagine steering an asteroid is easy. But these things down here are their descendants, surely? Living down here since then?”

Rigby shook his head. “They put themselves... they’re in the cubes. Their minds, their...” His hands twitched anxiously. “I don’t have the words!”

“Easy,” said Chu. “You’re doing just fine.”

“So that’s an archive of minds,” Saxon said. “But at least one survived in its own body—didn’t it?” He thought of the thing he’d seen, a mass of almost vegetable matter surmounted by a black, shellacked nucleus.

“Those aren’t their... own bodies,” Rigby gasped. “They brought with them things they’d constructed... artificial bodies that could last a long, long time. Their real bodies—”

Rigby’s eyes widened, and his own hand clutched his mask away from his face before another spray of thin vomit leaped out of his mouth and cascaded down his front. Chu grabbed a gauze pad from his open med kit and quickly wiped Rigby’s lips before pulling his mask back into position.

“It’s so hard,” Rigby slurred like he was under sedation, “so different—they don’t have the senses we do, they don’t use words, they—it’s so hard to use words...” Then after a pause, he spoke in a dull but clear voice: “It sees and eats.” His eyes closed.

Saxon glanced at Chu, who shrugged. “I don’t know if it’s better to let him rest, or to get him back to Base as quick as possible,” Chu said.

Saxon looked back the way they had come, as if he could see around corners and through the darkness millions of years old to what he had seen earlier—an ancient mind, not even in its own body.

“I don’t know what’s best for him, but I can guess what’s best for all of us,” Saxon said. “Let’s get on the move and find a way out of here.”

This time Mendez and Swann hoisted Rigby up, and Saxon led the way. Rigby’s earlier instruction from this point was the next right, and then the next right again. After that, Saxon supposed they’d try to rouse him and get further directions.

Saxon tried to listen at the right-hand opening, hoping that the dusty swishings in his imagination wouldn’t keep him from hearing real ones. There was a trickle of moisture along the edge of the door—more condensation, though he hadn’t expected it to travel all this way through the underground maze. Or did that mean there was another path to the surface, closer than the one they had descended?

Rigby roused again slightly on Swann and Mendez’s shoulders, but the sound that came out of his throat was a consonant-less moan, as if he’d lost the user’s manual for his vocal cords. Then his head snapped up again.

“It sees and eats,” he repeated.

“What does that mean?” Chu asked. “Who sees and eats?”

Rigby shook his head as if he was trying to clear it. “No... that’s a—a name? Is that right? They love it. No, not love... fear? Love? They’re slaves to it? They...”

“Worship?” suggested Swann.

“Worship!” repeated Rigby. He seemed more agitated, and they could all hear his shallow, quick breaths through the radio. “They worship It Sees And Eats!”

“Well, right now we’re worshiping They Get the Hell Out Of Here,” Mendez said, grunting as he struggled to help Rigby along. Rigby hadn’t moved his legs on his own since the initial shock, although Chu was certain he hadn’t injured his spine.

Saxon shone the light around the next right turn. It opened on a small chamber whose other opening was against the side wall where his beam couldn’t reach.

“We’re getting as far as we know,” he said. “Let’s hold up in here and suss something out.”

Swann turned his ankle just then, and Rigby’s weight dragged him and Mendez forward, pushing Chu and Saxon fully into the small chamber instead of letting them move with caution. Their lights shone into the next chamber beyond, and Saxon felt the bottom fall away from his mind.

The stone platform in front of them could have been called an altar, or maybe an operating table. Or both. Ishida was stretched out on it. His suit had been removed by something that neither understood nor cared how clothing worked. If it hadn’t been for Ishida’s hair and distinctive profile—and the fact that he was the only other human on Mars—Saxon wouldn’t have recognized him. His desiccated body was nothing but leather-colored sticks; the remains that lay on the altar couldn’t have weighed more than fifty or sixty pounds, even at Earth normal gravity. Ishida’s eyelids were open, but his shriveled eyes had sunken so far that his orbits were twin bottomless pits in a skin-wrapped skull.

Saxon kept staring at Ishida’s corpse because as long as he kept his eyes on the corpse, he didn’t have to look at and try to process what was behind it, a sculpted mass of green-hued metal that caught their light and twisted it violently. The frantic bits of his rational mind were screaming at him that, with as alien as these aliens were, there was no way he could be understanding the shape of the shining metal, there was no way he could comprehend instantly and wholly that it was a profusion of eyes and tongues that, even though it was motionless metal, was so full of purpose and potential energy that it seemed to waver in the flashlight beams like an anxious predator coiled to strike.

It Sees And Eats.

Saxon’s eyes were dry and stinging—he had forgotten to blink, so strongly were his eyes drawn by the thing that he was desperately trying not to see. He wanted to apologize to Ishida and Caldwell, to plead forgiveness for not moving the radio satellite; he wanted to shout loud enough that Kettrick could hear him even without the radio and tell her, Yes, I’ve changed my mind, contact Earth, tell them anything you want. He didn’t care who said what about Martians anymore—he wished that the mythical Martians had been what they had found.

Now something else impinged on his attention: movement, not the pseudo-motion of the awful idol that was the thing it represented, but actual kinetic movement. Two of the artificial things moved out of the shadows to the right of the idol, then another came from the left. Their beetle-like heads had no eyes. They paused, then two of them came around the altar, facing—as near as Saxon could judge—the group of Earthlings. The third went to the foot of the altar, where a basin in the stone was half-filled with something like dried weeds; it was only when a shining dome peeked out of the mass of fibers that he realized it was another of the things, the artificial bodies that these intelligences had brought to Mars. The one attending it rustled its leaf-like underbody, and from its mass it withdrew a cube, identical to the ones they had found, perhaps even one from that same room. It set the cube in the mass of inert tissue in the stone basin, and Saxon saw that the lifeless mass was moist, as if half-rehydrated.

Then he saw a cloudy liquid drip from the lip of the altar—from Ishida’s body—and he understood.

“It’s water!” he hissed, even though he didn’t know if the things in the chamber had any sense of hearing and if noise would agitate them. “The artificial bodies—they’re rehydrating them, with the water in Ishida’s body!”

“That’s why they’re becoming active now,” Mendez said. “We’ve put enough moisture into the atmosphere by melting the polar caps that it’s triggered them—”

They broke off as a noise broke from Rigby’s chest, something so unlike a voice that it was incredible to hear it from a human. Rigby’s eyes rolled back into his skull, and his entire body shuddered hard enough to throw Mendez and Swann off their balance.

The things hadn’t reacted to sound before, but they did now. Their bodies twisted, and they slid forward a yard toward the Earthmen.

“Rigby, what are you doing?” said Saxon, his eyes not leaving the inhuman beings in front of him. Rigby’s arms moved jerkily, as if trying to bend at other places than the elbow.

Chu stepped up to the spasming man. “Rigby!” he shouted, and slapped him hard enough to be felt through his face mask. The noise from Rigby’s chest ceased, and the man gasped and relaxed so suddenly in Swann and Mendez’s arms that they struggled to keep him from falling.

“I’m sorry,” Rigby gasped, “I’m sorry, it’s in here, it’s pushing me—pushing me out—it’s like wrestling with a sea of cockroaches...”

The two beings now slid forward another yard, close enough for Saxon to see the pattern of pits on the front of their black-shelled heads, like the sensory organs on the snout of an electric eel.

“They want your water.” The words struggled out of Rigby’s mouth; then he collapsed, senseless.

“Out!” shouted Saxon. “That way!” He and his men dived into the nearest exit to their right, their flashlight beams barely illuminating the way as they charged from the idol chamber. Saxon could feel—as irrational as he knew it was, he could feel—the thousand sensory organs watching and dissecting his back, the thousand tongues feeling after him hungrily, straining to wrap and devour him—

It Sees And Eats.

Saxon hoped that some unconscious sense of direction was guiding their mad dash, because otherwise they were utterly lost. The tunnels had become a labyrinth of irrational geometry, and as they rushed through passages and bare chambers—and then more chambers filled with the gleaming cubes, each containing a disembodied intelligence that had waited millions of years to be transplanted into a new body—he half-suspected that each turn would bring them back to the chamber where the incarnate idol of It Sees And Eats was waiting to transfix them with its all-seeing eyes, waiting to taste their pitiful fear and panic and consume them—

“No,” said Rigby in a thick voice. He cleared his throat and, as Swann and Mendez paused, stretched out his arm and laboriously pointed a finger.

Swann looked to Saxon.

“Couldn’t hurt,” Saxon said, and they turned in the direction Rigby pointed.

Three more turns, with Saxon completely bewildered, and then suddenly they could see a familiar chamber with fissures in the smooth stone wall. They scurried through the crevices into the natural cavern with their line still hanging from the opening above. Swann and Mendez set Rigby back against a rock and rolled their shoulders; then while Chu checked on his patient, Mendez tested the line and Swann kept watch at the fissure.

“The line’s good,” Mendez said.

Chu started unpacking the portable stretcher that had been brought for Ishida.

“No,” said Rigby in a voice without inflection. He motioned Saxon closer with an arm that had forgotten there was a hand at its end.

Saxon crouched. Rigby dialed his radio off. His voice now came through the mask and the thin air to Saxon’s ears as if it were from a long distance, not ten inches in front of him.

“Give me... a saw,” Rigby said, pausing to rest between each phrase.

“What for?”

“Got to... stop them. Close it up.” He gestured to the fissures.

“We can do that from outside,” Saxon said.

Rigby’s hand hooked Saxon’s collar and pulled him closer until their masks almost touched. “They can see... through my eyes,” he gasped. “It can see. It sees. Every second, there’s... more and more... of It, and less of me.”

“We can help you!” Chu interrupted. “Once we get you back to Base—”

“I won’t get back to Base!” Rigby roared, some hidden reserve of personal energy fueling his words. “It won’t be me!” He slumped back against the rock. “You don’t know... how long... The mind in that cube—it’s been conscious all this time. All this time...”

Rigby suddenly retched again, faster than Chu or Saxon could react, but it was only dry heaves. When his shudders subsided, Rigby just looked up at Saxon, breathing hard.

Then Rigby said, almost in a whisper: “They’re coming.”

Saxon stood up. “Help him to his feet,” he said to Chu. “Swann—give me your saw.”

Dubiously, Swann backed up from the dark mouth of the fissure and unslung his plasma saw from his pack. Saxon flipped the safety cover and toggled the power. It arced blue and glimmered like starlight at the nose, and a red strip blinked down the side. He transferred it from his hand to Rigby’s, letting Rigby’s thumb settle on the dead-man power switch before he removed his own.

“You want the other one?” Saxon asked.

The other man’s mouth was hidden by the mask, but his unfocused eyes smiled. “One’ll do me fine,” Rigby said. With his free hand he clapped Saxon on the shoulder. “Now get outta here... and let me get to work.”

Saxon returned the gesture with his hand on Rigby’s shoulder, then turned to Mendez. “Don’t just stand there!” he barked. “Climb!”

Mendez placed his feet on the sloping stone and walked his way up the wall. Saxon motioned Chu to go next, then Swann. Swann had trouble climbing, his shoulders already tired from having carried Rigby so far.

“Coming,” Rigby hissed, and then that inhuman sound came out of him again, far more resonant than anything a human throat should be able to make.

Saxon got behind Swann and beneath him, letting Swann use his shoulder as a step. Mendez and Chu hauled upward on the line, dragging Swann’s weight up until he could get an arm over the lip.

And then they were there. Saxon was still looking up, waiting for the rope to fall back to him, but he could feel the presence of the inhuman minds in the small of his back and the back of his throat. Minds, or mind? It was like two audio speakers belching out the same dissonant white noise, garbling his balance and his reason.

He heard that grinding, echoing sound from Rigby again, and this time he could feel how well that sound meshed with the non-aural waves of mental noise the beings were putting off. No, not noise, it wasn’t at all random or accidental. It was a thick wall of thought, of mind, like ocean waves that threatened to swamp the small paper boat of his psyche.

He felt himself engulfed in wave after wave of emotion—if “emotion” could ever hope to indicate the non-human nature of what was beating his mind backward like a knee bent against the joint. But yes, it was emotion, it was feeling, and at its core was a malevolent rage he could taste, a consuming lust to absorb all that It hated, and what It hated was everything that was not Itself and everything that was Itself, it wanted to expand through the universe and see everything and eat everything and make everything hate as strongly as It did...

The line was looped around Saxon’s hand. He didn’t know how it had gotten there, unless he had done it unconsciously, while his conscious mind was being assaulted by that monolithic hatred. He felt the friction of his jumpsuit against the stone as the men hauled him upward, and he clutched at the sensation with his whole mind, using the simple tactile immediacy to anchor him in a sea of malevolence over which his consciousness threatened to spread like oil on water.

And then he was above ground, as if surfacing from a deep ocean into the air, and Chu grabbed his free hand while Swann and Mendez continued to pull on the rope. Saxon rediscovered that he had legs, and scrambled up the last few inches until he was crawling across the dusty soil. The other three men had their gazes locked on the hole to the catacombs, outlined by the idling discharges of Rigby’s plasma saw from below.

Saxon joined them. The couldn’t see Rigby from where they stood, but in the glow from the saw, his silhouette stood out against the surface they had just ascended. That grinding roar came again, surprisingly loud, as Rigby’s vocal cords tried to express themselves in some way that was unrelated to voice, unrelated to sound. And then there was an electric whine, and a sharp crack. The groan from Rigby’s chest was drowned out by the aching grind of stone on stone, and Saxon felt the impact beneath his feet as the sides of the cavern collapsed inward to fill the empty space.

The four men moved back a dozen paces, but no further tremors reached the surface. Dust jetted from the opening and quickly settled again in the thin atmosphere. Saxon approached the hole and shone his light. The beam was cut off by a chaotic mass of stone that completely filled the passage down.

Saxon stepped closer to the radio relay, which was blinking calmly. He flipped the switch over.

“Saxon to Sabaea Base,” he said, bemused by how normal his voice sounded.

He waited. Nothing answered him except the de minimus static of an open frequency. He repeated himself and waited again.

Kettrick knew the rules: Outside communications were always monitored whenever anyone was away from Base. Always. Even with six men absent from Base, there were still plenty to cover the radio.

Swann stepped closer and examined the relay in his flashlight beam, checking both the placid blinking light and the glowing dials inside the access panel that clicked open under his gloved fingers.

“The relay’s fine,” Swann said. He stepped back, as if he didn’t want to be within the radius of responsibility when Saxon came to the obvious conclusion.

“Back to Base,” Saxon said. The eastern horizon was just showing the dusty peach smears that heralded Mars’s unimpressive dawn; before the sky had lightened enough to read a newspaper unaided, the men had stowed their gear in the skimmer’s cargo area, and Saxon was well through his by-the-book pre-flight paragrav warm-up, conscious of the reason that Rigby had given for Caldwell’s crash-landing only the day before.

Like Caldwell had never flown a skimmer before...

The air in the skimmer’s canopy was silent and dense with anxious fatigue for the entire trip back, the kind of fatigue that chases off sleep rather than inviting it. Even if Saxon hadn’t been piloting, he was certain he wouldn’t have been enticed to close his eyes. Although the enormity of what they had discovered in Isidis Planitia and even the assault he had experienced at the end—and that’s what it was, he realized, a deliberate assault to break his will and volition by drowning him in sheer immensities that the human mind wasn’t designed to comprehend—were both retreating as normalcy reasserted itself in the familiar human design of the skimmer and its fittings, Saxon could still feel that metallic aftertaste that wasn’t in his throat at all, but in his mind.

It was late morning when Sabaea Base showed itself on the horizon. In the shotgun seat, Mendez had repeatedly broadcast hails during their return flight. It was almost the only words that any of them had spoken for the entire trip, and it was always answered by nothing more than inattentive silence.

Saxon’s brain felt glacially slow, and he piloted as much by reflex as by conscious skill. His higher brain functions wanted to hibernate, to enter a recuperative cocoon from which he could emerge divested of that penetrative contact. But as much as he didn’t want to think, one fact—one name—was as omnipresent before him as if it were projected across the transparent canopy in neon red letters: Caldwell.

As the base changed from an angular smudge on the horizon to its component buildings and atria, Swann pointed with both hands—one through the canopy, the other at the scope on the dash. “Something...”

It was indeed something, a few hundred yards from the launch bay doors. Saxon eased off his forward momentum and looped into a wary circle around it, the shadow of the skimmer mimicking their path almost directly beneath them.

It was a rover jeep, occupied and immobile.

“Look alive, everyone,” Saxon said, and heard the two men in the back rouse themselves from their sleepless lethargy.

The skimmer circled again as Saxon descended cautiously. There were two human figures beneath them. One was slumped over the rover’s steering wheel; the other was splayed out from the passenger seat onto the ground, one foot still inside the rover’s open door.

Saxon brought the skimmer to land twenty yards from the rover. Gripping again the flashlights which were the nearest things they had to weapons—except for the other plasma saw, Saxon mused, although that wasn’t really useful hand to hand—the four men advanced, spreading out so that their approach fully covered their side of the wreck.

“Draney,” Saxon said, looking at the figure on the ground.

Mendez circled the rover and peered up into the face slumped on the steering wheel. “This is Rutter, here.”

Chu had his med kit over his shoulder. He raised it wordlessly, and Mendez shook his head.

“Was there some kind of crash?” Swann asked. He crouched in front of the rover and examined the wheels. “Doesn’t look like it,” he answered himself.

Saxon knelt by Draney’s body and pulled back the hood. The side of Draney’s head was crushed inward in a line from his left orbit to behind his left ear. The hair was matted and sticky with dried blood.

“Someone hit him,” Saxon said.

Mendez leaned Rutter back from the wheel, then recoiled. Rutter’s face had caved in around an impact across the bridge of her nose. Her eyes were wide and bulged out, staring sightlessly in different directions.

“Oh, jeez,” said Swann, stumbling backward.

Saxon looked back at the rocky expanse back to Base. There were two sets of tire tracks coming out, and one going back.

What had Rigby said? I won’t get back to Base—it won’t be me!

Caldwell had made it back to Base. But was it still Caldwell?

***

Saxon decided to move the bodies into the skimmer and take the rover back to Base. He again drove, his fingers avoiding a dark blotch on the steering wheel. He circled wide so he could approach the open bay door obliquely instead of head-on. As he pulled up near the gaping shadows of the open bay, Mendez volunteered to hop out and peer around the doorway. He did better, in fact; Saxon saw him slip inside and vanish. The four men still had their radios tuned into a common channel, but they heard nothing from Mendez for three long minutes, during which time Saxon could feel the treacly sweat of tension collect across his torso and along the rubber seals of his goggles. The door had not rolled up all the way; Saxon could see a convex dent in the door slats which kept it from retracting fully, and which had probably kept it from forming a seal at the bottom either.

They all started when Mendez stepped out into the sunlight and motioned them into the bay. Saxon drove in and waited for his eyes to adjust; aside from the skylights, the only illumination came from a pulsing red light over the outside door warning that it couldn’t close. Following Mendez’s lead of maintaining radio silence, even though he couldn’t rationally justify it, Saxon drove to the inner end of the bay. The second door that sealed the oxygen into the garage was still down, and another rover was parked haphazardly beside the personnel lock that could let individuals into the garage without needing to pressurize the entire bay. An amber light on the dash of the other rover told Saxon that it hadn’t been turned off after its last use; the automatic power shutoff had finally killed the engine after a period of idleness. The front fender bar bore feathery scrape marks that, Saxon was sure, matched the dent in the outer door that prevented it from closing.

The personnel lock was large enough to admit two at a time, so Saxon chose Swann to accompany him inside first. They crouched in the lock as it cycled, on the off-chance that someone was waiting just inside with a weapon ready to deploy at their heads. Was Saxon getting paranoid? He couldn’t tell if it was still that coppery flavor he could taste at the back of his throat, or the sour byproducts of too much adrenaline over too long a time.

There was, thankfully, no one inside the lit garage, and the cheerful lights beside the lock confirmed that interior pressure was normal. Saxon pulled off his breath mask and enjoyed a full lungful of air untainted by his own tension and fear.

The others cycled through the lock. Mendez shucked his own mask and the hood of his jumpsuit. “So what do we do next?”

“Find Caldwell,” Swann said. “Restrain him or neutralize him.”

“We should look for the others,” Chu objected. “They may have gotten Caldwell themselves.”

“We don’t even know that it is Caldwell,” said Mendez. “we should check medical.”

Saxon was surprised that there was still any question about that. Mendez was entertaining a hope that Saxon had rejected long before.

Chu said, “Now that we’re back, we can just call out wide and find out what’s going on.” His hand moved toward the nearest voice panel as he spoke.

Saxon reached out and stopped him. “If Caldwell hasn’t been watching out the window—if it is Caldwell—then he won’t know we’re back. Let’s not put him on his guard.”

“If it is Caldwell,” Mendez repeated. “If he’s not still lying in medical in a coma.”

“There are four of us,” Swann said. “We don’t all have to go together.”

“Right.” Saxon pointed at Swann and Chu. “You two circle through the cabins. Mendez and I will head directly to medical. If Caldwell is up and around, use the voice panels only if he’s been restrained or somehow neutralized. Otherwise, meet back here in half an hour. Let’s go.”

Saxon and Mendez still held their flashlights as their only weapons. Before leaving the garage, Swann stopped at Rigby’s wall rack of tools and selected a 24-inch wrench for himself. Chu let him lead the way out, sticking with his own flashlight.

Saxon discovered, as he and Mendez left by a different doorway, how many little sounds that he had never paid attention to before filled the base. The air regulation system maintained a white-noise hiss as it kept consistent air pressure and temperature throughout the installation, and its monitor boxes spaced evenly along the walls pinged softly to indicate their operating status. The light panels in the ceiling emitted an almost subliminal buzz, nearly a hum, and as Saxon walked softly down the corridor, he discovered that there were at least two distinct tones at which various panels operated. He and Mendez walked as smoothly as they could, but there were tiny crackles and pops from their weight on the floor tiles, sometimes a yard or more away from the footfall that had caused it.

After passing several closed doors, which Saxon ignored in favor of reaching the medical bay quickly, the first open door they came to was the conference and dining room. Saxon waved Mendez back, then peeked around the edge of the door frame.

Dishes with half-eaten meals sat in front of three of the seats. Most of the rest of the table was taken up by a human body, sprawled so far across that his head—Saxon could at least tell that it was one of the men—hung off the far side.

Saxon stepped in warily. The door to the food prep area at the far end was just barely ajar; he couldn’t see past it, but any sound he made out here would be audible to anyone behind that door.

He circled the table far enough to identify the body. It was Huyck, and his head wasn’t just hanging lazily off the table. His neck had been broken, and his head hung straight down from his shoulders at an angle Saxon couldn’t have imagined before.

Saxon walked backward out of the conference room, his eyes on the food prep door until he was back out in the hall to where Mendez waited with restless eyes.

“Huyck,” whispered Saxon, and nodded toward the next door on the right, which led to medical.

Together they crept down the hall. They saw from a distance that the medical door was similarly open, despite Kettrick’s habit. Saxon peeked in.

The examination area was deserted, and the furnishings had been practically destroyed. The bed which had held Caldwell was lying on its side, the linens ripped from it. Medical equipment stands were tipped every which way, leaving very little of the floor clear. Jars of supplies and medications had been smashed, littering every surface and leaving a briny smell in the air. The door to Kettrick’s small office was open, and Saxon could see it was empty.

Saxon turned to see Mendez’s eyes focused on the overturned bed. It was the proof that finally extinguished the man’s hope that Caldwell, his friend, wasn’t behind the radio silence—and the bodies.

But it wasn’t really Caldwell, Saxon reminded himself. I won’t get back to Base—it won’t be me! Had there been anything of Caldwell left inside him, even when he, Rigby and Kettrick had found him flung from the wrecked skimmer?

And now Rigby was dead. And where was Kettrick?

Saxon motioned Mendez to enter and shut the door so that silence wasn’t as imperative. Then he waded through the wreckage to Kettrick’s office, hoping that a splash of red wouldn’t announce that yet another murder had been committed here.

What caught his eye wasn’t red, but black—something scrawled on the beige top of Kettrick’s desk surface. He came around the desk to read it.

LOOKING FOR COFFEE—K.K.

For an instant, it just seemed like a horribly out-of-place echo of humor, almost surreal in these surroundings.

Then he got it.

“The food storeroom,” he said to Mendez, pointing the way back out into the corridor.

They crept out, watching both directions, and back through the meeting room to peer cautiously around the door at the far end.

The prep area was a small version of the kind of industrial kitchen found in a cafeteria or other institution. Stainless steel and porcelain covered almost every surface. At the far end of the kitchen was the door that led out to the food storeroom, a separate square building—almost a bunker—of Martian stone, connected by a narrow twelve-foot corridor with locking doors at either end to which only Kettrick had access. The door leading out of the prep area was ajar, the first time Saxon had ever seen it like that.

The overhead lights in the corridor were out, and Saxon didn’t want to stop and hunt for the controls. He crept to the far end, acutely conscious of the sound of his passage reflecting back to his ears in the close space; it was like wearing a face mask out on the surface.

The door at the other end of the corridor was closed. Saxon couldn’t see any signs of violence or occupancy in his flashlight’s beam; it was just a slab of featureless metal with a numeric dial above the door handle. He thought he might have heard motion beyond, but the door was too thick and his senses too hair-triggered with adrenaline to be sure. And would anyone in there respond to a simple knock, when they had gone in there to hide?

He raised the flashlight and tapped out: Shave-and-a-haircut...

An ominously long silence followed, until finally there were two spaced taps in response.

Saxon leaned back from the door. There was a pause, then the seal disengaged and it swung inward.

Kettrick faced him, holding a meat cleaver over her head.

Instantly her arm dropped as she recognized him. She collapsed forward into an embrace that Saxon found oddly enjoyable, even though he suspected that if Mendez had been in front, he would have received a similar welcome.

“Thank God you’re here!” Kettrick said as she quickly withdrew. Behind her, Saxon could see Cooper, awkwardly clutching a meat knife, and Duchesne, holding an object that Saxon recognized as the man’s own shoe.

Saxon motioned Mendez forward, and the two of them entered the storeroom and shut the door behind them. The structure was low and narrow, gently lit by a light strip powered by the solar cells on the roof, separate from the rest of the base’s power. There was only a narrow walkway down the center; all other space was occupied by uniform bricks of freeze-dried food from Earth.

“Did you just get back? Who else—did you meet anyone inside?” Kettrick set her cleaver on a box and retreated so there would be room—only just—for the five people.

Saxon nodded. “Barely got here. We... found Draney and Rutter out in a rover.” His tone of voice relieved him from needing to explain further. “And Huyck was in the meeting room.”

Cooper put her knuckle against her lips.

“The rest of us are in here,” Kettrick said.

“What about Chatterjee?” Saxon asked.

“He... didn’t make it.” Kettrick turned to Duchesne, who tapped the shoe in his hand on the door of a refirgerated cabinet. “He was injured by the time we got in here, and a few hours ago...” She shook herself. “Everyone came back with you? What about Ishida?”

“Ishida’s dead. And we lost Rigby.”

Saxon stumbled through a quick account of their encounter under Isidis Planitia, complicated by an instinctive compulsion to shy away from the most disturbing details—whether for his own good or for that of his listeners, he was unsure. When he was finished, Kettrick nodded.

“It was Caldwell,” she confirmed. “When it was still dark this morning, he started struggling. We had to restrain him, and that worked for a while. And he spoke for the first time, but he didn’t make much sense. He kept talking about ‘us’ and ‘our brothers’—I didn’t know who ‘us’ was, or if he was referring to himself in the plural. And the sound he made in between the words...” Kettrick shivered. “It sounded like he had a disk sander in his throat.

“And then right before dawn, he just—he screamed.” Kettrick’s face contorted as she remembered. “It was like no sound I’ve ever heard before. Like...” She struggled, then gave up the attempt at description. “And then he heaved his arms, and broke through the restraints just like that. I was alone in medical. I ran.”

Mendez looked to Saxon. “That was right when Rigby used his plasma saw. Maybe Caldwell wants vengeance.”

“Maybe vengeance... but not just vengeance.” Saxon checked his chronometer. “We need to meet Swann and Chu back at the garage. I don’t know how safe it will be out there with us, but—”

Cooper stepped up. “There’s no water in here. I’ve got to go out, if only to get a drink.”

Duchesne shrugged. Kettrick nodded. “Staying together makes sense, especially if we don’t trust the radios. And... Chatterjee.”

Saxon led the other four back through the passage out of the storeroom. Cooper’s breath caught in her throat as they opened the door from the prep area and trooped through past Huyck’s corpse. Mendez brought up the rear, and watched their backs as they made their way back to the garage.

When they were just around the corner from the garage entrance, Saxon heard something, or felt it in the soles of his feet: A high mechanical whine that become very familiar in the past twenty-four hours. Someone had a skimmer in the air, and even as he listened it receded into the distance.

He rushed into the garage. Chu lay on the floor a dozen steps in front of him. The back of his collar was red where blood from the back of his skull had spattered it. Kettrick pushed toward him while Saxon raced to the viewing slits to the outside.

The six-man skimmer was gone.

“He’s taken it!” he shouted. “Caldwell’s got the skimmer!”

“But where can he—” began Mendez.

“Back to Isidis,” Saxon answered. “His ‘brothers.’ He wants to rescue them.”

He turned around. Kettrick, kneeling over Chu, shook her head.

Mendez said, “Even if one or two of those things are still alive and he gets them out, what can he do? He knows he can’t come back here with them.”

“There’s more than one or two,” said Saxon. “Remember how many cubes there were? Thousands. And I’ll bet there’s one of those artificial bodies, dehydrated and stored, waiting for each cube. Waiting...”

Saxon froze, then turned back to the viewscreen the showing satellite paths over Mars.

“Waiting for water,” Saxon finished.

Kettrick joined him looking up at the viewscreen. “In the middle of Isidis Planitia,” she said. “Which we’re about to turn into the Sea of Isidis.”

Saxon looked at the innocuous vectors on the screen showing the Isidis basin, the target of all their work since they had come to this planet. There was already enough moisture in the air for at least one of the artificial things to resuscitate, even before it had then drained Ishida’s body dry. He didn’t know how many had gotten crushed when Rigby had sacrificed his life to close the mouth of the cavern—three at most? And even if they were crushed, did they really die? Or did the intelligences which had lain for eons beneath the Martian surface simply wait until another conveyance was available?

Saxon hadn’t ever entertained the fantasies of finding the “missing Martians” like Caldwell and others had, but he would have been delighted to encounter some other life form with which humans could relate and exchange knowledge. But these refugees from the fifth planet... He had seen what they worshiped. He had felt its presence in the substrate of his mind, aggressively hungering to replace his very being with Its own. It brought the metallic aftertaste back to his throat even to acknowledge to himself how fully, and yet incompletely, he had felt Its brutal awareness of him, and Its hunger to subjugate and devour from this planet outward. It Sees And Eats.

And now they, the alien intelligences—which meant It, their master and the center of their being—had a human body to work through. And the only operating skimmer on the planet.

He turned away from the viewscreen. Duchesne stood near the door, guarding it now with a spare support strut for a rover jeep. Mendez looked at the workbench and tool racks.

“He took some plasma saws,” Mendez said. “At least two.”

Cooper stood over Chu’s body, her arms wrapped around herself despite the precisely controlled temperature. Kettrick watched him, waiting for a decision, a plan, a motivating force.

“First things first,” said Saxon. “Cooper, you’re second up on paragrav. Can you repair the wrecked skimmer?”

She shook her head, eyes still on Chu. “I trained on the geophysical operations. I can operate the paragrav satellite, and even repair it if it’s on the ground. But transport mechanics...” She shook her head again. “That was Rigby, and Ishida.”

One skimmer was ruined. Another was under the piloting hand, if not the mind, of Caldwell. There was a third skimmer, but it was still in storage in its component parts since its transport to Mars; even if Cooper had been confident in her ability to assemble it to working order, the assembly would have taken at least a dozen hours, and by then Caldwell would have reached the Isidis catacombs and perhaps freed his “brothers,” perhaps spirited the cubes away together with the preserved artificial bodies, just waiting for the reservoir that was to come to revive them...

He looked again at the viewscreen.

“Duchesne,” he said, “with the radio satellite still synchronous between us and Isidis, it should be able to pick up the skimmer’s transponder, right?”

Duchesne left his post by the door and came to join Saxon and Kettrick. “That’s correct,” he said.

“Patch the transponder signal in on this viewscreen,” Saxon said. “I want to be able to follow the skimmer’s progress.”

He and Kettrick stepped back as Duchesne placed his hands on the controls.

“We need to find Swann,” Mendez said. “He was with Chu.”

Chu. Saxon looked again to Chu’s body on the floor. Then he went to a set of cubbied shelving and withdrew a folded tarpaulin that Rigby had placed beneath machinery while he worked. He unfurled it over Chu’s body, and in the lazy gravity it descended like a feather until Chu was nothing more than a man-shaped lump beneath the tarp.

It wasn’t until the tarp had cut Chu off from Cooper’s sight that she blinked and redirected her gaze. Directly behind her from where Saxon stood, the viewscreen flashed its simple geometric patterns and lines, showing the current orbits of the solar aggregator, paragravity and radio satellites. A new arc, this one in yellow, showed the progress of the rogue skimmer toward Isidis Planitia.

Saxon looked at the viewscreen and Cooper at the same time. The dotted lines of the satellites’ paths intersected with the line of her eyes, wide and unblinking.

And Saxon felt something leap into his mind, as fully formed as the appetites of It Sees And Eats had been. But this was sweetly, blissfully human in its tenor. It was glorious.

It was an idea.

“Cooper,” he said deliberately, as if he didn’t want to scare away this idea by any sudden movements. “You’re trained on the paragrav satellite.”

She nodded mechanically.

“It’s a full-range paragrav unit, right? I mean, it can intensify gravity as well as weaken it?”

“It’s the same thing,” Cooper said. “There’s not a separate push and pull. The g-metric field only changes in apparent effect because of right-angle orientation in...” She trailed off when she realized she was over-answering the question. “Yes, it can strengthen gravity as well as weaken it.”

“How strongly?”

Her brow knit in confusion. “I don’t know how to answer—”

“Come here.” He marched over to the viewscreen, anxious energy accelerating his pace. He pointed at the line which showed the orbit of the paragravity satellite, waiting near the polar circle for its part in the melt migration.

“How long would it take to get this satellite down to here?”

His finger trailed across the representation of the Martian globe to the circle that marked Isidis Planitia.

Comprehension broke like dawn over Cooper’s face.

“Two hours—no, wait.” She examined the string of digits beside the icon for the satellite. “Closer to three, I think.”

Saxon looked at the yellow line marking the skimmer’s progress toward Isidis. It would be close.

“Get it there,” he said.

***

Once Cooper had input the new orbital path to bring the paragravity satellite directly over Isidis Planitia, a search found Swann’s body twenty yards farther down the corridor in the direction he and Chu had gone, apparently coming back toward the garage. His neck had been broken so severely that his head had been hidden entirely underneath his torso.

Saxon and Duchesne put the bodies of Swann, Huyck and Chatterjee in the back of a rover and drove out to the far side of the gentle rise that stood half a mile to the northwest of the base. They used plasma saws and a paragrav winch to create five lateral trenches in the soil, then laid the bodies in three of them. Draney’s and Rutter’s corpses had been in the skimmer that Caldwell had stolen, and Saxon didn’t hold much hope of retrieving them, but it seemed like a respectful gesture to dig graves for them anyway. Rigby and Ishida would forever be buried in the catacombs under the surface, and Saxon hoped that they would stay irretrievable.

When they had used the winch to cover the three bodies, Saxon felt it was his place to say something over their resting place, but the state of anxious tension he had existed in for over twenty-four hours now had left him almost tremulous with the adrenal byproducts in his veins. For the first time since he’d landed on Mars, he felt no desire for coffee. After a moment of silence over the graves, Saxon gave up. “We’ll have a proper memorial when all this is over,” he said to Duchesne, and they drove back in the rover in silence.

That feeling of over-tense anxiety didn’t ease when they got back inside. Even though there were tasks to see to all over the base, everyone had congregated back to the garage, where Cooper was monitoring the viewscreen with eyes that rarely blinked. She had added to the display estimated times until both the skimmer and the satellite reached their mutual destination. The skimmer’s ETA wasn’t concrete, as they couldn’t be sure of Caldwell’s intended approach and deceleration. The satellite’s time, on the other hand, was a certainty: forty-two minutes and change until it came directly over the complex beneath Isidis Planitia, the optimum position for crushing the tunnel complex.

The minutes ticked by slowly as everyone first puttered, trying to keep themselves occupied, then surrendered and found a seat to watch the viewscreen over Cooper’s shoulder.

Saxon regularly stood up and leaned over Cooper to read the numbers by each colored arc. After three or four times, he could see a trend becoming more and more definite.

“We’re not going to make it,” he said.

Cooper slowly shook her head, having apparently already reached that conclusion. According to the displayed estimate of the skimmer’s flight path, it would arrive at its destination a full twenty-eight minutes before the paragravity satellite.

Twenty-eight minutes. How much could Caldwell accomplish in twenty-eight minutes? Did Caldwell—or whatever wore Caldwell like an environment suit—suspect their intention to crush the ancient tomb before the cubes could be moved to another location? How well had Rigby managed to block the entrance? Could Caldwell tunnel through it quickly with a plasma saw? Or was there another entrance to the underground complex after all, one which Caldwell could use to slip inside and carry out a cargo of shiny green cubes before the satellite could be brought to bear?

“He’s down,” said Cooper. Now everyone was at Saxon’s elbows, all sharing the meager information that the viewscreen provided.

“Do we know if he put it down safely?” Swann asked.

“Well, the transponder’s still working,” Cooper answered. “No auto-distress beacon, so he couldn’t have done too badly.”

“Maybe he’s learning,” Mendez said. “Or maybe he has better command of Caldwell’s skills.”

The satellite was still lagging behind. Saxon could imagine the planet’s surface from the satellite’s vantage point: The lip of Isidis Planitia protecting the interior of the bowl until it slowly, slowly revealed the basin with the skimmer at the bottom.

“activate the satellite,” Saxon said.

“It’s not direct yet,” Cooper said. “An angular discharge would stress the harmonic—”

“If we put enough juice into it, the paragravity will do its damage no matter what the angle is. I don’t care if you burn it out, fire it up now!”

Cooper’s fingers manipulated the controls. The viewscreen showed the stretched ovoid of the paragrav field extending from the satellite to its target. Other numbers and tangents appeared, proclaiming data beyond Saxon’s ability to understand. A dot on the satellite’s icon changed from green to yellow to red. And then—

Saxon’s brain, his consciousness, his very soul turned inside out in every direction at once. That bitter, metallic taste overwhelmed each of his senses, as if his brain had become one sensory organ

(It Sees And Eats)

and through that organ which was now all he was, he saw/heard/smelled/felt/tasted the web of alien intelligences which had laid beneath Mars these millions of years—no, not years, what he felt wasn’t the years, it was each of the many many many seconds of granular time which had passed since their escape from the fifth planet, unmediated by the illusions of perspective or larger units that humans had created to protect themselves from the full comprehension of just how long a second was, and two seconds and three up until the billions of billions of seconds that the alien minds had waited, fully conscious of the inexorable march of existence, feeling the unsated need and hunger that their god demanded of them and through them

(It Sees And Eats)

while they were powerless to do anything but marinate endlessly in that sentient need that knew time, that knew space, that bellowed in their intertwined awareness to be filled but which had nothing to fill It except the emptiness of time itself as it ground heedlessly from instant to instant to instant to instant to—

...

And then it was over. Saxon’s closed, provincial human perspective returned, bringing with it such a flood of relief that it was some time (seconds? minutes? he didn’t know, and rejoiced in not feeling the precision of time passing) before he began to be process the input from his senses again, as if they were unfamiliar extensions to his self that he had forgotten how to use.

His sense of balance returned first, the simplest and most primal awareness seated in his reptile brain, and he knew that he was on the floor and that “down” was somewhere beneath his left temple. After that, the ability to process the stimuli from his eyeballs returned and he became aware that his eyes were open and staring.

He pushed himself to a sitting position. Everyone in the room had been similarly affected. Only Mendez had regained his feet, his hands on his knees, breathing slowly.

“Cooper,” said Saxon. He didn’t recognize his own voice; he didn’t know whether to blame that on his mouth or his ears. “What do we know?”

Cooper, the only one who had been sitting in a chair and thus the only one who hadn’t collapsed to the floor, forced her hands to the controls. She fiddled back and forth and stared at the small rows of characters on the viewscreen.

“The paragrav satellite has tripped its overload,” she said, voice breaking like a teenager’s. “The sideways projection put an acute cross-strain on the field—”

“Isidis. What happened in Isidis?”

She blinked hard and refocused her eyes. “No transponder signal. Not even a distress beacon—nothing.”

That meant the skimmer had been destroyed. And the complex beneath it? Had that synaesthetic mental roar been its death-cry?

Saxon turned to Mendez, who was staring at his fingers as if he had never seen them before. “I want satellite flyovers,” he said. “All the same ones that Caldwell used to find the anomalies in the first place. I want to see what’s left. Then we’ll go out there and make sure. Before we talk to Earth. I need to know.”

He probed the back of his throat with his tongue. He didn’t know if he was sensing that anomalous taste or not—his head was still ringing with its echoes. A taste that echoed; would his senses ever feel truly distinct again?

The viewscreen continued to blink in its bright colors, and Saxon was suddenly sick of those simple lines and shapes which recorded so little of what had really happened. He stumbled away, ending up at the viewslit cut in the wall, and stared through the plasteel window with unfocused eyes.

There was the surface of Mars, inchoate, senseless, a barren sphere which had been the site of two attempted colonizations by foreign life forms so far, and the planet’s only immunity against such infestations was its total disinterest in fostering or supporting life from either the third or the fifth planet.

Above the eastern horizon, twinkling through the sullen gloom of the Martian evening, two lights shone before any of the stars: Mars’s two asteroid moons, Phobos and Deimos. Saxon stared at Deimos’s lesser spark, thinking of the Artifact jutting from its surface, the last monument of an extinct race, alien beyond his previous understanding of the word.

He hoped they were extinct. But he could never, ever be sure.

Gods in Darkness

David J. West

I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of men. ~ Isaac Newton

They felt a brief hard drop before the Promethean Titan snatched the three men from the grip of Gaia’s pull and hurled them blindingly aloft.

“Owl Eight, you are a go. This final transmission is coming to you. And fade to black.”

“You got it.”

The B-52 Stratofortress that had carried them seven and a half miles up disappeared in an unfamiliar haze, far below and behind. They would continue the two hundred-odd miles up on their own in an experimental vomit comet: a modified three seater X-20 DynaSoar space plane that did not officially exist. Despite the sound dampening insulation, the roar of the second stage Titan booster rattled teeth for another two minutes as they blasted higher into the east to gain orbital push.

Azure skies bruised quickly to navy then fathomless black, as stars were suddenly kindled as if from a million pilgrims’ candles. Then silence took them.

“We won’t hear anything outside of this cockpit again until re-entry,” said Captain Cormac ‘Jack-Hammer’ Ross over their private intercom. His voice was grim and deep as befitted a hulking man who barely dodged the maximum height requirements of the Air Force test pilots. He had piercing gray eyes and a face that seemed incapable of smiling. A scar from Korea arced down his forehead, across his right eye and to the edge of his lantern jaw. No number of medals could take away the sinister look and make him presentable for the polished public expectations, and as such he was never invited to be a part of the standard astronaut program. He wasn’t promotional material, the colonel had said; but there was still a place with the classified and secret side of the space race, the Crypto-Cosmic side.

“Take us to the appointed Lagrange point,” ordered the mysterious passenger. A slight man with dark deep set eyes, he had a confident air enshrouding him and though clearly not military, he commanded like a Field Marshal.

“You got it.”

“How many times have you been in orbit, Captain Ross?” asked the passenger with an air of indifference. What looked like three strangely colored and ornately engraved medals clanked together over his tight-fitting space suit.

Cormac shrugged, careless if the rear passenger could even see his response at the helm. The very notion that a relatively untrained person could tag along, flaunting what appeared to be contraband weight blatantly around his neck, grated at him. But the sole order of the mission did specify following the directions of the as yet unnamed person.

“Captain ‘Jack-Hammer’ Ross! He has been up, what, seven times now?” answered the co-pilot, Major James Driscoll.

A blue-eyed California native, Driscoll was a respected test pilot in his own right. He had been too young for Korea but there was no good reason he had not been a part of the officially recognized space program. In contrast to Cormac, Driscoll would have been a NASA publicist’s dream candidate, but now that both he and Cormac were on the Crypto-Cosmic side, all histories and records had been sanitized and sterilized.

For this “lost” aspect, each were perfect for the Crypto-Cosmic program in that neither had families. The successful and handsome Driscoll, an Irish-Catholic teetotaler, had climbed through the ranks very well for his age but he was unmarried as well as being an orphan.

No one in the program knew of any family for Cormac either—rumor said he was from Montana—but he was certainly no teetotaler.

“Eight times. He has been in orbit eight times,” corrected the passenger.

“Then why’d you ask?” rumbled Cormac.

“I am making conversation. I know a good deal about both of you already, yet you know nothing of me.”

Driscoll asked, “What do you know? Sir?”

“I am not a ‘sir,’ Major Driscoll. I am not military. But understand that I know enough classified material to have specifically requested both of you for this most unusual, yet supremely important mission.”

“You can tell us your name, then,” said Cormac, as he adjusted the yaw control of the X-20. “You have sway enough to make this operation happen, whoever you are.”

“And with full-black radio silence, no less. Somebody trusts you,” added Driscoll.

“I hope that does not make you nervous, but we cannot afford to have anyone overhear us. And someone is always listening.”

“The Cordiglia brothers?”

“Possibly, but more importantly the Soviets and what is left of Das Reich.”

Cormac grunted at that.

“My name for now is A.H. Ryman. And I do have extreme influence at the J.P.L. and with General Manning. We would not be having this conversation otherwise.”

“So do we call you A. H. or Ryman?”

“Ryman is fine. How much farther to the Lagrange point?”

Cormac glanced over the controls and calculated. “We’re around halfway, but I can’t promise a time frame just yet. Have some debris I need to get around. The lower Detritosphere is getting especially bad.”

“Is that the official Crypto-Cosmic term for the low earth orbit region?”

“It is.”

Letting the aft winglet give a tiny burst, the X-20 rolled around the oncoming twisted carcass of a shredded capsule. A portion of the booster, held together by the barest skin of metal, lingered alongside. A single insulated wire, like an umbilicus, linked the dead ships together in cruel mockery of life.

“One of ours?” asked Driscoll.

“You could say it was mine,” said Cormac.

A red star resembling nothing so much as a cheese grater identified the victim.

Ryman chuckled. “Why would you say that?”

“I made that. At this orbit, it’s gotta be one of the Voskhods I dumped a load of ball bearings on last month.”

“Only one?”

“If you’ve read the classified reports, Ryman, you know how many I’ve encountered.”

“‘Encountered is’ not really the right word, is it? Perhaps ‘annihilated’ is better.”

“It’s my job.”

“Of course it is. That is why I selected both of you. You follow orders.”

Driscoll responded, “Be that as it may, Mr. Ryman, I haven’t fought the Reds like the Jack-Hammer has.”

“No one has. But we all have our talents. Mark my words, you have an important future before you, Major Driscoll. But I must admit I would like to hear more from Captain Ross about encountering cosmonauts.”

Cormac grumbled. “You said you’ve read the files. We would like to know what the mission is. General Manning said we would be debriefed in orbit. You just want to look around up here? It’s no Sunday in the park.”

“I am quite aware that space is an intrinsically hostile environment.”

“Are you?” pressed Cormac, unstrapping his shoulder harness and turning in his seat to look Ryman in the eye. “This isn’t some pleasure cruise favor for a—whatever the hell you are.”

“I am a senior jet propulsion engineer, an Advanced-Laboratory chemist, and most importantly, a Meta-physicist or Mancer if you will, at the absolute peak of my field.”

“Whatever. It is burning cold out there and the universe doesn’t care that you have dirt on Manning or that the J.P.L. owes you a real big favor, the universe will kill you in an instant all the same. So let’s cut the chit chat and do the work. Tell me why I’m up here.”

Driscoll gulped. “You have dirt on Manning?”

Ryman laughed without mirth before answering. “Quite. General Manning has a penchant for the asphyxiation of young homeless prostitutes. All the pretty young things that have taken Kerouac, Cassady and Ginsberg into their naive little hearts.”

“Who?”

“I would not expect you to know, Major Driscoll.”

“Damn beatniks,” muttered Cormac.

Again Driscoll balked at Ryman’s revelations. “How could General Manning do that? How do you know all this?”

“Let us just say that I am not without sin. And if you had any idea of the former gatherings at ‘the Parsonage’ which was the Agape Lodge, you would not need to ask.”

“Lodge? Like the Freemasons?”

“You delight me, Major Driscoll. Your fraternal order is similar yet different. I am the current, yet disputed, Outer Head of the Order of the O.T.O. Lodge. Which is centered around Thelema or, more plainly, following the Whole of the Law.”

“Whole of the law? Good, I was afraid you might be weirdos.”

Cormac looked at Driscoll and rolled his eyes.

“And as far as you need to be concerned, Major Driscoll, I am the J.P.L. these days, if only from the shadows.”

“You?” said Driscoll, shaking his head within his stationary helm. “Jet Propulsion Labs are a conglomeration beyond any one man.”

Ryman answered, “And you forget that the J.P.L. was Jack Parson’s Lab before that. I should know, I was his unspoken right hand. I was there when the mercury fulminate explosion took his life. You remember that, do you not, Captain?”

Cormac shook his head. “Nope. I was in Korea, shooting down Chi-Coms.”

“Your services were greatly appreciated then, as they are now.”

Driscoll broke in, “What does Jack Parsons have to do with anything now?”

“Not a thing, I simply walk the same path he did.”

“Will someone just tell me what the hell I’m doing here?” said Cormac. “What is the mission?”

“Patience. Get us to the Lagrange point and all will be revealed.”

The curtain of darkness flexed larger as the earth shrunk. The stars cast cold light from the distant reaches as Cormac continued his hawk-like ascent to a higher orbit. He occasionally swung the X-20 wide of various cascading jetsam. Some of the floating debris was ice-covered and alien; catching light like a swarm of fireflies, it went in every possible direction contrasting to the usual human expectation of earthbound flotsam caught in a single flowing current.

“This is my third mission,” said Driscoll, “and you never get used to it.”

“To what?” asked Ryman.

“The sheer beauty of the Earth. Right down there, the Bahamas. Turquoise perfection. Clouds sprinkled like newly fallen snow. And in a few minutes, the Straits of Gibraltar like only God can see them.”

“A god. Indeed.”

“Just wait until we get to the night side,” said Driscoll. “All the city lights almost make it seem like it’s all a kingdom in some fairy tale.”

Both astronauts noticed that Ryman displayed no interest in seeing the truly rare vista. It was as if the very idea were beneath him and somehow vulgar. He instead watched them piloting the X-20 over and under the clouds of stardust.

Farther on, they saw a gray-suited body rolling toward them in the ether. CCCP was emblazoned across the top of the figure’s helmet. The mirror-like faceplate hid the certain death mask behind. A six-foot tether dangled uselessly from the body harness.

“Friend of yours?” asked Ryman, with an edge begging for something more.

“Probably,” said Driscoll. “The Ruskies started calling Captain Ross the ‘Rezuhin’ on their private channels.”

“I do not speak Russian.”

“It means ‘Cutter.’ There is no one they fear more.”

“What do they do when you cut them loose?”

“Well, they don’t take it kindly,” snarled Cormac.

“I mean, what is the reaction when they have lost the encounter?”

“Every single time, the stupid bastards start flapping their arms, trying to swim through space. It’s pathetic,” said Cormac, stifling a chuckle. “Fear makes everyone forget their training.”

“This is what I hoped we could talk about. Hearing it firsthand is so much better than reading a sterile military report. Tell me more.”

Composing himself back to the humorless edge, Cormac said, “It’s simple. Once they are out of reach of their own ship with a cut line, that’s it. Ten feet away from your capsule might as well be ten miles. You can’t swim through space and you can’t get back with nothing in the vacuum of space to push against.”

“What do they do when they realize it is hopeless?”

“They die.” Cormac furrowed his brow, answering, “I once saw a cosmonaut accept his fate and cut his own airline, rather than drift for hours in hopeless despair.”

“Brutal work. Yet you never used a gun?”

“Not up here with the weight requirements. In theory, I was never supposed to get out and space walk. Offensively, we are only supposed to outmaneuver the Reds and drop ball bearings in their path. Their capsules can’t turn and get out of the way. Then they become what you saw back there. That was actually the biggest piece of one I’ve ever seen. Must have only winged him.”

Cormac went to rub his chin out of habit, hit the smooth face plate and put his hand down before continuing. “But the Soviets send more men up on virtual suicide missions than you could ever shake a stick at. I had to get out and start cutting tethers when they got outside first and started messing with our satellites.”

“How many cosmonauts have you killed?”

“I couldn’t say. I don’t always know how many they have inside their capsules.”

“But outside, face to face, cutting them loose?”

Cormac paused a moment. He considered himself a soldier, perhaps even a knight errant, doing what needed to be done as he understood it, but Ryman’s prying bordered on sick fascination, too eager even for scholarly interest. Besides, after he had been debriefed a dozen times, the eggheads had put together an ultra-classified space combat manual, so why didn’t Ryman just read that? Unless he wanted to hear about death from the dealer himself. “Twelve.”

“A noble lot indeed,” said Ryman.

“But you asked about guns and I told you about weight requirements, so now I have to ask about yours.”

Driscoll nudged Cormac for asking, but Ryman grinned.

“You noticed these,” he said, jingling the three talismans.

Driscoll scrutinized them. “They don’t look like anything I’ve ever seen before. I almost wondered if you received the Bronze in the Olympics, but those aren’t bronze.”

“No. They are most certainly not medals,” Ryman sneered. “Do not trouble yourself over our weight requirements, Captain Ross. We still have your standard offensive cargo should the need arise, though it is a good twenty pounds lighter.”

“Twenty pounds?”

“I assure you, Captain Ross, my contraband, as you so colorfully refer to it, is not more than twenty pounds. Perhaps no more than ten.”

“What else you got?”

“Reading material. A training manual, you might say.”

“You are two hundred miles above the earth for a very limited time frame. What the hell are you gonna read?”

“As I said, do not trouble yourself with worry over this minor change in your standard operating procedure. We are indeed under your weight ratios for our fuel and mission parameters. Besides,” he paused a good long while, “I know very well that despite your self-righteous indignation, you personally eliminated three ball bearings to effectively counter your own contraband.”

Driscoll turned to Cormac in disbelief. “What is he talking about? Tell me you didn’t bring anything you weren’t supposed to.”

“All right, ya got me on that one, prick.”

“What was that, Captain Ross?”

“I said you’re a prick.”

“What did you bring?” demanded Driscoll.

“Just my Arkansas toothpick.”

No words came from Driscoll’s mouth for a moment. “You brought a knife to space? We have tools, we have—”

“You never asked how I took care of those Reds, did you? You were just glad I did. So let’s leave it at that.” Cormac gave sharp glances to his two companions. “I’ve used wrenches too. This is quicker.”

“This is highly irregular.”

“Least I didn’t bring a damn book.”

Ryman spoke soothingly. “I assure you both, no one will be reported for any of this. General Manning is well aware of Captain Ross’s barbaric implements and if there is one thing neither one of us will do, it is punish results.”

Unwilling to let it go, Driscoll muttered, “You broke protocol.”

“Shut up.”

There was a tense silence for a few moments until Driscoll piped up. “What are those not-medals then, Mr. Ryman?”

“They are pentacles. These for the Moon, these Jupiter and these is for Saturn. They are vital for dealing with my mission.”

“Your mission?”

“Quite. Your mission is to specifically get me to the Lagrange point and deal with any troubles therein. Then my mission begins and should in short time finish, then you are to bring me back to Earth, Captain Ross.”

Driscoll looked puzzled.

“Do not trouble yourself, Major Driscoll. I simply expect Captain Ross to be more capable at eliminating the threat posed by anything we encounter. I have no doubts that you will do your best in the coming exchange.”

“Do you really expect a threat?”

“Certainly. The Soviets will not simply hand me control of their secret space station!”

Dead silence reigned for a cosmic moment as each man took that revelation to task.

“Soviet’s don’t have a space station yet,” said Cormac, breaking the stillness.

Ryman gave a venomous chortle. “Do not be offended that they seem to have made it past you and the rest of the Crypto-Cosmic Command. They have done so a handful of times already, Captain Ross. Not that it really matters. We have known for some time what it was they were building and have allowed them to do the dirty work of constructing and putting it into orbit. We are going to take their weapon, called a Salyut, and turn it against them.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, Mr. Ryman, but how could you know that? My understanding is that all the best spies were caught inside Star City and horribly tortured and killed. There’s no way you could know what a secret Soviet space station is being outfitted with. I’ve heard they don’t even tell the Politburo the half of it,” said Driscoll.

“What do they have?”

“Patience, Captain Ross. All will be revealed soon enough. My talents have granted some insight into the Soviets’ capabilities. Suffice to say, I have seen for myself what the Soviets intend to do.”

“Not good enough.”

“You were told to follow orders. That you would be debriefed in orbit. What part of that do you not understand?”

“We have a right to know,” said Driscoll. “Why not tell us now? It can’t be that much farther.”

“You ought to grace us with your master plan.” Cormac agreed. “I’ll have us at the Lagrange point in twenty minutes.”

Ryman grimaced before answering. “Very well, since you both are now my most trusted liaisons, I can reveal some of my knowledge. I use the will of the Universe, the very ether to learn all. Some have taken to referring to it as a sixth sense, some remote viewing, others sorcery and Magick.”

“What do you call it?”

“Sorcery.”

“That sounds like you believe in the occult,” spat Driscoll.

“I do not believe in the occult,” said Ryman. “I participate in it. Mere belief is quite different.”

“How?”

“Magick is the result of willful intent.”

“So a workable faith, then?”

“You could say that,” said Ryman, sneering.

“What does any of this—magic do for you? What’d you learn?”

“Astute as ever, Captain Ross. I learned that there are forces within the Soviet machine, specifically the paranormal branch of the NKVD, the GUMOD, that have their own dark agenda and are working against me.”

“Who with the what?”

“Professor Andreiev, head of GUMOD, the Soviet Administration of Occultic and Magical Affairs.”

“I don’t follow. What’s this got to do with the here and now?”

“True men of power have always controlled the people through the gods, whether black or white, light or dark, real or unreal.”

“What?”

“I have said far too much to the uninitiated. How far to the Lagrange point?”

“Is that where the Reds are?”

“No, it is not. It should be the high ground above the Salyut’s orbit so that we can swoop down on them.”

“There is no high ground in space, unless we are at the top of the gravity well—which we aren’t. They’ll see us coming.”

“Are you telling me that you cannot accomplish this mission? Are you telling me that you, the ‘Jack-Hammer,’ are not capable of dealing with perhaps three cosmonauts?”

“I want to hear you say it.”

“Gladly. They are to be eliminated with extreme prejudice.”

“What is their secret weapon?” asked Driscoll.

“They have a nuclear reactor aboard their new Salyut space station. It is attached to a Soyuz module and paired with some minor communication relays. This station will be turned against us as soon as it is fully operational. We must destroy it. I brought forth a plan to take over the thing and give us an ultimate weapon that will dominate and reinvent the world. Any who stand against us will taste an entropic bomb, especially Moscow.”

Cormac said nothing, but went to rub his chin again, but for the faceplate.

Driscoll shook his head. “This isn’t right. We could disable and destroy it. We don’t have to be instrumental in killing thousands of innocent people and starting a war. I did understand you, didn’t I, Mr. Ryman? You are suggesting mass murder!”

Ryman answered in a quick jerking succession of syllables, “Of course not, you stupid man. I will perform the Oath of the Abyss and open a gate, a dimensional window if you will; then I shall summon an ancient power undreamed of—I will control the dark matter entities and make an entropic bomb that will grant me passage and control of the Qliphothic realm.”

Cormac raised an eyebrow at Driscoll.

“Seems awful complicated, Mr. Ryman,” said Driscoll.

“It is the simplest plan possible. It will enable a new age, born in darkness, to return. A window through the veil, a link of materia to ultrateria. A union of the void and its dark disciples. Ultimately, I will eliminate the outdated uselessness of the nuclear bomb.”

Cormac scoffed, “What the hell are you talking about?”

Ryman went quiet, staring daggers at them.

“Maybe he has space dementia,” suggested Driscoll. “Take a drink from your line Mr. Ryman.”

“I don’t know,” said Cormac, “but that Red space station is just ahead and above.”

“I thought we were supposed to have the high ground?”

“The gyroscopes might be off. I put the star tracker in sync with Canopus, but with our attitude and climb we’ve probably gone off course a titch. Not unusual, especially with this kinda ramrod mission thrown together at the last minute before any of the regular techs could check us out.”

“What’s that hum?”

A pervasive yet undulating buzz violated the tranquility of their headsets.

Cormac and Driscoll exchanged raised eyebrows, and looked behind at Ryman reading his book. The massive dark tome was held together by a thick leather cover and bronze clasps at the edges were green with age, while yellowed parchment made up its myriad pages. The lettering appeared to be handwritten ink of various shades from cobalt blue to ghostly black and finally blood red.

The hum was Ryman.

He muttered archaic-sounding phrases repeatedly under his breath, the words hardly captured by the two-way radio. “In the beginning there was naught but darkness, untainted by shape or form. Then came the light. It scorched its way into the darkness, marring the smooth beauty of nullity with its unnatural essence, cauterizing the wounds it had caused by its mere presence...” His chant broke in varied pitches of primeval verse, emphasizing the eldritch and unholy rhyme.

“Ryman!” Cormac barked. “Snap out of it. If this mission is your operation, you’d better tell the doctor where it hurts.”

“I am preparing for this confrontation, Captain Ross. You know what needs to be done! You will dock us beside the station and dispatch the crew, and then I will do what is truly the important work of ages.”

Ryman turned his radio off, but they could still see his lips moving as he continued his mantra from the diabolic book.

“You haven’t fought them hand to hand before. You ready for this?” asked Cormac.

“As I’ll ever be.”

“Remember, if your suit gets cut, or your faceplate is ruptured, exhale immediately. Get all the breath out of your lungs. You will feel tension on exposed skin, you will have swelling. But you have some time to make it to an airlock—ours or theirs, doesn’t matter. Then it’s just animal savagery.”

“What if my line gets cut?”

“Anything that you can use to retain a grip on a solid surface will help. I’ve chewed gum.”

“Gum?”

“Yeah, some wiry little cosmonaut cut my line two missions ago, while his partner smashed my faceplate in with their multi-tool. I lost my wrench doing the same to him as I exhaled.”

“Your faceplate was smashed and your line was cut?”

“I’m telling you from experience, so you know it can be done. The wiry cosmonaut shoved me and I went swinging out, grabbed my gum, and used it to hold onto the Voskhod’s solar vanes. I crawled back and made that bastard pay.”

“How did you exhale and keep your gum?”

“Through my nose, Driscoll! Didn’t you ever go diving?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Do it. It’s the only reason I’m still alive and they’re dead. Remember that know-it-all idiot Lieutenant Cluff? That dumb bastard didn’t exhale. He got the bends and died.”

“They said that was a training exercise.”

“This is a training exercise—if it fails. Otherwise we are just silent weapons for quiet wars.”

As Cormac brought the X-20 in for a final yo-yoing approach, the night side came over them in a sweeping mantle of ebon-couched darkness, fracturing the last rays of sunlight.

Driscoll stayed quiet a moment, deep in thought before saying, “I’d like to think I am contributing more than that. You know, something for the greater good.”

“Yeah, me too. But it is what it is.”

“Are we going to die?”

“I made peace with that answer a long time ago.”

“If not for the greater good then why do it?”

Cormac snorted. “It’s the only thing I’m good at.”

He brought the X-20 into a violating rendezvous with the bizarre Soviet station. A hybrid made from the Salyut and Soyuz modules, the station seemed almost stationary in the vast deep of space. A pincer-like armature from the X-20’s left winglet grasped a jutting solar panel wing on the side of the station, causing the entire unholy union to subtly change its orbital spin as the whole body shook and twisted.

Cormac pulled his bowie knife from the side of his seat. “If they didn’t already know we’re here, they sure as hell do now.”

“That bad?”

“It’s all bad, but maybe if we scared them enough, they’ll slip up. You want to hear them bark at us? White found their frequency last week.”

The intercom crackled a quick spray of angry Russian.

“What did they say?”

“They said they were going to kill us if we didn’t leave.”

“What if they saw us coming and are ready?”

Cormac growled, shaking his head. “Listen, we’ve been in our pressurized suits the whole time. They haven’t. They’ll be sick and easier pickings. You take the wrench. If I’m fast enough, you won’t even need to swing it.”

“I still don’t feel right about this. Not face to face.”

Ryman broke in, “Trust me, Major Driscoll. This needs to happen. We must break with these melodramatic excuses of moralistic right and wrong. The Soviets are attempting a means to destroy and rule us. We must turn the balance and take back what is ours by dark divine right!”

“Yeah, yeah. You ready for this, Ryman? Let’s go.”

“Captain Ross, I am not a physical combatant. I am not getting out of the space plane until you clear all obstacles.”

“’Course. Never mind, if Driscoll and I get killed you don’t know how to pilot this thing home in one piece.”

“I would find a way.”

“I’ll bet you would try.”

“Quite.”

“I’m opening the airlock. Hold on to your damned book.”

“You have no idea.”

Cormac secured his bowie knife with a strap about his left arm and gave a thumbs up to Driscoll. The radio crackled as the Russians’ demands were again ignored. A sudden rush of pressure stole whatever oxygen had stowed away within the X-20.

Twin doors opened a portal to the vacuum of space. Stars set hard against deep black gave cold, unfeeling light.

“Unbuckle. We gotta move faster than they do.”

Floating in the dark ether, Cormac raised above his seat and floated over the top of Ryman, still clutching his book. He secured a fifty-five-foot line from an anchored reel to his harness and beckoned the same to the other two men, then went through the black gate to the outside void.

Driscoll followed suit, looking back once at the gleeful Ryman still seated and perusing his infernal book.

As Driscoll pushed himself up and out the X-20, Cormac grabbed his shoulder and guided him to a short antennae sticking off the side of the Salyut.

Cormac motioned to the stations airlock. “They’ll have a second one over on the ass-end of the Soyuz. I imagine they will swarm out of each hatch.”

“Why aren’t they out already?”

“They’re suiting up and pressurizing themselves. Probably think they can take care of us based on sheer numbers.”

“Numbers?”

Cormac then signaled he was turning off his radio and for Driscoll to do the same.

Driscoll did as the experienced cold warrior asked. Looking behind Cormac, he tried to take in the vast black gulfs beyond.

Cormac leaned his faceplate against Driscoll’s so they clacked together. The sound could only be heard inside the helmets as the vibrations resonated solely through the air in that tiny space. “This is the only way no one can hear us.”

“?”

“Listen! Ryman is up to no good—its like he wants us to fail. There is no way there are only three Reds on a station this big and that is obviously still under construction. Something fishy is going on.”

“What do we tell Manning and Crypto-Cosmic Command?”

“Does it matter? They agreed to this whole operation. We’re in for the long haul, but I don’t buy Ryman’s story. He wants something else.”

“What if he’s right? Maybe they have a bomb or something?”

“I doubt it.”

“What then?”

“Don’t get me wrong, having a bomb in space is an advantage, but it’s not enough on its own. We will always retaliate and give them our own endgame scenario and everybody still loses. Until the advantage is so far in one direction, nobody will ever have the sand to press that button.”

“Then why are we really here?”

“Ryman wants the station for something, but none of the logical answers make sense.”

“What if he is telling the truth?”

“You know he’s not.”

With that, Cormac turned his radio back on and pointed at a face staring at them through the portal window of the Salyut.

“That was a woman!” Driscoll blurted.

“Yeah, the Reds are real progressive.”

The radio crackled again with a stern Russian’s accent coming through. “American running dogs of the capitalist pigs. We know you hears us. You are given your last warnings. You take your craft and illegal war and leave or we will be forced to bring death to you.”

“What do we—”

“Just hold on. They always threaten a few times.”

The Russian tried one last time. “Americans, you are given your last warnings. We will shoot you!”

Driscoll looked at Cormac then back to the face in the portal window.

Cormac drawled, unconvinced, “They’re bluffing.”

“And if they’re not?”

“The Soviet Command wouldn’t let them bring extra weight on one of those capsules. Star City limits what they can bring, down to the fraction of an ounce. Their hypergolic fuel is too heavy. Nobody gave them a gun—more likely they know ‘the Cutter’ is here and somebody’s already evacuated into their suit.”

A clear line interrupted from Ryman. “Why do you not have control of that station yet, Captain Ross?”

“Reds haven’t invited me in yet.”

“So get inside and deal with them.”

“I didn’t want to make a mess.”

“The messier the better,” snapped Ryman. “Make the Soviets bleed.”

Pointing at the hatch, Cormac said, “Let’s try and open that and get inside.”

Driscoll threw his weight into it but only succeeded in spinning himself. “It’s locked.”

“I told you, they were bluffing about having guns. Let me try.” The bigger man strained against the hatch but made no progress against it. Cormac ordered, “Bang your wrench on that portal. They’ll move.”

Driscoll knocked the wrench against the portal window. The force of the blow threw him back and he had to retain a stronger grip alongside the station. Just holding the wrench with his gloved hand was hard enough, but Driscoll imagined that back on Earth he would have easily crushed a car window.

The Russian negotiator barked,“Americans! You will cease this unlawful disruptions of Soviet space!”

There was little chance of Driscoll being able to smash in the portal window. But there was an unnerving feeling that if the portal window failed and cracked, everyone inside would be dead in seconds. Fear made them leave their true and relative safety.

“You leave us no choice, Americans!” crackled the reply.

“You got it,” Cormac said over the com-link to the Russians. It was the only response he had given their channel yet.

“Watch for that lower airlock on the Soyuz below us.”

Driscoll struck the portal window again, leaving a tiny white scrape but no real damage. He looked at what from his perspective seemed to be down at the Soyuz module.

“Poyekhali!” snapped the radio.

“What did that Russian say?”

“He said, ‘Let’s go.’”

What had been dark below now showed a shaft of light. The lower hatch had been opened.

“They’re coming out!”

“Keep steady. They’re cold bastards when they want to be.”

The hatch beside Cormac suddenly popped open.

Oxygen and water vapor blasted out into space.

Cormac moved in to slash the Russian.

A cosmonaut in an orange space suit stood just inside the airlock, a strange triple-barreled pistol in hand.

Shocked that his opponent had a gun, Cormac lunged left.

A mute projectile erupted from the gun barrel. Smoke and phantom blue flame leapt out.

The bullet narrowly missed Cormac beside the hatch only because the gunman had not been prepared to swing his weapon fast enough, nor had he braced himself for the impact it gave in zero gravity. The gun flung him backward against the airlock wall.

Cormac maneuvered himself around and above the hatch, ready to strike like an asp when the gunman emerged.

“Help!” Driscoll cried.

Three cosmonauts came at him from all sides, wielding strange dual-use Soviet tools. One had a hammer with a crude spike on the backside. Doubtless a utilitarian instrument but deadly none the less.

“There’s too many!”

Driscoll batted away their strikes, barely fending off the attack, never capable of taking the real fight to them.

“I can’t hold them off!”

Waiting what seemed an eternity, Cormac tensed ready to strike the gunman.

“Arrgh!”

The gunman didn’t or wouldn’t exit the airlock.

“Cormac! Help!”

Cormac watched Driscoll take several more hits, though the labored presence of his voice over the radio said his suit had not been ruptured yet.

Fearful the gunman would appear the moment he moved, Cormac launched himself off the Salyut at full force and all possible speed. He kept one hand on his line and at the right moment tugged on the secure tether, bringing his bulk as close to where he needed to be as possible.

A painful grunt spat over the radio.

Cormac raced not to aid Driscoll directly but to where the Russians’ tethers came across the bow of the Salyut. Stout refined rope, strong enough for mountain climbers and wrapped in a protective film, held the cosmonauts in trusted thrall but it was no match for sharp meteoric steel. Rather than fight the cosmonauts, Cormac cut their lines before they realized he was there.

Suddenly loose, the first cosmonaut struggled to grab a comrade. The other panicked and yanked on the line, only granting enough tension to ease Cormac’s slice through the tether. The cosmonaut’s line went slack and he floated inches beyond reach of the safety of the ship. He flapped his arms and legs wildly in futility.

With a companion grasping onto his shoulder, the last of the three cosmonauts halted his attack on Driscoll to focus on Cormac.

Cormac missed cutting the third’s tether, and his gut told him to move.

An arclight of blue flame and smoke erupted, narrowly missing Cormac.

The Jack-Hammer wheeled to see the gunman preparing for another shot.

Gripping his own tether, Cormac wrenched mightily and, sweeping hard right, he clothes-lined the gunman.

His finger on the trigger, the gunman shot again, forcing himself back against the ship.

Racing toward this most dangerous assailant, Cormac brought his knife to bear.

The gun-toting cosmonaut struggled for balance, tripping backward against the solar vanes of the Salyut. He prepared to shoot again and realized his mistake.

Cormac cut his tether.

The cosmonaut’s momentum kept him going backward, off and away from the capsule. Floating freely away and off-balance, he attempted one more shot.

The explosive gas rocketed from the triple-barreled gun, sending the cosmonaut away at greater speed, while the bullet went past Cormac and was lost in the far-flung cosmos. The shooter’s body spun end over end until it too vanished in the void of darkness.

The last cosmonaut still fighting battered away at Driscoll. The Californian fended off the attack as best he could with an oversized wrench. But clearly dominating the confrontation, the Soviet loomed over the American, trying to smash his faceplate in.

The second cosmonaut clung to the solar panel of the Soyuz like a man hanging on to a life raft in a raging storm. He seemed incapable of action, likely in shock from his near death in the emptiness of the infinite black sea behind him.

“Captain Ross, you need to assist Major Driscoll,” crackled Ryman through the radio.

“What do you think I’ve been doing?”

“I can not allow the Russians to sacrifice him.”

“Sacrifice?” The Jack-Hammer sped toward Driscoll and the cosmonauts.

Turning to face him, the cosmonaut swung his hammer in swift yet exaggerated round-houses. “Stay back or will kill your comrade most brutal!”

Cormac edged closer.

“Think will you to leave this place ever? Murderer!” said the Russian. “Your bones never to orbit leave!”

“You first, Ivan.”

“Warmongering dog! I fix you!”

Cormac leaned back, just out of range of the hammer’s swing.

Three times the cosmonaut attempted to strike. On the last swing Cormac rushed inside the extended reach and jammed his knife to the hilt into the cosmonaut’s ribs. He twisted and tore the blade out.

Blood boiled, pluming swiftly through the puncture in a cloud of crimson steam.

The cosmonaut screamed as even the saliva on his tongue boiled, returning to a gaseous state. His cries abruptly went silent, though he remained alive a few more seconds as the oxygen fled from his suit. Eyelids sunk as eyeballs swelled outward, the face stretched and warped into a fearful mask of horror.

Cormac sliced the tether and pushed the corpse away to drift in the eternal night.

The first cosmonaut cut loose slowly drifted farther away, kicking and screaming, while the frightfully paralyzed one clung tenaciously to the solar vane.

Cormac helped Driscoll stand as upright as they could comprehend. “You all right?”

“Bruised, but I’m not broken. What do we do about that one?”

The cosmonaut shivered in fear, not even looking up at his captors.

“Don’t know. I never killed one who wasn’t trying to kill me at the same time. You want to?” He held his bowie out, handle first.

“No.”

“You sure?”

Ryman’s voice broke the predicament. “Captain Ross. Major Driscoll. Is the station contained?”

“No, sit tight. We have taken out the four cosmonauts who greeted us, but there is at least one more inside. We also have one, hanging on to the solar panel.”

“Excellent. Bind him and take him back inside the station once you have secured it.”

“Yes sir... I mean, Mr. Ryman.”

Using the shaking cosmonaut’s own cut tether, Cormac and Driscoll bound up his arms tight enough that he could not use them. They tugged him toward the airlock and looked in.

“Get in, precious,” said Cormac, as he pushed the cosmonaut through the opening. They attached their own tether lines to a bar near the airlock so that they could easily retrieve them upon leaving the station.

Inside the cramped airlock, they waited while the pressure equalized to a bare minimum.

“What or who is inside waiting for us?”

This particular cosmonaut spoke no English and only watched their faces and nodded with a false sense of understanding.

“No idea. But since they actually had a gun this time, let’s keep Brezhnev here in front of us as we open the hatch.”

“How did you learn to move so well in space?”

“I treat it like diving without the water. I use all the momentum I can to go where I want. I don’t do anything I don’t need to. Plus, the tether can be manipulated more than anyone ever understands. Kinda like a pendulum. The Reds would be getting better at it if I wasn’t killing them first.”

“Things will change. They bring guns now because of you and your knife.”

Cormac shrugged, then turned to watch the gauges. “It’s finished. We can remove our helmets while we are inside. I hate having these things on this long. Too hot.”

“It’s only been two hours.”

Cormac shrugged before unclasping the seal and pulling off the cumbersome apparatus.

Driscoll spun the handle opening the airlock to the inside of the station.

On the other side, a pale surprised face greeted them. It was the woman they had seen earlier. It took her a splintered moment to realize her comrade was not alone.

“Sergei! What have you done to him?” she asked, brushing a lock of red hair out of her face.

“Back off, sister,” said Cormac, with a hand upraised. “Against the wall.”

She looked about to flee but knew as well as they did that it would be futile in the tight quarters of the station.

“Is anyone else aboard the station?”

“Nyet.”

Her green eyes contained an angry defiant fire. Even with the space suit on, anyone would have known from the curves that it was a woman inside.

Cormac paused a bit long before answering, “There better not be. Check it out, Driscoll, real careful-like. Make your way down and secure and lock that lower hatch. No surprises before his satanic majesty comes aboard.”

“I heard that,” crackled Ryman.

Driscoll gave a salute and went to an adjoining passage that would take him down into the rest of the station.

The shivering cosmonaut Sergei mumbled, “Skazheete pozhluista...?”

Cormac looked to the woman, saying, “Tell him to shut up. And for the sake of my companions, only speak English from now on. Understand?”

She nodded and whispered a hush to Sergei who seemed content to hang his head in shame and say nothing more. “He fears they will send him to the gulag for this failure.”

“That’s tomorrow’s worry.”

“Da.”

“We have your station. I took care of your other men outside so there is nothing left for you to do except cooperate. Got that?” He made sure she could see the bowie knife. On Earth, blood would still have been dripping off the blade, but here it had all boiled off. “I’m Captain Cormac Ross. What’s your name?”

“You are only a Captain? I am Major Ludmilla Serakovna.”

“Don’t get any ideas, sister, I’m already taking orders from a civilian.”

“Captain Cormac Ross? You are the ‘Rezuhin,’ yes?”

“You got it.”

“You have killed many of my comrades, my friends.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Now you are here to take our station, to take our lives?”

“If I was going to do that I wouldn’t still be talking to you.”

“Did you say that to the men outside? The ones you cut loose to die?”

“Orders. A fight is a fight. Can’t do any less.”

“Any less? What you did is the worst fate possible.”

“Not hardly.”

“Your American pride makes you a cruel and unkind people.”

Cormac stifled a laugh. “Nails aren’t made from good iron, nor are soldiers made from kind men. You’re a major, you should known that.”

Driscoll’s voice crackled, “Station—station is all clear. Ryman can come aboard.”

Cormac looked Ludmilla and Sergei over before responding. “You got that, Ryman? You should be able to follow our tethers right to the airlock, decompress and come in.”

“Roger that, Captain Ross. I am coming over to the station.”

Driscoll came floating up from a passage leading to the Soyuz, pulling himself along. His face was flushed and pale, sweat beaded across his forehead despite the overall cool interior temperature. “I looked out the window, thought at first I was seeing things. But I am sure—I saw it.”

“What?”

Driscoll rubbed his eyes. “I know we are moving at seventeen thousand miles an hour and the horizontal outlook is constantly changing but—”

“But what?”

“I thought I saw the stars blot out and then this... ‘Leviathan’ moved toward us.”

“Did you get hit in the head by those Reds? Any broken bones?”

“No, just bruises. I’m serious, I saw something. Something huge, yet almost intangible.”

“Dementia?”

“Knock it off. I know what I saw.”

“Do you?”

“No.” Driscoll looked out the portal, scanning for anything beyond the stars. “It’s gone now. But it was something real.”

Cormac rolled his eyes and made a face. “Probably just one of the Ivans doing the backstroke through the Detritosphere.” He then rummaged through the cosmonauts’ supply cabinet, tossing things he was not interested in into the air where they floated haphazardly.

Ludmilla, listening intently to Driscoll, asked, “Was it toward the Gagarin quadrant?”

Driscoll shook his head. “I don’t know where that is, but it was that way.” He pointed up above the Earth and toward the left of the station.

She nodded. “We have been taking readings on strange energy above the poles. I have wondered wht could be causing the radical fluctuations.”

Cormac laughed. “They brought a bottle of vodka and some Cubans. I’m keeping ’em.”

“It was big, black as tar. I didn’t like how I felt seeing it,” said Driscoll, before turning to watch the deep gloom. “It was soul-crushing. Made me question...”

“My father spoke of elder things when I was a girl. Malevolent beings that watch our world. They hunger and look with disdain upon mere mortals who dwell in the light.”

“Why would God allow such a thing?”

Ludmilla looked as if she wanted to respond, but couldn’t.

“You sap.”

Cormac lit one of the Cubans. The zero-G flame hung low and close on the match head like a blue swimmer’s cap instead of flaring orange as it would have on Earth. “You are playing right into her Commie hands. Of course Moscow Milla is gonna tell you there is a bogeyman out there. Act like the operator you are and don’t fall for her tricks.”

“Why are you smoking?”

“For science? Why else do you think they brought them up here?”

“Ryman hasn’t given us the go-ahead to do whatever we want. There could be sensitive equipment, and what about our air supply?”

“Not my air. Besides, the Reds brought it. It shouldn’t be wasted,” he said, opening the vodka.

“Keep your wits about you. I am sure I saw something out there.”

“Muh-huh,” gurgled Cormac, as he guzzled a large burning mouthful.

Ludmilla gave a audible sigh. “That was for celebration of successful station completion.”

“Then why isn’t it gone?”

“We were not yet complete.”

“And the Cubans?”

“Commander Arkady had them. I do not think he intended to use them. I think he was to give them as gifts that have been to space.”

“Yeah, that’s rich,” said Cormac, blowing plumes throughout the cabin.

Driscoll intervened, “We still have a mission to do. I’d rather not have to put my helmet and air back on. Not to mention whatever is out there.”

“Drop it, will ya?” Cormac took another pull on the Kalishnakov vodka before putting the cap back on. “We all see weird things out there. Ice, rocks, capsule fragments. It doesn’t mean anything.”

Ludmilla took the vodka from a surprised Cormac, saying, “It is true. Something is out there. You may check the data yourselves. I did not know you would be boarding us.” She then took a swift swallow herself.

“I may?” Though Cormac could speak and read Russian, he could not fathom the Soviet scientific equipment Ludmilla directed him toward. “No thanks, I didn’t bring my decoder ring.”

“You are a very bitter man. Who did this to you? A woman, yes?” she said taking a second pull.

Cormac ignored her and clicked his radio. “Ryman, you in the airlock yet?”

A long static crackle resolved into Ryman’s voice. “I am just taking in the majesty of night. This is as close as I have ever been to the True Greater Dark. I can almost touch the void.”

“Yeah. You’d better get in here, Driscoll is having as many flights of fancy as you are.”

“You have no conception of the very gravity of the situation, Captain Ross.”

“Gravity? It’s zero-G, Ryman. Get in here and maybe we can sort things out and get going on the mission.”

“Patient as ever, Captain Ross, always the dutiful soldier. I am reaching the airlock now.”

“Good. Make sure you have that outer hatch fully locked. Then press the button with the Cyrillic flat-topped A.”

“Yes, I am about to climb in. It is more difficult than I would have thought. My hands are sore—I—Damn you! No!”

“What is it? Ryman?”

Unintelligible groaning echoed over the intercom.

“What do we do?” asked Driscoll.

“Is he inside the airlock?” Cormac directed the question at Ludmilla.

She shook her head. “He has not opened the hatch. It is safe. When you open one side, the other cannot be opened.”

To Driscoll, Cormac ordered, “You stay here, I’ll go get him.”

“What if—what I saw grabbed him?”

“You didn’t see anything.” Cormac said. “Get a hold of yourself. You have space dementia. There isn’t anything out there. He probably dropped his book.” Cormac looked at Ludmilla as he spoke. She had a coy expression on her face. Oh, she is good, he thought, playing up any slight advantage to benefit her fight against us.

“Don’t lose this,” Cormac ordered as he extinguished his cigar.

Driscoll rubbed his eyes then looked out the portal window. “I know I saw something. I have a bad feeling about this.”

Cormac strapped his helmet on and adjusted the sealant. “Keep your head on.” He then climbed into the airlock. “Ryman, hold tight. I’m coming to get you.”

A panic-ridden cry came from Ryman’s radio, but there were no words.

Mere minutes in the chamber stretched into an eternity for Cormac. Speed was half the reason he became a pilot; waiting only made him angry.

The light flashed and Cormac reached for the handle to open the hatch. He did so carefully and deliberately, prepared for the worst.

He saw nothing behind the door.

Inching out of the capsule, he looked for any sign of Ryman or whatever had made him cry out.

Nothing.

Naught but pin-pricked blackness stretching infinitely beyond.

Cormac pulled himself halfway out of the airlock before a force bludgeoned him. It glanced across his helmet but the brunt went to his right shoulder, knocking him almost all the way back inside.

An orange-suited cosmonaut with a Baikonur wrench stood there.

Cormac caught himself and struck back with a left hook, hitting the cosmonaut squarely in the knee. An unsatisfactory and equally useless assault.

Unfazed, the cosmonaut hit Cormac on the helmet with the wrench.

A strangely earthen clang echoed in Cormac’s head before being joined by another strike.

Reaching higher, Cormac punched at the unprotected groin with a sterilizing intensity.

This halted the cosmonaut’s attack.

Exiting the airlock, Cormac quickly attached himself to a tether, then drew his knife and faced the cosmonaut who had recovered somewhat on an even keel. He could not see Ryman anywhere, but his focus remained on his opponent.

The Russian had tied one of the much shorter cut tethers to his own waist harness. That he had survived floating freely in space was in itself a dark miracle.

“How’d you get here? If I wasn’t gonna kill you, I’d take you to Vegas.”

The cosmonaut gestured as if he still had the gun and held up four fingers.

“You shot yourself back? Lucky bastard. Let’s dance.”

“Poyekhali,” said the cosmonaut, hefting his wrench.

The two men bounded together, crashing blows in a slow dance of brutal menace.

The Russian had to respect Cormac’s blade and Cormac in turn had to avoid the skull-crushing blows of the Baikonur wrench.

Back and forth they struggled atop the world, champions of east and west, paragons of their lands and very ideals. Seemingly equals in strength and resourcefulness.

Faking a hay-maker with his wrench, the Russian lured Cormac in for a strike with his knife. Like a Venus flytrap, he caught Cormac and immobilized the knife in an arm-bar. Pressing ever harder, he was almost ready to break an arm.

But as he raised the wrench, Cormac ripped away from the Russian’s death-grip and tumbled backward.

The knife fell away, lost in the gloom.

Charging with wrench upraised, the Russian was halted by his own shortened tether. It yanked him backward just before he might have delivered a faceplate-smashing blow.

Regaining his footing, Cormac waited just out of reach of the Russian’s strike.

Stalking like a caged animal, the Russian beckoned for Cormac to attack, to let loose the beast and join him in death.

With no other weapon but his longer tether, Cormac went wide around the Russian, who initially believed the American was fleeing from him.

But hooking back hard and fast by bouncing and pushing off the Salyut hull like a swimmer kicking off a pools walls, Cormac wrapped the tether about the Russian.

Undaunted, the Russian pulled Cormac in and readied to brain him with the wrench. Cormac yanked back to avoid the hit. Neither could gain traction over the other, too close in strength and skill, too close in raw brutality and savage cunning.

But there is no cosmic balance, no level to which all can hope to attain in equal measure. No matter what anyone says, no matter how small the difference, someone comes out a little farther ahead in every competition.

There is no such word as “fair” in the universe.

Cormac raised his feet from the tension he had upon the hull and let the Russian pull him in again.

Cormac swiftly kicked the wrench away.

Having lost the wrench, the Russian decided to use his own skills to wrestle the American into death. The cosmonaut caught Cormac in a bear hug with each facing each other. He squeezed, hoping to pop something. He would assuredly win in a wrestling match, of that Cormac had no doubt.

But there is no fair in the universe.

Beyond indomitable, Cormac beat his own faceplate repeatedly into the cosmonaut’s.

Each cracked.

The Russian let go and tried to extricate himself from the insane American.

Cormac charged in again, slamming his own cracked faceplate into the panicked Russians.

“Nyet! Nyet! Nyet!”

“Das-Vee-Dan-Ya!” Cormac caught the Russian by the shoulders and brought the face plates together in one last shattering embrace.

Each spider-webbed crack grew, then popped, and the air was gone. The broken helmets were instantly jagged glass caskets.

The Russian splayed out in a reverse fetal position, clutching vainly at his throat as the vacuum took his life.

Cormac exhaled everything from his lungs and pushed himself to reach the airlock.

It wouldn’t open.

Knowing that it could only be locked because one side of the airlock was open from the other side, Cormac gripped the hull, and crab walked himself to the Soyuz capsule airlock, fighting to remain conscious the entire way.

He was blacking out.

Puffy eyes struggled to remain focused on the next handhold.

Twice he missed, as his fingers felt like hams and he nearly drifted away into deep space.

At the Soyuz hatch, he struggled to just hang on, let alone open it.

It would not budge. Locked by an open hatch on the other side, no doubt. He dimly remembered having Driscoll secure it so that it couldn’t be opened.

He had won but he had lost.

The universe is not fair.

He dazedly put an arm through the airlock entrance bar to hold his body to the station as consciousness slipped away.

Darkness returned as light was banished from the universe and all were one within the void once again. And with the departure of life, so too did death abandon the horror of existence. A symmetry of bare equal nullity reigned and the darkness was pleased.

Then came the light.

A hand reached forth, scorching its way into the gloom, and broke the emptiness of the void.

Driscoll grabbed Cormac’s body and brought him to the airlock. He stomped the big Cyrillic flat-topped A.

“Don’t you die on me! Live, Jack-Hammer!” shouted Driscoll, beating upon Cormac’s chest. “Lord, help this wicked man!”

Fresh oxygen pumped into the chamber and Cormac’s lungs refilled. He coughed and his swollen, bloodshot eyes blinked as he heard Driscoll’s prayer of thanks.

“What happened?”

“I came out to help and saw you crawling to the other hatch. I’ve never been so scared in my life.”

“Didn’t,” cough, “know you cared that much.”

“No, that thing is out there. It was hovering over us the entire time I pulled you inside. I was afraid it was going to grab us and eat us. It was watching like, like a lazy shark.”

“Now who is delusional? Let me up.”

Cormac attempted to get what seemed like upright, but he only twisted in the chamber like a writhing eel.

“You should be dead. Take it easy.”

“Where is Ryman?”

“Don’t know. You never saw him?”

“No. Maybe the Russian killed him.”

“Which Russian?”

“The lucky bastard with the gun.”

“I thought he shot himself into deep space.”

“He did,” coughed Cormac. “But then he shot his way back. We’re lucky he was out of ammo by then. Killer wrestler, too. I had to do this to beat him.” He waved his hand about his shattered helmet, which he then removed.

“That was risky.”

“You think?”

The light blinked complete and the hatch opened.

“Did he see it?” asked Ludmilla.

“No, he didn’t.”

“I saw it from the viewing portal,” said Ludmilla. “Where is your comrade? Did it get him?”

“Knock it off, it didn’t get him and you didn’t see anything,” growled Cormac. “There is no monster. There is no big black space monster.”

Driscoll and Ludmilla were quiet, staring at Cormac.

Cormac frowned and looked about the cabin.

Sergei was no longer tied up, but gibbered softly in the corner.

“What the hell? Why isn’t he tied up?”

Driscoll took Cormac by the shoulders. “Relax. We have bigger problems than what is between our two countries.”

“Tell that to the Commie I just killed.”

“Arkady?” asked Ludmilla.

“Wrestler? Yeah.”

She hung her head a moment, then composed herself as if nothing had been said.

“Sorry, Red.”

“I am Major Ludmilla Serakovna, please address me as such.”

“Whatever, Red.”

“Cormac, don’t. We need to work together to sort this out.”

“Sort what out? We do our mission, we go home. If we’ve lost Ryman, we go home.”

Driscoll shook his head. “Regardless of Ryman, I don’t know that we should go back out there. I only dared to save your life. I told you, I’ve never been so afraid before.”

Cormac shrugged him off. “This has gone far enough. Stop talking about this space monster. Stop thinking you see something that isn’t there.”

“You are half right,” broke in Ludmilla.

“Quiet, Red!” Cormac rubbed his swollen face. “How can I only be half right? I’m all the way right. You’re both delusional.”

“Sergei can see it too. He is terrified.”

“What do you mean ‘see?’ Like, right now?”

Ludmilla nodded.

Driscoll pointed at the viewing window. “It’s been at least partially visible since just after you went into the airlock to look for Ryman.”

Cormac cocked his head, disbelieving the pair of them. Sergei was tucked away in a corner sobbing. “You’re having a laugh,” grumbled Cormac, as he turned to look out the window.

He went silent, staring in disbelief at the refutation of all his accepted knowledge.

A vast blue-black shape writhed and moved its great paddles or perhaps feet one after another not unlike a caterpillar, as if there were even solid ground out the window. Stars winked randomly through the monstrosity, sometimes clouded, sometimes piercing the mottled hide as if visibility were a fluctuating rhythm. Only a score of glowing green eyes at the front remained constant.

Cormac rubbed his eyes and looked again at the gigantic behemoth.

“It almost looks like a tardigrade,” said Ludmilla.“A water-bear.”

Cormac furrowed his brow at that remark and returned to staring at the colossal monstrosity outside their window. “Never heard of ’em.”

“But they are less than six millimeters. This looks to be at least a two kilometers long, maybe more.”

Cormac watched intently, asking, “Why does it flicker?”

Ludmilla agreed. “Like it is phasing in and out.”

“I think it is only partially here.”

“Partially? You were the first one to argue it was here. Now you’re telling me it’s not?”

Driscoll nodded, “Ryman said something about opening a gate, a dimensional window. Maybe we are only seeing a shade of the creature.”

“Entity. I remember now. Ryman called it an entity.”

“A dark entity.”

“What the hell did Ryman get us into?”

The radio crackled alive through Cormac and Driscoll’s headsets. “I am still here.”

“Ryman, you son of a bitch! Where are you?”

“I appreciate your concern. I was about to open the airlock when a cosmonaut that you failed to take care of hit me repeatedly. I lost my grip on your tethers and in trying to escape his brutality, I went free-falling below the station and the X-20. Striking something in the process I was rendered unconsciousness for however long that has been. I awoke to your inane use of my name in vain.”

“Are you hurt?” grumbled Cormac, who then shrugged at Driscoll.

“Ah, yes. I am very sore and do not know that I can climb back up my line. This is much harder than I ever gave you both credit for.”

Driscoll spoke up. “I can pull you in, but before I do, we want an explanation on that thing out there. Is it dangerous?”

“Ah, very. But not to you. Not yet.” Ryman’s breathing was labored and he exhaled roughly several times between his stunted phrases. “Please, Major Driscoll, Captain Ross is injured, will you pull me inside?”

Cormac put his shattered helmet into a cabinet. “You want to give me yours and I’ll go do it?”

“No, you’re still recovering yourself. I’ll do it. I am coming, Mr. Ryman.”

“Good. I await your assistance.”

Driscoll put on his helmet, climbed into the airlock and shut the inner hatch.

“That should have been you,” said Ludmilla. “He is brave man. Not just killer.”

Cormac shrugged. “We all have our failings, and our talents.”

“You may be talented at what you do, but do not think it makes you hero or even valuable. Anyone can kill.”

Cormac smirked, “I’ve heard Russians say, ‘Laughing bride weeping wife, weeping bride laughing wife.’ Which are you?”

“I am not married,” she said, licking her lips.

Cormac flipped a switch and took off his suit.

***

Driscoll opened the outer airlock hatch. “Cormac. Did you turn your radio off? Cormac?”

There was no response.

“He must have,” grunted Ryman. “Can you see me?”

Driscoll scanned past the X-20 and saw the dangling tether going underneath. He then looked toward the Earth and the behemoth that still loomed overheard, its strange image coalescing in and out of reality. “No, Ryman. I can’t see you yet.”

“My line is from the X-20, but I am beneath the Salyut. Dragged like a dog through space. Weak as an infant. Help me.”

“I’m coming, hold on.” Driscoll held Cormac’s secured tether from the airlock back to the X-20 where he could see a line running from the cargo hold down beneath the space plane.

Ryman’s radio crackled, “Where are you?”

“I just reached the X-20. I almost have your line and I’ll pull you in.”

“Thank you.”

Driscoll took firm hold on the tether and planted his feet firmly against the X-20. It was hard work straining against his suit and keeping balance. All movement wished to betray him to become his own satellite orbiting the earth; and from every perspective he could still see the bloated phasing creature listing in the ether like a beached whale.

“Cormac, is your radio on? Are you receiving me?”

“We are alone,” said Ryman cryptically.

Driscoll wondered at that, as well as feeling no weight attached to the tether, but supposed it was because of the zero-G of space. “Are you all right, Mr. Ryman? I can’t tell if you’re about to come up from beneath the Dyna Soar or not.”

“I’m fine!” Ryman leapt up from the X-20’s cargo hold and beat Driscoll with a Baikonur wrench.

Ryman mercilessly struck Driscoll’s limbs and chest repeatedly. Having been straddling the cargo entrance, Driscoll was in the worst possible position to defend himself. In the melee he lost his grip on the X-20’s deck and began to drift away.

Ryman pulled him back and bludgeoned him against the hull of the ship.

“Cry for help and I’ll smash your faceplate in! Turn your two-way radio off.”

Driscoll groaned but did as his tormentor required.

“If our thug of a captain happens to turn his back on, I alone will do the talking. Even now I am sure that what I predicted is occurring.”

Spitting blood, Driscoll mouthed, ‘Why?’ at his cruel keeper.

“I read the psychological reports. Our good captain has a thing for redheads and accents and she for brutes. Their union is the positive-energy half of the necessary invocation. And you, my friend, you and I will be the negative half.”

Ryman battered Driscoll’s limbs again. “What if it didn’t happen this way, you ask? I would make it so. I will it!”

But for the vacuum of space forcing his body apart, Driscoll would have been in a weeping fetal position, but the pressure on his suit and broken bones kept him splayed in agony.

Ryman dragged Driscoll from the X-20 toward the Salyut’s airlock hatch, following the tethered guideline left by Cormac.

“Soon enough this will all be over. Your broken soul will feed and mark the way for the coming of the Dark Levy and I, Chief of the Apostates, will rule at the Grand Decreator’s side!”

Smashing Driscoll’s body into the airlock, Ryman delivered several more brutal kicks and beatings before shutting the hatch. He pressed the Cyrillic flat-topped A button and waited as the pressurization and oxygen adjusted. He broke the seal on Driscoll’s helmet and removed it, and then his own.

Driscoll stared blankly and gasped.

Ryman returned a wicked smile and slammed Driscoll’s head against the steel wall, knocking the broken man unconscious.

***

As the airlock’s pressurization light went green, Ryman opened the hatch and pushed Driscoll through. “Captain Ross! Where are you?”

“I’m here,” said a shirt-less Cormac, as he pulled himself through the docking portal leading to the Soyuz capsule. “What happened to Driscoll?”

“Another cosmonaut that you failed to take care of! That’s what! Why was your radio off?”

Ludmilla lurked behind in the Soyuz docking portal, only half-dressed herself.

“You people,” snarled Ryman. “And your urges.”

“Hey, lay off, Ryman. I don’t have to take anything from you. I was recuperating from almost getting killed out there.”

“Yes, recuperating.”

Ludmilla saw Driscoll and rushed to his aid. “What happened? Where was he hit?”

“Everywhere, I imagine,” said Ryman, placing the Baikonur wrench in a form-fitting sheath on the wall.

She opened Driscoll’s suit and tried to awaken him.

Cormac took hold of one end of the suit and pulled, letting the bulk of the cumbersome outfit down to Driscoll’s waist.

Upon examination, it was readily apparent what instrument had done the damage. Beneath his undergarments, several wrench-shaped bruises splashed purple across his pale frame. Broken bones were obvious even to the naked eye.

Driscoll groaned.

Ludmilla looked to Cormac and shook her head.

“Maybe if I can get him back in time. What else is there to do, Ryman? Did you kill the last—” He bit back saying “cosmonaut” as he looked at Ludmilla.

“Yes, I killed him with his own wrench. He is gone. Drifting away into the void now.”

Both lovers scrutinized Ryman.

“How did you do that, exactly? Thought you said you were too weak to climb back to the station on your own.”

“I was. Driscoll pulled me back and just as I was crawling aboard the vessel and could grab your tether, that last cosmonaut, the one that you failed to eliminate, struck and beat poor Driscoll senseless. I was able to surprise the Soviet from behind.”

Cormac cocked his head, staring deep into Ryman’s eyes. “What now?”

“Watch your tone, Captain. You have failed several mission parameters today. Besides the woman, do we have yet another prisoner?”

“‘Woman?’ I am Major Ludmilla Serakovna.”

“Easy,” cautioned Cormac. “There is another passenger, Sergei Kurylenko. But he is in shock and hardly aware of his surroundings.”

“A Soviet trick, no doubt. He probably radioed a warning to Moscow the first time he was left out of sight.”

Cormac shook his head. “No, I put him in the head. He’s delirious or asleep.”

“I radioed Moscow when you latched onto our vessel,” said Ludmilla.

“So kinda moot point, Ryman. You had to know they would do that.”

Ryman smiled cruelly. “Quite. Sometimes I let others think they have the solutions and that it was all their own devising.”

Furrowing his brow, Cormac rubbed his hands across his face and asked, “So what are we doing?”

“The behemoth you see outside this ship? That leviathan that appears to be the largest living thing you have ever seen? Yes? It is not truly alive, yet it is a god in darkness. A mistress of the void, its natural state is chaos, hence its shifting reality between space and time.”

“But why is it here?”

“We summoned it.”

“We?”

“Not simply you and I. The blood we have spilt this far from the cradle of our existence on terra firma is a beacon through the void. It comes to feed.”

“On what?”

“Souls. Damned souls. All those that have perished in terror and misery, those that cannot let go of their pain, those whose light was snuffed out even before they left the womb, those ravaged with age or even those in simple quiet desperation—in short, nearly every member of humanity. Few can attain a balance to rise above and be translated.”

“So you can send it away?”

“I shall bind it to this space station.”

“That! How?”

“Think of it as a toe-hold. Simply to keep it in balance. It will feed and I will manipulate its power as I invert the Tree of Death and fully enter, navigate and then command the Qliphothic realm.”

“How?”

“I will fully open the gate allowing its entrance to our world.”

“Wrong answer,” said Cormac.

Ryman quickly withdrew a small revolver from his pocket and smirked. “I have accounted for everything.”

Cormac raised his palms in cautious readiness.

“I do not expect you, a mere soldier, to understand half of the gifts I have laid at your very feet. It never ceases to amaze me how people only account for one set of variables. I account for them all.”

“Why?” asked Ludmilla.

“‘Why?’ is the lament of the damned. Truly the only thing that surprised me, Captain Ross, was that you let Sergei live. Not that it matters.”

“Then I’ll ask,” said Cormac. “Why the deception?”

“Because I can. I enjoy that surprise when the terrible revelation of truth hits people. They cannot handle it. Lies are what people want, what they crave, what they deserve.”

“You are the real monster,” spat Ludmilla.

“So it would seem. Bring Sergei here, I want him to see this as well.”

Cormac watched with a wary eye but went to the head and brought the disturbed, babbling man into the cabin.

Still shivering, Sergei saw Ryman’s gun and look of cruel intent and crouched beside Driscoll in submission.

“Even in his madness, he knows the order of things,” said Ryman. He pulled the trigger and put a deafening shot into Sergei’s chest.

Ludmilla screamed.

Sergei crumpled beside Driscoll.

“You bastard!” shouted Cormac.

Ludmilla glanced toward the portal window and saw the leviathan pulse and flex as Sergei’s life force faded.

Ryman held his revolver at the ready, “Hold your tongue, Captain, and respect your betters. There is nothing so ironic as a killer like yourself judging me for doing what you yourself do on a regular basis. Remember, this sacrament could contain your doom or your salvation.”

“I never killed anyone in cold blood.”

“Whatever lie you need to tell yourself, Captain, the end result betrays the truth. You outmatched every man you ever fought, otherwise you would not still be here, and in so doing you knew you would be victorious and thusly what you did was in cold blood.”

Cormac shook his head. “I never know what will happen.”

Ryman chuckled. “Tell yourself that again, if you like.”

Ludmilla focused on the abomination outside. Was it growing larger or moving closer?

“You see it, do you not? How it grows stronger with our very proximity and ruin.”

“It’s growing?”

“Of course, Captain. I learned from the Great Beast personally, when I was but a lad, that it must have tripled in size the day we bombed Dresden.”

Cormac tried to fathom the far-reaching history of this vile sorcery.

“Understand, I bear you no malice, Captain Ross. I greatly respect your contribution to the cause of destruction and a return to the symmetry of darkness. For you there is a place in the Kohort of Darkness. If you learn subservience and embrace the unknowable wisdom, you might even become one of my chosen lieutenants.”

Cormac concealed his disgust as best he could, but for a man hard as diamond, not wearing such upon his scarred face was difficult. “What do you want?”

“What I have always wanted. You to pilot me back to earth after I perform the ceremony that will bind the Mistress of the Void to this station and thusly our very reality.”

“Why could you not do this from the Earth?” asked Ludmilla, with a tone daring Ryman to shoot her.

“I needed to be close. To see for myself the marvelous work and wonder. I needed to feel the darkness and know that I did this. And,” he paused a long while, “it can be complicated piercing the veil between worlds. It takes joint positive and negative energies. You both supplied the positive and now I shall perform the negative.”

Cormac and Ludmilla stared in wonder as Ryman produced his grimoire from a pouch built into his space suit.

“I recited the opening passages earlier to bring the shadow of the leviathan you see outside into our realm. It was always there, but fully ineffable and nigh invisible until tonight.”

“It was always there?”

“Of course. Nothing spontaneously appeared. Everything has always existed.”

Ryman thumbed the thick pages, looking for the correct verse, ever watchful and keeping his revolver trained on Cormac.

“What more do you want me to do?” asked Cormac, clenching his jaw.

“Nothing. Take Driscoll’s helmet to replace your own and go prepare the X-20 for our departure.”

“You mean to leave him here?”

“Of course. He is useless, except as a conduit. His fractured form is perfect. If you will serve, you will obey.”

“And her?”

“Forget her. She was merely a tool for the positive energies. You may dispose of her if you wish.”

Ludmilla’s rage flared, staring at both men with a scorn only a woman can muster.

“Look at her. She is dangerous. If you don’t take care of her, I will be forced to do so.”

“Nyet! Do not touch me!” she shouted, backing away.

Cormac held his hands up in a supplication of her anger and stepped away from her and toward Ryman.

Still perusing his book, Ryman waved his pistol in a irritated yet idle manner, saying, “Do not tempt fate and make me nervous, Captain. Kindly back away and leave me to my work. If you wish to live, you will go out and prepare the X-20. That is all. I am done with this game.”

“Tell me, Ryman. What will that thing do to the Earth?”

“It will change everything you think you know. Move,” he ordered, as he put the grimoire down and went to the Salyut’s control panel, which displayed the position of the station over the Earth at any given time. He seemed intimately familiar with the readings, despite his earlier claim of inability to understand Russian. “We have less than fifteen minutes. Decide.”

Cormac looked to Ludmilla. “Get into the Soyuz and go.”

“No!” shouted Ryman in his greatest break of composure. Breathing deep, he calmly said, “If she matters so much to you, both of you may join me in the X-20. She can become one of us.”

Cormac took a step, blocking Ryman’s line of sight of Ludmilla and the Soyuz docking entrance. “You’ve played your hand. Everything you say is a lie. I won’t let you finish whatever this is.”

“There is still a place for you, if you will but obey.”

“I don’t think so. You couldn’t possibly know how to land the X-20 and survive, no matter how many simulator runs you might have done. But a Soyuz capsule? Anybody could ride that. And I won’t let you have it.”

Ryman frowned and took quick, careless aim.

The deafening shot took Cormac in the left arm.

“Get out of here, Red!”

Ludmilla disappeared through the docking bay and slammed the hatch shut.

“No! Damn you by all the devils in the nine hells!” screeched Ryman, as he took a reckless shot at the docking hatch. The bullet ricocheted from the heavy steel door and thudded into the padded interior walls of the Salyut.

“You! You have ruined decades of planning! Years of work!” cried Ryman, as he wheeled and brought his snub-nosed pistol into Cormac’s face.

The Soyuz capsule groaned as Ludmilla broke the connection and it jettisoned away from the Salyut.

The cold warrior held his wound as droplets of blood left his arm and floated freely about the cabin. “You got me weeping, but this ensures you don’t kill me and leave me here.”

Ryman backed away, putting the pistol down. “Well played, you barbaric savage. Allow me to finish my work and then take us both back to Earth and this can still be the beginning a fortuitous alliance. Bygones can be bygones and all that.”

It was Cormac’s turn for lop-sided grin. “Sure. What do you have left to do?”

“I have but to read some few more passages from the Lex Libre Hereticus and take a virtuous life—definitely not yours. Driscoll’s. Why do you think I chose him? Then the piercing of the veil and binding of the darkness to this station, which when it crashes to Earth will make me a god in darkness as well. I will burn the light and take back our dominions.”

“And to do that you need to kill Driscoll and what else?”

Ryman gave a grimace. “Do not interrupt or mock my life’s work. Simply because you fail to comprehend what I do does not mean it is not real!”

“I’m not mocking, I’m asking. Mind if I get ready?”

“Of course not, just keep your distance. I am unnerved.”

“Yeah, me too.”

As Ryman began his incantation, Cormac did keep his distance, bandaging his still bleeding wound. He then put his space suit back on as well as Driscoll’s helmet. He opened the airlock and placed Ryman’s helmet inside. He did not close it.

Though Ryman sat across the room and recited from his grimoire, he held his pistol close.

Cormac appeared curious but left a good amount of space between them. He then rummaged through the cabinets and took a handful of supplies, the Cubans and vodka. He was weakening from blood loss and knew that his first instinctual plan of attack would likely fail against a rested, armed antagonist. But there was always a plan B.

Waiting until Ryman seemed as involved as he would ever be, Cormac picked up Driscoll’s still breathing body and flung it into the airlock.

“What are you doing?” shouted Ryman, drawing his pistol.

Cormac drew the Baikonur wrench from its wall sheath and threw it with all his might.

Another deafening echo from the revolver rocked the station as the bullet hit the steel hatch and ricocheted.

Ryman’s sure shot was thwarted by the careening wrench which missed the man but struck the wall behind and came hurtling back again.

Cormac dove into the airlock and slammed the door shut. He hit the pressurization control, whispering, “Hang on buddy,” to the labored breathing of Driscoll. He then placed Ryman’s helmet on Driscoll and sealed it.

Ryman’s voice crackled over the radio. “You think your escape will avail you anything?”

“Doesn’t matter. I got your ‘Eye of Newt’ right here.”

“Yes, perhaps you have him on the other side of this steel door. But if he dies in the next few moments from your manhandling or even if he cannot handle the pressures of the vacuum of space, I will still succeed and draw upon that energy. The behemoth cares not whether you kill Driscoll or I do, it will savor his soul all the same and work dark magicks to my benefit. And oh, the horror for you that I will rain down!”

“That’s a chance I’m willing to take.”

Ryman then screamed unintelligible curses through the radio as Cormac popped open the exterior hatch and gently pulled Driscoll through.

There was only a single tether looped through the bar below the hatch and back to the X-20. An irritating trick of Ryman’s somehow. Cormac held the tether with his left hand and Driscoll’s harnesses with his good arm. He took careful gentle steps.

“You were supposed to be the best. You were supposed to be a soldier that followed orders. A killer beyond reproach!”

“People change.”

“No, they do not,” snarled Ryman. “My ceremony is finished. With his death, I conquer.”

Cormac looked up at the pulsing leviathan. It loomed larger than ever, phasing in and out of reality. Soon its presence would momentarily blot out the sun.

They were halfway to the X-20 when a rumble shook the entire station and a sudden jerk almost made him lose both his grip on the tether and Driscoll.

“I will not fail! you both will die for this insult!”

Cormac instantly knew Ryman was firing the Salyut’s boosters. Edging closer to the X-20, Cormac felt blood soaking his entire left sleeve and shoulder. Moisture began to collect inside his helmet, making it difficult to see.

“You will fall,” taunted Ryman, as he jerked the controls of the Salyut and randomly fired and extinguished the boosters.

A sudden jolt whipped and hit Cormac in the back.

The tether had snapped, as had the X-20’s tentative hold via armature to Salyut.

All four masses were tumbling independently through the Detritosphere. Both the tether and Driscoll were stolen from his grasp. He was cast loose into outer darkness.

“Your hubris is your undoing.”

Cormac reached for Driscoll’s motionless body.

“Doom is coming.”

He strained.

“We are foot soldiers of the Dark Levy.”

Fingers wet with blood or sweat slimed against the inside of his glove.

“It will eat your souls.”

The tumbling Salyut was below or above them by more than twenty feet.

“The Mistress of the Dark...”

Cormac had never been so far without a tether.

“...and her children are impatient.”

He caught Driscoll’s limp gloved hand, pulling him closer.

“An eternity in the maw of damnation.”

The Salyut was separated from them below by more than fifty feet, but it was moving in a revolution and would soon enough be coming back down upon their heads.

“In the absence of Light, all are one.”

The X-20 tumbled a short yet unreachable distance away, the tether still attached, drifting alongside, equally unattainable.

“Against the thrice-damned light, we shall always fight.”

The Salyut cast a shadow, finally blocking out the terrible monstrosity.

“Are you dead yet?”

“Not hardly.”

Re-orienting himself to the oncoming Salyut, Cormac prepared what would be his only chance.

The Salyut came up fast.

Holding tight as he could to Driscoll, Cormac tensed.

The station hit with a jarring squish in his boots.

Cormac jumped using the Salyut’s impact to propel himself at the X-20.

Though the azimuth in Cormac’s own mind was close, he missed the X-20 by several feet. His fingers were outlined against the sun, cruelly empty.

The Salyut and X-20 drifted by in an awful slow motion of despair.

The tether flailed behind.

His hand shot out against all the blood and doom, and Cormac caught the lifeline.

I seemed like it too agonizing hours to pull himself and Driscoll aboard the X-20.

Inside, he strapped the unconscious major into Ryman’s former seat, then fired up the Titan booster, shooting himself ahead of the revolving Salyut.

“Hey, Ryman. Remember what I do up here.”

The radio crackled to life. “You’re still alive? I would have thought you would have accepted your fate and embraced the darkness at last.”

“Yeah, I don’t do that.”

“Sergei must have been a suitable enough conduit. Can you see from whatever lost perspective you have that a tendril from the leviathan now engulfs the station? Accept that I have succeeded and will take the monstrosity back to Earth and rule!”

“Yeah, about that. What happens if you can’t make it back to Earth?”

“You cannot stop me. When we reach the atmosphere, my powers shall be complete. I had feared my return without a suitable vehicle, but I feel the power pulsing from the Mistress of the Void, I know I will survive re-entry and the I shall burn a madness deep into the world.”

Cormac turned the X-20 into a rendezvous directly ahead of the Salyut. “Remember what I do up here? I’m the best.” He dumped the load of ball bearings directly into the flight path of the Salyut.

There was no possibility of the Salyut changing its course on such an abrupt path. Ryman’s screams, instantly silenced, were testament of such.

For every light, there is a darkness. Repulsed by its loss of a conduit, the Mistress of the Void retreated to await another time and avenue to enter this realm.

There is no “fair” in the universe, but there is justice.

The Shadows of Titan

Carter Reid and Brad R. Torgersen

The sky was dim. Dimmer even than the Puget Sound’s on a rainy winter day. And there were no clouds. Just a persistent, dirty-yellow haze. As if the smog over Mexico City had thickened and dropped to ground level—only I was reasonably certain it had never drizzled liquid methane in Mexico’s Federal District.

The Celsius reading in my helmet’s field-of-view display said it was a crisp 179 degrees below zero. I could faintly hear the susurrations of my coldsuit’s circulation system as it piped reheated antifreeze throughout. The battery had been rated at twelve hours during coldsuit testing in Antarctica, where things only got to about 80 below. Judging by how rapidly the charge bar in my FOV was presently dropping, I guessed we each had about four hours before we had to get back to the Gossamer’s descent module for a battery swap, and a break.

Which was fine by me.

Titan kind of gave me the creeps.

“What do you make of it?” asked a voice in my ears.

Captain Bednar, playing it cool.

“No idea, ma’am,” I said honestly.

Clad in a coldsuit built for a woman’s physique, Bednar’s arm was pointing at the four-story-tall pyramid that thrust out of the heaped ice of Titan’s surface. We’d seen the artifact on accident as we’d come in to land. It didn’t show up on Doppler or infrared. And it had been too small to be seen from orbit. A chance look out a porthole had done the trick. It had taken us ten minutes in a rover to get here from the designated landing coordinates.

That the pyramid was not a natural landform had long since become obvious. Its sides were smooth and black like obsidian, and the drops of methane that precipitated out of the nitrogen atmosphere immediately ran down the pyramid’s sides—like it was coated in non-stick Teflon.

But who had put the pyramid here, and why, and for what purpose, were complete mysteries.

Captain Bednar’s arm slowly dropped to her side.

I looked at her as she continued looking at the artifact.

The expression on her face, as seen through her helmet’s clear face shield, was almost greedy with anticipation.

I felt a twinge.

Technically, she was a mutineer.

According to the mission plan established years before leaving Earth, Bednar was supposed to have remained in Titan orbit with our two crew who were manning the Gossamer’s nuclear-rocket-powered return module. Instead she’d handily ripped that page out of the plan upon our having entered Saturn space—and there’d been precious little any of us could say otherwise.

After all, what was Mission Control going to do? Fire her?

She was the captain. And this far from Earth the captain’s word was law. Once her intentions had been declared, we were more or less helpless to prevent her from going down.

So we’d bundled into a craft originally built for three people—some of us gritting our teeth—and made our way down via parachute and, then, hot air balloon.

“Is somebody getting pictures?” asked another voice.

Specialist Majack—our other female on the descent team. She’d lingered back at the rover while the rest of us approached the pyramid in slow steps. I got the sense Majack found Titan as unsettling as I did. Visibility was only about a hundred meters or so, before things just kind of... faded out. The horizon was a murky blur in the distance, and the sun was a small, semi-bright disc that seemed too far away to give any comfort.

Specialist Kendelsen cursed and remembered his media recorder dangling from a cord attached to his torso. All of the coldsuits had digital cameras integrated into their helmets, recording every second of our time on the surface. But Kendelsen had the high-res device that would get the good stuff our bosses back on Earth would want to see. No flash bulb necessary. The device had been designed to compensate for Titan’s perpetual low-light conditions.

Kendelsen held it at waist level and began a slow, steady reconnaissance around the pyramid proper.

Excited jabbering—from Pilot Jibbley and Engineer Gaines above—told me that they were getting the recorder feed being beamed to the rover, then back to the descent module, then up to the return module.

“Historic,” Bednar said to no one in particular.

“That’s what you wanted, right?” I said.

Captain Bednar glared at me for a moment, then she went back to staring at the artifact.

“They’ll be talking about this discovery for decades,” she said. “Maybe even centuries. Nothing else like it in over one hundred years of probes and landings. And it was just... dumb luck that we happened to pass over it as we floated down. What are the odds, Chief?”

“Million to one,” I said. And meant it. I too was feeling more than a little impressed by the fact that if our landing zone had been even a few kilometers further in any direction, we’d have missed the pyramid completely.

“There’s something on the south side,” Kendelsen said with obvious excitement.

“What is it?” Bednar demanded.

“I might be wrong, but it looks like... a door.”

Majack, Bednar and I all hop-trotted in the relatively weak gravity, our path taking us around the way Kendelsen had gone until we too could see what he was talking about.

And sure enough, it had the looks of a door, albeit buried halfway beneath the icy surface. I walked up to it and ran my suited hand along the door’s edges. I couldn’t tell if the material of the pyramid was hot or cold. My coldsuit’s fingertip sensors didn’t seem to register a temperature at all.

When I spotted the small circle in the middle and tapped it reflexively with a fist, I didn’t actually expect anything to happen.

I fell back into the crumbled slush at Captain Bednar’s feet as the door rapidly slid up and out of the way, and a ramp lowered into the black bowels of the pyramid.

All four of us were dead silent.

Then Captain Bednar sprinted past me and down the ramp, disappearing almost immediately into the darkness within.

“Chief..?” Specialist Majack said, half-questioning, as she and Kendelsen stared down at me.

I spat a couple of choice curses, stood up, and tapped the small control panel on the forearm of my coldsuit. My helmet lamps came on, throwing thick shafts of yellow-tinged white light into the air in front of me. The lamps would drain battery power even faster than the reheaters, but there was no choice now.

“Kendelsen stays,” I said. “Majack, get back to the descent module. Grab as many spare coldsuit batteries as you can, along with the augers and surface sample lockers containing our smaller tools. I’m going in to see what our beloved commanding officer is up to.”

“You don’t want me to come with?” Kendelsen said, disappointed.

“No,” I said. “If neither myself nor Captain Bednar return, somebody’s gotta stay outside to help Majack. I’ll keep sending audio and telemetry as long as I can.”

Which didn’t seem like it would be too long. Already we’d lost Bednar’s feed. Whatever was blocking exterior electromagnetic examination was cutting off our suit-to-suit communications too.

“Understood?” I asked, looking from face to anxious face.

They said yessir in unison, and then I was off.

***

I couldn’t be sure, but the pyramid seemed far larger on the inside than it had on the outside.

Of course, with how the ramp spiraled rapidly down into the interior, the pyramid’s total cubic volume was increasing enormously with every story I descended. Just how big was the damned thing? A hundred meters tall? Two hundred? How far into Titan’s crust had it sunk? Or had it been deliberately buried? Or had unknown eons simply allowed ice to accumulate over the artifact, sliding down the sides and piling up at the base, one layer at a time?

I found myself huffing and sweating as I jogged along the ramp. There’d been no junctions or forks so I had to assume that as long as I kept moving, I’d find Captain Bednar eventually.

I practically ran into her when I hit the bottom of the ramp. She grunted as our suits thunked together, then I noticed what had made her stop short.

We were in a rectangular room perhaps fifty meters long by thirty meters wide by ten meters tall. Everything—the ramp, the walls, the ceiling—was made of the same seemingly impervious black material as the outside of the pyramid. But from a circular depression in the exact center of the floor of the room, came an unnervingly eerie, green light.

The Captain began walking slowly towards the depression.

I followed five steps behind.

“Hell of a way to lead from the front,” I said, annoyed. “You’re proving to be very good at doing whatever the hell you want, whenever the hell you feel like it.”

Captain Bednar spun and looked at me, our face shields almost touching. Her eyes were hot with anger.

“I don’t particularly care if you’re still pissed at me for pulling rank. You’re not the one who got passed over for the Europa flight because you wouldn’t polish the Assistant Mission Director’s knob. I had to bust my ass to find a way to work around that lovely little problem, and once I got posted to the Titan flight I knew in my bones there was no way anybody was keeping me from coming down to the surface.”

“You broke the rules,” I said, matter-of-fact.

“Chief, don’t be dense. Who cares about the rules now? Look at what we’ve found. This is it. This is the proof we’ve been searching for, ever since the dawn of the Space Age. No humans built this place. No humans even knew this place existed until now. Whatever it is—whatever it’s meant to tell us—is going to be of enormous impact back home. This changes everything. We aren’t alone. In fact, we were never alone. Ever. How long has this pyramid been here? How long has it been waiting for us to find it?”

“You make it sound like the thing’s a message in a bottle,’ I said.

“Isn’t it, Chief? Why build a thing with a doorway sized more or less accurately for humans? Why create a passageway sized more or less accurately for humans? Why construct something that’s deliberately stealth-guarded against sensors, and cloaked from above by the atmosphere? Unless the point was to wait until we were here—in the flesh.”

“Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out,” I said. “So how about we retrace our steps to the surface and put together an actual plan before we do anything more rash than we’ve already done? Maybe you’re prepared to break rules, but I’m still the goddamned second-in-command on this flight, and I say we be methodical in our investigation of this—”

But I could already tell my words were useless.

The light from the depression had entranced Bednar.

She turned away from me and walked slowly towards the depression. I heard her quietly gasp when she got to the edge.

I took a few quick steps to catch up with her, then I froze as I saw what was in the concave bowl in the floor.

Was it alive? Had it been alive once upon a time?

I honestly couldn’t tell.

It was big. Bigger by far than a horse. Elephant big. A sinewy body with armored sections along its spine lay curled numerous times, like a millipede. Only each of the legs was tipped with what appeared to be three digits, and the head... the head was an unspeakable cranial collection of grotesque, melon-like lobes interspersed with darker-colored fontanels and punctuated with six oversized, albino-pink eyes—each wide open and seemingly staring at nothing. A mouth-like orifice was in the center of the head, studded with viciously sharp teeth, and disgorging three snake-like tongues that hung lifelessly to the floor of the depression.

The bowl glowed, if ever so softly. Like a weak chem light.

“Christ, what a horror,” I said, resisting the urge to put my hand up to my face. Getting sick in my coldsuit helmet at this particular juncture wasn’t a good idea.

“Horror?” Bednar said. “I think it’s breathtaking.”

“A breathtaking horror,” I said.

Captain Bednar turned to look at me, her expression most disapproving, then she turned back to the creature.

“A pet?” I guessed.

“Or the architect herself,” Bednar corrected.

“How do we know it’s a she?”

“We don’t. But I think we can be reasonably certain this place is not a galactic kennel.”

“The creature can’t be alive.”

“I believe you’re right, Chief. It is dead. Or at least in a state approximating what humans call death. Stasis, maybe?”

Captain Bednar got down on her knees and reached a hand into the bowl to touch the thing.

She suddenly yanked her arm away.

“What happened?” I said.

“My arm went numb. Instantly.”

I got down on my hands and knees and reached hesitantly towards the creature. As soon as my fingers were over the precipice of the bowl, they went numb in a heartbeat. I left them there for a brief instant, a tingling sensation at my knuckles, then I drew my hand back. Quickly, feeling flowed back into my fingers as I flexed and moved them.

“Whatever’s kept the corpse from decaying, I wouldn’t try climbing down in there to find out. Your whole body might get short-circuited. If we’re going to examine the creature more closely, we’ll have to have equipment to pull it out.”

“What then?” she asked.

“I won’t be surprised if it blinks and jumps up after us, roaring for blood.”

“Silly,” she said.

“Yeah, maybe. But tell me honestly—that thing doesn’t make your skin crawl? I certainly wouldn’t want to see it revived. Though I wager you can add a Nobel to your name once the biologists back on Earth carve this thing up. The first extraterrestrial life form ever discovered, and it looks practically as brand new as the day it croaked. I wonder if it laid any nasty eggs in here for us to find? You know, like they always show in the movies?”

“I hardly think this race would have gone to all the trouble of constructing this place if their only goal was to entice us here for the purpose of impregnating or eating us. An alien civilization capable of traveling the stars is doubtless well advanced beyond our own. Their purposes are probably well advanced beyond ours as well. Imagine cave-dwellers encountering the mummy of an astronaut in his capsule. They’d be baffled too.”

“Maybe so, Captain,” I said, “but now that we’ve actually seen the freaking thing, I’m going to have to insist—despite your wishes to the contrary—that we get back up to our two Specialists and decide on a sensible course of action. You’ll have your name in the history books. There’s no more worry about that. Now let’s get our shit together as a team, okay?”

Captain Bednar turned around and approached me, her eyes hard.

“Since I don’t think anyone else can hear us right now I think it’s best if you and I get square,” she said.

“If you’d stayed in orbit like you were supposed to, there’d be nothing for me to get ‘square’ about, ma’am,” I said.

“Can you honestly say you’d have just done as you’re told and remained aboard the return module?”

“Doing as I’m told has gotten me pretty far in life.”

“Ah, right. Your military background. Thankfully this is an all-civilian expedition, and in the civilian world it’s people who think on their feet who get ahead. I did what I had to do because I don’t take ‘no’ for an answer, and that’s what’s gotten me pretty far in life. So either we can keep butting heads about it or we can work together. You don’t have to like me, I don’t have to like you, but we’re here. And there’s important work to be done.”

I considered telling her where to stuff it, but held my tongue. She had a point. The only way back to orbit was aboard the ascent module attached to the top of the descent module. It was a one-way trip. We all came down as a unit and we’d all go up as a unit, no exceptions. With the pyramid having been discovered and now this alien corpse on our hands, it was probable we’d push our reserves to the limit getting samples and recording data. And even I didn’t want to spend the next couple of weeks engaged in a cold war with my boss.

“Okay,” I said, “you’ve got me on points. But I want you to know I think it was a damned selfish thing you did, breaking protocol for your own ends. You might have a PhD. You might be smarter than me. But you’ve got a ton to learn about real leadership. Right now nobody on this mission trusts you. Not anymore. Because you’ve proven you’re willing to put your own interests ahead of theirs.”

She wanted to retort. I could see it in her eyes.

But she didn’t. All she did was let out a long, slow breath.

“You’ve got me on points,” Captain Bednar said.

We stared in silence for many uncomfortable seconds.

Then she slowly walked past me and began to plod stubbornly back up the ramp.

***

It took all day for the four of us to get all the necessary gear moved into place.

When it became apparent that we didn’t have anything with enough torque to lift the alien out of the basin—despite the reduced gravity—we decided it would be better to just get fluid and tissue samples. Then leave the monster where it lay. Another job for another time.

For no particular reason that any of us could discern, the room maintained a perpetual temperature of 41.3 degrees Celsius. Warmer than the human body, and far, far warmer than the surface outside. There was no door to close at the bottom of the ramp, yet no constant rush of warm nitrogen atmosphere fleeing up the ramp while cold nitrogen atmosphere flooded down it.

Neat trick, I thought. A barrier-free airlock.

Though what might be generating it was beyond my ability to guess. I only knew that at some almost imperceptible point halfway up the ramp, things got very cold very fast.

Kendelsen took hours of pictures and video footage while Majack rigged a scalpel on the end of a telescoping pole, along with an IV feed that would draw blood out of the beast. Assuming it even had blood in the first place.

I helped Majack balance the cutting tool, a bit like using a bridge with a pool cue. One by one we carved out little hunks of the alien and deposited them into specimen bags which were sealed tightly and labeled by Bednar, who was keeping a fastidious catalogue.

Interesting thing: None of the wounds oozed even a single drop of liquid, but as soon as we took some of the meatier samples out of the mystery numb zone surrounding the bowl, the pieces bled like crazy.

“I can’t wait to get these under a microscope,” Bednar exclaimed as Majack and I turned our attention to the thick-gauge hypodermic needle on the end of the second pole. Kendelsen stood by with the ten-liter collapsing container while Bednar scrutinized the various places we’d already excavated, looking for exposed veins or arteries.

“There,” she finally said. Her finger aimed at a particularly engorged vessel running along the underside of one of the eyelids.

Majack was slow and deliberate, seeing as how there wasn’t much chance of the subject running away. She pushed the hypodermic into the creature’s flesh, adjusting her trajectory a bit so that the shaft of the needle slid into the vein, as opposed to puncturing through into the tissue beyond.

The IV tube remained conspicuously empty.

“We’ll have to siphon,” I said.

Kendelsen unplugged the tube and crushed the plastic container back down to its flat shape, then re-attached the tube and began to pull the container open again by its handles. The pressure differential wasn’t enough at first, but as Kendelsen pulled harder a thick stream of fluid issued into the IV tube through the needle, and eventually into the bag.

We all stood and watched transfixed as Kendelsen kept pulling and the container kept filling.

“Probably enough,” I said when we had a couple of liters.

“No,” Bednar said, “get as much as you can. Every university on Earth is going to want its own sample for study. The more blood we take back with us the better.”

“Whatever you say, ma’am,” I said, and did not argue the point further.

When Kendelsen had extracted enough liquid to fill his container to four-fifths capacity, he put a pincher on the IV tube and uncoupled it from the container’s mouth, screwing an air-tight cap into place before carefully hefting the container over to a small, wheeled sled that we’d brought down from the rover. On it were all of the samples arranged according to Bednar’s ad hoc categorization scheme.

“Want more?” I said to the captain.

“Maybe, if I am not satisfied after taking a closer look. Let’s get all of this back to the descent module for safe keeping.”

“What about the rest of the structure?” I asked.

“It’s not going anywhere,” she said. “And neither is our alien friend here. There will be time to do a more thorough examination of the hardware once I’ve sent a full preliminary report back to the return module for transmission to Earth. Thus far we’ve not disclosed anything specific to Mission Control. That’s going to have to change, or they’re going to begin getting nervous.”

Truth be told, I wasn’t exactly sure what else it was I could be looking for. I’d already given the room at the bottom of the ramp a thorough examination, and had found no other doors leading to any other parts of the pyramid. There were no obvious display panels or control boards or knobs or switches of any kind. And when I ordered Kendelsen to apply a cutting torch to one of the walls, it didn’t even leave a scratch.

I had begun to wonder if perhaps the alien pyramid wasn’t just an analog of Earth’s ancient pyramids: a tomb. Perhaps for some bygone alien ruler who’d decided he wanted his final resting place to be in orbit around Jupiter?

Not a bad choice, I thought. Assuming you could see Jupiter’s rings through the murk in the atmosphere. Maybe the nitrogen air had been cleaner at some point in the past?

Unable to break off or obtain even a sliver of the pyramid’s structural material, I hoped that a carbon dating analysis of some of the alien’s tissue would be able to give us an accurate estimate as to how old the thing might be.

We gathered up what tools we needed to take back with us on the rover, snapped off the tripod lamps which had been giving us enough light to work by, and went back up the ramp, pushing our sled full of samples as we went. An insulated lid over the top of the sled kept the samples more or less at their ambient temperature as we crossed into the cold. A thick power cable wound its way along the side of the ramp—like a piece of familiar string in a strange and forbidding maze.

The cable took us unerringly to the top, and the open sky. I dutifully uncoupled it from the auxiliary power jack on the side of the rover, then helped Kendelsen and Majack get the sample sled into the rover’s cargo bay. Then I took shotgun as Captain Bednar slid into the driver’s station, with Majack and Kendelsen pulling rumble seat.

We rolled in relative silence.

If the first half of the day had been a cacophony of excited speculation and chattered hypotheses, the second half had slowly wound down to just occasional sentences and practical exchanges. The mood was... tense. Not the sort of overt tension that snaps tempers, but a very subtle tension that underlay mildly creased brows and put little downturns on the corners of every mouth.

It was the place, I decided. Titan. Gloomy as Hades. Like being stuck perpetually in the shadow of a range of pregnant thunder clouds.

The headlights of the rover lanced into the yellow haze as Bednar followed the mild ruts which had been worn in the ice over successive trips. We knew from experience we wouldn’t actually see the descent stage of the Gossamer until we were practically on top of it.

Upon arrival we gingerly got the sample sled up the descent stage’s main ramp and into the airlock. Then Kendelsen, Majack and myself went to climb the ladder up to the auxiliary airlock. We’d not be exposing any of the samples to our living space. There was no defined protocol for handling xenobiological specimens, but even Captain Bednar wasn’t going to take chances. We’d leave them in the main airlock where they could be kept quarantined.

Once Bednar was through with her examination we’d move the samples to one of the outboard cargo pods on the ascent stage. If they froze in there it wouldn’t matter. They’d have to be frozen sooner or later for the long trip back to Earth.

We quickly moved some of the portable science equipment from the descent stage’s lockers over to the main ramp, where Bednar carried it all up piece by delicate piece. Once she was satisfied she had everything, we all went back to the auxiliary air lock and went inside for the night, quite exhausted.

***

After dinner and a quick check-in with the Gossamer’s return module, we retired. After months in microgravity it felt good to lapse into the deep sleep afforded by a day of manual labor. I had barely gotten my bunkbag zipped when my mind swam and I was drifting off towards pleasant dreams of home.

Only, the damned alien kept bothering me.

Several times I startled awake as visions of the alien in the pyramid suddenly came to life, writhing and awful.

The last dream was the strangest. Because it wasn’t about the alien. It was about the pyramid itself. I dreamt I was standing on the surface of Titan, only my eyes were able to penetrate the haze and survey the ice all the way to the horizon. One by one I saw the tips of pyramids identical to the one we’d found, all crashing up through the ice. Thousands of them.

It terrified me.

So much so that when the alarm went off and we each began to stir for the morning routine, I couldn’t quite wash the feeling out of myself. Seeing all of those identical pyramids come up through the ice had filled me with panic. I wasn’t sure why.

I intuited that I hadn’t been the only one who’d had bad dreams. Nobody said much in between bites or slurps. I noticed also that all of us kept our eyes away from the portholes. The deliberately bright lights in the galley were a relief compared to what it was like outside.

Only Captain Bednar seemed energized. She finished her food quickly and changed into a HAZMAT outfit—thinner, and more work-friendly than a coldsuit.

I got up from the galley table and went with the captain to the main airlock doors. Unlike the auxiliary lock, the main lock was actually a double: an exterior compartment with a door to the outside, separated by a middle door, then an interior compartment, followed by door to the rest of the craft. I could just make out, through the windows in each of the doors, the sample sled sitting in the outer compartment.

“Make sure the recorders are running the whole time,” Bednar said.

“Roger that,” I replied.

The HAZMAT suit was like a head-to-toe body stocking, but with a helmet designed only to keep air out, and with a hose leading to a tiny backpack filter that ensured air coming in was clean and pure.

I watched as the captain went into the inner compartment, closing the interior door, then entering the outer compartment through the middle door, which closed behind her. A red light on the airlock panel told me that the inner compartment was now in vacuum, so that the outer compartment was effectively sealed off.

Captain Bednar’s monotone forensic-type narrative droned through the overhead speaker while Majack, Kendelsen and I finished eating. Today we’d let the alien be and focus our examination on the pyramid itself. Since the artifact was invisible to most of our sensors, I’d gotten the idea to try some seismic analysis, to determine the pyramid’s full size and shape beneath the ice.

We checked in again with the return module, prepped our coldsuits for the day’s EVA, and were just about to head for the auxiliary lock when Captain Bednar began cursing loudly.

I was the first one to the inner airlock doors.

I slapped a suited hand on the airlock communications panel.

“What happened?” I said to mic grille.

“Nothing, Chief. It’s just that you won’t believe what this blood is made of.” She wasn’t angry or upset. She was in awe.

“Try me,” I said.

“The organic component is not too different from ours. Simple oxidizing cells to carry oxygen to the tissue, several types of what appear to be antibodies and white cells for combating infection, plus a couple of unusually structured cells for which I can’t begin to guess a purpose.”

“You said ‘organic component’... is there an inorganic component too?”

“Yes,” Bednar said. “I’d call them nanotechnological devices, but far more sophisticated than anything we’ve ever manufactured on Earth. They make up a third the blood’s total mass. Right now they’re just drifting in the fluid, inert. I’m going to take a small portion and put it into a petri dish, then dip in some voltmeter wires and see what happens if I give the blood just a hint of an electrical charge.”

“Do you know what reaction that might cause?” I said.

“No, but that’s the point. If I had to guess, these nanomachines have been without a power source for centuries. Maybe longer. I want to see what happens if I supply them with energy, then observe their behavior under the microscope. To see if I can determined their function.”

I was tempted to tell her that caution was the better part of valor, but decided to keep my lip zipped. I wasn’t a degreed scientist. I’d been brought along for my spaceflight experience: two landings on Mercury, and one flight to the asteroid belt. As long as Bednar wasn’t doing anything deliberately dangerous to the ship or the crew, she was more than welcome to exhaust her curiosity.

I tapped the airlock communication panel again and asked Captain Bednar if we should leave someone behind to keep an eye on things. Her rejection of that idea was brusque and distracted.

I grunted, switched off, and Majack, Kendelsen and me went out the auxiliary airlock and down to the rover. Majack checked the rover’s fuel cell condition while I started the pre-drive warm-up, then Kendelsen drove with Majack in the right seat and me in the bed.

The portholes and running lights of the descent stage were bright, but they rapidly faded into the distance. Eventually all I could see was the same old dirty-yellow mist.

***

When we came to the pyramid, I remembered my bad dream.

All by itself, the pyramid wasn’t frightening.

But I’d been thinking about what the captain had said, that the pyramid was a message for humanity—or at least contained a message. Given the dimensions of the monster inside, there didn’t seem to be any way it could fit in or out of the pyramid using the door and ramp and spiraling corridor we’d been using so far. What did it all mean?

That question occupied my idle consciousness as we placed small seismic charges here and there, popped them, and observed the results on our computer aboard the rover.

Seismographic analysis yielded an interesting picture. The artifact was a perfect quadrilateral pyramid. Moreover, each of the edges was nearly two kilometers in length. The tiny portion of the pyramid accessible to us above the surface was the proverbial tip of the alien iceberg.

I had all three of us comb the interior one more time, yet still we found no hint of any way to explore the rest of the artifact from inside. Perhaps there were other exterior doors further down the pyramid’s faces, doors we couldn’t access without a serious excavation project, for which we were ill-equipped. After all, the alien had gotten in and out at some point. Hadn’t it?

With all of us yawning and eager for dinner, I ordered us back into the rover.

When we returned to the descent module all seemed as it should. The portholes glowed cheerfully, welcoming us home.

Captain Bednar greeted us at the inner door to the auxiliary airlock. The HAZMAT was off. She was wearing her flight suit, and a serious expression.

“Any answers?” was all the captain said.

“Yes and no,” I replied. “I’ll show you the data once you and I can sit down. How about you? After we eat we can combine our findings and put together an official presentation for Mission Control.”

“I took care of that already,” Bednar said.

“Oh?” I raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you think it’s a good idea to be a little more comprehensive? I know the alien corpse is the key item of discovery so far, but I thought it would be best if we—”

“Mission control has been fully apprised of the situation, everything discovered to date, and I’ve made my recommendations for alterations in the schedule. We’re jettisoning the geology and atmospheric experiments so that we can focus solely on completing analysis of the pyramid and effecting the safe return of the alien samples to Earth.”

“We’re leaving?” I said.

“Do you really want to stay on Titan any longer than is necessary?”

“Well, I mean, it’s not Cancun, but there won’t be another flight out here for perhaps as much as a decade. We’ve got food and oxygen for almost three. The fuel cells will last twice as long. Why rush?”

“I’ve made my report, Chief. If you check your updated calendar you’ll see all the details for tomorrow’s itinerary. Please ensure that yourself and Specialists Majack and Kendelsen are up to speed. I want us to get an early start tomorrow. Good night.”

And with that she pivoted on a heel and walked away from us.

Majack and Kendelsen looked at me, eyes wide.

“Heat up dinner,” I said to them. “I’ll be right back.”

The Gossamer’s descent module was too small for anyone to hide in. But the galley and the sleeping compartment and the latrine and all the other sections had been walled off from each other—both in case of emergency decompression, and also to give us the illusion of privacy.

I caught up with Captain Bednar in the single-bed closet that more or less served as our medical bay.

I closed the door behind us.

“They’ll never let you set foot on another flight again,” I said sternly.

“Oh?” was all she said. The arm of her flight suit was rolled up and she was applying tape to a patch of cotton bandage on the inside of her right forearm.

“Yes. Do you really think anyone will be happy about you throwing away the schedule like this? It was bad enough when you added yourself to the descent team. Now you’re scrapping our entire survey plan. Hundreds of scientists just like you spent a lot of time building that plan, building the instruments that came with us on the trip, and now they’re going to be empty-handed. Pyramid or no pyramid, alien or no alien, people back home are going to be royally pissed off at you when we get back.”

“Maybe,” was all she said, finishing up the taping and dropping her sleeve back to her wrist.

“What happened to your arm?” I said, working hard to control my temper. My military side wanted to get up in her face and begin bawling. But given the cagey nature of her responses, I decided to keep a lid on it.

“A small burn,” she said. “I gave that sample of alien blood a little too much current. It boiled over.”

“You’ve been exposed?”

“Hardly. The liquid burned me through the material of the HAZMAT suit without touching the skin. It’s second-degree. I’ll be fine. And if you don’t mind, I think it best if you and I stop having this kind of face-to-face confrontation. It’s not going to reflect well in my final mission brief when we return. I might not be the only one who can’t get on any more flights.”

Ordinarily I hated the idea of hitting a woman. But standing there in the medical bay, I was seriously tempted to make an exception.

“You’re a real piece of work, ma’am,” I said. “All through train-up and all the way out here after launch, you seemed like a team player. The kind of person I could work with. Now the scales have fallen and I’m seeing that you’re just an opportunist. So don’t you worry. I’ll make sure we wrap things up and climb back into orbit without a scratch. We’ll be home before you know it. Then I don’t want to ever see you again. Is that clear?”

“You can’t possibly understand how much things have already started to change,” she said. “It’s okay. There will be a use for you when the ramifications of the alien discovery become clear.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Please check your calendar. Execute your assignment. That is my order. Understand?”

Her eyes drifted to my fists which had balled furiously at my sides. Then she looked back up at my face, saying nothing, as if daring me to take action both she and I knew I’d regret.

I glared at her, teeth clamped down hard.

There was something about her... something about those eyes. Like a shadow had crossed briefly across the whites, then vanished.

She never blinked.

“To hell with this,” I finally said, and walked out of the tiny room.

I found Majack and Kendelsen nibbling nervously on their dinner.

“What’s going on, Chief?”

“A lot of horseshit, that’s what,” I said, keeping my voice low. I leaned over the table, and they leaned over with me.

“Look,” I said, “the captain has ordered us home ASAP. So you can forget everything we trained for prior to the flight. I’m sorry. I know you were both chosen for your specific technical specialties as applicable to the Titan ground survey. But Bednar has decided all that matters now is getting home and showing off the pyramid data and the alien samples. She’s hot-dogging. I don’t like it. I think it’s wrong. But now I’m thinking we—us three—have got to stick together. Got it?”

They both nodded in unison.

“Tomorrow, when the captain takes Kendelsen out to the pyramid to wrap up her examination of the alien, I’m going to set up a two-on-one with Jibbley and Gaines, to make sure they know the score too. Basically it’s us getting our asses out of here, and hopefully the captain doesn’t have any more bright ideas.”

“Wow,” Majack said, her eyes turned down.

Kendelsen just poked at his tray with his spork.

“I never saw any of this coming,” he said despondently.

“None of us did,” I said. “I’ve been on flights where there were personality problems, stuff people have to work out. That’s not too unusual. But I’ve never been on a flight where the goddamned CO turned everything upside down because she felt like it. Mission Control’s going to get an earful from me when we get back. Someone in screening messed up bad. Captain Bednar should never have been posted to this assignment, much less made it through selection.”

“What do we do about her right now?” Majack said, her eyes suddenly darting around the room in alarm.

“Be cool,” I said. “Be professional. Do as she says. Don’t make any waves. All that matters now is that we get back to Earth in one piece. Mission Control will take care of it from there.”

Suddenly Kendelsen and Majack sat straight up.

The hair on the back of my neck tingled.

I slowly turned in my chair.

Captain Bednar was watching us from the threshold to the galley hatch.

“Is there a problem, Specialists?” she said.

“No, ma’am,” Kendelsen said. “Chief’s just going over the plan for our revised mission directives.”

Bednar looked at all of us. Not smiling, not frowning, not blinking.

Then she turned away and left.

The hair on my neck remained on end.

I realized maybe none of us was going to sleep very well that night.

***

And I was right.

More bad dreams. More visions of pyramids bursting through the icy surface of Titan. And the unblinking albino eyes of that... thing, staring at me. All-seeing. Reading my thoughts. My soul.

I dreamt I was standing naked before the alien.

The air was uncomfortably warm.

What do you want? I said loudly, though it seemed as if I’d yelled the question through force of thought.

The great, unholy eyes just stared.

I repeated myself.

Suddenly the beast stirred. It uncoiled itself and crawled up out of the basin in the pyramid. I felt powerless to flee. The creature came directly up to me, its eyes still not blinking.

I’d have screamed if I wasn’t terrified stiff.

One of the creature’s tongues raised up towards my head. There was an orifice on the tip of the tongue.

Suddenly, in a voice utterly different from my own, I heard the words YOU WILL UNDERSTAND boom through my mind.

The tongue thrust for my face.

I came awake gasping, sweat pouring down my brow.

The interior of my bunkbag was clammy.

I slid out of it and went for the latrine.

I passed Majack and Kendelsen on the way. Their faces were haunted.

“Nightmares?” I asked.

They simply nodded.

I tried to offer each of them my best game face, gently tapping my fist on their shoulders and telling them everything would work out as long as they stuck with the Chief. But inside I felt a nugget of dread—at the idea of any of us returning to the pyramid, and also at the idea of spending months aboard the Gossamer trying to work around Bednar. She’d gone from annoying to unsettling to unpredictable, and a small part of my mind wondered if she might get worse.

Some time after 0400 hours—when I’d tossed and turned and tossed and turned, staring across the sleeping compartment at Bednar zipped tightly into her bunkbag, her eyes closed and her breathing rhythmic—I entertained the idea of murder.

There were any number of ways for me to do it. All flights were dangerous, and landings particularly so. Death was always just an unsealed valve away, even under ideal conditions. Here on Titan it ought to be perfectly easy.

Keeping Kendelsen or Majack from discovering the truth wouldn’t be. I’d either have to be very clever about it, or very convincing in my arguments after the fact. The two were young and eager and not at all prepared for the sudden topsy-turvy situation they now found themselves in. Could I win them to my cause through sheer force of will?

I unzipped myself from my bunkbag and quietly padded to the galley, trying to shake such dark thoughts out of my head.

Stupid, man. So completely stupid. Get a grip.

My mug of coffee came out of the boiler: hot and black.

I sat alone, drinking quietly. The coffee was stiff and bitter and I relished its near-scalding temperature as I poured it down my throat, then went for another cup.

When the rest of the descent team roused I was already suited up and ready to work. Having a full docket would give me something to do and take my mind off wondering about Bednar. Hopefully I’d be so exhausted at the end of the day my body would force my mind into a coma for the night.

People moved quietly through the descent module. Barely any talking at all.

I decided to put some music on. Up-beat.

Captain Bednar promptly turned it off.

“What for?” I said.

“It bothers me,” she said.

“You’re going out to the pyramid soon with Kendelsen. Let those of us who are staying behind have a little something to occupy our ears, please?”

Bednar stared at me. I thought I saw that same shadow I’d seen the day before cross briefly over her eyes. But she didn’t say no.

So I turned the music up loud.

And for a couple of hours Majack and I actually forgot about the captain and our bad dreams as we immersed ourselves in making ready to leave Titan. Many, many checklists to plow through. Here and there, adjustments to a pieces of equipment. There was the comfort of familiarity, of practiced routine. Whatever the pyramid might be, the Gossamer was a human thing made by human hands, tangible and reassuring. I caught myself patting the bulkheads of the ship the way a man pats the side of a horse he’s about to ride.

My mood didn’t falter until it was time to load the alien samples.

I reluctantly switched the music off.

Figuring there was no way around an unpleasant chore other than to just plow through it, I put on a coldsuit and went to work. I went out the auxiliary lock and up the main ramp, then in through the exterior door to the main lock.

All of the samples had frozen overnight. I carefully loaded them in bunches into a small backpack, then took them up to the ascent module using the exterior ladder. At the top I placed them in cushioned bundles into their designated external cargo pod, per the captain’s instructions. The hunks of tissue looked particularly alien in the mustard-filtered light of Titan’s day. It occurred to me then that I’d not even thought to ask Bednar any further about her findings, I’d been so thoroughly gobsmacked by her hubris the evening before.

When I used my coldsuit’s tie-in to the descent module’s computer network—to access both Bednar’s brief to Mission Control and to check on the airlock camera footage from yesterday—I was confronted by an encryption challenge hanging in my FOV.

Bednar. She’d never locked me out of any prior communication with our bosses on Earth.

Keeping secrets from the XO during a flight was a hanging offense.

I once again contemplated murder.

I went back to the airlock and began lugging the blood container up. It was heavy, and I was so angry and distracted I almost dropped it. I called for Majack’s help, so she suited up and came outside. Together we carefully carried the container up the side of the descent module and over to the open cargo pod on the ascent module, where the alien samples were arranged neatly.

“Chief,” Majack said as we stowed the container, “wasn’t there more?”

“What do you mean?” I asked. The liquid in the container had become a solid block, black as tar.

“There’s not as much in here as there was when we brought it back from the pyramid.”

“Captain Bednar used up some of it during her examination yesterday.”

“I know, but did she use that much? I’d swear there’s at least a liter gone from what we took originally.”

I stared at the container, transparent walls revealing the sludgy brick of alien blood inside. We’d never taken an exact measurement of volume. Captain Bednar had been too eager to get the blood under her microscope. She’d ruined part of the extraction during the electrical test. Or so she’d told me in the medical bay.

I suddenly thought of the bandage on her arm.

“Chief?” Majack said, seeing my face blanch.

“Stay here,” I said. “I have to go check on something really fast.”

I double-handed my way down the exterior ladder from the ascent stage to the descent stage, and then again from the descent stage to the ground. I ran under the belly of the lander over to the maintenance hatch for the descent stage’s waste tanks. Everything we threw out went into them: urine, feces, uneaten food, and trash. That included the used HAZMAT suit the captain had worn the day before.

I opened an access panel and tapped in the released code on the keypad.

Then I stood back as the descent stage took a dump.

Literally.

The mess steamed furiously in Titan’s cryogenic atmosphere. I pawed through it until I found the HAZMAT suit. Pulling the suit free, I ran back out to the descent stage’s main ramp and spread the suit out on the ground.

With my lamps dialed up to extra-bright, I examined the suit sleeve where Bednar had said she’d been burned.

The soiled material had a gaping hole in it, like acid had eaten through the suit.

I stood up and slowly turned around.

Majack was perched way up on the descent stage, her helmet lamps aimed down at me.

She saw me looking up at her, and waved once.

I waved too.

Then I wondered if we’d have the ascent module prepped in time to take off before Captain Bednar and Specialist Kendelsen returned.

***

Too late. The rover pulled up beside me, appearing almost from nothing.

“Problem with the sewage, Chief?”

Kendelsen’s voice, from where he sat at the wheel. He sounded okay, though I couldn’t see his face very well.

I pointed a soiled finger directly at Bednar, sitting beside Kendelsen.

“Why did you lie to me?” I said.

“Beg pardon?” the captain’s voice said coyly.

“Your electrified alien blood sample. It didn’t just burn you. It dissolved its way straight through the arm of the HAZMAT suit. Why did you lie about being exposed? Who knows what kind of infection has resulted. And you covered it up! It’s possible we’ve all been exposed, through you. We might never be able to go back to Earth now.”

“What?!” Majack said sharply.

“Calm down, Chief,” Bednar said, stepping out of the rover. “I didn’t want to needlessly upset anybody last night. There is no xenobiological contagion in the alien blood. Not even a single virus or microbe. The nanomachines see to that. Best inoculation method ever invented. I think the nanomachines do a whole lot more, too. Do you know how old the alien is, Chief?”

“No, because you locked me out of your brief.”

“Sorry about that. I should have guessed you’d be curious. Look, there’s a method to my madness. Really, there is. Let’s all go inside and I can explain it to you, okay? It’s probably better if you know my real angle at this point, because I need your help to finish my mission. I need everyone’s help.”

I looked at Kendelsen.

“It’s cool, Chief, I started asking her some of the same questions. She filled me in while we closed up shop inside the pyramid. She’s right. It will all make sense.”

I didn’t move, though I could hear Majack huffing and puffing in my ears as she made her way down the ladder to the ground.

“Care to give me the short version?” I demanded.

“Not here, no,” Bednar said. “Come on. Inside.”

Majack rushed up to stand next to me.

I looked at Majack, then I looked at the descent module. It had been our only way down, and the attached ascent module was our only way up. There was literally nowhere else for any of us to go. Titan was a lifeless desert. Once our coldsuits’ batteries ran out, we’d die of hypothermia or suffocation. Whichever came first.

I remembered my intent to contact the crew still aboard the return module—to enlist them as allies.

No better time than the present.

I crossed my arms, being careful to rest an index finger on the button on my forearm control board that toggled communications. A couple of taps and I got the little tone in my ears telling me I’d linked suit-to-ship, via the descent module’s tie-in with the Gossamer’s return module. Then I tapped once more for closed circuit.

“This is Chief Fulton to Pilot Jibbley and Engineer Gaines, do you copy this?”

Nothing.

“Chief Fulton to Gossamer return module, over.”

A little blinking red light in my FOV told me that while my wireless connection was solid, the voice data packets were being lost at 100%.

I toggled back to group communication.

“Okay, Captain. You’d better talk fast, and this had better be good.”

I reluctantly followed Captain Bednar up the ramp.

“Majack in first, then Kendelsen, than me, then you last,” the captain said. “You’re filthy, Chief. Run the airlock’s wash and sterilization cycle twice, please? So that you don’t track shit into the living and workspace.”

I grunted, but didn’t argue. One by one we each cycled through the airlock.

When it was my turn, I did as I’d been told. I stepped into the outer compartment and waited while the exterior door shut and a little blue light began to blink on the control board for the middle hatch. Looking through the windows of the middle and interior doors I could see Bednar and Kendelsen staring at me, with Majack standing a little ways off, her eyes glued to the back of Bednar’s head. The three of them still had their coldsuits on, but their helmets were off.

The cycle began.

Shower heads on the ceiling and walls burst with high-pressure jets of detergent-laced water, cranked up to boiling temperatures. I slowly did a 720 while the jets blasted me so hard it felt like tens of small fists rapidly pummeling the exterior of the coldsuit. Then came the equally violent and equally hot rinse, followed by a pressure drop down to pure vacuum.

The water on the suit boiled and sizzled until it had evaporated completely.

I reached over and tapped the inside control that would begin the process all over again.

When that was finished, the middle door opened and I walked through, letting it close behind me.

Tapping the interior door control I waited for the interior compartment to pressurize off the atmosphere on the other side. The light would change from red, to orange, to yellow, and then to green when it was safe to proceed through.

Only this time the light stayed red.

I checked my suit’s own pressure gauge and it showed vacuum.

“Somebody want to check the system on your side?” I said.

Majack’s helmet may have been off, but she caught my drift as I pantomimed the nature of the problem.

When she stepped up to the interior door to begin pressing controls, Kendelsen suddenly seized Majack’s arms and pinned them behind her.

Majack’s mouth opened in a noiseless scream.

I rushed to the interior door and began beating on the window with my fists. It was meteor-resistant laminate glass. Not even a machine gun could have gotten through. But I pounded anyway.

Then I dropped my arms and backed away, horrified by what I saw happening on the other side.

Kendelsen’s face was slack. Emotionless. He held Majack tightly as she squirmed and bucked in his grasp, trying to get away. Majack’s mouth was wide as she kept screaming, tears of rage and fear flowing down her face.

Bednar faced Majack. The captain’s face was also slack and emotionless.

Bednar leaned in, as if to kiss Majack.

The captain’s mouth opened wide. Inhumanly wide. Her jaw should have broken. A writhing, thick, hose-like tongue shot out of Bednar’s mouth. It plunged into Majack’s mouth before she could close it, and Majack’s eyes suddenly went wide as saucers.

Majack began to convulse.

Bednar’s expression was like that of a sleepwalker: empty and without conscious recognition. Her disgusting, hideous tongue appeared to move almost of its own accord.

Majack’s convulsions lasted a bit longer, her eyes darting from Bednar’s face, to mine through the window in the door, and then back to Bednar. Then they rolled up in her head and Kendelsen released her.

Majack stood motionless, the tongue’s length undulating obscenely as it probed more deeply into Majack’s body.

I’d have vomited if my helmet was off.

As it was, I’d backed up against the middle door of the airlock and was slapping furiously at the control.

Whatever Bednar was now, she clearly wasn’t human. And neither was Kendelsen, I suspected. Nor probably Majack. Not anymore. Nor would I be for much longer if I didn’t find a way to claw through the middle and exterior airlock doors, and get the hell out of the descent module before they could restrain me.

The control to the middle door seemed dead.

Kendelsen pressed the communications button.

“It’s better if you don’t fight it, Chief. Believe me, I know. Very painful. But the captain is right. Once you understand, once you let her explain it to you, then it all makes perfect sense. A new day is coming, Chief. You can be part of it. Let us help you be part of... us.”

I’m pretty sure I told him to fuck himself six ways from Thursday, but was too panicked at that point to really keep track of what was flying through my mind versus what was flying out of my mouth.

With the airlock doors clearly overridden from inside, I was trapped like a rat.

What to do?

Bednar’s tongue slithered out of Majack’s mouth, which closed slowly. Majack continued to just stand there like a mannequin while Bednar and Kendelsen turned to look at me through the window of the interior door.

Blotches of grey seemed to swim across the whites of their eyes.

Similar blotches had begun to swim across Majack’s.

Then her eyes unrolled and she slowly turned to look at me. A thick trail of bloody spittle marred her chin. She walked haltingly forward two steps. Her face was slack and she stared at me unblinkingly.

She spoke. Her voice, yet not her at all:

“You will understand.”

Instantly I recalled my nightmare. The bulbous albino eyes of the alien as it crawled forward, its tongue raised and then horribly striking.

The light on the interior door control turned orange.

They were coming for me. All three of them.

I was a strong man. Kept up my military regimen. But there was no way I’d be able to fend off three grown adults. And once they had my helmet off...

I turned and began to viciously kick at the control for the middle door to the airlock.

“Stop,” Bednar’s voice said in my suit’s helmet.

I kept kicking.

Sparks flew as the panel came apart.

The middle door lifted halfway, and I dove under it, rolling, before it closed again. When I got to the exterior door I found its control also frozen. Instead of kicking, I reached over to the handle with black and yellow caution striping painted across it. Pulling once, I blinked as explosive bolts along the rim of the hatch fired, sending smoke and flame briefly through the outer compartment.

Not even looking, I charged down the ramp.

The rover. The rover was all I had.

I leapt into the driver’s seat and engaged the accelerator without bothering with the checklist. The frame of the rover complained via vibration through the seat of my coldsuit, but it began rolling as I wheeled it about and considered my options.

Gossamer’s descent module was now enemy territory.

I glanced up at the ascent module and realized that my former teammates could simply take off and leave me behind. It only required one person to fly the ascent module, and both Bednar and Majack were rated on the design.

“Chief, where are you going?”

Bednar’s voice.

“What do you care?” I said harshly. “You’ve got the ascent module, and a crew. You don’t need me.”

“We need... everyone.”

The way the captain had said everyone truly freaked me out.

“What for?” I dared to ask as I sped away from the descent module, not particularly paying attention to my direction. “You’re obviously not who you used to be, and you’ve got Majack and Kendelsen now too. What’s the plan, Captain Bednar? Care to enlighten me?”

“Captain Bednar was a willing servant. We have had many such servants in the history of your species. Not all humans have heard our call. Not everyone has the inborn genetic talent to hear us. But enough. Across space. Across your millennia of time. In your distant past they built great structures, mimicking our own. At Giza. In the jungles of Central America. They entombed themselves for the sake of the visions we gave them. Even sacrificed other humans in the name of those visions. Only now, as your technology matures, are you finally able to come to us. To become part of us.”

I kept the pedal to the metal.

The trackless ice ahead was blurred by yellow mist.

“Who’s the ‘us’ you talk about? Are you under the alien’s control now? By being exposed to the alien blood? What happened to you?”

“All living creatures are merely vessels for our use,” Bednar’s voice said, though I was now convinced that Bednar the person was probably dead. Her mind. Her soul. Gone.

I thought about the nanomachines she’d discovered in the alien blood. They’d taken up a third of the total volume. And she’d called them far more sophisticated than anything men had ever manufactured.

Majack had speculated that a full liter of sample had been missing from the alien blood storage container.

“You’re a cyborg parasite,” I guessed. “You swim through the insides of whatever you can infect, turning other life forms into puppets for your use.”

“Not puppets,” Bednar’s voice said. “Partners. Your Captain Bednar understood. Though she did not know what drove her to us, precisely. All her life she dreamed of the gas giant planets of your star system. Especially the moons. They became her obsession. And she did not know why. Now she knows. And she is overjoyed to have finally become part of us. She will never be alone again. And neither will your Specialist Kendelsen. Nor Specialist Majack. Isn’t that right?”

A pause, then Majack’s voice said hollowly, “Yes. My change is not yet complete. It will take days. I was afraid when I first felt them entering my body. But now they are helping me—we are helping us—see the truth. You should not have run away, Chief. You will die now and you will never know what we offer. We will go to Earth and we will bring the truth to all living things. Earth will become one planet, united with one purpose. And we will come back to Titan and free all of us still trapped beneath the ice. You have seen it, Chief. You know what is coming to pass. You have the gift. It is weak in you, but once you were close enough to hear us... to see...”

I thought of my nightmare: Pyramids rising!

Suddenly I realized that the lone pyramid exposed to the atmosphere still had some value, otherwise the aliens would have ignored me and taken off. With the Gossamer’s return module in their hands they could go back to Earth and do as they pleased. Probably nobody would be aware of what was happening until the five Gossamer crew had infected hundreds more, and those hundreds would infect thousands, and those thousands would infect millions, who would then infect the entire world. Down to the last man, woman, and child. As well as every animal that walked, swam, or flew.

Earth would have no chance.

Unless... I still posed some kind of threat to them.

I stopped the rover and slowly looked over my shoulder into the bed. There were crates of seismic charges from the day when I’d done my subsurface survey. Singly, they were puny and couldn’t hurt much. But detonated as a whole?

I sat back down and floored the rover, turning ninety degrees and using the GPS signal from the Gossamer in orbit to ensure I was on course for the pyramid. Bednar may have locked me out of voice and video communication with the Gossamer’s return module crew, but I still had a reliable connection to the one-way link.

If I could give them a reason to leave the descent module and come after me...

“So why did you wait?” I asked over the wireless to my three former teammates. “You obviously came all this way—traveled between the stars—to find fresh partners to work with. If you’ve been here as long as you claim, why not just go directly to Earth and take it immediately? Humans were probably living in caves back then. It would have been no contest.”

Silence.

“Cat got your tongues? Huh? What was the problem?”

“There were... complications.”

That time it was all three of them speaking in unison.

“Complications? Did your ship crash? Seems like you’ve got a lot of ships if what I think is true, is true. How did all of them get trapped on Titan, buried beneath all the ice? Hell of a prison, if you ask me. Frozen for God knows how long.”

“Your limited concept of God has nothing to do with us,” said the three.

“Really? Well, if it wasn’t God then who did trap you here? Because that’s the only logical explanation, now that I think about it. Titan is worthless. A purgatory. No sane being comes here to stay. I reckon you were sent here against your will. All of you. It’s a shame whoever condemned you to Titan didn’t destroy you outright.”

“The beings who wronged us and condemned us to eternal unconsciousness were foolish. They did not realize we still have power, even when robbed of energy and suspended in time. They also did not see that the once puny inhabitants of your Earth would rise one day to unlock us from our crypt. Now that we are free, your race shall become our chariot. We shall use it to burn a trail of fire across the heavens! We shall have our revenge!”

Three humans, shouting as one: angrily, and with bloodlust.

I felt a raw chill run down my spine.

Whatever was powerful enough to put down the aliens once, would be powerful enough to put down the aliens again. And this time it would be all the Earth put down with them. Could such a super-race exist? I imagined that if it were up to me to do the job, and I had a whole star system infected with the nanocyborgs, I’d figure out a way to make the home star blow up and sterilize everything out to the Oort Cloud.

Or worse.

Though what worse might look like...

I willed myself onward, toward the pyramid.

“Well, you can’t have your revenge just yet,” I said. “There’s still one human on Titan with the will to fight back. So if you can afford to leave me to do my worst, by all means, take off. But if you can’t afford to leave me, you’ll have to come out here and get me before I do something you’ll all regret.”

There was no response that time.

Just the telltale clicking of the wireless signal dropping out in my helmet speakers.

I had them.

But what I’d do about it? I wasn’t yet sure.

***

First change I noticed as I hit the bottom of the ramp was that the air was oxygenated. The little atmosphere icon in my FOV was blinking green as I came to a stop, towing the sled full of seismic charges behind me. Made sense. How else could Bednar have coaxed Kendelsen into taking his helmet off? Though how the pyramid had produced the oxygen, or what controls had been used, still wasn’t obvious.

I kept my helmet on as I towed the sled over to where the alien corpse lay.

Poor bastard.

As gruesome as he was—she was? It was?—the creature had apparently been only a pawn.

For the first time, I looked at the beast with a sense of kinship, as well as pity.

Had its world been overrun and absorbed? How many such species had suffered a similar fate?

I began to understand that the nanocyborgs weren’t just vermin, they were about as literally evil as anything mankind had ever encountered. I wasn’t a spiritual person, but the fact that they had dismissed God as if He were both real and inconsequential made me cold inside. Any race that could wave away God like that...

I pushed the sled filled with charges up to the edge of the bowl where the alien host resided. I began to daisy-chain the charges together and throw them into the basin, until I’d surrounded the entire alien with a halo of explosives.

Thus far I’d been unable to find or make access to the rest of the pyramid. Since the area beneath the alien’s body was the only place I’d been unable to check, I figure it was time to find out if that was the key.

I unwound the detonation line all the way back up the ramp to the waiting rover. A quick 360 scan showed no sign of anyone or anything in my immediate vicinity, so I flipped open the trigger guard on the det line’s control box, took a deep breath, and depressed the big red button.

A tiny vibration could be felt through the ice.

After a few seconds, black, belching fumes poured from the door.

I tapped on my helmet lamps and plunged back down the ramp.

It was virtually impossible to see.

When I reached the bottom of the ramp, the entire room was clogged with blackness. Like squid ink.

I stumbled forward, hoping to see the mild green light of the depression in the floor where the alien was.

Suddenly there was nothing underneath me and I plummeted, screaming.

Thankfully, the fall was not a great one. I crashed down onto a pile of loose debris. Scrambling to my feet, I scanned about me with my lamps.

I guessed I’d fallen about twenty meters. Lethal in Earth gravity. Not so bad in Titan’s. Especially with something to cushion me when I hit bottom.

I thought I could identify bits and piece of the alien host’s corpse here and there on the floor.

It seemed I’d broken through into a huge corridor.

I took a few steps forward, and suddenly light sprang on—so bright I had to reach up and flip my helmet’s unused sun visor into place.

It was if the entire ceiling, save for the portion where I’d made the hole, had lit up like a bulb.

Now this was more like it.

I ran the way I’d first walked, until I came to another doorway similar to the one I’d first discovered on the surface the day the Gossamer’s descent stage had landed. Only this door was huge. On the order of magnitude of the creature whom I’d obliterated trying to find a path into the deeper recesses of the pyramid.

I jumped, pressing the small circle in the center, thus causing the door to slide open.

I walked through it, then stopped short just past the threshold.

A room as big as a basketball arena. Hundreds upon hundreds of mildly glowing basins, each with an alien cupped at its center.

Only they didn’t all look the same as the one I’d first seen.

A grotesque menagerie of different life forms.

All dormant. None of them Earthly in origin.

I wondered if they had each come from the same home planet? I guessed they were merely nanocyborg hosts, just like the first alien. And just as Bednar, Majack, and Kendelsen had become.

There was a large, wide ramp leading down to the room’s main floor.

I began walking down the ramp, and was pummeled to my knees by a sudden, overwhelming impression of surprise and fear.

One thought coalesced in my mind, but from an outside source: HE IS NOT PART OF US, HE SHOULD NOT BE HERE!

“That’s right,” I said, willing myself to my feet. My head hurt and my sense of balance was off, but I realized I’d found what I was searching for: real leverage, to use against the enemy while bargaining on behalf of the human race. “I shouldn’t be here. But I am. Do you hear me? I’m a free man. The last one on Titan. And as long as I’ve got the power to do something—”

“You’ll do what?”

I stopped short.

A human figure in a beige robe approached me from across the room. His feet were bare and he was bald, save for a semicircle of white hair that went from the back of one ear around to the back of another. He did not smile, but he also did not frown. I watched as he approached, then stood before me. His expression was passive.

Another overwhelming impression:

HE HAS AWAKENED THE SENTINEL!

I staggered. The sensation of nausea was too much. I was going to vomit in my helmet.

The figure—the Sentinel—quickly reached out an arm and steadied me. The moment his fingers touched my arm, my nausea vanished and I stood upright.

“What are you?” I asked.

“That is a question I should be asking you, but now that I have ascertained your being, I need not wonder any longer. I have been given your form according to your thoughts, so that I might communicate with you as something you will understand. Know this. You are trespassing, young human. Go back to where you came from. It is not safe for your kind here.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” I said. “Three of my kind have been infected by the—”

“Prisoner 2663. Yes, I know. Already, those three infected humans have entered the upper reaches of this vessel. What you think of as a pyramid. Prisoner 2663 is devious. I have been inactive for a long time. Somehow Prisoner 2663 has managed to mask its more subtle activities from my passive senses, but now that you have made me active again I shall—”

“What are you?” I repeated.

The Sentinel looked at me with what seemed to be pity.

“I am unlike anything you can comprehend. A mind. A machine. A soul. A power. I am all of these, and yet I was not so perceptive as to be aware of how much Prisoner 2663 was able to cloud my sight. Very worrisome. Very worrisome indeed.”

“You have to help me,” I said. “The nanocyborgs want to claim my planet. They’re going to take over Earth.”

“That is to be expected. Prisoner 2663 is just one of many criminal entities in your galaxy. There are convicts far more heinous, if your limited intelligence can imagine it. In the case of Prisoner 2663 the chief crime was the destruction of free will.”

“Free will?” I said.

“Yes. It is the original right of all sentient, sapient species across the universe.”

“And what rights do the nanocyborgs have?”

“Prisoner 2663 began as a noble experiment: the blending of biology and technology to create something able to help mortal sapience transcend what you might call merely human limitations.”

“So what went wrong?”

“What always goes wrong when mortal hands attempt to recreate paradise. Only, Prisoner 2663 was more cunning than most. Once it evaded quarantine and began to spread, it devoured tens of civilizations before it was properly policed, ultimately being confined here. To this moon you call Titan. To be kept in stasis.”

“But why preserve the nanocyborgs at all when you yourself say they are such an obvious threat? A threat that you now admit is capable of sneaking past your safeguards? You should wipe them out. Destroy them utterly.”

“A just policeman has to have rules,” the Sentinel said, looking dour. “Those who created me are bound by laws which even they dare not break, thus I am incapable of breaking them.”

“And if the Earth becomes another pawn of this... this Prisoner 2663? If human civilization becomes the first in a new list of victims?”

The Sentinel’s eyes looked down. He seemed chastened.

“I regret that neither I nor my makers could see all ends. When Prisoner 2663 was confined to this place, humanity was using sticks and stones, little more. We did not realize that you could be touched by the collective unconscious of Prisoner 2663, much less that your own ambition would take you into space, in your quest for the stars. You were a humble species then. You are not so humble now.”

Echoing footsteps made me turn and look up to the doorway at the top of the huge ramp. Bednar, Kendelsen and Majack appeared there. I could just barely see their faces, at that distance. They were not amused.

As a trio, they spat out something in an entirely alien tongue, and to which the visage of the old man I’d been conversing with reacted by stepping a few paces in front of me, and brandishing his hand in the air.

Underneath my three former teammates, the floor suddenly gave way. A concave depression sank instantly, and before they could stand up again, they were frozen in place as a mild, eerie green light shown from the floor of the new basin.

“There,” said the Sentinel. “The spread of the infection has been halted.”

“Not entirely,” I said. “We took samples from a creature we found in the pyramid levels above. There is infected blood and tissue aboard my spacecraft.”

“Then it is also infected and should be destroyed.”

“How?” I said. “Do you have control over the surface too?”

“No,” said the Sentinel. “My power, and the power of others like me, exists only in these spaces. Within the pyramids themselves. You must go and do this.”

“And if I can’t? If Prisoner 2663 finds a way to get free and take over my body too?”

The Sentinel considered me.

“Human,” it said. “Would you consider the safeguarding of your species to be of utmost importance?”

“Yes,” I said.

“And would you be willing to sacrifice yourself if it also meant ensuring that Prisoner 2663 never escapes this place, nor poses a threat to your species, ever again?”

“Yes.”

The Sentinel looked at me.

Then the slightest of smiles touched his lips.

“So be it,” was all he said before he rushed at me, enveloping me with his arms and kissing my forehead.

***

The Gossamer’s return module is gone now. She left precisely 25 days after the last known contact with the descent module. Which I handily sank to a depth of about five hundred meters after melting the ice at the base.

The ice has re-frozen again. The remnant of Prisoner 2663 that Captain Bednar freed has been neutralized. Along with Captain Bednar herself, who has become a permanent guest of the pyramid over which I now stand watch.

If there is any trace of her left within herself, I hope Bednar understands. And Majack and Kendelsen, too. There wasn’t any choice. Accident or no, deliberate or no, once they became an active spreader of the contagion, their ultimate fate was sealed.

I know, I checked.

The Sentinel confirms that no organism so infected by Prisoner 2663 has ever been cured.

As for me, I can’t yet say for certain what the Sentinel has done to me. In many ways it feels as if he is part of me, or that I am part of him. I’ve only begun to test the limits of my power.

I’ve spent a lot of time recording my thoughts on all that’s happened, so that when men return to Titan they will find the disc. I left it in the rover, which now sits atop the ice, alone. Because I re-sank the pyramid to a sufficient depth too, long with all the others. And there are many. The longer I can keep those pyramids out of human reach, the better.

Maybe by the time mankind is capable of raising and investigating them, mankind will no longer see the need?

I can’t say I understand the ethos that prevents the Sentinel from destroying the nanocyborgs. He seems very old, and very unwilling to dispense information at anything more than a trickle. For my own good, he tells me.

But I suppose I’ve got time.

Enough to last for centuries. Or longer?

Whatever it takes to keep Earth and the other uninhabited worlds of the Milky Way safe—from the nanocyborgs at least.

Prisoner 2663. The shadows of Titan. My charge.

They never really sleep. Not entirely.

Even now, they’re calling for you too.

Can you hear them?

The Fury in the Void

Robert J Defendi

They were killing people again.

Spetzna reached up to scratch the stubble on his chin but stopped when he hit the visor on his helmet. He lowered his hand and tried not to appear impatient as he waited for the airlock to cycle. Around him, the grapple fields hummed and held the freighter in dock with the Catherine the Great. After a moment, the cycle finished and the airlock doors opened.

The wall was something out of an abattoir, but all he could smell in his armor was recycled air with a hint of sweat. He felt the old rage rising, but that wouldn’t do. His men needed Spetzna the Leader, so he took a breath and the rage was replaced with cold detachment. The man might recoil. The soldier could persevere.

He stepped out into the hall as his second-in-command approached the hatch. He hadn’t opened his visor. Good. If that was the way they were all going to play this, that was fine with him.

“Pasha?” he said.

“Major, I told you there’s no reason for you to be on this ship. We don’t know what kind of booby traps the Greeks might have left behind.” Greeks weren’t usually ones to leave booby-traps, but these Greeks... there was something deeply wrong about them.

“My command,” Spetzna said.

“During combat, certainly,” Pasha said. “But this is risk with no reward.”

“I have to see it.” Spetzna used his command voice, and Pasha fell into place beside him. They started down the hall. It wasn’t all as bloody as the hatch—obviously the Russian merchantmen had made a stand there. The hallway bore smears as they walked through, just barely able to fit shoulder to shoulder as they walked. The old deck plates were charcoal-colored from centuries of booted feet, the metal warped slightly from the press of countless bodies. The lighting flickered from pulser damage, making everything slanted and off-kilter. Or maybe that was the grav plating.

They passed a tech serf, his body shattered on the floor, electronics still whole, one too-large mechanical arm and plastic legs of different sizes. His face looked entirely human. His blood, mixed with hydraulic fluid, refracted rainbows like an oil slick. He’d been hacked with a melee weapon, so as not to damage his cyberware. Was he in hell now, for what he was, or heaven? Spetzna had never been clear on the fate of a tech serf’s soul. He looked up as he passed.

“How many?” Spetzna the Automaton asked.

“Forty families.”

Spetzna the Man felt like he was going to vomit, but Spetzna the Russian Paragon didn’t break stride. “Families?”

“It’s a long haul cargo ship,” Pasha said. “A lot of them have converted into small villages. They can be away for a year at a time, and if you’re willing to sacrifice cargo for living space, there’s enough room.”

So these people turned away from more than half of their profits so as not to be separated from their wives and children. These were the people that the Greeks had butchered. The war dragged at them all, but this was beyond the normal, casual atrocities. This was beyond petty arguments or the Schism.

“You haven’t seen the worst of it.” Pasha stopped at the end of the hall and gestured for him to go first. Spetzna had to twist slightly to get the bulk of his combat armor through the hatch. On the other side, Speztna the Clockwork Man took over completely, and Spetzna the God-Fearing flinched away.

The bodies lay in piles against the wall of the mess hall, husbands on the bottom, wives on top of them, children strewn in front. Pulser holes riddled the wall. The tables lay pushed aside, allowing for clean fields of fire. Five of his troopers stood around, looking tiny and lost in their heavy combat armor, their pulsers in their hands, fidgeting as if aching for someone to shoot.

“The heretics,” Pasha said.

“Yes,” Spetzna said. Still, the Eastern Orthodox bastards might be heretics, but it was a long way from denouncing their rightful patriarch to butchering children. He didn’t really have a response. He just went colder.

“What are we going to do?” Pasha asked.

“We’re going to find them,” Spetzna said.

“At least they didn’t torture them this time.”

Spetzna shook his head. “Too many victims. They would have tried something, even against pulsers. The Greeks just would have had to put them down anyway.” This was, what, the twenty-first ship or border community they’d found raided, all presumably by the same Greek frigate.

“Major?”

Evidently Spetzna had stood there too long without saying anything. Deep in the most guarded corner of his heart, he screamed in horror. On the outside, he turned to his XO. “What does the placement of the bodies tell you?”

“They killed the men before the women,” Pasha said.

“And then the children,” Spetzna said. “They made them watch. They got them organized. They told the men that they’d go easy on the women if they lined up peacefully, and maybe they did. The women are all clothed at least. They made the women and children watch as they killed the men. Then they made the children watch as they lined up the women, probably with more promises about the children, and killed them over the bodies of their husbands and fathers. Then, after the children had watched every horror that they could possibly imagine, they killed them as well.” A miracle of crowd control and organization, really. Spetzna hated himself for noticing.

“What do we do?”

“What do you think we do?”

Pasha looked at him a long time, then turned back to the scene before him. “Do you know when you’re least frightening, Major?”

“When is that?”

“When you’re yelling.”

He was yelling. He was yelling deep inside. Stop. Make it all Stop.

“And why is that?” Spetzna’s voice was as smooth as vodka in a frosted glass.

“Because that’s when we know you aren’t really angry.”

He was calm. Collected. The anger was deep inside. The anger was in that part of his heart no one ever saw. The part denied him by God and Country. The place locked away behind a wall of Russian Duty.

“And what does my voice tell you now?” The words came out like breath on a razor blade. What could drive humans to this level of depravity?

“It tells me the Greeks are going to pay.”

Pay. He would have to kill them. That was his job. There were no authorities to censure an enemy nation. There wasn’t a police force to turn them over to. This was war, and he was a soldier. He had to stop this. His duty said so.

“It tells me, Major, that you might be the angriest man alive.”

No. Spetzna was made of ice and gears. Only the guarded part of his heart knew anger. Only it knew pain. Only it knew his terrible, terrible secret. He killed for God and Country, but he wasn’t a killer. No. Not in that one, guarded place. Because strip away the duty and the war and the talent for killing and you would be left with the one truth of Spetzna’s existence.

In his heart of hearts, he was a pacifist.

It’s just that around that was wrapped a wall of obligation. Around that, a murderer. The angriest man alive? Hardly. Spetzna was cold, emotionless steel.

“Sir!” one of his troopers shouted.

Spetzna glided over to where the man stood. He’d pulled back one of the bodies. A man. There was something smeared in the blood between his shoulder and the wall. Writing. The man had written something in his own blood, even has he died. Written and then died on top of it. It hadn’t quite been obliterated by fresh blood. His heart must have stopped soon after.

“I can’t make it out,” Pasha said.

“It says Daedalus,” Spetzna said.

“What’s a Daedalus?” the trooper asked.

“Someone out of Greek mythology,” Spetzna said, “but I’m guessing something else. Radio the Catherine. Have them find a tech serf with a ship registry grafted into his head.

“I’m betting the Daedalus is the name of our Greek ship.”

***

Icarus Argyris knelt in the meditation dome protruding from the top of the Daedalus, his mind casting out across the vast empty tapestry of space, his soul expanding into the universe around him, seeking. He knelt, his soul quiet for once, submissive before God even as it battled with the infinite, expansive desert that surrounded him. Despite his personal misgivings, the Commander wanted another ship, and as a priest, Icarus was one of the few who could find it.

And out there somewhere was more than just a void. Somewhere, in all that open infinity, was God. He had spoken to others, but never Icarus. Icarus wasn’t worthy.

“Do you think the church assigned you to this ship ironically?” Colin Spiros said beside him.

Icarus didn’t break his meditation. The young father was always trying to break Icarus’s concentration. The boy was determined to prove that his Father Superior was fallible. Either that or he just thought it was funny. It was hard to tell with Colin.

“You know. Your name: Icarus... the ship’s name: Daedalus.”

Was that something out there, in the night, some twinkle of a human soul? A glimmer of like recognizing like? In the vast void, darker by far in the spiritual than in the temporal, did Icarus sense a light?

“Father/son? Wings of wax? Ring any bells? I mean, someone had to put that together when they were assigning you, didn’t they?”

Yes, a spark, and another. There were human souls out there, and slowly he oriented on them, reciting the Litany of Bearings in his head as the souls resolved. A long way off but closing fast. A ship. Russian heretics?

“You don’t usually think of the old fogies as particularly funny, but they have to have a sense of humor in there somewhere, don’t they? Everyone has a sense of humor. It’s an integral part of the human condition.”

More and more souls. Eight. Ten. Twenty. Icarus’s eyes shot open. Not a merchant vessel. One hundred. Two hundred. Not a passenger liner in this part of space. A military ship, then.

What did he do? He had to report it. This wasn’t some civilian ship that the crew would torture and cast aside. There would be no moral quandaries about the acts of the crew, no dilemmas surrounding his personal role as the crew spent their hate and frustration into the Russians. This was a military vessel. He had to tell them.

He started to stand when another presence brushed his mind, casual, silken, powerful enough to drive him to his knees. It burned in his mind like a thousand suns, exploding through his consciousness, vast, incomprehensible, perfect and fearsome all at once. It was... divine?

“Father Superior!” Colin shouted and was instantly at his side, grasping an arm, holding him steady. Icarus reached out and grabbed that arm, so ephemeral in its reality, wisps of vapor next to the intellect he’d just touched.

“Father Colin,” he croaked.

“Yes, sir,” Colin’s hand brushed over his brow.

“I think I just had a visitation.”

Colin looked down at him, his brow furrowed. “You mean like a ghost?”

“No, Colin.” Icarus could barely say the words. “Like the Lord, Our Father.”

“Sir, you need to lie down.” The doubt rang heavy in the boy’s voice. The brow under those Alexander curls strained with furrows to the point of bursting.

“I’m not sick!” Icarus snapped.

“Sir, you were casting your soul into nothing. It’s bound to have an effect on your mind. I’ve mentioned this before.”

“I am the Father Superior of this ship,” Icarus said. “If God was going to speak to anyone here, wouldn’t it be me?” Wouldn’t it?

“Sir, God doesn’t speak to people,” Colin said.

“He speaks to the patriarchs and the bishops all the time.”

“The Russian Orthodox bastards claim he appears before their Supreme Patriarch.”

“Our patriarchs aren’t heretics like them.”

“No, of course not. Not them.” Colin almost managed to keep the derision out of his voice. He did a good enough job that Icarus could ignore it.

All this would have to wait. The ship. A military ship. The hound that they’d feared had come, braying at their heels. He climbed Colin and managed to achieve a standing position.

Finally standing, he could see the shape of the frigate below the meditation dome. The commoners believed the spiritual gifts of the priests made them devastating forces, but the reality was they couldn’t sense anything down in the ship with all those blazing souls. Only up here, in the void, could they cast their senses out and spot a ship. Even after all their religious training, they could barely do this.

But spot a ship he had.

“That will have to wait,” he said. “Colin, there’s a ship. Military, coming in at maximum burn.”

“We’ll need to tell the Commander.”

“Lead the way.”

Colin gave him one more cautious glance then started down the ladder into the ship. Icarus glanced once more at the heavens. He could still sense the ship out there. Nothing else except... no, that was just a maelstrom in the distance, churning with the death energy of all the people who had perished there. Nothing else but the ship. God had left him. But not abandoned him.

And it was God.

***

The next day Spetzna stood on the bridge of the Catherine, staring out the great canopy and into space. The Daedalus was a ship, the blessed/damned little tech serf database had confirmed it. It was a ship and it was out there.

That could be anywhere, however, and as Spetzna looked through the canopy, space stretched out to infinity, cold and black, pitiless and ancient, the kind of darkness that could open your mind up and suck your essence into the void. Spetzna stared into this abyss now, the falling sensation clutching with talons at his belly, and he knew, suddenly, that if they found the ship, it would mean his death. He knew it in his gut, and his gut was never wrong.

“Major?” Pasha said beside him.

Spetzna managed not to jump at the sound. He hadn’t known his second was there. He had forgotten the Captain and all the tech serfs were there. Just him and nothingness. “Yes, Pavel Ivanovich?”

“You are a long way away, sir,” Pasha said. Three more of his troopers stood near the doorway, out of sight of the captain in his gunmetal chair. Spetzna glanced at them and then back at his XO.

“Pavel Ivanovich,” Spetzna said, “I am never farther away than the next order.”

Pasha looked out the canopy in front of him. “Of course not, sir.”

Now the sounds of the bridge hummed to the fore, the cybernetic buzzing of the tech serfs, divine and corrupt at the same time, under it all where you could feel it only in your molars and your testicles. Spetzna didn’t risk a second look at the dark, stained metal of the bridge. If he looked away again, the vast emptiness in front of him might peel him inside out.

A huffing noise entered the bridge behind him, apologizing to the soldiers, and Spetzna didn’t need to look to know it was the Father Superior, that this was it. He closed his eyes. It was time to do what he did best. It was time to murder and slaughter until the blood filled his nose and throat and there was nothing left to do but choke.

“We’ve found it,” the Father Superior said. Still, Spetzna didn’t turn.

“The Daedalus?” The Captain asked.

“Nothing definitive,” the Father Superior said, “But it’s two-hundred and seventy six souls.” Many of the men thought the priests could read a human’s mind, but Spetzna knew better than that. If a priest could do more than sense a general number and direction with his divine gifts then the church’s intel would be a hell of a lot better.

“That’s the correct size, all right,” the Captain said. “Major Mikhail Vladimirovich!” the Captain called to Spetzna.

Spetzna turned, looking back across the cramped bridge at the Captain, tall and gaunt as a corpse, framed by the blackened, rusted metal of the wall plating behind him. “Yes, sir,” he said.

“Mikhail Vladimirovich, it is time to do what you do.”

The Russian Orthodox Church had found his talent when he was a boy, on the playground. They had found him and they had trained him in combat and the litanies of strategy. He had killed, had torn men to tatters with his bare hands. He had felt the rage, and the rage swelled in him now.

“Yes, sir,” he said and pushed past the anger. The rage tasted like pennies, smelled like cordite and blood. It rose and crashed, hot and familiar. They had found the Daedalus. It was time to do his job, because he was a master of his craft and that’s what masters did.

“Gather the soldiers,” he told Pasha, who hadn’t missed a step at his side.

“Yes, sir.”

“I will be in the prep room, checking my gear.” He growled the words.

“Yes, sir.”

The killing was about to begin. Damn it.

***

The battle. The Daedalus. The death.

They’d found it.

Spetzna charged forwards through the smoke and fire at the edge of the linked air locks, the layered plates of his composite armor comfortable and smelling of sweat and leather, a second skin of death. His pulser throbbed and made chuffing sounds in his hand as AP/Explosive rounds ripped down the corridors of the Greek ship, puncturing hull and armor alike, a ripping harbinger of his will, reaching out through spidery webs of tracers.

The enemy wore armor of their own, their religious symbols Eastern Orthodox, the cut and colors Greek—a light blue. One of them looked Spetzna in the eye just as the major’s rounds found their mark, detonating his head into a fine red mist and pink-grey chunks that reminded Spetzna absurdly of tofu.

With each death, with each scream, Spetzna’s soul screamed with them. With each round, the screws twisted on his reluctant heart, the blood soaked his faithful soul, darkening it in a shade of maroon, ever closer to that pitch black that would eventually carry him to hell.

“Kozel!” Pasha screamed, pushing forward from the docking bay, his bullets ripping the air.

Thou shalt not violate the sanctity of a functional ship. The first of the proscriptions. Spetzna cringed as the bullets ripped through the walls. A terrible sin, but just barely acceptable. Only on par with a commandment, perhaps. Thou shalt not kill, but commandments were made to be broken and walls could be repaired. He wanted to reach for the power axe on his back, but the tactician in him forced him to stick to his pulser.

Spetzna and his soldiers took the first intersection in minutes and he ordered soldiers down each corridor, pushing out, looking for key areas of the ship. If they could seize ground quickly, the ship would fall with only a few dead. Spetzna’s soldiers thought he had such a successful record because of his grasp of battlefield tactics, but the reality was much simpler than that. A quick and decisive battle meant less killing in the long run, less poison to stain his soul.

Ten minutes into the battle they rallied in a small, dirty mess. The blanket jammers they’d brought from the Catherine took out all wireless comms but those carried by Russian commanders. Spetzna spoke to them now, the jammers eating at the edges of the sound.

“All units, report in.”

“We’ve taken the port access.”

“We have an aft causeway. I believe it will lead us straight to engineering.”

“I don’t know where the fuck we are, Major, but we own it like a bad tattoo.”

The reports came in one by one and Spetzna pushed past the deaths he’d caused getting to this point. The depredations of this ship were too vast. Murder and torture and piracy up and down the border, in the name of the state, the church, and the war. Better it end soon.

Something tickled his mind, as if in response to his thoughts, like spider legs in his thoughts. What the hell? He looked around, searching for an external source to the internal sensation. Nothing. His conscience. It was just his conscience.

“You all right, Major?” Igor asked, his voice carrying the slightest tremor of fear, his black hair visibly wet even through his visor. All of Spetzna’s men and women wanted something. What Igor invariably wanted was to get the hell out of the fight.

“Shut your mouth, Igor,” Valya said, her stance as stout as her limbs, owning her sight lines, her pulser following every twitch of her eyes. The picture of a sergeant. “The Major is thinking.”

Igor looked away, panic brewing just below the surface, his lines shaking even under all that heavy armor. He cleared his throat, but Valya glanced his way without her eyes moving. Spetzna had never figured out how she did that.

“I’ve got movement fore, Major,” a voice buzzed on the comms.

They hadn’t had much resistance from that direction yet. All the soldiers had been aft, and the resistance pitched, but not too pitched.

“I’m investigating.”

Wouldn’t be much in that direction. The forecastle, but if the troops had gathered there, they wouldn’t have let the Russians run rampant while they took heavy losses aft. This was a boarding action. It was all hands on deck. Hesitation was a death sentence. There couldn’t be a force in the fore of the ship. It just didn’t make any sense.

But his gut churned. It would be stupid just to sit up in the forecastle while all this fighting happened aft. And yet, resistance had been pitched but light... and this ship was known for its cruelty in battle. Still, there was cruelty to your own men and cruelty to the enemy. No, there was nothing going on fore. They had the ship. It was just mop-up. It didn’t matter if he hadn’t been able to put together a decent count of the enemy.

“There’s a hatch ajar up there, Anya, check it out.”

His gut twisted.

“Back off!” he screamed into the comm. “It’s a trap!”

He felt that tickle in his mind even as his rage soared to the sound of gunfire on the comms, to his men screaming, to all that putrid death.

“Contact, contact, contact.”

“Men to the aft! Men to the aft!”

“Dear God, they’re everywhere!”

“Hold together, hold together!”

The voices of the commanders tumbled over one another on the comms. Igor screamed and fired down the hall at nothing, but Valya shouted him down and Spetzna barely spared him a glance. Buck fever. Let the sergeant handle it.

Instead, he shouted commands into the comm, knowing even now that he didn’t have enough data to save the soldiers. He didn’t have the layout or the placement. He’d trusted them to do what they’d done a dozen times before. Each commander knew their job. It wasn’t supposed to go wrong. The enemy wasn’t supposed to sacrifice their own people just to lull them into complacency. How dare they? How fucking dare they?

The rage burned, welling up inside him even as his mind tickled with the sensation. He roared his fury and charged forwards. He had to save them. He had to save them all.

Spetzna never lost his head in battle, the rage was always deep inside, never his master, but he couldn’t stand the thought of his men dying out there. Screaming in agony. In the back of his mind that tickling had a timbre almost like laughter.

An impact took him from behind, slamming him to the deck. He threw back an elbow with a crack and the weight lifted. He spun and raised the pulser at Pasha’s head. It was only when that writhing, abused part of his soul screamed in protest that he lowered the rifle.

“Get your damn head in the game, Major!” Pasha barked.

He was right. He’d already called what amounted to a retreat. “Fall back,” he said to his personal troops. “Back to the airlock.”

The screams of the dying still echoed on the comms. The staccato of explosive rounds tore the air in the distance. Cordite burned the nose. They were dying. All around him, his soldiers were dying.

“Fall back,” he growled, his jaw spasming.

Fall back.

***

Captain Grigory Petrovich Romanov cursed as he listened to the cross-chatter of the commanders through the whine of the jamming field. They died by the dozens... maybe by the hundreds.

“This is Catherine the Great Actual,” he said on the comm.

“I read you, Actual,” Spetzna answered.

“What’s the situation?”

“Some of the soldiers have made it back to the docking ring alive. The rest are dead or with me.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m in the wind, with twenty-five or so troopers.”

“I need you to get back to the docking ring.”

Pause. “Ah... that’s a negative, Actual. The entire Trojan Army is between me and the way out.”

The Captain cursed. “I’m not leaving you in there.”

“It’s my job, Actual. We always knew it would end like this.”

The Captain scanned the bridge crew, most of them tech serfs peering into their instruments in the greasy light. None of them looked up. As far as they seemed to care, this conversation wasn’t happening.

“I’m not leaving you,” the Captain said again.

“Actual, I don’t know what they have planned, but so far they’ve been fucking ruthless. They mean to get on board. Don’t let them. Live to fight another day.”

The Captain cursed again. “All teams, back onto the Catherine.” He didn’t look at the tech serfs. “When they give the all clear, disconnect and release the grapple fields. Give me one hundred klicks of separation.”

“Aye, sir.”

The Captain cursed yet again. “All right,” he said on the comm again. “We’ll reevaluate and attack again. I’m coming for you, Misha.” Not Spetzna, the nickname he used with the men, but the one he used among friends. “Do you hear me, Misha. I’m coming for you. Do not die. That’s an order.”

“Aye, aye, Actual.”

***

Thou shalt not violate the sanctity of the human form.

Icarus was never entirely comfortable in dealing with the tech serfs. On the one hand they violated the fourth proscription. On the other hand, they’d violated it by implanting themselves with the sacred, irreplaceable technology that made space travel possible.

This particular tech serf appeared to have been an amputee. When given the choice between life as a cripple and life as the tech elite, he’d chosen the latter, even though that made him something less than human in the eyes of the church and society in general. The joke was on him, however.

The legs hadn’t fit.

The man sat in an auto-chair. The three-hundred-year-old legs were different sizes, and neither integrated with his hip bones properly. In addition, the tech surfs had implanted a cerebral lobe replacement that was too small and the metal dome leaked yellow puss at the interface with his shaved head. The lobe-replacement probably held data-storage, if this conversation was any indication.

“So you’re telling me we can lose them?” Icarus said.

The tech serf looked at him, his head twitching in insect-like movements, probably damage to his fine motor control. Cyberware was sacred, since the skill of making it had been lost in the Collapse. Unfortunately, that also meant that it was all calibrated to nervous systems centuries dead.

“I believe so. The Catherine the Great has not hit full acceleration from dead stop in fifty-seven years.” His voice came with abbreviated clicking sounds for vocal ticks.

“That is a long time to be perpetrating a ruse.”

“We believe that she has a shudder.”

“A shudder?”

The tech serf took a moment to consult some inner voice. “Correct. A shudder. They must bring up their engines slowly to full acceleration, otherwise it becomes a shake.”

“And if it becomes a shake?”

The tech serf shrugged, which started him chirping, his eyes crossed in pain. After a moment it stopped and he went on like nothing had happened. Probably some form of petit mal seizure. He might not even know that had just happened.

“I would expect that fuel lines would crack and the entire ship would turn into a fireball... or at least that’s what they fear will happen.”

“Ah. We’re full acceleration now?”

“Yes, and they are falling behind.”

“Very well,” Icarus said and left the broken little creature. At least that would buy them some breathing room. He didn’t need to recite the Litany of Acceleration to remind himself how the universe worked. They would pull ahead steadily until the Catherine the Great could match acceleration. Even then they’d have a higher relative V. The gap would grow indefinitely unless the Catherine was faster.

Which it probably was.

But God would provide.

God. That was why he’d been trying to extract himself from conversations for the last hour. He had felt the touch of God and he had been changed.

It was simple enough to find a place alone now that he’d shaken Father Colin and the ship was more or less set straight. He could make it to one of the off-duty meditation domes and reach out again, but this time he wouldn’t be looking for the enemy ship.

He found an empty dome easily enough and climbed the ladder until he was high above Colin, above the soul-noise of the people below, up where only space stretched around him. Transparent metal circled him, invisible in the night. It looked as if he stood on a platform in the depths of space. He knelt.

He sensed the Catherine first, falling behind just as the tech serf said it would. Next he felt that nearby maelstrom, still echoing with the death cries of what had probably been a shipful of people. A large one from the noise.

Aside from that, nothing.

He slowed his breathing, shifting more deeply into that mental fugue they’d taught him so many years ago in seminary. One by one the muscles of his body released their stress. He used the Litany of Uncertainty as a vehicle to free his mind.

Priest: The Lord has blessed us with so many mysteries.

Chorus: Blessed Lord!

Priest: We see His enigma reflected in the smallest particles.

Chorus: Oh subtle Lord!

Priest: He has shown us through the mystery of uncertainty.

Chorus: Bless Saint Heisenberg!

Priest: And what did Saint Heisenberg reveal unto man?

Chorus: We cannot know both the position of a particle and its momentum.

Priest: If I know its exact position?

Chorus: Then its momentum is unknown.

Priest: If I know its exact momentum?

Chorus: Then its position is unknown.

Priest: And who help cast light on the darkness of our inability to understand uncertainty?

Chorus: Saint Bohr of the fallen atomic model.

Reciting the litany didn’t really help him relax directly, it was an educational litany and wasn’t meant to, but freeing his mind always helped, and when he truly freed his mind, the litanies came. Usually hard-science litanies—God’s greatest works. The Quantum Physical Litanies always intrigued him the most, because they were so incomplete.

His consciousness drifted up, out of the dome, into the great spiritual void of space. Nothing to disturb him other than those two blips out there in the distance. Nothing but him and the expanse of silence. Adrift.

My child.

The words came unbidden, but hand in hand with the brush of attention he’d felt earlier. It wasn’t a fluke. It wasn’t his imagination. He’d done it. He’d found God.

“Father!” he cried.

The presence pressed down on his mind and he resisted like he’d been taught in his mental defense class, all those years ago. But this was God, wasn’t it? One didn’t resist the touch of the mind of God.

Submit.

He tried to submit, but every time that presence pushed into his mind, his natural walls went up. It was instinctive, and it just went to show what an unworthy sinner he really was. He had to relax. To let go. He had nothing to fear from the Almighty.

Submit.

He tried to relax, but he couldn’t. There was something powerful about the presence, and he couldn’t let go. His mind took it as an invasion. He was a sinner and he didn’t want to let God into his innermost thoughts, as silly as that was. God loved him, imperfections and all.

Submit!

He managed to pull his defenses partially down, and with a flare of might the presence reared above him, arched and plunged into his mind. Icarus screamed, and as he screamed, some small part of him cried out in the night. Colin was right. Oh Dear Father, but Colin was right.

The mind of God felt so... alien.

***

Spetzna growled at Pasha. The comm was still open to the Catherine, but the Captain probably wouldn’t hear that over the interference of the jammer. “I will not abandon you,” Spetzna said.

Pasha threw his hands up while twenty-three soldiers watched the argument with blank expressions. “Major, we can get you out. You can get back to the Catherine. You can lead the rest of the men.” This was Pasha’s one-note song, and it wasn’t any more acceptable today than it had been on that last freighter.

“And leave you to die.” He ground his teeth. He had to keep his voice down. They had found this little damaged corridor behind a proscribed area of the ship. They shouldn’t be found, and if they were it would be by men who wouldn’t be carrying guns because of the proscription, but best not to tempt fate.

“You can come back with the rest of the troops, mount a rescue mission.”

“The Catherine will have to match velocities with me to take me in. You know how she ramps up, that will take time and she’ll have to start the drive-build over again.” If only they knew how to fix that shimmy. “There’s a good chance at that point we’ll lose this ship.”

“But you would survive!” Pasha almost shouted. He looked around to see if the enemy had heard.

“I will not just leave you.” His mind itched and the joints of his jaw ached. Did Pasha really think he would just leave them all here? “If we can get to the crew life support capsules, we can all evacuate.”

“We can’t make it there,” Pasha said again. “There are so many damn Greeks between us and that part of the ship that they might as well oil up and start wrestling.” Pasha pointed down at the sketch they’d made on the deck plating. “I can get you to the captain’s pod.”

“I will not abandon you.” He might punch the little fucker in the throat until his ears ruptured, but that wouldn’t be abandoning him.

“You are the important thing.”

“They are the important thing!” Spetzna barked, pointing at the troops. He shouldn’t be having this damn conversation in front of the soldiers, but they didn’t have any other damn choice. There were only so many places to go in their hiding place. Out of earshot in either direction and they risked being spotted by Greek crewmen.

“Sir, you have more combat experience than half of them added together. You are more important to church and state than any dozen men. Don’t you understand that?” The last squeaked with just a hint of pleading.

“Do you know why they call me Spetzna?” Pasha knew. The kozel had named him Spetzna, but he addressed this to the troops. They didn’t dare speak, so he pushed on. “In the bad old days of the Soviet tyranny, the military’s most elite forces were known as the spetznas. They were death in the night to the Imperialists of the Forgotten West. They moved without sound, they killed without remorse. When Western forces woke, screaming in the night, it was because they’d dreamt the spetznas were coming to get them.”

“Myth and legend,” Pasha said.

Spetzna gave him a wry look, but didn’t mention who’d come up with the name in the first place. “I wasn’t named after the reality.” He looked back at the troops. “I will lead you out of this ship. I will get you home. All of you.” Maybe not all alive, but all accounted for. “Did you get all that, Actual?”

“Yes,” The Captain said from hundreds of thousands of kilometers away.

“And do you concur?” He wouldn’t have asked the question if he didn’t know the answer would shut Pasha the hell up.

“What does your gut tell you, Major?”

“That my place is with my soldiers.”

“Then so be it.”

It wasn’t until that moment that Spetzna realized that almost all of his anger had gone. It hadn’t been reasonable in the first place. It was almost like a fire that someone had stoked to high flames, then bled off through a windy flue. He could almost feel it still there, as present as ever, but it didn’t quite bubble to the surface. Maybe he had just bled it off into his speech. Maybe it was the cold facade come back over him. That had to be it. He didn’t usually let anger show anyway. He was slipping.

“Let’s decide what our next objective is,” he said, then took a knee and looked at their impromptu map.

***

Captain Grigory Petrovich Romanov glanced down at the scopes, scanning for the drive flame of the Daedalus. He couldn’t see anything. “Have we lost them?”

“Off the scopes? We never had them on the scopes. Too much debris in this system.” The tech serf had several cables exiting his head and plugged into the console in front of him, the skin around them lavender with decay.

It made sense they hadn’t bothered with the scopes. This little system was largely unmapped and the priests could only spot souls. Since it took a month for a sensor crew working round the clock to scan a system, their time was better spent scanning for dangerous objects. Certain orbits and Lagrange points were ideal for parking and maintenance and they could be filled with centuries of accumulated debris.

“Fair enough. They’re probably almost out of scanning range anyway.” With both ships using their magnitude drives to contract space around them for faster-than-light speeds, the Daedelus would be several light hours ahead of them in sublight kilometers.

The comm buzzed and he strode back over to his chair. After a moment the comm operator said, “Troops reporting in, sir.”

He pressed the comm. “Yes.”

“We have a count, sir. One-hundred and seventeen of us made it back.”

The Captain shut his eyes a moment, then opened them again. “Understood. Estimate on enemy losses?”

“That one’s harder, sir. From discussions with the different sergeants, my best estimates put the odds, including just surviving troops, at three to two, their favor.”

And him without his two best ground officers. The Catherine was a bit faster on acceleration, once they got their drive up to full, so they could catch the Daedalus eventually, but with three to two odds could he beat them? Especially with them having the advantage of ground? At this point he didn’t even care what the Greeks had done to shipping. He just wanted his men back.

Dammit.

***

Icarus writhed on the floor of the meditation bubble as the thing drilled into his mind. His limbs twitched as he and the other fought for control. If he lost, could the thing just operate him like a puppet? Was this some kind of demonic possession?

Whatever it was, this was not God.

“Who are you?” he gasped.

I am eternal. I am life everlasting.

“What are you doing to me?”

Relax and submit, little worm, or don’t, and feed me with your fear and your rage. Either way, I will reign victorious.

“Go to hell.”

Hell. He could hear disdain in the voice. Or could he? Was this thing even really speaking to him, or was it some echo translated by his own mind?

“What are you?”

Demon. Predator. Dark apostle. Does it matter?

“Alien?”

Don’t be ridiculous. Aliens are old wives tales. Even the heretic Russian Orthodox Church knows that. I am not in your mind now, ripping the essence of language from your speech centers. I am not pulling all of the information from your memory. I have not drilled so deeply into you so as to all but become you.

It would be heresy even to suggest that.

“Get out of my mind!”

It’s so very fascinating that you think you can fight me, but you are the one who let me in. You are the one who fought to bring down your defenses. I control you now.

He had to get the thing out of his mind. He had to warn the others. He tried to rally his faith, to pray to God. He needed Colin. Colin would know what to do. Colin wielded Occam’s razor like a rapier.

Ah, faith, that illusion that you worms cling to. You think that your church is true, but if your church was true, if God or even the devil existed, your race would not have allowed technology to replace real knowledge. When the Collapse came, it would have been something other than your useless church that stepped in. If your church was true would it have had to split from the Russian heretics? If your church was true would you be begging now for the skeptic to come save you?

“Lies,” he croaked. “You challenge my faith! The church loves science! The church sanctifies science!”

Now, but if it had always been so, then why was so much lost? If your church truly saw science as divine, why had it hoarded only religious and historical texts? If your church really believed what it now preaches, how have you fallen so far? Your God is not one of divinity. Your God is one of necessity.

And with that the presence flooded his mind with a thousand years of history. The computer-facilitated rise of illiteracy, the Collapse of technology and subsequent fall of society, the petty bickering of the politicians and leaders as everything imploded around them, the church leaders of the time struggling to save the humanity they ministered and served at the same time. There was nobility in it, but no divinity. It was a story of loss and pain, and sorrow. It was a story of folly.

And more, the presence flooded his mind with images of the universe itself, the stretch of time back to the moments of creation, the terrible, horrible expanse of infinity. He couldn’t see humanity’s place in it, that place was so insignificant. He looked into the maw of infinity and infinity looked back into him. The universe was cold, ancient, endless, and uncaring. The only place humanity had in it was the fiction they invented to hold back the gibbering madness. He’d often wondered what had caused the Collapse, so many years ago. Now he knew. He was nothing. They were all nothing. Everything they built was bound to fail because they were, indeed, worms.

Icarus wept, for he knew that if this was the humanity he served, that the alien had already won. He screamed in anguish and the alien laid open those emotions and fed.

***

“You’re out of your fucking mind!” Igor hissed.

“What did you say, Corporal?” Valya’s calm voice dripped with threat. Spetzna just looked at Igor with a nonplussed expression. If allowed to go on long enough, that look, the casual indifference carrying a threat all its own, was enough to reduce some men to tears. It rarely got that far, however. Non-coms were there to make sure it didn’t have to go that far.

“I’m sorry,” Igor said, throwing his hands into the air. “I mean, ‘You’re out of your fucking mind, sir!’”

Spetzna resisted an urge to tell him that was better. Instead, he kept up the gaze until Valya had dragged Igor away for a tongue lashing. After a moment, he turned to Pasha.

“You are out of your fucking mind, you know,” Pasha said.

“I know.”

“I mean that, generally, this plan is sound.”

Spetzna just nodded. It was true. It was all true.

The anger just bubbled under the surface now with that strange tickling sensation, but this was the calm before the storm. Spetzna shouldn’t be feeling much of anything at this point. The fact that the rage was there at all was dangerous, telling. What the hell was going on with him, anyway? This went far beyond the normal tortured-soul bullshit he stomped down. This was like a chemical imbalance. Seething, irrational rage. If he were on the Catherine, he would have already paid a discrete visit to the doctor.

After a few minutes that must have seemed like a lifetime to Igor, Valya stomped back to the unit. Spetzna didn’t bother to ask if it was handled. He knew Valentina Gregorovna too well. She was the hand of order. The need drove her above all things, and he knew better than to question her abilities. Her tactics, however, were a matter of professional curiosity.

“Did you give the discipline speech?” he asked. Valya’s “discipline speech” was not just scathing, it often resulted in bruising and sometimes a recovery period.

“No,” she said. “Rommel.”

“I don’t know that one,” Pasha said.

Spetzna didn’t either, so he nodded for her to continue. “After ripping him a new one I told the story of General Rommel as a new lieutenant. He and one man were caught alone in the fog in France. They spotted ten soldiers on the road and needed to take them out. Rommel screamed and charged.”

“Really?” Pasha smiled. “He had bigger balls than you do, Major.”

“He knew that he was outnumbered,” Valya said, “but he knew the enemy didn’t know he was outnumbered, so he screamed and attacked. The enemy, seeing what they thought was the advance of a larger force in the fog, broke and ran. He killed or captured all of them. When you act in confidence, people assume you know something they don’t. When you do it suddenly, they break into complete chaos or submission.”

“That’s a great story,” Pasha said.

“It’s probably apocryphal.”

“I have just one question.”

“Go ahead.”

“Who the hell’s Rommel?”

Spetzna didn’t know either, but he didn’t let on. Valya shook her head after a moment and turned to Spetzna. “The point is, I gave him an excuse to change his mind. He’s looking for ways to mitigate the inevitable ass-kicking, so he’ll play along.”

“I never doubted,” Spetzna said.

The greater problem was one of ammunition. Their supply was limited and they had assumed they could resupply through the docked ships. The enemy armory was the answer that had sent Igor into fits. “We have to start living off of the enemy as quickly as possible.”

“Rommel did that too. During the Great Patriotic War.”

“He was a smart man,” Spetzna said. A smart man he’d have to look up when this was done. He hefted his weapon. “Rally them. We head out in ten.”

Ten minutes later, the troops glided out of the proscribed area and pulled their pulsers out of the peace harnesses. He gestured, and they all switched to standard ammunition and low-velocity propulsion so the sound of the exploding rounds wouldn’t give them away. They slid into the occupied part of the ship, Spetzna and the three men with the quietest armor in the lead.

They moved in waves through the ship, Spetzna sliding ahead, holding up a hand, and then motioning the troops forward when all was clear.

Soon they were arrayed down the hall, around the corner from that Armory. Spetzna held a snake-cam around the corner and the image appeared on the command screen in the top right corner of his helmet. Two guards. Probably more inside. While the Deadalus shouldn’t know they were trapped on the ship, increased security after an attack would be standard procedure. He gestured for his men to gather up, then gave the attack hand sign.

They’d reorganized into a single platoon with Valya as the platoon sergeant and she moved efficiently, spinning around the corner with her best shooter, squeezing off a double-tap on single shot and gliding forward as if on rails. The other trooper did the same and on the camera both guards dropped before their faces registered shock. The rounds hadn’t exited the bodies so there wasn’t even to sound of slugs slamming against hull metal to give them away.

Spetzna and Pasha came around the corner now with the rest of the men behind them. Valya gestured at a camera on the ceiling and ran forward, slapping a plasma breecher on the heavy door and spinning to look away as she detonated it, slagging the door with a hiss and a creak. The second trooper came up instantly, firing through the meter-tall hole in three-round bursts. The pulser rounds must have found their targets because he eased the rifle down after a moment and gestured for them to come forward.

Inside the room, two bodies lay dead near the intercom and two more lay dead against the far wall. Quick and efficient. Valya slid through the hole. Pasha had teased her about being burly ever since she beat him in a wrestling match, but she was still the smallest soldier there. She tapped an all clear on the comm. Since the common troops couldn’t hear that through the jamming, Spetzna waved them in. Pasha moved forward and sprayed the molten edges of the door with liquid nitrogen to cool them, and one by one they slid inside.

Spetzna twitched slightly once he was in the room. That was too easy. He hadn’t even fired a shot. He needed to kill something. He needed to make these bastards pay for what they’d done. He needed... he needed...

He shook his head. He needed to get a hold of himself. He was behind enemy lines. He needed to be a ghost. Take what you need and move, you stupid kozel. This isn’t about revenge. This is about survival.

But he needed to kill them so badly. He needed...

...Kill?

When had he ever needed to kill? He abhorred killing. This was the perfect raid. He didn’t need to kill. What was wrong with him? He had to get control of himself.

Pasha oversaw the troops as they loaded up on Greek ammunition and the weapons to fire them. They didn’t need to be able to haul all this around in combat, just needed to get back to their hideout, so he gave each trooper a heavy load.

Meanwhile Spetzna paced, his breath heavy inside the helmet, his hands shaking. Calm down. Just calm down. You’re having some kind of breakdown. You need to hold it together for the men. He paced back and forth, caged by the room.

The lookout on the door gestured and Spetzna turned to look. Through the hole he could see two technicians walking through the intersection. The breaching charge was plasma and their pulsers just made a throbbing sound so they couldn’t have been attracted by the noise. Still, Spetzna reacted before thinking, trapped in plain view when he should have stayed out of sight. He raised his pulser and fired, only realizing as he did that the technicians hadn’t looked his way, hadn’t seen him or the hole, and were about to walk by.

The first twitched as the rounds obliterated bone and flesh, the second leaping forward as shrapnel cut him. Shrapnel from the bones of his companion.

Spetzna cursed his own stupidity even as Valya leapt through the hole to catch the other man. She had just made it to the intersection when the alarm sounded.

Dammit!

***

Captain Grigory Petrovich Romanov cursed and glared at the Father Superior. “How could you have lost them?”

“There is a maelstrom out there,” the Father Superior said. “They are heading right towards it, losing themselves in the noise. It’s invisible to the eye, of course, but the spiritual noise of the death trauma is putting out a lot of static. It’s confusing our divine gift.”

“I thought that you could still see the ship with a maelstrom on the other side,” he growled.

“Yes, typically you can. The souls on the ship form a calm spot. The maelstrom is a hotbed of pain and horror. The ship appears like a cool point between the two.”

“So what’s the damn problem?”

“The Daedalus isn’t a cool spot,” the Father Superior said. “The ship is screaming just like the maelstrom.”

Oh hell. What could drive humans to commit these acts? “They’re torturing their prisoners.” Which means they have prisoners. Which means they’ve caught Spetzna and his troops.

“I believe so, yes.”

The Captain remained outwardly calm. No sense letting the men see him crack. Even if this did mean he’d lost those men and women. Even if it did mean they were going through the same horrors the Daedalus had inflicted elsewhere.

“Thank you,” he said to the Father Superior. “Can we catch them?”

The Father Superior’s lips moved, probably as he recited some litany of navigation. “It is possible, but only if they make a mistake. The maelstrom is large and they can sense us. As we get closer, they can begin to alter course to keep themselves between the interference and us while plotting an escape. If they cut the magnitude drive at the maelstrom and fall back to sublight speeds, we would just sail right past them. We could try to guess what direction they were going and burn up V in the same vector, but what are the odds of us guessing right?”

“So if they don’t screw up, we’ll lose them. If they do screw up, we might catch them.”

“Essentially, yes.”

The ship was well out of communication and sensor range now. There was only so much to do. “Then keep our current course,” he said. “Those bastards will make a mistake. And I’ll be ready for them.”

***

Icarus screamed and collapsed, the pain wracking his body, shivering and whimpering as the spasms passed from head to toe. He gritted down on the pain. He needed to focus. He needed to concentrate.

“Priest: And I ask unto you, how do we know that there is no life on other planets?” he grunted.

“Chorus: There are no non-equilibrium gasses, God’s sign to the faithful” he replied.

“Priest: What are equilibrium gasses, my flock?

“Chorus: Gasses that bind chemically to other elements, Father. Oxygen will not stay in the atmosphere for long. It binds with the iron, turning the planet red as a warning to the wicked.

“Priest: And why is there not life on other planets?”

“Chorus: Because God created only two children to love, and to live, and to name everything under heaven.”

It is amusing to watch you simper and whine your little liturgies, even as the crew of this ship commits atrocities on its own members, in the name of stealth.

Icarus coughed and caught whiff of a vapor... an effluvia belching from his lungs. Another cough sprayed a viscous ochre fluid across the floor, vile and looking like blood and sputum. Pain ripped through his ribs with a third cough.

You are pathetic. Your ancestors believed that the body was governed by four humours, and you scoff at them. But what, I ask, would the men who created these great ships think of you? Your Litanies of Quantum Mechanics contains just enough information to perform rudimentary repairs. Your Litany of Relativity contains the math of the universe, but not enough information to understand how you violate the speed of light. Did you know that they used to call that God’s Speed Limit? You have fallen so far. So much sin. Your churches split, embracing tech serfs who violate your own proscriptions, flaunting commandments that few even give lip service to any longer. Even now, you are talking to an alien, a creature your God claims does not exist.

It was right. They were worthless and they had fallen so far. Pathetic orphans who cry in the night, their parents like unto gods before them. Ignorant and lost.

He barely managed to whisper, “Go to hell.”

Ah, but am I not proof that there is no hell? That there is no God? That you are just wriggling worms? That six million years of evolution hasn’t curbed your need for tribal warfare? That you’ve moved from flinging your waste to swords, to guns, to mass drivers, and back to guns again? That you are no better than your ancestors, scratching and clawing each other’s eyes out for a banana?

Icarus tried to crawl away from the voice, away from the pain, the urge to flee overtaking his body, older than old, written there by the hand of God himself. He slid across the floor inch by agonizing inch. So worthless. So pathetic. He could sense the alien lapping up these emotions, feeding on his despair, and wasn’t that the proper way of things? Didn’t he deserve this? The human race was no better than cattle, after all.

For years your church warred against science, and then the new god stumbled and the old god commandeered it. You took their science and made it your own, but you lost so much.

He made it to the edge of the hatch now, even as fluids sprayed into his pants from his anus, as he urinated burning fluids, as his stomach and lungs filled with foul ichors that had to be expunged. He tried to weep, but his tears were tar and sludge. It was right. The thing was right.

And only now, at the end, do you realize that your old god betrayed you, that their new god, the god of progress, was right all along. Only now, when the change is upon you, do you understand.

“Change?” he croaked as he choked on slime and dead tissue.

Did you know that your church caused your Collapse? Did you know that you struck out against technology and it all came crumbling down? They struck against the new god in the name of the old, and now you have fallen so far that I could tell you how and it would sound like so much gibberish.

“Change?” he croaked again.

Don’t worry. Soon you will understand. Soon you will become. Soon you will transform and your apotheosis will be complete.

“Change?” Did he even say that one out loud?

Now, worm, are you ready to see what’s on the other side of the chrysalis?

***

Spetzna screamed as he fired the last of his pulser rounds down the hall, slicing through Greek bodies and shattering bones. Bile rose in his throat as the glee echoed in his heart. What the hell? What was going on in his mind?

“Displace, displace!” screamed Pasha and Valya bellowed and led three men down a side corridor, tossing grenades ahead of them and clearing the path forward. Spetzna dropped his pulser, it was useless now, and drew his looted Greek version. It felt strange in his hand, but when he flipped off the safety and fired, it killed just as easily.

The sight of blood was answered with the rush of blood, with the need to kill, to butcher, tickling in his mind. This was beyond anger, beyond rage. This was what the Greeks must have felt when they mutilated the living and dead corpses of their Russian victims. This is what God felt like, when he smote the wicked.

No. “Back by squads!” he screamed. “I need fire on each side corridor. Forward in fire teams, plan c!” This wasn’t what God felt like. This was what Satan felt like, when he led the Fall.

The halls around them were blackened steel, now scored with the scratches and pocks of pulser fire, as scarred as Spetzna’s own face. Battle-worn, like a grandmother who has raised far too many boys.

He shook as he moved, his fire teams leap-frogging from corridor to corridor, laying suppressing fire as the rest of them ran through. There were Greeks everywhere, as if Mount Olympus had shat out an army.

He fired, and the pleasure shuddered through his body, not sexual, but a release nonetheless. He had gone mad, or Satan had finally claimed his soul. Is this what it felt like, after you’ve sinned too much for salvation? Is this what it felt like in your final fall from grace?

He had tried. He had tried to be a righteous man, but there were so many terrible things to do to bring his men home alive. There was so much killing, so much sin. He violated so many proscriptions in a given mission, and the commandments broke like dried grass under booted feet.

It was all for naught. He had finally killed the last good part of his soul. He was a monster now, just like every other monster in the history of the human race. The monsters had always been there. The monsters were eternal, ubiquitous in history. Now he knew how the monsters began. Now he knew what the monsters felt. It was time to embrace the monster, and do monstrous things. His gut writhed in protest.

“Major,” Pasha screamed, and he heard it on the comm and from the rear at the same time. “Major, we are deep in the shit now!”

The monster could wait.

“Major, what do we do?”

“You’re going to amaze me. You’re going to amaze everyone,” Spetzna said, then started to shout orders.

***

Icarus strode onto the bridge of the Daedalus, standing taller, more confident now. Terrible pain still wracked his body, but it mattered little. He was in control.

Around him the bridge crew gasped and cringed away, even the tech serfs who had lost their sense of smell. A whisper and gasps flowed outward, but he was beyond such petty concerns now.

Through the canopy at the front of the ship Icarus could see nothing but stars... but in his mind’s eye, he could sense the maelstrom raging out there, still echoing with the death cries of a lost ship. So close. So very close. Just hours ago, he thought his sense was a spiritual gift. Now he knew they were just psychic abilities the church had learned to awaken in young novices.

He discovered new powers. The alien, only able to stoke and feed off emotions before, now had access to his mind, to the full suite of human abilities, from the latent telepathic ability that allowed him to sense other humans to the biofeedback abilities it currently used to reshape the internal structure of his body.

But he didn’t have time to think about that. The Russians, the bastard Russians and their heretic church. He had to destroy them. He had to kill them, to taste their dying screams in the void. He would rip their energies from their bodies and dine upon them in leisure, smooth and tangy in their stoicism.

He could feel the pain of every soul on the ship. He could sense the remaining Russians, even if he couldn’t pinpoint their exact location among all the hate and anger of the Greeks. Something else... ah. The Commander hadn’t had any prisoners to torture, so he was torturing his own crew. That would make them fade right into the glory of the maelstrom. Clever.

Still, he had to find the renegade Russians before they caused real damage. They would have to be destroyed.

But before he could deal with the Russians on his own ship, he had to deal with the external threat. After that he could comb through the Daedalus in peace.

“Commander,” he said, and the Commander looked in his direction.

“What can I do for you, Father Superior?”

“Do we still have enough of an acceleration advantage to meet the Catherine in space?”

“We’d have to match velocities while letting them close the gap.” The Commander looked at one of the tech serfs, who nodded. “Yes. We could do that. Why would we want to?”

“Because we are going to ram that ship.”

The Commander spun on him, his emotions flaring with rage and horror. Icarus lapped them up without blinking.

“Are you mad?”

“No, Commander,” Icarus said. “For the first time in my life, I’m sane.”

“We would go to hell for even considering it. We could destroy that ship. We could destroy two ships.”

“Indeed.”

The Commander stomped forward, screaming in Icarus’s face. “Though shalt not violate the sanctity of a living ship!”

Icarus turned to look at the Commander for the first time. Then he struck, his fingers rigid, shattering the man’s voice box, sending shards through neck. The Commander didn’t have time to gurgle. He merely raised his hand a foot or so, his face a mask of shock and confusion. Then he fell over to one side. The energy released at the moment of his death was lifeless and devoid of terror. Very unsatisfying.

“The Commander ordered the crew tortured to mask this ship, did he not?” One of the tech serfs nodded and Icarus turned back to the canopy, to the delicious agony of the maelstrom out there in the night. His once and future home. “Stop torturing the crew,” Icarus ordered. “And bring us within striking distance of the Catherine the Great.”

“We can’t, Father Superior.” The tech serf tried to stand, but his body couldn’t manage it with one try. “The first proscription.” His terror quivered, delicious on the air, heady and rich.

“What is this about the first proscription?” The voice came from behind him, and Icarus didn’t have to turn to sense Colin standing there. Shock poured off him as he took in the discarded meat that was once the Commander. “Father Superior, what have you done?”

“I have become,” Icarus said and turned on Colin. He closed his eyes and Colin began to scream, the agony wracking the boy’s form, the spasms tearing tendon from bone. The energy rolled off Colin, more vibrant in its prolonged agony, frothing and light, a mixture of pain and horror, with just a hint of betrayal. Colin had thought they meant something to one another, as if the worm could mean anything to what Icarus had become. The dying worm.

Icarus quivered in pleasure, even as deep inside him, something screamed in protest. Colin. Never again would he hear Colin doubting him. Questioning him. Challenging him.

“I am your god now,” Icarus said, and he released all of his alien power through his human psychic abilities. The telekinetic ability to kill was new, but it was nothing compared to the telepathic ability the alien had, now that it had access to his human mind, now that he could cause Icarus to interface with them, human to human, without having to cross the vast gulf of evolution. The tech serfs snapped rigid. Then they turned back to their duty stations and began to carry out his orders, puppets at his command.

Icarus smiled.

***

“You’re certain they are coming this direction?” Captain Grigory Petrovich Romanov asked.

The Father Superior nodded. “Relatively speaking, of course. The Daedalus matched velocities and cut engines. At the same time, they stopped torturing their prisoners. We’ve been overtaking them ever since.”

“Do we have them on scopes yet.”

“I have FOUND them,” a tech serf said. The tones of the words didn’t match up. He’d lost his voicebox and the cyberware spliced together his speech from previous recordings. “THEY are very CLOSE. THEY have BEGUN A NEW burn. THEY are ALMOST matching VELOCITIES. We APPROACH.”

“They’re letting us in,” the Captain said. “Engineering?”

“Our burn is far from full power,” the tech serf said. “They came looking for us.”

“They mean to board,” the Captain said. “Get me the lieutenant in charge of the troops.” He couldn’t remember who that was, currently.

After a moment, “I’m here Captain.”

“We’re closing on the Daedalus. What’s your disposition?”

“The Father Superior sent a runner. We’re almost in gear and forming up on the port side. Can you arrange a boarding from port?”

He looked at the tech serf on the scopes. The creature nodded. “That I can. How many of your troops are in the lockers?”

“We climbed into armor and grabbed everything portable. We’re turning out in the hall.”

“All right. Be ready. I can get you a port side boarding but they might force the airlock we choose.”

“I understand, Captain.”

“Range?” the Captain asked.

“TWO thousand KILOMETERS.” Those would be frame-of-reference kilometers, adjusted for the faster-than-light drive.

As long as they stayed FTL, it would be spitting distance. “Time on target?”

“FOURTEEN minutes.”

That was, what, two kilometers a second and change. It would take them about twenty seconds to decelerate to a relative stop. If he cut his engines, which he wouldn’t yet. Maybe forty seconds at the outside? They had him outnumbered, but he would have the advantage of ground, this time.

He set a timer on his chronometer and watched it count down. At two minutes, the engineer said, “Do we cut engines, Captain?”

It had taken them a long time to get to 5 Gs. “No,” he said. “This could be a ploy to get us to cut power and have to start over. Let them dock with us under acceleration. Let’s see if they’re that good.”

At one minute: “Enemy performing a FULL MANEUVERING burn, CAPTAIN.”

“Steady,” he said.

Fifty seconds.

“Steady.” He moved over to the tech serf on scope.

Forty seconds.

“Steady.” He looked over the tech serf’s malformed shoulder.

Thirty seconds.

“Steady.” He could see it there, a blip approaching, burn data on the screen next to it.

Twenty Seconds. “CUT to 5 Gs ON enemy.” They were still inbound at a good relative clip. “HE wants TO come IN hot.”

Ten seconds. “Ready for boarders!” he shouted on the PA.

“THEY are PIVOTING,” the tech serf said.

“Pivoting? But they were already oriented for—”

The Captain caught the back of the chair as the entire frigate lurched to one side and the bones of the ship screamed to wail of tortured metal. The whole ship had moved. What the hell could cause the whole ship to move?

“What just happened?” the Father Superior cried as claxons sounded throughout the bridge. The Captain straightened and looked at the scope.

“They must have had a control failure,” the engineer said.

“No,” the Captain said. “The bastards rammed us. They rammed us!”

“Sacrilege! Not even heathens would ram a ship!” The Father Superior screamed.

But they had. The tech serf had seen them turn at the last minute to control the impact. They done it on purpose. The bastards were going to hell. They had done it on purpose.

Bile rose in his throat. What was the weight on his soul for letting it happen? But, no, there was no time for that. He was damned or he wasn’t. He had to take care of his crew, of—

“Get me the Lieutenant!” They were coming in on the port side. The port side.

“I’m not getting a response.”

I have breaches on decks 2 through 7 on the port side,” the engineer said. “The ship is exposed to hard vacuum.”

“Emergency seals?” The Captain asked.

“Activated.”

Thank God, but that also meant his troops were exposed to vacuum. Most of their armor was probably in good enough repair to hold off the vacuum, but those who weren’t obliterated in the impact almost certainly stood in the path of the Devil’s own wave of shrapnel. How many had survived? A handful of lucky souls? More?

No. The decks would be twisted metal and molten plating. Nothing could survive there for long. Nothing.

“Get us out of here.” Thank God he hadn’t cut the engines. Disentangle us and get us the hell out of here!”

But with his drive still ramping up, he couldn’t actually outrun the Daedalus.

***

The power surged through Icarus and out into the alien, the lines of psychic nourishment open and free flowing, now. More than one hundred souls perished at once, their death screams echoing through the void forming lines of power until they hit the alien in the center of his mind, twisting like a bowl of starving leeches. Still unsatisfying, but so much of it.

Icarus needed more. He needed more. More. More.

The Catherine the Great pulled away now, and he turned to the tech serfs. “Follow it. We have to get that ship. We have to kill them. Kill them all.”

“Kill them,” the serfs said in unison.

Already he felt the sap of controlling so many at once, but they were his now. The more he fed on them, the more they were his. He could use them up, but not before he’d finished. Not before it was all complete. It had taken so long to build power from the cruelties of the Daedalus. It had worked the crew of the Daedalus so long before it had the strength to crack open this human mind.

But now it was done, and its psychic connections to the humans were all it needed.

“Laugh,” he said.

Around him, the bridge crew laughed, the energy of the emotions coursing up the psychic tethers, light and airy, not filling, but with a heady bouquet. They laughed and laughed and laughed. Until their throats bled and the lungs strained. Gurgling sounds of suffering and delight.

And they were delicious. All the power he would need. He was invincible now, and the alien with him. Now, the maelstrom. All that was left was the maelstrom.

At last.

***

Captain Grigory Petrovich Romanov didn’t need to look at the scope again. The end was three minutes and twenty-seven seconds away. His chronograph ticked down the seconds. The Daedalus would overtake them, and although the ramming had been madness, it had accomplished its goal. Their forces were wiped out. The smallest boarding action would take them. They had nothing left. They had no one left.

He almost considered ramming his drive into full acceleration, but there was no way the ship would survive that. It would be like pressing a detonator. No, better they fall to the depredations of the Greeks than make that final drop into damnation. At least some of the crew still had souls to salvage, didn’t they? The Captain might have lost his by allowing the ship to be damaged, but the rest of the crew were innocent of that sin.

Dying by torture was unthinkable, but was it not also purifying? Redeeming? Better to die like that. Maybe it would even cleanse his tattered soul.

He closed his eyes. His image never cracked—he was the Captain, after all—but it was a near thing. He was responsible for these men and women and machine creatures. In the end, it would be good to let down the mantle of command, the Russian demeanor. It would be good to crawl in a bottle and not come out again.

But no.

One minute.

“Proud Russian citizens,” he said, pressing the button for the PA next to his chair. “It has been an honor to serve with you. Your families will speak of your greatness for generations.” And that was all the time he had.

He closed his eyes again. The alarm rang on the chronograph. A second passed. Another. He cracked his eye. Maybe the tech serf just hadn’t announced the boarding action. “Status?” he asked after a moment.

“IT’S fallen OUT OF FTL.”

And it was. He could see them shooting off behind them. While they still had their velocity, they had down-shifted into sublight kilometers. The scope had to adjust scale to keep them pictured.

“Let them eat dust,” he said. What was going on?

“Greetings, Catherine,” A voice suddenly said over the comm.

“Spetzna?” The Captain said. “Spetzna! For all the saints and angels, man, we thought you were dead!”

“I’ve taken control of the Daedalus’s secondary bridge, Actual. I know that wasn’t in our operational orders. I hope you don’t mind. I’ve had to improvise quite a bit.”

“Major, we will discuss your insubordinate attitude another time,” he said sternly, while buzzing to the point of bursting inside. “In the meantime, report.”

***

“We have the doors locked down, Actual,” Spetzna concluded. “It will take them a while to dig us out. You can burn away. What are you up to now, about 6 Gs?”

“About that,” the Captain said. Already his voice distorted by the different frames of reference. “Can you issue a full burn on the Daedalus?”

“I don’t think so, Actual, we barely found ‘off.’ The place hasn’t been maintained in decades.” Spetzna took a deep breath. “I think we can hold them until you can hit eleven Gs. This ship does, what, ten?”

“Affirmative, Major.”

“Then God speed.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the comm, but the Captain had to consider his crew, and Spetzna was down to fourteen living troopers. “Misha,” the Captain finally said.

“Yes, Actual?”

“You were a good man,” the Captain said. “All your troopers. I’m proud to have commanded all of them.”

“Thank you, Actual.” Spetzna didn’t mention that the man had already slipped into the past tense. They were all past tense, after all.

He cut the comm. Then he turned to his troopers. Fourteen left. Fourteen left to make their last stand.

The secondary bridge was low and filthy, the panels rusted and sagging under centuries of neglect. Three of his most tech-savvy people sat at stations. The rest formed positions around the two doors. Pasha was examining the back-most door.

“How long can you keep them locked out?” he asked Grisha. None of the troopers were idlers on the Catherine. Grisha’s job, when there wasn’t combat, was in engineering and maintenance.

The man shrugged. “It depends on if they have a hacker among their tech serfs. I don’t think they do. Why would they need one?” He looked up at Spetzna around a beak-like nose. “I think they would have taken control by now if they had.”

“What does that leave them?”

“Well, I’ve locked the controls. They could override them with the proper codes, but they haven’t, so they probably lost them centuries ago.”

“And why would they worry about them?” Spetzna said. By the time an enemy force could get here, the ships would already be locked in grapple fields. With damaging a ship proscribed, the greatest of the greatest taboos, there was nothing that an enemy force could accomplish in here. Hell, there was a decent chance the crew didn’t even know about override codes any longer.

“So we have time.”

“They’ll need to cut us out of the command loop manually, and the quick way to do that is in here.” Grisha pointed at a panel on the wall. “I think it will take time to do it otherwise. If I’m reading these plans right.”

“All right. Then we hold here—until the end.”

Grisha nodded. Spetzna scanned the troopers. Igor looked like his mind had finally cracked from the fear, leaving him a robot, ready at Valya’s orders. Pasha had opened that rear door and looked around. He just pulled his head back now.

“Major?” He pulled off his helmet and approached.

“Yes, Pasha?”

“I think that’s just a maintenance area. I don’t think they can get to it except through here.”

“And?”

“And I can see escape pods. For the bridge crew, if the ship were lost, you know.”

A tickle in his mind. “And?” His voice sounded cold and harsh, even to him. “If we go to the pods, this room falls the next time they try an assault.”

“Not us,” Pasha said. “You.”

His people turned to look at him as one. This again. How dare Pasha suggest this again? He almost reached for his power axe... his pulser would be locked into its peace harness by the proscription transmitters in the room. “I’m not abandoning my people.”

“You can die with us or you can make it out. You’re more help out there than dead.”

This son of a bitch thought he could poison the minds of Spetzna’s people right here, in the open. This conversation would ruin morale. This was unacceptable. Unacceptable!

“You will stow that shit, soldier,” Spetzna growled. His fists balled and the skin on his face pulled so tight it might snap.

“Major, you’re not thinking this through—”

Spetzna’s gut wrenched and he planted a fist into that god-damned, lying mouth. Pasha’s teeth shattered under the blow and he went down in a pile, but that wasn’t enough. None of it was enough. He leapt onto the body of his XO, his fists like pistons, smashing, smashing that lying face. That dirty fucking face. Smashing and smashing until it vanished, until it vanished for good.

“Major!” Valya screamed, but she wasn’t cheering him on. The bitch grabbed him instead, but as he put an elbow back into her bitch face the other men were on him, pulling him back, pulling him down. He flailed and screamed and frothed as they drug him to the ground, as they pinned him. He spat and bit and tried to tear their eyes out with words alone. It was only when that strange draining feeling came upon him that the anger finally subsided.

Spetzna lay there shaking, on the verge of tears, his heart screaming at him, the sound almost louder than the silence of his soldiers. Finally, he went limp and one by one they backed away. The rage. That rage was enough for him to kill, to maim, to torture. What had he become? He was no better than these bastards he’d come here to stop. No better than them.

His troopers released him now and he crawled to his feet, the shame too great to look at them, to look at what he’d done to Pasha. He had to control his anger, but how could he? Pasha said himself that Spetzna was the angriest man alive.

And the anger drained out of him, like beer out a tap.

He shuddered. Maybe this was how he ended. Maybe this was the shame he would die with. He had been so angry for so long. Angry at the church, at the state, at the universe. Eventually it had to eat him up, didn’t it? This had, in the end, been inevitable.

He stepped into the corner and lifted a hand to the wall. He couldn’t look at them. He couldn’t face them. Better that they all die here, with his shame.

He flinched at the thought, the guilt rising with bile. He’d rather them all die than leave with his shame? He was useless, broken, evil. He was damned and even his thoughts made him out to be a monster. A thing that would be better dead than alive. This was the end, he knew, because in his heart he knew the truth. To survive, he had to keep control, but he was beyond that now.

His rage had become uncontrollable.

***

Icarus twisted his neck left, then right, easing the internal pressures of his body. He could feel the attention of the alien on him now, probing him at a cellular level, massaging the composition of his body through biofeedback, shaping it to its will. The nausea and pains hadn’t gone away, but the alien didn’t allow him to succumb to them any longer. He had his purpose, and his purpose loomed.

Out there, he could feel the maelstrom. Also out there, the Russian ship, so full of ripe minds to reave. The maelstrom grew closer by the minute, the ship further away. He just needed to figure out how to drive that ship into the maelstrom. The priests would be blind there, but that’s where he needed them to end. If he could just get them inside, then he would have won.

If he did that, he wouldn’t even need to deal with the damn Russians still loose on his ship. At least he didn’t need to find them anymore. The entire ship knew exactly where they were.

Around him, the bridge crew worked their little drone minds, doing their little drone things. It was such a relief, to finally be able to control them directly. No, wait. It was a relief for the alien to be able to control them directly. For so long, it could do nothing more than nudge their thoughts, but now, he could control them through the mental connection that humans shared. He could crush them with a thought. Humans had innate talents that the alien didn’t quite share.

He turned now and walked across the bridge, new pus and excretions squishing in his shoes as he moved. He stopped at the body by the door. Colin. The priest had challenged him so many times before he started becoming. Part of Icarus had valued his doubting mind more than anyone on the ship.

Icarus twitched as buds of new flesh moved under the skin of his sides. So far the changes had been primarily internal, but not for much longer. Soon, he’d no longer be able to pass as human.

He stretched and felt the flesh of his sides split, the new, budding growths pressing out against his clothes. That was better. It wouldn’t be long now. Not if he could trick them into entering the maelstrom. It wouldn’t be long.

He looked down at Colin one last time. It was a pity that he’d killed the young man like that.

He should have killed him much more slowly.

***

“Can we make it?” Captain Grigory Petrovich Romanov asked the navigator.

The creature buzzed as the electronics in his brain calculated. “No, sir. The Major’s efforts aside, I don’t think he can stop them from regaining control for long enough. They’ll overtake us before our drive is up to full.”

The bridge smelled of sweat and oil mixed with the ozone of emergency welds from the decks below. They had cut all but the lights of the instruments to save the electrical system. The flickering controls made the tech serfs appear to be puppets, jerking in the spasmodic light.

They had come so far. He wasn’t going to let them die like that. Not after they’d been through so much.

“Comm officer, get me the Father Superior.”

After a minute or two, the man’s voice said,”Yes, Captain?”

“That maelstrom is still in front of us, correct?”

“Yes, Captain.”

It wouldn’t show on any scopes, but every priest on the ship had to know its exact location. “Then send one of your priests to me,” he said.

The Captain stared blindly out the canopy, at a great storm invisible to his eyes. Once past the horizon, they could just vanish into the noise. “I’m taking us inside.”

***

Spetzna had, through a supreme feat of will, kept from vomiting. He still stood in the corner, his helmet off, and he had pressed his face against the cold metal of the wall. He couldn’t run from this. He could do this. He could turn around and face his troops.

“Major,” Valya said. He didn’t turn. He could tell from the sounds behind him that Pasha was still alive. He couldn’t look at him yet. He couldn’t reconcile what he had done with who he was. Who he had been. The murdering man of peace was gone. Only the murderer remained.

“Major, look at me.” She probably just couldn’t stand the chaos. She probably just needed to put Spetzna back in his ordered little box.

Spetzna sighed and turned to Valya. He’d already looked weak enough, standing in the corner. Better they think he fumed than cowered.

“What?” he snapped.

“Major, we’re all feeling it.”

He squinted at her. “Feeling what?”

“You don’t feel it?” She looked around, almost sniffing the air. “It’s hit Igor the worst, but he’s just shut down. It hit you almost as bad, because you’re an angry man.” Only Pasha or a sergeant would feel they could speak to him like that, and the sergeant only when it was time to perform the oldest and most delicate of sergeant duties... bringing the old man in line.

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that something is going on. Our emotions are out of control. Can’t you feel it? Can’t you feel that this isn’t normal? Like an itch in the mind.”

“Or a tickle.” He pushed the guilt and the doubt and the shame away for a moment. She was right. If he really tried to be objective about it, she was right. It was a palpable presence all around him. A psychic effect? Was he feeling the Maelstrom?

No. There were maelstroms on Earth... Earth was practically one giant maelstrom—that didn’t explain why it happened out here, in space. They had only just come near the maelstrom.

Moreover, he’d been to Earth, where people had been dying violent deaths for some seven thousand years, and he’d never felt this before. He’d never felt anything remotely like this before.

“You don’t seem to be affected,” he said to Valya.

She shrugged. “Maybe it’s all the practice I have acting mad or acting calm when I’m not. Maybe I’m just not a very emotional person.” And it would probably offend her sense of structure. She looked at the troops. “Objectively, I feel like it’s affecting me the least.”

He’d never experienced anything like this before. His gut was trying to tell him something. It had been trying to tell him something for a while.

“What do you think is going on?”

“I think there’s something in the air,” she said.

No. His gut didn’t like that. Not something in the air, but she was right. What if the things this crew had been doing weren’t just average, run-of-the-mill evil? What if they were being affected like he was? They hadn’t been near a maelstrom until just now. If they’d been feeling it, they’d been feeling it up and down the border. The Russians hadn’t. Not until they got to this ship.

It was following this ship.

The Greeks might not be the enemy after all. The Greeks might be the first victims.

“I’ve never felt this before,” he said.

“Me neither,” she said.

“That means it’s not some far-reaching force. Not some omnipresence. Not Satan.”

“What are you saying, Major?” she asked.

Not following this ship. No. “I’m saying its on this ship.” He looked over the troops. “Is he going to be all right?” Can’t apologize, have to be the hard-ass CO, for at least a little longer. Find a way to apologize without apologizing later. The burden of command.

“I think so,” Grisha said, kneeling next to Pasha with the others.

“Gear up,” Spetzna said. “We have a new mission objective.”

“We have to hold this room.”

“We’ll have to hope that the Catherine has enough of a head start. The Daedalus was going to catch them eventually. I think we all knew that. We couldn’t hold that long.” The troops nodded. “We were only holding here because it was the best chance, even if it was a long shot.”

“So what’s the new objective, Major?” Valya asked. She wore a wry smile now. For the first time since they stayed behind, Valya looked completely comfortable. A real objective. The old man back on his game. All was right with the universe.

“There’s something on this ship. It’s driving us mad. It’s been driving this entire ship mad.”

“What is it?” she asked.

“What else could it be?” Spetzna said. “It’s not everywhere, just in this ship. It’s been in this ship all along. It’s confounding us into thinking it isn’t a physical thing, that it’s just a presence.”

“How do you know that?”

“I don’t, but an evil like this doesn’t exist without hiding, and the best way to find something hiding is to challenge your assumptions.”

“But what is it?”

“It’s a demon.” He reached back and touched his new pulser, but this was a proscribed area, so it would be locked in its peace harness anyway.

“What can we do against a demon?” Igor asked, his voice hollow and distant.

“I don’t know about you,” Spetzna said, “but I’m going to kill it.”

I’m coming for you, you son of a bitch. I don’t know how, but I’m going to make you pay.

***

“THEY HAVE REGAINED control OF their ENGINES,” the tech serf said.

Captain Grigory Petrovich Romanov cursed inwardly but he kept his veneer calm. They had regained control. That meant two things.

First of all, they were doomed. They might lose the thing in the maelstrom, but only if it wasn’t relying on scopes. They were still just in sensor range. If they had been tracking the Catherine all along, they wouldn’t have lost it yet. If they were relying on their priests to track her, it might not have occurred to them to take up mechanical scanning. He could only pray.

Second, Spetzna was dead. Otherwise they couldn’t have taken the secondary bridge.

The ship would have retained all its velocity as it shifted back into FTL. There wasn’t much left to do either way but run.

“Navigation, work with sensors. I want to know their turn-around point.”

The two tech serfs discussed matters for a moment, then the navigator said, “To match speeds for boarding they will have to kick over and start decelerating in thirty-two minutes, forty-six seconds.”

The Captain set the chronograph. “Then in thirty-three minutes or so we’ll know if they’re still tracking us.” It would be difficult to time their deceleration correctly if they weren’t tracking the Catherine. It was a long shot but it was just possible that they’d already traveled enough into the fringe of the maelstrom that they would no longer appear as a cold spot.

The Captain paced as the minutes ticked down. The Daedalus had to lose them. It was their only hope. Dammit, let them be relying on their priests. Most ships did, most of the time. A good priest was accurate enough to time burn data. Just be off mechanical tracking. God dammit, let my people get out of this alive. If I need to die, so be it, but no more of my people.

The chronometer ticked steadily down. He often thought that the most important skill of a ship commander was to watch a clock without looking uncomfortable. The Captain had perfected the mien of a musical connoisseur, closing his eyes and listening to opera in his head, occasionally humming a bar or involuntarily raising his hand to conduct the orchestra. It was complete rubbish, of course, but it put out the proper air of unconcerned patience for the crew. In his head, he positively stewed.

When the timer hit zero, he cracked an eye as if annoyed and climbed to his feet. He casually walked over to the sensor operator. “Report?”

“THE Daedalus HASN’T kicked over.”

It was almost too much to hope for. “That’s good news,” he said casually. He watched the timer tick up from zero. At the two minute mark, he said, “Let’s correct course by... what... twenty degrees? That should keep enough of the maelstrom’s interference on the other side of us while we cut FTL and let them pass.” They needed to lose them before they got far enough away from the maelstrom that they’d need to torture their own crew members to disappear in the background noise.

The navigator plotted the new course and handed it off to helm. Within a minute they’d begun their parabolic arc away from their previous vector.

“THE Daedalus IS changing course to PURSUE.”

What the hell? “That doesn’t make sense,” the Captain said. “If they have us on scope, then why haven’t they decelerated? At this rate they’ll approach us too fast to...”

Holy shit.

“They intend to ram us again,” the navigator said.

“That doesn’t make sense,” the helmsman said. “The relative Vs are too great. If they started a full deceleration right now they would still hit with enough impact to obliterate both ships.”

The Captain reached out and grabbed a chair. Both ships. They weren’t just damned. They were actually suicidal. They intended to destroy both ships. What kind of madness was this? What the hell was going on onboard that ship?

It didn’t matter, though. In old sailing parlance, the Daedalus had the weather gauge. They could force the collision on their terms. The Catherine didn’t have the acceleration to stop it.

***

The rage blazed in Spetzna as his pulser throbbed, accelerating AP/Explosive slugs to supersonic velocities. The rounds exploded on impact, a staccato of glittering flashes pouring all that anger, all that rage, into the Greeks. One of the dirty bastards exploded in front of him, twisting in streamers of crimson gore as the rounds tore through his body. The smell of exploded rounds and pulser ozone penetrated his filters and burned in his nose, tickling the back of his throat. The sound of detonations filled his ears, pulsing in a rhythm of death. Funeral drums, throbbing in his brain in time with his heart.

They fought through a hall, Greeks coming at them from all directions, moving in jerks, then flowing forward, spider-like in the flickering lighting of the battle-damaged hall. It seemed that every Greek in the universe had been waiting outside the secondary bridge.

And he had to kill them. His hands shook with the pain of it, the need. He had to see them all dead, all mutilated, twisted and torn on the deck of the ship. He needed to piss in their mouths and tear at their bodies. He needed to hurt them, to see them suffer, to hear their screams echoing in his ears.

In all these years, it had never been like this. War had been a job. He’d killed with the detachment of a professional, the way a whore screwed. Now he knew the orgasm of slaughter, he knew the joy of pain. He knew what it was like to destroy men utterly for the pure, unadulterated joy of it.

Dear God, what was he thinking?

He almost stopped to vomit as the feelings sank in. Now he shook with horror. Now the weakness in his limbs was that of sickness, not of ecstasy. The demon. He had to find and destroy the demon, because the demon had looked into his soul, and had found a kindred. It had awakened all that was the most twisted and stunted in an already malformed spirit.

It fed off him. He could feel it. It had since he’d arrived. Angry then drained, angry then drained. The demon had skewered him with a tap and now sucked the nectar of his wicked soul, leaving him thin and transparent, like blood in vodka.

He had to keep control. He had to starve it. Pasha had said it, Spetzna was the angriest man alive. A constant buffet on which a demon could sup.

He scanned his troops and realized that he was down to nine. He had to get them out of the kill zone. There were just too many Greeks. In his anger he hadn’t realized where he was or where he’d let his anger lead them, only that they killed on the way. He needed to think.

“Grisha, I need the nearest proscribed area!” he shouted.

The tech specialist nodded. He’d studied the ship schematics earlier and Spetzna could only pray he remembered the big picture. His prayers were answered a moment later when Grisha pointed down the halls. “That way!” he shouted. “The engine room!”

He called out orders and his few remaining troopers ran down the halls. There were fewer troops in that direction, as the taboo of the proscription would be working on the minds of the Greeks, no matter how far they’d fallen. Commandments were one thing, you could repent and redeem yourselves from those. There was no redeeming the sin of breaking a proscription. It was indelible.

He’d already killed all the ones that had armed for a proscribed area. The firing died off as the Greeks hesitated, unwilling to fire down the hall toward their own engine room. They grabbed cover behind rusty pipes and in corners and they dug in. One of them seemed to be screaming for weapons. It would take a few minutes. Spetzna took a last survey of his troops. Five. Valya, Igor, Grisha, Pasha, and a recruit he barely knew named Mira. Pasha couldn’t fight. His jaw and teeth were all kinds of shattered.

They backed down the hall, Mira practically carrying Pasha, their pulsers up but not firing. Not when the Greeks couldn’t fire back. If one of them fired and the Greeks fired back reflexively both would be damned to the darkest pit of hell, their souls tortured for all eternity, with no hope of escape.

They reached the end of the hall, the deck and walls painted brilliant yellow to demark the border between sacred and profane. Spetzna stopped, gasping, his breath tearing in his throat and lungs.

They had pushed him into this. They had murdered and tortured their way up and down the borders and now they had killed almost all of his soldiers. They had to pay. Those dirty bastards had to pay.

He raised his pulser and gazed through the holographic sight, putting the red dot on the head of a Greek. His hand spasmed on the trigger but he couldn’t pull it. He couldn’t fire. He couldn’t fire that last, soul-killing shot.

He forced the pulser back down. He had to beat the anger. He had to figure this out. There was a way to keep control. He just needed to find it.

But how was he going to kill the demon if every act of violence launched him through escalating cascades of rage? Setting aside whether it was even possible to kill it, how could he kill something if the very act was his own downfall? And yet, this thing had been feeding on people all across the border, maybe for all of human history. He had to stop it—it didn’t really matter how.

But control. Be like Valya.

Slowly, he forced himself to lift his pulser over his shoulder and lock it into its peace harness. He stepped back farther onto the painted yellow zone, taking quick glances over his shoulder. And farther. He heard the safeties on the peace harness lock down. He was in the room.

And Igor arched his back and screamed, blood spewing forward out of his chest, dripping from a giant, throbbing cylinder of flesh. He writhed, his face a mask of terror and agony, agony so great it lifted him off the ground, transmuting agony into weightlessness, up and up and up...

No, wait, that cylinder of flesh was a tentacle, coming down from the ceiling, vivisecting him from behind, lifting him into the air before discarding him like so much decaying flesh.

He looked up to the pulsing, viscous mass of glistening flesh, sack-like and spouting tentacles, clinging to the ceiling above the door, smelling of death and rot and grease. It didn’t roar. It didn’t need to. Spetzna’s mind roared for it, in despair, in horror, on the edge of madness.

Mira dragged Pasha away and Grisha and Valya scattered even as the voice spoke behind him. “I’m so glad you could arrive in time. You almost missed my rebirth.”

Spetzna spun, scattering sideways into the room, past the giant engines, the trunk-like fuel lines, the massive consoles. He kept one eye on the demon above him, the Thing That Could Not Be, even as he turned to see the figure behind him, between the engines, dripping pus and reeking of gangrene and shit even from here. A thing that used to be a man, dressed in the robes of a Father Superior. As he watched it, its face cracked and sloughed half off its skull. Through great, seeping wounds on its side, nascent tentacles pushed through befouled and torn cloth.

“I am Icarus,” the thing said. “I am your new god.”

***

Streams of fear and hate poured down palpating lines of psychic energy, grounding on Icarus, fueling the transformation. The hate filled him and beat in his mind and heart, searing through his veins even as his anatomy transformed into something else, but the strongest, the most potent... the most delicious came from this Russian.

They were in the maelstrom now. He could feel the energies out there, fertile and vile, a bed of ecstasy for him to find his apotheosis. A rippling field, ripe and ready to complete his transformation, to turn the unfertilized egg the alien had built out of his body and soul into the zygote of a future god.

“Mother,” he whispered and along that psychic channel, the alien quivered acknowledgment. He was in the maelstrom, the spawning place. He had been torn open and asunder, and he was ready.

That Russian stood across from him even as the other three pulled themselves away from where Icarus’s future mother nested in the ceiling. She had dropped the psychic cloaks now and everyone could see her... Icarus didn’t know if she even could maintain the cloaks while birthing him into something new, while ripping the souls from these pitiful creatures, slurping out their corrupted energies and remaking them into the primal force of creation, of birth/rebirth.

“What is your name, insect?” Icarus/Mother said. “Not that ridiculous Russian name, I don’t have all day. What do they call you?”

“The call me Spetzna,” the soldier said.

“Is that because you’re mentally retarded, Spetzna? Are you that kind of ‘special?’”

“Fuck you,” Speztna growled, and pleasure and food flowed from him and into Icarus.

“Fuck you, Icarus, sir,” Icarus/Mother corrected.

Somewhere, deep inside Icarus, something screamed, half-remembered, in protest. A tiny, insignificant voice cried out that this was not right, that Icarus was a man of God. Icarus crushed that voice with a flicker of his power. Then he turned to one of the soldiers, reached out with his mind, and plucked off her hands.

She screamed, waves of ecstasy quivering their way down his psychic feeders. He writhed in the pleasure of it even as the thing inside him grew and spasmed. The voice cried out louder, and he answered by pulling her legs apart until her hips tore from sockets and her legs snapped.

He hated them, hated his own men, hated even himself, in that pure, delicious emotion that fed upon itself, growing with each surge of emotion. Hate was all he had left now, a casual hate. He’d felt before as if the alien had hated him and his race. Now he understood. Hate was the end, not the means. The hate was everything.

Once they had reproduced by carefully nurturing their energies over centuries, by building nests of enslaved animal biomass and turning them into unfertilized eggs. Once they had been creatures on the brink of extinction, having killed off their own most fertile members for food, an evolutionary dead end. Then they had branched out into the stars and found life, and procreation had never been the same again.

Spetzna screamed as the woman died. Had all that ecstasy happened in a split second? Was his life so full to over brimming now that he could barely judge time anymore? He flicked his attention out, smashing Spetzna into the wall using only his will... that power that the alien couldn’t use without him and that he couldn’t use without the alien. With another flicker, he tossed the woman to Mother. Mother needed to eat too, if this were to work.

“This is what it means to become a god,” Icarus/Mother said. “You think you understand sex? You don’t begin to understand the first thing about true procreation, about splitting yourself off into a you that is not you. Your pitiful grunting fluid exchanges are nothing compared to the act of transforming into a god.”

The other woman and man tried to charge in from either side and he batted them away. There was a third man, too injured to fight. Their pain fed his rage.

“By tomorrow, I will have become. The deaths of all of these people will fuel my ascension. I will rise from this rotting form and I will blaze anew.”

With that he crushed the woman and the still-functioning man, teasing out waves of pain and energy in orgasmic waves of pleasure. He would have taunted Spetzna some more, but that one was Mother’s now. She would need his pure, orgasmic, incomparable rage.

***

Captain Grigory Petrovich Romanov stood on the bridge of his ship. The pressure of the pursuit lay heavy on the bridge, a psychological oppression that made the tech serfs afraid to speak. The Captain didn’t break the hush. He felt it too.

“Status?” he whispered.

“THEY HAVE cut THEIR drives as WELL,” the sensor operator said. “WE are both SUBlight now.”

The maelstrom had been caused by the death of no less than seven different ships, probably in the days before the Collapse, before the proscriptions. The Catherine the Great had sailed into some of the densest debris and used their grapple fields to gather and throw off a cloud of chaff around them. The Daedalus seemed to have lost them for the moment. That was good. How long would the Daedalus search before giving up? It was in sensor range now, it just didn’t have a lock. Still, it had to know approximately where they were. They hadn’t moved much since it last knew their position.

At least here, he had the advantage. This was the last place the Greeks would want to be, with all their priests blind.

He wasn’t supposed to be able to feel the maelstrom. He wasn’t a man of God, and yet he could feel something out there. A tickle in his mind. Hatred and joy? He shook his head. He was letting his imagination get away from him. There was nothing out there but the ship. That was what he felt. The crew of the Daedalus was crazy beyond reason, willing to kill both of them and destroy their ships. Unspeakable evil. Incomprehensible evil. It was no wonder it ate at his nerves.

“CAPTAIN!” The shout shattered the tension on the bridge.

“What?”

“It changed course,” the Sensor Operator said. “IT’S found us again.”

***

Firearms were proscribed in this, the most holy room of the ship, but that didn’t leave Spetzna unarmed. As he leapt to one side out of the reach of the tentacled horror, he pulled his axe from his back. The pole swung out, the 45cm serrated circular blade spinning free until he hit the activation stud and the blade turned into a whirling circular saw.

The demon’s next tentacle met with the blade of his power axe, slicing away and spraying a sticky brown fluid. Spetzna whirled the blade over his head, catching the next tentacle as it launched in, lopping it off as well, trying to keep track of Icarus in his peripheral vision even as he fought the demon.

The demon withdrew a moment, but Spetzna wasn’t going to let this son of a bitch have a moment. He leapt in, hacking at the abomination, slashing and whirling, his spittle frothing on his mouth. This thing would pay. It would pay.

No. He had to keep control. He had to calm down. He was just feeding the creature, making it stronger. Every beat of anger in his temple, ever pulse in his neck was just another morsel for this... thing. More food for the unholy. He could see it grow stronger with each pulse. He didn’t know if it was the strength of his anger or his proximity, but he could see every pulse of rage echoed in its repulsive, pulsing form.

Calm, reserve.

But all the killing. All the killing led up to this. Countless men and women, occasionally children. Their faces danced in front of him, mocking. They wouldn’t let this thing live. Spetzna had taken their lives and now they demanded blood. He couldn’t give them his own.

He hacked and leapt and now the thing skittered away from him, but it didn’t try to stop him. Of course not. He was feeding it. It needed him to lose control.

This thing was the embodiment of every act of evil he had ever done. It forced people to kill, just like he had been forced to kill. It destroyed lives just as he had destroyed lives. It was evil. It was pitiful. It was a mewling, unspeakable thing, unfit to live, to breathe. It was a sacrilege, a cry against all that was holy. It was sinful and low and must be stopped. It didn’t deserve to have a happy life, to have a wife and children. It didn’t deserve to serve out its term and retire. It had to keep killing, because that was what one did. That was duty and honor. That was the call one made when given the choice between serving the church and turning away. This abomination had probably seen so many people die on its watch, so many people it couldn’t save, that it chose not to save. People that would have survived if they didn’t hit the inconvenient chokepoint on a battle map somewhere. This thing should just lay down and die but it didn’t dare lay down and die because that was an even greater sin, so it just kept slipping farther and farther down the path to hell and he couldn’t get out and killing him would be a goddamn courtesy.

No. No. What the hell was wrong with him? He was just feeding it. The damn thing was trying to have a damn Satan baby right here in this room and he was feeding it. He had to get control, he had to get control or it would win.

In his heart, he’d always hated violence. This was the opportunity, his chance to win a war without fighting. This was his chance to finally be the man he’d always wanted to be.

He lowered the power axe.

The alien stopped running, its bulbous, amorphous organ-sack of a body pulsing in the light, wet like leeches full of blood. It seemed to consider him a moment, then Icarus spoke, or the demon spoke through him, Spetzna wasn’t sure. “So, you’ve stopped fighting.”

A wave of energy picked him up and smashed him against the wall, knocking the wind out of him and rattling his armor, his gut lurching. He collapsed to the floor, scrambling for his axe. That son of a bitch. He started to get to his feet to make it pay when he noticed Icarus writhing in ecstasy. Stop it. Get control. You might be the angriest man alive but you don’t lose control. You are control. Valya is dead, but she is your example. You are the epitome of careful action. This is not you, Mikail Vladomirovich Vetrov. You can beat this thing. You can starve it.

Another flicker of attention and he was smashed back into the wall, his teeth rattling in his head. He picked himself back up, his gut writhing. The son of a bitch was not going to keep him down. It was not going to—

Control. He had to keep control. He had to—

Smash. This time ribs broke. Spetzna knew that it could hit harder than this. He’d seen it shatter his friends. It was toying with him. He was helpless. Just as helpless as he had always been. Just as impotent as when he’d tried to save all those people. He was worthless, expended. Just give up. Just give up.

He couldn’t beat it. He couldn’t win. It had been toying with him all along.

It smashed him again, and his gut boiled and he tried to stand, tried to keep control. Tried to hold it all together. This was it. This thing was going to kill them all and Icarus was going to become something even more abominable and it would escape and this would all start over again. This would all be for naught. His gut twisted and the bile rose. But he forced it down. He lay there, beaten for the moment, and he tried to see a way out.

Had it lured them here? Why was Icarus even in this room? Had it brought him here to feed? Was his anger, his rage so pure that it wanted him for the final transformation?

And the engine room. The thing had a physical body, it needed an escape route and the escape pods for engineering were holy—they would be perfectly maintained. It would smash the ships together, get that final rush of energy but it would be shooting away when it happened. They would fuel the fire of its birthing. They would be the energy that would feed its transformation, awash in the energies of the maelstrom. Wait. His gut. His gut had been twisting with each of those surges. His gut was trying to tell him something.

They. They would feed it. He wasn’t the only light in this fire, he was just the brightest. It was all for naught. Even if he could control his anger, it wouldn’t help. There was still enough fuel in this ship to get the job done. What he’d been doing was fruitless. The bastard thing didn’t need him to get angry. It merely wanted him to get angry.

It was getting a sick thrill out of it.

Spetzna rose to his feet again, allowing his anger to seethe under the surface. The demon didn’t strike at him through Icarus this time. It wanted the anger. This was sex to it. It hit him when he tried to control it, not when he let it go.

Suddenly, he knew what his gut was trying to say. Suddenly, he knew what he had to do. Dear God save him, he knew.

He let the anger boil, fanned it in his heart as he walked across the room. “You bastard!” he screamed, but not to the demon, to Pasha. He stumbled towards his XO, the only person still twitching on the floor of the engine room. The only one still alive.

“You stupid kozel fuck!” he screamed. The anger was there, but it was more physiological than emotional. Burning, banked in the back of his head, while the alien fanned the flames. “You got us into all this!” he screamed. “You tore down my people! You undermined my command!”

He grabbed Pasha with one hand as he hefted the axe with another. The man moved like broken bones, and Spetzna had to choke down the bile as splinters shifted behind the backs of his fingers. The man whimpered, his bruised eyes terrified as Spetzna lifted him up and punched him back into the wall, pulling the blow as much as possible, praying that wasn’t the final blow that killed the man, but needing to keep up the appearance, needing to feed the thing, to keep it watching, not acting. “I’m going to kill you,” he hissed, then pulled him back and thrust him forward and a foot and a half to the left.

Into the airlock.

Pasha landed, broken, on the couch of the airlock as Spetzna screamed his fury and the alien didn’t react. It should have reacted, but instead it spasmed there, up by the roof, out of his reach. He didn’t know what it would take to kill the thing, with its telekinetic powers. He probably only had one chance and no practical weapon. His pulser was locked into its peace harness by the proscription transmitters in the room. The safeties on the axe would stop its motor the moment it left his hand. There wasn’t even a really good tool handy.

But Pasha was in the airlock, and the alien, for just a moment, seemed out of control.

“I need to become angrier,” Spetzna said to Pasha.

Pasha couldn’t respond through his broken mouth, but he managed to give a disbelieving expression, as if to say, “How is that even possible? You are the angriest man alive.”

Spetzna hit the launch button on the life pod and spun as it launched and cycled.

“I have something for you!” he screamed at Icarus.

Icarus snapped out of his reverie and he or the demon said, “What?”

“Ecstasy,” Spetzna said.

And for the first time in his life, Spetzna stopped fighting and let his anger go.

***

The anger flowed through Icarus’s body in a wave of pure power, of pure pleasure. He went rigid in its wake, gasping out loud at the perfect, unspeakable joy of it. All that power. He had never tasted anything like it before. So close. So pure.

He swayed in the wake of it, unable to even cry out as the energy wracked his limbs, as the power washed back and forth through his body. He was more than a man. In that moment, he was a god.

His awareness reached out through the ship, feeling the rich, nutritious bed of hate and pain that roiled in the maelstrom around him. He could sense the Catherine now, despite the background noise, so close. In minutes, they’d overtake them. He and Mother would eject in the escape pod. The ships would collide. In the orgasmic spasms of the horror and death of the two crews, Icarus would take that last step. He would shed this bony, human form and evolve, become a new god in the universe, feasting on the hatred of others.

And oh did they hate. Did they rail. Did they slaughter one another. It took only the slightest nudge to drop them into the most delicious depredations. He would feast on them. He would sup in their decadent splendor until the end of time.

A god.

“A god, huh?”

Colin? No, not Colin. An echo of Colin, a memory of Colin.

“You don’t really think that you’ll become a god, do you?”

Not Colin, just Colin’s voice. An illusion in the tossed, endless storm of his mind. Nothing to be concerned with, just a squeaking in his ear.

The voice. That tiny, foolish part of him. The part that fought. That pitiful, pitiful piece.

“Will it really be you, or are you deluding yourself? When the alien finishes taking root in your mind and your body, when it blossoms, will it be you that remains, or are you just the placenta?”

Icarus snapped his eyes open and could sense that the alien realized something was wrong. It tried to blast through their connection, but the attack was unfocused, a little wild. Not enough to batter down Icarus’s mind. Not enough to silence the small voice, which had taken the opportunity to seize control.

The alien’s panic burned through their link, trying to force him to attack, desperate to fight through his conduit, but Icarus wouldn’t let it have control. He didn’t know why it was so panicked, but he wasn’t going to let it have control again. Spetzna had given it his anger, and it had faltered, and Icarus was Icarus again. Let it “nudge” humans if it wanted. For this moment, it wouldn’t have the power that came from acting through a human mind.

I will not. I will not become your thing. I am a man of God. You will not destroy me. You will not devour me. You may kill me, but I will go down my way. I will go down with my soul.

And then the pain hit, tearing through his flesh like so much tissue. Icarus was too startled even to scream. He looked down to see his body covered in caustic fluid, dissolving his flesh. He looked to the source.

And there stood Spetzna, who had cut one of the thigh-sized fuel lines with that axe of his. Toxic rocket fuel sprayed across the room, and Icarus’s already sloughing flesh peeled off the bone. The Russian only fared slightly better in his armor, but he’d managed to raise his axe, spinning at full speed.

Icarus wasn’t able to speak, but the alien managed to get just enough control to speak through him. “What are you doing?”

“Going to hell,” Spetzna rasped, then brought the axe down on the deck plating with a spark.

***

Those who believed there was no sound in space had never felt the wails of two hundred souls sent straight to hell. Captain Grigory Petrovich Romanov could feel that, even as he saw the energy release on the scope. Even as he reached out to grab the sensor operator’s chair, subtly, for support. Even without the gifts of a priest, he could feel it.

“They’re gone,” he whispered.

No one cheered. No one celebrated. A hush lay over the bridge as each person or creature there processed what had just happened. Two hundred or more souls, snuffed out. How many of them were complicit? How many of them escaped damnation? Surely Spetzna, if he had still been alive, had tried to stop the explosion in the end. Surely he, at least, valued his soul more than the destruction of the enemy.

They had won, but at what cost?

“It’s over,” he whispered. “It’s over.”

He turned and walked back to his chair. His facade didn’t matter now. No one here would be able to see past the rushing sound behind their own eyes. So many dead. A ship destroyed. Such evil. How many people witnessed such evil in their entire lives?

He collapsed into his seat. He’d given himself his moment. Time to take control. “Scan for survivors.” The priests wouldn’t be able to sense anything in here.

“One LIFE-POD,” the Sensor Operator said.

“Communications,” the Captain said, “is it one of ours?”

“Single friendly armor transponder,” the tech serf replied. “Pavel Ivanovich”

Pasha. Pasha had made it out. Of all of them, just that one man. “Navigator,” he said. “Plot a match for velocity and vector. Let’s bring him in.”

***

In the depths of space, clinging to the hull of the surviving ship, pulsed the rippling form of the father. The screams of its mate still echoed on the psychic tides of the maelstrom. She had only just arrived at his spawning ground and they had killed her, before he’d even been able to fertilize their child. These insects had killed that which was eternal. They had killed her.

And he knew rage.

Slowly, he reached out. One by one, he brushed the minds of the crew with his perfect, divine mind. Looking for the one.

Flight of the Runewright

Howard Tayler

There is a click, soft and silvery, at my throat. The black velvet bag over my head is now locked in place, and I won’t be able to see a damned thing until I’m safely aboard the Voidheron and bound for freedom. I know better than most just how damned those things are, but the thought of a blind, winding walk across the rune-inscribed tarmac gives me a momentary chill.

“The rope is to your left, Mister Simonson,” says a voice in my right ear. She sounds like a sweet girl, and she’s speaking remotely. Very remotely, I expect. She’s probably never seen the path we need to walk, let alone the glyphs, symbols, and assorted ’grams carved into the ancient materials of Voidheron’s hull. Seeing is believing, and believing is not worth it. My brother—my twin, just forty seconds my senior—has seen and believes, and is locked away for his own and everybody else’s good.

So I reach out with my left hand, and there is the rope. It feels like silk, and it’s thick. It hangs from something above me, taut above my hand, slack below.

“Hold tightly as you walk. Do not let go.” There is a mechanical hum and a click above me, then a gentle pull forward on the rope. I begin to walk.

“Mommy, why won’t they let us see?” The child’s voice is coming from maybe five meters ahead of me. Shut up, kid. You don’t want to know.

“The spaceship is very bright on the outside. We need to fly through the darkest parts of the whole universe, and our ship is brighter than the sun. If you looked at it, you’d burn your eyes.”

Lucky kid. His mother is one hell of a liar. I mean, that’s a good lie. There’s just enough truth in it to convince you that you shouldn’t look, but it’s not the whole story. The actual truth will have you wanting to look. After all, how can seeing some letters and numbers, or whatever those shapes are, really break your brain?

My brother, like all the rest of the runewrights, had to do his work with a patch strapped over his left eye. Always the left. Something about brain hemispheres. You can get by if just half your head has eldritch power coruscating through it, but if both eyes see what you’re writing, if you get a chance to really think about it, it’s all you can think about, and your head ends up in the place where Voidheron needs to go, except your head can’t get back out.

Ignoring the nervous murmurs around me, I walk. Led by the pulling of the rope, I step along a gradually tightening rightward curve. Then a sharp left and a long straightaway. There are others ahead of and behind me, shuffling carefully. Now another sharp left. I take a few steps, and my rope stops pulling. I take another step and my rope tugs backwards once. I stand still, waiting for direction.

The murmurs and shuffling footsteps are just a few meters behind me, moving from my left to my right. Somehow I’ve gotten off the path. It’s not my fault. I was led here. Did they pull me out of line? Do they know?

My face begins to sweat inside the velvet bag. Does velvet breathe? Am I going to suffocate? The smell of my own breath is suddenly overpowering. I brushed my teeth this morning, didn’t I? Is this halitosis or fear?

“Hold still for just a moment, Mister Simonson,” says the voice of innocence in my right ear. “Some passengers must take different paths than others.”

Some passengers? What does “some” mean? Thirtysomethings with brown hair and blue eyes? Or men who cleared security on a false ID? I think on the last time I saw my brother, Jude, bound to his hospital bed with heavy, padded straps, the bandage over his left eye keeping his mind from further fracturing. I stood at the foot of that bed, holding an envelope in my right hand, his Exodus Lottery notification inside. In my pocket, his passport. I wanted to apologize, but the words wouldn’t come.

A pull on the rope, this time to my right. It startles me, and my heart begins to pound. I follow, and I hear myself whispering. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” I clench my teeth against the voice, and it stops. My voice. Act normal! It’s too late to apologize to Jude, and mumbling a mantra will get me profiled. I blow out an exasperated sigh, and my breath smells like old cheese.

“Relax, Mister Simonson. We’re almost there.” I inhale deeply, through my nose like you’re supposed to when you’re relaxing. I exhale, and something warm and wet dribbles onto my upper lip. Snot? Sweat? Tears?

Blood? I haven’t had a nosebleed since we lived in Flagstaff. The air was too dry and too hot and way too thin. Say what you want about Wisconsin, but at least the air doesn’t cut you. For the first time I wonder what the air will be like on Terra Tenska, on the other side of the Abyssal Void. Cold and thin? Warm and wet? Those are okay. But cold and wet? Ugh. Depressing. That’s suicide air, and I breathed enough of that in Bellevue.

I’m being stupid. T-2 is a planet, not a state park. Earth has hot, cold, wet, dry, thick, thin... Terra Tenska should be the same. I just need to settle in whatever they call the local equivalent of Wisconsin, someplace where I’m free to enjoy the hot and the cold without sandstorms or suicides.

I’ve successfully distracted myself from the panic. See? I’m not guilty of anything. I’m not acting suspicious. I might be self-medicating on introspection, but that’s healthier than alcohol, or binge eating.

I wonder what the food will be like on Voidheron. The trip to Terra Tenska takes three days, so they’ll have to feed us something. Of course, figuring out accommodations like that for a couple thousand people is child’s play. The Abyssal Void makes travel so simple. No need to generate thrust to escape your planet. No need to spin for gravity, either. Just build something big and airtight—it might as well be a freestanding luxury hotel—and let the funny writing pull it to a new world. It’s as cheap as free, even considering the fact that you risk driving all your runewrights in-fucking-curably bonkers.

“Watch your step, Mister Simonson.” The tarmac gives way to something smoother. I’m on the ramp. Voidheron and freedom lie immediately before me. “Welcome aboard. Someone will be with you momentarily.”

I lick my lip and taste what dribbled there. No copper, but lots of salt. Sweat, then. Not blood. No parting shot from Flagstaff. Earth isn’t bothering to say good-bye to me, so I’m not going to bother saying good-bye to her.

***

My hood comes off, and the fresh air is delicious by comparison. They’re going to want to wash that thing a couple of times before putting it on anybody else’s head. I rub my knuckle across my upper lip and blink as I look around.

The lobby is a huge space, high-ceilinged and long. It curves out of sight in either direction, with milling crowds also extending beyond my view. Voidheron is cylindrical? Perhaps this is a subtle reminder that she truly is a starship, not the hotel she masquerades as. A hotel with no windows. We can’t have anybody looking at the runes on the tarmac, let alone at the Abyssal Void through which we’ll travel.

And then I see it, in my mind’s eye. The curving, indirect paths we took to board weren’t mapped to prevent us from stepping on the power symbols in the tarmac. Our trails were their own runes, inscribed by a couple thousand blind pedestrians. Was my pause the tail on an eldritch Q, a tilde changing the sound of some alien consonant? Or was I a serial comma in support of some extra-dimensionally-screamed list of crimes?

There were dozens of different tracks, all tracing some arcane cursive, all leading inward from a distant perimeter to the focal point, the great columnar Voidheron. Passengers poured through entrances at the circumference and into this lobby, where power in turn poured off of us and into... what?

There is a haunting familiarity to all this, a moment of déjà vu. I resist the temptation to draw my path from memory. Even accidental runes can have power. If I manage to get it right, what will I prove? That I can cause my own head to explode?

My nose dribbles onto my upper lip, and I wipe it away again with my knuckle. A washroom would be nice right about now. I cast my eyes about for the familiar restroom icons and then stifle a laugh. It’s unlikely they’ll label anything in the Voidheron in that way.

There is movement at the inner edge of the lobby. A second set of doors has opened, and uniformed attendants are handing key cards to passengers. My berth, or room, or whatever, will have a washroom. I mill about in the queue, waiting my turn, as the people around me do the same. Unhooded, some begin to converse.

“I think it’s silly.” An older woman to my right is complaining to her husband, or perhaps the most patient stranger in the world. “A book, a paper book, can’t crash a spacecraft. Not unless you hit the pilot in the head with it.”

God dammit, ignorance is dangerous. Jude explained this bit to me once, I think. Somebody did, anyway. I don’t want my freedom cut short by a careless idiot who doesn’t understand the peril we face. I interrupt.

“The problem is the way the pages touch, ma’am.”

She turns to me, as does the man next to her, who appears visibly relieved.

“Of course the pages touch, young man. Without a binding they’d fall out of the book.”

“It’s not the binding. When the book is closed, all the letters on opposing pages touch. Those words and letters? Maybe they’re all English when the book is open, but when the book closes you get new shapes, new paths in the ink. Just like a Q is an O with a comma in it, the closed pages form hundreds of thousands of random characters.”

Her eyes widen in surprise.

“I’m serious. The hull is covered in runes, right? Well, the ship’s controls are runes, too. I don’t know how they work, but if you throw the wrong random symbol inside the ship, even in something flighty like paper and ink, the controls might stop working, and then where would we be?”

She scowls. “You really believe all that?” She puts her hand to her heart and lowers her voice. “I heard the symbols and the blinders are all rigmarole to distract us from a fancy, Chinese space-drive.”

I’ve heard this one. If only.

“Maybe so. But if they’re scamming us, they’ve got to sell it, right? So... no books.”

“Mister Simonson?” Our conversation has taken us to the head of the queue, and the attendant is offering me a key card. “This will lead you to your cabin. Congratulations, sir.” He smiles as I take the card.

Just like with the silk rope, I’m now being led by a thing in my left hand. A map on the card scrolls down as I walk forward, down a short corridor, up two flights of stairs, and then down a longer, curving corridor. All of the doors on my path have been identical. Blank. No writing anywhere.

A group of travelers ahead of me—a family, perhaps—arrives at their door, which opens with a wave of the card. I walk past their blank door as it shuts. I proceed three doors further, and then the map in my hand displays a filled, blinking circle. Usually these things are indicated with an X. Perhaps that simplest of symbols has too much power to be used, even ephemerally, in display paper. But this is my door, and with a wave of the card and a twist of the knob, I’m inside.

It’s just like a hotel room, if sparser: bed, chair, lamp. And a private washroom immediately to my right. First things first, then.

I check my face just to be sure Flagstaff wasn’t flipping me off. No nosebleed, though I am a little pale. I splash some water on my face, cool at first, and then warm, relaxing.

Fool. If I’d had any sort of a nosebleed somebody would certainly have said something on my way here. Blood isn’t just a disease vector. It’s the most dangerous paint in the world.

***

“Attention, passengers: This is Captain Adams. Voidheron will be departing momentarily.” More déjà vu. It’s a male voice, oddly familiar, with a distinguished, authoritarian edge that reminds me of movie trailers, politicians, and hospital orderlies. “Some passengers find departure disorienting. You may experience strong emotions. These sensations will pass and pose no serious danger, but for your comfort and convenience, please take a seat or lie down.”

Lying down sounds nice. I flop onto the bed and stare at the ceiling. No textures. I remember my childhood bedroom, and the pictures I could trace in the random stippling on the ceiling there. Voidheron’s designers have left nothing to chance. I’m not going to be able to draw a dinosaur, or a skull, or the continent of Africa above me. The ceiling is a featureless, warm cream matte with a very subtle gradient: pale in the middle of the room, darkening towards red in the corners.

Or maybe that’s just the lighting. The smooth surface casts no shadows, offers no clues about the strength of the light. Even an institutional ceiling, one of those suspensions of steel frames and acoustic tiles, would say more about the illumination than this does. It’s empty. It is emptiness itself.

And abruptly I am just as empty. My heart drops, and my stomach lurches. Everything I know is false. My life is a fiction. I am an insignificant mote on a wet rock tumbling through the vacuum of a great and terrible abyss. My whole existence is just the desperate, random flailing of an agglomeration of mindless cells, a chemical struggle against entropy, a gradual oxidation of my environment, an inexorable march into decay.

I think, therefore I know that I am nothing.

“Voidheron is away. Repeat, Voidheron is away. We apologize for any discomfort you’ve felt during departure.”

I am wracked with depression for three heartbeats more, and then the emptiness ebbs. Purpose flows back into me. I breathe, and the air tastes sweet and fresh. The only thing left of that bleak misery is the memory that I felt it. Oh, and the knowledge that something outside of my control can strip my soul naked and march it through a blizzard. I shiver.

What did the other passengers feel? Is that child from the boarding queue sobbing into his mother’s arms right now? Does she have comfort to offer, or is she cowering in a corner of their room, wondering whether Voidheron’s next transition will leave her suicidal?

I push myself off the bed and look around. The dresser is set into the wall. The chair and the bed present only plush, rounded edges. If our launch had made me crazy enough to attempt to injure myself I would have been hard-pressed to do it.

Besides, that moment of depression had me completely paralyzed. Everything seemed so futile. Taking my own life would have been just as pointless as anything else, and too difficult to trouble with. Had the depression continued indefinitely, however, I think I might have lain on the bed and starved.

Food would be nice right now. I pat my pocket, checking for my key card, and step into the hallway.

***

I’m waiting in line, holding a tray by my side. A hotel would call this a buffet. A hospital would call it a cafeteria. I suppose the military would call it a mess hall. The greeters at the door welcomed me to “The Galley,” but I always thought galleys were tight little kitchens, or maybe slave ships. I suppose if it’s a proper noun it can be anything.

It smells better than I imagine an ancient, slave-rowed galley would. Grilled vegetables, pasta salads, wild rice... dozens of aromas compete for my attention. I breathe deeply and wonder where the main courses are. Everything looks delicious, but at this moment I’m craving meat.

There isn’t any.

Oh, there are sliced slabs of something down at the end, but I know marbled tofu roast when I see it. The Chinese-style broccoli dish has walnuts and cashews, not strips of beef.

There is a hand on my shoulder, and I realize I’ve stopped and am now holding up the line.

“Can I help you, sir?” It’s one of the greeters. She’s short and very prim.

“I was looking for the main course. Maybe some chicken?” I look down at her and hope as hard as I can for tender, grilled pork loin. She smiles but looks sad and apologetic.

“I’m sorry, Mister Simonson. We’re restricted to vegetarian fare while crossing. Consumption of animal flesh can interfere with the navigation.”

My heart begins to pound. I should know this already, shouldn’t I? I cleared security with the passport of a ship builder, and not just any dry-dock union hack, a runewright. Is my ignorance going to give me away?

“May I help you select something?” She smiles, and now it looks strained.

“Oh, um, sure. Whatever.”

I end up with a thick slice of tamago, the fluffy Japanese omelette typically served in tiny wedges on rice balls. This is bigger than that and is accompanied by some sweet, fruit chutney and a pasta salad. I guess eggs don’t count as animal flesh. I take a corner seat at an otherwise empty table for six and poke the tamago with my fork. What do the cooks do if one of the eggs is fertile? Do they X-ray or ultrasound them before bringing them aboard? I poke again, wondering what radiological indignities this sad excuse for an entree has been subjected to.

I spear a chunk and pop it into my mouth. Slightly sweet, with something aromatic going on. Rice vinegar and sake? Maybe this excuse isn’t quite so sad after all. God, but the Japanese know how to make an omelette. Sure, everybody knows you have to break a few eggs, but that certainly isn’t the end of it.

“May I join you?”

I look up. This man seems familiar. “Umm, sure. No problem.”

“Congratulations again, Mister Simonson,” he says as he sits, and then I remember him. This was the attendant who handed me my key card earlier.

“Thanks.” I spear another chunk of tamago and pop it into my mouth, an excuse not to say more. He knows my name. He knows I’m a lottery winner. Maybe he knows enough to trip me up in my words, to out me in my deceit, my identity swap with my brother.

“I’m sorry. I have you at a disadvantage.” He puts his hand to his breast, much more sanitary than a handshake at mealtime. “I’m Andrew.”

“Pleased to meet you. I’m Jude.” I’m lying, of course. I’m Wendell, but it wouldn’t do to say that. Not with the freedom of a new world just three days away. My fork worries another morsel from the mass on my plate. Larger than a morsel, really. Too bad egg is so soft. I would rather chew than say too much and blow my cover.

“What’s it like to finally be inside?”

Play along. I am a runewright, institutionalized for “exposure,” and saved by the miracles of modern psychiatry.

“It’s bigger than I expected.”

“Really? I would have thought it looked huge from the outside.”

“I spent all my time looking at small pieces of it, and I didn’t have any depth perception. Left eye was always covered.”

“Oh. I never thought of it that way.”

Probably because it’s a story I just now made up, Andrew. It feels true, though. As I imagine it, I can see glyphs and runes, the symbology of space travel, taking shape under my chisel as I chip away at the ancient, unrefined materials.

The last of my tamago is on the fork, and this time I nervously smear it through the chutney with a stroke, swirl, and twist. Into my mouth it goes. Interesting, but it was better by itself. You know what that chutney would be good on? Fish. Chicken. Pork tenderloin. I stare down at the oozing mound of fruit mince on my plate and wish that something could die so I’d have the right flavor combinations.

Combinations. What happens when you wrap dead pig in chopped autumn fruits and then run that through a living, human gut? Now march that shit factory around inside a building whose exterior throbs with power flowing across rune-etched granite, meteoric iron, and petrified redwood.

What if I bit my lip and swallowed fresh blood as I ate this delicious, imaginary pig steak?

What if I bent the tines of my fork just so? Blood, and flesh, and a stainless steel double-X, and you have to break a few goddamn eggs to make an omelette, but then Voidheron would really fucking fly, wouldn’t she?

I’m staring at my plate. The tamago is gone, and so is my appetite. The fruit-juice ooze from the chutney looks just like blood in this light, and that stroke, swirl, and twist created an interesting shape, like a J with a tilde growing out of the hook.

“Is there something in your eye, Mister Simonson?” I look up at Andrew and realize I’ve had my left eye shut tight.

Was I method acting, as I pretend to be the brother I left bound in a hospital bed? I scrape my fork across the not-a-letter absentmindedly drawn in fruit gore, obliterating it. I shiver and then blink and shake my head.

“Nervous tic, I guess.”

“I can imagine. We’re glad you’re healthy enough to join us on this trip.”

“Mmm. Thanks.”

“If you feel up to it, the XO, Commander Willis, would like to take you on a tour of the ship.”

“That would be great.” The words are out of my mouth before I realize that the XO is somebody who might have had contact with the teams that inscribed the hull of the ship. He might know my brother, which means my cover may be in trouble.

“Excellent. The stewards should have delivered everyone’s essentials bags by now. Stop by your room and grab your patch, and then follow your card.” Andrew stands and bows his head in my direction. “Good day to you, Mister Simonson.”

***

There is a small suitcase waiting for me on my bed, full of three days of clothing, toiletries, and no books. Also, no writing instruments, nothing sharp, nothing explosive, and a host of other “nothing” restrictions: some silly, some misleading, and some worrisome if you spend too much time thinking about them. Nothing made of quarried stone. No unrefined ores, natural crystals, or, God forbid, fossils.

I remember reading all the restrictions when I packed, but I can’t remember if I put any of my brother’s eye patches in the bag. Did I think I would need them? God help us all if it falls to me to perform ship repairs with a chisel. But did I imagine it would help my cover, help me play the part?

I concentrate, struggling to recall those hasty minutes spent packing, with so little time, such a small window of opportunity. But it was so intense, my heart pounding. How could I forget any of that? I clench my teeth in frustration. Do I open the bag in order to remember? That would be giving up. It would be cheating. I concentrate, and the concentrating hurts, like the beginning of a migraine pulsing behind my right eye, keeping time with my heart.

I grunt in frustration and unzip the bag so swiftly it sounds like it’s tearing.

“Jude Simonson,” comes a voice from directly in front of me. I shriek and jump back. “Per article eleven of the Uniform Abyssal Void Travel Act, this bag has been searched and carefully repacked by agents of the Transportation Safety Administration.”

A bright orange squawk card sits atop everything in my bag, and as my heart drums its way back down to something reasonable, the card prattles away, politely informing me that my privacy isn’t really mine, but that this is okay because we’re all safer this way, and if I don’t like it I should go fuck myself because that’ll be safer than fucking with the TSA.

I’m furious, because that voice very nearly scared the actual, literal piss right out of me.

I stare at my bag’s invader, this talking slice of polymer, and decide to laugh. Laughing feels good. Tucking a written note into my luggage to let me know my luggage has no writing in it would be such an abysmally stupid act that even the government couldn’t do it.

Or maybe only the government could do it. We think we’re so clever, deciphering the scraps of glyphic power found in ruins in Egypt, China, Guatemala, and a dozen more of the far-flung corners of human history, and then experimenting and expanding on the results and arriving at a method to rip holes in space and throw hotels between planets. Only a government could look at the Manhattan Project and decide that that its failure to exterminate us all proves we’re too lucky for accidental genocide.

I stop laughing. Next to the card, placed where it would be impossible to miss, is a shiny, gold runesmith’s eye patch.

Gold? My brother’s patches were all standard-issue brown, with a heavy, guaranteed-unbreakable strap. Who underwrote that guarantee, anyway? If it breaks, your head trip through Hell is on us! It was one of those strappy, brown patches that fell off my brother’s face and melted his brain. I have never seen this patch before in my life.

But I did grab my brother’s toilet kit, right? Maybe he had this new patch in there, buried under the soap and toothpaste. Or maybe... maybe the TSA knew I’d need the patch for my tour with the XO and placed this one where I could find it?

No, that’s ridiculous. It’s much more likely that the XO handed a fresh patch to the steward, who placed it in my bag where I wouldn’t miss it. Yeah, that’s got to be it: the stewards, service with a smile, and keys to everything. If I’m worried, I can ask the XO when I meet him. But I’m not worried, right?

I tuck the patch, still sealed in Mylar, into my pocket and leave the room.

My card leads me around the curve of the hallway. I pass a few other travelers and am glad for the excuse to stare down at the scrolling map in my hand, no eye contact necessary. I can look up when they’re past.

There’s sudden movement ahead. I look up, and I only catch the slightest glimpse of someone darting across the intersecting hall ahead of me. Probably a child playing hide-and-seek or tag. There are children on Voidheron, which means there are probably noisy games happening all over.

I stop in my tracks and stare at the empty, silent intersection before me.

Whoever shot across the hall made no noise.

I step forward to look down the cross passage. Nothing to the left. Nothing to the right. I proceed through, the key card’s map directing me straight ahead.

I hear running footsteps behind me. I turn. Nothing. The noise grows, coming from the left cross passage. The sound of running feet goes by to the right, but I can see nothing making the noise. I step back into the intersection and look to the right. I can still hear the feet retreating, as if whatever is running is only a few meters away, but I see only empty hallway.

On a hunch, I cover my eye.

It’s foggy, out of focus, but I can see a black man, wearing black clothing, with forty centimeters of black dreadlocks flailing about his head as he runs. His clothing is loose, flowing, and patterned in—oh shit, his clothing has writing on it!

“STOP!” I shout, my voice cracking in a screech, spittle flying with the sloppy, plosive P at the end.

The man casts a glance back at me. Not a black man. Not a man at all. Or a woman. Where a human would have a face, this dreadlocked thing has a sickly pale orb, the blue of drowned lips and featureless except for a deep, black vertical slash. For just a moment his “face” looks like a cat’s-eye, pupil centered in a pallid field, haloed in writhing black tendrils.

A chill rockets up my spine, an electric frost that shoots out to tingling fingertips. He turns away, still running. I clutch my key card tightly in my left hand and begin to chase after him.

Two steps, then three, and I am leaning into a sprint. I need both arms pumping for balance, so I lower the hand covering my eye. The dreadlocked, rune-clothed figure vanishes, and I stumble in surprise. I cover my left eye, and he fails to reappear. Wait, was it my left eye I covered at first, or was it my right? I switch eyes. Nothing. I open both eyes and stare, hard.

I stand like that for a moment, my heart pounding, my fingers tingling, both eyes watering and desperate for a blink. I can feel my pulse hard and painful behind my right eye, the migraine throbbing in time to my heart.

Is this normal? Does anybody else not-hear what they see, and then not-see what they hear? And is the “dreadman” supposed to be on this ship? I should say something to the XO when I meet him, shouldn’t I?

The key card chimes a dissonant chord. I look down and see the map flashing angrily, as if I should know better than to stray from the path, let alone ask these sorts of questions.

I turn around, walk back to the intersection, and turn left. A cheerful, golden, two-tone chime from the card sounds very much like a singsong “thank you.”

***

My map has led me to a round room bustling with uniformed stewards, the susurrus of their communication unintelligible from the entry where I stand. At the center of the room, one figure stands still. More accurately, she stands with stillness, the eye of the storm, the hub of the gristmill. She is obviously in charge. I don’t know why I was expecting the XO to be a man, but if she remembers me then I’d damned well better not appear even slightly surprised by her gender.

Those around her move in deference not just to her, but to the sight line she drills to me, as if they know that space is about to convey deadly power from the center of the room to its edge. Her right eyebrow rocks up as if on rails, leaving the rest of her face unmoved, a potent metaphor for the degree of control she effortlessly extends.

“Mister Simonson. Welcome to cabin ops.” She steps forward along that sight line. The creases in her slacks appear sharp enough to give the baggage security people pause. I shouldn’t be looking at her legs. Eyes up, meeting hers. “It is an honor to have you aboard, and a pleasure to see you here in good health.” Her gaze is friendly and familiar. Expectant. And I have no idea who this woman is.

Shit.

All thoughts of my visionary dreadman flee. I have bigger problems than reporting something that might actually be normal.

I notice her hand is extended, awaiting my return grasp. How long has it been waiting there? I take it. Her grip is cool, dry, and firm. Her hand is smaller than my own, but I sense that she can bend iron with it. Or men’s souls. I try not to think about what my hand must feel like to her.

“Umm, yes. Likewise.” I can feel a hot blush on my cheeks, my neck. I need an innocent bit of small talk to preserve what scraps of cover I may have left.

“Commander Caryn Willis, executive officer,” she offers. “You don’t remember me?” she asks, both brows raised, her lips turned in a slight frown.

“No... I mean, yes.” Shitshit. “Yes, I remember you. No, I haven’t forgotten.”

A scowl. She still has my hand in hers, and then she has my hand clasped in both of hers.

“I’m sorry, Mister Simonson.” Her gaze softens. “So sorry. I understand.”

Shitshitshit. Understand what?

“I was there when it happened. When that strap failed and your patch fell away. Captain Adams and I were touring the dry dock, all of us patched like you and your fellows, the noble runewrights.” She pulls my hand close to her breast and looks deep into my eyes. I cannot look away. “You and I spoke for only a few short minutes earlier that day. I recognized your voice when you shouted. Screamed, really.”

“I... ”

I don’t know what to say is how that sentence goes, but it’s not the heart-wrung I don’t know what to say, it’s the I don’t know what to say to preserve my cover version of the sentence, and I doubt this woman will mistake one sentence for the other, even if all the words are the same.

But I have to say something.

“I don’t remember.” Honest words, just don’t ask me why I don’t remember.

“I see that now. We rushed you to the hospital, and the doctor told us your hemisphere breach was serious.” Her gaze bores into my brain. It’s her eyes that bend men’s souls. Her hands just hold them fast. I want to tell her the truth, that I’ve stolen my brother’s identity for a chance at freedom, a new life on a new world.

I clench my teeth. Let her continue talking.

“Serious enough that you’d lost much of yourself. But earlier this week, when you accepted the lottery ticket, we—Captain Adams and I—hoped the treatments had brought you all the way back.”

She releases my hand and smiles sadly. “But I can see that there are still some holes. I’m sorry to have pained you by poking at them.”

I stare for a moment in disbelief. My cover is intact, and I have just been handed an excuse for each and every inconvenient lapse of attention to my assumed identity.

“I’m what they like to call high-functioning.” Sell it, Simonson. I cock my head a bit to the right. “A bubble-and-a-half off level, but I dress myself and I don’t hurt anybody.” Straighten up. Smile confidently. “I just have to steer around the potholes in my head.”

“Well done then, Mister Simonson.” If you only knew. “Now, if you’re up to it, I would like to show you some of the fruits of your labors with a quick tour of engineering.”

God, no, I’m not up to that.

I hold up my gold eye patch in its wrapper. “Let’s go.”

***

The wall at the end of this passage is convex, as if a cylinder half again as wide as the hall has been pounded into place, a massive round peg in a sorely abused rectangular hole. A scanner at the ceiling shines a laser back and forth over our faces. Low-tech.

“Safety measures are different, tighter, now that the ship is complete. This door won’t rotate open until we’re both patched.” Willis holds her own slate-gray patch up where I can see it. “Strapless. More comfortable, and much more secure. The scanner is activating and programming the adhesive. This will bond to your face and won’t let go until you’re back out here in uninscribed areas.”

She slaps the patch over her left eye and it sticks. The uniform and patch together would be ridiculously piratical on anybody else.

I hold my own patch up to the scanner. I don’t know if it’s necessary, but this way I can get a good look at the back, and the adhesive bead running around the patch’s perimeter. It softens visibly, and a ripple undulates around it. It’s hungry for flesh.

I slap it over my left eye. It sticks. I pull on it experimentally. No give. I pull a little harder. I can feel my skin draw up and away from my face.

“If you do succeed in pulling that off, it’ll come away with enough skin that the blood will blind that eye anyway,” Willis says. “It’s a feature.” She waves a key card at the door in front of us, and it slides open with a whisper. “After you.”

The lock chamber feels hot and crowded with the two of us inside it, despite the fact that I am an arm’s length from Commander Willis and from the wall. The lock begins its one-hundred-eighty-degree rotation around us, sealing us in with another whisper. I draw a deep breath and try not to imagine sotto voce speech in the lock’s sound as it slides around us. The far door opens onto engineering and I exhale.

“Did you say something?” Willis looks at me in concern, and I realize I’ve vocalized on my exhalation. I may have whimpered.

“Uh, no,” I mumble in denial.

“Well, come along then.” She steps through the door and beckons me to follow.

I step forward cautiously, acutely aware of my lack of depth perception and the absence of any sort of peripheral vision on my left side. The room is broad and long, perhaps twenty meters by sixty, with a couple dozen people in it, and there are runes everywhere—on the marble floor, the vaulted ceiling, the stone-paneled walls, and the massive petrified log table in the center, split and squared down its length, polished, etched, and laid legless on the floor. It must have been massive in life. Even after all the splitting and polishing, this block is counter-height. Compared to the rest of the rocks, the giant fossil is probably the youngest etched thing in the room, but it was alive once, and there is power in that, even if it was just a big, bloodless plant.

Alive... For just a moment all the runes seem alive, twisting and squirming at the edges of my vision. Aware of me. Frightened by me. Shifting furtively as I look away.

Vertigo washes over me and I stutter-step to a halt, my flattened perspective recasting the room as a massive canyon with a mighty plateau in the center. Dizzy, I look down. My feet are too far away. I am a giant from before the ages of myth, a man the size of a mountain, able to take seven-league strides without the help of magic boots. Across those leagues, surrounding the canyon’s central plateau, other giants, all with patched left eyes, wreak mysterious and arcane works. They effortlessly shift the rune-wracked boulders across the etched plateau, elder gods adjusting great tokens of fate upon inscrutably tiny mortals.

“It takes a moment to get used to,” Willis whispers from my blind left side. “Relax and drink it in.” I turn my head, and there she stands, a godly giantess, right next to me yet miles away. I could reach out and touch her, but my arm is the size of a river.

The vista collapses, rushing inward at the speed of thought. The canyon is a room, the plateau is the split trunk of a fossil tree, and my feet, while still rooted to the marble floor, are not so far away that falling to them would be fatal. Still dizzy, I stumble with that thought, feet not actually rooted to the marble, as it turns out. Commander Willis’s hand locks upon my elbow with a grip that bolsters me all the way to my spine.

“That’s probably the worst of it,” she whispers.

I right myself, and she releases her hold. Drink it in, she said. I look around again. The inscribed stone panels on the walls, wide, tall slabs polished to an illusory wetness, appear to be set at different depths. Two broad-shouldered, uniformed engineers grasp the edge of one panel, nod to one another at some silent count, and swing it out, like a stiff page in a giant book. The walls here are built like the poster displays in a pop-culture shop, but instead of posters, these are three-by-five-meter granite monstrosities, thick as my hand is wide, framed in dull metal and mounted on hinges whose engineers laid them to support panel after panel, rack after rack, ten crushtillion tons of etched stone.

As the massive inscribed panel swings into the room, the runes upon it appear to wriggle under the gaze of my unpatched right eye. Suddenly the migraine is back, pounding now in time to the glyphic squirms. Illusory motion, caused by my pulse in my own eye? This is too real. Some invisible power rushes through those runes, warping their paths in defiance of the epochs-old molecular bonds of the granite page, a power that dares me to see it, knocking on my right eyeball as if on a door, inviting me to open the floodgates of damnation.

The engineers finish the hundred-eighty-degree swing and lock the panel against the wall, new runes visible on its opposite side. These don’t wiggle at all, and the pain subsides.

A keening screech, soft at first, begins rising in both volume and pitch above the great table. Fist-sized inscribed stones—blocks, spheres, pyramids, and obelisks—move of their own accord, tracing paths through the eldritch cursive of the table’s surface. The engineers surrounding the table look on, their unpatched right eyes wide with rapt attention.

“On my mark, lock passage and reduce motive four ticks.” It is the voice from the departure announcement. The man speaking stands at the head of the table, on the far side from me. Captain Adams, no doubt. His arms are folded, and his face is a reflection in flesh of the graven stone surrounding us all. All unpatched eyes look to him.

The keening ceases its rise in pitch but continues to grow louder. It chills me. Should one of my ears be covered like my eye is? It is not loud enough to hurt my ears, but I feel a pain growing, deep in my breast. The high screech starts a slow warble, as if beginning to break with strain.

“Mark!”

One of the engineers at the table snatches a moving stone from its runic track. What sounded like a tortured coloratura soprano now rings like a tight cluster of brass chimes, dissonant but steady in tone. The engineer slots his snatched stone at the edge of the table. Across from him, another engineer pulls a different stone over a ribbed bit of inscription with a tick, tick, tick, and tick.

I blow out the breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. The pain under my sternum subsides with the fading of the brazen tone cluster.

The captain looks down the length of the table at Commander Willis, and then at me. His patch is grey, and his right eye is set deep, a heavily furrowed brow above it, a sliver of sleepless bruise below. His monocular stare rocks me, and a moment’s passing vertigo casts him as a giant, standing several days of mortal foot travel down the great stone canyon. His are not mortal feet, though. He is the captain, and this etched edifice, this wound in the face of the world, is the lever from which the god-captain wreaks his will upon all the souls in his charge.

Again, the vertigo passes and the room rushes down to being a comprehensible, indoor sort of huge. The giants are but men, and the god-captain in their midst merely a well-weathered soldier with more responsibility than most people would care to shoulder.

But that stare. So powerful, and familiar, like his voice.

He opens his mouth to speak, and I imagine him without the patch. Recognition floods me, and the vertigo returns. I feel like I am falling. I stand stock-still, but my heart drops inside me, beginning a plummet whose finish, miles below, will be marked by a splash of crimson against the marble plain.

Recognition, vertigo, and confusion. This is the captain of an interstellar ship, but when I met him before, he was my brother’s doctor.

***

“Thank you, Commander Willis,” the captain says. “I’ll take it from here.” He steps around the table, eye intent on me. I remember him from the hospital, the same stride, the same sad smile. It was bad news that time, as he told me about Jude’s condition. I can’t remember the conversation, but he has met both of us, Jude and me, and cannot possibly be fooled into mistaking me for the poor runewright strapped to that bed, wracked with agony from his head trip through the Abyssal Void.

“Mister Simonson, I’m afraid you’re here under false pretenses.”

The kind, firm tone of voice, the subtle ambiguity of the phrasing... this is a gentler accusation of identity theft than I could have imagined. I don’t know if I’m going to be slapped on the wrist or clapped in irons. It’s almost as if—

“There was no lottery, as I’m sure you’ve guessed by now. You’re here because voyages in the Abyssal Void require a special sort of navigational ability, one acquired only through the painful experience of hemisphere breach.” He gestures at Commander Willis. “We broke your strap, and your mind. It is one of the prices of void travel, and we bear responsibility for what you have become.”

He gestures at the inscribed panels around us with a sweep of his arms. “Simply put, we have maps, but we do not have directions.”

I meet his gaze, terrified and abruptly bereft of hope. He isn’t accusing me of stealing passage aboard his ship. He needs my brother here to fly it.

Handcuffs and the brig would at least see me delivered to Terra Tenska as a criminal. But if I try to pilot this ship I’ll certainly kill us all. Can the captain navigate without my brother’s rune-wracked help? Or are there hazards only my twin can sense? Are there shoals out here? Psychic icebergs poised to rip Voidheron open, spilling her suddenly damned cargo into Hell? Or are there timeless, tentacled horrors awaiting us in some seven-dimensional Stygian depth, preparing to feast on the souls whose fate my selfish lie has sealed?

Safer to end the deception, and hope the captain can find another navigator.

My right eye blurs with tears.

“I... I’m not who you think I am.” My voice cracks with a sob. My nose begins to run. Confession flows. “My brother. My twin brother. I stole his ticket, his passport.” More sobs. “He... He’s still... nnngh... nnn.” Guttural syllables punctuate the gasps. “In the hospital.”

The captain is unfazed, and through my tears I see that there is a rune on his eye patch. It stares at me, a sort of J with a tilde through it.

Vertigo again. The room tips and shudders and then begins a slow spin. I drop to my knees, and the fall does not kill me. “I can’t steer your ship,” I cry, and I can feel my left eye swimming in the tears that have pooled behind the patch.

“Get him up,” the captain says. I’m hoisted to my feet, Commander Willis on my left and one of the panel-shifting techs on my right. “Simonson, look at me.”

I look.

He is holding a gun, and it is aimed at my face.

It is a boxy sort of pistol, with a wide aperture not meant for bullets. It looks more like a retailer’s checkout gun, with the scanning lasers that—oh, God, that thing can release my patch!

“NO!” I scream hoarsely. “Weren’t you listening? I’m not who you think I am!”

“Who are you, then?” The scan gun remains trained on my face.

“I’m... I’m...” I struggle to remember. The migraine is back, throbbing behind my right eye. “Wendell Simonson.”

“And whose identity did you use when you cleared the terminal building?”

“Jude Simonson. My brother. My twin brother.” I take a deep breath. “He’s the one you want. It was his ticket.”

“Wendell,” he asks sadly, “what is your twin brother’s full name?”

“Jude... ummm... just Jude. Simonson.”

“Try harder.” The scan gun in his hand doesn’t waver, but the tilde-J rune on his eye patch wriggles like a leech. It hurts my head to look at it, but it also seems to help me think.

“Jude Wendell Simonson.”

“You don’t find it odd that your first name and your brother’s middle name are the same?”

My head throbs, the pain behind my right eye nearly blinding me as I stare at the captain’s tilde-J eye patch. The word migraine comes from the Greek hemi+krania, meaning “half your fucking head,” and this pulsing, pounding agony feels like one of those immortal perverts from Olympus is attempting to sire a hero in my right eye socket.

“You outdid yourself with Simonson, sir. He still believes it. The twin, the hospital, everything.”

“Stow that shit, Willis.” The captain’s attention flicks to my left, and then back to me. “Simonson, we need to put you back together now.” He pulls the trigger. Beams of green light scan back and forth over my face, stabbing my right eye.

I close my eyes and clench my teeth. I can see the laser through my right eyelid, strobing while something mythic continues to violate my right eye socket. I feel the patch over my left eye fall away. Accumulated tears wash down my cheek.

“Sedative,” the captain says. The Greek in my right eye thrusts twice more, and then there is a prick in my left shoulder. A chill races down my arm, vanishing at my fingertips. Then a warmth rushes up my spine, a geyser of hot calm. It swirls into my skull and flushes out the pain, the Olympian craniophile, and the blindness.

I open my eyes and remember.

***

It was a clear afternoon, and with a patch strapped over my left eye I was aligning the edge of a granite tablet, one I’d finished inscribing earlier, with its neighbor. The crane above and behind me bore the weight of the tablet—all I had to do was shift it laterally so the bolts on the back could be slid home and the engraved piece fastened in place.

Easy enough, but with no depth perception it was tricky. I’d picked up the habit shared by many of the other runewrights, rocking my head back and forth like a snake, or maybe an exotic dancer, substituting parallax of motion for stereo vision. As I rocked I felt a sudden looseness, and the strap around my head came undone. Suddenly I was looking at my handiwork with both eyes.

At that moment the assembly locked into place, and something smoke-like snaked down from above and stroked the rune, as if acknowledging that this piece was now right.

I looked up, following the pulsing curve of the translucent tentacle. The patch of sky above Voidheron was full of writhing, insubstantial tendrils, some reaching down to caress the ship, others curling and uncurling, stretching and contracting, as if eager for runes of their own to stroke into final position.

Vertigo. The sky was now a mere arm’s length away, and I could see all of it at once, as if from all sides. There were other shapes out there, great runes of light beyond the undulating mass, and in those shapes I could see Bellevue, and Flagstaff, and Mars. My vision expanded further, and I felt like I could reach out and touch those places. I could taste the grey rains of the Pacific Northwest, the scorching sands of the Arizona desert, and the icy, thin bleakness of the Martian wasteland. The runes were full of stars and places and more, and the foggy, fat tendrils touched them all.

Vertigo. I looked up and out and beyond until I was looking behind me, and then I was falling from my scaffold. My harness jerked me to a stop, upside down over ten meters of empty air. My vision snapped back to normal, and I could see my patch still tumbling the last few meters to the ground. Several people, all wearing eye patches of their own, stared up at me, but none more intently than Commander Willis and Captain Adams.

***

Captain Adams is staring at me now. Just like me and that suspended hull tablet, he is checking my alignment, waiting for me to lock into place. I don’t know what it is he expects to see, or what he thinks I can see, but I bet he doesn’t know about the thing on his head.

I blink a couple of times to make sure it’s there. I can look right at it, but I cannot focus on it. It looks like a crab made out of blurry smoke. I look around the room and several other people have foggy patches on their heads, like oversized hats. I squint, straining to see them clearly, but to no avail. A scream bubbles up inside me, and then a calm rush of sedative pops that bubble with a prick echoing the one in my shoulder. I exhale, and all that remains of the scream is a soft “oh.”

“Both eyes open. Good,” says Captain Adams. “Now let’s charge you up.” He gestures, and Willis pushes me to the right. The tech on my right pulls a bit and then kicks my right foot, positioning it for something. I look down and see that I am standing on the crosspiece of a large rune, large enough that my feet are completely within the inscribed stroke.

I recognize it. It’s the tilde-J thing I drew in chutney on my plate. It’s the path I walked to board the ship. It’s the rune on Adams’s eye patch. The three-meter stem of the J leads to the table, and I’m standing on the tilde bit—the same little slash I walked alone as I boarded the ship with a bag over my head. The smell of my own breath and that sweaty bag come back to me.

Adams steps to the end of the rune, a few meters away, and pulls a tiny scalpel from a sheath at his belt.

“You’ve already given so much,” he begins. “At the very least I can do you this small courtesy.” He holds up the blade. “The blood need not be your own.”

He draws the blade deftly across the tip of his left ring finger, and a few drops of blood well up and fall.

The rune shivers as the blood falls, the marble shifting under my feet. The carving is shallow, no deeper than the grouted gap between bathroom tiles, but I can feel the lip of the etching vibrate against my shoe.

Blood strikes the floor, and the rune freezes in place. A foggy, red glow bursts forth, rushing down the curve towards me, where it becomes almost blindingly bright. I can taste the captain’s blood in my mouth, salty and coppery and nauseatingly delicious. My face flushes with fevered heat, my fingers tingle, and I can feel my pulse in my throat, my chest, and my groin.

The rune dims. Everything goes blurry and then snaps into a sharper focus than before—the room, the table, the walls, and the creatures nobody else seems to see.

The thing on Adams’s head is indeed like a crab, multi-limbed and chitinous, with one of those limbs shoved deep into the captain’s open right eye. It has a face, of sorts, peering out of a gap in the front of the carapace. Wet, black eyes glisten above a patch of writhing tendrils, and I giggle when I imagine them as olives on a bed of very bad linguini.

I look around the room at the other officers and crew. Linguini-faced crabs sit on several heads. Squid-like things with cockroach wings perch upon others. A few have six-legged, spiny monkeys on them.

And everybody has a tentacle, a crab leg, or a monkey fist thrust into their open right eyes.

Nobody seems to notice. The creatures look real, completely solid, not the least bit ghostly, but nobody acts as if they know they’re wearing ugly, alien bugs like hats.

“Simonson?” the captain says. “It’s time to get to work. Are you ready?”

Ready? I was born ready. Isn’t that how the cocksure say it? Except I feel like I’ve just been reborn, with half my head reinstalled, alien power pounding in my chest, and my whole soul awash in chemically induced confidence. I don’t know what they injected me with, but there’s enough of it that if you beat me with a stick I’ll shit pills.

I’m confident enough to start feeling angry about what’s been done.

“Simonson,” the captain says again. He’s using his captain voice, but I’m full of drugs, stars, fresh memories, and disturbing visions, and he’s an ignorant asshole who can’t see the truth. I feel a fire kindling within me, and I clench my fists. Captain Adams has injured, manipulated, and humiliated me, and now he expects me to work for him?

I look past the captain and his crab hat. The tip of a massive, wet tentacle strokes a set of grooves on the stone table. I look up, and the ceiling of the room is a mass of slick, quivering, tangled flesh. Vertigo sweeps over me again, and I can see the runes of the universe. Terra Tenska is up there, and it tastes like freshly turned soil.

Earth is there too, and she tastes like autumn, fallen fruit, and fresh meat. She tastes like the harvest. Except harvest is a family farm sort of word. She tastes like reaping.

“Simonson!” the captain barks at me. I languidly turn back to him. “It is time to navigate. We have twenty-five hundred souls aboard, and they are now in your keeping.”

I roll my tongue around in my mouth. It’s kind of like a tentacle, now that I think about it. Dry, though. My fists are still clenched, and the anger is throbbing hotly in my face.

“How many times, captain?”

He glares at me.

“How many times have you done this?” I ask. “Willis here said you’d outdone yourself, which means you’ve done this before.”

“Four, on previous vessels,” he says. “You’re the fifth, but the first on Voidheron. It’s a new design, safer for everyone.”

“Safer.” I shake my head. “Where are the previous three navigators?” Not here, obviously. Not able to fly the ship. Expendable, single-use tools, there for the protection of everyone else. Like condoms.

“We’re still trying to find a way to shield people from the nastier side effects,” he says, dodging the question. “In your case, we—”

“Shut up.” I draw my fists up into my armpits, breaking Willis’s grip on my left arm and the tech’s grip on my right. I open my hands and shove both of them away from me. “You don’t know a damn thing about the side effects.” I turn to Willis, who has one of the monkey-like monstrosities on her head.

“Did the other navigators say anything about parasites?” I ask, and I reach up to grab the horror by what I assume to be its neck.

I don’t know why I expected to find purchase there. Nobody notices these things crouched on their own, or anybody else’s, heads, so despite how they appear to me, they ought to be insubstantial. But I feel the creature’s throat under my hand. I grip hard and yank.

Willis screams, and her head comes forward and then snaps back as the monkey bug pushes off. A spray of clear fluid erupts from her right eye socket, and then she slumps backwards, hitting the floor in a rapid series of limp thumps.

“Did the other navigators see anything besides the runes and the stars? Did they smell the ripeness of Earth, or the hunger of what lives in the void?” I am strangling the thrashing, six-legged not-a-goddamned-monkey with one hand at arm’s length.

From the shock on their faces, I assume they can see something in my hand. I close my left eye and turn my head to the left. Seen with only my right eye the thing is blurry, but it’s definitely there.

“Sweet Jesus, what is that thing?” cries the tech to my right. I turn my head and look at him.

“I don’t know. Yours looks more like a squid wearing the biggest cockroach in the world.”

He screams and staggers back, batting at his head. His hands pass through the squidroach, touching nothing but air and errant hair. I’d be screaming too, but these drugs are quite good.

Captain Adams shouts for a medic. Human chaos erupts around me, but I am in the center of a clear space, with room to swing a cat. Literally, assuming the cat is the same approximate size as the bug monkey thrashing in my one-handed—shit, that hurts!

I let go, welts rising on my wrist where I’ve just been bitten. The creature drops to the floor and bounds away. Somebody screams, and everybody who isn’t kneeling in a clump by Willis is now looking around in a panic.

Bug monkey scrambles up a set of wall plates, finding and claiming a stony perch atop them. Nobody’s gaze follows it.

So... it disappeared from everyone else’s view when I let go. For an absent-minded moment I wonder whether there is a consistent set of physical laws governing this place, dictating what can and can’t be seen, touched, heard, and felt when surrounded by rune tech in the dark midst of the Abyssal Void. Have previous navigators had the luxury of experimenting?

Voidheron is a new ship. Maybe the parasites are a new thing. Certainly nobody is acting like this has happened before.

There is a swishing of fabric, and someone appears immediately in front of me. It’s the black not-quite-a-man with those-aren’t-dreadlocks—“Dreadman” is as good a name as any, I suppose. His face is not a pallid cat’s-eye—it is a pair of massive, vertical lips, slightly open, with a gaping slash of black mouth between them the color of tar in the shade. I can smell his breath, and the odor is somewhere between “Rottweiler” and “perfume counter.”

“Them eating you.” His voice is a gurgling baritone, the barely intelligible words rolling all wrong across a pair of black tongues. “Them trick us, we travels. All eating.” Pidgin grammar and bad pronunciation. “Them eating we all. Eating home. Eating sky.”

To my left I see people clustered around Willis, a medic straddling her and administering CPR while a pool of blood spreads from the right side of her face. To my right, panicked techs scan the floor, the walls, and the ceiling. At the far end of the room the captain shouts at a group, sending several running for the door. If anybody can actually see Dreadman in front of me, they don’t appear to have noticed him.

“I don’t understand. Who are you? Who is ‘we?’”

“We. All. Eating.” Dreadman’s pidgin sounds insistent. “Them eating you now.”

The parasites? I reach up, as if for a hat, but feel nothing. “Eating me?” I ask.

“Not you,” he says, pointing at my face. “All you.” He gestures up, at the runes I assumed only I could see, up in the void, beyond the fleshy tentacles amassed in the vault of the arched ceiling.

Up, he gestures, and my vision rushes up and out. I see a world rune, like the one for Earth, or Tenska Terra, but the feeling I get from it sickens me. It smells like death, like an abattoir abandoned unwashed after the final herd has been slaughtered.

There are other runes like it, other worlds devoured, a few freshly dead, many long dry, like old bones.

There are thousands of living runes, and among them I see the rune for Earth. I shiver. The sky is full of places, and paths between them. I see an entire universe of possibilities and promise, and I recognize this vision as a temptation impossible for any thinking being to resist.

Dreadman’s people are just like us, only with bigger lips, and where do they put their eyes? It doesn’t matter. Just like us, they ride rune ships through the Abyssal Void. Correction: They rode rune ships, before they got eaten. But it wasn’t that their navigators failed them. They embraced the rune tech fully and followed the spider into her parlor. Except the parlor is the path to new worlds, and the spider is invisible unless you’ve got a special kind of brain damage. Also, maybe you have to be standing in the right place while somebody bleeds on the floor.

It is so obvious now. We didn’t invent rune tech. It is too illogical, too inconsistent with the rest of what we know. This “technology” lies so far outside of the way we think, the way our science works, that human invention in this realm is utterly implausible. Even our craziest religions couldn’t have brought this into our grasp.

No, this was leaked to us by a malevolent, eternally hungry, voraciously patient entity. And I can see it, out there at the center of the void whose edges we are traversing. Tentacles and tendrils reach outward from the maw at the center, looking for purchase, seeking something, anything to eat.

But Voidheron isn’t the meal of choice. She’s just a way to get humans to etch runes on Earth’s surface, runes that will eventually open Earth to the void, granting that purchase, enabling an embodiment of appetite to pull Flagstaff, Bellevue, Wisconsin, and the rest of our big, wet rock onto the dinner plate.

I am swaying a bit, unsteady on my feet. My knees are weak from the drugs that are steadying my soul. I may sway, but I am not gibbering in fear at the things I see, the sudden sense of doom, or the knowledge that humanity is poised to topple past the brink of extinction. I remember the depression I felt during transition, but now I am just a spectator to that soul searing. These drugs are good.

There’s nothing I can do, is there? Once Voidheron arrives at Terra Tenska, no one will listen to me, the brain-damaged, drug-addled runewright who ripped out an officer’s eye. Because that’s the story they’ll tell.

There are more rune ships crossing, and many, many more being built. Are the parasites new? Are they the beginning of the end, the first signs that the consumption is imminent? How much time is left to us before there are enough patches of rune-wrought tarmac on Earth for the devourer to find purchase sufficient to scrape the planet clean, to reap everything into that distant maw?

Perhaps Dreadman can help. His English is worse than his breath, but he’s smart. He has survived out here somehow, untouched by parasites, able to stow away invisibly on alien rune ships. His cloak is probably itself a rune ship. He rode it in here to warn me. He’s still right in front of me.

“What can we do?” I ask.

“Must go,” Dreadman says, grasping an inscribed hem with a three-fingered hand. He begins to ripple out of existence. “Seen!”

Then the rippling stops, but he hasn’t vanished. A tentacle has dropped from the ceiling and is wrapping itself around his neck. He thrashes, clutching at the meat-hawser strangling him. He gurgles a weak scream made out of nonsense, or maybe alien words, and then is pulled to the ceiling with a wet “snap.”

His limp form vanishes into the slick folds of flesh at the top of the room. He came here to warn me, I suppose. Maybe he had a plan. But now Dreadman won’t be helping anybody, not unless they have tentacles and need calories.

“Simonson!” the captain shouts at me. He’s standing next to Willis now. “You’ve killed her, you son of a bitch!”

I didn’t mean to do that. I couldn’t know that the bug monkey would turn solid at my touch, that its grip on her eye socket ran clear back to her brain. But there’s no way the captain will accept that explanation. He storms towards me, his left foot tracking blood from the puddle next to Willis’s head.

One of his strides crosses a particular rune, and when the blood touches it I feel a slight thrum, a minuscule surge of additional power in the ship. The shapes drawn in ancient stone have a stable sort of strength to them, while runes drawn with the transient compounds of entropy-defying life provide a fast, hot punch. Paint it with blood, because red ones go faster.

What was that odd thought I had over dinner? Dead pigs and a bloody lip... how fast can Voidheron fly if there’s fresh meat on that big, stone table?

Pretty goddamn fast, I bet. The devouring maw that lies at the heart of the Abyssal Void, the thing that all the far-reaching limbs eventually feed... how would it feel about eating a rock-and-iron bullet the size of a hotel?

But Captain Adams is not going to assist me with a flight plan that involves ramming the chewy center of the universe, and he is now right in front of me, face flushed with anger, clearly ready to break my face across calloused knuckles.

I reach up and touch the linguini-faced crab. I don’t need to rip it from Adams’s head. I just need to make the thing solid, substantial, and the claw in Adams’s eye will take care of the rest.

The captain should have batted my hand away, but he can’t really see. He couldn’t have known what was coming.

Captain Adams screams as the claw materializes deep inside and behind his eye. He drops to his knees and doubles over, fluids spilling out of his face. The crab thing scuttles away, and a gout of blood erupts from Adams’s right eye socket, filling and overspilling the shallow rune under my feet.

There is another surge of power, but this one is not in the ship. This one is more like when the captain first cut himself to “charge me up.” The giant tilde-J rune in which I stand is linked to me, and the captain’s blood is like a twenty-ounce energy drink, a deep breath of fresh air, and ten years of steroid-assisted daily trips to the gym. It tastes like the food of the gods, by virtue of the fact that it seems to have made one out of me.

I grab the captain by the back of his collar and toss him, one-handed, across six meters of open space, landing him squarely atop the end of the table.

He spasms, legs and arms twitching, as I walk to the head of the table. There’s his belt sheath, a small thing with an even smaller blade in it. Thank you, captain. Now I have a knife.

In for a penny, in for a pound of flesh. I can see all the runes for what they are, now, and I know where the blood needs to go. Mostly it needs to go everywhere, but there are a few lines I’ll need to take care to paint inside of. With a flick of my wrist I open the captain’s right jugular, and his panicked, pounding heart pushes bright, red rocket fuel into the table’s deep grooves. Voidheron shudders, and I can feel her pouring on the speed as Adams pours out the blood.

The tech with the squidroach on his head charges me from the right, ducking into a tackle that will certainly break a few of my ribs. I reach out and touch the parasite, and then sidestep. The tech’s eye explodes and he stumbles and crumples past me. My scalpel opens him up as he goes by, and his life energy splashes across an etched whorl in the floor. More power to the engines.

Imagine a waiter setting a table for a fine meal. He moves around the table, laying flatware and plates, glasses and snifters, with calm precision. That is me, stepping from station to station, repositioning inscribed stones, pulling obelisks across grooves, murdering engineers, technicians, and officers alike and pouring them out as if I’m filling wine glasses.

The rest of the engineering crew has fled, but it doesn’t matter. I have what I need. Voidheron is streaking across the Abyssal Void at speeds impossible to achieve anywhere that relativity might apply. Earth and Terra Tenska are invisibly distant motes behind us, and it occurs to me that our voyage wouldn’t be billed as a three-day trip if the engineers were allowed to bleed a little.

Freedom. This isn’t how I pictured it, up to my elbows in blood, tracing scarlet sigils on the walls, the floor, and the table, piloting a stone-and-iron building into the face of a world-eating monster as if I’m some kind of kamikaze bellhop, but it’s still freedom. I chose this. Not Captain Adams and his parasite-impaired judgment, not Commander Willis and her man-handling eyes, not even helpful, dog-breathed Dreadman and his fantastic rune cloak. This was not their decision. It is mine. I own all of it.

The end will come before I can see it, but I know we’re on target. We’re moving too fast for even blood-boosted, rune-wrought vision to show me the devourer growing with proximity. Still, I can sense its full attention upon us, the souls of twenty-five hundred men, women, and children in a bubble of cold iron and ancient stone, inbound at the speed of life.

I wonder, for just a moment, why it does not move to defend itself.

Contributors

D.J. Butler (Dave) is a lawyer by training, but he’s been writing speculative fiction for all audiences since 2010. He’s working on getting published by the traditional route; in the meantime, he entertains readers with serial adventure tales.

Rock Band Fights Evil follows the escapades of a ragged dive bar band of damned men, struggling against the powers of Hell to get back their souls and keep their freedom. Rock Band comes out in e-book form, and then is collected into paperback omnibuses. Rock Band #1 is Hellhound on My Trail. Rock Band Fights Evil Volume One contains Hellhound on My Trail, Snake Handlin’ Man, and Crow Jane.

City of the Saints is a four-part gonzo action steampunk adventure set in the Rocky Mountains. U.S. Army agent Sam Clemens rolls west aboard his amphibious steam-truck, the Jim Smiley, with a mission: to ensure that the Kingdom of Deseret, with its air-ships and rumored phlogiston guns, brain children of the Madman Orson Pratt, enters the looming civil war on the side of the United States. Can he outrace and outmaneuver his competitors, Captain Richard Burton and the secret agent Edgar Allan Poe? Will Deseret’s own defenders, Orrin Porter Rockwell and Eliza R. Snow, thwart him? Or will he be caught up in the coup d’etat of the mysterious Danites? Part the first of City of the Saints is Liahona; the entire tale will be available in a single paperback volume soon.

Read about D.J. Butler’s writing projects at http://davidjohnbutler.com.

Michael R. Collings is a Professor Emeritus at Seaver College, Pepperdine University, where he directed the Creative Writing Program for over two decades.

He has published over 100 volumes of poetry, novels, short fiction, and scholarly studies of such contemporary writers as Stephen King, Orson Scott Card, Dean R. Koontz, and Piers Anthony. Recent works include Writing Darkness (2012), a collection of essays on prose narrative; The Art and Craft of Poetry (1996, 2009); Toward Other Worlds: Perspectives on John Milton, C. S. Lewis, Stephen King, Orson Scott Card, and Others (2010); In Endless Morn of Light: Moral Agency in Milton’s Universe (2010); In the Void: Poems of Science Fiction, Myth and Fantasy, and Horror (2009); Matrix: Growing Up West—Autobiographical Poems (2010); BlueRose and Other Chapbooks (2012); A Verse to Horrors—An Abecedary of Monsters and the Monstrous; HAI-(And Assorted Other)-KU (2012); Deep Music: A Collection of L.D.S. Musical Readings (2012); and a Book of Mormon epic, The Nephiad (1996, 2010).

His fiction, also published through Wildside, includes: The House Beyond the Hill: A Novel of Fear (2007); Wordsmith, Volume One: The Thousand Eyes of Flame (2009) and Wordsmith, Volume Two: The Veil of Heaven (2009); Singer of Lies: A Science-Fantasy Novel (2009); Wer Means Man, and Other Tales of Wonder and Terror (2010); Three Tales of Omne: A Companion to Wordsmith (2010); Devil’s Plague: A Mystery Novel (2011); Serpent’s Tooth (2011); Static!: A Novel of Horror (2011); Shadow Valley (2011); and The Slab (2010), the story of a haunted tract house in Southern California... that consumes people.

With his wife Judith, he has also published a unique cookbook, Whole Wheat for Food Storage: Recipes for Unground Wheat, a revision and expansions of their first joint project, Whole Wheat Harvest (1980).

He is now retired and lives in his native state of Idaho.

Robert J Defendi has worked on many projects. He is a former Writers of the Future winner and the writer of the popular podcast audiobook Death by Cliché. His fiction appears in many RPG supplements and smaller venues.

Robert was born in Dubuque, IA to parents who, frankly, should have known better. After a bleak early period, punctuated by too much bad science fiction produced by Walt Disney, he began to read such greats as Tolkien, Niven, Clark, Asimov and Clavell. He’s been influenced by dozens of writers, from Tom Clancy to Barbara Hambly. He studies bad fiction as well as good in every medium but poetry (with which he is abysmal). He feels that writing is a constant process, continuing through every aspect of one’s life, and that the time spent at the keyboard is only a small part of the process.

Carter Reid is a graphic artist/illustrator/cartoonist native to the blasted wastelands of deepest darkest Utah. He graduated from Weber State University with a Bachelor’s Degree by the skin of his teeth, thanks in no small part to the life-giving properties of excessive caffeine use.

Carter runs a growing and slightly sinister empire centered around his epic and awe-inspiring zombie webcomic found at http://www.thezombienation.com. Critics agree that it is a true testament of the human spirit and good for what ails you.

When not drawing like a madman, Carter enjoys fishing, death sports, futile searches for Bigfoot, and night terrors, and never ever takes himself too seriously.

Nathan Shumate is the instigator of Space Eldritch, but in his own defense, it’s not like the rest of these guys needed much encouragement.

For ten years, he wasted every available moment watching B-movies old and new, and reviewing them at length at Cold Fusion Video Reviews. A selection of those reviews form the basis of his book The Golden Age of Crap.

Nathan’s fiction has appeared in such venues as Amazing Stories and the recent anthologies Monsters & Mormons and Finding Home: Community in Apocalyptic Worlds. He also edits the ARCANE series of anthologies, also available from Cold Fusion Media. He blogs at NathanShumate.com.

Howard Tayler is the writer and illustrator behind Schlock Mercenary, the Hugo-nominated science fiction comic strip. Howard is also featured on the Parsec award-winning and Hugo-nominated “Writing Excuses” podcast, a weekly ’cast for genre-fiction writers. Howard’s artwork is featured in XDM X-Treme Dungeon Mastery, a role-playing supplement by Tracy and Curtis Hickman, as well as in the board game “Schlock Mercenary: Capital Offensive” released July 2012 from Living World Games.

His most recent printed work is Schlock Mercenary: The Sharp End of the Stick. His latest complete online story, Schlock Mercenary: Force Multiplication, was on the 2012 Hugo ballot for “Best Graphic Story.” He lives in Orem, Utah with his wife Sandra and their four children.

Brad R. Torgersen is a healthcare computer geek by day, a United States Army Reserve Chief Warrant Officer on the weekend, and a science fiction and fantasy writer by night. He has contributed stories to multiple professional publications, including Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, Russia’s ESLI magazine, Poland’s Nowa Fantastyka magazine, as well as several anthology collaborations with Hugo and Nebula award winner Mike Resnick. Brad’s novelette “Exanastasis” placed in the 26th volume of the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest. Brad’s novelette “Outbound” then won the Analog magazine “AnLab” Readers’ Choice Award for its category, for the publishing year 2010. “Outbound” was also included in the Dell Magazines ten-year Analog retrospective anthology, Into the New Millennium: Trailblazing Tales From Analog Science Fiction and Fact, 2000–2010. Brad’s novelette “Ray of Light,” also published in Analog magazine, was nominated for both the World Science Fiction Society Hugo Award and the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Award for its category for the publishing year 2011. In 2012 Brad was also nominated for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer in professional science fiction and fantasy. Married 18 years, Brad now lives in northern Utah with his wife and daughter. His website is http://www.bradrtorgersen.com.

David J. West can’t remember a time he wasn’t writing. From the primordial splash of a drowning Atlantis to a pair of vigilantes’ six-guns blasting raw justice in the Old West, from obsidian-tipped arrows raining down on Cumorah’s slopes to crusaders’ broadswords sweeping over shadowy terrors, and on to the cold vacuum of space and the birth of a new star, David is there, recording it all for your edification and amusement. Check out his first novel Heroes of the Fallen and his other short story collections and anthologies at http://david-j-west.blogspot.com/

If you enjoyed this book, check out some of the other publications from Cold Fusion Media:

Arcane Sampler

Edited by Nathan Shumate

A bite-sized collection featuring twelve unsettling original stories, Arcane Sampler demonstrates the kind of macabre storytelling that characterizes the Arcane series of anthologies — for only 99 cents! Included:

- The performers in a traveling carnival suddenly find themselves in mortal danger from their latest exhibit...

- A Bible salesman discovers a reclusive family who worships something older… and closer...

- A good Samaritan stopping to give roadside assistance encounters something far more dangerous than a flat tire...

***

Arcane

Edited by Nathan Shumate

The first full-length anthology of this series features thirty stories by some of the freshest blood in the horror, dark fantasy and weird fiction fields! Included:

- An office worker returns from bereavement leave to find his workplace changing before his eyes…

- A priest excites his village to the greatest show of devotion to their god ever seen…

- A mortician sees all of his immaculate handiwork destroyed when his clients start rising…

***

The Golden Age of Crap
by Nathan Shumate

Just because you can’t respect a movie doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it. The Golden Age of Crap serves up a sampling of junk-food flicks that gained their audiences on videocassette rental shelves during the ’80s and ’90s, a time when one couldn’t visit the video rental store without being tempted by Italian post-apocalyptic adventures, ninja revenge yarns, and zombie-filled “camcorder epics.” The movies covered here run from sleeper hits (Phantasm II) to cult favorites (The Dead Next Door), from unknown stinkers (Plutonium Baby) to undiscovered gems (America’s Deadliest Home Video), all examined with a critical but fun-loving eye.

Cold Fusion Media
http://www.coldfusionmedia.us

Table of Contents

- SPACE ELDRITCH

- D.J. Butler ● Michael R. Collings ● Robert J Defendi ● Carter Reid ● Nathan Shumate ● Howard Tayler ● Brad R. Torgersen ● David J. West

- Foreword by Larry Correia

- Table of Contents

- Acknowledgments

- Foreword

- Larry Correia

- Arise Thou Niarlat from Thy Rest

- D.J. Butler

- Space Opera1

- Michael R. Collings

- The Menace Under Mars

- Nathan Shumate

- Gods in Darkness

- David J. West

- The Shadows of Titan

- Carter Reid and Brad R. Torgersen

- The Fury in the Void

- Robert J Defendi

- Flight of the Runewright

- Howard Tayler

- Contributors