“The hallucinations all came from that,” I rasp.
“It almost looks . . . Irlon,” Paki muses. “The crew has suffered grave injuries, Averator. I should begin quarantine procedures immediately.”
“Of course.” Zele nods absently, staring at me, and I can only wonder what he’s seen in his own hallucinations. “I despise such wasted opportunities. You are whole, Remiliat?”
More of the crew stagger in, congratulating one another or crying, holding each other up. Gorshen squeezes my shoulder in passing. Karisten gives me a relieved nod.
“I feel like a dreadcat clawed through my skull . . . but it will pass.” I nod to the table, shivering. “The effects can be purged.”
Paki and Zele share a long look, and Zele gives a slight bow to me. I help Eliat to his feet. His eyes are red-rimmed and staring. More of the surface party joins us, retrieved by Paki, each with the haunt of fresh nightmares about them.
Zele addresses us. “We’ve survived this ordeal for a reason. These properties are unprecedented in all of the Known and deserve further study, despite the risks..”
Everyone goes deathly quiet. A rift opens between the Averator and his crew. What side am I standing on? Opraila, who still won’t look anyone in the eye, speaks first. “We found the monument. Let that be enough.”
“Purge the ship records, so we never lead anyone back here,” Gorshen drawls. “No reason to come back here with anything less than a Doom in orbit.”
Betrayal weighs down Zele’s plea. “But the Empire needs . . . I cannot ignore—”
“By the Known, if we forget this mission ever happened I’ll be happy.” Eliat comes to himself. “Maybe we don’t have to expel all of it into space, yes?”
Paki holds the shards away from him defensively, shaking his head in warning. “I’m sorry, Eliat, but I shall supervise the quarantine personally. Direct physical contact might prove to be—”
Zele darts closer while Paki’s back is turned. He snatches a shard from Paki’s grasp, and the Averator plunges it beyond his lips and swallows.
“By the Known,” I hiss. “What have you done?”
“No knowledge is safe from an Averator—” The strangest look comes over his face. We gather around him, stunned. He closes his eyes, hands touch both temples.
Moments pass, and he doesn’t move. “Zele?” Worried muttering fills the space. Zele brims with intent, his presence in my extended consciousness is a raging torch.
“I need . . . more.” His voice is not right. Zele’s eyes drift open languidly, and his hand rises, contorts, commands. Four Cassad rise into the air with cries of surprise and awe. Nkedi laughs nervously, flailing. Gorshen and Bardas slap each other playfully as they drift. Karisten’s eyes touch mine; she bites her lip.
Zele’s palms spread wide as if he were running his fingers through the fronds of a cantliss tree. The chosen crew members press flat against the room’s walls. Their adulation turns to screams. Zele carefully smears their bodies across the wall in a thin layer of flesh, bone, fluid. Clothes and incursion suits fall to the floor, discarded and bloodstained by the madness that drives the Averator.
What remains is worse than vivisection, splayed ribs spread like delicate fans, exposed lungs convulsing as they are pushed flatter, straining hearts still beating to drive blood through the web of blood vessels spreading out to cover the surface.
I recognize pieces only. A patch of skin with a bearded eagle tattoo here, stretched to translucence; a hazel eye roiling in a distended socket there. A ruined throat, the trachea still connected to a compressed lung, and Karisten’s voice flutters out in a desperate wail.
“Remmmmmm . . .”
Speech fails me. Paki might retch, if he’s capable of such a thing. The remaining crew stares, hands clapped over their ears or eyes. A single, horrible word escapes the Averator’s lips.
“More . . .”
Chaos erupts around us as we scream and scatter. I run with no hesitation straight for Amadi Zele. Paki reaches him an instant before I do, tackling him around the waist. The air leaves his lungs as he goes down. The back of Zele’s head kisses the floor, and his eyelids flutter. I use the opening to shove two fingers past his teeth. He gags.
We search through the vomit. “Paki, I don’t see it!”
“His body may have absorbed it.”
I don’t know what to do. The Averator is unconscious, but when he awakens he may remake us along with the rest of the Dubious. “It’s not matter the way we think of it,” I mutter, forcing myself to think through my terror. “Not truly. It’s thought, just like on the surface.”
An alarm sounds, and I look a question at Paki.
“Escape pods,” he says. “The others—”
“The thoughts they’re infected with are just as dangerous as this matter!” I spring up and race for the hall. Blind panic takes command as Eliat’s insane mutterings about R’lyeh echo through me.
Paki’s grasp closes on my arm. “Help me!” I implore him. “If they get loose in the Known, that blood will be on our hands!”
He shakes his head. “Deal with the source first. The blood will come later. Your place is here, Remiliat. This is your chance. The Averator needs you.”
“The Averator is broken. He’ll never forgive himself for this.”
I waver, disgusted with myself, before allowing Paki to lead me back. Zele hums softly to himself, he’s regained his feet. The bloodied incursion suits are tucked neatly in one corner like discarded ration packets. I’m unable to raise my eyes to the walls. Paki looks a question at me. “He’s changing the nature of the . . . organic material.”
I say their names instead. Gorshen. Nkedi. Bardas. Karisten. But I still can’t look. “He’s made . . . an extension of himself, just like the material on the planet’s surface. I can feel them within it. Not alive, but not . . .”
Paki nods silently. “No one must ever know what he’s done. Including me.” The android makes a quick motion by his left ear as if twisting open a dial lock. A slim crystal rod slides out of his ear, small as a fingernail. He extends it to me. “My short-term buffer will clear itself in moments. I’ll lose awareness of this memory purge and how this room came to be.” The rod is weightless but sears my palm. “We will look to you for answers. Now. Are you part of this crew or not?”
I realize that I am. The Dubious needs me, and the people bonded within this room deserve whatever measure of comfort my psionics can give them. And the Averator cannot be broken by what he doesn’t remember.
DaVaun Sanders resides in Phoenix, Arizona with his wife and toddler twins. He’s presently hard at work editing the final three novels of his World Breach series, learning the nuances of disaster prep, and mastering the art of pillow fort construction. Check out more of his work in MV Media’s Dark Universe anthology and FIYAH Literary Magazine—which both feature tales from the same story world inhabited by Amadi Zele and crew. Reach out to DaVaun on Twitter @davaunwrites and stay posted on his latest projects at davaunsanders.com.
Starship in the Night Sky
D.W. Baldwin
Illustrated by Sishir Bommakanti
You will be mine,the King in Yellow whispered to Ilyana. You will behold my face.
She had only a moment to realize she was succumbing to another hallucination.
In the vision, Hastur was trapped in a blue-tinted prison of inescapable velocity. Around the king floated the wreckage of his flagship, yet he was still seated on his black throne. The dead god reached for her with a hand of bone wrapped in tatters of yellow. A cowl wreathed with a horned crown hid his mien from the glow of the relativistic walls around him.
Your daughter will be mine, he said. Your husband. They shall see my face, and they will worship me in our final days. Even in the vision, her face burned and itched, marked with his Yellow Sign.
As she had before, Captain-Second Rank Ilyana Vosik sought to escape by waking up. She tried, and this time something new happened.
I
lyana found herself floating across vivid white sand toward a black pyramid larger than any space station she’d ever seen. The immensity of the structure was as terrifying as the doom behind her. The dream took her to the base of the pyramid and a doorway, larger than anything mankind ever built, ringed with white stone.
Ilyana entered into a hallway with something that slept beyond death, something massive that stirred at her approach. Though it was black inside, she perceived everything around her.
Behind her, chasing her, was the outstretched claw of the king.
My face will become all you see, Hastur whispered.
Ilyana awoke, drenched in sweat, her stomach clenching and the Mark across her face burning. She was on the bridge of the NFS cruiser Miriya she’d hijacked, staring at the dull grey bulkhead separating her from infinity.
“Hello, Captain!” The voice of the ship’s artificial intelligence was cheerful and came from the hidden speakers mounted in the ceiling. “It is 04:27. Would you like breakfast, a stimulant, or to go back to sleep? I also recommend charting a course back to New Kiev in accordance with the orders from the Commissariat. Shall I do so, Captain?”
“No, Petrov,” Ilyana muttered. “Stay on course. Maintain communication silence.” She rubbed a hand through her short, graying blond hair. “How long was I out?”
She rose up from the captain’s chair at the center of the bridge, groaning with the aches in her joints. She focused on the pain in her body to keep from thinking of her family, whom she’d left behind.
“I will comply and register my advice against such a move,” Petrov said. “You were asleep for 136 minutes and completed a full REM cycle. There was also a Hasturan infiltration of your brainwaves. Your mental corruption index has increased by 6%.”
“Great,” Ilyana said. “Just what I wanted to hear. What is the remaining distance to the edge of the galaxy?”
“We are now less than 1 kiloparsec away from the galactic heliopause. Captain Visok, I must recommend that we return to the Commissariat as they can quarantine you to deal with the infiltration.”
Ilyana glanced up at the corner where Petrov’s camera was installed. I guess it’s time to tell him, she thought. Tell them. There was an ansible, utilizing trapped co-entwined hydrogen particles, hardwired into the Miriya, for FTL communication with the worlds of humanity and the Commissariat. Starships were expensive, and the Noviy Federation wanted a constant accounting of all in its Navy’s service.
Ilyana had already removed the Commissariat slave chip, but she couldn’t prevent Petrov from communicating with her superiors through the ansible.
“I’m not going back, Petrov,” Ilyana said at last, staring into the camera. “I’m marked by the Yellow Sign.” She pointed to the pale-yellow lesion marring her forehead and left cheek. “I may have sent the king to his doom, but he still wants me, and he’s threatening my daughter and my husband. If I think about them—at all—he could find them. Because of me. So Hastur will hit the event horizon of Centaurus A in . . . how many more days, Petrov?”
“Approximately seventy-one shipboard hours until projected collision,” Petrov said. “Ilyana, what will become of me?”
“Three days. Good,” Ilyana said. “My plan is to force him, over the next three days, to spend whatever energy he has left tracking me from outside the continuum, instead of tracking them.”
“Ilyana,” Petrov said, this time with concern, “What will become of me?”
Ilyana looked down at her gray tank top, her greasy blue pants, and decided against changing her clothes. There was no point. She turned back to Petrov’s camera. “Assuming there’s enough time,” she said, “I’ll order you to launch me in the shuttle out of the galaxy at relativistic velocity and to return back to New Kiev. That way, the commissars can have their ship back.” She was unable to keep the venom out of her tone.
“Thank you, Ilyana,” Petrov said.
She nodded. Petrov, and by extension the Miriya, was alive in its own way. She’d hijacked the Navy cruiser when everyone left on the Cosmoskovska station was celebrating their final victory over the legions of the King in Yellow. After the Yellow Sign manifested across her face.
Sleep deprived, marked, and desperate, she felt only resignation and guilt. She’d canceled the long-awaited reunion with her daughter and husband after seeing the mark, telling Gregor in an audio-only message to cut off all contact, pack up Natasha, and move somewhere far away from Archanska.
The lack of a reply message confirmed he understood—and broke her heart. There’d been far too many similar messages to families during the war due to the ravages of the Yellow Sign. The abandonment of her family was the only action she could take to save them. Doing so didn’t lessen the heartbreak; she knew that, to Gregor, this was just her final break from him, from the family they’d built. While Ilyana had liked being the mother of a newborn girl and a loving wife, she loved being a Naval officer.
Can’t think about them. Think about pain. Think about death, about what it will feel like to die. The king’s hungry touch moved through her mind toward those thoughts of her family. Ilyana focused on what it would be like to die by asphyxiation or by fatal insomnia or by stepping out of the airlock while at FTL warp. It was enough to hold Hastur off.
Ilyana’s stomach rumbled, her eyes were dry, and there was nothing to do but go to the galley, get some coffee, and watch the ambient blue glow of superluminal travel on the viewscreen. She returned with the coffee, but before she reached the bridge, her breath caught in her throat.
A black figure stood before the screen, cast into shadow by the roiling blue scintillations behind it. The figure stood absolutely still, staring at her. It bore no yellow rags, no horned crown.
Ilyana knew she was the only human on board. Life support systems were configured to sustain this narrow passageway, the officer’s galley, and the bridge. Ilyana blinked her dry eyes several times.
What she saw was a human being, clad in the remnants of an ancient, blackened Chinese spacesuit. The visor had blown out, revealing a desiccated, eyeless face framed by shards of jagged glass. Ilyana, no stranger to hardships in space, realized the face showed the signs of explosive decompression.
“Pe . . . Petrov,” Ilyana managed to stutter. “Who is standing at the bridge?”
“I do not register anyone, Captain. Are you hallucinating?”
Ilyana nodded, once. She licked her chapped lips, swallowed. “Yes, I believe I am.”
“Can you advise if it is one of the Hasturan variations?” Petrov asked.
The figure on the bridge remained still, its blackened eye sockets gazing at her.
“Doesn’t . . . doesn’t appear to be,” Ilyana responded. “It looks like a human in an ancient Chinese spacesuit. The color is black. The helmet visor lost structural integrity. It’s,” she paused, “staring at me.”
“Unusual,” Petrov said. “Your brain patterns are irregular due to insomnia and stress and show progressive signs of Hasturan infiltration. However, those patterns have not yet deteriorated into a psychotic state. It appears, Captain, that whatever you are perceiving is real.”
Ilyana closed her eyes. She opened them again with a prayer, hoping that the specter would be gone. It was not.
“Petrov,” she said, “Open communication channels. Monitor everything. All frequencies, all spectrums. Send this back to the Commissariat. We might have a new king on our hands.”
“Understood, Captain.”
It took everything she had to step forward—and then again. She had faced down disfigured lunatic cultists, dead bodies driven by Hastur’s titanic will, pirates, slavers, and more in the service of the Commissariat. But that dread gaze bore through all her mental walls and years of experience. It was almost a physical pressure on her temples, her neck, her chest, her stomach.
Ilyana entered the bridge and felt the oppressive weight of presence. This was an entity with enough power to breach the warp separating the Miriya from the physical
universe and manifest on the bridge in a grotesque human form.
“Who—who are you?” Ilyana asked. “What do you want?”
The specter lifted its hand and pointed at her. Without moving its legs, it glided to a screen on the helm station that displayed the location of the Miriya in relation to the Sagittarius arm of the Milky Way. The specter pointed down at the screen.
“Captain,” Petrov said. “I am receiving input at the helm.”
“What kind of input?” Ilyana asked.
“Physical pressure corresponding to keypad entry of coordinates.”
The specter vanished and so did the sensations of its passing.
“Captain, this is a new form of infiltration. Naval records do not list an infiltration manifesting into physical reality. I am transmitting this to the Commissariat for further study.”
“Good,” Ilyana said, though she felt anything but. A new infiltration, a new entity . . . she recalled the nightmare where she’d been flying across white sands under a black sky toward the black pyramid. There is another king, she realized.
Ilyana looked toward the airlock. I could do it, she thought to herself. There’d been whispers during her years of service. People who’d managed to override the airlock security protocols and throw themselves out into utter annihilation. I’m already dead.
Even the illusion of hope that this torment would end caused her to think of Natasha and Gregor. Ilyana crushed the nascent daydreams. They are better off without me, she reminded herself. The mental and emotional connections between people were the vectors the King in Yellow used. He would infect Natasha and Gregor with his mark, make them behold his face, and take their minds before he collided with the mega-collapsar at the heart of Centaurus A. Or he’d leave them forever teetering toward insanity.
Ilyana walked to the captain’s chair—her chair—and sat down. Shit, what I wouldn’t give for some sleep. Some real sleep, she thought.
Ride the Star Wind: Cthulhu, Space Opera, and the Cosmic Weird Page 15
