The lift slowed as it reached engineering, and Sammins put her helmet on carefully. The doors opened.
She’d warned him, but of course, he hadn’t paid attention. The smell of stale offal and blood washed into the lift, and he clamped his suited hand over his nose, biting his tongue to forestall gagging. Sammins stepped out while he jammed his helmet over the suit’s neck ring, wiggling it in place until the seal locked and he could breathe stale but mercifully clean air. Arnovic took another steadying breath and stepped out onto the top of the sphere that was the engineering deck.
Even during normal operation, engineering was a geometrical nightmare. Dark, grilled flooring curved sharply away all around the engine’s spherical, black iron jail, creating a constant moiré pattern on the too-close horizon. The room was a massive hollow sphere, lit by pin-spots angled from the ceiling some fifty feet above and pointed directly at the ground like sharp needles of light converging at the core. If you walked a hundred and fifty feet or so in any direction, you’d circumnavigate the engine. Untrained human brains weren’t easily adaptable to a room where down shifted so quickly. Vertigo inevitably set in after half an hour.
He squatted down to peer through the grill at the engine sphere, three feet below. Small, thick-glassed portholes had been set evenly through its surface, but as Sammins had warned him, they were caked with viscera from the inside.
About twenty feet away, just on the curve of the horizon, lay a huddle of bodies. He counted about six, surrounded by blood and flecks of gore. All wore regulation engineering robes, emblazoned with the all-too-familiar Hyrna glyph.
He fiddled with his helmet until the radio connection light blinked green. “Depending on what I find inside, I’m going to need some engineering equipment,” he lied, moving in a careful crouch along the floor. He could just see Sammins’s helmet sticking out above the horizon when he reached the bodies.
This was going to be unpleasant: he probably knew half the engineers in the cult. There were footprints in the blood from security.
He looked back. Sammins seemed unsteady on the curved floor.
“Don’t step around too quickly,” he warned, his breath puffing on the visor, and she raised a gloved hand to show she’d heard him. “This isn’t like a proper gravity well—if we had a quarter-gee of gravity coming out of a sphere forty feet across, it’d need something like one and a half billion metric tons equivalent mass. I think that’s about white dwarf star density. But we’re sitting in plicated space right here, you and I, and it attenuates enough that we aren’t spaghettified by the gravity field.” His hands moved quickly across the corpses as he spoke, feeling in pockets, trying to avoid the smears of blood. An Elder Sign medallion on a chain; a bloodied ritual knife held firm in a stiffened hand. That was enough. He plunged the knife into a torso, closing his eyes. Fresher blood. It would have to do.
He moved back to Sammins, where she was crouching a little, so the curving perspective didn’t mess with her balance too much.
“Is it risky? Working in pli- . . . plicated space like this?” Her voice was tense over the comms.
He glanced back at the bodies, holding the bloody dagger in one glove and the medallion looped around his other. “I guess there are incidental health risks, but . . .”
Sammins’s bad-smell expression embarrassed him into silence.
“Alright,” he said, “let’s lift up one of these floor plates and figure out what’s complicating our gravity.”
Sammins didn’t react to that terrible joke either. She knelt down closer to help unlatch and lift the grill.
“I hope this defector you picked up is worth the trip,” he added, sliding the floor panel aside and lowering himself into the gap. “Now, the plan is: first, I’m going to vent the engineering room by opening up the main access shaft above us. It should iris out along the central ship axis and give us a nice view through the superstructure and out into the void, if you’re into that sort of thing. I’ll make sure it’s slow, so we don’t get ejected, but best hold on to something.” His boots touched the engine surface, and he crouched, splaying a hand on the nearest port hole. She had to be in there.
“Next, I’ll cycle the engine casing open over . . . here. So step back half a quadrant, just in case. And I suggest you don’t look inside when I do that. You’re not desensitized.”
Sammins nervously retreated.
Arnovic slid aside a panel at his feet and flicked several large switches. The engineering chamber lights dimmed slowly to an ominous red.
“Arnovic.” He looked up as best he could, but Sammins was out of sight. “Arnovic, the bridge is reporting an enemy ship in torpedo range. If we engage, they’re going to blow us out of the sky. Captain’s orders are not to surrender.”
He froze, his hand over the phase one engine release button. This was all happening too fast. Hyrnadostorlechanima was supposed to die in dock, not in a combat zone. “So what does that mean for us?”
“It’s a waiting game. Eventually, they’ll fire on us if we ignore them. So get that engine working, even on a fraction of lightspeed, and we might be able to get away. Might.”
The old engine wasn’t going to work, he already knew that. She’d been sloughed off like old meat inside her iron prison. The Hyrna was never going to get out of here on its own power. He wracked his brain for something, anything.
“OK. Good to know,” he said finally. “Grab onto something while I vent.” He jabbed down on the release button, feeling the hum through his suit and the tug of escaping atmosphere on his sleeves. He rolled on his side to look up at the domed ceiling and the dim red lights were spiraling slowly aside, revealing the long, wide access tunnel that cut through the black silhouetted stems of wiry corridors and larger modules wrapped around the ship, sharp strips cut out of the maddening starry background. The wind died with the atmosphere and the tunnel widened until it was large enough to admit an entire engine. His cheap emergency pressure suit held in the vacuum, ballooning along poor internal seals. Half an hour. He had half an hour.
“Sammins, can you warn the bridge that we may lose gravity while I work?” Either no gravity or if he couldn’t contain the newborn engines then too much gravity. But there was no way the crew could protect themselves against that.
“Copy that.”
He muted his microphone with a tap of his dagger-wielding hand in case he needed to voice a ritual. It wouldn’t do for Sammins to accidentally overhear him and have a psychotic episode. He closed his eyes and thought back to the last time he’d lain against the hot edge of this engine, muttering promises of freedom he wasn’t entirely sure came from his own mind. Muttering the final few words of a ritual he doubted any human had ever pronounced near an engine.
He reached forward and pressed the bright yellow phase two engine release button. The floor to his left slid aside along a seam engraved in spider-thin script, opening wider as he maintained pressure on the release button. Blackish pink ichor bubbled out under residual internal pressure and spilled slowly along the outside edge of the engine casing.
Almost immediately, his stomach dropped as gravity vanished around him. Liquefied viscera bubbled out of the gap, which slid open along half the circumference of the sphere, releasing large globules of flesh and frilled, unidentifiable lumps.
Somewhere in there . . . his eyes spotted structure in the necrotic mess. A globe easily two feet in diameter, glinting dark green and yellow despite the red emergency lighting. It floated along the border of the slowly expanding viscera, its own smooth surface both roiling with color, like a miniature gas planet, and alive with tiny expanding and contracting pseudopods that tasted the vacuum. Where gobbets of liquid floated near its surface, they distorted, separated and tumbled aside as the tiny neonatal engine plicated its surroundings, exploring.
He knew in his heart this wasn’t what he was looking for, but it wasn’t unexpected.
“You can be . . . Arnovictormecheton,” he subvocalized, scratching the dagger a
long the solid edge of the opening in a careful pattern. The blood had mostly boiled off in the vacuum, but it should suffice. His throat was dry from long disused words as he muttered a binding, gripping the medallion tightly in his other hand. The sphere didn’t react to the words other than stopping its advance through the sludge. He wondered briefly how hungry it was. Would it lash out unexpectedly and pull in as much mass as it could, or was it—she—sated by her mother’s remains?
“Arnovic? I’m not looking, like you said. What’s happening? I can’t hear anything.”
He briefly thought of ignoring her—this was more important. Then he realized she might open her eyes. He unmuted his microphone and was about to reassure her when a different thought occurred to him.
“Sammins, it’s ok. I’m working on something. The . . . uhm . . . it seems the . . . the compartment contains some kind of juvenile engine. I was worried it might be hungry, but that gave me another idea: I need you to arrange to launch a torpedo on my command. It doesn’t have to hit the enemy vessel, just fly at them, provoke a response. I know it sounds crazy, but work with me.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“How’s your stomach for blasphemy, Ensign?”
“Are you planning on serving your crab soufflé as a victory meal?”
“Oh. Nice.” He laughed. “I meant figuratively. I’m proposing some highly practical blasphemy.”
He tapped the microphone off again as the goo near him started to roil. Could it . . . ?
“I’ll see what I can do,” came Sammins’s voice as from a distance, but he wasn’t listening.
“Hyrna, Hyrna, my Hyrna, I’m back,” he whispered. His eyes welled up, and he knocked himself in the head trying to wipe them through the helmet as though he was clumsily saluting the new roiling sphere that had emerged from the visceral swamp in front of him. His heart pounded in his chest. It had worked. She was alive; the core of her doubled and divided and buried deep inside the remains of her older shell. He gasped for breath.
“I . . . need to get you out.” He released the dagger and let it spin slowly beside him. He reached forward and took her in his outstretched hands, smearing her outer shell’s drying slime over his gloves. There was no way he could feel her through his suit, but the resilience of her surface comforted him. His thoughts were unfocussed. He’d had something in mind, something to do with Arnovictor—
He remembered. He blinked and scanned for the other globe, the child-engine, cradling Hyrna clumsily in his left arm and beckoning with the right. Arnovictormecheton drifted toward him, surface roiling with curious pseudopods and colors.
“It’s time we went outside,” Arnovic said. He unmuted his mic. “Sammins, head to the bridge and wait for me. Good luck.”
* * *
It took at least ten minutes for the unlikely trio to drift up through the wide engineering shaft to the edge of the ship, through the slowly thinning superstructure of the Hyrna and to where they had a clear view of the star-studded sky. Low on their horizon, the tiny enemy ship was visible in the distance. Both the neonate engines halted their drift at his gentle touch. Had he been drifting on his own momentum, or had they been propelling themselves onward? If he held her tightly enough, could Hyrna speed him a hundred light seconds away into the lonely void?
“Sammins, are you there?”
“Yes. But we’re a little tense as you can imagine.”
“Yeah. Can you launch on the count of ten?”
“Yes. Gods preserve us.” He wasn’t sure if it was a curse or a prayer coming from a Persistian. He muted the mic and started to count down slowly in his mind. He turned to Arnovictormecheton, thumbing the Elder Sign medallion in his left hand. She needed to be hungry enough, curious enough. Unlike her sister-mother, she was entirely new in this universe.
Arnovic breathed in deeply, muttering the unbinding. The engine spun a little, freed from his name. It spun a few times, moving slightly outward from the curved hull of the pressurized tube they drifted by. Any second now, there would be a fascinating, irresistible exhaust trail heading straight toward the—
The torpedo rose up into the sky a few hundred feet to his left, invisible but for the bright flame and the lighter exhaust trail of complex hydrocarbons left in its wake. It hooked in a fast curve and angled directly for the enemy ship.
His neonate engine, once more unnamed, grew still and eerily smooth, and at the same time, four tiny dots bloomed in the distant ship. Retaliation.
The globe darted upward, seeming to flash out of existence and reappear a hundred feet away. Starlight briefly glinted along the edges of its plication field as it tasted out and flashed again, closer to the Hyrna’s torpedo trail where its gravity swirled at the faint gasses remaining.
Arnovic bit his lip. The enemy torpedoes, visible only as light hairline trails in the distance, were coming closer by the second. Still, his curious engine merely toyed with their missile. It was visible now as a tiny flicking glint, like a soap bubble appearing spontaneously here and then there along the torpedo’s exhaust trail.
The enemy missiles came close enough to tease at the edges of its perception, and it winked out. The first of the enemy torpedoes hooked sharply, thrown wildly off course as though some massively condensed mass point stretched deep gravity wells too close beside it. The next missile snapped around. The third imploded, and the last slingshotted wide, hooked back, spiraled in, tracing a needle-fine light ellipse around the now-invisible juvenile engine. The undestroyed missiles, widely off their mark, sputtered out as they tried to regain their target but were chased down and consumed by the excited and hungry engine.
Which would hopefully sniff the enemy exhaust trails right back to their origin.
Sammins crackled in his ear. “What is going on? What did you do?”
“I took a god-engine and put it on the trail of those enemy missiles. Give it a few seconds, and it will fly right at their ship.”
“But what is that going to achieve? Is it strong enough to damage it? Why would it—?”
“At the heart of that starship is a millennia old engine, Sammins. The engineering cult are busily keeping it occupied, sated, placated. When a juvenile engine comes skimming past, hungry for torpedo exhaust, it’s going to fly right through the plication gravity field and get its attention faster than you can say—”
In the distance, the enemy ship crumpled. The wiry tangle of corridors and modules folded inward, spiraling off fragments and venting atmosphere as the engine at its heart snatched at the neonate in its orbit.
“Gravity spike.”
There was stunned silence from the bridge.
“Now, we wait a week for rescue. I’ll cook us all up something tasty when I get back inside.” He swallowed. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment.” He switched off the radio.
* * *
He had maybe five minutes of air time left before he had to get into atmosphere. Arnovic drifted before Hyrnadostorlechanima, his face to the scattered stars reflected and distorted in her roiling surface.
“Come back and find me, my love, my queen, my tiny god.”
She spun slowly, curled pseudopods unfurling through dimensions, and before he could touch her again, she plicated and vanished into the vast emptiness of the interstellar void: younger, smaller, but free.
And he could still feel her presence in his heart. She was a pulsing heat, warming at the snail’s pace of maturation, even while the realspace distance between them grew at one hundred light-seconds per second.
It was a love that ignored spacetime, their transdimensional connection. He was in love with his god-thing. He was a cult of one.
Tom Dullemond is a Dutch/Australian humanoid who stumbled out of university with a double degree in Medieval/Renaissance studies and Software Engineering. One of these degrees got him a job, and he has been working in IT ever since. Tom writes primarily short fiction across all genres, including literary fiction and the occasional poem. He co-authored The Machine Wh
o Was Also a Boy, the first in a series of philosophical fantasy adventures for middle-grade students, and writes a regular science fiction column for the CSIRO’s Double Helix science magazine. On the other side of the publishing mirror, he reads and edits for Andromeda Spaceways magazine and runs the writing management website Literarium.net. Find him online for occasional ramblings at www.tomdullemond.com or @cacotopos on Twitter.
Fortunato
Premee Mohamed
Illustrated by Michael Bukowski
The little dropship rocked and flamed as it smacked into the atmosphere, the noise of its entry rising to a scream. Inside, the air grew confusingly, unforgivably hot. The squad looked at their commander, waiting for the order to abort, but Rossi only shook her head. Looking past the sweat beading on her lashes, she focused on the control panel readout. That would be great, cooking her first command squad. No medals for that, probably.
The scream faded to a hum and the chatter of self-congratulation. She kept watching the readout, this time for altitude. It was all wrong, just like the atmosphere, every number in the red. For perhaps the hundredth time, she wondered whether they’d gotten the planet wrong. Shouldn’t be possible. The coordinates matched to the sixtieth digit. But the soupy air, the orange haze, mountains that couldn’t possibly have arisen in a mere two centuries, oceans and lakes a dull jumble, their shine gone . . .
Worst of all, the landing pad from the original surveyors’ charts was now a kilometer-deep fissure. The shipboard computer was desperately confused.
Touchdown at the revised pad. Rossi let the squad gabble in relief for a minute before calling everyone to attention; for a moment, she wasn’t sure they’d even respond. After all, two days ago, they had been peers, not incident commander and subordinates. But everyone snapped to and began gearing up.
Ride the Star Wind: Cthulhu, Space Opera, and the Cosmic Weird Page 21
