Cthulhu Unbound 3

by Brian M. Sammons (ed. )

  Nikonov smiled at Jordan. “We have good news my friend. We believe your story. We are going to secure you on board one of our 877 Paltus submarines.”

  Jordan knew the type Nikonov referred to, the 877 Paltus was what the US Navy calls the Kilo Class, and required a minimal crew to man it.

  “Your old friend Matvei will accompany you. Who knows you better, hey Yegor?”

  Jordan had to admit he wasn’t too happy about that last bit, but he knew Yegor would be, so he played the part. “That is very warming news indeed, sir.”

  It was indicated that Jordan was to leave now. Matvei would take him to a GRU safe house until morning, when they flew out. But before Jordan could take a single step, Nikonov had his wrinkled yet powerful grip around Jordan’s muscular bicep, halting him.

  “Yegor,” Nikonov licked his dried lips, “this expedition you would have us fund, would it have anything to do with all those Pacific cities that have suffered devastation of late?”

  “City’s sir?”

  “Petropavolvsk-Kamchatskiy, Guayaquil, Auckland, Suva, Honolulu, and a dozen other cities rimming the Pacific. Millions are dead, or missing.”

  Jordan swallowed hard. “Millions?” The situation was escalating into a disaster he couldn’t even comprehend.

  “In the last few days, since we picked you up, something like six million people have died. The strangest thing of all; there have been no tidal waves. There have been no earthquakes.”

  The singularity, Jordan thought. It was happening as Harrison Peel said it would. The laws of physics, time and space were breaking down, and this was probably only the tip of the iceberg.

  “Yegor?”

  “I didn’t know General.” He was too stunned to say anything but how he really felt. “I didn’t know it was that bad.”

  “It’s probably going to get worse too.” Then the SV-8 General disappeared without further explanation.

  And so Jordan found himself trapped inside an 877 Paltus submarines with Matvei, bound for the heart of the Pacific Ocean, wondering who would kill who first.

  5. Marrakech

  Peel stood under shade of the villa roof in his friend’s house, Jamal Al Hazard, enjoying a beer. The view through his sunglasses against the midday glare began with the dense white-washed buildings of the medina, then the ramparts of Marrakech surrounding the old city, date palms and in the far distance the snow capped peaks of the High Atlas. The scene was so peaceful and relaxing, Peel thought it unreal. After all he had experienced he felt he didn’t belong.

  Mentally he slapped himself. These kinds of thoughts must mean he was becoming too used to a world of hunting monsters.

  Al Hazard’s villa was a home to seemingly hundreds of relaxed and playful cats. They followed Peel everywhere. At this moment two tabbies rubbed against his legs. Another was curled on Peel’s cane chair. He gently pushed it away so he could sit next to Jamal.

  Peel had been residing in Jamal’s guest room for a week, hiding from his superiors and the world, and didn’t want to leave. Although he felt guilty relaxing while the planet was falling apart, over the last seven days he came to appreciate that he needed to.

  Jamal looked up, smiled kindly. Since Peel’s arrival Jamal had been busy translating Henbest’s copy of The R’lyeh Text. Peel had stolen the old book from Henbest’s penthouse apartment a few days after his near fatal fall from the Learjet.

  After several moments of peaceful silence, Peel asked, “Jamal, how old did you say you were?”

  The man looked over his moon-shaped reading glasses. “I didn’t, my friend.”

  Peel looked away. “I knew that.”

  Jamal appeared to be in his late thirties, slightly younger than Peel. Yet he read the Latin text that was indecipherable to Peel as easily as he decoded the Chinese characters intermingled in the many bizarre and complex drawings which were also known to him. Jamal knew too many languages to be that young.

  “How are you feeling today?” Jamal asked, lowering his spectacles and the book to fully engage with his guest.

  “You know me,” Peel jested, “always focused on the mission, so personal feelings can be ignored.”

  “At least you recognized this behavior.”

  Peel coughed out a laugh. “I came for a translation, not a therapy session.”

  “Yet you’ve stayed for a week, relaxed as I suggested you should.”

  Peel shrugged, he had no worthy response. “Can you tell me, Jamal, what this Infinite Replicator is? That is what Ben Henbest is so keen to discover. I’m certain he thinks it’s in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, of all places.”

  Jamal sipped his mint tea, took a long moment to savor its taste, enjoying it as if he’d never tasted it before. “You cared about Zoe.”

  At the mention of Zoe, Peel felt overcome with anger, yet he contained his frustration. Jamal and he went back many years. The man was a mentor, a spiritual guide even though Peel didn’t believe in the human notion of greater divine powers. Jamal was the one man on the planet who could help Peel see through the murkiness of his own character flaws and help him clarify his thoughts. With Jamal, Peel found he could see the world, and himself, as they really were.

  Of course it didn’t hurt that Jamal seemed to know more about the history and mythology of the outer dimensional monsters than anyone else Peel had ever met. Yet here they were talking about a woman Peel had barely known and whom he had quickly fallen for.

  “Yeah, I did care about Zoe, I guess. I hardly knew her. She was going to have me killed. Did I tell you that?”

  The Arabic scholar nodded. “It doesn’t change the fact that you cared about her.”

  Peel couldn’t get the image out of his mind, of her falling into the desert, always out of reach. He remembered her flailing, her screaming until the ground rushed up so fast her wails were silenced so very suddenly. He remembered the Learjet crashing near by, incinerated her body with its intense flames. Strangely, perhaps thankfully, there had been no sign of the white amorphous creature.

  “People I care about keep dying around me.”

  “And now you worry that your friend, Jordan, who you also care about is also dead, or soon will be if you don’t do something to help him.”

  For former army major stood, paced. “I get it. I want to save everyone, and I can’t handle it when I can’t help everyone.” Jamal did not respond, so Peel kept talking. “Can you help me, find out what I need to do before me or Jordan drowns in one of these…’singularity breakdowns’ that seem to be plaguing us?”

  The image of thousands of dead corpses, each and everyone one of them Jordan, still haunted him regularly. The reality breakdowns hurtling him to that cold, wet place were becoming more frequent. He kept looking for Zoe amongst the faces, perhaps as a distraction or for hope, but she was always absent. It was only Jordan, dying again and again, and again.

  “Your friend is not your responsibility. He chose this path, as much as you did.”

  Several cats meowed, rubbed Peel’s legs. He couldn’t stand their attention, so he returned to the cane chair, slumped into it. “But I can still do my best, to help him.”

  “That is all one can ever do, Harrison. But don’t forget, it is also important, and human, to take time out for yourself.”

  “I thank you for your advise, Jamal, but please, tell me something, anything, that might help me understand what is going on here?”

  Jamal smiled, turned the old book so that the illegible text faced Peel. “This is a description of an island—well it is more of a continent actually.”

  “Called R’lyeh?”

  “Yes, a continent that has been hidden under the Pacific Ocean for a very long time, locked between the folds of time and space and dark energy. Inside this island is a tomb, as some ancient prophets might have called it, and there sleeps an alien entity of immense power. My distant ancestor, Abdul Al Ahazard, called him Cthulhu.”

  “Cthulhu?”

  “You’ve heard the name?�
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  Peel nodded, “Occasionally in my career. I’ve encountered Taliban terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan who muttered allegiance to him. I’ve also heard the name in Africa, from Congolese warlords who shouted the name as a war cry. I thought nothing of it. Or thought maybe I heard something similar, but not actually the same name, each time.”

  “You heard correctly. Cthulhu’s worship is global, and ancient. The depraved and the deranged want him released from his prison, hence that mantra. What few understand is that Cthulhu is not really a god, so to speak, but a force of nature. A destructive force of nature.”

  “You mean like a gravitational force of nature, or a distortion in space-time?”

  “Yes, and that is why you and Jordan keep having these time-space slips. You are entangled with Cthulhu.”

  Peel thought about those poor vanished Pacific island nations in the news headlines of late, and the numerous coastal cities destroyed without cause and the millions dead already. Time and space were breaking down, and thus so too was the relationship between cause and effect. A tidal wave was coming, one of unprecedented magnitude, even though the cities that it destroyed were already devastated.

  “Jamal, I don’t want to do this any more. I don’t want to fight. I really don’t.”

  Jamal said nothing for a very long time, prompting Peel to speak again.

  “New Zealand sounds great you know, the South Island. Nothing bad has ever happened there as far as I can tell. I’ll vanish there. You would be the only one who would know.”

  Again, Jamal said nothing.

  “What you’re trying to tell me is that Jordan and I have to see this to the end?”

  The scholar’s smile was sympathetic. “I’m afraid so. Look at the evidence.”

  “Do we survive? Can we survive?” Peel thought again of all the dead Jordans he had seen, thousands of them. He realized then that he should not have been looking for Zoe, but himself. Thankfully his corpse had not been present in any of his displacements.

  “I don’t know, my friend. But I do know this, I believe that this Infinite Replicator which you came to see me about, which I can now tell you does exist inside R’lyeh somewhere, holds much importance to both your and Jordan’s destinies.”

  Jamal Al Hazard’s finger flipped over a single page in the R’lyeh Text, pointed to illustration of the Chinese man walking into the box, and then the same man stepping out over and over again.

  “I’ve seen this picture,” Peel fought to keep frustration from his tone because they were back on the subject of him continuing with his mission. “Henbest had this page open on the podium when I met him. It’s why I came to you, so you could tell me what it means.”

  “You may have seen the picture, Harrison, but have you really looked at it.” Jamal’s finger rested just above the face of the man walking into the box. “Someone traveled far enough back in time, probably only for a moment, so he could to tell an important story. Look again.”

  Peel did look again. Jamal was pointing to the man’s face.

  Then Peel realized who it was he was looking at.

  6. R’lyeh

  It was boredom that was for Matvei and Jordan the hardest emotion to overcome on their ten thousand mile journey, trapped together within the belly of the 877 Paltus submarine. Reaching their destination brought some relief, yet with just eight-hundred yards separating them from Centaurus’ mysterious oil platform, fear became their biggest enemy. They investigated passively, yet despite their efforts, so far they had learned next to nothing, so they again waited, and became bored again.

  Many hours after their arrival Jordan spotted one of the computer techs entering the submarine’s mess where Matvei and he were re-checked their guns because there was nothing else to do, and asked him, “Any luck with the decryption yet?”

  The tech looked at him and blinked repeatedly for about thirty seconds without answering. He, and the other two cyberspace cowboys Moscow had sent on this operation, were wired to the point of vibrating on Red Bulls and coffee. Drugs allowed them to crunch numbers all night long, but in between shifts babysitting monitors, they were practically zombies.

  At last the kid finally said, “No. Centaurus are still sending and receiving massive amounts of info, but they are using a random generating matrix that’s proving to be a real bitch. Military level encryption. But don’t worry, we’ll get it.”

  Jordan smiled, nodded and let the kid go. He had no doubt that cowboy and his two pals could hack into the Centaurus communications, he just hoped they’d do it fast.

  While the submarine they were in had seen better days, it was packed full of the latest computer and surveillance gear. Even almost half a mile away and under sixty feet of water, the Russian whiz kids had no problem wardriving the multi-billion dollar company’s satellite uplinks. Also contrary to the myth many in the west had about Russia being technologically backwards, they actually had some of the best computer jockeys in the world. So much so that when the Soviet Union crumbled the NSA raced into Russia to entice the former Red Menace hackers by digging into Uncle Sam’s deep pockets. While many Russians jumped ship, enough had stayed to build the new Russia a state of the art cyber division.

  “So tell me again, why are we here?” Matvei said as he put his reassembled assault rifle back into its soft case.

  “You know why.”

  “Ah yes, sea cucumbers.”

  “Yes, sea cucumbers.” Jordan said, rising to get a fresh cup of awful tasting coffee.

  “That sure is one big, strange sea cucumber they are drilling into.”

  Matvei was referring to the sonar pictures of what the Centaurus’ drill was burrowing into, or more precisely the lack of pictures. Something big was down there, continent size, but that’s all they knew about it. Whatever it was, it played hell with the sonar, so much so that every time they tried to get an idea as to its shape or size they always got vastly different images. It was as if something down there was absorbing, or distorting the sound waves, like stealth fighters did with radar waves. Jordan was aware of a theoretical acoustic cloak the US Navy was working on to make submarines invisible to sonar, but as far as he knew it was still just that, a theory.

  “Well if Moscow didn’t think it was important they wouldn’t have sent us.”

  Matvei snorted, “They didn’t. The old man did.”

  “Old man?”

  “The fossil from that special branch, department eight or something.”

  General Nikonov, Jordan thought and then said, “What do you mean he sent us?”

  “He’s interested in this place, very interested. But it wasn’t anything story you spun to him, the whole time you were being interrogated. It was something else that whet his taste buds.”

  Jordan raised an eyebrow.

  “It was the coordinates you gave him—that was the only time his eyes ever lit up. That’s what sold GRU and put them into action.”

  “You’re making a joke.”

  “No my friend, he was very clear to me when he said we had to find out what it was down here that Centaurus is trying to find. It was like he was afraid. I’ve never seen him like that.”

  Before Jordan could ask more, a second rank seaman walked up to him, snapped a salute, and handed him a slip of paper. Jordan dismissed the sailor, read the short message, and was immediately filled with conflicting emotions. The message meant that his job was about to get a lot tougher, but it also meant the Peel had gotten his message to someone back home and that likely meant that Peel was still breathing.

  “What does it say?” Matvei asked.

  “The Americas are sending some boats here.” Jordan replied as he handed the paper to his comrade.

  Matvei read the report gathered from low-orbit spy satellites. “Some boats? Shit, they’re sending an entire carrier strike group.”

  “It changes nothing.”

  “The fuck it doesn’t. I’ll not take on the pride of the US Navy with a single, leaky, twenty-year-o
ld submarine, no matter what the old man says. We’re leaving.”

  “No, we’re not,” Jordan said firmly, but this caused Matvei only to smile sadly.

  “Yes, I’m afraid we are. I have authority here, not you. The skipper of this boat knows it, as does his second. Now, you know it too.”

  Jordan didn’t like the sound of that.

  “Come now, Yegor, did you really think the SVR wouldn’t be wary of you? They went along with this operation just in case it bore fruit, but no one trusts you.”

  “How about you, old friend, do you still trust me?”

  Matvei sighed, “There are simply too many strange things about you. Too many things that, how do you say,” and then Matvei switched to English, “do not add up?”

  “What do you mean by that?” Jordan asked, still speaking in Russian as he did his best to lock eyes with the larger man in front of him while using his peripheral vision to spot anything close by he could use as a weapon, should the need arise.

  “I’ve heard things about you over the years, bizarre stories, that you’ve done many strange things, for many strange people. Tell me, were you really in Pakistan last year with the US Seal Team 2?”

  So quickly did a lie come to Jordan’s lips that he was amazed, but at the same time he was also so damn tired of always pretending to be someone other than himself. If this was going to happen, if another friend’s name was about to be crossed out, then he would at least tell him the truth before he raised the red pen.

  “Yeah, we found a local celebrity and made sure he wouldn’t become a martyr. I’m surprised you heard about that.”

  “You are a hard man to keep track of, but not impossible, despite your best efforts. After hearing enough weird tales about my good friend Yegor I started to look into you. That was four years ago, and since then you’ve had a pretty colorful career.”