by John Shirley
“What’s that, some sort of cell phone?” Seekley asked, looking over his shoulder. He blinked in the light from the declining sun glimmering over the top of the steel building.
“More or less,” Kline said distantly.
“Who’s calling?”
“A United World representative,” Kline said. No time to explain the world government—a unity that had come about because of the invasion—nor Ihlala’s work for its intelligence arm.
“They are closing in on your position,” Ihlala said, in a New Delhi accent. “There are about ten screwplanes at the moment but they’ve sensed the anomalous activity and they seem be to bringing the Float Hive to bear.”
“How much time do we have?”
“Their scouts will show up any moment. They’ll probably wait for the near proximity of the Hive before they attack. This...this summoning, Kline...is it going to happen? Or is it not?”
“We’re setting up for that. But if you’re asking about success—I don’t know.”
“Place the communicator so I can observe, please.”
Kline propped the CallTab on the nearer edge of the gurney, turning her camera toward the ruins. Then he looked at the graying professor. “Seekley, you must begin now.”
“Why? I told you I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it at all, anymore. I need time to think! Why must I summon him now?”
“Because...” A movement from the sky caught his attention. Kline pointed toward it. “See that, up there?”
Seekley looked. The screw-shaped vehicle, a thing of unearthly materials, glossy iridescence, seemed to be corkscrewing its way down from a cloud, leaving a trail of swirled mist. The craft was about as big as a fighter jet, but it tapered, at its aft, to a crystalline glowing stub like the coal of a cigar.
“That,” Klein went on, “is a scout for the Takers. That’s what they call themselves, at least in English. They invaded Earth about seven months ago. They used a translation device to demand our surrender. Everyone on the planet heard the demand, all at once—unconditional surrender. Those who surrendered are believed to have been subjected to experiments, then ground up for protein. No one is quite sure—no one’s come back—” He broke off, pointing.
“—Ah, there’s another advance scout!” They could see another corkscrewing vessel screwing its way through the air, in the distance. “The scouts usually come ahead of the Float Hive.”
“Float Hive...?”
“Their mothership. The Hive does the large-scale destroying—the screwplanes scout and do the detail work of destruction. London is gone, simply destroyed. So are Beijing, San Francisco, New York, Paris, Mumbai, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Moscow, Tucson, Chicago, Rio, Melbourne, Houston, Washington D.C.—even Las Vegas! In fact Las Vegas was first to go—all the lights there seemed to draw their attention. And we’ve drawn their attention, Seekley.”
Now seven screwplanes hovered, darted, corkscrewed along, over R’lyeh—and began to drift toward the balcony. Toward Kline and Seekley...
Professor Seekley gaped up at the alien vessels in awe. “Are they—the Old Ones?”
“We don’t know if they’re related to the so-called ‘Elder Gods’, Seekley. We’ve only managed to bring down three of those things and all three disintegrated with some kind of auto destruct before we could examine their interior. But we know they’re operated from the Float Hive. And we think that Cthulhu...your master...may in fact be able to penetrate the Float Hive. We’ve tried everything else. There are indications that Cthulhu’s body may be partly formed of a plasma which, theoretically, could penetrate their shielding. Especially in the monster’s dispersal form.”
Seekley looked at him in alarm. “Monster? You would insult Great Cthulhu...here? Do you not suppose he is listening?”
“Listening? You mean to me?” That hadn’t occurred to Kline. “But he’s...deep under the, ah...you know, he’s inside a stone chamber and...”
Seekley snorted. “How do you think I am to contact him, you fool? Telepathy! The chanting is only to focus the mind! He listens as he chooses!”
“Just—do the damned thing, Seekley! Or humanity’s done for. Finished!”
Seekley looked up at the approaching alien vessels. “I’m parched. I need some water. And if there’s anything in that medicine kit to give me a little strength...”
Kline busied himself getting the water bottle and an injector ready as Seekley got to his feet, leaning on the gurney for balance. Then he lurched toward the balcony’s metal railing.
“Be careful, Seekley! We don’t have time for a cracked hip!” Kline said, as he brought Seekley the water.
Supporting himself with one hand on the rail, the old man drank thirstily. Then he tossed the plastic bottle aside as Kline applied the injector.
“I feel no injection,” Seekley said, glancing at his arm. “No pain, no needle...”
“It’s painless. Do you need me to hold you up?”
“No, the railing is enough... And I feel the drug now. I have some strength. Yes.”
For several long moments they watched the screwplanes twist closer to the balcony; and closer yet, coming at them like flying drills.
Then a pulse of translucent red energy expanded from the coal-like tail of the nearest, ran forward along the screws, spinning as it went, and projected, a twist of living fire, down at the balcony, screaming with destructive glee as it came.
Seekley gasped—then one of the antennae on the roof behind them hummed and a shield of electromagnetic force appeared, up above, just in front of the twist of fire, dispersing it.
“You have a shield of some kind!” Seekley said.
“It won’t work for long. It takes too much power...and we’ll soon be overwhelmed. They’ll blow us to bits! You must call your master!”
Seekley took a deep breath and began chanting. Mouth twisting unnaturally, he intoned, “Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!”...over and over.
Kline had heard a recording of a cult chanting that same wicked psalm. But now Seekley was incanting other words too guttural for Kline to understand. As he chanted the incantation his eyes rolled back to show only the whites, as if he were sinking into a profane ecstasy.
Abruptly the old man fell silent, head tilted, as if listening to the voiceless voice of great Cthulhu.
Another gleeful scream ripped the air above—a sizzling replied to it, as another bolt of energy chaos was deflected by the antennae. Several screwplanes fired at once and two of the antennae exploded...
In the distance, something loomed in the gathering dusk.
It had been given its human name based on its shape, like an old fashioned beehive, a cone made in layers of pearly material, crackling with electrical energies as it pressed through the atmosphere. It was mountainous, an unnaturally symmetrical mountain pocked with cryptic passages; it came skimming over the sea, spinning slowly, making the watery surface wrinkle and draw away beneath it. Its base was nearly as big as R’lyeh itself, bigger; big as midtown Manhattan. It was the Float Hive, the extraterrestrial mother ship.
Crimson energies rippled out from it, whiplashing up to the screwplanes, but not attacking them—nourishing them, reinforcing their energies, so that soon they would have the power to destroy this building, the balcony, and end humanity’s last hope...
Then something glided into view, on Kline’s right—the nuclear submarine which had brought him here. The sight saddened rather than heartened him—he knew what the outcome would be.
The submarine launched its cruise missiles. They chuffed into the air and soared up to strike at the screwplanes. They struck their targets--and had little effect.
The screwplanes regrouped, and angled to aim their corkscrewing tips down at the submarine.
All those men...
But they would serve their purpose. To delay the enemy, just long enough.
“Kline!” Seekley shouted, over the cacophony of the unleashed energies roaring around them. Crimson fire rained upon the sub
marine; cruise missiles hissed into the air. “Kline, I have called the master! I have reminded him that our world, which has sustained his organism for so long, deserves his loyalty. But Great Cthulhu says no! He declares it is we who must have loyalty—to him!”
“What the hell are you talking about, Seekley! Tell it to destroy that thing or it’s going to be destroyed itself! The Hive will annihilate everything that could be any kind of obstacle!”
“The master doesn’t care! How do you think Cthulhu came here? Now that he has regenerated, by that same means he can depart! Unless! You, speaking for humanity, must swear fealty to the master! You and all those you represent must swear your loyalty to Cthulhu! All humanity must swear it! Cthulhu will know! Once, in millennia past, humanity worshipped Great Cthulhu! And must do so again! The master demands our loyalty!”
Kline gaped at Seekley. What was he asking of them? “Perhaps, we...we might...”
“Are you thinking of destroying Cthulhu after he has done the deed, Kline? He is too strong now! And will become stronger with this act! If you try to betray great Cthulhu—you will trade one great enemy for a worse one!”
The submarine exploded, its hull snapping in half, gouting a roaring fireball of white and blue flame. Men’s bodies spun into the air, burning...
There was so little time to decide. Kline writhed inwardly with uncertainty.
“Kline!” came the tinny voice from the CallTab. “I have been transmitting all of this to the United World! The delegates are unanimous! We swear loyalty to Cthulhu!”
“It cannot be undone!” Seekley shouted, eyes wild. “We have crossed into his world and we are forever his!”
Then Seekley turned to the sea and warbled his perverse hymn once more...
A roll of thunder boomed, then, followed by a massive crackling of unseen lightning; an echoing crash, like a hundred avalanches at once; a smell like hair burning, of electrical discharge, of a billion gutted fish...and the balcony shuddered under their feet. Kline staggered, caught the balcony railing beside Seekley just in time to see the slick, cracked blocks of R’lyeh shrug out of the way, pushed aside from beneath...
The Float Hive drew nearer, glowing as it prepared to fire directly on the steel outpost.
Then a green titan emerged from the sea, rising up, tentacles waving furiously, throwing water and stone aside with equal ease.
Great Cthulhu reared up, higher and higher, many hundreds of meters high, tall as a skyscraper, exuding the smell of brine and burning electricity and bubbling acids, the odors washing over Kline in acrid waves.
Cthulhu’s thin wings unfolded, and lightning, forking from the thickening clouds beyond, was seen through the emerald membranes. His gigantic body was both dragon-like and transparently gelatinous.
Seekley shrieked in mingled horror and ecstasy, falling to his knees, raising his shaking hands to his primordial lord.
Up, up rose Cthulhu, water streaming off his translucent green wings. His body quivered as he bellowed a challenge to the Float Hive; his beard of tentacles jittered with his rage. The spider-like cluster of eyes on his squid-like head glistened with malevolent intelligence; his scaly skin, transparent and yet murky, rippled as he waded out of the ruined city toward the approaching alien mothership: the mountainous cone of metal glowing ever brighter as it prepared to blast this new adversary...
“Aiiieee! Great Cthulhu!” shouted Seekley, spraying spittle in his excitement.
Kline watched, sickened and eager, as Cthulhu stalked toward the mothership—and suddenly flapped up into the air. The wings, looking too thin to support the giant body, seemed to stretch out, expanding to gather in more air, and they pulsed with a green energy that added its own lift...
And suddenly Cthulhu was flying.
The giant lifted up, streaming ocean water and seaweed, roaring with a sound that shook the world. His wings keened and hummed, almost invisible in their whipping activity. His tentacular “beard” writhed; gigantic talons stretched out...
The Float Hive fired. A beam of crimson energy big enough to melt a dozen aircraft carriers shot out of the mothership and in to Cthulhu’s mighty breast...
And passed right through him.
It was as if the titanic body acted as a prism, separating out the energies of the red beam, keeping what Cthulhu wanted and conducting the rest out between his wings, to be dispersed in the sky. But yes—a wound, a green edged hole, had formed...and as Kline watched, it quickly sealed up. Cthulhu had taken what he wished from the beam, let the rest pass through, and had healed himself, all in an instant.
The screwplanes fired on Cthulhu—their energies, too, were refracted.
The ancient titan flew higher...and then, diving down from above, Cthulhu pounced.
The primeval colossus from the stars threw himself upon the Float Hive, attacking the mothership like some hideous parody of an eagle attacking its prey. Cthulhu clasped the alien spacecraft, arms and legs wrapped around the enormous cone. And the huge alien ship spun as if in impotent fury, gyrating Cthulhu about, perhaps trying to free itself with this desperate maneuver.
But instead of letting go, Cthulhu clasped tighter yet and—and then, abruptly...melted. Or so it seemed, at first. The gelatinous giant seemed to melt onto the Float Hive, becoming hundreds of seeking tendrils, each separate, but with one mind squirming their way into the mothership’s cryptic openings, slithering into it...
Kline watched as Cthulhu sank into the giant alien craft.
And then, great Cthulhu vanished entirely.
Like an animal maddened by a wasp in its ear, the mothership spun recklessly about, wobbling, turning faster, faster—blurring...until at last it detonated from within.
A great shockwave rumbled out from the blast, coming visibly toward the balcony. Kline turned to run but the shockwave caught him and Seekley, threw them skidding across the balcony. Kline was stunned, dizzied as the shockwave flung him through the open doors, sliding into the steel corridor...
His body stopped moving, but his mind kept whirling...and he lost consciousness, sinking into a churning darkness.
The darkness was not comforting; indeed, it was not uninhabited...
“Kline...” came Seekley’s croaking voice. “Kline!”
Head throbbing, Kline reluctantly opened his eyes. “What...has happened?”
“You must get up, Kline. There is more to do...”
Groaning, Kline forced himself to his feet. His every muscle ached; his head resonated like the speaker of an amplifier shaken by feedback. But he followed Seekley out onto the balcony.
The dusk was thickening; the clouds churned. The screwplanes were all down—some of them had crashed into the stones of R’lyeh, and their remnants melted away, disintegrating.
A noxious brown-black cloud was dispersing in the distance where the battle had been fought. Grisly wreckage floated on the sea, human bodies from the submarine blended horribly with wormlike extraterrestrial corpses from the shattered mothership.
And something else—was forming, out there. Something was taking shape in the cloud.
Kline remembered the account he had read of what had happened when a steamship rammed giant Cthulhu: ...For an instant the ship was befouled by an acrid and blinding green cloud, and then there was only a venomous seething astern; where—God in heaven!—the scattered plasticity of that nameless sky-spawn was nebulously recombining in its hateful original form...
And so it was now: recombining, Cthulhu sloshed ponderously toward them, wading across the surging sea, up to his scaly translucent hips in the waves, tentacles waving, the green feelers reaching out toward the two men...
“Oh, no, no,” Kline said. “We mustn’t...”
“But we have no choice,” Seekley declared grimly. “We made a deal. We agreed! And so it must be. The master will have nothing less.”
A few moments more, and then great Cthulhu was rearing over them like a cyclopean statue: reeking, dripping acid that hissed when it struck the
stones of R’lyeh.
Seekley fell to his knees and clutched his head. “Yes, yes, I hear you, great one! I hear you, lord of all the Earth! You shall have one now!”
“Have...have one what?” Kline asked, his mouth paper dry.
“A sacrifice,” Seekley said. “But it will not be you, you have another way to serve him.” He reached out his arms toward the looming giant. “Lord Cthulhu! Take me as your first offering! Honor me—and take me first!”
Cthulhu bent—his hideous transparent head came within a dozen meters of Kline, who staggered back in revulsion. Then the giant feelers clasped Seekley, drew him into the gargantuan maw hidden behind the tentacles...
Seekley screamed.
Kline saw the man’s form, his body, sinking head downward, visible in the semitransparent body of the giant as it swallowed him...
Whimpering, Kline turned away.
Then he heard a voice in his head. It was a wordless voice, and yet, somehow, it spoke clearly enough.
Kline took a deep, shaky breath. He must do what he must do.
He turned back to Cthulhu and threw himself to his knees. “Oh Great Cthulhu! You have destroyed our enemies! We will serve you! I myself will bring you offerings! We will offer up many to you, Lord Cthulhu! Many!” Kline salaamed to Cthulhu and cried out, “We give you our loyalty, great Cthulhu! Forever!”
And he found that he could pronounce the master’s name, now, just exactly as Seekley had.
THE GAME CHANGERS
By Stephen Mark Rainey
We never saw or heard them coming. One moment, the squad was moving in a column along a narrow, muddy path through dense rainforest. The next, we were in the midst of deafening, blinding, bloody chaos. At some point, I discovered I was firing my M16 at anything that moved beyond the nearest trees, and I saw a flailing shadow topple and vanish in the surrounding green tangles. A terrific concussion rent the air, and, from behind, a blast of intense heat drove all the air from my lungs and sent my weapon flying. As I dropped first to my knees and then onto my chest, I felt something dancing and cascading over my shoulders—flames, I realized with horror. I threw myself onto my side and wriggled and rolled in the soupy mud, unable to turn fully onto my back because of my bulky pack, waiting for an onslaught of agony that somehow never came.
