Space Eldritch
Page 27
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.