Swords of Steel Omnibus

by Howie K Bentley et al.

  Shortly after my return I felt a sharp pain in my left bicep. With great dismay I discovered that a radiated roach had gnawed its way through my suit and into my arm! My suit had failed me. Nauseated, I extracted the grotesque thing and threw it into an incinerator. I checked myself for more of the foul insects. No others had penetrated the suit, but one was enough. I immediately felt my body start to weaken and wither.

  I desperately wracked my panicked brain for a way to survive. I could only think of one thing that might save me, and that was a long shot: my orgone accumulator. Orgone, the universal life force energy, was dismissed as pseudoscience by my snobby former colleagues. It frustrated me that I was unable to prove them wrong, as my device never functioned properly. If it failed now, it would cause me not just frustration but death. But what did I have to lose?

  I entered the chamber of the accumulator and shut the door behind me. I could feel little positive effect. My cells were decaying faster than the orgone could regenerate them. I had bought myself a little time, but ultimately it would be no use. What else could I try?

  My fevered mind was struck by a flash of insight. The technology from the ship! There had to be something of use amongst the items I brought back. Hastily I pawed through the stuff, but the alien nature of the items was too far beyond my comprehension. Lastly I came to the robot, its head hanging loose. It gave me a strange idea…

  Within a few hours I was no longer completely a man. I was something greater.

  By infusing my human brain with the robot’s memory banks, I had given myself super-intelligence. The functions of all the alien technology I had acquired became clear to me. With my new enhanced brain, all the scientific problems that had confounded me seemed ridiculously simple. I began grafting parts of the robot onto my slowly rotting body.

  My left arm was the first to receive the upgrade. Although the roach bite only affected a portion of my arm, I thought it best to replace the whole thing, as the infection was spreading quickly. Amazingly, I was able to successfully operate on myself even under the influence of a strong anesthesia. I merely put myself on auto-pilot and let the robotic portion of my brain do the thinking.

  The left arm was in place, but why stop there? I repeated the process on my right arm, and then both my legs. I might be more machine than man, but what did that matter? I was alive, with greater intellect and physical strength than I ever had before. I felt invincible. I felt… godlike! If only my former colleagues could see me now! Ha, the fools would be so jealous! But in all likelihood they were probably dead, so it was no use to gloat.

  The next task at hand was to build a weapon to defeat the aliens. By combining parts from the ship with my prototype for a portable orgone accumulator, I devised a powerful blaster. By focusing the orgone in a beam, the target would become overloaded with energy and explode. I found it mildly humorous that an invention originally intended for healing purposes had been modified into the deadliest of weapons.

  A realization hit me. Even if I could destroy the aliens with the orgone blaster, what good would it do? Earth was in ruins. Billions were dead. Civilization was in utter disarray. So I began to think. What would be the most significant thing that I could do to change all this?

  The answer was simple: build a time machine. Now that I had a supply of alien technology and the ability to understand it, it could be done. I was able to manufacture everything that I needed to create to make my projects work from the parts of that alien space ship. It was almost like it was meant to happen to bring everything to this point in time.

  With my new hyperintelligence I calculated the turning point in history when the event occurred to forever mark the change of a whole system that had been in place before recorded history. It was the birth of Jesus Christ, a messiah who was used in a corruptive way to change time as it was being recorded back then in order to serve a certain religion’s need for control. Once the world went from a lunar calendar to a solar calendar, the entire history of the lunar period of the Earth was slowly erased by this religion, so that they could create their own history and conquer the people with fear. It was the perfect plan and their sheep fell for it, thereby creating a new religion that has been steeped in bloodshed from its beginning to the present day in AD 2026. So the ultimate time period to go back to in order to change history would be the night of Christ’s birth. I would eliminate the Messiah in his birthplace in Bethlehem under the North Star shining bright!

  I had a mission with a goal that was going to change the fate of the world, a mission that must be carried out no matter what. There could be no emotions involved to hinder this mission in any way. With my new technology-infused brain it was now second nature for me to control my emotions. It was as simple as turning off a switch.

  With my goal in mind I set the chronometer to September 28th, 1 BC (the true date of Jesus’ birth) and the coordinates to exactly where the North Star was over the Earth on that night. If I did not miscalculate I would end up somewhere close to the manger scene described in the Bible. But still I had some doubt. It was clear that I might end up in a place or time that was no better than what was left of the planet that I was leaving in AD 2026, if this machine even worked at all. I brought with me several things that would help me survive for quite a while wherever I might end up, such as food and, of course, my trusty orgone blaster.

  I hesitated briefly before turning on the machine. I heard a peculiar whirling sound, as if thousands of insects were fluttering all around me. It made me feel extremely light headed and almost dizzy. I took my chest power piece out and stuck it in the main panel board of the time machine. It lit up bright green, much brighter than I had ever seen it glow before. Yellow sparks began flying out of the symbol in the circle, followed by an energy field. It was glowing so brilliantly by this point that I thought it would explode. Just as I was about to turn it off, it started emitting a strange high-pitched whine, but like no pitch I have ever heard before. I thought the deafening sound would drive me mad. The energy field The Key created began expanding. Soon the whole time machine was enveloped inside of an electrically charged ball of lightning bolts. I felt myself literally coming apart into millions of small particles, but I still retained my basic shape. Suddenly the whole energy-encompassed time machine started sinking into the floor, almost as if melting, and a huge white flash with a bang was the last thing the human part of my brain remembers. The computerized part of my brain, however, was filled with fantastic imagery. It was like I was witnessing history backwards. I saw major events of the world unfold before me, but in a reverse order. The moon landing, the fall and rise of the Third Reich, the colonization of America followed by its discovery by Columbus… Each image passed by as fast as the speed of light, but still left an imprint on my mind.

  The thoughts slowed down for a couple seconds, then the sounds of whining and whirling came back with full force. The heat inside the machine was tremendous. I could tell I was traveling at an excessively high rate of speed. Everything flashed again with a thundering sound as I felt all the separate particles of my body pull themselves back together into a solid form. Wherever I might be, I was whole again and had survived.

  The machine was still glowing from the heat of its… otherworldly reentry, I suppose you could call it. As the smoke started to clear I could tell that I was on solid ground, in a desert with a million stars above shining brightly. I had never seen such starlight before. Had the machine taken me back to a time before pollution?

  I noticed three figures standing in the not too far distance staring at me and my time machine. Certainly it must have made quite a spectacle. I pulled The Key to the time machine out and put it back in my chest piece. It began to glow again as a new wave of energy surged through my entire body. The feeling of invincibility returned. I stepped out of the time machine with my orgone blaster in hand and I started walking towards the three figures. As I approached, they knelt down and put the baskets they were carrying out in front of them in offering to me.
They spoke to me in tones of awe and reverence. My enhanced brain let me understand every language there ever was so I was able to converse with them.

  “It is a miracle!” said the eldest. “The prophet had written that the Messiah would appear in Bethlehem. A great distance we have traveled, following your fiery chariot. Your appearance is strange to me, O Lord, but I have seen you come from Heaven with mine own eyes. We bestow upon you gifts of frankincense, myrrh, and gold.”

  I looked down at the three men who abased themselves before me. I said, “You got the wrong guy!” and blasted them into nothingness. I felt not the slightest regret about slaying the three Magi in cold blood. It was necessary. If they had known that I was coming to destroy the Messiah they were so desperately seeking, they would have tried to stop me.

  It wasn’t a very long walk until I could see a small farm in the distance and I knew it was exactly what I was looking for. As I got closer the sheep started bleating pathetically. They could sense that I was a paranormal intruder. The bleating sounded to me like cries of desperation, but it fell on deaf ears, for I was on a mission to destroy the Messiah in his birthplace. Wasting no time I drew my orgone blaster and kicked open the door to the stable. Inside I found a man, woman, and child. The second I came through the door I pointed my blaster at the man and woman and pulled the trigger, completely obliterating them. At that point I realized that there was nothing to stop my mission. All my plans and work were about to come to fruition. This realization brought the human emotion back into my brain and I was temporarily overwhelmed by the immensity of its implications. Overcome with hysteria, I began to laugh maniacally as I blasted the Messiah right in the manger.

  Now the fate of the world and history as I had known it was forever changed. I have the power to rule the entire planet! All who dare oppose me shall die by the sign of The Key!

  Nautical Adventures

  Blue Mistress

  By Geoff Blackwell

  Cyrill Derx gave the knot of his lifeline a tug for reassurance and dived over the Orphan’s railing. He heard the voice of the captain screaming at him before all went cold and dark and wet as he plunged into the sea. The water stung his eyes as he peeked into the depths. Further ahead, something glimmered, a fleetingly human shape that he had seen from the deck of the ship.

  Derx kicked out, propelling himself towards his target. He reached out, wrapped his fingers around an arm. The skin was heavy and tough, like water-smoothed stone. As he gathered the strange figure into his arms, his lifeline tugged against his hips, dragging him backward and jarring the breath from his lungs. Water filled his mouth and he struggled, vying for breath even as his shipmates sought to pull him from the sea.

  He broke the surface, gasping with animal panic. The figure he had rescued hung limp in his arms. It was a young woman, but one unlike anything Derx had seen before. She was fully nude, with blue-black skin studded by crystalline shapes which glinted like stars in the night sky. A cascade of dark green hair hung from her head. She was unconscious, sapphire lips slightly agape, a smooth, slitted bump of a nose barely rising from her face. Her body twinkled, even under the cloud-blanketed skies. Was she made of gems and precious stones?

  The young sailor heaved her limp form over one shoulder and the sailors pulled him onto the Orphan. The deck shook with angry footfalls and the scarred face of Captain Beiran Stormchaser hovered over Derx.

  “What in the blue hells were you thinking?” he snapped. “Where do you get off, boy? What...” his words melted away when he saw the unconscious sea-woman.

  “Ocean pearls,” he managed.

  The crew babbled in a free-for-all of curses and prayers in whatever language came naturally to them. Beiran Stormchaser enjoyed variety in his crew, so long as the sailors could get around the more common Southroot tongue. First-mate Vlannir shouldered his way alongside Beiran, pausing when he saw the glittering girl.

  “A deep-dweller,” Vlannir said, mystified. His leathery face held a mixture of childish wonder and adult fear. “Blow me down, lads. A real deep-dweller!”

  Derx thrust a protective arm over her body as the sailors leaned closer with hungry looks in their eyes. One man was on the verge of drooling. A lithe, naked girl made from jewels? Some dreams did come true.

  “Deep-dweller?” Derx asked.

  “Ancient people of the water,” said Beiran. “Legends say they were here long before mankind crawled onto dry land, even before the mountains rose from the ocean depths to create the first continents. Islanders from Broxas worship them as gods.” His broad fingers twitched at the hilt of his sabre.

  Derx, raised in a strict Houjana household and unused to the ways of others, shook his head. “That’s impossible, people can’t live underwater. And the papyrus of Hojo tells us that the Iron Men sculpted the mountains at—”

  Beiran slapped his shoulder, cutting him off.

  “Boy, take a good look at her. That’s right, take a good, long look. Now look me in the eye and tell me that creature laying there was born and bred on dry land like you and me. The sea is older than any holy book, and she has twice as many secrets.”

  Vlannir tweaked his blonde beard with two fingers. “Moving beyond religious debate, what do you propose we do with her, Cap’n?”

  “Young Derx is going to put her back where she belongs.”

  Dismay clouded Derx’s face. He opened his mouth to speak, only to be cut again by Beiran’s sharp eyes.

  “Some things belong to the sea. The Blue Mistress has a way of getting her own back,” the captain growled.

  Beiran Stormchaser turned back to the quarterdeck, hollering the crew back into action. The crowd around Derx reluctantly dispersed, muttering amongst themselves, watching Derx from the corners of their eyes.

  Vlannir knelt beside Derx. “Come, mate. Let’s get this done.”

  Derx didn’t budge. “She’s unconscious, Vlannir. Maybe she’s hurt, dying. We could help her. What harm could she be to anyone?”

  The first mate sighed and gripped the boy’s shoulder. “Just let it go. I’ve been sailing with old Stormchaser for nearly two decades, and I’ve seen enough places and things and wonders to make me renounce me own gods. Nothin’ ever surprises the captain, and he always seems to know what’s right when it comes to the sea and her charms. Got a knack for it, he does. If he thinks it’s for the best, he’s probably right.”

  Vlannir stood and nudged Derx with his boot. Derx gazed a long time at the twinkling sea-woman and ran his fingers across the richness of her skin. Soft and bumpy; she felt more like fine shoe leather than stone.

  His ruminations shattered as the Orphan rattled and shook. The ship lurched starboard, the waves boiling around her. White-crested spray flew from each side, dashing Derx and Vlannir’s faces. Twoscore voices rose in shock and confusion.

  “A reef?” Derx said, spitting out water.

  “I’ll swear by the Blue Mistress, that was no reef,” Vlannir replied. He gave the sea-woman a dark look. A great bellow rumbled from below the ship. Vibrations crept from the floorboards into Derx’s feet, through his spine, buzzing in the top of his head. It was a deep, nightmare sound. No living thing should have been able to make such a noise.

  Then the sea exploded.

  It was as though a series of volcanoes came to life beneath the ocean. A forest of limbs erupted from the waters, clammy-gray, mottled in brown. Some skinny, like twigs of trees, others wider than a man’s thigh. People cried out as the creepers slithered, climbing the sky or feeling their way around the Orphan’s railing like blind worms.

  “Guns!” screamed Vlannir, already priming his pistol. A limb like some titanic slug groped toward them. He cranked the key, heard the click and aimed. Smoke and fire burst from the gun, tearing a ragged hole in the slimy skin. Foul green ichor oozed from the tentacle, which wriggled and retreated away from the ship.

  The scent of burning powder filled Derx’s nose as more weapons blasted the attackers. He didn’t have a gun, for he h
adn’t saved up enough money to buy one worth having. The extras were in the cargo hold, at the other end of the ship. He pulled a knife and stabbed at a creeper near the railing. Vlannir was in the midst of reloading when a gurgling scream came from port. Gennain was caught in a tug o’ war between the lifeline at his hips and the tentacle wrapped around his throat. More of the gray-brown creepers rose to collect him or pull him apart, whichever came first.

  Vlannir swore and rushed to help, drawing his blade. All around Derx, sailors engaged the tentacles with gun or sword. Beiran and several other men had formed a tight knot on the quarterdeck, hacking and slashing and howling like lunatics. With only an unconscious deep-dweller by his side, Derx felt horribly alone. He put the blade of the knife into another creeper before hefting the woman over his shoulder and making for the door of the cargo hold.

  Put her down somewhere safe, then grab a gun and return to fight, he told himself. A sailor named Kyvar went down, four creepers wrapped around his chest and legs, dragging him overboard. He locked eyes with Derx for an instant, but he was too far away for any help. Kyvar gave one yelp of terror before disappearing into the waters. He hadn’t been wearing his lifeline.

  How do you win against a beast like this? By amputating each and every tentacle? Derx shuddered when he thought of what might be waiting at the other end of those creepers.

  The mess of mottled limbs thickened. They seemed never-ending, climbing above the surface of the water in great towering spires of flesh. They wrapped themselves around the ship, coiled amongst the rigging. The timber groaned beneath the strain. Derx heard the voice of Beiran Stormchaser shout “Fire!” and the cannons below deck, a half-dozen on each side, bellowed at the base of the tentacles. A roar of fury loosed from beneath the water and the jungle of tentacles recoiled, disengaging from the the ship. A hearty cheer went up from the crew.

  “Shut yer traps and reload,” Beiran said over the hubbub. “It’ll come back for more and it’ll be pissed!”