Distant Worlds Volume 2 Read online

  Another scream sounded from behind the door.

  She emptied the spent shells from the revolver and slid four bullets into the cylinder before opening the door.

  Heavy curtains blocked out the sunlight that should have poured through the windows to illuminate the large bedroom. A series of dim light bulbs provided some meager lighting, but not enough to see into the darker corners. She stepped inside cautiously, watching for any sign of movement.

  Someone moaned near the bed, which stood along the opposite wall. The dim lighting didn’t extend that far, so she pulled back one of the curtains to let some daylight into the room. Stacks of unassembled machinery and rolls of cable surrounded the bed, and a portable voidsteam engine sat powered down a few feet away. The window permitted only enough light to make out the shape of a woman atop the mattress.

  She stepped over to the bedside.

  Dacia Vellorax trembled as she approached, her dilated pupils darting about haphazardly. A heavy bandage covered the stub where her hand had been chopped off, but she otherwise looked unharmed. Three makeshift leather straps held her down to the bed.

  “Ms. Vellorax,” Rytha said, keeping her voice low.

  Vellorax’s eyes came a bit more into focus and she turned her head to look at Rytha.

  “W… Weldon… he came back. He hurt me…”

  Rytha raised a finger to her lips.

  “Shhh, I know. What did he do to your security men?”

  “I don’t know. They… they did whatever he told them, had them bring me her…”

  “Where is Weldon now?”

  Vellorax closed her eyes and shuddered. “The workshop. Out back. Been dragging things in from out there. Said he has to… show me something.”

  Rytha recalled Senantha’s last entry as she undid the leather straps.

  Weldon will show Him to me.

  She looked down at Vellorax’s bandaged arm. “Your hand… Why did he take your hand?”

  Vellorax shook her head, tears forming in her eyes. “He said I needed to touch him.”

  Touch him or touch Him?

  Rytha took the dead man’s gun from her pocket and pressed it into Vellorax’s good hand. “You know how to use this?”

  She nodded weakly.

  “If Weldon comes back here before me, shoot him.”

  “But he’s still—”

  “Listen to me. This isn’t the first time he’s done this.” She averted her gaze, back of her wrist to her lips to hold back the sudden urge to vomit at Senantha’s memory. It took her a second to shake it off. “You don’t want to know what he’s got in mind for you next. If you can’t bring yourself to shoot him, then use it on yourself before he gets to work on you.”

  Rytha strode away from Vellorax before she could answer. She left the room and hurried downstairs, keeping a sharp eye out for any more brainwashed security. When she reached the foyer, she found a wide hallway that led directly through the mansion to the backyard grounds. A modest looking garage stood on the rear quarter of the property, far beyond the huge swimming pool and the topiary gardens.

  The workshop.

  She found another guard floating face down in the swimming pool and a fourth a few feet beyond the topiaries. Both men looked to have been gunned down, likely from the two Weldon gained control over in the mansion.

  The workshop door was still open. She peeked inside. Light spilled into the central machine shop room from the overhead windows, and the steady hum of voidsteam engines echoed off the metal walls.

  Rytha slipped through the doorway and took cover behind a large drafting table. The machine shop room took up most of the building’s interior space. A chalkboard as long as three skycars and filled with lengthy, complex mathematical equations covered the far wall. Heavy machinery of various shapes and sizes filled the room, making it difficult to see more than a few yards in any direction. The steady droning of the voidsteam engines made hearing anything difficult.

  Dammit. He could be anywhere in here.

  A loud metallic clang rang out over the engines somewhere to her left. It sounded like a wrench or some other tool clattering to the cement floor.

  Taking a deep breath, she moved toward the sound.

  She found Weldon near the center of the shop floor assembling a crude mechanical limb similar to the one he’d attached to Senantha. This one was bigger, with a set of hydraulic rods around the joints and an independent power source. Weldon scarcely resembled the soft-faced youth from Vellorax’s photo. His body looked gaunt, his face so hollowed out it seemed almost skeletal.

  Rytha stepped out from behind a parts shelf and raised her gun. “Get your hands up, Weldon!”

  Weldon looked up at her slowly. Only then did she get a good look at his unblinking, metal eyes.

  What the hell?

  He stared at her, his metallic gaze concealing any trace of emotion. “Who are you?”

  “Consider me a concerned citizen. Now get your fucking hands up!”

  Weldon shook his head slowly. “You don’t see. None of you see. You don’t know what He has planned for us.” His hand moved toward the mechanical arm’s power source. “Let me show you.”

  “Don’t touch th—”

  Weldon pried the lid open to expose the heated voidstone inside to the open air, releasing the pent up steam in a superhot flash of light. She managed to throw her arm over her eyes before the lightburst could scorch her retinas, but it still burned enough to blind her temporarily. Stumbling backward, she fired off two rounds, hoping to catch Weldon before he could react.

  After the second shot, something knocked the revolver from her hands. She flailed blindly to defend herself, but a heavy blow to the side of her head sent her reeling to the floor. Weldon pinned her to the ground with his knees and grabbed a fistful of hair. She tried to struggle, but her head was still spinning and she couldn’t generate any leverage against him.

  “You’re not ready to see,” he said, whispering harshly into her ear. “Perhaps after you’ve learned to serve, you’ll be ready.”

  A blade scraped against her scalp, threatening to peel it away from the bone.

  No!

  A gunshot rang out over the din of machinery and the weight lifted from her back. She rolled over, scrambling away from Weldon. Enough of her eyesight had returned to see him bracing himself on the workbench. His metal eyes stared at the blood running down from his chest.

  “Mother? Why?”

  Rytha looked behind her to find Vellorax leaning against a shelf, pistol in hand.

  “You… are not… my son!”

  She raised the gun and fired again.

  And again.

  And again.

  And again.

  And again.

  And again.

  Vellorax went on pulling the trigger after the final cartridge ejected from the chamber. Rytha got to her feet and took hold of the gun.

  “It’s empty.”

  Vellorax looked at her, her face twisted by some mixture of sorrow, confusion, and loathing. Whatever she was thinking in that moment, she couldn’t find the words to express it.

  “Come on,” Rytha said. “Let’s get you out of here.”

  As she helped Vellorax out of the workshop, she glanced over her shoulder at Weldon’s bloody corpse. His metal eyes stared at her, boring through her soft flesh to chisel away at the bone beneath.

  Even after they stepped outside, she could still feel that vacant, alien gaze upon her.

  People like Dacia Vellorax could pull quite a few strings to keep events out of the public eye, but even Rytha was surprised by how well the whole incident got covered up. Money might not have been able to buy happiness, but it could certainly buy silence. The families of Vellorax’s deceased servants didn’t ask questions when word of their relatives’ unfortunate, and unexplained, deaths were accompanied by a few years’ worth of salary. As for Vellorax herself, the papers must have run dozens of stories about how losing her hand in a freak workshop accid
ent would affect her professionally.

  By the time Vellorax finally got around to visiting Rytha’s office, the whole story had largely run its course.

  At least for everyone else.

  This time, Vellorax took the drink Rytha offered her.

  “Glad to see you’re up and about again.”

  Vellorax nodded and took a sip of brandy.

  “It occurs to me that I never paid you for your services.”

  Rytha shrugged. “Well, you saved my life, so I figured things were pretty well squared away.”

  Vellorax set down her drink and reached into her coat. She produced a small book. “We found this among Weldon’s belongings.”

  “What is it?”

  “A journal. It details the last year and a half of his life, including the last six months.”

  Rytha wasn’t sure she wanted to know what might be inside. Vellorax had already given her more excitement than she ever needed in her life. “And I suppose you’ve got some things you want me to follow up on?”

  “I’m not sure I trust anyone else at this point, Ms. Taldron.”

  Must be juicy stuff. “Why don’t you let me have a look at the journal and I’ll tell you what I think.”

  Vellorax smiled. “I don’t think so. Either we have a contract and share information, or we don’t, and I walk out the door and never come back. Your choice, or course.”

  Slick bitch. “It’ll cost you.”

  “I’ll triple your normal fee.”

  Triple?

  Rytha stared at the journal in Vellorax’s hand. She thought back to Weldon’s metal eyes glaring at her, thought about the cryptic letters and what he’d done to poor Senantha. What he would have done to his own mother. How he’d turned two grown men into mindless slaves. A knife slice in her scalp throbbed. What he almost did to her.

  “Well, Ms. Taldron?”

  Rytha opened her desk drawer and took out the bottle of brandy. She refilled her glass and topped off Vellorax’s.

  Fuck it.

  She reached out to take the journal. “Let’s have a look.”

  The Shoggulators

  Originally published in The Fall of Cthulhu, Vol. 2 (Horrified Press, 2015)

  Written for the same post-apocalypse Cthulhu anthology as “A Small Plot of Land,” this story was an attempt to go in the complete opposite direction. Where “A Small Plot of Land” was still, measured, and nuanced, “The Shoggulators” is pure spectacle and action movie firepower. Sadly, the rejection letters didn’t make much of a distinction between the two approaches. Although it eventually found a good home, this story was a challenge to place. It’s heavily entrenched in the Cthulhu Mythos, but it’s far too action-oriented for most Mythos collections. While it’s not one of my better stories, I’ve always been fond of it all the same. It feels like a particularly memorable roleplaying game session I could have run at some point, which I suppose is more or less the vibe I was going for.

  The remnants of the city came into view as the lander dropped out of the bloated stormclouds. A steady sheet of rain pelted the urban graveyard, keeping the skeletal husks of fallen skyscrapers and tangled heaps of twisted highways slickened and black.

  “Hell of a sight, ain’t it?”

  Javier Santego had never seen a city before, at least not one like this. Would have been home to three, maybe five million people at its height. That had been long before he was born, though.

  Before everything.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Karasov pointed out the husk of an old high rise half-submerged in the sluggish, polluted river.

  “Had family that lived there,” he said. “Mother’s cousin, I think.”

  Dutton laughed humorlessly.

  “Everybody had a cousin or two here, man. Cousin or an aunt or a grandma or something.”

  Santego didn’t know if that applied to him. His mom never talked about how things were when she was young. Never said much of anything, really. There were days when she’d go for hours on end without a sound, just staring at the wall of their bunk, a smile sometimes tugging at her lips.

  “Might be you’ve still got a few relations down there, the lot of you,” Corporal Surizaki said. “Not that you’d want to have them over for dinner.”

  A voice crackled over the intercom.

  “No sign of patrols. Touch down in seven minutes.”

  Surizaki withdrew from the viewport and clapped his hands.

  “Gear up,” he said. “Ready in two.”

  Santego knew the drop prep routine after a year of training, but he followed Karasov and Dutton’s example anyway. They were the veterans, the sort he ought to be imitating if he wanted to become the same.

  “How many this make for you?” he asked

  Karasov scratched his chin.

  “Seventeen,” he said, “I think?”

  Dutton grunted and reached for her helmet.

  “Don’t listen to that shit,” she said. “He couldn’t count his fingers if you spotted him a glove.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Dutton ignored the retort.

  “This makes twenty-five on the nose, for both of us.” She turned to Surizaki. “And, what, fifty something for you, right, sir?”

  The corporal had already donned his helmet and slung one of the flamer units over his shoulder. He checked Santego’s equipment quickly, adjusting a strap here and there.

  “Fifty-two total,” he said. “Twenty-eight in command capacity.”

  “Right,” Dutton said. “Good mix for your first time.”

  Karasov shoved a flamer unit into Santego’s hands. The weapon felt heavier than the ones he’d used on the training course. He looked down at the fuel indicator. The tank was nearly full.

  “Just remember not to melt whoever’s in front of you, alright?” Karasov said.

  “That’s enough chatter,” Surizaki said. “We’re inserting about five blocks from the old stadium, which is being used as some kind of a temple. Once we secure the perimeter, we find a way inside, burn the place out, and take down the high priest. Then we haul ass to the extraction point before our window closes. Forecasts say the storms will kick up again in about three hours, so time’s already moving against us. Any questions?”

  “What do we know about the high priest?” Dutton asked.

  “Ichthymorph, most likely. Whatever it is, it’s pretty damn powerful. We’ve tried to bomb the temple six times in the past year, but nothing can get through its psychic shielding. That’s why command is sending us in to deal with it.”

  “What kind of resistance should we expect?” Karasov asked.

  “Hard to say,” Surizaki said. “The storms keep interfering with the scanner sweeps. Could be anything from some inbred scavengers to a whole ichthymorph nest. That’s why they sent us, got it?”

  Santego and the two veterans nodded.

  The corporal grinned with the mischievous glee of a child ready to break something.

  “All right, Shoggulators, let’s go wake the wolves.”

  Santego took up position in front of one of the three large capsules in the cargo hold. The containers weren’t part of the hold’s original construction, nor was the pile of bulky equipment clustered around them. Thick tubes pumped liquid coolant into the main cryogenic system to regulate each capsule’s internal temperature. The machinery emitted a low, steady hum that filled the cargo hold.

  A single word was stamped upon the capsule’s poly-steel hatch, scarcely visible beneath a sheet of white frost.

  Typhon.

  Karasov and Dutton stood poised over the two other capsules just a few feet away, each of which had a label of its own.

  Rahab.

  Echidna.

  Santego kept the flamer’s barrel trained on the hatch while the corporal punched an access code into the capsule’s control panel. A cloud of freezing vapor escaped as the hatch hissed open.

  Something inside the capsule moved.

  He struggled to keep the flamer
steady. He hoped the corporal wouldn’t notice how much effort it took.

  A tall, naked man stepped out of the capsule, stopping only inches from the flamer’s barrel. His black eyes had no pupils, like small droplets drawn from the endless, dead vacuum of space. The man’s skin appeared unblemished, his face unwrinkled by age or worry.

  Santego had interacted with shogg troopers in the last stages of his training. Before that, he’d learned everything there was to know about them, learned how researchers had awakened the traces of alien genetic code buried deep within human DNA to create something more, and less, than human. Something that could salvage the war effort if only it could be controlled.

  By all rights, then, he should have been accustomed to the sight of a shogg trooper, but something about this one made his skin shiver. Those black eyes seemed to pin him down, smothering his thoughts and weighing down his limbs. Looking at the shogg made him feel like he’d fallen into a pool of tar.

  When the shogg trooper finally broke eye contact to glance down at the flamer pointing at his chest, Santego realized he’d been holding his breath since the hatch opened.

  Surizaki reached over to push the weapon’s barrel down.

  “Good morning, Typhon,” he said.

  The shogg looked at the corporal and raised an eyebrow.

  “Surizaki, is it? What’s the occasion?”

  “Dinner for three. Seafood. Hope you brought your appetite.”

  Typhon glared at Santego. The world slowed down again, but Santego at least remembered to breath this time.

  “I don’t know this one.”

  “Private Santego will be your handler today. Go easy on him, all right? It’s his first time.”

  Typhon smiled, his ebon eyes shimmering.

  “Welcome to the war, kid.”

  The lander touched down on an intact rooftop just north of the old stadium. Karasov took point with Rahab, the biggest and meanest looking of the three shoggs. Dutton followed close behind escorting Echidna, the lone female shogg. Corporal Surizaki went next, toting along the spectral scanner and motion tracker, while Santego brought up the rear with Typhon. Once they cleared the loading ramp, the lander took off, its grav-thrusters making scarcely a sound even at full power.