Distant Worlds Volume 2 Read online

  Surizaki consulted the spectral scanner.

  “Building’s clear. Rahab, go check the perimeter.”

  The shogg grunted. Then he ran to the edge of the roof and leaped off the building.

  Santego activated his helmet’s tactical display. Each shogg carried short range nanite transmitters in their bloodstream, allowing their handlers to track them at all times. He watched Rahab’s signature move quickly around the building’s perimeter, far faster than any human could manage on foot.

  “There’s a certain beauty to it, don’t you think?”

  Typhon’s voice stabbed into Santego’s ears like an ice pick. The shogg stood just a few feet from his handler, but his gaze remained fixed on the broken horizon of the shattered city. A few spears of starlight managed to puncture the dark clouds overhead, glimmering off the wet expanse of rent metal and glass that once housed millions of inhabitants.

  Santego took in the sight. If he let his eyes unfocus, the landscape took on a mutable, dreamlike quality. There was something serene about the sight, something…

  He turned away and shook the image from his mind.

  Less than two minutes in the field and he’d nearly forgotten the first rule of dealing with shogg troopers.

  Don’t talk to them.

  Ever.

  “That’s enough chatter,” he said, mustering his sternest voice.

  Typhon shrugged.

  “Have it your way.”

  Santego was relieved to hear Rahab’s voice come in over the radio.

  “Perimeter clear.”

  Corporal Surizaki pointed to the stairwell.

  “Echidna, take point. Let’s move.”

  The team made it to the outskirts of the temple before the shoggs caught the scent of something nearby. Surizaki checked the spectral scanner and spotted a cluster of humanoid figures gathered inside one of the partially intact structures surrounding the temple. He relayed orders silently through the team’s tactical displays. Rahab and Echidna would engage the targets on the ground level while Typhon provided support from above.

  They moved into position quickly and silently, splitting up as they approached their target. The building looked like it might have been a church of some sort before the great cataclysm demolished the city. Half of its roof had collapsed, but the walls remained in place.

  Santego and Typhon circled around to the rear, where the roof seemed most stable. The shogg scaled the twenty-foot high wall with ease. Once he attained the roof, he reached down to Santego, his arm reshaping into a slithering, fleshy tentacle that stretched all the way to the ground. The appendage wrapped around Santego’s waist and hoisted him up to the roof effortlessly.

  Typhon greeted his handler with a smile.

  Santego refused to acknowledge the expression, instead pointing toward the hole in the roof nearby.

  They crept over to the opening and peered into the building. A group of men, women, and children stood before a crude cement altar. Even from high above, Santego had no difficulty making out the crude idol resting atop the shrine. Fashioned from a rotted chunk of wood and adorned with lengths of rebar bent into the form of writhing tentacles, the makeshift icon formed an unmistakable visage.

  Cthulhu, lord of R’lyeh. The doom of mankind.

  The people gathered within the profane chapel looked only vaguely human. Patches of scales besmirched their waxen skin and their shoulders slumped forward. Their overlarge eyes stared dumbly ahead, unblinking and soulless.

  Santego shivered. But for a bit of chance, he might have been born into such a monstrous existence.

  The monster beside him nudged his arm.

  He glanced over at Typhon, careful to avoid looking at his soulless eyes.

  “Here they come,” the shogg said.

  Rahab and Echidna stormed into the building from opposite sides, ripping through the concrete walls like they were made of wet cardboard. Moving in for the kill, they retained few traces of their humanity. Bundles of ropy tendrils extended from their uniform sleeves in place of arms, each one barbed with hundreds of sharp thorns. Rahab’s jaw opened wide enough to swallow a grown man’s head while Echidna’s tongue stretched into a five foot long tentacle covered with dozens of biting mouths ringed with fangs.

  Typhon waited until the other shoggs fell upon the wretched creatures before diving through the roof to join them. His hands changed into snapping jaws as he fell, and two sets of sucker-covered tentacles sprang from his back when he hit the ground.

  A few of the degenerate worshippers reached for makeshift weapons, little more than rusty metal implements cobbled together from the ruins, but none managed to put up any meaningful resistance. The shoggs moved too quickly, whipping through the confused melee in a lethal mass of tentacles, fangs, and talons. Most of the congregation tried to escape, but there was nowhere to run. Blood, entrails, and shards of bone exploded against the walls to the sound of their panicked screams.

  The slaughter took only a handful of seconds, but to Santego it seemed to last an hour. Again he realized that he’d been holding his breath.

  Once the shoggs finished, the rest of the team moved inside the building. Typhon and Echidna had already returned to their human form, but Rahab had yet to retract all of his barbed tendrils. When he caught sight of Dutton and Surizaki on the far side of the room, he made a foul, gurgling sound and lumbered toward them.

  Karasov stepped into the room and leveled his flamer at the shogg trooper’s back.

  “Stand down, Rahab!”

  The big shogg stopped, then turned to glare at his handler. Even looking down from the roof, Santego could see the blue pilot flame glowing at the tip of Karasov’s flamer. One squeeze of the trigger and a gush of superheated plasma would incinerate the shogg’s mutable flesh.

  For several tense seconds, no one moved.

  Typhon broke the silence.

  “Rahab,” he said, his arm stretching out to form a long tentacle that touched his comrade’s shoulder. “Enough.”

  The shogg grunted, then shrank to take on a recognizably human form.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Blood was up.”

  Karasov lowered his flamer, but kept his attention fixed on Rahab. Santego noticed that he hadn’t extinguished the weapon’s pilot flame. He’d be watching the shogg even more closely from now on, something Santego should be doing with his own charge as well.

  That was the second thing to remember about shogg troopers.

  Don’t take your eyes off them.

  Ever.

  Typhon withdrew his tentacle from Rahab’s shoulder and whipped it across the room to yank the grotesque idol from the altar. He smashed it against a nearby pile of rubble until it shattered.

  Echidna spat on it.

  “His stink is all over this place,” she said. “Ought to burn it all.”

  Surizaki shook his head and consulted his spectral scanner.

  “Waste of fuel,” he said. “Let’s get moving, people. We don’t want to miss our ride out of here.”

  The team regrouped outside and set off toward the stadium. Rahab and Echidna led the way again under Karasov and Dutton’s watchful eyes. Santego trudged along the muddy street a few yards behind Typhon.

  He kept his flamer at the ready, focusing all of his attention on the shogg’s movements.

  “So what do you think of the big city, kid?”

  Don’t talk to them.

  “Keep walking, Typhon.”

  The shogg looked around, his gaze sometimes lingering on a portion of the ruins.

  “My parents used to live here, back before the big squid took a shit on the world.”

  The comment piqued Santego’s curiosity. Shoggs weren’t supposed to remember anything from their lives before the DNA infusion procedure that awakened their alien genetic code.

  Santego couldn’t keep his curiosity in check.

  “You remember your parents?”

  “Not much,” Typhon said. “Some broken images here and t
here. But I know they were here. Every now and then I see something that looks familiar, like an echo from somebody else’s dream.”

  Santego stopped walking and tightened his grip on the flamer. Typhon shouldn’t have been able to remember his own past, much less access the genetic memories of his parents. He knew he was supposed to scorch the shogg at any sign of irregular behavior, but this was something different.

  Typhon turned around to face him.

  “Are you going to shoot me now or what?”

  Santego swallowed, sending a cold lump of anxiety down to his stomach.

  He should burn the shogg now, just a singe to an arm or leg to remind it who was in charge. That was what Santego’s training told him to do when a shogg stepped out of line, but something about Typhon’s defiance flummoxed him.

  It was too… human.

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  The shogg smiled, and Santego realized he’d made a horrible mistake.

  “Well, let me know when you do. I hate waiting. Come on, we don’t want to get left behind out here.”

  They resumed walking, each one acting as though the conversation never took place. Santego found it hard to think about anything else.

  The stadium loomed into view as the team left the chapel behind. Although not as enormous as the city’s fallen skyscrapers, the building still took up most of a city block and stood over two hundred feet tall. Its great domed roof had partially collapsed, and the crumbling walls had been reinforced by scrap metal and stone from nearby structures. Rubble covered the original entrances, but a large hole torn into the building’s side had been framed with rusted girders to form a makeshift entryway. Beyond the gaping threshold, darkness reigned absolute.

  Rahab and Echidna moved to either side of the opening while Surizaki checked the motion tracker and spectral scanner in turn.

  “No movement,” he said.

  A slender appendage slithered out from Echidna’s sleeve. It probed into the darkness beyond the door. After a few seconds, she reeled the feelers back in with a hiss.

  “What is it?” Surizaki asked.

  “Seafood.”

  The corporal checked his spectral scanner again.

  “The scanner’s still negative.”

  “It’s wrong,” Echidna said.

  “Structure could be interfering with the scan,” Dutton said.

  Surizaki nodded.

  “Maybe. Keep a sharp eye. Let’s move.”

  The team stepped into the darkness one by one, but Typhon paused on the threshold. Tentacles extended from his arms and neck to probe and sniff at the air.

  “What is it?” Santego asked.

  Typhon shook his head.

  “I don’t know. Air tastes funny. Could be nothing.”

  “A lot of people died around here when the storms hit,” Santego said. “Could be they left some kind of psychic signature.”

  He probably wouldn’t buy the explanation himself if he thought about it for very long, but he preferred it to the alternatives lingering on the edge of his mind.

  “Maybe.”

  Typhon retracted his sensory tendrils and moved inside.

  Santego took a deep breath and followed.

  The stadium’s interior reeked of brine and decay.

  Santego activated his helmet’s night vision display and immediately clamped his hand over his mouth to keep from vomiting when he saw what was inside.

  A long walkway led down to the swampy mire that covered the temple floor. Rows of rickety catwalks clung tenuously to the walls, and many of the ceiling’s reinforced bracings had already collapsed. Water ran down from every nook and cranny with maddeningly irregularity, each drop echoing clearly throughout the open space.

  Clusters of rubble formed small islands in the muck throughout the vast room. On one of the larger islands, a statue made of bent and twisted lengths of iron towered above the water. Even at a distance, its tentacle-faced likeness was unmistakable.

  Santego’s attention, however, went not to the statue, but to the gigantic piles of human bones before it.

  He realized he’d been holding his breath again. When he took a gulp of the temple’s rancid air, his lungs rebelled and his stomach threatened to join the protest.

  Someone touched his shoulder.

  “Close your eyes,” Typhon said. “Nice and slow.”

  Santego took the advice. The first few breaths were a struggle, but his lungs adjusted to the foul air quickly.

  Another voice joined them.

  “You okay, Private?”

  The corporal?

  Santego nodded and opened his eyes. His stomach quivered, but he managed to force the bile back down his throat.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Fine.”

  Apparently satisfied, Surizaki went back to studying his spectral scanner.

  Typhon watched him go the rest of the team, then gazed at the ghoulish statue in the center of the temple.

  “You should never have come here,” he said.

  Santego turned to face him. The shogg’s eyes looked even blacker in the helmet’s night vision display.

  Don’t talk to them.

  “Can’t you smell them? Taste them? Feel them?”

  Don’t talk to them.

  “Of course you can’t.”

  Don’t talk to them.

  “Because you don’t belong here anymore.”

  “Enough!”

  Santego pointed the flamer at him, but he couldn’t quite manage to keep the barrel still. Typhon glanced down at the weapon, then back at him.

  “Well?”

  “No more talking,” Santego said, marshaling as much authority into his voice as he could manage. “You open your mouth again and I fucking melt you down, got it?”

  The shogg stared at him for several seconds before taking a step back and raising his hands.

  Santego lowered the flamer slightly.

  “Good choice. Now let’s catch up with the others.”

  Typhon obeyed without any objections, but Santego would have felt better if he’d done it without smiling.

  Rahab and Echidna led the team down the ramp. Karasov and Dutton followed close behind with their flamers. Santego found himself at the rear once more, trailing after Typhon and Surizaki. The shogg seemed increasingly amused as they descended, but he kept his mouth shut.

  Echidna gave the signal to halt when she reached the edge of the water. A tangle of writhing antennules extended from her eyes, each one poking and prodding at the air.

  “What is it?” Surizaki asked.

  “He’s here,” she said. “Somewhere in-between dimensions.”

  Surizaki looked at the scanner readout again, then packed it away and lit his flamer’s pilot light.

  “Scanner’s negative. Can you pinpoint his location?”

  Echidna pointed at the statue.

  “There.”

  “Alright, then,” Surizaki said. “Let’s move.”

  Rahab smiled for an instant before his face split open right down the middle to form a vertical, fanged mouth the size of his head. His arm muscles rippled, the flesh flowing downward to gather into two bony cudgels where his hands had been. Echidna’s arms split into a bundle of tentacles again, each one ending in a talon shaped like a meat hook. Her jaw distended, dropping down to the base of her neck and sprouting row upon row of razor sharp teeth. A tentacle the size of a man’s arm and covered with suckers sprouted from the center of her mouth.

  Typhon remained unchanged.

  Santego lifted the flamer a few inches, just enough to get the shogg’s attention.

  “Go on, then,” he said. “Do your thing.”

  Typhon raised an eyebrow. A small, ropy appendage no wider than a finger shot out from his neck and coiled around the flamer’s barrel like a whip. Santego tried to pull the weapon free, but Typhon held it fast. Then the shogg’s tongue stretched from his jaw and sprouted a wide flap of skin to clamp tightly over Santego’s mouth.

 
A small orifice on the tentacle moved, whispering in a mockery of speech.

  “Or what?”

  Their eyes met once again and Santego wished he could turn the flamer on himself, anything to escape that monstrous gaze.

  “Santego!”

  By the time the corporal’s words reached his ears, the terror had passed. Santego rubbed his mouth and moved his flamer freely while the rest of the team stared at him. For a moment, he wondered if he’d imagined the whole episode.

  Then he saw Typhon smile.

  “Yeah,” he said, fighting to keep his voice steady. “I’m ready.”

  “Good. You and Typhon cover our ass.”

  Santego closed his eyes and cursed.

  When he opened his eyes, Typhon stood mere inches from his face. He staggered back, but the shogg caught him by the arm.

  “Let’s go see who’s home.”

  Santego nodded before his brain could even process the words. The shogg turned him free and stepped back, smiling.

  Typhon sprouted four sets of tentacles from his back, each one nearly six feet long and covered with serrated hooks. His fingers, writhing like serpents, extended to twice their normal length, each one tipped with a fanged mouth. The lower part of his jaw split in half to form a pair of rending mandibles.

  Santego should have torched him, but it was too late for that. Losing a shogg now would put them in even more danger.

  He’d had his chance to assert control and he lost it.

  His life was in Typhon’s hands now.

  If the shogg decided to end it, Santego would have little say in the matter.

  Trembling, he followed Typhon into the water.

  Santego stayed as far back as he dared, trailing about a dozen yards behind the shoggs up on point. The frigid air contained so much humidity that his helmet’s display fogged up within seconds. He couldn’t go more than a few steps before having to wipe the helmet clean, though the hazard-ridden water made it difficult to move quickly anyway.

  The shoggs moved unimpeded, easily slithering over obstacles and probing the waters before them. Karasov, Dutton, and Surizaki struggled to keep up, which eventually forced Rahab and Echidna to wait for them. Typhon moved more slowly, carefully probing the air and water with various appendages as he went.