Ride the Star Wind: Cthulhu, Space Opera, and the Cosmic Weird Read online

  “And maybe also because technological infrastructure tends to go haywire whenever Novjorians are around,” Rafiq retorts. “Especially powerful broadcasters, like the girl you have in the box.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Xander says. “Whatever stories you’ve heard about Novjorians are irrelevant. The box is psi-proof, and she’s unconscious. There’s no scientific justification for whatever you think she could have done to the shielding. Stop being superstitious.”

  “Well,” Del drawls. “Maybe the box isn’t as psi-proof as you think. Maybe someone decided to cut some corners. Save a little money.”

  For some reason, he glances at Captain Oswald when he says this. The temperature in the room goes up several degrees.

  I’m stuck on what Xander said: Stop being superstitious.

  Saying something like that—it feels like tempting fate. It feels like a dare to the infinite and indifferent universe, whose snarled edges extend far beyond anything we’ve seen or known.

  In a universe this vast and strange, what would actually be irrational is to doubt the existence of the inexplicable.

  And isn’t that what being superstitious is? Fearing the forces that are vaster and older than those we’ve mapped?

  I’ve only been a spacer for six years, but in that time, I’ve come to think that superstition might be the only thing that keeps us alive.

  Perhaps, Xander and I are too different, after all.

  * * *

  The thing between Xander and I started six months ago, maybe seven, back around the time we made the run through the Galea system. The thing was natural and physical and existed in the space between sentences. It lived in the way our bodies fit together, the mesh of smell and taste and touch. He felt like coming home to a familiar place.

  But then, we started talking.

  We carried the argument about the cargo back to his narrow bunk and he said, “What does it matter? It’s their people. Their decision. This isn’t our fight. It’s just one girl.”

  It’s just one girl.

  One girl is every girl, I thought but didn’t say. The inner monologue of a woman who was also just one girl.

  We left the argument alone and rode each other’s waves and fell asleep in one another’s arms, sweaty and content. His hollows, my curves: simple bliss.

  But in the morning, I woke, and I thought, This man doesn’t really know me.

  He couldn’t understand why I’d take it personally that some girls are born to live and die inside destiny’s cage.

  * * *

  I’m pulled from the memory by my crewmates’ shouting. The fight has escalated to recriminations. Rafiq blames Captain Oswald. Pike is angry that he dares. The shouting almost becomes blows, the others loudly taking sides—

  “Enough!” the captain declares. He looks shaken and tired. He may not be well. He’s definitely not sleeping. “We’ll figure something out. OK? We’ll find a way.”

  He sends us to search the ship for something, anything, we can retrofit as replacement parts.

  “I know what components I have on my ship,” Cicely says. We all know she’s right; this search is doomed from the start.

  But the captain insists, so we obey. He sorts us into teams of two.

  Rafiq and I search the storage bay in the corridor behind the mess hall. In the dim light, we work slowly and methodically, sorting the gear into piles based on probability of usefulness. We chat while we work. We’ve never been particularly close, but since the cargo came on board, the alliances in the crew have shifted; now, I feel more comfortable with him than most of my crewmates.

  He’s up for leave next month. I ask him what he’s planning to do. Of course, he’s visiting his sister. He tells me about his niece and the baby nephew he’s never met, the lucky soon-to-be recipient of a knitted spacesuit jumper.

  His sister still lives on his homeworld. Hanna Ro, Charru’s legendary megacity, renowned for their fusion cuisines and acrobatic dance troupes, home to the largest butterfly conservatorium in the galaxy, and birthplace of Luxie Amalfea, the famous pop star. Rafiq grew up there; he misses city life.

  It makes me happy, the way his eyes light up when he talks about home.

  “You ever want kids of your own?” I ask idly, as I catalogue a spool of fine-gauge titanium wire that will do absolutely nothing for our repair needs.

  “Nah,” he says. “Cool uncle’s more my gig. Yourself?”

  “Maybe,” I say. “Someday. On my own time. On my own terms.”

  He nods. I don’t know if that means he understands.

  * * *

  Afterward, we all meet back in the upper deck to inspect our finds. Our trusty smugglers’ ship has been held together with duct tape and rusty bolts for many runs across the galaxy. We’ve got plenty of junk parts and detritus but nothing that substitutes for a coolant pack.

  Rafiq and Cicely sit down and calculate how long we can make it before the protector shields break down completely. How far we can go in that time. And where that might put us.

  The only worlds between here and Soline are Federation planets with formal docking procedures; if we stop for help, we’ll have to submit to inspection, and the agents will no doubt find our hidden cargo. We’d all be in deep, deep shit.

  We could push the cargo out an airlock and land anywhere, get help repairing the shielding. But when Soline finds out that we ditched their once-in-a-generation princess, their multimillion-credit investment, we’d all be in deep, deep shit.

  Or we could keep going until the shields break down completely, and our ship is pulverized by space debris while our bodies are poisoned by space radiation. Limp our way into the Soline system, if we make it that far, and hunker down to repair our ship and wait to die.

  None of the options are particularly appealing.

  “Of course, we agreed,” Del says quietly once the captain’s out of earshot. We all know he’s talking about the cargo. “We’re the troops. It’s our job to agree, say ‘aye, aye, yes sir.’ What did he expect?”

  “Not everyone said ‘aye, aye, yes sir,’” Cicely says with a voice like a dagger.

  The tension is unbearable.

  I retreat to the cargo bay. I sit by the girl’s superalloy and aerogel coffin and gaze at her through the frosted panel. She’s like a marble statue but for the slight flutter in her temple. Her eyelashes are silver.

  What’s she dreaming about? Does she know that she’s killing us? Does she care?

  Oblivious—I think—she sleeps.

  * * *

  We spend some hours trying to strategize but mostly sniping and bickering and lamenting our impending doom. There doesn’t seem to be any way around the fact that we’re probably going to die soon or at least be imprisoned for a very long time.

  We retreat to our quarters to rest and contemplate our fates or, in Rafiq’s case, work on his knitting—he’s determined that whatever happens, he will go visit his sister and his nephew will be attired in baby astronaut finery.

  I sit alone in my bunk and sip my whiskey and think, Well, I was going to die sooner or later, right? Probably sooner.

  I come from a world of never-ending war. The war’s continued for centuries, consuming all. It should have extinguished our world long ago. But somehow, the war continues. And the world survives just enough to keep burning.

  Our bodies are owned by the state. Our babies are owned by the state. The state’s one and only business is to make the war. And so it demands more babies, more bodies. The girl babies grow to make more babies. The boy babies grow to be more bodies.

  The war devours us all.

  When I was sixteen years old, I stowed away and became a spacer. I stole myself—a capital crime against the state.

  I’ve always been a dead woman walking, but eight years later, I thought maybe I was finally free.

  Oh well. This life was good while it lasted.

  More hours go by. Xander’s voice rings out across every intercom. “I see something. Everyon
e, come up to the bridge!”

  * * *

  The ghost ship hovers in the view screen, dark and glittering, vast and bulky like a floating arcology. Perhaps, it used to be a generation ship, now remodeled as a cruiser to travel among the conquered stars.

  “It’s sending out a call,” Xander says. “A beacon. No code I recognize. I don’t know what it means.”

  “A distress call?” I wonder. “Or a warning?”

  “It’s garbled,” he says. “Gibberish. Static. It could be anything . . .”

  Rafiq studies his maps and sky charts. “I don’t see any lost ships listed for this sector,” he says. “No vessels matching this description. Strange.”

  “Maybe it’s lost,” Pike says, which the rest of us ignore; he’s better at soldiering than problem-solving.

  Xander calls over our comms link: “Hello? This is the Titania. Is anyone there? Identify yourself. Again, this is the Titania. Do you need assistance?”

  No answer.

  Cicely says what we’re all thinking. “This might—it might be the answer to our problem. Such a big ship. They’ll have a warehouse. We could get help.”

  “And if everyone’s dead?” I ask.

  “They’ll still have the warehouse,” Xander says.

  “And no one to ask annoying questions,” Del adds. I can’t tell if he’s joking.

  “Unless, it’s all been stripped by space pirates already. Possibly the ones who left it stranded here.”

  “We’ll try it,” Captain Oswald declares. “We’re out of options. Rafiq, shift course. Take us to the cruiser.”

  * * *

  As the Titania closes the distance between us and the silent ship, we ready our shuttle. Xander and Rafiq will stay onboard, waiting just outside the cruiser’s range in case of danger. The rest of us will take the shuttle and explore the ship.

  Pike and I are defense, so we gather our arsenal while the captain runs diagnostics on the shuttle and Cicely and Del analyze the projected 3D map to plan a search.

  The craft grows inexorably larger in our screens, eerily silent. The architecture is odd, like a floating ziggurat, terraced and geometric. Millennia of civilizations and their explorations means a lot of weird stuff ends up floating around out here at the dark edges. But still, I’ve never seen a spaceship quite like this one.

  The Titania makes her final approach. We bid goodbye to Rafiq and Xander and climb into the shuttle, which launches like a pebble hurtling through space.

  As we approach, we call out on every channel. Silence. No word as we pass through the outer membrane of the ship’s atmospheric shield into a vast loading dock and small craft hangar. The captain eases the shuttle into the nearest docking station. The airlock syncs. We’re good to go.

  We pass through the first corridor into a wide-open lobby. At the center, a jungle-like profusion of green plants flourishes in a circular well. Bright light emanates from everywhere, the floor and walls and far-off ceiling illuminated and aglow. Soft music plays like an elevator ride in a capitol building. The air changers hum.

  No one’s around.

  “Very strange,” Captain Oswald mutters. “Very, very strange.”

  “This is fucked,” Del agrees.

  “Let’s start walking,” Cicely says.

  We cross the lobby and enter a small passageway. This opens onto a wider space. To our left, doors; to our right, more doors. Directly across is open air. We crowd the ledge.

  We’re in a central atrium, vaguely hexagonal, the circumference lined with hallways and doors and the central shaft falling deep below and high above. All as cheery and brightly lit as the first room we entered. Music tinkles like a carnival accompanied by the sound of falling water.

  “Passenger quarters?” Del speculates.

  All this bright light and blooming foliage and breathable air and not a person in sight.

  “I really don’t like this,” Captain Oswald says. “Mina? Pike? You on point? Stay focused.”

  He doesn’t have to tell us. We’re soldiers. We know this is wrong. We know it feels like a trap.

  “Whatever it is, we won’t find what we need here,” Cicely says. “We need to find the crew’s quarters.”

  The feeling of wrongness is sharp and pointed like something lodged between my shoulder blades.

  We walk, following the map projected by algorithm from the 3D scan, through winding corridors of passenger lodgings that turn into spacious passenger parlors, through abandoned guest cafes and lobby bars. We enter the cozier crew’s quarters and pass life-support systems for producing food and recycling water and air.

  From our vantage point in that vast atrium, we glimpsed the shape of the whole ship, but now as we walk, the internal geometry doesn’t make sense. Like halls are moving. Like walls are moving.

  “I could have sworn . . .” Cicely says and doesn’t finish.

  “What?” I ask. “Could have sworn what?”

  “We saw that door before.” She points to a dent in the door’s lower right hand side, a divot in the metal where the paint is chipped. “We walked this hall already. But that was a couple levels ago. We’ve been walking down this whole time.”

  “A glitch,” Del says.

  “What? What does that mean?”

  The halls have narrowed. The ceilings seem to sink lower with every step we take. The dim lights flicker. The hum of the air changers seems shriller. I can almost hear desperate voices buried in the static.

  The white noise of the ship intensifies and fades. Like the world we’re inside is rocking closer and then farther away.

  “That storage berth,” I say. “I saw it before, too. That same tangle. We should look inside. Right? Because coolant packs.”

  “Yes . . .” Cicely says. “A good place to look. Definitely a good place to look.”

  Captain Oswald is muttering to himself. No one asks him what he meant to say.

  Del slaps at his arm. And then the wall beside him. “What the fuck? A fly? The bastard.”

  “A fly?”

  “Yeah. A fucking fly.”

  “Doesn’t that seem unlikely? On a spaceship?”

  The flies buzz. There are more now. I see them, too. Crawling on the walls. Hovering beyond my nose.

  “Do you guys smell that?”

  A heavy, putrid smell like day-old death and rotting garbage.

  I’m not thinking clearly. I know I’m not. Something’s overtaken me. These waves of feeling. Emotion like a flood. It’s dark and cold and dripping, and I want to sit down, my back against the dented dirty walls of the belly of this spaceship cruiser without a living crew, and cry, I think—yes, cry. For all the girls that didn’t make it out.

  “I grew up in a factory,” I announce. “A factory for making bodies. I really loved her—my friend—her name was Naomi. After they took her to the birthing mill. I mean, I knew they’d take me too, soon. I couldn’t bear it. I should have stayed. But it was too late for her, really. I’m sorry.”

  “They’ll take my daughter if I don’t pay,” Captain Oswald says.

  I didn’t even know he had a daughter.

  “You got a kid?” Pike asks.

  “On Asuslon. I only see her once a circuit or so. She’s very smart. Just twelve, now. I hoped one day she’d want to join the crew . . . of course, her mother wouldn’t approve. But traveling is in our blood. Not her mother’s. The problem. Of course. Always is.”

  “Me, too,” Pike says. “A kid. He’s three. Never met him yet. Saw some holos. Talk to him on the screen. God, he’s beautiful. Looks just like his mother, of course. Eyes like saucers.”

  It seems we’ve been walking for days and days. Or maybe just a minute. Time’s gone strange.

  “I quit, by the way,” Cicely says. “The Titania. I’m done. You can drop me off at the first civilized world.”

  We’ve reached the dead end of something. An ever-narrowing hallway that ends in a door.

  “I love you all so much,” says Del. “Don’t sa
y it enough. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have the Titania. All of you. My family. The only one I’ve ever had.”

  The sadness crushing my chest like the grip of marble arms becomes something else, something syrupy and viscous and golden. I want to cry, but in a whole different way, and laugh, too. I’m hysterical, I realize.

  The smell is different. The rotting garbage smell. It’s become a much older kind of death, cloying and almost sweet. A smell like almond oil and scorched honey.

  Captain Oswald passes through the final door, and we follow him into a cargo bay.

  The ship has guided us to this heart.

  We stand on a narrow, rickety catwalk above an open cavern. This one-time cargo bay is now entirely consumed by a massive substance. A thing. A creature? The mass is pitch-black and iridescent and thick, amorphous and diffuse, like a plume of spilled oil and tar blooming in deep water. The thing trembles. The sounds and shrieks it makes are awful: groaning, keening, panting sounds that might be lust or rage or terror. It’s immense and everywhere at once; its tentacles are reaching for us. The pitching, bucking catwalk attempts to dump us into the creature’s fetid mouth.

  I am screaming, by the way. I think we all are.

  Pike’s double-fisting his blaster and his gun, discharging them both rapid fire into the thing below. Neither particles nor projectiles seem to have much effect.

  It’s roaring now. It’s not clear if it has tentacles or limbs or legs, or if its body simply has strength without much shape, but parts of it reach up and grab Pike, whipping him around while the particles and projectiles fly, while he shouts in pain and outrage.

  It sucks him in and down. Devours him—or deconstructs him. He’s gone.

  Time moves on, both fast and slow. We’re all running. Pandemonium sets in. We’re tripping over each other and falling and fighting. The nebulous parts of the creature block our way, knocking us into each other, temporarily blinding us with black floating clouds. The catwalk seems to be spinning. Revolving in faster and faster moving circles, no longer lined up with the door that brought us here. The ship itself revolts against us.

  Cicely falls. The creature swallows her, too.