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

  Captain Oswald hangs upside down from the edge of the catwalk, legs splayed, head facing down, hacking at it with something like a machete, and in all this chaos, as time no longer seems to work, I think, This whole time the Captain’s carried a sword? Insane.

  “That way! Run!” Del shouts.

  I want to fire at the creature too, like Pike did. I’ve got my weapons. I’ve got my arsenal. It wouldn’t be the first time I fought for my life. Then I realize I am firing. I’m standing still. Mesmerized. Aiming at its slick oily center (though it’s everywhere and nowhere and doesn’t really have a center at all).

  “Move!” Del’s shouting and shoving.

  The catwalk is revolving. Like it’s made to do. We’re in a central shaft and doors enter from all around. We’re on a bridge that serves them all, programmed to rotate where it’s needed. It’s rotating now and all the doors are opening and closing at once.

  This sick architecture’s taunting us.

  Somehow, though devoured, Cicely is still screaming. Captain Oswald is screaming, too.

  I’m dragging Del, or he’s dragging me, and we’re running and running, hoarse from screaming, out of this place, beyond this creature’s reach. Through a door—not the door we came in, I’m relatively sure—down another endless hallway.

  Even as I run and run, I still feel it behind me.

  I look back, over my shoulder, just to check—the hallway’s empty, right? All I see are my own footprints, each step a stamp of slick black ooze. Moving with me. Almost alive.

  For a moment I think, My footprints are following me.

  But that doesn’t make sense. I mean, of course they are.

  * * *

  Into the frigid sleep, some presence leaks.

  Into cold solitude it speaks.

  Tendrils spiral toward her dreaming conscious mind, and her own tendrils spiral back into the dark. Tendrils. Tentacles. Curling. Twirling. Twining.

  Dreams, dreams, dreams: vast and terrifying and gorgeously sinister.

  Dreams of foreign suns and alien vistas and ancient worlds.

  Past and future. All together. Time beyond reckoning.

  For a moment, the bitter loneliness abates.

  Ruler once and could be again; priestess of small world, but the universe beckons.

  This is us.

  Lovely.

  Planted like a seed.

  Tempting.

  Beautiful and hideous, the infinite terror, the boundless void. What creature, no matter how monstrous or otherworldly or fatebound, would not long to be free?

  Let’s go, then.

  Together, we’ll feast on the psychic screams.

  * * *

  Del and I sprint until we reach a passenger lobby filled with soft jazz and kaleidoscopic carpets and verdant artificial trees. We fall panting and whimpering across the plush settees.

  “Cicely . . . Pike . . .”

  “Captain Oswald . . .”

  “They’re gone. They’re gone.”

  “Coolant packs. We were supposed to find . . .”

  “Damn it.”

  “That storage berth.”

  “I’m not going back.”

  “Titania?” I shout into my comms link. “Titania? Can you hear me?”

  “Mina?” Xander’s voice sounds very far away. “Is everything okay? You guys went dark. You alright?”

  “No!” I shout hysterically. “We’re not all right. There was something—this thing—it got the Captain. And Cicely. And Pike.”

  “A thing? What do you mean a thing? Get back to the shuttle right away, okay. Mina? Are you listening? Are you and Del injured? Get back to the shuttle.”

  “We’re not injured.”

  “We still need to find the coolant packs,” Del says into the link.

  “Forget the fucking coolant packs! Get back to the shuttle. That’s an order.”

  He’s our commanding officer, now. I’d almost forgotten.

  Del and I pick ourselves up and search for the shuttle hangar. Somehow, the way back is much shorter than the way down.

  We enter the hangar on the opposite side from our shuttle. “We must have got turned around when we were running,” I say. Del just grunts.

  We’re docked with an entrance lock across the hangar; it’s either wander around inside until we reach the right passage, or make our way across the hangar and climb into the shuttle through the emergency exit.

  We opt for the second; it feels safer in the hangar. At least through the membrane, we can still see the stars.

  “There’s an L-Class Sparrow Freighter docked over there,” Del says. “Protector shielding’s got a similar build to the Titania’s. Made by same company. Might be some spare coolant packs. They won’t fit exactly but—I could try—”

  “Okay, okay. Let’s go. Fast.”

  I wait just outside the freighter while Del searches inside. Xander and Rafiq are interrogating me over the comm link the whole time, panicked and afraid, asking what went wrong in there, what’s going on.

  “I can’t even explain it.”

  “Mina? The captain’s really gone?”

  “He’s really gone.”

  “Do you know how to fly the shuttle?”

  “Fuck. Fuck.”

  “You don’t?”

  “I do. I know how. I’ve done all the training modules. I can do it.” I’ll try.

  Del comes back holding a foil-coated duffel. “I found some stuff,” he says.

  “Let’s go.” We wriggle our way up the chute and into the shuttle. I strap into the captain’s seat, Del beside me. We’re both shaking. We’ve both forgotten how to breathe.

  I ease the shuttle out of the hangar and past the membrane and toward the Titania.

  * * *

  The components we brought back aren’t perfect, but Del works on the system with stopgaps and hacks and fixes it up enough to work for a few days.

  The Titania is limping by the time we make it to Soline, but we make it. We deliver the cargo and earn our paycheck. It’s a lot of money.

  A lot of money.

  We only spend a day on Soline. Just long enough to replace the damaged components on the ship, restock, refuel. We leave the colony as quickly as we can.

  The ship is ours now. As long as we can stay ahead of whoever was after the captain.

  We head for deep space, the unexplored outposts, the unknown worlds.

  We delivered the cargo, but something’s stayed with us, too.

  Something remains.

  * * *

  Back on Soline, the carnage begins with blood and screams and fire.

  It begins and doesn’t end until there’s nothing left but the burnt-out husks of buildings and smoking plastic and scarlet spattered across the snow.

  And the cargo, of course.

  It settles down to wait.

  Desirina Boskovich’s short fiction has been published in Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Nightmare, F&SF, Kaleidotrope, PodCastle, Drabblecast, and anthologies such as The Apocalypse Triptych, Tomorrow’s Cthulhu, and What the #@&% Is That?. Her debut novella, Never Now Always, is recently out from Broken Eye Books. She is also the editor of It Came From the North: An Anthology of Finnish Speculative Fiction (Cheeky Frawg, 2013) and, together with Jeff VanderMeer, co-author of The Steampunk User’s Manual (Abrams Image, 2014). Her next project is a collaboration with Jason Heller—Starships & Sorcerers: The Secret History of Science Fiction, forthcoming from Abrams Image. Find Desirina online at www.desirinaboskovich.com.

  The Blood Will Come Later

  DaVaun Sanders

  Illustrated by Nick Gucker

  The Cassad recruiter laughs, and I nearly erase his mind on the spot.

  “You do know this is an Averator’s craft?” he asks, tapping notes into his palm-sized manifest. A line of Cassad hopefuls stretches into the bowels of the stardock behind me, citizens of the Reach worlds vying for stable work.

  “I do now,” I reply. “You said there’s an opening.”<
br />
  “Another vessel’s better suited.” His fingers flutter at distant lines of people in the cavernous requisitions plaza; many hope to fill holes for freighter crew, merc raiders, diplomats’ pleasure cruisers. “Half of Amadi Zele’s personnel were born and raised together! What possible need could—”

  “Engineer, then.” A moment is all I require aboard this ship. A reckoning.

  “But you just—”

  “Engineer,” I repeat softly. “Or whatever. Wherever there’s a need. Let me pass.”

  His eyes lose focus as my mental suggestion permeates his consciousness. “You may board the Dubious.” He taps an entry into the manifest—cook, of all the inane things—and gestures me forward for scanning. “Hmm. You’re not Cassad. Name?”

  “Remiliat Dumasani.”

  I lash out with my mind, shunting a precise amount of disruptive psionic force into the recruiter’s motor cortex. His fingers scramble the entry. My eye scan and voice print remain stored on his manifest, however. That’s a problem.

  “Paki handles assignments. Report to . . . report to . . .”

  I stride past as my parting suggestion unfolds deep within the recruiter’s mind. The lift platform awaits, a hexagonal shell of cold steel and glass. I step inside. The crunch of splintering glass compels my backward glance.

  The recruiter sits, lips sliced and stained red. Other Cassad rush up. He’s still determinedly trying to eat the manifest even after they wrestle him to the ground, shouting. Cook, indeed. Before the lift doors close, I see sparks dance between his teeth.

  One thing is clear as the lift sweeps toward dock seven thirty-two: the Dubious is a ghastly craft. All manner of receiving devices plaster the forward bridge. A preposterously long, narrow hull ties a bulbous beak to oversized engines. A crew of fifty would be cramped, I suspect, which makes my hunt that much easier.

  One held breath centers my focus. When the lift stops, my talents are ready for the two waiting Cassad crew. “Welcome to the highest calling in the—” the woman frowns as I slip past. “An empty lift? Can this mission get any damn stranger?”

  The other Cassad sighs, equally blind to my presence. “I hate the Reach. If the Averator wasn’t so sure . . .”

  I pad through precise white halls of steel and glass, maintained far better than the rusted haulers I bartered passage on to get here. My path to the bridge is unobstructed. No personnel. No surveillance nodes.

  A Cassad man stands over one of the flight consoles, burly but not overly muscular, skin a tinge browner than mine. He wears an oddly cut blue uniform and tugs at his mustache while he mutters to himself. He sees me before I shield his mind.

  “I’m sorry, young woman,” he intones pleasantly. “But you should seek opportunity elsewhere at the stardock. I specifically forbid crew with military training of any sort aboard my vessel.”

  “That’s a shame,” I reply, mildly impressed by his discernment. Averator, is it? “Because your bright empire is rusting along the rivets, Amadi Zele.”

  His eyes narrow as I inspect the console beside him. “History’s full of temporary lapses in order,” he says. “Regardless, nobody is idiotic enough to attack my vessel.”

  “The New Regime is populated by nothing if not idiots.”

  The console responds to my query. Damn. My target isn’t aboard, but the crew roster shows her reporting soon. “Good day, Averator.”

  He jerks as my suggestion draws a curtain of amnesia over his memory. Eyes clouded, he returns to his work. I’m already forgotten here, just like everywhere else.

  I pass more Dubious crew in the halls, wearing their amnesia like a protective cloak. By emperor’s decree, every Cassad vessel—even one this bizarrely designed—has a brig. It’s even more neglected than I suspect. The perfect hiding place, and closest to Karisten’s post.

  Karisten.

  It feels good to finally dwell on her name. I settle on a small mat in one of the brig’s shadowed cells, recounting her crimes. Of all our old crewmates, Jobrel trusted Karisten most. And with her deciding vote, all that remained of my husband’s memory was scattered across the Known. She’s proven easiest to hunt down; first on my list.

  Zele’s deep baritone washes over the ship’s comms. “All crew is aboard. Report for inventory appraisals immediately. Departure will commence after officers’ check.”

  If the Cassad love anything, it’s following standard protocol. By my reckoning, Karisten will meet her end long before the ship disengages from the stardock, hours from now, and I’ll turn to my next target.

  So when the Dubious’s engines hum to life, I’m understandably vexed.

  The cell’s stun wall suddenly powers on. I blink stupidly in the crackling blue light. The brig doors slide open, and Amadi Zele himself strolls in. “So! My hypothesis was correct.”

  Outrage battles my shock. “Release me before—”

  “This entire compartment will be ejected into space in seconds,” he cuts me off. I believe him, along with the fresh alarm blaring through the comms. “I wanted to see if you could be reasoned with. Who are you? Who sent you? What have you done to my crew? In that order, please.”

  “No one, nobody, and nothing any of you will remember. How did you detect me?”

  His hand wavers over the control panel beside the door. “Headaches, forgetfulness among the best minds in the Known.” The alarm ceases. Zele frowns. “You’ve misstepped gravely, young woman. My crew is an extension of me.”

  “I don’t care. All I want is Karisten. The rest of you have nothing to worry about unless you prolong this.”

  “Unacceptable.”

  I’m ready when Zele’s fingers dart for the panel. His arm flops uselessly to his side. “Remarkable!” he breathes.

  The brig’s door grates open manually. Crew pour inside. A Marajeshi man with greenish freckles on his brown skin lunges for Zele. I disrupt the muscles in his left thigh—and his bowels, because I’m in a bad mood—and he spills to the floor. Zele twists and turns as half a dozen Cassad sprawl around his ankles, one by one.

  “Young woman, I’d like to offer you—”

  “Averator!” One last crewperson rushes in with a med kit: hair in small twists, like I remember, worry lines creased into her forehead. She sees me and her jaw drops. “Remiliat?”

  Karisten.

  I’ve dreamed of this for so long. My mental assault simply unfolds. Karisten crumples so perfectly her cheek bounces on the Averator’s boots.

  “This is how you left me.” My voice pierces the paralysis I’ve crafted for her. “That ship was all I had left in the Known—all that remained of Jobrel! You had no right!”

  “We tried, Rem,” she burbles. “You weren’t the only one who lost someone! We all had to start over with the empire so broken—you can still start over, the Known is big! You can find—”

  “A new life? I tried.” I spit. “But I’m not Cassad. I’ll settle for you.”

  Tears leak down her face. It’s a simple matter to curve her spine past breaking. Stop her heart.

  His crew incapacitated around him, Zele addresses me. “You’ve infiltrated this ship at great cost, but you’re no murderer.” A strange light glitters in his dark eyes, a hunger that unnerves me. “I insist you must remain and work with me.”

  What? “You mean dissect me. You’re insane.”

  “No. I trust my impulses, and I do not extend this offer lightly.” His hand slaps the entry pad before I can react. He’s released the stun field. “Cassad or not; my crew is family. No harm must come to Karisten. That is my condition.”

  I edge out of the cell in disbelief. He’s offering me . . . work? What’s my role? How will I . . .

  A hundred more questions cycle through my mind as the moaning Cassad regard me fearfully. I could stand among them, be part of a family again, despite the pain I’ve wrought. Hope seeps through my weariness, inviting and viperous. “I’ll need a convincing story.”

  “And you shall have one.”


  * * *

  The Averator restores a semblance of order through a combination of my induced amnesia and his calm explanations for any incongruent recollections. They trust him absolutely. I endure whirlwind inoculations, procedure reviews, lab tours. At an all-hands dinner in the ship’s refectory, I’m introduced as a last minute addition and warmly greeted by Cassad I paralyzed just hours ago.

  “Remiliat will maximize personnel interactions,” Zele concludes cheerily. That raises a few eyebrows, but I’m accepted without question. The effect is completely disarming.

  “Averator, you’ve never agreed to an empire-sanctioned mission before.” Eliat, a linguist with a boyish face and skin the shade of sunrise clouds, clears his throat. “Frankly, several of us are concerned we’ll be diverted into weapons research.”

  Heads bob throughout the space.

  “I’m not so immune to our political realities.” Zele sets down his steaming tea and rises. “We’re seekers of truth, yet beholden to agendas. This is one of those rare occasions where our work as scientists coincides with the needs of governance. I’ve acquired evidence of ancient Cassad contact with an alien species, undocumented by the imperial djelis.”

  Speculative murmurs burst out all around me. “Derelict craft?” Gorshen, a pilot with bearded falcons tattooed under either ear, rubs his hands.

  “Hardly.” The Averator smiles. “An entire world.”

  Eliat raises a hand. “Does this rock have a name?”

  “My source is unclear on the translation, but it appears to be . . . R’lyeh.”

  I mouth it silently. R’lyeh. Even sounds ancient.

  His eyes touch mine for an instant. “The implications for this are staggering. The empire can certainly use a reminder of greatness, achievement—our birthright, the emperor might say. So many member worlds question the legitimacy of Cassad rule. We’re considered a proud people. This is indisputably verified fact, yes?” Assenting laughter rumbles around us. Zele waits for it to still. “The Known needs to be reminded of why. Show them.”

  The crew of the Dubious springs into motion. They’re eager to see the Cassad revered again . . . desperate for it. The collective focus is intoxicating—cathartic, even without my psionic abilities. I’ve never been more convinced of a small group of peoples’ ability to enact great change. I’m surprised by how blind I’ve been to my own yearning to be part of something bigger.