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

  “Yet here you are, looking to go back?”

  “Yes,” the pilgrim admitted, looking back at the pale man’s door. “And I believe this man knows way there.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we have been spell-sailing these last six days,” the Endraxian explained. “And there is only one reason to do such a thing—”

  * * *

  “And you better tell me what it is before I smack you upside your face!” Jesk shouted at Ione, pointing to the small statue of Khub on his cabin’s desk. Clearly, she intended to do the deed with his favorite god.

  “Now, be reasonable,” Ione said as he held up his hands, hoping neither she nor Hrsk became any angrier: “If I’d just said—”

  “That we’re going into the damn Null?” she shouted, not caring if the rest of the help heard them.

  “Sssuicccide,” the burly Xard hissed, shaking his head from side to side. “Foolissshnesss.”

  “Our employer says he can get us through,” Ione reprimanded the lizard-man, indicating the pale man he’d asked to this impromptu staff meeting.

  “Into something that sucks temple cruisers down when they get too close?” Jesk replied.

  “We will be . . . protected,” the pale and hooded man insisted. “We have spell-sailed here.”

  “Which means what, exactly?” Ione asked, starting to sound doubtful.

  “Our course has created a . . . pattern,” their mysterious employer said, pulling out a piece of paper that revealed the shape in question—a seven-pointed star with the Null at its center. “As we have travelled that pattern, I have worked a protective spell.”

  “Wait,” the captain said, raising an eyebrow. “Is that it? Really? Magic? I thought you had some device or something.”

  “You do not understand,” the pale man said, putting his hands together: “It is . . . disappointing.”

  “Then explain it better,” Ione said, clearly irritated. “All of it. Otherwise, I don’t care who you are, we’re going nowhere and you’re going out the airlock. Understand?”

  “Who is he . . . ?” Jesk started to ask, but Ione held up a hand.

  “Ten of your millennia ago, before the First Dominion, the Null was . . . different,” the hooded man said. “Full of worlds. Full of life.”

  “That’s what Yerg said,” Jesk said, raising an eyebrow: “All that stuff about Cathuria? The Great Ones? Their children? It’s all true?”

  “Of course, it’s true,” Ione snapped at her. “The details are a little uncertain, that’s all.”

  “So what happened?” Jesk asked, a little stung by the captain’s retort.

  “War,” the pale man continued. “A terrible conflict against the Elder Ones. Do you know of them?”

  “Yes,” Ione nodded, remembering the hideous statues his people had venerated out of fear. “I also heard the Great Ones wiped them all out.”

  Their employer nodded: “Victory was . . . costly. A terrible weapon was used. What you call the Null is what remains.”

  Jesk blanched. “And you believe what’s in there is worth going through it.”

  “Truly,” the pale man said.

  “So what is it, then?” the captain demanded. “Because if I’m going to talk that lot out there into this with magic, I’ll need more than ‘the greatest thing you will ever see.’”

  “Words fail,” their anonymous employer admitted. “But you risked all for funeral treasure but a thousand years old. What does that compare to something untouched for ten millennia?”

  Ione looked at the man. He started to stroke his beard, perhaps considering.

  Jesk sighed, knowing that was for show, and he’d already made up his mind.

  * * *

  Everyone wanted to be on the bridge for this.

  The Oeno sat at the very edge of Nebar’s system, right where the journey had started. Beyond it lay the Null, filling the windows with roiling, black evil.

  This close, it poisoned the mind, making onlookers think they saw things in that blackness. Eyes staring back at the ship. Maws opening to consume her.

  Tentacles, threatening to drag them in . . .

  “All ssssystemssss ready,” Hrsk said.

  “Guns are ready, too, for what it’s worth,” Jesk said.

  “They will not be necessary,” their employer insisted. “The spell is complete. The ship is protected. We will be safe.”

  “Safe?” Harley said, looking around. “Is he crazy? Are we all crazy?”

  “Be calm, friend,” Yerg said, holding up his hands in supplication. “We have spell-sailed here. We could not be safer—”

  “Against that?” Harley insisted, pointing to the monstrous black chaos outside. “It’s suicide!”

  “So’s going out the airlock,” Ione said, turning his gaze on the terrified veteran. “You eavesdropped your way into this trip, Harley. This is what we’re doing. Obey or leave.”

  The cyborg opened his mouth and closed it, putting his hands down as he did.

  Captain Ione turned back around, twisting his beard, and nodded. “Let’s see if there’s something to this spell-sailing thing after all.”

  He gently eased the Oeno forward. The freighter slowly approached the churning blackness, meter by meter, until they could actually see some kind of texture in the dark.

  And then the freighter slid in.

  An eerie silence followed. Every noise the Oeno normally made was muted. All the crew could hear was their own breathing and the frightened beating of their hearts.

  The quiet was abruptly broken by a strange groaning all over the ship. It reminded Ione of loose bulkheads being crushed by an atmosphere just above structural tolerance but worse, somehow.

  The groaning continued and got louder. Before long, Ione began to worry that the ship couldn’t take it. The alarm lights flashed, however silently, and he swore he heard the hull buckle.

  But no sooner did he reach out to employ braking thrusters than the noise just stopped. The Oeno’s normal sounds resumed: engines, controls, the annoying proximity alarms.

  “The spell holds,” the pale man said: “We may . . . proceed.”

  “For how long?” Ione asked.

  “Perhaps . . . a day?”

  “I’ll hold you to two, then,” the captain said, pointing a finger at the man’s very pointy chin. “Any longer, and we’re backing up.”

  And there was clearly no arguing with that.

  * * *

  “Captain,” Jesk said, turning to look at the bridge’s visitor. “We have a problem.”

  Ione turned from the window, just as the cyborg sprouted several hidden guns from his arms and chest. He pointed them at each person at the bridge as well as the front windows.

  He grinned as he did it. It was not a pleasant expression.

  “Look, I know you’re not happy,” Ione tried to reason, wishing their employer was not hiding in his cabin, again. “But I promised our friend a day—”

  “This is what is going to happen,” Harley announced, his voice and mannerisms quite different. “We are going to turn this ship around and head back the way we came. And once we are out, I shall be calling a temple cruiser to pick us up.”

  “An agent,” Jesk grumbled. “For Khub’s sake, Hrsk, you had to hire an agent!”

  “Sssorry,” the Xard hissed.

  “No wonder he was always listening at the bar,” Ione muttered.

  “My friend, please,” Yerg begged, getting on his knees and praying with all four arms. “We both worship Nodens, in our own way. Would you not stand in paradise? Walk with your gods? ”

  “Heretic,” Harley sneered. “Do I kill you now or leave you for the prefects?”

  His question was answered by a solid thunk—the sound of steel burying into his forehead.

  “I’d prefer to not be caught,” the web-fingered man said with another knife ready to throw. “I’m sure you understand.”

  Where had he come from, Jesk wondered. He hadn’t been there a mo
ment ago.

  Harley tried to say something but fell to his knees, eyes staring in different directions. The Valerians were on him a second later, dragging him back to the galley to dismember him with their axes.

  As they took him away, the proximity alarm changed tone.

  “Sssomething ahead,” Hrsk said, turning back to his station: “Disssturbanccce.”

  The captain almost asked what kind, but the Oeno slid out of the solid blackness.

  “Oh, thank Khub,” Captain Ione breathed.

  “Two days, Captain,” their mysterious employer said, now right behind him.

  “Yes,” Ione said, wheeling to face him. “And where is the greatest thing we will ever see?”

  As if in answer, something before the Oeno lit up with a strange phosphorescence—a long spacecraft, shaped like the sailing ships of old. Its sides were made of massive, pale trees twisted together, and its edges were of silver, engraved with a language Ione had seen upon Serania’s oldest temples.

  Above its deck rose several long, sinewy masts, draped with glittering starsails. There was no question as to what it was.

  “A star ship,” Yerg said, kneeling in reverence. “The White Ship!”

  “Yes,” Captain Ione said, astounded to see the tales of his youth made true.

  And enraptured as he imagined what treasure that ancient ship carried in its hold.

  * * *

  “We’ll breach her with the docking clamp,” Jesk explained, just off the bridge. “It should be able to figure the configuration.”

  “We walk with the gods, here,” Yerg insisted. “We must be humble and proceed with open hands and hearts.”

  “Hrsk agreessss,” the Xard said, nodding his head side to side.

  “Hrsk, you’re staying behind,” Ione insisted. “Just in case.”

  The burly lizard seemed crestfallen but obeyed.

  “I will need my . . . things,” their employer said, heading to his cabin.

  As soon as he was out of earshot, Ione walked closer to the web-fingered man. “Thanks for helping with the agent.”

  “You’re welcome,” he smirked, looking at Jesk. “Both of you.”

  He walked away with a spring in his step as if he’d won a bet with himself.

  “Irritating,” the gunner grumbled.

  “Stop being so worried about him,” the captain whispered. “It’s our employer I can’t really trust.”

  “Oh really?” Jesk sneered. “Why now?”

  “He’s unnerving,” the captain said. “I don’t like unnerving.”

  “Hrsk will be listening in while we’re over there?” Jesk asked: “Right?”

  “Absolutely,” Ione said, “because—”

  * * *

  “This is . . . not exactly what I was expecting.”

  The captain wasn’t the only one. Some were enchanted, and some were afraid, but none were anything less than completely astounded by the insides of the ancient craft.

  Beyond the bony swirl of the airlock lay a massive, open chamber, running from bow to stern. It was filled with strange, long swirls of phosphorescent, whitish-green gas that moved as though alive. Numerous free-floating decks hung between those glowing clouds, connected to one another by wide ramps, and filled with floating silver globules that shivered and breathed with a strange and frantic life.

  The party quietly strode across the ramps and platforms, following their employer. His box floated behind him like a pet. The pale man spoke in a tongue that none had ever heard before, and the floating silver blobs seemed less agitated after he passed.

  At last, they came to a long staircase, stretching up past the ceiling. It led into what was clearly the wheelhouse, filled with more of the breathing, silvery globules. At the far end was a massive dais, and beyond that lay a massive, curved window overlooking the ship’s long, silver prow.

  The pale man spoke to the globules in turn. Then he strode toward the dais and knelt with his box beside him.

  “Amazing,” Yerg said, looking around. “Truly amazing.”

  “Boring,” the taller Rug snorted. “Where are its defenses?”

  “Oh, they are here,” the pale man said. “You ignorantly walked past them.”

  “He isn’t having speech problems, now,” the web-fingered man whispered to Jesk.

  “No,” she whispered back. “I don’t think he ever did.”

  “So the treasure?” Ione asked.

  Their employer took the silver object from his neck and placed it upon the box. There was a hiss and the box opened, revealing a large number of silver blobs. These dutifully floated up and around him, like strange birds.

  “Look around you, Captain,” the pale man said, standing up as the silver blobs moved. “The ship is the treasure.”

  Ione was about to say something but could only watch as the pulsing bulbs of metal met with one another and joined. As they did, the ship’s glow strengthened and began to pulsate.

  As the brightness grew, the crew of the Oeno could finally see what lay beyond.

  The roiling and gelid sphere was blossoming with hideous life. Massive alien organs were born and moved about only to be absorbed back into the darkness after a time. Titanic, many-lobed eyes stared down upon the ship, hungrily. Huge, fanged maws yawned and shut, expecting to be filled.

  And black tentacles slopped out of the mass, extending toward the ship only so far before being stopped and roughly shoved back into the dark from whence it came.

  “Shoggoth,” Yerg gasped, looking at the horror outside. “We sit inside a shoggoth!”

  “Indeed we do,” the pale man said, stroking the silver object as he returned it to his neck, now glowing in time with the globs about them. “The primal hunger made flesh. The darkness that has no beginning or end.”

  Jesk looked around unnerved and realized the web-fingered man was nowhere to be seen.

  “Shoggoths,” the shorter Rug spat. “Stories! Just like the things that made them.”

  “Stories to some,” the pale man said. “History to others.”

  “Only we haven’t heard the whole story, have we?” Jesk questioned. “How did this ship come to be here?”

  “The war raged for millennia,” the pale man explained. “Neither side could win. Maddened by their failure, the servants of the Great Ones attempted to use the Elder Ones’ weapons against them.

  “But they miscalculated,” he said, gesturing toward the toothy, sliding sphere beyond the window. “Instead of making many shoggoths, only one was created. Its hunger was incredible. Uncontrollable. It ate everything in its path until it had consumed the world of its creation. Then its moons, its neighbors, its star.

  “And then it began to eat even more . . .”

  Yerg fell to his knees, holding his head in his four hands. “Then Cathuria . . .”

  “Cathuria is no more, Pilgrim,” the pale man said without any sympathy. “Crumbs at the creature’s table.”

  “But how could you know?” Jesk asked. “About what happened? What they did? And how this ship got here?”

  “Because he was there,” Ione revealed.

  The pale man looked at him, perhaps reproachfully, and pulled the cloak back so they could all see.

  Everyone knew what the Great Ones looked like, thanks to the many statues from before the First Dominion. They were thin-faced beings with long and pendulous earlobes, thin and narrow eyes of all black or white, and thin, jutting chins.

  Their employer’s immortal bloodline showed true: he looked exactly like the statues of Tamash: pale of skin and black of hair, narrow ebon eyes sparkling with dark mirth.

  “God Born,” Jesk gasped, watching Yerg prostrate himself in fear.

  “Yes,” Ione confirmed. “My silence was part of the agreement. We’d help him escape Nebar and get back to his ship, and—”

  “And I would give you treasure,” the God Born mocked.

  “Now wait,” Ione insisted. “We had a deal.”

  “If you want tr
easure, fool, then consider your lives recompense,” the pale man said, pointing back the way they’d come: “Leave. Now.”

  “Let’s not be calling anyone a fool,” the captain said, pulling his blasters out. “Especially when it’s six to one—”

  The captain didn’t even see what killed him. A silver globule burst like a seed pod, shooting a beam of green and white light straight through his heart.

  “Ten thousand years imprisoned on Nebar,” the God Born hissed as Ione fell dead, blasters clattering. “Locked away in shame for my failure to control the beast. Bound by the servants of my kind, and handed to their descendants and theirs in turn. Passed down through the ages, long after they had no idea why they guarded my chamber or what lay within!

  “And you dare oppose me, now that I have at last escaped to reclaim my birthright?” he shouted. “Now that I am free? I am the son of a god! You should pray to me!”

  The taller Rug grinned, hefting his axes. “We don’t pray—”

  “We fight!” the shorter agreed.

  The pair ran toward the God Born, screaming, but Jesk didn’t care to watch. Instead, she ran back to the Oeno, down the great staircase, across now-live decks and ramps, past clouds of gas that seemed as ready to kill her as those silver blobs, and down to the airlock.

  But it was closed with Hrsk collapsed in front of the door.

  As Jesk ran toward the Xard, she saw motion through the nearest porthole. Her ship was quickly backing away.

  At the bridge window of the Oeno was Harley, looking like he’d literally pulled himself together, and grinning as he marooned her—

  * * *

  “And that’s all I know. I swear before the Silver Hand,” the cyborg gasped, still reeling from the prefect’s last use of the truth stick. “I incapacitated the Xard and left them all there.”

  “Why did you leave?” the prefect demanded.

  “I thought it would be better to go and get backup, in my condition. I just had a knife to the head—”

  “I see no wound,” his interrogator said.

  “My memories,” Harley begged, putting a hand to his forehead. “They’re broken . . .”

  “Is it telling the truth?” someone asked, just behind the prefect.

  “In some parts, Lord,” the prefect said, snapping to attention. “But I have not been able to get a straight story. We have been over this ten times, and the particulars keep changing.”