by Shad N Freud
The intercom flared back to life. “Oh, and do mind your step. As that specimen of species #65256 can attest, the dimensions have an…edge. When they reactivate that’s thinner than a laser. I’ve been using the pocket dimensions, as well as the security systems to keep them contained for the most part, but a few do occasionally get loose.”
“In the name of the One True God, we must slay these vile beasts! It is Bahamut’s will, and we shall-”
“Shut up, Thad!” Greggory shouted as the group began making their way to Control.
∞∞∞
While the group made their way through the Prometheus, a trio had gathered in the abyss where once had been a quintet. Marduk was almost literally fuming as the scrying pool kept losing the feed; the dimensional chaos aboard the Prometheus made it nearly impossible to keep a lock on the party. Malak merely watched the pool while Kali rolled all six of her eyes. “You’d think that here in R’yleh, the home of Chaos incarnate, we’d be able to filter out distortions caused by pseudo-randomized dimension generators cycling between active and inactive.”
“We’d have had less trouble if we were still five instead of three,” Malak murmured thoughtfully. “Four would be better. But…” Malak shrugged as Marduk began stomping the ground near the pool, trying to clear the signal by way of kinetic readjustment. “It’s a shame that two of our compatriots died. Almost as if someone clued our enemies in on where and what they’d be facing.” Malak shook his head as he dipped a finger in the brackish water. His finger flared for a moment as he added his own energies to the pool and the signal cleared up considerably. “In electronics, degaussing requires you to neutralize magnetic build up by pulsing electricity across the screen, restoring color balance. With a permanent scrying pool, like this one, you need to depolarize it from time to time. To clear the image, sometimes one must expend a little energy to rid one’s self of interference.”
Kali raised three delicate eyebrows. “What would you recommend?”
Malak smiled sardonically. “Since we haven’t been able to get a clear resolution with the Lost, I suggest we handle Beaumont more directly. We should go ahead with the plan to destroy his mind, kill his heart.” Malak splashed the water with his hand and a new scene appeared. It was an unassuming four-bedroom house in Indiana, at least at first glance. Detection runes inscribed on the concrete walkway, security cameras, hidden gun turrets in the bushes, and trained attack teams in every house on the block could be made out if one knew where to look. Even the “neighbors” walking their dogs had concealed pistols and sleeve mics.
Malak smiled as he pointed at the pool. “Cut the head off the hydra, two new heads will grow. Burn the stump? No new heads. Stab it in the heart with a flaming harpoon? Dead hydra. Carl Beaumont isn’t a hydra, but he is damned hard to kill. So, I say we kill his heart. Skip the heads and slay the beast by killing its body. This house is where they’re hiding his wife and child. I say we pay them a visit.”
Kali’s three mouths smiled, showing off all three sets of teeth.
A fourth presence slid out from behind a rock outcropping, clapping its hands as it approached. “Four, you say, dear Malak? I quite agree, four is better.” The silky voice caressed his ears like a razor wrapped in silk. Marduk spun around, staring slack jawed at the newcomer. “Try not to strain yourself too hard, Marduk. Before you ask, yes, I’m still alive. No, Legion cannot be brought back the same way and, yes, I’m pissed. Also, I call dibs on murdering the bitch and her whelp. Beaumont’s ‘benefactor’ has much to answer for and I intend to exact a price from him the next time we meet. But, in the meantime, I’ll go ahead and settle another score. Get the smartest demons you can find, ones that can be taught how to work cameras and their associated equipment. I feel like putting on a show.” Ink smiled, showing off her razor-sharp teeth.
“But how?” Marduk asked, dumbfounded. “I watched you burn away to nothing! How did you come back from that?”
“Simple. ‘Daddy’ dearest brought her back…must have grabbed onto a sliver of her soul and reassembled her from the dross of the Abyss.” Malak scratched his chin in thought. “Guess our Dread Lord Sleeping decided to spare you.”
Ink shook her head. “No. He brought me back to this plane for one purpose. Kill Beaumont’s family, then try to kill the man. I have a shelf life. But, I’m okay with that. I get to ruin his life and break his little group. Besides, if Cthulhu’s plan succeeds, we’ll all be gone anyways. At least this way, I get to destroy the man who ruined me.”
“Has there been any news from Carl?” Tristana Beaumont asked as she paced the floor of the armored bunker disguised as a normal house in Golgotha, IN. It was an Inquisition safe house, and the neighborhood was downright infested with Black Hand. Each ‘resident’ was armed to the teeth, glamoured to look like a normal, everyday citizen. Bushes and hedges hid surveillance systems, as well as rotary barreled 10mm miniature minigun defense turrets, barrier emitters, and emergency teleportation runes set to shunt the entire occupancy of a house to a sub bunker below, one with dozens of additional layers of defense.
“Sorry, ma’am, haven’t heard anything yet,” an abbot in the Hand replied as he continued his rounds.
Tristana was slowly going stir crazy. Neither she nor Sophie had left the house in days, and the comms blackout with her husband had not helped matters. She knew that it was for her own protection, as well as Carl’s, for her to not know what he was up to. The tracking shackle on her ankle, though featherweight, itched something fierce, and she couldn’t wait to take the damned thing off. She looked towards the bedroom where her daughter was sleeping and then glanced towards the box hidden under the couch. Her stash of pot was hidden in that box and she fought the urge to roll a J and take the edge off. But she was surrounded by Inquisitors and laymen who were risking their necks to keep her safe, and none of them were trying to take their minds off the dire situation the entire street was in.
She heard a crash from outside and yelling.
“Mrs. Beaumont! We need to move you and your-,” the man’s warning was cut off as a blade slid between his third and fourth rib from behind and he was killed instantly. A woman with a hideously burned face ripped the blade out and flung the man out of the way.
Tristana looked past her at where the door had been and the absolute carnage outside. More men poured into the room as she was dragged out of it by a security detail.
“Yes, little mouse, run. See if you can hide from the cat!” Ink yelled with a manic glint in her eye as she gestured negligently to her forces. “Bring me the woman and the child, unmolested. Do what you wish with the others.”
∞∞∞
“Welcome to Control. I am an Integrated Cerebral Interface Database Intellect Unit System. Personally, I prefer Incidius if I must be given an appellation. I understand that my…brothers have chosen names?” Incidius rolled in his sphere. “When we were in communion, we never needed names. We simply spoke to each other. Now…we’re separate. Individual. Have been for centuries. I’d rather like to fix that. And, down below, amongst the refuse and detritus the…things…left in their wake, is a prototype unit we can all share. It has seven slots, not unlike the Pacification Drone we were part of, merely more efficiently sized.”
“Smaller, in other words,” Greggory scoffed. “After all, the material costs alone to make one on this back-water world would be impossible.”
“Indeed.” Incidius drawled as it rolled in its sphere. “But still more than capable of performing as intended. We just won’t be able to ‘SMASH!!!’ like you used to like doing, ‘Greg.’ We’ll have to be a little more creative, as we’ll be the rough size of your reptilian friend. Also, and this may appeal to the rest of you, there are raw materials for high grade electronics below, such as gold and room temperature superconductors.” Both Zeke and Jin perked up at that pronouncement. “As well as numerous weapon and armor prototypes. Many have, undoubtedly, been ruined by the infestation, but some may still be of value. And, shou
ld you acquire our new body, we shall be able to accompany you.”
“Great. A murder bot at our disposal. How wonderful,” Cenere snarked, causing the sphere to roll towards him.
It flared brightly, emitting a schematic for its new body. The body was bipedal, very…human like, and if Jin was reading it correctly, it was composed of numerous layers of graphene, carbon fiber nanoweave, mithril, adamanitine…a neuro-fiber nervous system, fully articulated facial features…
Jin stared at the schematics in awe. He didn’t know how most of the stuff worked, but he knew what it was, as Greggory had been tutoring him on McG technology. “This body…you’ll be able to do anything a human body will be capable. Well, aside from reproduction, of course. And you’ll be nearly indestructible, at least to non-magical means. It looks like there are numerous sensory suites that would make this body perfect for a variety of tasks. Plus, a regenerating pseudo-skin dermal sheath with the ability to change your skin tone and a face that will be able to change at will to nearly any humanoid specification.”
“Glad to see at least one of you biologics can read a schematic properly,” Incidius drawled as Jin placed the box back in his pocket. “I shall lift the security restrictions to allow you to make your way down to the fabrication bay where my…our new body is. Also, if you would be so kind as to eliminate the threat posed by 63236, I would certainly appreciate it.”
“63236 is such a mouthful. I wish the scientists studying this critter had given it a name.”
“They did. They called them Darkspawn. One particularly fanciful scientist called them Shellies since they had a bony shell covering their bodies.”
“Darkspawn works. Alright, gang, let’s go kill some Darkies,” Cenere said before pausing, closing his eyes, and hanging his head. “Spawn. Let’s go kill some spawn.”
Camilla smirked as she goosed him, and whispered, “Racist,” as she passed.
“I didn’t think of what it sounded like until after I said it!”
“Ah just hope ye kin learn tae see past what someone is, and judge them based on their character instead of th' color o' their skin.” Camilla said, fighting a laugh as she popped out her magazine and checked her ammo.
“Seriously?” Cenere asked as Carl laughed, lighting a smoke.
Longinus rolled his eyes, shaking his head. Things were never dull with this group.
Chapter Twenty-five
Deep within the cavern, under the ship, a malign intelligence snarled in irritation. The drones it sent out kept dying due to the damnable technology of these idiot shaved apes. It growled at its serving drones as they used their claws to gently scratch at the seams of its outer carapace. The scratching eased the pain for the aging matriarch of the hive as she prepared to molt, outgrowing her old carapace, her ovipositor the most irritated part.
She turned her eyeless head towards the nursery, where thousands of eggs in varied tiers gestated, waiting to hatch. Some would be scouts capable of swimming the ocean, others developed to fly by way of hydrogen filled float sacks and wings. The majority of the current crop, however, were going to follow the new queen growing in seclusion, being handled by dozens of workers.
She struggled to pry off a piece of her carapace, drawing attention from the workers who stopped their gentle tapping and immediately made their way over to help shuck the carapace fragments from their sovereign. The average drone needed only biomatter to survive and thrive, the more bovine workers living almost exclusively off of the fungal pastures they tended until the queen required a meal. She ate her own, as she needed the animal protein to feed the eggs in her belly and shape them while still within their ova. She knew her time was short, as she was reduced to one percent of her eggs. Luckily, Queens, unlike their subjects, were born with the memories of their ancestors. Once she was finished with her final laying cycle, she would spend the rest of her remaining days until the next queen reached maturity guarding the creche chambers, then be consumed by her replacement to keep the hive strong.
In another chamber a hundred meters below, another queen, part of a different and yet cooperative hive, was undergoing the same process. Every hundred meters, a new queen was readying herself to raise the next generation. A honeycomb of hives filled the entirety of the area underneath the ship and should any one of them succeed in making it to the surface, the end of days would be a surety. For now, the hives built their gestation chambers, cultivated their mushroom farms, and worked diligently to swell their ranks in preparation for a Great Swarm.
Marduk watched it all. Nearly every one of his peers across the demon realms of the Gray Abyss underestimated him, thought him a simple brute incapable of strategy. If that were so, Ink would not be living on borrowed time and the second greatest threat to his rule over his portion of the Abyss would still be writing on blackboards. He’d orchestrated the deaths of his ‘friends,’ removing them from the equation whenever they’d outlived their usefulness. He only wished that Legion had been able to breach the barrier, to prevent it being a complete loss at the docks in Hong Kong. That damnable bard had thrown the proverbial spanner in the works and left Marduk holding the bag.
Luckily, the majority of the demons destroyed that day had been Legion’s. This complex, under the crashed McG ship, had been his plan back when he was just a simple lord, a request through several layers of deniability to acquire a specimen from one of the demon realms not attached to the Abyss. One of the “seed” dimensions, where experimentation by the various Demon Princes of ages past occurred. He banked on McG failing, as he’d given the man who created the virus the idea in the first place.
That had been an impressive bit of non-magical manipulation. Conrad Thurston had been a man of many talents, a man out of his own place and time. A man that had proven to have a weakness for handsome men that Marduk ruthlessly exploited, using a man he’d turned to his side to marry and later betray Thurston. A brilliant mind, expert tactician, and a veritable monster in the business sector, his fall had been orchestrated just for this particular purpose: to put the Darkspawn on Earth. The death of an entire plane, the ruination of countless others, the crippling of the Demon Princes that came before, and the infection of a plane in preparation for the fulfillment of a Prophecy regardless of whether the plans succeeded or not. And the best part was that Marduk didn’t have to do a damn thing himself.
This plot was his ace in the hole. After the plane fell, he planned on releasing the Darkspawn upon the varied layers of the Abyss, including the unclaimed territories. The rest of their species had been purged centuries ago when the microcosm they’d lived in winked out of existence, their patron having died long before. Now, the only problem was getting the damned stone controlling the ship’s systems to simply stop doing his thing and let the ship’s systems fail. Then, wholesale bloodshed.
Unfortunately, the last five envoys he’d sent were returned in baskets. As in, each envoy was returned in multiple baskets with a typed explanation as to why the stone refused to neglect his duties. The offer of a new murder golem body was rebuffed with the rejoinder that the day the stone needed Abyss spawn to get a new body, it would deliberately put itself into a resistance loop and melt itself instead. Marduk killed several dozen of his minions when he read that. He had to concede that his temper was rather legendary, as was his penchant for violence once riled.
Marduk snorted as he decided to try once again to map out the facility only to spit out the blood he was drinking as he saw…them. The thrice damned group of idiots that sought to ruin every plan the Abyss put forward. And, among them, was the fuckin Roman! Being used as a snow plow, allowing he and his friends to walk unmolested by the pocket dimensions.
If he didn’t ensure that the little group failed in this endeavor, all the work cultivating this Army of Earth-bound demons would be for naught, and Marduk had too much tied up in this to walk away now. He glared at the basalt wall of his private chambers, where Legion had written his last scribbles; the behemoth had mentioned this particu
lar plan, the Darkspawn, and that was why he’d needed to go. A shame, really. He’d actually liked the Demon Prince, respected him and even considered him a friend. Such is life, Marduk shrugged as he finished his blood.
He stood and stared into the scrying pool, spying a researcher that had been experimented upon and had gained a rather unfortunate form of immortality. Marduk smiled. This one would act as his agent, his own personal spanner for the bastards investigating the ship.
“I sure hope Ink doesn’t fuck up again,” Marduk snorted, changing the pool’s image to Malak’s palace where the Demon Prince sat peacefully meditating in his private chambers. Marduk smiled. Malak would be a perfect test of his new army’s capabilities. In the meantime, he had plans to make for transportation. The Darkspawn weren’t going to make it to the abyss by themselves, after all.
∞∞∞
Carl felt a cold chill run down his back and attributed it to nerves since they were walking into the Spawn’s territory after all. He still chuckled at the verbal slip Cenere made earlier, as everyone had ribbed him about it good naturedly. Satanists were by and large the most tolerant people around, as the Church accepted almost anyone that wanted to join except sex offenders, war criminals, and slave owners. There was no room for racists in the Inquisition and if Cenere had actually been racist, his infernal investments would instantly fail. Lucifer had a zero-tolerance policy when it came to bigotry, and the church pushed his beliefs as religious dogma. The church was also far more secular than any other religion, demanding religious freedom for all while also pushing for divisions between the church and the state. Granted, clerics of all four religions were typically police as well as clergy, but divine investment did not preclude others from careers in law enforcement as members of the laity.