by P P Corcoran
“Target Alpha.” Falb directed his unit against the Apparition’s revenants. One puppet came to a standstill, its armor porous from bullet holes, before it tumbled down in a cascade of crashing metal. The remaining puppets didn’t turn their heads, and Falb’s soldiers cowered under a series of supersonic booms as they returned fire.
“Forward!” Falb ran toward the puppets till he reached the next ventilation column, dropped on one knee and took a shot. The Apparitions had the servo-assisted armor and the sophisticated weapons, but they commanded only the remains of men, broken toys that lacked speed and reflexes.
Deuteros and Pemptos advanced behind Falb, and another puppet fell. The remaining puppets tried to turn, then Falb was right next to them. The salvo missed his arm by a hair’s breadth as he pulled his own trigger.
Armor plates and necrotic flesh tumbled under a barrage of close-distance hits collapsing like a stage prop. The rifles died down, and the sharp stench of smoldering tissue wafted from the hallway into the ring corridor.
Falb stopped to wait till the rest of his unit had passed the fallen puppets.
“Should we establish defensive positions, commander?” Asked Tritos.
“No. Follow me. We go farther.”
“This isn’t procedure.” Tritos kicked one of the destroyed puppets, checking for any reaction. “Our orders are only to hold the line, to buy time for the evacuation.”
“Since the very first encounter, every Phobosteus has been flawless and fully functioning. This one is damaged. It has weak spots.” The artificial gravity wasn’t uniform, it had tiny currents and whirls that tugged at Falb’s armor. It was hard to stand steady, harder still to ignore the opportunity that this implicated. “I told you we’re going to capture an Apparition, and we will.”
#
- ACT III -
The third act contained the first major transition in every Larvosis play. There was conflict, often between the characters of the companion and the creature, but never without ambiguity. Larvosis theater had left the realism of earlier forms far behind, venturing toward a refined symbolism, in which everything and every character represented something other than themselves.
The fish in the lake stopped moving and drifted in the water as the path curved into the forest again.
The unit marched through the perpendicular hallway into an immense room. This was it. Falb’s skin prickled in the freezing atmosphere. Tilted panels and heavy strutting lined the walls while huge metal blocks towered up from the floor. Surgical lightheads glided on ceiling rails between them, creating corridors of high-lux illumination and leaving keel waves of diluted shadows.
Parts of the floor lost themselves in gray shadows where lamp tubes had been destroyed by explosives. There were no other signs combat, no dried blood or ejected shells, but it was clear that this room had seen fighting in a previous battle.
Falb’s voice was but a whisper in the vastness of the room, the only sound except for the ventilation and the steps of his soldiers: “The thing’s been gutted already.”
Other entrances gaped on the far sides of the room, and Falb ordered his unit to fan out between the enormous blocks. They moved with him, they trusted him, and he would never throw away their lives without purpose.
“Shh.” Tritos seemed to listen to something that only he could hear, turning his round head. “Is that you? I waited for you, I took care of her, like you wanted. No ... it can’t be, no, no.”
His eyes squinted as he stared at the empty air, obviously manipulating his effigy. “Commander, I ... the nightmares show me my brother, and I ...”
Falb’s muscles tightened, and their involuntary activation began to heat up and stew him inside his armor. The pores and glands in his body took on a life of their own, and Falb drowned in his armor even as he tried to control them.
Sweat poured over his skin, soaking the thermal underlay. Tears and snot ran over his face, his eyes burned, and the saliva in his mouth accumulated so fast he had to constantly swallow.
The golden eyes of the fish flared their light piercing Falb’s head like the rays of a sun. He staggered under the tree canopy hands pressed to his temples. In the murky lake, the fish eyes dimmed again as they sank between the reeds.
The effigy appeared before Falb’s watery eyes, and he tried to close the floodgates. Hundreds of microscopic needles released chemicals into his organism, while the suit tried to sponge up his body fluids pumping them into small tanks. He tried to concentrate on a single point while the armor did its work, imagining his pincers pulling every last hair from him.
He reduced his body’s outcry to mere data streams, to visual input and sound waves, nothing more than warning lights and sirens without emotional attachment. He controlled the onslaught of his senses like he controlled his mind and flesh, mastering them like he had mastered his hair growth.
As the storm calmed in him, Falb saw Deuteros moving her hands over the etched-in names on her armor, and young Hektos trying to bend back his fingers from his face, where they had left bloody scratches. As his soldiers fought against the nightmares, metallic clangor rose up from the ship’s depths, like a dozen kitchen knives hacking down rhythmically.
Pain surged from Falb’s right arm up into him. His muscles were pulled out and furled, and Falb pinched the right biceps of the floating effigy to prompt the mechanisms in his real arm to block neural transmission, preventing any input from reaching his brain.
“Falb.” A voice hissed in his ear, its anger audible through static interference and the high tide of the nightmare effects: Timeon, Falb’s brother back on the cruiser.
“What are you doing, Falb?” A light head passed by over Falb blinding him for a second. “You are too far away from your shell. If you go any farther, we will lose you.”
“The Phobosteus is damaged. There’s a way inside.”
“This isn’t in our orders, and you know it.”
“We can’t keep following orders. Not while the Apparitions overrun system after system.”
Massive spider-machines stalked into the hall, their heavy armament swiveling toward Falb’s unit. They advanced between the towering massifs of metal, and where they put down their legs, air filters began to roar in the walls.
Falb called for his soldiers to take cover and used his effigy to force his own legs to move with artificial nerve impulses. Timeon kept talking to him the entire time, but Falb only paid attention once he reached the nearest column and its rotation vibrated through his bones. A bright light glided past on the ceiling, then the shadows flooded together again. His brothers voice returned to his ears.
“... where every part has to work, or the whole engine jams. The Amaranthine Fleet is under a lot of pressure, and we cannot relieve it, lest the Apparitions burst through and drown us all. You cannot win the war on your own, Falb, but you may be able to lose it.”
The armed spiders opened fire, releasing streams of super-heated projectiles in wide arcs across the hall.
“Keep your heads down!” The wave of nightmares ebbed down, and Falb released the effigy to regain natural control over his nerves and muscles. “Timeon, I can’t discuss this now. The oracles are broken. Our orders didn’t foresee a damaged ship. You need to trust me.”
The moon’s pallid reflection vanished as the forest closed around Falb.
Falb shot a blind volley toward the spiders and pulled back as a staccato of impacts thundered against the column.
“If we believe the Apparitions made a mistake, we believe what the Apparitions have fed us.” The detached voice of a gold-emblazoned oneiromancers trickled in Falb’s ear, one of the advisors of the Fleet. “We know one thing about them: They do not change their pattern without intent. Our orders are unambiguous, and so are the omens. We hold the line until evacuation is complete, and then we disengage. Everything else is certain doom.”
It was time to act, not talk. If Falb didn’t do something, his unit would be pinned down and die here, with more puppets t
rudging in from across the ship.
He took his gun and sprinted forward while Deuteros and Pemptos laid down covering fire. The guns of the robotic spiders blazed, their hail of bullets hammering down behind Falb, pulverizing the floor where his feet had been.
As Falb dodged the salvos, the rest of his unit joined the shooting, and the roaring of small explosions meant that Pemptos was launching grenades from her rifle. The impacts caught up to Falb, and he leaped forward toward another block, rolling over the ground in full armor. The collision knocked the breath out of him, but when he got back up, the spiders fell silent.
“Timeon. Are you still there? You’re telling me about probabilities, rules, fears. I know you are better than this. I hope you remember why we joined the Fleet: to do the important things. You’re my brother, Timeon: wait for me. I will return from the abyss.”
#
“Let’s go.” Falb called to the others as he changed his magazine and stepped over the scrap metal carcass of a spider robot. It reeked of rotten meat and decay, of mold and fungi proliferating within its hardened shell.
Tree trunks and undergrowth stretched in all directions, monochromatic in the pale moonlight. Falb had lost his brother, and now he couldn’t find him anymore. He called his name, but the leaves swallowed his voice and didn’t return an echo.
“Should we really go further?” Tritos reminded Falb more of an owl than ever, his eyes widened, and his hair glued together by sweat.
Falb stared at him and shuddered at this disgusting mess of hair. He turned to the rest of his soldiers stepping out of cover. Dark spots disfigured Pemptos’ arm, and red fluid leaked over her hand.
“You’re wounded.”
“A few pieces of shrapnel, commander.”
Falb gathered his unit and checked their status, but everyone else seemed fine. He had never lost a soldier under his command, and he wouldn’t start today. Pemptos was strong, nonetheless Falb could see her face losing color, paling like the eyes of young Hektos.
“Go back to the shell and seal it behind you. Wait for us. If the cruiser leaves and we’re not there, don’t stay behind. You understand?”
Pemptos nodded absent-mindedly, probably releasing painkillers through her effigy.
“Go.” Falb watched Pemptos shoulder her heavy rifle and hurry away. “No other injuries? Good. Follow me: time is not on our side.”
He started to march, and his soldiers trailed him through an entrance and into one of the petrified arteries of the Phobosteus.
The undergrowth closed around Falb and whispered with tongues of grass, feeling for his legs.
Falb started to speak, but stopped as a shock traveled through the corridor, shifting the floor under his feet. He wrestled for his balance as the metal shuddered under a series of tremors.
“What’s happening? Is the Phobosteus being hit?” Asked Tritos.
Falb shook his head: “The cruiser’s weaponry can’t penetrate the shielding. This is the Apparitions’ doing.”
Another quake, followed by mechanical noises in the walls: things twisting themselves, rotating in steady rhythms, snapping into place with a click.
Behind Falb’s soldiers, heavy gates closed like rows of teeth while new entrances opened elsewhere, as if the Apparition ship was a theater stage changing scenery between acts.
Falb would never find the way back, he could only go forward to find the tree of visions. The treetops trembled as birds landed on them, crows with inky plumage and snow globe eyes.
Rectangular blocks rose up from the floor, and Falb and his soldiers had to tread carefully toward the exit. When they were almost in reach of it, the corridor tilted like the board of a see-saw, suddenly connecting two different levels of the ship’s interior maze. They stumbled as the ground inclined beneath them.
“Marin,” croaked the birds, “Marin. Marin. Men like you are the victims of darkness.” They plucked out their jet-black feathers and whet their beaks on the tree’s bark. “Marin.”
“We should go back, commander.” Hektos pleaded. “Please.”
“Can’t.” Falb clambered down the corridor-turned-ramp. His skin was sticky with dried body fluids, and every movement rubbed against his armor. “Only one way left. Toward the final act.”
In a Larvosis play, the creature was the one that came at the companion in a series of random attacks while the darkness followed an intricate plan, a byzantine conspiracy to corrupt and erode the seer’s will.
This nightmare architecture was like both, evoking a sense of spontaneous improvisation while at the same time having been prepared long in advance.
Falb and his unit continued through the lower corridor: and all at once, as if they had crossed an invisible border, the lights went out.
#
- ACT IV -
The Phobosteus was a stage, and Falb was stepping into the next act.
Without the moon, the forest underwent a metamorphosis. Branches, vines, and roots coalesced to form a mass of clawing tentacles, a nest of snakes and writhing worms. The wind roared between the tree trunks and carried bright bells, a melody from the tree of visions.
“Lighting!”
Rifle-mounted spotlights flared, transforming the hallway into a maelstrom of restlessly swaying shadows. The geometric blackness shifted like the inside of a kaleidoscope.
“Commander? What’s the next act?” Hektos’ pale eyes had lost all color now resembling bleached-out pearls.
“Catabasis.” Deuteros stood next to Hektos and squinted over the rifle barrel while strafing her spotlight methodically along the corridor. “The descent into the underworld, the journey along the river. The seer’s fight against the darkness.”
Noises resounded in the distance, whirring and scraping.
Falb knew the world was spinning for his soldiers, and he had to become their fixpoint. “The Apparitions turned off the lights. So what? Are we children? We have our own lights.”
“Marin.” The birds in the treetops turned their heads with eyes like luminous marbles, their call as spiteful as if they were saying: “We warned you.” Their little bodies formed feathered silhouettes in a pandemonium of gray, and Falb could barely distinguish them from the shreds of sky.
They moved on with careful steps, Falb at the front, followed by Deuteros, Hektos, and the rest. Before them, a chamber opened, so vast that the brightness of the spotlights perished part-way. Rows of drawers lined the stainless walls, their screens flickering with numbers and data readouts, while high voltage cables as thick as Falb’s leg twisted over the floor.
“Stop.” Falb grouped everyone in a tight circle, guns and lights pointing outwards, heads and bodies as close together as possible. “Listen to my voice. Think of why you’re here. Think back to the plays you’ve watched, the roles you wanted to perform.”
Every Larvosis play had four main characters: the seer and the companion, the creature and the darkness. The companion had to overcome the creature, the seer the darkness. The basic constellation was simple, but the audience didn’t know the distribution of roles. The story-path turned into an intellectual challenge because underneath each of the many skins—played by a real actor or a robotic substitute—could be the companion, the creature, the darkness, or the seer.
There were countless people who wanted to be the companion and fight the creature, to be the trailblazer who made the seer’s metaphysical struggle possible. The conflict with the darkness on the other hand, the unknown, utterly alien, inhuman, amoral other ... this conflict only spoke to a select few, to extraordinary individuals like the ones that had led humanity into the outer dark.
“For long stretches of my life, I was satisfied with serving. A son to my parents, a soldier to the Fleet. But there have been times I wanted to achieve more. To take on the role of the seer.” Falb let his words sink in. He could only hope that Timeon wouldn’t disengage the cruiser and flee the system, that he would give Falb the time he needed.
This was uncharted territory, be
cause nobody had ever penetrated this far into a Phobosteus. Anything could wait for them here.
“Every one of these times, I succeeded. The seer needs the companion, and I need you. No turning back now, only success or failure. Aren’t you curious what an Apparition looks like? What it is?”
The drawers moaned, as if corpses turned inside their tombs. The numbers on the monitors changed, and some readout lines spiked. “Come on.”
It seemed to take hours to cross the chamber, but according to Falb’s suit, it was little more than a minute. The spotlights peeled an exit from the gloom, a corridor that branched out into three directions.
In the brightness of their lamps, every step felt detached, as if they were controlling themselves through their effigies, watching their bodies from outside. Tritos and Tetartos secured the left branch, Deuteros and Hektos the right one, while Falb walked straight, like divers exploring the wreckage of a long-lost submarine.
Tetartos gave his “All clear,” and Falb turned to the other side: “Deuteros? Do you–”
A door slammed down and cut Falb short. The corridor to the left turned into a wall, cutting of Falb, Deuteros, and Hektos from Tritos and Tetartos. Falb swiveled around to see another wall where the chamber had been, imprisoning them in a cul-de-sac.
“Tritos? Tetartos?” The radio inside the suit returned only white noise, like waves breaking over rocks. “Tritos! Tetartos!”
“It’s the darkness.” Hektos muttered to himself, and coldness radiated through Falb’s body. In the Larvosis theater, the perversion of expectations was a major theme, and it was always caused by the darkness.
“Remember the end.” The darkness deceived and manipulated throughout all the acts, but ultimately, the seer and the companion emerged triumphant. Larvosis theater was more than mass entertainment, more than a complex riddle: It was a common myth, a story about ambition and success, about the seer’s vision and the companion’s endurance. It had made humanity reach for the stars, build the first Flüstermeer ships and colonize worlds so distant they hadn’t even been dreams before.