“You have to go… you have to go now…” Deep breaths racked the former sailor’s frame. “My mind is… scattered… I don’t control them… the way I once did…” There were clicking sounds and suddenly Adolphus could see the robots that Roe had spoken of, machines with tools and weapons melded with their structure, each with at least a small bit of tube and wire feeding the fragment of a brain. “They protected me… from all others… don’t know any better… I tried to hold them back… RUN…”
The last word was shouted with double intensity, and then the machines rushed forward in a wave of steel and gears and wires, some no bigger than mice and others the size of grown men.
“Fall back!” Grey shouted, but the others were already retreating. There were far too many robots to fight and it was doubtful anything short of powerful explosives would be able to kill them. Soon the team was running, as fast as they could manage, shots cracked out from some of the machines- how did they aim? The question occurred to Adolphus and he almost turned back to look- but there was the door and there was Heinrich on the other side, ready to shut it, the Medic might not know what was chasing them but he certainly knew by now that something was chasing them- and Adolphus didn’t dare stop now. Then he was through into the mess hall and the slav was firing wildly behind them to slow the things down, he would have closed the door himself but Heinrich was the one holding it and he waited until everyone was through to slam it shut.
Silence.
No banging on the door, no attempts to force it open. The ship’s interior wasn’t fixed in space, who knew where that door led to now? Then the Technician heard a sound from behind, a scraping noise, and turned just in time to see one of the ever malicious ghosts pulling away the chair they had left to keep the path to the bridge open. That door swung closed with a sound like thunder.
They no longer had a way back.
Th Generator Room
Sergei felt his heart pounding inside his chest. The door was closed. The door was closed. Any moment now the robots would burst through from the machine shop and there was nowhere for the team to run. Oh god, what if they cut him apart and turned him into something like that flesh and metal monstrosity inside? He found a grenade and prepared to throw it, it ought to be enough to at least damage the machines. Bullets had only bounced off the sides when he’d tried shooting as they retreated- perhaps if he could hit the scraps of brain?
“Ivanovich.” The Team Leader said sharply. “Put that away.”
“But the machines…” There was no sound coming from the door, maybe they didn’t want to chase them too far from the mutilated man/thing?
“The inside of the ship is unstable, when we closed the door it probably broke the connection between here and were Roe is.” Grey patiently explained. “It’s the same reason why we needed to keep the door to the bridge open.” His voice took on an annoyed weary tone as he said that last sentence.
Ah, that made sense. He hadn't quite understood the importance of keeping the other door open, just that it was important. The Russian tucked the grenade away, feeling faintly foolish. “Then where do we go now, tovarich commander? The door is closed.”
“We need to get to the Rainbow device shut off.” Hirasawa cut in, his face grim as death. “You heard what that... sailor said. Something very dangerous is trying to get into our universe, another god maybe, but this sounds like it could be worse. We have a responsibility to the human race, a responsibility that is paramount to any personal desire of ours to escape, we need to find the device and destroy it.”
“I disagree.” The female commando was not shy about letting her voice be heard. “We’re equipped for a quick recon of the ship, a mission of maybe a few hours. It could take days if not weeks to find the Rainbow device, what with reliable mapping of the interior impossible. And who knows whether or not we have the firepower to handle everything we find? I say we go back up and make our report, then the Agency can send in a dozen new teams to scour the ship and locate the device. Time is hardly a sensitive issue here- at least not in terms of the few hours it would take assemble such a mission.”
To Sergei’s surprise Grey didn’t reprimand both of the others for speaking out turn- he was the commanding officer, they had no right to question his actions. But then again American bourgeois didn’t have the same notion of discipline as did the proletariat officers he was used to, perhaps because they worked without the full support of the people.
For a long time the Team Leader stayed silent considering their options, everyone waiting to hear what his orders would be. At last he spoke; “We don’t have any definite route through the ship, if we find a way out first then we leave and make our report. On the other if we can locate the Rainbow device before we find a path to egress, then the first priority is to destroy it. Got that?”
There were murmurs of assent.
“Right then. Sergei Ivanovich? You take point. We’ll go back through this door and see what’s on the other side.” He indicted the door they had just come from. “At least we know it doesn’t lead to the machine shop.”
“Yes, tovarich commander.” Privately the Russian was still having trouble conceptualizing the idea of doors leading to different places between the first time you opened them and the next. But if there was one thing he knew how to do no matter the circumstances, it was follow orders. He took a deep breath and seized the doorknob, ready to fling it shut if it turned out the robots were waiting there after all. He pulled it open.
The room on the other side was a place of shadows dimly lit by a weird blue light that radiated out of an unseen source.
Carefully Sergei edged inside, the rest of the team following behind him. The German fascist was the last one out and he closed the door once they were all through after receiving a nod of permission from Grey. No point in keeping it open if there was no longer anything in the mess hall worth going back for.
He pressed on, keeping a wary eye out. The room was gigantic, by the light of their flashlights and the dim glow that suffused everything the Russian could see catwalks crawling over the walls and ceiling amid banks of pipes that put one in the mind of dense jungle vines in some darkened forest of the Middle African Containment Zone. Ahead of him and towards the center of the room was a large shape like half of a long cylinder laid on its side. Large cables snaked from it to connect with the mess on the walls. There was no movement apparent anywhere but there was still that unnerving glow coming from somewhere on the other side of the shape. Perhaps by fortuitous chance they had stumbled onto the Rainbow device already?
“This was the generator room.” The Technician said softly, but loud enough for everyone to hear. “These old ships used the rotation of the engines to generate electricity, it’s still a common design today. Very efficient.” Trust a man like that to know about every machine no matter how obscure.
The Japanese reactionary took his right flank as Sergie made his way around the dead generator, keeping the cold steel on his left. He gradually became aware of a sound, difficult to place, similar to an engine being revved repeatedly and regularly, or the propeller of a plane being started and stopped. They rounded the corner and came upon the source of the noise and light.
The first generator next to him was long dead, cold and silent no doubt since the Colorado’s engines had last stopped turning. But there was a second generator across from it and that one was anything but quiet. It was… mutated was the only word that fit. Extraneous dials and gauges sprouted like a myriad of shining eyes from oddly organic projections that… “grew” from the bulk of the machine. A third turbine projected from the top of the generator, spinning fast then slow, fast then slow, fast then slow, creating an effect that was not entirely unlike the regular breathing of a twisted behemoth. The whole… machine… monster… thing hummed with power and glowed a sickly blue light of a shade similar to that he had once seen given
off by rods of spent Samsonium. What might have started out as electrical lines twitched and writhed in the manner of tentacles extruding from the generator.
Sergei had only a single heartbeat to take in the scene in front of him before the thing used whatever arcane senses it possessed to realize that it was being watched. Tentacles that had been moving about aimlessly before stiffened and darted for him and the other man with terrifying speed. He gave a wordless shout to warn Hirasawa to get back, but before he himself could get out of the way one of the cables had slashed open his forearm, penetrating the Hazardous Environment Suit as easily as through paper and ripping open the skin. Adrenaline let the Russian ignore the pain and he fired as he ducked back behind the dead generator, but it was more out of reflex than anything else. This thing was definitely preternatural and could probably shrug off bullets like raindrops.
“What’s happening?” Grey demanded and started to run over, his pistol out and ready to fire. “More crew?”
It would take much too long to try and explain and Sergei could already see tentacles inching over the bulk of the first generator, feeling for where they were. If it couldn’t see through solid objects then perhaps they had a chance of escaping. He ran backwards, hoping that everyone else would take the cue that there was something too big to fight, and follow.
“Looks like a daemonically possessed generator.” The Japanese reactionary actually slowed down to take the time to answer the Team Leader’s questions. “Very big, very dangerous.”
The Russian slowed down as well, shamed by the fact that the other man wasn’t running, and fired a second burst at the questing cords and lines. He was still closer to the danger than anyone else was and didn’t like it one bit. “We should withdraw, tovarich!” The gunfire was clearly having no effect. Hirasawa sent a brightly lit luminescent stream of plasma in the direction of the tentacles and actually seemed to hurt one of them, it slumped over the first generator, struggling to move, but there were still at least twenty more and additional ones appeared every second.
Grey wasted several additional seconds digesting the situation and needlessly loosing a few rounds himself, before calling to team; “Fall back!” and then starting to pull back towards the door on his own. Sergei didn’t need to be told twice, there was blood running down his arm onto his side and he preferred fights that actually included a chance of victory.
Why couldn't the PCRA have sent him against human enemies? He'd fought the Deathless Army and the followers of Resurrected Tamerlane, those were familiar foes, not the monstrosities that infested this infernal ship.
“We don’t know what else is on the other side of this door!” The Medic protested. He had his own pistol out- even if the PCRA were to observe the Geneva Convention (which it didn’t do most of the time) then its enemies certainly made no distinctions between soldiers and non-combatants.
“Just open it, damn you!” The Team Leader roared, and for once the Russian agreed with him. The tentacles were getting closer, and pretty soon they’d be tearing the group apart. Did generators animated and warped by the presence of creatures from beyond the universe eat what they caught, or just kill for fun? Perhaps the Swede would be curious enough to stay behind and find out, but that didn’t really appeal to Sergei. With trepidation the German fascist threw open the door and the rest of the team practically tripped over each other in their haste to get through to the other side. The Russian was the last one into the darkness beyond and he slammed the opening closed as quickly as possible.
“Are you injured?” The Medic’s sharp eyes picked up on his bloody arm. “Let me see.”
The combat specialist hesitated before holding the limb out to be examined. In addition to dispensing battlefield medicine, it was one of the primary duties of the PCRA medical corps- who were not allowed to take the Hippocratic Oath- to perform triage if personnel became infected with certain incurable parasites or organisms.
“I don’t see any signs of preternatural or mundane infection.” Heinrich announced after a thorough investigation. “But I’ll sew the gash shut and tape it over. If you start feeling any strange symptoms- any fever, any strange thoughts or difficult to control urges- then tell me. I can treat most things you’d likely come down with, including some forms of possession, just as long as I can diagnose them early. Understood?”
“Da.” Sergei sent a silent prayer to god that it was nothing but an ordinary injury. Better to lose a limb than face… well it was true that you could treat some preternatural diseases with the miracles of modern medicine. But others could kill you in the worst possible fashion- and then bring you back with no thoughts save insanity and to feast on the flesh of the living. Those could only be addressed by what the Germans called “curing with a single pill”- a bullet to the head.
He shut his eyes and ignored the regular stabbing pain as the other man stitched up his arm.
Chapter 10
Chapter 10
The situation was far from ideal and it was hardly getting any better. Grey studied the wall plating where the light of his flashlight fell with disappointment. He could find no portholes which meant that they were still too deep inside of the ship to attempt blowing their way out with explosives. At least the only casualty so far was a hopefully minor gash on the Combat Specialist, but the longer they stayed here the less likely it was that their luck would hold. Fortunately this spot they’d stumbled onto didn’t seem to have any present threats, it was a long corridor covered in dust with the occasional bit of detritus left from violence and insanity long past.
“Sir.” Arra called out and the Team Leader’s head jerked around. She was playing her flashlight beam over an empty doorframe, the metal around the fame was badly scratched and dented, and occasionally streaked with blood. “It looks like the door was forcibly torn off its hinges from the outside.”
“Leave it alone, we don’t know what’s in there.” Grey looked back over his shoulder; the Medic was wrapping up treating Sergei Ivanovich, the Russian bore up with remarkable stoicism. “As soon as they’re done we head back through the door and keep looking for the Rainbow Device or the Bridge.”
“The door’s been taken down, that means I can go inside without being cut off from the corridor. For all we know there’s door to the outside through here- it could be why they were so anxious to get through.” The commando protested. “Opening and closing doors at random is more likely to get us killed by hostiles before we find anything if we don’t even do basic reconnaissance. We could walk right past what we're looking for.”
The American ground his teeth. He didn’t like her attitude, but right now they had more important things to worry about, and to be honest she had a point. “Alright, but we go in as a group. I won’t risk anyone being separated.”
“Yes sir.” As Arra kept an eye on the smashed door Grey went to round up the rest of the team.
Hirasawa led the way into the darkness, Sergei Ivanovich insisted on going second despite his injury. So far no signs that it had been anything other than an ordinary wound, but everyone was keeping an eye on him. After just a few steps however, the Japanese specialist stopped.
“What is it?” The Russian asked anxiously.
“The door is just inside.” Hirasawa shone his light onto the ground somewhere in front of him. “It’s faint but it looks like someone painted a Seal of Solomon on the outside.”
“I’d be expecting a cross.” Grey mused. The Seal of Solomon was one of the best known runes for barring the path of energy-based preternatural creatures such as daemons or ghosts. The PCRA used it as a standard part of its containment procedures. What was surprising however, was that a sailor from the United States in nineteen forty would think to use it rather than a cross. Crosses, like most religious icons, were ineffective against the preternatural (although the older the faith, the more likely that symbols with significance to it would posses thaumaturgic
properties). “Nothing alive in there I trust?”
“No sir.”
Past the battered doorframe was a small kitchen that had clearly been witness to a scene of terrible destruction, the fixtures were all smashed into scrap and the jumbled skeletons of over a dozen sailors lay intertwined upon a veritable carpet of shell casings. Many of the bones showed tell-tale signs of monsterism and scorch marks indicated what might have been the blast radius of a Molotov cocktail. Clearly the place had been hard fought after the door went. A second door of thick wood was on the right hand side, scorched, damaged, and broken, it was set at a slant that showed it was probably no longer in its hinges. Powder burns blackened the edges of the space between the door and its frame and an additional Seal of Solomon was scratched into the surface.
Abyssus Abyssum Invocat Page 4