As Peyton and Abrams half-turned in their chairs, Draver’s eyes burst with silver and green strands of living ribbon, just as the space monstrosity had done just moments ago. The small tentacles writhed from Draver’s eye sockets, six and nine inches long, groping the air as the captain’s body sat upright on the floor of the navigation platform. Draver spoke in wet, garbled sounds: “Feeeeeed. Energeeeee. Feeeeeed Nakteleth….”
Having spoken the alien syllables, Draver’s mouth fell open and a bluish hunk of swollen flesh that had once been his tongue pushed out of the orifice, streaming slime as it extended and then simply fell away, followed by more of the green and silver tentacles. The thing that had been Captain Draver turned its head toward one of the control panels. The face-tentacles snapped out like a hundred frog-tongues after flies, embedding themselves in the panel as it sparked and flickered.
A low hum filled the cockpit. All of the lights on the navigation panel dimmed.
“No!” Abrams rushed the Draver-thing. With a grimace of loathing, he grabbed a handful of the offensive tendrils and yanked them free of the control panel. Shocks of energy shuddered through Abrams.
The Draver-thing attempted to fight back, but its flesh was too soft. Abrams kicked a deep cavity into its chest, then yelled and forced it to the floor. The egg-shell bone of its skull cracked. Abrams planted his foot firmly on top of the mush that was Draver’s head and crushed it. A foul odor filled the cockpit as Abrams fell back against his chair. He retched and looked at the residue on his hands. Blackened streaks were scalded into his palms where he’d ripped the tentacles from the control panel.
Peyton gathered his wits about him, reaching forward to turn the ship around. He refused to look up again at the abomination in space—the spidery, squid, jellyfish thing that certainly belonged elsewhere, in some uncharted region of old Earth’s seas, a Cnidarian horror from the deep. He wouldn’t look up. He wouldn’t look at it again.
He consulted carefully with the instruments, reluctant to leave this sector completely but the planet samples were long gone, and so was their fortune. All that was left now was to survive, to see Kalley and Randi again. Draver’s impromptu trip out to feed this thing had expended more fuel than they’d planned for. There was still six months’ space travel between here and home. They had no choice but to turn back now, and surely couldn’t last in any sort of chase with a foe like this, so clearly a creature that thrived in space like a hydrozoa thrives in the ocean.
And apparently feeds on energy. Never mind that we’re the nearest source of what it needs … and that, since it just awakened, it must be hungry.
Peyton looked up at it now like a matador regarding a bull. He had to run calculations on how quickly he could get past it, if he had any room to outmaneuver it. The computers judged its size at twelve-hundred-forty kilometers from top to bottom. Flying over it seemed the best bet. They’d just have to hope that one of those energy-seeking proboscises didn’t wend its way up and touch the Tycho Brahe.
Abrams pointed at the lower right of the viewfinder screen. “Peyton, look!”
The first mate couldn’t be sure what it was at first. Nevertheless, dread leaked like a slow trickle of poison into his heart. Everything in him went cold when realization struck.
It was the decimated carcass of the Mark Twain—the ship that had been missing for seven years.
“My God,” Peyton breathed.
“Do you think there’s anyone left?”
“I don’t see how.”
Abrams reached for the headset, extended the keyboard from the com panel, and typed in his password. Abrams had the computer figure a trajectory to send his message when it occurred to Peyton that might be a mistake. If that thing sensed energy, sending a signal to something it ate for a snack a few years back might not be a good idea.
“Jeff, no–” Peyton reached over to grab his arm, but it was too late.
“AAMC Tycho Brahe hailing the Mark Twain. Please respond.”
Peyton froze. Abrams put the response on speaker. Nothing. Dead silence.
The giant creature turned, as if jabbed by a needle. The gray mass grew larger in the viewfinder. Dark shapes of its ballooning head lobes made waves across an epidermis one thousand times the width of the Tycho Brahe. They were dwarfed beneath it. As dangling green and silver tentacles curled toward them, a haze formed, flashing with aurorean lights, making it seem as if they were sailing headlong into a night of stormy seas on an alien world.
The viewfinder flickered. Peyton was ready to discharge the maneuvering engines and plow through the energy field the thing dragged beneath it. Abrams was on the headset.
“AAMC Tycho Brahe hailing Altairus ISS. Repeat, this is Tycho Brahe calling Altairus. Folks we are in danger and have to abandon the mission. We are in the segretarian quadrant, just outside AAMC claims 689–”
Peyton saw the neon stir around them as Abrams tried to deliver his emergency message. If the creature sensed or fed on energy, then he’d just sent a message that served as a path—straight back to Starcity Altair.
“Stop!” Peyton jerked the headset off of Abrams. “You’re giving this thing a path right back home!”
Abrams shuddered involuntarily. “Jesus Christ, I don’t want to die!”
“Shut up and help me pull us around. I want to try and shoot past it.”
Peyton worked fast. Abrams managed to collect himself and input navigation coordinates. As soon as they were set, Peyton said, “ready” and Abrams said, “we’re off!”
The maneuvering jets ignited and pushed them through the electric jungle, but the energy field between the creature’s tentacles formed a palpable barrier through which they crept as if through ectoplasm. It slowed them to a crawl.
Abrams said, “We can’t move through this substance with these engines. We’re going to have to engage the FTL drives.”
“I’ve fixed a course back to Altair, but the resistance of this murk could knock us off course. If we’re even a hundred-thousandth of a degree off in trajectory….”
They looked at each other gravely. It was an unspoken understanding that they would die otherwise. It was the only chance they had to survive.
“The coordinates are set,” Abrams said.
Peyton nodded. He looked out the viewfinder as the miasma of gasses and electric currents swirled. Peyton felt the urge to pray, but it seemed too late to pretend that God owed him any favors.
“Ready,” Abrams said.
Peyton fired the FTL drives. The mining vessel Tycho Brahe shuddered in the comic whirlpool. Ribbons of light whirled between groping tentacles that reached for the Brahe. A flash of darkness left in the vessel’s wake scarred the creature’s underside, but was insignificant as a shooting star in an ocean of night compared to the immensity of the colossus.
Its hunger piqued, the cosmic feaster of energy followed the path of the Brahe’s last transmission to Starcity Altair and the great blue planet beyond.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
CHRISTOPHER FULBRIGHT is a former journalist turned technical writer with fiction published by DarkFuse, Delirium Books, PS Publishing, Dark Regions Press, and many others. He still writes articles and conducts interviews from time-to-time; his non-fiction has appeared in Texas Highways and Cemetery Dance magazine. His latest novella The Midnight Order is now available, and a horror novel written in collaboration with Angeline Hawkes, Night Wraith, is slated to appear in the next few months. More info is available at his website: www.cristopherfulbright.com.
AARON J. FRENCH is a book editor for JournalStone Publishing and the Editor-in-Chief for Dark Discoveries magazine. He has edited several anthologies, including Songs of the Satyrs, Monk Punk & Shadow of the Unknown Omnibus, and The Gods of H.P. Lovecraft. His fiction appears in The Chapman Books, a supernatural thriller collection from Uncanny Books featuring Aaron’s novella “The Stain.” His single-author collection, Aberrations of Reality, was published by Crowded Quarantine Publications and it is the first boo
k to collect Aaron’s fiction focusing on the occult, metaphysics, and the weird. “The Order,” an occult thriller novella about a Lovecraftian secret society, was published in the Dreaming in Darkness collection, and Aaron’s hard-boiled Lovecraftian novella, “The Dream Beings,” was published in Jan 2016 from Samhain Publishing.
Indiana writer JAMES DORR’s The Tears of Isis was a 2014 Bram Stoker Award® nominee for Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection. Other books include Strange Mistresses: Tales of Wonder and Romance, Darker Loves: Tales of Mystery and Regret, and his all-poetry Vamps (A Retrospective). Also be on the watch for Tombs: A Chronicle of Latter-day Times of Earth, a novel-in-stories due for release from Elder Signs Press in spring-summer 2017.
An Active Member of HWA and SFWA with more than 500 individual appearances from Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine to Xenophilia, for the latest information Dorr invites readers to visit his blog at http://jamesdorrwriter.wordpress.com.
BENJAMIN SPERDUTO is a history teacher and has also worked as a freelance editor and writer for roleplaying games. Some of his short stories have appeared in Purple Sun Press’s Coven anthology, Spooky Words Press’s Bad Neighborhood anthology, and Horrified Press’s The Fall of Cthulhu, vol 2 anthology. His first novel, The Walls of Dalgorod, is available from Curiosity Quills Press. A graduate of the University of South Florida, he lives and works in Tampa, Florida. For a full list of publications and fiction updates, visit www.benjaminsperduto.com or follow him on Twitter (@bensperduto) and Google+ (+BenjaminSperduto).
DAVID HOENIG is a practicing physician who is also exploring his writing career. He’s been fortunate enough to win two and place third in another short/flash fiction contests, and to have published multiple short stories with Nonbinary Review/Zoetic Press, Horrified Press, Drunk Monkeys Literary, Dark Chapter Press, and Nebula Rift Magazine.
JAY CASELBERG is an Australian author based in Europe with multiple novels and short stories appearing worldwide. Consistently appearing in various year’s bests, his work always tends to the darker edge. More can be found at www.jaycaselberg.com.
LEE CLARK ZUMPE has been writing and publishing horror, dark fantasy and speculative fiction since the late 1990s. His short stories and poetry have appeared in a variety of publications such as Weird Tales, Space and Time and Dark Wisdom; and in anthologies such as Corpse Blossoms, Best New Zombie Tales Vol. 3, Steampunk Cthulhu and World War Cthulhu. His work has earned several honorable mentions in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror collections.
An entertainment columnist with Tampa Bay Newspapers, Lee has penned hundreds of film, theater and book reviews and has interviewed novelists as well as music industry icons such as Paddy Moloney of The Chieftains and Alan Parsons. His work for TBN has been recognized repeatedly by the Florida Press Association, including a first place award for criticism in the 2013 Better Weekly Newspaper Contest.
Lee lives on the west coast of Florida with his wife and daughter. Visit www.leeclarkzumpe.com.
L CHAN is a writer from Singapore. He spends too much time on the internet and too little time writing. His work has been published in Fictionvale, Perihelion Science Fiction and A Mythos Grimmly: Prelude.
TIMOTHY G. HUGUENIN grew up in West Virginia, running around in the woods and making up stories. He does pretty much the same thing today. Though his body now roams Wyoming, his soul still haunts those dark Appalachian hollers. You can find out more about him and his writing at http://tghuguenin.wordpress.com/
COSTI GURGU was born in Constanta, the 2600-year-old Greek city on the Black Sea shore, and lives in Toronto with his wife, on the Ontario Lake shore. Large bodies of water help Costi glimpse into other realms. That and some Dacian magic. His fiction has appeared in Canada, the United States, England, Denmark, Hungary and Romania. He has sold three books and over fifty stories for which he has won twenty-four awards. His latest sales include the anthologies Ages of Wonder, The Third Science Fiction Megapack, Tesseracts 17, The Mammoth Book of Diesel-punk, and Street Magick-Tales of Urban Fantasy. His novel RecipeArium” will be published in 2016 by White Cat Publications.
ERIC DEL CARLO’s short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s and Strange Horizons, as well as many other venues. His novels include the Wartorn fantasy novels written with Robert Asprin and published by Ace Books, and The Golden Gate Is Empty, which he cowrote with his father Vic Del Carlo and which is available from White Cat Publications.
DARIN KENNEDY, born and raised in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is a graduate of Wake Forest University and Bowman Gray School of Medicine. After completing family medicine residency in the mountains of Virginia, he served eight years as a United States Army physician and wrote his first novel in 2003 in the sands of northern Iraq. His debut novel, The Mussorgsky Riddle, released in January 2015, was born from a fusion of two of his lifelong loves, classical music and world mythology. His short stories can be found in various publications and he is currently hard at work on his next novel. Doctor by day and novelist by night, he writes and practices medicine in Charlotte, North Carolina. When not engaged in either of the above activities, he has been known to strum the guitar, enjoy a bite of sushi, and rumor has it he even sleeps on occasion. Find him online at darinkennedy.com.
ERIC BLAIR is a young man living in America’s Inland Northwest, originally from the California Bay Area. After an unsuccessful try at a graduate program in the area, he settled there on a permanent basis, mostly due to the fact that his home state is unfortunately filled with Californians; a highly annoying and somewhat unsettling breed of human being that should probably be avoided whenever possible. He divides his time between managing a piece of rental property, volunteering, and, of course, writing stories that he hopes find a good balance between intense emotional content and high quality evisceration. He has recently had the honor of marrying a wonderful woman and coming to greatly love and respect his new son.
JOSHUA STEELY lives in the Midwest with his wonderful wife and son. His short fiction has been published in Niteblade and is forthcoming in Havok and Mad Scientist Journal.
ADRIAN LUDENS is a radio announcer and fiction author from Rapid City, South Dakota. His newest collection, When Bedbugs Bite, is available on Amazon in paperback and kindle formats. Other recent and upcoming publication appearances include: Shadows Over Main Street (Hazardous Press), Surreal Worlds (Bizarro Pulp Press), The Gothic Fantasy Book of Science Fiction (Flame Tree Publishing) and The Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper Stories (Little, Brown). He is an Active member of the Horror Writers Association. Visit www.adrianludens.com.
MADISON MCSWEENEY is an author, poet, and columnist from Ottawa, Canada. Her fiction and non-fiction work has been published in The Fulcrum and Thee Westerner, as well as her blog: rantsandswritingsblog.wordpress.com.
She currently studies Political Science and Communications at the University of Ottawa and works part-time for a Canadian Member of Parliament. Her interests include politics, music, horror and science fiction, and preparing for the inevitable zombie apocalypse.
E. DANE ANDERSON grew up in Spokane, Washington. He attended Eastern Washington University and University College London, holding masters degrees in both History and Archaeology. He is currently employed as an archaeologist for an environmental consulting firm. He is also a photographer and musician, living in Seattle with, as one might expect, a slightly temperamental cat.
KEVIN BANNIGAN JR. is a writer who lives in Levittown, Pennsylvania. He enjoys writing and reading all types of fiction. He is also an avid film fan, and hopes to someday write the screenplay for a feature film. His biggest influences are Stanley Kubrick, Richard Matheson, Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, and Clive Barker.
Kevin’s stories have been featured in several anthologies, all of which can be found on his Amazon Author Page at http://www.amazon.com/Kevin-Bannigan-Jr./e/B00UE647AE.
STEWART STERNBERG is a retired educator and author of The Emerald Key (Ticonderoga Publications), as well as The Ravening (Elder Sign Press). I
n addition he has had short stories published in anthologies and online by Elder Sign Press, Chaosium, and White Cat Publications. He has a passion for gaming and sometimes chases people with silly putty and a spatula. He lives in rural Michigan with his wife Jamie, and their three dogs and four cats.
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