***
As the airlock’s pressurization light went green, Ryman opened the hatch and pushed Driscoll through. “Captain Ross! Where are you?”
“I’m here,” said a shirt-less Cormac, as he pulled himself through the docking portal leading to the Soyuz capsule. “What happened to Driscoll?”
“Another cosmonaut that you failed to take care of! That’s what! Why was your radio off?”
Ludmilla lurked behind in the Soyuz docking portal, only half dressed herself.
“You people,” snarled Ryman. “And your urges.”
“Hey, lay off Ryman. I don’t have to take anything from you. I was recuperating from almost getting killed out there.”
“Yes, recuperating.”
Ludmilla saw Driscoll and rushed to his aid. “What happened? Where was he hit?”
“Everywhere I imagine,” said Ryman, placing the Baikonur wrench in a form-fitting sheath on the wall.
She opened Driscoll’s suit and tried to awaken him.
Cormac took hold of one end of the suit and pulled, letting the bulk of the cumbersome outfit down to Driscoll’s waist.
Upon examination, it was readily apparent what instrument had done the damage. Beneath his undergarments, several wrench shaped bruises splashed purple across his pale frame. Broken bones were readily apparent even to the naked eye.
Driscoll groaned.
Ludmilla looked to Cormac and shook her head.
“Maybe if I can get him back in time. What else is there to do Ryman? Did you kill the last,” he bit back saying cosmonaut as he looked at Ludmilla.
“Yes, I killed him with his own wrench. He is gone. Drifting away into the void.”
Both lovers scrutinized Ryman.
“How did you do that exactly? Thought you said you were too weak to climb back to the station on your own?”
“I was. Driscoll pulled me back and just as I was crawling aboard the vessel and could grab your tether that last cosmonaut, the one that you failed to eliminate, struck and beat poor Driscoll senseless. I was able to surprise the Soviet from behind.”
Cormac cocked his head, staring deep into Ryman’s eyes. “What now?”
“Watch your tone Captain. You have failed several mission parameters today. Besides the woman do we have yet another prisoner?”
“Woman? I am Major Ludmilla Serakovna.”
“Easy,” cautioned Cormac. “There is another passenger, Sergei Kurylenko. But he is in shock and hardly aware of his surroundings.”
“A Soviet trick no doubt. He probably radioed a warning to Moscow the first time he was left out of sight.”
Cormac shook his head. “No, I put him in the head. He’s delirious or asleep.”
“I radioed Moscow when you latched onto our vessel,” said Ludmilla.
“So kinda moot point Ryman. You had to know they would do that.”
Ryman smiled cruelly. “Quite. Sometimes I let others think they have the solutions and that it was all their own devising.”
Furrowing his brow, Cormac rubbed his hands across his face and asked, “So what are we doing?”
“The behemoth you see outside this ship. That leviathan that appears to be the largest living thing you have ever seen? Yes? It is not truly alive, yet it is a god in darkness. A mistress of the void, its natural state is chaos, hence it’s shifting reality between space and time.”
“But why is it here?”
“We summoned it.”
“We?”
“Not simply you and I. The blood we have spilt this far from the cradle of our existence on terra firma, is a beacon through the void. It comes to feed.”
“On what?”
“Souls. Damned souls. All those that have perished in terror and misery, those that cannot let go of their pain, those whose light was snuffed out even before they left the womb, those ravaged with age or even those in simple quiet desperation, in short, nearly every member of humanity. Few can attain a balance to rise above and be translated.”
“So, you can send it away?”
“I shall bind it to this space station.”
“That! How?”
“Think of it as a toe-hold. Simply to keep it in balance. It will feed and I will manipulate its power as I invert the Tree of Death and fully enter, navigate and finally command the Qliphothic realm.”
“How?”
“I will fully open the gate allowing its entrance to our world.”
“Wrong answer,” said Cormac.
Ryman quickly withdrew a small revolver from his pocket and smirked, “I have accounted for everything.”
Cormac raised his palms in cautious readiness.
“I do not expect you, a mere soldier to understand half of the gifts I have laid at your very feet. It never ceases to amaze me how people only account for one set of variables. I account for them all.”
“Why?” asked Ludmilla.
“The lament of the damned is a ‘Why?’. Truly the only thing that surprised me Captain Ross, was that you let Sergei live. Not that it matters.”
“Then I’ll ask,” said Cormac. “Why the deception?”
“Because I can. I enjoy that surprise when the terrible revelation of truth hits people. They cannot handle it. Lies are what people want, what they crave, what they deserve.”
“You are the real monster,” spat Ludmilla.
“So it would seem. Bring Sergei here, I want him to see this as well.”
Cormac watched with a wary eye but went to the head and brought the disturbed babbling man into the cabin.
Still shivering, Sergei saw Ryman’s gun and look of cruel intent and crouched beside Driscoll in submission.
“Even in his madness, he knows the order of things,” said Ryman. He pulled the trigger and put a deafening shot into Sergei’s chest.
Ludmilla screamed.
Sergei crumpled beside Driscoll.
“You bastard!” shouted Cormac.
Ludmilla glanced toward the portal window and saw the Leviathan pulse and flex as Sergei’s life force faded.
Ryman held his revolver at the ready, “Hold your tongue Captain and respect your betters. There is nothing so ironic as a killer like yourself, judging me for doing what you yourself do on a regular basis. Remember this sacrament could contain your doom or your salvation.”
“I never killed anyone in cold blood.”
“Whatever lie you need to tell yourself Captain, the end result betrays the truth. You outmatched every man you ever fought, otherwise you would not still be here and in so doing you knew you would be victorious and thusly what you did was in cold blood.”
Cormac shook his head. “I never know what will happen.”
Ryman chuckled. “Tell yourself that again, if you like.”
Ludmilla focused on the abomination outside. Was it growing larger or moving closer?
“You see it, do you not? How it grows stronger with our very proximity and ruin.”
“It’s growing?”
“Of course, Captain. I learned from the Great Beast personally, when I was but a lad, that it must have tripled in size the day we bombed Dresden.”
Cormac tried to fathom the far-reaching history of this vile sorcery.
“Understand, I bear you no malice Captain Ross. I greatly respect your contribution to the cause of destruction and a return to the symmetry of darkness. For you there is a place in the Kohort of Darkness. If you learn subservience and embrace the unknowable wisdom, you might even become one of my Chosen Leftenants.”
Cormac concealed his disgust as best he could, but for a man hard as diamond, not wearing such upon his scarred face was difficult. “What do you want?”
“What I have always wanted. You to pilot me back to earth after I perform the ceremony that will bind the Mistress of the Void to this station and thusly our very reality.”
“Why could you not do this from the earth?” asked Ludmilla, with a tone daring Ryman to shoot her.
“I needed to be close.
To see for myself the marvelous work and wonder. I needed to feel the darkness and know that I did this. And,” he paused a long while, “it can be complicated piercing the veil between worlds. It takes joint positive and negative energies. You both supplied the positive and I shall perform the negative.”
Cormac and Ludmilla stared in wonder as Ryman produced his grimoire from out of a pouch built into his space suit.
“I recited the opening passages earlier to bring the shadow of the leviathan you see outside, into our realm. It was always there, but fully ineffable and nigh invisible until tonight.”
“It was always there?”
“Of course. Nothing spontaneously appeared. Everything has always existed.”
Ryman thumbed the thick pages, looking for the correct verse, ever watchful and keeping his revolver trained toward Cormac.
“What more do you want me to do?” asked Cormac, clenching his jaw.
“Nothing. Take Driscoll’s helmet to replace your own and go prepare the X-20 for our departure.”
“You mean to leave him here?”
“Of course, he is useless, except as a conduit. His fractured form is perfect. If you will serve, you will obey.”
“And her?”
“Forget her. She was merely a tool for the positive energies. You may dispose of her if you wish.”
Ludmilla’s rage flared, staring at both men with a scorn only a woman can muster.
“Look at her, she is dangerous. If you don’t take care of her, I will be forced to do so.”
“Nyet! Do not touch me,” she shouted backing away.
Cormac held his hands up in a supplication of her anger and stepped away from her and toward Ryman.
Still perusing his book, Ryman waved his pistol in an irritated yet idle manner, saying, “Do not tempt fate and make me nervous Captain. Kindly back away and leave me to my work. If you wish to live, you will go out and prepare the X-20. That is all. I am done with this game.”
“Tell me Ryman. What will that thing do to the earth?”
“It will change everything you think you know. Move,” he ordered, as he put the grimoire down and went to the Salyut’s control panel, which relayed where over the earth the station was at any given time. He seemed intimately familiar with the readings despite what he had claimed earlier as an inability to understand Russian. “Yes, I lied about that too. We have less than fifteen minutes. Decide.”
Cormac looked to Ludmilla. “Get into the Soyuz and go.”
“No!” shouted Ryman in his greatest break of composure. Breathing deep, he calmly said, “If she matters so much to you, both of you may join me in the X-20. She can become one of us.”
Cormac took a step, blocking Ryman’s line of sight of Ludmilla and the Soyuz docking entrance. “You’ve played your hand. Everything you say is a lie. I won’t let you finish whatever this is.”
“There is still a place for you, if you will but obey.”
“I don’t think so. You couldn’t possibly know how to land the X-20 and survive, no matter how many simulator runs you might have done. But a Soyuz capsule? Anybody could ride that. And I won’t let you have it.”
Ryman frowned and took quick careless aim.
The deafening shot took Cormac in the left arm.
“Get out of here Red!”
Ludmilla disappeared through the docking bay and slammed the hatch shut.
“No! Damn you by all the devils in the nine hells!” screeched Ryman, as he took a reckless shot at the docking hatch. The bullet ricocheted from the heavy steel door and thudded into the padded inside walls of the Salyut.
“You! You have ruined decades of planning! Years of work,” cried Ryman, as he wheeled and brought his snub-nosed pistol into Cormac’s face.
The Soyuz capsule groaned as Ludmilla broke the connection and it jettisoned away from the Salyut.
The cold warrior held his wound as droplets of blood left his arm and floated freely about the cabin. “You got me weeping, but this ensures you don’t kill me and leave me here.”
Ryman backed away, putting the pistol down. “Well played you barbaric savage. Allow me to finish my work and take us both back to earth and this can still be the beginning a fortuitous alliance. Bygones can be bygones and all that.”
It was Cormac’s turn for lop-sided grin. “Sure. What do you have left to do?”
“I have but to read some few more passages from the Lex Libre Hereticus and take a virtuous life, definitely not yours—Driscoll’s. Why do you think I chose him? Then the piercing of the veil and binding of the darkness to this station, when it crashes to earth will make me a god in darkness as well. I will burn the light and take back our dominions.”
“And to do that you need to kill Driscoll and what else?”
Ryman gave a grimace. “Do not interrupt or mock my life’s work. Simply because you fail to comprehend what I do, does not mean it is not real!”
“I’m not mocking, I’m asking. Mind if I get ready?”
“Of course, not, just keep your distance, I am unnerved.”
“Yeah, me too.”
As Ryman began his incantation, Cormac did keep his distance, bandaging his still bleeding wound. He put his space suit back on as well as Driscoll’s helmet. He opened the airlock and placed Ryman’s helmet inside. He did not close it.
Though Ryman sat across the room and recited from his grimoire, he held his pistol close.
Cormac appeared curious but left a good amount of space between them. He rummaged through the cabinets and took a handful of supplies, the Cubans and vodka. He was weakening from blood-loss and knew that his first instinctual plan of attack would likely fail against a rested, armed antagonist. But there was always a plan B.
Waiting until Ryman seemed as involved as he would ever be, Cormac picked up Driscoll’s still breathing body and flung it into the airlock.
“What are you doing!” shouted Ryman, drawing his pistol.
Cormac drew the Baikonur wrench from its wall sheath and threw it with all his might.
Another deafening echo from the revolver rocked the station, the bullet hit the steel hatch and ricocheted.
Ryman’s sure shot was thwarted by the careening wrench which missed but struck the wall behind and came hurtling back again.
Cormac dove into the airlock and slammed the door shut. He hit the pressurization control, whispering, “Hang on buddy,” to the labored breathing of Driscoll. He placed Ryman’s helmet on Driscoll and sealed it.
Ryman’s voice crackled over the radio. “You think your escape will avail you anything?”
“Doesn’t matter. I got your ‘Eye of Newt’ right here.”
“Yes, perhaps you have him on the other side of this steel door. But if he dies in the next few moments from your manhandling or even if his carcass cannot handle the pressures of the vacuum of space, I will still succeed and draw upon that energy. The behemoth cares not whether you kill Driscoll or I do, it will savor his soul all the same and work dark magick’s to my benefit. And oh, the horror for you that I will rain down.”
“That’s a chance I’m willing to take.”
Ryman screamed unintelligible curses through the radio as Cormac popped open the exterior hatch and gently pulled Driscoll through.
There was only a single tether looped through the bar below the hatch and back to the X-20. An irritating trick of Ryman’s somehow. Cormac held the tether with his left hand and Driscoll’s harnesses with his good arm. He took careful gentle steps.
“You were supposed to be the best. You were supposed to be a soldier that followed orders. A killer beyond reproach.”
“People change.”
“No, they do not,” snarled Ryman. “My ceremony is finished. With his death, I conquer.”
Cormac looked up at the pulsing leviathan. It loomed larger than ever, phasing in and out of reality. Soon its presence would momentarily blot out the sun.
They were halfway to the X-20, when a rumble shook the entire sta
tion and a sudden jerk almost made him lose both his grip on the tether and Driscoll.
“I will not fail, you both will die for this insult.”
Cormac instantly knew Ryman was firing the Salyut’s boosters. Edging closer, Cormac felt blood soaking his entire left sleeve and shoulder. Moisture began to collect inside his helmet making it difficult to see.
“You will fall,” taunted Ryman, as he jerked the controls of the Salyut and randomly fired and extinguished the booster’s.
A sudden jolt whipped and hit Cormac in the back.
The tether had snapped, as had the X-20’s tentative hold from armature to Salyut.
All four bodies were tumbling through the Detritosphere. Both the tether and Driscoll stolen from his grasp. He was cast loose into outer darkness.
“Your hubris is your undoing.”
Cormac reached for Driscoll’s lifeless body.
“Doom is coming.”
He strained.
“We are foot soldiers of the Dark Levy.”
Fingers wet with blood or sweat, slimed against the inside of his glove.
“It will eat your souls.”
The tumbling Salyut was below or above them by more than twenty feet.
“The Mistress of the Dark . . .”
Cormac had never been so far without a tether.
“. . . and her children are impatient.”
He caught Driscoll’s limp gloved hand, pulling him closer.
“An eternity in the maw of damnation.”
The Salyut was separated from them below by more than fifty feet, but it was moving in a revolution and would soon enough be coming back down upon their heads.
“In the absence of Light, all are one.”
The X-20 tumbled a short yet unreachable distance away, the tether still attached, drifting alongside equally unattainable.
“Against the thrice damned light, we shall always fight.”
The Salyut cast a shadow finally blocking out the terrible monstrosity.
“Are you dead yet?”
“Not hardly.”
Re-orienting himself to the oncoming Salyut, Cormac prepared what would be his only chance.
The Salyut came up fast.
Holding tight as he could to Driscoll, Cormac tensed.
The station hit with a jarring squish in his boots.
At the Highways of Madness Page 17