Dead Ship

But not even a nightmare hurts this much.

Blood escapes my lips, riding the leading edge of a groan. A closed-lipped cough sends droplets in an expanding half-circle. More blood.

If I cared, I’d wipe the remnants from my lips and assess my situation, or at least dress my wounds, but I don’t because all I can think is holy living fuck where in the hell is Tricia?

I try and blink the blurriness from my eyes; my vision goes from shitty to just less-shitty, and I can settle for that. Something is ringing, and at first it’s just my head, but it starts oscillating and I realize that it’s an alarm and oh, fuck me, that’s a bad sign.

That’s the last thing you want to hear on a space ship. Not that I wasn’t expecting it. Then again, the fact that I’m hearing it means there’s still air.

I know I’m in microgravity because nothing has as flat a trajectory as the blood I just coughed up in an environment with gravity, so I push off the bulkhead. Something made out of steel screams in agony, and the gravity’s b—

Head: meet floor. Floor: head. My stomach is doing cartwheels and I’m seeing spots, and can we please decide on gravity, no gravity, something?

Butterflies beating their wings in my stomach inform me that, once again, the gravity is dead. With a groan, I sit up.

I become conscious of what I’m seeing, and for a second my heart leaps into my throat; everything’s red.

Wait; emergency lights. Right. So the power must be out.

And I’m not the only thing floating around in the communications bay. Aside from the dinner I ate longer ago than I can remember, microphone headsets both intact and otherwise, pieces of the comm set I’d taken apart to work on, and the tools with which I’d been working on it, it looked like there was somebody in here with me.

Whoever it is is facing perpendicular to me, and all I can see is the side of their head. Eyes closed; maybe he’s unconscious.

“Hey,” I say, reaching over to shake him awake, “Any idea what happ—“
His leg catches on the work bench, turning his body and head, which was only half there, and proving me right: it was somebody.

Some body.

Rick, actually. Lead engineer. Jesus Christ, he must have come up from the engine room to give a damage report to the Captain when we…the ship…

What the hell even happened?

Somebody had to know. I take a deep breath to shout, which is loud enough for anyone to hear in a ship that measures only about forty meters from bow to stern – bad idea. Pain in my chest immediately reduces me to a racking cough that rattles in my throat like I’m trying to crush gravel into dust with my Adam’s apple, and more blood finds its way up to my lips but fuck it I’ll just go up to the cockpit myself because even a man on his deathbed can maneuver in zero-g so just kick from the wall, and smoothly, smoothly, there we go, don’t even look at the body, and why is it so fuckin’ hard to see in this red light, and is anyone still alive and where the fuck is Tricia?

Aaaand, we’re in the hallway, wait, whoa, whoaaaa, stop.

I make it out into the main corridor that runs the length of the ship’s operating deck, and wow, whatever the hell happened must have been extra-shitty with a side of suck. When this ship was constructed, and for as long as I’d been with her, this corridor was straight as an arrow. The shipbuilders on Mars had called it the spine of the ship; the central passage from which all of the other functional elements of the ship stemmed, and through which all traffic, so to speak, would be directed.

Looking in the direction of the cockpit, the walls have been crumpled in like an accordion, bringing the end of this hallway a good thirty feet closer to me than it should have been. The back, which I remember is where the engines are (which are 80% of the mass of any ship in our class), has been twisted a full quarter turn. I bet air is leaking all over the place.
Before I go in either direction, I slide back into the comm bay and pluck my ID card and acetylene torch from the air. I’ll need these.

For the first time since I was formally brought aboard as a crewmember, I have to stop and consciously think to remember where the medbay is in relation to myself. It comes to me, and I kick off towards the rear, hoping the compartment hasn’t been sealed shut by the deformation of the ship’s hull or the decompression failsafes keeping a breach from killing everything else. Mother of shit; if she was in there during an explosive decompression, I’d rather have just met the black in whatever instant of silent violence killed this ship.

Nerves buzzing like an electric toothbrush, I hold my ID card up to the reader and hold my breath for a second that stretches into infinity before it beeps and the door slides halfway open.

It catches on something, and the electric motor grinds and squeals before giving up the fight and falling silent. A red maintenance light comes on over the door.

I’ll put in a memo to engineering, I’m sure they’ll get right on it.

Inside, the red emergency lights show me a three-dimensional minefield of hypodermic needles, broken glass, and chemicals that I don’t even wanna know the function of. Some kind of bedside machine that was doubtlessly in use before the impact has been brained against the wall; a chunk of it is still attached to the patient. He’s dead.

My teeth find my lower lip, and with a small nudge I slide into the medical bay, bracing myself on the door and not daring to go any further.

The small flashlight I keep on my belt comes to life, and I search the faces of the damned. Someone groans, but it’s a man. It’s not Tricia; I don’t care. And besides, there’s nothing I can do for him. He’s a goddamned pincushion of hypos, and judging by the way his back is arched against that wall, I’d wager he’s got some sticking into him from the other side, too. I don’t even want to point the flashlight at him; his murky red silhouette will keep me up at night for a while as it is.

“Tricia,” I say. It’s not a question.

“Wh…what? She’s…I dunno. G-get, get over here, man…I’m hurt bad.”

I close the door and move down the hall.

My ribs are starting to bother me now that the fog of my unconsciousness is starting to lift. Getting folded over my work table sure as hell didn’t do anything for them, that’s for sure. I would have pulled some painkillers out of the medical bay, but I wouldn’t have known what to look for.

And besides, there wasn’t any time. I have to find Tricia.

Next down the line is the mess hall, and the door’s open. I bet it’s stuck.

I look inside, and immediately regret it. The lighting in here is pretty good; whoever designed the ship must have figured that, in an emergency, the mess hall would be one of the likely places where crewmembers would be when not at their stations. Well, he was right.

There’s no shortage of bodies.

I retch once, then again. This is too much.

Shatterproof plasticware coated in food and gore, both probably still warm, floats amongst a graveyard of trauma victims. This is one for the textbooks. Some crewmen were catapulted headfirst by the impact; when the ship stopped moving instantly and they didn’t, Newtonian physics would dictate that they would keep moving until they found something to stop them. For most of them, that something was the bulkhead.

More than a few brains are exposed to the air. See, the force of their continued movement propelled most of them against the tables they were sitting at. They mostly caught their legs on chairs as they passed, which of course were slowed, while the rest of them plunged headlong into-

Yeah. You know the rest. It’s not pretty.

I can’t decide who had it worse; the ones closer to the wall, who probably survived until their friends fell on top of them, or the ones who were sitting at the opposite end, and had time to process the fact that their death was rushing up to meet them, and were unable to do anything at all about it.

I bet this is what it looks like when people jump out of buildings. Except this isn’t just one person, it’s about twenty. Is one of them…

“Tricia,” I say once, weakly. I gather my strength into my diaphragm to call again, but the exertion of breathing sends me into a coughing fit. More blood, and I don’t even care enough to cover my mouth. It sprays everywhere, but no one is around to write me a hygiene citation.

Let’s do this again.

And breathe, and –

“Tricia?”

Still air replies.

I bow my head, and push off from the doorframe, moving downship towards the crew quarters.

A part of me dares to hope that she was in her bunk; that would have been her best chance of surviving the hit we took.

As I move further towards the engines, the torque they caused in the ship becomes a lot more noticeable. Fuck. These doors are gonna be the hardest so far to open. I’m glad I brought the blowtorch with me.

My fingers slide over the painted steel of the walls, counting doors in the dim lighting until I get to hers. And three, and two, and one, aaaannnd –

I grab the handrail to stop my glide, but my momentum has other ideas; it slams me into the wall, and the blinding shock of pain in my chest makes me retch again, a thin line of bile that I spit onto the deck. But I don’t let go.

The door is right there, and geez it’s in rough shape. I knock. Nothing. The rising tide of panic reaches my eyes, which tear up with the exertion of the adrenaline rush that’s now singing in my veins, but I fight down the self-defeating beast of Panic, leaving only the strength of adrenaline and my own determination.

My thumb finds the switch, and the torch comes to life in my hands, recoiling slightly as the hot gases streaming from the nozzle act like a tiny rocket engine, but I keep it under control.

Not bothering to turn my eyes, I touch the stream of flame to the steel door of Tricia’s coffin-like bunk and start making a circular cut the size of my head. First priority is just to know if she’s in there at all.

Sparks burst from the steel, and I know I’m getting through. I work the flame slowly along the steel in a pretty rough circle, burning as fast as I can but not fast enough and jesus man this thing is fully open and it needs to hurry the hell up I can’t wait this is unacceptable come on comeoncomeon I don’t have all day just fucking hurry up and cut through the goddamned steel for shit’s sake and with about an inch left to go I toss the torch to the floor without bothering to cut off the gas – it’s got a deadman’s safety anyway – and punch inside the circle I’ve made, bending back what little steel I don’t have the fucking time cut through, and I get my pocket light out and shine it inside and fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!

She’s not there.

A couple of holograms smile at me; stills of her friends, her family, of me. Our wedding day.

Where is she? This isn’t funny. If this is someone’s idea of a goddamned joke, this is not funny.
All right? Just give her back.

I slowly gather breath into my lungs, ready to stop when I hit my pain threshold, but it’s on me before I know it’s coming; more blood explodes from my mouth, and I fold into a wad of shivering flesh and pain. This is bullshit.

Recovering, I straighten myself out, but my head hits something hard as it floats by. My hand flies out at the culprit, and I draw it to my face to examine it better in this terrible light. A wrench.

I just can’t catch a break, can I?

I wing the wrench overhand like it’s a tomahawk, and it clangs off a bulkhead and continues its spinning flight towards the engine room. The entire corridor rings with the impact, and suddenly it comes to me.

The space around me is populated somewhat sparsely, but in a few seconds I spot a pan, with the bowl of a wooden spoon sticking out of the handle, the standard configuration for these things in storage.

Suppressing another cough as I draw a breath in excitement, I snatch the floating cookware from the air and unsheathe the spoon. Blinking contemplatively, I look around me – I don’t know why – and then strike the pan with the spoon.

Slowly spinning around like some kind of insane matronly anachronism ringing a dinner-bell, I float towards the rear of the ship, banging on the pan with the spoon, and I’m wondering if maybe I’m not already batshit insane.

I beat slowly on the pan at first, figuring to save my strength, but find myself lapsing into old rhythms from nursery rhymes and childhood songs, tunes from a different era in my life that now bring only a sort of veiled comfort. Passing each bulkhead slowly and with a quick look inside, I make my way to the rear of the ship, beating “It’s Raining, it’s Pouring” onto the pan I’m carrying, hoping beyond hope to find the only thing in the universe that has ever mattered.
And, from the engine room, I hear the most incredible sound that has ever seen fit to reach from the heavens and grace my humble ears: a cough.

Tricia’s cough.

It doesn’t occur to me to wonder what she’s doing in the engine room; I quickly cut the hinges off the bulkhead door and pull it to me, discarding it down the long passageway leading back to the bridge, and pull myself through and—

There she is. Naked.

With the dead chief engineer. They were like this when the ship was put into whatever state it’s in. And now they’ll be like this forever.

You know, that word used to mean something to me.

For several moments, words fail me; she looks over and sees me, her body crushed under his against the wall next to the bulkhead, her ribs probably broken just like mine. I hope it hurts, because nothing has ever hurt me like this.
“Phil,” she says, weakly.

We stare at each other in silence. I remember the sidearm at my hip, the magnum handgun chambered in 12.7mm, and in an instant it’s out, and it’s pointing at her. She closes her eyes, anticipating the shot.

“I can’t believe you,” is all I can manage. I shift my aim just a little bit, to the window just behind her, the infinite starfield that has been my home for years. I’m going back to it.
She opens her eyes again, and I squeeze the trigger; the echo of the muzzle blast reverberates through the metal engine room, and the glass stars momentarily before spraying outward. The atmosphere in this room follows it momentarily, and Tricia, the dead engineer, and I float towards the exit, swept along with whatever other flotsam is in the engine room.

The pressure increases towards the window, and I hear the decompression alarm start to blare as I accelerate out into the immense frigid nothing of space, all but naked, still clutching a handgun as though it means something.

Now, everything means nothing. She used to be my everything. Now we’re both dead. I can’t quite see her as the air in my lungs is sucked out, but I know she’s going through the same thing, the same immense pressure inside trying to fight its way out of my skin, the nitrogen embolism burning like I’ve been filled with gasoline and set ablaze from the inside out.
I close my eyes, and put the pistol to my head. I deserve to die less painfully than this. I do. I do.
I do.

North Star Letter

Back to the point, I’d like to draw attention to the quote from Mrs. Rowling that appeared at the end of the article, something that really burns me because no one else seems to notice: “If I’d known it would make you so happy, I would have announced it years ago!”
Read that again. Are you getting this, gay community? Rowling was keeping this from you – keeping publicity and hero figures away from your apparently needy group. Why? Because she didn’t think that it would sell. That’s right – the author responsible for the hero you love almost neglected to let you know that you have a hero in your literary midst because she didn’t think it would sell.
Dwell on that.
Another issue in your issues with which I draw issue is that of the “Junk of the Month” column. As though the injury of being evicted from the upper parking lot (a fact of which we’re reminded every day by Jack Frost nipping at our nose and taking off a chunk as we trudge up the exposed hill into our delightful little school) were not enough for you people, now seniors have to live in a constant state of fear for being picked out and humiliated in front of the whole school because they didn’t feel that they should figure “status symbol” into their car-buying decision. Can I be frank, North Star (I guess it’s a little late for that)? I think it’s crap.
A couple more issues. Small ones. Promise. Stay with me here.
Does anyone want to tell me what the point of Kollege Kwest is? If not, I’m going to assume it’s filler, because it’s information we could obtain in two minutes from the college’s website, and receive by the mail in droves every single day. Instead of having these inhuman statistics, why not have students from North’s student body write about their experiences when they went to visit colleges? I think the experiences of someone with whom we’re familiar will be a lot more helpful than numbers on a page that no one bothers to read, anyway.
And why is there a Sudoku puzzle in the newspaper? Wait, I know this one! Space-filler. I mean, I suppose that’s understandable; you’ve got space on a page, and apparently can’t produce about nine square inches of responsible journalism, so you just take number-puzzles from a book (or the internet) and slap them on. More power to you.
Alright, North Star, old buddy, I admit, I have been pretty hard on you. Keep in mind, though, I only kid because I love. And I love because otherwise I’d look like a jerk, but that’s beyond the point, because I do have good things to say: your illustrations are incredible (especially, much to my surprise, the one in the Dumbledore article), and the photography is A-1 stuff. Serious kudos on that, North Star. Keep it up.
Maybe one day they’ll be good enough that people won’t be subjected to the horror of having their eyes wander to the parts of the newspaper that actually have complete sentences.

All my best,



Mike Sowell

**(Author's note: I've since made an apology for that last line, because it was terribly immature of me. I feel it would be irresponsible of me, however, to leave it out of this, so it's here for posterity.)

Unfaithful

Faint murmurs, a steady rhythm,

And a grand entrance. Epic. Telling a story that deserves to be –

Nay –

Demands to be! Told,

Lest we forget, the awesome capabilities of man

To abuse women undeserving,

To say no

Thi--ng

Of innocent

Victim of her own society,

Portraying women as compliant accomplices in their own

Singular, solitary

Deaths, utterly undignified, and utterly

Pointless, sacrifice for

What? Is it dignity? Is that for what she died?

He would never,

Ever have approved had HE KNOWN! And yet,

Centered in the iron sights,

There she was, fresh out of the arms

Of another man

And he had known, yes,

When he’d heard…

Broken Man Dies

I feel the curtains drawing closed,

The final chapter written,

The searing fire of inspiration hosed,

By death I find I’m bidden

Resistance dimmed by fire dying,

Violent thrashing all for naught,

On death’s grey bed my final sighing,

No more resisting, though I ought

The spark of life forever lost,

I can’t bring myself to grieving,

Love’s final, lethal, ultimate cost,

Chest’s final life-breath heaving

I ponder this, my destiny,

As though I’d more to offer,

Laughing softly, now I’m free,

No more good deeds to proffer.

More Sci-Fi Thing

Lyle felt the crunch of alien tissues beneath his booted feet as the bastard’s head exploded against the wall with a sickening spray of blood and what he assumed was brain matter. The alien soldier – who bore marks of such high visibility that Lyle assumed he was a commander – slumped to the ground, its neck still squirting blood at a regular rhythm.

A second later, Lyle was himself on the ground, on his back, though he did have all of his tissues intact. He drew the rifle from under his back, cursing it for not being softer, and looked back and forth down the hall, drawing himself up into a crouch.

“Bastards shoulda never come on my ship,” he said, using the back of his hand to wipe flecks of blood from his cheek.

Distressed shouting drew Lyle’s gaze in the general direction of engineering, though he couldn’t yet spot the source; the fact that he recognized the shouting as human further garnered his interest, though he progressed slowly, using the rifle as though it were an extension of his jaw, sweeping back and forth and listening for anything that might give his foes away.

Daring to expose himself, he rolled across a perpendicular corridor down which he guessed was whoever was shouting. Lyle strained his ears, but could only catch snippets…

“Take that, ye crummy bastard, and one for yer motha, too, aye…” followed by the sickening crunch of something hard tearing through bone, sinew, and flesh. Lyle could only hope that it was alien. The shouting ceased. He broke into a run, fearing that whatever survivor he had heard was wounded or killed, and only hoping that he could reach them in time.

At the far end, he could see only a crouching figure, and another with an enormous chunk of its head taken out, blood pooling around its head. Taking the crouching figure square in his sights, Lyle crouched and spoke normally; “Who’s that?”

A smile spread across the lips of the figure, and Lyle instantly recognized it as human. Hearing the accented voice this close only cemented his recognition; “Not gonna shoot me, are ye, laddeh?”

“Ah, shit, Wallace, what…what did you do it?”

The ship’s cook – Joel Wallace – rose to his feet, ignoring Lyle’s question, though the blood-stained wrench in his right hand left little need for question. A small shudder worked its way up Lyle’s back, but he said nothing. Wallace had been with the crew for years, and while he’d always been rowdy and boisterous, Lyle never could have imagined him capable of such a blatantly violent act.

The man was probably unstable.

Without a word, Lyle unstrapped the alien’s harness from its chitinous shoulders and tossed it to Wallace, who wore it across his chest like a bandolier, alien weapons clattering against one another as he shifted it. As he did so, Wallace stepped into the dim light given off by one of the hall lamps, and Lyle could see that the man’s overalls were tarred in alien gore; he wondered how many of them the Scotsman had felled.

Lyle closed his eyes, and saw Lorraine’s death again. Shit, I’m tired.

“Y’all right there, laddeh?” Wallace asked, idly fiddling with one of the larger blades strapped to his stolen bandolier.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Alarms blared, and panic ensued. What the hell is the purpose of alarms, anyway? Lyle mused. Not like people can really go anywhere. It’ll just make them stick their stupid heads out, and expose them to even more danger. The ship’s paltry security teams assembled, armed, and then spread out again to cover all of the airlocks as instructed by the captain, whose complete lack of tactical sense bordered on disgusting.

If it were up to Lyle, he’d lock all of the unarmed civilians in engineering, give them a couple guards, decompress the rest of the ship except for one airlock so that he’d know where the aliens were certain to come from, and then hunker down and prepare. That way, there’d be no idiot civvies in the way when the shooting started.

No one asked Lyle, though.

In fact, he’d been essentially told he was on his own, and so he’d acted accordingly, procuring weapons from an abandoned security locker, and stripping off unnecessary elements of his attire. Lyle had never before fired a rifle, but he figured that if everything went well, he wouldn’t have to. He wasn’t an optimist, though.

-- 1-23-2007

The Fuschia Dream’s Sergeant-at-arms, Darius Orlovsky, stood before the airlock, framed by the massive doors. Lyle watched as Orlovsky pulled a cigarette from a breast pocket, thought the better of it, and put it behind his ear; he hoped that indecision wasn’t one of the more significant side-effects of the man’s nerves.

A Higher Calling

A script for a play I wrote for Creative Writing class, based in the Cthulhu mythos...

“A Higher Calling”

By: Mike Sowell

Characters:

Gefreiter Andreas Kaiser – Crewman aboard U-529

Hauptgefreiter Joachim Balter --

Oberstleutnant Adolphus Roem – SS Officer attached to U-529

Oberst Hermann Hebel – Captain of U-529

Gefreiter Langenscheidt – Crewman aboard U-529

Gefreiter Schangenholm – Crewman aboard U-529

Setting: Unterseeboot-529, a cramped German U-Boat in the South Pacific – a fact not registered on the official record because the U-Boat was commandeered by the SS for the purpose of investigating rumors of powerful ancient artifacts, as part of the Nazi party’s campaign to acquire physical symbols to cement their credibility as the true inheritors of the Earth.

AT RISE:

Andreas Kaiser: [Raising periscope] Nothing to report, Hauptgefreiter. All is quiet, as usual.

Joachim Balter: [Standing behind Kaiser] Ja, ja, as usual.

AK: Just like everything else onboard.

JB: Not exactly.

AK: No? What do you mean?

JB: [Smiling] I guess you’d not have noticed, being a sound sleeper…but, well, the Captain’s been having these strange nightmares. Absolutely terrifying, really, if the screams are any indication. A lot of the crew has been unable to sleep well, even the Oberstleutnant, and those SS Officers are supposed to have nerves of steel.

AK: Ah, I see. And since he’s the Captain, we can’t just keep him up at all times, even if it meant letting the rest of the crew sleep…

JB: Correct, correct. We don’t know what to do. The fat kid in the galley has been whipping up every backwater cure-all recipe that the farmboys in the fore torpedo bay have been able to pull from their asses, but alas, the dreams are only getting worse.

AK: Ah…I suppose I should be grateful for my sleeping habits, then. Hey, look at it this way – it’d be a lot worse if the galley ran out of coffee. That would be a true tragedy.

JB: Don’t you worry, Andreas. Things will be getting worse. Just wait.

Lights out, all but one, on ANDREAS KAISER, who takes a deep breath and begins speaking to the audience, his head bowed ever-so-slightly.

AK: He was right. The Oberst’s tortured screams got to the point that none of the crew slept, even me. The men got edgy at first, and then started to just…fall apart.

Lights come back in full as KAISER moves offstage. A lone sailor stands over the curled up body of another, his chest heaving before he turns his head and shouts.

Schangenholm: HELP! Come quickly! Langenscheidt, he’s…he’s been hurt!

KAISER and BALTER rush in and kneel beside LANGENSCHEIDT, who remains silent and still.

JB: He’s…damn, he’s gone. What happened to him?

GS: A…well, I was, here, working, and one of the valves, it was a valve, it burst, and I was fixing it, and when I turned around, he was…it must have struck him…my God, there’s…there’s blood everywhere…

Lights out again, and again the spotlight is on KAISER as he stands and moves to center stage.

AK: According to our corpsman, Langenscheidt’s death had been the result of nearly a dozen forceful blows to the head, with something big and heavy…just like the wrench that we’d seen Schangenholm holding as we tried to revive Langenscheidt. Strangely enough, aside from this, things quieted down quite a bit. The Captain even stopped having nightmares. Yes, the entire ship seems to have settled down…

The lights return slowly, and reveal OBERSTLEUTNANT ADOLPHUS ROEM standing before a low table covered in maps and instruments, one hand on the table, leaning forward, the other at his waist. Unconsciously, ROEM moves his hand over the grip of his holstered pistol several times, then back to his belt.

AK: Everything alright, Oberstleutnant Roem?

Roem: [Looks up quickly, clearly startled by the sudden realization that anyone else had been in the room with him.] Ja, ja, Gefreiter, I appreciate your concern. In fact, the entire crew has gone above and beyond the call of duty on this mission. Once again, Deutschmarine high command exhibits its talent for choosing only the finest crews and vessels for SS missions. The Fuhrer will no doubt be very pleased.

AK: We only do as ordered, Oberstleutnant. Your fearless leadership is the very glue that holds our beloved ship together.

Roem: [Bowing head slightly] I appreciate your kind words, Gefreiter Kaiser. I only hope that this trait of mine will be sufficient to maintain order amongst the men in the times to come.

AK: I am as confident in your abilities as I am in the discipline of the crew, Oberstleutnant. I believe that you have nothing to fear.

Roem: [Smiling, some of his tension clearly melting away] We shall see, we sh—

Simultaneously, the lights go out, and the sharp POP of several pipes bursting pierces the ensuing silence, followed by distant screams echoing through the vessel’s halls.

(Voice of) AK: What…what’s going on, Oberstleutnant?

(Voice of) Roem: I, I don’t know, but help me fix these leaks! Come, now!

A single red spotlight fixes upon Oberst HERMANN HEBEL, kneeling downstage, hands on his legs, head bowed. Slowly, a smile creeps across his lips, and he says quietly:

Hebel: C’thulhu fh’tagn, mein kameraden, C’thulhu fh’tagn…

The door to Hebel’s quarters slams open at his back, and JOACHIM BALTER is framed in the doorway, red light from the hallway outside silhouetting him.

JB: Captain? Captain, we’ve been having some serious problems, and…

All lights out, now, but one, on ANDREAS KAISER, center stage, head bowed and arms crossed slightly, a bolt-action rifle slung over one shoulder.

AK: The Captain said nothing, but Oberstleutnant Roem ordered us to the surface. He was the highest-ranking officer on the ship, so of course we followed without hesitation. As we stepped out onto the deck, we could hardly believe the sight that lay before us…a tremendous city, filled with buildings of a style we’d never before seen, or even heard of. Before I’d realized it, the Captain had made it on deck. He started speaking again, but all he said was –

Hebel: -- C’thulhu fh’tagn –

AK: -- and stood alone, on the prow, as though he wanted to be closer to this gargantuan city than any other member of the crew. It seemed almost as though the enormous city before us had some kind of power over him. None of us spoke a word to him. Roem, on the other hand, said nothing at all, but instead merely stared at the island before us, transfixed upon its magnificence. He seemed distant, and frightened, though by what I may never know, and would never ask.

JB: [Joining KAISER in the spotlight] When finally Roem began to speak again, he didn’t hesitate to order a small contingent of crewmen to go ashore, in the only raft we had aboard.

Roem: [Light fading on the others, then coming back in full force. Speaking to THE CAPTAIN on deck, though their conversation can’t be made out. Behind them, armed sailors load crates into the raft, their faces determined, almost…fatalistic.] …nein, Captain. Who will stay here and watch the vessel?

Hebel: I am sure that with your practically limitless amount of leadership ability, Oberstleutnant, you will manage to see to it that she stays safe. Surely you understand that a Captain must simultaneously follow his men and see to his ship, and set the two as priorities in precisely that order. I’ll have no more argument, Oberstleutnant.

Roem: [Clearly relieved] Very well, Captain. I see that you can not be dissuaded. Even so, my obligations to my superiors must be fulfilled. All I ask is that you write down, in great and painstaking detail, everything that you encounter, and take as many pictures as you can.

Hebel: [Nodding, accepting a camera that Roem hands him] Count on me, Oberstleutnant. [These last words as he steps into the raft.]

Roem: [To THE CAPTAIN] Remember, Oberst, leave nothing out. [The Captain nods, and Roem stands silently on the deck, his hand slowly, subtly, moving to the grip of his pistol.]

Lights out. KAISER comes out again, his clothes tattered, cradling a rifle in his arms. Solemnly:

AK: That was the last we ever saw of Roem, our ship, and the rest of the crew. The next night came an otherworldly moan, and a tremendous crash…

A tremendous screech of metal followed by a splash, and screams of surprise and anguish, all underscored by a terrible, low, moan.

AK: No one needed to ask what happened. Somehow, we all knew. I don’t think any one of us slept that night, but somehow in the morning, we realized that the Captain had slipped away.

Shakes his head and turns – the lights come back, and reveal that he is accompanied by JB, the two of them stalking through the forest, rifles at port arms, as if expecting danger.

JB: To be truthful, I don’t even understand why we’re looking for the Captain, that damn nutcase. He’ll do us no good even if we find him, especially without even a ship to command.

AK: [Stops and holds up two fingers] Ssshhh…

Distant chanting catches their attention, who look upstage, where the light falls on THE CAPTAIN, who kneels in the red light, hands on his legs, chanting quietly, oblivious to the presence of our two heroes. Vague chants of “C’thulhu fh’tagn” can be heard, and he begins to raise his hands.

JB: [Sneering] Great. Morning prayer. Fine, then, we’ll just have to come back later.

THE CAPTAIN pays them no attention, continuing his chant, he stands, still facing away from the two sailors. JOACHIM shoulders his rifle, taking careful aim at THE CAPTAIN, his face twisting into a mask of unadulterated rage, ready to cut the man down, but seeming as though he’s waiting for something. KAISER looks over and sees JOACHIM aiming at THE CAPTAIN, and slaps the muzzle of his rifle down, but it goes off anyway, striking the ground right in front of them.

Both sailors freeze, frightened of the repercussions from THE CAPTAIN, who turns and stands.

Hebel: Hah…mortal weapons…I’d have thought you somewhat more cunning than that, Hauptgefreiter Balter.

JB: You have no right, referring to me by rank! You left us, left us to die! And for what? Some stone city, in the middle of, of nowhere? Your crew is dead, your ship is gone! What do you have left?

AK: [Pushing JB to the side] Look, Captain, we just need your help, sir, we’re running low on supplies, and—

Hebel: FOOLS! To think that I give a whit about your petty grievances! The power of the German war machine is nothing compared to that of a single pound of stone from this ancient city! Himmler never could have even imagined the tremendous power of this city! And do you know what, scheissenhunden? [They shake their heads] It’s mine.

AK: [Mumbling] You really have completely lost your mind, Captain…

Hebel: Hah! The only crazy ones here are you two! Pandering about the outskirts, with your mortal rifles, while I’ve been sapping the energy of this immortal place, this, the tomb of C’thulhu.

Rain softly begins to fall, soaking the lot of them quickly. The Captain’s hair comes down over his eyes.

JB: [Lowering his rifle, his body less tense overall] What…ka-who?

Hebel: [Sneering] C’thulhu fh’tagn…"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn."

AK: Wh--…what are you, what are you chanting, Oberst?

Hebel: Do you not know, comrade? Has not Dread C’thulhu come to you in your dreams, and shared with you his wisdom, that which has indirectly perpetuated the existence of the human race?

AK: N—no, Oberst, I’ve…I’ve had no such dreams…

Hebel: Never mind that, for now…I must…I must complete the ritual! I must!

THE CAPTAIN turns away from them, and kneels again, chanting the entire phrase now, his head bowed slightly. Not turning, he says:

Hebel: It is a chant of reverence, I believe…and a claim to the infinite power which once manifest itself in a single being: C’thulhu. His power, it will be mine, soon…fear not, boys…I’ll not hurt y—

A tremendous moan disturbs THE CAPTAIN’s speech, and he stands and watches in shock as something occurs offstage. Immediately, BALTER follows suit, but KAISER, sensing that something is dreadfully wrong, begins running.

Hebel: Oh, God…how could I have forgotten? “That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die.” I’m…I’m sorry, my Overlord, please…please, spare me…[Looking up, now…loud breathing is heard…lights go OUT…a roar, and an anguished cry]

Spotlight on KAISER, front and center, rifle cradled in his arms, bearded and unkempt.

AK: I ran. That was all I could do. It…it didn’t chase me, but…I heard Joachim for several nights after that. Eventually, I went back to that very spot, where we’d seen the monster, and there he was…sitting there, rocking back and forth like a frightened child, crying his eyes out. His fingernails had been torn off, and I could see scratches in the dirt around him, where he’d tried to dig a hole with his bare hands.

Meanwhile, JOACHIM is in the background, a solitary light upon him, its harsh brightness casting shadows on his features, as he follows ANDREAS, doing exactly what he describes, as he describes it.

AK: For months, I cared for Joachim, whose mind surely must have been lost in its entirety on that fateful night as he and the Captain laid eyes on that…that monster, or however you may deign to describe C’thulhu. And then, Oberstleutnant, you returned to us…how?

Lights return in full force to reveal OBERSTLEUTNANT ROEM, standing before KAISER, his pistol in hand, a smirk on his lips. BALTER sits behind Kaiser, head in hands, shaking uncontrollably, and muttering incoherently.

Roem: It was quite easy, honestly. All I had to do was fake the sinking of the U-529, scatter the necessary debris to make it all believable, and then radio Berlin to send the Kriegsmarine. As soon as they arrived, we came ashore, not daring to make a move before the Fuhrer himself had deemed it safe for any true loyal member of the party to set foot on the island. Now, knowing of what the Captain tried to do, I regret to inform you that you are to be charged with treason. As executor of the will of the Third Reich, and by proxy the German people, I pronounce you a traitor to the party, and thus barely worthy of the bullets that my duty requires I put into your subhuman body.

AK: No, no, Oberst, you don’t underst—

ROEM fires two shots each into KAISER and BALTER. They fall instantly, and their bodies twitch briefly before ROEM fires into them again, silencing them. He turns and signals to the sailors behind him, out of sight.

Roem: Come. We’ve no business left here to which we are required to attend.

Sci-Fi

Darik`a stood before the command viewport of Peace and Order, gazing out across the Stamotian nebulae and admiring their beauty. There was no way they wouldn't be; the finest artists amongst his people had painstakingly designed them to be as such, and then scattered the stellar gases in such a way that the rays of the system's sun caught them just right, brilliantly coloring them.

Darik`a opened and closed the protective membranes over his eyes several times, the universal sign amongst Ren of withheld distress.

The tendrils lining his spine relaxed against his back, indicating to any observers that he was at ease. Within, however, Darik`a was a torrent of thought and emotion.

For the first time in eons, his people would be going to war.

Massive warships were being recalled from the farthest reaches of the galaxy to the throne-planet Va-Nar, homeworld of the Ren. Already, the press corporations of a thousand solar systems were deeming the massive military build up "The Rearmament".

It had been ages since the overlords of the galaxy, the noble Ren, had felt themselves unsafe. Even so, their military forces were well-armed, well-trained, and well-deployed throughout the galaxy.

Lyle Sanders was not a drug addict forced into the habit because he lived in a bad neighborhood, or because he was depressed, or because it was the only way he could make money. There was just nothing else to fuckin' do on the Fuchsia Dream.

The attendant gig wasn't so bad, really. Punching ticket after ticket, serving watered-down drinks to whiny children, then sitting back and waiting for something to do – anything, man. Anything.

Sure, the other flight attendants knew. Shit, he knew they knew, but as long as he didn't fuck up and didn't do anything wrong, who cared? It wasn't like most of them weren't shooting up themselves.

That was a course he plotted for himself, though. There was really no room to move up in Consolidated Intergalactic Transport services, but at least he had some job security. And a girlfriend, even if only in name. You certainly wouldn't prove yourself a good psychologist by pointing out that theirs was hardly a relationship – they were both addicts, who happened to have both reached the peak of their substance-induced sex drives one day and ended up fucking in one of the unoccupied bathrooms.

Lorraine really wasn't much to look at. Haggard, you could say. Didn't really take good care of her long brown hair or pale skin, didn't take too much pride in her appearance. Low self-esteem was probably what put her in the needle's frigid embrace.

Emptily she repeated to herself that she was her own woman, that this whole drug thing was just temporary, to relieve the boredom of serving on the crappiest space liner in the galaxy. Just as empty were her self-assurances that Lyle was in love with her, though she couldn't have known.

He was a convincing liar.

An exhilarated cough and a smile of self-satisfaction heralded the arrival of something new but familiar into Lyle's bloodstream, the same batch of ice he'd been shooting up with since they'd last made port. He flexed and contracted his hand, his godlike strength coming back to him.

A silent nod of acknowledgement from him, a loosening of the belt, and the suppression of a heartfelt whoop later, Lyle was on his feet and out the door, prowling the corridors of the Fuchsia Dream. Hunching forward slightly, the Beast formerly known as Lyle eyed passersby beneath a furrowed brow, drawing more than a few frightened stares.

Hours later, Lyle sat in the infirmary. White-hot tendrils of agony shot through the veins in his arm as the drugs administered by the nurse immediately brought him down from his high. If leather straps hadn't bound his arms to the table, he would have reached out and killed her.

A mountainous figure of a man filled the doorway; the Captain. Loping strides conveyed Cap'n Theodos to Lyle's side, disappointment infecting those deep green eyes as they gazed into him. Lyle turned away; thinking that he'd somehow let the Captain down was more painful than having to face the man's rage.

"You're lucky," Captain Theodos said quietly. "You could have died. Or been permanently incapacitated. Or, worse, offended one of the passengers, in which case I'd have been forced to let you go."

The Captain's masked compliment caught in Lyle's throat, keeping him from speaking. Not that he could have said anything of substance, anyway.

"You do good work, son," Theodos continued "That's the only reason I'm not letting you go. I see that you've got a life ahead of you…and I'd be real sad if that life involved whatever it is that we just had to bring you down from."

A curt nod was all Lyle could manage. Hell, what did you say to something like that? Nothing that wouldn't end up in Lyle looking dumber than he already did, and that definitely wasn't what he wanted.

Sensing that the restrained attendant before him was at a loss for words, Captain Theodos placed a hand on Lyle's shoulder.

"You'll do fine, my boy," he said before turning on his heel and striding from the infirmary, leaving Lyle to his thoughts. He shut his eyes tight and laid back, contemplating the rather one-sided exchange that had just taken place.

When Lyle again opened his eyes, they met Lorraine's. She was straddling him, but being careful to let most of her weight rest on the bed; he presumed that he'd fallen unconscious, and Lorraine had come to take him back to his quarters.

"Smooth work there, slick, getting caught by the Captain and all. Vomiting on his shoes was a particularly nice touch," she rasped, a bit of a mischievous grin crossing her lips as she imparted this knowledge to Lyle.

He groaned, now realizing how he'd been caught…and why. A faint memory of the stench of vomit brought him back to the instant when his lunch had decided that it matched the Captain's boots better than his stomach.

Lorraine started to unbutton her shirt, looking down as she did so.

"What in the hell are you doing?" Lyle asked, his first words in nearly half a day.

Lorraine shrugged. "I want some. And you're not going anywhere – Captain's orders. Confined to quarters for the next three days. Since Security decided to raid both of our bunks, we've been relieved of our stashes. Nothing else to do."

Lyle smirked, and then shrugged. Getting it when he didn't expect was better than not getting it at all. They filled Lyle's cramped quarters with screams and moans for the next few hours.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Nor`od`un spread his mouth-tendrils in the Ren approximation of a smile. "Slipstream capacitors operating at optimal efficiency, Captain," his engineering subordinate reported.

"Keep me posted," he replied, allowing the needless gesture to fade from his visage. The Ren were supposed to have become a race entirely devoted to the efficient conveyance of ideas, having shunned the theatrical and unnecessary practice of facial expression several ages ago.

Artistic expression, poetic license, even the teachings of literature were simply abandoned, not even acknowledged by the Ren people as a whole, deemed unnecessary and archaic. Automated databanks containing all of the objective knowledge possessed by the Ren were all the reading that their posterity needed, in their estimation.

- - - - -

Lyle felt the crunch of alien tissues beneath his booted feet as the bastard's head exploded against the wall with a sickening spray of blood and what he assumed was brain matter. The alien soldier – who bore marks of such high visibility that Lyle assumed he was a commander – slumped to the ground, its neck still squirting blood at a regular rhythm.

A second later, Lyle was himself on the ground, on his back, though he did have all of his tissues intact. He drew the rifle from under his back, cursing it for not being softer, and looked back and forth down the hall, drawing himself up into a crouch.

"Bastards shoulda never come on my ship," he said, using the back of his hand to wipe flecks of blood from his cheek.

Distressed shouting drew Lyle's gaze in the general direction of engineering, though he couldn't yet spot the source; the fact that he recognized the shouting as human further garnered his interest, though he progressed slowly, using the rifle as though it were an extension of his jaw, sweeping back and forth and listening for anything that might give his foes away.

Daring to expose himself, he rolled across a perpendicular corridor down which he guessed was whoever was shouting. Lyle strained his ears, but could only catch snippets…

"Take that, ye crummy bastard, and one for yer motha, too, aye…" followed by the sickening crunch of something hard tearing through bone, sinew, and flesh. Lyle could only hope that it was alien. The shouting ceased. He broke into a run, fearing that whatever survivor he had heard was wounded or killed, and only hoping that he could reach them in time.

At the far end, he could see only a crouching figure, and another with an enormous chunk of its head taken out, blood pooling around its head. Taking the crouching figure square in his sights, Lyle crouched and spoke normally; "Who's that?"

A smile spread across the lips of the figure, and Lyle instantly recognized it as human. Hearing the accented voice this close only cemented his recognition; "Not gonna shoot me, are ye, laddeh?"

"Ah, shit, Wallace, what…what did you do it?"

The ship's cook – Joel Wallace – rose to his feet, ignoring Lyle's question, though the blood-stained wrench in his right hand left little need for question. A small shudder worked its way up Lyle's back, but he said nothing. Wallace had been with the crew for years, and while he'd always been rowdy and boisterous, Lyle never could have imagined him capable of such a blatantly violent act.

The man was probably unstable.

Without a word, Lyle unstrapped the alien's harness from its chitinous shoulders and tossed it to Wallace, who wore it across his chest like a bandolier, alien weapons clattering against one another as he shifted it. As he did so, Wallace stepped into the dim light given off by one of the hall lamps, and Lyle could see that the man's overalls were tarred in alien gore; he wondered how many of them the Scotsman had felled.

Lyle closed his eyes, and saw Lorraine's death again. Shit, I'm tired.

"Y'all right there, laddeh?" Wallace asked, idly fiddling with one of the larger blades strapped to his stolen bandolier.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Alarms blared, and panic ensued. What the hell is the purpose of alarms, anyway? Lyle mused. Not like people can really go anywhere. It'll just make them stick their stupid heads out, and expose them to even more danger. The ship's paltry security teams assembled, armed, and then spread out again to cover all of the airlocks as instructed by the captain, whose complete lack of tactical sense bordered on disgusting.

If it were up to Lyle, he'd lock all of the unarmed civilians in engineering, give them a couple guards, decompress the rest of the ship except for one airlock so that he'd know where the aliens were certain to come from, and then hunker down and prepare. That way, there'd be no idiot civvies in the way when the shooting started.

No one asked Lyle, though.

In fact, he'd been essentially told he was on his own, and so he'd acted accordingly, procuring weapons from an abandoned security locker, and stripping off unnecessary elements of his attire. Lyle had never before fired a rifle, but he figured that if everything went well, he wouldn't have to. He wasn't an optimist, though.