Chapter 810: Ultimis Diebus Hominum

Chapter 810: Ultimis Diebus Hominum

It should have just been a routine salvage mission. A wreck from the Terran-Precursor War that had drifted through space for centuries. A cold, dead warship that was lost with all hands, representing millions of credits in salvage.

For the crew of the Good Luck Chuck, it was a exercise in horror.

Coming this summer, a new immersion into fear: Yorktown, Do You Read? Staring: Fe'ermo'o, Acturmo'o, and Yektik the Telkan. Rated: Age of Majority

The discovery of Terran "horror movies", "psycho-thrillers" and "slasher-flicks" filled a need that I never knew I had. From a young age, I knew I had to make them for my fellow Lanaktallan, who had never known real fear. The terror of the other, the fear of the unknown, the fright of the normal becoming skewed.

I'm proud to accept this award for Dead Terrans Still Kill Five - Return of the Anasazi Death Weaver*, on behalf of my production crew.* - Acclaimed film writer, director, producer Fylmo'o, at the Nineteenth Lanaktallan Movie Awards.

The anomaly occurred in twelve perfectly placed locations across the vast protocontinent. A thick obscuring mist rose up from the ground, covering tens of square miles, rising hundreds of feet into the air. Shapes could be seen within, lights flashing and moving within, and strange muffled sounds came from inside the thick white fog.

The Atrekna moved out to examine it. Those on the scene first noted that the slavespawn had moved away from the mist, displaying signs of discomfort and agitation if they were too close.

According to the Atrekna's sensitive phasic senses, there was nothing there. Literally nothing. It was blank, empty. Radar, sonar, laser ranging, all vanished into the fog, swallowed up by the obscuring mist. As darkness fell on the eastern edge of the protocontinent, the mist began to softly glow, a pale white inside with a bluish tint at the outside.

The Atrekna moved up slavespawn and ordered them into the fog.

Slavespawn that entered reported back everything was fine as they moved in. They had zero visibility, the ground beneath their feet oddly damp and cold. They moved deeper in, finding nothing until a sudden spike of fear, then excruciating pain, then nothing. Small ones had a sudden spike of fear, then nothing. Medium and large ones had a moment of agonizing pain. Then nothing.

An Ohm Class slavespawn was ordered in by the nervous Atrekna into the fog.

It rumbled into the fog, which swallowed it without even a swirl. It bumped nothing, encountered nothing, in the fog, unable to see or sense its surroundings.

There was a moment of agonizing pain.

Then nothing.

The Atrekna ordered in servitors. At first, just in typical servitor clothing, then in protective equipment, then in equipment more at home fighting on airless worlds.

Nothing. They had a visibility of less than two meters.

One by one they just vanished. A few registered pain. One had time to scream. Two fired their weapons.

Then nothing.

The Atrekna sent several Young Ones into the fog. The first grouping had only their own powers and skills to protect themselves.

The fog was nothing. Not water vapor. Not any type of gas. Just... fog. Nothing. It felt both sickly warm and vaguely clammy at once.

Phasic powers and psychic ability was snuffed almost immediately.

One by one they vanished.

One had a split second of fear, managed to scream, fired off its psychic blast.

Then nothing.

More Young Ones were sent in. This time in exploration gear. Then protective gear. Then combat gear. Three sets even went into the fog inside of a phasic combat globe.

They vanished.

The Atrekna set up observation points and just waited. They tried sending in constructs of phasic crystal and robotics.

Once they moved into the fog, transmission ceased. Even robotic servitors vanished.

A year went by. One rotation around the stellar mass.

A year and a day exactly.

The Atrekna at the observation posts had become bored. Most worked on their own research, plots, plans, and projects, leaving the basic work to the servitors and slavespawn.

A slavespawn saw an Atrekna stumble from the fog. It fell on its face, then got up shakily.

Its skin was a pale purple, almost white.

It stumbled forward, looking around, making audible noises of distress.

Two of the servitors hurried out to the Atrekna, helping it inside the observation post. It kept keening in distress, the psychic emanations garbled and confused.

One of the Atrekna recognized it as one of the Young Ones that had been tasked with exploring the mist. It alerted the Overmind even as the servitors tried to calm it.

Nearly fifty Atrekna arrived to find that Atrekna that had come from the fog huddled in the corner, rocking back and forth. The Atrekna at the observation station told the newly arrived Atrekna that the found one was almost catatonic.

The new Atrekna looked up, saw the others gathered.

It stood up slowly.

Its stomach suddenly bulged with the wet tearing sound of separating tissue. Its feeding tentacles moved aside to reveal the tightly puckered mouth.

It opened at the same time as the rescued Atrekna screeched.

Stinging insects swarmed from the Atrekna's maw, covering the observing Atrekna and servitors as the found Atrekna slowly deflated.

One of the servitors ran to the lab and helped two others jury-rig a flamethrower.

They fought their way free from an observation station full of insects. The Atrekna that fell to the insects, the insects burrowed inside of, reanimating them, replicating, until the Atrekna was stumbling around as a semi-sentient hive of stinging and biting insects.

The servitors blew up the observation station and ran off into the woods.

It took the Atrekna almost a week to find them. They were a hundred kilometers from the observation post and living in a cave.

The observation stations were put on high alert.

One reported that there was an Atrekna at the entry portal, claiming to be one of the Atrekna inside the observation post, telling the Atrekna inside that the Atrekna that looked like it had ambushed it and dumped it outside.

An hour later the observation post stopped reporting.

A servitor combat team, backed up by five Atrekna in a combat globe, arrived within six hours.

It was empty. As if it had never been crewed.

A phasic imprint on the wall was simply 'them' and nothing more.

The Atrekna ordered the observation post crewed and issued out weapons.

Another observation post kept repeating that everything was all right. Even when unprompted, it kept reporting that everything was all right. Even requests for clarification or attempts at getting the observation post to state anything else was met with 'situation normal nothing to report' instead of anything else.

Atrekna armed up light they were going to fight the Inheritors and arrived at the outpost.

It was crewed only by the skeletal remains of servitors and Atrekna. Cobwebs and dust was everywhere, as if it had been abandoned for years.

One Old One urged the others to blow up the observation post.

He was mocked and derided, the others settled down to crew it while the Old One left.

Three hours later it began to broadcast "situation normal nothing to report" over and over.

The Old One boarded a private spacecraft and left.

This time, the observation post was abandoned. Cobwebs, dust, debris was everywhere. Observation portals were left open and dry leaves filled the rooms. Only a jury-rigged beacon had power, broadcasting "situation normal nothing to report" over and over. A cringing servitor shut it down and breathed a sigh of relief when nothing happened.

When he turned around, all of the other servitors and Atrekna were gone. There was knee deep mist inside the observation post.

The Atrekna found him a month later, living in a cave, eating moss and small insects to survive.

The Atrekna conferred.

The post was left abandoned and a new one slated to be rebuilt.

The Atrekna moved military vehicles, combat trained servitors, and combat slavespawn around the patches of fog.

The fog expanded slightly. Only a few miles in every direction.

Swallowing the observation posts, the servitors, and the slavespawn.

After nearly a month, it drew back.

The observation posts were empty. Some were festooned with cobwebs, others were pristine, others were nothing but empty buildings, even the piping and wiring stripped out. Some combat vehicle remained. Some were intact, others battle damaged, others looked to be decades, centuries old. The shells and chitin of some slavespawn remained, all of them looking as if the slavespawn molted or died and rotted away.

The Atrekna held multiple Conclaves about what to do about the mist.

They had no answers.

They tried orbital strikes. Antimatter charges. Directed energy weapons.

The fog barely swirled.

An atomic was detonated.

The fog wasn't even moved by the blast wave.

The Atrekna knew it was some kind of trick. It had to be. There was no scientific reason for the fog to be naturally occurring. It had to be some sort of Inheritor trick.

But it didn't make sense.

So they assigned more crews to the observation posts.

S12 had realized what the mad female lemur was doing.

"Putting him through his paces" is what she called it.

She was testing him under every extreme condition she could devise.

She often examined his DNA as he was strapped, naked, to a table. She shook her head quite often and quietly berated him for having such trimmed down DNA she was unable to induce any mutation to it through exposure to different natural environmental extremes. That only under a few conditions did any differential appear between Atrekna.

"You are little more than copies of copies," she said softly. "Echoes of a parasite that devoured entire universes. Not even a fossil record of that species, but the trail left in mud by that parasite, nothing more than the evidence of the fossils of the creatures you parasited off of."

More tests.

"You are an evolutionary dead end," she stated one day. "You trimmed your DNA down to nothing. You cannot adapt. You cannot improvise. You cannot overcome. As a species, barring a tiny amount that is but a percentage of an infinitesimal anomaly within statistical deviation, you are little better than jumped up viruses."

She lit a cigarette, cupping her hands together and rolling them to make the pack and then the lighter vanish. She was sitting on a stool, completely naked, staring at him.

"You use parasitic larvae to reproduce. You literally produce nothing, as you have beaten aging. Your technology is largely a dead end. You have almost negative pattern recognition built into your brains. I can find no reason to stay my hand and not wipe your species from this universe. Your parasitic nature means that to put you in another universe ensures you will devour that universe in a short time," she said. She looked at him.

"Can you give me a reason to allow you to survive, S12?" she asked, cocking her head slightly.

S12 nodded. "We think. We live. We feel. We are sentient. We are sapient. We react to negative and positive stimuli. We struggle to survive as you do," speaking was painful, but the thought of touching her maddened thoughts with his own made him tremble with fear.

She laughed, shaking her head. "Oh, now you're a hippy, huh? Dude, like, we totally live, maaaaan. We're, like, alive. You should let us live because, like, we're all thinking and feeling creatures that, like, feel pain here," she laughed. "Do we not, like, both bleed if you cut us, maaan?"

S12 nodded.

Her face hardened, all mirth vanishing from it. Her gunmetal eyes went cold and hard.

"I don't give a shit," she said. "The Lanaktallan were of this universe and I was willing to exterminate them," she leaned forward slightly. "And, unlike you, I didn't hate them."

She stood up, moving away from him. She snapped her fingers and the bed raised up and tilted until he was almost standing upright.

The 2.5D screen in front of him came on as she moved up next to it.

"Well, S12. You should consider yourself a very very lucky parasite," she said, her voice back to soft and gentle.

"Why?" he grated out.

"Because now that I'm done squeezing every bit of data, information, and knowledge from you and your fellow parasites," she said. "I'm going to let you watch me exterminate your entire species from this planet as if they never existed," she said. She put her hand on his chest and pushed, lightly for her, but enough to make him groan as his ribs deformed slightly.

"And then, when I'm done here," she said. She slowly pulled her hand back.

"I will exterminate your entire species," she said.

S12 felt fear, but realized that she wasn't done yet.

"I've spent time infusing the oceans with nanites. The heat of the sun vaporizes the surface water of the oceans, uptaking my nanites by the trillions in each drop of water vapor. They float in the clouds until they rain down upon the land, the ocean, the mountains, the lakes, the rivers," she leaned forward. "The cities. The rain falls everywhere, carrying my tiny servants," she leaned back and smiled.

"It is time for me to reveal myself," she said softly. Her smile got wider. Her teeth seemed to grow, becoming long and sharp as her smile grew.

The corners of her mouth split, revealing more teeth. Her eyes began to glow red. Horns burst from her forehead, blood running down her face.

"I am..." she stated.

As S12 watched, she suddenly began to grow. Her skin bubbled and warped, and as he watched the skin split to reveal dark brown muscles. She grew in height, her skin splitting and reduced to tatters. She shifted her shoulders, tearing free of her skin. She flexed her arms, the skin reduced to rags that slid down the muscle on black blood. The headband sunk into her flesh, the new thick brown skin overgrowing it until only the gem remained.

In front of him stood a nightmare.

Five meters tall. Three meters wide. Heavily muscled. A large head with horns, a massive maw with tusks. She threw back her head and roared as wings exploded from her back in a shower of blood and gore.

It stood there, its eyes glowing red, its exhalations smokey and smelling of hot blood and brimstone.

With a rattle, from its hand fell a barbed iron chain with brimstone and sulfur inlaid runes.

The creature leaned forward to stare S12 in the eyes.

S12 felt terror as the creature exhaled brimstone and hot blood smoke into his face.

"The Detainee."

She, it, whatever it was, S12 wasn't sure, stood upright, the wings slowly moving.

"It's time, my little pet, to bring my wrath, your terror, and fear to your misbegotten people and wipe them from existence," the creature rumbled. "But first..."

The smile was a terrible thing.

"It is time to place the gates of Hell."

-----

The Atrekna were alerted as the fog suddenly began to tatter and dissipate.

In moments, all that was left was a blasted field of twisted vegetation, exposed and scorched rock and barren dirt.

In the middle were massive constructs.

A mile wide circle of interlocked stone blocks set in black mortar. Each brick was engraved, the entire thing one big swirling pattern that burned with a lurid crimson light. Around the edges were plinths that had crystal obelisks, monoliths, and henge stands on them. The crystals were full of twisted metals of strange coloration and appearance, the crystals glowing softly.

Beams of light connected the crystals.

The light in the engravings grew brighter.

Two columns of fire roared up in the middle of the flat circles, a hundred feet high. A line of fire connected the two pillars at the top and bottom.

The Atrekna in the observation posts were screaming across the Overmind for more Atrekna to arrive, to fire orbital shots at the circles of cut stone...

...to do something!

The rectangles were empty for a moment.

A set of Substance-W doors clanged into existence, covered with inlays of bronze and burning iron.

The Atrekna weren't worried.

They had ships in orbit. They had slavespawn orbiting the gas giant, patrolling the empty spaces of the system, orbiting the stellar mass. They had servitor crewed ships in orbit.

Anything that happened on the surface, they could handle.

They waited.

Unaware that their bodies, their brains, their nervous systems, were full of tiny machines a dusting of atoms wide.

The doors cracked open with a boom that could be heard a thousand miles away.

-----

The Detainee looked at S12.

"Lo, I send forth my Heralds," she stated. She reached out, her talon tipped fingers touching S12.

Nightmares ripped at his mind.

S12 found himself stumbling from somewhere. Behind him there was burning heat, the sounds of screams of torment, and a hot wind.

There was a booming that sent him down on his hands and knees.

He looked up to see Atrekna inside of combat spheres rushing toward him.

The Atrekna had seen an Atrekna stumble from each gate at each location. The Atrekna, one and all, had been driven to their knees by the closing the vast iron door.

The combat orbs swooped down. Phasic power took hold of the Atrekna.

The Overmind recognized them as the initial twelve that vanished into the first gravitational anomaly. Each of them with runes seared into the flesh of their foreheads. Bands of phasonium alloy around their heads, the bands decorated with precisely cut gems and crystals.

Some tried to scramble away. Others tried to run. A few fought, trying to keep the Atrekna inside of the combat orbs from capturing them.

S12 shook his head as the combat orb flew back, away from the massive iron gates.

The other Atrekna saw he was shaking his head, making audible sounds of distress.

It took one a moment to understand what S12 was saying.

"no."

The combat orbs took the rescued Atrekna to the nearest city.

One rescued Atrekna per city.

S12 kept shaking his head, repeating one word over and over.

"don't"

He was pulled into building where research was performed. Other Atrekna informed him that he would be examined closely. Asked him if he could tell them where he had been, what had happened to him over the last thousand years.

He just kept repeating one word, over and over.

"run"