PULP! - Adventures in Bad SciFi

PULP! Episode #6 - I Hate This Episode

PULP! Episode #6 - I Hate This Episode

"I have a bad feel-"

Thousands of miles away, Scrivener lifted a hand, silencing the aide who spoke. The room went still, all fearful eyes on him as the tall near-human stood in a whisper of robes and left the table, as though his subordinates no longer existed. His senior adviser gracefully took over the meeting as Scrivener slipped from the room and began down the hallway, aware of the steady crawl of his own flesh, and an ever-deepening sense of unease.

Once cloistered in his office, Scrivener began searching through his accounts...money was where it should be, his vast number of employees, henchmen, and embedded androids were all represented and showing no signs of dissent. His mistresses were all accounted for and without complaint, his young protege was, as usual, planning his overthrow, and his five year old adviser was safely in bed under the watchful eye of his mother and several bodyguards. Even the fish on his desk was fine, judging from the way it drifted around its lonely bowl...but something still wasn't right, and it troubled him.

An off-hand glance at the voyeur-cam, and his breath stopped. The courier vessel, SoHo, was dark save for the glow of indicator panels on the bridge, proximity and intrusion alarms silently flashing...as he watched, something crossed before the bank of lights, a tall, hunched shape in a crescendo of static, affecting the function of the camera as it neared and then passed. Beyond that flicker, all of the ships observation cameras were dark. On another lens, a similar static seemed to rise and fall, but for the darkness he couldn't see what caused it.

Taking up a pair of headphones, he leaned back in his chair and stared at the black screens, listening for anything that might give him a hint as to what was happening. Using the data contact still maintained to the SoHo, the concerned Evil Overlord accessed the ship's systems and began an over-ride procedure, but the commands would take time to reach their destination, relayed in and out of normal space.

###

Armed and fearful, Rosebud and Erika stared at the closed doors of the lift, unsure who or what was on the other side.  From inside, the sound of scrabbling against the sluggish hydraulics of the doors, the grunting of a tiny woman with a crowbar, and both jumped to help, producing a crack, then a few inches, Nebis's eager face staring at them from the dark interior.

"Are you both okay?" She asked, seeing how battered the botanist and pilot were, seeing the headphones stuck firmly to Rosebud's temples and knowing immediately how he'd been given his sanity back. There was still the question of how Erika had managed to avoid the madness created by Chthonic language, but Nebis thought the better of it, and decided she'd ask later. Above their heads, the sound of malformed feet shuffling on the deck plates was an uneven rhythm as Deep Ones walked the ship, searching for them.

"Been better," Erika said softly, cramming her body through the narrow opening of the lift doors, putting her weight against the hydraulics to force them further apart. "I don't know how they boarded, but if we re-take the bridge, we might have a hull breach on our hands when they realize it." Nebis shook her head.

"No...they don't breach, it's called phasing. They do the opposite of what we did to get here, they slip into normal space, locate their target, and then slip back into the Abyss...they have to be very close."

"What if they take the ship?" Rosebud asked, sounding bored with the entire exercise.

"I didn't know you could talk?!" Nebis stared, open mouthed.

"Need to know basis. So?" The thorn-covered man asked, shifting his feet in the sludge.

"If they take the ship, they only want the living bodies...so the four of us will be kept alive. We'd probably be taken back to whatever Orb is nearest, and they would determine each of your fitness for indoctrination, slave labor, or breeding. Donut and Erika would be used for the latter, not sure about you, Bud."

"What about you?" Erika asked, helping Rosebud clear the narrow space into the lift.

"I'm the least in danger here." Nebis said, not wanting to elaborate as she worked the button. "So what's the plan?"

"Well..." Erika looked from face to face, "...I want to get the bridge back and the juice on again, the air is going to start getting pretty dirty if the scrubbers aren't up, and once I'm sure we can all continue, you know, breathing, I want to get the hell away from whatever ship the Deep Ones are in and get the hell out of the Abyss.  Then we all high-five, have a victory party, and then discover that there are a few more Deep Ones on board, or that we've come out of Abyssal Space into restricted space, or the engine dies and maroons us in the middle of nowhere, or some other cliche doomsday scenario. Anywhere but here."

"Sounds fine to me." Rosebud said.

"Yeah, that pretty much covers it." Nebis agreed.

###

Donut lay near the door, panting, frothing at the mouth, listening to the Deep Ones in the hall whisper to one another in Eldritch torrents that it hurt to hear. A sobbing gibber, and he was on his feet, mashing his forehead against the keypad, feeling the buttons depress and click against the clammy skin of his face. Jamming his head against the keypad, random tones emerged from the speaker above, and as the Deep Ones moved far enough away that he could no longer hear their murmurings, the once-man amused himself with the noise, reason and logic had left him, for now.

"DONUT," a male voice spoke from overhead, "THIS IS GOD."

The only partially sane Donut fell upon his face, cowering in the direction of the sound, hands clasped like a little boy, trembling in abject terror, but unable to speak. A warm light began to fill the room, the halogen bulbs overhead being fed from battery power, warming him, first comfortably, then becoming painfully hot, searing the man's fractured mind into focus.

"PROTECT THE WOMEN, DONUT. KILL THE NON-HUMANS."

The burning light faded, halogen elements glowing red as an afterthought, and shaken to the core, Donut rose and searched around the room for something, anything that could be used as a blunt weapon. Digging the telescoping rod out of his gear, he swung it once, testing the weight, and heard the door lock pop free. Slipping out into the corridor, he could hear his quarry, their filthy, slime-covered footsteps audible in the dark...they had no way of knowing that the human who approached from behind them had a mandate from heaven.

....or something like that.

###

"What the hell is that?" Nebis whispered, straining to hear as they spread out into the corridor, hearing the thick squalling of a Deep One up ahead. She felt Erika next to her in the blackness, a kiss of long hair against her arm as the human woman passed her, the snicker-snack of a hammer being thumbed on one of her vintage pistols, then the other.

"Stay back," Erika said over her shoulder, "you're the only one who can navigate us out of the Abyss.  Autopilot can handle the rest.  Rosebud, get her to the airlock and I'll head for the bridge."

Nebis felt a thorn-covered palm close painfully around her wrist, turning her in the other direction, moving more quickly than she knew he could, the Deep One's short legs struggling to keep up with his gait. "Let's go" Rosebud muttered, "I hate this episode."

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Last Words: So this update took longer than expected, due in part to a real deadline for a serious piece I spent most of the holidays working on. With any luck, I should be resuming weekly or semi-weekly updates from this point forward.

- Suemii