PULP! - Adventures in Bad SciFi

PULP! Episode #1 - PULP!

The SoHo careened through the shipping lanes, leaving a column of super-heated gas in its wake, a ripple of turbulence that would leave an obvious trail, but now was not the time for subtlety. Glancing to the sensor panel, she could see several interceptor-type skiffs were giving chase, the local port authority not taking kindly to their rather abrupt departure or the chunky-salsa-style bloodbath they'd no doubt already found in the local governor's office.

How was she to know that the package was a sonic grenade?

'Oh well,' the courier told herself, 'business is business.'

Throwing the ship into a slow roll, Erika leaned back and listened to the hull begin to groan under the strain. Somewhere behind her, the tick-tick-tick of warping steel could be heard over the angry growl of the engines. The thrust compensators were beginning to fail, and she could feel her body being ground backward into the pilot's chair, the pistol next to her on the con beginning to slide backward. Erika watched helplessly as it continued its slow march across the dash, preparing to tumble to the deck plates. Even raising a finger was becoming hard, and she mashed the squawk button quickly before returning her grip to the trembling helm.

"Nebis...uh...I'm waiting."

Merchant traffic was ducking for cover as they blazed past, narrowly avoiding a ponderous freighter who's pilot was too slow or drunk to see them coming.  Drawing the tiny ship into a tight curl around the prow of the freighter, she dove back into the civilian traffic, feeling the navigation system buck away from manual control as the internal computer plotted avoidance courses around the myriad other vessels in the lane.

Next to her, the squawk flared to life.

"I don't think this is the best time to make a jum-"

"GET YOUR SWEET ASS OUT THERE!"

-

"I'm just sayin..." Nebis muttered, leaning to snap her mag-boots into place, clearing her throat as she punched the air-lock button, closing her eyes against the sudden loss of pressure, feeling her hair curl in the chill before blinking back into vision.

So very quiet here.

The engines, the warning claxons, the groaning of the hull, nothing out here in space, as though all of reality had simply been silenced.  Blinking against the chill, ducking as Erika dodged another freighter within a few feet of her head, Nebis reached for the access ladder and began to climb toward the podium, a flat spot at the prow of the vessel.

It was hard not to watch, wide-eyed, as the SoHo narrowly avoided one ship, then another, and like a passenger in the car of a new driver, it was with morbid dread that the navigator tore her eyes away from the lane and continued to climb, focusing on rung after rung of the access ladder, her unprotected flesh turning first white, then greenish as it resisted the freezing temperature.

Already, as though space-time craved the new orifice Nebis was about to tear in it, she could feel time around her beginning to alter, synapses moving too slowly to catch the shift, like the slipping shutter of a broken camera.  As she watched the slowdown, the nauseating ballet of Erika's piloting became a slowing and quickening series of slides. Freezing trails of ichor had already begun weeping from her wide eyes as Nebis reached the podium and set her boots. After several spasming moments, her gills finally relaxed and began to filter trace gasses from the vacuum...euphoria filled her.  She could taste the space around them, the exhaust gasses in the shipping lane, trace elements left by the passage of thousands, hints of eldritch depth beginning to swarm even at the threat of her focus.

'I live for this shit,' she thought.

Below her, the bridge windows were lit, and she could see Erika working at the helm, white-knuckled at the yoke and waiting for her signal.  Nebis unzipped her pocket and dug out her goggles, the strap feeling brittle in the cold, as it had for years. Tugging them down over her face, what little light was available was cast in a safe, deep-green hue.

Seeing the goggles go on, below her Erika blew a kiss and then closed the bridge shutters against what was coming.  A breath later, and Nebis felt the ship buck as the engine strained, the shipping lane falling away breathlessly as the SoHo dove away from civilized eyes, only the skiffs could follow.  The red and green strobe of the security ships were distant now, falling away into the turbulent wake of the faster courier vessel. They deserved what they got.

"Opener of the Way!  Lurker at the Threshold!  Heed my summons and rend a trail that I may follow unto thee!"  Nebis incanted, feeling their speed begin to change, the steady tumble of the ship stabilizing in preparation for the jump.

"Father of the Abyss, blacken the stars and let the candle of my consciousness guide me to your chthonic ruin!" The words flowed silently, and truly, the words themselves were only a key to the state of mind she required.

Focused on the unspeakable image of the Beyond One, Nebis felt Its dire focus, ever-shifting between Its thousands of subjects, and suddenly, unexpectedly, the impossible weight of Its Horrible Consciousness settled on her as space yielded, tore under her pressure, and sent she and her vessel screaming into the Abyss, her voiceless words curling in the bow-wake as the SoHo was swallowed whole: "SHIT SHIT SHIIIIIIIIIIII-"