PULP! - Adventures in Bad SciFi

PULP! Episode #2 - The Horror of Space Horror

PULP! Episode #2 - The Horror of Space Horror

Erika found her sleeping just inside the airlock, the near-human curled into a ball, the hood of her sleeveless parka rimming the girl's sallow, ichor-stained face in fluff. Immersed in Abyssal space there was no immediate risk, and even if one or more of the skiffs had followed them through the rift, they wouldn't be allowed to traverse without a Deep One on board, and even then it could occasionally be tricky.  That said, they were no longer in the reality that Erika knew.  They were in that eerie, starless space between spaces that only those with Elderich heritage, Deep Ones, could navigate.

"Baby..." Erika said quietly, kneeling next to her, digging around in her pockets for a handkerchief and leaning down to wipe away the ichorous tears that had caked to Nebis's face, black like corroded oil.  Beneath her eyelids, Erika knew that the girl's eyes were still swimming in it, her once-normal teeth likewise affected by the slipped seeming of the Abyss, which revealed things for what they were. The Deep One purred, an eerie hiss, her mouthful of tiny, hook-like teeth bared for a moment as she dozed.

Around them, the heat lamps had begun to cool down and shut off, leaving only the florescent tube back-ups, casting the aft corridor into a washed out, greenish light, too sparse to be comfortable to the eye.

"That was..." Nebis began to say, blinking away her fatigue. "It wasn't usual. We may have a hard time getting back. The Dweller at the Threshold is paying direct attention to us.  It's always been kind of a trick to slip in and out of the Abyss without being especially interesting to It.  Now that It watches, I'm not sure what to expect."

Something skittered through the edge of Erika's vision, causing her to glance over.  Nothing.  At the points where the hull was exposed, she could see strange, dark beads of liquid forming quivering pearls on the steel, then running down in near-black rivulets.  In Abyssal space, everything lifeless degraded at an accelerated rate, manifested rust, decay, and degredation.

"We've had bad trips before," Erika said, forcing herself to look away. "How long do you think we'll be here this time?"

"Don't know," the smaller girl said, hauling herself up with great effort, rubbing her still-oozing eyes. "At least we re-stocked rations. What was with our...err...hasty departure?"

"Shafted by the client," Erika said, dismissing it as a risk of doing business, "his device went off sooner than expected. A new Governor has probably already been voted in by now, but they aren't going to get the mess out of his office for weeks, I'm sure."

Nebis chortled, leaning on the wall as she waited for warmth to return to her extremities.  Her vision was more natural now, cast in ichor-green hues, warm points seeming brighter than cooler ones, her eyes drawn naturally to things her half-human mind deemed 'prey'.  Erika looked vulnerable to her, shifty and feral, though the Deep One considered that to be a good pilot, one had to be a little twitchy.

"Shoulda' shanghaied a new mechanic." Nebis said, encouraging banter as she slowly began toward their quarters, wanting a softer place to sit than the deckplates.

"Yeah. But if we'd pressed anyone into serving on the SoHo, the resulting cliche would lead to them killing both of us and taking the ship home as someone's revenge fantasy. That's a totally different movie." The friendly chatter began, and at least it distracted from the mottled, steadily-spreading corrosion spots on the metal surfaces they passed, the caustic reek of rust already saturating the air scrubbers.

###

A scream, followed by the sound of rending flesh...the bestial roar of something beyond mortal ken, and Erika was exploding from bed, hands groping for her guns, her back to the wall, blinking the sleep out of her eyes. Nebis was sitting on the edge of the bed, dropping the game controller, both hands raising, her eyes wide. Over her shoulder, the strange beast she controlled in the video game was standing idle, munching on some poor game-sprites digital thigh.

"Want me to turn it down?"

"Inappropriate much?"

"What? It's relaxing." The female Deep One said, pushing the VR goggles up on her brow, her perpetually weeping, pitch-black eyes reflecting her nude girlfriend, the glint of the raised guns visible in her broad, dark pupils. Nebis set aside the controller and lifted a sallow hand, the fingernails seeming sharper, hooked, unpleasant. "Aww...want to cuddle?"

"Ma- maybe later." Erika set the guns down and groped for her robe, yanking it over her modesty and tying it at the waist. "Is the mess safe?"

"I heard footsteps earlier, but then I started piping bad girl-pop into the corridors using the intercom system and I think any horrific anomalies have cleared out." Nebis said offhandedly, turning off the console and stepping into her house-shoes. "It's hard to be a big, badass monster when some human chick is singing about riding your 'disco stick', neh? The 'What a Wonderful World' music & carnage juxtaposition doesn't work with it."

"But they don't have a sense of humanity or of-" Erika began to say.

"Don't overthink it, save your logic for the fridge...speaking of which, weren't we going to the mess?"

-

"If I see that little hand-spider thing again, I'm going to stomp on it, hull burnies or not." Nebis muttered, eying the floor from where she sat in the middle of the mess table. "Fucker has been flying at my face every few weeks for the last year. Why won't it go after you?"

"My maiden name is Ripley."  Erika said dismissively, her back turned as she poured herself a cup of stale coffee, offering one to the huddled girl. "Means half the non-human life forms in this galaxy have an irrational fear of me."

"What about the other half?" Nebis took the cup in both hands and tested it, wincing.

"Blinding, homicidal rage."

A claxon sounded, causing both women to look toward the indicator board.

"Proximity? What could we possibly hit out here?" Nebis said, slipping from the table and jogging from the mess, down the corridor toward the bridge. Checking the outboard sensors, she caught sight of a small ship a few thousand feet from their undercarriage, and began to roll the ship's orientation to get it on level, slipping the shutters and examining it as well as the distance allowed.

"Looks like wreckage," Erika said over her shoulder, offering the cup of coffee she'd abandoned.  Nebis stepped back into her girlfriend's arms and frowned at the ship, glancing at the sensor panel.  Not much heat coming off of it, only a single concentration at the heart of the ship, where the general quarters and stasis pods would be, if the ship were equipped with them.

"We ought to board her and have a look," the smaller girl said, sipping the coffee.

"Random, dead vessel with a single life form?" Erika said, peering at the corroded, soot-stained hull of the derelict, appraising the damage. "We leave it here, we don't board it, we don't go investigate, we don't even LOOK at it for too long. We go home alive. End of movie."

"You're no fun!" Nebis said immediately, "if They pushed the wreck at us, then They want us to go have a look at it. Come on, the Plot Gods have spoken, and we are bound to go and put ourselves at hazard despite our common sense to the contrary. You know how this works."

"But I like the stories where everybody lives." Erika already knew that Nebis was right, but suspending common sense was like suspending disbelief for a bad movie, it was always hard to do.

"You're too old fashioned. Come on, finish your coffee and we'll suit up. I think I can move us within magnetic tether range, the space here isn't exactly turbulent."