A Halloween Aside. From the Other Place: Intrusion
31 Oct 2022Creamy Goodness III
Part two of From the Other Place
A soft ringing of wind-chimes gently drew Creamy out of deep sleep, the soothing sound played around him while he stirred himself to wakefulness. Ninette never bothered him with a message after bed time unless it was an emergency, or one of the people Creamy was always happy to hear from and this wasn’t the emergency sound. All of the people Creamy didn’t mind hearing from at all hours were women, so he couldn’t stop the sly smile from commandeering his lips while he reached for the glass on his bedside cabinet.
Pressing the lid of the glass into the dispenser, a small jet of icy water was injected, and the container pressurised. Creamy wondered witch of his lady-friends it would be this time as took he a pull from the glass to wash his mouth and wet his throat. He took a second sip to clear away the taste of the night.
“Good morning Ninette” said Creamy to check his voice sounded crisp and fresh “Do we know who is calling?”
His personal assistant program didn’t answer as it should. The voice he heard was still accented, and the woman spoke French just like his computer, but this was not Ninette.
“<Lord Goodness, is that you? I know it’s late, and I hope I haven’t angered you>”
The voice was familiar to Creamy but he had just woken up and he was more taken with the accent and young sounding voice of the woman. The French language always did it for Creamy, especially when it was spoken properly by an attractive young lady. He needed to hear her again to run her smooth voice through the list of his acquaintances. He felt sure he wouldn’t forget a woman with a temptation tone like that.
“<Not at all my dear>” Said Creamy magnanimously, happy to be speaking French again “<Space travel has no respect for bedtime, or bio-rhythms. I do hope you are well and this is a social call?>”
The door to his room opened and in the dim light from hallway, Creamy saw the slender figure of a short woman with long dark hair. Pushing himself upright, he waved his hand past the night-light above his head. Beautiful women coming to his bedroom unannounced wasn’t uncommon, but tonight his ship, the Honour Promise was idling in space well off the normal flight lanes.
“<I wish that it were Lord Goodness, but I need you>” said the woman interrupting Creamys’ chain of thought. “<You were kind to me once, and I hope I can call on that kindness once more>” she said stealing into his room, a light pleading in her sultry voice.
The soft glow from the little panel above Creamy highlighted the woman revealing tanned skin, sculpted eyebrows above long green eyes. Her dark red lips were parted as soft breath warmed by apprehension passed between them. A short jacket with a high collar hung off her delicate shoulders and her long legs extended from a tight high-slit skirt. She was a vision of Aphrodit perfection that must have walked out of his dreams. He didn’t recognise her at all, but her voice was familiar, and so was this situation with her speaking to him while he lay in bed.
“<Jacqueline? Is that you?>” he asked uncertainly. Creamy always remembered the women he had met with unnatural clarity; it was strange to him that he wasn’t certain this time.
Over a year ago, some pirates working for Vengerfield had kidnapped Creamy and held him for interrogation. They had also taken a French speaking doctor hostage, enslaved her, and altered her face to look like someone Creamy cared about. After he was beaten half to death, that doctor was sent to Creamys’ cell to put him back together. That’s where he remembered this woman’s’ voice from talking to him softly while he lay convalescing in bed.
“<Its me>” answered the beautiful visitor “<They cut me for you, so I cut my self to forget>” she explained looking away as if ashamed.
Guilt racked Creamy after hearing that. Being the reason something so heinous had been inflicted upon any one, let alone a woman like Jacqueline wounded him deeply. He knew what Vengerfields’ men had done the moment he realised a person he thought was Nerys, was in fact someone else surgically altered to look like one of the few women to take a piece of his heart. He also knew that Jacqueline was the one that would suffer if Creamy resisted Vengerfields’ torcher much longer. It was just luck that Mrs Muir & JB had rescued them both before it got that far.
“<Even though we were both prisoners and . . we knew what was coming, you were kind and made me smile>” said Jacqueline looking deep into Creamys bright-blue eyes “<I need that kindness again Lord Goodness. Will you come to me?>”
Guilt, lust, duty, ego, and guilt again were crashing around Creamys head, smashing his usually simple and orderly thoughts. He started getting out of bed; he was naked, but Jacqueline had seen all that before so he didn’t make an effort to hide himself while he opened his underwear draw.
“<I will, just let me get.. .I thought.. .Or aren’t you and Mrs Muir good friends? Isn’t she helping you?>” asked Creamy holding on to the draw to stop himself floating up to the ceiling.
“<No!>” demanded Jacqueline. “<It must be you. You are the one I want>”
Creamy got his briefs on and pushed himself back to the floor in front of his captivating visitor.
“<Well, yes. If you say so, of course>” he said reaching out to touch her arm reassuringly.
Jacqueline leaned away from Creamys’ hand before taking quick steps to the bedroom door.
“<Not here, you must come to me Lord Goodness. Will you come?>”
There was so much going on, so much to process; Creamy couldn’t keep up with it all. The odd phrasing Jacqueline was using kept him off balance, and her words didn’t match her body language. Still, after what she had been through because of Creamy, he didn’t blame her at all for being nervous around him, and he was well aware that the use of language changed vastly from system to system.
Floating around his bedroom wasn’t going to help, so Creamy tucked his feet into his magnetic slippers and pulled his gown out of its little locker then followed Jacqueline out of his bedroom, and through the lounge.
“Wait Jacqueline” called Creamy in his native language.
She was moving through the ship with surprising speed staying just in view at every doorway and corner. Creamy did his best to keep up, but his slippers kept coming off his feet or lost their grip. They were only made for shuffling about in the morning, not marching through the corridors in a rush.
“<I can’t>” implored Jacqueline before she turned another corner leaving Creamys sight again “<I need to show you>”
Jacqueline had got so far ahead; the cockpit doors were closing as Creamy pulled himself along the handrail towards them. Through the narrowing slot, Creamy saw Jacqueline typing on the nav-panel, she glanced over to him just as the doors shut. Impatiently Creamy jabbed the ‘open’ light on the doorframe; Saud Kruger ships did everything gracefully, so it took the doors a half a second to respond to his input. When the doors glided silently open, Jacqueline was nowhere to be seen.
“Telepresence la communication est terminée” said Ninette.
Creamy looked around the cockpit in case Jacqueline was hiding somewhere, but that was wishful thinking.
“Telepresence?” Asked Creamy. “Even in my bedroom?”
“Oi” answered Ninette ” le système couvre quatre-vingt-neuf virgule six pour cent du navire monsieur”
“Well, it is Saud Kruger and I asked for the best of everything I suppose” said Creamy sitting down in the pilots’ seat “I wonder where she wants me to go” he mused as he checked the nav-panel.
It felt to him as if Jacqueline had really been there. He fancied that he could still smell her in the cockpit, but Telepresence made a lot more sense. There was a six jump course plotted and a planetary address, right down to an apartment number typed underneath the star map.
“Right, let’s get going Ninette. I’ll get dressed once were in system” said Creamy with heroic determination. He was awake now, and a beautiful woman had given him a mission to aid her. For Creamy, it was an adolescent dream come true.
Chapter 2
The settlement was on a small high-metal planet close to a deep-red dwarf star. Descending into the thin atmosphere, the Honour Promise was bathed in a gloomy orange twilight so dull it didn’t even cause the canopy to tint. As the planet was tidally locked, this was what passed for daylight here. Given how dark it was, Creamy could see very little artificial light escaping the ancient domes that covered the long dormant mining settlement below. Only the scant few hydroponic tents let anything Creamy would call illumination spill out to hold off the ever present bronzeian-dusk.
An automated computer voice negatively answered his landing request. It would seem the pads capable of housing an Orca were out of order; Creamy suspected beyond repair was more likely given what he was seeing from his birds eye view. Still, the sleek silver body of Saud Krugers finest labours would probably incite the sort of people living here to indulge in a spot of proactive salvage.
The flat featureless landscape meant Creamy could land anywhere outside the settlement, so he chose to put down a few clicks away, and drive in. At least if his SRV was ransacked while he looked for Jacqueline, he could still call Ninette and have her land the Honour Promise nearby for a quick extraction. As an extra precaution, Creamy changed out of his metallic blue and silver embossed Atriums suit for some plain workwear. The stock Maverick suit he selected wasn’t upgraded at all, but he’d look less like a walking stack of creds, and he hoped, a less tempting target.
After pulling into the garage, Creamy checked his hud for a public terminal; nothing showed up. Through the bubble of his SRV, Creamy did spot a large “I” for information above an old-style notice board, so that was as good a place as any to start. Local people watched him intently as Creamy brushed the dust off an old map of the settlement. At one time the speech bubble coming from the happy little waving ‘You are here’ man on the map would have read “Hello There”, but someone had scratched off the ‘o’ and the ‘T’. Looking around, Creamy was inclined to agree whit the little chap. After locating the habitation block he was looking for, Creamy used the public information map to pick a path through the converted work camp.
The dank taste of stale recycled air clung to Creamys throat like oily dust. Rubbish piled up in every corner partially hidden in the deep shadows cast by a dim star, made the perfect breeding ground for mould adding its heavy musk to the already thick man-made atmosphere. Eyes followed him from darkened doorways and half covered windows. The constant creaking of the old dome and worrying sound of escaping air that accompanied the protesting repairs took his mind off the locals. Getting mugged was far more appealing than being under this dome when it gave out from old age and jury-rigged repairs.
Flickering lights hummed with the strain of pulling a few watts of energy from the over taxed power grid as Creamy climbed the steps of an old fashioned pre-fab hab-block. Stepping over the slumbering body of a vagrant he continued to the third floor where Jacqueline had arranged to meet him. Whatever sort of trouble she was in to be in a place like this without turning to Mrs Muir before it got this bad was beyond him, but he’d never let a lack of comprehension stop him from helping a beautiful woman.
A group of men and women on the trash-strewn street watched Creamy walk along the balcony above, making no bones about keeping eye contact with him. They all wore heavy ponchos voluminous enough to hide anything beneath the folds of cloth. Looking down at the suspicious congregation, Creamy put together a crude escape plan. He estimated the gravity here was almost Earth normal; as he was used to something much higher, he could easily jump down from here, even if he had to carry Jacqueline. With that sort of head start, he could get lost in the twists and turns of the ram-shackle settlement before the ponchoed-pack could catch up, if there were going to try something.
Turning his attention back to the numbers on the doors, Creamy found Jacquelines’ apartment. Giving the door a wipe with his sleeve, he pressed his ear to it and knocked. Inside he herd his taps had caused someone to move suddenly and then go silent. Cupping his hands around his mouth, Creamy pressed them to the door and spoke loudly hoping his words would carry through the cheap plastic partition, but not far enough to reach the group below.
“Jacqueline, it’s Creamy. I’m here for you”
Whoever was inside was moving without trying to be quiet now, but they were not coming to the door. Taking a step back before lunging forward with an extended leg, Creamy kicked the door. It buckled and his foot made a hole. Gripping the tattered gap in one hand, and the frame in the other Creamy pushed until the hook-bolts pulled the keeps off the frame, and the door snapped open. A warm waft of rotting meat hit Creamy hard, like an ephemeral punch and he paused momentarily to activate his helmet before he stepped into the apartment.
Inside was unlit, but the flickering light outside highlighted a bony organic mess. Fettled meat and blood dampened bones were strewn all over the floors with a path pushed through the mess leading to a door way. He saw a man run from the small front room toward the back, and followed him into a cramped bedroom. The stranger gave up trying to open the window as Creamy was bearing down on him and darted into the tiny bathroom. With nowhere to go, he turned just in time to see Creamys’ mad eyes and extended hands close on him.
“WHERE IS SHE” demanded Creamy as he crashed the man into the wall.
With one hand, Creamy had pushed his head into the mirror above the sink, the other had gathered up his wrists and pressed them into his chest, then Creamys’ knee was thrust into the mans’ abdomen and pushed hard against the sink. On the short journey to catch the stranger, Creamy had seen enough to accurately call this apartment a charnel house. If Jacquelines’ bones were amongst those littering the floors in here, this man would forfeit his hands and never walk again.
Wroughts’ eyes swivelled madly as he tried to fight against the grip Creamy had on him. It was useless, it was like he was in the grip of a statue and no amount of struggling would earn him his freedom. One glance at the cold blue eyes of Creamy told Wrought that his pathetic pleading and squeaky begging for clemency were falling on deaf ears. He went limp once he had taken in the angry face glaring at him. He’d see it before; he’d been shown that face and told to pass on the item he had been tasked with guarding all these years to this man. His panic turned to relief and he gladly gave up his fight, happy at last to have been freed from his burden.
Sensing the lack of resistance, Creamy lifted his palm off the strangers mouth, but vice like fingers kept a grip of Wroughts’ skull, and he didn’t release an ounce of the presser he was exerting to push him head into the wall.
“I have it here, I was told to give it to you. Please, please I don’t want it, I don’t need any more rewards, it’s yours. I just want them to let me go” begged Wrought.
There was too much for Creamy to put together; A telepresence visit from someone that as far as he knew, wanted nothing to do with him, calling him to a repurposed mining camp so old, it used out dated technology that could fail at any moment. He’d seen rotten bones in this apartment and assumed the worst, but the bones in the shower cubical beside him looked as if they came from animals. Now the man he was ready to cripple was trying to give him something that was left for Creamy he assumed, by Jacqueline.
Dropping Wrought, Creamy stepped back and let the man fumble in his pocket for something. Trembling dirty fingers emerged from the filthy reassesses of Wroughts’ coat holding a small brown plastic box about the size of his index finger that he offered to Creamy.
“Here, take it and tell them I did as I was told. I just want to sleep without dreams. You’ll tell them that won’t you?” asked Wrought in the same weak squeaky tone that completely lacked even a hint of manhood.
Creamy took the box, but didn’t understand what Wrought was asking. Tell who? What did this wrenched little specimens' dreams have to do with anything?
“Did Jacqueline tell you to give this to me?” asked Creamy taking the thing and placing it in a pouch.
Looking passed Creamy, Wroughts eyes widened before Creamys’ shields flashed blue as someone tried to stab Creamy in the back. With hardly enough room to turn around in the narrow bathroom, Creamy reached behind, found the arm holding the blade and grabbed it as he propelled himself backwards with all his might. Someone was crushed sufficiently to drop their knife, but there were more people waiting beyond the door way. Putting his shoulder down and guarding his head with his fist, Creamy charged the two people in the doorway. They braced themselves, but they may as well have tried stopping a charging bull. Pausing for a moment, Creamy checked the bedroom for Jacqueline, or another room where she could be hidden.
“You fool!” called one of the men he knocked over “You’re being used”
Two laser blasts challenged the suits shields from the front room forcing Creamy to move again. He jumped over to the wall beside the only other door to the front room where the shots had come from. He just had to check that room for Jacqueline, and providing there were no other doors to open, he could make his escape.
“Get the book” called a deep gruff voice beyond the doorway.
Creamy was already moving when the person ordered to ‘get the book’ let her pistol lead the way into the room. Creamy twisted the weapon out of the woman’s hand, grabbed her by the neck and used her as a shield while he scanned the front room quickly. No Jacqueline, and only one other door. Throwing his erstwhile attacker at two more people in the apartment, Creamy pulled the last door open. It was a storage unit with yet more gore and waist piled knee high, but thankfully no Jacqueline.
The people back in the bed room had got up and more shots, both laser and bullets drained Creamys’ shields forcing him to run out the apartment. Stepping off the balcony railing, Creamy jumped as lasers streaked by and bullets cracked ageist the suits armoured plating. Hitting the ground, he rolled and came up sprinting for cover.
"Don't read it, you’re a pawn in their plan" yelled a deep voice from above him as he sailed towards the floor.
One of the few useful things Creamy was good at was running, so it didn’t take long for him to put some obstacles between him and his pursuers. As he ran, the fading voices of his attackers kept warning him about a book. If they didn’t want him to read something enough to kill him over it, then it must be well worth reading. Creamy didn’t slow down until he was at his SRV. A few scavengers scattered, abandoning the loot they had pried off the vehicle as its owner crashed into the garage bay. Fortunately, the SRV started and Creamy was soon speeding out of the dome, and into the flat wasteland beyond.
After calling Ninette to return with his ship, Creamy took the little brown plastic thing out of his pouch and looked at it. He couldn’t tell if it was dirty plastic or old wood. Whatever it was, the longer he looked at it, the more its uneven surface seemed to move like melting wax. Putting it way, Creamy fort off the disquieting feeling the thing gave him as he headed for the landing zone. He could study it when he was safely away from this planet and unlock its link to his beautiful visitor.
Chapter 3
Supercruise always made Creamy feel safe; after he paid for it, his Orca had been sent to specialists for tuning so it ran cool and quiet even by Saud Kruger standards. Anyone scanning space for him would have to be on top of his ship before they detected its signature, and by then Creamy would be ready to jump before they could get an interdictor tether. After changing into his lounge suit, Creamy activated magno-grip and enjoyed the little magnetic tug that pulled at him near the end of his decent to the sofa. He placed his capped wine glass on the low table in front of him, put his feet up and took the small box out of his pocket.
It felt smooth and rubbery on his fingers as he stroked the uneven lines that ran its short length. He brought it close to his eyes as he slowly rolled it between his fingers and thumb. Smooth black vain-like ridges were slightly raised above a tactile mat-black surface somewhat like old leather. Whatever it was, Creamy was in no danger of reading it. There were no words on it, and he didn’t see any way of opening it.
“What is it Ninette?” asked Creamy holding it up for inspection.
A drone detached from its concealed dock, and took the finger sized box from Creamy. A compacted sensory array went to work feeding information back to the computer. After Ninette cross referenced its extensive database, the personal assistance program voice its best match, the closest a computer could come to taking a guess.
“Je crois que c'est un ancien périphérique de stockage de données, monsieur. Au moins quatre cents ans” Said Ninette as the drone gave the box back to Creamy.
“Four hundred years? I say, that’s old for a storage device what? If there is anything on it, will it still be retrievable old girl?” Asked Creamy following the raised lines on the box with his fingers.
“Monsieur inconnu, l'appareil nécessitera un dock physique pour le savoir. Je peux demander au synthétiseur de créer un adaptateur, mais vous devrez le connecter à l'ordinateur du navire. Je peux vous guider tout au long du processus si vous le souhaitez.” Informed Ninette.
“Me? What, like soldering, and fiddling with your internals and all that?” asked Creamy unwilling to do anything mechanical or electrical to Ninette. If he did something wrong and damaged her, he’d be almost useless and he knew it.
Despite his apprehension to wire in an out-of-date port for the data storage device himself, the more he was stroked the thing, the more the box intrigued him. How had Jacqueline got hold of something like this, and why would she leave it with a dirty old butcher to pass on to Creamy? Why did a group of people that wanted the ‘book’ wait for Creamy to arrive? Maybe they knew what they were looking for was in that old mining camp, but they had to wait for Jacquelines’ contact to lead them to it.
Creamy was no stranger to being hunted by a gang of killers for the smallest of reasons, so this situation didn’t seem all that out of place. The cool box rotated in Creamys’ fingers, it was the next step towards finding Jacqueline and helping her solve her difficulties. It was a step that had to be taken.
“Alright Ninette, with you talking me through it, I’m confident I can wire in a dock for this thing without damaging your .. main.. system.. board or what-nots. Go ahead and synthesise the adapter and I’ll set about getting it installed what?”
Back in the cockpit, with holographic overlays and step by step instructions from his computer, Creamy managed to wire in a port for the old data-stick. After putting the tools way, Creamy proudly held aloft the socket on the end of a wire that snaked up from an access panel under the pilots’ seat.
“Right..” said Creamy offering the stick to the socket. “.. How do I it connect it?”
“L'extrémité faisant face à votre droite se rétractera loin de l'adaptateur si vous le faites reculer” said Ninette.
“Roll back?” puzzled Creamy as he twisted the one end of the stick like he was trying to extending a lipstick. Nothing happened.
Eventually, the rubbery texture of the sticks skin reminded him of another rolling motion. He pulled its outer skin back and a puckered slot in the end allowed a metallic tong with three copper strips on each side to protrude.
“Oh I say” exclaimed Creamy triumphantly, but the happy sentiment was soon supplanted by a more fitting “Eugh” because of the unnervingly fleshy action of the motion. After plugging the data-stick in, Creamy unconsciously wiped his fingers on his thighs.
“What now Ninette?” he asked looking between the information display on his right, and the coms display on the left.
With a flicker, the displays offlined, and the lights went out. An all but imperceptible vibration of the FSD made its self notable by its absence, and the Honour Promise dropped out of Supercruise. With no thrusters online the ship continued on, heading out into the yawning abyss between stars.
The few dash-lights that were burning up the residual power left in the ships systems winked out one by one until Creamy was left alone in the dark. He knew he shouldn’t have fiddled with anything electrical, and his dead ship was proof of that. As Creamy was about to get up and go to the generator room, when the lights came back on followed by the displays flickering back into life. When the flight assist system came online, the thrusters fired gently bringing Honour Promise to an elegant stop.
Chapter 4
“Ninette, what happened there?” asked Creamy glad that the power was back on, and hoping he wouldn’t be immersed in darkness again.
“Th… w.s .. une….ted sy…. r.set .ir” replied the broken stock-voice of the Pilots Federation COVAS.
A light on the dash that hardly ever illuminated was shimmering as it strobed away, indicating that the main computer we busy processing. Now Creamy could see again, he reached for the wire that linked the old storage device to his computer. Its skin had rolled up to enveloped the socket, and frost was forming along its length and up the wire. While Creamy was wondering if that was normal, the nav-computer set a jump rout and the FSD started charging.
“Ninette, what’s going on?” demanded Creamy as the ships nose swung round to face the jump-marker.
Grabbing the controls, Creamy tried to cancel the jump. The sticks did nothing to change the ships direction, and cancelling did not halt the jump. The stuttering voice of the COVAS did its best to answer his inquiry unsuccessfully. It seemed to Creamy that the FSD charged very quickly, and the jump its self, pushed him back in the seat. Normally, Saud Kruger engineering made the transition to Witch Space as smooth as it could be. An experienced pilot knows when something is wrong with a jump, and although there was nothing in a Witch Space tunnel that could be called a land mark, Creamy knew from what he was seeing in the swelling mass outside, that this was not a normal jump.
“Ne-am întors” said the COVAS clearly when the ship dropped back into space.
We are returned
A dull orange star greeted the Honour Promise as the ship flew itself around the burning ball to face the next jump. The sound of straining metal, and a heavy boom travelled along the infrastructure from somewhere deep in the ship. Those ominous noises coupled with the language Creamy couldn’t understand coming from his COVAS awakened a memory he had worked hard to forget.
“I bloody well think not” muttered Creamy with iron determination as he got out of his seat.
If the controls wouldn’t respond, then the FSD would just have to be disconnected at the source; by force if need be. Creamy didn’t go down to the rooms that housed the technical elements of his ships often. He knew the basics about all the important parts that made a ship go, but there were people that knew what they were doing with them, and he could pay those people to do what they did if his ship need it.
When he got to the drive room door, a red crackel of energy played over its surface. He knew his FSD was shielded, but Creamy couldn’t recall ever having seen shielding dancing over the door; in fact he couldn’t remember ever having seen red shields. Opening the door, Creamy looked over the humming FSD. This was the first time he’d been here, so he didn’t know if everything looked the way it should. Curved girders vaulted the small room making the FSD look like a heart nestling in a giant robots ribcage. Locating the tool store on the wall a little way inside, Creamy braced himself for the task in hand.
“<Creamy don’t>” said a French female voice in the hall.
Turning around Creamy saw Jacqueline peering at him from around a corner. Her hand was on the wall beside her face; she seemed outlined in black, or maybe a black glow. It must have been an effect of the Telepresence hologram generation, but it did nothing to dull Jacquelines’ attractive crystal-green eyes. Her gaze locked Creamy in place and he enjoyed the pleasing tingle of carnal intent building in his loins, instigated by Jacqueline enticing body language.
“<Come back, I have scribed eventing you need to know. Come with me>” she whispered extending her hand towards Creamy.
Wordlessly, Creamy followed Jacqueline hardly registering another jump; he was transfixed on the holograms pendulum hips and perfect heart-shaped rear. Jacqueline mentioned she had some work done, but it was as if she had known Creamys’ image of the perfect woman and sculpted herself into that very likeness.
“<I’m glad you’re alright” said Creamy earnestly “I was worried that was not so after what I saw back on that planet>”
Jacqueline turned her head and smiled in a way that raised Creamy pulse. Raising her finger, she beckoned him to stay close and follow her back to the cockpit. On the bridge, she draped herself over the back of the pilots’ seat.
“<Sit>” she commanded and Creamy was powerless to resist.
Not being able to touch Jacqueline was ramping up Creamys’ a thirst; he was almost trembling with the need to quench it as the hologram took the other chair. She called up the coms panel for Creamy, it was filled with yellow writing using characters he didn’t recognise and certainly couldn’t read.
Leaning towards him with her chin rested on her fist, she whispered “<Read it to me>”.
Her words were soft, but they were definitely an order. Creamy looked from her face to the display wishing he could do as he was told. Failing to please Jacqueline could mean she wouldn’t want him, and that thought just about broke him on the spot.
“<But the language, I don’t underst….>” he said still speaking French, but he was cut off.
“<You will. Just Read it to me now>” said Jacqueline pointing at the display.
Looking at the text, Creamy tried to find repeated words or charters so he could at least try to decipher the writing as if it was a code. He knew he wasn’t capable of such a thing, but he had to try for Jacqueline. As he studied the display it seemed to grow bigger; the letters took on a red outline as if they were a meatal being heated. He was concentrating on them so hard, Creamy fancied he could feel that heat on his eyes; burning each new character there as he willed his mind to comprehend them.
‘I can’t’ he thought, but before he could vocalise his doubts “<You will. Keep reading>” reassured Jacqueline in that same voice of commanded interlaced with an irresistible promise of reward.
Leaning closer to the display, Creamy took his skull in both hands covering his ears looking for anything he could recognise. The words were glowing as if about to catch light when comprehension came like an epiphany. A small word here made sense to him allowing Creamy to decipher a longer word there. Silently, with growing enthusiasm, Creamy pieced together words and phrases in to sentences. Quickly he read them to himself building the confidence he needed to say he could finely do as Jacqueline had asked.
He glanced at her, and she grinned back “<Good, now read to me Creamy. Read it all>” she said leaning back in her seat.
The text was a commentary on individual philosophy, and each person’s place in the complicated intricacy of a correspondent universe that over lapped with what little Creamy had heard about Chaos Theory and Quantum Entanglement. As he read, Jacqueline relaxed and made herself comfortable encouraging Creamy to continue each time he looked her way. The ship jumped again and again, weaving a paten with its swirling wake in Witch Space; each turbulent line anchored by the rips it left in Space-Times fabric.
After each jump, strained meatal sounds resonated up the ships spine occasionally followed by heavy clang. If Creamy was distracted by the noises and looked away from the display, Jacqueline sat up and told him to continue, reassuring him the noise was nothing to worry about. To beguine with, Creamys’ hero complex made him argue, determined to keep the ship in one piece so he could reach Jacquelin, but there was something about her voice and the way she looked at him that calmed his mind, so he continued to read as he told.
Soon the book moved on to the apparent history of extra dimensional intelligences that shaped their reality by pure dint of will. It told of how they created whole universes to push their latest experimental musings to their ultimate conclusion. Eons could pass for the life that grew in their vast and unknowably complexed experiments, but it was seldom more than a passing fancy for its creator. Many creations were abandoned, or snuffed out with callous regard once its architect lost interest.
“<Yes, keep reading>” moaned Jacqueline.
She was leaning back, gripping the arms of the seat pressing herself down as she writhed like a lap-dancer. Her foot was stroking her opposite leg and she looked at Creamy for a moment, smiling as if she enjoyed teasing him before she closed her eyes again. He was very easy to manipulate.
“<Read>” she said breathlessly.
The book was using Creamy now, it only needed him to vocalise the words in its pages; the story had to be spoken for the way to open. It told of the cleaners, created by the Sculptors to devour what was left in their wake. Cleaners that had survived long beyond their usefulness, and learned to feed on other abandoned experiments. The longer they survived, the more their intelligence grew. With understanding of their origins and lost purpose came bitterness; a bitterness for their uncaring parents that evolved inevitably into hatred. In time the cleaners named themselves the Other Ones and soon became strong enough to bite the hand that unwittingly fed them. Unfortunately, they paid the price for such a petty revenge.
The Sculptors were consumed by their forgotten creations, but they didn’t go quietly. With the last of their energies, the Sculptors pushed the upstart caretakers out of creations light as their own flame was vanquished. The Other Ones had succeeded in ridding themselves of the Sculptors and the shadows they cast, just to be banished to an infinite emptiness that had never be touched by light, and never would be. Surviving on nothing was not new to the Other Ones, so they existed silently with in a dimension where direction meant nothing, and the smallest distance stretched beyond unseen horizons.
Drowning in solitary oily-black silence, the Other Ones’ regret for their short sighted action turned into madness. Trapped in their minds, the insanity twisted and turned until it escaped the confines of the Other Ones’ heads only to race around an endless black, which was just as much of a prison to an unleashed consciousness. However, an unhinged mind can pulse with chaotic energy that disrespects barriers an ordered mind would have no choice but to perceive as impenetrable.
On rare occasions, a disquieted mind going to dark places in another universe, could slip out of the light and dip into the endless black where the Other Ones had been imprisoned. In even less common occurrences, the visiting consciousness would brush against the racing insanity of the Other Ones. The contact was catastrophic for the visitor, but it was a taste of freedom for the Other Ones. It told them there was a way back to the light, back to a physical existence where the Other Ones could stand above all, casing their own shadow just as the Sculptors had.
In a place where time holds no sway, rare events eventually stack. With every mental touch, more knowledge was gained, and soon a faint glimmer of hope quieted the madness long enough to allow the Other Ones to form a plan. The visiting minds belonged to simplistic creatures with biological drives so primitive; they were as predictable as the most basic mechanical toy, and the Other Ones learned to influence their brief visitors. On the other side, influenced by dark whispers the insane scratched and clawed at the timeless barrier the Sculptors had erected, until they had created a window for the Other Ones. The window didn’t allow light to leak through, but it did let the prisoners peek out upon a universe full of stars, and push their influence ever further into that bright place.
Chapter 5
Creamy was sweating; his perspiration joined the tears streaming from his red eyes. The book hadn’t let him blink as he spoke aloud the words with in. Now their language had been spoken, and the words had echoed around the cockpit resonating with the reality-warping power of an FSD, the Other Ones had been called to gather around the window, waiting for the thin barrier keeping them back to be ripped away. With each jump Creamys’ ship had drawn a geometric pattern in the stars that intersected the window time and time again, pulling at the membrane like hooks in flesh.
Falling magnetically to the floor, Creamy pressed his palms into his eyes and groaned. They felt like balls of sandpaper in their sockets, and his throat was saw and dry. Desperately he sucked on his tong in an effort to produce some saliva to wet his mouth. The thing pretending to be a Jacqueline Creamy would want, stood beside him for a moment then pushed him onto this back with her foot. Looking up at her with blurry vision, Creamy thought she look taller. He saw her beautiful green eyes had gone dark when she reached down for him; her hand feeling cold and hard in his. She hauled Creamy upright, and keeping a tight grip, pulling him along behind her.
“You need to come with me now” she said.
She wasn’t speaking French anymore, and her voice had an echo, or more like a second voice speaking the same words under her own. He looked out the canopy through stinging eyes and saw nothing but darkness as the woman led him off the bridge. Creamy tried to ask Jacqueline what had happened, but he couldn’t push the words past the pain in his throat. Stumbling, Creamy lost contact with the floor but Jacqueline didn’t stop walking; she let Creamy trail behind her like a flaccid kite.
Tears blurred Creamys’ vision; he looked at Jacqueline trying hard to make sense of what he was seeing. She seemed taller, stalking down the white corridor of the Orca on points like a ballerina. Her legs looked as if they were bending in the wrong places, and what must have been her jacket appeared to be wings of blades rising above her shoulders.
Jacqueline stopped outside the drive room and opened the door. As Creamy was about to try to ask why they were here, she threw Creamy inside as if tossing rubbish in a bin. Where the FSD should be, Creamy saw a black mass fringed with yellow and red light. Around it, the girders that reinforced the room had bent and folded themselves into a geometric structure that made Creamys’ head ache for the brief seconds he had tried to make sense of its shapes. He was drifting in absolute silence towards the black mass. It took more than just an absence of noise to explain the silence in this room; it felt like every noise was somehow being drunk away and subdued. As he got closer to the black, Creamy saw dozens of orange stars weaving and blinking-out in the darkness beyond.
Curiosity and exestuation overruled Creamys’ senses as he drifted towards the black gap in the drive room. Reaching out, he touched the event horizon. As soon as his fingers made contact, his joints were stretched, and all of them, up to his shoulder were pulled out of their sockets as he was yanked into the darkness beyond. Instinct made him grab the burning edge of the hole and panic lent superhuman strength to Creamys’ already impressive grip.
Inhuman screams forced their way past the noise of rushing wind that was pulling at Creamy, straining his fingers to their limit. He closed his eyes and pressed his lips together to try and stop the unseen force pulling at his eyeballs and stealing the air from his lungs. He felt his long hair forced against his scalp and slapping the back of his lounge suit. His injured arm flailed uselessly beside him as he tried to make it take hold of the other side of the hole in space.
Hard claws gripped Creamys’ legs and used him to climb toward the light. Looking down, Creamy saw that what he thought were stars was in fact the glowing orange eyes of large insect-like creatures. Each one had at least six eyes in a chevron formation; one line of pin-prick lights on each side of an arrow shaped head. There were so many clawing at Creamy trying to climb against the invisible force rushing against them, he couldn't fail to put a foot on a creature and push himself closer to the inviting normality of the drive room. A mixture of terror and the will to live drove him to kick out at the monsters below, and using them as a horrifying living ladder, Creamy tried to fight his was back.
His own screams of terror were drowned out by the screeching swarm of insects that were intent on useing Creamy as a stepping stone into our universe. Kicking out and using any purchase he could, Creamy pushed against the swarm with his legs, and pulled with all his might; slowly he was making progress. A pincered insect appendage gripped Creamys’ forearm and he felt the weight of one of the creatures on his back. More of its legs wrapped around his shoulders as it pulled its self along Creamys’ body.
With titanic effort, Creamy had inched his head to the event horizon and managed to force his elbow beyond the breach allowing his fingers to relax and his arm take the strain. Looking up, Creamy brought his face out of the barrier, the noise stopped and he could at last take a normal breath. Hope let him redouble his fight to escape the black hole and he forced himself another inch forward. It was a strange to feel his body being pulled as if he was in a wind tunnel, but not even the hit of a breeze, or the most distant sound affected that small part of him that was beyond the rip.
Growling and crying out with strain, Creamy eked another inch forwards letting a hit of salvation enter his thoughts. His slither of triumph was snatched away when a claw pierced the breach and wrapped around Creamys’ head, its point digging in just above his eye. A moment later, another claw gripped the other side of his skull and pulled back. Creamys’ feet found nothing to step on and his muscles burned, coming close to the limit where his tendons would snap. The thick ropes of muscle in his neck fort against the creature pulling on his head as he continued to fight for each millimeter of progress. Bloody ran between Creamys’ teeth, forced from his gums because he was gritting so hard.
Another inch forward allowed Creamy to hook his foot on the edge of the breach and fight against the irresistible pull of the swarming void beyond the smouldering rend. Clambering on his belly, Creamy tried to roll the thing off his back, his one good hand lifting a chitins spike off his forehead. As if delving a punishment for its prays’ impertinence, the thing shifted its grip to Creamys’ neck and squeezed. Swallowing hard, Creamy couldn’t encourage a single gasp of air past his closed throat.
His hands gripped the hard claw, but one of his arms was pulled apart inside, and the other was strained to the point of exhaustion. The last vestige of resistance was wrung from Creamys’ body, and the creature lifted him to a face crafted by no god humans ever conceived. Its chevron eye glowed brighter as its probing psyche felt the waking-mind of the soft thing in its grip slip away. It joined a scant few that had escaped the captivity of untold eons, and now it had a new vessel that could take it anywhere it wanted to go.
Chapter 6
Distant clangs echoed far away approaching at speed; cold air was forced into his mouth expanding his aching ribs with life-sustain breath. Creamy opened his eyes; they were greeted with red lights passing above him at rhythmic intervals. Pain rolled in his shoulder forcing him to reach over his large chest to hold his tortured body, but he was bound unable to free his limbs. Panic came with the same urgency of the booted foot-falls he could hear around him.
“Where am I” Demanded Creamy rolling his eye unable to lift his head.
“Hay now, hay. You do speak English” said a confident, calming voice of a man beside Creamy “We got you, your safe”
The man carrying the stretcher leaned back so Creamy could see him and he put a hand on Creamys’ chest to gently discourage his patients effort to move.
“Seems a catastrophic failure in your FSD breached the hull and you were caught in it. Man, you are so lucky; it takes the strength of a Greek hero to resist the pull of a hull breach. You’re suffering from vacuum exposure, but you’re going to be ok”
Now Creamy recognised where he was; he was still on board the Honour Promise. The Red Cross in a white circle on the green flight suit of the man above him let Creamy know help had come, and he was safe now.
“Where is Jacqueline, she was here, I felt her hand” asked Creamy while he was being taken across a boarding tube to the emergency services rescue ship.
“Your computer says it’s just you, but we won’t leave her here. Just relax; we’ll take care of everything” Lied the paramedic.
He already knew there was no one else on the ship. If this guy had a friend, she was lost to the void now. After adding more sedative to his patient’s intravenous pump, the paramedic watched Creamy drift peacefully to sleep.
“Din spatele acestui chip îmi voi vedea lucrările” escaped in breathy syllables from Creamys’ slumbering throat.
From behind this face shall I over see my works
He'd been speaking like this since the paramedic discovered Creamy floating unconscious outside the drive room. It wasn’t that strange to hear an accident victim mumbling incoherently, but this time the words felt like spiders crawling over his ears.
“Cu acest nume voi blestema oamenii tăi” followed the last whisper.
By this name shall I damn your kind.
The tone of the unknown language coming from the man he had rescued unnerved the paramedic, so he let a little more sedative join his patients’ blood stream.
“Cu aceste mâini îți voi remodela realitatea pentru unitatea mea” raised from Creamys’ lips, soft as vaper on a cold morning before he fell silent.
With these hand shall I reshape your reality for my knid.
Yes, this vessel was perfect.