Nihilnauts: 2005

Looking over the railing of the command deck, down through the brass-lattice of glass, to the rolling verdant land scape a mile beneath the craft, Prismia Alvarez stood firm, arm braced on the copper console. A chittering from behind her as she turned to look up at the hulking form of Admiral Gre Yunnala, his wide rusty carapace hidden away beneath an overcoat, detailed golden epaulettes flowing off his shoulders, the knitted beige turtlenecks hugging the base of his eye stalks. Moving a claw up, he pointed to an officer sitting at a optical targeting mechacomputer.
“Lieutenant, prime the firing tubes and ready the ordinance. The emperor intends to find out what this artifact is capable of,” the crab stated loudly, booming from gills.
Prismia adjusted the striped shirt pulled over her exogear; flattening out the creases in her cotton pants, cuffed just above her boots; her large leather overcoat dangling down besides her legs, a belt cinching the waist, and its collar popped up above the rubber neck seal of the exosuit; her hair neatly braided beneath a simple brimmed cap.
The crab behind the targeting device tapped away at a telegraph wired to the bomb bay farther back in the craft.
Prismia looked out the side of the nearly hemispheric windows at the sweeping blades of the engines swooping softly as the craft pittered forward lazily. Situated further back in shielded tombs set off from the ship on metal struts, gravpulsors canceled gravity within their radioactive containers, keeping the craft suspended in the morning sky.
Her free hand moved through simple spells, the voice in her hand speaking the ancient incantations. Spherical spirals and glowing transparent curves began manifesting in her palm, the Heri fields aligning under her suggestion. Feeling the crystals on her rings and bracelets vibrate softly, she adjusted the spell, intuning it to desired base frequency.
As the popping purple manifestations flowed more intensely and tightened into almost physical cycles, she closed her hand, transferring the hericyclic clusters into the crystals in her rings, a faint humming as they vibrated with the stored energy.
“Miss Alvarez,” Admiral Gre began, “I hope you are not intending to use magic on my bridge.”
“I would never think of it, your crabby one,” Prismia retorted turning back to look up at the imposing crustacean, “I’m simply growing antsy that the bomb hasn’t been deployed yet.”
“Lieutenant,” the Admiral boomed, “Fire when ready!”
The ordinance crab nodded, eye stalks bouncing back to look down the sighting glass, a scrawled note next to the telegraph receiver indicated the bomb was ready to go.
Prismia’s gaze fell back down to the lush world below: a complex ecosystem sprawled out to the horizon, animals and plants never before seen enjoyed relative peace as the floating fortress slipped softly through the sky. A few relatively sentient creatures stood outside their clay houses staring up at the oddity hovering above their world. Fields of cultivated grain stretched over hills to a premedieval city.
The lieutenant chittered out “bombs away” and the craft lifted slightly as the massive ancient device fell away, green and orange energies flowing over its metallic surface, the tetrahedral bomb swirling in the wind as it careened toward the ground. Prismia leaned over the railing to see the impact crater as the device smashed into the dirt.
A dull shadowy gray began creeping from the crater across the grass. Tendrils of the wave front stretched ahead, converting biomass to flowing gray. The wave traveled quickly through the fields, causing animals and sentient creatures to be painfully reduced to biomass and then to gray self-relocating automatas. The gray goo moved over the hills towards the city, a silhouette against the horizon softened as the goo reached it and converted it all to goo. As she scoped the world below with her looking glass, she could only see the formless gray flowing out. In a mere matter of moments, there was nothing on this pristine world but gray.
“Dear god,” Prismia sighed out.
“That’s quite effective,” the Admiral cheered, “Now nothing, not a single dimension, can stand against the Crabithian Empire! Helmsman, signal the scouts to return. Slipmaster, entune our phase array to Crabithius Primus; we are heading back to give a full report to the Emperor.”
Prismia’s face tightened, her lips turning down as she stepped up towards the command level of the deck. Admiral Gre clattered backwards on his legs as she approached.
“Admiral, I disagree with the deployment of this weapon,” she asserted, “it’s powers of destruction are too great to be employed.”
“Why, Alvarez, you have served the Crabithians for months now and never had a problem with our methods. Have you not enjoyed the ample resources provided?” he retorted.
“I never served; Our interests were not opposed and it was easier to work with you than against you. Your empire is nearly the most powerful thing i’ve come across in the multiverse.”
“Then what’s the issue now?” the Admiral asked incredulously.
“This ancient device is too powerful and indiscriminate. You are not subjugating; you are erasing.”
“You had no issue deploying it on this world, why hesitate for future ones?” the Admiral stretched up, his claw moving to rest on the railing, a few feat from her.
“We didn’t know what it was capable of, but now I am rescinding my gifts. The Emperor does not deserve this power—no one does,” Prismia asserted, foot planted firmly, sparks of purple resonating off the crystals in her hands.
Below them, the dull goopy gray surface flowed idly in the wind, the entire world slowly transsubstantiating to a formless mass of gray. All life converted to gray, the atmosphere collapsing down, it’s molecules rent and assembled to gray.
“Very well,” Admiral Gre conceded, “I have neither the power to stop you, nor the authority to acquiesce. We are slipping back to the Imperial Core shortly and there you can make you case before the Emperor.”
Fingers relaxing, the energy subsided within her palm as she turned and walked back down to the lower deck.

A spherical volume grew, the boundary warping light into bands of aberration. Buzzing in their metal cages, the crystals in the phase array vibrated as the sliptear appeared, a faint blurred impression of the dimension beyond visible through the shunt.
Floating through, the colossal capital ship slipped through to the world on the other side, smaller scout ships flanking.

Crabithius Primus stretched out below the craft as it slip through. The warm red light from the dying star, the thick smoggy atmosphere. The city was constructed of sandy concrete and brass; Massive spires and domed structures rose from the dusty ground. A sea of crustaceans flowed through the streets, their eye stalks adorned with gold rings, flowing purple robes dragged along the stone paths. Beyond the high city walls, thick smoke rose from the manufactories, slip gates dotted the skies above as freighting vessels brought resources and fuel from distant colony worlds. Warships hung idly above the city, cannons and plasma ballistas stood ready.
Prismia adjusted the cap on her head and walked off through a bulkhead into the craft.

The capital ship moored at the upper dock of the magnificent domed Imperial Palace. A gang blank was set down across the gap as workcrabs began pulling it into dock.
Prismia quickly strutted across and made her way into the recess of the Palace to the throne room.
Swiftly walking down staircases and through hallways, she moved purposefully.
As she entered into the throne room, she saw the massive face of the Emperor, his ancient eye stalks resting within his shell, his mouth agape as Palace Guards tossed sacrifices captured from the colonies into his unsatiated maw. Disappearing into the depths of the city, his titanic body rested molted beneath the Palace.
Hurrying down from the balcony, Prismia walked to the center of the room before the giant Emperor.
“Your excellency, hear me!” she shouted.
Palace guards spun in surprise as they began rushing towards her. The sacrifices, shackled in a line, looked on, a tinge of hope behind their dead eyes.
Prismia clicked her rings together and actuated her hands in a spell; the Palace guards fell quickly under the impressions of her magic, violent purple cycles emanating from her palms.
The massive hulking head of the Emperor heaved slightly, his eyes sliding open partially, grime shedding off in flakes.
A deep guttural groan blasted from his mouth, the power of which knocked over the sacrifices as flowed past her, the fetid stench of decaying flesh permeated.
“You dare call upon me!” he boomed, Prismia more feeling the words in her shivering spine than hearing them.
“Emperor I rescind my gift of the ancient world ending bombs!” Prismia asserted, “their power is too great for anyone to wield!”
“I am the Emperor of the Crabithian Empire, the greatest presence in the known dimensions! I will not tolerate such insolence!”
His voice rocked the foundation of the Palace as guards struggled against the debilitating magic to stand, their legs flailing and claws pinching haphazardly.
“If you will not accept that, then I have no choice,” she shouted back.
Taking a phase crystal from her bandolier, she articulated a spell with her hand and forced the hericyclic cluster into the pink crystal. Glowing wildly, the crystal clattered to the ground in front of the Emperor Crab, pink energy arcing off.
A void of blackness grew from the crystal, the ground warping and cracking around it as it punctured a shunt to a sub space contained adjacent to the crystal.
As the void formed, angles of metal began protruding out, fissures on their surface cracking as the device suffered the geodesic stress of a such a violent slip.
Another ancient device eventually slipped out and rested in a hemispheric dent in the floor, the crystal shattered, void dissipating, leaving only the ancient weapon before the Emperor.
“What are you doing?” the Emperor demanded to know.
“I am ending your oppressive reign, your Excellency.”
Prismia extended her hand, purple hericycles spewing out towards the device. Orange and green arcs of energy began popping off the device as it shuttered to life after uncountable aeons.
She careened out of the throne room towards the upper platform where the capital ship rested docked against the Palace.
Running down corridors of sandy concrete, their texture surfaces reflecting the dancing light of burning fuel lamps dangling along the center cusp of the ceiling, Prismia articulated spells wildly, disrupting the ambient Heri field as she moved, arcs of purple eddy currents spiraled off behind her.
Running out from the Palace onto the docking piers, she shot off a ray of purple at a guard standing in front of the gang plank leading to the ship; his legs flailed wildly as his body careened off the pier down into the warm air sixty stories above the ground.
Prismia rank across the plank into the craft, shouting for the crew to lift off from the dock.
She flicked her fingers, crystals humming, to make the moors tear off from the dock, releasing the capital ship as it shuttered and fell slight away, the gravpulsors vibrating.
As she looked back towards the entrance to the Palace, the walls began creeping, shifting, falling away, as they turned to a sticky dull gray, she scanned her gaze to the ground, seeing a spreading wave front of gray converting the robes bodies of crabs to a goopy gray. The ship fell away from the pier as it cracked and fell to gloopy globs towards the soupy ground below.
“Fuck! Fuck!” Prismia shouted as the entire Palace collapsed on itself, dragging a few other capital shops into disassociating gray.
A few crabs dressed in naval uniforms began screaming at her, their claws pinching down near her face. She jumped back into a bulkhead and cast a spell to launch one of them clean out of the craft, his body flailing as it fell away towards the churning mass of gray below them. The spell, imperfectly cast, fractured the brass beam holding the floor to the superstructure in that section. Wood splintering as the brass truss began failing; the other crab held on to the bulkhead as the floor beneath him shattered away.
Having picked herself up, Prismia walked toward the bulkhead, the crab clinging, his stalks extended in terror.
“Please! Please help me!” he pleaded.
She kicked his claw and watched him fall towards the sea of gray, the city converted to a flowing mass, it’s walls reduced and it’s buildings decimated.
Looking off towards the manufactories, she saw war ships wildly moving, a few half converted to drippy globs as gray seeps up their anchor lines.
She collapsed back into a chest, resting her head in her hands. The metal ring of her neck lining cool against her skin.
Tears welling up behind her eyes, she began sniffling softly.
“God, I want to go home. I can’t keep this shit up,” she exclaimed quietly.
Frantic tapping on the roof above as crabs scrambled about the deck attempting to figure out and react to their empire reduced to goo, them being a few survivors of the near annihilation of their species.
Prismia rotated onto her back across the chest, dragging her feet up onto the wooden surface. She looked up at the brass cross braces ceiling.
The thought of earth invaded her false stoic defenses; the thought of home, memories of a lost version of herself still desperately clinging to hope.
A shuttering ran through the metal skeleton of the ship as it slipped through a shunt and travelled to some dimension.
Looking off to the warping world beyond the craft, she instinctually pulled up her life support mask and cinched the belts holding it to her face. Breathing in the cold dry air, her lungs chilled by it.
She slid goggles over her eyes and adjusted the zoom level of the lenses to neutral. Aberrations at the peripheral of her vision as she stared back towards the ceiling, the lenses misting up as tears slipped out of her eyes.
“I just want to go home,” she sighed out as the craft rocked violently in the turbulent winds swirling around the shunt.
The craft peeled out of the slip portal, sailing beyond into the dimension. She closed her eyes as chilled winds whipped in through the shattered hill beyond the bulkhead, ashen flakes collecting around the room, dusting the store room.

/Warm light drifts in from shaded windows, crystals glistening chromatic prisms across her desk. Notebooks lay open, intricate notes and diagrams filling their wrinkled pages. A glass canister sits idle, swirling Hericyclic clusters confined to the resonant chamber, exposed copper wires wrapped around inducing the rectifying field.
Her eyes move over detailed descriptions written in the firm flowing print of her grandmother. She attempts to match the arcs and movements of the spells, to confine the heri field to usable cyclic clusters./

Shooting awake, breath heavy and quick, Prismia felt the ship shutter to a halt as it landed forcefully on unfamiliar ground. The scene beyond the bulkhead was a dismal foggy plateau: ash swept black stones, the faintest glow of lava churning from vents in the valley below, the thin atmosphere giving way to the blackest star speck’d sky, an infinite expense of stygian nothingness save for the rare dull orb of a distant star.
She shifted her legs off the chest onto the debris covered plank floor. Commotion echoed from above as crabs scuttled about. Stepping to the bulkhead, hall beyond an array of shattered boards and snapped cables, Prismia scanned left and right, peering through the lenses of her goggles.
A small outcropping of volcanic stones rested a hundred yards from the vessel’s abrupt landing zone. Boots knocking against the blasted rock ground, she sprinted quickly across from the capital ship. A screeching buzz rang from the port side gravpulsor, the concrete tomb cracked, a vile blue liquid steaming out in globs from fissures.
Vaulting over the rock, she slid behind cover and caught her breath, the mechanical staleness of the recycled air hissing from her mask barely a respite.
She peered around the stone, looking at the ship. It’s main engines were broken, propellers snapped and housing smoking. The metal superstructure was undamaged, but cracks ran the length of the brass and wooden hull. Resting in shards, the entire observation glass was shattered, the skeleton of sills still clinging to the under side of the upper decks.
Muttering under her breath, she talked herself through a shoddy plan: “I need to get at phase crystal. Realign it and get out of this dimension.”
She looked to the aft section of the ship, a slew of crabs clambering on the decks, shouting at each other as they scurried to fox the damage the sudden unplanned slip and crash landing caused.
/The portal must not have been big enough, she thought, and the geodesics must have strained everything too much./
The phase array was in the aft section within a steal box, the ancient slip gate pillaged out of a dimension.
/There’s no way the crabs could even fix it, let alone construct them in the first place. Simply imperial pirates scraping through the remnants of the precursors./
Looking down at herself, she inspected the side arm strapped across her chest. A simple plasma discharged she found buried in an eldritch tomb years ago. Her eyes lingered on a mechanical pistol, more a keepsake than a weapon now. It’s texture grip smoothed and weathered. It’s intricate firing mechanism no doubt slaggy and inoperable after so many years. The blue of her jumpsuit was faded, patches sewn in, each tear a memory, a survival.
She looked back around the rocks at the craft as her hand pulled out the discharger, setting the safety off. A low pitched buzzing escaped from the coils as it powered on.
Gritting her teeth, she adjusted the zoom of her goggles and scoped the upper decks swarming with crabs. A radio mast jutted up from the center, dished and antennae clung to its metal truss.
Clinking her rings together, she felt a thrumming from the heri field as she articulated a spell, something subtle.
An antenna started rocking slowly, side-to-side, increasing in speed until it snapped off its feeble support and crashed to the deck in on the starboard side. The commotion on deck shuffled over to the antenna as she swept from behind cover and sprinted back to the damaged section she had left from.
Having attained to the side of the craft, she stepped over twisted beams and loose cables, carefully making her way inside the downed vessel towards to engineering section. Blackened redness fell in from the windows along the outer edge of the hall. Large waist high glass, set between brassy struts, illuminating the hall with barely enough ambient light from the dimness outside.
The walls deeper in the ship changed from wood to steel, pulsing halogen bulbs kept it illuminated in an orange dimness.
The scuttling of legs above her masked the quiet steps she took around the corner into the slip gate chamber. The large pyramidal structure rose in the center of the room, it’s ancient pseudo-metal arms, the kholei glistening in the scant light.
Wires and cables suspended from the ceiling arced down and tangled the device in a haphazard manner. Newer crab tech blinked in copper consoles welded to the pearlescent greens and grays of the ancient device. Several of the kholei were disalligned, in a seeming repair orientation.
/No doubt the reason we ended up somewhere uncharted/ she though.
Reaching up, she tugged at a pink crystal sitting slightly from its place in the slip gate. It loosened and fell into her hand, almost weightless despite being about a foot long.
A bang proceeded the metal bulkhead swinging open across the room. An ensign stepped in casually before seeing Prismia crouching behind the pillar.
He shouted something before reaching for a scatter cannon at his hip. Having nearly brought it level with his shoulders, his claws were shot backwards by some purple energy forming out of the air. Prismia clicked her rings, summoning a jolt as she raised the discharger and fired off an arcing bulb of plasma. The energy ball melted through his carapace, uniform catching flame. His mortal chittering echoed off the steel room as she began running back towards the door.
Red lights flicked on, pulsing as sirens went off in the vessel. Soldiers scrambled down the corridors carrying weapons.
She careened into the hallway, two soldiers stood at the far end, scattershots drawn and ready. Before she could muster a plan, she jumped head first through a window, shattering it into a chaotic shower of glass shards glinting flickering red.
Her hat pulled off her head, falling away behind her as she attempted to contort her body to land softly.
Crashing in a rolling pile, she scrambled to get up and hurried off to the edge of the plateau as scattershot flew by over head.
Leaping down towards the outcrop, she rolled and began sliding down the steep rocky edge of the cliff. Her coat tattered as jagged rocks tore at its dense material, the impacts softened by the jumpsuit underneath.
Rolling to a stop at the base of the, in hind sight, not too tall cliff edge, she looked back at the quiet ridge before sprinting off into the valley, plumes of sulfuric smoke churning from lava vents.

The cave entrance was low, an old lava tube perhaps. She crawled in and focused on her gasping breaths, willing herself calmer.
Peering back towards the plateau, she zoomed her looking glass to observe the slight chaos on the rocky ridge. Crabs scrambling to and fro as they searched for her. Onboard the highest deck, she could see Admiral Gre shouting orders to mariners. From her vantage, she could just make out that they had breathing apparatuses clamped to their gills and transparent inflated shields around their eye stalks.
She looked down at the Kholei in her hand, the smooth pink surfaces, deeper purple spindles etching through the interior.
“I’ll need to somehow entune it,” she muttered to herself, her voice crackling through the mouthpiece.
Feeling the heri field around her, she tried to focus on some plan of action, but simply sat in the lava tube and breathed.
She looked back at the capital ship resting on the mesa, it’s survivors shouting.
“Another empire crumbles, I guess,” she said softly and adjusted her body to the curve of the cave.
Closing her eyes, she felt the heaviness in her mind settle.

/A classroom, the caustic buzzing of bulbs in the high ceiling. A professor is talking passionately about something barely the TAs can follow. A half finished equation on the board from where he got distracted.
He is speaking about his research, some DARPA contract.
The doodles in her notebook picked up from the half finished equation. A dragon and a knight. A silver plated robot with awkward perspective. A little stick man on a cliff.
Someone nearer the front raises their hand and chatters something.
The professors demeanor lessened.
“No this won’t be on the exam,” she hears him say.
A sullen walk back to the chalk board.
She perks up, looking at the professor. None of the content of his previous digression was remembered, but something about his passion resonated.

“Professor Prskavec?” she says poking in through the open door.
“Oh, hello,” he responds looking up from a notebook, the soft glow of his CRT monitor across his face.
“You were talking about your research in class, I was curious if you could explain it to me. It was really interesting.”
“Of course. I’ll try to keep it at an undergrad level for you,” he said sliding back in his chair, “what was your name again?”
“Prismia,” she says.
“Ah, Prismia. Alvarez right?”
“Yes.”
“I would suggest you focus on this class then, your midterm grade wasn’t the best. I could have a TA meet with you to help?” he offered somewhat politely.
“That’s alright. I’m in a study group, but your research seemed really interesting in class.”
“Oh sure.”
He walked to a chalk board scribbled over with equations and diagrams.
“I’m part of a DARPA program studying practical models of hyper dimension spatial structures. It’s all really theoretical, but the government is pouring a lot of money into it, and it’s a good application of my research areas.”
“Hyper dimensional?” Prismia asks walking to the board.
“The world we live in is four dimensional,” he draws four arrows on the board and labels them x y z and t, “but were looking into discrete extensions of this space time. Think of it like parallel regions,” he draws another four arrows next to it,” when you’re in this space time, you go about your life unaware that just over here is a completely separate region, but,” he scribbles in a line between them, “we are studying the theoretical existence of discrete shunts between space times. Small bridges between islands.”
“That’s really cool. Are they real?”
“Well, no; not that we know of, but,” he leans closer and lowers his voice, “the way they’re pouring money into these programs, I don’t think we know everything they know.”/

A brighter red cascaded down through the thick clouds above, partially obscuring a deep red orb burning above. Prismia opened her eyes, yellowy condensation clinging to her goggles. She wiped it off and rotated towards the entrance. The landscape was grayer in the daytime, lava rivers flowed from vents down volcanic beds towards the lower lands.
She shuffled out of the tube and looked up at the capital ship. It rested there still, and the crabs seemed focused on repairing it, clinging to its hull and welding beams together to hold it in one piece.
Her back was tight and neck pinched as she stretched out, her ripped overcoat flowing softly in the sulfuric winds sweeping across the valley.
She started walking down towards the lowlands following along the outcropping of smooth ashen boulders.

Steam flowed up from where the lava pooled next to a fetid ocean of sludgy water. Gray sand encircled the shore set against the basalt rocky ground as she stepped into its sticky surface. Sucking at her boots she trudged along the beach at the base of the mountains, a tiny structure in the distance catching her eye.

As she approached the structure, she could make out its glinting surface, something not from this world, something metal and forged. It was a simple shelter thrown together from disparate metal beams and plates. Cords and wires wrapped around it and shoddy welds ran the seams. A small curtain ran across the entrance.
She brushed it aside and walked within. The single room was a little taller than her as she stepped onto the dirty plate floor set into the sand, dust piling up along the edges.
The reflective steel certainly wasn’t from the crabs; it was almost familiar, almost a memory in its simple surfaces recalling something. She crouched down near a box along the far wall.
Opening the lid, she fell back and landed softly, creaking echoing through the structure. She stared bewildered at a simple design on the underside of the lid, barely visible in the scant light falling around the curtain: BREMIS.
“No. It—how?” she said to herself, crawling towards it as she reached out, half expecting it to dissipate under her touch. Her fingers slid softly, reverently, over the decal simply etched onto the dull metal plate of the lid.
Condensation began pooling on the inside of her googles as she breathed shaky. Her strength fell from her, her body collapsing over the crate, hand still touching the logo.
Prismia cried, slowly at first, before whimpering in a pile. Something changed, something within her she long thought dead was back, barely.
She gathered herself and pulled up into a cross legged position in front of the crate, looking down to its contents. A mechanical rifle, standard issue, a few rounds, a telecommunication device, some rations far out of date. She picked up an MRE and turned it over in her hands. A beef patty, expiration March 9th, 2004.
/That’s after the incident, but, she thought, it’s probably from someone else who made it out./
Tucked beneath the butt of the rifle, a small box of cigarettes peaked out. She put the MRE back and slid the carton into her hand. Flipping the lid open, three cigarettes poked out, slightly yellowed and a tad saggy. Prismia sighed and tucked the carton into a coat pocket.
Her eyes moved up to the wall, a series of cables stretched along, held up by simple hooks of bent metal. They led to a console in the corner, a simple CRT monitor, tape running along a cracked screen, and a keyboard.
She shuffled on her knees to the computer and tried cycling the power. The screen stayed dark. A power cable came from the box leading to a generator, a field RTG, probably plutonium.
“Shouldn’t be dead,” she muttered, fidgeting with its dials and switches, a distinct impression in the heri field surrounding the generator.
She tightened her lips and articulated her fingers to form spell, swirls of purple energy coalesced in her palm, the projection leaking through the generators shell. Shaking a bit, the RTG didn’t do anything. She sighed. The metal prongs of the power cable caught her eye in the abberated periphery of her view.
Plugging the cable into the generator, she turned to see a small red dot on the reinforced case of the computer.
She pressed the power and watched the distant memory of the windows 95 bios boot. A simple password screen appeared through the static build up sparkling off the screen, the basic design of a multieyed creature, the logo for the Argos Squadron.
“Admin, no password,” she said to herself, typing on the keyboard. It opened to a desktop with a few icons and folder arranged neatly along the left side.
She looked at the date: February 28th, 2005.
/Five years, she thought, since Salasad./
The files didn’t contain much useful info: abstract charts and logs, jargon too dense to parse, encrypted files far outnumbering anything accessible.
She turned around and sat in the center of the room, back braced against the chest, legs outstretched. The churning of lava beneath the ground rumbled through the rock. Violent winds swept down off the mountains, turbulent flow shuttering the feeble shelter.
Her eyes closed, respirator hissing, a subtle burning tinge stretching across the exposed skin on her neck and hands.
A puttering of rain against the sheet metal roof echoed in the dark room, thunder cracked a mile away as the downpour increased in intensity. Pools of brackish fetid water began seeping in, collecting near the walls.
She looked out through the gap between the curtain and the haphazard frame at the dreary exterior, currents of water sloshing off the mountains towards the ocean.
A series of squelchy steps sounded from behind the house, their sucking sound quick and frantic. The curtain pushed aside and a slender space suit ducked inside. It’s white metal pressure helmet was dirtied and dented, reflective visor blocking the face. The dark grey jumpsuit was tattered slightly, revealing the skintight compression bladder beneath.
Seeing Prismia sitting on the floor, the figure jumped back, hand instinctively reaching for a sidearm tucked in a holster beneath its arm.
“Who are you?” it asked, voice garbled through the breathing apparatus, fingers coiling around the undrawn weapon.
She knocked her hat back to reveal her face, tired eyes visible through brass goggles, as she opened her overcoat to reveal a sun bleached orange jumpsuit matching the figures.
“I’m a ‘naut, same as you,” she said shakily.
The figures arms relaxed, hand slipping off the gun. It stared at her, head still, the slightest movement of breathing.
She stood up, tossing her hat on the chest; her movements slow and deliberate.
“I’m captain Prismia Alvarez, I’m—was—a chemical engineer for the engineering corp,” she said.
The figure continued to stand, arms resting at his side, gloves moving slightly, their rubber squeaking.
“I’m Silas Acker. I’m an Agent with the Argus division,” he finally said.
He slid his reflective visor up, revealing pale gray eyes staring from behind the helmet, his face obscured by shadows and the breathing apparatus clamped over his mouth and nose.
“I haven’t seen another human for a few years,” he breathed out.
“Me either,” she said, “since Salasad.”
“Oh, my team was in delta 2 when it happened, so we were fine, but,” he hesitated, “it’s dangerous out here.”
“Do you live here?” she asked.
“Temporarily. We set this up pretty soon after Castle Salasad was severed. This is Delta 9, I think.”
“Delta 9? We’re that close to earth?”
“Yes, but the slip gate from 2 to Castle is nonop, so still stranded. That was the first thing we checked after that pulse blasted from the gate.”
“I slipped to Delta 3 a few hours before the gate broke; I needed to collect a few samples of dirt for testing so I went alone.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, but we can reminisce later; I saw a flying vessel crash land in the highlands last night. I went to scope it out, but that toxic rain is too dangerous to be out in.”
“I came in on that,” she said, “it’s a war ship of the crabithian empire—former crabithian empire,” she added.
“What?”
“Sentient colonialist crabs.”
“Not the strangest thing I’ve come across.”
“They utilize slip gates and gravpulsors on their ships; that’s how they got here.”
“Utilize slip gates? Are they the precursors? Jesus, crabs?”
“No, they clearly didn’t build them, just use them to extract resources and labor from neighboring dimensions. I had a working relationship with them for convenience, but,” she paused, “their home world is a gray goo now.”
Silas stared, pink flecks creeping in from the corner of his eyes.
“I found a doomsday weapon, probably precursor. They tested it on some primitive dimension and melted the whole planet. I couldn’t let them have that power, so I may have used it on them. They had slavery though, so it’s probably a net good, right?”
He didn’t say anything, just his intense eyes almost seeing through her.
“I couldn’t let them keep it. What if they had gotten to earth?”
“That’s a fair point. I’m still trying to wrap my head around sentient crabs using slip gates.”
“The dimensions far from earth have a lot of weird shit.”
“I’ve found a few civilizations, but they were medieval at best. But in an infinite multiverse, something is bound to be smarter than us. Anyway,” he continued, “we need to seize that ship. Having a platform to slip dimensions would be useful.”
“What’s Argus? I’ve heard whispers, but can barely remember anymore.”
“Argus? Argus Panoptes,” he said, making a circle with hand and holding it up to his eye, “It’s an agency division, extension of Argenta.”
“What?”
“I’ll explain later, for now, we need to—“
He snapped his neck around, hand gripping his gun. His other hand waved at her to get back. She continued to stand, but took a few steps towards the other wall.
Outside, through the clatter of the downpour, the squelching sands fattening with water, and the thunder claps sporadically dousing the air with noise, she struggled to understand what he reacted to.
He leaned around the door frame, peering out, mist rolling off the hills and seeping up from the almost boiling drops shattering around.
She walked up behind him and looked in the direction he stared, gun unholstered and inching up. Through the rain she could make out two shadows moving a couple hundred yards off near the base of the mountain. A blurry figure, maybe a claw, sideways movements likely a crab.
“That’s them,” she whispered, her audio equipment crackling.
“We can’t move in this storm. They can die, right?” he asked turning to look at her, his face now entirely shrouded except for a faint pinkish glow behind his eyes.
“They do die—easily,” she added.
His gun peaked out from the curtain, trained on the shadows scuttling uneasily over the sucking sand.
The sun was ablated by the churning clouds, casting the world into a twilight neutrality. They moved closer, quickly. Steam rushed off their carapaces, their uniforms sagging, holes melted through to their red shells. Prismia could see their eye stalks bobbing as they sprinted forward, claws waving as they clutched scattershots.
A crack blasted in her ear, a flash blinding her. Another crack. Ears ringing, she stared out at the unmoving bodies laying in the sand as the torrent of water streamed down, dragging sentiment over them.
“That’s that,” Silas exhaled and stepped back into the shack, water dripping in from rusted rivets.
“I have two clips left,” he explained as he resting against the wall, “how many targets are left?”
“Maybe 30,” Prismia responded.
“Math doesn’t work then. You got a weapon?”
“This,” she said pulling back her coat to reveal the discharger in a makeshift holster.
“What is it?”
“A energy pistol. I found it in a derelict crashed warship on some dead alien about a year ago. I haven’t had to reload it once.”
“Tech like that,” he began, “is it precursor?”
“I don’t think so. Their technology was more chrome and neon then the precursors weird opalescent metal.”
“Opalescent,” he chuckled, “I guess that’s an apt description.”
Prismia closed the chest and sat down, dragging one leg under her, the coat bunching up.
“How long have you been here, Silas?” she asked.
“A few months. This was an early shelter we built, but I’ve been back tracking.”
“What happened to your team?”
Silas paused, his helmet pointing at the floor.
“They—er—they’re all dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
“We were much deeper than here, three years ago. I could see something was going to happen, but the op-lead was too focused on pillaging a precursor temple to listen. They tried activating a slip gate, but it was damaged or unfinished. I couldn’t say, but when it activated, they all phased out of existence—viscerally. Parts of them were everywhere. If I hadn’t been on over watch at the archway, I’d’ve been dead, too.”
“I’m sorry. Seeing your friends die like that—“
“They weren’t friends; colleagues more like, but still the last humans I knew.”
“I didn’t see anyone die. Just the gate was severed violently. I saw the temple on delta 3 vaporize behind me.”
“I don’t really want to talk about all that. We’ve been stranded out here for years, and that ship is a chance to get home,” Silas stated flatly.
Prismia nodded as she adjusted her goggles.
“We should wait out the storm though,” she said.
Silas leaned back against the wall, putting one foot back.
“So, where are you from?” he asked staring at the shuttering roof.
“I’m from California, originally, but we moved around a lot. My dad was a master sergeant in the Air Force. You?”
“Born and raised in Chicago. Masters from UPenn in Psychology. I got picked up for an Agency project during that back in ‘91. That’s how I ended up in Salasad.”
“I got a chemical engineering degree from UCLA. My dad told me to go the officer route, so I did ROTC there. I guess I did that well enough because my second assignment was Salasad.”
“What’d you do here?”
“I was a chemical analyst. A forward deployment ‘naut to assess the composition of anything really. Precursor stuff is so cryptic, even on a chemical level. Half of it is exotic compounds that shouldn’t exist. The rest of dimensions are mostly earth stuff.”
“That’s interesting.”
“What about you? What did you do?”
“I’m an Alpha Participant. One of the eyes of Argus. Well, I was, I should say. Even before we were severed, the roles were changing. We were able to self direct a lot more. Something about the psychosphere around Castle.”
“What?”
“I wouldn’t think you’d know much about what the Agency was doing here. Air Force personnel don’t have the clearances. Basically, we are an intelligence gathering unit. Just psychospheric intelligence.”
Prismia continued to stare.
“The psychosphere is an ambient field. It’s like a fundamental field from quantum physics, if you’re familiar, but we can only observe and interact through our minds. It is entirely undetectable through conventional means. We use the—ah—I can’t be bothered to lecture.”
He crossed his arms and closed his eyes.
“oh,” she said, turning her head to look around the room, winds whipping past the shack.

Trickles of water dripped down, pooling in dents on the panel floor.
“How did you join with the crab things?” Silas asked, looking up from his nap
“What do you mean?” Prismia responded, her head looking up from its hunched position.
“They’re trans dimensional alien crabs; how did you talk to them?”
“I-I don’t really know. I could understand them well enough. They did speak in chitters though.”
“That doesn’t make sense, Captain Alvarez. How can you talk to aliens?”
“I can’t say.”
Silas dragged himself up.