Ever Present Chaos

Epic Spaceship by Dmitrii Ustinov

The infinite wine dark sea stretched outward in all directions. The darkness between the spheres threatened to seep into the soul if one was not careful. Maximus Polemos, Navarch of the Spear of Saint Astrid, surveyed the chaotic wilderness of the void. When once generals of old worried of warriors hiding in the trees now the purest dark energy veiled unspeakable horrors. The horrors lashed out less than the hidden barbarians of ancient history but were far more vicious when they did. For all the stars in the universe so few offer refuge, Maximus thought inspecting the three-hundred and sixty degree vision on the holographic viewfinder.

Hundreds of adepts, curates, and regular grunt soldiers observed the wine dark sea, each the sole guard of his camera, his section of the void. The field of holographic displays sat within the long, narrow bridge of the Spear of Saint Astrid. Maximus upon the dais in his throne-like seat. He watched, the faint melody of The Chant echoing around him, he listened and heard faint nibbling whispers. Have we… have I missed something? The whispers fell to silence.

Magna Illyria lay weeks away, beset by rebellion and, if reports were accurate, ferocious native beasts. Simple problems, Maximus spun the viewfinder to the stern, the images from port-side flickering by in a static jumble. Words and growls whispered to him. Maximus slammed his hand down on the control orb and rolled the viewfinder back to port. The whispers grew louder. ‘Nero!’ he barked.

‘Navarch?’ His second-in-command slammed his breastplate in a rough salute, a bead of sweat on his temple.

‘Do you hear that?’ Maximus did not risk waiting for an answer. ‘Priests to port-side on every deck.’

‘Your sense was always more fine tuned than mine, Navarch. I’ll see the order relayed.’ Nero saluted again against his crimson trimmed black cataphract armour, his vibrosword slung across his back, a pulsecannon on his hip. He ran a heavy clad hand over his shaven scalp and winced, ‘Navarch. I hear it,’ Nero dropped to his knees and reached for his rosary. He burst into fevered prayer.

Maximus jumped to his feet, the viewfinder sliding to one side, ‘Companions, to me!’ He activated ship wide comms, ‘ArchPriest Apollonius to port. All Quiristers, double your efforts. We have contact.’

Affirmation is admittance.

The Spear of Saint Astrid shuddered. Her hull screamed. Maximus was thrown from his feet and crashed into the viewfinder of an adept, the holographic orb projector shattering beneath the weight of his cataphract armour. The unarmoured adept sent sprawling, left arm bent unnaturally.

‘We’re stationary, Navarch,’ the navigations curate said.

Maximus stumbled to his feet, ‘How? What happened?’

‘We collided with… something. Pressure has been lost on decks four through thirty-one, reports of casualties,’ a curate said. Nero found his senses, his rosary hanging from his neck.

‘Temperature fluctuations, massive ones, Navarch,’ an adept reported.

‘Nero! Companions!’ Maximus growled and headed for the turbolift, his warriors thundering after him. ‘I want companies on every deck, pulsecannons primed and firing freely. Take. No. Chances,’ the Navarch announced ship wide.

‘Casualties are thickest on deck twenty. Electronics offline. Hull has been breached,’ Nero spewed the reports as fast they appeared on his forearm. A continuous scroll of green text streamed by on his gauntlet terminal. ‘No other vessels in our vicinity.’

Then what hit us? ‘Ready pulsecannons and vibroswords,’ Maximus unsheathed the monstrous hunk of black iron from his shoulder and activated it via the rotating switch beneath the crossguard. The sword hummed to life, emanating a blue glow and waves of heat. The familiar click-and-hiss of a pulsecannon clip priming echoed in the turbolift. ‘Lucarius, Felix, Cyrus keep to the sides, Nero, Rufus, and I will take point down the middle.’ His helm locked in place with a rushed hiss of air.

The Companions and Nero acknowledged their orders with a unified, ‘Yes, Navarch!’

The turbolift sighed to a halt and the doors parted to reveal a dark passageway. Death stalked, a shadow of the shadows. A wave of psionic hell slammed into them, replete with shrieks and screams and the warbling of long-forgotten souls. ‘Fire, fire!’ Maximus clutched his helm, his head felt as if it were swelling against the edges. That it would burst amidst the torrent of evil. The high-pitched whine of pulsecannon fire hazed the air around him, the blue bolts of pure energy scorched bulkheads, igniting the shadows in a blaze of holy fire. The cascade of psionic power ceased and the preternatural dark was banished.

‘That will only repel the chaos for so long, we must push on,’ Nero said. ‘The ArchPriest should be here already.’

Maximus grunted and marched out ahead of his warriors. Dead lay throughout, the skin seared from their bones and marked with the blood-red runes of the Before. Swirling patterns acting as a prison upon the dead, entombing them to be the puppets of the Ancient Gods who existed before there was form and order. Runes of the void, of self-annihilating infinity and black suns, were carved in the walls and weeped primordial blood. The deeper Maximus ventured the colder it became, ‘Status on atmosphere?’

‘None,’ Nero said. ‘Yet, the hull breach is sealed.’

‘By what?’

‘All port-side observators are offline,’ Nero’s voice crackled through his helmet’s speakers. The Chant was all but silent here, Chaos able to reign supreme.

‘Navarch,’ a croaking voice came over the comms.

‘ArchPriest, good of you to join us,’ Maximus said. ‘Where are you?’

‘At the breach with my flock. Can you not hear our prayers, our hymns?’

‘No.’

‘Then it is worse than I feared,’ Apollonius said.

Maximus made for the breach, Companions at his side with cannons and swords at the ready, gleaming bright. Amidst the shadow the priests emerged, radiant in their red and white robes draped over cataphract armour. Their helms fronted by white porcelain masks and topped with tri-peaked headpieces carved from obsidian. Silver and gold medallions hung around their necks on chains, images of Saints and Saviours laboriously hammered by hand. The Word, leather-bound and handwritten on vellum, hung in a holster on the belt of every priest, his final task before ordination. Prayers rose from their lips, hidden beneath porcelain masks, in a language out of the mythical past. The sound brought peace to Maximus. The priests stood arrayed at the breach, a splatter of steel and titanium ten metres wide and twenty tall gaped in the side of the ship. A dark and cold opening to whatever interstellar evil The Spear of Saint Astrid had struck.

‘Apollonius, what is it?’ Maximus said. The opening breathed frost upon him.

‘It’s ice, Maximus.’

‘Ice?’

‘A comet. There is Chaos within it and we are caught in its grasp,’ Apollonius said. He clung to his stave, its head amorphous, and pressed the foot into the white-cold frost beyond the hull. His chain rattled against his cataphract armour. ‘You know what we must do.’

‘To enforce order on chaos, to banish the formless, to repel the forces of evil. I’m aware, Apollonius.’

‘Good, for this is unlike any previous challenge,’ the ArchPriest pressed his stave deeper into the ice, the hole welled with red-black blood that froze as quick as it pooled.

Maximus stepped off his starship and into the comet. The tunnel burrowed deep into the icy behemoth, appearing as a single straight cavern with a faint white light at the end. The tunnel was white with frost that rescinded when he held his vibrosword to it. Beneath the frost was crystalline ice. ‘Apollonius with me, the rest of you behind. Weapons primed.’

Nero saluted.

The ice crunched underfoot. The prayers of the priests warped and warbled in the new architecture’s acoustics. Their litany of order casting out the worst of the chaos. Deeper Maximus strode until he looked back and could no longer see the punctured hull of Saint Astrid, he turned ahead and the light at the end now pulsed black, bubbling with pus. He held the blue blade close to the ice. The frost melted and revealed transparent ice miles upon miles thick, the surface carved with runes of chaos. ‘Apollonius.’

The ArchPriest set the head of his staff to the wall and muttered a prayer. ‘We must be quick, the runes are the least of our worries. Look,’ he jabbed at the ice with his staff.

Deep within the ice were beings long dead, of creatures long extinct. Maximus gazed upon the unknown animals sealed within the ice. One enormous beast cast a shadow across all the rest, he had seen antique recordings of one swimming between stars feasting on entire moons. Nearer were hundreds of half-men, or at least some sentient like being long extinct or perhaps from another galaxy. Interspersed where strange bug like creatures, beasts the size of men but with shells upon their backs, birds with wingspans of ten metres or more. The more he looked into the comet the more his mind reeled.

‘Navarch,’ Apollonius’s voice shattered Maximus’s confusion. ‘We should press on and leave this place soon. The dark, it nibbles away at us.’

‘Yes. Of course, ArchPriest,’ Maximus cleared his throat and stared straight ahead, to the bubbling shadow of pus and blood. He continued on.

The frost melted and the runes began to leak. The further Maximus led his men the steeper the slope became, the harder the steps. Whispers harried him, whispers of voices he remembered, of men he knew where dead, of children he never had. Then, trapped within the ice, it moved. A being encased in ice for eternity thrashed, hundreds then awoke, and shadows descended upon the tunnel, upon Maximus and his companions. A wraith passed through Maximus. His heart shuddered, his hands went cold, and his breath turned to mist in his throat. ‘Contact!’ He screamed into the comms, his tongue burning with ice that lanced up into his orbital bones. ‘Pulsecannons!’ He roared, angry he had not yet heard them fire. Fear will not win over my men.

Apollonius flicked through his hymnal and sang, his staff began to glow and the amorphous lump of marbled glass transformed. A great ebbing halo of gold emanated from the staff and bleached the darkness with light. The wraith shrieked and fled towards the rear of the column. The pulsecannons fried its spirit to ash. Hundreds more moved like blurs towards the tunnel. ‘Keep on moving, Navarch, there are too many to fight and far worse than mere wraiths within the ice.’

The moon eater, Maximus thought, and sprinted ahead. The hydraulics of his cataphract armour hissed with each step as he climbed. ‘Forward!’ He ordered, swinging left and right at the slightest hint of evil. He climbed and swung, swung and climbed. The tunnel darkened, shadows swarmed him, wraiths with faces of death screeched anger and evil, unknown beasts from worlds far beyond gnashed their teeth and raked him with their umbrous claws. Puppets, all, of some Ancient God of the Before. Nero screamed. Pulsecannons rained fire through the tunnel. Ice exploded into snow. Streams of water turned to blood. Then, it was gone. Maximus burst into a cavern. Apollonius and the priests, Nero and the companions too. The shadows harangued them no more, trapped, now, by the ice dome of the cave.

‘What hell is this?’ Nero cursed. ‘Is everyone here?’

The companions and priests nodded.

‘This is the epicentre,’ Apollonius said.

Maximus felt the truth of it, he had seen it miles back. The well of darkness and bubbling pus, now it lay in the centre of the chamber and spoke to him in sonorous tones.

‘Why have you come here?’

‘To destroy you.’

‘But I can provide you with everything, anything. Why would you destroy a gift?’

‘You offer naught but death and despair,’ Maximus bellowed. He stepped forward but a wave of psionic energy crashed into him and sent him sprawling.

‘Navarch!’ Nero ran to Maximus’s aid. ‘Arrghh!’ He grabbed his helm and fell to his knees, wordlessly wailing with pain.

Maximus howled too. All around him the companions and priests fell to the ice, writhing, screaming, clutching their heads.

Apollonius alone stood upright, his staff of blinding light casting back the chaos, ‘You shall not beckon to us. You are not of this realm. Creature of the dark, benefactor of chaos, archon of evil, I condemn you to your nature. Mute and still, unmoving and unchanging, inactive and powerless!’ The ArchPriest slammed the foot of his staff into the ice and a pulse of golden energy erupted in a sphere from the staff. The psionic energy was driven off, reduced to a haze. The shadows and wraiths sealed in their corpses once more. The cavern fell still. Apollonius wheezed, ‘Maximus, we do not have long.’

The Navarch struggled to his feet. A fellow companion, Rufus, charged him, screaming and muttering in an accursed tongue. Maximus reached for his sword of burning light and cut the tainted warrior in two. Gore sluiced out from the armour, steaming and cauterised. ‘Any other weak minded?’

‘A priest,’ Lucarius said.

Apollonius grunted, ‘Zeno, cremate them both.’

Zeno the Priest bowed and reached inside his robes for some trinket. He held a small vial and tipped three drops of the liquid on the corrupted priest’s corpse. With three words the dead priest burst into flames, Rufus was next. ‘How do we kill it?’ Maximus said.

‘It cannot be killed for it is not living. It can only be banished, trapped, chained, in the Beyond. Maximus, this God of Chaos is stunned, not defeated. I need you and the companions to encircle it.’ The pool of shadow was still, a perfect black mirror upon the ice. ‘Plunge your swords into it and close your eyes.’ Apollonius opened a compartment in his chest plate and pulled out a theosdesmoterion, a sphere of spheres, a shape of infinite shapes. A myriad of glass plates sat within fragile silver frames, one inside the other inside the other all the way to its core where the shape repeated again and again.

Maximus sank his vibrosword into the tenebrous pool. Nero, Lucarius, Cyrus, and Felix followed suit. The pool writhed and bubbled. Faint breaths of dark psionic energy burst from blisters upon the surface.

‘Close your eyes, I implore you! Zeno, lead the prayers,’ Apollonius held the theosdesmoterion in one hand above the obsidian horror. Maximus had only read of such marvels. The deepest secrets of the Magisterium, powers beyond magic and technology. ‘Your eyes, close them!’

Maximus did as he was bid and felt his mind detach as the ArchPriest began to chant. A barrage of chaotic thoughts sieged his mental defences. His sword rumbled in the ichor. Lucarius argued with himself. The ArchPriest chanted in his ancient tongue. Zeno prayed in another. Maximus’s mind stung, burning hot needles seared inside, piercing deeper and deeper. Sweat poured from every inch of him. He held fast to his faith, the walls of his mind impregnable.

‘Who are you to question one who survived Creation! Who has existed since before your God was but a contradiction, a disgrace. I, who have levelled galaxies, who traversed nullspace. Who knows all mysteries. I, who could reve—’

Maximus’s mind went silent. He opened his eyes to find himself ankle deep in water, his sword, and those of his Companions, deep in the melting ice. Apollonius stood to one side, hands clasped around his staff, in silent prayer. He looked up and saw the skeletal figures of unknown beasts. Unmoving and decayed.

‘Navarch, it is time we returned to the Spear of Saint Astrid,’ Apollonius said. The theosdesmoterion nowhere to be seen. The spring of chaos sealed away, contained but not destroyed.

‘As you say. Companions back to the ship!’

Upon return Maximus found the deceased to still be skeletal but unmarked. Free from the runes of chaos their souls would find peace. Satisfied, he returned to the bridge. ‘Activate all pulsecannons. Full-reverse and open fire. Destroy that comet,’ he ordered.

Immense gratitude to all of you, dear readers. I implore you to share this tale of heroic order defeating chaos to all you know, young and old, friend and foe, kin and stranger. Share this poultice to reality. Share this salve. Share this tonic for the needy!

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