Cedar Sanderson is doing N'inktober, so I'm going to follow along and do what I've been trained to do by the Raconteur Press Postcard books: come up with a story to match her visual prompts. I can't guarantee that I'll have a complete story for every image, but I'm going to at least try to come up with a scene, a start, or an idea!
Azimuth Lost
“szzt – ome in, 23 Enigma. Overwatch calling, come in – brrrt”
Fred cursed and smacked the communicator, then yelped and shook his hand.
Simo snickered as he shifted his sniper rifle into a more comfortable position. “It’s solid state, Douglass. The geeks back home grew it from one of those weird fuckin’ crystals 17 brought back. You ain’t gonna tune it that way.”
From up ahead where he was following Sac on point, Audie looked back over his shoulder. “Can the chatter. Simo, code names only. Fred – anything?” Even whispering, his voice seemed excessively loud in the unnaturally quiet rainforest.
Fred tweaked the comm the way the eggheads had instructed him, and was rewarded by a feedback howl. He slapped the off switch in disgust and the sickly internal green glow of the organic-looking device flared, then died.
“Nothing, LT.”
Simo snorted and moved up the column. Bones drifted over to take his place next to Fred as the team continued slowly down the broad, dirt-covered stone road between the palm-tree looking growths.
“That thing telling you anything else?” Bones pitched his voice low enough that they earned a glance from Audie, but not an admonition to shut up.
Fred grunted as he clipped the comm in place on his belt. “Readouts worked fine. Little bit of background radiation, but nothing too bad. The five intrinsics are all sigmaed out, so we’re basically still within consensus reality. No indications of time dilation. Pulsar nav says we’re still home. Which we aren’t, obviously.”
“Yeah. So, what? Sideways?”
“Or another damn pocket dimension.” Fred pulled a battered green disk from his pocket and flipped it open to expose a battered compass dial. Under the cracked glass, the magnetic needle was wobbling back and forth wildly.
Bones groaned as the needle spun in a complete circle once, then again. “Oh, fuck me. Non-Euclidean?”
“Ye-ep.” Fred snapped the compass shut and slipped it back into his pocket. “Could be anything.”
“There’s a – contact!” Sac’s voice cut through the air, soft but clearly urgent. She backpedaled, rifle at the ready. The rest of the team immediately moved to take cover behind the nearest trees, weapons out and pointed downrange. Simo braced himself against a tree and looked down range through his oversized optics. Audie busted out his own set of binoculars and powered them up with the whine of electronics.
“I’ve got a building,” Simo said quietly. “A little over 1500 meters. Mixed stone and metal construction. Looks like something out of Central America.”
“Aztec.” Audie spoke absent-mindedly as he dialed in his own visuals. “Definite signs of tech. There’s wiring, and what looks like artificial lights near the entrance. Visible glyphs on the door, but the AI isn’t translating them. No sign of movement. Simo?”
The sniper shifted slightly, scanning. “Negative.”
“Sac? Explain.”
The scout kept her eyes on the road ahead. Her oversized goggles made her look like an insect searching for prey as she tilted her head, engaging different passive detection modes. “Something moved between me and the building. Heat shimmer. Tuning it in… and there you are.” Her voice shifted from distracted to a purr. “Simo. I have eyes on the target, 500 meters. Armed. He thinks he’s invisible. LT, request permission to take the bastard down.”
“Permission granted. Simo. Non-lethal. Link and fire.”
Simo sighed. “Fuck, I hate this. Ready for eyes, Sac.”
“Three. Two. One.”
The rest of the team couldn’t see the linkage that let Simo use Sac’s eyes to sight in, but it was obvious neither one enjoyed the experience. Sac’s started twitching, then Simo let out a hiss of pain. The sniper steadied, waited, then in between breaths, squeezed the trigger on his rifle.
A brilliant pulse of red light exploded from the rifle, flashing down the road. A warbling scream ripped through the trees, followed by the thump of something heavy hitting the ground.
Sac collapsed to her knees, gasping for breath. “Contact… down.”
Simo shook his head and spat blood, then pulled his canteen out and rinsed his mouth before spitting again.
“Good job. Sac. Eyes behind. Simo. Permission to engage anything that closes closer than 500 meters. Bones and Fred, with me. Let’s go see what we’ve bagged.”
—
Bones scratched his head as he examined the medical readouts. “He’s ugly enough, that’s for sure. Carbon-based, remarkably similar to us. Shouldn’t be a problem.”
The thing in front of them looked like a six-limbed black panther that had a blobfish somewhere back in its ancestry. Its face was broad, pale, and slimy, with an overly-large mouth and tiny, beady eyes. It was wearing some sort of harness, and seemed to be oozing a thin mucous that was currently sliding down its body and creating a small, mucky puddle on the road.
Audie shrugged off his pack and pulled out an oversized power pack. He inserted it into the butt of his rifle with a click. Almost immediately, the rifle started to glow with an eldritch light. Tiny sparks of electricity danced around the barrel, and the weapon began to emit a low-pitched, ominous hum.
Audie stepped up and made sure the barrel of the gun was planted firmly in the creature’s chest. “Ok, boys. You know the drill. Wake it up.”
Bones nodded, then pulled an aerosol can from his pack, sprayed the creature in the face, and stepped back.
The thing stirred weakly, growled, and opened its eyes. It started to try and right itself, then realized something was poking it in the chest. When its eyes finally managed to focus on Audie, the growling stopped, as did the thing’s motions.
“Good. Fred, you’re up.”
Fred stepped up, comm unit in his hands. It was already powered up and glowing.
“Hey there, bud. We are but poor, lost circus performers. Is there a village nearby?”
Audie narrowed his eyes. “Cut the crap, Fred.”
Fred sighed. “Right. We come in peace, ugly. Come on, give my toy something to chew on, will you?” He gestured encouragingly at the creature.
Its face rippled strangely, then it spat out some phlegmy-sounding gargles that might have been a language. The comm unit made some strange noises, including a whinny, a whistle, and something suspiciously like a long wet fart before finally emitting a satisfied beep.
Fred pursed his lips. “Whoo! Deep Atlantean. That’s a new one. Greek phoneme drift and a smattering of Low Urgic for seasoning.”
“Which means…?”
“The dingus can handle translations. Earbuds in, guys. Let’s find out what’s up.”
Fred punched a few buttons on the comm unit, and the creature’s phlegmy sounds became a deep baritone.
—
“PHLGHTH PFFHG every one of you with my bare hands.” It flexed its hands and sharp, stubby claws emerged.
“Hey, now. No need to be rude.” The comm unit echoed his own word in a series of squelching noised.
The thing’s face rippled again, an obvious expression of surprise. “You can understand me?”
“With a little help from my friend, here.” Fred tapped the comm unit. “I have a few questions for you. Things will go a lot easier, and a lot quicker, if you answer them.”
“What? You dare? You come into SQLUTCHBLACH and think –”
It stopped speaking as Audie moved the rifle, using it to lift the creature’s chin. After a moment, it shivered.
“Ask!”
“First off, my name’s Fred. What’s yours?”
“Watcher-at-the-Gate. Why do you pretend not to know that?”
“Hmm. Interesting. We’ll come back to that. First question. Is your purpose in any way, shape, or form, describable as one or more of: world domination, the extermination of all life, the extermination of certain life, or the generation of circumstances that would result in the end of the world or destruction of consensus reality?”
Watcher blinked slowly, his face rippling in surprise.
“What?”
“Is your purpose…”
“I heard you! What kind of question is that?”
Fred sighed. “I’ll take that as a ‘no’. You’d be surprised how many creatures we encounter who simply start ranting about the Old Gods and the End of All Things. Saves us a lot of time, figuring out how to deal with them. Next question. Have you, or anyone you have been in recent contact with, touched, passed though, or otherwise interacted with a gate, portal, shiftstone, fairy circle, or other method of mystical or technological travel between realities?”
“… no?”
“Good answer!”
Bone coughed. “Don’t forget the compass.”
“Right! Dimensional theory. How many dimensions are we currently occupying? A rough count is fine.”
“Twenty one.” Watcher was definitely sounding confused. “Twenty-three if you count both temporal dimensions?”
“Nice! That’ll help us with cleanup. Now. Final question. Why did you manifest in our kitchen?”
Watcher’s eyes darted between Fred and Audie. “You… are not here to defile the resurrection crypts?”
“Not even the beginning of a clue as to what you’re talking about,” Fred said cheerfully. “We were on kitchen duty. Sac was whining about taking out the garbage, and next thing we know, BAM! – reality ripples, and we’re wherever here is.”
“Kitchen.” Watcher’s blobby face rippled in complex patterns. “A… place for food preparation? You are cooks?”
“Eh. We’re part of… a group that deals with weird stuff like this. Normally we’re assigned to Mobile Task Force Kappa-23. Eris’ Goons. Though technically, right now, if you want to be specific, we’re on KP duty.” Fred glanced at Audie. “I mean, mistakes were made, and we touched something that we shouldn’t have, sure. But a month of KP?”
Moving slowly, Watcher spread his fingers out wide and retracted his claws. A long, silvery tongue flicked out and swirled across his face, smoothing out the mucous covering his head.
“It… it is possible that I have misunderstood this situation. What is it that you said? ‘Mistakes were made’? I… also may have touched something I shouldn’t have.”
Fred shook his head. “I know the feeling, bud. How about we figure out what happened so you can go your own way and we can get our kitchen back before the Captain decides we need another month of KP?”
Oh, that was wonderful! So funny! I had to read it out loud to husband.
I really love how you give the plot a little tug and a twist at the end and suddenly it makes me laugh.