Walling up the entryway between the worlds of the benevolent, bat-furred toad-god Tsathoggua and that of the much-less-attractive demon prince Hziulquoigmnzhah seemed a surefire means of reaffirming Tsathoggua’s favour. The Quorum’s vote on this matter had been unanimous, and so the pit where the portal was located was closed off using a variety of fail-safes, and then the whole area was surrounded in a series of airlocks, cultural heritage be damned. Until Professori Laila started in with her insane theories of interstellar harmony and pan-theological unification, no one had given any thought to reopening the portal of ultratelluric metal that lay buried in ruins of black gneiss beneath Mhu Thulan’s capital city.
Pipaluk had suspected the worst as soon as she discovered the Professori’s new laboratory was directly adjacent to the outermost airlock housing the gate to Cykranosh that the warlock Eibon had used to escape Earth in ancient times, if the mytho-historical record was to be given credence. Alas, the Quorum had dragged its feet, despite Pipaluk’s warnings, and now it was too late—she would have given her musk glands to kick the Provost in the kanaaks for postponing his vote as long as he had.
Pipaluk’s subgineers bustled about Laila’s laboratory in their glistening salamander-suits and, behind a tarp, they discovered where the Professori and her team of graduate students, clone servitors, and formless spawn had hacked into the municipal pipe that made up one of the facility’s walls and plugged in their plasmaborers. The tunnel they had excavated led—surprise surprise—out of the lab, through a mega-support column, and directly into the first airlock bay, the dull-metal doors towering some thirty meters tall over Pipaluk’s team.
“Airlock initially opened, Aggusti Second,” the voice of one of the subgineers crackled in Pipaluk’s pulsing, yellow bio-helm. “Breached on average twice daily each day since.”
“Hymirbjarg,” Pipaluk cursed, and several of her underlings grinned to themselves to hear their normally unflappable superior use such strong language. “I trust this is sufficient?”
“Fall back, Ingeniøri,” Provost Ole answered over the Quorum channel. “We’ll hold an emergency meeting. Politibetjent Chief Malik is on his way up, so extract your team and—”
“Wha—shhhack?” Pipaluk held down the garble button she’d installed onto her com-panel as she addressed her subgineers on their private channel. “Right, we don’t have time to deal with more dawdling by those kanaaks. Ane and Nuka, with me. The rest, seal this airlock after us and don’t open it, no matter what. I trust you all remember what happens when you open airlocks, yes?”
They did. It had been Pipaluk’s team, after all, who designed the last batch of svataarsualiartartoq-suits for Mhu Thulan’s formless spawn commandos—space stations tended to lack many gaps for the polymorphous spawn to flow through, so infiltrating the interstellar strongholds of those Yig-worshipping Valusians and Ithaqua-kissing Gnophkehs necessitated finding another way to get the formless spawn inside. Spacesuits that matched the design of those used by the targeted station, save with opaque helmets, did the trick quite nicely—fill a few suits with the spawn, trigger a rescue beacon on the station’s frequency, and float the formless commandos through the void until they were retrieved by drones and taken inside the airlocks. Then, total havoc as the deadly children of Tsathoggua swept through the station, a sentient tidal wave of ichorous death.
“How will we get back, Ingeniøri?” subgineer Nuka asked, his voice cracking.
“Have some faith, son,” said Pipaluk. “We’ll recode the locks as we go. Things were built by your ancestors; think their primitive programming is beyond your skill?”
Nuka straightened his shoulders, his three-toed foot snapping up in salute. Through the faceshield of his bio-helm, Pipaluk could see the lad’s umber fur bristling straight out from his face in embarrassment. Good, he should feel like an idiot.
“—stunt,” Provost Ole was saying as Pipaluk relaxed her finger on the garble button. “Is that clear?”
“Perfectly, sir,” said Pipaluk, and quit the channel altogether. “Right, let’s go.”
Nuka whined, long and low; Ane prayed, fast and loud; and the other subgineers all saluted as the ancient airlock opened into the deep.
II
There were three airlocks in total, and the trio had reached the control panel beside the second by the time the first had ground shut behind them. Before advancing any further, Pipaluk had Ane explore to the left and Nuka to the right—the Ingeniøri had been over the schematics a dozen times lest just such an emergency entry become necessary, but it never hurt to confirm what the blueprints had already told her.
“Dead end,” Nuka reported through the bio-helm’s thrumming com-membrane. “Basalt. Dry. No cracks.”
“Same here,” Ane said, as she hiked back across the bay.
“Good,” said Pipaluk. “Everything matches up. The reports state that the Eibon Gate was interdimensional, so they were able to completely surround it. Basically, they built a giant basalt box around the thing, with only an airlock leading in or out. Around that, another stone box with an airlock, and then another. So, through this door is another bay and across that is the final airlock, which opens into the ruins where the Gate is. Professori Laila and her team are either in the bay beyond this door, working on the last airlock, or they’ve managed to breach it and gain the ruins, which could be bad. Very bad.”
“‘Bad’?” said Nuka. “‘Very bad’?”
“Depends,” said Pipaluk, hoping against hope that her quarry was still fiddling with the last airlock and not beyond it. “Even with the feeble half-lives they were capable of producing, back when this was all built, the fail-safes in the ruins should still be operational. So, in a best-case scenario, the fail-safe will have arrested the Professori’s advance. Worst-case scenario, Laila will have somehow gained the Gate.”
“Fail-safes?” Nuka whimpered. “Issi.”
“Act like you’ve got a quad,” Ane snorted, petting the slimy muzzle of her microwave spitter as she sidled up to Pipaluk. The weapon purred at the subgineer’s touch and Pipaluk made a mental note to invite Ane over for a soak in her breeding bath when they were safely home—the Ingeniøri’s whiskers needed a serious stroking and she had a feeling this was just the Voormi to give it to her. This wasn’t really the time for such concerns, admittedly, but stress always made Pipaluk’s glands overproduce.
“Remember,” Pipaluk said, as her fingers danced over the airlock’s panel, “we need to stop Laila at all costs. Alive to stand trial is preferable but by no means necessary. The main thing will be avoiding the fail-safes, if those idiots have opened the airlock, and the Professori’s formless spawn if they haven’t. We may already be too late, so from here on out, we move faster than fast, got it? Now, let’s get this heretic.”
“Oh yeah,” said Ane, and her weapon shivered in anticipation.
Nuka whinnied and made the sign of Saint Toad.
Pipaluk opened the airlock. A rush of cooling, semi-congealed blood poured out over their feet.
III
The bay between the second and third airlock doors glowed a faint turquoise from a K’n-yan luminance system, and before the Voormis’ bio-helms could tint out the blinding, pale light a fail-safe leapt on Ane and bit off her head. The thing’s gears screamed and spat puffs of rust as it thrashed atop the decapitated subgineer, a blur of slick, amphibious tails and bluish metal pincers. Nuka panicked, his high-pitched howl nearly blowing out Pipaluk’s com-membrane, and the Ingeniøri had to force herself not to attack the subgineer before taking out the fail-safe. She spat out the immolation code for Ane’s suit, even as she leapt out of the way of the imminent blast. Even through her own salamander armor, she felt the wave of heat buffet her like a solar flare.