THE HOUSE OF FLIES
By Christopher P Secor
CHAPTER 1
"THE BIO-VIZIER"
"The nethermost caverns...Are not for the fathoming of eyes that see; for their marvels are strange and terrific; cursed the ground where dead thoughts live new and oddly bodied, and evil the mind that is held by no head. Wisely did Ibn Schacabao say, that happy is the tomb where no wizard hath lain, and happy the town at night whose wizards are all ashes. For it is of old rumour that the soul of the devil-bought hastes not from his charnel clay, but fats and instructs the very worm that gnaws; till out of corruption horrid life springs, and the dull scavengers of earth wax crafty to vex it and swell monstrous to plague it. Great holes secretly are digged where earth's pores ought to suffice, and things have learnt to walk that ought to crawl…"
- H.P. Lovecraft; "The Festival"
Bak' Khan the Chief Bio-Vizier of Queen Amara looked intently at the blue planet that spun on the large monitor in his laboratory. It was ripe for the Laughing Meat. If left unchecked the whole planet would be one gigantic monster in a matter of days.
Every insect. Every fish in the sea... What a ravenous hunger. Such was the nature of the Kha'bj-te Amedha. And this fascinated Bak'Khan more than anything in all his long years. He yearned to study it. To understand how such a thing could even exist. And most of all, he longed to know it's mind. What could such a thing be thinking?
The Yautja Empire possessed knowledge on a great many things. But virtually nothing was known about the legendary Flesh Plague. All their knowledge of the Laughing Meat revolved around killing it, and the legends of how it had brought the Yautja to the very brink of extinction in ancient times.
The Bio-Vizier could understand how his ignorant brethren only wished to destroy it. But Bak'Khan being of a higher mental order knew that destruction was not the pinnacle of knowledge. And knowledge was power. And he would have it. Despite the Queen's decree.
He felt her ignorance in this affair was justification for disobedience. Though only the precious few secretly allied to his cause would agree with this. The stakes were high, and if he was not careful he would pay with his life.
The female clans with their uncontested rule of the empire believed themselves untouchable. But the abyss was infinite. And it's mysteries uncounted. And Bak'Khan would see his people truly flourish. He would make his people invincible.
A window on the monitor opened up, blocking out part of his view of the rotating planet. And the Bio-Vizier suddenly found himself looking into the eyes of the Chief General of the Ivory Legion. Thindweh was on the bridge of the ship making final preparations for their descent. He did not look pleased.
"Bio-Vizier Bak'Kahn." He said. Making no attempt to hide his disdain for the Yautja. "I am surprised to see you still in your facilities. We will be making our descent soon, and I expected that you would want to be on the bridge to see it."
The Bio-Vizier bowed slightly to the monitor. A gesture met only to further vex the General. "Thank you elder Thindweh for the honor of inviting me to attend the descent on the bridge. But I must remain in my laboratory. I have certain… Instruments that will allow me to better assess the situation."
Thindweh frowned and abruptly closed the communication window. He did not like the Order of Bio-Viziers. Any male that did not participate in the Hunt could not be trusted. Queen Amara's decree had been been absolute and ucompromising since the beginning of this horrific chase across the Abyss.
Her Majesty had commanded that if any traces of the Laughing Meat were found on any world they were to wipe the planet clean of life, or destroy it entirely. And Bak'Kahn was to supervise and confirm that all biological life was indeed exterminated.
Genocide of an entire planet was an action that any Yautja would be loathe to perform. But a necessary step none the less. The Laughing Meat had carved a gory path of destruction since its re-discovery on the Ice Moon Gorth. The dominant species on the moon were a reclusive race of cyclopean white furred giants.
They had a propensity for mining. And had lived for millennium within the frozen moons of the Great Ice Belt of the Brown Dwarf Teide. Delving deeply into the frozen moons. Raising great towering spire cities of ice and stone, and digging gigantic labyrinths deep beneath the surface.
But the Hesiod of Gorth, which was the name the Yautja had given them, had delved too deeply it seemed into their icy home. For they had uncovered the legendary plague that was the Laughing Meat. The Scourge that had not been seen in over ten thousand years, and had been long thought extinct.
What ensued next was of course never in doubt. Fire. Paranoia. Death. Father's burning their sons. Brother killing brother. And then armed with the knowledge of the Hesiod living on the other icy moons. The Laughing Meat then began to spread across the Ice Belt. Consuming and replicating the entire Hesiod population on four other moons before the species as a whole realized what was happening.
Mercifully the white furred giants had little to no knowledge of the Galaxy beyond their little ice cluster. Having kept their interstellar travels to the frozen moons they ruled. This met that if the legends of the Flesh Plague were true, the Hesiod it consumed could provide it with no new knowledge of life outside the Ice Belt of Teide.
In desperation the Hesiod elected to destroy their brethren's fallen moons. Killing the infected and anyone else still alive. It was a desperate quarantine effort. The wanton destruction was noticed by a passing Yautja hunting tribe. The Dassanech were not familiar with the signs of the Flesh Plague. But the onboard sensor's of the Tribe's Man'daca were. Upon the detection of the Class Four creature all thoughts of hunting were uncharacteristically set aside, as a more militant stance was taken.
The tribe relayed what they had detected across the frozen airless gulfs, all the way back to the heart of the empire. The data took several weeks to make the journey. During which time the tribe ran interference as the moons fell. Any ship attempting to leave the moon belt was destroyed by the superior Yautja craft.
Some of the Hesiod had elected to abandon their moons in favor of braving the abyss with their primitive craft. This might have been a new era for the species. Inspired through necessity to become the first interstellar pioneers of their race. But the Dassanech could not allow the chance of the Laughing Meat escaping into the outer abyss.
Queen Amara's decree had been swift and absolute. Within a month's time Amara's response to the Dassanech's message had come back in the shape of the Ivory Legion. The right hand of the Yautja military. Commanded by Chief General Thindweh. Inferior males though they were, for several millennium the female clans had allowed the soldiers access to weaponry that would otherwise be forbidden to all other Yautja males.
Their monolithic ivory ships did not arrive a moment too soon. For over the course of the month the pandemonium on the moons had reached a fever pitch. The dying species being whipped up into a frenzy at the horror of their encroaching doom.
Massive fires could actually be seen from orbit, burning across the icy wastes of some of the moons. There had even been battles in orbit above the Frozen Moons between the Hesiod and the Laughing Meat. The Yautja had watched these battles with great interest. It was almost comical watching the primitive craft with their hastily retrofitted weaponry try to out maneuver one another at a snail's pace.
Quickly though the Laughing Meat gained a firm foothold in these battles. For the Flesh Plague possessed scientific knowledge from other species as well. And it began to alter the commandeered ships in ways that the original creator's of the craft could not adapt to.
The Hesiod were being steadily pushed back further and further to their capital. A planet sized moon named Borea. Every day there were battles in orbit and new infections popping up in the Ice Cidatels across the cyclopean giant's empire. The wreckage of primitive ships littered the local spaceways. The blown out hulls of the craft began getting pulled into erratic gravitational pulls between the moons. Until there were entire debris fields slingshotting between the Moons at deadly velocity.
In the growing frenzy more and more Hesiod elected to flee their homes in their primitive ships. They were like a mindless swarm of blood flies. And the Hunting Tribe was quickly losing ground in their efforts to destroy all the fleeing giants.
Never had any Yautja amongst the Dassanech Tribe beheld such senseless horror. Such wanton destruction. As the Laughing Meat spread so did its mental influence. Soon Black Thoughts were emanating outward from the Ice Moons. The Laughing Meat had detected the tribe. Though they had remained invisible all the while. The plague's strength was growing.
On the twenty second day of the Dassanech's containment effort, a single word erupted from the ethereal and into the minds of every single member of the tribe. "Yautja…" The Laughing Meat's strength had grown to the point where it was now reaching into the fourth dimension.
It began to assail the minds of the Yautja in their cloaked ship. And on the twenty ninth day there was a great battle that raged all the way from the fourth deck to outside the command deck before it was stopped. The younger, weaker hunters, mostly Un-Blooded had been driven insane and attacked their brethren. The legends of the Flesh Plague were proving themselves to be true.
The Laughing Meat's influence did not spare the Hesiod either. Madness compounded madness on the frozen moons. Turning nearly all the remaining cities of the Hesiod into hellish warzones. The bulk of the remaining population was pushed back to their giant capital moon Borea. Where the Yautja had already detected traces of infection.
The Hesiod began planning a mass exodus of Borea. And the Laughing Meat continued its mental assault on the remaining Yautja. Plaguing both their sleeping and waking hours with nightmarish, blasphemous visions. So relentless was the Laughing Meat's mental assault that even the veteran hunters began to buckle under the effects.
On the thirty second day of the Flesh Plague the dying giants of Borea commenced a mass exodus of the moon. Tens of thousands of ships erupted from the frozen cloudy atmosphere. Electing to die as pioneers rather than perish horrifically in their mighty citadels. The Hesiod took every space faring ship on the planet sized moon.
The already exhausted tribe fought with honor, but were unable to stop the titanic swarm of cyclopean pioneers, with their rickety primitive ships. The Man'daca's sensors warned that the Flesh Plague was already on several of the Hesiod's craft. The blasphemous monster even then hiding amongst the cyclopean giants.
The Dassanech destroyed dozens of the Hesiod ships. But the giants were like a swarm of starving bloodflies. And the tribe in their Man'Daca were like a surgical blade. Then just as all hope of containment was lost, the Ivory Legion appeared out of Hyperspace. Already aware of the situation, the mighty warships dispatched the thousands of fleeing Hesiod ships in a matter of moments.
Then the Ivory Legion set about destroying the moons of Teide. It was only when all the ice moons had been completely vaporized that the Yautja discovered their grave error. A drop ship was missing from the Dassanech's ship. Record logs showed that it had ejected during the pandemonium of the great battle aboard the Man'Daca on the twenty ninth day of their quarantine effort.
"The Hesiod are now extinct." General Thindweh thought to himself with disgust. He turned his attention back to the blue planet rotating on the main view screen of the command deck. It was an exact representation of what it looked like outside his Flagship. Which now floated above the little blue world. He waved a hand in the air and the view began to zoom up on the planet's surface.
"It should have ended there." The thought kept repeating in Thindweh's mind. "The extinction of one race should have been enough."
But it had not been enough. The Laughing Meat had escaped. Which in and of itself should not have posed too a much of a problem. The Ivory Legion consisted of the swiftest ships in the known galaxy. But The Laughing Meat had had time to somehow apply it's own technology to dropship, and had actually begun to outrun them.
How it had accomplished this was a complete mystery to Thindweh. As they had struggled to keep the ship from within their long range scanners, they had witnessed further transformations to the dropship.
As time went by the ship literally changed shape slightly. And the dropship's speed increased as the transformations took place. Soon the Legion's sensors had begun to detect unfamiliar energy sources from the dropship. Then to Thindweh's horror the dropship had simply winked out. Disappeared from the scanners as if it had never been there in the first place.
That's when things had gotten really desperate. When the Ivory Legion finally arrived at the dropship's last known location they had expectedly found nothing. But Bak'Khan and his fellow Bio-Viziers (he grudgingly had to admit) had suceeded where the Legion would have failed, and found trace amounts of the dropship's energy trail.
The problem was they were only able to narrow down the dropship's possible path to three directions. And so the three main ships of the Ivory Legion were forced to split up. Each battle group hunting in a different direction. And now there was the very good possibility that it had tasted Yautja Flesh and now knew them as well as it had in ancient times.
And now there was the possibility that the Laughing Flesh had made it to this world. Initial scans showed that it was rich with life. And that there was even a Pyode Amedha settlement on the Eastern hemisphere.
Thindweh had literally no qualms about eradicating an Ooman settlement. It would not be genocide after all. They were like insects and this outpost was just one of their many fragile hives. He found the species distasteful, and as he stood there he considered destroying the settlement even if they did not find any traces of the Laughing Meat.
It was the indigenous life he was reluctant to eradicate. How many species had he been responsible for destroying in this insane chase across the abyss? The weight of his actions hung heavily on the Chief General's shoulders. He would see this abomination utterly destroyed. If it was the last thing he ever did he would see this unholy Thing exterminated.
He turned his attention from his brooding back to the blue planet. The view screen continued to zoom up. Rapidly moving passed the cloud line, a mountainous land of snowy peaks came into view. The ships scanners had the scent of something. But it didn't know what just yet...
"Thanks for reading. Please feel free to comment and critique. And please check out the updated Chapter 2!"