Navigator's Log

What follows is all that survives of the science vessel Herodotus. Its navigator, one Jeff Franklin, tried transmitting his personal log to Earth shortly before the accident that destroyed the ship. Much of the data was corrupted, but we’ve recovered what we could. 

August 12^th, 2820

We’re finally underway, and at long last, we’ve set sail. At long last, I can continue recording in my old voice journal. I don’t know why, but it gives me comfort to just speak my thoughts, even knowing no one will hear my words.

I’ll admit it. I’m scared. We’ve been given a ten year mission, and this thing we’re investigating. It’s…well, the implications are insane. Our new, faster-than-light deep space sensors have been scanning worlds much older technologies had identified as likely candidates for life. And so many of these worlds are just missing.

Yeah. Missing. As in, they’re gone. No traces left. Tell me that doesn’t get the hair on the back of your neck standing on end.

I wish I were the praying type, like Nana. I could sure use some comfort when I think about what’s going on out here. I mean, we finally cracked faster-than-light travel, and this is what we’re met with? Some kind of space horror mystery?

July 23^rd, 2821

That’s the fourth planet we’ve visited. Or, at least, it’s the fourth location where a planet should have been. The captain’s unnerved. All of us are. Tempers are flaring. Something has to break soon, or we’re going to have to return to Earth and tell them to send someone else.

September 8^th, 2821

Well, I have good news for once. Of a sort. Earth contacted us and told us that they’d managed to find one of the worlds on the list still there. It shows signs of radiation on the surface. But it’s still there. So we’re making our way at full speed.

The crew has been invigorated by the news. At long last, something that might shed some light on what has been happening.

We should arrive in a few weeks.

October 10^th, 2821

The people on the planet appear to have been as advanced as late twentieth century Earth. What records we can salvage indicates that they were attacked by some kind of entities, and they’d fired off all of their nuclear arsenal in hopes of destroying the invaders.

We reported to Earth what we’d found, and they suggested we travel as many light years away as necessary to try to get a visual on the events using our best optics. It was a while back, and the ship’s best optical sensors can only confirm that whatever the invaders were, they definitely didn’t seem to have any ships out in space. We kept moving, and scanned many intervals across several years before the events occurred, and we could find no evidence of any invading force arriving from space.

Earth took our information under advisement.

March 30^th, 2823

Emily and I sat alone in the observation lounge again this afternoon, staring at the stars. I still can’t believe that she and I got together. We’ve scoured three planets scorched by nuclear fire and a dozen worlds gone completely missing, and now I’m sleeping with the hottest woman in the crew. Five foot eight, silky blond hair and the most beautiful sparkling green eyes you’ve ever seen, and she was sleeping in my bed.

Of course, I think she sought me out because she’s terrified. We all are. Captain’s increased our rec time considerably, trying to let us blow off steam before another fist fight breaks out on the bridge.

I wonder if we’ll ever go back to normal, or if we’ll all end up in psych wards when we get home. We’re all going to need therapy, that’s for sure.

May 10^th, 2823

It has finally happened. We found a world that’s both still there, and not destroyed. We’re pushing the engines as hard as we safely can. To say we’re excited would be an understatement. At long last, we might be getting close to unraveling the mystery.

Captain says we’re going to scan the entire system, looking for any kind of vessels, and then we’re making contact with the people on the planet. The hope in Emily’s eyes is intoxicating. Not only can we confirm that we’re not alone in the universe, but it seems some of our neighbors haven’t moved out.

Emily actually asked me if I’ve ever considered having kids. I hadn’t really, but the relief I’m feeling makes me wonder if it might be something I want to do in the future as does that happy look on Emily’s face when she talks about it.

I’d like to think I could be a decent dad.

September 19^th, 2823

I went down to the surface to meet with the leader of the planet’s largest nation today. They had this ceremony for us, welcoming us to their world. Strangest thing about these people is how much like us they are. I mean, they’re humans, for a start. And even stranger, I could put on clothes out of one of our museums and blend in with them fairly well. At worst, I’d look like a foreigner, not an alien from a quarter of the way across the galaxy.

One of the women in attendance seemed overly fond of the captain. I want to say she was their Minister of Defense. Um…Nimue, I think her name was. Black hair, purple eyes – I’m told the people on the planet regularly use physical lenses to change their eye colors, not holo-emitters like we do – and the lowest cut formal dress she could get away with.

Captain was definitely impressed, the way he kept gawking at her chest.

September 28^th, 2823

We finally revealed to the world’s leaders what we’d been investigating. When we discussed the invaders, one of them suggested that instead of aliens, the creatures might have been spiritual foes of some kind. Demons.

Nana would have been proud that he’d spoken his mind, though it did him no good. He was nearly laughed out of the room.

Nimue, tasked with being our liaison for these talks, apologized for “his silly superstitions” and assured us that religion had “long since gone out of favor on the planet, replaced by science, as it should be.”

Still, we passed that along to Earth, and while they dismissed the possibility of the invaders being demons outright, it did prompt considerations that they were some kind of extra-dimensional entities.

None of us can argue with that possibility.

September 30^th, 2823

Emily found out that I’d slept with Nimue and broke it off with me immediately. I don’t know what the big deal is. Monogamy’s silly. What, did she think she had me all to herself?

When the delegation came up to tour the ship, the captain made sure Emily was doing work in an area away from our guests. But she came to get a look anyway.

She tells me that something’s wrong with Nimue. That she feels a darkness in the woman. She says even the baby growing in her womb – my child! – could tell that something was wrong with her. I told her she was just being jealous. But then she slapped me and refused to keep talking with me.

What follows is the final entry to the voice log. The second voice – that of a woman – has not been identified. It does not match any of the ship’s personnel, nor any records of those delegates from the planet’s surface. If what we hear is real, then I fear for us all.

October 13^th, 2823

I’m transmitting my log, along with this final entry. Holy crap! It was all true! I wish I knew how to pray. I wish I’d listened to Nana more.

It’s only a matter of time before they manage to batter through the door. So please listen. These things are demons. We’d had visitors from the surface up on the ship again. Things seemed normal. 

Then, seemingly prompted by a secret signal, three of the members of the delegation tore their skin off, becoming hideous monsters. Two of them were like giant, humanoid bugs made of ice. They began tearing our crew apart.

So I ran.

I was chased by the third. Nimue.

Her lower body was like a nest of tentacles. She had some of them on her head, too. And her hands were horrifying claws. If I had to say what color her skin was…salmon, I think is the name of the color?

Emily jumped out of a door and struck her with a large spanner. Nimue was stunned for a moment. Then she looked at Emily. “I hate children,” she said, reaching out her hand with lightning speed and tearing the fetus out of Emily’s belly with a sickening, wet sound.

“Run,” Emily breathed, her green eyes imploring me.

I managed to make it to my room. Someone had to be warned. They’ve turned off the normal communications equipment. But I can still send out my log. So, here it is. My last words. The door is giving way…

Wait, who is this woman? She looks a lot like Emily. But she has horns, and wings of flame.

What followed the log was a conversation. It was badly degraded, but our computers have managed to reconstruct it.

“You must be Jake,” a woman’s voice says, reverberating as she speaks.

“How do you know…?” the navigator asks.

“Nimue says that you were an adequate lover. That is high praise, coming from her. But where are my manners? I know your name, but haven’t given you mine. Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Korex’ilian, and I must admit, you’ve quite vexed me, Jeff. We were so looking forward to surprising Earth, and you’ve gone and spoiled it. Oh well. I guess we’ll have to have a drawn out war, after all.”

The woman laughs in a hideous cacophony.

“Luckily, Jeff, it seems that your people won’t be so stupid as to irradiate themselves. We won’t have to infiltrate your government and disable all your nuclear missiles. You’re all so much smarter than that. You think you can win. I’ll enjoy breaking you of that misunderstanding, in the name of my Queen, now that the Divine Treaty with Earth has expired. But, you know, you don’t have to suffer, Jeff. I can be merciful, to those who can be reasonable.”

“W-What do you want?” the navigator sobs.

“Your soul, of course. Offer it freely, and I promise I won’t tear it out painfully slowly and eat it. I think you’ll like being a devil, Jeff. I’ll even let you watch Xaphan destroy this world beneath us before I transform you, if you’d like. I mean, unless you’d like to have you soul devoured slowly and painfully. It’s your call.”

“I…yes.”

The woman laughs again. “There’s a good boy. Come on, let’s go find one of your view screens and I can show you how your new boss conquers a world and drags the whole planet to Hell. Then we can get your soul corrupted into a devil. Say, how do you feel about goat legs? No? Okay, we can work up to that. I mean, you'll be a roiling soulmass for a bit first, no matter what we choose for you...”