Inferno's Core

Part 2 of Significantly Advanced Tech

By Jeffrey Von Hauger

A hard-edged perfect cube lifted off the moon of Elipso. Its six smooth square sides pulsed through the six colors of the rainbow every six seconds. The ship's interior was divided into two decks; the bridge and the gear room.

On the bridge, Abaddon St. Baal stood before a massive view screen. The sheer enormity of Inferno filled the floor to ceiling monitor. Endless turbulent gas storms roared across the planet. Abaddon's normal indifference was accented by a gentle flutter. Slits on the shoulders of his fine tailored suit allowed his large white feathered wings to casually hang from his back.

Sitting on the floor next to him was Melock the Wise; a little old man with a spindly Fu-Manchu beard and long white hair loosely held atop his head in a messy bun. He wore simple course robes of an ascetic monk and no shoes.

"Space travel." The old wizard took in the glorious sight before him. "I shall never grow tired of its infinite repetition."

"Indeed." Abaddon was more the tall blonde handsome nontalkative type.

"Will this ship be sturdy enough to get us into Limbo?" asked Melock.

"We can pass through the upper gaseous layer to the edge of the dark hydrogen, beyond that the liquid and metallic hydrogen will crush us," responded one of the two identical #71EEB8 clone pilots.

"That will do nicely, boys."

Melock had taken to referring to the middle-aged clones as boys, which confused them as they stepped out of the cloning chamber bald silver skinned fully matured adults and never got to be boys nor even understand what boyhood was. Not to mention they were both well over four centuries old. They took no offense as their sensors informed them Melock was, in fact, their elder.

Abaddon's readings were inconclusive.

In the gear room below, the ladies were looking through a box Melock had brought. The pale waifish human with a Joan of Arc haircut stripped out of her lightweight silver Zero-G combat armor and handed it Pippalotti. She stood there in a dirty white t-shirt and shabby underwear with bruised legs and blackened toenails. Her calloused hands held out the body armor like a sacred offering.

"We're almost the same size, might fit you better though."

Pippa looked at the slick fitted suit. "This is military grade stuff."

"You should wear it. And this too."

She stepped in close to Pippalotti and taking her grayish Grandorian hand placed a simple blown glass ring on her finger. It had a slight hint of a rainbow within.

"It will protect you from the fire."

It was rather pretty, but Pippa failed to see how it would protect her from anything.

"So, Sister John Murphy, do you have another name you go by?"

"My maiden name was Melody Cherrycoke. I was married to Lord John Murphy at 15. He died when I was 16 and I was put into the nunnery. I ran away a year later and met Melock in my battles against evil. You may call me Murphy if you like."

"Ok, Murph. How old are you now, BT-dubs?

"19."

Murphy pulled what looked like robot body parts out of the box and began clamping the heavy metal cylinders around her arms and legs. She shoved her smashed up little feet into thick steel boots and pulled broad metal shoulder pads over her head. When she finished she looked like a girl pretending to be a robot.

Pippalotti put on the silver body armor. It was amazingly flexible and tough, giving the wearer a feeling of being both nakedly comfortable and indestructible. She felt stronger just wearing it and the boots, they were to die for.

Sister Murphy pulled a wide barrelled electro-blunderbuss out of the box and armed it.

"That's Ibi-Ero technology, isn't it?"

"Would you like a weapon?" she replied.

"Who do you think you're going to fight inside a gas giant?" asked Pippa.

"Evil."

-9-

The ship passed into the upper atmosphere and vanished beneath the clouds. The decks shook, the walls groaned, and everything slowed to a crawl.

"This is as far as we can go and maintain hull integrity," said one of the clone pilots.

The view screen gradually became a solid crimson wall of unchanging color.

"Then this is where we get off." Melock reached into his pocket and pulled out the brain matrix of an Ibi-Ero Makina cyborg soldier and handed it to the pilot. "Your payment for the ride."

He headed downstairs with Abaddon on his heals. The two other clones were waiting at the airlock in their matching seafoam green environmental suits. They each had a large arm device on their right hands that gave the impression they were going to play jai alai.

Sister Murphy stood at the ready wearing the body of the robotic species as armor. Three blue lights that would have been a cyborg's eyes lit up on her chest. Her smile for Melock faded into a grimace for Abaddon as they entered.

Pippalotti dug in the box. "Where's the helmet? I can't go without a helmet."

"Do you have your ring on?" Melock inquired.

"Yes and I'm sure it will protect me from the fire, but I'd also like to breathe." She pulled herself out of the big crate with a silver helmet in hand. "Ah-ha!"

"You'll be fine."

Melock walked barefoot into the airlock and Sister Murphy followed with exposed arms and legs and no helmet whatsoever. The two clones stepped in and responsibly clamped down the slick visored helmets of their environmental suits.

Abaddon in his smart linen designer suit looked kindly at Pippalotti.

"I grant you safe passage in my realm." And with that, he too stepped into the airlock.

Pippa looked at the ridiculous bunch and wondered if she was dreaming. She clamped on her helmet, dialed the environmental controls to a Grandorian female of her body index, and stepped into the airlock.

"71's, are you reading me?" She spoke into her helmet intercom.

"Affirmative." They both replied; clones had no individual identities.

"Don't you think they should be wearing helmets?"

One of the clones closed the airlock door and the chamber filled with dark red gas. The outer door opened and they stepped out into the void. Pippa and the clones activated their headlamps and cast beams of light through the dense atmosphere.

"Initiating homing beacon." The dual clone voices came over Pippa's helmet.

Pippalotti saw a readout of her location, the two clones, the ship, and something else. It was moving right toward her. Out of the deep red haze came the pale-face of Sister Murphy.

"Stay close together and don't touch anything."

"What the hell are you talking about? And how the hell are you even alive?"

Murphy smiled, held up her pulse cannon, and walked off. Her Ibi-Ero armor cast a geolocation target.

"I don't know if I should be more shocked that you are alive or that you're considering firing an electro pulse weapon in a hydrogen atmosphere." If she was breathing there was oxygen out there.

Pippa followed the signal and the two #71 clones followed her. It got darker and thicker, like walking through water. Her lights hardly made a dent in the near black red. She could still see her hand if she put it directly in front of her helmet. She followed the readout and trusted the technology.

Deeper in, their lights were swallowed by inky gas and utter darkness covered Pippalotti's visor like it was painted black. Her breathing and what was clearly her heartbeat where the only sounds. Inside of a minute, she started to panic.

"Warning: External pressure at 50% of limit," informed her suit.

"Shit! That scared me to death! 71s, you still with me?" She saw them on her readout as she moved through the darkness.

"Affirmative. Still with you. Over."

"Let's keep going, these warning signals are always overprotective." She kept following Murphy.

"Warning: External pressure at 75% of limit."

"Fuck me! What do you two think?"

"The environmental suits will only begin to fail at 99% of limit." The clones were so helpful.

"If they fail we'll die! Damn it."

Breathing. Blackness. Silence. Heartbeats. Fear. Sludging forward knowing it would only get denser.

"... let's go a little further."

"Affirmative. Over."

"Warning: Pressure at 90% of limit. Rupture imminent."

"Ok. That's it. We gotta go back." Both she and the clones stopped.

"It's not much further. Melock is already through." Murphy's voice rang out in the dark.

"Our suits aren't going to make it." It was totally surreal that she was talking to her at all, was she hallucinating, had gas leaked into her oxygen system?

"Just a little bit further, you're almost there. I'm at the barrier."

Pippa saw Murphy on her readout just a few meters ahead.

"Ok. 71s. I'm gonna go for it."

"Affirmative. We will follow. Over."

She ran forward as much as she could run in the muck.

"Warning: Pressure at 95%."

Pippa pushed on.

"Warning: Pressure Limit Reached. The Ursa Minor Corporation no longer backs the structural integrity of this suit. Proceed at your own risk."

As if she fell out of a pool and into a void Pippalotti found herself floating in an air pocket. Her lights flashed out before her and her panicked breathing stopped in awe. In front of her, floated Abaddon with a golden halo and his wings spread out in all their glory like a magnificent bird in flight. Melock and Murphy were there two, swimming around in the anti-gravity well.

"Welcome to Limbo." Melock wiggled his old toes as he dog-paddled across the void.

Pippa turned around and behind or rather above her was a wall of liquid black. Out of it came the two clones. #71EEB8 clones rarely showed emotion but these two had looks of relief on their identical faces. She smiled at them and turned her attention back to the others.

"This place defies the laws of physics. And you three certainly should be dead. What's next?"

"Our readings confirm an anti-gravitational anomaly," the clones sounded off as they took measurements with their arm devices. "The anomaly collapses in three hundred meters. Beyond that appears to be a liquid environment."

"That is where we must go!" said Melock peddling off in the direction of what looked like a swirling whirlpool.

The old man's wispy beard and hair floated behind him as the vortex sucked him in. He spun in circles wildly and was flushed away. Murphy pointed her boots at the whirlpool and got sucked down feet first. The two clones activated their grav-boots and followed her.

"How is this possible?" Pippalotti looked at the angel floating in the void.

"It doesn't require any leap of faith, just a leap." He flapped his massive wings and flew straight in.

Pippa shrugged her shoulders and flushed herself. She whirled in dizzying circles moving through bubbling water at incredible speeds until she slammed down in a ruthless faceplant on what was clearly earth. Or ground? Or some kind of soggy surface?

3~4~5

She pushed herself up and tried to balance on squirming ground. Not only was the slime-covered fleshy earth moving but a gunky rain was falling from an eerie sky. Pippalotti looked up to see swirling mud colored storm clouds overhead with a dull obscured light source low on the horizon. The water that landed on her visor left streaks across her helmet.

"Oh, god, the smell. It's wretched!" Sister Murphy wiped the black rain out of her eyes and spat it out of her mouth. "And the taste, ugh."

Pippa looked up to see Abaddon flapping his wings against the rain. His previously pristine suit stained black and his beautiful hair matted against his face. For a second he looked at her and his once radiant eyes were just white orbs without any kind of pupil or color. Black slime streaked down his cheeks and what looked like little horns were poking out of his forehead.

He turned in the sky struggling to fly against the falling filth and headed toward the light in the distance. With one massive wing flap, lightning ripped the clouds and burned a path through the slime making a blackened road that led in the direction he flew.

"Abaddon!" Pippa yelled into her helmet.

The drenched wizard put a hand on her shoulder.

"In his realm, he must go to the center. But it was nice of him to give us a path over the feeding gluttons."

He had no sooner spoken when Pippa realized that the ground was made up of living things. Big gross wormlike creatures that fed on the sludge that fell from the sky.

They made their way to the burnt road and walked on in muddy rain until they reached a stream of dark water. A ferryman waited for them at the river's edge. He was nothing more than skin and bones in a hooded cape with a long pole for moving his skiff across the waters.

Melock stepped aboard the boat and placed five gold doubloons into the ferryman's boney fingers.

"Five to cross, my good fellow."

Murphy boarded, followed by Pippa and the clones. The Ferryman had no eyes in his empty sockets and skin so thin his skull shown through. He put the gold into a worn leather pouch, said nothing, and commenced pushing them across the river.

They sat for the crossing and though the river was calm, the oil spill looking water made it hard to feel at ease. The rain stopped at the halfway point as the clones took endless readings.

"Abundant life signs in the water," said one as he dipped the end of his arm device into the stream.

It hardly went in more than a few centimeters and he was instantly pulled arm first, followed by his body, into the murky depths. The others jumped up reaching for him; trying to save him.

"Stop!" shouted Melock. "All who touch the river shall find instant death."

"You mean he's dead?" Pippa was infuriated.

"I told you not to touch anything." Muphry was not helping.

"Look, Melock. What is this place? This is not the kind of shit you'd expect to find inside a gas giant." Pippa wiped the black smears off her visor and folded her arms not touching anything.

And as if on perfect queue they reached the opposite shore and before them stood a massive rusty iron gate.

"We told you from the beginning. This is the underworld; Hades. Most cultures have a legend of a place were evil-doers go after death. A hell of sorts." Melock gestured to the macabre entrance.

"There is no such thing as hell." Pippa got off the boat with the others.

"Then you won't mind passing through its gates."

"My brother is gone then?" asked the surviving clone.

"There might be a way to save him at the center," suggested Melock as he led the way in.

Beyond the gate was a massive graveyard and not a single grave was filled in. Fire belched out of the empty holes in the ground and cast an epic vision of nightmarish proportions.

"This place is insane."

"Don't fall into despair. The journey is full of illusions but we will help you make the crossing." Murphy said this to Pippalotti with heartfelt sincerity.

"And don't forget you accepted the invitation. It's nobody's fault but your own."

"Don't discourage her." Sister Murphy pushed Melock along.

"Thanks, Murph."

She turned back and walked side by side with Pippalotti. "Us girls have to stick together."

The surviving clone followed along recording data measurements as they went. They walked for what seemed like an hour before he stopped them.

"I'm reading a breathable atmosphere." The clone double checked his device, opened his helmet visor, took a deep breath, held it a moment, and exhaled. "It's fine."

"We're approaching the forest. The legends are true." Melock looped his dried hair back up into a top knot.

Ahead of them beyond the massive burning graveyard were what looked like trees.

Pippa popped her visor. "Might as well conserve oxygen. Melock, tell us if anything else is going to kill us. Preferably a little beforehand if possible."

She took a breath of the hot air. It smelled like sulfur and tasted of cinders.

"We should be alright until at least the furnace." The optimistic old man was completely unphased.

They entered the woods. It wasn't a leafy forest but one of twisted thorny trees. The sky, if you could call it sky, overhead was filled with dark murky swirls of gas. They moved deeper into the petrified forest following the brisk pace of the barefoot wizard.

"I'm getting #71EEB8 signatures." The clone ran ahead disappearing into the gloom of the woods.

They caught up with him in a clearing, standing still with his arms at his sides. He was visibly shaken and it was the bodies that did it to him. Everywhere they looked, as if merged or growing out of the trees themselves, were dead clones with horrific expressions frozen on their faces.

"Why are they here?" he asked. "What happened to them?"

"The forest of suicides." Melock passed the stunned mourning clone continuing to hike toward the edge of the woods.

Pippa and Murphy took the clone's hands and walked him along.

"Every DNA sequence here is from a clone that once left the collective. Ones that could no longer face the challenge of immortality. Melock is right. They're suicides." He was beside himself with grief and loss.

There were thousands of them; an entire forest's worth.

The woods thinned, the ground became sand, and overhead the clouds began to glow red. Across rolling sand dunes of darkened desert stood a beacon of fire. The group trudged on until they reached the great furnace.

The ancient industrial structure belched fire into the sky. Its steel doors hung open to welcome all out of the desert cold. Inside the heat was blazing. Everywhere beings toiled and worked. A variety of species, mostly humanoid, all naked with bodies covered in ash and grime shoveled, hauled, and broke stones to feed the flames.

It was unclear what drove them on but they worked constantly, ignoring any interruption. They worked until they collapsed and then others would throw the unconscious ones into the furnace. The fires raged on.

The group followed Melock through room after room of the massive factory that only produced fire and smoke.

"This is it!" Melock ran into the next room with Murphy at his side.

The walls in the next sections were lined with weapons. Murder devices from every imaginable age. There was no order to them and they covered everything but the floor. The wizard ran like a kid in a candy store until he found the tarnished golden morning star he was looking for.

"Go ahead, it's the tool that can right this whole world."

Sister Murphy handed her blaster to the clone and reached for the spike-covered brass ball on a straight thick brass handle. It was dulled with dust and dirt but its gilded forged medieval metal shined through. She held it up above her head with two hands looking mightily empowered.

Pippalotti looked for something that might appeal to her. She was a crack shot with a phaser pistol back in her academy days. She reached out to take what looked like a Gastraddar bio-disruptor off the wall.

"I wouldn't do that if I was you," warned Melock.

Pippa pulled her hand back in a flash. "Right, right, don't touch anything."

"These weapons are cursed. Meant to harm both the wielder and the target. All but this one." He gestured to Sister Murphy who was swinging the heavy ball hammer around.

"It was once the instrument of a holy warrior, who beat the devil back to hell, only to be dragged to the underworld himself. Because he couldn't let go of it. The prized possession was thrown into the pit of cursed weapons where its powers of good would be stifled for eternity."

"And now it's mine." Murphy fell to her knees and bowed her head in silent prayer to her new toy.

"We're near the center, let's pay our respects to the Prince of Darkness and take our leave of this place."

Sister Murphy stood up. "I'll brain him."

"Now, now, We'll thank him for safe passage and be on our way."

"One of us was killed!" Pippa reminded.

"Oh, yes, we'll see about getting him back on the way out." Melock led them to the back door.

666

Beyond the furnace, it got hotter and stranger. They walked toward a rocketing jet of fire and lava that flowed from the ground into the sky. And they were not alone. At first, they came across stragglers; manic, mad, crazed beings in ratty robes muttering to themselves. Then more and more of them until they were walking in a crowd.

The masses of humanity pressed in and shoved them forward. At one point Pippa lifted her feet up and the crowd carried her along. It was starting to get scary and the fear of being crushed or stampeded by the mob was becoming real when Sister Murphy started busting heads.

The first one had whispered something to her. She hit him smack on top of his skull. It split right open and he fell to the earth. For a moment, it was the most horrifying thing Pippa had ever seen, that was until the others began nailing his body to the ground.

And that was enough for her. "Melock, I want to get out of here, now."

He took her hand. "It isn't much further, buck up, we'll see your friend again and we'll be on our way."

Sister Murphy clubbed three more robed figures to death and the crowd gave them some room as they secured the fallen to the earth.

"All these people appear to be dead, already," said the clone who had been silently observing and recording the whole time.

"Just shoot them then!"

"Oh, right, of course." He was still carrying the electro-blunderbuss.

The clone raised the blaster rifle, aimed it toward the planet's core, and fired. A softball-sized glowing yellow electric ball of energy ripped through the crowd plowing a path toward the lava fountain. Everyone in its wake was disintegrated, leaving only parts of bodies to be nailed to the ground by the others.

They walked down the newly created path through the mob and when they got to the front of the congregation, there he was; Abbodon sat on a throne of blood. His skin turned a lacquered red. His wings feathered no more, where black, reptilian, and bat-like. Horns as black as his wings grew large and curved out of his forehead and his blank white eyes were like a shark in mid-bite.

Pippalotti saw his naked and still perfect body, his goat hoofed feet and his utter lack of genitalia. "Ok, this is a deal breaker."

Melock stepped forward. "Thank you, Abbadon, for this marvelous peek into your world. Before we are on our way, we wondered if we could get our clone back?"

Abbodon laughed a deep throated and maniacal chuckle. "None may ever leave my realm."

The hordes rushed forward. The clone turned and fired repeated blasts vaporizing waves of them, but they kept coming. Sister Murphy bashed skulls and broke bodies as they attempted to subdue her.

Melock pulled a small medallion out from under his robe. Abbadon jumped to his feet and opening his mouth like he was a T-rex sucked the old man to him and swallowed him whole. His little toes wiggled as they disappeared down the devil's gaping mouth.

"NOOOOOO!" Murphy snapped, charged forward, and cleaned the devil's clock.

The spike-covered ball of her mace cracked into the side of his head knocking him off balance. He hurled her back into the crowd, igniting her body into a ball of flames that flew into the congregation catching others on fire. But that didn't stop Murphy, she was protected from the fire, and she started bashing her way back to the front.

Creepy robed figures grabbed Pippa's arms and legs. The clone disintegrated them but when his back was turned the mob jumped him, took his weapon, and began impaling him.

More robed ghouls grabbed Pippalotti and shoved her to the ground. They pinned her down and she could no longer see Murphy. A rusted railroad spike was jammed into her forced opened hand and a rock hammer swung up preparing to drive it home. Her piercing scream mixed with the evil laughter of the fallen angel and the delirious chanting chorus of his condemned worshipers.

"Hail Satan!"

"Hail Satan!"

"HAIL SATAN!"

To be continued?