Previously: Zatoichi

Item #: SCP-6190

Object Class: Keter

Special Containment Procedures: The Archival Division, concurrent with their investigation into SCP-6190, has proposed the unorthodox dispatch of a manned exploration of the ship with the goal of disabling its engines from the inside, thus trapping the ship within the asteroid belt. This operation is ongoing.

Description: SCP-6190 is an abandoned spaceship enroute to the Earth that functions through a combination of nuclear thermal propulsion and applied aether astronautics. The ship is approximately one hundred meters long and consists of three major sections: a fullerene-shaped nose, a cylindrical midsection, and a dense, knotted base that ends in curved thrusters. Each of these sections is constructed of a semi-translucent material that resembles wood.

Both SCP-6190’s nose and thrusters perpetually emit lethal quantities of ionizing radiation (estimated 1 KGray within 1 minute of exposure). Long-range viewing through meteoroid holes in the midsection has identified both nuclear and oil refining machinery in unclear condition. Despite the ship’s condition, its rear thrusters are still operational, and it has avoided all attempts to destroy it en-route.

Recent investigation by the Archival Division coinciding with the appearance of SCP-6190, suggests that it was constructed and crewed by PoI-0108 “Captain Nemo”; this, in conjunction with its current trajectory, indicates that the ship is on a crash course for Buckingham Palace in England. Neither MI666 nor the Royal Family have yet been informed.

BRIEF: PoI-0108 “Captain Nemo” (1820s-1940s?) was an Indo-Atlantean polymath and revolutionary known for constructing the submarine Nautilus and waging a 90-year guerilla campaign against the British Empire from the First Indian War of Independence to the onset of World War II. Using the Nautilus as a mobile naval base, Nemo provided technological and logistical support for anti-imperialist causes around the world on both sides of the Veil. His decimation of the Royal Chthonic Navy before abruptly disappearing in 1939 shaped modern parapolitical history1.

Nemo was born Viswamitra Thakkar to a minor rajah somewhere in the Bundelkhand region of India and spent his early adulthood studying and touring in Europe. In addition to intensive study of various scientific and engineering disciplines, Thakkar joined and covertly sponsored numerous socialist organizations across Europe2 until returning to India in 1849 to fulfill an arranged marriage.

Between 1850 and 1857, Thakkar focused his energy both on householding and further scientific research. However, his work remained obscure in Europe and his attempts to distribute his research and support worker-owned industrialization in India were stymied3.

Thakkar’s involvement with the Indian Revolution of 1857 was initially limited to supplying rebels with food, equipment, and safehouses. However, the death of his family partway through the conflict4 precipitated more direct involvement: he liquidated his family fortune to spend on equipment and foreign mercenaries5 and abdicated his throne to participate as a combat medic and engineer for the rebels6. At the end of the conflict, Thakkar and a small cadre of followers fled Bundelkhand to parts unknown. His real name does not appear again in the historical record.

Thakkar, now Captain Nemo, resurfaced in 1863 aboard the Nautilus7 and subsequently became the most wanted fugitive in the nascent anomalous community8. Details of Nemo’s life aboard the Nautilus are scarce9, but he became a popular symbol of anti-imperialism and rebellion behind the Veil10.

Between 1900 and 1939, Captain Nemo began associating more closely with the Indian National Congress (INC). For all intents and purposes, the crew of the Nautilus became the proto-Indian state’s paranormal defense agency11, but direct contact between the two groups was limited and the Nautilus’ operations were ultimately more focused on hindering the British than benefiting India.

Throughout this time, Nemo had continued to explore new scientific, literary, and occult disciplines: his exploration of medieval Sanskrit works12, excavation of Atlantean ruins in the Indian Sea13, and collaboration with the Foundation14 sparked an interest in spaceflight and xenobiology that he began exploring by 190315.

In 1939, Nemo severed his relationship with the INC16 and abruptly left Earth onboard a rocket off the coast of Sri Lanka for an unknown destination. The Foundation detected the ship as it left Earth, but lost track of it once it passed Planet X. However, its size, speed, and unorthodox trajectory on the negative Z-axis from Earth indicated that it would exit the Solar System before civilian technology would be able to detect or reach it. The ship was subsequently reclassified Neutralized and Nemo was designated KIA.

Despite figuring prominently in the public consciousness, archives of surviving contemporaries, and records of virtually every coterminous paranatural organization, there is virtually no physical evidence for Nemo’s existence.

The cause of this discrepancy is unknown.

OPERATION: THROUGH AN ARBOR DARKLY

DATES: ██/██/2029 – ██/██/2029

STATUS: FAILURE

DEPARTMENT LIAISON: Head Librarian Olympia

OPERATION LEADER: Senior Agent Adam Saxon

OPERATIVES: Associate Translator Bharath Redacted

SUPPORT: Archival Division, Astronomy Department

BRIEF: While SCP-6190 has thus far avoided all missiles fired at it and mines in its path, it has suffered damage from smaller meteoroids and micro-impacts in the same time. A small package could feasibly be fired at the ship to disable it from the inside.

Exploration Specialist / Associate Translator Bharath Redacted (whose unique health condition enables him to survive both the launch and the anomaly's environment) could be dispatched to explore SCP-6190, disable its engines, and memorize as much information about it as possible, reporting it back upon his arrival to Earth.

Associate Translator Redacted will be fired from Launch Site Gamma. The site hosts a mortar-based paraweapon that can fire projectiles as far as Neptune at speeds in excess of one thousandth of one percent of the speed of light. However, Translator must be executed and his remains loaded into an incendiary mortar capable of surviving the journey. A successful strike will ensure that the mortar bursts into flames and ignites Translator Bharath's remains aboard SCP-6190, triggering his regeneration cycle and enabling him to investigate the ship.

The operation will take place from Launch Site Gamma owing to its cliffside location and favorable weather conditions on short notice. Translator Redacted has volunteered with the understanding that he will be terminated, that his remains not required for the mission or post-recovery will be discarded into the ocean, and that survival is not guaranteed. Armsmaster Broad has volunteered to carry out both the execution, launch of Translator, and disposal of mission parts. Translator Redacted and Armsmaster Broad have signed all consent and safety forms.

DEBRIEF ONE: Conducted by Adam Saxon on Bharath Redacted

Where should I start? The mission – sorry, operation – arguably started when we reached Launch Site Gamma, so I could describe how I reached the – SCP-6190 – or I could start right from where I landed on the sh – the anomaly?

[Start from where you landed onboard SCP-6190.]

Understood! As far as I can tell, the launch went perfectly. The mortar landed in the ship’s midsection and disintegrated into a controlled flame, my regeneration sparked and occurred normally, and I began recording as soon as I got my burning under control.

As I began making my way to the bridge, I observed a thick core of bundled piping and machinery, dotted by glass portholes, running through the center of the midsection from one end of the ship to the other. The inner walls around it were paved in long stone trails that ran around the ship’s circumference. I was able to walk up and over the entire ring – the floors, the walls, the ceiling, which were the floors – without issue. It was incredible! Like nowhere I have ever been before! Ahem. But it was also apparent that some kind of disaster had taken place.

I found what were clearly supposed to be hydroponic gardens, with sophisticated irrigation networks inset into the stone, but couldn’t tell what they had grown. Everything had been steamed and blackened to the roots. Every few meters I observed a jagged rupture or melted porthole in the central machinery leaking a grainy, cherry-red sludge that ate through the paving and my fingers when I tried to examine it. There were also several small alcoves clearly meant for human use that had been destroyed by fire. It was like walking through an accident at a smelting furnace.

[Was the entire midsection like this?]

No. The piping became more robust and the fire damage less intense as I got closer to the nose. I observed more irregular patterns that reminded me of fire spreading from arson and even found some plants that hadn’t been burned. They had clearly died of radiation poisoning, but had failed to rot, leaving grids of perfectly preserved corpses. I could not identify any of the plant life but memorized their appearances. I can describe them?

[Just one for now.]

Yes. Let me think… Oh! Near the first body. I found trees with wings! At least I think they were wings. I counted two such specimens, each about five meters long, covered in tan, hairy bark in cross-hatched patterns, complete with three pairs of wings branching off from a bulbous growth around their midsections. Like a cross between a dragonfly and a palm tree. With pale, rubbery roots. Rubbery-looking. I didn’t touch anything I thought might be flammable. Um. It seemed like the tree specimens tried to uproot themselves somehow but died. There were clusters of blackberry-like fruits around their canopies.

[Go back. First body?]

Um. Just past the dragonfly trees. I found a human body slumped in front of the entry hatch to the nose. Per my training, I immediately compartmentalized my discovery and attempted a detached visual analysis of the deceased. They were wearing a black, unlabeled extravehicular suit. Thinner than American space suits but thicker than, say, jumpsuits. I recognized the suit immediately: MI666 standard-issue extravehiculars straight out of Hutchinson’s Hidden Truths. [Pause] A British pulp magazine published during the seventies. It was one of our best sources of intel at the time and we’d long suspected that the crown had a role in killing their distributor –

[You’re sure the suit belonged to MI666?]

Positive. I didn’t touch the body, but I’ve read enough issues of Hidden Truths to build that suit from scratch. It was identical to a half-dozen separate descriptions, down to the corrugated joints and polished black visors. I’d be happy to give the suit measurements to –

[Not right now. Focus on the recording. What happened when you saw the hatch? ]

Um. I looked for a manual override or a sensor to open the door but didn’t find one. The hatch was shaped like a camera aperture so I I tried pulling the shutters apart and squeezing through the gap. Then – I got frustrated, flared up and tried to burn a hole through the door – but nothing happened to it. Wasn’t even scuffed. Then I extinguished myself, collected my thoughts, and found the override hidden behind a panel inset just off to the side. It was a bright yellow two-handed lever that I had to pull down with all my weight. The door split open with a puff of superhot steam that melted the MI666 agent’s visor onto their corpse.

DEBRIEF TWO: Conducted by Adam Saxon on Bharath Redacted

My first thought upon entering the nose was that I had entered a nuclear steam bath. The air was scaldingly humid and itchy with ionizing radiation. The passageway was three meters tall and one meter wide, made of the same semi-transparent wood as the ship’s exterior. But it didn’t lead directly to the bridge or even some part of the ship. Instead, I walked the length of the ship’s nose, then turned a corner to another passageway as long as the ship’s nose, which turned yet another corner to yet another passageway – and then the path forked. It was like space-time inside the nose had been squashed and folded into a maze.

I still reached the center. I’m not sure how long the maze was or how long I spent in there – I lost count of my footsteps around 13,000 – but my final path from the hatch to the bridge consisted of 345 turns in total. I ran across several deceased MI666 agents who must have gotten lost and been overcome by the radiation, but compartmentalized each of them. Acted like they weren’t even there! Um. Anyways, there wasn’t really an entrance or hatch to the bridge. I just made the final turn – a left turn – and tripped over two MI666 agents at once. When I got up, I found myself in a large, disc-shaped room that had been the scene of an intense firefight.

The immediate center of the bridge was occupied by two bodies: one looked French but I didn’t recognize him. The other was clearly Captain Nemo himself. Nobody else could have a beard like that. Um. Both bodies were slumped over a large silver object in the center of the room. It was shaped like a small hemisphere sitting on a larger, upside-down half sphere, itself sat on a cylindrical stand.

The object that had killed them - that had irradiated the ship – was shaped like a small hemisphere sitting on a larger, upside-down half sphere, itself sat on a cylindrical stand. A fusillade of pipes rose up from the top of the core and split off into ports covering the ceiling. I had no doubt this was where all the pipes were leading. Both the Captain and the Frenchman’s hands lay over the object’s upper hemisphere, blocking a radioactive pink light that made my eyes bleed where it poked through their fingers.

I left the model alone while looking for the ship controls. The whole rear of the bridge had been burned down and was still burning when I found it. The remaining MI666 agents strewn around the room had seemingly dropped dead while incinerating the place. Their flamethrowers were still running.

I tried looking through the remains for any useful information but everything was too far gone to read. All I found were scorched bits of books and paintings and fossils and the entire encyclopedia of Captain Nemo’s knowledge wiped from existence. Even now, thinking about the breadth of history we lost… that really burns my ass. Sorry.

Um. The fire hadn’t spread, though. The entire bridge was made of thick, dense, wood, but only the captain’s collection had burned. As if that was all the fire was meant for. So I turned away and tried following some of the pipes off the power supply to see where they went. Most of them went right into the ceiling but a few branched off, ran along the upper diameter of the room, and came down to a control system that I didn’t understand at all.

Instead of a guidance system or navigation table or even a ship’s wheel, the Albatross’ bridge consisted of a single huge machine made of wood and glass being pumped full of radioactive sludge. It looked like Olympia’s mainframe and it was throbbing like a human heart and the closer I got the more my eyes hurt like I was staring at the pink light. I decided to leave the bridge and try manually destroying the thrusters.

I exited the bridge into a completely different maze from what I had entered. When I mentally reconstructed my recording to see which turns I should take out of the maze, I found my real path diverging from the original. When I finally gave up on backtracking and simply tried following the right hand rule, I turned the right corner five times. I tried turning back and turned left five times. When I tried fixing myself by my surroundings, I saw them repeat around me.

I’m sure you expect I became nervous or flared up. I didn’t. I’ve studied so many accounts of predatory geometries I could navigate them in my sleep. Instead of panicking, I took a deep breath, recited my containment mantras, and let go of the wall. Just as [DATA EXPUNGED] did two hundred years ago in the hidden archives of Lemuria, I stopped following the corner and stopped falling for the trap.

I walked blindly forward – straight forward – for what I counted by my footsteps as seventy meters on hardwood until smacking face-first into the aperture back to the ship’s midsection. Instead of flaring up, I felt blindly for the pull-lever and only opened my eyes once I had stumbled through the hatch.

DEBRIEF THREE: Conducted by Adam Saxon on Bharath Redacted

My plan upon re-emerging in the midsection was to melt through the central machinery and leave the ship dead in space. I was able to leap up there from the overhead walkways but couldn’t burn hot enough to melt through them. So I switched to the backup plan of manually detonating the rear thrusters. I navigated through the midsection, making my way back through the burned remains of the ship, and used the hidden manual override on the other hatch to the thruster section.

The more rigidly designed, space-bending frontal sections of the ship gave way to rounder, softer housing, more akin to living inside a tree than a spaceship. I kept trying to navigate to the thrusters – to find the engineering bay – but couldn’t find a map of the ship and all of the signage had seemingly been worn off. I passed through small multi-bunk bed rooms, canteens and bathrooms, even communal smoking and rec rooms. All of them were full of bodies.

MI666 had killed them all and left their bodies to rot. I found bodies face-down in vacuum-preserved porridge, slumped across broken terminals, or sitting on flushed toilets. It was like a ghoulish freeze-frame of the entire crew the moment before they died. I tried compartmentalizing each of them, but it was… I found Clarke Savage Jr. – the real one, from Egypt – still sitting at a chess table with Nemo’s first mate. Their faces were bloated and puffy and full of bullet holes and – the pieces were still floating overhead! The Justice Society of Africa saved Ayers Rock from a dreamtime incursion and were murdered with pillows over their faces for it! That’s just… it was hard to process.

[How many bodies did you count?]

I, uh, I indexed about one hundred bodies. They were all wearing jumpsuits in different colors of the same nylon-like fabric. I memorized all of their appearances and faces in detail. I can describe them if you need. I just need a moment – ulp –

[Take a break and let’s skip that part for now. Did you find the thruster controls?]

No, I… I failed. I found a freezer room containing slabs of frozen purple-black liquid, long cuts of meat that I didn’t recognize, and several eyes from creatures I don’t know. I can describe how they looked?

[What happened to you in the freezer room?]

Well, it was… It was something stupid. I was in the freezer, three rooms past the midsection hatch, trying to flare up and stay warm while also memorizing the details of the hundredth victim – the 20th century shaman Jeremiah Nkrume – and realized while indexing it with all the other corpses I’d examined that they had all died the same way.

They’d all been shot in the head and chest. In the same pattern, that I’d read about in Hidden Truths – somehow I just hadn’t recognized the symbol. It’s a six-tap execution method invented by – stolen by the Crown, really, they cribbed it off – um, I’m getting distracted, it’s a sigil, expressed in the form of a tactical fusillade, that disrupts the integrity of a person’s soul. To prevent resurrection or communication with the deceased. Make sure they stopped existing forever.

MI666 had done this to everyone onboard the ship. And I just – at the moment I realized that, the moment I thought about having that done to me – I felt something poke me in the back of the head. I know it was probably a meat hook now but then, being surrounded by unfamiliar meat and hooks and dead people… I freaked out and flared up so fast I immediately incinerated myself. The recording ends there. My next recording begins with waking up at Launch Site Gamma, from my designated recovered remains. I can transcribe that?

[To recap – you explored Nemo’s ship but failed to disable it?]

Well, I also recorded a bounty of information on new plant life! On how Captain Nemo built and crewed an entire colony ship! Where so many famous figures in history disappeared before World War 2! I haven’t even told you about the crew quarters –

[But you failed to disable the ship? It’s still on its way to Earth?]

It – yes. It’s still on its way to Earth.

Footnotes

1. refer titles: HISTORY OF THE ALLIED OCCULT INITIATIVE

2. refer accounting: VÖRWARTS 1844, NEUE RHEINISCHE ZEITUNG 1848; refer correspondence: MARX-THAKKAR 1843-1849

3. refer institutions: HER MAJESTY’S ROYAL ARMY, EAST INDIA COMPANY; refer documents: REPOSSESSION ORDERS OF: THAKKAR ELECTRO-MOTIVE CANE HARVESTER, THAKKAR THREE-DIMENSIONAL JACQUARD MACHINE, THAKKAR AUTO-LOADING SPEAR-GUN

4. refer institution: BRITISH ARMY, refer correspondence: HAVELOCK-NEILL 1857

5. refer name: PIERRE ARRONAX

6. refer institution: BRITISH ARMY, refer document: REWARD FOR THE CAPTURE OF VISWAMITRA THAKKAR

7. refer title: ACCOUNT OF PFC ISHMAEL BROOMSTEAD ON THE SINKING OF THE HMCS ESSEX

8. refer institution: HER MAJESTY’S CHTHONIC NAVY, refer document: ORDERS REGARDING CAPTURE OR DESTRUCTION OF THE “NAUTILUS”

9. refer correspondence: ARONNAX-VERNE 1869, BLACKWOOD-NEMO 1875; refer title: THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF JULES VERNE;

10. refer correspondence: refer factions: GALLANT SOCIETY, SERPENT’S LEAGUE OF THE JUST, REAL TALES OF THE SUPERNATURAL

11. refer institutions: THE ROYAL CHTHONIC NAVY and HER MAJESTY’S PARANATURAL SERVICE; refer statistics: FAILED ASSASSINATIONS, APPENDIX B: INDIAN SUBCONTINENT and ASSASSINATED OFFICERS, APPENDIX B: INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

12. refer name: NAKKIRANAR

13. refer title: THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF KUMARI KANDAM

14. refer operation: MERCURY THEATER

15. refer correspondence: CAVOR-NEMO 1903, NEMO-TSIOLKOVSKY 1903, GODDARD-NEMO 1919

16. refer correspondence: GANDHI-NEMO 1939