Deluge

Chapter 1

The day the rain started

Sister Cassandra was raised high by the current, trailing much blood in her wake.  Higher and higher, until it broke, and Cassandra fell.  Her face met cold, rusted steel with a slam.  She felt the bruised half of her body swell and beat with renewed agony as she compulsively gasped in a lungful of air.  If she had a voice she would have screamed.  As it was she lay in silence and pain, alone.  Her mind began to drift.  Was that rain she felt on her back?

“Where the did that wave come from?” She heard a man's voice say along with footsteps, more than one pair.

“Who cares, the drought is over!”  Another said with apparent glee.

“Holy guys, look.” Yet another said as Cassandra came into their view.

The crowd muttered as they approached her.

“Throne, she’s hurt.  Look at all the cuts!”

“Get the Chirurgeon , now!”

“And the captain.  Look at her neck.  She’s Inquisition.  Guys, I would stay back.”

Cassandra was fading fast, but she managed to thrust one arm out enough to roll over.  The crowd gasped.  The sky was completely covered with deep purple clouds, shot through with lightning every second.  She opened her mouth.  It was raining. 

Mission accomplished, Cassandra thought.

The rain tasted sweeter than anything ever had in her life.  She was in so much pain.  But it's over, she thought.  She had lost track of time down there.  In the caves with the Demon.  Her face still managed to form a snarl, thinking of the creature that her and Calpurnia had bested.  But where was she?  And how did she get here?

“Oh well I’ll be an Orks dinner, you weren't pulling my leg.  A lady washed up on the ship.  Terra, look at her!  What in the Emperor's name…” Cassandra heard the voice of a large man cut through the din of the rain.

A pair of heavy footsteps stomped towards her, and she saw blue scanner lights passing over her.  She saw a face covered in a medical mask, with a mechanically overlaid eye, wearing a rain hood.

“Curious.” The masked figure said.

“She has already begun stabilization.  There is medicine in her system.  Quickly, help me carry her to the sick bay.” it told the other pair of footsteps that she couldn't see.

She was picked up and carried out of the rain, into the ship's interior.  They reached a room that was full of beeping machinery and sterile smells.  She was placed down on a gurney, barely conscious at this point.  The masked man looked her in the face.

“If you’re still with us, I am going to put you to sleep now.  You are gravely injured and need to heal.”  He said and turned away without waiting for affirmation.

He returned with a needle which he placed into her arm, and she did not reject.  Cassandra fell asleep within seconds.

She awoke again to voices in the room.  The same two.  She kept her eyes closed. 

“Same time, her and the rain.  Showed up at the same time.” The first said, large and higher pitched.

“Surely you are not accusing her of something.” said the second, flat and monotone.

“No no no, I’m not saying that.  She could know something about it though…” The first said emphatically.

“It is rain.  It is what we wanted.”

“No one wanted a week of rain over the entire goddamn planet, sawbones.”

Cassandra opened her eyes to this remark.  There was a big bearded man with a grimy hat and yellow rain jacket on her left, and a man dressed in medical whites turned brown to her right.  She was on a hospital bed, in a very cramped medical facility. 

“She’s awake.  I will leave you to your business, Captain.” The doctor said.

“Alright alright.  Thanks doc.  Hey, watch out it's raining- ha!” The man said, with a chuckle.  The doctor cranked the door shut behind him.

The Captain's smile dulled when looking upon Cassandra again.  She was not a pleasant sight, so dramatically and strangely wounded.  He felt extremely uneasy around her, and did not know why.

“Well I suppose I should introduce myself.  I’m Captain Thomas Warberwill, and we’re here on my ship The Big Fish.  You arrived in one hell of a state lady.  Flung up onto my deck by, what, a rogue wave?  Your top half all cut up… Beyond cut up.  Hundreds of em.  And your entire left half was bruised near black, still is, not so bad now though.  Lots of busted bones, pooling blood.”  The man seemed to have a knack for talking.

Cassandra listened to the man in silence.  When he again met her eyes he put a palm to his head.

“Well here I am yapping… We noticed your… Uh… condition.”  He said, and opened his mouth, gesturing to his tongue.  She cut off his pantomime with a nod.

“Uh, here…I brought some vellum and a pen.” He pulled a pad and pen out of his pocket and offered them to her.

“We noticed your tattoo.  Are you with the Inquisitor?  The one that arrived right before everything went to hell?” He asked.

Cassandra nodded.

The man stood stunned for longer than he should have.  He shook his head and said,

“W-well what happened?”  With a wave of his arms.

Cassandra thought about how to answer him.  She could say Inquisition business and that would be that.  But she did not want to say that.  Cassandra was a tool of the Emperor’s divine will, made hard and cold by the unimaginable horrors of the galaxy.  But she was still human.  And she wanted to tell someone.  She wrote one word on the velum;

“Demon”, and turned it to show him.

His eyes went wide. 

“There is a Demon on Veyrfall?”

Cassandra nodded.

“That’s what hurt you so bad?”

Cassandra nodded.

“But you are alive, so you got away?”

She wrote another word;

“Trapped.”

“You trapped it?  Oh well I suppose that's as good as news gets.” The man said with an exasperated chuckle, pulling off his hat and leaning against a counter.

“Well.  Forgive my decorum.  This ship has never greeted a guest of such high esteem as yourself, a member of the Inquisition.  At your service.”  He said, and made the sign of the Aquilla

“Do you have any questions for me?”

Cassandra met the man's gaze and held it for some time.  His eyes were kind, but troubled.  There were streaks of grey in his beard and hair.  He looked like he might be getting too old for whatever job was weathering his body so harshly.

She thought of what to ask.  She had been asleep for a week, that much she heard. 

She wrote;

“Comms?” and showed the Captain.

“Communication?  None.  Haven't been able to raise a signal since the rain started.  That really shouldn't be possible. The entire planet has a redundant satellite communication system that The Dam utilizes a lot for its fishing crews.  Cloud cover normally isn't an issue.  The way it works is if one tower can’t get the signal out, it just routes to one that can and data gets passed just the same.  The only way you can get completely shut out is if every single tower on the planet is being interfered with.  There are millions of them.  That's how we reckoned the storm must be everywhere…”

The man took off his rain jacket and hung it on the door handle.  He seemed to be working up a sweat.  He looked back for another question.  Cassandra wrote;

“Ship?”

“Oh what The Big Fish?  It's my ship, passed down in the family.  Crew of around a thousand.  Commercial fishing vessel.  You see, Veyrfall has some really big oceans with lots of room to grow.  There are dozens of ships like mine, bringing in the big and small hauls.  We use a simple but effective method of influencing life in the ocean.  We seed massive amounts of the little ones, Vitafish we call em.  They're a primary food source for a lot of life down there, but they mostly feed the real big fish, the Steel Whales.  Bigger than any fish you've ever seen, these things.  Just one pays for the entire trip three times over.  We’re pulling three right now!  HA!” The Captain laughed and slapped his knee hard.

“By the high council I love my job.” He said.

Cassandra had a screwed up half smile on her face.  The man’s attitude was infectious.  She wrote another word;

“Far?”

“About six months.  We’re on the last leg of the journey.  We got a belly full of the Vita fish and the three big ones behind.  That's a pay day.” He said with a devious smile.

Cassandra looked down at the pad wondering what to ask next.  She was perplexed.  Was the storm the Demons doing?  Cassandra did not think so, but had no other idea what it could be.  Maybe it simply was rain.  Maybe this is what the planet's water cycle truly looked like without the Demons influence.

She looked down at her body.  Her top half was entirely bandaged, with only some blood seeping through.  Her bottom half was clothed with clothes that were new to her.

“We had some of the girls on the ship come and help you with some stuff… Uh… Cant really leave you uncovered too much on the ship with the rats and mites and salt in the air.”  The captain told her, shyly. 

Cassandra nodded.  She did not particularly care, but appreciated the courtesy.  She tested her muscles and was very surprised that she had not atrophied nearly as much as she expected.  Everything ached so much that she felt like one pulsing wound, but she could move more or less as normal.  She tested the theory, and swung her legs off the side of the bed.

“No wheelchairs on the ship unfortunately but we got you a couple crutches you can take if you need them.” The man reached above and behind her, and brought down two crutches. 

Thomas.  That was his name, Cassandra reminded herself.  She took one crutch, and seemed able to stand well enough for now.  She thought back to Drayvus.  She almost certainly had him to thank for this expedited recovery. 

Cassandra looked at the man and gestured to the door, a steel oval in the wall with a wheel crank in the middle of it. 

“Oh.  Oh!  Um, you want to go outside.  Sure we can do that.  Damn.  Just, uh, brace yourself ok?  This one is kind of hard to explain… Best you see it yourself I think…” Thomas said, suddenly nervous. 

He pushed himself off the counter and turned the crank.  Cassandra heard the rain as soon as it cracked open.  It was loud.  And just behind the rain was soft rolling thunder.  Thomas bid her first through the door, and Cassandra hobbled her way over the threshold.  Thomas followed her out and closed the door. 

“I’m assumin you want to see the storm in action.  Quite a sight, I must admit.  Never seen nothing like it.  Follow me.”

Cassandra followed him through the town like structures of the huge fishing ship.  She could hear the rain and see the water running, but they were still below the deck above them, and surrounded by habs on all sides.  Eventually they turned a corner and Cassandra saw the lightning clearly, flashing endlessly at the end of the corridor they walked down. 

“The strangest thing… Well, the second strangest thing about the storm is how calm it is.  Hardly kicking up any waves at all.” Thomas said before putting his hood up and stepping out into the rain. 

Cassandra followed him to the railing and looked out over a black sea, highlighted purple by the moonlight and constant lightning.  She could feel the pressure of the rain, and the sound it generated on her skin.  The world felt muffled, and crowded, even though this ship was likely the only structure for kilometers.  Thomas gripped the railing of the ship and looked up into the sky. 

“Never seen nothing quite like it…” He said under his breath.

Cassandra followed his gaze, and became entranced by what she saw.  She could not discern its true nature at first.  The lightning rolled without pause, yet when the bolts ended their light did not.  The purple light seemed to catch on the rain and split into new colors, creating ghostly images that faded slowly, and reinvigorated with each lightning strike.  Cassandra focused on the image closest to them, and when her eyes had finally adjusted to the visual chaos in front of her, she saw a pair of dead eyes staring back. 

The lightning showed bodies in the rain drops, hanging by an infinite length of shimmering light let down from above.  Cassandra's mouth fell open.  She scanned the sky and now saw them clearly, everywhere.  Some hung nearly as far as the sea, others high in the storm clouds.  Some were massive, others merely pin points of shivering light.  Each one hung by the legs, throat cut, pouring red rain into the sea below.




Chapter 2

Sixteen days since the rain started

Vitali Baycliff walked with a hand along the curved steel side of The Fall.  He could feel the current raging downward constantly, as it had for thousands of years.  But it was stronger now.  Stronger than it ever had been.  Vitali walked to meet The Fall’s Steward, a tech priest that seldom left the workings of the massive system.  Change was coming, and they needed to make a plan.

The population of The Dam, especially the Harborfolk, were beginning to forget what the planet's day night cycle felt like.  Vitali had begun his own personal day with an urgent notification from the Steward.  He had been waiting for it, ever since the lower levels of the hive began to flood, and run in rivulets down the cliff face of the Harbor.  The Falls intake had reached its limit, a monumental occurrence that had never happened before.  The overflow reservoirs were beginning to fill.  Soon the river would be flowing over the cliffside.  Vitali had not visited The Falls' cherished inner workings for a very long time, and he desired to see its operational state at such a unique period in its history.

“Greetings Steward” Vitali said, as the tech priest came into view. 

He was not so heavily modified as many other tech priests, and did not wear a mechanicus robe, instead wearing one he acquired in service to The Dam.  Sea blue struck through with red.  The blood of the whales is on us all.

“Greeting Harbormaster.” The priest said looking up from the data slate mounted against the retaining wall.

“Your presence is well received, Master, though I could have shown you anything you require via servo projection.” he added.

Vitali nodded at this.  “That is just as well.  This is a historic occurrence for The Fall, however.  It may see us through these strange times, best not to neglect it.”  He said with a smile.

The tech priest returned the smile.  “Well, then let me boot up the diagnostics.”

He returned to the small data slate mounted on the huge plasteel wall, pressed a few runes, and a projection flickered into life that covered the entire thing.  Faint green lights that reflected the workings behind the wall, with bright red letters and numbers everywhere showing diagnostic data.  The Falls inner workings were ancient, built by Vitali’s ancestors, the first settlers upon Veyrfall.  True understanding of it has faded into history like so many other things, but The Fall endured the test of time, and stood as the foundation of the Harbor and The Dam for thousands of years.

Vitali marveled at the projection.  Everything looked as fine as it ever had.  In fact, it looked better than he had ever seen it.  Every single diagnostic was at peak performance, and holding absolutely steady.  He could see the projections representation of the raging current crushing downwards, but it presented as a perfect unbroken flow devoid of imperfections or irregularities.

“Quite magnificent.  I never thought I would see it in its full majesty.” The tech priest said as he pulled up another diagnostic, a simple large number that represented the Harbors battery banks.

“By the Throne!” Vitali said, shocked.  He did not know they could store so much power.

The tech priest chuckled through his half respirator.

“Yes it looks as though we can end the power rationing.” He said.

“I’ll say,” Vitali said.  “It's still going up…”

That was a bit of good news at least.  They would need every ship soon enough.

“And The Fall is stable?  It will not fail us in our time of need?” Vitali asked.

“Barring direct catastrophic damage, I struggle to think of an event that could disrupt The Falls function.  This cliffside is not subject to seismological activity, and sits at the terminus of an enormous drainage basin.  The Hive could fall into the Harbor, and The Fall would persist.” The Steward said with certainty and pride.

“Well.  Nothing without a price.  How long do we have until the overflow reservoirs fill?” Vitali asked.

“Three days,” The priest said curtly.  “The minister of the upper hive has already begun evacuations, as I’m sure you’re aware.  Until this time The Fall has been absorbing the grand majority of the flooding at the ground level, but once the reservoirs fill, every passage through the cliffside will become an outlet.”

Vitali sighed.  That was not nearly enough time to evacuate the Harborfolk from the cliffside.  They should have started evacuations sooner.  But how could they expect the rain to continue?  Each day that it continued only made them more certain its end was near.  But this was not a normal storm.  They knew that right away.

Vitali hung his head and strolled to the outer wall, a giant curved window, looking out over the Harbor.  This area used to be bright at all times, with either the day or moon's light.  Now it sat dark and shimmering with the same anxiety inducing lightning as the rest of the Harbor.  Vitali did not look into the sky.  No one did anymore, not on purpose.

There were many ships docked below, but Vitali knew that there were many more in the darkness further out.  Ancient ships.  For some it's been centuries since they came into port.

“You will see some of the classic ships coming by for a top up soon then.  We will need to house the Harborfolk in them.” Vitali said, resolute in his decision.

“It will be an honor to service the ancient machines, even from this distance.”  The tech priest replied.  The Steward was not as bothered as Vitali, it seemed.  It made sense.  In the days to come the Steward’s job may not change much at all, the ancient machine a sturdy bedrock for his life.

Vitali turned back to the priest and bid him farewell, making the sign of the Aquilla.  No sense in wasting time he supposed.  This evacuation meant a great deal of things needed to be set into motion, and he had a lot of people to talk to.  He decided to start with the whale float and the Black Wall.

Vitali took the lift down to The Harbor.  The great shell of The Fall sat half embedded in the cliffside and shot deep down into the water below, The Harbor built around it.  Vitalli stepped out onto the massive floating platforms, and passed through the ceremonial space that surrounded the fall.  There was housing down here, dense housing that climbed against the cliffside.  It would not be enough to house everyone that needed to evacuate the Harbor facing hab units.  Vitali followed the cliffside to its edge, where the housing thinned, and large empty docks dominated. 

They did not build any permanent structures near the whale float, the primary reason being the smell.  Vitali was used to it, as were most of the Harborfolk, but it did have deleterious effects on one's health.  The unique biology of the Steel Whales, mixed with preservatives and rot, created a thick miasma that made a respirator necessary to work in the float.  Vitali had an exceptionally well made one that he clicked into place as the smell began to bother him.

They floated the whales off the corner of the cliffside.  Though Vitali could not see them now, he knew they had three floating, and one on the wall, processing.  Vitali approached a small podium that held a servo skull with a loudspeaker attached.  He activated the skull and it followed him.  There was limited direct access to the whale processing units in the cliff face and it would be easier to communicate this way.  Vitali walked to the work lights that lit up the blood blackened cliff face.  He had to get uncomfortably close to the whale corpse in order to communicate with the crews.  It generated heat, one of the stranger things about a dead organism this size.  It took so long to process and the chemicals involved were so volatile that the lower body of the whales begin to decompose rapidly once on the wall, producing prodigious amounts of heat and gas.

Vitali had spent his entire life in this harbor, and they had always processed the Steel Whales.  The size of the creatures still left him awestruck, even after all this time.  He could only see the creatures' lower portion, the rest swallowed by darkness.  But from what he could see, things were not going well.  This whale had been on the wall for too long, and they should have more than one working.  They were having to fight the flood as they worked.  They hadn't even turned this one around yet.  And they had more whales coming back soon.  Not good, Vitali thought, as he commanded the servo skull high into the sky and activated the connection.

“This is Harbor Master Vitali Baycliff.  I am issuing a general command to the whale processing teams to stop production, and reinforce your work spaces.  Troubling times are ahead, and we need to keep this wall functioning.  The hive depends on you to eat!  Prioritize diverting waterflow, and shielding the bays from water from above as well as within.  Whalemaster Sturgis, see to your crews, and call me later.  I have more people to talk to.”

The crews came to the edges of their bays, all nearly identical in their yellow hazmat suits and respirators.  They waved in recognition.  Vitali waved back in confirmation, and went to return the servo skull to its podium.

The processing docks went out far into the bay, vacant and covered in industrial smog.  The air cleared the further from the whale float he went, and he un snapped his respirator once he neared the outer edge.  The docks here usually sat empty for loading and unloading. To his left he saw the first ships of the far harbor peaking out of the darkness.  The empty docks were soon filled with busy sailors and tired dock hands.  Hundreds of small ships sat anchored.  Vitali looked at his chrono.  Nearly half the day had passed already, and the rain was getting underneath his coat.  He was heading for the dockmasters office.  He could dry off there.

He stood under the canopy in front of the office doors for a moment.  He took his hat off, to hang it when he went in the door.  As he turned his head, he looked into the sky, and nearly jumped out of his skin.  One of the… Things.  Caught him by surprise.  Slightly lower than the rest, bigger too.  Just look away, Vitali told himself, but had difficulty looking away from its eyes.  Sometimes they looked so real, bouncing off the rain the way they did.  But they weren't, Vitaly reminded himself.  He went to enter the office, but instead saw Dockmaster Sasha nearby.  So much for drying off, he thought.  Vitali whipped his exaggerated wide brim hat off once, and  went to meet her.

Sasah was looking out over the water.  As Vitali approached she was taking a swig from a flask, turning it up and closing her eyes.  He took a stance beside her.

“All is well on the docks?  Dockmaster?” He said, startling her.  She gagged on her liquor slightly, opened her eyes, and widened them further when she saw Vitali.  She capped her flask and wiped her lip.

“Aye Captain.  Just don't look up.”  She said with an alcohol scorched throat, and a half smile.

“Well get ready for some excitement.  Big changes, starting today.” Vitali said, stern faced.

Sasha widened her eyes again.  “Whats that mean?  We gotta go talk about it?”  She said, gesturing to her office.

“No.  Simple orders to start.  I will be back before you finish the first of it.  The rain has granted us a surplus of power, and it robs us of space to live.  We are moving the Harborfolk that live on the cliffside either to the Docks, or housing them on ships.”  Vitali expected her reaction.

“Oh :cuss:.”  She said with a sigh and an eye roll.  Vitali did not blame her, this would be a large task for her.

Vitali continued.  “We are pausing all production concerns and fortifying ourselves against the weather.  We can not wait for the flood to consume us.”

Sasha nodded, resigned.  “Yeah.  No, I know.  No one can even really live up there anymore anyways, it's all wrecked.”

“Your first task.  Get every ship in the port charged to bursting, and out of the way.  Anchor them close by, create a lane for them, so we can bring the big ships in to charge, and load the Harborfolk.”  Vitali looked around.  There were so many ships.  But Vitali had seen it empty before.  It could be done again.

“Hmm…”  Sasha hummed, and stared off to where one of the bigger ships might be docked.

“How much power do you think those old batteries hold anyway?” She asked.

Vitali had not thought of it in those terms yet.  He did not know.

“Hm.  I’m not sure.  I would imagine a great deal.  There is a lot about those ships I do not know…” Vitali said. 

“Same…” Sasha said.

She turned her head, seemingly having found her motivation.  “Well.  Orders received, Captain.”

Vitali nodded curtly and tipped his hat.  “Carry on Dockmaster.  I will find you again in the morning.”

“I’ll be here.  Somewhere."  She said, as they both turned to their business.

Vitali was exhausted.  He needed to eat and was soaked through.  He decided to return to his quarters and await Whalemaster Sturgis.  The solution to the housing crisis would be unpleasant and a detriment to efficiency, but it was a solid plan, and it would work.  The ancient ships are massive and sturdy beyond reason.  The oldest of them were gifts of the Imperium in the wake of Veryfall's conquest, to be used in further subjugation of the planet.  Venerable machine spirits dwelt within them, and have been left to rest in respect.

The solution of the Black Wall still vexed Vitali, however.  Him and Sturgis had much to discuss.  The Dam not only produced various goods from the Steel Whales and Vita fish, as well as other industries, for the Imperium.  But they also produced all of their own food.  They did not supply anyone else on the planet with their food stores, so he need not worry on their behalf, but if they can not keep the processing facilities running The Dam will fall into chaos quickly.  The other Hives may indeed call on them for food in time though…  Vitali wondered how many less mouths to feed there were already.

Vitali took off his hat and coat.  It was very cold.  Days and days without sunlight would do that, Vitali supposed.  The rain that fell from the sky was somehow warmer than the ambient temperature around the docks, and in Vitalis quarters.  He lit the whale fat lamps that served to barely warm the drafty old building, and he took a seat in front of his window.  Some days Vitali imagined leveraging his station to obtain better quarters, somewhere on the cliff face, or in the lower hive.  He never had because it put too much distance between him and his work.  He supposed he was glad he hadn't, with the flooding now.  Though he still did not relish his quarters. 

Vitali sat and lit his Lho pipe.  He could see The Fall and the cliff face from here, at the furthest edge of the housing district.  To his relief, he also found his view free of the… Monstrosities… Visions… Whatever they were, that hung from the sky.  He could simply observe The Dam with his thoughts.

Some minutes passed before something caught Vitali’s eyes on the edge of the cliff.  Some sudden movement where there was none before.  He squinted but could make nothing out.  He picked up the spy glass he kept on the table and peered through it.  Some distance past the edge of the hive a current had dislodged an amount of earth, forming a channel.  Water was pouring down the cliffside from a new aperture, scattering in the high winds, its purchase in the wall growing with every second.  Vitalis’ heart sank, though this was to be expected.  Just too soon, he thought.

Vitali kept his spyglass trained on the forming waterfall, and he saw something get caught on the aperture, before ripping through and tumbling over the edge.  A body.  Vitali followed its descent until it disappeared behind the Dock Housing.

Vitali put the spy glass down, and put his head in his hands with a sigh.  That would not be the last.  He would need to deal with this.




Chapter 3

Twenty days since the rain started

Xelia Share had always loved the rain.  She loved the river Highwater, the one she grew up on, and had dreams of one day seeing the great oceans of Veyrfall.  Fate is evidently not without a sense of humor, she often thought to herself. She would be seeing the ocean soon.  At this rate her and the other survivors would be there in days.

All of the Share farms were destroyed by the rain.  The floods came so fast it was unbelievable.  At first they rejoiced at the drought's end, but after three or four days the ground became waterlogged.  The unnaturally flat plains became swiftly spreading pools of water and within another day, everything was submerged.  Everything she ever knew was gone.  Her family was either dead or barely surviving like her.  Her future was gone, she thought.  The only people that still knew her name were on this barge, floating with her towards The Dam, and they did not like her.

They had been farmhands for the most part, and it was part of her job to see to their care.  There were millions of them before the flood.  Some surely still survived in the same manner that they had, floating on some old farm equipment.  As soon as the situation had become clear to Xelia she made for the barge on the river highwater.  She had to swim for longer than she ever had in her life to reach it, but it was her best chance at survival.  They used the barge to float machines that weigh a hundred tons across the river Highwater when necessary.

Xelia lay on the edge of the barge, one leg hanging off, her long black hair barely touching the water's surface, dragging behind her.  They were moving at a decent pace.  They had been on the barge for over a week.  She estimated one more week before the reached the outer perimeter of The Dam.  She had never been.  She lived her whole life until now in the fields between the hives, never visiting any of the four.  She hated her life in the fields, but she had at least looked forward to the passing of her father so that she might inherit his status and change things for the better.  Now that he was most likely dead, there was nothing left to inherit, and Xelia resented that fact more than she ever had resented him.

She hadn't managed to escape with any clothes or suitable protection from the weather.  She lost her shoes and back pack in the swim.  Everything was soaked constantly, but the survivors managed to hobble together a small shelter from the rain out of wreckage they floated by.  Xelia did not partake.  She wore her long black farm dress, old and tattered at the ends, and her fine white billowing blouse with a corseted mid section.  All soaked through and clinging to her body.  The rain was warm though, and it simply did not bother her.  She expected her flesh might wrinkle more than it was.  After over a week in the rain, her skin seemed as supple as ever.  So she stayed in the rain.

Death or violence had never bothered Xelia.  She had in fact visited violence upon her subordinates many times, and in her short nineteen years on Veyrfall had ended more than one life.  It was part of her job.  People are not all the same, and some best serve as examples to others.  So when the ghostly images appeared in the sky she did not react like most others.  Maybe… There was something wrong with her.  Sure.  She did not know.  It did not matter.  She was not the one averting her gaze from the sky, hiding from the reality that stared at them all with dead eyes.  Were they scared?  Well she was not.  Whenever she thought of it, she felt angry for some reason.

The rain was playing tricks in the sky like the most magnificent light display she had ever seen.  The purple light from above the clouds bounced from raindrop to raindrop splitting into all the colors of reality.  As the rain passed through the light they shone their magnificent array for only the seconds that they passed through the space of the image, and the rain that followed did the same.  As Xelia looked into the distance, the bodies stretched forever, and the rain that fell below them coalesced into a red haze that streamed from their ripped necks.

The hangers passed overhead often.  The blood that poured from their open throats was merely water, and it tasted as delicious as any water ever had.  The light simply persisted in its tricks, even when she held it in her hands.  There was little to do on the barge and she did not want to socialize with the farmhands.  So she became friendly with the hangers.  She did not delude herself, she was not talking to the images, or believe they were talking to her.  But they had eyes that were open.  Eye contact could be made, and it did not leave Xelia feeling nothing inside, like so many things did.

Before the storm Xelia was in line to inherit fourteen mega plantations that stretched across the planet.  However her father had never seen fit to let her venture beyond the worst plantation they owned, the Grox Pit.  It made no sense, and Xelia hated him for it.  They had watched all their Grox die when the floods started.  Nothing to be done about it.  The deep pits they kept the vicious creatures in filled with water sooner than anything else, and in some cases they needed to execute the beasts before the water let them rise to the surface.  By the time they were sure of the flood's proportions they had slain each one, to let rot in the water.  She did not love the beasts, but the sight of it did Xelia harm.

What would happen when they reached The Dam?  She spent much of her time considering this.  No one would know that she was Xelia Share, heiress to the Share fortune, and by right should have a notable say in planetary affairs, especially regarding the tithe and food production.  She had no identifying information, and without her father to initiate the proper proceedings, she would die sifting through red tape before anyone ever recognized her for who she was again.

She had never been to an actual Hive before and the stories did them no favors.  She imagined the plantation she grew up on, and stacked it on itself over and over again in her mind until it touched the sky.  Of course, she had seen actual picts of The Dam before, but the still images did not convincingly portray the scale in her mind.

The Dam was an exceptional Hive.  Those that were educated at a young age on Veyrfall learned of it extensively, as it was the first Hive to rise on the planet's surface.  The river Highwater ends at the continent's edge in what used to be a magnificent waterfall.  The settlers of the planet, with their ancient and lost technology, harnessed the full power of the waterfall in a great device named The Fall.  This ever flowing source of power helped the Imperium gain its foothold on the planet.  In the decades to come, the hive grew downwards, over the cliffside, and onto the ocean that the Highwater emptied into.  They discovered the Steel Whales, and their venerable hunting ships culled them into a manageable harvesting population, glutting the planet with whale fat, meat, bones, and many other by-products.

Xelia considered how The Dam might be faring in the storm.  No amount of flooding could truly destroy a hive, they were too massive and too many people lived above a reasonable height for water to ever reach.  But the lower parts.  The under hive.  The common folk.  Most likely all dead, with not even an attempt made to save their lives.  Where would they go?  Billions of unwashed un-educated witless drones.  The industry they supported would be the thing that truly harms the hive.

Xelia considered the river she rode on now, and how it now more resembled an ocean.  Does water now flow through and around The Dam, and over the cliff in one great sheet, enveloping the historic Harbor?  Would they simply wash over the edge when the time came?  All of their hopes hinged on somehow being able to prevent that eventuality from coming to pass.  But what would happen if they were able to actually make it to the hive?  Would they reject them, simply seeing some plantation rabble floating down the river, not worth the time?  Or would they capture the barge as it floats by, and incorporate them into the hive?  Xelia's guts squirmed at the thought of it.

Xelia had not been eating, none of them had.  There were precious few items that were gathered by the survivors that they were rationing out very carefully.  She was weak, and tired.  She did not think she would starve to death, and she was at least well hydrated.  Before the rain started it was the exact opposite, and that was playing to her favor, she thought.  She let the hunger become a part of her bodily experience and it ceased to bother her.  If she lay still and did not expend energy she almost did not notice.  She fell in and out of sleep often.  The rainfall on her skin was such a consistent yet erratic pattern that her sense of touch became static, and disembodied.  When she closed her eyes she felt as though she didn't have a body.  When she listened the sound of the rain extended forever, and it felt as though she could hear the rain a million miles away.

Unbidden and without reason Xelia awoke from her sleep.  There was a hanger, very low, close to her.  Its eyes were open.  Xelia met its gaze, and the position of the image's eyes made it look like it met hers.  It was a male.  Clothed, and arms tied across his chest.  Short hair, soaking and dripping with blood that ran from its throat, slashed open in a heavily one sided wound.

Xelia was not a fool.  She was perplexed by what was happening.  The storm, the insane images in the sky.  The fact that the Inquisition had been on the planet for months now.  All extremely unusual and massively concerning.  But what could she do about it?  Now she was just farm rabble, floating down the river.



 

Chapter 4

Twenty four days since the rain started

Cassandra’s time on the ship over the coming weeks was a welcome reprieve from her time in the caves.  She developed a ritual of bandaging her enormously scarred upper half when she awoke, and washing the bandages before she slept.  Without them she was a shocking sight.  Her scars were still healing and bright red, if they weren't still actively scabbed over and bleeding.  The scars on her face and head were harder to hide. 

She recovered better than she had any right to.  The crushing impact on her left side destroyed her intracranial emergency transponder that might have let her communicate with Calpurnia, as well as leaving one of her eyes permanently flooded red.  She was glad she did not have brain damage, or lose her sight.  The rest of her left side was permanently darkened by the bruising.  Her left leg was in more or less a constant state of pain, but it was easy to tune out, or use as a focus.  She walked with a slight limp now. 

But she was not in the caves anymore.  She had bested the Demon.  She thought back on the decisions she had made, the things she made herself do, in order to bring the creature low.  It seemed like a fever dream, and she felt like a different person than the one she remembered.  She did not dream, but the memories plagued her during the day.  It was not long before she found solace in work on the ship.

She spent the first couple days on her feet accompanying Thomas in his duties.  She did not know what else to do, and learning from the talkative man was especially easy. 

“You ain't never seen this many fish in one spot before, guarantee it.” Thomas said with pride as they travelled below decks to the Vita Fish storage tank.

“The Vita Fish are miraculous little things.  The creature has long since changed from what it was, but it's technically a native fish.  The eggs are easy to synthesize, fertilize, and introduce into the ecosystem at crucial points.  The fish are nutritious, breed like crazy on their own, and are kind of stupid so they're easy prey.”  Thomas laughed at the last part.

Thomas told no lie, Cassandra had indeed never seen so many fish in one place before.  They were still inside the ship, but she could not see the other side of the massive interior lake they were kept in.  There were workers all around the edges of the tank, as well as on small barges floating in the middle.

“This is what we eat on the return journey, typically.  They're all fishing out today's quota.” The Captain said.

Cassandra spent the rest of that day in the Vita fish tank, helping them lift heavy things and drag heavy nets.  She struggled a great deal, her body still healing, but she persisted and the workers welcomed the help without complaint.  They did feel her presence though, Cassandra could tell.  She felt bad, and made it a point not to spend too much time in any one portion of the ship.  For this same reason she requested sleeping accommodations far away from anyone else.  Thomas, no stranger by this point to Cassandra's peculiar aura, took the hint and had an idea.

“Well forgive me for being a bit of a father, but I don' t like the idea of you stayin’ nowhere by yourself.  Ships are unsteady, and you're still shaky on your feet.  But I think I know a place that will work.”

He led her to the ship's engine room.  Not really a room, more like an engine town.  They walked past at least five different sections, each designated to a vital function of the ship.  It was spacious down here, a change from the rest of the ship.

“Orren you here?  Got someone I want you to meet.” Thomas shouted into the further darkness of the ship's machinery, once they had reached a sort of locus of the area.  No response.

“Bastard’s not responding to my hail on the network either.  You can get lost down here in the machinery.  It gets way crazier past this point.  Anyways.  I don't think he’ll mind your company.  I’ll make sure he knows you’re down here and that he checks on you.  He’s always back and forth.  I’ll just have to pester him on the throne forsaken radio all day to get his attention.”  Thomas pulled his radio off his belt and hailed Orren again, to no response.

Cassandra needed to retrieve her very few things from the medical bay, and Thomas told her there would be enough bedding here to get comfortable, as well as water, food and a radio when she came back.  The walk back to the med bay surprisingly did not take her long.  The ship was well made with many routes to traverse quickly.  When she returned Thomas had made good on his word, there were more than enough provisions for Cassandra to become comfortable.  She noted that Thomas forgot to mention who Orren was.  She guessed it was the ship's tech priest.

Cassandra found a drain in the floor and used her water sparingly to wash her bandages and wounds.  It was very warm down here, and it did her muscles good.  She ate as much as her stomach desired, which was not much.  The dried fish and tack bread that was brought for her was not bad, it was quite good in fact.  Her appetite still had not returned, though, and she found it hard to eat much at all.  She bedded down on the excessive amount of clean linens that were brought for her.  Memories of sleeping in the caves plagued her, but faded as she experienced a base comfort that she thought was lost to her forever.

“The thing about hauling three gigantic whales behind ya for the better part of a year is that critters tend to get at them.  All kinds of hangers on and creatures nibbling on them.  The corpses stay surprisingly fresh, though.  The water keeps them cool, and they're so heavily insulated only the outer layer of fat ever gets necrotic.  The skin of the whales is a product of its own.  Don't call em steel whales for nothing.”  Thomas rambled on as Cassandra began a new day learning about being a sailor.

“We do this about once a week, get on the little boats and scrape off the hides.  We usually do it in daylight though…  It'll be hard for the divers to see when they go under.  Might have to just skip that step.  I ain't keen on losing people.”

Thomas led her to a large group of sailors getting themselves ready with life vests and cleaning equipment.  There were around a hundred of them, Cassandra guessed.  They were in the interior of the ship, just below the main deck, where they could exit and board the smaller vessels held to the ship's side.  Thomas walked her through what equipment she would need.  He assumed she wanted to go out with the crew, and he was correct.  Cassandra had nothing else to do.  While she was getting prepared she offered Thomas a piece of equipment as if he were coming with.

“No no no no I ain’t coming.  I’m getting too old for that :cuss:.  Plus Captains gotta stay on the ship.  Have fun though.”  He said with a wink and a nudge.  Cassandra had never been the recipient of such a playful nature.  She did not often know how to react to Thomas.  Cassandra found a group boarding a vessel, and they accepted her without question.  Word of her had gotten around on the ship very quickly, and she found most people looking at her as though they knew her already.

Leaving the interior of the ship for any reason held a certain weight to it now.  Many of the crew could manage to simply stay indoors for the entire voyage if they wanted to.  Most of them did want to now.  Facing the hanging things in the sky was always an unpleasant shock to the system.  A reminder that things were very wrong.  The crew of The Big Fish was an experienced one, and the storm did not bother them, especially one so calm.  So when left inside for a period of time it was very easy to forget the state of the world outside. 

Cassandra had much time to think of the hanging things.  The scene that played out in the sky was an unmistakable mirror image of what occurred on the planet months ago, the event that had brought her and Calpurnia to the planet.  Or rather, the event that had stopped occurring months ago, just before they arrived on the planet.  But Cassandra was reasonably sure that this was not the Demon’s doing.  When malicious in its intent before, the Demon had used its influence over the water cycle to withhold, and to hurt.  Now the rain fell freely and without end, and nourished the body without taint.

Some things are so atrocious that they leave a mark on reality itself.  The psychic backlash of such things can become so powerful that it bleeds from the warp into our world.  Cassandra believed this to be the explanation for the hanging things, triggered by the Demon’s imprisonment.  A last ditch shriek into the abyss from a failing, corrupted being.  This explanation made it easier for Cassandra to deal with the visions, but unfortunately not the rest of the crew.

They rode in the small craft past the end of the massive ship, and far past its rudder.  In the dark they could not see their destination until their flood lights spied it through the rain.  It was much farther back than Cassandra was expecting, but she did not know what she was expecting really.  The lights hit a dark grey, slightly reflective surface.  The boat slowed, and began to sidle towards it.  The lights angled up, and illuminated an eye bigger than the craft they rode on.  The visceral detail visible in the physical structures of it were… unsettling, even to Cassandra.  Thousands of tube-like structures clustered around a hollow nucleus that Cassandra could crawl inside if she had a mind to.  She would drown in the viscera and fluid of the creature's eye matter, Cassandra thought.

There was rigging already installed on the side of the creature that they moored their vessel to while they worked.  Around the water level was an accumulation of hard barnacles that grew on top of each other relentlessly.  They were chiseled off with an automatic hammer.  The flesh of the whale was stronger than the material that clung to it, and after the hammer removed the bulk of the material, a quick pass with a two man grinder cleared the rest.  The flesh of the whale remained unharmed.  In fact the grinding seemed to have a polishing effect.

Both above and below the barnacle line were scores of other creatures hanging on.  Cassandra wondered what they were hanging on for.  Surely they could not be feeding through the strong flesh of the creature.  She soon came to find that the majority of them were of a leeching variety that sucked nutrients out through the flesh of the whales.  The hides were apparently strong, but porous, and susceptible to parasites.  Strange sucking creatures with tendrils that reached deep inside the grey flesh were yanked out with long poles and flung back into the sea.  Colonies of tiny blood sucking creatures covered entire sections of the whale, and were purged with fire.  More than one large octopus type creature needed to be dispatched carefully, from a distance, before being removed from the corpse.

The task took hours, and when they finished it was close to the daily meal time.  There were other sources of food but once per day they served a hot meal.  Cassandra was famished and decided to join the crew to eat.  She had noticed a strange behavior among the sailors that spent an extended period of time in her presence; they drank.  They would pass flasks or bottles back and forth, surreptitiously taking small swigs.  As Cassandra sat at one of the long tables with her pile of fried fish and bread, she saw the bottle come out plainly, and sit on the table in front of them. The sailors began to pass it around, and eventually they offered it to her.  She declined.   Drinking was not something she did.  But the spirits seemed to restore color to their faces when her presence stole it, and she did not begrudge them the habit.  It bred sociability, and Cassandra enjoyed hearing the stories the sailors would tell.

Cassandra returned to her space in the engine room for the night.  She performed her ritual and donned some simple clean clothes.  She sat with her legs crossed, her hands relaxed in her lap, and began her nightly meditations, something she had forgone for the past period of struggle.  She had difficulty clearing her mind.  Too many memories of pain, blood and utter survival still plagued her.  It was not always this hard.  She heard a noise that brought her out of her trance-like state.  Heavy footsteps were approaching, walking with a staff.  Cassandra opened her eyes and searched for the source of the noise, but its voice came first.  It was very low, clearly mechanically augmented, though it blended seamlessly with what might have been the owner's original voice.

“A silent sister aboard The Big Fish.  Take no offense, but no sane sailor would wish for such a thing” It said, and Cassandra turned her head to see the speaker. 

He was very large, at least seven feet tall, and had a full physique to match.  His face was a conglomeration of various lenses and dialing rings, constantly moving, shining green light outward.  He wore a robe of bright blue splashed with vibrant crimson, and many mechadendrites sprouted from his back.  He bore a traditional axe of the Omnissiah, Cassandra noted. 

Cassandra made to rise and greet him, but he spoke again.

“Do not rise for me, Sister.  I am simply passing through.”

Cassandra watched him pass through the control hub that she slept in.

“Appellation Orren Harpon V, at your service.  Our path will cross again.”  The tech priest said as his mechadendrites faded into the shadows.

She returned to her meditations, and soon went to sleep, thinking of what tomorrow would bring.



 

Chapter 5

Twenty nine days since the rain started

Vitali looked at the Harbor and cliff face that had been his home all his life.  He could hardly see the hab units and processing bays through the hundreds of new waterfalls that covered the cliff face now.  The whale team had managed to erect a strong shield over one of their bays, but everything was empty for the time being.  Vitali held his radio in his hand, ready to give the command.  Nothing would be the same ever again, after this.  But that was not his fault.

“Demolitions, sound off.”  Vitali said into the radio, and a series of check-ins came back.  Everything was ready.  Vitali gave the command.

Starting at the base of The Black Wall where the docks connected to the cliff, a series of controlled explosions began to roll eastward.  They snaked up into the housing that was now being violently dismantled by the falling water, and blasted it apart from the cliff.  Water began to fall in the gap instead of flowing over the housing.  The explosions continued.  Vitali could see the piles of debris and dead bodies that had piled at the cliff's base explode into showers of gore and burning refuse.  Soon the entire Harbor was disconnected from the cliff face.  Smoke attempted to rise through the rain in thin black trails, and the burning wreckage left behind was soon snuffed out.

“Stand by.  Get ready to move on my mark.”  Vitali said, as he turned his back to the wall.

Vitali stood on the upper observation deck of The Red Wake, one of three Poseidon-class naval craft gifted to Veyrfall in ancient times.  He could not believe even at this very moment that he stood on its deck, and was in command of the legendary ship.  It was with this ship that Vitali’s ancestors conquered the native wildlife of Veyrfall's great ocean, bringing its creatures to heel with great violence and unmatched ferocity.  It was with this ship that first steel whales were brought back to port, a dozen at a time, demonstrating its namesake with evident clarity. 

The ship was absolutely massive, yet thin and lean like a predator.  The ship was big enough to temporarily solve their housing problems.  Hundreds of thousands of Harborfolk now resided in The Red Wake.  Not all of them could stay, and there were currently more people aboard commercial vessels than would ever be acceptable under production standards, but it was good enough for now.  Vitali walked the quarter of a kilometer back to the ship's helm at a calm pace.  Everyone needed to be ready for the next step and he wanted to give them enough time. 

The voice of a Tech priest came over his radio.

“Battery link to The Fall has been disconnected, The Red Wake is free to sail.” It said.

The Ordo Harponis Sacra.  These were times of unbelievable importance to them, a time to enact ancient rites and sacred rituals they were certain would never be needed just months before.  An ancient order of enginseers and technicians that saw to the survival and fitness of every ship in the Harbor.  The need for them would be great in the time to come.

Vitali reached the helm of the ship and took off his hat when he entered.  Similar to the rest of the ship, the command bay was huge.  Far in front of him was a wall of various screens that portrayed places of importance around the ship.  On the wall behind him was a massive projection of the rear of the ship, monitoring the huge chains that connected beneath the water to the Harbor’s massive floating foundations.  The Archmagos of the Ordo Harponis Sacra stood with his hands in his robes, observing the various monitors at the front, while his disciples operated the many consoles and cogitators in front of them.

The Archmagos was huge.  Many members of The Ordo tended to modify themselves so, Vitali imagined in order to accommodate the large ships they serviced.  He wore the blue and red robe of the Ordo.  It was nearly pristine, yet decades of salt was beginning to work its way into the exceptionally well made garment.  His face was almost entirely a respirator, made of a dark cold steel, with a series of recessed slits where his eyes might be, and where his mouth would go.  Over one shoulder he wore a thick net made of woven gold that fell over his neatly folded mechadendrites.  His robe was cinched with a thick gold rope, and from it hung many golden hooks with gilded lines.   

Rousing The Red Wake was easier than any of them had expected.  It was guided back to the port via an outboard guidance system that was not part of the craft itself.  The Red Wake would not brook an unused charge in its batteries, constantly hunting for targets, testing its weapons, and running its engines hot in anticipation.  And so its batteries sat dead for decades.  Centuries, in fact.  And it was still as bloodthirsty as ever.  It had taken merely the Archmagos and a handful of his most skilled adepts, along with a skeleton crew of servitors and menials to wake it.  Its first true task was now at hand.

“Are we ready Archmagos?” Vitali asked the giant priest.

+Affirmative Harbormaster.  The Red Wake teems with power.+ He replied in a purely robotic voice.

Vitali picked up his radio,

“Haulers sound off.”

Another succession of confirmations came in over the radio.  Vitali looked out either side of the command bay windows and saw the closest of the other ships in the towing line.  Massive in their own right, but Vitali looked down on them from The Wake. 

“On the sound of The Red Wake’s horn, slow and steady.  Stay straight and be ready to stop when the chains tighten.  Good luck everyone.”

Vitali put down his radio back on his waist and nodded to the watching Archmagos.  The priest took the signal and turned to his acolytes and the command screens.  Without a word they began their synchronized operations.  A massive shudder ripped through the ship, and with a forceful gesture by one of the priests the horn blared.  It was so high pitched it hurt, screaming rusted pipes being subjected to far too much percussive force.  It screamed for a full thirty seconds before reaching its peak and dying with a choke.  By the time the horn died the sound of the ships engines were filling the space left behind, and the chains behind the ship slammed into a new resting position.

Vitali recovered from the sound of the horn and hurried to the rear facing wall.  It was a massive wall showing a scaled down projection of the rear of the ship.  He kept enough distance to see the whole picture.  Waves were beginning to form at the dock’s edge, and the walkways that reached far into the harbor were beginning to break off.  Some survived still, moving with the rest of the docks.  They needed as much to survive as possible. But the wreckage would get in the way.  There were still a lot of people on the docks and in the housing.  They had been instructed to stay away from any exterior edges or open water, and to try and stay behind a single ship, and avoid the spaces in between.

The Wake was moving faster than it should be.  Vitali had a thought to curse the ship for its eagerness, but he caught himself in the ridiculous notion.  This was The Red Wake, and without its petulance, they might have been lost. 

“We must slow it down, Archmagos!  We risk uneven forces on the docks.” 

+Affirmative Harbormaster.+  As Vitali looked back he saw the Archmagos with his hands out of his robes at a console. 

Vitali continued his observation of the haul.  The left flank, The Black Wall and its docks were behaving strangely.  He ran to the other edge of the projection and saw that the docks in the whaling district were violently riding the new waves.  There was no weight to help them plow forward. 

“Western flank, shorten your chains, reduce slack in your haul.”  Vitali said into his radio.

“The docks are making some crazy noises over here Captain, I don’t rightly know what's happening!”  Came a response.

Vitali thought he did.  The docks of the whaling district were about to come apart.  The docks were not a solid singular foundation, but many floating platforms linked together both on top and bottom.  The rapid rising and falling motion with so much weight behind it was stressing the connections. 

“You are about to become disconnected from the rest of the Docks.  Western flank, keep your chains tight and anticipate the breaking of the platforms.  Haul the whaling district away from the rest of the docks, the tethers will catch you and you will put down anchors all the same.  Do not panic.”

The man over the radio answered affirmatively, and Vitali continued watching.  They had moved the docks fully past the new falling water now.  The ships were communicating well, he could hear them all over the vox.  Speeds were regulating, and the Western Flank was communicating its situation effectively to its neighboring ships.  It was working.  Vitali had nearly dunked his head in a vat of whale preservative when the notion to move the Harbor crossed his mind.  It seemed ridiculous.  But as the floods worsened and the rain continued, the only other choice was to let the water destroy their home on its own.  Vitali had made the right choice, he firmly believed. 

The western flank split off from the flotilla as expected.  Luckily the break happened in a wide open space with no Harborfolk nearby.  By this time they had reached their designated breaking point, and Vitali gave the command. 

“Everyone reduce speeds and watch for the tethers to catch.  On my mark drop your anchors.”

Vitali watched the cliff face.  It was so hard to see through the rain and lightning, but when the massive plasteel tethers shot out of the water with the sudden tension there was no mistaking it.  The Tech priests needed to time this exactly right, which Vitali trusted them to do.  The Red Wake would not stop here, they knew that much.  It would take time to calm it down.

There were eight massive chains dragging from the back of The Wake. When the tethers connecting the docks to the cliff face snapped tight once, The Wake shuddered, and the chains disconnected from the rear of the ship.  The chains themselves would serve as heavy anchors for the Harbor, while the rest of the hauling ships would put down their own. 

“Kill engines and anchors down.  Welcome home everyone.”  Vitali said into his radio.  

The next hour or so on the command deck of The Red Wake saw Vitali handling various matters of urgency throughout the fleet.  Everyone needed instructions.  Obviously no one had plans for a situation such as this, and it was now his job to make the decisions for them.  While Vitali communicated with the rest of the fleet, The Red Wake continued to sail, the priests continually calming its engines and disabling its systems.  They would return to the Flotilla in time.  It felt disrespectful to cut The Red Wake’s first voyage in such a long time short.

He conversed with the Archmagos for a time.  The Ordo would be busy in the days to come.  Vitali planned to leave the Red Wake in his care.  While the idea of claiming it as his flagship was enticing it did not feel right.  It was a dangerous vessel, one with a purpose that Vitali would not fulfill.  Neither would the Archmagos, but he understood the machine better than Vitali, and could keep it docile during its time as a housing cooperative.  For the time being, The Red Wake would serve as the Ordo Harponis Sacra’s base of operations, and they could not be happier about that fact.  Even during these trying times, and in the hearts of these cold half machine men, there was room for joy.

Vitali took a small craft back to the docks.  He could still see his quarters and found it extremely odd to be returning to them after such a change in scenery.  He found the docks contents to be thoroughly shuffled around, but less structural damage than he was anticipating.  It would take time to clean and they needed to deal with the cliff facing side of the docks, but they would be able to continue living and working here.

Through the storm Vitali could see the water raging downwards past the end of the docks.  The sound was overwhelming and everything shook with its power.  Vitali's view of the new natural feature was blocked by the housing, and he endeavored to see it fully, up close.  He made his way through the tight alleyways filled with Harbor folk setting to work right away, fixing the mess.  When he reached the disconnected portion of the Harbor it took his breath away.  They had pulled the Harbor a full half a kilometer away from the cliffside,  but it was so massive that it felt much closer.  Mist filled the air stretching along the entire cliff’s base.  Vitali could no longer see the hive structures on the cliff face, and in the storm he could no longer see the Hive above.  It was just him and the waterfall, and it raged with such ferocity that he wondered how anything else had ever been made to be.



 

Chapter 6

Thirty five days since the rain started

By the time the refugee catchers found them Xelia was very weak.  She had no way of knowing how long it had been, none of them did.  The closest thing they had to a clock was their hunger, and the time since their last ration.  They were extremely lucky to have come from farm country, where much wreckage held some semblance of sustenance.  But they were found at last.  The spotlight that found them comforted Xelia for exactly one second before a voice broke through the rain. 

“Prepare to be boarded.  Everyone lay down, hands behind your backs. Obey or be shot.” A loudspeaker boomed. 

Xelia became enraged instantly.  Her heart started beating at a dangerous pace, and her skin began flushing with hot blood.  She looked around the barge to see the farmhands doing as they were told, laying on the deck slowly. 

A large riverboat slowly glided up next to them and a person in a heavy black raincoat hopped onto the barge with a rope.  He looped the rope around the barge’s mooring and more jacketed figures jumped onto the barge.  They quickly erected a ladder onto the riverboat before turning their attention to the farmhands, and Xelia. 

Xelia lay on her back and propped herself up by the elbows.  The catchers pointed their rifles with mounted lights at the crowd, all waiting silently on their bellies.  They picked them up off the deck one by one with unnecessary force and shuffled them towards the ladder.  They were not binding them.  They must assume themselves quite intimidating, Xelia thought.  One of them spotted Xelia with his gun's light, and walked over to her quietly.  She wasn't obeying.  Would he shoot her?  She did not think so.

“Alright girl, get up.  Don't make me kill you.”

Xelia made eye contact with the man.  He looked like a normal man.  He was dirty, unshaved and bore unsightly scars.  Hardly any different from the farmhands.  He raised his shotgun at her and emphasized himself.

“Get up, now.”

Xelia slowly lifted herself off the deck.  She was sore everywhere and it hurt.  But she did not show the man.  She made slow deliberate movements and focused on staying calm when he shoved her.  She needed to stay calm, above anything else right now.  Xelia was self-aware enough to know she could make some really bad decisions at this moment.

“My name is Xelia Sha-” was all she managed to say before someone hit her on the back of the head.

“Stay quiet.” A voice told her.  She bit down on her cheek and locked her face into a grimace as blood filled her mouth.  Remain calm.

They were led to a room below deck with nothing to sit on and no windows.  The catchers did not accompany them, but when Xelia had entered as the last of them, they held the door open.  Someone that looked different than the others came forward.  His hood was down, he was dry, and he held a clipboard.  He spoke briefly with one of the catchers before dismissing him. 

“Hello, welcome to The Dam.  My apologies for the sparse accommodations.  We will dock within the hive shortly, where your work assignments will be designated.  Please refrain from inquiries until after you have been assigned.”  The man said.  He made the sign of the Aquila and went to close the door.  Xelia lunged back:

“No wait let me t-” she yelled, spewing blood from her mouth. 

The door slammed shut and Xelia ran into it.  She screamed and punched it as hard as she could, breaking the knuckle of her ring finger.  She winced in pain.  She could feel it, but the adrenaline in her veins was so much worse.  She crumbled to the ground and turned her back to the door with her head between her knees.

She sat and felt her blood course through her.  She realized that this was the first time she had been out of the rain since all this began and she hated it.  She missed the constant pattern on her skin, her muscles felt dead without it.  It was hot and stuffy in this metal box, she could already feel the breath of the others in the air.  Disgusting.  She wanted the fresh air back.  The farmhands started to talk about what was to come, and Xelia’s rage grew, she wanted them to be quiet.

She fell into a state of dissociation.  If she kept her eyes closed she could escape who and where she was for brief moments, letting the intensity of her emotions carry her consciousness outward.  Her psyche ached and reverberated, bringing her back to her body.  Every time she came back it was worse, her heart still pounding, her skin burning.  She strayed further on the tides of her anxiety and did not want to return.  Was she going insane?

The door opened behind her, and she snapped back to consciousness.  She scrambled to her feet and turned to face the door, backing behind some of the farmhands.  She let them go first.  She needed all the time she could gain to think.  They were fools for not binding or searching them for weapons.  Xelia always had the habit of carrying knives.  She had kept one with her all this time, in her corset.  She followed the farmhands out of the room towards the ship's upper deck.

Xelia had never been inside a hive before, and when she stepped out onto the ship's deck she immediately felt like she was going to throw up.  The vertigo was violent, the buildings were so high, and there was no visible sky, nor roof.  She looked upwards and felt as though she was falling up, the buildings racing past her.  The guards shoved her again. 

“Keep moving.”  It was the same guard that pointed the gun at her on the barge. 

Xelia was dizzy, and unsteadily made her way forward.  She focused on not falling over as they made their way off the river boat and onto solid rockcrete, which threw Xelia off again.  She had not been without the water’s sway since this all began, and she lost her balance.  The farmhands were growing further from her, as well as the other catchers.  Xelia fell to one knee hard.  She gripped at her chest with one hand and caught herself with the other.  The catcher came up behind her again and leaned down to grab her;

“Quit :cuss:ing arou-” His words were cut short. 

Xelia ripped the knife from her corset and stabbed him in the face. The man screamed.  She broke contact and pushed off of the man.  There was an alley nearby.  She needed to get in it and keep moving.  She didn't think he would follow but the others might.  She tripped over herself one time before managing to catch her stride and bolting into the alley, her vision swimming and head spinning.  She did not care what happened next.  She was not going with them.

The alley was narrow and the buildings went up forever.  Why was it this strange green color here?  There was no normal illumination, but a soft green haze fell from the sky and bounced from every surface.  She heard the catchers yelling behind her.  She ran over old slick stonework and slipped many times, falling into the dirty water in the gutter.  She was going to retch.  The air was acrid here and she needed to breathe it.  She forced the miasma into her lungs and continued to run.  There were people everywhere, dodging out of her way as she ran.

The vertigo was getting better as long as she looked at the ground.  She watched her steps and the path in front of her.  Her bare feet were completely covered in blood.  She could hear them behind her, but they were confused now.  She changed directions every chance she got.  Where am I going?  She thought to herself.  She was in an incredible amount of pain, and her body was so weak.  What was she going to do?  She did not even know how she made it this far.  She felt her mind drift again as she ran, the pain pulling her away from herself. 

Something thin and stiff whipped across her face leaving a deep cut.  It was dark.  When did it get so dark?  Something else slapped across her midsection.  It was a tree branch.  She did not want to stop moving, but she could not see any more.  Her eyes needed to adjust.  She kept hurriedly moving forward.  She was walking on grass.  Did they have this kind of ecosystem in The Dam?

By the time her eyes adjusted she found herself in a forest clearing.  Trees branched out in either direction behind her and around forward in a perfect circle, all beautiful, vibrant and strong.  The clearing was huge, and there was something in the middle.  Xelia walked forward.  It was hanging out of the purple clouds that pulsed with lightning, though no thunder reached them here.  It was the hanger that met Xelia’s eyes on the barge, the one with the short hair, crossed arms and one-sided wound.  She walked closer.  It was looking at her.  Not like before where their eyes happened to align.  It was making eye contact with her now, and when Xelia got close enough to those dead eyes, she saw the roiling tides of emotion behind, and fell into them.

Her mind and soul were pulled into a realm beyond her understanding, but no longer beyond her notice.  She walked through the man's memories of horror and anguish, until his dying moment.  She flowed with his blood into a great river that traveled deep into the earth, eventually poisoning the pure water it found there, drop by drop.  She followed the blood to every corner of Veyrfall, into every river and stream, into the magnificent ocean she still had never seen.  The blood brought her high into the sky and her perception rained down on every piece of the planet both familiar and foreign to her.

Xelia did not know what was happening to her, and when she tried to regain some sense of self amidst the rushing chaos around her, she found herself in her body again, but now she stood ten million kilometers tall, walking on the firmament itself, looking down on Veyrfall, and what lay around it, encapsulating it.  A dying, gibbering being that held the planet in its trembling hands.  Its tears rained down upon the planet as it shrieked and wailed in misery.  Its tears were the rain and its gaze the lightning.  Xelia took a step toward the creature, to which it became alerted of her presence, and brought its gaze upon her.

Xelia was split into a million million pieces that replayed the last moments of every body that now hung in the sky.  Brutal ritual sacrifice, bloodletting, torture in the name of some perverse god.  Months of being held in a cage, brought only to have your throat ripped open above a sea of blood.  Xelia felt the terror of each one, and carried it into the bowels of the planet once again, just like the first time.  A million million times.  And when it was all done she looked down on Veyrfall from the eyes of the hangers.  And she understood.  And she did not pity the creature.

She found herself back in the forest clearing.  The man was no longer hanging in front of her, he was on the ground, crying much like the creature had been.  He shrieked with inconsolable agony and gripped his head tightly with his arms.  He was weak, Xelia thought.  She lunged at the man, kneeing him in the forehead the second she got close enough, sending him sprawling on his back.  He tried to fight back but he was too disoriented, and Xelia landed on him, driving her broken hand into his face again and again.  He stopped trying to fight and Xelia gripped his throat and began choking the life from him.  Xelia would have what this creature had.  She would take it.

She heard a voice that did not belong to the man, on the wind, in the trees. 

“Do you know my name?”

It came unbidden to Xelia, she had never heard the name before in her life.  But she said it.

“Va… Valgaast.” Xelia said, as the man died.

“Do you know mine?” Xelia asked.

No response came to her.  Xelia blinked one time and was somewhere new, no longer the forest clearing.  She was kneeling, her mouth nearly in the water that flooded the floor here.  It was very dark, only illuminated by very dim red lamps on the ceiling.  There was a solid roof over her head.  She was in some sort of tunnel.  It was very big though, and there were lots of doors all around her.  The water was rushing past her, a current strong enough to carry the debris around her in the same direction.  She stood up and took a step, but fell.  Her leg had seemingly vanished into the water.  When her face connected with it she entirely dissolved into the water, and the current pulled her forward.  She brought herself back up again and her body became solid.  She came up gasping but found that she did not need the air.  She had never stopped breathing.

Xelia struggled to move through the water, her body disappearing into it and being pulled apart by the current.  What was this insanity?  She feared losing pieces of herself in the flow of the water.  She could not fight the current and instead surrendered to its inexorable flow.  She fell into the water again and let it carry her for a time.  She gained a sense of self while under the water, and tried to separate it from the self she felt above the water.  She rose again and this time was able to maintain a fairly consistent form.  She learned to let the water run through her, and soon it felt as though there was nothing there at all, unless she desired it to be.

She moved freely through the flooded hive now, regardless of its currents.  She saw the purple of the sky’s lightning far ahead.  The rain.  Oh how she wanted to feel the rain on her skin again.  She rushed towards the flickering lights, and saw the water she walked through empty into the open sky, and scatter in high winds.  The thunder was louder than it had been before, on the barge.  She walked to the very edge, the water did not push her any further.  The hangers were gone, but the storm was growing rapidly.  Waves were quickly rolling into the massive floating harbor below, and beginning to toss its ships around.  She saw the ocean.  It was so massive, it was all there was to see.  She… Had an idea.  She told herself she would return to The Harbor soon, she did love it so upon first sight.  But right now she wanted to experience the ocean a little closer.

Xelia jumped over the edge of the waterfall, and let her body scatter into droplets of rain.  She landed in the water and coalesced beneath it.  She moved through it with incredible speed, and set out into the great rolling tides.  She had a lot to see.



 

Chapter 7

The day the storm started

Cassandra was outside the moment it happened.  She saw the hanging visions in the sky flicker and disappear all at once, and then the clouds began to swell.  The wind began to blow fiercely, kicking up waves with it.  They were assaulted on all sides, the storm having no direction or logic to it.  The Big Fish’s size would only protect it for so long, and it was being carried high on the waves when Cassandra took shelter inside. 

While inside Cassandra and every other sailor were tossed around violently.  Every crew member was in the process of locking equipment down or tying it up, locking cupboards and cabinets with their possessions inside so as not to fly throughout the ship.  More than one person was injured by falling or flying objects immediately.  Cassandra needed to find Thomas, but she helped the wounded first, and it turned out to be a task that took a great deal of time.  When she had helped one person someone else was in need within arm’s reach, and she could not turn away.  The storm intensified outside still, and the chaos inside grew for hours and hours until they eventually reached an odd sort of homeostasis with the chaotic events.  All those that needed care were attended to, that Cassandra could see.  She needed to find Thomas.

She made for the ship's bridge, she could only assume he would be there.  She had never actually been there, but everyone knew where it was, being the topmost place on the ship.  There were no crew members on the way, but she could hear a great commotion when she came to the stairs to the bridge.  She walked up into a crowd of technicians at their stations, tech priests performing sacred rites, and a variety of small disasters being handled every second.  She made her way through the crowded outer section of the room, and into the open bridge, where she saw Thomas to her left, in front of a massive window, and an equally massive ship's wheel.  Cassandra balked at the size of it.  Surely it was ornamental.  Only the top three hand holds of the wheel were visible through the floor, where it disappeared into a great chasm that stretched across the room.

She walked closer to Thomas, making her way to his side so as not to scare him as he worked.  She saw that he stood on a raised dais in front of a smaller wheel, one that a man could use.  He turned the wheel, and the one ten thousand times its size that seemed to pierce the ship turned with it.  It was evidently not ornamental at all.  Thomas was shouting as he turned the wheel;

“Orren!  I can only drive so much, I need to know where the shields are at, man!”

There was a very large wave coming their way.  Cassandra looked back to find Orren, the huge tech priest standing in front of dozens of cogitator arrays, projections and data slates that expanded far on either side of him.

“Sufficient to pierce any oncoming waves for the time being.  Deflection of the port and starboard impacts remains problematic, as does sustaining an impact of the ship's own weight on sudden drop.” The priest said as he worked.

“Oh hello Sister.  Glad to see you are ok.”  She heard Thomas say, and she turned her head again.  He had turned back to the wheel and was turning it rapidly, as he spoke

“Hey, don't suppose you saw any strange ladies wash up on the ship did ya?  That's what happened last time the weather changed for the worse….”  He cackled as Cassandra walked closer to him.  It was oddly steady up here, despite the nature of events.  She signed the simple sign

~No~

To Thomas, and he glanced at her.

“Guilliman’s guts, your hands!” He exclaimed.

Cassandra's hands were covered in blood from helping the wounded.  She looked at them with no concern for herself, only empathy for Thomas.  He figured it out.

“That’s not your blood.  Got it….”  He turned back to the wheel and continued to steer. 

“Thanks for helping, Sister.  And I didn't mean what I said.  You've been like a gift from the Emperor since you been here.”

Cassandra nodded to him.  Thomas was cranking the smaller wheel and the larger one shifted fractionally.

“This is a mighty complication to our trip back.  If this lasts very long we’ll have to cut our catch.  I don't like it but their not worth dying over,” he said with melancholy.

“But I got crew for that.  I imagine you're here looking to be helpful, yeah?”  He asked her.  She nodded.

“Good cuz I need someone I can trust to check in on some things.”

Thomas explained to her that there were various areas of the ship that contained gravity stabilizers that would keep the crew relatively safe during the storm.  He gave her a data slate and showed her where everything was on the schematics.  She memorized the locations and stowed it in her small workbag she had begun carrying.  Thomas wanted her to check in with the vital gravity hubs and see that they are handling things sufficiently.  He said The Big Fish can weather a storm for a good long time, what gets dangerous is the people.

“If there are complications just pull up the vid feed on the slate and show me.  Alright?  You got a knack for keeping things from falling apart, that's what I need right now.”  He clapped her on the shoulder before turning back to the wheel, and a small group of deck technicians that were awaiting his attention.  As Cassndra turned to leave Thomas called after her:

“Oh hey wait a second.”  She turned back. 

Thomas was taking something off of his hat.  He tossed it to her.  It was his Big Fish pin that usually sat on the left side of his old unobtrusive captain's hat.  It was a cartoonish depiction of a fish with puffed cheeks and a fat belly, worked in heavy antique gold. 

“Put that right here–”  he said, tapping above his heart

 “Everyone will know that means to listen to you.”

Cassandra nodded again, with respect.  He had already turned back to the other crew.

By this time the majority of the crew should have been relocated to the gravity havens as part of standard storm procedure, being roughly eight hours since the storm started.  As she returned to the lower decks of the ship Cassandra examined the data slate again and the ship's schematics.  There were six major gravity havens along the entire length of the ship, all in the center of the ship’s decks and connected by a hallway that was also gravity stabilized.  The first was directly below the command deck, where Cassandra had come from.  She checked in with the crew that she had met earlier and left for the next one. 

The space appropriated for the next gravity haven was very large, an open bay with miniature hab units lining the walls, and communal tables in the center.  Cassandra guessed there were over a hundred people in the space.  It was not crowded, but it could easily become so.  Cassandra did not know if she could see any open bunks, and this was only after eight hours.  She did the math and some of the other havens would have to be bigger than this one. 

As Cassandra entered the area from the passage, the ship lurched.  The crowd became weightless for a split second, enough for the ship to fall out beneath them by a few centimeters.  Everyone stumbled and crashed into their surroundings.  Some shrieked suddenly.  One person called out for help, having smashed his head.  Cassandra saw that he was being taken care of by someone nearby who seemed competent.  That's the best she could do.  She was perplexed, was the field not functioning?  Soon she heard the answer come from the crowd.  That was with the gravity stabilization on.  The ship likely fell hundreds of meters in reality.  The thought made Cassandra slightly dizzy.

Cassandra found whoever seemed to be of rank in the room.  There was an innate order and hierarchy on the ship and it persisted during emergency procedures.  Cassandra got the impression that this was common enough for them to be good at it.  She communicated to the person in charge her data slate hailing number and told them to call in if they needed help.  She stayed and observed long enough to ensure they had their bases covered.  Enough space, food, water, and no rising tensions.  She saw that this area was kept stocked well with crates of rations, and she stopped here in order to eat and drink for the first time since things began.  Roughly ten hours she counted checking her slate while she ate.  Things changed quickly.

Cassandra left for the next haven shortly after.  The next one and all the havens after it were on a lower level of the ship and it required Cassandra to traverse the open elements for a time.  It said on the slate there was a sort of light system to indicate safe passage, and warned of fatal consequences for disobeying it.  She came to a large airlock-type set of doors.  One stayed open, showing the interior of the set.  It was all see-through, but there was nothing to see.  The dark and the constant water mixed with the flood lights from outside simply showed an inch of intense rain all around it and nothing more.  Next to the open door was a large red light, with two more that sat dark beneath it.  Cassandra saw the explanation of the system.  When the light was red, passage would be impossible.  When the light turns yellow, prepare for transit.  A countdown with your approximate time for passage will begin auditorily.  Be in the airlock by the time the green light turns on.  It explained that transit time to the next passage was only about twenty-five seconds.  There is also a tether she should use.  She pressed the button that indicated her desire to pass.

A sign with the number one hundred and twenty appeared on the wall beside the door.  It began to count down with a loud beeping noise every second.  The light turned yellow and Cassandra entered the airlock.  The door closed behind her, and lights exploded from outside of the glass box.  In front of her was a staircase.  She knew this part of the ship.  She would emerge in the middle of the staircase and continue to a passage that led below decks.  She saw the lights emanating from overhead.  She did not know the point of this structure before now.  It was providing environment shielding.  It was not eliminating the rain entirely from within its cover, but it dispersed most of it.  The door opened and Cassandra hurried out of the door.  She gripped the tether to the right of the doorway and began descending the stairs.

The air was filled with a fine mist mixed with large sprays from huge waves crashing overhead, and dispersing on the shield.  There was still gravity assistance here, thankfully Cassandra thought.  Without it she would be thrown about helplessly, she could tell from the odd physics of the water outside the shield.  The light was coming roughly six meters overhead, and the darkness began to seep in near the base of the stairs.  Towards the sides of the shielding Cassandra could see what the outside world looked like now, not that there was much to see other than torrential rain from every angle.  As she made it to the downward passage at the bottom of the stairs, Cassandra nearly jumped out of her skin.  She thought she saw something at the edge of the light curtain.  Something standing in the rain.  Her heart pounded ferociously for three beats before she calmed herself.  There was nothing.  She needed to get inside.  She didn't look again.

She entered through another airlock system and continued into a dimly lit passage that continued further into the ship.  According to her dataslate this next haven was the largest, and the two after meant for more operational staff that needed access to the rear of the ship.  The largest number of people would be here.  Cassandra considered the size it occupied on the map, and the amount of people that would be there.  It was actually far more room than was necessary.  That made sense, she supposed.  This ship was huge and a crew of one thousand was actually strikingly low.  Not that Cassandra knew anything about staffing a whaling ship.  But there was enough room for everyone, even in the most dire of situations.  She had come to admire The Big Fish a great deal in her time aboard the ship.  In a harsh galaxy this ship felt like a loving home to some. 

She eventually reached the central haven.  The passage widened into a large corridor with bunks on either side, enough to fit a small family in one section.  There weren't many families aboard the ship, but Cassandra was in fact aware of at least one.  She hoped they were here somewhere.  The sections all offered a modest amount of space and privacy, creating a very wide open, but segmented and cut off feeling.  The lights over head cut into shadows over dozens and dozens of tired sailors still settling into their new quarters.  Cassandra drew many glances as she arrived but kept her gaze about her business.  She walked with a slow gait down the rows of bunks, watching for anyone that might need help.  To her eyes everyone seemed to be handling the situation remarkably well. 

Cassandra introduced herself to the person that seemed to be in charge of operations here, and requested a place to rest for a while.  It had been nearly thirteen hours since the storm broke out, and Cassandra's leg hurt.  She would continue.  But she needed to take her mind off the pain.  She did not know if that meant taking a pain-killer yet.  Her mind used to be so much easier to clear of its distractions.  She shook off the thoughts, and the man she spoke to directed her to a section where she could rest.  She sat upright on the cot with a pillow between her back and the room divider.  She didn't want to fall asleep.  Before she closed her eyes she pulled out her data slate and sent a message to Thomas

“All is well.  You have a good crew.” She sent.

To which Thomas replied “Is it weird that I have a voice in my head for your messages?”

Cassandra laughed silently, and closed her eyes.  She meditated for some time.  She attempted to clear her mind of all of the uncertainty that fed the tension in her muscles.  She mentally examined every pathway for sensation her body was capable of identifying, and tried to relax them.  Her left side was a throbbing mixture of pain and dull sensation.  Her leg and hip ached, but fell nearly numb at her foot.  Her left chest and shoulder felt similarly numb.  She attempted to force sensation into the numb parts of herself, as well as dull the painful parts. 

Cassandra heard a scream.  A terribly horrified scream, the likes of which she was not sure she had ever heard before.  Her eyes snapped open, and she was on her feet before she knew where she was going.  Others were reacting similarly, but she was faster.  It was around the corner, coming from the mess hall area of the haven.  She turned the corner and paused, letting her eyes catch up to her body.

“Get away from me!  Get him away from me!  Emperor save me, Emperor on holy Terra save us all!”  A woman screamed as she ran in Cassandra's direction.  She dived behind a group of people and huddled against a wall, mumbling prayers to herself.  A man stood confused at one of the long tables, with a small group gathering around him.

The man mumbled in his defense, stating he did not know what was going on.  He hadn't done anything.  The woman shrieked back from the corner she hid in.

“He’s a demon!  I saw his face change, I saw what he really looks like!” she said, crying.  Cassandra had never seen anyone so viscerally terrified in her life.

But the man looked normal.  No one knew how to proceed.  The people near her began comforting the woman.  Someone sitting at one of the long tables called out to the crowd.

“I uh… I think I need a medic…” The man said.  There was a copious amount of blood falling out of his mouth.

“Medic!” someone yelled, and multiple people rushed to the man.  They sopped up the blood with loose clothing and attempted to examine the wound.  The crowd stood shocked and silent. 

Cassandra looked into the crowd and where before she saw so many people handling their trepidatious situation with practice and skill, she now saw a group of fearful, ailing refugees.  Many of them looked like they were developing a fever, with sweating red skin.  She saw crew members clutching their chests and closing their eyes.  More than one of them was crying, clutching their heads in sorrow.  Multiple people rushed out of the area, seemingly overwhelmed by… what?  Cassandra looked over the room again and saw only one thing that was different.
 

Cassandra saw someone dripping with water.  A girl.  Everyone but her in the haven was dry.  Cassandra looked closer.  She was standing at the back of the dining area in a corner, watching very intently.  She looked like a teenager, one of the few Cassandra had seen on the ship. She had long messy black hair and wore a long ratty skirt made of thin black material that corseted at her midsection over a billowing white blouse.  She was incredibly pale, and barefoot, yet her feet were colored vibrant red. The girl's attention snapped to Cassandra.  When she blinked, the girl was one.

Cassandra stood still and watched without moving or blinking for a long time.  The girl was gone.  The man continued to bleed from the mouth, despite the effort to stop it.  The crew around all continued to struggle.  Eventually she turned around and continued to examine her surroundings.  The crew in other segments of the haven were behaving similarly.  Cassandra observed astutely.  She did not know what to do to help them.  She did not quite understand what was happening.  She felt a vibration and pulled her dataslate from her bag. A message from Thomas was waiting.  It said they were cutting the catch, and Thomas wanted her to check in with the crew on the back of this ship A.S.A.P.  He had heard disturbing things over the radio.

Cassandra walked to the passage back slowly.  She was unsure of how to act at the moment.  There was nothing here for her yet she felt obliged to aid her shipmates in some way.  Was that girl a crewmember?  Was she still here?  Maybe Cassandra had simply been viewing the crew's reaction to the storm with affection and pride before her meditations cleared her mind.

Thomas said they were in a stretch of relatively clear water and would be announcing to the crew they were cutting the catch in about thirty minutes.  It was no easy task to cut them loose, but Cassandra wouldn't make it there in time.  He wanted her to head that direction anyway, in case folks become emotional about losing their pay.  Before long Cassandra was alone in the passage between havens again.  Thomas came over the ship's loud speaker and made the announcement, along with his sincere apologies. 

Cassandra reached the next haven and found its residents in a deplorable state.  Every single one of them was affected in some way.  Sweating through the cold.  So dizzy they could not stand.  Hearts beating so fast they thought to hold them in place.  All of these things on top of curious physical wounds on the hands and faces, and unreasonable anger amongst the afflicted.  Was there an affliction spreading through the ship?  Some kind of virus that spread in its compact spaces?

Despite the sorry state of the haven's inhabitants, there was nothing Cassandra could do for them.  They had basic necessities in plenty, and were not suffering from extensive physical harm.  Why was Cassandra not affected like them?  The apparent answer troubled Cassandra greatly.  She made her way to the final gravity haven.

She heard arguing when she arrived.  There were few people here and the ones that she saw at first were simply sleeping in their bunks.  She continued to the rear where the arguing was coming from.  She rounded a corner to find a group of around fifteen sailors all waiting in front of a door.  One blocked the door, pointing a shotgun at the rest.

“Jenson, don't make us kill you.  You can't shoot us all, and if we don't cut the whales, we're as good as dead.”

The man cocked the shotgun and pointed it at the speaker's face.

“Shut up!  I’m not losing this year's pay, not after what happened on my last ship, you!  We can all die!”

The man's skin was bright red and veins bulged from his skin.  His eyes were crazed and he moved with tension that spoke of extreme agitation, to the point of irrational action.  Cassandra stepped forward slowly.  The crowd was getting extremely antsy.  They did not look much better than the man, all nearly panting or leaning on each other for support.  They began to shout for action to be taken.  They started stepping forward in unison and the man waved his gun at them.

Cassandra pressed her way through the crowd.  Those that saw her were diffused immediately.  Most of them knew who she was at this point.  By the time she reached the man, the crowd was parting for her, wondering what was happening all the sudden.  When the man with the gun saw her he broke down.  He dropped the gun and began to weep on his knees.

They were standing in front of another airlock system like the one that Cassandra had passed through earlier, and in its glass she saw something.  She kept her eyes focused on the man.  She did not move them in any perceivable way, but she took notice of what her periphery showed her.  Behind her and to her immediate left at the back of the crowd, the drenched girl with the black hair stood.  She watched again with rapt attention.

Cassandra turned about and faced the girl.  Their eyes locked for a single second.  The girl faded into the air around them while mouthing one word:

“Bye.”


 

Chapter 8

Four days since the storm started

Vitali looked down into the grand hall of The Red Wake.  Hundreds of tech priests filled the long chamber.  Huge half machine adepts of sea blue and blood red mixed with gold and salt rusted iron.  He had never seen so many of The Ordo in the same place at the same time.  By their very nature they were normally spread across the Harbor and the great ocean itself, tending to any given vessel in need.  Vitali had called every priest of the rank ship technician or higher to attendance.

+Are you ready, Harbormaster?+ The Archmagos asked him from across the dais they stood upon.

Vitali nodded.  The Archmagos gestured him forward and a servo skull that would amplify his voice hovered in front of him.

“Priests of The Harponis Sacra.  Thank you for all being here at this moment.  Firstly I must issue my gratitude to you all, and your order.  The priests of The Harponis Sacra uphold a culture older than any other on Veyrfall.  Centuries of diligent care, study, maintenance, preservation of ancient rites, enactment of sacred rituals have all come to fruition in these trying times.  And so I, Harbormaster Vitali Baycliff, thank you all for your dedication, and the lives you have lived that have brought you here in front of me at this moment.”

Vitali paused only for a second to catch his breath.  The crowd of Tech priests would have been inscrutable on an individual basis, face to face.  There was no chance Vitali could read this crowd.  Best just keep talking.

“We find ourselves at the meeting of past and future in its most uncertain point, just as our ancestors once did.  Never since that time has there been such a chance to mold and change Veyrfall's uncertain future into one of our choosing.  And you are the arbiters of that change!  You are the holy implements of the Omnissiah's will that shall see us through this dark night,

into a new day!”

Vitali was getting emotional.  A strange thing, to become emotional in front of this lot.

“You have likely heard rumors of my announcement and what it entails.  You have all done exemplary work yet again, fortifying our newfound home against the newborn storm.  But its fury grows and our battlements do not.”

Vitali took a moment to breathe.  A lot of the crowd already knew what he was about to say.

“Today we sail for Stormbreaker.”

To this they had a reaction, bursting into commotion.  More than one began a high pitched, ululating binaric screech, Vitali supposed out of excitement.  When the screeches ended Vitali began to speak again.

“Each and every one of you will be necessary and we do not know when any one of you might return to your stations.  Leave your home crew well equipped and capable of functioning without you.  The choice of transport is your own, save one ship.  This one.  The Wake houses too many citizens to put at risk in open waters during the storm.  We leave in eight hours.”

Commotion broke out again.

“The blood of the whales is on us all,” Vitali said.  An ancient tradition.

“For this blood we trade our lives,” they chanted back.

Vitali turned from the crowd and stepped off the dais.  The Archmagos stood waiting for him on the walkway. 

+You said “we” two times.  You plan on joining us?+ The emotionless iron masked man asked him.

Vitali hesitated.  He was already resolved to join them.  He did not think he had anything to offer the priests to aid in the awakening ritual, but this was a singularly important moment and he would not miss it unless something else equally important called him away.

“Yes I am.  With your blessing Archmagos, I would hope.” Vitali responded.

The Archmagos regarded him in silence for a few long moments.

+Of course you have my blessing.  I would simply recommend an injection of Sea-Strider prior to departure.+

Vitali scoffed.  He had never been sea sick in his life, he did not need drugs to ride with them. No matter how fierce the storm.

“I should be quite fine, Archmagos, thank you for your concern.”

The huge robotic man regarded him in silence for some time again before replying

+Very well.+

Vitali nodded to him.  “Very well.  I will remain on The Wake until the time of departure.  My thanks again for your consideration of our global communications network once Stormbreaker comes online.  I will prepare the necessary missives now.  If the skies do clear we’ll be ready.”

+Affirmative Harbormaster.  Until then.+  The Archmagos said, and made his leave to the floor of the hall.

Vitali returned to the command room where he had been spending most of his time since the storm started.  The past four days were an endless stream of catastrophes and tragedies that he found almost too hard to bear.  He stayed aboard The Wake in order to communicate more clearly with the ordo.  Every citizen of The Dam owed them their lives at this point, and when they came through the other side of this he would make sure everyone recognized it.

Vitali sat at the long war table on an iron chair covered in centuries of rust.  He had draped an old jacket over it and left it there.  This ship was not hospitable in any sense of the word to any of its inhabitants.  Pity that it was the one ship they could house the most of their people in for the time being.  Vitali tapped on the cogitator array in front of him and began to sort through all of his half written and rambling correspondence.  He had previously thought to put together running status reports and critical information to send to the other hives, but it was all a mess and unfinished.  But if Stormbreaker could clear the skies even for a second, all of it could go through.  

Vitali spent the next six hours writing reports to the other hives, as well as any large settlements or facilities in between that might be standing.  He detailed their current status, what they had to offer, what they needed, and roughly how long it would take them to achieve their goals.  Even through all of this, Vitali had goals for Veyrfall.  This was not the end.  In addition to the other hives Vitali made sure to contact each ship that had been out of port when the rain began, which was a substantial amount.  Before he left Vitali required The Archmagos assistance with one final recording and beckoned him to the war room.  They needed to send The Big Fish a message.

The time to depart came quickly, and Vitali followed the Archmagos to the outer upper deck of The Red Wake.  The ancient ship had a very tightly localized environment shield that sheltered them from the rain while on board.  Vitali walked out on the starboard side of the ship, the one facing the Harbor.  What remained of it.  They were attempting to use the Red Wake as a shield from the harshest of the weather, along with the other large ships, and it worked to some effect, but not nearly enough.  It floated in pieces now.  Still functioning, just barely.  The greater structures held, but their cohesion had failed, leaving sections of the floating city separated, and susceptible to the storm.  

The Archmagos summoned an anti grav platform, which they both stepped on.  Vitali needed to remember to get one of these.  It whisked them to the other side of the ship that faced outward, into the wide open ocean.  The massive flood lights from The Wake shone light created an illuminated dome of rain, filled with ships very familiar to Vitali.  The lightning rolled overhead and showed even more, further out, tacking in the winds or climbing and descending massive waves with clinical precision.  Scores of the most capable ships in the fleet.  They had chosen small crafts to travel with.  Vitali figured that was sensible, yet dangerous.  If catastrophe were to strike, the losses would be less severe.  Then again, the smaller the vessel the more likely catastrophe is in this weather.  But Vitali did not think The Ordo had any intention of suffering losses or catastrophe.  He could already see their skill by simply sitting at attention in the storm.  That they could maintain any sense of order in this chaos was remarkable.  Funny, Vitali thought.  He did not know how many times he had ever seen a priest of The Ordo actually pilot a ship.  Had he ever?  They were always the technicians, the mechanics, the ones that kept the ships running.  Never the ones driving.

They took the anti-grav to a loading bay on the side of The Red Wake.  There were multiple vessels here getting ready for the voyage.  They were using this as a servitor loading bay.  Dozens and dozens of the machines were loaded into the boats that moored here, and strapped against the walls like loads of cargo.  The Archmagos took him to an empty dock, and soon a ship Vitali had never seen before floated in with exact precision.  It bore the golden harpoon of The Harponis Sacra, and was painted pristinely in their colors.  This must be from their private fleet.  Vitali thought it was just a rumor.  

The ship was like a speed boat, but larger.  It could hold maybe thirty people comfortably, and it was abnormally barrel shaped, yet low to the water.  It had a small cabin that receded below the deck, and its back end lowered enough to where it could connect with the wake.  The ship activated a magnetic field and it hugged close to the dock.  

+This will be your vessel Harbormaster.+ The Archmagos told him.

“I see.”  Vitali said, stepping off the anti grav and walking towards the ship.  There was a tech priest on the deck fixing some rigging.  That surely wasn't the pilot.  Another emerged from the cabin and stood at attention by the gangway.  

“At your service Harbormaster” The priest said, making the sign of the Omnissiah.

“At ease” Vitali told him, and stepped onto the ship.

The first thing he noticed was how stable it was.  It must have had extensive gravity assistance work done.  The pilot showed him to the bridge and the hold.  There were five priests total aboard the boat.  As the time to depart drew near Vitali turned control of the situation over to The Archmagos, who departed for his own vessel.  Vitali found a place in the command room where he could observe without intrusion, difficult with the tech priests over large bodies and extra limbs.  Vitali could go and tie himself down in the hold, but he found it hard to deny his curiosity of late.  He wanted to see as much as he could.


They moved away from The Wake and into an empty section of the bay to wait.  The priests were busy and in constant motion, but said nothing to one another.   Vitali knew them well enough to know they were communicating through another medium, one more efficient and less prone to disruption or miscommunication.  Vitali looked out of the command deck over the hundreds of gathered ships, ready to set sail as a unit.  Eventually a warning came from the ship's pilot.

“Brace yourself Harbormaster.  The order has been given, we will be in motion within seconds.”

Vitali nodded back to him.  Out in the bay he saw one ship strike out into the ocean from the center of the armada.  It was going blazingly fast, and cut aside small waves that other captains might have chosen to steer around.  Two ships rocketed out into the first’s wake, splitting the waves it created further.  Two more ships joined either of those two ships, splitting their wake and creating a predictable turbulence that threatened to overpower the fury of the storm.  And so the ships continued, inward and outward, until a racing pattern of split water and ships' light stretched over the stormy horizon. Vitalis' ship rocketed out in the middle of the pack.

Vitali fell to the floor.  The acceleration was not done instantly, it was simply faster than Vitali was ready for.  He pushed himself up.  The gravity systems on these ships were great for keeping its occupants upright where the world around them was not, but sudden back and forth movement it could do less about.  He looked out the command window and saw the formation stretch out in front of them.  Without the cliff and The Red Wake to break the waves the storm would soon grow tremendously in strength.

It would take them hours to reach Stormbreaker, roughly five or six.  The lights of the Harbor faded behind them, limiting their visibility to the ships closest in formation.  The ships that Vitali could see were behaving like absolute madmen.  They crashed into towering waves, utilized the odd directions of the storm's patterns to gain momentum, and routinely spent time in the air.  It was as if they were doing tricks.  Maybe they were.  Vitali thought of his earlier trepidation and felt comfortable confirming that the priests of The Harponis Sacra could indeed pilot the ships they serviced.  Maybe a little too well.

Vitali had roughly twenty ships in his field of vision when the lightning was low, but when it surged he could see them all.  The formation his ship was locked into fought viciously to maintain their position relative to one another, and when the lightning flashed it showed the rest of the armada drifting away in sections, broken apart by stronger waves.  He saw the eastern flank of the formation break its pattern in order to cut the side off a tremendous towering wave.  One ship dived into its middle and gouged a wound of water from its center.  The next in formation followed the same path and widened the wound.  The entirety of the east flank followed suit, riding on the controlled wake until the wave they cut fell back into the ocean.

The time passed in a flash.  Vitali was a sailor after all, and his heart was pumping at a rate it had not in years.  The nautical acrobatics and maneuvers they performed were dangerous and daring, but once Vitali learned to trust the most prodigious skills of his pilots, he was able to enjoy the ride more.  Eventually they drew near to their destination, Vitali could see from the radar.  Vitali had only ever seen Stormbreaker once before, as a child.  He remembered a black ship so big that he thought it was a city at the time.  He remembered candle light and the smell of old administratum standard wax.  And he remembered it was so quiet that it terrified him as a child.

The ship Vitali rode in slowed drastically, though it did not stop.

“The Archmagos has sight of the ship and will begin docking soon.  He says there is sufficient room for the fleet to dock.  He will wait for you to arrive before ascending into the ship.”

Vitali was surprised.  He still could not see it, but the fleet was covering a massive portion of the sea.  Vitali confirmed the plan with the pilot, and continued to watch the ships in the formation.  He was tired, and his muscles were sore from fighting to stay upright for the last six hours.  But he was determined and ready to see things through.  They would return to The Dam with Stormbreaker.  

Vitali continued to survey the horizon.  Eventually a black mass appeared that he reasoned must be Stormbreaker.  They slowly drifted towards it, and the black mass grew far quicker than Vitali guessed it would.  The night and rain obscured any identifying details from this distance, there was only a space devoid of lightning where it blocked the view of the sky.  They spent the better part of an hour floating towards it.  They received directions on where to dock, and made a nearly one hundred degree turn, and were still facing the ship.  Still, all they could see was black.  

Approaching Stormbreaker was somewhat of an optical illusion.  The base of the ship was not where it ought to be from a distance, instead becoming great eaves that ran for nearly a quarter of a kilometer off the side of it.  When they reached the overhang, they finally saw the material of the ship itself, to find it was simply more black.  Vitali paused for a second.  They were floating under the eaves of a massive Poseidon class ship in the middle of a hurricane class storm.  It was calm. Vitali was too awestruck to notice the weather change.  The waters were steady and Vitali saw the other mechanicus ships finding places to dock under the ships eaves.  It was evidently made to receive them this way.  There were countless mooring structures of every variety mounted to the ceiling and walls of the ship.  Vitali looked back, where they entered the eaves.  The storm raged just the same.

There was a large dock below the eaves where the Archmagos waited for him, while scores of tech priests with billowing censers gathered near.  The pilot of his boat deposited him and went to moor his vessel. 

+We may make the pilgrimage to the control room on foot, the way is always kept open.  The Ordo will follow and begin initialization of the ship's reactor.  Power restoration is the first priority.  The restoration of the ship's other systems will take time.+

“Very well Archmagos.  Lead the way.” Vitali replied.

They walked up into darkness, the way only illuminated by the servo skull that floated over the Archmagos’ shoulder.  Vitali walked slightly behind him so he could see his way.  They reached the top and made a hard turn, unprompted as far as Vitali could see.  The Magos must know the way very well.

“So you have visited here before.”  Vitali said.

+Affirmative Harbormaster.  It is part of the Archmagos duties to routinely see to the ancient ships.  This is the first time any but me has walked its halls in a very long time.+

The ship was silent and completely disconnected from the noise of the storm outside.  There was not even a hint of noise from outside the ship after they made it twenty meters up the stairs.  Vitali only heard his and the Archmagos footsteps, and those of The Ordo slowly filling in the ship below them, beginning quiet binaric chants.  They continued in silence for a long time, traveling up many sets of stairs and ladders.  When parts of the ship were illuminated under the light of the servo skull there was only more black.  Occasionally there were shrines, piles of wax long since melted in front of various artistic pieces.  Statues and paintings appeared frequently.  Vitali thought himself in a museum for a minute, before remembering where he really was.  

The Archmagos saw Vitalis confused look upon one of the shrines and offered an explanation.

+A calm place to worship, in times past.  May it be so again, Harbormaster.+  He continued on his path.

They reached a particularly ornate set of stairs, all worked in black iron and dripping with old wax.  The purple of the lightning flickered from above.

+We have arrived.+ The Archmagos said.

They ascended the steps and could still hear the chanting behind them.

+Potentia veni. Potentia crescit. Omnissiah, dirige currentem. Aqua cedat. Mare taceat. Tempestas frangatur. Omnissiah, dirige currentem.+

The command deck was enclosed in a glass dome, something Vitali was not expecting.  He did not know what he was expecting.  The lightning and rain raged relentlessly overhead and their view of the outer world was reduced to nothing.  It was a dome, but it was elongated, simulating the length of the ship.  At the base of the glass walls was an unbroken pitch black console that ran around the entirety of the room.  Everything was pristine.  There wasn't even any dust, which did not seem right.  The floor was black marble, and there was a central station in the middle of the room, slightly past where they came up.  Other than that the room was empty.

Vitali walked in silence to the end of the room, watching the storm.  From this perspective he could see the tops of the ship that had eluded him in the storm earlier.  A massive sphere dominated the foredeck.  A weather manipulation device, one of the strongest in the galaxy.  So the stories went.  There was another in the rear of the ship, and many more smaller ones throughout.

The chanting below them continued to grow louder.  It had been at least three hours since they boarded the ship.  The Ordo must be making progress.  

+Potentia veni. Potentia crescit. Omnissiah, dirige currentem. Aqua cedat. Mare taceat. Tempestas frangatur. Omnissiah, dirige currentem.+

+The Stormbreaker awakens, Harbormaster Baycliff…+The Archmagos said from behind him.

Vitali turned.  There was a light on the command console that had turned on.  And then another.  And then three more.  And then a screen flashed on and began running diagnostics.  The ones nearby followed suit.  Soon the lights on the ceiling flicked on, and then the consoles on the walls.  They all began displaying weather data from the world around them, its measurements thrown into a frenzy from the storm.  

All in complete silence.  There wasn't so much as a hum of energy or a crackle of power.  If Vitali’s eyes had been closed, he would not have noticed anything at all.  The chanting continued below them, louder than ever;

+Potentia veni. Potentia crescit. Omnissiah, dirige currentem. Aqua cedat. Mare taceat. Tempestas frangatur. Omnissiah, dirige currentem.+

The flood lights on the outside of the ship turned on, illuminating the torrent around them.  Vitali walked closer to the window, and saw what he was so desperate to see.  The reason they came here and risked such danger.  Visible vibrations rippled outward from Stormbreakers hull.  When they hit a wave or a cluster of them the waves failed in odd ways.  The energy in them seemed to disperse.  It was working.  Thank the Omnissiah, The Emperor and everyone in between.  Stormbreaker still worked.  The ripples continued for kilometers, battling the waves the entire way.  Stormbreaker would win.

+Power has sufficiently been restored.  The capabilities of this ship are… prodigious.  We will use its calming wake to sail back to The Harbor, and test its more volatile systems on the way.+

Vitali looked back to the tech priest who was now delicately interfacing with a console, and he felt hope swell in his breast for the first time since the rain began.




 

Chapter 9

Four days since the storm started

Xelia saw so many things.  She travelled through the water at the speed of thought, deep into the ocean and high into the sky.  She saw every Hive on Veyrfall and every drowned city in between.  She could inhabit the waves, the clouds, the very air of the planet.  She could see the insides of the people that drank her water if she wanted to, and felt an uneasy curiosity when she extended that process to its natural conclusion. 

She explored and found something new. There were tides of a different kind on this planet.  Like the sea she had witnessed surrounding the gibbering creature.  But it was here, not wherever she had gone.  It was everywhere, it always had been.  She could just see it now.

She followed the tides first to a place that they ended, to a ship with a peculiar woman aboard.  Like a black hole the woman sucked in the material of the other realm and gave nothing back.  The tide was in all living things, except her.  She was a horribly damaged woman.  And she could see Xelia.

Xelia learned more about herself while aboard this ship.  Her visage was not her own anymore, and only through great concentration was she able to force her true self through.  Her face and body changed in the presence of others, never the same without a reason.  There was a logic she did not understand behind it.  For the most part people avoided gazing upon her, and when they did they looked away with shock and quiet terror.  Except for the woman.  When the woman was near the stuff of the other realm that morphed her appearance parted under her gaze, and she saw Xelia as she was.  Twice.  Xelia did not want to give the woman a third look, and left.

Time did not matter as much to Xelia any more.  She was aware of time passing; it just did not present much of an obstacle for her.  She did not grow hungry with time nor tired, and she traveled at a speed that made time and distance irrelevant.  She spent days following the tides of the planet to their great centers of emotion, teeming with fear and anger.  The Hives were so full of people and their outrageous personalities that she found them almost claustrophobic, at least for the time being.  She travelled underground, into the twisting waterways that filled the planet.  The tides down here were stronger, and she saw them growing as she travelled deeper.  Eventually she was led to these stronger tide’s source. 

Deep underneath Hive Imperialis, Xelia knew that to be where she was, there was something amazing.  Something horrifying and brutal and disgusting, but amazing in all these aspects as well.  It was trapped, seemingly staked and netted to the cavern floor.  A gigantic mass of ragged veins in the shape of a man being pulled through the net and towards glowing runes on the cavern roof.  The substance of the other realm flowed from the veins freely, only a portion of it being captured by the runes.  At the top of the mass there was one large eyeball, swiveling and twitching as it locked onto Xelia.  Another thing that could see her when it ought not.  She was in the water, dispersed into a million particles.  Yet it saw her for the substance that suffused her just as much as it leaked from it.  She did not depart this time.  It was trapped and posed her no threat. 

The runes on the ceiling were incredibly intricate and evidently made of iron or some metal.  How long had this been down here?  How long did it take to make?  The runes glowed red and she could see them run off in every direction.  How dangerous was this thing to trap it so thoroughly?  And why was it so much like Xelia?  She examined the cavern further and saw something very interesting.  On the cavern ceiling in between the runes were servo skulls that looked to be active.  They were mounted to the ceiling and had small lights still active on them.  Their eyes were pointed directly at the creature.  Were these cameras? 

Before she could ponder further she was interrupted by a massive surge in the tide's strength coming from above.  Coming from the surface.  She took one last look at the creature and whisked herself away.  She raced along the strange tides and was back to the surface in seconds.  She looked and saw that she was back at The Harbor.  There was something going on.  The people were excited.  She flowed out of the ocean, into the rain and onto the cliffside to get a better view.  She perched just outside the waterfall.  The storm had taken a toll on The Harbor since last she visited.  It sat in splintered pieces in the bay now, using ships to moor them, and keep them from flying apart into the waves and wind.  But the people were out in the storm.  All of them were on the docks, looking outward.

Xelia looked out and saw the blockade of ships that were attempting to hold the waves back.  Dozens of the largest ships in sight sat anchored past the Harbor absorbing the worst of the oceans waves.  The decks of them all were full just like the docks, full of people fighting to stay upright and looking out to sea.  What were they looking for?  Xelia looked out to the darkness of the sea, and saw a silhouette on the horizon.  A big bulky thing with sharp corners and high arches, with a massive dome on the front.  An approaching ship.

A great breaking sound slammed through the air.  A dull percussive slam that shoved aside all other sound and left a void in its wake that lingered.  A ship's horn.  It sounded twice more, and when it stopped the world felt silent.  And then the crowd erupted in cheers.  They screamed and carried on and Xelia felt their height of emotion threaten to overwhelm her newfound senses.  Xelia figured it out by this point.  The big ship in front of her was The Red Wake, and this one on the horizon was Stormbreaker.  She knew the stories.  They were waking the ancient ships.  She sat and watched with a slack jaw.  She could not believe what she was seeing.

Stormbreaker drew nearer to the Harbor, and the water between the two began to calm.  The massive waves that assaulted the big ships subsided and the people on their decks rejoiced more.  The docks ceased their creaking and began to settle into one spot.  When the ship stopped approaching it sounded its horn in a pattern of three again.   It was very close now, maybe a kilometer out of the bay.  It was so huge it looked much closer.  This time the horn hushed the crowd, and they sat in quiet reverence, intimidated by the ancient ship.

The great black orb on the front of the ship began to emit light.  Just a pinprick of dull warm light at first.  Then a second, and then a great thrumming noise that filled the bay.  Light arced between the two pinpoints and shot out rapidly from the black sphere, dissolving the rain and water in its way.  It shot into the sky and slammed against some invisible barrier, where its ends extended to the sea and over the top of the hive, creating an arch of light. 

Xelia felt as though she had been run through with a razor wire.  Two more pricks of light appeared on the dome, and the process repeated, dissolving the rain and leaving an arc of warm light that expanded for kilometers in both directions; behind Stormbreaker and past the top of The Dam, totally encapsulating The Harbor.  The process repeated again and again.  And Xelia felt each arc of light run through her body just like it ran through the rain.  But she did not let it break her.  She absorbed the pain, no one was watching and she did not care, she would not submit to it at this time.  She watched Stormbreaker cut into her again and again with a stern face. 

Eventually a dull dome of warm light covered The Dam, The Harbor and The Bay, leaving only a faint golden mist behind.  The lightning still rumbled over head, but its sound was muffled now.  The water sat so still you would never know the storm raged just off the cape of the cliff.  And the people rejoiced.  Until the horn sounded again.

The sphere aboard the ship began to glow with an increasing ferocity.  It grew and faded in a pattern, and on its fading step it released a massive gush of wind as it charged the light back up, each time brighter than before.  It blew Xelia’s hair back all the way up where she was.  On its seventh repetition it released the energy it was building and it shot into the sky, breaking through the cloud cover instantly.  Daylight shone through for the first time in over a month.  And the people rejoiced.  And Xelia felt her rage grow.

She extended her senses into the clouds, leaving her body, maybe it stayed where she was, maybe she was traveling through the water again, she did not know.  She was too angry.  She inhabited the storm above and expressed her will.  The hole in the sky closed, because Xelia willed it.  She looked down on The Harbor and saw it shielded from the storm and the waves.  They could have that.  The sky was hers now.  They would not touch it.

Xelia rode on a trail of settling mist down into The Harbor.  She always felt a pull to return to her bodily form when traveling through the water.  She could ignore it if she wished but right now it infuriated her.  She manifested from the mist in a dark corner behind two buildings behind a stack of barrels and boxes.  She wanted to keep her distance initially.  Xelia had seen how her presence affects those around her on the ship but only briefly.  She needed to know more.  She let the rage fall back inside her and focused on the task at hand.

She first wanted to see herself through bodily eyes.  She looked and found a dark window she could see herself in.  She was still female.  But she was taller now, with blonde hair and a skinny face.  She looked simply like any other woman.  Her clothes were different now as well, simple rags that she was not familiar with.  Why?  She wondered.  Why change what she looked like?  Xelia focused and forced her real self to emerge through the illusion, to prove she was still her.  It worked, and she saw herself in her old clothes, with a cut face and broken hand.  Just as she had been.  But the second her focus lapsed she snapped back into the illusion.  She looked at herself again in the window.  There was something odd about her, like there had been before, she just didn't have time to look in detail before.  What was wrong with her face?  After nearly a minute of staring at herself she figured it out.  She didn't have any pores on her skin.  Her flesh was completely smooth and gave the appearance of putty from a short distance.  She… Did not know what to think.  It did not make sense.  But nothing made sense any more.  Nothing she saw, heard or felt made any sense ever since she got off the catcher's ship, and she stopped trying to make sense of anything.

Xelia turned from the window and slowly walked to the back edge of the dock she was on.  She emerged near the very back of the Harbor, where the waterfall was.  The waterfall particularly vexed Xelia, she did not think this is what The Dam looked like.  She thought the waterfall was enclosed in an ancient system.  She thought The Harbor was attached to the cliff.  Had the storm caused this much destruction so quickly?  She thought back on her farms.  Of the Grox pits filled with floating corpses.  She supposed it must have.  Yet the people survived.  Xelia heard them now, even louder than the waterfall were the sounds of the people all out on the docks cheering or singing.  As she looked to the main section of the dock she was on she saw three young men hurry back into the shadows.  They were planning some work and grabbed three huge spools of rope from the building opposite Xelia, while she watched unnoticed.

Xelia slowly turned the corner after them.  From here the dome on Stormbreaker’s prow shone like a dull sunset.  It stood much taller than The Red Wake and cast shadows from it into the bay.  The light that shone overhead was caught by the falling mist and reflected in every direction, making The Harbor glow.  Xelia looked up into the sky.  From here it was not possible to see the extent of Stormbreakers effects, but she knew that it extended over the hive itself.  She looked back to the waterfall.  It could not stop that.

Xelia stood on one of the larger floating platforms left in the bay.  There were many buildings still standing and many people readying themselves to work.  There were many boats affixed to the edge of the docks that were now detaching, some moving away, some carrying lines to other platforms.  Xelia walked further into the thoroughfare of the dock.  She stayed to the edges, close to the buildings that faced outward.  There was so much wreckage, and people were gathering it in big piles or onto small ships to be carried away.  People could see her now, she was sure.  If their eyes wandered in her direction there was nothing but a slight shadow hiding her.  She stood against a wall underneath a staircase and watched the people for a long time. 

There was so much more to see now in each person.  The tide that flowed through them betrayed their very center of self, and Xelia could see it plainly.  She could not read their minds or see into their souls.  But she saw what made them up, and its nature informed her in myriad ways.   People were remarkably similar in some ways.  The shape of the essence that flowed inside most people was weak, and small.  But persistent.  That is what she had seen so far.  Xelia stood under the stairs for hours watching the people work.

Eventually Stormbreaker sounded its horn once more, and attempted to clear the skies again.  Xelia did not let it.  She did not yet have subtle control over the storm, but she could focus its wrath when she wanted to, and she could keep the cloud cover strong despite Strombreaker’s attempt.  The spectacle of what she was doing overwhelmed her.  She was in a contest of strength with the ancient ship.  And she was winning.  In one aspect at least.  The feeling of pride and power was intoxicating, and it soothed her aching veins and sore muscles.  She moved on from under the stairs, so excited by the moment and half drunk with sensation.  She continued her walk down the row of buildings.

Xelia still felt the adrenaline in her veins from what now seemed like ages ago.  The rage at being captured.  The incredible cloying anxiety that ate away at her brain.  The fire just underneath her skin that wanted to break out.  She could still taste the blood in her mouth, and feel the blood running down her ankles.  But fighting Stormbreaker felt good.  Expressing her will in the storm had felt good.  At least, it felt like something that wasnt… That. 

Soon she came upon a large group of people gathered around a building with a big open door.  Dozens of them were celebrating.  This looked to be a place they gathered to drink.  There was nothing as civilized as a bar, simply a keg on sawhorses with siphon hose, and a score of kegs turned up to serve as seats and tables.  Xelia’s father was an extremely well functioning blackout drunk.  She hated the substance and never touched it herself.  Now with her new eyes she saw it in an even more contemptible light.  The people that drank it were emotionally fragile, and explosive, easy to push over the edge, in whichever direction they chose to fall.  Xelia wanted to see more.  She flitted on the air into the room and back into the shadows. 

There was a barrel that sat in complete shadow against the wall where she could sit and no one would see her unless they came looking with a torch.  She stopped there and reappeared out of the vapor in the air.  She got comfortable and took stock of the environment.  There were roughly fifty seven people that she could count, some coming or going.  A mix of genders and ages.  Out in the docks in front of the group Strombreaker’s glows shone over them all, and ships crisscrossed the bay between wrecked platforms.  The mist was beginning to fall in currents.

Xelia watched people come and go from the large keg that held their astringent smelling liquid.  She noticed the ones that came more often than others.  They were hard to miss.  The substance made them emotional.  If there was one thing that Xelia had learned about the other world, and this stuff that connects us to it, it was that it was tied to emotions.  It was emotions.  Or perhaps emotions were part of it.

She stayed in this spot for hours, again.  It was too easy for Xelia to lose herself in the examination of the people.  She began to practice casting parts of her self through the water, to watch or listen.  It worked better than she could have hoped.  She was intimately aware of any water in the area, and even without the rain, it was literally everywhere.  Nothing was dry.  And so Xelia sat still and sent her hearing through the water onto a barrel with four men sitting around it.  Xelia heard a bottle clink against glasses and the men at the table talking about their work on something called The Black Wall.  Xelia pulled herself back.  She tried again with her sight, and looked at the spot where she sat from across the room, from some moisture beaded up on the wall.  She saw everything in the room from a new perspective.  She pulled herself back again.  Where is that one drunkard?  He might be fun to watch…

There.  He was out of the room, on the docks, sitting on a crate in front of a barrel, playing dice with two other men.  Xelia sent her eyes and ears to a lamppost that looked over his friend's shoulders from the pier's edge.

They were betting lho sticks and get them in a tin to keep them out of the mist.  The drunkard clumsily added five, rolled, and added five again.  His friends beheld him with astonishment as he lost his bet and passed the dice.

“You're getting a little risky there Danz, what are you doin?  Too much amasec got you wanting the lho that bad?”  One of the drunkard's friends said.

The man barely responded.  He slurred a response and shoved the tin of lho sticks at the man.  He was evidently very drunk.  His jaw was hanging open very obviously.  The game proceeded and when it came to his turn again, his mouth was hanging wide open, and the inside of his mouth was black.  It was like it was being pulled down by an unknown force.

“Ok I think you've had enough to drink there friend why don't you get on out of here” the man's friend said. 

The drunkard seemed to come out of a haze.  He looked at them confused.  He felt his face.  He tried forcing his mouth shut, but stopped before giving it his full effort.  He hurriedly put his anty in the tin and rolled once.  He nodded curtly, and passed the dice.  He went back to trying to fix his face, trying to shut his jaw with both hands, but could not.  His friends watched him in stunned silence.  His jaw was opening wider.  Much wider than it ever should, and its insides were pitch black.  The Drunkard stared around the gathering with anxiety plain in his eyes and ran through the crowd, trying to cover his distorting face.  Xelia watched him run, fascinated.  His friends laughed it off, calling him a waste of the Emperor's time. 

Xelia continued to watch the gathering.  Emotions were running high.  Most of the people that were here at this point had been there for a long time, and were sufficiently inebriated.  There was a gasp from a young woman who stood next to the keg with a man pouring from it for her.  Xelia sent her perception nearby.

“Wait wait what is that… Look at me…”  The woman looked him in the eyes for a long second.  Her face belied confusion, disgust, and wonder.

The woman placed a finger on the man's shoulder and began to tap in in a steady pattern, fairly quick, without breaking eye contact with the man. 

“What are you doing?” He asked.

“That's your heart beat isn't it?”  She said, like she was witnessing a medical miracle.

“Y..Yeah…”He said, motioning to her tapping that she continued.

“But how did you kno-”

“Because I can see it in your eyes! Their green, aaaaa—!”  The girl screamed and ran away, leaving him bewildered, with multiple people watching him now.  When he turned, Xelia could see his weird beating green eyes.  He left before long after being confronted by many of the other people there. 

The atmosphere in the room had turned from frivolity to paranoia and hostility.  Xelia watched from her bodily eyes again and saw a room full of wary and suspicious people.  They were getting quieter, huddling into clicks, and whispering to themselves while looking over their shoulders.  Soon the crowd dissipated, and Xelia rode the mist out of the room before it was closed. 

She noticed that she looked different now.  She stopped in front of a window again.  Still female, different height, different hair.  She thinks… She changes when someone sees her.  Something to that effect, but she was not sure, as she was not sure who might have seen her.  She looked closer at her reflection.  There was something strange on her neck.  She brushed her long brown hair aside and gasped with surprise.  She had gills.




 

Chapter ten

Four days since the storm started

The Big Fish fought the storm like a hero.  The storm was overpowering and the sea was vast, but The Big Fish sailed through it with calm confidence.  The gravity havens held without fail and the crew ceased suffering injuries after the initial onset of the storm.  The only time they lost people now was when work needed to be done outside of the havens.  The ship's shields held and converted kinetic energy to battery power seamlessly.  Cassandra had spent only a small amount of time at the helm with Thomas, watching the ship's trajectory.  The scale of the waves and the extreme nature of the maneuvers they performed boggled Cassandra's mind, and left her feeling disoriented.

Cassandra was in the middle of her morning rituals when she received a message on her dataslate from Thomas.  He wanted her to come to the bridge as soon as she was ready.  She finished without delay and made the journey to the helm of the ship.  The room with the huge wheel was still heavily populated, but relatively calm.  It was always surreal seeing the orderly execution of duty inside while watching the catastrophic dissolution of order without.  She walked to the helm and saw it wasn't Thomas at the smaller wheel but a co-pilot he sometimes trusted with the task.  He told her the Captain was waiting in the comms room and pointed her to a room off to the front right.

The door was open and she entered to Thomas' voice talking quietly over a console, facing away from her.  The room was spacious but packed with gizmos and mechanisms.  Old machinery and new intermingled on the ceilings and walls.  The tables were covered with old maps, and the consoles were all black except for two that Thomas and a technician stood at, to her left.  

+Greetings Sister+ The deep mechanical voice of the ship's technician boomed from her right.  She turned to see Orren standing with his axe.  It looked like he had just arrived as well.  Cassandra nodded to him.  Thomas turned to greet hear;
 

“Cassandra, good you're here.  I already told Orren what's going on but I figured I'd wait till you get her fore we go any further.  You being the ranking servant of the Emperor aboard The Big Fish and all.”  He did not seem troubled, but not his jovial self either.  He was focused.  This must be important.

“We’ve had some communication come in.  We already tried and we can't send nothing back, and nothing more is coming in.  But what we received seems to be everything that's been sent since the cloud cover started.” Thomas went on.  Cassandra widened her eyes.

“I uh, started to go through some of it chronologically, but the first message was….” He looked at the console and read off of it

“From the Inquisitorial office of The Death Of Us All and by the order of Inquisitor Calpuria Thorne” He said plainly.

Cassandra walked over to the console.  She saw the familiar seals and logos associated with an Inquisitorial search and rescue operation.  She let out a brief gasp of air and felt the corners of her mouth turn up in a smile.  Calpurnia was ok.  And looking for her.  She turned her half smiling face back up to Thomas and nodded.

“Looks familiar, eh?  Well I haven't listened to or read nothing yet and there's a lot of communicae here.  You're welcome to stay as we go through it and see if anything stands out to you” Thomas said, returning her smile.  Cassandra nodded again and looked back to the console.  She read it in its entirety, there wasn't an audio component.  It was a simple planet wide search warrant for a Sister of Silence, blond hair, tattoo on the neck, heavily wounded.  It gave details to contact the proper authorities if she was found. 
 

They all sat around a table and went through the correspondence starting with the oldest.  There were a number of hails from The Dam requesting a status update, and others providing status updates to them.  At first they were sent specifically to The Big Fish, but then changed to mass transmissions.  The Dam was struggling a great deal.  The first message that gave Thomas pause was from someone called Harbor Master Vitali Baycliff.  When he introduced himself over the recording Thomas and Orren exchanged glances.  Before this point it had been a nameless technician.

“This is Harbor Master Vitali Baycliff sending a mass transmission to any ship with intent on returning to The Dam.  Be warned.  The rain has taken its toll, and our home has changed shape.  Do not come within ten kilometers of the Harbor without communication, to prevent collisions.”  There was a long pause.  He did not sign off and the communication did not end, so they listened in silence.

“We have roused The Red Wake from its slumber.  Our people take sanctuary within the savage old beast.  The Harborfolk will live.  Signed with the blood of the whales, Harbor Mast Vitali Baycliff.”  The recording ended.  Cassandra looked across the table and saw Thomas staring at Orren with his mouth open.  Orren was returning a wide lensed face, all of them fully open and dilated.

Thomas stumbled over his tongue.  He turned to Cassandra.

“That's… Kind of a big deal here…”  He looked at the table.  “ To be honest I didn't think they worked anymore, I thought they were just old ceremonial junk, pardon my blasphemy there Harpon” he said, glancing at Orren.

Cassandra looked at him quizzically. 

“The Red Wake is an old old ship.  From… When we first got here.  When they made The Dam and The Fall and The Harbor and all of it.  All of Veyrfall.  The Dam was the first hub of industry on the planet.  The Red Wake was the reason why…”  He had a wistful look on his face and seemed to lose his train of thought. 

+Three Poseidon class vessels were gifted to Veyrfall upon the planet's assimilation.  The Red Wake.  Stormbreaker.  And the Ares Imperia.  Each utterly unique and purpose built, one of a kind in the galaxy.+  The tech priest said,  expanding on Thomas’ trailing thoughts. 

“Yeah… That's right.” The Captain said. 

“Well, let's keep listening.  Wonder what else happened…  Why did we get these all the sudden?”  He said as he continued the recordings.

There were a number of global transmissions both from The Dam and from other places on the planet.  There were also a great deal of distress messages that they passed in dismay.  Far too old to act on.  Another message from the Harbormaster came on.

“This is Harbor Master Vitali Baycliff.  This is a general transmission to any ships out of The Dam.  Today we ride for Stormbreaker.  Our home breaks on the waves and our salvation lies with the black ship.  If you receive this message you will know that Stormbreaker has succeeded in breaking through the cloud cover and restoring our communication.  To follow are individualized messages for each ship I know to still be out of port.”

Cassandra saw Thomas and Orren exchanging the same look again.  They glanced at her.  Thomas was lost for words for the first time in his life and gestured to Orren. 

+Stormbreaker.  The sanctuary ship.  A miracle of ancient weather manipulation technology.  Were it here next to us we would likely be able to turn The Big Fish off and ride in Stormbreakers wake through the tumult.+ The priest explained.

Cassandra was fascinated.

“Well that's how we got the messages then… Guess it didn't last…”  Thomas tapped the console and played the next message.  The recording clicked on.

“Hello Thomas.  I hope this message finds you and your crew well.  Before I begin, please summon Orren Harpon V to receive this message as well.”  He paused for a moment.  Thomas glanced at Orren.

“If you are receiving this you have received my other updates and you are aware of our struggles and triumphs during this time, so I will not recap.  I must say, I am supremely glad that you are where you are in the ocean right now, or should be according to the charts.  I would bet my hat that The Big Fish survives this storm handily.  And I need a Captain I can trust to do what needs to be done next.”

Thomas smiled at that, but turned up an eyebrow at the last part.

“You are the closest ship out of port to the Aris Imperia.  I need you to wake it up and bring it home.”

“What!?”  Thomas yelled without pausing the recording.  Orren let out an odd binaric mess of noises that reminded Cassandra of a cough.  The recording continued.

“We don't stand a chance of getting to it in this storm.  And any other ship will take just as long as if we went ourselves.  We need The Imperia to start putting the pieces back together.  I trust you Thomas.  The Harbor trusts you.  And I trust you, Orren Harpon V.  The Ordo Harponis Sacra will be due for an annual planet wide parade when this is all over, and they will sing your name in the songs if we get this done.  I have the Archmagos here with me, he will tell you what you need to know.  With the blood of the Whales, Harbor Master Vitali.”

An echoing robotic voice came over the recording.

“Greetings captain and technician.  Before I proceed I must ask all but Orren Harpon V to vacate the room.  What follows is privileged information of the Ordo.”

Orren tapped the console and paused the playback with lightning quick reflexes.  He sat in contemplative silence staring at the transcript of the conversation. 

Thomas looked up at him, then over at Cassandra, and back to Orren. 

“Uhh, yeah, uh very well.  We’ll leave you to it… Let us know when you're finished, yeah, we’ll be wondering about ya.”  He said, standing up.  He walked over to Cassandra and they exited the room.  As they made to close the door Orren called out;

“I do think this will take quite some time.  You… Know the location of The Imperia, Captain?”

“Aye.  Even been there once or twice.”  He replied.

“Do not wait for me to set your course then…”

“Aye.  See you soon Orren.” Thomas said, and Orren nodded to him.

Thomas closed the door.  He looked at Cassandra with vacancy in his eyes.  He was somewhere else in his head, she thought. 

“Alright… Well.  We got some stuff to do then.  You're welcome to do as you please of course.  But I'm going to be calling an all ship here in a few minutes to talk to the crew.  Might as well stick around” He said in a voice that bordered on playfulness.  Thomas had come to enjoy Cassandra's company greatly, and she was quite aware of that.  She gave him someone to talk to, he said. 

Cassandra nodded to him and he smiled at her weakly.  He made an announcement to the bridge over the loudspeaker. 

“Attention bridge crew.  You all need to stay put, but I'm going to be calling a meeting in a bit.  Just keep your ears open, it’ll be playing on the speakers.”  They agreed while continuing to work.

“Right, well let's get to the big haven.”  He said to Cassandra, ushering her to follow.

He made the announcement while they walked, calling everyone that was able to congregate in the large gravity haven.  Everyone would be able to fit he said, but just standing room.  He said the meeting would be in thirty minutes and replayed the message every five.  They reached the large gravity haven and waited as people poured in.  Thomas stood on a table, emphasizing what a large man he was.  Where he normally stood six and a half feet off the ground now it was nearly ten.  He started directing the traffic and greeting people as they made their way in.  Cassandra settled into a spot in the crowd and watched.

Thomas patched himself into the ships speaker system and tested it. 

“Alright… ok.  You can all hear me?  Good.  Ok lets get this started.  Thank you all for meeting me here on such short notice.”  The crowd was all around him and he slowly turned while he was talking.

“So today we received some communication from The Dam, and some orders.  Before I get to that though, actually… I want to thank you all.  We have been making it through this storm with competence and confidence and that's thanks to you all.  I couldn't ask for a more professional crew.  But believe it or not we've been having it easy.  The Dam is in dire straits and our home… won't be the same when we return.  They have had to resort to some extreme measures.”  He paused here.  He was no doubt about to tell them about the ships, Cassandra thought.

“The Red Wake, and Stormbreaker…”  The crowd gasped before he even finished his sentence.  They burst into a murmuring chorus of disbelief and shock. 

“Sail once more.”  Thomas finished loudly.  The crowd quieted. 

“And we have some new orders.”  The crowd grew dead silent.

“We are the closest ship to the Aris Imperia, and we are to bring it home.”

The crowd exploded in a cacophony of different emotions.  Excitement, and, fear, disbelief, religious awe.  Thomas spoke above the crowd.

“It was the Imperia that spread The Dams influence across Veyrfall in ancient times.  Now, we will use it to spread salvation to the desperate places on this drowning rock.”

He paused again.  He seemed contemplative.

“Now I know I’m the Captain, and the ship goes where I say.  And it's not much of a choice I have to offer you, follow me or take your chances in the storm.  But I still have to ask.  Are you with me?”

The crowd responded with a strong affirmative.

“We sail into legend.  Are you prepared?” 

The crowd shouted back louder.

“We will return to The Dam as heroes.  Are you ready?”

The crowd shouted back and a raucous applause that even Thomas could not shout above broke out, and he climbed down from the table.  He made his way through the crowd back to Cassandra.  He was dripping with sweat and beat red. 

“How’d I do?”  He asked her.  Cassandra gave two thumbs up and a very firm nod.