Chapter I. The sticky words.
01
There are few things as boring but at the same time relaxing, as is captaining a ship that's carried by one of the large void filament currents. As long as the ship's crew is well trained you personally don't have to do anything - just sit back, relax and wait until you'll be called on deck when the ship reaches its destination and it'd be the time to take the turn and leave the current.
Unless, of course, someone turns the wheel too sharply and the ship skids around its axis, flings you out the chair and leaves you in a decidedly ungentlemanly position on the cabin's floor.
"Lernean pirates!" Thought flashed in my head like a bright alarm light. "It must be!"
I gathered myself, grabbed a pair of pistols off the wall and rushed to the door somewhat assisted by the floor rising under my feet and pushing me forwards as the ship heaved and fell down, dropping out of the filament's current.
Wait, what? Leaving the current? Dropping us into the still Void where we would be moving at a sleepy snail's pace instead of rushing forward along the filament to try and escape pursuit? What's helmsman thinking?
"Where are they!?" I cried, appearing on deck trying to find something to point my guns at.
"There!" Alaia said, pointing her finger straight up. "Why guns?"
I looked up expecting to see a multi-headed Lernean trireme or a Stygian sloop at the least… but there was nothing.
"Where!?" I roared again.
"There! Look!" Alaia kept pointing upwards. I think we might have had a misunderstanding?
"Alaia… where are the pirates?"
"What pirates?"
"Pirates that attacked us."
"We were attacked by pirates?"
Yes. Definitely a misunderstanding.
"Helm!" I shouted.
"Sir!" Helmsman replied.
"Why did we leave the current?"
"Miss Alaia saw something, sir!"
"Alaia?"
"I'm here!" She was still standing in front of me, pointing right up.
"Wait a moment." I shook my head and went back to my cabin - both to place the guns back where they belonged and to force every mental image of our ship being attacked by the pirates out of my head. Alaia followed me, picking those images up and looking at them with great interest.
"So cruel… Did they do that?... Really?... Right through the head?... Now that's sweet…" She looked at me again. "Didn't know you were ready to…"
"I'd prefer you didn't know still." I sighed. "So, what did you saw?"
"Words."
"Words?"
"Words. Cry for help."
"There are enough of those flying around in the Void… why jump off the current?"
"It got stuck in our bubble."
"I see…" I rubbed my forehead. "We can't pretend we didn't notice it, can we?"
"Exactly!" Alaia was acting as if she was proud of herself… for some reason. "I'm glad you think so. I won't have to cry to make you catch those words and follow them back to their origin."
"Did you expect me to be that uncaring?"
"I did!"
She's probably absolutely correct.
"I am!"
02
I spent too much time looking right up than I'd ever care to admit. For the same reason I don't want to admit that I didn't spot anything unusual - or anything at all - on the vanishingly shimmering border of the normalcy bubble that encompassed our ship.
"They're there!" Alaia was adamant, even stamped her foot on the deck. "Look!"
"It's there, captain." Said Conrad, approaching us with a spyglass and handing said looking implement to me.
Through the spyglass I finally managed to spot what Alaia and Conrad have been talking about. A tangled mass of words, hanging from the top of the bubble slightly astern from our mast. Words were exhausted, almost transparent, meaningless - more like a void algae than words. Then again, that's exactly what void algae are, so no surprises there.
What I also saw was one of the sailors on top of the mast, trying to reach for the words with a broom. Thankfully, the broom was too short, so he wasn't able to nudge the words off the bubble and into the void - I don't want to think what kind of monstrous language Alaia would've unleashed on him if that would happen.
"We need a kite." I said. "Conrad?"
"Yes, sir." They said, already turning to give orders.
"And fetch the mages. At least some of them."
"Yes, sir!"
At this point the lad on the mast finally realized the sheer futility of his attempts and now was climbing the mast down with the broom strapped to his back - I guess I should give our sailors more credit: I was fully expecting for him to throw that stick into the void where it would in a thousand years turn into a god of cleanliness or something like that.
03
Following Conrad, two of the ship's mages chittered from below the decks, almost jumping out of the hatch and landing on all of their eight thin metallic limbs. They quickly gathered their surroundings, spinning around their axis as two human-sized robotic insects. Seeing as Abby was already standing up on the ship's castle strapped to a box kite, they rose up, folding their mechanical extremities in pairs to form more humanoid arms and legs, and froze in place in front of me, silently bowing and awaiting further instructions. I explained to the mages what was needed from them and patiently waited while they discussed something - hopefully, my request, but one never knows - in their own language, consisting of loud high-pitched shrills and whistles.
"This will require high precision power management and borderline excessive use of control spells to facilitate the exact right amount of lift, channeled at miss Alaia." Finally said one of them in a human tongue. "Are you sure that the probability of her becoming untangled and exiting the safe space bubble is kept manageably low?"
"I wouldn't let her fly otherwise." I nodded. "The tether is strong enough to hold her if you'll keep the wind reasonably strong. And I've checked the ropes holding her to the kite myself - they'll hold."
Second mage let out a series of whistles. One that's been talking to me blurbed almost a shriek in response.
"Enough with the arguments!" Alaia was jumping up and down on the spot. "I'm old enough to manage my own risks! And I own the ship therefore you should do what I say!"
"She does own the ship…" I looked at the mages. They bowed, went down on their knees and began chanting.
Alaia was watching them, holding onto the ropes that tied her to the kite.
The pitch of their whistling went up and up until it became almost unhearable - just a sound that you aren't quite sure if you're hearing or imagining.
Alaia jumped on the spot again.
The wind picked up inside our safe bubble.
Someone handed Alaia a butterfly net.
Mages' chant drifted back into the average human's hearing range - almost - and began waving up and down with certain intervals.
"Check the tether!" I ordered, as the wind was getting stronger and people on deck were already holding to their hats.
Mages' chant went in circles a few times, dragging the air along for a spin - faster and faster and then
Alaia jumped down from the castle
Wind blew up with force
The kite went "frrrh!" and flew up, carrying Alaia with it.
She was laughing and waving the net in her hands.
04
"This is incomprehensible." I said, listening to the whispers of words Ala had caught and brought down. "I can't understand a word."
"It's in a language I don't know…" Alaia shook a jar we put the words into. "I'm getting the intent and emotion but not much in the way of making actual sense."
"Yeah, I can feel it's cries for help or something like that, but help to whom and where…?"
"Captain, sir…" Conrad unexpectedly took interest in the matter. "May I?"
"Oh, of course!" Alaia put the words jar into Conrad's slim hand. They waited for my nod then took it, brought it closer to their eyes and squinted.
"Hm…" They shook the jar holding it by the top. "That one looks familiar… Where did I hear this…? And this one… I'm pretty sure it means 'mother' but why am I sure about it…?"
They handed the jar back to Abby and sauntered off below decks, returning back in a moment followed by a ruffled sailor who looked like he was just recently awoken.
"Crewman Jax do you recognize these words?" Conrad asked the yawning sailor.
"It's so early in the morning…" The sailor wasn't happy about what was going on but knew better than to raise any real objections. "I haven't said any of them, sir!"
"Time to shave you with a rusty razor..." Alaia sang at him, startling the guy.
"No need, Ala." I could see the young crewman was scared enough. "Jax, we want to know what those words say. Do you understand any of it?"
"Um… gulp… well… that's…"
"That's…?"
"They're asking for help…"
"Do they say where they are?"
"Where…" Jax ran a hand through his hair and looked around. Then pointed in a direction. "There! That way, around two day's worth of flight, something about… crystals? Living crystals?"
"But how can you tell?" Alaia was curious.
"It's… gulp… it's in my homeworld language."
"Thank you Jax." I said. "You can go. And Conrad… make sure nobody disturbs mister Jax there so he can get a proper amount of sleep he deserves."
"Thank you… um… captain, sir!" Jax saluted before leaving.
Chapter II. The Living Crystals.
01
What took the words two days to fly themselves to exhaustion turned out to be almost a weekly crawl for us. Our mages were chanting maintenance spells non-stop to keep our overclocked engines running and still the ship moved painfully slow.
"Please tell me there are some pirates, captain." Said Drake, our ship's surgeon, startling me. I was concentrated on trying to see at least something in the void along the course - and failing to see anything of note.
"Or monsters." Drake added. "Void monsters would work too."
"If any of the crew will hear you…"
"They'll start crying and run away in tears as the superstitious toddlers they are." Drake grimaced out of contempt. "Get us a fight, captain! I'm bored!"
"Everyone is…"
"That's exactly the problem. It's been almost six days since we jumped off the current and went nowhere. Find us someone to fight or we'll do it ourselves."
"I see." I thought about it for a moment. "I say we give it one more day. If we won't find anything substantial until then - I'll talk to miss Alaia myself about turning back."
"Thank you captain. That's all I ask for."
"What was that?" I smiled. "I remember you saying something about a fight previously…"
"That'd be nice too, don't get me wrong." He slapped his thighs with both hands. "Well! I'll go be bored in my cabin then! And set aside a vial of relaxing eye drops for you, captain."
"Thank you, Drake."
"Captain?"
"Yes, Drake?"
"Why is there nothing? Literally, nothing in all directions around us?"
"That's how the void is - it's called 'the Void' after all."
"Yes, but usually it's anything but. You have worlds bubbling up left and right, you have the filament currents and ships and all sorts of junk floating around… So why is there nothing here?"
"Who knows." I shrugged. "It could be for many reasons: maybe God that plays dice decided that this place should be randomly empty… or maybe Law of cycles popped all the world bubbles in this space because they thought it'd be amusing?"
"I don't like it, Captain." Drake said looking around at nothingness that surrounded us. "If any of the Void gods decided there should be nothing here, maybe we shouldn't be here either..."
02
"Something's there!" Alaia peeked into my cabin, visibly shining with happiness. "Oh, it's so bright in here!"
"It wasn't before you showed up…" I covered my eyes with the palm of my hand. To be honest, I was trying to find words to tell Ala we need to turn back - and it's the only kind of search that's better done without a light. I've almost found what to say but it looks like that wasn't needed after all.
From the bow of our ship it looked like a star, like those that fill a lot of the worlds we've been visiting previously. But if that was a star it was terribly out of place floating in the void. No stars exist here - not outside of their worlds anyway.
"It doesn't look quite like a star." Alaia said. "Stars are enormous balls spewing super hot stuff all over the place. This one… isn't right. It looks too much like a star, you know?"
I looked at it again and I think I got what she was trying to say - it looked like something that a person would draw if they were told to draw "a star". Too much of a star, huh?
"Captain, are we sure it's where those words were from?" Conrad had appeared behind my back seemingly out of nowhere.
"It better be." I shrugged. "Let's get a little bit closer and then slow down to a fourth."
"A fourth? We'd be barely moving."
"Never hurts to be careful."
"Aye, captain." Conrad nodded and left to give out orders.
"Alaia?"
"Yes?"
"Do you think it's dangerous?"
"Maybe!"
"Not very encouraging…"
"Is it not!?"
03
It was a crystal. About a third of the size of our ship - translucent crystalline structure was sitting in the middle of the void. It seemingly was made out of sharp spikes protruding outwards from the central core. Inside the crystalline material blue and purple sparks ran from the core to the tips of spikes and back.
"Maybe that's what they meant by 'living'..." Alaia looked at it, full of curiosity.
"Captain, I'm not sure we should come any closer." Conrad, conversely, was extremely cautious.
"I would agree - we don't want to end like those poor souls."
We sure didn't want to… There, at what was a topside of a crystal relative to our ship's point of reference, was another void vessel. Once it was probably bigger than the "Silver Key" but now it was only a half - or possibly a third - of the hull, lodged deep into the mess of crystal spikes.
"It's like an apple on the hedgehog's back!" Alaia clapped her hands.
"Miss, hedgehogs don't actually do that…" Conrad said, turning to her. "They don't even eat apples."
"I know!" Alaia clapped again, still excited. "But that ship looks exactly like that! And about as unreal as the apple carrying hedgehog would be."
Conrad looked at her, then at me, then at the crystal hedgehog carrying a voidship.
"You have a point." They said finally. "Maybe we should send out a boat, captain? To check on that hedgehog and apples?"
"If there are still any…" I nodded.
04
The voidboat, a small fully pressurised vessel, with the crew of three was lowered from the ship and hung on the ropes.
"We'll just take a quick look, captain." Said Conrad, looking out of the hatch on top of the voidboat.
"Just be careful, try not to hit anything…" I didn't need to tell them this, it was mostly for the sake of my own consciousness. "And maybe think where your exhaust hits too. If this thing is living somehow, it might not like it."
"Good point." Conrad said, closing off the hatch.
"Release!" I ordered and the steel claws holding the voidboat unclenched, letting go of the vessel's hull, allowing it to fall through our normal space bubble. It gathered some speed, plunged through the bubble's border and began slowly drift off into the void, not gaining any more speed but not slowing down either.
In a few moments its engine fired up, nudging the voidboat forward with a bright flower of flames at the tail end.
Voidboat began her short journey to the crystal.
"Shouldn't we be there?" Said Alaia. "It has room for three, so it could be you, me and Conrad?"
"So we would lose all the command staff if something went wrong?" I shook my head. "And the ship's owner? Who'd be in charge then?"
"Drake?"
"Like he could be bothered…"
"That's true…" Alaia sighed.
05
The voidboat slowly found its way to the crystal drifting in the nothingness of the great void. Conrad fired boat's engines in short pulses to give it enough forward momentum to float in the direction he wanted but not too much so he could stop it with one burst of the brakes.
We watched it as it approaches the crystal, rose its bow up firing a maneuvering thrusters and dove down at a sharp angle at the ship currently sticking out of the crystalline body.
Brakes flared forward.
The voidboat stopped.
It floated above the iridiscent matter making up the visibly sharp spikes and the partly visible hull of the crashed void vessel.
Time ticked away. Moments passed.
"Are they alright?" Alaia asked.
"I'm sure they are." I answered as confidently as I could. "I'm sure Conrad just wants to take a good, careful look at that thing."
"Probably…" Alaia said. "Why don't they turn the searchlights on?"
"With that crystal so close… imagine all the reflections and refractions."
"It'd look pretty…" She smiled. "But really hard to see anything else, you're right."
"So…" And as she began saying something else, the voidboat fired all of its forward thrusters and braking engines at once, sending itself tumbling backwards, then steadying itself in the void.
The whole of the crystal mass shuddered, sending waves of iridescent colours running along the spikes, reflecting back from the tips of the crystal needles, colliding and interfering with themselves, forming shining colourful patterns on the translucent body.
A number of spikes, closer to the voidboat shoot forward. Not too far but enough to shift the whole crystalline body as it dragged itself along.
"It can move!?" I cried out.
"The living crystals…" Alaia uttered. "Should we run?"
"Not without Conrad." I said, watching how the voidboat put it's main engines into the overdrive, burning through whatever reserve fuel it carried in a moment to give itself maximum possible acceleration.
"I hope they won't pass out after that…"
I tried to imagine the trajectory of the boat and it didn't look good. After that burst Conrad couldn't possibly have enough propellant left to steer the boat so it was going to travel pretty much in a straight line until it'd hit our bubble and then either ram the "Silver Key" - which wasn't great - or pass under the ship's keel and go back into the void. In any case it travelled too fast for us to attempt to fish it out of the void. I needed to do something before it was too late…
"Alaia, go to your cabin."
"I'm not a little girl!"
"No but I'm the captain, you're on my ship and it's an order!"
"It's my ship!"
"So fire me later." I shrugged. "To your cabin, now!"
"Everyone, clear the deck!" I cried, running to the helm. "Clear the deck! Get out of the way! Off the deck, now! Hold onto something! Give me the helm and hide somewhere!"
"Aye-aye captain!" Helmsman was much easier to persuade than Alaia.
I grabbed the wheel and rolled it sharply to the side, at the same time pressing the button locking both pairs of our engines together, and kicking the throttle lever into "full ahead". After that, barely managing to steady myself I reached for the second wheel and sent the ship down as fast as possible, almost sinking us into the void.
The voicetube from the engine room burst into shrieks of magespeak. Then, after they managed to get a hold of themselves after my reckless maneuver, it became more intelligible.
"Helm! What is the reason for such a massive load on the engines and steering systems?"
"Engine room we are in emergency!" I yelled back.
"My apologies, captain, I didn't know you took control. I would still insist on…"
There wasn't a lot of time left.
I stopped the engines pushing us down. Levelled them horizontally. And fire them up again, now propelling the ship forward.
The cybermage in the engine room was once more shrieking something I couldn't understand.
"Keep them working!" I shouted, trying to bring the ship to the course parallel with the lifeboat. "I need all the power you can squeeze out!"
The mage gave out a series of loud beeps and fell silent.
“What’s happening, Captain?” Drake ran all the way from his cabin to the helm. He was holding a bag of his medical instruments which made it undeniably clear that he had a good idea of what might’ve been happening. “Did you just decide to randomly annoy our engine mages?”
“Well, surgeon, you’ve asked for excitement, haven’t you?” I said, locking the vertical controls and focusing on keeping the ship’s course in the horizontal plane. “Is it enough for you or should we have someone to break their neck?"
"I'll take a few mild injuries instead, thank you captain." Drake said, watching the voidboat approach. "Patients with broken necks are extremely boring to treat to be honest."
06
The voidboat has caught up with us - I did all I possibly could in these few moments and now all I could bank on was Conrad’s knowledge and quick thinking. And a hope that all three of them were alright inside that pressurized hull.
Two things happened to the boat when it entered our ship’s normalcy bubble: it got pulled down, turning its straight trajectory into a curve and its hatch was blown open by someone - Conrad, presumably - activating the emergency exit procedures.
Even diving down the boat still had too much speed - our ship’s movement was barely enough to give Conrad and sailors with him a second or two more than they would have otherwise, before the boat would pass through the bubble threshold again and float off into the void.
Conrad jumped first. Too early, but they needed to - or those two behind them would not have any chance. Even before they landed on deck, Drake was already running to help.
Sailors who crewed the voidboat followed - the last one barely made it and ended up hanging by the edge of the ship before being pulled up by Drake and another sailor.
“Captain!” Conrad, who was surprisingly unscathed, approached me waving. “Thank you and let’s get out of here! Fast!”
“Engines are doing all they can.” As if to prove my words, the voicetube let out a torrent of cybermage screeches from the engine room. “I don’t think you want us to blow up?”
“Then we might have a problem… Look.”
I turned back to where they were pointing - and watched the mess of crystalline spikes and jagged edges come to life. Sparkling, shining, expanding and contracting, shooting parts of itself forward and pulling the rest - the structure was dragging itself through the void in our direction, and if I’m not mistaken it was gaining on us… Even without any visible engines it was moving faster than a void brigantine at full speed.
Still, that wasn’t the worst that caught my eye: the aft of the ship that was sticking out of the crystals suddenly shook and fell apart into many small crystalline parts, reabsorbing itself into the main crystal body.
“We need to get away from that, Captain.” Conrad said, still pointing at the crystalline mass.
“I’m not sure we can…” I looked at it, as it was rolling through the void. “Conrad, battle stations. All batteries, ready void charges. And get a pair of mages into the castle.”
“Aye-aye, sir!” And they ran off without questions.
Chapter III Screams in the Void
01
I was right - despite the best efforts of our four engines and all of the cybermagic screeching out of the engine room, "Silver Key'' was not fast enough to escape the rolling mass of crystals tailing us. If we'd managed to jump onto the filament and let the current carry us - maybe… But the closest filament was days away.
"Disgusting…" Alaia said, looking at the crystal. And I couldn't agree with her more: now when it got closer to us, we could see what prompted Conrad's hasty escape. The crystalline hedgehog was festooned with words - words that didn't need a translation: cries for help and screams of pain and agony. Some of the crystals still carried imprints of people who left those words - crystallized grotesque forms of suffering frozen in time. Deformed mouths, wide open eyes, crystal spikes protruding out of what once was the ribcage. Arms and legs nailed to iridescent needles, now moving once again in a mockery of a natural life.
"I think I told you to stay in your cabin." I glanced at a girl, who stood there with her gaze glued to the monstrosity racing towards our ship.
"And they say in the void nobody can hear you scream…" She said, not really answering me. "That's true, but we sure can see it."
"Ala?"
"Captain, can we destroy it?"
"I don't know." I said. "But it's our only chance, I think."
"I see…" She clenched her fist on her chest, like holding something in hand. "May the Lady of Tower be with us."
"I'll take any help from anyone I can…" I said, then opened the voicetube to the gun deck. "Conrad, are you ready?"
"Ready, sir!" They said back to me.
02
Normally, I’d be happy to delegate the steering of a ship to the helmsman and focus my attention on trying to outplay our enemy’s tactics. Well, normally I wouldn’t have to – my job would be just to plot the course, give it to the helm and make sure to check on them every once in a while.
What was happening right now wasn’t normal by any stretch – being chased through the void by a clump of apparently living crystals wasn’t something I’ve been used to.
What can you do?
It’s the Void. It’s where the unnormal things dwell.
And if you can’t avoid them, there’s only one thing left to do…
I signalled Ala to hold onto something and spun the ship’s wheels, sending us into rotation and upwards. I could hear the chant of cybermages on deck – looks like Conrad didn’t forget to send them there. It should make things a little safer for us.
The moment “Silver Key” turned, Conrad, – without any additional unnecessary orders, – gave the crystal a full broadside volley. “Thump! Thump! Thump!” – void charges left the launchers flying a bit away from the ship before igniting their rockets and streaking out of the normalcy bubble and through the Void towards the crystal.
A second passed. Then another one.
The ship was still rotating, getting ready to fire off launchers from its other side, and lifting up, above the crystalline thing still gaining on us. Before Conrad let out the second volley, first charges hit, exploding into fiery flowers on the crystal tree – and sending parts of it flying in all sides, exactly as I was expecting.
Cybermages’ screeching rose up in pitch when they noticed crystal fragments flying towards us at high speeds. The borders of our normalcy bubble began hardening in places, hoping to deflect any foreign objects trying to pass through.
Another row of void charges flew towards the crystal.
Crystalline fragments hit the bubble containing our ship. Most of them passed through, flying wide and through the normalcy field. Ones that were flying slow enough to fall on the ship's deck and those precise enough to fly themselves into the ship directly were stopped at the bubble's border by the cybermages' spell. I need to give cybermages a well-deserved praise - they perfectly predicted the path of each of the shards and concentrated on stopping only the few of them deemed dangerous to the ship.
The second volley of void charges hit the crystal, sending more of its fragments flying through the void. Despite the damage done by explosions, the crystalline mass didn't show any intention of stopping.
"Another volley, Conrad!" I shouted into the voicetube to the gun deck.
"Aye, Captain!" They answered.
"Aim for the center, let's try to break it up…"
"Why would you want to make more of… it?" Ala asked suddenly.
"I hope to break it into chunks small enough we could fend them off with our hardened bubble." I shook my head. "I don't see any other way out for us…"
03
It took two more volleys of voidcharges until the crystal gave in. As I expected tge crystalline mass broke and fell apart into much smaller fragments. What I didn't expect - it did so in an extremely explosive manner, sending most of the resulting shrapnel flying our way.
"Evasive maneuvers!" I yelled, spinning the ships wheels like my life - literally - depended on it. "Hold on to your butts everyone!"
Despite my best efforts at unsafe piloting, some of the crystal's fragments hit our normalcy bubble. The cybermages on the upper deck - holding to the deck with all of their eight limbs - were wailing their binary chants.
For a moment it looked like my plan succeded - the bubble hardened, keeping the crystals from reaching the ship.
Then one of the mages fell silent - I could see the faint stream of smoke rising from under its robes.
A large crystalline fragment forced its way through the normalcy bubble.
I spun the wheels again, desperately trying to evade the inevitable.
No luck.
The crystal hit the "Silver Key's" engines, piercing metal as if it was mere paper. Crystall spikes lodged themselves deep into the ship's hull.
Ship's engines fell silent.
Chapter IV The Way Home
01
I can't say we felt the crystals crash into the ship. It was less of a crash and more of a soft nudge - about as soft as the perfectly executed docking procedure.
But now we had a seemingly extremely dangerous crystalline fragment lodged deep into the lower aft part of the "Silver Key".
The voicetube erupted with shouting voices from several different decks of the ship at once, all of them relaying very important information and competing for my attention.
"Alaia are you okay?" I asked first, watching her looking around with an expression of utter disbelief on her face.
"Why did the ship stop, Captain?" She asked, looking extremely serious. "I don't remember ordering the cybermages to stop the engines. Or did you?"
"I didn't Alaia. I'm afraid we lost the main engines. The crystals hit us…"
"You've said the normalcy bubble will protect us."
"And it did… mostly." I wiped the sweat off my face with my hand. "But one of the mages… malfunctioned."
"It died, Captain." She said, still uncomfortably serious. "And now I'm not sure we won't follow it soon - without the lifeboat…"
"We'll see…" I turned back to the voicetube, which finally went silent. "One by one! Engines, damage report!"
"Main engines: destroyed." The voicetube relayed cybermage's words. "Maneuring engines: fourty percent power available. Fuel reserves at ten percent. Cybermages available: ninety percent."
"Gun deck, damage report!"
"Structural damage minimal, Captain," Conrad answered. "Several crewmen injured, but Drake is working on them already."
"Lower decks! Damage?"
"Extensive, Captain!" The voicetube said with the voice of an unknown crewman. "This shiny thing went through the hull as the knife through butter. No chance we can dislodge it… and I personally won't touch it with my hands even of you order me to do it sir."
"Don't even try, crewman Shrike!" Drake jumped into our conversation. "Captain, tell everyone to stay as far away from these crystals as possible! I'm a doctor, not a sculptor! I can't do anything if they turn into crystal statues!"
"Men, you've heard the surgeon," I said. "Don't touch the crystals and don't let crystals touch you!"
"We just need some time." I added. "Observe it and relay any changes in crystals to the bridge."
"Aye, Captain!" Several voices replied in unison.
02
"...So we're stuck." Conrad had finished their report with words both simple and heavy as a rock.
Our main engines were destroyed, our maneuring engines weren't powerful enough to drag the ship to the filament and we had a large lump of the strange crystalline matter stuck to the ship's aft.
"Okay, Conrad," I said, sitting down on my bed in my quarters. Alaia sat down next to me. "Now give me the good news."
"I'm sorry, Captain… miss Alaia…" My first mate looked at us confused and apologetic. "I'm afraid I don't have any good news at this time."
"But everyone… most of the crew are still alive, right?" Alaia asked. "And most of the ship is intact…"
"That's true, miss Alaia," Conrad nodded.
"Then this is the good news!"
"But we aren't sure for how long." Conrad shrugged. "If we won't be able to find any means of propulsion, we'll run out of supplies sooner or later…"
"Means of propulsion…" Alaia looked at ceiling. She looked uncharacteristically adult at this moment. "We can't propel ourselves through the Void…"
"Not without the engines, miss…"
"But the crystals could?"
"The crystallyne mass doesnt show any intent of moving anywhere, miss Alaia. It just stays in place, unchanging."
"What if we persuade it?" Girl jumped up from the bed and began pacing back and forth. "What if?"
"You can persuade only something you can talk to…" I told her.
"Did we try talking to it?"
"I don't think we did," I and Conrad replied simultaniously.
"Maybe it's time we try…" Alaia looked at us both with sudden fire in her eyes - as if she thought of a greatest prank in history. "But we need to talk to it in a language it understands."
"I don't think anyone of us speaks crystal…" I said.
"Crystal? What do you… Oh, Captain!" Alaia stomped her foot. "Either you don't understand or you're teasing me again!"
03
"For how long have you been a sailor, Jax?" Alaia asked the crewman she demanded to be called to my quarters.
"Since I was a kid, miss…" I think he blushed a little. "My dad was a sailor before settling down back in my world, and his dad was a sailor before him. So I never thought of picking another trade."
"Interesting!" Alaia let out a shower of smiles at poor Jax. "Oh and can you sing? You sailors have all manners of songs, do you? Sh… shanties they're called? Do you know any from your home world?"
"I mean… captain do we…?" He glanced at me as if to say "we all are going to die, is it the time for questions now?"
"Can you sing, sailor!?" Alaia insisted.
"Yes… miss."
"Then, sailor Jax," Ala sat on the floor in front of him, crossing her legs and propping her face up with her hands. "Sing!"
"Miss? Captain?" Jax looked like he was trying to wake up from a bad dream.
"Jax… do what she says." I had no idea what Alaia had in mind, but it was better to let her try it anyway.
"Well… if it's an order…" Jax closed his eyes and tried to calm down before clearing his throat and humming a little tune…
"I thought I heard the old man say:—
'Just one more pull, and then belay.'
Hooray my boys, we're homeward bound,
Hooray my boys, we're homeward bound…"
"Louder, sailor Jax! As loud as you can!" Alaia ordered, giving him a good round of applause. He repeated the song one more time, this time pushing his voice and our ears to their limit. And when he finished the line with "...homeward bound…" both me and him were almost swept off our feet by the ship… moving?
Alaia, still sitting on the floor, laughed and applauded.
Who or what were moving our ship?
"One more time sailor!" Alaia insisted. "I'm paying you double if we get to port!"
And again, once Jax finished the song, the ship jumped forward - not a long distance, but still some distance - in a sharp manner, as if it was kicked by an unseen foot, like a small stone on the road.
"Sailor Jax, you're genius!" Alaia proclaimed, getting up from the floor. "Captain, call a cybermage here, please…"
04
"The mages say it slowly turns the ship into a crystal." Alaia said, pacing back and forth in my cabin. She jumped every time the ship shuddered forward as it was with our newfound mode of propulsion.
"How long will it take?" I asked, leaning back onto the wall and turning my head to look at it, as if expecting it to turn crystalline at this very moment.
"Should be enough for us to get to the scavengers' island…"
"I'm sure you'd love to fly on a sparkly translucent ship." I let out a little smile.
"If it didn't want to turn all of us into crystals too… Yes!" She jumped onto my table and sat there, dangling her feet above the floor. "I would've named it 'Princess Sparkle'!"
"But it wants to eat us all too, so it's out of the question." She added, not without a disappointed sigh. "We should get to the scavengers and get this thing removed. And then make repairs."
"For which you'll have to pay, I'm afraid."
"Oh, I'm not!" She realised I was confused by her remark and corrected herself. "I'm not afraid! It was worth it! A fine and exciting adventure in the void!"
"Yay for the adventurous!" I was originally planning to raise the first above my head but after considering my levels of excitement settled on lifting it up from the bed a little.
"Call it what you will, captain!" Aly said, jumping down from the desk and making her way to the door. "Good night. I'll try to get some rest in all this singing. You should do the same."
"I'll try… Sleep well Alaia." The wailing of the cybermage who recorder the Jax's singing and now blasted it at the crystal to keep the ship moving wasn't the best accompanement for the good night's sleep but it was much better than the alternative.
"What do you think…" She said, opening the doors. "Was the crystal the reason there was nothing there? Did it crystallize all the worlds?"
"I'm sure it would've been bigger if it did…"
"Maybe it got so big, it split in parts? Like when we blew it up… and sent all other pieces flying." She looked at me very seriously. "What if those pieces fall on other worlds? What if we destroyed several whole worlds, captain?"
"I think the threshold guards or the Lady of Tower herself won't let that happen." I rubbed my brow. "And if those pieces happen to fall on a world without the Lady of the Tower's protection… we can't do anything about it."
"If you say so…"
"Look, Alaia. I think what you're saying is possible but what I think is more probable is that the crystal flew into the already existing void on its own. And then just sat there. Bored."
"If you say so." She repeated, nodding. "Good night."
05
When we finally saw the vague sihlouettes of the Scavengers' isles in the distance, I turned to Conrad and Alaia.
"Do you think they will let us dock? Or anywhere near the island at all? Seeing as we're dragging this spiky unknown thing with us…"
"It's not a 'spiky unknown thing'! It's our engine!" Alaia frowned. "They let Phoenixians dock - and seven out of ten times their engines catch fire on launch!"
"Hm…" Her reasoning was - shall we say - unorthodox but not without merit. If only I could get it through the border guards… "How about we signal distress 'unstable engines' and request additional assistance?"
"I'm sure we'd be able to hire a void hazard team and pay for their services." I paused to think for a moment. "And possibly even turn a profit after they extract all of the cryrals out of our ship."
"Sounds reasonable." Conrad nodded.
"Profit is good!" Alaia announced. "Right?"
"Right!" Me and Conrad answered simultaneously.
The monumental towering structures of the Scavengers' isles grew ever closer with each jump.
