Mark crashed on one of the bottom beds of their cabin, saying, “Holy shit everyone knows me here.”
Sally hummed as she put her bags by her own bunk bed, which was on the other side of their small cabin, while her swords went under the bed itself, in a compartment for such things. “Were any of them threatening?”
“Nah,” Mark said, “Not really. Mostly it was the… awe. That’s the weird part.”
Isoko said, “I think only a few of them looked at you with goldleaf in their eyes.”
Sally asked, “How much are you carrying around right now?”
“A lot, and not enough at all,” Mark said, but the real answer was 2,100 grams. Mark wasn’t going to say numbers out loud, though. Not ever again. That’s how people would track his wealth and notice that he was making adamantium himself. Right now they probably all thought that Addavein had given him some more, or something like that… Hmm. Mark breathed in, sighed out, and got off of the bed. “But it’s too much! It’s time to gift some to the settlement.”
Sally hummed, but she held her objections.
Mark had been planning on handing some adamantium to the settlement project for a few days now, since he could just make more. “We need more kaiju blades. Everyone does.”
Sally shrugged.
Isoko said, “Very well. I believe I will be taking off this armor first, though.”
Isoko unclipped herself from her breastplate, and Mark decided it was time for him to do the same with his overarmor. Soon, Mark was in nothing but his underarmor, which was not enough at all, so he put on a pair of jeans and a shirt. The underarmor still showed under his collar and all the way down his arms, to his black gloves, but at least he wasn’t out here in skin tight stuff.
Sally left her leathers on, saying, “You two should invest in some comfortable armor.”
“It’s on the list of desires,” Isoko said, packing her things away for the trip.
“Webweave is comfortable,” Mark said. “It’s just indecent.”
Sally smiled, saying, “And you look good in it! Nothing wrong with that.”
Isoko said, “You do look good in it.”
Mark rolled his eyes and got to the door, where he paused, and then he made a muscle with one arm, smirking as he turned. “I know.”
Sally snorted.
Isoko chuckled.
Mark opened the door to the sounds of a ship full of people. A crowd filled the hallways, people moving into the ship with their bags, or moving out of their rooms and into the rest of the ship, trying to get through the crowd. The rooms had slight sound dampening on them, but with the seal broken a thousand conversations were suddenly there.
Mark entered the flow and led the way down the path while Sally closed and locked their cabin behind them, flashing her wrist and her ID across the handle. The door locked with a flicker of blue light.
The door and the entire ship was tier 4 or 5 stuff, but it was all metal, so it was extra hard. There were temporary enhancements that they could turn on in the case of a kaiju, but mostly, the place was just simply strong. But still, the hardness of the material and the security measures were not much use against people with big Powers, so the ‘security measures’ were more like ‘security suggestions’, as Eliot had called them.
If someone went into their room looking for Mark’s adamantium, then they’d find nothing.
But, as Mark, Isoko, and Sally, squeezed down the hallway, Mark wondered if they might be the only ones with real Powers in this particular hallway. People who were combat capable were told to board in their armor, and remain decently combat ready the entire trip. Or at least noticeably combat capable. This was to better identify who would take charge in the case of an emergency.
Sally had her leathers. Isoko wore her chainmail, but not her breastplate. Mark had his underarmor on, which was clearly visible beyond the sleeves of his shirt. But no one else in the throng of people looked ready for war, at all. They were all civilians.
Mark made his way out into a much wider hallway and stepped to the side to get some breathing room. The sound was more manageable here, so he asked, “Are we the only combatants in this corridor?” Mark glanced up at the signage in the main passageway. They were on Floor 3, Hallway F-Right. And then he saw a guy wearing a helmet and pauldrons and a breastplate. That guy disappeared with others down a different hallway. “Ah. Well. He’s in a different hallway, I guess. I think we might be the only ones with Powers in this hall?”
Isoko stood with Mark looking excited, her vector almost thrumming with anticipation, and maybe even some joy. “I think it’s finally hitting me. We’re really doing this.”
Mark smiled wide. Isoko was too excited to care about Mark’s question, and yeah, he was excited, too.
Sally said, “We’re in the middle of the ship so that you two can Union, right? Because I can’t see an actual exit anywhere to be able to fight any boarding monsters, or whatever. Just paths to exits.” Sally pointed at a stairwell with an exit sign overhead. “That way to the nearest exit?”
Isoko said, “And also the restaurants and gathering lounges! I’ve never actually been on one of these before!” And then she crossed the stream of people, saying, “Pardon me, excuse me—” She looked behind her and called to Mark and Sally, “Come on!”
Mark smiled as he followed, saying, “I think it’s finally hitting me, too.”
He wasn’t sure if Isoko even heard him.
Sally patted Mark on the shoulder and then held on so she could follow easier, saying, “I almost got stuck back there.”
Mark smiled and put a hand on Sally’s hand, on his shoulder, saying, “Don’t worry! I won’t leave you behind!” Isoko was already up the staircase, sounding like she was giggling. That was fine. Mark added, “I can always find you, and Isoko can, too.”
As they walked up the staircase, which was thankfully less full, Sally let go and said, “We should set up a signal, or something, because I am certainly going to lose you.”
“Oh! That’s a good idea! Uh…” Mark was at a loss, in the moment. “I’m not sure how to do that, actually. You could think some truly weird thoughts as some sort of signal, I guess? Then you’d get noticed by other people, though?”
“I’ll think of something,” Sally said, nodding.
And then they were on a different main thoroughfare. The hallways were extra-wide with a great big dining room over there with a stage for shows, or something like that, and a grand staircase that led upwards over there, and a restaurant with a glowing sign that read ‘The Eatery’. Mark smelled something good in the air, something meaty and bready, and he felt the vectors of the people around him as they smelled and either dismissed the scent of food, or got hungry, and their attention went toward The Eatery. Sally was one of those who narrowed in on the restaurant, her vector slamming in that direction. There were other Giant Strength people in the cafeteria, at the buffet, and Sally was about to ignore her hunger, to walk on, but Mark didn’t want that. Isoko noticed Sally’s hunger and Mark’s own desires, both without even turning to see them, so she turned around.
“I can eat,” Mark said.
Isoko nodded. “Let’s eat something.”
Sally rapidly led the way into The Eatery—
Mark stepped into the place and experienced a shock that was not his own. The other people in the Eatery were experiencing that shock first. And then Mark was concerned, as he heard other peoples’ words of concern. Of worry.
“What do you mean, this is the menu?” asked a father, with his son and daughter, to one of the cooks behind the counter.
The food on the buffet was lumpy stuff in pasta. Meat in pasta, right? Chicken, right?
Mark knew it wasn’t chicken, though. He was already hearing other people talk about the food, now that he was here.
The cook, as though he was trained for this, said, “This is what we have on offer, sir. Expect more of the same in the settlement until a proper farm can be set up.”
Elsewhere, a woman looked at the piles of pasta and at the lumps under white sauce, and said, “That’s not chicken, is it.”
“No, I don’t think it is,” said another woman.
There was no meat.
Mark got into the line, which had a label for ‘free’, and he realized what he was looking at.
Unbidden memories of Mark’s childhood surfaced.
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One year, years ago, a tanker had crashed into the fish tanks, out in the bay, and monsters got in to eat all of the fish. If it was just the tanks being broken, then they could have survived just fine. Dad and the guys would have gone out and fished with lines for food. But everyone was strapped for food. The tanker had crashed because of a hurricane.
They had needed to go onto the Basic Food program for half a year until the city could afford a metalsmith to come out and fix the cages, but the metalsmiths were in high demand.
So Mark, at 6 years old, had gone with Mom to the Basic Food house a few times, since they were the only people with food. Mom had gotten her allotment alongside everyone else. It was still good food. But it was pasta, beans, rice, tofu, and a lot of different vegetables. It was the normal food for the normal people, who weren’t able to buy better food. It was Basic Income stuff. It was the stuff that you ate in the high rises, where ten thousand families lived in the cramped quarters of the parts of cities that no one wanted to talk about.
No meat at all.
Here, at the food line, and in the settlement, there was no meat at all.
There was a big thing of rice right there. A massive container of pasta in a cheese sauce over there, which was probably not a real cheese sauce. Tofu was over there, fried in spices and stuff like that. And sure, it smelled fantastic. But there was no meat.
Maybe there were some eggs in the pasta and stuff like that, and maybe there was cheese in the sauces, and milk in some of the foods, but there was no meat.
Sally happily dug in, eager to get food. She was born and raised on this stuff, like so many other kids. Like Mark almost was, if his family hadn't been responsible for the fish tanks in the bay. Orange City was pretty well off compared to some places out there, but some places, like parts of Tokyo and a lot of India and some of the cities up the coast of the East Coast Union, and a good quarter of Memphi, were all high rises with people living in houses that were four rooms and nothing else.
In those places, and in the settlement, the Farmers of the God Verdago grew lots and lots of food, so no one went hungry, but meat was not on the menu. Not often, anyway.
Mark said softly, “We’re going to be meatless for the next year.”
Sally snorted a laugh, as she plopped a cheese sauce onto some red rice. “Oh please. Be more dramatic.”
Isoko asked, “They have plans for a fishery, I think?” She pointed toward a big sign on the wall beside the entrance/exit to the food hall. “So fish, at least?”
There were giant posters on the wall showing how the entire initial settlement was going to shake out. Mark had seen plans before now, and he was sure everyone had, but now there were giant plans, expanded out to four meters large, that mapped the entire 10-by-10 kilometer initial settlement site and 50 kilometers in every direction beyond that. Most of the map was the Shine to the west of the city, a lake on the south side of town, walls around the settlement, and planned farms taking up a full half of the city space. A fishery was a full third of the lake.
Mark would look at it in detail later.
… Mark helped himself to some tofu pasta, which was fine, he supposed. “We could get monster meat too, right? Game?”
Sally said, “Fuck yeah!” She added, “You gotta make sure what you’re eating is good, and there are tests and scanners that can scan for that stuff, so we need to get one...”
They sat down to eat, with Sally talking about food on Daihoon and catching and eating monsters. Soon, they had eaten and then they moved on.
“No meat,” Mark said, softly.
Sally said, “We’ll get meat.”
Isoko chuckled. “What’s wrong with tofu!”
“Everything,” Mark said.
They laughed.
Mark said, “I tell you I am in pain, and you laugh.”
“Yup!” Sally said.
“Yes,” Isoko said.
Mark led the way upstairs, past game rooms and recreational areas, past hallways that were labeled ‘crew only’, and up past an open hatch, onto a deck where snow flurries drifted across the grey-painted steel. Giant turrets dominated the top of the Grey Whale, like turtle shells with heads poking out, ready to fire upon enemies. The ordnance launchers were each the size of a house, but they were just deterrents. The real firepower would come from hatches like Mark, Isoko, and Sally had just done, to do battle with any kaiju that showed.
There was nothing up out here on top deck aside from the turrets, though, and the people, standing around, looking past railings that were little more than grated half-walls. Most of the people were bundled up against the cold and the snow, but there were a lot of warriors like Mark, Isoko, and Sally, with webweave on full display, or wearing full armor. They were getting the lay of the land, too. Strangely enough, Mark saw kids on the upper deck with their parents, the kids wearing big puffy and colorful jackets, while the parents, or maybe older siblings, or whatever, wore armor and webweave.
So some hunters were moving here with their families, huh?
Mark mumbled, “I wonder if the kids broke Protocol already. Just being here is Breaking the Curtain.”
Isoko noticed, too. She said, “The kids have brown hair but the parents have yellow and pink hair, so… the kids might be Daihoonian? At least biologically?” She asked, “Does being biologically from Daihoon make the Curtain stronger? Or did they just… disallow the kid the choice of choosing the Tutorial, or not?”
That’s what Mark was wondering, too, but maybe not in so many words.
“Some people are fast and loose with Protocol,” Sally said, “I’m glad I was raised in Gladegrove, but I am never going back to a place like that, ever again.”
Suddenly, Mark had a weird thought. If he ever had kids, he would want to raise them on Daihoon. Which was strange. But… Yeah. If he raised them on Daihoon, then they could grow up outside of most Curtain Protocols, so that they could make their own choices about their own paths in magic—
“So where are we walking, anyway?” Sally asked.
“To find the way to the front of the ship, and see the sights along the way,” Mark said, looking around. “There should be a way to the front of the ship from here…” Mark looked around—
“There,” Isoko said, pointing.
She was pointing at a bulge in the deck toward the front, in the center. Some crew stood outside of the bulge, talking with civilians, or whoever. The crew of the Grey Whale wore white and blue, but the civilians all wore whatever they wanted. The army guys wore green. Looking down, Mark saw that arrows painted on the upper deck led to the hatch that Mark had just come out of, and those same arrows also led up ahead, to that central vent, and to every other vent in the upper deck. Upon the deck itself were big numbers, made that large so that they would be visible from hundreds of meters away, for fliers, painted on the deck.
Mark looked down and read off, “We’re at R-3.” He looked ahead. “And that one up there is 1-C. First Central. Eliot might be there, now.”
Mark led the way, walking close to the railing, to look over the edge.
The settlement program was a massive undertaking, with several giant warehouses filled with stuff… but maybe only the last two were filled with stuff. The first warehouse, on the left, looked mostly empty, actually.
Isoko and Sally both looked over the edge with Mark, and Isoko said, “Maybe another few hours till we’re fully loaded.”
“We’re pulling out before nightfall?” Sally asked.
“I think so,” Mark said.
Isoko hummed and nodded.
Mark made it to the central hatch, where a wide staircase descended into the ship and a duo of guards/soldiers/crewmen stood in the way of that staircase. One of them was talking with some people who looked important, but those people were trying to get down into the center of the ship, to see some person in the main crew, and they were politely, firmly, told—
“It is not possible for anyone to visit the captain at this time. Please book an appointment through the ship’s systems,” said the guard/soldier, who had repeated the same thing word for word, twice now.
The guy trying to get inside just frowned, and said, “This is very unprofessional.”
And then the two of them had a staring contest.
Mark looked to the other guard, who looked to Mark, and Mark said, “Mark Careed, here to see Aurora Valen, if she’s in, or I can just see her some other time.”
The angry civilian and his miffed family and the begrudgingly solid crewman all focused on Mark, along with the crewman he was talking to. They had recognized his name.
The crewman in front of Mark stood a bit taller, saying, “I would like to invite you in to see the captain, but Captain Gearhead is busy organizing the intake. General Valen is doing the same. They will be available for speaking about an hour after we get underway. Have you patched into Grey Whale’s systems? Or do you need a tablet? As you and your friends are warriors, then you will be expected to attend the mandatory warrior meeting with General Valen in the main auditorium at 10 PM. It’s three decks below this central space right here.”
Mark nodded… and then he looked around, his eyes landing on the various kids here and there. He asked the sailor, “We’re not under Curtain Protocol, are we?”
“We’re not under Curtain Protocol at all, though we assume that some people are keeping their kids inside and under silences, though those people are not your concern. Any children from Earth will likely Awaken when we begin the crossing to Daihoon, or sooner, but some kids from Daihoon might not.”
Mark nodded, then said, “Thank you, sir! Then we’ll be… meeting with Aurora later, then. Thanks!” Mark stepped away.
Sally and Isoko followed.
Isoko asked, “We’re not stopping here, right?”
“Correct,” Mark said, lifting an arm that wasn’t directly attached to his physical body, to float Quark’s display to his hand. The silver screen flickered as Mark asked, “Can you connect to the ship, Quark?”
The phone flickered, and then Quark chimed. “I have connected to Grey Whale’s systems. There are welcome messages. How can I help you?”
Mark said, “The messages can wait. I’d like a semi-private meeting with Aurora Valen, using whatever systems they have for that. Send Eliot a message that we’re here, too.”
Quark flickered silver. “Done. There is a response. General Aurora Valen is in cargo hold 2. She will be there for the next hour. She instructs you to come there. Eliot is also there.”
Mark blinked. He smiled a little. “… Then that’s what we’re doing.”
Sally turned and asked the guard behind them, who had been watching, “How do you get down there?”
The crewmen stood straight and pointed to the side. “Follow the arrow to L-2 or R-2. Cargo 2 is the bottom floor. Cargo 1 is at the bottom of 1, etcetera.”
Mark thanked the guy, and then started walking. Isoko and Sally were close behind.