[https://i.imgur.com/Uf7xL7d.png]

Crew was having better morale. But still not as good as usual. This was vexing! However the trajectory of Morale for Crew was improving. Which was more relaxing! In addition the new passengers and the old were having very good morale interactions! And now it was confusing silly one thing after another story time with crew and passengers again.

They liked to nestle in close to Tunie’s interior drive chamber and the churning whirling heart of her interior feather gyre. She could relate to wanting to be close to it! Her drive chamber made her all warm and fuzzy and tingly inside and let her push extra hard in her linear acceleration!

Speaking of she was finally underway!

It had been so nice to drink and drink and drink the grist until her feathers were so solid and whirring with potencies that she was sure she could have weathered a decent paced ramming! Tunie was so full she had started itching to just go-go-go! But alas the port was super duper crowded!

So she was only lightly push-puff-pushing! Flutter flutter fluttering only her outer-feathers to drift and shift around traffic! So much traffic here at the port. It was all because they were at a bend point in most of the courses through this part of the reef. It made it so a lot of ships were already slowing down almost to stop when they were close to the port anway. So of course it was worth it to make a stop and trade for some fuel or trade mass to haul elsewhere.

Which was convenient of the port to have done for Tunie and the Ships. But it also meant it was so crowded and full of TRAFFIC.

So Tunie was still puff puff shuffling with her feathers flutter fluttering. Hardly pushing at all, feeling all the more twitchy and wanting to leap and lunge and shove herself to the limits of speed for how buzzy her feathers had grown from such a deep feeding.

But Tunie was stuck nudging and fluttering in traffic so slow-Slow-SLOW. At least everyship else was mostly peeling off in their own courses instead of converging all down to one point, so there was a lot less need to stationkeep and check courses and correct for idiots or slow stupid clumsy not-ships.

So she had attention to spare on her Crew and Passengers sharing some more of their ‘story’ time. This was a really stretched out one this time. Strung along super slow and stretchy.

It made it take so long to define the course of one of the passengers. Also she was not sure but Tunie figured from the crude details given that the stupid fat fish was doing a waggle dance to start with.

That made sense to Tunie, Waggle-dances are a common body signal. For a ship waggles were signal to draw attention. In the case of stupid fat flashy fish who did not even have proper feathers to push themselves along it also had the added bonus of throwing short light all over the reef out from the circle of the fish’s feeding grounds.

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

That it called in some cleaners for the passenger’s people was also very sensible to Tunie. It was the most obvious and universal kind of signal, draw attention to yourself from afar very brightly and obviously and it will draw all kinds to you. If you have some kind of icky sticky things that are hard to get off SOMETHING is going to like to eat those eventually and will tell all their friends.

Tunie of course was a Civilized Ship and she had her wonderful bestest Crew to give her brushies. But for big dumb fat stupid fish beasts and wild Ships without the benefit of crew waggle dances it made sense very useful ways to get cleaned and preened.

After that sensible bit things followed for a bit longer making sense in the course. The big stupid fatty fish got properly cleaned and stopped waggling. Then the passengers spent a lot of time working to quicken new families and rebuild themselves to proper and useful for feeding port status. Or at least useful for uplifting to useful for feeding.

But apparently the stupid fat fish ran into something and then the passengers people got sick and died. After that it all started going wrong and disturbing. Parts of the earlier course started lining up in ways that were awful and dangerous. Smelly and foul accidents were aligning in ways that made her quiver in worry. Ugly and nasty coincidences that were too lucky.

Hints of something hidden moving.

Shadows of the horrible void predators which Ships whispered soft of and danced slowly about in hidden corners of the reef. Things which were best avoided for ships that ignored these warnings were lost and never heard from again.

Shadows in the distance, mysteries in the close. Hidden secret terrible things which were not to be touched by Ships.

It made her nervous and worried and yearning for it all to turn out to be just another of the passenger’s bad jokes. The really awful ones that were so unfunny but good intentioned. But the punchline did not materialize. The course was left dangling with those awful awful coincidences that teased and itched and terrified.

It put Tunie in a jittery mood all around, which made it hard to concentrate on traffic, the story or anything at all.

Which is why she almost missed the signal in a long light and resonance channel.

At first Tunie was even more suspicious that maybe this was some final conspiring of the terrible hidden things of the passenger's long distant course. But the harder she looked and considered the less it seemed so. It was just an honest cry for help, Corroborated by many other ships heading in opposite vectors.

No suspicious tight beams aimed solely at Tunie.

No strange shadows or occlusions in the distance.

Just a simple cry for aide.

She needed to inform her Crew of this.