Location Unknown, Location Unknown, Time Unknown
- - - - -
Strauss’s feed to his drone cut off instantly. One second, he could see the red-lit room he’d been investigating near the ship’s stern. The next, half his vision was static. “Command, contact with the drone has been lost. Mark time.”
“Time marked. 11:53 Local Victoria Time,” Ramirez said.
It took a couple of blinks for Strauss to reconfigure his face shield for regular vision. “Lambda-Four, we lost reconnaissance and overwatch.”
No one responded. He stared down the open hatch into the darkness below. SHOCKS had trained him for this; his team was split into three separate groups, leaderless, and confronting an unknown anomaly or group of anomalies. He loosened his rifle and got it ready, but didn’t raise it just yet. Protocols said to try alternative means of communication, then attempt to regroup with the rest of the team unless it put the mission in danger to do so.
“JAMES Unit, please respond. I’ve lost contact with Lambda-Four. Do you still have contact with L4-3, Claire Pendleton?” It wasn’t lost on Strauss that she was inside a ship she shared a name with.
The JAMES Unit didn’t respond. Whatever was going on inside the Pendleton, Strauss had lost contact with everyone outside of Command.
“Command, do you have contact with the rest of Lambda-Four?”
The response took a moment. “Negative. Expect electronic and magnetic systems to fail within the ship’s hull. We’re working with the JAMES Unit to gather information on similar anomalies. Stand by.”
He took a deep breath, trying not to feel too much relief. Then, he let his training take over. They were dealing with a Post-Life Entity, presumably one in the high-Xuduo-Danger class. It was capable of affecting electronics within its domain, which included the sub-surface levels of the Pendleton. The ship was also partially operational—or at least its pumps were. And no one could leave it—not if they wanted to go anywhere. The tide was coming in, covering the gaps in reality with murky water.
“Copy that. I’m going to begin visual reconnaissance on the Pendleton’s surface deck and outer hull, with an interest in demolition. Will report in every one to two minutes in case of communications loss, per protocols.”
“Understood. We’re recording from your helmet cam. Keep safe, and recover her,” Ramirez said.
“L4-5 out,” Strauss said. He cut off the communication and started tapping on the rusted deck. One thing struck him, though. Ramirez hadn’t said which ‘her’ needed recovery.
----------------------------------------
Location Unknown, Location Unknown, Time Unknown
- - - - -
The flashlights cut out. So does my helmet overlay. My augs flick off, and a wave of vertigo hits me. I get my helmet off just in time, puke into the corner, and watch as they flick back on in ‘safe mode.’ I try to flick between different vision modes, but nothing works. All I’ve got is standard, and I can’t even see my hand in front of my face.
The ship’s voice screams for help again. I shiver. My heart won’t stop pounding.
Someone’s hand closes on my shoulder. “L4-3, that you?”
“Yes. Jesus! I almost shot you!” I shout. It’s Daley. L4-2. He flicks a lighter. A thin, wavering flame lights up the room, and I flinch; we’re surrounded by barrels full of oil, and if they go up, the burning man’s heat will feel like an early spring sunshine. “Keep that thing away from the tanks!”
“Way ahead of you on that,” Daley says. He reaches up and fishes an ancient-looking lantern from the ceiling. I shake my head. There’s no way that’ll work. But it does. The orange light casts long shadows between the pipes all around us. We’re like flies surrounded by a hundred spiders’ webs.
Munroe joins us. He’s got his rifle at his shoulder. “Loaded for Post-Life.”
“Same here,” Daley says. “Not that it’ll do much.”
“Okay. Okay.” I breathe. It’s the first time I’ve really breathed since the lights went out. The Revolver’s shells glow in front of me; I can’t see anything by their light, but they’re still reassuring. “Okay,” I say for a third time, getting my bearings, “Let’s try calling out. Command, Strauss, and, uh, the JAMES Unit.”
The lines are quiet. Not staticky, like there’s something disrupting communications. Just silent. No response—just like Rodriguez earlier. Daley and Munroe shake their heads as well. We’re clustered around the foggy, scratched lantern in the middle of the ship’s oil storage. “Back to the entrance, then?” I ask.
“Negative,” Munroe says. “This is a standard ghost ship Post Life Entity. That hatch is sealed. We could try cutting our way out. That almost always works. But Strauss has our egress/ingress gear, and he’s on the outside. We should keep moving, though.”
He’s right. More importantly, he’s telling the truth. The best way out is to keep moving. “Okay. I’ve got point. Keep that light up so we can see, and watch our backs.” I start moving through the mazelike hull. In theory, there’s a way out—if this isn’t the obvious trap I think it is, at least.
Something moves up ahead, and I pull the trigger. A merge opens, and the reality skipper hits the hull, sparking. I wince as the shot’s impact echoes around us. Then I breathe and keep moving. Whatever it was, it’s already gone.
“Reconnaissance by fire,” Daley says.
I snort. “Har har.”
So, I’ve got three puzzles. The first and most pressing is to find Rodriguez. The ship took her. I don’t think it killed her, though. That means it needs her alive for…something. I want to figure out what that something is, but getting the lieutenant back is more important than that. Second is finding a way out for myself—and for Daley and Munroe, as well. And third…third is finding some record of what happened after the Pendleton sank.
James could have told me everything up to the point the rescuers gave up on recovering more people. He’d accessed that information already, and that’d give me a place to start. But as it stands, I’m on my own for that mission. Daley and Munroe probably only care about finding their team lead—or maybe only about getting out alive—so this mystery’s all mine.
That doesn’t mean I can’t use them, though. Or that they can’t help me.
“What do you know about ghost ships?”
Daley looks at the ceiling. “It’s almost always either the captain or the crew. Sometimes, a distraught wife, like L4-5 said earlier. If we knew who’d gotten off the Pendleton when she sank, we could tell which. There’s usually someone on board who’s not ready to go, but usually, they stay at their station and keep doing their job.”
“So we’re looking for the different stations on board?” I ask. My Revolver’s up again as I keep moving. I don’t have any clues about Rodriguez, and we can’t escape, so investigating the ship is my only real move. I need to fill in some variables, even if they’re not the most important ones.
“Maybe. I’d check the crew quarters first,” Munroe says. “Someone probably died there, possibly without any idea what even happened.”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
There’s no way to know where the crew’s quarters are, though. I wander through the maze of pipes. They don’t make any sense: pipes in the hallways, pipes across doors, even pipes seeming to run straight through the oil tanks that line the whole deck. It’s almost like they’ve grown here somehow. The gurgling oil passing through the ship keeps slurping by, and I shiver.
We push through the maze. It feels like it’s taking hours, but my augs show it as only fifteen minutes. That’s enough time to walk the length of the ship and back twice if I was on the top deck, but we’re still making good progress. The lantern keeps flickering, and I clear another corner, then stop.
There’s a second door in the way.
This one’s just as barnacle-covered and rusted over as the first one. I stop next to it and try to spin it. It doesn’t move.
“It’s dogged. The crew sealed it to stop the water from coming in.” Munroe steps up to the door and pulls a lever near the floor. He strains, and it pops. Then he spins the wheel.
Sand rushes into the room.
----------------------------------------
It covers Munroe in a wave; as the sand hits his skin and uniform, it flashes blue. In less than a second, he’s buried up to his waist in bright blue sand.
“Oh, fuck!” Daley yells. He grabs the other trooper’s hand and starts pulling. I watch, standing at the edge of the sand pile as more pours into the room, slowing but continuing to bury Munroe. Daley heaves, and something pops. Munroe screams. It’s high-pitched, a shriek that pierces my brain, and I grab his other hand and pull, too.
He erupts out as the sand vanishes around his leg, leaving a void in the ship’s hull that’s just a bit bigger than his thigh.
Munroe’s leg vanishes, too.
Blood spurts like a geyser from the clean cut just above his knee. His femur’s sliced perfectly evenly with his muscle and skin; even the pants leg’s gone right there. He keeps screaming as we drag him away from the hole. Sand pours into it, mixing with the blood into a sticky, goopy slime before it vanishes. My Revolver’s out. There’s nothing to shoot, though. Suddenly, the slow-motion race we’d been running along the beach feels a lot more horrifying.
Daley’s already got his med kit out. I fall to my knees next to the trooper. They hit the steel deck hard, and I suck in a pained breath. “Holy shit. The sand’s in the ship, too?”
“Pressure.” Daley snaps. He’s got bandages and a tourniquet, which he loops around Munroe’s leg. The big guy won’t stop screaming, even as the rubber device clenches shut around the wreckage of his leg.
I jam bandages into Munroe’s stump. His screams double, then stop. Blood covers my fingers, but this is what I’m supposed to be doing. I push even harder as the cotton cloth goes red.
[Skill Learned: First Aid 2]
Something clicks, and Daley lets go of the tourniquet. It’s locked around Munroe’s leg. The man’s face is pale, and his breathing’s shallow. Daley presses a finger to his neck. “Pulse is weak. We need to get him out of here.”
“We can’t.”
Daley looks like he wants to punch me, but it’s the truth—he said so himself. We can’t go back up. I stand my ground, but the Revolver’s on the floor nearby, not in my hand. It’s not a deterrent. If he decides to attack me, I’ve got nothing.
Almost nothing.
I don’t move, though, and I don’t watch him. My hands are covered in his teammate’s blood, stuck in the guy’s leg, and I can’t move. “According to you guys, this is a ghost ship. It’s not just going to let us out. We have to make it let us go. How do you guys usually do that?”
Daley stabs Munroe in the chest with a needle as long as my hand. He starts screaming again, eyes wild. His hands convulse.
I glare at Daley across the other trooper’s body. “What was that for?”
“Munroe! Munroe, focus! We’ve got you!” Daley yells. He slaps Munroe across the face, then pins the other man’s arms to his side. I keep the pressure up on his leg as it convulses. “We’ve got morphine—the anomalous shit. But we can’t give it to you until you tell us what to do.”
“Fuck, man,” Munroe chokes out through gritted teeth. He shakes again, then screams. It’s not as loud as before, though. “You gotta kill it.”
“How do we kill it?” I ask.
“I don’t know. They’re all different.” He’s running on pure adrenaline. Daley kicks a can toward me. It’s a wound clotter—I pull the soaked bandages free and dump the whole can into the man’s leg in one long spray that covers the floor in pinkish foam.
“So we have to figure it out?” I ask.
“Yeah, man,” Munroe says. “They’re all different.”
He’s repeating himself. Daley hooks up another needle to a bag, jams it into the wounded man’s arm, and squeezes the bag. A moment passes. Munroe convulses again. Then he goes quiet.
The whole ship goes quiet except for the oil pulsing through the pipes all around us.
“That was a fucking waste of adrenaline,” Daley says. He double-checks the tourniquet and leans back on the ship’s hull. “Okay. L4-4 recording. We’re inside a ghost ship anomaly. L4-2 ran into a separate anomaly. His leg’s gone. We’re working on possible evacuation plans, but the Post-Life Entity hasn’t revealed itself yet. I’m taking command of what’s left of Lambda-Four. Current force: L4-1, separated; L4-2, injured and out of the fight; L4-3, VIP status, mission-critical that she survives; L4-4, in command; L4-5, separated on the ship’s surface.”
He keeps talking as he packs up his med kid—or what’s left of it. Most of it’s on Munroe’s leg or smeared across the Pendleton’s decking. I interrupt. “So far, all we’ve run into is traps. I can move cautiously, and I’ve got some Skills from truth-finding to keep myself safe. I’ll work on an escape route. You stick with Munroe.”
Daley pauses. Then he shakes his head. “Negative, L4-3. The risk of losing you is too high.”
“None of us are getting out of this if we don’t take a risk or two.” I stand up, wiping Munroe’s blood onto my hoodie before opening a water bottle to rinse my hands as best I can. When I grab the Revolver, my grip’s still tacky. I try my best to ignore it. I’ve got no connection to this guy other than that we’re on the same team—for now. But still…the blood on my hands is a lot.
“I’m heading for the ship’s stern. It’s across the crevice, but I’ll stay safe. You stick around here,” I say.
Before Daley can protest, I’m gone—right through the wall with Slither and Smoke Form.
[Stability 5/10]
----------------------------------------
My plan’s not exactly what I told Daley.
It’s a lot more high-risk than that. I think the stern’s where I need to be if I want to get off this ship, and it’s definitely where Rodriguez is. But that gap’s not going to be crossable—not in a conventional way. Slither might do it, and the reality-skipper mini Mergewalk might, but I’m not convinced. Something about it feels…wrong. Like it’s waiting for me to try it.
It’s more likely that there are only two ways across.
The first is through the pipes that crisscross it, and I can’t fit. And the second is to trigger the Post-Life Entity—the ghost. I’m not thrilled about finding a ghost at all. Nothing in my toolkit’s built to fight one.
But I’m not looking to fight it, either.
As I wait for the inevitable, I keep my eyes open. Most of the ship’s just the ever-present pipes and tanks. It’s almost oppressive how industrial it is; it makes the basic living building’s basement look downright welcoming. There’s rust and sticky puddles of oil everywhere.
I also try to swallow down the mounting dread. If I don’t find the ghost soon, I’ll stumble across another sand-filled chamber again. Or a pipe will burst and flood the deck with crude. Or something else. Anything could go wrong. A lot probably will.
My equation’s almost solved—at least for the first variable. If I’m right, the Post-Life Entity will come after me.
If I’m right, it’ll take me to the same place it took Rodriguez.
And if I’m wrong? If I’m wrong, we’re all already dead anyway.
I step into a room with a single card table and a pair of folding chairs at its center. The cards have been rotted for a long time, but there’s a sheet of paper that, inexplicably, isn’t. I read it through my aug.
19 February, 1952
Not sure where the rest of the crew is. We were supposed to make port in Boston today. When I woke up, there was no land to be seen. The Pendleton’s last-known bearings were south of Cape Cod, so that can’t be right.
20 February, 1952
Still trying to figure out where we are. The sun never set last night, but the ship’s clock says a day’s passed. My eyes don’t match the time I think it should be. I’m not alone. Two of the engine men showed up from down below. They said they’d been working nonstop and no one had relieved them. There’s no one available to relieve them. Merlin’s pissed about it, but what can I do?
22 February, 1952
Merlin says the three of us can bring the Pendleton in. That’s good, because I finally thought to check the radio, and it’s dead. We’re picking a heading and sailing in it. There’s plenty of fuel and food. We’ll find something before we run out.
There are a few more entries, all from February ninety-two years ago. The paper’s a journal. I try to pick it up, but my hand goes right through it, so I fiddle with my ‘safe mode’ aug until it goes to camera mode, take a quick picture, and move on.
It’s my first clue, and the only thing it’s told me is that a few members of the crew ‘survived’ as ghosts. They were trying to find a port.
Something tells me they failed.
I keep moving through the pipe maze. They’re everywhere. There’s even more of them the further aft I go. My Revolver’s back in my pocket since I’m trying to attract the ghost, not fight it. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I’m in danger here, and I’m not trying to protect myself.
Ahead, there’s a stairway leading down into the hull. I eye it dubiously, then start climbing down into the pitch-black darkness below. Even my aug can’t penetrate it, and the ladder creaks under me as I work my way down.
My foot misses a rung. I fall and hit the deck back-first. Air shoves its way out of my lungs. There’s a square above me that’s not quite as dark as the rest; as I suck in a breath of air and cough, it goes pitch black, and the door slams shut.
I can’t help but smile through the pain. My aug’s already recording. A ghostly figure in one of those white undershirts rough guys wear in the old shows steps through the wall. He reaches down and grabs my arm. It goes cold and numb as he drags me to my feet and drags me, arm-first, through the wall and into the ship’s stern.