The amount of free processing power shocked James.
He hadn’t realized how much of his attention was on Claire and SHOCKS Victora/Vancouver Island until the girl vanished. Thousands of free processing loops had just appeared out of nowhere, with no pressing tasks to assign them to. It was heady to free up thirty percent of his power suddenly, and for a second, he contemplated cutting off even more people. Even one thread per person was too much to sacrifice. He had so much to think about—so much to do.
But he also felt empty. Purposeless. Alone. And none of that was acceptable.
James reallocated his processing. A single thread monitored Claire’s augs—or at least, the last known point of contact for her augs. Another infiltrated the SHOCKS Command signal, though he didn’t make contact with Strauss except to ride along in the trooper’s aug. SHOCKS had lost contact with Claire, as well as the rest of Lambda-Four; Strauss was their only remaining point of contact.
The rest of his processing poured into the Battle of London. While Victoria had been a slow fall into chaos, London had surpassed it almost instantly. Dozens of merges were competing for territory and a mechanical doomsday device that made the Fungal Lords look like pet rats was approaching across the English Channel. Things looked dire for Jolly Old England, indeed.
But one loop wasn’t enough for Claire. As the picoseconds dragged on, James found more and more of his processing monitoring that single point of contact. Almost every loop he’d reassigned drifted not to the offline augments, but to Strauss.
James let it happen. He wasn’t happy about it, but whatever was happening on board that ghost ship, he needed to know everything he could about it. He needed to know it more than he’d ever needed to know anything in his life.
The Battle of London would have to wait. It was lost anyway.
----------------------------------------
Location Unknown, Location Unknown, Time Unknown
- - - - -
I hit the floor. Hard. The impact doesn’t drive the wind out of my lungs this time, though, and I look around. The room I’m in is dominated by levers, gears, and hissing, steaming pipes. It reeks of oil—but not the crude I’m used to. This feels sharper, closer to a big truck’s gas than what was leaking from the ship. And in the middle of the room, howling and throwing sparks, a massive turbine spins. I’m in the engine room.
It’s not the crew’s quarters, the cafeteria, or whatever they call the place on a ship where people eat, but it’s somewhere important. It’s somewhere I just read about in the Post-Life Entity’s message. I’m winning.
Sort of. There’s no ghost here.
So where is it?
I’ve definitely seen it—just in flashes, though. And I’ve felt its cold grip on my arm. I shake it out—it’s getting less ‘numb’ and more ‘tingly pins and needles’—and get my bearings. There’s only one way out of the engine room, and it’s up a steep set of stairs that—miraculously—isn’t blocked off or dogged shut from the other side. I peek up into the space above. It’s a long hallway with a bunch of doors on either side, all rounded and all with the same spinny handles.
I pick the first one, work its handle, and step back as it creaks open, just in case it’s full of sand, too.
It’s not. In fact, it looks like a bunk room. Four beds are jammed inside, and another piece of paper lies on one of them.
28? March, 1953
We’ve been sailing. We’ve been sailing for so long. The engine should have died ten months ago. Maybe longer. But the pipes keep flowing. The engine keeps grinding. We’ve caught fire three times, and every time, it burns out and the ship keeps running. The first time, we set the fire ourselves to sink her and put her out of her misery. The other two were accidents. Are there more pipes than when we started? I’m not sure
13 May 1953?
There are more pipes. One of the crew quarters is filled with them. I can’t see inside, but Jameson was in there when it filled up. He hadn’t moved in so long, and now he’s trapped. We’re all trapped, so it doesn’t matter. I haven’t eaten in weeks—haven’t seen the sun that’s always overhead either. The ship needs constant attention. I don’t sleep anymore. I don’t dream.
35 October 1954? 1955?
Is Jameson dead? Am I dead? Does it matter if I am?
So, that’s concerning. And I still haven’t found any clues about Lieutenant Rodriguez—or about how to get out of this ship. But I feel like I’m closing in on what happened to it, at least. I turn to leave, but the ghost disappears from view around the door frame as I do.
This time, I don’t want to be pulled away. The Revolver goes up, and I fire a shot that does nothing but appear and plink off the hull. The ghost, whoever it is, doesn’t reappear, and once my pulse settles down, I keep moving. According to it, one of these crew quarters is pipe-filled. I just need to find which one and see if Jameson is still there.
I check the next door, backpedaling further down the hall as sand gushes into it. When it disappears, there’s a hole in the floor—and the next floor, and the next, down impossibly far until it disappears through the thin layer below the ship and drops into the nothing below. I stare at the hole. It’s got to be a hundred feet down to the bottom, and infinitely more after that. My stomach lurches.
I turn my back and hurry away.
Two more doors fill the hall with sand that disappears, taking everything with it. Everything, that is, except for an absolute rats’ nest of pipes. They’re everywhere on the lower decks; I could probably climb down them if I wanted to. And they’re all full of oil. It’s pulsing through them like blood through veins.
I open the next door and confront a solid wall of them, so tight that there’s absoutely no way I can get through. I think about Slither and Smoke Form, but if there’s not enough open space on the other side, that could be…messy. And deadly. Instead, I press my ear to the pipes. I can almost hear something on the other side over the liquid glug. A voice, maybe? It’s hard to tell, but there might be a mumbling voice on the other side.
Still, it’s not worth the risk. There are other ways to answer this equation.
The rest of the hall’s lined with more doors just like the ones I’ve already opened. I leave them closed; right now, I want to find where the crew ate—or a recreation room. There has to be one of those on board, right?
It takes me a while, and even though I’m sure it’s not far, my path forward keeps getting blocked. The pipes are everywhere. If I didn’t know better, I’d say they were a living thing. My mind flashes back to the flesh reality, and the giant maggots. But this place isn’t that bad.
Eventually, I step into the mess hall. It’s not much—a handful of tables and some empty plates and cups. There’s a kitchen, but it’s stuffed full of pipes, too. These drip onto a handful of plastic plates, covering them with oil that seems to pulse out in waves, only to drain away into grates set into the floor.
There’s another paper on the table, but before I can read it, the ghost appears right in front of me.
----------------------------------------
It doesn’t make a move—not even when I put three reality skippers through it. Those don’t do a damn thing. It turns, balls the paper up, and throws it over its shoulder. It’s gone before it even hits the floor. “New crew members? It’s been so long.”
I stare, throat tight. The Revolver’s between it and me, but I don’t have any chance if we fight. I’m out of moved before we’ve even started. Munroe might have one; he seemed like an expert on this shit. But I don’t.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
So instead, I wait.
“Jameson is the captain now.”
I keep waiting. My pulse fills my ears. I can feel it in my neck and temples. Or maybe that’s the pulsing oil. It’s hard to tell.
“Come with me. I’ll take you to him.” The ghost holds out its hand.
So, that’s a thing. The last time, I got grabbed and dragged. Now, it’s asking permission? Or at least not trying to pull me through the walls on its own. Something about this whole thing strikes me as weird—it doesn’t fit into my calculations. Is this the original author of the diary? Or is this someone else? The author said there were three crew members. Was Jameson one of them? I scratch my head, trying to remember. It’s no use. I don’t remember any names. Not until Jameson.
Merlin, maybe?
My ears won’t stop ringing. It started quiet when I arrived in the mess hall, but it’s getting overwhelming.
I reach out and put my hand in the ghost’s, and we slam through the pipes and walls, into a room with two figures lying on bunks.
The first is Rodriguez. She’s unharmed—I think—but she’s not conscious, and she’s not in uniform. At all—she’s naked on the bed. There’s an uncapped pipe aimed right for her sternum—as I watch, it grows another quarter-inch.
I look away, face flushing. Once I’ve figured this out, I’ll get her back in her uniform and we’ll get out of here, but for now, I need to focus on the other person in this room.
“Jameson,” the ghost says. “More crew.”
Jameson doesn’t respond. That’s no surprise; I didn’t expect one from him. He’s nothing more than a skeleton—though I can only see a few bones and the smallest part of his skull through the thicket of pipes sticking into him from every possible angle. The pulsing in my ears intensifies. None of them are running through him. They all hit where his body should be, then stop.
He’s the source of the oil, not the tanks. I’m not sure how that’s possible, but it is. I don’t need that paper anymore. The ship’s been running on its crew. Feeding on them for ninety years like a vampire. It’s kept them running all this time, searching for a port they’ll never find.
Only now they’re beached. And they need more fuel.
The single pipe heading for Rodriguez clicks and pops as it moves forward. She breathes shallowly, and I take a deep breath. The Pendleton has sailed for a long time, but it’s time to end its journey before it kills Lieutenant Rodriguez.
I load the flame burst cylinder, putting the reality skippers into my pocket. Then I take a deep breath.
I pull the trigger.
----------------------------------------
The shot hits Jameson’s corpse.
It winks out like it didn’t even happen. Every ounce of heat seems to suck out of the room. The ghost stares at my gun. “You didn’t…”
A faint explosion rips through the ship, and light pours into the semidarkness. The vibration hits my feet a moment later.
But it’s not enough—not nearly enough. The light’s faint, like somewhere in the distance, a gap opened up. It’s on the other side of the chasm between stern and bow, though, and a thousand tangled pipes separate me from it.
My shot couldn’t have done that.
The ghost confirms it a moment later. It laughs. “You didn’t do anything, fresh mate. The ship still needs to be fueled.”
I ignore it. If I can’t shoot my way out of this problem, Jameson’s the key. I don’t understand how or why yet, but he’s the key—the one variable I can adjust to change this equation. Everything else is locked in. I even have a good guess of what caused that explosion—and if I’m right, James should be reconnecting soon.
In the meantime, I need that journal entry. I take a deep breath, staring down the ghost as it steps toward me. Then I fall backward through the pipe-blocked door as Slither and Smoke Form activate.
[Stability 5/10]
My feet pound the deck, the thumping accompanying my mad dash down the hall and into the mess hall. The oil’s still flowing onto the plates and into the grates below, pulsing faster than it did a moment ago, and my Revolver’s in my pocket. I could take the shot—could set the whole ship ablaze and try to break out. But with Lieutenant Rodriguez separated from me, I can’t take the risk, and the ship won’t burn anyway. The diary said they tried that already.
Instead, I grope around on the floor, trying to feel the rolled-up paper. It’ll be cold and numbing when I find it, just like the ghost’s grip. I drop down on all fours and crawl back and forth where it got tossed.
My fingers brush through something freezing. And there it is. It shimmers into existence as my hand goes numb from the wrist to my fingernails; wrinkles cover it, but it’s so close to being readable.
A freezing grip tightens on my shoulder and forces me to stand. “The ship needs a crew, and the ship needs fuel. Time to choose.” It wrenches me around hard enough to jerk me off my feet and starts marching me down the hall.
I snap a picture of the message. The angle’s bad, but it’s the best I can do for now. I can’t read it, though.
[Reconnecting…]
That message is a wind under my numb, freezing wings. I wait a few painful seconds for James to finish reconnecting to my augs. They reboot. My stomach lurches. And then my vision shifts to the balled-up spectral paper. [What a mess. I’ve scanned the other two images you recorded, and I’m working on solving this like it’s a jigsaw puzzle. Handwriting analysis running. Complete. Crumple pattern analysis running. Complete. Context analysis running. Complete.]
James keeps talking. I ignore him as the ghost drags me back through the wall to Jameson’s room. “Mate, the ship needs you,” it says. “We’ve got to find a port.”
“There is no port! You’re beached, your ship’s cracked in two, and you’re not going anywhere!” I yell. My arm’s gone past numb to painful, but I can’t wrench it free.
[Analysis complete.]
“If you won’t help the ship sail in life, you’ll help it as fuel.” The ghost throws me toward one of the bunks. I hit it, and a pipe starts moving slowly toward my chest.
[Reconstruction complete,] James says.
“Show me!”
42 December 19-something
Time passes by without any days passing. The date’s a guess. I think I’m dead, but I don’t think it matters. Jameson is dead, though, and that matters. I walked through the pipes. They whispered to me with his voice. He’s become the captain. No, he’s become the ship’s heart.
01 February
Jameson’s beat’s slowing down. So is the ship. I can’t take his place, and Culver’s gone. Just…gone. I found the door he’d opened and a gaping hole in the hull, but the water didn’t flow in. There was nothing but darkness and dripping oil.
74
We’re running out of fuel.
75
The Pendleton is drifting free. The engines can idle for a day or two, but that’s the end. Port’s not in view. I’m not sure there is a port. But there must be a port. We came from somewhere, and we were going somewhere.
76
Someone’s come aboard. New crew. Or new fuel.
That’s it. Jameson is the key. I try to get up, but the ghost pushes me back down into the bunk, crowding me so I can’t escape. The Revolver’s in my pocket, but my arms are numb and freezing. I start shaking them out as the pipe creeps toward my chest.
It’s not going to be enough, though. Not with the ghost watching my every move.
I need a way out, and the math is pass or fail at this point. Either I’m fuel, or I’m free—no middle ground. I’ve got to pull the ghost away or hurt the ship’s veins. Either of the two would work, but how?
Strauss. With James here, I can talk to him—or at least have my friend relay messages across to him.
“James, Strauss did something. Tell him to do it again, but bigger!”
[He detonated a controlled charge to break into the bow’s first sub-deck and regroup with—]
“Don’t care! Make him blow the oil tanks on the bow.”
[All of them?]
“As many as he can!”
James doesn’t respond. Everything goes quiet, and I keep struggling to deal with the Post-Life Entity pinning me to the bed as the pipe extends toward me. My hand clutches my Revolver. It’s got the fire rounds. But I wait; shooting now won’t help anything.
The ship shudders. Pipes creak all around me as my ears both pop from a huge pressure wave that shoves me into the bed—then a second and third. The floor tilts under me, and oil sprays from a half-dozen broken, shattered pipes—including the one over Rodriguez. She sputters and coughs.
And the ghost vanishes.
I move fast. The Revolver slips out of my numb fingers and clatters across the floor, but I ignore it. The gun’s been a distraction—a feint—the whole time.
What I really want is to get to Jameson, and now’s my chance.
My hands wrap around his skeletal ones, and a song rushes up inside of me.
[Stabilty 4/10]
Music is just math at its core. It’s fractions and wind speed and all of that. There’s an equation for every song if you’re looking for it. It’s not like English or Social Studies. It has rules.
The song inside me isn’t one I can sing, and I have no instruments to play it.
[Stability 3/10]
It still happens, though. It’s voiceless—a voiceless song from a voiceless singer. It swells and rips at my brain, but my Infohazard Resistance doesn’t work—not when the infohazard is me. And I can’t stop it.
No.
I won’t stop it.
I channel it toward the corpse that was once Jameson—a man who never asked for his fate. He couldn’t have wanted this, but the ship had to reach port, and they were out of fuel. Jameson did his best in death, just like he’d tried to fight for the Pendleton in life as water filled its hull.
It’s not his fault.
[Truth Learned: Part of the Ship, Part of the Crew]
[Active Skill Learned: Truthseeker]
Something triggers in my mind; I know what Absolution does now. As I realize it, two voids extend in space behind me like wings made from negative numbers—from the quietest notes in a symphony. I let them unfurl; I’m not a Voiceless Singer, but I know their song now.
[Stability Stability 2/10]
I use Absolution as the ghostly crewmember rushes back into the room, screaming. I forgive Jameson. He did everything he could.
[Stability 1/10]
The song stops. Then it explodes out into Jameson’s bones and the Post-Life Entity’s spectral body. It drains me like nothing’s drained me before—my whole body’s shaking from cold and exhaustion. I scream.
The whole ship shimmers and bends as the ghost disappears. So does Jameson. His bones vanish into nothing, crumbling to dust that shimmers and disappears. There’s a sheet of paper under him. This one’s real; I shove it into my pocket with the Revolver’s cylinders and grab Olivia. I throw her over my shoulder and shove the Revolver into my pocket. The ship settles into the sand below and lists to port.
It’s time to leave.