Heavy Engine Room - M.S.V., C.L. - ‘Breathless Chaplain’ -
“And we exhale…” says the man plainly, sitting there with crossed legs. His calm voice somehow remains audible over the grinding roar of the heavy machinery behind him. Pistons whir together with a spinning cylinder; a sweltering heat fills the room, rising up to thick metal shafts at the top of the cramped space. Metal piping and cables run across the walls in all directions, like the arteries of a fighting body, pulsating with red heat that threatens to burn anyone coming close to them.
His chest deflates as he exhales slowly. His hands, resting on his lap, fall flat together with the slacking of his shoulders.
Refractive light bounces around the metal walls, dancing around over the surface of the polished steel all around him. Suspended from many pipes around the room are small crystals and stones that are tied around strings and cords. They dangle and sway with the movements of the ship, catching the light of the machine room and casting it back out in all directions, giving the impression that the superheated steel coffin of a space is enchanted with fairy glow. Bundles of herbs and spices are suspended above several of the hot pipes, which have dried them out and instilled the tight space with a contrasting scent of floral fragrance that intermingles with oil and sweltering heat. A wind chime dangles above one of the engine’s exhausts, the scalding air rising up and blowing past the metal chimes, causing them to climper and jingle.
“Hold that emptiness in your core. Don’t breathe just yet,” he instructs in a slow, calm, and methodical voice. “One. Two. Three. Four, and inhale again.” Slowly, the man opens his eyes, looking across from him. “Do you feel peace growing in your heart?”
Sitting across from him on a bolted down stool is a dwarven woman. Her face is covered in machine grease and smears of oil, and her arms are covered in small burns from the work around the engine. Looking his way with a raised eyebrow, her elbow stuck on her thigh, and her head resting on her palm, she continues to chew the brackish blob she has in her mouth. “I ain’t doin’ all that,” replies the woman in a simple droll. She turns her head, not lifting it, and spits into a pot down on the ground before looking back his way. “Crossed there down on the floor like some rattle-snake. Only piece down there is the one you’re sittin’ on, Ears.” She spits into the pot again, the metal chiming out in a sound that sounds almost exactly like the dangling wind-chimes above their heads.
— They aren’t regulation. But the engine room is so hot, wet, and constricting that nobody cares enough to come down here and check.
The Breathless Chaplain displaces just above ten-thousand tons in movement, and is propelled by a collage of four three-drum oil-fired water-tuber boilers. These turn a series of massive parson-geared steam turbines that, in turn, feed down into the vessel’s propeller shafts. With this, the ship can move at over thirty-two knots. Together with the internal fuel storage of over two-thousand tons, they can go well over eight-thousand nautical miles on a single load. Well enough for a while, but occasionally, the support ship trailing behind them needs to return through the portal to refuel and then return to re-tank them. With this set-up, continuous naval operations in the spirit-world can be assured.
The engine room is, in a way, massive. It’s a significantly sized space; however, most of it is consumed with extremely dangerous, exposed machinery. Pistons are whirring up and down their central columns, and turbines the size of a drake are spinning just along the engines with enough speed to rip a man in half if so much as his eyelashes twitch the wrong way. The space is a screaming, horrific metal deathtrap.
— The crystals really do help bring it together, though.
The elven man lifts a hand to his chest, dropping it in demonstration as he inhales. “And we breathe out -”
“- I told you, son. I ain’t doin’ that elf nonsense on my break,” remarks the woman, rolling her eyes. “You cooked in the head or something?” she asks, sweat pouring down her face as she looks at him. He’s oddly dry, not having a drop on his body anywhere, despite it being hot enough in here to cook on the walls. “Why don’t you sweat none, Calgrave?”
Calgrave, the elf, looks at her. “I am not under duress,” he replies calmly, as if that would explain his apparent disinterest in the sweltering air surrounding them.
She sighs, looking at him with a deep, annoyed look as she lifts her head. The woman shakes out her palm, droplets flying off of it. “You’re gonna be in a second if you don’t stop trying to indoctrinate me into your fairy-loving-tree-kissing-weirdo-crap,” she warns. “Maybe if you ate a steak once in a while and stopped being such a sap, you wouldn’t have been banished down here and away from the normal people, Ears.”
Calgrave extends his arms out to the sides, just barely avoiding touching any of the scorching metal as he stretches very slowly in odd manners. “Perhaps you would be less aggressive if you worked to calm your spirit, Funzel.” He stretches out his fingers, rolling them, before turning his body the other way. “Besides, I harvested an elk four months ago. It was a proud hunt, and his body became nourishment for the clan of our brotherhood.”
“Why you gotta speak words like that?” she asks, shaking her head. The woman, her legs dangling off the sides of the stool, jumps down and grabs a wet rag from the side. She wrings it out and then wraps it around her head, reaching over to grab a wrench that was leaning against the wall. Water pours out of her glove as she grabs the tool. “Like some old forest preacher,” asks the dwarf, the engine whirring next to them.
Calgrave doesn’t reply, simply stretching out further.
Above their heads, a lamp lights up. Both of them look, listening as a crackling comes over the intercom. “Raise speed. Two knots,” comes a simple command from a man’s voice, carried over the electrical machinery their way.
Funzel sighs again, looking over at Calgrave, and then lets out a fuss, jumping back in surprise. The man is already standing right next to her. She didn’t even notice him getting up. “Gods’ sake, you creep! Don’t startle me. Come on!” she instructs, brandishing the wrench at him as the two of them get to work feeding the engine more fuel. She moves to a pipe, loosening a valve along a notched system somewhat, as Calgrave heads to a console and grabs a lever. His long fingers press down on a mechanical stop on the lever’s grip, constricting it together, as he raises it up a smidgen further. A rattling thud comes from around them as the pipes slosh, fresh fuel pressing through the metal as the flow increases. The vents around them open just a smidgen further letting out more residual heat into the space.
A loud thudding comes from around the walls.
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Mess Hall - M.S.V., C.L. - ‘Breathless Chaplain’ -
There’s a subtle lurch all around them, followed by a long croaking and groaning of metal. Quietly, a dull humming of fans blowing through the ventilation shafts fills the otherwise fairly peaceful room. There is a constant static pressure of ambient noise in the air, from distant machinery, that comes together in a strangely calming and passifying whir. Steam and smells rise through the air conditioning system, rising out into the open air outside. Only the long, loud squeaking of an opening door on the side of the large hall interrupts the confusingly heavy ambiance.
People are talking to each other, a few dozen of them only, as it’s currently an unusual hour for the canteen to be full. The primary shifts haven’t changed out yet, leaving only those who are in-motion in between the vessel’s assigned duty groups to find their way into the mess hall right now.
A soft metal clanging strikes out as a steel ladle hits a meal tray, generously pouring an off-beige gruel onto it.
“Mash again?” sighs the sailor, looking at his breakfast and then up at the orcish man behind the counter in a stained apron. The galley chef lifts the ladle, droplets falling off of it, onto the metal counters as he points at the sign on the wall. It’s the week’s meal plan, with each day being written out together with the food served for the day’s three meals.
However, a defining feature of the menu is that a lot of it is just the same ‘chef’s special’ for breakfast, lunch, and, very often, dinner as well.
“What even is this stuff?” groans the sailor, finding a towering shadow leaning down over him from the other side of the counter a second later. He looks up at the green-skinned orcish man with a short, ungroomed beard hanging over him.
“Good for you,” is all the chef replies with in a curt, growl of a response. “Next!” he calls, shoving the man on and grabbing his ladle again as the next sailor lines up to receive her ration.
Now, this wasn’t exactly how provisions were planned out for the voyage. Before the assault went underway, ample stockpiles of MREs from both factories as well as local provisions were gathered in ample supply — more than enough for everyone to eat square and well.
The chef wipes his sweaty forehead on his sleeve, ladling another scoop of goo onto the next tray. The elven woman sighs, not bothering to argue, as she just slides along down the line.
However, there was an issue with the vessel’s refrigeration system — namely, nobody can get into it. It sounds almost mundanely absurd, but, for whatever reason, the primary door to the ship’s main refrigeration hall has malfunctioned, leaving them no option but to improvise food out of the things that don’t need to be stored in the cold. Grains and tubers, dried herbs and seasonings, and so on. Given the number of mouths that need to be fed, there just isn’t time to make anything more delightful than a lovingly gray slop.
— It is very nutritious, if nothing else.
The galley chef looks up at the broken fan next to him. “Well?” he asks in an impatient, loud growl. “How’s it look? Are you done yet?” calls the orc.
No response.
He lifts the ladel, banging it against the metal ceiling loudly, splattering gruel around him. The assistant cook ducks out of the way. “HEY!” barks the man loudly at once, several people sitting at the mess hall tables jumping in surprise as his heavy voice breaks the almost meditative atmosphere of the humming machinery.
“WHAT?!” replies a shrill voice a second later from above. A moment later, a small body presses itself out of the ventilation shaft, crawling between the blades of the fan that has stopped moving. “What the hell do you want?!” shrieks a sweaty, oil and grease-covered fairy. Her red hair is slicked back behind her ears. “I’ll fucking kill you! Shut up! Let me work!” she threatens immediately, looking down at the orc standing below her. Sweat runs down her face in a full stream. All of the heat and steam from the kitchen are rising up into the ventilation shaft she’s working in, making it a literal sauna — except for the overpowering smell of boiled dirt and grease.
“I said, ‘are you done yet’?” he asks impatiently, hitting the vent next to her. She ducks away, returning a rude gesture down at him.
The fairy glares at him. “How the fuck am I supposed to be done with you hammering around here like the brute you are every five minutes?! Huh?!” she yells, clambering halfway down and out of the vent. “If your goblin-brained useless ass hadn’t broken the damn door, we wouldn’t be in this mess!”
— She ducks out of the way as the ladle hits the roof next to her again, and she dodges, flying down, and kicks his face with her boot, ducking out of the way just in time as he swipes over her head.
“Excuse me…” calls a voice from the side, a soldier holding out his tray toward them as the chef and the maintenance crew-member get into a fight in the kitchen. “…Hello?” asks the tired soldier, not getting a response.
— Metal trays fly through the kitchen as a blast of magic flies past the orc and into one of the ovens, rupturing it apart.
It doesn’t take a minute longer, then a team of soldiers run in from the ship’s internal security team, dragging the two apart from each other and out onto the deck, where they can get some fresh air and a reprimand from the nearest senior officer.
Watching them get dragged away, a dark-elf assistant cook picks up the ladle, shaking it off as, behind her, a few other members of the kitchen staff work to put out a grease fire.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“What would you like today?” she asks in an eerily chipper voice, smiling tight like a serpent’s pursed mouth and nodding her head sideways to the menu — that doesn’t really offer any choices in the matter.
“…The… chef’s special, please,” asks the soldier, holding out his tray and receiving a hearty mound of slop. The assistant chef opens her eyes, only barely wide enough of a slit to let the venom seethe through her gaze. “Thank you!” calls the soldier, quickly running off and away to a nearby table.
“Next!” calls the dark-elf, the line moving along in an orderly fashion as smoke rises up through the vents.
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Radar, Sonar, and Sensory Control Station - M.S.V., C.L. - ‘Breathless Chaplain’ -
“Sir, there it is again,” remarks the sensory operations crewman, leaning forward over his console and staring at the rounded glass surface. The man watches his station, looking around at a few other devices around him that are outputting a long, trailing scan over a roll of paper that is sliding down the wall into a collection bin. He rips the sheet off, handing it back behind himself to the junior officer, who is approaching.
“Same as always?” asks the officer, taking the chart and then looking at the console together with him.
“Yes, sir,” replies the operator. “The system’s showing it’s below us, constant roughly six hundred fathoms like always.”
“Confirming,” calls a third voice from the side of the room. “Object Alpha is in synchronous motion together with us.”
“We raised the anchor, right?” asks the officer, confused. Something has been below them ever since they arrived here in the spirit world, which would be concerning under normal circumstances. However, the scans have shown this object, or whatever it is, being directly below them ever since they arrived from the first second onward. Nobody can tell if it isn’t just some kink in the sensitive machinery. There are all sorts of energetics, vibrations, and harmonics moving through the spirit world that definitely make magic react oddly at times. Who knows what effect it can have on this strange machinery?
Hell. He doesn’t even know how it works. He just knows how other people have told him how it works, but the junior officer isn’t even sure if they know that either. Surely, they were just told how it works too.
“Anchor is raised, sir,” remarks the third operator, looking at his sensors and setting down a telephone receiver next to his station. “Either something is stuck to us, or we just have a ghost in the machine,” he explains, leaning back for a second. He shrugs. “Given that the object maintains its position below us perfectly, I’m inclined to believe it isn’t anything organic,” he explains. “A monster or an animal would be moving around more erratically.”
That sounds reassuringly confident.
The junior officer nods as he looks around himself at the metal coffin of a room he’s in, surrounded on all sides by glass and machinery. Just over a year ago, he was sitting at home by the forest, hunting elk and fishing in the pond, together with his wife. This all still feels surreal. How can life possibly change so much in such a short time? How can anyone be expected to keep up with it all? It all feels like a dream to him more often than not, but he never seems to wake up.
The young man crumples the chart together, throwing it into the bin, and he picks up a phone, pressing a single button. It’s a direct line to the bridge.
“Sensory control,” says the junior officer, talking into the phone. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s still on sonar,” he affirms, answering the question from the other end as he glances over to the sonar stat. “You guys too? Yeah? Understood, will do.” He hooks the receiver back in. The others look at him, and he shrugs. “Bridge says to just keep an eye on it.”
The men confirm and return to their duties, interrupted only by a dull thud coming from the ventilation every now and then. But it stops after a moment.
“Do you believe in ghosts, sir?” asks the sonar operator, nervously looking up at the shafts above them.
“Get back to work, soldier,” says the junior officer, grabbing the man’s bolted-down rotating chair and turning it back toward the console, together with the man sitting in it.
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Pilot - M.S.V., C.L. - ‘Breathless Chaplain’ -
Pilot makes his way down the corridor of the vessel, rubbing his face for a moment as he thinks. Caretaker is back in the cabin and resting. She’s with child, and that, combined with her work, makes her exhausted more often than not. He wanted to leave her behind at home; a ship at war in a foreign ocean is no place for a pregnant woman — let alone a perceived deity of the world whom the entire remnant of their civilization worships. But she, short of him hand-cuffing her to the world tree, wouldn’t listen to him about the matter.
Stopping for a second, the man turns his head, looking at the ventilation shaft next to him.
He argued that she needed to stay back to take care of the world tree, but she argued that the forest is being maintained by people now. An entire team of foresters does nothing all day every day except safekeep and tend to the delicate heartlands around the world tree. And then have industrial cranes and tractors to do the work she had to do with magic. The result is the same, barring an invasion, the world tree will be fine enough while she’s away for now.
— He’s not sure if he believes that or if she does. But this is where they’re at right now.
They’re making strong headway into enemy territory. They’ve met significant resistance, but it seems that their surprise attack has worked well enough to let them break through, although at a significantly higher casualty rate than was expected for this point of the operation. It’s put a damper in their plans, as several operations need to be sidelined until indirect fire resources are available for them. Obelisks — the summoning points that seem to be the needles that press into the mortal world, allowing monster invasions to pass through — have been marked now all over the map.
On the land, out at distant sea. It seems that in every direction, there is at least one of the markers to find. As they press their way to what appears to be Tango’s stronghold in the center of the spirit world, it’s imperative that they neutralize these targets too. There haven’t been reports of any invasions against the world tree since this assault operation began, but its only a matter of time before Tango begins to push back against them. With so many of their resources here, their back line is a critical weakness of his assault strategy. If Tango can use the obelisks to attack the world tree, effectively burrowing past his army, it will be a major issue.
Of course, he’s taken precautions against exactly this happening, but they need to reduce the possibility of it as much as possible. Airborne Five took out the first obelisk, and a fresh indirect rocket barrage is being prepared for a second one that has been spotted in the mountains, but they need to get rid of all of them as soon as possible.
This blindingly fast surprise assault of theirs only works out if the enemy isn’t allowed to recover their footing. If they delay long enough to allow Tango to recover, then the entire operation is at risk.
They only have this one push; the pressure cannot be stopped.
Pilot keeps walking, strategically eyeing the wall at his side as he makes his way down the corridor and then rounds a bend, where he knows there’s an open shaft from a maintenance team doing work on the ventilation.
He waits a second and then, with a jolt, dives into the hole and snags something. A shrill scream comes from the inside of the vents, his gray pants and boots kicking as he fights his way back out, fighting against his target.
Pilot pulls back out of the shaft, yanking, with both arms, his stalker out and into freedom.
Her legs dangle in the air, scuffed with scratches, metal grease and fresh burns; her uniform legs and sleeves have both been rolled up short and high. Her remorseless eyes stare straight into his, unafraid, as they sit adorned over a chemically scarred and burned face.
“Luisa,” says Pilot dryly, looking at the girl. She’s grown a lot, having turned into a strangely lanky thing that doesn’t quite know what to do with her long, stick-like arms and legs yet. She fights around, trying to get out of his grip like a slender bug trapped in a spider’s web. Luisa squirms out of his grip, trying to clamber over his shoulder and get away, but Pilot just grabs her ankle before she can vault over his side and holds her up in the air, dangling her upside down and staring at her calmly as she flails. Luisa has arrived at that awkward teenage age where her childish locomotion and growing body simply don’t align anymore.
— She hits her elbow on the wall and then hisses, wincing as she holds it, stopping all of her fighting. She hit her funny bone. He can see it by the pang that travels across her face, which has become very expressive compared to the cold statue of a thing he had found back then out by the lake when they first met.
He went out of his way to make sure she didn’t come with them out here. Caretaker insisted on it — almost violently. The woman has grown a great deal of affection for Luisa, essentially adopting her as her own daughter at this point, and she’s become very mother-bear in her mannerisms when it comes to the girl. Pilot is a little more laid back, but the two of them had many arguments about ‘child endangerment’ and such other nonsensical topics. Luisa lives with them in the little home below the world tree; she eats with them. She’s family. Before the assault, the girl followed him everywhere, all day, every day. She was stuck to him like gum in his standard issue, military-approved hair cut. Pilot feels no differently about the matter of her not supposed to being here but is perhaps less militant about her safety, feeling confident enough that she can handle herself. Luisa’s one of the best shots he knows, and her magical alchemical training makes her an expert in chemical warfare. She’s proven that she can survive in the war that never ends.
— But she’s still a gangly, awkward stick-creature of a girl.
“You know you’re not supposed to be here,” says Pilot calmly, lowering her down. Luisa presses her palm down to the ground and then drops down as he lets go, landing on her feet and then standing up in front of him. “We didn’t take children with us on purpose.”
“And I’m glad you didn’t,” remarks Luisa, dusting herself off and then looking up at him. “They’re all annoying and gross,” she says, looking away to the side.
“Luisa,” starts Pilot, his tone making it clear that there is trouble in the air. “You’re supposed to be at the academy. I left you with your aunties,” he says. Staub, Vilenna, and Schtill — all three of whom are back at home — were tasked by him personally to keep an eye on Luisa.
It seems that this hasn’t worked out. But he’s not that surprised. After all, he trained Luisa himself. She was always a bit of a fox with her wiles, but now she’s ruthless in her cleverness too.
Luisa lifts her palms slightly, shrugging and taking a step back, and then looks up at him as Pilot rests a hand on her shoulder — one, as a sign of consoling comfort, but two, so that she can’t scurry away back into the vents. “I told you, I don’t want to go to some stupid academy. I want to be out here with you!” she argues, grabbing his wrist and lifting his hand off of her shoulder.
“You’re a liability, Luisa,” says Pilot calmly. “How am I supposed to work if I have to worry about three of you now?” he asks.
“Huh?” she asks, looking at him. “How are we supposed to work if we’re worried about you not coming back from some stupid flight?” she asks, expertly turning his weapon back against him and driving it straight into his heart. She looks at him with large eyes and then leans in, hugging him to hide her face in his jacket. “I got scared you guys wouldn’t come back!” she cries into his shirt. “I didn’t want to lose my family twice,” she says quietly into the fabric.
Pilot sighs, his shoulders falling slack after an awkward second of standing there. He’s still not used to this sort of personal connection. Lifting his arms, he holds Luisa and pats her on the back as she cries — very unusual, as far as he can tell. But the stiff mask of the girl's frozen expressions is beginning to slip. The good life is making her soft. She’s losing her survivor’s inner quiet.
He rubs her back, standing there for a moment, and then looks back at the top of her head. “Nice try, but I’m still going to hand you in.”
Luisa stiffens up, leaning back in an instant. Her face is completely dry and stiff. “You wouldn’t,” she says, looking into his blank expression.
Pilot shrugs. “You oversold your act. Tone it down, maybe twenty percent next time,” says the man. He grabs Luisa, spinning her around, and, with his hands on her shoulders, begins to march her down the corridor.
“Come on!” she protests, looking over her shoulder back up at him. “Have a heart! You and me, remember?” she asks. “Just let me go. Nobody has to know I’m here.”
“It’s out of my hands, Luisa,” remarks Pilot, dryly. “I didn’t set this sting operation up.”
“…Huh?” she asks. “Sting?”
Pilot shakes his head, his lips pursed for a moment, as he looks up to the ceiling, escorting his military prisoner to their tribunal. “She smelled you yesterday already,” explains Pilot.
“What?”
He nods, raising a single shoulder. “Unexpected battlefield factors have killed endless waves of men, Luisa,” explains Pilot. “Always remember that while you’re changing and developing, so is the enemy,” he remarks coolly. Luisa presses back against him, unable to stop her from stumbling forward with her lanky legs. “Turns out that pregnancy can make some senses hypersensitive,” explains Pilot as they round the bend. “I didn’t know that either. Now I do,” he says, letting her go.
Luisa gulps, staring at the antlered figure baring down their way from the end of the hall. Steam from the vents drifts past Caretaker’s antlers, obscuring her face except for the glow of her angry eyes. Luisa’s arm shoots down toward her side. “THINK FA-”
“- No,” says Pilot, grabbing the girl’s wrist as she reaches for the smoke grenade on her belt. He shakes his head. “Not this time.”
She looks back at him in fear, trying to pull her arm free. “Come on, man,” pleads Luisa. Pilot just shakes his head quietly. He gently nudges her forward, taking the smoke grenade and reinserting the already pulled pin.
Standing upright, Pilot leans against the wall and watches as Luisa slowly steps toward the danger. She looks back at him, but he just nods reassuringly once and then ushers her back onward toward the looming antlered silhouette of Caretaker in the shadows of the metal corridor — a presence that undoubtedly does feel like that of an ancient deity of the forests of the old world.
But really, all that ends up happening is that Luisa gets nagged, scolded, hugged, and then punished with a barrage of mediocre, annoying, busy-work chores and grounding. Such is life in this new family of theirs.
It’s too late to have her sent back now, so they’ll have to make do with her being here with them.
Pilot finds it difficult to view this situation as a problem, in truth. In fact, he’s happy about it, even if his better half is furious. He always enjoys having Luisa shadow him. But his personal beliefs don’t align with those required by the mission of safe-keeping their new family, ordained unto him by Caretaker, so he keeps that opinion to himself.
— At least until they’re out of earshot later on, where Pilot ruffles Luisa’s hair, praises her for her excellent infiltration skills, and the two of them sneak off to check out a new experimental machine gun together down in the armory.
If this is all there is to parenting, he’s going to do great when their second one gets here.