A Grim Fable with an Unhappy End

[Krylo]

Originally Posted by Fifthfiend

I'm kind of tempted to run this off on my office printer so I can give it an actual "not on a fucking computer screen" read.

...Plus then I can make EDITORIAL COMMENTS in bigass red sharpie and post scans up here, which would be delightfully presumptuous.

Please do this.

[DFM]

I also support this.

Edit: Because at risk of embarrassment I want to try for publication with this.

[DFM]

(SUPER SHORT)CHAPTER 3 AND THE FIXES FROM CHAPTER TWO

“There's a series of caverns not far from here where the Everspring river flows through, used to be used to ferry in supplies and soldiers during a siege or when the surface roads were too dangerous for merchant caravans. Mostly use it now to get the General in and out without too many people noticing.” The private stepped off the ending of the stairs and onto a dirt floor. He took a lantern from the wall and continued down a long, black hall.

“A little paranoid, isn't it?"

"It's spawned speculation, I'll say that much."

"Speculation? On what?" Talidon turned to the private.

"On what exactly he is. It's pretty odd, for a general to never be seen by the troops he commands. Even if they're paranoid or a terrible speaker they at least make some token appearances. Veerson, though... he's practically a hermit. Always spirited about without ever being seen, always at night or through caverns and tunnel networks. It's just barracks talk mostly, but some people say he's a kid, or a vampire or a leviathan or one of the old gods crawled back out of Abysinial."

"I could let you know." The words were out of Talidon's mouth before he realized there was a large chance he wouldn't be able to make good on his offer and still maintain a position within the army.

"Honestly, I'd rather not know." The soldier continued as they walked the torch lit tunnel. "There's a kind of... hope, in not knowing what he is. Right now, he could be anything, something powerful, something fierce... and knowing that there might be an elder god or an ardire backing you makes the war seem a lot less futile. I'd rather have that then find out he's just another dwarf or satyr, you know?"

"I know." Talidon replied.

“I am General Veersonalit'harkelmordoth.” The head reared upwards, its voice threatening to shake apart the very foundation of the cavern. “Though I am more commonly recognized as General Veerson, mortal tongues being what they are. You are, I assume, the one responsible for the disaster at Tel'Alharun.”

Talidon swallowed, clenching his hands behind his back.

“Colonel Taylor was wounded early in the battle, and acting command of the fifty second fell to me. So yes, I was responsible for that disaster.”

“No, you were not.” The head swung low and to the side, appraising him. “Do you understand what has happened?"

"I..." Many, many things had happened with the fall of Tel'Alharun, and Talidon searched for the correct one. "...We've lost our easternmost foothold to a Commonwealth counterattack."

"Counterattack." The dragon snorted, flames erupting from its nostrils as its head reared back. "This is the start of an entire counter offensive and it has come much, much sooner than we are prepared to face. Do you have any idea the destruction a Commonwealth battleship is capable of? How many nations the Intrepid alone has brought to their knees? If one of the old gods were to be unleashed upon this plane again they would shudder and die beneath her guns. If she is not stopped before she sails within range of Dermoor or worse, Parsai, we will lose this war, Lieutenant Colonel. Let me be perfectly clear about that."

The dragon's head had lowered, mouth almost level with Talidon's head. He had never seen a battleship until the eclipsing silhouette of the Intrepid the previous night. The tales he'd heard from refuges and former mercenaries made their chances against such a monster seem slim at best. Veerson's massive eyes began to soften.

"You have proven yourself countless times on the field of battle and unlike many others you have earned the medals on your chest. You have fought longer, and harder, for the emperor than nearly anyone in this army. Were you not at Tel'Alharun I believe it would have fallen days before it did. You have a reputation for winning hopeless battles, and there is no more hopeless a battle than the one I ask of you now."


The head receded slightly back, flames dancing around its jaws. It slid forward again, eyes staring down at the elf like half moons against the blackness of the ceiling.


“Colonel Lindura...” Veerson began, “I have a task for you.”

CHAPTER 3
Word of the Lord


The CNS Intrepid hung low in the sky, the setting sun against its back. Turrets made of sixteen inch cannons lined its armored hull, bristling like spines across a steel monster. A twenty inch rifled artillery gun stretched across the bow, steel support beams visibly bending under the weight. Four massive propellers, each the width of the ship, hung motionless from the sides and stern. Two smokestacks, the forward lower then the back, sprouted from the top of the vessel, surrounded by hangers and defensive flak guns. The lower bow of the ship had a glass pane looking out onto the fields below, an elegant sitting room behind it. The view was crossed in supporting steel beams and the glass had several cracks from storm and shell. Admiral Archer sat in one of the high backed chars, crimson uniform blending into the red leather. His hair was gray and smooth, his eyes dark and sunken. He sighed, tapping his cigarette against the ash tray on a nearby end table. He couldn't deny it anymore. They had been caught with their pants down. He, his peers, the Parliament, the entire Commonwealth, all too busy pushing up their noses and making nasty faces to see the fist coming for their stomach. There was no way around it, they'd been overly complacent and now they were paying for it. He took another breath of the cigarette, watching the exhaled smoke twist in front of the electric lamp. What had started out as raids by pirates and militant extremists slowly turned more efficient, more organized. Soon, they started occupying cities and villages instead of raiding them. Before the bureaucratic mess that passed for an organized government could react, they'd lost half the continent to misanthropic malcontents. And to make it worse, they'd taken up the mantle of an empire. To think, a backwater collage of savages would dare to call itself an empire. And under the very nose of the Commonwealth, no less. A chimp shrieking in front of a gorilla and proclaiming to be great.

Admiral Archer drummed the fingers of his free hand against the leather. It had taken nearly a year to pull forces from the Shun-kuan theater and redeploy them on the mainland but now, finally, they were here, and the 'Empire' of Mythra would face a true Commonwealth army. He tapped the cigarette again against the ash tray as a squadron of Spirithawk fighters shot past the captain's study close enough to hear their monstrous engines. Delta-wing design with stabilizers near the nose, pushed with a single oversized propeller near the rear of the cigar shaped fuselage. Each fighter was armed with forty five caliber machine guns and under-slung unguided rockets. There were nearly five dozen of the fighters stationed on the Intrepid alone, not to mention a few Siren dive bombers that had recently arrived from the Grummech Lochk development plant. There were never enough planes to meet the demand on the front. Never enough walkers or tanks or knights either, ever since they'd lost the factories at Parsai.

That blow... had cost them dearly, even before the Empire began to retrofit the stolen facilities for their own misuse. Archer ground the cigarette into the ashtray as the steel door was pushed slowly open.

"Yes, Sergeant?" He asked without looking behind him.

"It's Marshal Anillid, sir." The voice came from the doorway, steadiness masking a nervous unease. "He's on board the ship and requested an audience."

"Brigadier Marshal." Archer corrected. "And he does not request, he bellows demands of his superiors. Send him in, I should never wish the poor soul to be kept waiting. How dreadfully inconvenient it would be."

"...Yes sir." The voice replied, door shutting firmly again. It would be a few minutes as the information was relayed and the Brigadier Marshal stumbled his way to the captain's study. Archer stood and walked towards the window-wall at the front of the study, polished leather boots thumping against the hardwood floor. The Intrepid and its military entourage hung now above the Althesian midlands, the agricultural lifeblood of the Commonwealth. Beneath him, farmlands stretched out for miles across the horizon amidst rivers, forests and gently rolling hills. He folded his hands behind his back, watching silently as another squadron of fighters passed below the window, entering the second phase of their patrol.

The Intrepid was anchored now, after passing from Tel'Alharun over the Mas'avea mountains earlier that day. There was an old docking station here, and though it'd been meant for zeppelins they could make use of it with some minor adjustments and careful flying. Supplies and fuel were being ferried aboard by the Verticor transports, massive things the size of four train cars lashed side to side, with a vertical engine and propeller on each corner. Six anchors the size of large buildings had been dropped onto the green earth, each connected to the battleship by a great chain boasting links larger than a car. Given the somewhat inadequate facilities, the Intrepid might spend the whole of the next week on refuel and resupply, even though docking bays at Earana or Grummech Lochk could do the same job in a day, maybe two.

Archer wondered if Tel'Alharun had truly been important enough a target to burn midnight oil across half the planet before heading for one of the mainland shipyards, but his, as they said, was not to question why. The door to the study opened loudly, heavy boots hitting the floor behind him. Admiral Archer turned, saluting the great, bald man in his doorway.

Brigadier Marshal Anillid returned the gesture before striding across the gap between them.

"Admiral, glad to see you made the flight across the Emerald Sea. Not one of the more serene routes a ship could take."

"It is the quickest, though." Archer replied, keeping his back to the observation window. "And battleships have weathered far worse. I assume your trip was a pleasant one?"

"As pleasant as can be expected." Anillid adjusted one of his silken white gloves, biceps almost ripping through his uniform as he did so. "But I've not come here to bore you with formalities. I have a new assignment for your ship."

"Do you, now?" Archer asked, almost genuinely intrigued. Battleship commands were almost always handed down directly from the very highest of the commonwealth naval brass. Coming from an army marshal, and a Brigadier Marshal at that, was almost unheard of.

"You are to mobilize whatever force you deem necessary and secure the imperial city of Pesadas, and more specifically, the estate of Folion Drephas. Your command crew is being given all the necessary information and should be able to provide you with specific details. Once you've secured the area, you are to contact one of the Roses. They will arrive and perform a search, afterward, you will receive your orders directly from them."

Archer did not reply immediately, his mind slowly turning the Brigadier Marshal's words over and over again, searching for the hidden meaning in an outlandish, ludicrous command.

He did not find one.

"I beg pardon, Anillid?"


"It's really quite simple." Anillid walked past the Admiral, resting his hands on the safety bar and staring out the window at the endless farms and fields. "Secure the Drephas estate, contact the Order of the Roses, wait for them to give you new orders."

"You-" Archer's outrage was barely contained. "-You would presume to commandeer a battleship to secure a building and then you would dare to suggest it bows to the whims of those... those assassins?"

The Order of Roses, no more feared a name was there either within or without the Commonwealth. With a breath, the Admiral calmed ever slightly, and his words grew hushed and cold.

"You are a Brigadier Marshal, Anillid. As an Admiral in the Commonwealth Navy I am your superior on the battlefield and on this ship I am your God. You command nothing and the only authority you have here is what I grant you. Even if you had a signed order direct from the Magistrate himself I would be under no-"

Archer paused, watching as the Brigadier Marshal produced a small envelope, wax sealed with the signet of the House of Lords. He held it out with a smile.

"Signed and notarized, as of the sixteenth of July."

Archer stared, slowly grasping the envelope and pulling it away from Anillid.

"The Dauntless is crossing the Halvishare straight as we speak, only a couple of days behind you. They'll be taking over military operations in this theater until you complete your special assignment, or until construction of the Vindicare is completed." Anillid flashed a vicious, knowing smile.

"Whichever comes first."

Anillid left the captain's lounge with a salute that the admiral did not return, his eyes fixed firmly on the envelope. The House of Lords. The Magistrate. The entire nation, it seemed, had gone mad. With an aged hand he broke the wax seal of the envelope, discarding it onto a nearby sitting chair and unfolding the letter within. The mechanical buzz of another fighter patrol passed by the observation window behind him. The orders were very formal, very official. The Brigadier Marshal, against all odds, did not lie. Archer sighed, collapsing back against the guard railing. He reached across the window, pulling the phone from the wall.

"Good evening, Admiral. This is Owen speaking, how may I help you?" The voice from the other end was oddly chipper.

"Send word to Knight-Captain Rheinhelm, he has work to do."

[Azisien]

I couldn't pay attention, after I read "Admiral Anillid."

I know you've already confessed to a name problem but yeah. You're a better writer than I, though, so kudos!

[Bob The Mercenary]

I have a question. Are these your very first drafts? Or are they revisions? Because if these just come out of you at will then you're a machine.

Because at risk of embarrassment I want to try for publication with this.

Embarrassment? Surely you jest.

[Kerensky287]

I'd love to read more of this Grim Bloody Fable with an Unhappy Bloody End.

And... wow, you went above and beyond with those Chapter 2 fixes. I was thinking that you'd just like, change two or three words, rather than the whole massive paragraphs you added. Awesome job. Damn fine writing.

[01d55]

Originally Posted by DFM

Turrets made of sixteen inch cannons

Unless you're telling me that Commonwealth battleships have so many guns that they have to mount their guns on other guns, that's not phrased quite right.

[Doc ock rokc]

“I am General Veersonalit'harkelmordoth.” The head reared upwards, its voice threatening to shake apart the very foundation of the cavern. “Though I am more commonly recognized as General Veerson, mortal tongues being what they are. You are, I assume, the one responsible for the disaster at Tel'Alharun.”

Talidon swallowed, clenching his hands behind his back.

“Colonel Taylor was wounded early in the battle, and acting command of the fifty second fell to me. So yes, I was responsible for that disaster.”

“No, you were not.” The head swung low and to the side, appraising him. “Do you understand what has happened?"

"I..." Many, many things had happened with the fall of Tel'Alharun, and Talidon searched for the correct one. "...We've lost our easternmost foothold to a Commonwealth counterattack."

"Counterattack." The dragon snorted, flames erupting from its nostrils as its head reared back. "This is the start of an entire counter offensive and it has come much, much sooner than we are prepared to face. Do you have any idea the destruction a Commonwealth battleship is capable of? How many nations the Intrepid alone has brought to their knees? If one of the old gods were to be unleashed upon this plane again they would shudder and die beneath her guns. If she is not stopped before she sails within range of Dermoor or worse, Parsai, we will lose this war, Lieutenant Colonel. Let me be perfectly clear about that."

The dragon's head had lowered, mouth almost level with Talidon's head. He had never seen a battleship until the eclipsing silhouette of the Intrepid the previous night. The tales he'd heard from refuges and former mercenaries made their chances against such a monster seem slim at best. Veerson's massive eyes began to soften.

"You have proven yourself countless times on the field of battle and unlike many others you have earned the medals on your chest. You have fought longer, and harder, for the emperor than nearly anyone in this army. Were you not at Tel'Alharun I believe it would have fallen days before it did. You have a reputation for winning hopeless battles, and there is no more hopeless a battle than the one I ask of you now."


The head receded slightly back, flames dancing around its jaws. It slid forward again, eyes staring down at the elf like half moons against the blackness of the ceiling.


“Colonel Lindura...” Veerson began, “I have a task for you.”

Holy shit! I don't know how you did it but I ... I was feeling pretty damn scared there. I COULD SEE Veerson Looking at me. Saying these things. And....Damn that was the most Awesome thing i had ever seen! PUBLISH THIS! DEAR GOD! PUBLISH THIS!

[MFD]

Hrm. Admiral Archer? I hate to say it, but that brings Star Trek Enterprise to mind. Also, I hope there's more to chapter 3.

Some nice work fleshing out the Commonwealth. Although, they seem rather villainous, or that might just be their racism shining through.

[DFM]

Originally Posted by Bob the Mercenary

I have a question. Are these your very first drafts? Or are they revisions? Because if these just come out of you at will then you're a machine.

First two were revisions, Chapter 3 was rough draft + proof reading for errors which might mean first draft I don't know!

Originally Posted by Bob the Mercenary

Embarrassment? Surely you jest.

Not really!

Originally Posted by Kerensky287

I'd love to read more of this Grim Bloody Fable with an Unhappy Bloody End.

It's the most awesome working title ever, you must bend and admit this.

Originally Posted by 01d55

Unless you're telling me that Commonwealth battleships have so many guns that they have to mount their guns on other guns, that's not phrased quite right.

The rest is made out of chainsaws and it just smashes onto the ground and tears ass around enemy territory blasting and ripping until everyone is dead.



OKAY SO I've extended that bit into a full chapter. (It was originally just a little intermission thing) Hopefully it fleshes out the Commonwealth more as an army/faction! Also thanks Doc Ock, glad you liked it!

(And keep in mind italics and all that don't transfer over apparently)

CHAPTER 3

The Commonwealth of Men

The CNS Intrepid hung low in the sky, the setting sun against its back. Turrets of sixteen inch cannons lined its armored hull, bristling like spines across a steel monster. A twenty inch rifled artillery gun stretched across the bow, steel support beams visibly bending under the weight. Four massive propellers, each the width of the ship, hung motionless from the sides and stern. Two smokestacks, the forward lower then the back, sprouted from the top of the vessel, surrounded by hangers and defensive flak guns. The lower bow of the ship had a glass pane looking out onto the fields below, an elegant sitting room behind it. The view was crossed in supporting steel beams and the glass had several cracks from storm and shell. Admiral Archer sat in one of the high backed chars, crimson uniform blending into the red leather. His hair was gray and smooth, his eyes dark and sunken. He sighed, tapping his cigarette against the ash tray on a nearby end table. He couldn't deny it anymore. They had been caught with their pants down. He, his peers, the Parliament, the entire Commonwealth, all too busy pushing up their noses and making nasty faces to see the fist coming for their stomach. They'd been overly complacent and now they were paying for it. He took another breath of the cigarette, watching the exhaled smoke twist in front of the electric lamp. What had started out as raids by pirates and militant extremists slowly turned more efficient, more organized. Soon, they started occupying cities and villages instead of raiding them. Before the bureaucratic mess that passed for an organized government could react, they'd lost half the continent to misanthropic malcontents. And to make it worse, they'd taken up the mantle of an empire. To think, a backwater collage of savages would dare to call itself an empire. And under the very nose of the Commonwealth, no less. A chimp shrieking in front of a gorilla and proclaiming to be great.

Admiral Archer drummed the fingers of his free hand against the leather. It had taken nearly a year to pull forces from the Shun-kuan theater and redeploy them on the mainland but now, finally, they were here, and the 'Empire' of Althesia would face a true Commonwealth army. He tapped the cigarette again against the ash tray as a squadron of Spirithawk fighters shot past the captain's study close enough to hear their monstrous engines. Delta-wing design with stabilizers near the nose, pushed with a single oversized propeller near the rear of the cigar shaped fuselage. Each fighter was armed with four forty five caliber machine guns and under-slung unguided rockets. There were nearly seven dozen of the squadrons stationed on the Intrepid alone, not to mention the Siren dive bombers that had recently arrived from the Grummech Lochk development plant. There were never enough planes to meet the demand on the front. Never enough walkers or tanks or knights either, ever since they'd lost the factories at Parsai.

That blow... had cost them dearly, even before the Empire began to retrofit the stolen facilities for their own misuse. Archer ground the cigarette into the ashtray as the steel door was pushed slowly open.

"Yes, Sergeant?" He asked without looking behind him.

"It's Marshal Benet, sir." The voice came from the doorway, steadiness masking a nervous unease. "He's on board the ship and requested an audience."

"Brigadier Marshal." Archer corrected. "And he does not request, he bellows demands of his superiors. Send him in, I should never wish the poor soul to be kept waiting. How dreadfully inconvenient it would be."

"...Yes sir." The voice replied, door shutting firmly again. It would be a few minutes as the information was relayed and the Brigadier Marshal stumbled his way to the captain's study. Archer stood and walked towards the window-wall at the front of the study, polished leather boots thumping against the hardwood floor. The Intrepid and its military entourage hung now above the Althesian midlands, the agricultural lifeblood of the Commonwealth. Beneath him, farmlands stretched out for miles across the horizon amidst rivers, forests and gently rolling hills. He folded his hands behind his back, watching silently as another squadron of fighters passed below the window, entering the second phase of their patrol.

The Intrepid was anchored now, after passing from Tel'Alharun over the Mas'avea mountains earlier that day. There was an old docking station here, and though it'd been meant for zeppelins they could make use of it with some minor adjustments and careful flying. Supplies and fuel were being ferried aboard by the Verticor transports, massive things the size of four train cars lashed side to side, with a vertical engine and propeller on each corner. Six anchors the size of large buildings had been dropped onto the green earth, each connected to the battleship by a great chain boasting links larger than a car. Given the somewhat inadequate facilities, the Intrepid might spend the whole of the next week on refuel and resupply, even though docking bays at Earana or Grummech Lochk could do the same job in a day, maybe two.

Archer wondered if Tel'Alharun had truly been important enough a target to burn midnight oil across half the planet before heading for one of the mainland shipyards, but his, as they said, was not to question why. The door to the study opened loudly, heavy boots hitting the floor behind him. Admiral Archer turned, saluting the great, bald man in his doorway.

Brigadier Marshal Benet returned the gesture before striding across the gap between them.

"Admiral, glad to see you made the flight across the Emerald Sea. Not one of the more serene routes a ship could take."

"It is the quickest, though." Archer replied, keeping his back to the observation window. "And battleships have weathered far worse. I assume your trip was a pleasant one?"

"As pleasant as can be expected." Benet adjusted one of his silken white gloves, biceps almost ripping through his uniform as he did so. "But I've not come here to bore you with formalities. I have a new assignment for your ship."

"Do you, now?" Archer asked, almost genuinely intrigued. Battleship commands were almost always handed down directly from the very highest of the commonwealth naval brass. Coming from an army marshal, and a brigadier marshal at that, was almost unheard of.

"You are to mobilize whatever force you deem necessary and secure the imperial city of Pesadas, and more specifically, the estate of Folion Drephas. Your command crew is being given all the necessary information and should be able to provide you with specific details. Once you've secured the area, you are to contact one of the Roses. They will arrive and perform a search, afterward, you will receive your orders directly from them."

Archer did not reply immediately, his mind slowly turning the Brigadier Marshal's words over and over again, searching for the hidden meaning in an outlandish, ludicrous command.

He did not find one.

"I beg pardon, Benet?"

"It's really quite simple." Benet walked past the Admiral, resting his hands on the safety bar and staring out the window at the endless farms and fields. "Secure the Drephas estate, contact the Order of the Roses, wait for them to give you new orders."

"You-" Archer's outrage was barely contained. "-You would presume to commandeer a battleship to secure a building and then you would dare to suggest it bows to the whims of those... those assassins?" The Order of Roses, no more feared a name was there either within or without the Commonwealth. With a breath, the Admiral calmed ever slightly, and his words grew hushed and cold. "You are a Brigadier Marshal, Benet. As an Admiral in the Commonwealth Navy I am your superior on the battlefield and on this ship I am your God. You command nothing and the only authority you have here is what I grant you. Even if you had a signed order direct from the Magistrate himself I would be under no-"

Archer paused, watching as the Brigadier Marshal produced a small envelope, wax sealed with the signet of the House of Lords. He held it out with a smile.

"Signed and notarized, as of the sixteenth of July."

Archer stared, slowly grasping the envelope and pulling it away from Benet.

"The Dauntless is crossing the Halvishare straight as we speak, only a couple of days behind you. They'll be taking over military operations in this theater until you complete your special assignment, or until construction of the Vindicare is completed." The brigadier marshal flashed a vicious, knowing smile. "Whichever comes first."

Benet left the captain's lounge with a salute that the admiral did not return, his eyes fixed firmly on the envelope. The House of Lords. The Magistrate. The entire nation, it seemed, had gone mad. With an aged hand he broke the wax seal of the envelope, discarding it onto a nearby sitting chair and unfolding the letter within. The mechanical buzz of another fighter patrol passed by the observation window behind him. The orders were very formal, very official. The Brigadier Marshal, against all odds, did not lie. Archer sighed, collapsing back against the guard railing. He reached across the window, pulling the phone from the wall. A verticor transport tipped past the observation window towards one of the side hangers, a man's face staring at the admiral beneath the verticor's empty ball turret.

Baker continued to stare out the viewport even as the Intrepid's observation deck disappeared from view and the transport continued along its side. There was nothing in the stories or the field manuals that could have prepared him for the sheer size of the war ship. He'd spent so much time learning its history and infrastructure without comprehending the meaning behind the numbers that had filled the pages. He swallowed, reaching into his coat pocket to feel the orders again. They bent easily in his sweating hand. Immediate transfer. The transport dipped low beneath a massive turret jutting from the behemoth's underside. Promotion. Opportunity. Boxcars lashed together by the dozens were being hoisted past them by the Intrepid's industrial cranes. They swerved sharply towards the ship as another transport blew past them, and he could hear the pilot swearing from the cockpit. Enyn Baker had never flown before.

"Hey, farmboy!" The voice was shouting above the roar of the engines. Baker had been one of six dozen others taken from Fort Warine to re-enforce the ground teams stationed on the Intrepid. Theirs was the last transport to take off from the fort's makeshift landing pad. It was, of course, the same transport containing corporal Bellar. "If you thought tractors were a big deal you must shitting your pants right now, huh?"

"It's big." Enyn agreed.

"It's big', no shit Detective Aluwell. What'd they even put you on? Kitchen staff?"

Enyn turned away from the window, hand gripping the wooden stock of his Kalamach 348.

"Four oh eight, under Knight Captain Reinhold. Marine drops, I guess."

Bellar stopped smiling. His eyes narrowed as the rest of the soldiers stared at Enyn.

"Bullshit you're in the four oh eight. You're a goddamn corn farmer."

"Commander Priest gave me the transfer himself, what are you talking about?"

Bellar leaned forward, still shouting to be heard over the engines.

"Then Priest's fucking murdered you, kid."

The transport shifted dramatically upwards and to the left, the view outside shifting to open fields and rows of windmills. Bellar was screwing with him. Guy was a jackass. The abandoned zeppelin station was latched onto the hull of the battleship, barely large enough to notice next to the gunmetal monster. They couldn't be moving supplies through that thing fast, why stop the Intrepid here? There was a groaning as the gears extended and a harsh jolt as the verticor hit the floor of the landing bay. The light below the empty turret seat flashed yellow, the whole of the transports back slowly lowering to form a make-shift ramp. The air from outside was fresh and cooling, coming in on the glow of the fading evening sun.

"Alright ladies, pick up your gear and wait inside the hanger, you'll be debriefed and split up according to your individual transfers, don't you all feel special?"

Enyn pulled the rucksack up from between his legs and swung it over his left shoulder as he stood, scores of men filing past him off the transport, all carrying identical sacks and rifles over their shoulders. He followed them, stepping off the ramp and into the hanger. It was one of the smaller bays on the ship, large enough for four transports and not much else. The ceiling and far wall were open to the twilight sky, though both could be sealed if the ship came under fire. The rotors of the verticor had begun to slow as he followed the crowd, ducking under one of the engines. Flight crews moved through the surging crowd of soldiers, attaching fuel lines and arguing with a pilot who wanted to grab lunch instead of running diagnostic checks. There was a second verticor in the hanger, rotors folded forward and back. The metal casing around its left rear engine had been stripped, exposing wires and parts that Enyn thought didn't resemble a tractor's much at all. Two men in gray flight crew jackets were pulling and twisting at seemingly random parts, occasionally prying a piece loose and setting it on a tarp on the hangar floor.

"Three doors down, take a left and up the stairs to H deck, ask for Leftenant Burns."

The replacements had gathered near the head of the bay, several uniformed men with clipboards directing each individually. The crowd thinned as soldier after soldier was sent away, and Enyn was one of the last to see a director.

"What's your unit?" The woman asked, clearly hoping Enyn would actually be the last.

"Four hundred and eight, under Knight Captain Reinhold."

She was quiet for a moment, lowering her open manila folder.

"Funny. Let me see your transfer orders.

Enyn reached into his coat, pulling the heavily creased papers from his pocket and handing them to the director. She read them slowly, and was quiet for a good moment longer. She looked at him for a few seconds more before handing back the papers.

"Take a right, follow that hallway all the way down to cargo bay twelve. Talk to... anyone."

"...Thank you." Enyn said taking back the orders and stuffing them again inside his overcoat.

The corridor of the ship was narrow, lined with pipes and mechanical valves and pressure gauges. It was surprisingly empty, given the multitude of people who had just left bay and surely inhabited the ship. He passed a dozen or so, alone or in pairs, but saw none heading his way. He adjusted his rucksack, glancing at the deck and section designations posted near the ceiling. Rats scurried under his feet, bits of stolen rye still stuffed in their jaws. There were few windows in the lower decks, most of the hallway was lit by electric lights. It was almost dark outside, now. There was no one else around him, the last soldier disappearing as he followed the corridor left, turning with it away from the hull. The section designations became more faded, neglected casualties of time. A spiderweb stretched across a doorway, an unusually fat lillothar resting in the center. Bumps and clacks echoed from inside the walls of the ship. Steam gushed from one of the piping joints. Each of his footsteps clanged loud against the rusting steel. A light flickered in front of him, and then went out. The ambient rumble and hiss of the battleship began to fade around him, a single light suspended against a wheelock door that the hallway stretched outwards to meet. Cargo Bay Twelve. No Access Permitted.

Enyn paused, swallowing the lump in his throat before willing his feet to continue. He glanced over his shoulder, a large rat pausing under one of the hanging lights to examine its haul before darting behind a broken weld in steel work. Corporal Enyn Baker lay his rifle against the wall and with a strained pull, spun the wheel of the door.