Any Body On Board?

Buddy, with Jean in tow, lowered down the stairway to where they assumed an engine control room would be. They, of course, were correct. Instead of finding a cyborg embedded into the very machinery of the ship, however, they found a single low ceilinged room, a long leather couch sat in the center facing a plethora of monitors. The cushions were dented and crinkled from several backsides, but a veneer of dust coating every surface revealed that it had been quite some time since last it had seen use.

Moreover, everything in the ECR was coated in dust, even the little office room that was separated with an open doorway from the main center. The desk and the chair within, the latter fixed to the floor by a tight chain from the seat, looked as though the previous person to use them had left expecting to come back sooner rather than later, evident by the dusty coat draped over the back of the chair. A strange machine with a glassy pot half full of black liquid sat on a counter in the corner, a few porcelain mugs by it on a rubber mat.

“The hell?” Jean whispered, stepping cautiously into the office. “This place looks like it’s been abandoned for years, if not decades.” He plucked a small rectangular yellow note from the corner of an archaic looking monitor. “Stewie’s drain. Apprentice brief. Oil records,” he read aloud and looked to Buddy.

The bounty hunter rubbed his coppery jaw and shrugged. “Sounds like a to-do. Is the terminal functioning?” he asked pointing at the desktop machine. His back was beginning to ache having to be in a slight bend the whole time given that the ceiling was sow low. Why did ships have to be so cramped? Why had he decided on being so tall?

Jean slapped a long key on the board before the monitor. It clacked satisfactorily, but nothing happened. Jean shrugged. Buddy pointed at the pot with the black liquid and raised an eyebrow. Jean glanced at it then back at the hunter. “What?”

“What is that?”

Now Jean raised an eyebrow. “You’ve never had coffee?”

“That’s coffee?” Buddy asked, entered the room and went straight for the pot. Before the Grower could stop him, he’d gulped down half of the ancient brew. “Jee-SUS that is horrible! Do you near-organics, well, I suppose you’re an organic, really drink this?”

“Only when it’s freshly brewed. But I’ve not had it since me and my progenitor were in one of the larger hidden facilities, before we broke off.”

Buddy smacked his thin lips together. “Unpleasant. But suppose they’ve got some of the dry stuff. Maybe we could take some with and I could taste it fresh.”

“Was this what you had in mind when you said we should be looking for clues?” Jean asked, “pilfering relics off of a ghost ship?”

Buddy grinned, his noble metal teeth glinting in the wan lighting. “Well, one of many things I must admit.”

---

Rousseau and Hound remained on the aft deck of the superstructure while Stick promptly entered and hurried up the main stairway within toward the bridge. The two made a quick round outside before entering themselves, noting only a few things out of the ordinary.

The ropes, coiled neatly into drums by their respective winches, were faded and worn to the point where when Rousseau touched one, the splice her fingers grazed crumpled into dry flakes of fiber. Patches of rust like scabs on flesh dotted every flat surface, and the machinery wept brown tears from all their seams. The only thing that wasn’t dry and dead was the small black boat that sat in its cradle above their heads. Hound could see water trickling down as a gentle gust blew through the foggy air.

“That has been recently used,” Hound mumbled.

“What need do those dreadful specters have of a boat, deary?” Rousseau asked dismissively.

Hound gave an animalic equivalent of a shrug. “I intend to find out.”

The two entered the superstructure through a weathertight door that was sealed so tight that had not Rousseau been a bot, it would have never opened. The port side of the deck had three rooms. Some form of control center was one, an office with bookshelves stacked with binders and folders and manuals was another, and the last was a smaller office with a few terminals and chairs. The starboard side, after an open door that led to the stairway, was the mess which led to the kitchen.

Rousseau, clutching her massive tome, inspected a lump of discolored flesh with unidentifiable masses of spoiled organics by it. “What do you suppose that is, dear Hound?”

“I’ve no clue, but it smells horrible.”

“Aye, I can imagine,” the bot said.

The freezer was empty, but the dry stores still had some cans with blue labels stacked in a corner behind a sheet of plywood. Evidently someone had hidden the last of the food.

“Baked beans,” Hound read aloud.

“What in the Saints’ names are beans?” Rousseau asked, “and why’ve they been baked?”

“Probably some form of synthetic nutrient compound, made for organic consumption,” Hound said.

“Doesn’t look like anyone’s touched them in an age,” Rousseau said, “these mariners truly where ancient if when alive they ate organics. Far older than I.”

Hound looked at the faded blue labels of the cans for a long moment, then turned around, “come, lets check the next deck. I want to check the boat.”

---

Stick huffed and puffed his way up the stairs without issue until he was at a the door that led to the bridge. He grabbed the handle to open it, but after he exerted the slightest of pressure the handle came off. He grumbled a curse, then looked into the ruined locking mechanism. It was dry and old and completely busted.

He switched his sight between various spectrums and saw that the door wasn’t just locked but welded shut from the inside. He thought for a spell, weighing if he should blast it open with his arm cannon or figure something else out.

He decided on the latter and descended one flight to the captain’s deck. He didn’t want to anger their mysterious host by opening fire on their ship, so instead he’d snoop around before trying to get on the bridge from the outside.

The port side of the deck had two spacious areas, one similar to the conference room on the Melchizedek, while the other had a bed and a monitor and other personal paraphernalia. No persons, though.

Stick, being a seaman of long experience, having served on many a type of vessel, noted something strange. The black orbs in the corners of various spaces in the ship that he’d previously thought were security oculi, seemed a tad strange. He couldn’t make out the capture lens from behind the black glass, so, to satisfy his curiosity, he propped a dusty chair beneath one.

The dome came off without much issue, and Stick was left with more questions than he’d begun with. Inside was a sphere with a pinprick aperture and a variety of cloudy glass panels the size of the tip of Stick’s little finger. He zoomed his vision and saw that behind the tiny glass panels there where some form of high powered lights. If he knew his tech, and he believed he did quite well, he’d bet his right arm that these things weren’t designed to capture, but to project. It explained why the personal spaces, usually without any form of spying tech, had the orbs as well.

---

Buddy looked up and whistled. The space they had entered was vast, and all around them, welded to the interior bulkheads of the ship, were all manner of gantries, pulleys, winches and equipment neither of the explorers could recognize. In the center was a semi-cylindrical tower that led up to what Buddy surmised was the bottom of the aftmost Earth Breaker. For all intents and purposes, he was looking at a gigantic ballistic magazine. From cracks atop the deck, the fog drizzled through like some spectral waterfall.

“Machine God…” Buddy whispered. How many of the giant city-leveling shells still rested within, and moreover, would the master of the Optima truly resort to the use of a weapon of this caliber?

“Should we check the other two holds?” Jean asked.

“Nah, I scanned the blueprints I found back in the ECR. If I read them right the mid and fore holds are nearly identical.”

“Should we…” Jean paused and looked around, “should we, you know, sabotage something?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea if we want the Melchizedek to survive. If I start blasting, whoever’s in charge will just let loose.”

“Then what do we do?”

Buddy worked his jaw. “Dunno,” he said at length.

“Weren’t you the one who was in favor of sabotage to begin with?”

“Yep, but I ain’t so sure now. Especially—” Buddy saw something move from the corner of his eye. He spun, atomizer in one hand, his other arm switching into the glowing sword with a loud clack, and instantly split his vision into two fields, infrared and night vision. “Who’s there? Show yourself!”

“What is it, Mr. Limbo? I can’t see?”

“Stay down,” Buddy said. He scanned the gantries and the great magazine. Every ledge and railing, nook and cranny that he could see from his current vantage. He could make out nothing. His aim assist didn’t lock on to anything either. Once satisfied, flicked the blade back to swap out to his hand and holstered the atomizer.

“Thought I saw someone,” Buddy said, turning back to the crouching Grower. The hunter’s eyes were still in the night and infra split as he did so, and he could clearly make out the one armed man as a blob of orange heat and a sharp, pale white image simultaneously.

When he flicked them back to regular vision, he yelped. Behind the grower, clear as day, was a man in the same archaic uniform as those that had boarded the Melchizedek the previous night.

“Stay down!” Buddy shouted, quick drawing the atomizer with a speed impossible for an organic. With both hands in a death grip around the cherry wood, he growled, “now you stay right there mister. I’m here to parlay with your master. Don’t want no reason to shoot you, you hear?”

“You may go no further,” the ghost said, “and neither will you enter the engine room. Leave.”

“Now, hold on, one of you let us up, so I take it we’re welcome. There weren’t no welcoming committee so we decided to just look around and see if we could find someone, that’s all,” Buddy said.

The ghost took a step forward, and Buddy fired. Throughout the coming journey Buddy would never admit to firing in fear, no matter how Jean told the story. He’d always dig his heels in and insist that he felt threatened and did so with a cool head. The truth was that he quite literally jumped, only a centimeter, off the ground and squeezed the firing stud by accident.

No matter how it went, the small bead of energy zipped through the man, causing his image to ripple, then it hit something at the far end of the hold that burst into a shower of sparks. The image of the man disappeared that instant.

The two, too terrified to think straight, didn’t connect the dots until a little later. For now, they ran back into the ECR and up the stairs into the accommodations structure. As soon as they entered, they heard Rousseau scream.

---

On the following deck, the boat deck, Hound and Rousseau searched through each cabin for signs of life. They’d found none. The cabins were spacious in various degrees, with made beds and a nice couches to sit on, even personal hygiene pods with a showers and sinks, something Rousseau marveled at. “I’ve not seen such things since me childhood. I hear naught but the lairds in charge have access to such things nowadays. To imagine that each of these little cabins is equipped with one. Must’ve been royalty.”

The outside of the boat deck had been as rust spotted as the deck below, but as Hound suspected, the black boat in its cradle had been recently used. The strangest part of it was that there was no means of ingress aboard. It looked more like a drone than a boat made for people, and on the top was a black hemisphere of unknown purpose.

Once the two recommenced their interior exploration, he noted that there were curious black orbs placed in the corners of each hallway and cabin, except for the hygiene pods. Otherwise, they were all around. Their placement was strange, for they didn’t seem to be security oculi, given that he’d seen one in the mess and it looked quite different. That, and they reminded him of the larger device atop the boat.

“Doctor, um, Chief Medic?” Hound cocked his head, “I apologize, how do I address you? Lucia calls you Mother, but I doubt it would come off as natural from me.”

“Either doctor or just by me laird given name thank you a ton. I was a bot with just a serial for far too long to be called by titles or strips of ident codes,” the brass lady said.

“Doctor, then,” Hound nodded. “So, Doctor, what do you think?”

“Think of what?”

“Everything? The cabins have no personal items nor seem to have been used for a long time. Then there are the black orbs everywhere.”

“Aye, I’ve noted them too. I can’t say for sure, but I think I’ve seen something akin before.”

“You have?”

“I cannot recall, good Hound.”

“Can’t you just pull up the memory from your engrams?”

Rousseau chuckled then gave a wistful sigh, “Oh, dear Hound, I’ve been alive for so long, been swapping and upgrading me body so many times, that much is lost in the process. Memory degradation, code corruption, neuronal subconscious imagery compression. I sometimes have trouble knowing if my memories are mine or the previous owner’s of whichever limb I’ve replaced.”

“Then, um, where do you think you’ve seen them before?” Hound asked.

Rousseau tapped her brassy facemask with a delicate finger. Then flicked her orange topknot from one shoulder to another. “A casino.”

“Casino?”

 “Ancient term for a gambling hall. It’s the only word I associate the orbs with, though for the life of me I cannot tell you why.”

“How old are you?” Hound asked.

“Can’t ask a lady that,” she said dismissively and flicked one of his silicone ears. It was quite painful, and evidently she’d had more than enough practice in administering such punishment.

“I apologize, I did not know,” Hound said, keeping his lips over his metal fangs with some effort.

Rousseau made her way to the stairway, some of the fog from outside had crept in through the ventilation. “Come on now, we still have a couple decks before the bridge,” she said, and as she stepped into the tower-like internal structure with its stairs leading from top to bottom, both heard a muffled bang decks below. Hound’s ears perked and Rousseau went stiff.

Hound followed her in, and in that same second a man was standing by them. He wore the same ancient uniform they’d seen the night prior. “I suggest you reconvene at the bridge now,” it said and disappeared.

His voice was almost drowned out by Rousseau’s startled scream.

---

Stick’s arm folded within itself and reconfigured into an energy cannon as soon as he heard the bang, then the scream. Though he was alone on the captain’s deck, he felt as though he was being watched. And, though he didn’t know who, he knew exactly what was doing the watching. Bracing his gun arm over his forearm, he aimed at the black orb he’d partially deconstructed, though he didn’t know how much good threatening a projector would do.

He activated his ear bead with a thought. “Mr. Limbo, Doctor, someone tell me what’s going on. Thought I heard a gunshot.”

Buddy’s voice crackled through the line, “Uh, well, one of them ghosts came at me. Reflexes, you know. We’re coming up.”

Rousseau’s voice broke through next, “We’re coming up with Hound as well. One of those ghastly things appeared and invited us to the bridge. I reckon the master wishes to parlay now.”

“They are correct,” a voice said from behind Stick.

The boatswain turned and beheld the same bald man from the bridge of the Melchizedek. “Yer not real,” he said, “I figured ye out.”

The bald man nodded. “I’ll explain everything as well as I can once all of you come aboard the bridge.”

“The door is sealed shut,” Stick said, hearing the rest of the party come up the stairs.

“You may open it by any means you see fit. Just don’t damage anything integral,” the bald man said, then blinked out.

Stick lowered his cannon and grumbled a curse.

 

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