Chapter Text
Security Chief Thacker Stack did not enjoy the company of their shipmates, often opting to take meals in their cabin; they preferred loneliness to running the social gauntlet. Attempting to find pleasant company at one of the mess' many crowded tables, stuffed shoulder-to-shoulder with rowdy sailors, was impossible, and the stodgy air of the claustrophobic wardroom was already bad enough without the officers who populated it. This meant that their half-hour shift meal, already shortened by the wait time in queue for food, was additionally shortened by an exactly six-minute walk from the automat in the galley on deck three to their cabin on deck four. On that day in particular, it was not only shortened, but fully preempted:
The klaxons spun up when Stack was halfway down the stairs.
Action.
In the space of a moment, they mourned the loss of their burgoo and calorie bar as both were summarily abandoned. No longer important. By the time the bowl clattered and splattered down to deck four, Stack was already on the stairs up to two. No time to apologize to those who got pushed out of the way. Up to the main deck next, into the open. The sea air smelled wrong, like rotten lemons and chemical bitterant. The stench was somehow familiar, but they couldn't place it in the moment. Out of breath, they reached the bridge.
The BCH Yorewell, a joint-operated research vessel, had two co-Captains; Warden Sykes, a career scientist from the Black Cross, and Lord Chonchyuudo, a Hark of some alleged repute. To Stack's knowledge, neither had seen true combat. They favored Sykes for her tenure with the Black Cross' Academic Division, but she was far too green as a sailor, let alone a commanding officer. At the very least, though, she was human. Mr. Chon, as his Hark subordinates called him, was very much not. The faceless, rugose, paper-white giant took up much of the free space on the already cramped bridge, his globby flesh spilling over and through his human-sized chair as he silently rotated to face Stack.
"Acting Security Chief Stack," he started, "there is an emergency that requires your immediate atte-"
"A huge cloud appeared on sensors," Sykes interrupted, "out of nowhere, all at once. I'm worried it might be...enemy combatants."
Bandits. What she meant by that was "bandits." She always spoke of combat in distanced, technical terms, sounding somewhere between unfamiliar and disgusted.
The majority of the Yorewell's crew was comprised of Research personnel, then Maintenance and Engineering, a few trace elements like Comms and Ethics, and finally the minimum-required security detail that had recently lost over half of its nine-member skeleton crew; the most senior surviving member of which was Stack and their whopping fifteen months of BC service on top of a bachelor's in whatever "communications" actually amounted to. However, twelve of those fifteen months were on frontline rota, patrolling the border between territory controlled by their people and the wild seas beyond; ruled by anarchy and lousy with bandits, scavs, and monsters. Stack had seen their share of combat, and they had all of a bad arm and a transfer to a "peaceful little research vessel" to show for it. They could hold their own in a firefight, and they were detached enough to be able to make hard tactical decisions that put the needs of the vessel before the guarantee of their safety. That's why Chon promoted them. They hated him for it. They hated him for a lot of things.
Chonchyuudo burbled.
"Long-range sensors detect unidentified flotsam within the cloud, hundreds of objects between 1 and 3 meters with fairly little mass to them. The sensors cannot compile shape data at this range. What is your opinion in regards to our safety, Acting Security Chief Stack?"
He always made sure to add the "acting," too. The pompous, soggy marshmallow of a thing was insufferable, but the data spoke louder to Stack. They had seen readings like this once before.
Sheer, cold panic.
"Red."
They sprinted to the sensor panel, pushing between the captains in a way that would be a breach of decorum in anything but an extreme emergency.
Unluckily, it very much was.
They turned to Sykes, then the other.
"There's a cloud. Cloud full of little guys. It's red, isn't it? Do we have visuals yet? The cloud. Is. It. Red!?"
Sykes nodded in confirmation, looking like she was just notified that she had been unknowingly holding a bomb. Chonchyuudo, for all Stack could tell, looked worried as well.
He croaked out a "yes, wavelengths obser-" before Stack pushed back through the both of them, sprinting for the door. They stopped at the threshold, looking back at their commanding officers, both of whom now looked back at Stack for direction. A wave of sickness came with the adrenaline. This was far too close to last time.
"High alert, full-tilt on everything. Get everyone up, get 'em to stations."
Thacker Stack tried their best not to vomit, hoping the weight of their breaths came off as seriousness to their captains.
"It's fucking space vampires."
They took a good, long look at Sykes and Chonchyuudo, registering the fear in her face and the shudder in his barbels. Then, as the klaxons multiplied and the ship rumbled to life, Chief Stack bolted for the armory.
----------
🚀🔄🚑
----------
The cramped cockpit was humid with Taylor's breath, tinged sickly metallic with the fresh bloodstains on her favorite hoodie. No damn ventilation, can't roll down the windows in a...submarine? Spaceship? Something. Whatever it was, it was surrounded with something that worked like water, but wasn't. More than anything, she was just glad that nothing was leaking. Even more than anything, she never wanted to have to find out what that liquid was. More so even than that, she wanted to break down and cry. The most, above everything there ever could be, she wanted to go home to her chaotic house and her dog that chewed everything and her terrible mother and her awful life. In the space of two days, Taylor Myers had gone from being a miserable teen who wanted to be anywhere other than Barren County to being an even more miserable teen desperate to get back there.
At the very least, the controls were familiar. Taylor had learned to drive in her father's house; an old ambulance that Taylor Sr. converted to a camper that, after the divorce, became more "home" than the word motorhome usually suggested. He called her Gloria. Whatever the hell this bullshit submaship was before, whatever it looked like while that rambling shitwhistle Mic was alone on the ship for who knows how long, the moment Taylor stepped into the cockpit with the intent to put pedal to metal, it was a perfect match for ol' Glori. Even had the chunk she kicked out of the dash after Gabby Nuñez said that she'd only kissed her to get back at Vinnie. Nobody bothered to name the ship in the chaos of those first two days, and now that it was more or less hers she decided to keep the name. At least one thing could be consistent, could be familiar enough to give a shred of comfort.
Taylor had never been on what she considered a "true" road trip, only the sort where the GPS did all the work and she knew where she and her mom were going to be driving to several days beforehand. A real one, to her, had a vague destination and an even more lightweight plan to get there. It was about the adventure. She had always wished to be adrift. Now that she was, it felt a bit less appealing.
"Alright, first thing: somewhere to land. Dock? Park. What the shit-fuck-hell is the right word to use there? This thing probably needs fuel, so it's probably a good idea not to waste too much until I figure out how to get more."
Even when talking to herself, Taylor was practical before much else. Practical and profane, when she was frustrated. Breaking down and crying was for after you'd secured your escape.
"Dad kept maps in the glove box, maybe that transferred over?"
Click. Rustle. Sigh.
A map of the Kentucky interstate system would be of no use here, save maybe to wrap a sandwich in.
"Right. Well. Gloria, you got any ideas? You've always been here for me, at least I hope that's still you."
Like always, she sat in silence for a beat, to allow the vehicle to respond. It was her tradition, and thus one more little way she could attempt to maintain consistency.
"Well, I didn't much expect you to have anything prepared. This is maybe the furthest I've ever been up shit creek, I'm flailing. Hell, I'm not above praying. Hear that, mom?" she shouted to nobody, "It worked! You put enough 'fear of god' in me that I'm considering asking the sky for help here. Maybe if I wish hard enough I'll wake up in my bed at your place on a fine Sunday morning and your kid'll be normal and we'll all go throw snakes at each other."
The bitterness always welled up by the end. The first step was always thinking of her mother. The last was always screaming internally and grinding her teeth. Sometimes, like this one, the screaming was external.
Despite everything she said to herself, though, she did eventually resort to hope. It felt greasy and wrong. She wanted to go home. She wanted to un-see everything she'd experienced in the past two days. She wanted the real Gloria, because that meant her dad would be there too. She clenched her fists and kicked, hitting the Gabby Nuñez Scar dead-on. Despite her best efforts, she eventually cried. It felt like she cried for hours. Her lungs hurt. Her head throbbed. It just kept coming. It didn't make her feel any better.
Then, a light. Something within the dashboard crackled. Terrifyingly, it sounded just like a campfire. It sputtered and cracked and began to ooze, glowing like molten iron, up through the dash. Taylor jumped up, eyes still obstructed with unwanted tears. Not another ember-gloopy horror rising up to eat her. Two in a day shouldn't be allowed. And yet, a hand pushed its way through. Then another. And three more. Something vaguely resembling a human torso formed itself between the limbs, prying itself up through the Gabby Nuñez Scar. Frozen in the sort of fear response that can only come after several previous exhausting and traumatic events, Taylor wished she could reach for the door. It was right there. It was so far away. Her face felt hot and pressurized.
"Dad, Gloria, Mom, anything listening, I just wanna go home. I just wanna go home."
The blazing figure bowed, reaching out a hand.
Taylor didn't notice.
Taylor was hyperventilating.
Taylor was buckled over, sputtering mucus into the bloodstains on her favorite hoodie, onto the only remains of the first people to be nice to her in a long time, repeating the same "I just wanna go home" for the thirtieth time.
She felt a hand on her shoulder. Slow and light at first, but growing rapidly into a hug. A hot, metallic hug from far too many hands.
For a moment, it was like Mom was back in her right mind. Taylor felt small and vulnerable for a long, desperately-needed moment.
[Fear not, child, for you are now in my care. I shall be your Vesselheim. You shall be my Knight. Together, we have much work to do.]
It was like a voice synthesizer in a tin can doing an impression of her mom, just close enough to be unsettling.
The illusion broke.
She was back in a weird copy of her dad's house-bulance, which was made by a weird submaship, floating in the middle of the Who Even Knows Sea.
She defaulted to deadpan.
"Fuckin' what."
[Anon, the storm's approach. The sanguine miasma that threatens us both. Sit, please, I cannot travel without your direction.]
"What in the entire living hell are you?"
The figure released her, unfurling up and over Taylor like a red-hot molten canopy. It had at first had no hint of a face, or even much of a head, instead possessing a whirling cloud of starry material that hovered loosely over its neck stump. As the thing spread itself out, the cloud condensed into a gleaming iron mask that looked a bit like Mom, and a bit like Aunt Debbie, and an unsettling, uncanny amount like an older Taylor.
"I am your Gloria."
----------
🚑🔄🚀
----------
The Black Cross was an organization dedicated to theoscientific discovery, focused on understanding the Supersargasso Sea's psychedelic supernature and the metaphysical biology of the very real gods and monsters that haunted its non-waters. Conversely, their partners in the Joint Operations Agreement, The Harks, were originally formed as a society of adventurers who hunted for the rare and powerful artifacts of the great pre-human civilizations that once flourished on the Supersargasso. Both organizations were, by their missions, dedicated to the vague "survival and advancement of humanity," and had ended up acting as de facto peacekeepers for the communities that formed in and around their territorial holdings. As such, even the humble Yorewell had a well-stocked armory. Stack arrived to it already crowded, their newly-recategorized subordinates tossing rifles to the rabble. They pushed through the crowd, pulling themself up onto the counter between Seekers Vasquez and Rumham. It was time for the Bridge Officer Voice. They hated this part. The last time they had to use it, it was to announce that they'd be taking over for the much-loved, very dead, Striker Rudghast. It was why, even now, they still couldn't bare to refer to themself as being the new Striker; allowing their team the mild insubordination of calling them Officer, or Chief, or basically anything else that didn't denote rank.
They were not a very good Striker.
They were no longer even a particularly good soldier.
More than anything, they were a wreck.
They put on the voice regardless.
"OK, boys. New info, new loadout. It's Maggots. Like, The-Maggots-In-Space Maggots. Meaning, uh, it's gas vampires. Respirators are now mandatory. Stakes and pitchforks, too. Anyone not ready to deal with bloodsuckers, get to the laboratory decks and hunker down with the other noncombatants. Everyone else, aim for the skiffs under 'em on the approach. They're useless at range, mobility is their best weapon; they berserker-charge to close distance, betting on you trying to hit them instead of disabling their vehicles. Standard bait and switch: they're basically immune to bullets, and they're relying on you to be too scared to remember that nobody can swim in non-water, even if they're undead. A stranded immortal is still stranded. Your goal is to turn as many as you can into sitting ducks for the grapeshot jockeys downstairs to mop up. Anything that you and gunnery don't take care of is gonna try to board. Once they do, drop the gun and focus them down in groups. If you have a fork, pin em to the ground. If you have a stake, it goes in one ear and out the other. As long as they can hear their music, they'll regenerate. Any questions? Good. Form two lines, everyone gets something pointy."
They hopped down, a new wave of adrenaline sending renewed signals to void their still-empty stomach. Vasquez gave them a thumbs-up and a "Good to see you, Chief, let's bust some bloodbags!" It was certainly meant to be encouraging, but everything felt too distant and distorted to mean much in that moment. Vasquez didn't even know that the whole rally-while-ambushed speech was stolen from the man who had full-chestedly orated it in the moment, confidently, to Stack and the rest of their patrol one awful day.
What felt more reassuring was the familiar weight placed in their hand by Rumham. A black metal sphere a bit smaller than a softball, inset with flickering red lights along the seams. A Dragon's Tooth. They pressed their thumb to a port on the side for a few seconds, syncing the thing to them with a finger prick and a drop or two of exchanged fluids. They hoped they wouldn't have to use it, but it was still better to feel like something had their back. Even if it was one of those things.
The whole ship shook. Stack's hair stood on end. Must've been the shield going up. Wouldn't do much good against a force that didn't even bother carrying guns, but it might be good for morale. They quickened their pace. They weren't sure why. Stack had faced exactly one proper Maggot raid, and it was the single worst experience of their life.
Ten months ago, early into their field assignment to the Northern border, Squire Thacker Stack worked under a Ranger named Merrick Budd. Ranger Budd was a kind man and a good leader, who had died a horrible and preventable death.
Budd was special. Mythologized. A permanent fixture in their warmest memories and worst nightmares alike. The singularity of that incident, where the one truly good man they could name died because he did something above and beyond for their benefit, served as catalyst for whatever curse Stack believed they had caught. Budd was only the first in a long line of Stack's COs, each of whom met a terrible fate. With each successive loss, Stack left behind a bit of themself. It didn't feel like there was much left; just wracking memories of unspeakable horrors, one after another. The Black Cross did not dismiss its assets on mundane mental health grounds, and so Stack simply continued marching forward. In this case, toward a series of events that felt like reliving one of those flashbacks.
A record scratch. Breakbeat drums. Then the guitar, high and frantic. Eyeless. The Maggots held a reverence for a band from topside, it was the key to their undead vitality. Budd had explained it as having something to do with masking a frequency that reverberated with The Red, the miasma that they carried into battle as both weapon and standard. Stack couldn't hold the memory without thinking about what happened next. That music was the soundtrack to heavy, bloody memories. That music, the same song even, played as they watched Budd get pulled apart and devoured.
Budd's words were theirs now, welled up in their mouth so quick that they couldn't help but let the sentence repeat itself:
"Stay in the present. It's an awful present, but it's real."
He always said something like that.
It didn't help.
----------
🚀🔄🚑
----------
Gloria streaked like a falling star through the weird, rusty, not-quite-water that filled this endless nowhere. Taylor felt the same rush as the day Dad taught her how to catch some air at the railroad crossing out by Rocky Hill. It was exhilarating to fly like this, feeling the forces that pulled at her when she tested the old girl's new turning radius and how quick she picked up. It was, however, terrifying to keep flying and flying and yet see nothing that even reasonably resembled artificial light or civilization.
Hours passed. Occasionally, a soft, tinny voice that was not Gloria's would notify her of a "patch of debris" to be avoided. Did this thing have a nebulous talking "computer" like your average TV starship? If so, what did that make the molten-hands-thing that called itself Gloria? Would the Avoid Debris Voice comfort her like Gloria did? Did it think? Feel? Did Gloria? What exactly...happened after she met that thing that said it was her dad's ambulance camper, anyway? The moment itself felt impossible and the time after unreal, fading into uncanny before finally blending in with the baseline misaligned strangeness that Taylor had been coming to grips with since the day before yesterday. This whole sorta-ocean place felt like having her right shoe on her left foot.
Several flashing lights broke her from her highway-hypnotic trance. A huge red cloud appeared instantly in place ahead, settling and spreading out after a frozen second. Avoid Debris Voice had become Imminent Danger Alarm Voice, and even it sounded worried. A yellow reticle appeared on the windscreen, locked onto something beyond the cloud labeled "BCH Yorewell." A hundred more tiny targets followed, streaming out from the cloud toward BCH Yorewell. She didn't let up on the gas for a second. Taylor was getting answers, even if it meant flying into an apparent warzone.
It would have been a terrible idea if it had ever managed to get to the point of being a coherent thought, but Taylor was riding on a dangerous combination of desperation and derealization. Nothing else mattered. She had a few seconds to pick a side, and defaulted to the red team. The red team was always the defending team, everybody knew that.
----------
🚑🔄🚀
----------
Defending against a Maggot assault was like trying to catch a handful of moths: no matter what tactics are employed, most of them slip through. Defending against a Maggot assault was unlike attempting to catch moths in one's hands because moths are rarely armed with explosive power tools, and they tend to die when they are killed. Stack held no delusion that the battle would be won without even a puff of the Red staining the Yorewell's deck. While the panicked flock of volunteers from Research and Maintenance took pot shots at the oncoming storm, Stack tightened the last belt on their long-fall boots. They smirked at the "Tread on Ye" that Mazslow wrote on the left one in paint marker. That was the day before he died. That was the day before they all d-
A keening tone cut through the approaching chug of vampiric nu-metal, fully diverting Stack's train of thought as well. That horn belonged to a Vesselheim, undoubtedly. Was it the Heartbeat? Was the Pirate Queen herself coming to this one? It sounded smaller than the Heartbeat's horns. Was it just far off? Was it an unknown? There hadn't been a new Vesselheim emergence in decades, and they only changed hands when the previous crew was killed off.
It couldn't be.
It was.
----------
🚀🔄🚑
----------
Taylor decided she was on the wrong team when a second, larger man in a bloodstained boilersuit jumped onto Gloria's windshield and began to messily devour the first, whose leg seemed to have broken on impact. Even flying near to the red cloud prompted the Imminent Danger Alarm Voice to start panicking. These were not normal people, these were not good people, these were people to get away from very quickly. The.....beige team(?) looked better and better as she passed into visual range of the marker labeled BCH Yorewell. By the time three more sailboards packed with blood-suit freak men swung in from all angles like seagulls on a side of fries, she and Gloria had pulled close enough that the Yorewell people had begun to fire on her aggressors. The windscreen was spattered with blood and boilersuit scraps within seconds. Somehow, the glass never cracked. Taylor made a note, then j-turned to hover directly over BCH Yorewell and its crew of heavily-armed frightened janitors. She flipped the radio to bullhorn, took the mic off its cradle, and immediately dropped it when a person with a goddamn rocket launcher fell boots-first onto the windscreen. She was glad the mic was still on push, or everyone below would've heard a very high-pitched yelp followed by a stream of surprised profanity. Unlike her previous boarders, though, this one stood confident. They had on a lot more armor than their compatriots, including a full-face helmet that made them look like they belonged on a motorcycle. Taylor thought that, maybe, this could be the captain, here to explain everything and help her escape this hell. Instead, she heard
"I am Security Chief Thacker Stack, speaking on behalf of the Black-Cross-Hark Joint Research Vessel Yorewell: for the love of whatever god you bleed for, we need your help."
Bleed for? Great. They sounded like her mom. Though, they did imply multiple gods.
The voice was shaky, clearly this Stack guy was shaking in their boots. But, Taylor mused, at least they sounded pretty.
She shouted her reply through the glass.
"Aight, Fancy-Boots, just tell me which button on an ambulance dash is, uh, shoot?"
The soldier's posture changed; they loosened their grip on the absurd device slung over their shoulder, their shoulders slumped forward, their head dropped. Whatever realization they'd just made, it seemed to Taylor that it had reduced her value to them.
"Where are you from?"
"More-or-less Glasgow, Kentucky."
"You have no idea what this thing is, do you?"
"Her name is Gloria."
"That thing is a Vesselheim."
"Gesundheit."
They lolled their head dramatically, which looked admittedly cool to Taylor, at least when backdropped by supercosmicexplosionwar. Something about the...nonchalance? The smoky monotone. The whole "brandishing high explosives while standing on a submaship's windscreen" thing.
"Where's the moon door, I'm coming in."
"The what?"
"Moon door, on the double."
"It doesn't tell me what it is if you just say it again, but loud n' angry."
"Have you ever disembarked this craft?"
"Yeah, through a big hole in the floor in the big room with all the spinny-wheel doors."
"Thanks. See you soon. What I'm about to do won't hurt you, I promise."
At that, the soldier pointed the tube of their weapon at their feet, jumped straight up, tucked their knees into their chest, and literally blasted off.
----------
🚑🔄🚀
----------
Trajectory calculations were mostly handled by the computer housed within Stack's standard-issue BC spinal implant which, under combat activation, worked in concert with the exo-brace that normally served as a mundane disability aid for their right arm. As the human component, Stack's job was mostly to stay calm while rocketing through a warzone, and to make sure the long-fall boots were the only thing to contact the arrival target's surface. As long as they had surfaces to blast-glance off, and provided they landed correctly, Stack was more or less able to fly. They loved it. With a vague idea where they were headed and what they hoped was a reassuring statement to the greenhorn pilot, they once again rocketed into the open void.
Jump, crouch, trigger, brace.
Something neither air nor water rushed against their face.
This was Thacker's last remaining truly happy place.
The first blast from their B.C. R-Class Personnel Launcher directed them mostly-laterally; the second pivoted them under the starboard wing. Once the rig's camera caught sight of the portal on the vessel's underside, it bounced Stack off the Yorewell's deck and directly into the absolutely diminutive Vesselheim. They landed boots-to-ceiling, flipping down to a somewhat-painful three-point landing.
It was stagnant in there. It smelled like blood. Stack had read shelves of books about these ancient vessels; the eternal masterworks of the long-dead Empire of Worms. Vesselheims were legendary things, wrought of flesh-metal and powered by the captive dream of a Great One. A living ship, older than the entire human race, and it was being piloted by a teenager. Probably a Topsider, too.
Wait.
It was being piloted by a teenager from up top. Stack stopped, resting their hand on a pipe covered in alternating patches of crumbly rust and oil-slick patina. Their thoughts raced, despite their best efforts to think calmly; they had to think this part through, they had to be sure. Vesselheims, as a last-ditch tactic, could pull new crew members from the worlds above. They always came in fours. Where were the other three? Was this an ambush? They pulled their knife from their belt. They needed information.
The girl stumbled in from the cockpit.
She was pathetically underequipped for both battle and the weather: tennis shoes, leggings, a bloodstained hoodie. No printing on it, so no context clues about which Earth was hers. Her expression was pure, unmitigated awe.
"How do you do that!?"
"Standard equipment, where are the rest?"
Their tone was harsh, their pace rushed.
"Is that your rocket launcher!?"
"Personnel Launcher. It launches personnel. Where are the other three people?"
"What's your name again?"
They sighed, having realized that getting the information they wanted would be more storytime than sitrep. Just the basics for now.
"Call me Stack."
"Does your 'Personnel Launcher' have a name?"
"Jane. What's your name?"
"SHE'S SO PRETTY." The girl flapped her hands in front of her face in excitement. "I'm Taylor!"
That was surprisingly exuberant. Pleasantly so. They softened a bit, their tone straying from their previous distant, rushed professionalism to relaxed and mutually curious. They had almost forgotten about the war outside. Their brain was desperate to forget the war outside.
"Where are you from, Taylor? I'm guessing it's not here."
"I said: Kentucky. Outside Glasgow. Do you know Kentucky? Where is this? Am I dead? If I were dead, you'd tell me, right?"
The faucet had opened, and the questions had begun to flow.
"In order: I know of several Kentuckies; you're in the Supersargasso Sea, in BCH-controlled space; if you're dead, I wouldn't know either, but I would tell you if I learned you were dead."
She looked simultaneously curious and devastated.
Stack had seen this in several new Hark and BC recruits who came from above. They stuck out like a hand of sore thumbs: a lot of realizations about the reality of the Supersargasso came at once, and each question answered only served to grow two more in its place. The dreaded info-hydra. From experience, it was best to be sparing at first.
"Has someone down here given you a proper welcome yet?"
Her tone snapped to acrid. "Yeah: he tricked us into getting some kinda gem from a magic bear-hole and then he fucked off with everything and left me, the only fucking survivor, for dead."
"You'll need a better welcome, then. But that's for peacetime. You're the pilot. Was one of the other three the gunner?"
"I don't know what that means."
"Are there any weapons aboard this thing?"
"I looked around earlier and found an old revolver and a buncha golf clubs. Revolver's gone now."
"Great. So. No time, no firepower. Taylor, you'd better hope I remember all the words to this or we're gonna have to improvise in a much more panicked fashion from here on out."
Taylor cocked her head. "Words? To what?"
"Worm spell."
"What."
Stack threw their hands out and looked toward the aft end.
"Immortal engine! Nascent lashed dream of the long-sleeping Great Ones! I, descendant of lowly worms and heir to that which is called humanity, hereby request asylum and adoption to the crew of this great Vesselheim!"
The whole place shook.
"And if you can, assign me to gunnery!"
----------
🚀🔄🚑
----------
Taylor looked on, rapt.
Gloria rose out of the floor as Stack finished whatever a "worm spell" was.
Well then, she thought, that was definitely magic. This was a place with magic, where personnel get launched, and where freaky guys on freaky sailboards jump at you and eat each other.
Cool. As. Fuck.
Also incredibly terrifying, but if all the awful she'd been put through the past two days got paid off with a personal "vessel high" submaship, she was willing to call it even. Her judgment was never good to begin with, and it had only gotten worse those past two days.
She nearly missed Gloria pushing Stack through the ceiling, which formed a metal-reinforced glass bubble with a gun turret around the both of them. When she came back down without them, Gloria did something that felt to Taylor like staring deep into her eyes, even though the molten figure had no real eyes, or a face, to speak of; only that swirling cloud.
What was the word?
Inscrutable.
The moment broke quickly.
"Hey! Taylor! Get to the cockpit! Hard timer!"
She ran like hell.
Gloria rumbled when Taylor sat down in what still felt like Dad's seat. She had absolutely no idea how to pilot a worm-powered spaceship, but she sure as hell knew how to tear through South-Central Kentucky in a heavily-modded ambulance.
----------
🚑🔄🚀
----------
The gun turret, despite being formed around Stack and the glowing soul of the engine, was somehow already rusty and stained with gouts of decaying blood. Their wish for a weapon came true; now, like with every other wish, they'd have to wrestle it loose from the jaws of death. Beyond the cramped crystal cornea, the red tide flooded in. By Stack's count, they'd be within boarding range in seconds. They shouted down to the newbie.
"Hey! Taylor! Get to the cockpit! Hard timer!"
Stack knew a lot about the Vesselheims: their legendary origins, their impossible technology, most notably how deadly they were when put up against modern craft. The guns of the Black Cross' flagship Vesselheim, the Mother's Arms, could shred a Maggot raiding party as an afterthought. Taylor's Gloria, though, was a hundredth the size. Maybe smaller.
No time to test, they'd have to find out in live-fire.
The grips for the turret itself were bladed. Worm tech was a thing of blood and soul, of human sacrifice and warping occultism. They removed their gloves. This was going to hurt.
A cautious grip at first. Hurry.
They pushed in, testing the force required to aim. Too much.
No time for this; full force grab.
The blades spun.
A surge of something so powerful as to be beyond Stack's comprehension flooded in.
It seared like divine judgement.
The gun aimed them. It knew the enemy. It always did, it always would.
Sometimes, a soldier is merely the bearer of their arms.
Stack couldn't breathe, let alone think. Needle-tipped cables, seemingly projected from every millimeter of the gun's surface, found purchase in their flesh. They could see the whole of Gloria, as though the entire hull had become their eyes. They could see the swarming insects whose blood-pact insulted the honor of Eld.....no- they could see the bandits headed for their comrades on the Yorewell. They had a chance to intercept.
Creaking, ever-rusted wormwrought fleshmetal screamed with friction as the turret dome rotated. The barrels flashed. A moment later, a perfect sphere of Maggot skiffs and red mist disappeared completely.
Deleted.
Stack's blood fizzled with exultation. This was a power beyond the drip-feed of minor auspice and tweaked luck from BC's reserved, peaceful, civilization-god; this was hot, unfamiliar, and brimming with pent-up fury. They felt like they had the power to remake existence. They had a nosebleed so torrential that it threatened to dip-dye their boots. No power in existence rivals the moment of deciding who lives and dies, both in its ability to elevate the mundane to historic greatness, and in its ability to purify those made 'great' into nothing more than hands with an overwhelming, addictive desire to pull the trigger.
They could feel the gun slithering deeper into them, tracing their nerves and testing their spinal implant. They were used to sharing their body with similar things. This was simply a much, much stronger hit of it than they were used to. Even with the world spinning, they could still follow the current:
Spin.
Flash.
Delete.
Repeat.
Spin.
Flash.
Delete.
Repeat.
Keep going until the screaming stops.
Keep going until everyone's safe.
Keep going until their blood nourishes the fields our great ancestors harrowed long before the dawn of these parasi-
Quiet.
Stillness.
Was it over?
----------
🚀🔄🚑
----------
Gloria slowed to a halt once again above the Yorewell, guided carefully by Taylor's foot on the brakes and her hand on the suicide knob. Taylor had no idea what Stack had done up there, but nothing remained in the rusty grey-brown void ahead save for a few scattered shreds of guy-confetti. The janitors were cheering. She unbuckled and ran to the central hub-room, hoping to congratulate her new friend on a long series of epic badasseries. Why wasn't there a ladder up to the gun bubble? Is that blood?
Not again.
Instead of her newfound, seemingly-competent friend, Taylor could only see a tangle of oxidized pipes and greasy wires that choked the bubble and blocked off its only exit. What was now inarguably blood spilled from a tiny gap in the center with alarming pressure and volume.
Taylor's thoughts rushed, breaking free into a full sprint incanted aloud to nobody in particular, and to Gloria, and to Dad. This time, though, mostly to Raleigh.
"Oh no, not this again. I can't do this again! I simply can't. Too much, too quick, too many people dead because of weird shit I don't understand and can't do anything about."
She hadn't yet realized that her hands were already widening the blood-faucet gap.
"I let you all die, and I'm gonna let this guy die, and I'm gonna die myself, and then I'll probably be eaten by guys in Slipknot shirts."
She paused, realizing where her hands were.
"...and damnit, I don't want that to happen!"
She wrenched, this time with intentionally-focused force, putting her whole body into it.
Something gave.
It was like watching a horse give birth.
An inhuman amount of what was no longer inarguably just blood fell out when the sphincter of cables slackened. Then, dangling by a hundred more tiny cables that ran from gun to flesh to gun again, Stack's unconscious form slumped halfway out from the dome.
Taylor watched for a moment, looking for life signs. The moment that Stack gasped, shouting and coughing up hopefully-just-blood, she ran to the moon door.
Poking her head out of the force-bubble that presumably kept the not-water out of her worm-vessel-submaship, Taylor shrieked for help.
The janitors scrambled to comply.
----------
⭕
----------