Averting Epsilon Chapter 1: Brace For Impact

  So, you want to hear the story of Epsilon? Well that, as cheesy as it sounds, starts and ends in the same place.

You see, you can't beam radio signals into infinite space, with a functional possibility of infinite worlds, and expect nobody to pick up the phone. And when that phone is picked up, you better not piss off the guy on the other end.

Well, somebody did pick up. And somebody pissed them off. I don't want to ruin the surprises for you, so I'll hold back exactly what happened next. In the meantime, our story, like I said, begins and ends in the same place, a perpetual storm around the Bering islands.

This odd storm appeared one day in 1908, and simply never died down. Other inexplicable weather events happened at the same time, equally as unusual, and along with them came various new forces of nature that at first were simply called magic. If the inhabitants even knew half the reason for them, they'd realize magic was the least of their worries.

Shortly after the appearance of these new forces, it was discovered they were orders of magnitude stronger and more prevalent near these weather flukes, so despite the risks, people would venture into these regions seeking fortunes. Very few could get safely past the one surrounding Bering island, but those who could made a decent living by ferrying fortune seekers through the never ending typhoon.

We start our story with one such pilot, a young irish vixen named Sapien. Oh, did I forget to mention that? Part of the appearance of those storms and forces of magic were the appearance of non-human sentient creatures. Barring total retrograde amnesia, they were perfectly normal people, and quickly integrated into society after the initial panic subsided. Or at least, that's what the history books say.

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Sapien looked out over the clouds with a troubled sigh. She'd made this crossing several dozen times before, but she'd never seen currents this bad. With a turn on a dial the bank of crystals below decks glowed brighter, broiling heat rolling from them and flushing the balloons with scalding hot gasses.

Between the ballast and the steam turbines, she was pushing the crystals to dangerously high temperatures, but she didn't have a choice if she wanted to stay above the hurricane force winds looming below. The feeling of unease she got when she picked up her passengers for this crossing was only growing stronger with every lightning bolt in the churning carpet spanning the horizons.

She went below decks and roused them, tossing her telescope to the nearest, a disturbingly large half-dragon, “On your feet, Kessler, you lot have some questions to answer.”

He grumbled, lifting a blanket from his face, “Since when do I answer questions from a kobald?”

“It's Vulpren, not kobald, and if you take that tone again, you're gonna be flying on your own wings the rest of the way.”

“Okay, so, since when do I answer questions from food?”

“That's better. The storm's picking up as we're nearing the island, I need everybody awake in case we need to start dumping cargo.”

A dwarf, Jagra, looked up from his napping, “What do you mean 'picking up' I heard that storm's been the same for centuries.”

“You heard wrong. It has a mind of its own, and something about you four is upsetting it. Normally I have a policy not to ask questions, but if any of you is harboring something that might be agitating the energies here, I need to know about it, preferably before we're falling to our deaths.”

Akaila, a winged whitewolf, grimaced before tapping on her tiara, a gold band that hooked over her canine ears and crested her brow in a gem-tipped V shape, “This might be doing it. Psionic amplifier.”

“No, I ship things like that all the time, it takes something bigger to upset this storm.”

The dwarf scoffed, “You mean like something too big to fit on this ship, something maybe we're not carrying and you're accusing us over for nothing?”

A human with the group gave out a long, distressed sigh, “I think I know what it is.”

Kessler raised an eyeridge, “Something you care to share, Tristan?”

“You could say that...would 200 stone worth of mythril interfere with that amplifier of yours?”

Sapien's eyes went wide, as did those of the others. She jumped across the room, her clawed fingers digging into his shoulders and her feet both planted in his gut, shouting “That's what's in those crates!? What kind of dumb ape moves that much mythril in a single shipment!?”

Jagra snarled the words at her, “That kind, apparently.”

Tristan pried her claws away, “We needed a currency light enough to ship by air, the syndicate never said anything about a damned psycher being on board this ship.”

She growled at him, baring her teeth, “Well thanks to your ignorance, the syndicate might just find their shipment waiting at the bottom of the ocean.”

Sapien rushed back out to the decks and took another survey of the clouds before making a course adjustment. Akaila hurried out behind her and timidly asked, “Is it still possible to turn back? I wouldn't want people to be in danger because of me.”

“It's too late for that, we don't have enough fuel to turn back at this point, and besides, it's not your fault, it's monkey of the year back there and his blood money that's likely to get us killed.”

Sounds of yelling and a struggle drew their attention back to the doors leading below decks and to Jagra and Kessler both struggling to bring a crate on deck despite Tristan's efforts to stop them.

Sapien ran towards them, scolding, “What are you morons doing!?”

Kessler responded while parrying Tristan away with his tail, “We're dumping this stuff before it gets us killed!”

“You're bringing it too close to her!”

Akaila was already on hands and knees as Sapien said those words, clutching her head tightly. Thunder was crackling in the storm below, and the clouds started rising rapidly.

Sapien shouted above the rumbling, “This ship's hull is brass! It was insulating her from the mythril!”

Jagra looked back and forth between her and the crate, “Well just get that amplifier off her head then!”

Akaila whimpered above growing pain, “I can't! It's fused! Don't you know how a psycher even works!?”

“We've got no choice but to toss it then.”

He picked the crate back up and made for the railing, but a strong current of wind rushed up from the clouds below and slammed into the ship, making him lose his balance and drop it. The crate smashed to the deck and sent mythril ingots scattering, several dozen coming to a stop around Akaila. She screamed in agony and blacked out, releasing a massive psionic pulse, sending the bars flying away as chunks of shrapnel, the passengers dropping to the deck to get out of the way.

As several ingots fell overboard and into the storm, the energy they'd been leeching from her was released, fueling the currents around them. In only seconds, strong winds grabbed the ship and pulled it down into the tempest.

Sapien took the helm, turning off the auto pilot and doing her best to keep the ship level as it rapidly lost altitude. Freezing rain sprayed from all directions and hail pummeled the decks and started clogging the turbines, their steady roar turning into ear-splitting clanks and groans as they struggled to keep their speed against the onslaught of icy debris.

She called to the others as loud as she could, “Jagra, get Akaila below decks and secure her in my cabin, Tristan, go to the galley and pull the red tabs above the range until you hear a crack, then do the same in the bilge and hold on the tabs you find there. Kessler, get all of your lot's valuables out of the hold and crew quarters and move them to my cabin, and leave the damned mythril!”

Tristan did as instructed, and found three massive steel pins above the range, painted bright red and anchored into the brass superstructure of the airship. It took all of his strength to wrench them out, and with each one, the entire ship shuddered and loud cracks rolled through it.

He went to the hold and did the same, crossing paths with Kessler as he frantically carried their possessions towards the captain's quarters. Kessler unloaded an armful of boxes and bags to the sight of Jagra tying Akaila to a bed.

He barely had time to secure her in place before Tristan pulled the last of the pins and creaks and groans rolled through the entire ship. Splits began opening in the hull and he ran towards the bow as fast as he could, jumping the last of the distance as he saw nearly half the ship's bulk falling into the inky blackness below, splashing on the surface of an alarmingly close ocean.

With the bulk of the ship's weight gone, it was no longer a cruiser and was suddenly a frigate on a cruiser's balloons, slingshotting back into the sky, all of them gripping tightly to whatever they could as wind and hail lashed at it. As the crystal bank began smoking, and the pummeled turbines began knocking against their housings, sunlight started filtering through the clouds again. Seconds later, they rocketed through the canopy and into clear blue skies again, but only briefly as they peaked in altitude and the battered engines finally gave, a deafening clang signaling the end of the starboard turbine, rotor blades falling into the clouds below.

With Akaila unconscious and most of the mythril cargo jettisoned into the ocean below, the storm started calming, but the damage was already done. The drained crystals flickered and fluttered before going completely dark. Sapien shut down the port turbine to compensate for the lost engine and left the aft running on residual steam, but it would only be a few minutes before she lost pressure.

The three men staggered onto the decks, but her glance back towards them wasn't reassuring, “We've lost all heat in the boiler, we're gonna lose pressure soon. The reserve fuel crystals were in the section we had to dump, so I've got nothing to relight the boiler with.”

Kessler raised an eyeridge, “You've got me.”

“Those boilers are designed to take type III fuel crystals, even dragon fire can't get that hot.”

“It'll limp it along though. Just keep us pointed towards the nearest land and I'll put as much fire in those as I can muster.”

Jagra stopped him as he went towards the door, “Open my pack, there's a small keg in there, dwarven ale, that should kick up your flame by a good margin.”

“Will do.”

He went to Sapien's cabin, now the only cabin on the ship, and started rummaging in Jagra's supplies for the keg. Akaila woke to the sound and struggled on the ropes tying her to the bed, “Hey, a little help here?”

He snipped them away with his tailblade and kept looking for the keg, finding it moments later. Akaila blinked and looked around, sniffing at the smoke in the air, “Did we land yet?”

“Far from it, but nearest I can tell all the mythril went overboard when we dumped the aft section of the ship.”

“When you dumped the what!?”

He gave her a half salute and a chuckle, then hurried to the boiler room. He opened the access hatch to a blinding wave of heat, scalding even to his dragonscaled face. Before he had a chance to second-guess it, he took a mouthful of the ale and released a torrent of flame into the heat chamber.

With the alcohol augmenting his flame, he was able to restore some power, and each exhale from him brought with it a slight increase in the ship's turbine speed, but between the rapid deep breaths required for the flame, and the potent ale seeping into his tongue and piercing his sinuses, he was growing rapidly dizzy and light-headed.

Eventually the keg ran empty, and so did his stamina. He closed the hatch and slumped down next to the boiler, not sure if it was the ship or his own head spinning, but the extra heat bought them valuable altitude, and Sapien managed to clip the inner edges of the clouds, escaping the storm and declaring “Land ho!” as the island they were destined for approached on the horizon, dead center in the typhoon's eye.

She siphoned what steam she could into one of the auxiliary tanks and held it there as they steadily lost altitude in the now stable and gentile breeze. She warned them to brace for impact as the ground approached rapidly, and released the boiler's final breath into the last remaining turbine to slow them right before landing.

The slowing was significant, but not enough to save the ship's keel, which buckled and collapsed on impact and rendered the vessel a total wreck. With the exception of Sapien they all climbed out and onto the beach, collapsing in both exhaustion and relief, except for Kessler, who's movements were closer to drunken slithering.

Sapien emerged from the wreck several minutes later, dragging a massive brass slab, big as a backpack compared to her small vulpine form. Indeed, as she climbed down, a pair of woven chain straps assembled themselves from two corners and she put it on as such.

She looked at the wreck with a disdainful sigh, then at the four weary travellers, “You do realize you all owe me a new ship now, right?”