A Brotherhood of Crows.
Chapter 18

“Helm, bring us to port, twenty degrees.” Captain Pillion’s voice crackled over the radio. “Logistics, on my mark if you please...ready...launch.”

From his makeshift laboratory, deep within the bowels of Cerberus, Dr Crucius watched on the holoscreen as the drone was fired out of the torpedo launch tube and began to fly ponderously towards the ruins of the city.

“Manual controls coming online now,” said Crucius. He took hold of the joystick in front of his holoscreen, “Distance to target area four hundred leagues and closing.”

Cerberus and her support vessels hung low in the gunmetal skies, around one hundred leagues off the coast of Madagascar. Captain Pillion had halted their presence here, and kept all three vessels at a height of twenty five thousand feet, just below the clouds. The area was what the Captain had called a hot zone - a zone where conflict between Commonwealth and Severance forces was ongoing. The three airships kept below the cloud ceiling, and thus out of visual range of any Severance patrols, but also high enough that, if needed, they could breach the clouds and shock away if danger presented itself.

“Three hundred leagues,” said Crucius. On his holoscreen, he now had a view from a camera mounted on the front of the drone - it gave a fishbowl view of the scorched earth, the deep gashes in the ground where rail gun fire had torn up roads, trees and towns, and the approaching vista of the city, now a shell of itself.

“Are you sure about this?” said CSO Hitchens, to his right. Cerberus’s chief science officer had remained almost perpetually at Crucius’s elbow since he had arrived on board, watching his work with a mixture of awe and nervousness.

“Very much so,” replied Dr Crucius, without taking his eyes off the holoscreen. He made small adjustments to the drone’s course with gentle twitches of the joystick. “My sense is that the storm is drawn towards sights of recent conflict; past sightings have been reported near to, or at, locations where battles have taken place. We will replace no better site than here.”

“But what makes you think the storm might appear here?” asked Hitchens, “There have been many sorties with the Severance over the last few days, so why should -?”

“Call it a hunch,” said Crucius, abruptly, to shut him up if nothing else.

“I must concur with my CSO,” Pillion’s voice came over the radio. “If your thesis is correct, and the storm is attracted to recent combat, then this is but one of many possible locations.” Crucius detected a barely concealed hint of steel in the captain’s voice, “And may I remind you, again, Dr Crucius, that if there is any sign of trouble here my men are under orders to Shock back to the rendezvous point -”

“I am of course completely aware of the threat this expedition poses to your men, Captain,” Crucius cut him off smoothly. He made another small course adjustment, “You need not fear. I do not believe you and you men are in any immediate danger.”

Pillion grunted noncommittally, and Hichens continued to hover, too close to Crucius for comfort. Privately, Crucius quelled a feeling of exasperation. Hitchen had been assigned to him as soon as he’d stepped aboard Cerberus, and had been nothing but a nuisance ever since. Crucius had known more first year undergraduates with a more refined sense of studying unnatural phenomena than Hitchens, and certainly more who could get on with their jobs without the need for self-narration. As for Captain Pillion, he had proved harder to read. The initial unease that Crucius had felt upon their meeting in the Palace of Westminster had not gone away, and Pillion had been courteous but stony over the last two days. The skills Crucius had picked up from long, long years of navigating the power structures and hierarchies of Cambridge University had gotten him no nowhere. He had expected to have been quartered with the officers, which might have given him a good opportunity to read Pillion, but had instead been given a bunk in a rowdy crew head. Unperturbed, he had asked the captain to dine with him in the officers mess, only to discover that Captain Pillion insisted on eating with his men in the low galley, and instead, he, Crucius, had been invited to dine with them. Crucius had never seen a more disgusting display of culinary habits; most of the men had eaten with their fingers, the air coarse with their language and heckles, and the Captain had joined in as naturally as if he’d been a petty officer. In short, Crucius was no closer to pinning down his unease about Gregory Pillion, but only knew that the Captain regarded him with barely concealed contempt.

As the drone drew closer to its target, the city began to become clearer. Antananarivo had been the capital of Madagascar for almost five hundred years. Horseshoe shaped, it had circled around an artificial lake, a mass of gleaming skyscrapers, stadiums, neat streets, and historic buildings. Until a few days ago, that was: now all that remained was the jagged shards of bombed out towers, that jutted knife like into the sky, and great piles of rubble where homes had once stood.

“Tell me, Lieutenant Modaboah,” said Crucius as he continued to pilot the drone closer to the city, “If you would be so kind, what happened here?”

“At 0800, two days ago,” Modaboah came through on the radio, “The Commonwealth’s 8th Fleet launched a surprise attack on the Severance’s 12th fleet, which had docked to take on supplies at Toamasina. The Severance forces withdrew to the interior of the island, and tried to engage our ships at low altitude combat. The battle lasted four hours. Severance loss: five battleships, and one loss on our side, RMS Akron. The remainder of the Severance vessels were captured.”

“And tell me, Lieutenant,” Crucius continued, surveying the destruction before him on the holoscreen, “Was Antananarivo itself a target?”

“No Doctor. Madagascar is considered part of the Neutral Zone. What happened to the city must have been the result of collateral damage. “

That was one way of putting it. As the drone soared over the remains of the city, Crucius noted the deep craters in the brokens streets; a typical air ship rail gun could fire ionised projectiles at speeds of around mach five. Such projectiles were often no bigger than a man, and might only dent an airship’s armour upon impact, but if a stray shot hit the ground, it could explode like a bomb going off. Furthermore, if any airships came down to earth in combat, their thauma drives were likely to explode, with the forces of thousands of tons of TNT. No wonder the city had been obliterated.

“And how many casualties?”

“Military?”

“Civilian,”

“Approximately,” there was a short pause, “one point one million.”

“Then we have the perfect conditions.” replied Crucius, and turned his attention back to the drone, now fifty leagues from the city.

“I don’t see what the death toll has to do with the absurdity storm” said Hitchens.

Crucius sighed inwardly. Didn’t that man ever get bored? “A simple hypothesis; death tends to generate Chaos, an explosion of life energy if you will. If, as I believe, the absurdity storm is a mass chaos entity, then such a large quantity of chaos might draw it out.” he tapped on a few buttons on his holoscreen. “The readings on the drone should be coming up...now. You see? There’s a huge amount of Chaos energy in the area surrounding the city -”

“Chaos energy?” Hitchens said, blankly.

Crucius scowled at him. “Do you have any background in the Unnatural Sciences, CSO Hitchens?”

Hitchens looked confused. “In what now?”

Crucius swore he heard Pillion stifle a laugh over the radio.

The drone had reached the centre of the city now, and Crucius put it on auto-pilot, in a loose circular patrol root, and turned his attention to his readings. “Chaos spread, high. Atmospheric pressure, 101.325 kPa, lower than normal given our altitude above sea level; wind speed 18kph -”

He hesitated. The day before he had loaded a program onto his holoscreen, designed to correlate atmospheric pressure to chaos spread. Typically, one could expect to replace extremely low atmospheric pressure in the centre of a storm, such as a cyclone or tornado. Additionally, one would expect to replace low levels of Chaos as well, unless the storm had caused significant loss of human life. Crucius had run a few test scenarios through the program, just to check it was working, and it should have displayed the data from those as a guide to compare to the data being sent in from the drone. But instead, Crucius found that the program was clean, as new, with no simulations.

Someone was tampering with his research. And they hadn’t been careful.

Hitchens was still at his side, and out of the corner of his eye, Crucius regarded him balefully. The man was too stupid to be a spy. There were a few of his underlings who came and went from the lab, but they didn’t have the access codes for Crucius’s holoscreen. The Captain perhaps? Unlikely; he was either on the bridge or in his bunk. Anyone who had accessed the holoscreen must have hacked Crucius’s codes - no mean feat - but they had been sloppy. They had clearly examined the test data and then accidentally deleted it…

A sudden beeping from the drone brought Crucius back to reality. He checked his readings again. “Atmospheric pressure dropping rapidly.” he called out. He brought up the drone’s camera, trying to get a better view of the skies. “Wind Speed increasing now - 28 kph….34 kph…”

“Sir,” Modaboah came in over the radio. “We’re picking up clouds moving rapidly over the city.”

“Location?” snapped Pillion.

“Navigation puts it at five hundred leagues and closing, sir.”

“Spool up Shock drives, relay to the Ajax and the Marksman.” Pillion barked, “Doctor, whatever you’re going to do, do it fast.”

“I will indeed, Captain,” said Crucius. Deep below him came the audible groan as Cerberus’s Shockstream drive began to charge. He spun the drone it its circle, looking for something, any sign of the storm. Clouds were beginning to fog his vision, and he noted the atmospheric pressure dropping rapidly.

Over the ship’s tannoy, Pillion’s voice sounded: “All hands, make ready for imminent shock. All personal report to your stations and secure all fighters in the bay.”

Crucius heard Hitchens give a little gasp as he read over his shoulder. “That’s impossible!” he whispered, “The atmospheric pressure is 0.657 atm - that’s lower than any record -”

Crucius didn’t reply. The drone was now trapped in the clouds that had rapidly formed around it, and he could barely see a thing. The chaos spread here was off the chart. Desperately, he tried to replace a break in a cloud, some way to see what was going on around him. He veered the drone to a higher altitude, and then -

-Then his view was suddenly clear.

Behind him, Hitchens swore softly.

The drone had punched through the cloud into a great, empty space. Wind speed had dropped to nothing. Ahead of the drone, filling up the viewscreen was a great, black mass. It was huge - miles across. The blackness was the darkest onyx, an inky circle carved out of the sky. Yet here and there the black was broken by jagged shards of green lightning, leaping and sparking and looking, for all intents and purposes, like the veins on a great, malevolent eye.

“Captain -!” said Hitchen, nervously.

“I see it,” replied Pillion, “Time till we can shock?”

“Fifteen seconds, Captain,” called Modaboah.

Over the tannoy, “All hands, prepare to Shock on my count,” then back on the radio, “Wrap things up, Doctor, we’re getting out of here.”

“Captain, I really must insist -”

“With respect Doctor, you can stick your insistence up your arse,” back on the tannoy, “All hands, prepare to shock in ten...nine...eight...seven...”

Crucius sighed, and turned back to the holoscreen. So close, yet so far.

“...six...five...four...three..two...one...and shock now.”

Cerberus jolted violently forward as her Shock drive kicked in and sent her leaping across the boundaries of space. With another jolt she came to a sudden halt.

“Report!”

“Current position three hundred leagues off the Coast of South Africa, Sir. All support vessels accounted for.”

Crucius sighed and muted the radio. His holoscreen had turned to static, and he swiped it closed with resignation. He checked over his readings - some useful data, captured in the last few seconds before Cerberus had shocked away, but nothing meaningful. He was back to square one.

At least Hitchens had wondered off, perhaps scared by his first glimpse of the absurdity storm. Alone for the first time, Crucius rested himself against the edge of his workstation, and pinched the bridge of his nose. With no data to do any real analysis on, his mind turned to the next immediate question: someone was spying on him. And he intended to replace out who.

He felt a buzz in the inner pocket of his suit jacket. Reaching inside, he took out a slim phone, the counterpart to the one he had presented to Elijah Avaron in Cambridge. He flipped it open, and read the message:

Might have something. Can we talk?

Ah, that other business. In the excitement of the experiments, he had almost forgotten the Brotherhood of Crows.

Yes. Give me one hour.