The yellow, crackling glow that surrounded the ship intensified, and if anything, both it and the rain had gotten significantly worse in the last couple of minutes. The Son of Albion’s deck drifted into view. Groups of men, four at a time, fought a dozen or so fires across the deck; steam hissed into the sky as the rain washed across the flames, but did little to quench their appetite. Large sections of metal plating had peeled back in the shape of terrible modern art or had been torn away to reveal the vulnerable wooden innards of the ship that were almost as on fire as the deck. The cradle spun on the spot as it hovered into position. She felt vulnerable and, perhaps most importantly, very, very wet.

  The cradle shunted towards the ship, its height adjusted automatically brought it in line with the deck. It locked into place alongside two metal arms and settled as the engine shut off. She hopped down to the deck with a squelch, as while the balloon offered some cover from the rain, the wind still saw fit to whip torrents of water into her face as some kind of joke. Edevane shoved her out of the way with the sort of force that suggested his whole personality was made of dicks, and stalked off towards the, she presumed, control room. It wouldn’t be so terrible, she thought, if they just both strangled each other. With the exception of the sailor-types, the deck was abandoned; there were no soldiers and definitely no Uncle Bastard. Or her father.

  Sailors turned to absent-mindedly glance at her as she moved across the deck with far less subtlety than Edevane, but their minds and hands were elsewhere. The sky flashed and the deck stood as bright as day, if only for a second. Blood, there was so much of it; across the railings, across the controls to the lifeboat – pooled where he father had been standing. Her stomach churned as she watched the rain hit the dried blood and send large clots of it drifting down the deck towards her, like macabre paper boats in the gutter. What remained of the bloody trail snaked across the deck and under a sheet-covered array of boxes and barrels. “Hello,” she ventured timidly. Something moved beneath the sheeting. “Hello,” she repeated. “I’m coming under. It’s me, Erica.” She ducked under the canvas and crawled towards the source of the movement.

  “Why didn't you leave?” Sebastian wheezed. He sat with his back against the rail, his arm clutched tightly across his stomach and chest. His white shirt had taken on a pink hue while his skin had become as pale as the shirt once was. Erica stifled a scream and threw her arms around his neck. She tugged at him and tried in desperation to move him even an inch closer to the cradle, but her father’s body resisted her every attempt despite his own best efforts to move.

  “You're not trying! Please, try.” Tearful sobs punctuated her words and any semblance of a sentence became lost in them. “Please, let me help you!”

  Sebastian smiled as best he could and held his hand out towards her. She took it and gave it a squeeze – he hardly felt it. “I'm sorry,” he said. “My fault. I did it.”

  “I don't understand. Come on, let's try again. Let me take more of your weight this time. I can do it if you just let me, I promise.”

  “The attack,” he panted. “Windstadt.”

  “Don't be silly,” she gently reproached. “It's the blood loss is all, you wouldn't do that.”

  Sebastian spluttered and convulsed violently, a fine mist of blood left his mouth. “Parnell was like a puppy, always at Helena’s side. She hated it. Needed him gone to make a better life for us, to escape.”

  “That doesn't make sense, you're not making sense. You have a fever.”

  “He wanted to use the weapon somewhere else, larger. Couldn’t stop it, so redirected it. Started another war, forced Parnell to deploy overseas. Helena didn't know. My fault as well, your mother. Ask Bridget, told her.”

  Erica slid her father’s arm over her shoulder and again tried to pull him away from the railings. “We can talk about this later, when I get back. First I’ll take you home, then I’ll come back and turn the engines off and stop the Gate.”

  “Too late for that, for me, for it. You need to send the ship back.”

  “I'm listening,” she sobbed. “What about the cypher, I don’t know how it works.”

  “Don’t need to. Console’s already set. Offset first row by three, second by eight. Lever up, blue button.”

  “What about you? How do I help you?”

  “Please don't tell Sarah I'm a monster.”

  “You're not a monster, you're not!” she yelled over the rumbling sky. “You're not!” she said again, this time quieter as she sunk down and placed her head on his chest.

  “Love you,” he whispered. Then he was gone.

  “I love you, too,” she whispered into his ear, each word prefixed by a sob that threatened to leave her crumpled on the deck beside him. She kissed him on the forehead and crawled out into the rain.

  As she walked back the way she came, people and things in her periphery barely registered to her, not even the rain, not even the first few gunshots and screams. The rain-stained midnight that enveloped the ship eased up again, this time not from the intermittent crackles of electricity, but from gunfire. Edevane sat crouched behind a large wooden crate, the low-calibre ammunition of the ill-equipped crewman struck it and sent splinters and saw dust into the air to be swept around on the currents, but failed to pass through it and whatever it contained. In contrast, Edevane’s wall-killer cut through cover and crewmen alike, going as far as to set fire to the clothes of those sheltered next to them.

  “Parnell!” He screamed. Automatic fire tinkled across the deck towards him and bounced wildly and unpredictably off what remained of the Son of Albion's armour plating. He returned fire. The thrum of the rifle was followed by a gurgling scream and a clunk-clunk-clunk that even if you’d never heard it before, you’d immediately recognise as someone falling down a set of stairs. The remaining guardsman hurled his rifle onto the deck and hastily descended the stairs, not even taking the time to step over his fallen comrade.

  He barged past Erica and knocked her to the deck; he looked back at her and paused, then turned and continued running towards the lifeboats. A molten chunk of metal ripped past her and removed a large section of his torso. The man crumpled into a tangled heap of limbs that his momentum insisted keep moving along the rain-slick deck. She crawled along the length of the wall and made sure to keep all the body parts she quite liked tucked by her side. “Parnell! Get out here!” Parnell stepped out onto the deck, unconcerned by the gouts of gunfire or the twitching, smouldering bodies that lay at his feet. Nor was he concerned by the current state of the ship, which could be described as still existing but give it a minute.

  “Shoot me, then.” Parnell didn't shout or so much as raise his voice, but it still managed to carry above the roar of the numerous fires and the thunderous tumult above them. Each footfall exaggerated to make as much noise as possible, he slowly made his way further onto the deck. “Shoot me or come out. I don't exactly have all day,” he drawled. Unimpressed, he turned to walk back inside. Edevane's rifle clacked onto the deck and slid to a halt next to him.

  Parnell turned, one hand still gripped behind his back. “Oh, you're one of ours. I expected a- I don't know what I expected, really. Perhaps some kind of large rodent. Though looking at you, I wasn’t far wrong.”

  Edevane stepped forward, the urge to salute almost too great. “Colonel Christopher Edevane. Royal Expeditionary Force.”

  “I see, but I have no idea who you are.”

  “You abandoned my squad and left us to die. When I returned home, I didn’t get a thank you, I didn’t get a medal, there was no parade. All I got was this shitty mission, with this shitty equipment and bunch of rookies.”

  “I'm not interested in your stories of petty revenge. Everything I did was to save our people.” He pointed to the black void of his left eye socket. “Every sacrifice I ever made was to save our people! People have suffered, people will always suffer – it's the human condition. What people don't have to do is die choking on their own filth. Now do your duty and stand down, soldier.”

  Edevane slowly approached and unclasped his helmet. He tucked it under one arm. “The people that say that are never the ones willing to make it – never the ones willing to be tortured for it. You lose one fucking eye and you think you have the monopoly on sacrifice.”

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Edevane surged towards Parnell and slammed the helmet into his stomach. Parnell gasped and staggered backwards as Edevane brought his palm up and struck him across the nose, before he seized him by the throat and drove him towards the wall. Parnell brought his arms up between Edevane’s and pressed a thumb into each eye as his own eye lolled about drunkenly as the pressure on his throat increased. Edevane relinquished his grip and recoiled. Parnell took a quick, painful breath and stepped in to deliver a jab to his throat; while deeply unpleasant, not the killing blow he had hoped to make.

  Lightning tore across the deck, the impossibly hot tendrils scored a molten trail behind them and scattered the few crewmen that had remained on deck to keep atop the newly arisen fires. The ship shuddered and both men tumbled across the deck, every opportunity to lash out at one another as they went taken to their fullest. Erica bolted around the corner into the ship. The interior was charred and blackened, the deck mostly missing, and what wasn’t didn’t look like it was in the mood to support anyone’s weight. She kept to the metal beams where she could until she reached the stairs to the control room.

  ***

  Electricity arced between terminals and up across the ceiling, where it sparked down like rain. The majority of terminals were deformed from a sudden and violent impact with one, or several, bodies – many of which still lay in a crumpled heap in the corner. Emergency lights flickered pitifully above key work areas and Parnell's throne, leaving most of the room drenched in blackness.

  “Three, then eight,” she mumbled to herself.

  “You're nothing like your uncle at all, are you, child?”

  Erica looked up from the controls. “Are you here on business, Corelious, or did the ship need a new anchor? I’m not in the mood for you right now, I’m afraid.”

  “Very droll, Ms. Hubert, but I must ask you to step away from that terminal as if your life depended on it. Because, regrettably, it does.”

  “Oh, please.” She kept one eye on the terminal as she continued with the adjustments. “You're not exactly built for this.”

  Walking was the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other, something that Corelious had practised his whole life; running was the simple act of doing it all a little faster, which was something Erica hadn't been quite prepared for him to do. He wasn't going to win any medals, but Corelious covered the short distance between them admirably, and fast enough to elicit a stunned squeak from Erica. The meaty slap he aimed at her head fell short as his too-tight blue suit took the opportunity to hold him back and betray him for all its years of abuse. His fingers glanced across her retreating face with force enough to knock her from her feet. She hit the ground rolling and came up behind Parnell's throne.

  “I have very little that is nice to say about your father.” Corelious stalked towards the throne. “But he was a braver man than most in many respects. He was, however, a coward when it came to fully availing himself of the opportunities presented to him. He threw away his life and the lives of millions for the sake of Cadia. He opened the gates of Heaven and then closed them in our faces! Do you have any idea how that feels?”

  “They weren't his gates to open, and they're not yours.” Erica shuffled awkwardly behind the throne as she tried to anticipate which side he would come from. “People like you, like my uncle,” she spat. “Don't belong anywhere near Heaven. It's Heaven because you're not there!” She’d anticipated incorrectly; Corelious lunged around the side of the throne closest to her and seized her around the arm. The ship rumbled again.

  “I'm loathed to harm you, Ms. Hubert, but you are pushing events ever closer to where that is a possibility.”

  Erica struggled against his grip, but his fingers were clamped immovably around her forearm. “If you don't leave, there won't be a Cadia at all. Look at the sky.”

  “Pish and piffle. Sykes assured us this would happen; simple atmospheric interference. The accompanying turbulence was just a little more than anticipated.”

  “Been outside lately? The ship is in pieces and on fire, the woods are littered with bits of ship and the bodies of far too many of your people, and your precious High Lord is being chased across the deck by a deranged former employee – and you're telling me everything is fine? The Gate has an emitter and an Anchor, you probably know that already. One, or both, of them is clearly broken. The Gate isn't closing, it's getting larger. We need to send the ship back.”

  “We can't do that, I'm sorry. We neither have the resources nor the man-power to do this again this side of the next thirty years, and we don’t have those. The Son of Albion has endured more than this. High Lord Parnell won't allow anything other, and neither will I!”

  Erica fumbled through the pouches on Sarah’s tool belt. Screws and tacks, rolls of tape and tubes of glue, all spilled onto the deck and disappeared down one crack or another. She brought her hand back with a singular glass orb, the inside of it swirled like oil on water. She closed her eyes and hurled it at the wall, the cabin erupted in a blinding flash.

  “You uncivilised little bitch!” Corelious rumbled. His grip weakened and Erica pulled free. He lunged around the throne again, but this time grasped nothing but the bright spots that danced across his eyes. Lighting struck the balloon and coursed down the chains and across the deck, the chain-links squealed as they tore apart and the ship lurched to starboard.

  The Son of Albion hung precariously from one set of chains, the engines on the unsupported side struggled and failed to keep the ship upright. In a likewise fashion, Casper Corelious clung to Parnell's throne by his meaty fingertips, his stubby little legs dangled twenty-feet above the nearest solid surface. He looked up at Erica who teetered on the arm of the throne and at this moment loomed over him. “Help me, Ms. Hubert, please,” he pleaded as he kicked his legs looking for purchase on something, anything.

  “What am I supposed to- Oh, this is bloody ridiculous,” she muttered. She grabbed Corelious by the wrist, her small hands barely able to lock around it, and heaved. A piece of metal pinged past her ear and into the darkness. The eerie silence that overcame the control room was perforated by the tink-tink-tink of the bolt as it bounced down to the wall that was now the floor. The throne shifted uneasily below her, then there was a second and third ping.

  “We're going to fall!” she wheezed.

  “This has really been quite the day.” The restraining brackets of the throne began to buckle and rip away from the floor as Corelious pulled himself up towards Erica, his wrist still in her hands. “Let go, child.” Erica let go of his wrist and, as she did, Corelious seized her by her own and pulled her from the throne.

  “What are you-” she managed to get out before he thrust his arm out and threw her across the room. She landed chest first across a terminal, and thought her ribs didn’t feel broken, if she lived, they were going to have a word with her later.

  “I did it for the children,” he said quietly. “There's no reason that should change now.” The throne tore loose from its mountings and both it and Corelious tumbled into the inky darkness, the sickening thud echoed throughout the cabin.

  Erica clambered up onto the terminal and attempted to get her bearings in the newly-shifted environment; it wasn't until she looked down that she realised she was perched on the terminal she’d just been standing at. She tilted her head to the side to get a better view of the panel, then clicked the last wheel into place. “This really has been quite the day,” she repeated, then she flipped the lever and pressed the button. Metal ground on metal as the heavily dented prow of the Son of Albion scraped open and the transmitter extended. Sparks danced along the sides of the ship and consolidated themselves at the glowing tip of the emitter; the sky lightened and the crackling static that filled it localised itself entirely in an area twenty-feet in front of the ship. The engines rattled and hummed and did their best to propel the stricken vessel towards the Gate, which now held a distorted vision of an orange-washed London skyline.

  ***

  She slid down the deck, that was the easy part. Sailors struggled to clamber to relative safety, be that a crate or throwing themselves below deck through a hole that wasn't on fire. Some were less fortunate and fell screaming past her as she went; they reached for her desperately but she’d had to close her eyes and pull away, knowing that she couldn’t save them and they’d have just dragged her with them. Parnell and Edevane stood at the prow of the ship on what was once the starboard side. Their frantic pace lessened and they stumbled about something terrible, but they still didn't miss any opportunity to shove at each other and attempt to hurl the other from the ship.

  The cradle sat docked where she left it, though it now sat at a jaunty angle much like everything else. The Gate roared in a non-metaphorical sense; it didn't sound like a large creature, it was one. Two elongated tendrils of yellow energy protruded from the Gate and wrapped themselves around the ship, crushing into it and pulling it closer to what was clearly a mouth; rows and rows of spiralling purple blade-like teeth replaced the vision of the London hell-scape.

  Erica stumbled into the cradle and wrapped an arm around the rail. Geddis hadn't told her what button she was supposed to press, so she pressed them all at once. The cradle arms shuddered as they tried to remember how they were supposed to work, then they dropped it because it all seemed like too much effort at this point. The cradle tumbled through the sky end-over-end as she mashed at every button in every sequence she could imagine. The engine coughed into life and propelled the cradle a good thirty-feet sideways before it managed to right itself.

  The balloon that held the Son of Albion aloft broke free of the ship and used its new found freedom to drift away from the Gate as quickly as possible, while the ship itself stayed in the air, held by the mass of writhing tentacles that ensnared it. She watched in horrified fascination as the last of the ship disappeared into the ethereal maw and the Gate closed behind it. The horrifying soundscape quickly fell away to a chorus of birdsong as a throng of blackbirds took to the sky from the treetops below her.

  “Look!” one shrieked. “We chased it away!”

  “No we didn't, Brian. Shut up,” replied another.

  “Let him have his fun, Shawn.” The conversation drifted off as the cradle skimmed those very treetops and fell the last five or so feet into a small clearing. Erica spilled out into the dirt and rolled onto her back. The birds danced in the bright-blue above her, and outside the carnage that surrounded her, it was like everything had disappeared without trace. She kicked her feet and waved her arms in any and every direction as her manic laughter drifted up to the sky to mingle with the bird song. Like Geddis said, there was a time for everything. Sadness would come when she made it home.