Tempus_The Terraunum Origins Series

by R. J. Batla

  “If you would, periodically during our trip, send out communications to see if we can get any response from the Spirit. See if they’ll answer calls to their telestone.”

  She saluted before turning away. “Aye, Captain.”

  Celeste peered out over the vast expanse, the majesty of that blue horizon mesmerizing her momentarily. In the distance, a whale leapt from the water, its silhouette framed in the sky for an instant before it came crashing back down in a spray of water. She couldn’t tell for sure, but it looked like a sworca, the majestic black and white whales that were considered good luck for sailors. That boded well for their mission, if you put stock in such things.

  “Ahoy, Captain?” called one of the sailors she hadn’t met yet, dropping down beside her from the rigging and landing with a thump.

  “Yes…”

  A wide grin split his face – it was the man from the deck hockey game who liked to knock everyone around. This time she got a closer look: long black hair under a small, brimmed hat, square jaw, flat forehead, and a nose that had been broken at least a dozen times. Lighter blue than most Tempus, he was also heavier muscled. The man had more weapons on him that she thought possible – highlighted by two cutlasses, one on each hip. “Leroy, ma’am,” he said with a salute and a bow.

  “Is that a first or last name, sailor?”

  He nodded his head. “Just Leroy, ma’am.”

  “Well then, just Leroy, what is it you wanted?”

  “What do you suppose the odds are of finding pirates?”

  “Beg your pardon?”

  He started talking with his hands. “Well, Captain, you see, if something crazy is going on with the Spirit we’ve been sent after, it’s probably pirates. The quicker we find them, the quicker they might resist, and the quicker they resist, the quicker we get to fight ‘em. Which makes sailing a lot more interesting.”

  She waited for a second, but that seemed to be all he had. Celeste repressed a laugh. “We’ll find the Spirit as soon as we can, Leroy. But I doubt very seriously we’ll run into any pirates. It was probably something as simple as a malfunction.”

  He grinned wider. “Then I’ll just have to hope you’re wrong. Jolly good, Captain. Carry on.” He bounded off, scurrying up the mast like it was made of stairs, then hung off one side while holding on with only one hand, looking out into the horizon, pulling a knife from his belt and putting it between his teeth for no good reason. This time Celeste didn’t stop the laugh from coming.

  Later that night, she called a meeting with Mate, Poteet, and Wylie to tell them about the intruder on the ship. They were concerned, but she didn’t want to tell the rest of the crew as to not incite panic. They reluctantly agreed, and each promised to keep an eye out for anything abnormal.

  After a week’s worth of sailing, and on par with Wylie’s time estimation, the Ajax rounded Ferris Point two and a half days ahead of schedule. The point was a small mountain that suddenly dropped off into a cliff; ocean waves crashed against the sheer face, trying their best to erode the mountain further. In a few minutes, they had left the point behind, caught a different current, and were speeding along the eastern coast of Terraunum, working their way down the first of the four peninsulas off the larger Watuaga Peninsula. Newark was located at the southern tip of this first finger, according to Wylie, and that was where they’d really start their mission.

  The crew was working like a well-oiled machine. Celeste almost forgot this was a military mission, and that she wasn’t just taking a very large private vessel on vacation.

  The weather remained fair, so after another week of sailing, the ship was approaching its destination. Celeste told her crew to keep a sharp eye out for anything out of the ordinary, but especially for the ship they were after.

  “Ahoy! Something off the port bow, Captain! Something big!” Jace yelled from the crow’s nest. Celeste, Mate, and several of the crew rushed to see what Jace had spotted.

  “Is it the Spirit, Jace?” Poteet called up.

  “It’s not moving, sir. Looks like a large, dead sea creature – a whale maybe?”

  Poteet looked at Celeste. “Your call, Captain, but a dead biological? Seems safe enough.”

  “If something died, where are the scavengers?” Mate said.

  Celeste nodded to Poteet, though she didn’t have an answer for Mate. Poteet called to Wylie at the wheel. “Five degrees to port.”

  Celeste could vaguely see the large shape floating in the water, gently bobbing in the waves. Turning to the wheel deck, she hollered, “Three more degrees port, Wylie! We want to pass by it as close as possible.”

  “Aye, Captain. It’ll be off the starboard side momentarily,” Wylie said.

  The sailors not at task lined the rails. Slowly the shape came into focus – definitely a dead animal of some kind. Casting her eyes skyward, Celeste saw nothing. Nothing at all. Odd. She turned the other way, and could barely see the land off in the distance, about thirty miles. Usually carrion this close to shore would attract sea birds, and a lot of them, but there wasn’t a single bird in sight. Returning her attention to the body floating in the water, Celeste almost gagged. A large, white-streaked sperm whale, much like the ones Celeste and Bogata had encountered only a couple of weeks ago, except this one was half eaten by sharks or other predators, streaked with white where there should have been color, and shrunken up like a prune. Something that didn’t happen on a normal basis. Or even an abnormal one.

  “What in Terraunum is going on,” she said. In all their studies at the Bastion, she’d never even heard of something like this, something draining an animal of color and life. “Keep an eye out, Jace. Whatever did this could be the reason we got the distress signal from the Spirit. And I don’t think we want to tangle with it. Let’s continue on, but I want everyone on alert.”

  Unsure how to best honor the slain animal, Celeste decided to let the ocean take care of it, as it could feed many hungry fish in the sea – if anything decided to actually eat it more than it already had.

  Judging the current, they turned the ship away from land and sailed the most likely direction the whale would have drifted from. By mid-afternoon, they’d found three more dead whales of different species, each floating in various stages of decomposition, each getting progressively whiter than the last, and each even more shriveled up than the first. Pulling up beside the fourth whale they’d come across, Celeste called the ship to a halt. “Mate, Poteet, Leroy, with me,” Celeste said. “John, James, grab twenty more sailors and lower us down. We need a closer look.”

  The sailors quickly got to work and rigged up a pulley and ropes with loops at the end for a foothold, then slowly lowered each sailor down on their own rope to stand on top of the whale, wobbling slightly as the corpse adjusted to their weight. Up close, the whale looked even whiter than before, the rubbery skin wrinkled, the entire frame smaller than it should be.

  “Captain, look here,” Mate said, kneeling down and pointing at something. Celeste looked over his shoulder and saw two round holes as wide as her fist a foot apart.

  “That looks like a gigantic spider bite,” Poteet said, putting his fingers in the holes. “Definitely puncture wounds by something fang-like.”

  “Strange,” Celeste said. They looked around a little more, but finding nothing else, they stepped into their ropes and were hauled back up on deck.

  While the rest of the crew got the ship ready, Wylie and Leroy came up beside her. Leroy pulled off his hat. “‘Tis a shame. Those whales are so magnificent. It looks like something just sucked all the life out of them. It don’t even have the right coloring at all.”

  Celeste nodded, but didn’t comment. Wylie whispered, “From Leroy, taking off his hat like that was akin to crying.” Then she added, “Why would something do this? What manner of creature could do it?”

  Celeste shrugged slightly and continued looking down at the once majestic being. Leroy muttered a few words under his breath. The muscular sailor grunted, put his hat
back on and turned to leave. “I’ll tear ‘em to shreds for this. Picking on whales. I’ll give them a pair of rock shoes, see how they like it…” He trailed off as he went to help John raise the sails. That was more like the Leroy she was used to.

  Celeste reported what they found to the rest of the crew, and the Ajax sailed on.

  As the sun was nearing the horizon and they hadn’t found another dead whale, Celeste called a halt for the night. She feared that in the darkness, they would end up ramming into one of the poor dead animals, or somehow announce themselves to whatever was doing this. And something that size could cause some serious damage to the ship. It wasn’t a risk she was willing to take.

  “Wylie, let’s report this to Watuaga.” The pair walked to the navigation room, and Wylie activated the telestone, handing the handheld stone speaker with the coiled cord running to the main unit to Celeste. She keyed the mic.

  “Tempus clipper Ajax reporting in.”

  “Tempus Navy Dispatch, go ahead Ajax.”

  Celeste relayed everything about the whales and her concern. The operator echoed her concern and said she would report it up the chain of command and get her an answer as soon as possible, but it would take time given everything going on in the capital. A bit underwhelmed by the response, Celeste signed off and Wylie powered down the telestone.

  Mate set a rotating watch, and the Ajax anchored for the night. A billion stars shone overhead, the anchors holding her still, even more so because of the water powers of the Tempus. Celeste slept fitfully, dreams of dead whales and cloaked figures plaguing her throughout the night, keeping her tossing and turning. She startled awake three times, drenched in sweat. The same thought echoed through her head each time: Go back. Do not interfere.

  When the sun came up the next morning, Celeste splashed water on her face, hoping it would help revive her. Despite the nightmares and worries, Celeste wouldn’t be deterred. There was no sense in disobeying orders just because she was scared – they had a job to do, and “I dreamed we should turn around” would not sit well with her superiors.

  Celeste walked out to the alarm sounding. Two steps later, she arrived on deck, and most of her sailors were at the rails peering over. Many were still in their night clothes, pointing at the water.

  “Captain!” Wylie said when she saw Celeste. “It’s horrible. Quickly, come look!”

  In two steps, she was at the rail. “Oh. My. God.”

  The Ajax was in the middle of a flotilla of death. Hundreds, if not thousands, of whale bodies bobbed in the waves around them. Whales of all sizes and species, all with the same lifeless, white skin and wrinkled appearance. There were so many, they were bumping into each other, some even bumping into the hull of the ship. Celeste had to grab the rail and lean on it with both hands. So much life lost! Who, or what, could do something like this? Something so…wrong…

  “Who was on watch?” Celeste said.

  “Me, Captain,” Jace said, stepping forward.

  “Did you see what did this?”

  “No, ma’am. One second there was nothing but open water, the next there were bodies everywhere, just coming up from the depths.”

  Gaining her composure the best she could, she said, “Thanks, Jace. I want all hands on deck, fully dressed, in fifteen minutes. Man your stations,” Celeste said. “Ready all weapons and prepare yourselves. We seem to be in the middle of this…whatever this is...and we need to be prepared. We’re going to catch the bottom-feeding sea urchin responsible.”

  A chorus of “Aye, Aye!” came from the crew as they jumped into action. The loss of life hit them all hard, the disrespect for the creatures, and the sheer wrongness of what was done to them.

  “Poteet, scope!” Celeste moved to the front of the ship.

  Poteet pulled a lever near the wheel and a panel slid open on the front of the ship, revealing a flat stone screen about a foot square and four black buttons with arrows – one red button, a joystick, and a metal ball set into the panel so only the top portion was visible. Celeste walked up and put her hand on the stone. Concentrating, she pulled energy from within herself and sent it into the screen and pressed the red button, her water powers activating and controlling the device. Static crackled across the screen before it slowly cleared into a perfect view underwater, showing a few fish scattered around the bottom of the ship.

  Grabbing the joystick that popped up beside the screen, she moved it left, bringing the scope around to look horizontally under the ship, showing the sickly sight of the whales. The clear water did nothing to hide the ghostly whiteness of the bodies, their shrunken appearance, their lack of any life whatsoever. There were so many; Celeste saw an ocean full of dead bodies, fins sticking down like so many twigs in a dead forest – not only whales, but sharks, fish, invertebrates – nothing was spared.

  Panning down, she gasped. Quickly she moved the camera all around, and she couldn’t believe her eyes. Suspended below the surface were even more bodies, slowly rotating in the waves. Hundreds more than on the surface. Panning down even more, the bodies continued into the depths for as far as she could see. Nothing but white husked shells of death.

  Flicking the camera quickly to the left, she moved it as fast as she could, trying to look everywhere at once. She’d thought she saw movement, something that looked like a human body, but there was nothing there now.

  Disgusted, and with a shiver, Celeste pressed the button to deactivate the scope, the screen blinking off while the wooden door closed. The view underwater had shaken her. So many bodies.

  Was this the fate of the Spirit too? Had they been caught somehow in whatever killed all these creatures? We’ve heard nothing from them since the original communication…

  Once everyone was again above deck, Celeste gave the order to move out. The Tempus moved the Ajax with their powers, gliding through in the water, trying not to touch as many of the sea mammals as possible. Five sailors on each side moved together, reaching down into the water with their powers as their fluid movements propelled the ship forward, as directed by Mate, stationed in the bow in order to steer the ship by voice command.

  As the ship moved through the seemingly endless hoard of bodies, Celeste, Wylie, and Leroy took the job of examining each body as they came by, documenting what they saw. The sheer amount and variety of injuries were astounding – claw marks, bites, welts, bruises, abnormal swelling. No two were alike. A few even had no visible injuries at all, while others had parts missing – a fin here, a tail there. Each one had identical fang-like puncture wounds.

  “Captain?” Leroy said, watching as a gray whale slowly passed the side of the ship, belly swollen.

  “Aye?” Celeste said, not looking up from her notepad.

  “Is it just me, or did this have to happen pretty recently?”

  “What do you mean, sailor?”

  Leroy shrugged. “There’s no smell, no decomposition, no blood. No nothing.”

  Celeste cocked her head – come to think of it, there was a distinct lack of smell in the air. The sheer volume of bodies distracted her from the fact that there wasn’t even a hint of decomposition smell at all. Leroy was right – the killing of these particular animals had to be very new – as recent as last night even. Which meant the perpetrators were probably still in the area, and –

  “Captain, ship wreckage, fifty yards to port!”

  Looking over the rail, Celeste saw what was left of the ship – just a bunch of splintered wood. “There’s not enough there to be the Spirit – that looks like a small fishing vessel.”

  A series of high-pitched squeals, squeaks, and clicks erupted from the front of the vessel. “Dolphins, Captain!” a sailor said, pointing to water in front of the bow.

  Celeste ran to the front of the ship, eyeing the frantic animals as they jumped and splashed in the water. “They seem agitated, scared even. Can anyone use Seaspeak?” She knew the answer was no, but she couldn’t help but ask, wishing Boga was here so she could use his ability.

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nbsp; Leroy came up beside her. “I don’t think we need to, Captain. Look, they keep looking to the port side, then darting to the starboard and staying there, only venturing out enough so they can peek around the ship. They’re clearly scared of something over there!” he said, pointing. “And I think I see what it is.”

  “Ships, port side!” came the call from above them.

  Turning, Celeste saw five frigates, each flying a flag with a skull and crossbones in white blazed on a black background.

  Pirates.

  Chapter 7

  Heavily armed vessels with guns bristling from both sides of each ship were headed right for the Ajax, the black Jolly Roger flag flying from the highest mast.

  Leroy grinned and slapped another sailor. “Ha ha! Looks like we’ll see some action today, boys! Let’s do this!”

  Celeste stared at him for a second before she grinned herself. “Loose all sails! I want every inch of canvas we got catching wind! You ten, stay on the rails and Push us ahead, away from those ships as fast as possible. James and John, I want you two at the bow. Clear us a path through the whales; Push them aside as fast and with as much respect as possible. Everyone else, battle stations. We’re going to try to outrun them – they have us vastly outnumbered and I’m assuming outgunned, but the Ajax is faster than any pirate vessel,” Celeste said, sailors jumping to obey.

  Pirates. Her first mission and they encounter pirates. She couldn’t help but think of her father in this moment. What would she do if she ever ran into him?

  Wylie shouted to Mate, who took over steering, spinning the wheel to turn them around, as Wylie ran to the navigation room. She was out in two seconds with navigation instruments, strapping on her blue leather armor.

  Five pirate ships? What in the world was going on? Pirates usually traveled alone and hardly ever banded together. Celeste suddenly wished the admiral had sent a whole flotilla of vessels, not just one clipper! But too late for that now – they needed to get gone fast.