by Isaac Stone
The crew are from all manner of races of beings, many are quite alien to this world. Each crewmember is a warrior of tremendous skill, and each one possesses a personalized shield. These shields are displayed along the sides of the ship, bizarre heraldry that decorates the broadsides of the ship even as they armor it.
No one is sure of its purpose or of the disposition of the crew. All that is known is that when important and strange events occur in the world, the ship and its crew are either directly involved, or the ship is seen either before or after the event. This is such a well-known tales that seeing the ship in the skies is considered by most to be a portent of impending chaos and upheaval.
The truth of the ship is much stranger than any could imagine. When the original crew took the ship across the mountains they passed through a tear in the fabric of reality and passed into another realm. In that realm the ship was crewed by a myriad of members, and so never ended up picking up a single resonance.
The ship moves through its existence with a seeming agenda of its own, leading its crew though a chaotic life of battle and adventure. It has developed the ability to at times travel into different realms as it sails through the annals of history, thus the crewmembers of alien ethnicity. The crewmembers believe, and the new ones soon grow to believe, that the ship is like a needle. It passes in and out of realms, like a needle and thread it helps to hold existence together. The crewmembers see themselves as keepers of a cosmic equilibrium, believing themselves to be lead into battle and adventure by the ship’s unspoken empathy for potential breakdowns in the fabric of reality. They travel through the realms weakening the boundaries of the worlds. Sometimes strengthening or defending the boundaries. Other times they are simply led into events of which they cannot know the reason or significance, yet they fight on, trusting in the ship.
Failsafe (A cautionary tale)
“Alright Kash, now don’t move,” whispered the young thief as the floor tile he had just landed on depressed ever so slightly and made a faint clicking noise. Just as he heard the noise a large coffin like box descended upon him from somewhere in the ceiling with blinding speed, landing over him, trapping him. He almost yelled out in fright and surprise, but held his tongue, in his business it paid to be silent no matter what.
The box was slightly larger than he was and had a large slit in it right about where his eyes were, allowing him to look out into the room and letting light in. There was a door leading out of the room directly in front of him, but it had thankfully remained unopened so far. He soon noticed that the light from the torches on the walls was illuminating most of the inside of the box. To his horror the thief immediately notice several traps inside the box. There was some kind of barbed spike pointed at his midsection, he could see tripwires near his knees, and some kind of sharp clamp trap resembling a giant mouth that was poised over his head. He reasoned that there were probably more traps within the box, and so remained very still as not to spring them.
As he looked over the rest of the box, straining his eyes to see without moving his head, he noticed that all of the traps seemed very well crafted. As far as he could tell the traps guarded the locked hinges that held the two halves of the box together, if he could bypass the traps and release the hinges, the box would fall away in two pieces and he could escape. It was as if the box had been made to thwart not petty intruders, but master thieves, both a challenge and an insult. This was going to be tricky.
He was careful not to move his arms, for not doubt there were traps down by his hands. He was going to have to be careful with this one. Without moving his arm, the thief slowly twisted his wrist downwards and back towards the inside of his arm. When he straightened his wrist out again he held in his finders a small lock pick which he had hidden in the cuff of his shirt. He could see no trap guarding the padlock on the hinge near his right hand, so he assumed that the padlock was the trap. He carefully inserted the lock pick and began to work.
Apparently this was some rich merchant’s notion of irony, thought the youth. Any minute now someone will come walking through that door with a smile from ear to ear. It just wasn’t fair he thought, a thief in the prime of his career getting nailed by some scrub’s sick practical joke. He wasn’t sure he could blame them though, those he stole from usually weren’t the sort of people to take kindly to the loss of their precious hordes.
While he was thinking to himself and working on the lock he felt something through his pick, something inside the lock that shouldn’t be there. He moved his pick around ever so slightly and felt the trigger mechanism, it was a pin-trap for sure. A spring-loaded needle, poisoned no doubt, was setup inside the lock so that if a key or pick opened it, the needle would shoot out at whatever was in front of the lock. Being careful to keep his hand as flat as possible against the side of the box, he triggered the lock. The needle sprang from its housing as the lock opened, but the thief’s pick was in the way of the spring and the needle stopped just short of his hand. He looked at the second lock and cursed, it consisted of a simple deadbolt that crossed over the hinge, impossible to pick. He slowly bent his wrist back and groped for his vial of acid.
He had stolen from this place before, a rare and priceless book of fallen gods, prophecies, politics, and history. In fact he had returned in the same manner as last time. He had used a grappling hook to make a tightrope in order to cross the mote. Then he had used his climbing claws to scale the wall and leap into the first open window he had come to. Greedy fool, he thought to himself as he dripped acid on the padlock with his left hand, and gasped when the nauseous fumes reached his senses as the acid melted through the deadbolt, freeing the hinge. His sense of accomplishment was significantly lessened when he tried to get to work on the traps near his legs. As he reflexively bent over to get at them he was stopped short as he felt the barbed spike near his abdomen puncture his outer layer of clothing. He quickly pulled back and took a deep breath, after a few moments he wasn’t dead, so decided that the barb must not have gotten through all of the cloth when it scraped him.
He wondered how many other thieves this box would kill if he didn’t escape. It wasn’t that he cared a great deal for them as people, but it was the principle of the matter. It was thieves and scrubs, and as far as he was concerned a thief had to be true to the profession. If they didn’t trade secrets and information, or help each other out sometimes, thievery just wouldn’t be as glorious as it is, he said to himself as he slowly poked around at his pants leg. He was feeling for the folded seam on the outside of his pants that held a long metal rod. He usually just used it to push objects in and out of tight spots, but he figured that this spot was tight enough.
As he slowly pulled out the metal rod he studied the tripwires around his feet. The wires were strung at knee level and as near as he could tell, went all around the width of the box. He could barely see where the wires were loosely hung on two tiny latches on the sides of the box. Each latch was being supported by a metal plate attached to a swivel mechanism; it was like a little door that covered the bottom hinge on each side of the box. He assumed that the tension in the wire was coming from a device somewhere behind his legs, probably on the backside of the box. With horror he realized that the only way to get the hinges open was to move the metal plate away on its swivel, but if that was done the latch on the wire would give way and the wires would be drawn back towards the tension device behind him. If the wires did that they would bite deep into his legs, making his knees buckle and causing him to fall foreword, right into the barbed spike near his abdomen.
I am going to die, he thought. All of this time training to be a good thief, I am young and able, I am in the prime of my career, and I am going to lose it all. I should have been a baker or something, he silently grumbled as he used his fingers to slowly work the rod so that it would be able to touch the tension device behind his legs. Even though he could not turn his head to see, he had a relatively good idea of what the device would look like. He was, after all, a master thief an
d therefore very familiar with all manner of traps and killing devices. He felt around for the device until he felt the rod touch something right behind his legs. There, he though, now to find a way to break the tension, and laughing at his pun, began to probe the device. He found the point at which the two ends of the wire met, and as he suspected, there was a small metal clip that held the wires together and linked them with the tension device. He inserted the rod in between the clip and the tension device, taking care that it was secure. Then he used his knees to disturb the plates that covered the hinges of the box. When he did so the latches gave way and the wires shot towards his legs as the tension device pulled them towards it. However, the rod broke the tension immediately after the clip began to move back and was stopped by the rod, the wires fell slack onto the bottom of the box.
With a sense of pride and relief he relaxed for a moment and began searching for the trigger for the sharpened clamp trap. He already knew that no matter what the trigger looked like, the trap itself was quite deadly. The clamp was set at his throat, so that if it closed it would close about his neck with some force, most likely decapitating him. It wasn’t until he noticed the trigger that he lost his nerve. He had looked above his head and seen another swivel mounted metal plate covering the hinge at the top of the box, the plate had a wire attached to it that led to a padlock mounted right in front of the thief’s mouth.
By now he was tired and worn. The realization that he could be decapitated did not lighten his mood. Moments before he had felt as if he was actually going to survive, now he was just tired. He thought about his house, nice warm fire, good food that would be nice right about now. He thought about his friends. Even though he picked their pockets once in a while that didn’t mean they weren’t friends he thought to himself. Never had got married, never had kids, never managed to get his purse back from that other scoundrel. Not quite as glorious as you thought eh kid, he could hear his father saying. He knew he had to pull himself together in order to survive this, he had to steady his nerves. He had already defeated the other traps he thought to himself, only one more to go. Besides, it couldn’t be any harder than the others, right?
He looked again at the padlock in front of him. The lock unlike anything he had ever seen before. It had two keyholes. As he studied the lock further he could see that there was a second wire that was attached to someplace inside the lock and it let to what he could now see above him as the trigger mechanism for the clamp trap. His jaw dropped as the truth of the situation hit him with the force of a thunderbolt. If he unlocked one keyhole the hinge would be released as the padlock dropped to the floor and pulled the plate free. It was the last hinge so the box would fall away from him and he would escape and live thought the astonished thief as he looked at the lock. If he unlocked the other keyhole he would set off the clamp trap and be decapitated.
With a shudder he tongued his shoulder flap for another lock pick. He was wearing a cloak, and as most cloaks do his had rain flaps in which many secret pockets could be sewn. While he was not the sort of thief to carry a lock pick in his mouth, he was the sort of thief to prepare in case he had to pick a lock without his hands. He used his mouth to pull up the rain flap on his left shoulder and used his tongue to pull free a lock pick from its clasp. With the lock pick held firmly in his mouth he took a moment to stare at the lock. Only one would save him, he thought. With a shrug of his shoulders he inserted the pick into the left keyhole and began to pick it.
As his pick reached the final mechanism in the lock, he paused. His thoughts wandered for a few moments, and then he chuckled and unlocked the keyhole.
Special Thanks
Cover image by 4U2C aka Shane (Deviant Art)
