The World Gear

[FC Error]

Aboard submersible cruiser Electrum
The Spinwards Sea, near Trondston, Sarum
19:45 hours local time, 4th of Harvest, 1125 nCDS

"Contact, magnetics, twenty degrees to starboard."

Captain Hader nodded to himself. "Very well. Helm, ahead slow. Mister Falles, acoustics?"

"Nothing yet." the sensor operator responded. "Just magnetics so far."

Captain Audrick Albert Jules Terry Hader ducked under a protruding pipe, mentally lamenting his considerable height; it was rather a bother, aboard the cramped vessel. Idly straightening his jacket, he glanced at the helm repeaters; the boat was creeping forwards on inertia, electric drives de-powered to allow for unimpeded use of the magnetometers.

"Miss MacAuley, ahead dead slow, please. Mister Falles, acoustic search, if you would."

The two crewmembers murmured their understanding as the gentle thrum of the boat's electric motors sounded. Falles, hat off to allow for the acoustic headphones, slowly twisted the hydrophone dial back and forth, listening intently to whatever sounds the device was hearing.

"Twin-screw. Low revolutions… sounds like a heavy diesel. Plotting, please mark contact as Anton One, merchant vessel, bearing zero-three-five, range three thousand meters." Twiddling several other knobs as the officer of the watch went about marking the contact's position on the large glass-fronted map on the bulkhead, the man paused, listening intently. "Magnetic hum… Captain, I believe this is our man."

Hader exhaled slowly. "Good. Miss MacAuley, ahead one-quarter, please. Miss Thurston, make your depth one-five metres, please."

As the two women set about bringing the boat up from her fifty-meter depth, he turned to the radio operator. "Leftenant Fairey, do you have the tapes ready to transmit?"

"I do, captain. Both the initial call and the back-up are ready to transmit as soon as the antenna clears the surface." the stout officer responded, tapping the two small reels nestled in among the oscilloscopes and dials of his station.

"Very good. Watch Officer, please inform the engine room to crank the Langston generator at their convenience. P-W, please call the gun crew to ready - I doubt we'll need them, but I'd prefer to be safe over sorry."
"Aye, sir." the Principal Warfare Officer, a Lieutenant-Commander Jacobin, replied. A bell rang briefly throughout the boat, followed promptly by the PWO's announcement; "Gun crew to ready stations. Gun crew to ready stations."

"Captain, we are holding steady at one-five metres depth." Thurston reported, eyes glued to the ballast gauges and dive-plane dials. Hader nodded, turning to the radio station.

"Very good. Leftenant Fairey, please raise the periscope and wireless masts. Mister Falles, disable magnetometers, please."

Ducking under several pipes on his way to the rear of the control compartment, Hader caught the handles of the periscope as it rose, aligning himself with the eyepiece as the top of the device cleared the surface. Spinning the device to the right, he sighted their quarry; a large, low-slung merchant ship, chugging along at a sedate pace, lights twinkling gently in the darkness. "Leftenant Fairey, play the first message, please."

"Captain, engineering compartment reports the Langston generator is warmed up and running." Watch Officer Ruiz informed him. The rising thrum of the generator punctuated the statement, blue lights flickering to life along the walls.

"Very good. Raise the exhaust mast, please. Leftenant Fairey?" the captain asked, turning to look at the man in question.

"First message has been transmitted, captain. Re-winding the reel now." the radioman reported. Hader re-focused on the periscope, just in time to catch a bright red flare, launched upwards, igniting high over the vessel.

"The transmission has been acknowledged. Miss Thurston, surface the boat. Miss MacAuley, ahead one-half, and steer course zero-four-zero. P-W, please join me in the sail."

Folding the periscope's handles up into their stowed position, the captain strode to the front of the control compartment, resting a foot on the bottom rung of the ladder, watching the depth gauge at Thurston's station. At the woman's nod, he scaled the ladder, unsealing the hatch at the top and climbing out into the cool salt air of the Spinwards Sea.

Raising his binoculars, he sighted in on the freighter in the distance, noting a motor launch being swung out over the side. Slowly, he turned on the spot, scanning the horizon for lights or tell-tale smoke plumes from other ships; nothing presented itself, and he gave a satisfied nod.

Footsteps rang out from the hatch, preceding his PWO onto the top of the sail; nodding respectfully, the man raised his own binoculars and took up his station near the rear of the sail, diligently searching for vessels or aircraft in the fading light of sunset.

Hader climbed down the stairs set into the side of the sail, striding out onto the foredeck as the gun crew clambered out the hatch, carrying with them cases of the 100mm high-explosive shells used by the submersible's only conventional weapon. Pausing near the gun's covered muzzle, he observed the crew readying the cannon for combat; it never hurt to remind them the Captain expected the best.

"Captain? Motor launch heading our way." Jacobin called from the sail. Turning, he easily sighted the launch; the large wake kicked up behind it marking it out clearly.

Drawing a small wireless from his jacket, he twiddled the tuning dial for a moment before depressing the transmit button. "Searchlight, Searchlight, this is Magnet. Do you hear?"

A brief moment of static, then came the reply: "Magnet from Searchlight, we hear. Seems like your old man's guesswork was right on the money, Magnet - we're sending over the boat now with the records we could find at the site."

A smile flashed across Hader's face. "Good to hear, Searchlight. Are you able to carry on to Searing Point?" he inquired.

"That we are, sir. Spotters have reported nothing suspicious on route thus far; seems the place was entirely deserted. Do you want to take the package onboard your boat, Magnet?" the wireless operator aboard the freighter queried, his voice curious.

"Not at the moment, Searchlight. We've an old friend coming out tomorrow morning to transport it to the old laboratory. Was there anything else?"

"Not on my docket, Magnet. Searchlight, off wireless." his counterpart replied. Hader signed off briefly, tucking the wireless back into his pocket at the motor launch slowed, swinging around to come alongside.

"Audrick, mein freund!" a voice hailed. "We struck a goldmine with this material." The voice's owner, one Jurgen Althaus, pulled himself up onto Electrum's deck, a broad smile on his face.

Hader felt his face lift at the sight, striding forwards to clasp hands with his oldest friend. "Well done, Jurgen. How was the crew?"

Althaus shrugged. "Competent, to be sure. Not as many questions as I would have expected, but I suppose the place was mildly unsettling to visit - nevermind ransack for anything of use. I have photographs, if you'd like." he noted, gesturing to the case held under one arm.

"Sounds like a swell vacation spot." Hader returned dryly; Jurgen's 'mildly unsettling' would have many people fleeing in terror. "No difficulties getting to the area, I hope? The maps weren't, admittedly, the most descriptive." His companion chuckled.

"Some climbing, to be sure, but nothing the lads and I couldn't manage. Speaking of, do you have the maps on hand? There's some things I'd like to compare with the records we dug up."

Hader nodded, noting his friend's abrupt shift from camaraderie to professionalism; beckoning him along, the captain headed up the sail, exchanging acknowledgements with the PWO and sliding down the ladder. Waiting at the bottom, he examined the navigational charts briefly while his first officer negotiated the descent.

"Can I ask how much you found, all told?" he said, leading the man through the control compartment and towards his small office at the rear. "Understanding, naturally, that you haven't precisely had time for a full indexing."

"A few hundred pages and perhaps three maps of any usability. Unfortunately, much of the material there was damaged well beyond recovery; most of what I have here we found in a concealed safe, in one of the offices." Althaus answered. "We did manage to draw up a map of the site and photograph much of the area, too." He shrugged. "Still better than I had expected we would find, in truth."

"Likewise." Hader muttered, pulling his father's heavily-annotated maps from their storage case and laying them out on the desk. "Alright. What was it you wanted to compare?"

His compatriot set the case down on a chair and pulled out several large sheets, unfurling them to reveal maps - though not ones Hader recognized. "These are only regional maps, but the coordinates didn't match up to anything on our charts. If we…" he glanced back and forth several times, before pointing to a blank spot on Hader's chart. "That's where this map claims to be centred. Naturally, we can find no reference to it on any other chart; even the over-priced 'ancient' ones the traders hawk at Anchorage."

Electrum's captain leaned over Althaus' acquired maps, eyeing the various markings - all, save for the coordinates and a legend at the bottom, in some sort of cipher - or perhaps just alpha-numeric designations? "Quite near the Bleak Lands. It's still odd that someone would have missed it on a survey; gods know enough cartographers have mapped out the coasts there."

Althaus shook his head. "True enough, but the accuracy of those maps has been questionable at best; recall the recent speculation that the Lands' coasts actually shift over time?"

Hader glanced up at his colleague. "What, you mean it might be there, but move around?"

"Or be submerged occasionally. The Gallows site showed evidence of water damage to the buildings; we initially thought it a high-tide or temporary flood, but with a twenty-metre cliff surrounding the island? But this..." he tapped the map, brow furrowing, "...looks almost like a fortress, from these markings. Surrounded by cliffs on one side and nothing but sharp rocks on the other, too - any approach would be difficult, at best. Not something easily concealed-"

"-unless you can tuck it entirely out of sight from surveyors." Hader concluded, gazing at the slightly faded chart. "Submerging it entirely, though? I'll admit it's not outside the realm of possibility, but…"

Jurgen sighed. "Agreed - but then, this whole thing is insane. I'd not have believed you about the Gallows if you hadn't brought out your father's materials - I still didn't really believe it until we laid eyes on it. Speaking of…" digging through his case, he pulled out several photographs and laid them on the desk. "What do you make of these?"

Hader picked up the glass-plate images, examining them; one seemingly depicted a large gun-shaped device, pointed skywards; a crewman, stood next to the object, gave a sense of scale, and that sense was 'colossal'. "Well, that's quite the feat of engineering. Were you able to get any of the inside?"

"Unfortunately, no. There wasn't any access point we could find; aside that, however, we also didn't find any evidence of water damage - despite the, for lack of a better term, more conventional buildings showing signs of flooding."

Hader set the slide down, eyeing the next one of the set; this of a large dome-shaped building, a featureless round tower projecting up from one side. He glanced up at Jurgen, who was leaning against the doorframe. "We're not entirely sure what that one is, but the ship's wireless aerials picked up no shortage of emissions from it; none comprehensible, but all in a repeating pattern. He marked out the frequencies and modulation - the sheet's in the case there - but couldn't make heads nor tails of it."

"I'll run it past my wireless man, then, see if he can get anything useful out of it. You averse to remaining aboard for a while?"

"Not at all." Althaus returned, smiling. "I take it you would like some assistance going over the recovered materials?"

"Indeed; and running it past everything at the old laboratory, too; see how much of the information there bears out, and if it might have some leads we've missed absent-" Hader gestured at the assorted papers "-all of this."

"But of course. If you don't mind, though, I may borrow your wireless briefly - I've a few old friends who I'd like to call in. Older gents who never quite got their fill of adventure, you understand." Jurgen arched an eyebrow, amusement rolling off him like waste heat. "Old men with many maps, old journals, unusual inventions... that sort of thing."

Audrick grinned. "Far be it from me to gainsay an old man who's still got his spark."

 

[Pyro Hawk]

Huh. Someone did something screwy with the planet, and caused an apocalypse on Earth? One that changed the coastlines amongst other things, whilst also leaving 'lost wonders' across the world and under the oceans it seems... Or at least, that's what I get from the mention of 'ancient maps' and how people expect there to be legitimate ones that show the world distinctly different to how it is now. Even if the vast majority are likely to be forgeries and fakes meant to scam people out of money.