Cosmosis

One twist of Adeptry later, and I had a one-use flare gun firing into the sky.

she confirmed.

Corphica answered.

Lorel observed.

I said.

They had been following the protocols given to them by the disaster chief, but in the brief hours of sleep we’d all gotten last night Nai had confided that there was likely a better way to save lives than a solid barrier stretching across as much coast as possible.

The measure did seem to disproportionately prioritize protecting the water front buildings. Water still made it over or through the barrier, flooding was still rampant more than a mile into the city. But the leaks were steady rather than violent. No waves had battered the beaches or the shops and high-rises closest to the water.

The most cynical part of my brain wondered if some wealthy property owners hadn’t thrown their weight and money around to meddle in disaster protocol. The logical part of me felt the need to remind myself I didn’t know enough about Pudiligsto or its reputation for corruption to know if that was the case though.

Stopping buildings from collapsing was unambiguously a good thing, but making it more difficult for boats to get to safety wasn’t. A lot of the Vorak we’d pulled from the water had already drowned, and if it had been easier for their boats to come in…

Whatever the case was, my job right now remained the same. Sweep this cruise liner for stragglers.

Most of its inhabitants and crew would have taken lifeboats to shore two days ago. But the powers that be managing the disaster response had detected the radio of the thing was still signaling. All signs suggested it was an automated message, but it was big boat. It alone could carry more passengers than the entire Flotilla had personnel.

So it wouldn’t surprise anyone if someone had managed to find themselves left behind after the initial evacuation.

Donnie asked.

I said.

he shared.

He sparked up the single-use radar, crippling its precision in favor of widening the range. He didn’t make it reach nearly as far as Jordan and I had under Coalescence, but it was still more than enough to engulf the whole ocean liner.

Donnie frowned.

he said.

He psionically exposed the radar’s results, revealing a strange fuzzy feedback. It made sense the the feedback wouldn’t be crystal clear, but Donnie was right to be confused. The radar was flickering and stuttering in a way that couldn’t be explained by the range tradeoff.

Donnie asked.

Whatever the source, it was interfering with more than just the radar’s feedback. Donnie’s candled radar fizzled out after barely thirty seconds, not at all the normal multiple minutes of uptime.

<…Could be,> I said.

Donnie said.

We ended up fastening our boat to the ocean liner’s anchor chain and swimming our way to the ship itself.

Both of us were keeping warm with Adept-made wetsuits the munchkins had designed in committee. Sid and Deg had sounded proud when they’d transmitted us the psionic blueprints. Knowing they were thinking about how to help out was energizing. The whole crew was on the same page, each in our own ways.

But while Donnie and I swam with roughly the same equipment, our approaches diverted when we finally reached the boat’s massive hull. For the umpteenth time in the last three days, I got a sobering reminder of how dangerous boats could be, even just floating there.

The waves still swelled and crashed, even with the ocean liner between us and the storm. So the ship’s metal bobbed up and down more than a dozen feet with each wave. Just that motion was enough for me to feel the suction pull down on me.

I Spider-Manned my way up the ship, materializing hand holds magnetized to the hull. It was slow going close to the water line, but I made better time once I was above the slamming waves.

Donnie beat me there though. We were both magnitude limited Adepts, but in Peudra’s words: ‘not all M1s are created equal’. His mass limit was slightly larger than double mine. That gave him options.

While he was still a dozen feet away from the hull, he materialized a bulky and unwieldy gadget, aiming it upward. A combination of super-tense springs and compressed air launched his grappling hook up over the ship’s railing far above us.

It wasn’t so much a ‘hook’ so much as it was an exotic magnet designed to adhere itself to the first solid surface it struck with exotic charges. But the result was the same; Donnie casually rappelling his way upward.

He was adamantly against showing my the mechanism that let the grapple gun pull him upward in addition to first firing out the hook and cable, but I had my theories about that too.

If there was any consolation for me, Donnie was forced into a ridiculous pose clinging to his grappling gun while it wound in the cable. Then again, I was basically materializing telephone pole spikes every few inches and giving myself an upper body workout.

Glass houses, Caleb.

This wasn’t the first big ship we’d boarded, so we were both ready for the wind the moment we crested the ship’s deck railing. The ship’s primary deck was almost a hundred feet above the water line, and the wind had already been bad down there.

It howled and screamed at us so violently, if we hadn’t already been using psionics, we’d be forced to just to get a word in.

The doors to the ship’s interior were all locked, but nearly half the windows were broken. Vaulting our way inside was a breeze. We split up down the port and starboard hallways, but out of the wind and rain, this was the easy part.

<[You ever been on a cruise ship like this one?]> I asked.

<[Do I look like the kind of kid who spent his summer’s on a Royal Caribbean?]>

<[Maybe,]> I said. <[What does that kid look like?]>

<[Like a spoiled brat,]> Donnie said honestly.

Yeah, that wasn’t him. Donnie had one of the biggest chips on his shoulder I’d ever seen.

I could only assume the hallways he was picking his way down were identical to mine: row after row of cabins, tacky art hanging on the walls to match the carpet. But surprisingly little water.

Combing it for survivors, we found the ship to be in remarkably good condition. This must have been one of the first boats to evacuate because half the cabins were unlocked with luggage still inside.

It was almost unbelievable that the ship hadn’t capsized. Its size and weight had to help with that, right? The boat was three times the size of the Siegfried, at least.

While I continued to ponder why the ship wasn’t gone the way of the Titanic, Donnie and I both arrived at the stern end of the hallways.

Strange.

I asked. Even if the survivors were on a deck below us, we should have picked up something with our psionic senses.

Non-specialized psionic senses mostly involved detecting ‘slough’, emotional and cognitive byproducts that remained ill-defined, but still detectable all the same. But that slough changed contextually. Different activities and states of mind yielded different qualities of emanations. Jordan was pretty sure it was possible to hide emanations altogether, but there was still a lot of research to be done on those fronts.

The one common point was unconsciousnesss; it was far harder to pick up traces of someone who wasn’t conscious.

Any survivor would have been out here multiple days now, possibly injured.

Donnie guessed.

I pointed out.

I said.

I caught sight of Donnie as we both found stairs connecting the decks, but where he went deeper, I made my way back up into the wind.

Serral had made sure we learned the basics of ship design as part of familiarizing ourselves with the Flotilla’s many spaceships. And spaceship design had a lot in common with their seaworthy conceptual ancestors.

The bridge would be high up and well-fortified.

Sure enough, the only access point from the ship’s interior was secured with a thick metal hatch. Still secured, that is.

That was strange. The ship radio was still active, presumably turned back on by our survivor. But they hadn’t accessed the bridge through the interior.

Cascading the lock revealed…crap, I could probably trick my way through it. Maybe if I materialized some pressurized gas in just the right spots to move the tumblers into place…screw it. Easier to go outside and go through one of the windows.

The wind was noticeably more intense just in the time Donnie and I had been aboard. So much so that I had to magnetize my feet to the ground or risk being blown over…which made it all the more surprising that the bridge’s windows were all intact.

They weren’t visibly reinforced, but cascading the nearest one revealed a weave of microfibers running through the panes.

Take note of that one, Caleb… these windows were definitely bulletproof. The door had looped back around to seeming like the best way inside. There were two heavy hatches leading the highest deck just outside the bridge, but Adepting one of them open would leave me exposed to the harsh wind. Much easier to go back to the one indoors.

Except one of them was unlocked.

Okay…things weren’t adding up.

Even with the door unlocked, it took both hands and a foot braced against the doorframe for me to pull the hatch open. I was fighting more than just the weight of the door, the force of the wind held the door in place like a vice.

I’m going to slip and fling myself clean over the—

No sooner had the thought gone through my mind did one of my hands slip on the wet metal. I instantly lost my grip, tipping over the deck railing.

Countless hours of agility training with Nai paid off, and my hand snaked out to grasp the nearest pipe. My hand almost slipped on that too. Almost.

Donnie asked.

I said.

I went to pull myself back to the right side of the railing, and I caught myself wishing the other big ship had been the one we were dispatched to instead. It wasn’t so tall as this one; a flatter and wider cargo ship rather than a passenger cruise liner.

Looking at it now a mile south of us in the water…it looked desolate—wait those were flashlights.

My eyes fixed on the ship, trying to pick out the lights I’d just seen. It was too far away to pick out numbers, but they were all over the ship’s highest point just like I was.

I said, while I reattempted the hatch.