The Utter Limits of Disaster (Rory thread) (Quest - Ghost Ship)

[King Ghidorah]

The ship wasn’t actually a ship as such. Technically it was a 1970 Ford Taurus. There were reactionless attitude thrusters and sensor-arrays bottled onto every seam and joint, all of which were so crusted with plasticrete sealant that there was almost more glue than there was car. Strips of radiation-pitted titanium cladding bound the thing together against the shear-stress of the two nasty fusion-torches bolted to the roof.

There was a closed-loop life-support system where the engine-block was supposed to be, and a navigational array running on a solid-state obsidian monolith had replaced the passenger seat. The trunk-space contained the deflector-array, plugged directly into an ancient Austroavian null-geometry particle-annihilation drive-kernel which was powering the whole mess (and only occasionally threatening to implode into higher-dimensional space).

There was a phaser-bank in the license-plate, which was both expired and stolen, and a degraded- to-the-point-of-unintelligibility Canadian folk-punk mixtape stuck in the tape-deck, which couldn’t be turned off without also shutting off the avionics.

Spiraling hell-for-leather through the void of the Beyond, strapped into the cracked pleather driver-seat of this junkyard monstrosity, Chaos Agent Rory ruffled his plumage and breathed a sigh of relief.

Overall, he was in a pretty good place. I mean, yes, the penguin was being pursued by the blood-drenched followers of the Cult of the Last Emperor, who were pretty peeved that he’d messed up their prophecy for the sake of Syntech’s yearly televised bloodsport, but those d00ds had been following their weird book’s instructions for so long that they had a hard time making decisions now that things weren’t going according to plan.

They were probably still arguing over what had become of their high priest’s shitty car.

And yes, Rory was still hallucinating occasionally, neurological fallout from abusing the Emperor’s aurora-beams and overloading on the eldritch power of the End prior to his unfortunate demise and subsequent resurrection in last years Dante’s Abyss; He’d catch glimpses of scintillating aurora streaming like wounds across the sky, or his old boss grinning at him from the midst of a crowded city-street, but he was mostly good now. Besides, even if Rory wasn’t giant-sized and betentacled anymore the perfidious bird had come out of the whole giant-monster experience with the ability to shoot eldritch lasers from his eyes, so he considered passing disconnects with reality to be a fair trade.

Finally, yes, he was broke again. He’d spent all his money trying to leverage his position as, technically, their messiah, in order to turn the Last Emperor’s cult into a more traditional pyramid-scheme, and it hadn’t worked. It *really* had not worked. He was pretty sure those d00ds were communists now on top of being nihilistic whackadoos, and he was stuck with a warehouse full of religious literature, cultist starter-kits, and t-shirts with his face on them.

None of that mattered right now though. In space, no one can check your bank-balance; All he had to do was find a single Iridium-dense asteroid and tow it back to civilization and he’d be back in the black, mang!

His long-range scanners beeped, and he poked the bank of switches soldered to what used to be the gear-shift with one webbed foot.

A holographic display flickered across the meteor-pitted windscreen. There was a repeating signal coming from somewhere out there in the void. Piped through the dashboard speakers it was fragmentary, garbled even when you accounted for the distorted background-music issuing from the ancient stereo.

After several repetitions, the words ‘Celeste’ and ‘critical’, were just about all the bird could make out.

Given that it was looping, it was probably a distress-signal.

Rory flicked another switch and gripped the steering-wheel with his bill, wrenching it thirty-degrees to the left.

This far out, a distress signal meant one of two things: grateful spacefarers receptive to a competent salesperson or a dead ship full of sweet, sweet salvage. Either way, it was in the penguin’s interest to get him some of that.

The dying mix-tape came around again to the part of the soundtrack Rory liked best. He sang along as best he could to the faded lyrics as his horrible car-ship's fusion-torches flared purple, throttling deeper into the dark, towards his dubious destiny.

“Freeeeee! Doodoodoodoodooo Blackbird… Freeeeeeee! Doodoodoodoooo doooo Blackbird….”

 

[King Ghidorah]

Rory’s initial impression of the source of the signal, when it finally came into view, was that he was hallucinating again.

It was a sailing ship, with vast oversized sails of translucent golden gossamer, too large for the ship by several orders of magnitude and seemingly disconnected, hovering at-station over the vessel without rigging, mast or lanyard. Ivory and gold and burnished bronze, it gleamed against the void, adrift upon the winds of distant suns.

As the penguin’s Ford drew close enough for a proper look, mathematics flickering details against the windscreen holo-displays, further details emerged. Although fashioned after the tapered hull of a windborne oceangoing vessel it was clearly a star-liner, nearly a kilometer long with state-of-the-art ion-drives hidden in the weft of the keel. The aesthetic embellishments of the thing, bronze fittings suggesting portholes and a decorative bowsprit with a figurehead depicting a vaguely drunken-looking mermaid, were, according to Rory’s crappy close-range scanners, actually the housings for a variety of advanced systems. At the foot of the massive ‘forecastle’ a section of decking the size of a sports-field was apparently open to the void, serviced by an artificial atmosphere held in place by directionally permeable force-fields. There was a swimming-pool, a lounge-area, an open space which could presumably be put to a variety of uses, and a small shuttle-pad - all apparently deserted.

The moniker GMS Celeste was emblazoned in proud golden script across the curve of the vessel’s ivory bow.

The thing practically screamed ‘money’. Rory made an excited little chortle in the depths of his throat, turned down the music and fired up his communications..

“This is the salvage vessel Mo’ Mo’ Money, hailing GMS Celeste,” he said, christening his previously nameless frankenstein junk-shuttle on the spot. “Come back Celeste. I got your distress signal, mang. Are you d00ds okay?”

Ominous silence was the only response. Rory checked his scanners again, pinging for life-signs.

Nothing. According to his admittedly kinda bad sensor-arrays the, Celeste was entirely derelict.

He hailed the ship again.

“This is the salvage vessel Mo’ Mo’ Money. If you d00ds don’t give me some sign that there’s someone on-board, I’m calling dibs. Your window for take-backsies is closing mang. If you don’t want me to like, board your ship and fill these pockets, speak now or forever hold your piece.”

Still nothing.

Confident that his ship had quite literally come in, Rory closed the channel with a smug little flourish. He unbuckled himself, and rooted around in the back seat of the Taurus until he found the little satchel-of-holding which he habitually wore around his feathery waist. He strapped it on, strapped back in, then activated his car’s attitude jets and moved at a leisurely burn towards the shuttle-pad.

***

To Rory’s great surprise, aside from the shuttle-pad the upper deck of the Celeste was surfaced with genuine varnished oak planks. The pap pap pap of his webbed feet against the shiny-smooth surface as he waddled across it seemed to echo in the stillness - which was, of course, absurd. There was no roof here, no walls, just a pocket of atmosphere held in place by artificial gravity, force-shields and a vector-impulsion envelope, with banister-rails so that passengers didn’t wander off into hard vacuum.

“Hello?” Rory called, sweeping his avian gaze across the deck. “D00ds? Is anybody here? ”

There were tote-bags, purses and towels laid out by the pool, running lights blazing in faux-Victorian sconces along the railings. The bird waddled through the open-air lounge and found unfinished drinks left abandoned on tables and brass-fitted bartops, shoes left by chairs where they’d been kicked off for comfort, suit-jackets folded across the back of couches and even a wallet or two (which went straight into the satchel, naturally).

Aside from Rory’s footsteps, the only sound was the faint hiss of the artificial atmosphere recirculating, the slosh of water and the nigh-subaudible hum of the ship’s systems. Everything smelled of alcohol, snack-food, varnished wood and the faintly floral scent of fresh towels.

“Well fuck me, d00d.” said Rory. “Where'd everybody go?”

He spent about an hour wandering around the deck rifling through abandoned possessions and confiscating anything that looked remotely valuable or interesting. At first he would occasionally mutter ‘dibs’, just to be safe, but nobody showed up to challenge his ownership, so eventually he stopped.

When he was certain that he’d picked the upper deck clean of goodies, all safely stowed in his satchel, he headed for the forecastle and, presumably, the helm.

It was time to see if there was actually anybody on board what he was rapidly beginning to think of as his new ship.

 

[King Ghidorah]

As he waddled the Celeste’s interior corridors, padding across plush red carpets, past walls decked in varnished timber cladding and hung with nautical oil-paintings and framed navigational charts, he couldn’t help but appreciate the dedication to the brand. These d00ds were really serious about the gilded-age Atlantic-crossing ambiance, and Rory was totally there for it.

It was a shame that absolutely nobody else seemed to be.

The penguin turned a corner, and found himself at a t-shaped intersection. There was a holographic sign-post affixed to the wall here, projected from a brass oculus set into the baseboard. It indicated, in warm, gaslight-yellow letters, that the dining-room, the gymnasium, the guest-rooms, and the ‘great hall’ could be found to the left, while recreation, leisure, and ‘lower decks’ could be found to the right. There was also a smoky blue panel floating just a little bit above Rory’s head which didn’t indicate any direction, but simply said ‘Information’.

He reached up with one flipper and poked at it.

“Our deepest apologies,” said a richly aristocratic automated voice, emerging from out of thin air, “but it seems you have not been properly registered with the ship’s central computer. In order to access the amenities to which you are entitled as a guest aboard our ship, please seek out the nearest crewmember and present your booking information. They will be happy to assist you. On behalf of The New Victoria Starliner company and the crew of the GMS Celeste, we hope you enjoy your journey with us, and that we can help you reach your final destination.”

Rory honked in disapproval, reached into his satchel and pulled out a sheaf of print-outs stolen on a whim from a random poolside purse.

“Fuck you too, computer d00d! I got bookings for days! Yeah, they’re other peoples, but they weren’t using ‘em, and you can’t say I don’t have ‘em.”

He waved the papers at the hologram, held in one weirdly articulate flipper, with only a minimal display of tiny black tentacles to betray how he was actually gripping them.

The information kiosk didn’t react. Rory wasn’t sure whether that meant he’d won the argument or if it just wasn’t programmed to. Still, there was always the off chance someone was watching, so he threw the printouts on the floor, moon-walked a circle-around them, and waddled off down the rightward hall.

He’d barley gone twenty meters when something caught his eye.

Carved into the wall, near the brass-fitted baseboard, was a weird little twisty sigil no larger than his webbed foot. A few months ago, the mildly eldritch waterfowl wouldn’t have cared, would have dismissed it as random vandalism or some kind of shipwright’s branding.

But that was before Rory read the Austromundia Obscuricon.

He couldn’t actually remember much of what had been in that book - its contents had basically poured themselves into his brain and then hid like they were running from Rory’s creditors. Since his failed stint as the Last Emperor had ended, the perfidious bird barely even felt the urge to bring down the crushing weight of ages upon civilization’s fragile skein, or whatever un-marketable occult garbage he’d been supposed to do with the power it unlocked. Even so, the information contained in that forbidden tome was still in his head somewhere - and that unspoken, unspeakable knowledge recognized this symbol.

It was an invocation to the lesser void, a summons of bad decisions and mild-to-moderate stubbornness.

Rory ruffled his plumage and preened under one flipper.

“Whatever, mang. This is a cruise ship. That's like, a slightly bad Tuesday.”

Nothing answered him but the distant hum of the ships engines.

"It's probably fine," he said, and continued on his way.

 

[King Ghidorah]

“Recreation” and “Leisure” turned out to be an entire deck of restaurants, casinos and lavishly over-furnished common areas, all done up in the vessel’s brass-and-leather oak-paneled gilded-age aesthetic and accented with a variety of potted plants from all over the Crossroads. Rory spent an hour gorging himself on food that had been left half-eaten on prim white table-cloths, much of it still slightly warm when he started. He ransacked the casinos: dealing himself winning hands at high-stakes poker tables stacked with chips and abandoned cash, cheating shamelessly at roulette, and cracking open slot machines like pinatas with an ectoentropic impact-hammer retrieved from his extradimensional satchel. Finally, he drank an entire magnum of champagne, arching his back and pouring it into his open beak. For a bird his size, he may as well have injected directly into his eldritch little veins, but regardless he proceeded to drunkenly beat himself at someone-else’s half-finished game of holographic chess.

“Annnnnnnd Checkmate,”

The table played a victorious tune, and the hologram shut off. Rory hefted his empty champagne-bottle in one flipper and adjusted the purple ostrich-feathered cabaret headdress he’d looted from the dressing-rooms of the largest casino’s main stage with the other.

“…. But D00d. Seriously. Where the fuck is everybody?”

It was creepy, mang.

Big Band jazz played a jaunty swing over the ship’s PA system. The engines and power-systems hummeed, barely audible. Water dripped from an ice-sculpture of a winged female figure presiding over the buffet. Abandoned brochures, bingo-cards, and other sundries fluttered in the subtle breeze of the ship’s climate-control.

Through his pleasant but increasingly concerned alcoholic haze, the penguin made an executive decision.

“I need to get to the bottom of this, mang.”

The chess-table hologram reactivated suddenly, flashing a shape in the static as it failed to boot. It was another sigil, from the same eldritch script: this one summoned endless hunger.

Or, at least, it was supposed to. Rory wasn’t exactly the target audience.

“Seriously? Wow, mang. Somebody really didn’t like chess players. Well joke’s on you, d00d - I just ate like, three times my body-weight in over-priced fish. Probably. I mean, it’s not like I paid for it: I’m not a mook.”

The bird smashed the hologram projector with his empty bottle, regretfully removed his head-dress, and hopped drunkenly down off his chair, stumbling purposefully towards the hallways. If he was going to get paid for finding this boat - and he was going to get paid, no cap d00d, cash-cash money - then it looked like there was a problem he had solve first.

One forbidden occult invocation to madness and the void in the forgotten alphabet of a fallen priesthood was coincidence. Probably.

Two was shenanigans, though; And if there was one thing Rory knew about shenanigans, expert that he was, it was that you needed to keep a very close eye on them or they could rapidly spiral out of control.

With that in mind, he wandered around until he found another sign-post and drunkenly slapped at the information button until the prerecorded message began to play.

“Our deepest app-”

“Nope,” said Rory, and rooted around in his satchel until he found a little eight-sided polyhedron made out of completely featureless blue material. It was something he’d taken with him on the way out of the office, so to speak, when he’d left his old job.

“- nearest crewmember and present your booking information -”

“Get rotated, computer-d00d.”

The little prism wasn’t a computer in the traditional sense, though it was the physical anchor of some incredibly sophisticated mathematical processes. Its actual purpose was a mystery, but if you used it right it could tenderly, yet with great authority and incredible thoroughness, have its way with all but the most blisteringly antagonistic and overbuilt network security.

Rory shook it like a magic eight-ball and then spun it on his flipper like a top. He attempted to use it like a hacky-sack, but between his inebriated state and his webbed feet he just ended up dropping it on the carpet a bunch.

This wasn’t the right way to use it, but sometimes it also worked if you just embarrassed it enough.

“-final destination-ation-final-final-final-*bing-bong*... Welcome <ReGIsTeReD GuESt-GuEst-CReWMeMmmmmBErrrrrR> PLEASE REMAIN IN YOUR CABIN UNTILLLLLLLLL- …..*bip* -n behalf of the GMS Celeste and her crew, please, tell this kiosk what you would like to know and every effort will be made to satisfy your needs.”

The penguin put the prism away. It had turned a very slight shade of pink at the edges.

“Tell me where the Bridge is, mang. And like, the computer stuff - Records and junk. Lemme at them cyber-crimes.”