Exodus Nebula

Chapter Sixteen

Shisula had not factored into any elaboration of her schedule the presence of another ship this far south, especially along this untraveled route. The ship had come from beyond the horizon, approaching slowly, and station-keeping with her along her route.

They were following her, observing her.

Why? She captained a small shipping vessel, hardly worth anything on economic standards. If they knew anything about her, they must have checked her records and unsubmitted manifests back in New Ikayu, making her ship, for its empty cargo holds, doubly worthless.

Why? As the ship migrated from the horizon, coming closer, her feeble, shipboard telescope could resolve its greater features. The ship seemingly had no name--none, that is, printed onto the hull. Actually, the hull was rather strange. It had no obvious panel- or sheet-wise fabrication to it, like any other ship. It seemed... well, seamed... by irregular lines... veins, almost. She couldn't discern its material apart from ice. It truly looked like an iceberg.

She wondered if that was entirely intentional. Perhaps, pirating vessels camouflaged in the pack ice, waiting for ships to become ensnared in it, like she had been some days ago, before striking.

During the two days of the white ship's gradual approach, she had formulated many plans of action. Which she would take, however, depended on the white ship's reaction to the encroaching storm. She had mathematically modeled the storm's probabilities, and physical observation of the nearby superstorms had decreased those uncertainties: there was a massive storm headed her way.

The white ship began closing the distance.

She had no real hint regarding its true intention. As the ship closed, it fired two blue smoke flares into the air, a maritime signal, responding for assistance. She had had signal flares of her own, but they were destroyed in the previous major storm. She would have attempted radio contact, but that equipment had also been destroyed in the storm. She would have made visual signals with her sails or by some other means on the deck, but she didn't want to reveal her true number to them; a ship with ten or twenty hands was better defended than a ship with one.

And so, Shisula selected from her long list of potential plans of actions, and enacted, veering west, toward the pack ice she had previously departed, lowering her sails and burning precious fuel, putting distance between her and the white ship.

The coming storm was a strata of greys and darker greys leveled on the horizon, no more than an hour away. Atop it, a broiling crown of amorphous shapes, like an avalanche of tumbling, shattering china. Winds from it blew northward, perhaps forty kilometers an hour and increasing. The white ship was slow to catch up, likely for its tremendous size. Though, and to her surprise, she suspected it had the capability to catch up to her, if not exceed.

No more than half an hour. Winds sweeping past at sixty kilometers an hour, still accelerating. The white ship: closing, despite her top speed.

She raised what remained of her sails, allowing the profuse winds to drag her north, curving around the thickest regions of the pack ice, carving through its thinnest.

Rain. Freezing blows of rain blasted the air at random intervals, drumming on the taut fabric of her sails.

The white ship grew closer, not two kilometers out.

The overspill of waves colliding with the hull delivered chunks of ice fragments to skid, tumble, and slide across the decking as it rocked back and forth, side to side.

She could now see the finer details of the white ship with her unaided eyes. Its hull was indeed lined with countless veiny structures, like a maddened artist's depiction of colliding river deltas, or like the branching, tracheal veins on the underside of a leaf.