The Grand Mariner, Part 1

Outer System, Yggdrasil, the Trojan Reach.

Caitlin whistled. ‘Well, will you look at that now. What a beauty! Guess ol’ Hurbi was right after all.’ 

Maltz leaned forward in his seat to peer at the sight before him. 

The ship floated in the thin upper haze of the gas giant: sweeping bronze curves and lattices of blue light, half-sunken into the clouds. No hard angles. No visible engines. Just something vast and flowing, as if grown instead of built. Hairline fractures spiderwebbed across its hull. Vapour bled from a shattered dome, curling lazily into the upper atmosphere. 

Caitlin eyed the looming hull through the viewport and grinned, "Looks like someone was compensating." 

Cathbad’s voice slid from the speaker, dry and melodic. "This was once a jewel of Sindalian excess. A floating palace, a traveling court, a pleasure barge for the Empire’s elite. Now it drifts half-dead in orbit, lights flickering, gravity barely clinging on, and its golden halls echoing with nothing but dust and bad decisions." 

Caitlin leaned back, squinting at the wreck. "Old as balls. Got ya. Now, what's inside that lovely floating coffin? Can you scan it?" 

There was a faint, scandalized sniff from the speakers. 

"My dear captain," Cathbad said, "you equipped me for precision, not omniscience. The deep penetration scanners can," a pause, as if he were choosing his words carefully, "rummage through about forty tons an hour. That vessel is no less than twenty thousand tons of ancient bad decisions. I estimate... several weeks of careful scanning. Assuming we are very, very lucky." 

Maltz grumbled something that sounded suspiciously like "We never are." 

"And the life scanner?" Caitlin prompted, already rubbing her forehead. 

"Ah," Cathbad brightened. "That I can deploy. I should be able to detect anything still squirming, gasping, slithering, or preaching inside. Accuracy: moderate. Ambiguity: high. Danger: inevitable." 

Caitlin blew out a breath. "Right. Spin it up. And maybe skip the poetry if it starts moving." 

"I make no promises," Cathbad said, already humming something that might have been an old funeral reel as he went to work. 

Time passed. The old ship groaned quietly in the storm, as if remembering it was supposed to fall apart. 

On the comms, Cathbad’s voice took on a tone usually reserved for delivering poetry about dying civilizations. "No life signs detected. Atmospheric composition is patchy. Residual trace oxygen. Pockets of inert gas. In short, breathable if one is particularly adventurous about lung collapse." 

Caitlin grimaced. "Boarding suits, then." 

Maltz squinted at the life scanner feed, tail twitching. "Nothing moving," he said quietly. "Nothing living. Just a lot of... rot." 

"According to surviving drive signatures, Captain, the vessel is sustaining orbital drag through what I can only describe as sheer obstinacy. Gravity is winning, but at an extremely leisurely pace." 

"We're gonna die in some stupid way," Maltz said. "But I'm still curious." 

They docked anyway. Because of course they did. 

When the hatch opened, the ship stirred. Ancient systems, blind and half-sane, lurched awake. Somewhere in the depths, rusted pistons and corroded gears coughed to life, moving nothing but stubborn tradition. Vents rattled and wheezed, stirring thin air into motion. 

A greeting flickered across Caitlin’s HUD in battered Sindalian script: “Commissioned by the Sovereign Houses, built in the Fifty-Seventh Year of the Golden Reign, and consecrated to the Glory of the First House of the Western Reach. Welcome, Esteemed Guests, aboard the Grand Mariner. Glory Endures." 

She snorted. Not here it didn’t. 

"Lovely," Maltz said, voice muffled behind his helmet. "It's rolling out the red carpet." 

A soft chime flickered through the Morrigan’s bridge, almost hesitant. Caitlin frowned. "That wasn’t you, was it?" 

"No," Cathbad said, already scanning. "We are receiving... a handshake. Some fragment of old protocol. No active communication yet." 

Maltz made a strangled noise behind his helmet mic. "I think it's trying to throw us a party." 

--- 

In high orbit over Yggdrasil, aboard the gilded predator they called a yacht, the Order of the Mantis caught the signal. 

It wasn't much. Just a faint, battered handshake in an ancient code. 

Lady Seseine watched the code flicker across the display, one gloved hand adjusting the fall of her sleeve with the care of a woman straightening a shroud. Her implants pulsed faintly under her skin, slow and deliberate. 

"A greeting," she murmured. "From the Grand Mariner. After all these years." 

Svv licked the edge of the display thoughtfully, the long, hook-tipped tongue moving with surgical care, leaving a faint, oily smear behind. 

Tyram fidgeted near the bulkhead, twitching in sharp, mechanical spasms as he checked the load on his pistols for the third time in as many minutes. His movements had the jerky grace of something half-rebuilt and already falling apart. 

The Twins, perched together like ornaments chiselled from vanity and wet porcelain, giggled without moving their mouths. 

Jotimam flexed one of his many hands, the servo whine whispering of scalpels and unpleasant possibilities. "Eight hours to intercept. Shall I wake the Witnesses?" he asked, voice dry as bone dust. 

Seseine smiled, a small, poisonous thing. She tilted her head slightly, her pupils shifting and flowing like a Rorschach test, narrowing to cold slits. "Prepare everything," she said. "Dead things tell the best stories." 

The yacht changed course for the outer system, sleek and hungry.

---

The Morrigan's docking clamps thudded home with a teeth-rattling jolt, sending a puff of dust out from the battered airlock seals. 

Inside the boarding tunnel, Caitlin adjusted the seals on her vacc suit, slung her laser rifle, and glared at the pressure gauges like they owed her money. 

Maltz, slightly hunched in his own suit, checked the cutting gear strapped to his belt with the same weary professionalism he reserved for things likely to explode.

Cathbad's voice crackled through their neural comms, dripping with theatrical disdain. "Docking secure. Local atmosphere is technically present, but I would advise against breathing it unless one enjoys selective lung failure. However, The Grand Mariner appears to be stirring." 

Maltz grumbled something unprintable. The airlock clanged open, sounding, somehow, deeply sorry about the whole arrangement. 

Caitlin stepped through first, mag boots clunking against tarnished deck plates. Maltz followed, the cutting gear rattling softly against his belt. 

The corridor ahead was dim, but not dead. Soft music floated on a dying speaker system, some kind of string ensemble, grand and aimless. A holographic footman flickered into view, bowed politely, and collapsed into static. 

Lights buzzed overhead, struggling to decide whether to stay on. 

Maltz looked around and shivered. "Lovely. We’re standing in a monument to expensive mistakes." 

Caitlin adjusted her rifle. "Stay sharp. This much effort to look welcoming usually means someone's about to sell you something or shoot you." 

A distant metallic clang echoed from deeper inside. 

"Or both," Maltz said quietly.

Link to Part 2: https://soren-boye-petersen.itch.io/the-grand-mariner-part-2