Beneath to the burning surface of a flooded world, a woman in a full-body wetsuit was fighting her way up through the fierce currents. The water was colder than she had imagined but the dive had been shorter than she had first feared, and as she pushed against the gushing currents and propelled her entire body upwards, flailing her legs beneath her in unison, the woman remembered what she had witnessed when she had first made it to the bottom. I
t was a thought which stimulated her to flail faster.
Following a trail of debris, much of which was still slowly raining down, the ghostly wreck of the Cantina had emerged from the deep like the sha
The gulls laughed and cawed overhead as the city gleamed.
Described in history books as ‘a nascent community of culture’, Havana was growing in its own multiplicity by each passing year. But what Mapp liked more was what it represented. He gave some thought to that as he watched the dawn from the tip of the Cantina’s foremast.
The ship was anchored at the harbour amongst other galleons, and the crew swashed up and down the main deck. Mapp watched them from above. They looked like insects carrying out a routine morning exercise, exorcising the old wood by swabbing it in sea water, and they did it without order. They had ari
Darkness.
The decks of the great ship creaked and groaned.
Only the artificial gravity remained functioning, keeping those inside securely on their feet. But the Cantina was tilting, just slightly, to one side as if she had run aground.
Thankfully, Dray could see better at night – a benefit of her enhanced Wraith heritage – whereas Susie was completely blind – a shortcoming of her archaic human senses. Dray mused that – in a way - the fact that humans had managed at all beyond the safety of their planet was, at best, remarkable and, at worst, quite embarrassing. All of the Wraith were gone now, after all.
Dray reach
Compared to the Basement, Doggerland had been child’s play.
All of the hallways were constructed to be entirely sloped – making it easy to navigate and hard to turn back. Everything was pointing down, an eternal incline. Aila feared what she might find if she ever followed it right to the bottom.
It was the perfect prison in a way, a nest of stone and shadow. One wrong step and you could be surrounded by monsters of varying descript. The Countess found it difficult to see past the shadows, keeping one eye shut as having both open at the same time made her lightheaded. She passed through hallways of stone, of wood, and then cavern
The Cantina’s infirmary was a cold, dank place. It was more like a morgue than anything, although it had not been used in quite some time.
Elle stayed with Cow for a long while.
His eyes flickered occasionally – the sign of a dreamer – as he lay motionless on the bed in the middle of the sickbay. The coma had struck with swiftness in the night on a whim. There had been no signs. No warnings. It had just happened. Maybe, Elle guessed, there had been something hidden away inside Cow’s head, something which had been waiting a very long time to burst.
She was partly right at least.
Elle sat in the only chair in the infirm
“I should’ve known it was you,” said CJ as the dawn washed over her pale features.
She had not slept in days and had set up a makeshift camp around the three gravestones atop the hill overlooking the farmhouse. It had taken hours for her to decipher the words on the largest of them, but when she had – he appeared as if summoned. His name, here in this place, was nothing less than an incantation.
Anton looked different how he had on Bastille Day, which was the last time CJ saw him alive. Paris had erupted into civil war after years of oppression, and a young, terrified Anton was running from the bloodshed before it beg
P90 had a big fat smile on his face.
Well, of course he did. He was a married man now after all.
The ceremony had come and gone without a hitch and the reception was already in full swing.
The crowd in the suite was comprised of Cantina crewmembers, young and old, as well as their various associates from all across time and space, some of whom were secretly plucked out of their personal time-zones (some in their sleep too no less!) so that they could be here. It had been a busy final few weeks of preparation, but between P90’s legendary TARDIS and Mapp’s infamous Cantina, they had managed to amass a horde of about two-hundred. Th