Chapter 1.
Humanity has always been drawn to the sea; it can be seen across the world's major cities always being connected to the sea. Men setting off on rickety ships into the unknown to discover new lands, or entire wars being fought over a few shipping lanes. Mankind has spilt more blood conquering the ocean than there is water in it.
The sirens changed everything. Nobody knows how or why they arrived, but the weapons of man were practically useless against them, and after a short and bitter war man had been cut-off from the sea.
Over a hundred years have passed, Empires collapsed, nations fell and entire civilisations starved. Yet man was still drawn to the oceans, ports have become fortresses, fishers and Merchant's risk death on the open sea to keep the lifeblood flowing.
Port Dublin was old, layers of armour surrounding the docks, with cannons and anti-air batteries behind them. Armoured trains would make quick work in the unloading of cargo before moving it safer inland. When a ship was stuck in port it was the most vulnerable.
Unable to manoeuvre and surrounded by highly flammable oils, if a siren raid was to come all the crew could do was pray.
One of these ships was the cargo freighter SS endurance, an old ship covered in grime and rust, only held together through patchwork and the constant need for maintenance by her crew. she sat in port as her precious cargo was loaded, as the last of the cargo was being loaded the crew felt a sense of relief, most letting out breaths they didn't even know they were holding. Not knowing that one of the last items to come aboard held in a small box was about to start a change in events that would change the course of history forever.
I awoke to the sound of the ship's engine coming to life, before feeling the small jolt as the propellors engaged, razing my head up I felt the pain in my back as id fallen asleep at my desk, looking over at all the schematics and documents I had been going over the night before.
Rubbing my eyes to clear the haze of sleep I looked over the ships manifest, a bunch of fish destined for the mainland, serval tons of materials and a few specialist items. What was most concerning was the last-minute charter made for just one person with light cargo, people wanting a trip was nothing new, just them overpaying was a little concerning, I made a mental note to bring it up with the captain next time I saw him.
Putting the manifest down I looked over the other papers on the desk, the memories of the previous night coming back, I had been going over mountain's worth of schematics and technical documents trying to come up with ways of keeping this old ship moving, or in some cases afloat.
Looking at a cup of what was now cold tea I began to feel the ship turn to starboard and begin to increase in speed. I gazed over to the clock hanging on the wall in my cabin to realise that I had worked into the early hours and had defiantly slept in, however we were still leaving far earlier than what was planned.
Leaving the cabin, I saw the usual movement of people each getting along with their jobs, mostly preforming maintenance duties to keep us afloat. An emptiness in my stomach pushed me to get something to eat, I was on my way to the mess when a newer crewman stopped me.
"Cap wants to see ya, up on the bridge." his tone didn't portray anything regarding the summons, but if he had sent word for me, it was probably best to get there sooner than later.
"Aye will do." He had already started walking away before I'd finished answering.
Tuning around and beginning the walk topside I tried putting a name to the guy's face, we went through so much crew every trip it was hard keeping track.
Just as I was beginning to climb a ladder to the top deck a cold chill ran down my spine accompanied by a strange sound eerily resembling a childish giggle.
I spun my head around looking for the source but only finding corridors and closed an empty hallway and closed hatches.
"I need more sleep." I murmured to myself before continuing up the ladder.
"Ah so you've finally finished having your beauty sleep then." A rough old voice called out in greeting as I entered the bridge.
The owner of the voice was the captain, an older man with a face showing his many years at sea, despite his age he still had a rather large build and stood taller than most, I only had a few inches of height on him but he would still be the dominating presence in any room.
"Well, somebody onboard has to, not to mention we're not supposed to be setting off until later in the day. What happened?"
I walked further onto the bridge giving a nod to the helmsman and a few other sailors about, all of which looked to be shaking off a hangover.
"Special request for us to set off with utmost urgency for Liverpool, the amount we were paid to do so outweighed the risk so I accepted."
I shook my head as I walked further onto the bridge, looking over all the gauges and readouts checking them off in my head. "Not my place to tell you what to do with the ship but it would have been nice to have it ran past me before doing so, I still need to do work on the ships engine as it could fail at any point." I tuned round to face him directly leaning against a table, "so what was it you wanted me for anyway."
The captain chuckled as the reached over to a desk picking up some papers while putting a pipe in his mouth. I had always wondered why he had that he never seemed to smoke it, just chew the end.
"In my long service I don't think I've seen anyone refuse a promotion before" showing the paper to me, my handwriting on it requesting the denial of my promotion to first mate. "First mate is a stepping stone to captain, out of anyone on board you deserve the position."
"You already have me as chief mechanic and the ships pursuer, what I don't need is more work for the same pay, not to mention I am in no way qualified for being a first mate, and no way in hell could I ever be a captain." this conversation had played out a serval times before, almost the point of it being a monthly routine with him.
"I can't be captain forever, and a ship always needs one, you may not be ready for it now but give it a few and you'd be more than capable."
"Yeah, I can't see myself running a ship that's more rust than metal." I said before walking over to a window and looking out before continuing. "The ship had been slowly getting worse recently, making my job harder and harder. Anything less than a complete refurbishment of the ship would be useless."
The captain stood back looking surprised, he reached over with his hand and stroked the helm. "don't you listen to him old girl, you know he didn't mean it."
"You talk to the ship like it can hear you, ships don't have feelings."
He chuckled to himself "I've heard you talk to her before while working on the engine. Thinking you're all alone"
I cast my gaze away from him looking out to see to hide my embarrassment "that's different, I'm just occupying my mind."
What was obviously supposed to just be a light tap on my Shoulder nearly pushed me over, the captain not knowing his own strength or more likely not caring. "Well, whatever you call it she is happy that you talk to her, just less of the mean words and she may stop causing you problems." he rubbed something on his chest that was beneath his old overcoat. "You know, my grandfather used to serve in a real navy."
I rolled my eyes getting ready to re-hear a story for the hundredth time.
The captain walked up to a window gazing out to the open sea before continuing. "Never met him, most of what I know comes from my grandmother and a few letters he wrote. He used to sail in real ships, warships they were, ones not designed just to ferry cargo and run at the slightest bit of trouble, but to carry the will of the nation and face the danger head on, using her cannons to vanquish any that might oppose her and armour that could help her stand in spite of anything the enemy could bring to bear."
I saw his face swell up with pride before slowly tuning darker.
"And yet the sirens came." I said knowing where he was going.
He looked to almost spit in hatred at just hearing the word
"Godless creations that appear almost from nothing, destroying everything in sight before vanishing into the fog again. A ships soul is her crew, they have none. Just sailing the oceans killing everything that they come across, if you ever wanted a more biblical definition of evil, they would be it, at least back when nations went to war you can see both sides have their own versions of morality.
"Makes you wonder where they came from." I voiced, a question probably everyone on earth constantly asks themselves.
He continued. "I've heard it all, some have said its aliens to others an experiment gone horribly wrong. Or even some saying its god punishing man for our sins." he shook his head. "Don't believe it for a second, there's something far more nefarious at hand here, they may not have crews but there's someone out there controlling them moving around in the shadows not only destroying ships and ports but information as well, what would have been written down a thousand times over and yet we barely know anything of first contact with them or the subsequent battles, only that around a hundred years ago all the navies of the world came together and still weren't strong enough. And now we have resorted to scurrying around just barely managing to survive.
I watched him rub his chest again before his face returned to normal.
"But enough of that I'm sure there's something that needs fixing and we can't have our best mechanic just standing around listening to story's all day."
As almost to prove a point the ships suddenly jolted everyone forward as a loud grinding noise reverberated through the deck.
"What's that?" the captain asked as I made my way to the ship's intercom.
"Anybody want to tell me why it feels like an earthquake up here." I spoke into the ship's intercom, already the vibrations were dying down along with the sounds of the ship's engine.
"it's the engine sir." an agitated voce came though; I could hear people yelling in the background. Probably trying to wind the engine down before more damage could be done "sounded like something snapped and then all hell broke loose."
"Ok just cut the power and bring her to a stop, I'll get there now." I put the receiver down before facing the captain, he just motioned towards the door. "shouldn't have called her rusty boy." he said with a chuckle.
I was making my way through the ship as quickly as I could, already thinking of what could have happed and what would be the best way to get us moving again. A man stopped me as I was walking, looking over him I knew he wasn't part of the crew.
"Mind telling me why we have stopped or what was the source of that racket." he said in an annoyed tone.
"Sounds like a gear or something snapped." I replied with my best guess.
He grunted before continuing. "I paid good money to charter this ship for myself and my cargo. I was promised a reliable and fast journey Whatever has happened best be solved quickly young man."
His tone irritated me. "Well, I was going to take my time with the repair, while we sat in the middle of the ocean, and just wait for a siren fleet to stumble upon us, but now I will definitely get it done as fast as possible just because you asked.
I didn't even wait for his response before pushing past him and making my way to the engine deck.
When I got there, I was greeted by one of the crew, a young boy who was definitely too young to be sailing and had most likely lied about his age to get aboard, he showed me to where the noise had originated from. I told him to go and check on the boiler pressure and the drive screw.
After seeing him leave I began removing the covers to the engine. "Please just be a simple fix. Do this for me and I promise not to call you rusty again."
It wasn't simple at all, I had taken hours just to remove and replace the damaged parts that had originally failed, before moving on to everything that had been knocked out of alignment due to it. Even down in the engine room I could tell hours had passed and it was now closing in on sunset. But finally, the engine fired up again and the ship began to move.
After calling up to the bridge telling them to keep the ship running slowly to avoid further damage, I was making my way towards the mess. My body and fingers epically were sore and cut from working and now all I wanted was food and then to rest properly in bed.
I was stopped in my tracks as from the corner of my eye I saw a brightly coloured object move along with the same childish giggle I had heard earlier. I couldn't tell if it was just my tired mind playing tricks on me, but something compelled me to investigate.
"Hello, is anyone there?" I asked as I began walking towards where I'd seen the movement.
Nothing but the sounds of the ship and people further away retuned my question.
"Probably a Stowaway." I said to myself after not getting a reply. it was probably just a kid from the sound of the voice. Walking around the corner all I found was a hallway with a bunch of doors leading into cabins, only one was open and I would have heard any of the large metal doors close.
I was surprised to find an empty cabin when I looked inside, it was obviously in use from seeing all the paperwork spread across the desk, along with folders and small boxes piled up in the corner of the room, but none were big enough to hide a person and there wasn't anywhere somebody could have gone from this room.
I was about to turn and leave before my eyes were drawn to a small locked box on the table, unlike anything else in the room this had obviously been placed with care, it was in a position where if the ship was to rock then it wouldn't have been at risk of falling.
walking into the room more, focused in on the box and its surroundings. The paperwork on the desk had several drawings of cube shaped objects followed by incredibly long calculations that made my head spin looking over them.
The box in the room obviously wasn't the same as the one in the drawings, but I guessed that it was just a container for it, the sturdy metal frame and combination lock on the top meant I probably wouldn't find out, yet even as I was trying to convince myself to turn and just forget about it my hand had subconsciously began to reach out, I was about to touch it before I was interrupted.
"I was told the locks on these doors was the best you could get; guess that's another lie I was sold."
Ice shot though my veins and straight up my back, quickly bringing my hand back and turning to see who was talking as a lump formed in my throat. When I looked at who had caught me, I realised it was the same guy who had stopped me earlier in the day, but now he looked even more irate.
Trying my hardest to speak without stuttering "Sorry, I came in here looking for someone, I thought I saw." before I could finish, I was interrupted. "so, what you just decided to unlock my door and invite yourself in then?" he was starting to look fully angry now, while he did look to be an older man, I really didn't want any confrontation.
"It wasn't locked when I came here, the door was fully open. I had just heard a kid's voice and saw movement; I was concerned about a stowaway so I came to investigate." when I finished explaining his mood seemed to instantly change. Gone was the anger and replaced with curiosity.
Next thing I knew he was right in front of me, I could feel his eyes going over every detail of me. "And when you came in you found yourself drawn towards that box?" he began rummaging around in his pockets before pulling out a well-worn notepad.
"Yeah, it just seemed to catch my eye." I replied, my heart rate starting to calm down now.
He wrote down some notes before continuing. "Right, young male with an average build, roughly six foot and seemingly in good health. Age and name?"
"It's James sir, James Dawson. I'm twenty-five, may I ask who you are and what's this all about?" I asked suddenly feeling like I was being interrogated
"Good, good." He murmured before finishing what he was writing. "My name is Martin Walsh." He held out his hand, I shook it "I am a scientist working for the university of London. This will definitely lead to a breakthrough, people have reported minor voices before but never seeing things, and it's never opened doors before."
"I'm sorry but what hasn't opened doors before, it's just some regular box." curiosity slowly overtaking the shock of the situation.
"Ah yes the cube. It's not the box itself but rather what's inside, here let me show you." he walked past me and to the desk, I watched as he tuned the dials on the lock to open it. "Three eight two one" without me even thinking about it I already had the number already committed to my memory. As he opened the box a soft blue light escaped from it, the source of the light was a small cube, my eyes became immediately fixated on it. As he picked it up, I noticed I could see his hand through it.
"Here, hold it but be careful." he offered it to me, my hand instantly going out to grab it. As my fingers touched the cube, I felt a slight warmth coming over my hand, it was small enough to fit in my palm with my fingers just coming over the top edges of it. I brought it closer to properly look at the source of the light, right in the centre was a white orb softly glowing, it was surrounded by dozens of small white dots that seemed to flicker in and out of existence as they slowly orbited the centre.
"What is it, some sort of lightbulb?" I asked finding the warmth slowly began to spread up my arm finding the fatigue of the day seemingly vanish wherever it went.
"A bit more than that, what you're holding will hopefully be the key to the future. But tell me when you touched it did you feel or hear anything?" he had got his notepad out again and was looking ready to begin writing notes.
Dragging my attention away from the cube and to him I began to summarise "Well I didn't hear anything, but I'm getting this warm feeling from it."
He wrote down my answer. "Right, now focus on a random object in your mind and try to describe it as best as you can."
An Image immediately came to my mind and my mouth seemed to move on its own "A sandwich."
He stopped writing and looked at me. "Really, that's what you came up with."
"Sorry, that's just the first thing I thought of. Was it supposed to be something else?"
He just rolled his eyes and wrote down my answer. "No that's fine, this just leads to further un answered questions. These cubes have been a complete mystery since they were first discovered, any progress we make in trying to understand them just leads to more and more questions, only the lab up in Inverness has had any progress, but they keep to themselves." He put his notepad down and scratched his chin, staring at the cube hoping that it could reveal its secrets.
"So There's more of these things, how did you discover them." I pondered, trying to imagine multiple of them together.
"Currently there's nine of them that we know about, they have all been found washed ashore in different locations. This one in particular was found three weeks ago on a beach near Dublin, another two were found in Belfast four weeks ago. The current plan it is to get this one over to London as quickly as possible like the other two that left yesterday."
"Why transport them on multiple ships, and why the urgency?"
I saw his mood change. His face looking all too familiar. "Four were supposed to be shipped from the isle of man last week, the ships they were on never arrived, last radio report said they were lost in fog. Only wreckage was found a few days later. You are now currently holding one of six cubes left."
The cube felt heavier now. "Isle of man, that's such a short trip and it's incredibly rare for sirens to come into the Irish Sea, I'm surprised it got hit. Maybe there drawn to the cubes or something."
He let out a sigh, looking exhausted as if he hadn't slept in days, and from the look of his bed he probably hadn't. "That's what I believe as well, so I spit up the three cubes sending two ahead with my aid and then chartering this ship to get it and all of my notes back to the mainland and then over to London."
I realised now why he had been so irate earlier, a small lump appeared in my throat as it was likely that I was holding something that was drawing sirens towards the ship. I offered it back to him, even though I was the one to give it back it still felt hard to give it back and I kept watching it as he put it safely back into the box "so apart from being a small light and heat source with the potential to draw sirens towards you, what exactly do you hope to use them for?"
He scratched his head. "Well, that's the thing we don't know, it's always giving off energy so it's a potential power source. That's what they're apparently working on in Inverness. In London there looking into the power problem as well."
"What about you, what were you working on?" I asked as I glanced at the notes on the desk.
"More of the same really, but I'm finding that certain people seem to experience either hearing or seeing things when there around it, so far there's no correlation between the people who experience them, you're the first person to ever have them without any prior knowledge of it." He started looking over his notes "when we reach port, I would like to go over a few things with you, see if you have the same reactions to the other two cubes that were sent, maybe if it wouldn't be too much trouble even to come to London and help us with the study of the two there as well."
Thinking about it for a minute I realised that I hadn't actually been far inland in a long while, it was probably for the best to be on solid land for an extended period of time. Not to mention I wanted to hold the cube again, it felt calming to hold it for some reason and now the fatigue of the day was creeping back making my eyes feel heavy. "Yeah sure, I will have to get leave from the captain but I can't see a reason why he'd say no.
He offered his hand to me. "Thank you, hopefully we might make a breakthrough. Lord knows we could do with one.
I shook his hand before turning to leave. "If you do experience anything abnormal, please come find me." He called out as I left.
"So tired." I said to myself deciding to skip having anything to eat I headed back to my cabin. Kicking off my boots and laying in my bunk, I ignored the protests of my stomach and closed my eyes. Trying to remember the warm feeling in my hand as I drifted off to sleep.
I was standing outside; I didn't know where I was or how I had gotten myself there. Panic began to settle in when I noticed the moon was giving off a deep red glow. Looking around all I could see was a calm ocean reflecting the moonlight. Far off in the distance I could see a landmass. I tried to move the ground below me feeling off for some reason, looking down I noticed I wasn't standing on anything but rather my feet were just above the water's surface.
The situation began to make my head spin, I couldn't tell the depth of the water but I knew it wasn't shallow, putting pressure on the water I felt a resistance push back keeping me afloat. "There's no way this is real, I must be dreaming." I tried walking finding that the water was still allowing me to stay above it.
I was about to begin walking towards the land before I heard what sounded like crying.
I spun around trying to find the source of the crying but to no avail, I was completely alone. What sounded like a dozen different people all talking at once was suddenly in my head? "They're coming again there's nothing I can do, there's nothing any of us can do"
I brought a hand to my head, feeling as if an explosion had happened right next to my ear. "Who is coming, who are you." I called out.
"Them." Is all that it replied
It felt as if someone was right behind me, turning round I could see far off in the distance was a large black mass. It was some sort of fog travelling closer towards me, it wasn't giving off the same red glow as the ocean instead it was seemingly absorbing all light around it.
Inside the fog I could see darker shapes moving around, they seemed to change in size and shape and sometimes vanish all together.
I felt an ice-cold jolt down my spine "I don't want to die." Bounced around in my head I had no idea if that was me or the voice.
Trying to turn and run only to find my legs wouldn't move. The shapes in the fog suddenly stopped moving and became more solid. Red light began to glow all around them as a deafening Horn sounded.
Lights started to glow inside the fog, even at the distance it was from me I could already begin to feel the heat radiating from it. "Run" the voice sounded as the ocean began to boil around me.
My legs still wouldn't move, frozen in fear all I could do is watch as whatever was happening finally finished whatever it was doing.
Beams of light shot out towards me boiling the ocean's surface below them, I put my hands up in front of me in a futile attempt to protect myself. I felt the searing heat burn trough my hands as the beams hit me.
I jumped up a panicked cry escaping my mouth before my head impacted a metal beam that was above my bunk.
"Son of a." I rubbed my head as a thriving pain washed over me, I was covered in a cold sweat and my heart was beating harder than it ever had before.
I sat in my bunk slowly calming myself down as I tried to remember what my dream was about but with each passing second the memories of it faded away.
Adrenaline had fully woken me up and I knew there was no chance of me going back to sleep. I eventually decided to finally get something to eat
Getting dressed and putting on my overcoat Before Heading out of my cabin. I was about to go to the mess to find something to eat but I found myself walking towards the bridge. Even though I couldn't fully remember it something about my dream wasn't sitting right and had left me with a sense of dread.
As I walked into the bridge and said a few words of greeting to the night crew I looked out to sea. What should have been an open moonlight light was instead dark as a fog was all around. Even with our reduced speed we should have reached port by now.
Looking at the clock showed it was about an hour before first light. "Where are we? We should have reached port hours ago."
"No idea, we drifted a fair amount yesterday when our engine was out but when we got back underway, we found ourselves in this fog, all our instruments seem to be off." One of the sailors replied in a carefree manner.
"Fog?" I remembered something the scientist had said earlier. "The last radio report had them lost in fog, get everything up and running. something isn't right here." The few crew members slowly began to move bringing the ship back to life. I tried to turn on the ancient radar system the ship had equipped only be greeted by interference.
"What heading should we take sir?" The helmsman asked. A panic had overtaken the bridge as people were trying to get the ship underway.
"Just get us moving. Half speed for now." I tried to get the radio working but after only having static reply to my calls I knew we were on our own.
Putting the strap of some binoculars around my neck I went outside to get a better view, all across the horizon was just the fog.
On my second pass I saw it small shapes in the distance, flashes of my dream came back to me. The word run begun to eco around my mind.
As if reacting to me seeing them the figures began to glow red. My blood ran cold as I knew what they were.