Sorry this one is a little late; I've had a week and a half. Quick shout out to Appleye2, Draco38, midnightsky0612 and a few guests too; thanks for reading and reviewing everyone and a big hello to my good friend Stripesicles222. Hope you are all enjoying this odd little tale.

Chapter 45

Departure and Disaster.

It was not easy for Reed Branson to watch his ship being lifted out of the water and placed on the deck of the giant tanker. It was even harder to watch them slice off the vessels keel and cut three large holes in the hull.

"I hope your people know what they're doing" Branson said as he took a deep breath.

Professor Adisa slapped the Captain on the shoulder and smiled.

"If not, we all go down together when your ship sinks" he joked.

"As if that makes me feel any better" Reed sighed.

Next to the One and All, a forty meter long, four meter wide bluish grey tube sat on the deck waiting to be fitted under the Brigantine. As he considered the new addition to his ship and watched its installation, Branson was beginning to wonder if he had made the right decision when he agreed to the engineers plan.

"So this thing is made out of space ships?" he asked.

"Not exactly" Linton explained "Each section was the inner pressurised part of the supply pods we would send to Mars. There was also an outer skin with fold out landing legs, rockets around the lower skirt and parachutes. Now that we no longer need to land the pods, we've started using a new design with a flexible wall."

"So these are surplus to requirement" Reed noted.

"Indeed yes. By putting this unit in place of the standard keel, you are increasing the amount of cargo space on board by a factor of four and enabling the fitting of our defensive weaponry. With all three access hatches hidden under the lowest points of the One and All, it also means if we do get raided, we should be able to keep our supplies hidden."

"I doubt we'll have to worry about raiding parties with those 20mm rapid fire cannons backing us up" Reed grinned "but tell me how this thruster works without a propeller."

"No doubt about it" Linton Adisa smiled "Willow little gang of miracle workers have outdone themselves there. The water is drawn in two side vents in the rear section by an electrically driven turbine impeller; it's then thrown out the back as high speed water jet. In favourable conditions, it should be able to propel the ship to a speed of twenty knots for a short time."

"Hopefully long enough to get us out of trouble" Reed crossed his fingers.

It had taken Willows team (and another thirty seven draftees) over a week to construct their miracle masterpiece and another three days work to install it on the One and All, but Sarah wasn't concerned about the lost time if it would help the Professor and his companions stay safe. Later as the Brigantine was lowered back into the water, it did not escape anyone's notice how much the sailing ship looked like it had submarine stuck to its keel. Once it was finally back in the water, everyone worked late into the night making final systems checks and loading up the new extension with supplies so Captain Branson could set sail the next morning.

The sun had not yet shown itself in the eastern sky when the time finally came. A small number of people gathered on the floating dock next the giant tanker's bow, where the One and All's life boat sat and waited for its final passengers of the morning.

"I don't think you realise how much I'm going to miss you" Sarah Spencer declared as her eyes began to water.

"You've been doing a wonderful job as the new Railgun Co-ordinator" Professor Adisa smiled "and I know you will continue to do so after we leave."

"You emotionless old fool" Sarah tried to laugh "It's you I'm going to miss, not your advice."

"I know what you mean" Linton smiled as he hugged her warmly "You've been like a daughter to me and I am very proud of you."

"You've been a cranky old coot but I still don't want you to go" she started to cry.

"While I don't know how long we'll be away, I'll try not to dawdle; we'll be back before you know it."

"Not fast enough though" Sarah sighed.

A little further back, Maximilian DeGroot had one final task before he took his seat in the boat. His belongings were already stowed on the One and All but he had kept back a very special book; one he had not shown to Blue previously.

"How are your studies on the Viking rune writings progressing?" he asked.

"Oh not bad" Blue responded "I'm getting used to recognising basic sentence structure and grammar, but I still need to use the alphabet chart on most words; I can pick out 'and' and 'the' easily enough though."

"Then you will definitely need your chart for this" DeGroot smiled as he handed Blue the book.

"I don't think I've ever seen this one before" Blue looked at it curiously.

"You haven't; I have been keeping this book away from you on purpose" DeGroot gave an almost evil grin. "I know you don't fully believe me about the dragons and your ancestry, but I feel sure when you see the things written in here, you will look on what I have taught you in a new light of understanding."

"It's a pretty thick book" Blue noted "It'll take me a while to translate."

"Believe me young man; it will be worth the trouble. The entire book is fascinating but I have placed a few bookmarks to lead you to the most important parts."

"What is it exactly?" Blue asked.

"It is the collected writings of an old woman who was an adviser to three generations of Viking chiefs and the last of these was the Dragon Master himself; her name was Gothi."

"Funny name" Blue smirked as Calla rushed towards him with a warning.

"The Professor is about to board the boat" she declared urgently "Last chance to say goodbye."

"And your last chance to get on Mr. DeGroot" Blue added.

"Don't worry I'm going" DeGroot huffed as he started to walk down the dock.

Blue and Calla followed along even though the small walkway was becoming quite crowded. They found Sarah Spencer still in tears as Professor Adisa was helped onto the lifeboat.

"Good luck Professor" Blue called out "I look forward to hearing about what you find over there."

"I just hope we do find something" Linton replied.

DeGroot followed the Professor onto the boat leaving only two of its passengers on the dock.

"Here we go again Jack" Captain Branson nodded.

"Happy to be back at sea sir?" jack Sumner asked.

"Normally I'd say yes, but I'm not too sure about what the good Professor's team of engineers have done to my ship; it took me all of the last two weeks to learn how to operate her again."

"Should be an interesting journey sir."

"No doubt about it Jack" Branson declared "Get the stern line."

As Jack followed the order, Reed Branson untied the bow line and stepped onboard. Jack Sumner pushed the boat away from the dock as he stepped down and sat by the tiller; he contemplated the new control switches on the handle. The boat once had a small petrol engine many decades ago, but it had been reduced to sail and oar long before Jack had joined the One and All crew. Now the lead keel had been replaced by a sealed battery pack, the bow and stern had been covered with solar collection material and under the rear hatch was a small electric motor. Jack pressed his thumb onto the safety switch, twisted the handle slightly and the boat began to power its way back to the ship.

"Electrically driven lifeboats; I could get used to this" he smiled to himself.

A small crowd of people called out and waved to the little boat, from the stern of the giant ship while Sarah and Blue watched from the floating dock. Calla meanwhile walked back to the beach and around to the bow where another truckload of material awaited its driver for the trip back to the Railgun Complex.

"Hello Emerson" she greeted her brother "You got back here sooner than I expected."

"There were so many people at the stern of the ship, I decided not to stay" he explained "It's not as if I could see her anyway."

"You mean Doom? She's still asleep" Calla said in a matter of fact way.

"How do you know?" Emerson asked.

"Blue had a telescope set up and we were doing a bit of stargazing last night. Doom was really tired by the time we finished and she asked me not to wake her when I came down this morning" Calla explained.

"But... isn't she on the ship?"

"Yes; in her cabin sleeping."

"I mean the other ship" Emerson blurted out "The One and All."

"No she's asleep in her cabin, here on this ship" Calla huffed "How many times do I have to say it?"

Without another word, Emerson sprinted into the ship and ran up the stairs. His chest began to ache and his throat was burning before he was a quarter of the way along the deck, but he didn't slow down. When he reached the rear superstructure, he almost knocked a few people over as he ran up the stairs and along the corridor. Without knocking, Emerson threw the door of Harriet Doom's cabin open and hurried over to the bedroom where just as his sister had said, she lay sleeping peacefully.

"I said I did not want to be woken up" she mumbled without looking up.

At first Emerson could not even speak, but eventually his breath returned and he half spoke and half gasped.

"You didn't go; you're still here."

"Your powers of observation are truly astounding" Doom noted.

"I don't understand; I thought you..." Emerson tried to be more coherent but his head was spinning.

"I don't know what is so confusing" Doom yawned "I told you I wouldn't go if you gave me a good reason to stay; now shut up and let me get back to sleep."

"But... but I didn't..."

"Yes you did" she insisted.

"But how... when?"

Doom did not answer straight away but instead beckoned Emerson to come closer; he nervously approached and bent down.

"When you told me that you liked me" she whispered in his ear and kissed him on the cheek "Now be a good boy and go away. You could always head off to the galley and make me some eggs on toast for breakfast."

Emerson staggered towards the door feeling mildly surprised; just as you would expect since there was a Stormy Petrel sitting on his head.

"Eggs on toast" he mumbled as he touched his cheek; he could still fell where her lips had touched him "Why didn't I tell her months ago?"

"My thoughts precisely" Doom whispered to herself as the door closed.

That evening Blue lay down on his bed after a very busy day and pondered how odd it felt knowing the Professor had gone, especially since he had been the one who had wanted to leave. He was trying his best to ignore the Book of Gothi but as it sat on his desk, the strange knowing look Maximilian DeGroot had on his face when handing it to Blue, began to gnaw at his mind; the Wood Duck sitting on the book didn't help either.

"Why not?" he asked himself as he walked to the desk and sat down.

Blue opened the top left draw and took a notepad and pencil before opening up the book to the first of the pages where DeGroot had placed a book mark. Most of what he read was made up of simple words and was easy to follow as he copied the translation onto his notepad, but he still needed to refer occasionally to the rune chart Blue had posted on the wall behind his desk.

Gothi appeared to be giving an account of a journey she had taken one day with a Viking named Stoickson. She had led the young man halfway up a mountain outside the village of Berk, to a cave closed off by a wooden wall and door.

"Hmm... cosy" Blue smiled to himself.

As someone who until recently had spent his entire life underground, a cave house did not seem strange at all. It was difficult to translate the name of Gothi's destination but based on the words he knew, Blue figured the name to be the Cave of Revelation or something close; it was certainly a much more impressive name than Berk anyway. The next section he translated, spoke of Chiefson being taken deep inside the cave to a place called the Vision Portal.

"Okay so where did this guy named Chiefson come from?" Blue asked himself.

He went back over what he had already read to see if he had missed the place where this second person had joined Gothi and Stoickson when he realised he was mistranslating the words.

"Ah; it's the same guy" Blue smiled.

Stoick the Vast was the chief of Berk during the last years of the Dragon Wars, so Son of Stoick and Son of Chief were both the young man known as the Dragon Master. The story went on to describe how Gothi activated the Vision Portal with a sparkling red dust, showing the Son of Stoick his triumphant future.

"First it was dragons and now a magic window to the future" Blue smirked "Oh DeGroot, how gullible do you think I am?"

Although he was starting to feel a little tired, Blue wanted to see where this story was going, so he decided to give it another hour. Gothi wrote about the Son of Stoick seeing himself as a proud and happy man with a bright future before things took a very strange turn. Instead of continuing to see his future self in the portal, another young man appeared; and this newcomer introduced himself to the Chief's son as...

"It can't be" Blue gasped as he slammed the book shut.

The departure of the One and All had given everyone in the complex a renewed impetus to push on with their work. Emerson eventually approached Blue to ask about re-joining his classes and was surprised by the young man's reaction. Instead of being chastised for wasting his time and changing his mind, Emerson was encouraged to take on a role similar to his sister had, but with the engineers.

"Every one of the trainees needs know about the machines we'll be using on the Asteroids" Blue explained "So I'd like to put one of the engineers you've been working with in charge of that side of the training. You've had so much experience with them already, I think you're the perfect choice to help translate all the 'tech talk' into something everyone can all relate to; Calla has been a great help to me and I believe you will to the engineers too."

"Err... sure" Emerson replied "But what about all the stuff you've done over the last month?"

"Calla and I will help you catch up" Blue smiled "Just don't try to beat your sister's record on the centrifuge; most people black out before they get close."

Blue was right about the new training system and Emerson progressed well over the next week. Partly because Calla relished in training her older brother but mostly because Emerson loved studying with Doom; although he still had a long way to go before he would be as proficient as the others in the class.

The first launch of the new set of pods was less than forty eight hours away when up in space, something new entered the picture; the Mars Transfer Vehicle had finally moved into Low Earth Orbit. Of the three Astronauts on board one was excited to see Earth up so close, one was looking forward to returning to his pregnant wife on Mars and the last one was getting nervous. Commander Sage had made plans for almost any eventuality but thought of the unexpected still had him on edge.

"Commencing recording" Abigail said as she gazed in wonder at the screen.

She thought nothing would top seeing Earth through the glass of the cupola, but the detail revealed by the high resolution camera was truly amazing. Clouds obscured some of the coast of Western China, but she could easily see Southern Japan. The first major scaring came into view as they approached the border of Alaska and Canada where three large craters formed a triangle.

"Not easy to look at is it?" Luis stated from his seat in the nose of the capsule.

"I wish I could have seen it before the asteroids hit" Abigail sighed in replied into her headset mike.

There were still large areas of land that had escaped devastation while others appeared to have been hit multiple times. Abigail found herself wondering if these places had been unlucky enough to be repeatedly in the line of fire, or could it have been a single large meteorite that had exploded in the upper atmosphere before its remaining fragments had rained down peppering the area.

"Moving out over Florida" Abigail reported.

There was not much to see over the featureless Atlantic until the southern tip of South Africa appeared and the MTV's orbit moved north once more. In reality the line of the orbit was straight but the angle of the planets rotation made the spacecraft appear to move over the Earth in a wave pattern. Commander Sage sat silently at the rear of the capsule monitoring the path of the MTV on an overlay of the planet below. After an hour of recording images for later study back on Mars, a pre-set alert appeared on the computer screen warning Sage his ship would pass over West Sumatra in only ten minutes; he slipped out of his seat and floated out of the nose capsule and into the main body of the ship.

"Everything working well Cadet?" he asked Abigail.

"Yes sir" she replied "We're getting some great recordings and high resolution stills."

"Very good Cadet, but I could use a rest from staring at the computer screen; take over for a few minutes please."

"Right away sir" Abigail obeyed as she dropped down out of the cupola and floated forward.

She still had a lot to learn but Abigail was pleased the Commander was putting more trust in her. Now he had the young cadet distracted, it was time to give Major Dias something other than the external feed to watch.

"I'm reading a slight discrepancy in the air lines; check each individual tank pressure please Major."

"Checking tank pressures" Luis acknowledged.

Sage smiled to himself as the ship approached the northwest coast on Indonesia. If there was something there, he should be the only one to see it. His heart still began to beat a little faster as the location of the hidden Railgun came into view. There was no doubt about it now; sitting on the shore as large life, was the biggest supertanker ever built. He would have to make sure no one else ever set eyes on it.

"ABIGAIL; COME HERE AND LOOK AT THIS" Luis called out excitedly.

Sage hurried forward and gazed through the hatch; he had assumed Luis would switch over his main screen to check the tank pressures, but instead he had brought up the relevant information on the unused navigators screen.

"Dammit" he cursed as Abigail saw the ship her father was pointing at.

"It's still there; it wasn't destroyed" Luis blurted out "Your brother may not have died after all!"

"My BROTHER?" Abigail gasped as the Magpie of Heart Stopping Shock slipped into a bird shaped spacesuit.

The Magpie took this precaution because of something very disturbing going on behind them, but Luis and Abigail soon became aware of it too when they heard the inner hatch to the ship close and seal. The most disturbing sound of all followed with the decompression hiss of the seal and the clunk of the unlocking clamps that held the nose capsule in place.

"THE ORION HATCH IS STILL OPEN!" Abigail cried out.

In a few seconds the two sections of the craft would separate and both of the capsule's occupants would be blown out into the vacuum of space.

Is it just me, or do you hate cliff-hangers as well?