Storm Shelf
The ocean played the lighthouse like a muted organ.
The waves thrashed against the base of the concrete pillar, as it bellowed and groaned in the depths. A chorus of wind followed it, squeezing through every cut and crevasse and whirling it’s way up to a crescendo until fading into the rhythm of the great lit beacon as it spiralled above. The set was played out by a percussive splattering of sea spray against tiny round windows of salt-crusted glass and white washed frames.
This was the song of a storm. Its beautiful, haunting melody was so familiar to Atawhai that he barely took any notice as he sat just below the lighthouse beacon and flicked through his giant ledger. Ata had the unenviable task of lighthouse keeper for the Port at Storm Shelf, a world eponymously named for its endless churning storms. Though others might have found the job tedious, or the mood lonely, or the living conditions uneasy at best, Ata loved his life as a watcher of the storm. He was able to keep to himself all day, avoiding all but the most important of interactions between others. The accommodation, though tiring to climb, and noisy at times, was mostly dry and comfortable, and the job, well the job was why he was here. To keep the beacon lit and shine a way into the harbour for the many vessels navigating the dark, greedy froth.
Ata turned the page of his ledger with damp hands, causing the ink to bleed slightly as he ran his finger down the night’s manifest. The names of ships, crews, and estimated arrivals were further distorted by a smattering of tiny raindrops that flew inside when one of the small round windows above his desk was flung ajar by a sharp gust. Ata strained to read the now soused ledger as he slammed the open window shut without taking his eyes off the page. He knew seven ships had already braved the angry seas tonight and had all made it safely into the breakwater at Storm Shelf harbour. Some of tonight’s vessels had also brought in Sling-Skimmers that had been forced to set down on the vessel's hulls, or risk being lost to the storm and sea. It frustrated Ata to see this, to think of all the extra effort put in by these ship's captains and crews just to rescue these recreational fliers. They were likely wealthy hobbyists that had come here to challenge the infamous weather patterns that thrashed Storm Shelf’s endless oceans. A challenge undertaken with little consideration for the dangers it posed to them, or to the working crews that were morally obliged to answer their last-minute distress beacons. An age ago, Ata might well have been one of these hot-headed risk takers, out there chasing the next biggest wave, but as he grew older he came to see them for what they were. Arrogant and selfish.
Agitated now, by the thought of these skimmers, and by the increasingly illegible page that lay before him, Ata unfolded two buckles, either side of the quilted collar on his pinniped jacket. The collar expanded and puffed up around his neck into a snake-like pillow before expanding further over his head to create a rigid geometric hood that shielded him from the errant drips and sprays of the storm. Ata reached across his giant ledger, that had now cleaned itself of ink blots, toward an ornate jade box. Inside the box was a stack of 6 matte black cigars, all with a copper band embossed with the shape of 3 tiered rings stacked on top of the other. Ata took one of the rubber-like cigars and held it up toward the spinning lighthouse lamp above him. The edge of the concentrated beam brushed over the tip of the cigar, lighting it in an instant. With no smugness and with the nonchalance of a man who hadn’t anyone to impress, he grabbed the cigar between his teeth, and closed his ledger with both hands. The smoldering cigar illuminated his dark, tattooed face and filled the inside of his hood with swirls of dark smoke. Taking a moment to himself, Ata leaned back in his chair, folded his hands tight, and continued to puff away hands-free while he sat waiting for the last two ships to arrive. After a few minutes, he peered down and opened the ledger again, just to see if any last minute additions had been added. There sometimes were. But not tonight. No change. Every vessel was accounted for with the exception of two.
The two unticked entries in the ledger read:
The Steel Chip - 7 Crew - Prow Mining Operations in the Medeza metal drifts - expected arrival at port 8 hours after departure
The Line Shredder - 42 crew - Rare Sea Fishing - expected arrival at port 10 hours after departure OR upon full load.
Perhaps it was his sleeplessness the night before or his aging mind getting the better of him, but as Ata sat cosied below the massive lighthouse beam, in a heavy cloud of smoke, he couldn’t help but feel a gnawing frustration over the amount of sling-skimmers that had already been hauled in behind tonight’s returning vessels. He ought to complain really, send a message to the port authorities, but they wouldn’t listen. Even if they did, they wouldn’t forward such a minor grievance on to the rings of the Exchange. Extreme tourism was a major source of income for the port operators. The measly kickback they received from the working ships was barely enough to supplement their operating costs, so allowing wealthy patrons to pay good credit to try their fates in the ocean storms, made perfect sense. Even if it meant abusing the laws of duty-to-rescue to provide some level of assurance to these careless thrill seekers. No, there was nothing Ata could do, other than sit and stew in his own disapproval, as he made sure that the last of the night’s working ships had a light to guide them home.
Grumbling though he was about these visitors, Ata knew he had no right to judge. No one did. Everyone on Storm Shelf had arrived as a visitor, even someone as old as him. Storm Shelf was far from the well-worn tracks that fed the Junction of Worlds, and it's beating heart, The Heavens Bazaar. Unlike many of the worlds that ultimately lead to the Bazaar, Storm Shelf was not the birthplace of any sentient life, at least not any that were around to tell their stories. But, like many of the known worlds across the multiverse, Storm Shelf was connected to the space surrounding the Bazaar via a great track of light. The track lay high above its waves, swirling like a giant cylindrical Aurora that stretched from the sky to the faded stars beyond. It was a small window above, not unlike the port hole that had flung open earlier, that led to a track by which every living soul had come and gone from Storm Shelf. In and out of its raging seas, into the quiet expanse of space. These auroral tracks, stretching from thousands of different worlds, were just one of the many ways one could travel to the Heavens Bazaar, a great floating market, nestled amidst a graveyard of dying stars, in a forgotten dimension of space. Looking through the center of Storm Shelf’s track, these other tracks from these other worlds could be seen, swirling beyond the muted glow of the storm clouds. They spread across the horizon in every direction. Permanent streaks joined intermittently by the veins of lightning that rippled across the rest of Storm Shelf’s sky...
...Ata must have nodded off for a moment before he was shaken awake by a burst of light so bright that it could have been another lighthouse lamp, shining right back towards him. He took his cigar out of his mouth and pressed it into a black glass tray on his desk as he walked over to the small wrought iron balcony that straddled the port side of the lighthouse. The sea beyond was barely visible now, and the lighthouse lamp above him had gone dark. For a moment Ata thought that the burst of light might have been from the lamp blowing its fuse, but not a second after having this thought, did the lamp light up again and slowly start its restful spin. The temporary darkness had been replaced with the certain glow of the lighthouse. But the glow grew abnormally larger. Soon the storm clouds illuminated in grey-blue and then in a blinding white, brighter than day. The churning tips of the ocean waves captured this light and played with it. Passing each new beam of concentrated white into the next wave, who passed it onto the next, and the next, and so it went until what felt like only a minute, or less even, and the sky faded back to night again. It felt like an endless flash of lightning, a blinding light that preceded a paralyzing darkness. Looking up to the lamp again, Ata noticed it was once again inactive, but this time something else caught his gaze. Beyond the lamp and the storm clouds, the track to the Bazaar was rapidly swirling inward, and through its window to the stars beyond, Ata noticed the same anomaly happening to other tracks. One by one the great Auroral roads were vanishing and the night sky, always glowing, was replaced by an unnatural stillness.
Ata acted. He dashed across the lighthouse interior, clambering over his chair, to the starboard side. He kicked open a small wooden door, shattering its rusted hinges as he climbed out into the storm. He stood on a small service ledge and, buffeted by the raw power of the elements, shook his collar once more. His jacket transformed it again, this time turning the rigid hood into a sealed transparent face shield. Mimicking the motion with his wrists, his sleeves extended to his fingertips before molding themselves into gloves. Somewhat more protected from the storm now, Ata leapt off the ledge and onto an exterior ladder with a dexitery unbefitting of his age. Using his gloves and boots to control his speed, he slid down the ladder much faster than taking the interior stairwell would have allowed.
Not 10 seconds after leaping off the service ledge had he dismounted the ladder and was rounding the lighthouse to the front entrance, when a giant sheet of coloured metal shuddered past his head and into the sky. It had come from a sling-skimmer, the remainder of which lay severed in half, on a rocky outcrop some 20 meters from where Ata stood. He could barely make out the broken silhouette of the pilot tangled amidst its knotted solar sails, unconscious at best. The earlier frustration he harboured for the recreational fliers had gone, replaced by a sickening combination of guilt and fear. Looking up to the closing hole in the sky, and accepting that he likely didn’t have time to do what he was about to do, Ata took a clip from his belt and attached it to a metal bollard at the base of the lighthouse. The rope that attached to the clip began unspooling with a harsh buzz as he ran against the wind, toward the downed sling-skimmer. He clambered down the rocks and along the outcrop before reaching the trapped pilot. They were definitely unconscious, and certainly beaten, but they were breathing. Just as Ata went to reach for the pilot his belt tugged against the now taught rope. He’d run out of slack and was now faced with either sacrificing his safety line, or leaving the pilot to die. He moved without thinking, pounding the side of the belt to detach the rope and leap toward the pilot. On the other side of his belt he pulled out a small laser blade and began cutting away the tangled rigging that held the pilot. Water droplets ran down his face shield and captured the red light of the laser as it sizzled it’s way through a web of knots. One especially taut rope sprung towards him as he cut through it, and a dull hook on its end smashed a small hole in Ata’s face shield. The sound of the storm rushed through the gap, temporarily blinding him as his senses adjusted to the screams of wind and rain. He resumed cutting, freeing the pilot from the last of the rigging and catching them in his arms.
Slinging the unconscious body over his shoulder, Ata slowly clambered back up the rocks toward flat ground, where his belt rope now flung in the wind, beating against the base of the lighthouse. As he rose and his eyes met what was left of the horizon, he saw The Line Shredder in the distance. It looked like it was reaching into the sky until Ata noticed that it was being lifted up by The Steel Chip, which had skewered the stern of the Line Shredder and was dragging it down toward the ocean waves. Ata could just make out the glitters of life pods shooting upward from the hulls of both ships, heading towards the auroral track like a desperate swarm fleeing from a flooded hive.
He’d already stood staring for seconds too long. Ata barged through the front door of the lighthouse with the pilot still slung over one shoulder and bound down to the basement level, four steps at a time. Before him stood a layered steel door with a small dust-coated screen to its left. He wiped it clean with his free hand and proceeded to activate its interface by pulling a large lever beside it. The screen illuminated and a green beam shined through lingering motes of dust and mist, to stretch across Ata’s face. The hydraulics gasped and the door rattled open, halving into the low roof and cold steel floor. Muscle memory served Ata well as he entered a small room that tapered off at the opposite wall. Two high back seats, molded from the floor itself, stood between them and the back wall. Ata planted the unconscious pilot into one of the two chairs and strapped them in. Ata landed on the other chair and spun around to face a flashing console. In the same instance he reached out toward the consoles and pulled another lever. There was a moment of nothing, before the beginning of everything. The sound of splitting rock deafened the tune of the raging storm as the ground around the base of the lighthouse peeled off and tumbled into the surrounding waters. Lightning illuminated the small room as the walls slid away to reveal windows out towards the thrashing waves. The view was exposed just soon enough to see the two falling ships in the distance become enveloped by the ocean.
The lighthouse shuddered. It felt unnatural. It was like a tree, unset from its roots, except that the hole that once bound it was now flooded with the azure glow of thruster ignitions. The seats and consoles moved as one, rotating upwards by 45 degrees so that Ata could see straight along the length of the lighthouse up to its glowing tip. Gravity held him back as the rocks below disappeared and the lighthouse launched towards the closing hole above. The lighthouse, now a ship of its own, joined the last of the escape pods that had left from the two remaining ships on Ata’s manifest, as well as an assortment of shuttles and utility ships that must have been quick enough to leave from the port. As they reached the auroral track and sailed through its closing gap, the water that clung to the ships instantly froze and then shattered into nothingness as the clouded sky was replaced by a field of muted stars. The unconscious arms and legs of Ata’s new co-pilot floated off their chair as the weightlessness of zero gravity took hold. Visibility was low in the Junction of Worlds, and without the paths to guide them, Ata knew that thousands of ships like his would be left adrift.
Unsure of whether it was his concern for any remaining vessels, his desperate hope that the track would not fully close, or a bout of fearful nostalgia, Ata decided to spin the lighthouse around, and peer back through the gap and down to Storm Shelf below. He fired the thrusters and turned the ship a full 180 degrees. As soon as he released the controls, he immediately regretted the manoeuvre. The circling Aurora continued to close, even faster than before. Its edges tighten like a noose around the lighthouse, clipping the top, and slicing the unlikely ship in two. Ata had just enough time to see the crown of his pillared home, with its great circling lamp, plummet into the mouth of the storm. The track then spiraled into nothing, replacing the tempest below with the darkness of space, leaving Atawhai and the sling-skimmer pilot floating in the quiet of space, on the precipice of a far larger storm.
