Ship Bases Novels & Stories

I forced my head up, my teeth grinding against the metallic taste of blood and sulfur that filled my mouth. Above the ruined apex of the Spire, through the jagged holes in the shattered dome, the three massive, wedge-shaped hulls of the charcoal titanium battleships weren't firing anymore. Their underside target-acquisition bays were sputtering wildly, the solid violet lenses flickering between a dangerous crimson and a dead, empty grey as the systemic hard-reboot I had forced into the baseline began to bleed into their navigation arrays. Without the High Council's central core to provide a unified targeting frequency, the ships were blind—three hundred thousand tons of military-grade hardwa

“Fine! Gotta go. Teacher Mary’s coming!” The line cut off. I exhaled and smacked my cheeks with both hands. It helped me focus on my predicament. With arms crossed, I watched the barge swaying gently on the waves. Its massive gray structure was just as my father once described—the Kulbahinam Barge, a large vessel with twelve passenger cabins, forty double decks, and too many weathered plastic chairs bolted to the deck. It belonged to the Garcia family, a shipping empire. Father used to work for them when he was alive.

I tapped Ted beside me, signaling him to help. "The ship is like a mobile base of operations, a safe haven of sorts. It's under the radar, where remaining families can stay. It's mobile, so we can go anywhere we want. Most of the lower city folk prefer to stay there to avoid turf wars." The ship stood proud near the harbor. We had to take a speedboat back and forth three times to transport both us and the boxes. By the second trip, I lost my patience and yelled at the captain, "Take us to the damn harbor so we can load the boxes quickly! We're being followed, you idiots!"

He'll see what mediation will do for us once he allows different thinking to replace his natural stubbornness. It's an hour before we take the motorbikes to the shipyard. I've only been here once before, and it was just as creepy then as it is now. The old ships are decrepit piles of rusted steel that look like they should be resting at the bottom of the ocean instead of being secured to endless brown docks. The ships tower above us and bob slowly in the nearly black water, making weird creaking sounds that heighten the entire creep factor.

Here is the place where ships used for sailing are repaired. It was one of Larica Shipment’s properties and it is not far from the shipping port where the center of business is. I didn’t pay attention to the looks of some of Papa’s employees who kept on pulling something while looking in my direction from time to time. They knew me because I always walk past the area whenever I go to the dock, and it was their first time seeing me with a man. Tch. Good thing that they kept their mouths shut or else…

even began. The Shipyard was a "Non-Euclidean-Scaffold" the size of a solar system, built from "Ghost-Steel" and "Compressed-Gravity." It was a graveyard of "Prototype-Universes," half-finished "Gears-of-Existence," and "Blueprints-Carved-in-Vacuum." Unlike the "Wild-Multiverse," which was a product of "Accidental-Chaos," the Shipyard was a place of "Abandoned-Design." It was the "Studio" of the "Origin," left behind when the "Smith" retired to see what his "Creation" would do on its own.

"No... no time. The radio... it’s all gone. Dar es Salaam is a fortress." Baraka knelt beside her, his face grim. "Easy. You’re safe in the North. We broke the Vanguard." "You didn't break them," the woman coughed, blood staining her lips as she looked up into Baraka’s glowing violet eyes. "You delayed them. The Apex... Malik... he isn't just conscripting soldiers anymore. He took the naval shipyards." Baraka felt the blood run cold in his veins. "What did he do at the shipyards?" Baraka asked, his voice a tight whisper.

He tilted his head, “And how do you see this playing out? You know all they need is a single reason to pin us down.” I gestured at the screen. “Pier 37 stays our main focus, but we set up dummy shipments at Dock 32 and Dock 28. We move the decoys at staggered times—same day, different hours. That way, if they’re watching one spot, they don’t have the manpower to cover the others. Plus, the noise from those docks will mask the movement at 37.” Alessandro tapped his fingers on the desk, considering. “And the timing?”

"The‍y co‍n​trol the Mediter​ranean‌ access, C⁠eleste. We can't move our automat⁠ed logis​tics l⁠ine or our tech‍ comp‍one‌nt⁠s into th‌e eastern markets without pa​ssing thro‌ugh those specif‌ic⁠ port⁠s. Ther‌e is no altern‌ative route availabl‌e on th⁠e open marke​t.⁠" "The​re is i⁠f we route through the North Sea," she r‍epl‌ie‍d, a small, t​riumphant smile tou‌ching her lips as she leaned cl‍oser to him. "Thre‌e y‍ears ago, Alistair used a Ha‍rringt​o‌n shell c‌ompany reg‍is⁠tere‌d in P​a​nama to‌ purchase a defunct, heav‌ily fortifie‌d na⁠val shipya​rd just outside of Rott​erdam.‌ I⁠t’s com‌pletely private, e‍ quipped with military-grade⁠ dry docks, an‍d‍ has direct deep-wate​r access‌

The black horizon of the Pacific didn’t just rumble; it bled. Through the dense, wet curtains of the harbor fog, the silhouette of *The Leviathan* materialized like a prehistoric leviathan cut from matte-black steel. The naval destroyer sat three miles out, a ghost ship commissioned by the absolute peak of corporate desperation, its heavy forward cannons slowly rotating toward the coordinates of the free port of Blackridge. They weren't here to negotiate an asset recovery. They were here to execute a scorched-earth liquidation.