The Ship Going Home

In the deepest power section of the engine room, all the crewmen and cultists who had once stood watch here were dead, yet the enormous steam core unit continued operating without anyone controlling it.

The reactor emitted low tremors. The pipes and valves surrounding it periodically let out faint hisses under the automatic balancing system's control. Warning lights used to monitor the state of the Boiling Gold catalyst blinked steadily, showing that the pressure within the steam core was running high.

At the end of a steel platform more than ten meters from the steam core stood a massive copper column stretching between floor and ceiling. Part of its casing had been hollowed out, revealing intricate gears and linkage mechanisms constantly moving within. The rapid clattering of precision machinery rolled on like waves. Strips of paper were sucked into openings along the copper column's edge, then spat out through other openings and conveyed to other storage devices or punch-card analyzers.

This expensive, sophisticated Difference Engine was automatically calculating parameters related to the upcoming voyage and supplying the data to the engine room. Part of its input and output data came directly from the navigation station above—none of this could be allowed to fall into the hands of that shadow from Subspace.

A vast darkness of fate was gathering. An omen more terrifying than death had descended—the Ghost Captain had realized what was happening, and his wrath was coming here.

The enormous skeletal spider hesitated no longer. He swung his long jointed limbs and swiftly crawled to the copper column, then drove a bone spike into the Difference Engine's core drive shaft without hesitation.

A corrosive force field enveloped the black bone spike. The protective casing around the drive shaft, tightly shielded by thick copper plating and steel armor, was pierced