The time spent in New Zion has been eventful. Thanks to their novelty and minor-celebrity status, the adventurers are able to get into the best clubs and restaurants in the evenings, which helps them unwind from the activities of the day. And they are very active during the day! Aaron and the does visit pharmacies and clothing stores in search of new drugs and new fashions, as well as see if anyone could afford to import Amazonian Angor wool. Layth bounces between first-aid training with Dr. Caravelli and target practice with Tasha and Gabriel. The machine pistols take getting used to, even with silencers, but the Lapi's reflexes and Tasha's keen eyesight help a great deal.

The final few days are a flurry of preparation for the trip to Sheol. The Expedition is happy to supply what is needed, in exchange for lots of documentation of the journey. So along with the body armor, pistols and rations are several cameras and a portable radio-telegraph system that the engineers hope can send a signal strong enough to be detected in New Zion. There is one mishap, however, when Dr. Caravelli sprains his ankle. It isn't bad enough that he can't walk, but he bows out of the trip just to be on the safe side. Layth is also a bit sore, but that was from dealing with Aisha and Calli the night before leaving.

Rather than wait in the relative luxury of New Zion, Aisha, Calli and Aaron decide to go with the others as far as Camp Caroban to see them off and wait for their return. With Caravelli being tended to by one of the Life Mages, the others assemble on the airfield.

The unflattering hulk that is the Dainty Mauler squats on its landing pad, humming and growling as it prepares to launch. The gangplank is still down, and the Titanian called Blammo is eyeing the boxes of supplies with anticipation. Dr. Zerachiel looks a bit queasy already, while Akkers is a mask of military stoicism. Aaron says, "Don't be heroes, okay? It's bad enough you know how to make a ghost machine out of those old rocks, so don't take extra risks."

"Extra risks? Us? Have we ever done that?" Layth asks as he arranges the boxes for the fifth time. He apparently can't stand it if they're not perfectly aligned.

It doesn't help that the boxes aren't all the same size. Every time the Lapi shifts one, Blammo gets excited thinking it's about to be opened up.

"Oh calm down," Layth tells Blammo … again.

"You come back," Aisha tells Layth, looking worried. Calli hides it better, but still has a concerned look. "We'll kill Xavier if you don't."

"Oh, we'll be careful. Don't you worry Aaron," Tasha assures the buck, patting him on the shoulder. The Vartan is dressed in highly modified bullet-resistant armor with plate inserts, just like the rest of the team, only with sections cut out in the back for her wings. An automatic pistol is holstered under her arm, and she even picked up a pair of sun glasses to help against the red glare of Abaddon. The woman smiles at Aaron, then steps back to inspect the party and nod. "Well, we should get going then. Are you still sure you want to come, Layth?"

"Be sure to make it slow," Layth tells Calli and mimics her completely serious expression. To Tasha, he asks, "Who else will keep all of you out of trouble?"

"And I'll need someone to hold my hand," Zerachiel notes, only half-jokingly.

Tasha blinks at that, then pushes her glasses down her muzzle to peer over them at Layth – a move she's become fond of doing. "I thought I was keeping you out of trouble these days! And I just did! Or tried to! Oh well, it's good to have you with us," she tells him, then steps over to give him a hug.

"Well, enough dawdling," Akkers says, and picks up one of the artifact boxes. "We'll be here all day otherwise and Blammo will drool himself into dehydration."

Layth actually laughs and returns the hug. "And remember, the Titanians like Lapi, so having me along is a bargaining chip," he remarks, amused. After he releases Tasha, he then walks over to Zerachiel and takes his hand. "Do you want a kiss, too?" he asks the Karnor.

Tasha gives Layth a big grin in appreciation, then lets him go. "We can't have that," she replies to Gabriel, giving him a smile too. She walks over to the containers and hefts two up, demonstrating that despite her relatively short stature compared to the others, she's still a Vartan with all the strength that entails.

Lugging the gear into the ship isn't so bad, and the Titanians show them a closet (although the door looks like it was just added to cover up the hole) nearby the airlock to stow it in. Then they're led to the big wood-and-fur paneled room, where the benches are now full of Titanians manning the oars. Blammo shows them to some jump-seats bolted to the back wall that they can strap into before taking his own place at the oars.

"Why do I feel we are about to embark on the ridiculous?" Layth asks the others as he puts away the remaining box, then heads towards the jump-seats. "I still do not see how this ship can possibly work."

"I'm sure it's much sturdier than it looks," Zerachiel says. Still, he's clutching an airsickness back in one hand while Gabriel checks that he's strapped in securely. Given the size and placement of the seats and the straps, they obviously weren't made with wings in mind.

Tasha drops down into one of the jump seats next to Gabriel, and takes up the straps. "I'm definitely going to secure myself for this; this ship isn't like any ship I know how to fly," she tells everyone. "You may want to do the same, I have a feeling this is going to be rough." Her effort to 'sound more like Nora' have shown steady improvement over the last several weeks, and now she barely slips into her old speech pattern; even her accent has begun to edge into the formal, professional tone of the Expedition wolves.

The Vartan glances at Gabriel, who has to make do with a wing crowding him, and grins. "It's like our early days, isn't it? Do you remember the time you were half awake, thought I was a Karnor, and ran into my wing, knocking us both down?" She laughs at the memory.

Layth straps himself in as well. Given he's mostly human-sized, he at least fits reasonably well. Of course being mostly human sized also earned him some bizarre propositions while in New Zion, but he was too polite to talk about that.

"I also remember the giant naked rabbit woman looming over me," Gabriel says with a bit of a shudder. "I thought I was still dreaming of being a cub… "

"Do you have problems with naked rabbits?" Layth asks.

"No, not with the normal Lapi," Gabriel says with a grin.

At the front of the hall, Captain Rushfighter starts banging out a code on a support beam with his hammer. First Officer Grillfang helpfully translates this by barking, "Prepare for blast off!" "Blast off, and Titanian, does not instill confidence," Layth mutters.

The Vartan's own experience in New Zion was reportedly just as uncomfortable, but for different reasons. Most people thought she was the product of disturbing genetic experimentation by the Confederates, if not something worse, and Confederate ties were routinely suspected by non-military forces who knew better. Despite that, she seemed to enjoy the technology of Abaddon, especially the flying machines and the louder contraptions which the Lapi avoided like a plague. "I just hope it's blast off and not blast everywhere," she remarks. "Even to my limited eye, this technology is fishy."

The oarsmen start rowing, while Grillfang bangs out a cadence on the huge metal drum at the front of the hall. Bangs seems to echo around the ship – not from shaking, but from other sections using Hammersong to report status and such. Rushfighter seems to stare at a point on the ceiling while he listens, and occasionally replies with some bangs of his own. Then the real shaking starts…

"I… I miss those priestesses," Zerachiel adds, before yelping at the onset of shaking.

"You are missing out, then. A warrior would have shown you new things," Layth claims. The buck then grumbles to himself, "I am going to have a headache after this."

"Stop trying to get my boyfriend to cheat, Layth," Tasha barks at the buck, reaching over to swat him.

The rattling goes on for several minutes before smoothing out. "Clear sky!" Grillfang announces. How the Captain and his First Officer actually know what's happening outside is a mystery, unless they really are going entirely by Hammersong. There's a brief moment where it feels like they're falling, but then gravity reasserts itself.

After leaning back, Tasha shakes her head at all the shaking. "I'm not used to not seeing where a ship is going, or being a passenger all the time. I hope I'm not getting – what's the word? – decadent." She glances down at her wide sunglasses, then picks up the band that keeps them from falling off her head, and twiddles with it.

"Artificial gravity," Zerachiel notes, still clutching his bag. "Ah, too bad," Gabriel says. "We could have had some fun in freefall."

"It may have been safer to just build a catapult and fling ourselves to the moon," Layth complains.

An air horn blasts, and Grillfang says, "Okay, safe to unstrap. Get to catapult!"

"Get to what?" Layth asks.

"How do you create gravity, Gabriel? Did the Fenris do that?" Tasha's inquiries into Expedition technology have been frequent. She seems bent on learning how it works, despite arguments that it's far too much for her to learn quickly. Gabriel may suspect she's still trying to equal Nora's education, but it seems to him like she's also simply trying to better herself, too. She unstraps herself quickly, standing and removing her wings from crowding everyone.

Blammo leaves his bench and comes over to the passengers. "Katy-pullit! For moon! No land ship."

Layth unhooks his straps. "Are we being flung out in a smaller ship? We will splatter if we are flung unprotected," Layth points out.

"We had artificial gravity," Akkers notes. "It's done with… plates in the floor fed by some sort of high density plasma. Doc can probably explains it better."

"Um, but won't that launch us into … a vacuum? Or, like Layth says, won't a ship … splatter? Does Sheol even have an atmosphere?" She fishes in her pocket a moment, then begins to tie up her long blond hair into a high ponytail.

"No splat! Come!" the shaggy wolf beckons, heading for a different passage.

"I did say this was a bad idea," Layth remarks as he follows after Blammo.

"This is an adventure into the mysteries of technology," the Vartan says, shaking her head in bewilderment. "I almost miss wood. Plain old wooden ships." She glances at Layth, and tells him, "I did offer you to stay behind," she points out, grinning.

The route through the Mauler is short on corridors and big on rooms connected by hatches. No two hatches seem the same, nor do any of the rooms. Some are filled with steam or dripping fluids and bizarre machines, others with hanging meat and what might be giant bugs. Soon however, they enter a room with windows. In fact, aside from the floor, it's all windows. The ruddy disc of Sheol is ahead, and growing quickly.

There are benches with Titanians on them, all tapping out messages on pipes with small hammers.

"Well there it is, our new home for a while," the Vartan remarks as she walks towards the window to view Sheol. "It's remarkable we can even reach it; I can't even comprehend how far away it must be. Yet there it is, and here we are."

"It's not very big," Zerachiel notes.

"Come!" Blammo calls, opening a hatch in the floor near the front of the observation dome.

"And about to die," Layth remarks. Still he continues forward and follows Blammo's indication by entering the hatch.

"Oh it's-" Tasha turns around and blinks at the doctor, then laughs at his joke. "Of course you know how big it is! I think that's my first joke in space, too." She steps away from the windows and follows after Blammo.

Beyond the hatch is something like a fire-control room. A Titanian mans a telescope aimed at Sheol, and steps aside while Blammo says, "Aim where we go!" to Akkers.

"Aim… hmm," Gabriel says and takes over the telescope controls. He has to stand on tip-toe to manage it. "I think I recognize some features… need to find a certain cluster of craters… " he mutters as he turns hand-wheel controls.

"So we can make a new crater?" Layth asks.

"Um, do we need to get our gear?" Tasha glances around the room, wondering if the room might launch itself at any moment.

There's a rattle, and another hatch pops open before the various containers arrive on a conveyor belt.

"Oh. Well. There they are." Tasha reaches over and awkwardly pats their supplies.

"Okay, I think I have it centered," Akkers announces, and the Titanian next to him pulls a big lever that keeps the telescope tracking that spot. This causes a lot of other rumbles and vibrations as well.

"Good!" Blammo yells, and goes to pull more levers, until something that looks about the size of a locomotive engines starts to open up and reveal an enormous gun breach. There is a hemispheric depression in it, about ten feet across.

"Just when I thought it couldn't get worse," Layth says, yet has to laugh anyway. "Let me guess, enter it?"

Tasha's ears perk at all the noises, rotating to track them like fuzzy radar dishes. When the gun barrel opens up, her eyes widen, "That's the biggest cannon I have ever seen." She then holds up a finger, before pointing it at Layth, "And no jokes about me seeing a lot of 'big cannons'!"

"Gear first!" Blammo says, and opens another compartment that is full of small devices covered in blinking lights.

"The fact that you thought it is enough," Layth remarks to Tasha. He even sticks out his tongue before he goes about loading the gear into the chamber.

"Okay, bring boxes!" the Titanian says, after fiddling with one of the gizmos and tossing it into the depression… where it floats in mid-air right about where the center of a 10-foot-diameter sphere would be.

"That is … what is that?" Zerachiel asks. "Localized gravity nullification?"

"Don't you use reverse-psychology on me, bunny," Tasha insists in a huff. Apparently she's also been picking up a lot of new words and phrases; seeing Tasha spout something like 'reverse-psychology' in a comprehensible manner and understand shows how far she's come, besides being very odd for anyone who has known her a while. She picks up two crates and follows Layth into the shell.

Blammo shows Tasha and Layth how to… well… toss the gear into the pit where it just clusters around the floating center.

Having been arguing with Layth and not paying attention, Tasha stops dead when she sees a crate floating in front of her. "What?" When Blammo shows her, she offers a slightly less confused, "Huh?" Then, she just tosses her gear in the gravity-sphere too.

Layth doesn't even blink, he just tosses the crate in. "I wonder who they stole all this from," he comments.

Once the gear is 'loaded', Blammo swings a big nozzle over the spot, and pulls a chain. Pink smoke pours down, filling in the depression and conforming to an actual sphere somehow. Once it's 'topped off', it seems to solidify.

"First Ones," Akkers mutters.

"It's very impressive," Tasha agrees. "I don't remember the Expedition having anything like this, maybe it's from one of the others?" She glances at Gabriel, and blinks. "Oh, that would explain it."

"Gumball ready!" Blammo shouts, and pushes the breach closed. The other Titanian goes to work, and the whole front of the chamber seems to rotate. Apparently the catapult is also some sort of revolver. "Bubblegun one loaded!" the other Titanian replies, and then Blammo opens the breach on a fresh, empty hemisphere…

Another blinking floaty-gizmo is tossed in, and Blammo asks, "Who first?"

"I will go first," Layth offers.

"I guess that's me," Tasha says with a shrug. She steps forward, and runs into Layth.

"Two in one is okay, you fit!" Blammo says, gesturing for Tasha and Layth to just jump in.

Layth looks at Tasha, shrugs, then jumps in!

Tasha pauses, then backs up. "I'll go with Gabriel. If we die, I'd like to die together. Good luck Layth!" She gives him a big wave, grinning.

The Lapi's leap comes to a quick stop, as he ends up floating in the middle with the gizmo.

"Thank you for making me feel so loved," Layth remarks and waves back.

"Hokay," Blammo says, and pulls the chain. Pink mist pours down into the breach, filling from the bottom up despite the odd gravity. "Take deep breath!" Blammo notes before the mist reaches Layth's head.

"If Calli and Aisha were here, they'd both join you," Tasha assures Layth. "I'll tell them how brave you were."

Layth takes a deep breath. He's suddenly glad for those days at the Morpheus spa in Amazonia … or this would really bother him.

The sphere forms up, and the experience in the sensory deprivation pool really does help. For Layth, it's like floating in the womb. There's no urge to move or breath, but he can see clearly as if there wasn't any sphere at all. Time also acts oddly; instead of seeing things as they happen, it's like seeing things illuminated by a flickering light, each moment frozen before another replaces it. Then the gumball is rolled into a cylinder, and everything is dark again.

"Gods, I hope I didn't just get my best friend killed," Tasha says, her voice tense. "I suppose if I did, we'll be joining him soon enough. I'm sorry this is such a strange ride, Gabriel."

For Tasha and Gabriel, who end up hugging, they mostly get to see things over one another's shoulder, which means Tasha gets a better view given that Akkers doesn't have wings. It may take a few minutes to prepare each gumball, but for those already inside them time seems optional.

Inside their gumball, Tasha leans back, and can't resist kissing Gabriel out of time. She grins, floating in the dark. Maybe she can't see him, but she knows he's there.

Eventually everyone is loaded up, and the cylinders move. Darkness gives way to a long tunnel with a red disc at the end, and then a flash of light and the moon rushing up at incredible (if stroboscopic) speed with no sense of actually moving. And then… impact. And bouncing. Lots and lots of bouncing.

"I am going to be sick," Layth thinks each time the landscape goes bouncing in freeze-frame view in his sight. Inductively sick, anyway, since he cant actually feel the momentum changes. The visual cues are near enough, though.

Eventually the gumballs come to rest, clustered within a few hundred yards of one another. The gizmos blink and buzz, and the balls melt away.

"That was entirely awful," Layth remarks from where he landed. He somehow ended up upside down, so now lays with his shoulders on the ground and his legs bent over himself, leaving the buck effectively mooning the ship in the distance. Using his arms, he rolls himself a bit until he's at least sitting upright.

The group find themselves standing under a black sky dominated by the red face of Abaddon. The air is dry, and despite the tiny size of the moon everyone feels just as heavy as they did on Abaddon itself.

The ground is gravely and dusty, with no signs of vegetation or life.

"So, if we don't find a ship here, how exactly do we get off this moon?" Layth asks the others as he looks around the desolate landscape.

For Tasha, it all reminds her of the time she tried that 'special spice' one of the crew brought on board The Rake. It would have been fun, except she had night watch, and tripped off the side of the ship into the rigging. After that, she vowed to never try 'special spice' ever again. When her bubble bursts, she leans back from Gabriel and releases him reluctantly. "Well, here we are. We seem to be going to progressively bleaker planets, don't we? Or in this case, a moon." She smiles at him, then takes a moment to look around. "I hope Layth is okay, and wasn't Blammo coming too?"

"Arroooo!" howls Blammo from over the lip of the crater. The Titanian appears next, carrying a lot of… stuff… on his back. Including what might the ugliest gun in existence: it looks like several weapons were just welded together and festooned with extra tanks and tubes. "No dead?" he calls out.

"Death would not have this much nausea," Zerachiel comments. Gabriel just says, "I feel fine, but if we'd held that kiss the whole way we'd really be tasting one another's lunch right now."

Blammo comes around and starts collecting the gizmos, which he brings over to the pile of supply boxes.

"No we are not dead," Layth also calls back. "We had best find a place to set up shelter before we search out the old base. I do not want any of us caught out in this wasteland should a windstorm hit. In the desert, a windstorm can strip the flesh off your bones; here is likely no different."

"No dead," Tasha calls out, heading towards the Titanian. She figures with howl and sheer size, he's the best marker they have for gathering. On the way, she gives Gabriel a sympathetic smile. "Would you prefer if I was less affectionate for a while? This has to be hard on you, I don't want to make you uncomfortable." She smiles at the doctor as he draws near, and adds, "Or you either, doctor."

"I just need to get my bearings," Gabriel notes. "Compasses don't work here." "Why's that," inquires the Vartan. "Actually," she says after a moment to think about it, "I don't know why they ever worked."

"Shelter! Gots!" Blammo notes, and removes a thick roll of gray tape from his utility belt.

"Can that withstand sand being blown so hard it can scrub the paint and rust off your ship?" Layth asks the Titanian as he now gets close.

"No magnetic pole on this moon," Zerachiel answers. "This side is always facing Abaddon too. Along with the all other miracles here, the 'dark' side isn't freezing cold though."

"Huh?" Blammo asks Layth, as he puts together some sectional poles and starts jamming them into the ground. Then the tape is used to secure some of the gizmos to the tops.

"Oh. Another Sifran miracle." Tasha nods, having slowly become used to such strange things, if not anywhere near comprehending them. She pats Gabriel's arm, giving him a worried look when he isn't looking.

Layth rubs his forehead. "Sand no scrub scrub body to death?" he then asks Blammo and points at the structure the Titanian is building.

"We've got thermal blankets in the supplies," Gabriel notes. "I remember 'night' here lasting about four hours, then you get light from Abaddon and Primus again."

Blammo smiles to Layth, says, "Bunny!" and then bangs on a gizmo with his fist until it lights change their sequence. A glowing green cone of light appears, about the size of a tent, with the gizmo about a foot below the peak.

Looking around again, Tasha asks, "How far do you think we are? This place sure is desolate, isn't it. I remember 'Sheol' being the name of some religion's afterlife. If this is the afterlife, it's very bland." The woman just shakes her head.

"We never actually studied the surface much," Zerachiel admits.

"Well, it is very bland," Tasha tells the doctor, understandingly. "Did you put the base here because it was safe from Abaddon's fighting, or maybe because of all these odd Sifran features?"

"I remember the features I used to navigate with though," Gabriel says. "If this is the big crater I was aiming for, the entrance to the base should be about a kilometer in the forward orbital direction."

Layth resists kicking Blammo in the knee. "I suppose that would do," he admits when he sees the 'tent'. He calls over to the Karnors, asking, "How far are we from your old base? And what is the likelihood it is not buried miles under sand?"

"Uh, the carrier crashed here, actually, and we just started calling it a base," Zerachiel mutters.

"There isn't much of a climate here," Gabriel notes to Layth, gesturing around. "These craters aren't eroded after all this time, so the base shouldn't be too buried."

Tasha blinks at the answer, then scratches her head and observes, "That seems to happen a lot."

"You crashed?" Layth asks, "That does not bode well for much surviving."

"The Fenris crashed too, Layth, and it was largely intact. And, this isn't a volcano. The ground looks reasonably soft. Actually, I think all the big ships of the Expedition crashed somewhere. Isn't that right?" Tasha looks to the Karnors for confirmation.

"It wasn't a bad crash," Akkers notes, shooting Eli a glare. "Just one the Orpheus couldn't take off from. The lifters don't work here."

"The Titanian 'junk' tech seems to be doing fine," Zerachiel notes as he studies one of the 'tent' force-fields.

"Who go hunt with me for supper?" Blammo asks.

"Are there any animals here to hunt?" Layth asks, "Not that I would eat them, but I do know how to hunt more or less. Khatta caravan and all."

"I don't recall any animals, but… we didn't get out much," Akkers notes. "It's a Sifran world. It's got air and gravity. Critters aren't out of the question… "

"Wait, were you the captain of the Orpheus too, Gabriel?" The woman gives her boyfriend a curious look, unsurprising given her unending interest in ships of all sorts, and their technology.

"I will go with Blammo, then. I expect all of you to secure the camp and then scout for the base," Layth says, then actually grins slightly. "No smooching until we are secure." "No, I wasn't an officer on the Orpheus at all, actually," Gabriel notes. "The Karnor Elite were separate from the ship crew."

Tasha listens to Gabriel, and nods. When Layth speaks up, she says, "I'll try and restrain myself," with a grin, "but he is a Karnor Elite."

Day is longer than night on Sheol, which gives the team a slight advantage. Gabriel and Tasha climb to the raised lip of the crater, and the angle of the sun is just right for him to spot metallic reflections in the desert – debris from the old crash landing, pointing the way to the base.

Layth and Blammo manage to get something up out of the dirt, mainly by having the Titanian whack away at a boulder with his hammer. What comes up to investigate is unlike anything Layth has ever seen, and yet also slightly familiar. It looks a bit like a sea-scorpion, but is almost three feet long and seems to be made entirely of glass. Blammo crushes it and tries to eat some anyway, only to spit it out and say, "Tastes like glass!"

"Well, it did look like glass," Layth admits, "I have a feeling we'll need to survive off the military rations … which remind me vaguely of chewing on a shoe. Ah well."

"I hope the whole planet doesn't have glass animals to eat." Tasha looks at a claw she's broken off, holding it a foot from her face and making the claw open and close while frowning at it. "At least we spotted some wreckage we think is the base."

After breaking out the blankets and rations, the group eats a short and bland ration supper (with Layth having to trade meet for veggies with the others, who don't seem to mind parting with them). Blammo has his own food, which seems to consist of big piece of purple, leathery jerky. The terminator moves quickly, as Abaddon blocks out the sun for the brief night and everyone retires to the force-field tents.

Layth rises before the rest of the crew and has already begun repacking the supplies for the journey to the base. "We will re-establish camp just outside your old base," he tells the others as they emerge, "Or inside, should it prove safe enough."

"It should be secure inside," Gabriel says, stretching and still looking sleepy. Blammo is using the tent poles and gizmos now to create a floating cargo sled for the supplies.

"If it hasn't collapsed," Layth notes, "I am not making any assumptions on what we will find."

Tasha sits, disentangling herself from where she had snuggled up under the crook of Gabriel's arm. She yawns expansively, then stretches, before standing. "We'll have to worry about the door too, if the power is out, Fenris-style steel doors will be hard to pry open," she says, sounding less groggy than her boyfriend.

"We don't need the hangar door, and the other airlocks have manual overrides," Zerachiel says. "If the base was abandoned in an orderly fashion, someone would have made sure it could be reentered eventually."

"If the base was abandoned at all," Tasha says, brows furrowing. "Well, one way to know: let's go!"

"Of if they were attacked they may have sealed themselves inside," Layth suggests, then grins. "Make no assumptions," he repeats, then closes the last crate and tosses it on the sled. "Let's go."

The trek across the desert is short, but slightly disorienting. Even though it's less than a kilometer, the small moon's horizon is so close that they don't see their objective until they're nearly on top of it: a large, artificial cliff that seems to grow up out of the horizon. It's the same dirty red as the ground for the most part, but large patches of bare hullmetal shine in the light. The structure is huge, and at the center is a giant door big enough for a fleet of airships to pass through if it were open.

"That does not look like a soft landing," Layth remarks and casts a glance to Gabriel. "That thing is bigger than most cities… "

"The moon didn't crack in half, so it was soft enough," Akkers replies.

"You sound like a politician," Layth remarks dryly.

Tasha stops walking to admire the view, pushing her glasses down her muzzle so she can get a good look. "It's huge," she breathes, shaking her head as she wonders how such a thing could ever fly. "And you called it a 'carrier'? It looks like it could carry all the airships in Rephidim. Come to think of it, it reminds me a lot of the Temple of Rephidim, which, I think, crashed in a very similar way."

"It's basically like a flying horseshoe," Zerachiel says, without even considering if the reference makes sense to the Sinaians. "The center is the hangar area, which is mostly open space."

More details appear as they get closer. On either side of the door are giant alcoves made to look like carved stone, with huge statues of human men in them – just like on the sides of the Intimidator, Rephidim's military flagship.

The Vartan points a finger at one of the statues, "I've seen that," she shouts in surprise, "It's the same style as on the Intimidator, Rephidim's flagship. The Initimidator doesn't look like any other airship in the fleet, either. I always thought it was just a special style to show off, but now that I see this, I think it must have been an Expedition vessel."

"Operating after so long?" Zerachiel asks in surprise. "Amazing… "

"Or made to look like one," Layth notes, "I'm not sure a normal airship could lift that king of weight in stone or metal."

"Was it called the Intimidator back then, too?" The woman glances at Zerachiel. "And you know, I'm not sure how it operates these days, after what I've seen. They probably removed a great deal of machinery and used more conventional airship technology. Or, maybe it is still working as it did, which would be amazing."

The wall of the ship extends almost 300 feet above the ground, with the huge hangar doors being nearly as tall. There are many other smaller doors clustered around them, including a few at ground level. Quite a bit of debris seems to be piled up as well, obscuring some of them.

"The fleet was huge, and I have no idea of which ship it might have been," Zerachiel admits.

"I wonder if the place is now just a tomb, full of the remains of old. Or … did they use the last of their power and move to the planet?" Layth muses as he approaches the ruin. His attention turns to the doors at ground level as he tries to spot one that might be operable.

"I can believe that." Tasha looks up, and up, and up at the massive hanger door, gazing across it, then shaking her head slowly. "So many ships lost. We would always hold a night of drinking and stories when a vessel we knew never came home, and to think, so many, so long ago … "

"There were only about a hundred of us on the base when the Fenris launched," Gabriel says. As they get closer to the doors, they can see that one is opened. Or rather, missing. The frame is warped and torn, and the metal looks like it's been… chewed.

"Oh, that doesn't look good at all," Tasha remarks with trepidation as the mangled door comes into view. She absently reaches to unlatch her sidearm, allowing the weapon to be drawn. "Not good at all. I'm glad we practiced."

"I do not think we are alone," Layth says and holds up his hand as a warning. "This place is not secure. We had best be ready for anything. Blammo and I will take the lead, I have been a guard before and he … well, look at him." With an odd air of decisiveness, he draws out his sidearm and in a fluid movement checks that it is loaded and ready. "Time to enter the shadow of the past."

From deep in the ship, there is a moan of metal warping…