Opening the door, I pace slowly onto the metallic deck. Ashes and sparks dance about the ship as the soft Kiln wind carries them away. The crew have divided themselves into various campfires with six or seven crowded around a flame. Some men are singing, some are brawling. Most are drunk.
Comrades shot by the Red Front and reactionaries
March in spirit within our ranks.
The song of trumpets and chants is coming from a group considerably louder than all the others near the bowsprit. While making my way over, a few of the men notice my armor and immediately stand a little straighter. The larger, bronze-colored armored one with a shaved bald head is standing above them all, knee raised up, arms outstretched in theatrical display at the story he is telling.
“And the fucker came up to me and said, ‘If you talk to me like that one more time…’ and it was right there when I knocked him onto the ground. I don’t like knives you see, gotta just—”
He wrestles with the air, pretending to down a figurative man. The crowd’s attention has now turned to me placing myself on a chair, joining the group bunched around the flames. The air becomes thick with nervousness. They aren’t used to the Captain himself joining them in their drinking.
“After I stopped throttling his neck, he eventually regained consciousness but you should have seen the wedding party—” he pauses, as his good eye slowly turns to meet mine.
“That’s a good story you should continue,” I encourage.
After a few seconds of wide-eyed befuddlement, the man quickly regains his composure and waves his arm down to the fire. “Welcome to our humble fire, Captain,” he says with a smile half full of teeth.
Clear the streets for the brown battalions,
Clear the streets for the storm division!
The muffled voices continue to sing and I turn my attention to the small wooden box that is blaring the music. It’s cobbled together in a makeshift fashion with screws and tape. With every call of the horns it rumbles like it will burst open at any moment.
“That’s an odd contraption,” I remark, pointing at the box. “Where did you get it?”
“He made it himself,” a man to my right says in a slurred tone. I can’t place his name, but he appears to be a guard by his uniform. More armor, more pouches, and a rifle by his side. Each ship in the Kiln was assigned at least a few still-active military members, although most of the men who sail in the Kiln have themselves at one time served in the Kiln.
“Thank you, but I would like to hear from Chief Engineer Keller,” I calmly reply, my eyes turning toward a face covered in a fix of dust and grease.
“I did make this myself, Captain,” Keller beams, pointing to the box. He stops the song, and the group bemoans their loss of entertainment. With one quick fashion he opens up the wooden lid and takes out a dark and round, yet flat disc. “A friend of mine sold it to me in Eagle Nest #18. Said some Scavengers found it while scouring the desert.”
“Scavenging is illegal, you realize,” I state, leaning back.
Keller’s eyes freeze for a fraction of a second, still grasping at the disc. The fire reflects speckles of orange off of the disc’s glossy coating. I can tell his mind is churning with the right words to say.
“Technically, yes it is, but I didn’t scavenge this, somebody else did,” Keller defends.
“Fair enough,” I respond, not caring much that the disc was actually found. I’ve never agreed much with the rules about scavenging in the Kiln. It’s a vast desert. I’m sure there are things out here worth some money. Yet the law demands that nobody take even a trinket from the sands. The reason for this is unclear. Some argue that it’s to prevent some ancient virus from resurfacing to plague humanity once again. Or maybe, the Scavengers planted a lie in the desert. I doubt the latter, I don’t think the Scavengers are smart enough to even replicate an Aryan artifact.
Keller takes the disc and places it neatly back into the box. With a closing of the lid and the press of a button the song continues on with its jubilant melody.
Millions are looking upon the swastika full of hope,
The day of freedom and of bread dawns!
The voices ringing from the box were muffled and distant. Perhaps it was just the rudimentary nature of Keller’s design, but this song certainly didn’t sound like anything I’d heard before. It sounded…old. Like singing from the distant past.
“We were taking bets on when this could have been made, sir,” one crewman draped in a brown cloth pipes up, “I think it’s from the Glass Wars.”
“Fuck off, it’s far too old for that, I’d say twenty-ninth century…at least,” another butts in with a deep baritone voice.
“What about you Keller?” I ask the Engineer sitting himself down. Keller puts a gloved hand to his face, rubbing more grease onto it.
“I’d say…Reclamation,” he guesses, putting his hand to his chin in a comedic fashion. The group howls in laughter at the idea.
“Reclamation! Fuck you! Something like that doesn’t survive that long out there!” the man to my right yells.
For the last time, the call to arms is sounded!
For the fight, we all stand prepared!
“I like that idea,” I say, and the laughter dies down, eyebrows raise. “I’d say it’s Reclamation too.”
“Well, looks like you win, Keller,” another jokes. “Captain has final say. Reclamation it is. We’re listening to the original Aryans.”
“There’s no way to know for sure,” I state, not wanting the festivities to end just yet. “So, what are we betting?” I ask. “Just so I know what we get if we win.” I point to Keller and me.
“The finest German whiskey, aged twelve years, winner gets the bottle,” Keller states, holding up a fine brown bottle with the engraving of an eagle. An idea pops into my head. There is a way that we could figure out this little mystery…or at least, the best-educated way to.
“I have a way to settle this,” I say. “My brother Ulric. Knights have all that knowledge of Reich history over any of us buffoons. He might help.” Drunken agreement arises from the crowd.
“I’ll go wake him up!” the man to my right eagerly says, but before he stands I place a hand on his shoulder.
“If some random sailor he doesn’t know knocks on his door at this time of night, I guarantee he won’t come out, and we’ll never learn the secret,” I joke. “I’ll do it.”
With that, I lift myself up, excuse myself from the group who raise their drinks to me, and turn back toward the portway into the officer quarters.
The joyous song still plays behind me. It must have been some crazy bastard, to go out into the desert to get that. Yes, it was “illegal” to take objects from the sand, but nobody really bothered to scavenge anyway. Going out without a ship oftentimes was just suicide.
A decent suit of armor was really the best and only defense against the scalding heat outside, and at best it lasted a few hours. After that, the last bit of power runs out, the cooling systems fail, and the suit’s occupant succumbs to the heat in a matter of minutes.
Who would want to risk their own life to try to find something out there? Everything interesting, like old ships and lost civilizations once under the sea, had supposedly been picked clean long ago. Who would expect that after two thousand years, there would still be objects out there left undiscovered? Something potentially from the Reclamation—from the time of the Eternal Führer and the founding of the Reich? The