The Remarkable Rift

Every Captain Needs a Crew

"I'll have no damned psychic aboard my ship!" Captain Blair roared unceremoniously at the four members of the Exploratory Sub-Committee. It didn't seem to bother him in the slightest that these thin figures in their long black robes and black-scarfed heads were, in fact, his superiors, four of the five Council members who were organizing the entire expedition. Their skin pale from being indoors (except for Councilman Mandragor, who was, in fact, quite dark), they nevertheless seemed to grow ever colder under the insubordinate anger of the aged captain before them. Jeremiah, standing nearby, subconsciously moved a few feet to the left in order to distance himself from the outburst.

"Captain Blair, you may exercise all the protestations you desire, but you will, without a doubt, allow Ms. Zukunft aboard your ship," responded Councilman Gray, whose pale eyes matched both his flesh and name.

"The hell I will!" Blair blurted out further. "There's no room for some charlatan spiritualist aboard the vessel, not with this miniscule skeleton crew you've assigned. Not unless she has some other capacities which she can exercise."

"She is no spiritualist, nor medium, nor anything of the sort," Councilman Gray said. "Ms. Zukunft has a capability which will be of great use at your destination." At this, he glanced momentarily at Jeremiah. "Has Mr. Rixon been made aware of the details of the mission?"

Blair took a long breath after this and then, after a moment, he ushered his newly appointed first mate toward the waiting Council members. "Tell them what you know, son."

Jeremiah cleared his throat. "Well, sirs and madame," he began, his heartbeat picking up speed as he felt beads of sweat forming beneath his shirt, vest and greatcoat. "We are to cross into Barboro Territory...or, possibly beyond Barboro Territory...in order to discern the origin of a signal we've received here in Illyrium."

"And what do you know of the signal?" Councilwoman Adiram asked, her short hair so starkly silver that it almost seemed to reflect what little light made it through the windows of the great Benjamin Clock in which they all stood.

"Only that it is somehow capable of ignoring the dampening effects of the aether, which has until now inhibited even the idea of cordless signal transference, sirs and madame." Jeremiah held his breath after he finished.

"Have you told him anything beyond those textbook soliloquys?" Councilwoman Adiram asked, her eyes shifting to Jermiah's commanding officer.

"I told him all I felt necessary to share," Blair said rashly. "But if you think I'll take some palm-reading, tea-drinking, pseudo-supernatural-"

"That is enough!" Councilman Kariza yelled, his pale skin momentarily blushing red beneath his cold, white hair. It was not the first time Jeremiah had wondered why most Council members tended to have gray or white hair, though the stress of dealing with captains as fired up as Soren Blair would make for a reasonable explanation. "Captain Blair," he resumed after his voice had cooled down. "Would it help for you to know that Ms. Zukunft was initially unwilling to agree to this mission?"

"Well, her name does sound foreign, so I can only assume that she didn't warm up to the possibility of returning to her own savage tribes," Blair said as if he believed this last-ditch attempt to invalidate having a psychic under his watch.

"Captain Blair," Councilman Kariza said, sidestepping such a tempestuous flurry of pseudo-logic. "Marina Zukunft had initially applied for a governing position unrelated to her unique capabilities, and we had to threaten to revoke her validation as a psychic in order to get her on your roster in the first place."