Bloodrite: Voyage of Man

First of all, I didn't do very well on my first attempt at writing and publishing this story. To this day, I have no idea why or what I was doing. So, here I am again. Still going at it.
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The star compass, a small navigational device said to be invented by the Cosoc wayfinder, Fen Thuros, amazed all those lucky enough to view it with their own eyes. Word spread around the villages and sects that Thuros had created the thing that could estimate the best paths and compose “riding links” across space, throughout uncharted frontiers.

He had indeed solved a most vexing dilemma in the future of Mythicons, but the spacecrafts... now that was another issue.

Terival went with Thuros to a shipyard in Borgain shortly after leaving Maulice and Decimus. It was Terival’s first visit to Borgain, and the first trip to see a sky vessel in its infancy.

“Your first?” Thuros joked. “Man, Teriv. I’d figured you’d built your own by now.”

The young and eager Fen Thuros sat on the outer seat of the rail transport, his hair wild and his eyes glistening.

“Insane!” He laughed in that very way, his cackle carrying throughout the cabin as he pointed out to the massive extended cranes and robotic hooks. “Those men look so small and the machines so big!”

Terival frowned and crinkled his lips. “That amuses you, Thuros?”

“Yes,” the younger man turned suddenly serious. “There could be a war against them... right here... the machines... I’ve heard of it before... in other worlds... other times...”

“Far worlds. Much different than ours.”

“You mean like where the crrons come from?”

The one thing Terival had kept from his mind had been crrons—ugly predators with snake heads and powerful legs, their segmented bodies rotating, cutting into soil like drills. It seemed that killing one was to give birth to ten more. They were destroying Shior, shredding all things that grew, burrowing into the greenspaces, stripping the skin right off of living, breathing men, women, and children.

“Beast-machines. We’re at war with them, right?” Thuros came again. “We’re losing. We don’t even know where they came from.”

Fen Thuros was a younger man but Terival was also young, the eyes clear and skin taut, the thoughts sharp, and motivation strong.

“In this case winning takes the skill of killing,” said Terival. “That takes precedence over these ships or the compass... a greater need than all of our advanced technical resources. We’ll have enemies. We’ll have to kill them to stay alive out there no matter where they came from.”

“I hear what you say but see the only way to beat a beast-machine, Teriv, is with an effective man-machine.”

Terival rested back and watched a huge crater in the soil open up to a large deck surrounded by many movable platforms and supply cages as the railcar crossed over a bridge then looped around the building site. He’d thought maybe Fen Thuros could have been right after all, about beast-machines against man-machines. Still there had to be training of the current fighters, many who had all but already sacrificed themselves to save their families.

The railcar stopped at its first destination and let off a few worker passengers, then proceeded to the next stop where Terival and Thuros detrained. The autoramp detracted and the doors slid shut behind them. A sign glowing “To Sitelevel Three” hung above the nearest exit. Terival had started in that direction when Thuros pulled him back by the sleeve.

“Not our stop. We’ll have to catch another into the lower spaces. That’s where you’ll get your clearance and whatever else there is waiting for you.”

Terival looked out to the platform in the distance to the big ship’s carcass. “A vessel, I hope. Completed.”

“Yes, my friend. I assure you. Your eyes are about to see the greatest vessel ever born.”