Perfectly Safe Mode - Part One

The submarine is toodling along through the vaguarities of Shadow, her crew particularly nervous when the Sea becomes less a watery concept and more a vast volume of cacaphony through which the vessel cruises. Deeper into shadow in the Deeps, as it were, they slide back into more conventional liquid, although the shapes of things moving into view are utterly alien, bilious and pulsating with distant galaxies.
Merrisol has made sure most of his by-now habitual passenger list has been whittled down to the essentials before setting off on this voyage: The search for a possessed storm cannon, as he had put it, simply. The rumours of the epic blunder on the cliffs of New Kitezh had been verified as mostly true; some had perished, the overcharged cannon had been pitched from the precipice, but those who had gone over with it had, of course, survived. After a freefall of sorts, through oceanic shadows, they had located a Perfectly Safe one to stow the beastly thing. Now, after all's said and done, it's on at least one mind that there is really only one place that is Perfectly Safe, and that is the Solar Flare. Best go back and check on that gun.
The captain stands by his trusty control column, speaking quiet orders to the officers on either side, to adjust speed and heading but making sure to always push forward. Ruby's fine work with the Pattern does require that much of them.

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