Lex and Bethany traded a long look. It was the sort of look that only two people who’d known each other for years, even decades could have. They were talking without words.

The words followed, but that didn’t mean Serenity understood the context. Some of it made sense, but it was clear his parents were working in a landscape he didn’t know.

“It hasn’t been a year yet.”

Bethany shook her head. “Doesn’t apply. I’m more worried about the Congressional backlash. Senator Robins.”

Lex shrugged. “Robins doesn’t matter, he’ll listen to Evans, and Evans will be thrilled as long as we’re willing to allow his people access. He’ll say it’s about fairness. I’m not worried about him; I’m worried about Browning.”

Bethany seemed surprised by that. “She’ll love this, recovering evidence of Earth’s past?”

Lex shook his head. “International cooperation.”

Bethany froze for a moment. “Shit.”

Lex turned to look at the spire. “You know, it might still work, and Captain might be the key. What level of control do you think the Captain has?”

“Whatever his nation and crew-” Bethany stopped. “You mean magic. Magical control. Access codes and lockouts.” She paused and grinned. “Actual, provable evidence of ownership. No one can hack that. Not yet.”

“Except Serenity.” Lex nodded at his son. “We’ll have to hire protection, but that can be accomplished. For that matter, Uncle Sam may well pay for it. They won’t want the ship taken by anyone else either.”

“They’ll want it somewhere they can control it. US waters.” Bethany’s words didn’t match her tone of voice. She sounded almost serene. “Something to negotiate.”

“That’s what lawyers are for, plus PR people. We’re going to need some. Probably also some business advice; we don’t need to make money but I don’t want a money pit either, and this isn’t going to come cheap.” Lex laughed. “We may end up coming out of this really well, depending on how much more there is to the island.”

They’d made an assumption that Serenity wasn’t certain was valid. It was probably based on insufficient information; he hadn’t told them yet, had he? “I’m not sure A’Atla will be able to move any time soon. We’re in a nexus right now; I bet that’s why the spire is filling instead of draining. Moving an island, even just refloating it, will be expensive, and it’s using all its free mana on maintenance already. If you take it out of the nexus, the power available will start to drop, then…”

Serenity wasn’t sure what exactly would happen then, but the current condition of the spire was probably a big clue. “It should be able to move once Earth’s Tier is high enough, but for now the best we’ll be able to manage is to surface, and that assumes the nexus goes that high. We might be able to stay above water only temporarily; I don’t know how big this nexus is. It is a fairly large one, so that’s hopeful, but it’s really unlikely that it’s large enough to reach the surface.” Serenity bit his lip. “With enough planning and precharging, it should be possible to move the island along a ley line to another nexus. The trick is that we’ll have to get there before power gets too low, or we might be stuck.”

Bethany turned her attention back to Lex. She shook her head. “We can’t pass this up.”

“Even if all we get is a salvage payment…” Lex stared at the spire. “We can get that either way, but I’d hate it. We have to try. You or me?”

Bethany closed her eyes for a very long blink then shook her head slightly. “Has to be you. There are some slight advantages for me, but international name recognition is going to be vital, and that’s you. We’d better hope we’re in international waters.”

That sounded like a decision. “So I should make Dad the Captain?”

“Yes.” Serenity’s parents spoke almost simultaneously. They shared a look after that, then Lex said “Jinx” and Bethany punched her husband lightly on the upper arm.

They’d relaxed a lot from the people they’d become as they got older. Serenity seemed to remember some of this sort of silliness from when he was a child and young adult; it was good to see.

Serenity reached back out to the spire. The choice was still waiting for him, so he selected Alexander “Lex” Rothmer to take over as Captain.

Lex froze. He stared at the space in front of himself. “I wasn’t expecting that. It’s like the Status screen, only it’s for the entire … the hells. A’Atla is gigantic; no wonder no one found it. Nothing that big should float.”

“How big is it?” Serenity couldn’t avoid wondering.

“The scale isn’t … there we are.” Lex moved his hands to adjust things in the screen that showed only in front of his eyes. Serenity knew that wasn’t necessary but he could vaguely remember that he’d done it himself, once upon a time. “It says that’s miles, but … that’s insane. The longest dimension is over fifteen hundred miles. This isn’t a city on the water, it’s an entire country.”

“Well, it’s probably a safe bet that we aren’t in any one country’s territorial waters then.” Bethany managed to say that with a straight face, but she dissolved into laughter when her husband turned to look at her with an incredulous expression.

If A’Atla was that big, then all of Serenity’s guesses about how it got power might well be wrong; there was no way the majority of A’Atla was in a ley line nexus or even a ley line. The fact that they’d arrived in an area that was both liveable and could interface with the ship’s systems might not be odd; it made sense that important areas would be the most protected.

The fact that the area also contained a power spire and was in a nexus, on the other hand, might well mean several different things. Had A’Atla followed the nexus as it moved? Was the spire simply the best place for it to get mana and essence or was there a distributed power system of some sort? Perhaps the spire was the most efficient but there were other pickups; that would make sense for something huge that could move. Perhaps it normally stayed more or less stationary; in that case, secondary ways to gather power might or might not be useful. It was hard to say, since Serenity had never actually dealt with a giant floating island before.

It might still be necessary to keep the spire in a ley line or nexus as much as possible, but Serenity strongly hoped there were other mana collection points. More flexibility would be a good thing. The only way to find out was to go and look, which brought him to the next question.

“Can you open the locked doors Mom mentioned? Or find out why they were locked?” Serenity had to ask the question a couple of times before Lex paid attention. He was clearly still shocked by the scale of the “ship”.

It took Lex a while to figure out how to navigate down to that level of detail, but when he did the result wasn’t promising. “They’re locked because they’re flooded. The skull symbol seems to mean exactly what we thought it did. There’s an option to pump them out and restore a breathable atmosphere, but it’s locked out due to insufficient mana.”

That meant all they could do was wait and pour mana into the spire to speed up its recovery. Serenity tried to help; he had the highest mana and mana regeneration in the group so he could speed up the spire more than anyone else. He started to feel fuzzy around the time he’d dumped half his mana into the spire and stopped.

Blaze scolded him for it. “Waiting won’t hurt you, running out of mana will. You’re in rough shape and you need all of your mana to heal. Stop trying to kill yourself. I think it’s affecting you more than you realize and has been ever since we got to Earth; I want you to go lie down and sleep.”

Serenity grumbled but followed Blaze’s instructions. There wasn’t that much else to do anyway.

From the outside, Serenity’s tent looked smaller and cruder than his parents’, but once you got inside it was obvious that they were using Earth technology while he was not. When Serenity woke up, it was clear his parents had discovered that; their sleeping bags were laid out on one of the larger beds that Serenity wasn’t using. Serenity couldn’t blame them; they were definitely old enough that sleeping on the bare ground probably made them hurt in the morning.

He was a little bothered that he hadn’t woken up when people came in. He must have been more tired than he thought. At least his mana was full now; he did feel better. That might have just been the sleep, though.

No one was in the cafeteria when Serenity left his tent, but he easily found his father in the spire room. Bethany and Blaze weren’t present; Bethany was probably showing Blaze around. It was too bad Serenity had missed that, but there would be time over the next day or two for another tour.

Serenity wondered what the room was for, other than housing the spire; it was too large to just be for one thing. It wasn’t a control room since there weren’t many places for people, but Serenity wasn’t certain what other use the large mostly empty room could have.

“Ah, you’re awake.” Lex smiled at his son from a chair that he’d clearly brought in from elsewhere. “I hoped you’d be up soon. Come on in, you’ll want to see this.”

“What did you find?” Serenity hurried over to his father.

Lex waved at another seat. “I located some logs, probably a personal journal of some sort. Most of them aren’t all that interesting but I thought you might want to see these. Whatever this is really does feel a lot like a primitive computer.”

23 Amit

CY 1492

42 days after the Event

Help still hasn’t arrived; I can’t be certain any of the messages we sent got through the heavy mana disruptions of the Event. We couldn’t wait any longer. We’ve gotten everyone except for the few who have to stay off A’Atla. It was good to be underwater at first, but A’Atla wasn’t made to stay submerged for that long, not with an actual population on board.

I worry about the ones we’ve sent away. They couldn’t stay; I know that. I did the math. Why didn’t I include more life support when I designed the city sections?

Not that it would matter unless I also enclosed the farms. I know there was no way to do that; there isn’t enough mana available to run the city and the farms without the aid of the Sun. At least we’ll be able to recover them when the surface is viable again. That part of my planning has been tested!

I have nightmares sometimes. It’s my fault they’re gone, after all. The Captain tells me it was the right decision and I know she’s right, but it doesn’t make it better. I can only hope the land-based Enclaves are in good enough shape to be able to take them in. Maybe they were able to call for help.

12 Kiiba

CY 1512

Twenty years underwater. I never thought we’d see it.

Mana levels are close to stable and the essence swirls have dropped to almost the level they were at before the Event. Another decade and A’Atla will be able to sustain itself on the surface again.

I wish I could tell the Captain. Reka is no fit substitute but he’s still the best we have left. More importantly, he’s the only one authorized to command A’Atla. I already know what he’s going to say, even before I ask him.

We’re going to abandon A’Atla and try to reach the Enclave we sent our families to twenty years ago. On foot with no recent maps.

We’re all going to die.

I probably deserve it.

Please survive, A’Atla. I know you’re not alive, but you’re all I have now. Maybe someone will find your fields and orchards and you can save someone I couldn’t.

Lillene

A’Atla is smaller than Australia.

Admittedly, there’s a long way down from there, but for scale … it’s bigger than Texas but smaller than Greenland.