Grisha still remembered seeing her grandmother's body during her service when she was nine. There was something surreal about watching the body and expecting it to open its eyes. Like she had simply gone for a nap and was going to spring back to life. But more than the body, Grisha remembered the weight of the silence. Aside from the sobbing, no one dared to speak up.

  As she looked around, she felt that same heavy atmosphere; but on a much larger scale. The upper plaza held a crowd that easily numbered in the thousands, yet none dared to speak. They simply stared with terror at the dozen or so wooden pillars that had been erected in the night. From each pillar hung the remains of a Twin, they looked like simple farmers of various ages. Grisha avoided looking towards the child that looked no older than eight.

  Beside Grisha stood the shaking form of Tayla, her eyes welled with emotion as she ground her teeth at the horror. It was obvious that she had not been told about these monuments. “That lying bastard!” She hissed under her breath.

  Casting a glance around Grisha could make out the various leaders of the different houses of the Coast, they all shared the same look as their Queen. Admiral Broadsen barked for the bodies to be cut down as guards rushed towards the wooden pillars.

  “Anyone who touches those pillars will find themselves hanging from their own.” The smooth voice of Nel’Dorn rang out across the plaza as the demigod marched through the crowd to stand beneath the corpses. He was flanked by a dozen soldiers in golden armor, each one held weapons that were as deadly as they were ancient. He came to a halt as he turned to address the crowd. “These.” He gestured to the corpses. “Are the remains of those that turned their backs on our Gods. These wretched fools were found to be worshiping the primordial chaos, we found totems of their dark god hidden in their homes and as such, we were forced to bring them to justice.” His voice carried easily across the plaza, the glow surrounding his body seeming to burn brighter with his every word.

  “It is obvious that the foul touch of the Void has spread through your homeland, and that this blight is more than your kind can handle on its own.” Nel’Dorn turned to lock eyes with Tayla. “As of this morning, I have been given the authority by the Celestial Court to weed out this foul infestation and bring those responsible to justice!” As he finished he pointed upwards into the sky.

  The hairs on Grisha’s neck stood upright as the air hummed with power. A crack of thunder roared in the cloudless sky as a massive golden dreadnought teleported above the city, blotting out the sun with its sheer size. A wave of hysteria and panic swept through the crowd as all those present turned to face Tayla. The young Queen went pale as she stared slack jawed at the megalithic vessel that hung in the sky.

  Nel’Dorn raised his voice even louder. “As of this moment, the Black Coast is now under martial law. All city guards will relinquish their weapons and stand down. We will be implementing a mandatory curfew, we ask that every citizen stay within their homes unless absolutely necessary. Failure to follow these directives, will result in execution. Anyone found to be harboring the agents of the old gods, will be executed. Now. Return to your homes and await further instructions.” There was a smug look of satisfaction on the demigods face, he probably assumed that his display had cowed the masses into submission.

  He was wrong.

  Grisha saw the looks on the people’s faces, underneath the fear was pure indignation. The Twin’s were a proud race that seldom rose to provocation. But now Nel’Dorn had spat in their faces, he had dishonored them after centuries of faithful and loyal service. It was obvious he had hoped such a move would break the morale of the people, but he had made a gross miscalculation.

  The guards that flanked Nel’Dorn shuffled uncomfortably as they scanned the crowd looking for any threat. Grisha saw the demigod rest his hand on his sheathed weapon as the tension in the plaza grew more and more dire. Just as Grisha feared all hells would break out, Tayla cleared her throat to draw the assembled crowd's attention back to her. She had regained her composure as she walked forward.

  “We will submit to the will of the Court. You can scour our homes to your heart's content but you will only find evidence of our devotion to the All Mother and the Nightfather.” Her voice echoed through the plaza as the crowd nodded along.

  Finally she came to rest in front of the pillars as she placed her deadhand on the wood. “Rest now. And may you find peace in the Endless sea.” As she spoke she burned a handprint into the wood before turning to walk back to the Keel.

  One by one the thousands of other Twins made their way to the pillars to offer their own respects. Each one leaving another handprint burned into the wood.

  The guards turned to Nel’Dorn for guidance but even he seemed to recognize that stepping in would only spell disaster. He crossed his arms as he watched the tribute with a sneer.

  Grisha was fiddling with her hands as she tried her best to seem small and unimportant. That was swiftly brought to an end as she made eye contact with the demigod. He pointed with his chin towards the retreating Tayla. Grisha swallowed a lump in her throat as she scurried after the Queen, her stomach was in such a knot she felt she might throw up or pass out at any moment. She was a bookkeeper, not a spy!

  As Grisha ran up the ramp she looked up to see a file of city guards marching out the Keel with their weapons in hand. They did little to hide their rage at the indignity of what was happening. Though Grisha succeeded in averting her eyes as she continued to follow Tayla into the bowels of the mysterious ship.

  Tayla moved quickly down the corridors with practiced steps, she obviously knew the inner workings of the Keel like the back of her hand. After half a dozen turns that had Grisha struggling to keep track of where she had come from she walked around a corner to find Tayla waiting for her with her arms crossed.

  “Is there a reason you’re following me Grisha?” Tayla asked coldly.

  Grisha leapt out of her skin as she felt her heart pounding in her chest. “By the saints! I didn’t… I wasn’t…” She stammered.

  Tayla sighed. “Let me guess. Nel’Dorn wants you to follow me so that you can report any corruption back to him directly.”

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  “I…” Grisha tried to muster the nerve to deny the accusation. She thought of Ida and Izzy and the fear she had at failing them. “If I don’t… I….” The words had spilled from her lips without thought.

  For her part Tayla looked taken aback for a moment before she scowled. “That prick threatened your family, didn’t he?”

  Grisha nodded slowly. Some spy she had turned out to be.

  Tayla stepped forward and hugged Grisha. “I’m sorry.”

  For the first time in a while Grisha let her frustration pour forth as she clung to Tayla. She let out a cry of anguish as she thought of her family and the fact that she might never see them again.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do.” Tayla said while pulling away from Grisha. “You are going to do exactly what Nel’Dorn told you to.”

  “What? But you know!”

  “Exactly.” Tayla exclaimed. “I have nothing to hide, Grisha. So do what that smug bastard ordered you to do. Search high and low for any sign that I’m some villain in disguise.”

  Grisha shuffled awkwardly. “I know you must hate me.”

  Tayla gave a subtle smile. “We all have to put our family first. I won’t hold it against you.”

  The two chuckled at the absurdity of the situation. Tayla was the first to step away. “Feel free to follow me but I’m just going to let my brother know about the situation.”

  “That’s alright, you deserve some privacy during such a heavy conversation. I’ll continue my own work.”

  With a wave Grisha continued through the Keel to her workstation. Nel’Dorn would probably throw a fit but this was just as important as following Tayla. Even if they couldn’t see it. Grisha sat at the cold desk that housed the terminal that she had been using for the better part of two months. The thought hit her like a brick to the head, she had been stationed out here for almost two months.

  She keyed the command to open her personal messages. There were the usual reports and documents waiting for her review but she was more concerned about the three messages from her wife. Something in her gut ate at her, a sense of dread that any day now she would receive a message that her wife was fed up with this new assignment and that she was going to leave Grisha.

  The groundless worry gnawed at her as her finger hovered over the message icon. With a shuddering breath she pressed it. A small window appeared, showing Ida and Izzy’s smiling faces.

  “Hey beautiful. I hope you’re doing well. We both miss you.” Ida said while moving a lock of hair from her face. Grisha smiled as she reached a hand to the glass of the screen. Her wonderful wife began rambling from subject to subject with no particular direction. All the while Izzy wiggled in her arms.

  One by one Grisha watched the messages as she blocked out the reality of the situation she was in. For a moment it was just her and the two most important people in her world. The thrumming and creaking of the Keel seemed to fade away, until the only thing that existed was the illuminated screen of the terminal. Grisha closed her eyes as she rested her head against her other hand.

  The sounds of her wife seemed to grow distorted as they bounced off the cold metal walls, soon it felt like she was right beside Grisha. There was a warmth beside her, like the two were sitting side by side. A faint smell of Ida’s shampoo wafted in the air.

  Suddenly a hand came to rest on Grisha’s shoulder as she lurched back into her seat. She turned to look but there was no one. A trick of the mind no doubt, but as she sat there for a moment she breathed deep. There was no mistaking it, the room smelled like her wifes shampoo. Not an idle memory, but the actual real deal.

  Grisha looked around the room, the walls seemed to be pulling closer towards her as she watched the lights above hum with their strange gravity bending light. Once more she was reminded that there was something wrong with this place. She could feel it in the way the air moved, the fluttering of the lights that seemed too sporadic to be random. It was like there was someone hiding inside the walls as they pulled the strings.

  The final message came to a halt as it prompted Grisha to respond. She shook her head to drive away the feeling of madness that was slowly creeping through her mind. She turned back to the terminal to record her own message when she noticed something on her screen. It was an alert that indicated her scans of the transmission logs were done. She absentmindedly pressed the alert. The scan was a bit of a goosechase but she had to be throughout.

  A small window appeared with a full manifest of the incoming and outgoing messages. She scrolled through the vast list as she tried to look for any anomalies. There were none of course. Tayla had always been honest with her, and whatever feeling Grisha held towards the Twin’s and their part in the death of her maker she couldn’t hold it against the people she had come to like while staying in the coast.

  Just as she was about to close the window she noticed something off. The total bandwidth for the Keel’s messages were much higher than they should have been. She did a quick tally of the listed messages and found that the outbound and inbound bandwidth didn’t match at all with the numbers the satellites were claiming.

  “Huh.” Grisha mumbled.

  She quickly opened the transmission buffers to see if it was a memory leak issue, but what she found was something even more mysterious. There was evidence of a nasty memory leak, but the defragmentation of the data was too rhythmic to be natural. There was a pattern. In each of the outbound messages were the same set of errors.

  Grisha narrowed her eyes. At this point she couldn’t be certain, but if her hunch was correct someone was sneaking messages through the buffers by purposefully degrading the data as some form of coded message. Scrolling through the logs she found that this pattern was present for the last couple years. Right around the time the old king had passed away.

  All of this was just idle thinking, what she needed was proof. She quickly wrote a script to search for patterns in the memory buffers and send the data to her personal terminal. After it finished she sent the data through an old cryptography program that was nestled deep in the Keel’s systems. A bygone product from the age before interstellar travel, when the brilliant minds of the old world worried that they may need help communicating with whatever they found out in the vastness of space.

  The ancient program awoke from its slumber sluggishly as it screamed about being out of date and needing to recompile itself, but it started to trudge along as it allocated the necessary resources from the Keels internal systems. It was a low priority task so the decrypting wouldn’t be done for quite some time. It could take days, maybe even weeks.

  Grisha made sure to set an alert so that the system would inform her the moment the process finished. With that out of the way she turned her attention back to her family.

  Moving the camera mounted in the terminal she recorded her response to her loved ones back home. Wishing them well and making small talk. All the while something nagged at her in the back of her mind. What if Tayla was the one behind the encrypted messages? It would have taken someone truly brilliant to design such a method.

  Doubt crept into her mind as a security camera inside the room turned slowly to focus its view on Grisha. Somewhere deep within the Keel something shifted its attention to the intruder.