>>Previous thread: https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive/2022/5187049/’>>RECAP of the prior thread…<span class="mu-i">The year is 76 A.C.
After the Cataclysm that blasted away the human order and man’s collective progress, water now covers approximately 90% of the world.
Mankind stands at 100 million strong.
Hanging on the knife’s edge between civilization and barbarity.
Struggling to find purpose and meaning in a Flooded World.
… … …
Sinleq Unami is a debt-slave of Free City of Babylonia, 25 million ducats in debt to Lord Bartholomew Stolze. For the last three years, he had been working aboard the oil rig Marduk when orders for transfer were suddenly issued. The PUEXO pilot and deep-sea engineer had been re-assigned to the salvage trawler Calypso, for an expedition undertaken by the Salvage Guild.
Aboard the ship, he settled in, making new contacts and acquaintances. Captain Elishani and XO Geary, Deck Chief Holt and ACOMMS Aalto, Sergeant Kwan and his marines. But perhaps the most significant relationship he established was with Gully Elishani, a fellow PUEXO pilot and daughter of the captain.
The salvage expedition, recovering an Olympia-class starship, promised to be one of riches and Old World treasures. However, the wreckage had been trapped, rigged to blow by the Dragon’s Teeth – eco-terrorists with Luddite sympathies diametrically opposed to Babylonia. In the depths of his mind, injured by the blast and hallucinating a vision of his godson Tom, Sinleq admitted that he sold himself into slavery to pay for Tom’s life-saving treatment because of a love for his mother, Caroline.
Sinleq and Gully barely escaped the blast, only to find that one of their submarines, a small, three-man submersible called the Mackerel, had suffered damage and was hemorrhaging oxygen. To make matters worse, the Calypso was not the only one searching for the starship. Raiders of the Toghril Khanate were fast approaching the ship. Weighing his options, Sinleq made the decision to save the Mackerel first, before leaping to the defense of the Calypso.
Nearly all of the raiders are dead, but the Calypso paid a high price in blood to keep the ship. As luck would have it, Sinleq came across a survivor, a young teenage mechanic cowering in one of the raiders’ attack boats. The youth, a boy named Gren, pled for his life, swearing that he had done no harm, and that he was here only because of his brother.
Whether or not that plea would work had been left at the end of the prior thread…</span>
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