Always Coming Home

“This story begins on an island not like this one. There’s no electricity or fancy towers or metal. It’s a peaceful place, where you can hear the cry of seagulls and the sound of waves. When the ocean winds blow during the fall, the rustling of leaves becomes like rain. This is where I was born.

“We lived in stone homes. I, my wife, and my son, I mean. We lived well. My son grew to be fast and strong, a quick thinker much like his father. My wife cultivated her gardens and cooked stews and soups fresh from her picked vegetables.

“I wanted nothing more than this. I had hung up my sword and my bow long ago. I had done my life’s share of adventuring, lost too many friends and loved ones. My place now was to raise my son and to love my wife.

“One day, there was a storm brewing. I had finished anchoring our ships to the dock when one of our neighbors approached. She said that her father had not yet returned from the storm. He was old, she told me, but enjoyed fishing out at sea. She said he might be caught in the storm.

“I promised that I would find him. I took one of our boats into the sea. The storm was fierce that day. My boat whipped back and forth. I spotted the woman’s father about three hundred paces from me. His boat was struggling to not capsize in the rough waters.

“I made my way towards him and with some of his help I tied our boats together. The storm intensified then. The rain was so heavy I could no longer tell which way led back home. My instincts were all that guided me, but as I rowed and rowed, I wondered if perhaps my instincts had failed me.

“Then it came. A giant wave approached. Our boats were small. There was no engine or course correction that could save us. At that time, both of us merely closed our eyes and said our final prayers. The wave crashed into us and split the boats wide open. He and I both fell and the water dragged us under.

“I don’t know how long it was before I saw that glimmer of light, but my consciousness was fading. There was this brightness coming from the bottom of the ocean. It just got bigger and bigger. The icy cold of the ocean burned away and then there was nothing.

“I passed through life in dreams. Dreams of my wife, dreams of my son, dreams of home. I’d like to think those dreams kept me alive. In between dreams, however, I saw another light, but this one was different. It was artificial, there was little warmth in it. A few days later, I awoke aboard a medical bay, surrounded by men in masks and their goggles.

“Just imagine. A primitive man waking up in a world of metal and fire. I didn’t even know the language that the doctors spoke. Part of me felt religious and believed I had been saved by gods.

“I learned later that they had picked me up on the shores of some exiled colony world. The woman’s father was never found. They must have thought I was an exile and took me out of Caerleon space, thinking that it would be dangerous were I to return to the imperium.

“Make no mistake. These were good people, and I was fortunate to have been found by them. For several years, they clothed me, taught me basic language, and allowed me to learn about this undiscovered new world I had found myself in. My biggest regret remains that I did not inform them of my predicament. I wondered if they would have even believed me.

“In any case, I set out on my own once I had found my feet. I took odd jobs and studied the world. I learned of Caerleon and scoured different worlds. None of them reminded me of home. There was no trace of my wife, my son. It was like they had never existed. They lived on, however, in my memories, in my dreams.

“In time, I considered the possibility that there were others like me, those who had been ripped from their own timeline and transplanted here. I had studied some probability and determined that this was unlikely. If there was in fact a mechanism by which one was cast from one time and into another, the probability of two individuals being cast into the same strip of time seemed infinitesimally small.

“But the idea rooted itself like a parasite. Men of my time were superstitious by nature. We believed in amorphous concepts like destiny and fate. It did not take much time to convince me that I had come here for a reason, and that others like me had arrived under similar pretenses.

“Once again, I was met with failure. Even if there were in fact others with my predicament, how was I to broadcast that they were not alone? I considered hollering around like a madman, but the extent of my messaging would reach as far as my voice could carry. Shackled by limitations, I stowed away the idea in pursuit of more learning.

“As the odd jobs stopped paying, I turned to old expertise. I had been a fighter in the past, and life beyond the Imperial Rim required strong hands and stalwart personalities. I joined a number of haphazard crews and expeditions with the hope that these travels might reveal whether there were others in the universe like me.

“A few years later, after a series of promotions and a fortuitous stroke of luck, I stumbled upon enough money to pay for my ship. Circe. I named her after an old lover of mine. I had no money at the time to pay a crew and flew the ship myself, looking for rare precious metals and sources of deuterium to sell on the black market.

“For the first time in a while, I felt my adventurous youth returned to me, and I ventured to an ancient battlefield on the border of the Imperial Rim. The debris from the battle had coalesced and now orbited the nearby star. The haul found there was exquisite, but it was often patrolled by marauders and Caerleon ships alike, not to mention navigating the area was dangerous.

“After retrieving a pair of imperial cargo ships, something shiny caught my eye at the edge of the accretion disk. I didn’t want to push my luck with an already solid haul, but I had never seen such a glimmer among a field of dead debris. I approached for a closer look.

“It was a ship, one I had never seen before. The metals and alloys twisted and turned in unusual ways. I had never seen such designs in any of the books I had read. My mind worked backwards from there. If it was true that someone could be displaced from a time in the past, then it stood to reason that someone could be ripped from the future.

“I hailed the vessel on all known frequencies and received no response. That only gave me more reason to hope. I approached the ship and parked Circe next to what I perceived as a state of the airlock. I grabbed a firearm, just in case, and docked with the ship.

“The moment I entered, I found someone. I found more than someone. Half the crew was unconscious, lying on the floor as if dazed or sedated. I tethered Circe to the ship and dragged the rest of the crew, one by one, aboard, and placed them in the medical bay.

“The crew awoke a few days later. They spoke a streamlined variant of the Basic language, and I explained my situation to them. I asked them all about that extraordinary light, to which they all professed the same experience. I had never felt such joy from being right.

“Then, the crew asked how they could return to their future, to their particular timeline. I had no answers. They looked dismayed. Some of them cried. I understood that pain better than anyone else in the universe.

“To ease that despair, I told them that our meeting had to have been ordained. I had come from the past. They had come from the future. If that was true, then the phenomenon we had experienced worked both ways. Like me, they could be sent to the future. Like them, I could be sent to the past.

“That was the birth of the Sunless Fleet, upon the promise of a homeward return. The oaths we swore were simple. We would rescue those who were lost in time, because we knew of that lostness better than anyone, and we would work tirelessly to return everyone to their proper place in time.

“If you haven’t guessed by now, Miss Greymoor, then I shall make it clear. Almost everyone aboard the Sunless Fleet has been stranded. They do not belong here. We became proficient at finding our allies in all corners of the universe. We found Friede fighting for her life in dangerous jungles. Alexis arrived frozen in a body bag.

“We then learned of the Chalice of Time, the ancient Caerleon artifact capable of manipulating time itself. We learned of the other relics necessary to find it. This became the sole and exclusive mission of the Sunless Fleet, to find the Chalice, hidden somewhere in the restless void of space, and send all of ourselves back home.”