6:27am in the morning, UTC.
Steam bellowed from all of the port-side compartments. Both the screams of those who persevered and the silence of those who jumped reminded the refugees of the horrible incidents of only forty minutes ago, and led some to believe that Edwin was not worthy as a proper leader. The screams grew louder by the minute. Not only were people jumping overboard, they were being tossed to their deaths.
All of this raucous shook Edwin out of unconsciousness.
"What the hell is going on?" Edwin's voice was raspy, but was capable of shouting, and he did so. Some refugees nearby were alarmed and stopped screaming.
"You don't remember? Sir, the ship was involved in a bit of an, uh, accident. People are bein-" A refugee replied without fear.
"Well thank you, but I'm well aware of that! What happened?"
Edwin hadn't noticed the badge on the refugee's chest. He was a chief of a armed platoon back before the plague had struck their homeland, but was separated when he was forced to flee. He found a multitude of different survivors with Edwin and decided to flee with them, with Edwin's permission. He had been allowed, and now they were here, on the verge of stalling over an island barely discovered and inhabited. The chief cleared his throat, and identified himself as Chief Tharald.
"Chief, I'm sorry for barking at you like that, but I need to know now. What exactly happened?"
Edwin looked around and gathered his bearings. Most people stopped screaming now, trying to get an extra ear in on the conversation. Nobody dared to interrupt. Chief Tharald and him were standing just outside the captain's bridge. A foul stench wafted in through the mostly-closed steel door, and Edwin quickly looked inside before abruptly slamming the door.
"He's been dead since the airship crash." Chief Tharald whispered in a low tone. "You were lucky; you only fell unconscious and suffered a couple second-degree burns and scratches. Compared to the rest of us, you came out mostly unscathed."
"Damn it. We crashed?" Edwin was in shock. How could the captain have crashed our mighty ironclad-airship into another? Captain Morrowberry was very proficient at his job.
"Yes. Another airship crashed into ours earlier, and the damages were fairly equal. Each ship sustained mighty fires, theirs from what looked like the starboard side, ours from the port. Our cannons are completely busted, and some supply crates slid overboard. Their cockpit was ripped off entirely! Some crazed people, possibly hosts of the plague, managed to board our craft through a side entrance, but-"
"Oh my god. The people falling, that isn't it, is it? They were thrown!" Edwin shuddered, as resilient as he was, but regained his senses within seconds. Chief Tharald had a grim look on his face, and mustered a shy "yes". Sweat was dripping heavily from Edwin's coarse eyebrows, and his face shrunk considerably.
"As far as we can tell, the hosts of the plague are dead now. Medical attendants, mostly nurses, are caring to the injuries sustained in the accident, and we're lucky that we are still in the air. The other airship span crazily out of control and crashed into a rough tundra-looking terrain some couple hundred feet below. I've got to go back to the stockpile, try to stop stuff from sliding overboard". Tharald didn't let Edwin interrupt this time, and left abruptly without uttering a goodbye. He strode down the hall shakily, boiling from the ever-rising temperatures.
Edwin was overheating too. He made his way onto the observation deck and peered down. The airship was still moving, albeit slowly, and he feared that they would end up with the same fate as the airship before them. They would stall, crash, and die. For all they knew, the crew of the airship were deceased, and while Edwin felt a strange sense of sorrow, he was much more grateful for the fact that most of his crew survived.
From the observation deck, he could see only water with a short glimpse of a coastline and rivers in the distance. He knew the airship had little chance of crashing onto dry land, but he was hopeful. He was not the best swimmer, and he wasn't convinced half his crew was either. He daydreamed for a short amount of time, his memory catching up to him, about how his refugees picked him as a leader. "Now what do they think?" Negative thoughts flowed into his mind just as the waves flow up onto the shore ahead of them. "Am I not fit to be a leader?" Before he knew it, he was exclaiming these thoughts. in the odd silence and privacy of the observation deck.
"Am I not fit to be a leader?" He said. "I've lead my people to this, this demise. Out from one tragedy and into another!" He was growing more angry, and was shouting now. Finally, once he took a break to breath in the soot-infested air, someone he was not aware was even there spoke up.
"No, sir. You should be proud!" A group of three refugees, two parents and one child, were standing at the small, reinforced door. The man, clearly a blacksmith, spoke again saying, "I mean, this isn't a good state to be in, but we are trying our best to repair the ship. All of us!"
"Are you not aware the ship is losing altitude, fast?" Edwin felt somewhat better by the family's praise, but he thought of them to be oblivious to the disasters that lie in the very near future. "We're stalling out, the captain's dead; I'm sure you know that. There is nothing but ocean and a bit of bare land in front of us!"
"My wife has a little understanding of how to pilot an airship. She's only had half a year of education, granted, but she'll be better than nothing. She may not fly it, but she'll stabilize it until further disasters!"
"You're clearly hopeful." Edwin said in a sarcastic tone. He wasn't in any sort of mood to be joyful, but every little bit helps. "Alright. Let her go at the controls. What are your names?"
"I'm Mark, or Markusson as I prefer to be called. She is Hilary, and slightly hard of hearing. And the boy-" Markusson was cut off by his little son who looked to be about seven or eight and had absolutely no marks or scratches, whatsoever.
"My name is Trenton!" The boy was giddy with all the excitement, and he didn't have too practical of an understanding of whats going on to be worried.
Hilary left for the bridge of the airship at the same moment Markusson and Edwin made their way around each corridor of the ship, gathering up as many people as possible.
The screaming had ceased by now, and almost sixty-eight people had been instructed to stay in the stockpiling quarters. Along the way, Edwin had managed to confront Chief Tharald again, this time instructing him to gather up as many people as possible and bring them back to the room everyone else was in.
"The stench is unbearable!" Hilary slowly entered the bridge, pinching her short nose tight with rosy fingers. She found two others in the bridge, working away at trying to get the ship to fly, and offered her assistance.
"Glad you came, Hilary. We could always use a bit of assistance!" The first and taller man in the room stood up, and Hilary instantly recognized both people as colleagues from her flight classes back in her home of Southspire Lake. The taller man was named Jackson, and the shorter, skinner one was Armund.
"Can you fix the trims and get the bearing indicator to at least level out to -10 degrees? We don't want to dive too fast." Armund was very knowledgeable about flight, having studied it for three years, however he was preoccupied with trying to make himself a sandwich and keeping an eye on the ground.
"Yeah, sure. Someone do me a favour and toss that guy overboard, he's no use to us dead." Hilary scoffed and almost gagged at her second look at the captain's mutilated corpse. She wondered for an instant if he died from burns, or if he was torn apart? Evidence from the body suggested both, and (oh god what if the infected didn't eat him alive but when he was dead oh god).
She quickly shook her head to get rid of the gruesome thought as the right-side hatch was opened and the body was disposed of.
"Two-hundred and fifty-six, two-hundred and fifty-seven, and you, Chairman Berigan." Chief Tharald was used to doing head counts of large crowds, and had managed to successfully finish this one before he lost count. The ship was nearing the surface now, but the three pilots including Hilary managed to level it out enough that the promise of a shore landing grew stronger.
"Please, do not call me that. I'm no chairman nor am I a dictator. We all work together here to thrive, okay?" Edwin believed in a socialist society, but being called a chairman set him off the edge. "I am however grateful that the headcount is finished, thank you for that."
Everyone was gathered into the stockpiling quarters, sitting, standing, and crouching around the large, burnt chests that gave the room its name. Even the makeshift pilots were not attending the helm anymore, directing all their attention to the headcount and the two apparent leaders, Tharald and Edwin.
The refugees separated themselves into groups sorting them by profession as instructed. The blacksmiths in one corner, farmers and housewives in another, and men of the trades in another. Edwin caught a glimpse of Markusson and his boy in the starboard corner of the room, and the blacksmith waved.
"Alright leader, what inspiring speech do you have for us now? We are all hopefully that the rest of us will survive, but what will we do?" Tharald wasn't directly trying to intimidate Edwin, but he felt strong. The strong waves of sunlight reflected off of Tharald's taut skin and muscles. The room went silent, expecting at least some dialogue from Edwin, and waited almost two minutes. A lot of the refugees startled when he shouted out the beginning of his speech.
"We originally had two-hundred and seventy-eight people. We have lost exactly twenty of them. But the accident we endured was a catastrophe, greatly reducing the opportunities all of us have. The rest of us will start a new life, on a new island, and bond together as a community. Twenty casualties is a lot in a time like this, where more manpower equals more survival. But we can do it. We will do it, we'll bounce back and prosper. Now, I'm sorry for all of you who lost a friend, a family member, or a spouse. But we all have to make sacrifices, and-" By this time, tears were starting to well up in the corners of his eyes. He choked very quickly, and started up again.
"We all have to make sacrifices, and we have. We will continue to, but it is for the future of our lives, and we will succeed!" He sat down as he finished his last words.
The crowd gave a fair amount of applause after the speech was finished, and almost all doubts of survival were abandoned. They were diving quite quickly towards what was now a large field with a beach and river nearby, and they all scavenged whatever they could in the room without getting lost. Seeds, weapons, purifying and medical equipment, building supplies were gathered up.
And before they knew it, they hit the ground with a violent crash.