AS NIGHT BEGAN to fall where the stars shone brightly and the moon laid up in the sky in its waning state. There was not much time for peace as the world had taken a drastic turn for the worse but in due time things would set its course. Olivia was sitting in the quarters of her ship. With an intent stare to the box she had inherited from the Fleet Admiral, she could only frown. The previous evening’s conversation replayed over and over in her head. She tried to work around the reality of the stones, and just could not escape the feeling that The State was behind this whole fiasco. The unfortunate thing about the whole thing was that she had no real concrete evidence.

A soft knock came upon her door as the inventor snapped the box shut and stored it under a secret compartment of her desk. For the safety of her crew and herself, she had to keep those stones under lock and key.

“Enter.” The door opened and Belle appeared. She appeared nervous and excited at the same time. The inventor could see that as they finally sailed on one of her own manufactured ships. In Belle’s arms was her work clipboard with all of the maintenance checks and personnel.

“I came with the quarterly updates.” Olivia nodded, looking out the window to her left. While her room was spacious where she could relax, she still did not sit comfortably on a ship in the middle of Mother Nature.

As it stood, Mother Nature had a way of wrecking many of her inventions lately. Every 1/10 inch scale boat she had ever created wound up breaking under the sheer force of the waves within the simulator back in Chiariotti. Sometimes the simulations itself became a nightmare and trauma whenever she felt the waves slightly rocking into the hull of the ship.  The whole trip made her first voyage away from Chiariotti quite the feat.

“How are we doing on time?” She asked, turning her attention to the straight haired woman before her. “I wanted to be sure the mechanics of the ship were going smoothly. The ocean riptides and waves haven’t damaged the hull, have they?”

If there was anything Olivia was careful about, it was how her inventions fared the first time they started. This ship was a byproduct of hard work, diligence, and effort over the past few years.

“Everything is running smoothly Ma’am. The schematics you gave us prior to us leaving helped finish the last of the kinks in preparing. The robots have all been programmed to do a maintenance check of the engines every three to four hours. The hull has not been damaged either, and we should be thankful that we managed to miss the squall that passed through this region.”

Olivia nodded at this before sighing. If she had one concern it was being caught in a storm, and that would definitely put a kink in her plans. “If I read the mechanics of the barotropic metric system along with the topography of this region correctly, there should not be a storm in the next week or two. Am I correct to believe that?”

Belle nodded her head before looking at her clipboard. “Correct. We can rest assured that the ship will not experience a storm for some time.” Belle fidgeted in her spot before looking out of the window.  “I just hope Anna is alright. I haven’t received any letter from her in the past two weeks. It had me greatly concerned.”

Olivia grimaced before shuffling through some of her papers on her desk. She was holding the readings on all of the ships her brother had assembled together for those wishing to use and own a vessel. Every model he created, he had it give a signal back every two to three days to be sure it was alright. If there was some fault with the ship it would also send a signal of distress. Unfortunately she was staring at The Division’s signals of distress. Her brother had given one of his first generation ships out to Xavier Drummond, a man who was ambitious in fighting for the organization. Admiral Julian saw that the man had potential which then led her brother to creating The Division in the first place.

“What is it Lady Olivia?” asked the scientist.

As to not give too much concern to her fellow shipmate Olivia placed down the papers before shaking her head. “I think your twin will be fine. But to be safe let’s instruct Radium to increase our speed from 12 to 18 knots. The Division was shown to be around this area as of dusk.”

That was, if it was still a ship after dusk. She kept that thought to herself as Belle left her office with a smile.

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