A Brotherhood of Crows.

Many miles to the south, in a discreet but well furnished meeting room in the Palace of Westminster, Dr Crucius interlaced his long, violinist fingers, and said: “So the situation is far graver than we feared.”

At the opposite end of the lengthy oak table, the military officer, having stood stiffly as he had delivered his report, sagged ever so slightly, as if from relief. “So it would seem, sir,”

“My God,” muttered one of the assembled ministers, each of whom occupied a high back chair around the table, “Do you meet to tell me, Commander, that we have no way in predicting the nature of this...storm?”

“None whatsoever, sir,” replied the Commander, “its meteorology is a complete mystery to us. The fact, sirs,” he addressed the rest of the room, “my ship and I were lucky to escape in one piece.”

“And the rest of the fleet?” piped up the Minister for Transport, with faux hopefulness, “Perhaps they might have escaped?”

“It is unlikely,” Crucius responded, dryly, “If the fleet were as close to the storm as the good Commander here attests, we can safely assume them lost.”

The Prime Minister was smoking, his third since the Commander had begun his report. Crucius had known many Prime Ministers, but this was the first smoker, and the foul, cloying fug of the PM’s cheap Marlboros was making his eyes water. The Prime Minister had been silent, puffing away and lighting his next cigarette off the butt of the previous one. “Perhaps you could show us what you managed to capture, Commander.”

“Certainly, sir,” the Commander gestured to a screen, hastily erected before the meeting by the Palace Ushers, upon holo projector splashed its ghostly light. “As you can see from the first image, we first became aware of the anomaly after a return from a sorte with Severance forces on the fringes of the Neutral Zone, along the Gulf of Finland. This image was taken from a distance of four hundred leagues from the storm.”

The image on the screen showed swirling cloud, grey and gunmetal. At the centre of the image, a small black dot, the size of a large coin could be seen.

“This image was taken at 0932,” the Commander continued. “At this point the eye of the storm measured a few hundred metres across. However,” the image changed abruptly, “This image was captured at 0934.”

Crucius heard a gasp from one of the ministers at his side. In this image, the black spot had grown, expanded out until it almost filled the screen. Jagged green sparks of lightening could be seen criss crossing its onyx expanse, like veins on some great infernal eye.

“Do you mean to tell me,” said the Minister for Public Decency, incredulously, “That the storm expanded that much in two minutes?”

“It didn’t just expand,” replied the Commander, tersely, “It moved.”

Crucius raised an eyebrow. “It moved, you say?”

“Yes, sir. This second image was taken with the eye of the storm just twenty leagues from my airship.”

There was a moment of silence while this settled in.

“Perhaps…” the Minister for Theological Justice, a new person in the role, Crucius noted, said, “Perhaps the wind could have -?”

“Blown it closer? Highly unlikely.” The Commander cut him off. “I’ve spent twenty years in the Air Force, Minister, and I have never seen the wind move a weather event over three hundred and fifty leagues in two minutes. It’s impossible.”

“What happened next, Commander,” Crucius asked.

“Admiral Hendrix gave the order to engage shockstream drives and take us to a safe distance. We aimed to jump to a safe distance of five hundred leagues. The storm was playing havoc with our ships instruments. My vessel, The Unbroken, made the jump, but the admiral’s ship, The Bulldog and her support destroyers were unable to jump at first. We were not able to raise them on the holo, but from our vantage point we could see them, still near the eye of the storm...when we did raise them…” the Commander hesitated, and in the dim lighting, Crucius could a slither fear slide across his face, “There was...laughter. All we heard was horrible, mad laughter...and then we lost contact. I gave the order to shockstream again when the storm began to pursue us -”

The Prime Minister choked in the act of lighting his fourth cigarette. “Pursue you?”

“Yes...sir,” the Commander now seemed more uncertain about himself, his military posture slipping, and his left hand fidgeting at his side. “The storm...it followed us, sir. We fled as fast as our engines would carry us between shockstreams, but it kept on coming. Every time it got too close, our instruments would go haywire, and we’d loose navigation, or lighting, or our oxygen levels would drop.”

“And how,” said the Minister for Theological Justice, clearly unconvinced, “Did you manage to escape this...ha...pursuing storm?”

“I gave the order to take us above the clouds, sir, to the maximum height my vessel could withstand. We used up our shockstream drive just to break over 80,000 feet. The storm it...it stopped after we broke cloud roof, sir. It seemed to be watching us, waiting for us to come back down...I kept us above clouds for as long as I could, before diverting us to Reykjavik.”

There was another silence. The Prime Minister smoked reflectively for a second, and then said. “Very good, Commander. Thank you for your report, you’re dismissed.”

The Commander saluted, turned stiffly, and nearly fled the room. In his absence, a sense of quiet unease filled the room. On the screen, the holo-projector retained the image of the storm. Crucius was not prone to hyperbole but he could not help but feel that the eye of the storm was regarding them, malevolently.

“Terrible bad business,” said the Minister for Finance and Capital. He was a great jowly man, a veteran of several government, and when he shook his head, his great rolls of fat quivered like seismic shifts. “Terrible bad business.”

“It’s errant nonsense,” snapped the Minister for Theological Justice, “The man is clearly trying to cover up his own incompetence. Any fool can see that he lost his fleet in a sorte with the Severance and is trying to hide it with his far fetched story about monster storms!”

“But this is not the only report of weather anomalies this last year,” protested the Minister for the Regulation of Undesirables, “Just a month before the election there was talk of some sort of storm which was wreaking havoc in our Australiasian colonies -”

“I, for one, found the Commander’s report to be implausible,” said the Minister for Public Decency. Crucius wasn’t surprised he did. Public Decency and Theological Justice tended to go together on so many issues, given their tenacity with moralism and traditional values. “I concur with my honourable colleague that the bigger question is the loss of four perfectly good airships at a time of war.”

Theological Justice looked as if he was about to say something, but Crucius cut across him. “With all due respect, gentleman, I believe you are missing the point. The threat that this storm poses to our interest is far greater than the Severance or a few lost airships. I suggest we take the good Commander’s word seriously, and discuss the matter.”

Theological Justice’s face spread in a sneer. “Oh really? You believe that load of tosh do you…” he floundered for a name, “Look, who even are you? You aren’t even a member of this government!”

Crucius sighed gently. He was correct - Theological Justice was new; one of the fresh, former ministers aides, who had slimed his way up the greasy pole since his first days at Oxbridge, probably through contacts and the right amount of religious zeal - it was Theological Justice after all, and that department attracted a certain sort - and only now was beginning to get the plump, smoothed facedness which cursed so many of the government’s ministers. Crucius wanted to respond to the younger man that he, Dr Horatio Crucius, had held this seat, at this table, at these meetings, meetings so secret they didn’t appear minuted in anywhere but the most closely guarded documents of the Palace of Westminster, shared only with cabinet ministers on a need to know basis - that he, Dr Crucius, had held this seat long before Theological Justice had even been a boy, long before many of the men in the room had been boys, long enough to have worked with their predecessors, and their predecessors, long as the living memory of any of the old guard of Civil Servants, and, were it not for some careful amendments of the Palace’s archives, it might have been possible to find a seat laid out for one “Dr Crucius,” even further back into the murky depths of the past. He had long since made sure his name was never minuted, and his presence never recorded, but that it was simply understood that when the Prime Minister wanted to get down to the real business of running the vast patchworks of nations that made up the Great, British Commonwealth, he would always have a space, three chairs down from him, for Dr Crucius.

Crucius surveyed the room; they were all men (they almost always were these days) and to a man, he held none of them in high regard. Crucius had known many governments, advised many Prime Ministers, and it had been many, many years, since he had known a group that impressed him. Who was even in power, these days? Was it the Right? Or the Left? They were always feuding and forming coalitions and breaking coalitions and promising reforms abandoned the moment their leader stepped into Number 10 to the extent that the majority of people no longer could tell the difference between any of them, and just put a mark on the ballot paper next to whichever defender of true Britishness and the might of the Commonwealth happened to be the least offensive that year.

Theological Justice had clearly taken Crucius’ silent contempt for accession. “Gentlemen, I fail to understand the role that this...man plays in our meetings. I have been a member of this government for two months and he has never cared to explain himself, but simply passes judgement on all important matters of state -!”

“Minister,” the PM interjected. He ground his cigarette out in an ornamental ashtray, and his gravelly, smoky voice silenced the younger man in a flash. “Have a care, Minister. This is Dr Horatio Crucius, of St. Jude’s College, Cambridge, a great personal friend of this government and one of the world’s pre-eminent Unnatural Scientists -”

“ ‘Unnatural Scientists’?” scoffed Theological Justice. “What on earth is an Unnatural Scientist -”

“The kind,” snapped the Prime Minister, “that you would do well to listen to, so kindly shut up.”

Theological Justice opened his mouth to object, then reconsidered the benefits of defying the Prime Minister, and slumped back in his chair, like a sulking school boy. The Prime Minister glared at him for a few seconds longer, then nodded to Crucius. “Doctor, if you would be so kind as to give us your analysis of the situation, I’m sure the Ministers would be most grateful.”

Crucius bowed his head in acknowledgement. “Gentlemen,” he said. He remained seated as he spoke; years of lecturing undergraduates and government ministers had taught him that he was perfectly capable of commanding the attention of a room without the need to stand. “The information that the good Commander has provided for us correlates with a matter which has occupied my academic interest, and that of those others in the field of Unnatural Science for some time. It is my belief that this storm is no mere spectacle of freak weather - I believe instead that we are dealing with an intelligence, a living thing, which manifests as meteorological phenomena.”

Crucius tapped at the discrete little holopad which he kept resting in his lap during meetings. The Projector at the far end of the room whirred into life, and a series of images began to flash up on the screen.

“This storm, named by colleagues of mine, as ‘the maelstrom’ defies all scientific understanding. The images you can see were taken in different parts of the planet at concurrent times - there, you see an image of the storm captured at a distance off the coast of Sierra Leone; here, an remarkably similar storm appears to be taken place in Siberia, and here, the storm is spotted by merchant airships advancing on horn of South America. Note the structure - it resembles, for all intents and purposes, a hurricane, but you will see, gentlemen, than the eye of the storm, so to speak, is a place of pure darkness, a complete absence of light - furthermore, the eye is not located as vertical spot in the centre of the storm, but faces outwards, a horizontal eye in a more literal sense of the word. Note as well, that all of these images were captured within a matter of seconds - this storm appears to be able to move, almost at will, across great distances - to appear and disappear in a blink of an eye.”

“So...it’s...some sort of creature?” asked a Minister.

“Nothing quite so simple,” Crucius responded, “I believe, gentleman, we are dealing with an Absurdity Storm.”

The Prime Minister had run out of cigarettes and had been in the process of motioning to an aide to bring him more. He hesitated. “An Absurdity Storm?”

“Indeed. Its categorisation comes from its effects on the the areas it appears to target -” the images on the projector shifted. Pictures of a cityscape - wrecked and ruined husks of buildings, warped and twisted trees, a sky wrent of all colour. “These images were captured six months ago in Miami, in the former United States -”

“Miami?” Theological Justice suddenly piped up. “That’s in Severance territory. How have you come into possession of information from the enemy, Dr Crucius?”

Crucius glowered at him; his sudden smug, accusatory tone grated on Crucius’ nerves. “Minister, I am an academic, and the world of academia is not quite so rigidly divided as the world of war. We scholars do not found ourselves as constrained by the borders that the Commonwealth and the Severance has seen fit to impose upon the world, nor those made and broken by those nations in the Neutral Zone. Information flows freely. Observe the images if you will - the maelstrom, this Absurdity storm, struck Miami without warning. The destruction was not caused by high winds, but by the complexities of the Unnatural connected to the storm; it turned the majority of the city into ash in a matter of seconds. As for the people, autopsies found that the calcium in the victim’s bones was transformed into glass. Their bones simply shattered as they tried to flee.”

“But that’s impossible -!”

“Nothing is impossible in the field of Unnatural Science. Hence, gentleman, you see the reason why it is called an Absurdity storm. Its effects are absurd, there is no longer a pattern to how it changes its surrounding environment. In Miami, total destruction - hundreds of thousands dead in seconds. Here,” a new series of images flashed up, “Trondheim, in Norway, the storm struck and merely rained feathers. A completely harmless event. Here,” more images, “a fishing fleet in the South China Sea was caught in the storm and disappeared. Their ships were found two weeks later, in the middle of the Australian outback. The crew had been fused together - each man and woman crushed into the next, to make one hideous life form made up of a hundred people, which had an appetite for human flesh and devoured several of the team who discovered it before it was euthanized. Other, unconfirmed reports suggest the impact of the maelstrom ranges from innocuous to a cruelty that outweighs the atrocities of war - stories of sea creatures sucked up into the storm, and dumped into cities across the globe, screaming about the death of God; of towns where every structure is transformed from brick and mortar into salt, causing each one to collapse and drown the inhabitants; of mutations, visions, transformations and insanity caused by the simple appearance of the storm. It is Absurdity, a total absence of logic and reason - it takes what is normal, and replaces it would wonders and horrors at a whim.” Crucius paused for effect. “And if the report we have just heard is anything to go on, we can assume it is becoming more aggressive. To target a specific airship suggests a hunting pattern; the storm, as I said, is controlled by an intelligence. That intelligence wished to devour The Unbroken and her crew, enough to chase them to the cloud ceiling.”

Crucius tapped his holopad and the projector went dark. The only light in the room came from the dim lamps around the walls. Outside the rain pounded against the high windows of the Palace. Its spattering filled the silence, uncomfortably.

“So what can we do?” asked the Prime Minister. He had yet another cigarette in his hand, though this was unlit. He was twirling it between his fingers, pensively.

“On that I cannot advise,” replied Crucius, “Due to the nature of the Maelstrom, it is difficult to gather effective data. But rest assured, gentlemen; this storm poses a threat that cannot be over-emphasised. If we are defend against it, we must understand it.”

The Prime Minister nodded. “I see. And what do you need, Doctor?”

“A ship. Something fast, with an experienced and fearless crew. I have some equipment in Cambridge, of my own design, that could be used to measure the level of the Unnatural in the storm. This data would allow me to understand it, and perhaps, find a way to combat it.”

The Prime Minister motioned to a ministerial aide, who had detached himself from the shadows. “Show Captain Pillion in, would you? I believe we have a job for him.”

The thick oak doors of the meeting room were opened by two more aids, letting in a sudden surge of sharp light from the corridor of the Palace. A tall, smart military officer entered. Crucius regarded him curiously. His face was not familiar, and in the many many years that Crucius had influenced matters of state, he had never forgotten a face.

Someone new?

“Gentlemen, may I present Captain Gregory Pillion, commander of the Cerberus, of

the 34th fleet.” The Prime Minister said to the room, “Captain Pillion is a highly decorated military officer, with over 20,000 hours of combat experience.”

Pillion stood ramrod straight. His uniform was impeccable; despite the lateness of the hour, he could have been out on ceremonial parade. Beneath his uniform, his body was clearly muscled and in peak physical condition. This, however, contrasted with the neat grey hair and whiskers that adorned his head and face.

“Ministers,” said Pillion, to the room, with a curt nod. And then, to his surprise, he said to Crucius, “Doctor. A pleasure to meet you in person.”

Crucius eyed him, with a feeling of both amusement and unease. “You recognise me, Captain?”

“I do sir. I am a great admirer of your research. I wrote my thesis at Sandhurst on your research into elemental unnatural science and its potential military applications. A fine piece of scholarship, if you’ll permit me, sir.”

It was an interesting choice. Crucius had little time for war, or at least for the petty war that had raged between Commonwealth and Severance forces for a generation, and that paper had been written long ago, before Crucius had realised that there were bigger matters to account for beyond weaponising the chaotic power of Unnatural Science. An officer and a scholar? Interesting.

“I believe that Captain Pillion and the Cerberus are fit for your purpose, Doctor?” said the Prime Minister.

Crucius didn’t reply. He regarded Captain Pillion carefully. There was something too stiff about the officer. His stature seemed artificial, his stillness as he stood at attention too forced. And even in the dim lighting, Crucius could see that, in contrast to the poise of his body, his eyes were twitching agitatedly.

“The Cerberus can dock at RAF Bassingbourn by 1900 tomorrow,” Pillion said in his clipped tone, “I can send a detachment of my men to collect the equipment for your analysis.”

Something odd. One to watch. “Very good, Captain. Have your men come to the college. I’ll see that the porters get my equipment to you.”

Pillion nodded, saluted, and departed. The end of official business, the meeting broke up. The Prime Minister arose, lit his umpteenth cigarette of the evening, and began to converse in hushed tones with the Minister for Finance and Capital. Other ministers began to mingle - the lights were raised, now that the work was done, and the Palace Ushers were bringing in trays of brandy. Crucius quietly drifted out. He never stayed for these post-meeting drink events. This was the time when the powerful men gossiped and bickered and plotted against their colleagues, often those just across the table from them, all the while getting drunker and drunker on fine port and brandy. It was said that this was where the real business of politics was done, through half said implications of who was on the up, and who might need to go, whispered through a smoky haze of cigars. Frankly, it bored Crucius to death.

He strolled the halls of the Palace of Westminster, quietly pondering. The hour was late, but the ministerial bars were still full of backbenchers raucously celebrating the passage of some inconsequential bill or another. Palace usher scuttled quietly, delivering notes and memos and dismissals. The debates that took place in the House of Commons these days were really just a farce - the agenda for the government had long ago be decided by the men in key positions in the corporations, military and, increasingly these days, by the ever expanded mass of Theological Justice. The Queen’s’ Speech, PMQs, Private Members Bills...all of it was a bit of theatre, something for the media to convince the masses that democracy hadn’t long since given up the ghost, to be replaced by something that had, in many ways, always been there; power and interest.

That too bored Crucius to death.

A glance at his holopad told him that the next airship back to Cambridge wasn’t for another twenty minutes. He perched himself on a bench beneath a statue of Winston Churchill, leering pugnaciously in the foyer of the Palace. This place was quiet, and quite dark. The arcane chandeliers of the Palace barely penetrated the dark, and bar the soft, pattering footsteps of rushing Ushers, the only sound was the rain. Crucius leaned back until he was almost one with the shadow, and continued to ponder.

Crucius slipped from his pocket his notebook, and passed the time by flicking through the pages. While he kept his holopad to hand at all times, Crucius kept his most important notes to the format of pen and ink. Such things couldn’t be hacked. His long, artisan’s fingers traced his elegant writing, reminding him that, among other things, the JCR at St Jude’s were one again in uproar, after the Director of Studies of Philosophy, one Nathaniel Hopkins, had published “yet another one of his racist book.” A note, a page later, from the College Council, proposed a firm response to these allegations, rustication for the ring leaders, and question whether communist influences had infected the student populous again. Not after Feuer Frei, Crucius had noted, though this was a thought he kept to himself. He sighed softly, and mused about the possibility of a world where the JCRs, College Councils, Research Boards, Teaching Excellence Frameworks, and all their similar ilk, might go away, and leave him time for the important business of study.

His flicked a few more pages, and found himself confronted with a question he had written many years back, and had yet to answer:

Are they real?

The word ‘real’ had been underlined multiple times, and the ‘they’, well...who ‘they’ were was, Crucius supposed, a story for another time...

His thoughts were disrupted by the sound of voices, and the louder clumsier footsteps of ministers approaching.

“....Absolute disgrace. That man has no right to belittle a minister of Her Majesty’s Government in front of the Cabinet,” said one voice. It was the Minister for Theological Justice.

“Quite...it was, uh, rather uncalled for,” said another - Public Decency.

Crucius didn’t move. Years of eavesdropping had coached him into adopting an extraordinary stillness, of fading into the background in almost any space. In the dimly lit foyer, he could have been little more than a darker patch of dark in a darkened room.

“Do we know anything about this Dr Crucius?” Theological Justice demanded, as both ministers came into view, trotting towards the Airship station.

“He’s…” Public Decency was shorter than his colleague and was half running to keep up. “He’s a Cambridge man...St Jude’s...rather influential...not much else to go on -”

“And he has a seat in Cabinet? Ridiculous.” Theological Justice stopped and began to pace in a circle. He was clearly used to ranting to an audience. “I should have the Listeners investigate him. I caught a distinctly godless vibe from the man.”

“Well, perhaps he is known to the Brotherhood?” suggested Public Decency.

Crucius’s ears pricked up. For years now, Crucius had kept a silent eye on the increasing number of secretive and clandestine religious cults that held sway behind the doors of Ministry for Theological Justice. Partly, he found them amusing. Crucius was acutely aware of the existence of higher (and darker) powers, and it amused him to watch the various churches attempt to pray and sacrifice to Gods that had long since died. But on top of that, Crucius watched the religious groups because he was worried that one day, one of them might figure out what was really going on.

The Brotherhood? That was a name he hadn’t heard before. At least not uttered seriously.

Theological Justice paused and regarded Public Decency in the dim light. “The Brotherhood demand a high price for information.”

“Yes, but...if this Crucius is someone we need to worry about, the Brotherhood would know.”

A pause. “Yes...I suppose. Those Crows have a way of finding things out.”

Theological Justice had spoken lightly, but Crucius detected something in his voice - a twinge of awed fear.

Crucius watched the two depart. His mind, already filled with thoughts of Absurdity Storms and Airshipmen with twitching eyes, now found itself latching onto those few words he’d picked up, words charged with significance from coming from the mouth of the man at the head of an uncomfortable fusion of religion and government.

Could it be true? There had always been rumours…

Are they real?

From inside his inner pocket, Crucius withdrew his notebook, opened it, and wrote in his flourishing, ornate hand:

Who are the Brotherhood of Crows?