Vadim was actually feeling quite comfy at the moment. He was slowly starting to wake up after a good session of flight training with Micha the day before. If he was entirely honest he might have overdone it with the vodka as he was now feeling the aftereffects of the liquor, but nothing he wasn’t already used to.

Idly, the grey feathered griffon noted how warm he was feeling despite having fallen asleep above his blanket. He had seldom felt so good sleeping in this cabin.

And then he noticed the breathing that was ruffling his neck feathers. Without moving, he glanced down at the still sleeping form of Micha that had her head nestled in the curve of his neck just under his own beak. The bald eagle griffon was hugging his frame, just as he was cradling hers. She had one wing wrapping around his back, and one of his was keeping her hindquarters close to his in a tangled mess of limbs and fur. Even their tails were intertwined, keeping them in as close a contact as was possible.

He could feel the beating of her hearts, her intoxicating scent infiltrating his nostrils; his instincts relishing the proximity he had with his mate and ordering him not to break the contact. Still not entirely awake and with his mind sluggish from the hangover, he didn’t go against the call of his instincts.

Wait…

Mate?

His jumbled memory finally assembled the last pieces in spite of the hangover. He had actually had sex with his best friend (and technically superior, but he didn’t know which was worse). His breath caught in his throat for a second at the thought.

The seemingly innocuous reaction was enough to stir the other griffon, because he caught her heartbeats increasing. He wanted to break the hug, knowing Micha would have a very good and justified reason not to be particularly happy when she woke up… but it just felt so right.

The green highlighted feathers around her eyes parted to reveal her yellow raptor eyes. Still half-asleep, they groggily looked around for a couple seconds. Vadim caught a barely perceptible groan escaping her beak before her eyes met his, instantly opening fully.

He blinked.

She blinked.

Neither of them moved the least bit.

“Dzień dobry.” He greeted her in a whisper.

Vadim could see the gears in her head turning for a few seconds. She broke eye contact and noticed how close their bodies actually were, her head feathers subtly fluffing up in embarrassment at the sight.

“Did we?” She asked.

The question was pretty much rhetoric. Both of them could still feel the dampness of the blanket they were resting on around their joined hindquarters, and the two were equally as sore in that region in particular.

“We did.” Vadim told her softly. “How are you feeling?”

“Sore. You?”

Luckily she didn’t appear to be taking this too badly. Surprising considering her situation, but he wasn’t about to start complaining.

“Same. That felt… completely different than anything I ever did before… No regrets?” He asked her.

The female griffon actually snuggled closer to him at that, rubbing her neck against his before settling down.

“I know I should feel bad because of, you know…” She trailed off. “But I just can’t seem to find it in me to do that. It just felt…”

“Natural?”

“Tak.” She agreed. “Plus I remember I initiated it anyway. Can’t really blame you for responding eh…” She chuckled, one of her paws beginning to stroke Vadim’s. “Still, all of that… I… that was the most amazing thing I ever felt.” She breathed out.

“Like how you feel the whole body is involved?”

She nodded.

“But… what now?” Vadim asked her, genuinely not knowing where to go from here.

“What do you mean what now?”

“Do we leave it at that? Do we each go our own way? ‘cause I remember you technically being married, me having a girlfriend, and a certain desire of…”

“What if we… kept it going until those problems in particular can be addressed?” She cut him off. “It can’t hurt… right?” She knew she had told Aleksei she wanted to be male again, but nobody said they couldn’t keep each other company until the issue was resolved right?

At least that’s the reason she came up with in her mind. Both of them used to visit red light districts frequently, so this couldn’t be that different from that habit.

“Yeah… can’t hurt.” Vadim muttered, arms tightening around her frame. “I don’t want to turn around, what time does the clock say?”

“Half past seven. You got watch?”

“Only at ten o’clock, I made a deal with Boris. You know what the others will say about us?”

“Some probably won’t be too happy about their bet.” She snickered.

“I wonder how many had a claw or paw in it…” Vadim mused.

She nibbled him in the neck softly. The gesture felt natural.

“Don’t. That’s their business, not ours.” She chastised him.

“You still sure you don’t mind that turn of events? I mean… come to think of it that’s kinda fast.”

“It does feel odd, and I know a couple weeks earlier I wouldn’t ever have thought about doing that, but I can’t bring myself to regret it.” She reassured him.

“And neither do I. Now, you want to keep snuggling for a while or do we do some actual preening?”

Micha’s sole answer was just to snuggle closer.

The two of them stayed in bed a little while to nurse their hangover before Vadim excused himself to go take a shower. Parting was hard for the two of them, but eventually they had to get on with their lives. Micha flipped over in the bed to rest on her belly, idly thinking about how quickly the two of them had gotten accustomed to their new bodies. She idly looked around while Vadim was in the bathroom, noting the posters, books and CD’s that decorated the room. Vadim was pretty clearly into cars and military history, but she also spied a worn-out violin case poking out of his wardrobe. The Ukrainian had never told her he could actually play an instrument…

Before long, Vadim actually showed her how to take care of her wings and how to use her preen gland on her beak to wax her primaries. Her mate (why her mind was pushing her to use the word, she didn’t know) helped her remove some broken and bent feathers from hard to reach places like the back of her neck. By the time they were done, both of their plumages had taken on a clean sheen not seen since the day of their transformation. By nine o’clock, the pair of refreshed and happy griffons left Vadim’s cabin side by side, their shipmates easily noticing how much closer the new couple had gotten.

Crazy strong stuff those griffon instincts.

The ship’s grapevine was quick to react to that, a short debate about the two griffons occurring in the depths of the engine room before liquor and cigars reluctantly started changing hands (or whatever the equivalent was), some crewmembers smug, others much less. The oldest of the crewmembers like the veterans were a bit partial about it, but nobody was really sure how to take it considering the subtle ways their transformations had messed with their heads.

And in all that fuzz, neither Micha nor Vadim had noticed how they had forgotten to use protection during the act, the two of them still drifting on a cloud of happiness.

That day, the trading of intel with the HPI took place as scheduled. Eko didn’t send them any message that would have signaled them Dilip’s data wasn’t of value to them. Instead, the Indonesian forwarded them the Rhine’s own contract, a note on how the HPI’s R&D department was still figuring what to ask them to do for their sake…

And of course the intel they had about survivor colonies.

They immediately had someone print the documents and bring them to the gathered Captains inside Dilip’s office. The Chief Officers and Engineers were present as well to observe the reveal, and maybe tell the rest of the crews later.

With a bated breath, Dilip reached for the files. The agent had given them the data regarding the Americas, unsurprisingly. He opened the first page showing a map, and a list of locations.

“Havana, Cuba, estimated size: minimum 30. Last observation: 7^th of June 2015.” He read out loud.

“Saguenay, Canada, estimated size: minimum 20. Last observation: 1^st of June 2015.”

“Veracruz, Mexico, estimated size: minimum… 80?! Damn that’s a lot. Last observation: 10^th of June 2015. There is a note too: ‘Potential petrochemical activity’. You know what that mean guys…” The dog smiled.

“We might have a solution for our fuel problem. Does that mean I stop my research on the oil reconditioning project?” Schmitt asked from the back of the room.

“Keep working on it unless it takes you away from the Rhine’s modifications for too long.” Dilip told the orange dragon. “The document does say ‘potential’ after all; we can’t hinge our survival on an uncertainty. There is one more location too:”

“Belém, Brazil, unconfirmed activity. It seems to be all they have on the Americas for the moment, and they added the satellite pictures to highlight the activity. Still… That’s more than a hundred potential survivors to rescue. I don’t think anybody has any protest about that?”

There were none.

“To me that sounds like a straightforward path from now on.” Raimund said. “We finish the modifications on my ship, by then the HPI should be ready to receive our delivery and have given us a port of call. We do it, and then we move on to these guys and actually make use of all that humanitarian gear we salvaged.”

“And once we’re through with these locations, we buy more intel on colonies and move on to rescue more.” Dilip nodded, arms crossed. “Chiefs, do any of you have any concern or protest to manifest towards this course of action? The order in which we will tackle the colonies will depend on where the HPI wants their prototypes delivered, but that shouldn’t change too much.”

Alejandro actually had a few remarks about how they might need to do some research on the areas and have someone (in other words: Sandra) keep an eye on the evolution of satellite pictures around the colonies. Nobody really had anything to say against that, so the Captains sent the Chiefs off to tell the rest of their crews the news and to begin the modifications on the Rhine now that they had the parts to do it.

Considering their manpower base was still restricted by the small number of trained welders and the need to keep the terminal secure, it was hard to assign many sailors to the works on the Rhine simultaneously. Most were still hard at work training with their new weapons and, in the case of Amandine’s crew, their firefighting equipment as well.

Over the course of the next three days, not a single expedition left the terminal. They didn’t have any free hands to allot to the retrieval of art pieces at the time. Amandine’s crew began running drills inside the kill house and soon enough, on board of their ship as well to give the entire crew a refresher on how they were supposed to react in case of emergency. Aleksei had completed several sets of adapted masks for their SCBA equipment, and they seemed to work just fine. She even made more than strictly necessary to equip the Rhine Forest and leave both ships with a surplus of gas masks.

Artyom increased the pace of the CQB training inside the kill house to make sure that everyone had a go at it. He even got tips from Alejandro on how to teach a handful of basic defensive moves that would allow them to fend off monsters at short ranges and keep enough distance so they could use their guns. Granted, it was not a complete martial arts course and the kill house stuff barely put them at reservist level, but combat skills were deemed secondary.

On the bright side, now he was sparring with Alejandro whenever he got the chance in the morning.

On the Rhine, the crewmembers were training as well. More and more of them were getting comfortable with their new bodies and had started modifying their gear to fit their new morphology. They began unloading the lighters that were stacked in the front rows where the modifications would take place, even hauling some of them out of the water to be dismantled for parts and materials. As soon as the lighters were out of the vessel, all five welders both ships had available began the work of creating the new bulkhead that would separate the containers from the barges. The process was lengthy and arduous because of how the Engineers had designed it, but the complexity was a necessity. Making it sturdier would mean they wouldn’t have to worry about breaches in the near future, and contingencies had to be built-in in case of accident.

Vadim found himself hard pressed for time when Camille fell down upon his schedule and claimed most of his free time either for her medical research or to give him more lessons on medicine. The Ukrainian would later lament about the mental exhaustion she caused him to Micha during their flight training in the evening, but not even once did he threaten to pull away from his medical duties.

Despite everyone being otherwise kept busy by the constant work going on around the terminal, Roberto kept looking for targets of interest they could send expeditions to. Most of them were art retrieval for the sake of the HPI, but he had managed to come up with a few tech companies they could get databanks from, as well as electronics for when they would have to start repairing their own tech. At some point the cat was visited by Bart, the sky blue unicorn telling the secretary about the need for some Swedish Ak-5 carbines to improve their own FNC’s with better optics and ergonomics.

That spurred Roberto to start devising a set of expeditions across the strait to Malmo, the two towns only being separated by a short tunnel next to Copenhagen’s airport. Knowing the level of engineering that went into Northern European infrastructure, there was little doubt the tunnel wouldn’t be usable. Eventually, he went to visit Dilip to present his idea of sending one team on a first trip to Malmo to get them some intel on the location of a base before actually sending out a salvaging convoy with lorries and trailers. The Captain approved of his plans, but the expedition had to be postponed until the crews were done with their training and they freed up some workforce to allot to it.

The same went for possible leads on where to find the boats Amadi wanted to add to the Rhine’s complement: the ideas were there, but they just couldn’t spare the crewmen to do it.

Much to the cat’s dismay, more time was ‘lost’ when Captain Gerig decided to immediately have most of his crew go through refresher courses on firefighting and emergencies as well, which chained itself into a lot of them going through CQB training and so on… In a way, the cat couldn’t blame the decision and training had to be done, but the barge carrier made up most of the workforce they had in the ‘fleet’. This meant that as long as the Rhine’s crew was training, the rest of the sailors were too busy with the modifications and terminal defense duties to carry on expeditions. It frustrated him to no end because it felt like they were stuck doing nothing at times, and even the novelty of having the hippogriffs make use of their aquatic transformation to maintain the underside of the vessels had worn off surprisingly quickly.

Still, it was a nifty trick that would make them last longer before having to repair a dry-dock though. That kind of advantage couldn’t be understated enough.

“So?”

“So what? You’ll have to be more accurate than that.” Micha told Aleksei.

Both the griffon and the hippogriff were once more working on programming issues from the confines of the engine control room. They had pretty much sorted out the issue with the new pumps and Micha was almost done inputting the data by then. Aleksei on the other claw… She might as well be bashing her beak against a wall when it came to figuring out how to convert the audio files from the bridge’s radio log. Neither of the two would actually qualify as remotely competent when it came to coding, it was just a secondary skill set in an industry that rarely called for it. Not helping their cause was the fact they had been taught to rely on online repertories to write their code, which made for a massive roadblock in the event of an apocalypse.

But this obviously wasn’t what the hippogriff was asking her about.

“I mean, we all heard it through the grapevine ‘bout you and Vadim. Hell, I know you two keep hanging out.” Aleksei said with a twinkle in her eyes. “Surprised no one really, I’m just curious about how it felt like.”

Micha quirked an eyebrow at her.

“Haven’t you tried it on your own already anyway?”

“Come on Micha! You know it’s not the same, and I don’t have someone as close to me as Vadim is to you to take the plunge, and neither am I as ‘daring’ as Danny.” Aleksei said, making air quotes with her talons.

“Fine.” Micha blushed, embarrassment visible even through her feathers. “It was… overwhelming… just incredible… and even Vadim told me it felt nothing like human sex. It was slow and smooth, nothing rough at all. I… I don’t think I would have pushed him to do it had I not been a little bit tipsy at the time.”

“What, even for those that stayed male it’s not the same? Shit…” She shook her head. “Didn’t expect that. You wore protection I hope?”

Micha didn’t answer and lowered her beak ever so slightly.

“Micha!”

“It’s fine I assure you.” The Polish griffon raised a claw to stop her. “The day after it happened I felt incredibly horny all the time and we did it again in my room -with a condom this time mind-. Next day uh… I kinda… menstruated.” She said the last word barely above whispering level before letting her head fall down on the console in front of her. “Felt like shit the whole day before Vadim dragged me to the infirmary.”

“Damn girl you’re getting busy.” Aleksei breathed out. “And the two of you, are you in a…”

“Relationship? I guess we are…” She muttered. “We just… agreed to forget about it if we ever find a solution to the female issue.”

At that Aleksei gave her a disbelieving look. Like hell they would, she had read enough similar stories (in fiction of course) as is, the hippogriff knew exactly where this was going and telling her friend would only be met with blatant denial. With a resigned sigh, she settled for drilling the bald eagle griffon on more juicy details about her experiences with the Third Officer.

Aleksei liked to consider herself genre-savvy, and in stories like that there always was a threshold not to be crossed. Poor Micha had catapulted herself way beyond that point and there was nothing she could do about it but watch.

On board of the Rhine Forest, a door slammed shut inside the accommodation. It was one of the rating-sized cabins, this one currently occupied by one of the half-dozen cadets the barge carrier had serving in her complement.

All in all these cabins were not too dissimilar to those of Amandine: a simple room with storage compartments for the sailor’s belongings, desk, bed, and a small door that led to a bathroom shared with the adjacent cabin. The biggest difference would have been that the walls were actually painted beige instead of white. That particular cabin hadn’t been decorated overly much by its occupant, since the cadets had only embarked recently on the vessel.

In that case, said occupant was a dark red unicorn mare with a spiky blue mane that was huddled in a blanket on the bed. She had been released from the infirmary recently under the promise that she would take care of herself and rest a lot. Not that she had any problem with it, the blood loss caused by her injury having made her particularly weak.

She also definitely wasn’t hiding from the rest of the cadets.

“You’re hiding from us.” Carla said in Dutch.

Okay, she might be.

The grey hippogriff was standing on all fours next to the door with a concerned look on her beak, ears held low.

“I’ve got issues to deal with!” Sebastien protested, tightening the blanket around herself with her telekinesis.

“Last I checked I had the exact same issues as you have yet I don’t hide in my cabin like a cornered rat.” He accused her.

He wasn’t exactly wrong, their issues were just reversed. While her girlfriend (now boyfriend technically) had switched gender, so did she. She couldn’t even really complain about the lack of hands on her part, what with her newfound ability to interact with objects using her mind. But the gender change… it was just so chocking to one day wake up like that. Could she really be blamed for making use of her injured situation to stay in her cabin all day long? She did leave the room… once a day to go eat from the pantry when fewer sailors were around before she reported to the infirmary to have her wounds inspected and receive her daily ration of painkillers.

“You’ve been avoiding us. I believe I have every right to be worried about you.” Carla stated slowly.

“You needn’t be really.” She huffed, one ear twitching in annoyance. “I’m doing just fine.”

“Like Hell you are.”

“Really, I am. I just need some time to figure it out on my own. That’s what I usually do with issues like that.” She declared before turning away to face the wall.

If sulking inside her cabin qualified as figuring things out that is. She was barely at a stage where she could look at herself straight in a mirror, and each trip to the bathroom was a harrowing experience to her.

Hoofsteps behind her told the mare the hippogriff still wasn’t leaving. She felt a depression in the mattress when Carla clambered on and sat down on his haunches an arm’s length behind her.

“What are you doing?” She hissed, not even turning to face him.

“You know, I somehow doubt that’s the kind of problem you can sort out by thinking for a while and going on a lonely stroll. Just my grain of salt.” He casually told her.

“Oh really?” She said sarcastically, one of her large ears lowering to the side of her head. “Then what exactly do you do?”

“What we do Seb’. It’s not just me but the rest of the crew too; we’ve got group meetings with all those that have swapped genders. You’re the only one that tries to stick it on her lonesome and look where that got you.”

The mare flinched at the ‘her’ Carla used in her sentence. Stupid rule decided by the Captain, convenient or not. She knew about the meetings, Doctor Delacroix had told her about it. She just didn’t feel like she needed it. It would just be… too embarrassing to face the rest of the crew as a little mare.

“If it’s the whole crew that does it then why did they send you?” She half-growled.

“Unless you forgot the part where we’ve been a couple for four years now, then nothing I guess.” Carla said, the hippogriff creeping closer to her.

Sebastien felt Carla’s breath against her neck. Where in the past she would have been taller than her girlfriend, the case was now reversed: with the two of them sitting on their haunches, the hippogriff was easily a head taller than her. Carla puller her in a hug from behind, his bigger frame easily wrapping around hers and his shin resting on the top of her head just above her horn.

“I know things are… different now Seb’.” He told her. “But we’ve been an item for so long, and now that most of what we knew is gone, we really should stick together don’t you think?”

The mare deflated in his hug, conflicting feelings bouncing around her head and pent-up grief, sorrow and frustration starting to threaten to spill over. Carla could feel her start to tremble in his arms. He extended his wings out to wrap around her in a cocoon of sorts.

Admittedly he was pretty confused with his behavior himself. He knew the situation tended to be pretty much the opposite in the past, but now his attachment to the dark red mare he was hugging had turned into something different. He was actually surprised, but not displeased to notice that his love for Sebastien had carried over after the transformation despite the two now being different species. Sure, being attracted to someone of her former sex felt strange, but it was Sebastien he was talking about. The same Seb’ he had known since he was eleven, the same one he had started dating at the age of sixteen. The difference now was that her mind pushed her to act protectively around the smaller mare, but she was convinced the two of them could still make it work.

“You…” Seb’ squeezed her eyes shut. “You mean you don’t mind the change?” Ah, there was the hint of hope in her voice Carla wanted to hear.

“I won’t lie, this is different and both of us will have to make some… concessions to make it work, but there is no one else I’d rather be with than you.” He whispered.

This appeared to be the last straw the mare in his arms needed. She finally turned around and wrapped her forehooves around the hippogriff’s chest before she started weeping. Carla gently rubbed her back as the tears stained his feathers and coveralls, not minding the slightest bit.

Because now he knew he wouldn’t be alone he thought with a small smile on his beak.

One day later, Bart made an interesting discovery. The unicorn had been kept busy most of the day near the kill house and shooting range, both to train sailors in combat and to receive some training himself. His coat reeked of smoke and sweat from the firefighting exercises he had gone through, but it felt satisfying to know he would be able to assist his new shipmates in case of fire.

He had also spent some time trying to figure out how to use guns with his telekinesis. Granted he could move them around easily, but aiming them was another matter entirely. If he just held them above him he wouldn’t be able to know where his shots would land, so he had to improvise. His hooves weren’t able to pull the trigger, but his telekinesis was. In this manner, the Corporal had started ‘cradling’ his rifle in his forehooves so that he would be able to look through whatever optics he fitted to it. Then, he had grabbed the entire gun in his telekinesis to float it around while he held it. It wasn’t exactly easy, but it allowed him to walk on two hooves as long as he held on to the gun.

On the plus side that method made recoil virtually nonexistent. If he didn’t have to carry the gun on his back when he wasn’t aiming it he would have no problem using a machinegun like their MAG’s or the Rhine’s MG3’s. Such a shame that his body strength had decreased that much when he changed into a unicorn.

Bart took off his sweater and coveralls before tossing them in the laundry basket next to his bed. Glancing inside, he idly noted he would have to run a laundry soon. To be honest he had been pretty lazy when it came to refitting a new wardrobe to his frame. He had the possibility of obtaining more clothes (and thus avoiding frequent trips to the laundry room), but he just felt more like hanging out in the armory rather than requesting sewing supplies from Farkas.

When he undressed, the unicorn stole a glance at the scar on his neck. Despite Vadim’s efforts at making the wound look good, he could still see a ripple of pinkish scar tissue peek out of his sky blue coat of fur. The stitches and bandages had now been removed, and it didn’t ache anymore, but the mark on his body would remain as a parting gift given by the wood hounds of Zeebrugge.

Sounds of rushing water in the bathroom adjacent to his cabin told him Nguyen was taking a shower. He had quickly discovered that the cat cook that was his ‘bathroommate’ tended to forget locking the door on his side, much to both their horror when Bart accidentally walked in while the Vietnamese was taking his shower. Several swear words in Vietnamese, Dutch and some confused apologies in broken English later, Bart stuck a Post-it note saying ‘trust your ears, not the door’ in Dutch on the bathroom door.

It still amazed him how quickly he had gotten accustomed to life on a ship with so many foreigners from all around the globe. And he was the one who kept badmouthing the navy every chance he got before the Event!

Technically they were merchants, not navy, so he was still free to do it.

His horn lit up and a drawer opened in the cabin’s desk, a bottle of water flying out of it and towards his awaiting mouth. Much as he disliked the loss of his hands, he had to admit there were some practical advantages to this whole telekinesis gig. He was still having difficulties moving more than two objects at once, but he certainly wasn’t lacking in precision.

In fact it even helped him be better at his job as the ship’s ‘gunsmith’. He was able to reach places he knew he never could have even with specialized tool, and removing grime from a rifle’s chamber was now done effortlessly with a mere glimmer of his horn. Anything that was related to guns, he could easily achieve with the magic of telekinesis and some ingenuity.

Well, not really anything. He couldn’t conjure the parts they needed to modify the FNC’s out of thin air for one. That would have to wait until they found a stash of Ak-5 in Sweden.

Bart’s musings were stopped by a soft glow on the edge of his vision. The curtains were drawn and the lights off, but he could spy a small glow emanating from one of the drawers under his bed. Odd, he didn’t remember putting his flashlight in that one. It was the one with the sword… Then again he could be mistaken.

He pulled the drawer open, intent on turning off the light before it burned through its batteries, only to find that it was the drawer with the sword. The same sword he had gotten from his unit’s regimental museum, the one that had belonged to the Administrator-General of the Congo Free State.

And the pink diamond in its pommel was glowing. Not like a car’s headlights or anything that intense, in fact he was pretty sure the glow wouldn’t be noticeable in broad daylight, but in the dim light of his cabin he could see the gem imbedded in the pommel release a faint pinkish light. He pulled it out of its scabbard, and it turned out that the heavily engraved blade was glowing as well.

Actually, now that he lifted it in his telekinesis, Bart noticed how hard it was to make the telekinetic wrap around it. Nothing impossible, but by comparison it was much harder to lift than a machinegun from the armory. He could even feel a slight feeling of dread deep in his gut when he looked at the gem.

“Hoe raar…” He muttered under his breath.

Gently depositing the sword on his bed, the unicorn grabbed the dirty set of coveralls in his laundry basket. There was no way in Hell he was sleeping with that in his cabin; this was going straight to the armory until he could get someone to take a look at it.

The next day marked the 21^st of June, and on that day the Captains were finally satisfied with the training of both crews after countless hours on the range and in the kill house. They were deemed fit enough with their guns not to accidentally shoot their teammates in the back and with recent enough training in firefighting and emergencies that they wouldn’t watch the ships burn down helplessly. A fire drill would have to be scheduled on board at some point, but the fully fledged exercise could wait a week or two.

The first expeditions to be sent out were the usual art retrieval and other HPI related missions in the city center proper. They sent a couple trucks to small scale museums to empty them and bring back the art pieces, but Captain Gerig herself ordered them not to go for big targets like the crown jewels or the SMK just yet. She wanted to send a bigger convoy that would be able to do it in one go.

Beside those expeditions, another that finally left the terminal was the one headed to Sweden. Micha managed to get herself on the roster for that one by using her having already been to Sweden as a justification, though she couldn’t convince Dilip to let her bring Vadim along. Her mate was otherwise busy keeping watch and studying medicine under Doctor Delacroix, the French hippogriff apparently having a very clear path for him to follow.

A pity truly, but she had an expedition to get on with. Half an hour after breakfast, Micha was seen driving a Land Rover off the ramp of Amandine. She quickly stopped by Rhine Forest to pick up a crewmember to complete her team, and then they were off towards the town of Malmo. The city was built on the opposite side of the Oresund, a mere fifty kilometers away from where they had moored their vessels by road.

The sole thing that made the trip doable by road and allowed them not to use one of the Rhine’s tugs was the highway that crossed the strait. It first dove under the waters in a (thankfully still ventilated, they had checked) tunnel near Copenhagen’s airport before emerging on a small sandy island covered in lichen halfway through the strait and crossing the rest of the way via a bridge.

A clever solution made by local governments: it created a path for trains and cars while still allowing ships to traverse the Oresund and reach the Baltic Sea. Considering the standards of construction in Northern Europe, Micha wouldn’t be surprised if it survived another half a decade of decay and lack of maintenance before collapsing.

“So what are we looking for exactly?” Danny asked her from the passenger seat.

“Intel.” Micha simply said. “We need to find a Swedish military base.”

“Then why are we going to a city and not the countryside? Last I checked they rarely built bases downtown.” A yellow male hippogriff piped in from the back.

Or Frederik as he was called. A young eighteen-year-old engine cadet that came from the Rhine Forest. A cadet really was the only thing Captain Gerig had been willing to spare for her expedition, not that she minded. As long as her minimal team size of three was fulfilled, she had no reason to complain.

For whatever reason, Gerig had decided that the half-dozen cadets on his crew would be issued sub-machineguns instead of the carbines and rifles the rest of the barge carrier’s crew used, which is how the young German found himself with a silenced MP5 in his talons.

“We don’t want to comb an entire province worth of countryside just to find a base.” Micha explained. “Malmo’s one of the biggest cities in Sweden, it’s bound to have a recruitment center or a reservists’ office we can find. Then we can get the address to the… regional HQ or whatever it is they call it.”

“And how exactly do we find it?” Danny said with a hint of doubt in the golden parakeet’s voice.

“Either we get lucky and just happen to find a storefront with soldiers on it… or we attempt to be a little more clever than that and check out the yellow pages at the town hall. I’d rather go for the latter personally. Frederik, can you grab the backpack I left in the back seat?”

The hippogriff sitting in the back lifted a small canvas backpack in which Micha had put extra supplies on his lap. Following another instruction from the griffon behind the wheel, he opened it to reveal a trio of small blue books along with Micha’s supplies and extra ammo.

“English to Swedish dictionary, that way we can translate and know what to look for exactly. I looted them yesterday from a book shop.” Micha told the other two. “I’ve already been to Sweden once, not in Malmo I’ll admit, but it’s the same brand of book I used on my trip. Works well enough if you know what word you’re looking for.”

“Wait, you’ve already been to Sweden?” Danny burst out.

“Further north, biking trip with my… wife.” With what had happened between her and Vadim recently the word left a bizarre taste in her beak. “Biked all the way around Lake Vattern three years ago. Can’t say I can speak Swedish but I know a few words and some tips on how to get around.”

At the mention of a wife Danny gained an understanding gleam in her eyes. The yellow feathers parrot gave the griffon a complicit nod that went unseen by Frederik. She knew how it felt, her situation with Carlos being pretty much identical as Micha’s with Vadim, though much less intimate. It felt good, natural… as long as they didn’t think about before the Event. She used to have a wife and family herself before, all the way back in Manila.

How hard it had become to associate herself with such a distant life.

Soon, their Defender reached the end of the bridge to Sweden. They could see a vast expanse of dry, yellowish grasslands ahead of them, interspersed with shrubs and short bushes at regular intervals. Here and there, small dunes held in place by hardy grass broke up the monotony of the landscape. They bordered the roads and blocked off most of the view they had of Malmo.

Exiting the highway, they reached the city within minutes of driving. It wasn’t nearly as big and sprawling as Copenhagen, but much like the city on the other side of the strait its city planners had planted a lot of vegetation all over the place. The greenery only faded away once they were in downtown Malmo proper to trade place with an architectural style not unlike Copenhagen’s, albeit with much less modern buildings or frills.

Just as planned, they found the town hall on a plaza decorated with circular patterns and multiple fountains that had dried up weeks ago. A green statue of Charles X Gustav covered in patina was staring straight at the building through its inanimate, soulless eyes from its position atop a horse in the middle of the plaza. The town hall itself was built on a base of pale grey stones. Red brick walls rose up from the base, contrasting with the black stones of the quasi-gothic arches that enshrined the windows of its façade. The motto of the city was engraved in golden filigree just below the top of the building, where marble statues inside small alcoves lined the copper-sheet covered roof.

Micha only spared a few seconds to take in the architecture before she parked her Land Rover in front of the main door.

They were forced to break it open in order to get in, but it was a possibility they had foreseen before leaving Copenhagen. A liberal application of a crowbar and much swearing later, the now slightly splintered door swung open.

The inside of the building fit its outside appearance, though the lower levels they visited bore the marks of modernization in the shape of computers and modern appliances. They were careful to approach the situation as if monsters could get the drop on them any moment… but it was not to be. Not a single demonic circle was found that day.

Between the three of them, they managed to extract a host of useful data from the city hall, including the location of a Swedish army base some eighty kilometers or so further inland in a place called Revingehed. They spent the better part of two hours sorting the files and notes before loading them in their Land Rover. Most of what they loaded was in Swedish and they only really had a vague idea of what it was about by a few keywords and the title, but that was for Roberto and the Rhine’s secretary to sort out. And maybe their Logistics Officer as well if he was unlucky enough to get roped into the translation effort.

“So that’s all?” Frederik asked in disbelief as he carried one last stack of repertories and leaflets out of the building.

“What do you mean that’s all? We got an entire truck of intel!” Danny cried out just behind him. “The hell were you expecting, cadet?” She asked him.

“Dunno really.” The hippogriff shrugged with his wings after dropping his load in the back of the Land Rover. “I just expected it to be a bit harder than that is all.”

“Bases are not some kind of closely guarded military secret you know.” Danny pointed out. “Not bases like that anyway, from what I understand it’s a regional command centre.” She added with a click of her beak.

“But you’re not saying all bases are as easy to locate as that.”

“Of course not!” The golden parakeet laughed. “But I don’t think we’d have any use for the contents of a super secret nuclear silo or whatever.”

“True, true.” Fred nodded. “Still, I kinda expected it’d have taken us a little bit longer than that…” He trailed off.

“Bear with me. I’m a certified welder, the moment we get back I’ll have to go back to working on the modifications. You’re just gonna get stuck watching a checkpoint for the rest of the afternoon.” Danny told him. “Been doing so much of that lately, can’t get the smell outta my nostrils.”

“Nobody said we had to hurry you know.” Micha interrupted the two of them from the city hall’s entrance. “I’ll let the two of you in on a little secret about this expedition…” The griffon said quietly as she crept closer to them. “I, for one, willingly overestimated the time it would take by three hours or so in order to get some time away from the port. Now I don’t suppose you have a… shop or whatever you felt like robbing during the apocalypse?”

Neither Danny nor Fred said anything. They just nodded complicitly before piling back in the Land Rover.

All three of them had a bucket list of sorts regarding what kind of stuff they’d happily loot, and they spent a little while mingling around town in their truck. They couldn’t exactly take much since the 4x4 was already filled to the brim with raw intel, but there were a couple things they could spare room for. Danny for one had them load a box of assorted dried and canned fruits (according to the parrot, they tasted heavenly to her transformed taste buds, enough not to make her regret meat) while Fred settled for breaking into a book shop and taking a couple books from what looked like a fantasy themed shelf to Micha and Danny. Not that the two higher ranked sailors would have known what 5^th Edition was, but apparently it was popular among the Rhine’s small circle of cadets and the book shop was stocked with the English version.

As for Micha, she decided robbing a CD store was worth her time. They found a small shop near a park not too far from the town hall, and so Amandine’s Second Officer found herself browsing through rows upon rows of CD’s, vinyl’s and music memorabilia. She was a pretty big fan of heavy metal and hard rock, and there were a few best-of collections in there that found a place in her backpack, including some she knew she already had back home in Gdansk.

Considering how unlikely it was she would ever see her home in the near future, looking for replacements wasn’t a bad idea altogether.

Before they left, the female griffon quietly padded over to the Classical aisle. Not that she liked it overly much… but Vadim looked like he did if the CD’s in his cabin were anything to go by. She snuck a couple such collections in the backpack she had adapted to fit her new form while Danny and Fred were busy looking at guitars. The bag itself wasn’t too different from a human one, but she had been forced to add several transverse straps to keep it in place due to her quadruped stance.

Motioning to her companions that it was time to go, Micha finally moved out towards the exit of the small shop, her backpack now a little bit heavier. She stopped on the threshold just to take in the sight of the park on the other side of the street. A little one-meter high fence separated it from the city, grey stone trading place with lush vegetation. Gravel pathways snaked their way between trees that had been planted just far enough from each other to create shade without cluttering the scenery. The lawns were overgrown and the hedges and bushes around the park’s ponds were now spreading out of their intended spots… but it still was a pleasant sight to behold.

And then a feather glided down to the ground not even a meter in front of her beak. She stopped. Fred and Danny stopped just behind her.

Slowly, Micha craned her neck upward. High above her, on the edge of the roof, a pair of yellow raptor eyes stared back at her in curiosity.

There was a griffon looking down at them on the roof.

She was obviously a female: ruby red feathers surrounded her eyes, not unlike the green ones around Micha’s. In fact the other griffon was half bald eagle like the Pole, her other half being that of a cougar. The only reason she was able to tell she was half cougar being that: one, Vadim was half cougar; two, she was only wearing a tattered t-shirt on her frame.

Micha was also pretty sure the griffon was a kid… or chick probably in that case (or cub maybe?). A particularly young kid if she compared her size to that of the only young griffon she knew of, Izaak, Rhine Forest’s second bosun.

The feather she had spotted falling down didn’t come from the chick. No, it came from the pigeon the kid was in the process of munching down like it was the most normal thing in the world.

The chick finished her… meal and then proceeded to stare straight at Micha for a couple seconds.

“Hey…” The Pole tentatively said, waving at the kid with one of her claws.

That got a reaction out of the kid, because the instant Micha raised her limb, the smaller griffon stood up and screeched at her before leaping off the building, much to the surprise of all three sailors below her.

The chick was obviously more skilled at gliding than most sailors in the fleet because she managed to cross the street by frenetically flapping her small wings and landed in a tree. She turned back towards them and let out another screech before jumping towards the next tree deeper in the park.

It took a whole five seconds for their collective minds to start working again. Micha shook off the surprise with a soft growl before running off after the kid in a full sprint.

“Get the truck and try to get around the park!” She barked at the two sailors behind her before she leaped over the park’s short fence.

The Polish griffon didn’t look back to check if they had heard her order correctly, instead being entirely focused on chasing the fleeing kid whose tail she could see disappearing through the brush some hundred meters ahead of her. She had lost the advantage of altitude and was now rushing through the overgrown hedges.

Good, that meant she was as much of a glider as Micha was, she wouldn’t have her fly off in the sunset then. She was pretty sure that under normal circumstances she wouldn’t have had any problem catching up with a running kid, but unlike Vadim she had yet to train her running skills on a treadmill. Not helping was the fact that she was currently burdened by the not insignificant amount of gear she was carrying.

Micha was no soldier, and having to sprint with a heavy flak jacket weighing her down along with a fully loaded backpack, expedition gear and her hunting rifle whose stock bounced painfully against her hindquarters gave her more than enough of a handicap.

Apocalypse or not, you can’t just abandon a kid in a city, and that one being only clad in a tattered t-shirt didn’t leave her thinking she had an adult with her.