Inktober 2026 31, Flex

Captain’s log. We are home. All of us, hero, survivors, SOSi, even the two robots, down the ramp and onto solid ground, and I don’t mind admitting my knees gave way.

The dapper man walked us to the edge of the landing field, tipped a gloved hand, and went back aboard without a word. We stood there breathing real air. That should have been the end of it.

Inktober 2026 30, Cookie

I only touched it to steady myself. A bulkhead console in the corridor outside the machine hall, bolted down like everything else on this ship: a squat screen in a scarred metal frame, a slab of keys beside it, a pair of sliders, a row of tiny lamps. Behind it, a glass valve glowed amber in its socket and a fat cylinder hung from the ceiling cable like a sleeping animal.

Inktober 2026 29, Tusk

The dapper man collected things. I should have guessed. Somewhere aft of the passenger deck, past a door that had not been there the day before, he had a long, quiet room lined with trophies, and he invited me in as though I were a guest rather than a captain without a ship.

Most of it I couldn’t name. But the piece he stopped at, he lifted from its stand himself: a tusk, ancient, yellowed to the colour of old piano keys, curving up to a split and weathered tip. It stood in a banded collar of pale metal, ribbed like a barrel hoop. Down its length, cut with a needle’s patience, ran a whale. Heavy-lidded eye, deep furrows along the head, the tail curling away round the curve of the ivory, every line as fine as a hair.