Free Through Glass Darkly Episode 1 by Peter Knyte

he’d begun to thrive upon the challenge, and while all the captains were also researchers and explorers as well as military leaders, Hughes had somehow managed the twin feat of pushing his ship to its very limits while at the same time nurturing and developing his crew to become one of the most highly performing units in the fleet.
    He’d made no secret of the fact that the current fleet, in his view, was only enough to quell the increasing encroachments of the miasmic invaders for a few years, and that something else would be needed within that time before our enemy would once again start to overwhelm us, but he’d steadfastly kept his views on what that might be to himself.
    Whether it had been his plan all along he never said, but as the majority of the world’s leaders slipped back into the complacency of just building ever more ships, Hughes somehow obtained the support to once again follow his own plan, and now as the mammoth craft that we would come to know as the Golden Goose travelled down the coast past Malibu, across the calm water of the bay toward the second Howard Hughes world broadcast.
    This time though instead of a thousand identical cine recordings of his address, he stood before the world in person, upon a low stage on Cabrillo Beach with the giant aircraft hanging in the air behind him.
    Around him on all sides were members of the worlds press corp, hundreds in number, some with simple notepads or voice recorders, others with enormous television cameras that were connected via long cables to radio vans that would relay the signal live around the world for the first time in history.
    ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the world.’ He began simply.
    ‘Thank you once again for your attention.
    ‘As many of you will hopefully recall, three years ago to this day I revealed a fleet of fifty airships to the world that I had created. Ships I had manufactured to address a growing threat, the first wave of an invasion by creatures coming to our world from what we have since come to call the Miasmic Expanse.
    ‘But even at that time, as powerful as those vessels were, I knew and I warned the world that they could not repel those invaders permanently, they could only hold the line against our enemy for a while.
    ‘A great deal of work, and a great many sacrifices have been made by a great many people since that time, and in some ways we have been even more successful than I could’ve hoped. The world has recognised the threat and built hundreds of additional ships to defend against our enemy, and with those ships we have combated the enemy more effectively than I could possibly have hoped. But our success has lead to complacency.
    ‘Well intentioned complacency in some cases I am sure, but complacency all the same.
    ‘This in turn has resulted in our advantage so hard won over our enemy beginning to reduce, and I fear before long it will result in that advantage being lost, and ultimately our enemy once more gaining the upper hand.
    ‘I cannot and will not allow that to happen while I have the strength and will to intervene, and to that end I have instructed the Hughes Avionics division to design and construct a new type of ship, the ship which you now see behind me. A vessel that will take the fight back to our enemy, that will go into the Expanse and hunt these creatures down where they live, where they sleep and where they think themselves safe.
    ‘But let me be clear,’ Hughes continued after the briefest of pauses. ‘I do not intend to sail this ship into the Expanse for but a short while. This vessel has been designed to travel deep into the Expanse, if necessary spending months there in order to track down our prey and learn as much as we can about their weaknesses.
    ‘This will be a hazardous and gruelling mission, involving risks and dangers we cannot anticipate or prepare for, and while the ship is insulated against the sickening effects of the Expanse to a degree, every soul aboard will