Chapter 41 - Chapter 35: The Gull in the Mountain

🐦Chapter 35: The Gull in the Mountain

🌍 November 23rd, 98 BCE – Early Winter 🍂

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In the Batcave, Junjie sketched the outline of a hull across his slate. "A river trader," he murmured. "Wood to their eyes, alloy beneath. Something that can dock without question. Traveling to town on foot or wagon is too slow—we need something faster, something they'll accept as ordinary."

He marked a square on the deck plan with the edge of his charcoal. "Here—a cabin. The crew won't live in the open like cattle."

Nano's voice filled the chamber, calm and sure: "And beneath it all, a Ghost Mind. To them it will seem a spirit lending its hand."

Junjie tapped the slate once, sealing the thought. "Then they'll believe the disguise. We begin with a cargo ship."

Traveling to town on foot or wagon and navigating the steep mountain trails with cargo was slow, exhausting, and inefficient. They had the tech. So why not use it?

A small flying vessel, disguised as a modest river trader, could move supplies, ferry villagers, even trade with outsiders, all without drawing the wrong kind of attention. Better still, it could serve as a trial run—proof of concept for something larger, more ambitious.

They started with the shape of a classic river cog: low draft, single mast, stout and steady. Sixty feet long, eighteen feet across at the beam, with a hold capacity of about eighty tons. Designed for tight inlets and shallow waters, it could pass at a glance for any number of coastal vessels that hugged the eastern river routes.

But beneath that humble skin lurked a technological masterpiece.

🛠️ Design and Disguise

They started work on November 23rd. The villagers labored first on the frame. Wooden mockups of the ribs were carved, bent, and set into sand molds. Teams worked in parallel—some cutting patterns, others packing sand, others tending the forges. Within a week, the first molten alloy hissed and spat as it poured, drinking into the molds. When the sand was broken away, gleaming curved beams emerged—metal bones shaped to look like timber. The men cheered as they hefted them into place, rivets ringing beneath their hammers.

Tamra and Jinhai worked side by side, hauling the rough-cast ribs onto the infeed belt of the Fabricator, their muscles straining as the heavy beams slid into the dark Box. When they emerged from the outfeed, the beams were smoothed, edges perfect, surfaces already patterned with the faint grain of wood. Jinhai whistled low. "We cast them straight, but not that straight." Tamra only grinned and wiped sweat from his brow. "The gods shave the rest."

By December 7th, the hull planks followed. Forged flat, then pressed under patterned rollers to carry the grain of wood, the plates were heavy but manageable in groups. The villagers wrestled them into place against the ribs, fastening them with rows of brass-colored rivets. To their eyes it looked like the shipyards they imagined from Junjie's stories of the southern ports: hammering seams shut, rivets clenched, sweat running in the forge fire's glow.

Two weeks later, on December 21st, the deck came next. Instead of rivets, Junjie had them bolt the plates from below, a trick he insisted was "how ships were always done" to keep the rain from seeping through. The villagers nodded, satisfied at the cleverness, never questioning why the seams seemed tighter than any carpenter's caulk could manage. The small deckhouse and railings rose under their hands as well, giving the vessel a shape they could recognize and claim as their own.

Only at night did the illusion sharpen. When the fires died down and the villagers stumbled home to their beds, Nano's unseen swarm traced every seam and rivet, fusing the metal into watertight perfection. Leaks vanished. Gaps closed. By dawn, their crude work gleamed with an otherworldly exactness no mortal hammer could have made. And the villagers, seeing it in daylight, only marveled at how well their labor held.

The hull, frame, and decking were crafted from nano-forged alloys—engineered at the molecular level to resemble aged hardwood. You could knock on it and feel the soft give of timber, even see the fine woodgrain and tool marks carved into it, but it was stronger than steel, fireproof, and nearly impervious to weather.

The sails? Reinforced textile composites, woven with memory-fiber filaments. They could catch real wind when needed, or shift their tension dynamically to mimic the behavior of windblown cloth, even if the ship wasn't actually using wind at all. The black spritsail was the centerpiece: sleek, oddly elegant, and just unusual enough to stand out—without standing too far out. In any quiet mountain dock or foggy river town, it would pass as a merchant's quirky custom job.

⚙️ Power and Propulsion

Hidden inside the keel was the heart of the ship: a compact Nano-Fuel Reactor, drawing clean power from molecular conversion. Nearly silent and efficient enough to run for months without refueling, it fed into a dedicated battery–capacitor bank that smoothed demand and stored reserve power. From there, energy flowed to the high-torque fans—two mounted at the stern for forward and reverse propulsion, and four lateral vectoring fans for sharp turns and side-drift. These were regulated by gyroscopic stabilizers and atmospheric sensors, allowing it to handle high winds, altitude shifts, and difficult terrain. Together, they enabled smooth takeoffs, soft landings, and quiet glides over ravines and hidden valleys.

And beneath the deck, embedded between the cargo braces and ballast compartments, were anti-gravity plates. When activated, they made the ship lighter than air and so that it could effortlessly lift, even when fully loaded.

Of course it had a Ghost Mind to help control the ship.

🧭 Crew and Operation

The ship was built to be small but self-sufficient. It could be run by a crew of just six marines—four hands for operation and navigation, and two marine-style escorts trained for both defense and manual labor. Below deck, a compact captain's cabin sat just aft of the helm, with the rest of the crew in basic hammocks amidships.

Loading and unloading was handled via a simple retractable crane arm, a few magnetic hoists, and extendable gangplanks—all housed beneath cleverly hinged deck panels. The ship could dock like any normal riverboat, and load by hand if needed—an essential feature for maintaining the illusion.

It would fly from the valley to the river, slipping into the water near town just before daybreak, then sail to the town's dock as if it had been there all night. At dusk, it would depart under sail, and somewhere upriver, quietly rise out of the water and fly back to the valley. The all-black design made it easy to disappear into the night.

⚓ Naming the Ship

Junjie christened it The Gull in the Mountain. An odd name, perhaps—but fitting. A seabird, far from the sea. Light, swift, and never quite where you expected it to be.

Like Junjie himself, it was more than it appeared.