Maelstrom - of Hunters and Hunted / Maelstrom (ePub)

The world has become a hard and dangerous to live in place since the catastrophic event now known as The Great Dry. Centuries have past since that disastrous time and the climate has changed to a hot and scorching heat. Scouring storms roam the planet, treacherous sands suck down all they can in dangerous currents and huge twirling maelstroms. Water and food is hard to come by.

Of the billions of people only a handful have survived the world-altering cataclysm, but those who did have adapted. The struggle for life continues and people make a living any which way they can. Hunting for water, hunting for food...

Northeast of Galdrex lie Chimaera Fields. There are a few of these fields spread throughout the world, but these are the largest, and also, luckily, the closest for the crew of the Pequode.

A whaler, a man with many such voyages under his belt, takes his ship and crew out to these Chimaera Fields, hoping to catch one of the chimaeras.
It's a dangerous job to hunt for animals as large or even larger then the ship they hunt them with. But the crew has an unspoken determination among them, being confident in their ability to catch one. They have done so before, and lived to tell.
But chimaeras can be fierce animals when threatened. In the end, one can never be sure, and a lot can happen.

So who will be the hunter and who the hunted?

(novelette - 11.400+ words)