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CHAPTER 1 BACK TO NEXUS The Wounded Captain bled three times and only rang the bell when the last proved too torrential to handle alone. He sat alone, hands braced upon soaked bandages as he kept his eyes focused on the middle distance and breath a thin, steady line, waiting for the clatter of boots which would herald help. Always took just a few minutes, but the pain stretched it out to something more cruel. There. Precise steps and two sharp knocks that were hardly given a moment before the whine of the hatch unlocked and opened. The Tomb Colonist then. Not the stomping and called out questions of the Old Woman, not the step-and-drag, the quiet hesitation of the First Mate. The Tomb Colonist ducked into the room and gave the hatch barely a moment to shut it behind him before he cut across the room, hands already reaching for the kit upon the side table. A glance to the bloody pit, a grimace as he took his seat beside the bed. The Wounded Captain was the first to speak. Only one who could find their words when confronted with the ugly wound was the Old Woman, and she would always fish for some distracting joke. All the quiet avoidance made him feel small, as much as he fought to ignore it. “How’s it going up there?” Lying and bleeding for so long made it hard to muster up his natural cheer. His hands were cold. The Tomb Colonist grabbed for a dwindling jar of poultice- would have to start pulping up what solacefruit they could spare to make more soon- and scooted the chair closer to get a better look. “Quiet.” He pressed a hand against one of the Wounded Captain’s own, nudging it aside so he could get a clear look at the mess without bandage hiding it away. A click of his tongue. “You should’ve called sooner.” The Wounded Captain ignored that. Had been going on long enough that he should be able to handle it himself, as long as it didn’t reopen too many times in too quick of a succession. “How many people visited today?” (The open secret of the Fortas Kettle . People came to forget their regrets, the First Mate harvested them, and the Wounded Captain bled anew. He understood it, the Tomb Colonist understood it, and the Old Woman had learned it quick enough when she went against the First Mate’s own quiet refusal to think too hard about anything. They must not have understood it. Must be some strange trick of Aigul, the humming fluke-rocks and the spines pierced through the guts of the vessel, because the Wounded Captain refused to think of what it meant if they did understand.) “Two.” The Tomb Colonist set aside the jar in favor of a makeshift rag- cut from one of his coats, stained by a lifetime at zee- and pushed aside the Wounded Captain’s other hand. Removed the bandage and pressed down the rag to sop up as much blood as he could so it wouldn’t wash away the poultice when applied. “A devil from the Iron Republic and another Nookling.” A devil. It was tempting to ask after that, their sort a rare sight in the unter-unterzee, and the Wounded Captain wanted terribly to take the distraction that the Tomb Colonist was offering up, but he couldn’t. That accounted for only two needles. “I bled thrice.” “The First Mate was already in the engine room,” His own bandages made reading the Tomb Colonist’s expression a great struggle, but the distaste in his voice was clear as it ever was. “And, well-” A shrug, “-You know how they are. Plenty of regrets stockpiled away there already.” The Wounded Captain gripped his thigh, where his hands had been pushed aside to, with enough force to hurt. “Don’t talk about them like that.” The Tomb Colonist paused in his ministrations and glanced up to meet the other man’s hard stare. A moment. In his eyes, a flicker of that old spirit, the one that’d had him spitting and stomping all around when the Fortas Kettle had first been run aground. The first and the last to try to speak with the First Mate about the needles in any depth beyond the simple task of harvesting them, the last of the original crew to stick around throughout it all- his shoulders rose up, the Wounded Captain clenched his hands harder in anticipation of another argument, and then he sighed. The light died back down. “Right.” He lifted up the rag just enough to get a look at the wound underneath, then pressed it back down. Blood crept up to his fingers. “You’re the one bleeding here, not me, I suppose.” “Right.” And that was the breadth of his captaining upon the Fortas Kettle anymore, defending the First Mate from slights that the Tomb Colonist didn’t have the spirit to say straight to their face anymore. The Old Woman hadn’t approached them with anything less than a gruff sort of tact since the Wounded Captain had explained to her their circumstances. A lance of pain throughout his leg, from the thigh to the toes, and he hunkered down to shiver through it. His voice came out strained. “I am.” (The Wounded Captain always responded to the Tomb Colonist’s s__t in the same way. Told him to shut up and did his best to shut it down while skirting around it as much as possible. He’d gotten into plenty of arguments with the Tomb Colonist during those early days, when he was far worse off and none of them had the understanding they did now. Could smile and laugh his way through only so many bedridden days hearing the echoes of frustration and accusation from the upper levels- You got us into this shit and now you aren’t even doing anything about it!- before he wanted to bite at the hand trying to fix him up. A shame, that. He’d liked the Tomb Colonist when they’d first picked him up, just a few days spent in Venderbight to restock and shake the shivers crawling along the dark belly of the neath brought. Of course the First Mate was at some degree of fault. The Wounded Captain knew that better than the Tomb Colonist ever would, but getting mad over it wouldn’t change a single thing. Only thing they should, could be doing was learning to live with the change. Any emotion of the more blue variety would just serve to delight Aigul .) The rag was swapped out with another which dabbed away the remains of pooled blood upon intact skin, then set aside to make way for the poultice. The whistle of a lid unscrewed, the cool nothing of jellied solacefruit spread upon raw meat. The Wounded Captain watched as the clear gel mixed with blood which slowly seeped out still, the little rivers of numbness which slipped down to sheets already ruined as the Tomb Colonist got to preparing a fresh bandage. Thick gauze pads from a small selection of medical supplies they’d sold off a crate of fuel for, shirt-strip bandages wound around to keep it in place, the cold leather of the Tomb Colonist’s left glove when he helped the Wounded Captain keep his leg steady in the air for the wrapping. He did so with a detached, practiced skill. Had told the First Mate that he’d worked as a ship doctor before death started reaching after him when they’d been debating in favor of hiring him with the captain. The Wounded Captain wished they hadn’t hired him on. Then he wouldn’t be trapped down in the Fortas Kettle with the rest of their sad lot, bound by some sense of obligation that kept him as the rest of the crew slowly dispersed, begging off transport from the zubmarines that stopped at their port. He resented them, the Wounded Captain and the First Mate both, it was clear he did, but he still stayed. (That was a stupid path to walk. One should’ve, would’ve, could’ve opened the door to every single other one. Why stop there? The Wounded Captain wished he’d wrestled the vessel’s wheel from the First Mate, wished he’d plotted a separate course, wished he’d told the Admiralty they had to find a new captain rather than head out once more after the last time he’d delivered a report to London, wished he’d never stepped foot on the damn thing in the first place. He’d been relatively happy throughout his life, but it was hard not to look back and rankle over it all when it landed him in the pitch dark of nowhere, dancing on the edge of bleeding out every single day. He knew he was in a vile mood, that he should be pressing for cheer in the face of their circumstances. There was a feeling in the air, the crash of the waterfall in the distance. They’d all run the courses through denial at the start- the Engineer desperate to diagnose a clearcut problem and figure out an impossible solution as the spine pierced through the engine constantly shifted and grew, the race to send out emergency signals which would ultimately go ignored once the Admiralty found a purpose in their newfound, permanent position- and then anger- the Tomb Colonist the loudest out of the whole crew, the one barking up every single tree that he could- bargaining- supplies traded away for the chance to get away by crew without the Wounded Captain able to do a single thing, hidden away and bleeding in the belly of the Fortas Kettle, that the First Mate did not care to do a thing about- and now the somber atmosphere of it all. It felt cliche in a way that the Wounded Captain would laugh over if it was written in a bad book and not his life. He just hoped that it would follow through to the last stage, the crew’s collective mourning of lives which were as good as lost if they stayed within the embrace of Aigul. Acceptance in the face of it was what he’d said was for the best when they received word from the Admiralty that Aigul was their new station and the silver powder of the spines their new export. He was just a bit of a hypocrite, as hard as he tried to believe in it otherwise. Would be nice to actually settle down in the day to day blue at last.) The Tomb Colonist did not stand up from the chair when he’d gotten the wound nice and wrapped up. He leaned back in it and stared down at the captain, heaving out another sigh before he crossed his arms. Less of an assertive gesture and more of a self-comforting one, shoulders tight as he practically hugged himself. “I’m sorry, captain. Not for what I said, but for the way I said it. That wasn’t right.” The Wounded Captain was not the only one who felt just a bit unsettled by the addition of the Old Woman, it seemed. The First Mate had welcomed her on- swayed by a sad, strange tale of watching fellows drop away throughout her career as a postman, a fear of failing to deliver one too many letters driving her to quit in favor of simple zailor work. She still wore the uniform- postman no longer, she’d still been proud of the work she’d done and it was an innocuous enough eccentricity that most captains overlooked it. She was looking for a place to settle down after many a year of voyaging and the Fortas Kettle was hurting for more crew. They’d let her on, gave her a set of keys and everything, but did not bother to actually tell her anything. Left it up to the Wounded Captain and the Tomb Colonist as they sequestered themself away in the engine room, blunt questions that neither knew how to navigate around with any degree of tact. (She’d laughed just like she’d heard some particularly interesting tidbit of gossip, the Tomb Colonist told the Wounded Captain, when he’d told her the man and the First Mate were set to get married when they returned to London. Nothing malicious there, more surprise over the romance novel nature of it, but she didn’t understand , she hadn’t seen any of them anywhere but Aigul. It felt wrong to think that she hadn’t been there when the First Mate had almost killed all of them because of the fluke-rocks’ song.) “You better not be talking to them like that. They don’t deserve that.” The Wounded Captain brushed a hand lightly over the new bandage as the Tomb Colonist looked away at those words. The skin surrounding it was fever-hot, though he hadn’t a single infection since they had started with the solacefruit poultice. The body struggled with a wound that would not close, no matter how much it sought to mend it. “They’re hurting too, you know, and getting upset on my behalf doesn’t do a single thing for anyone here.” “I know.” The Tomb Colonist bowed his head, just a little, and closed his eyes. “I know it doesn’t, but it's impossible to just talk to them anymore. Not the way we used to be able to. Feels downright cruel to try.” The First Mate had been the crew’s confidante, the sympathetic shoulder to cry on when one feared judgement from anyone else. They might not’ve been the best at coming up with solutions, but they were good at listening. The Wounded Captain remembered them sitting with the Tomb Colonist late into the night when he’d first boarded, listening to talks on medicine and death and all sorts of other topics with their patient, attentive air. Nothing was just something to them, and the Wounded Captain had to close his own eyes against the sudden wave of grief over the thought of them losing that to Aigul. D___n fluke-rocks. Would tear the entire outcropping apart with his bare hands if he could for hurting them, hurting his crew. Couldn’t muster up anything but a soft, “I know,” in response. The Tomb Colonist forced himself back up to a proper sit. Reached out, patted one of the Wounded Captain’s hands with his own, and stood to check on the incense burner. The Wounded Captain hadn’t been the confidante of the Fortas Kettle for a reason- wasn’t good at saying the right thing around soft, delicate times like that- but he hadn’t hurt the situation any worse than it already was. “We’re going to need more myrrh soon.” There were other incenses, but that was the one the Wounded Captain liked best. The Tomb Colonist and the First Mate both were still looking out for those little things- did they understand just how great a kindness such consideration was, when his entire world had narrowed down to a single room and the single smell of blood? His smile felt less forced than before. “Anything else?” “Solacefruit. Coffee.” The Tomb Colonist looked around the room, raising a finger for each item listed. “Sheets. Spare filters for the life support system would be nice, too.” Seemed like his visit was up. He only started with the official work when it was time for him to head back to the upper levels. “Keep an eye out for those things, then. Might to well to ask regulars if they could do so as well.” (Aigul did receive repeat visitors, as much as the Wounded Captain balked at the thought. People in terrible enough circumstances that each departure from the station brought about more they wished to be rid of, people who realized the weightlessness in a lack of regret and sought to trim away everything else that bothered them. At least they were a more consistent source of supplies- the most the Fortas Kettle heard from the Admiralty anymore were rumors from visitors. Station III was their master, then, and it was an uncommunicative, distant one. A single zubmarine once a month with a quiet captain and a crew of Clay Men who load up crates of spine-shavings with naught an unnecessary word. The most they’ve gotten from the captain, the First Mate had told him once, was a soft ‘happy holidays’. At least they’d been able to set the calendars right, after so long of Aigul’s timeless nothing.) “Post a list out in the airlock asking for charitable donations.” The two shared a laugh. The Tomb Colonist was good at little jokes like that. With the Wounded Captain bandaged up once more and appraised, however briefly, on the state of the Fortas Kettle, there was nothing keeping him. Still, he lingered at the hatch for a moment, one hand resting upon it and the other with fingers tapping away on his thigh. “Well. I’m going to be rounding up the other two for dinner soon. I’ll bring something down for you.” They didn’t have enough solacefruit to justify boiling it up into a broth when it could be mashed into more poultice. Not as many visitors recently- and the Wounded Captain knew that, in some abstracted way, that should make him feel some sort of positive thing. Less people around meant less people desperate enough to come to Aigul with all of their griefs and regrets. Meant less needles for the First Mate. Mostly, it just hurt him. Without the constant solacefruit haze, the pain had a way of creeping in just a bit too much. Poultice could only do so much before it diluted away- it was a blessing, but it was as ephemeral as anything else which came from solacefruit. The thought of another tin of brined fish with another prepackaged pair of hardtack crackers he was meant to spread them upon made him feel nauseous, but he still smiled and nodded. “That would be appreciated.” “Of course.” The click of the hatch’s lock, the whine of old hinges as it swung open. The Tomb Colonist dallied upon the threshold, half in and half out, just long enough for a soft, “Take care, captain,” before he was gone and all that remained to remind the Wounded Captain that there was any other living soul upon the Fortas Kettle with him were the bandages and the stack of books which the First Mate had been bartering for from visiting captains. |