And The Sky Is Limitless Part Two
Mar. 12th, 2011 06:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
laliandraYes, I am aware that it is not Thursday but sadly my job has not been slash fic editing friendly this week :(
For summary, rating, notes etc please see the
Master Post
Part One
&&&&&
Anoop holds up a schematic then turns it round. And then round again. Meg sighs and turns it back to its original position.
“It’s always the smart ones,” she mutters with a long suffering air and a smile that suggests that she doesn’t mind so much. She points at the far right drive linkage and then jabs her finger onto the drawing. “See?” she says, and Anoop nods his head quickly.
Kris peers at the engine and tries to visualise Meg’s modifications. He walks around the room to get a new angle, but it’s no good, he can’t quite make it all make sense in his head. He gets in under the pistons, trying to see if being where the new parts will go helps.
Despite the lull in the usual banter he can’t quite seem to get it, still. His brain can’t seem to focus today, flitting about of its own accord, restless.
“Could you hand me that first sketch again, Meg?” he calls.
There is a giggle and then a hand appears under the piping. On reflection Kris should have known something was up from the moment his crew stopped talking.
“Thank you, Adam,” he says.
Adam is still laughing, pleased and infectious, when Kris extricates himself, with Meg and Anoop restraining themselves to conspiratorial snickers.
“So this is what you call an afternoon off,” Adam says, laughter still threaded through his voice. “Very relaxing, I’m sure.”
“Oh, are you not on shift?” Meg asks, then frowns. “Wait, I don’t think I am either.”
Adam throws up his hands and says, “Honestly, you’re all as bad as each other.”
“Not me,” Anoop says. “I’m here very much under duress. I can think of a hundred things I would rather be doing. And if not, I have letters home to write.”
“Anoop is a good boy who writes home every week,” Meg tells Adam, who raises his eyebrows very expressively.
“Oh yes. And his mother still sends him food,” she adds.
“See if I share my cake with you again,” Anoop huffs, but Meg smiles at him and he brightens under her sunny unrepentance.
“There now. I’d much rather be eating cake, for example,” Anoop says, and Adam nods along with Meg.
“Or taking a nice long shower,” he suggests.
Anoop says, “Or reading a good book.”
“Or playing cards,” Meg and Anoop say together.
“What about you, Captain Kristopher?” Adam inquires, eyebrows raised in high judgement again.
“Oh, I’m not much good at cards. Terrible at bluffing, you see,” Kris confesses. He’s lost more money and far more dignity than he likes to think about over the years because of that.
“Alright, then what do you for fun?”
Meg and Anoop promptly fall about laughing.
“Oi! I resent that. I have fun, I know how to relax,” Kris protests. He feels like he should be able to tell teacher that the other children are picking on him, except he’s the teacher in this situation as well.
“Lying is a sin, Captain,” says Meg with a solemn nod.
“The lady has made quite the accusation. State your defence, Captain Allen,” Adam says gravely, resting easily on the casing to the right of the prop drive as if he’d spent inches his whole life from limb crushing machinery .
“I defer to the judgement of the Commander. He is by far the most qualified in… having fun,” Anoop says and winks at Adam in a very unnecessary way.
Kris flounders a little at that while Meg, the traitor, goes over and leans on the casing next to Adam.
“I read,” Kris says hopefully.
“Do you mean things like this?” Adam produces a book from his pocket with the triumphant air of someone producing the only key to your handcuffs. Which... Yes.
Meg takes the book from Adam and reads, “Computational Steam Dynamics, A Guide.”
“They’re all like that, every single book in our room," Adam says, eyes wicked even as he affects despair.
“Not even a single novel?” Meg looks shocked, which Kris feels is unfair. Meg is usually the one who, when it came to conversations that don’t involve engines or her family, tends to treat them like mental games of hot potato.
“Not a one,” Adam confirms.
“Someone has to think of these things. Not all of us can live a life of decadence, you know,” Kris teases, only Adam’s merry expression stumbles and falls from his face, and that wasn’t the idea, not at all.
“I see my reputation precedes me,” Meg laughs. She tosses her head, glancing quickly at Adam from under her hair. “I was a wild child, what can I say?”
Adam’s expression lights back up in the face of her. He holds out a hand and spins her into a twirling dance around the room. They advance on Kris who retreats backwards. “I don’t dance, don’t ask me.”
Adam lets Meg spin away and he ruffles Kris’s hair before Kris can stop him. “Live a little,” he says.
“Trust him, he is a man who knows how to let loose,” Anoop says with a laugh, like there’s a punchline that Kris just isn’t getting. Adam’s hand stops dead in Kris’s hair, then he pulls it back. It’s like Adam keeps forgetting where he is, that it’s a joke with nothing worse than a smile behind it, not something he needs to have his defences ready for.
“Am I missing something?” Kris asks, and all three turn to him with disbelieving expressions.
Adam puts on a pout and says, “Well, I’m very disappointed. I thought my exploits were legendary.”
“Oh, they are,” Anoop assures him.
Meg nods enthusiastically and asks, “Is it all true? The costume parties, the fifty piece orchestra, the six day masquerade ball, the dancing boys…”
“Sadly, the dancing boys are a myth," Adam interrupts. "And it was a hundred piece orchestra, actually. But the rest sounds right. As far as I can remember.”
“It must have been wonderful,” Meg sighs.
“It was, in its way. It’s not a period of my life I have regrets about. But it’s not one I’d care to repeat, either.” Adam’s voice keeps tipping into something much more intimate than Kris is used to hearing out here. He can’t even begin to imagine this other life of Adam’s; it’s so very far removed his own sphere of experience.
“Why on earth not?” Anoop asks, incredulous.
“It wasn’t... It wasn’t a life, exactly. It was marvellous fun, but terrible idleness. It was like drifting. I had nothing to aim for, you see,” Adam explains, hands in his pockets and eyes very blue, somehow.
Kris tries to imagine what that must have been like. He’s carried the blueprints for his and Katy’s airship around with him for half his life - what would he have been like without his two girls to push him in the right direction? And Adam is so full of drive and energy that without anything to do with them, well… A ship without a rudder is just a crash waiting to happen.
“I think my favourite story is the one about the time you nearly burned down a whole wing of the Mansion by setting a curtain on fire with your hat,” Meg says.
Adam looks charmed and not even slightly embarrassed. “That was probably my most notorious moment, it’s true. Well. Except for the exiling incident, obviously.”
“Um, the exiling incident?” Kris asks. He really should have kept a better track of what went on at the Mansion. For one thing, it all sounds far more dramatic than he had ever imagined.
“I wasn’t actually exiled. Only nearly exiled. Threatened with it, anyway.”
“That’s nearer than I’d like to go,” Anoop mutters. “I thought you had no regrets.”
“I don’t. I was in love, and my father didn’t approve and… I don’t regret it. I stood up for us, for him, because I loved him. I’ll never regret doing that.”
Adam’s words are light and honest, but to Kris they feel like standing too close to a firing cannon - leaving him reeling a little, his ears ringing. He tries to imagine standing somewhere and saying, “I loved him,” as easy as that, and he’s never been jealous of Adam before, but right now the envy is so bitter he can almost taste it.
Adam has stopped talking and is watching Kris with an intense, almost worried expression.
“I’m not… Adam. I’m not judging. I don’t. It’s not that I mind…” Kris starts but he can’t explain, he just can’t. After so many years of denial, his mind won’t even go near that path of thinking, shying away from it like a spooked horse.
“It’s rather the opposite,” Meg says gently, looking over at Kris because she knows, and she knows that he wants Adam to, as well.
There is a long pause while several mental readjustments clearly have to be made. Kris watches Adam’s face, or what he can see of it - Adam is looking down and away - but the curve of his mouth against the angle of his jaw is all Kris needs. It gets easier each day to read between the lines that make up Adam.
So when something shifts Kris is prepared, has already calmed his expression as much as he can before Adam starts to look up again Adam looks perfectly put back together again, his voice light and implausibly amused, as he says, “So, that’s why you laughed when I asked if you and Katy were...” He makes the hand gesture that is apparently his go-to sign for ‘married’.
Anoop and Meg start to snicker at that but stop when Kris gives them his best Captainly Glare, which is gratifying. Kris is secure in his command, but this has hardly been your everyday situation. He never thought he would be nostalgic for those.
“Something like that,” Kris allows. He takes a very deep breath and tries to channel some of Adam’s implausible lightness. “Come now, this is supposed to be my afternoon off.”
“I think we can take it from here, Captain, if you want to go,” Meg says, and Anoop nods obediently.
“Thanks, Meg,” Kris says and holds her gaze for a moment. Then he picks up the blueprints from the floor and asks, “Adam? Are you done here?”
Adam looks over to where Anoop and Meg are bent over the original blueprint, heads close and hands skimming over the paper in tandem.
“I don’t think we’re needed here any more,” he says, with a conspiratorial smile.
In the corridor Kris doesn’t look at Adam, just bumps his shoulder and says, “You know, when a Captain of an active military vessel can honestly say his life was less complicated before you arrived…”
“Yes. I’m looking into the state of my life. Many apologies for it,” Adam says. Kris steals a look at him. For all his practised casualness, Adam’s gaze is fixed and his jaw is still set a little tight.
Kris opens the door for Adam automatically, even though Adam isn’t technically a guest, it’s their cabin now. Adam catches Kris’s eye in a silent thank you, and Kris can feel them both relax.
“I won’t stay,” Adam says, crossing the room and picking his jacket up. “I thought I might take a couple of books and go read up on deck. I know you have valuable sleeping pencilled in around now.”
“My schedule is flexible, but yes, some sleep would be useful.” Kris sits down on his bed and undoes his cuff buttons. Adam laughs and says, “Alright, I’m going, there’s no need to undress already. Just let me pick out a book and I’ll be out of your hair.”
“It’s fine, Adam. Stay as long as you like,” Kris tells him, because that laugh still wasn’t right, was more like the echo of normality.
Adam trails his hand across the spines of Kris’s much maligned collection of books, and picks one off the shelf with a satisfied expression.
“This one looks particularly terrible,” he says. Kris rolls his eyes and concentrates on unlacing his boots.
Abruptly, Adam starts to speak again. “I wasn’t supposed to be the Heir, you know. I…” Adam swallows, hard. “I had an older brother. Neil. He would have been a great Idol; he was so much smarter than me. So me and Allie, we were allowed to, well, run a bit wild.”
He’s looking at Kris but his eyes are far away, watching his past.
“We got into trouble, but it didn’t matter because it wasn’t like either of us were ever going to be anything but minor royalty, trotted out for functions and the occasional wedding. They had Neil to be their Idol.”
Adam’s fingers are gripping the book tight, as if the only way he can keep his voice that calm is to channel out the tension through his hands. It’s painful to see. Kris has to sit on his own hands stop himself from reaching out and smoothing out the harsh lines of Adam’s fingers.
“Daniel, the priss, was always making snide remarks about Allie and me. He has terribly strict parents, you see, very keen on duty and devotion. They brought him up to be rather old fashioned, and our messing around didn’t exactly sit well with that. Neil just thought he was funny,” Adam adds, a small, sad twist ghosting round his mouth.
“I heard Prince Neil went missing,” Kris says, because he doesn’t know how to even begin. He’d heard the story, vaguely known the facts, but he’d never given it much thought. It had all been before he came to the Mansion, when Adam and Allie were names he didn’t even know the Prince and Princess had, let alone consider using. When he had never had to watch Adam struggle for control like this, and feel adrift.
“He did. They think he drowned. Idiot.”
Adam is barely constructing sentences any more, which is always a bad sign. Kris wonders if he should - make some soothing tea or something, anything would be better than sitting uselessly on his bunk with only one shoe on and probably looking like he’s been struck on the head.
“I’m sorry,” he offers, inadequately.
“It… It changed things. Changed me,” Adam tells him. His face can’t seem to settle on an expression, flitting from hurt to wistful to hopeless. Damn the tea, damn everything, all Kris wants to do is to shut Adam away somewhere safe, because the raw emotion on his face is too much, too intimate to let anyone see.
“And so that’s why you joined the army?” Kris asks, in lieu of being able to do or say or think anything useful.
“Not exactly. Remember how I said I was almost exiled? Father wanted me out of the Mansion, one way or another.” Kris has never heard Adam call the Idol that before. Adam finally looks at Kris, as if he knows he can’t say this with words alone. “So he settled on sending me to the borders,” he finishes with a casual shrug and intent eyes.
At that point Kris had been navigating his first year as Captain, trying not to break too many rules and going to more official dinners than he ever wanted. And he had heard the story of the Prince going off to fight, and maybe there had been a few wink-nudge moments that Kris hadn't had the energy or interest to wonder about. But there it had been, the turning point of Adam’s life, reduced to an amusing anecdote over entrees.
“My father made it as difficult as possible, made me a Commander. He thought I’d give up after a month and have to come home with my tail between my legs, ready to repent and play the good son. But I... I liked it. It felt like I was actually doing something, you see. Making a difference. And I was good at my job.” Adam says that like it’s a secret, a shameful confession. Whereas in truth, he had picked a hopeless, terrible combination of a border dispute and a civil war and somehow turned it around. Kris may not know politics, but he knows war. Adam had been something special.
“I heard as much. You were talk of the Fleet, of everyone, really.” It’s a little hard to reconcile this Adam with the Commander who ran a ruthlessly brilliant campaign. Even harder to imagine that either of them could once have been the hedonistic, aimless Prince.
"Oh, so this you've heard of," Adam says, rolling his eyes. Kris is about to defend his select range of interests, again, but Adam cuts him off. "Anyway, it’s fine. I've taken up enough of your time already. You should be fast asleep by now."
Kris feels a little dismissed, but then he notices the easy, loose line of Adam's back and the book resting in his hand as he turns to leave. He's not right, but he's better, at least. Adam heads for the door and then stops, silent for a few long seconds.
“Thank you,” he says quietly, not turning all the way back around. He’s already leaving when Kris, caught on the soft sincerity of Adam’s voice, remembers to say, “It’s fine.”
&&&&&
Night shift is exactly as mind numbing as Kris remembered. He spends some time up on deck, drinks some tea and wanders the corridors aimlessly.
He decides to go visit the engine and finds Michael there, watching the gears go round in an almost hypnotised fashion.
“Everything alright here?” he asks. Michael doesn’t even start, just says, “Evening, Captain. Anything I can do for you?”
“Just seeing how you were. Night shift can get you down,” Kris sighs, and shovels some more coal into the engine, to feel useful.
Michael laughs. “I’ve raised three children; sleep deprivation is practically routine to me.”
“It’s the boredom that’ll get you,” Kris says, except he should have known better, because the bell on the wall next to him starts to ring almost exactly as he finishes the sentence.
He and Michael drop everything and head for the look out, because Lil wouldn’t set that bell off unless they were in serious trouble.
“This is all your fault. Just don’t say anything like ‘how bad could it be’, okay?” Michael tells Kris as they rush up the stairs. Kris tries to smile, but his mind is already being pulled in all directions by the potential disasters that could await them.
Lil is standing in a pool of light, turning the gear handle that will be setting bells ringing all over the ship. She looks up as Kris approaches and her face is determined, though her eyes are worried.
“Two ships approaching, which I’ve identified as known hostiles,” she says, leaving the bell and leading them to the telescope array. “You can make them out quite clearly now. Approximately 15 minutes away.”
Kris looks through the eyepiece she indicates and his heart sinks. The ships are small but heavily armed mercenary vessels, covered in symbols and graffiti. Skypirates, his first Captain had called them, laugh brittle as he tried to reassure his newest recruits before the attack.
“They shouldn’t be anywhere near this quadrant,” Lil says as Kris straightens up. “They would have to get past at least two of our gun towers to be coming from that direction.”
There’s no way those ships could have simply flown by manned, armed towers. It’s a puzzle, and Kris doesn’t think he’s going to like the solution, when he has time to figure it out. Right now, there’s only one important conclusion. “They’re here for us, then,” Kris says, grimly. “Michael, ring the other bell. Wake the crew.”
Michael salutes smartly. It makes Kris feel proud and sick at the same time, his crew, ready for battle. He needs his gun.
His mind is already so busy making plans that it’s almost a shock when he opens the door to his room and Adam is standing there already dressed, looking confused and concerned.
“I’m assuming the frantic bells are not a good sign?” he says, and Kris can only shake his head as he takes his Acoustic out of the box under his bed and loads it.
“Two mercenary airships, ETA about 15 minutes. We are in for trouble.”
“Mercenaries? Here?” Adam asks, and Kris shouldn’t be surprised that Adam is not only keeping track but grasps all the implications.
“Exactly. So they can only be after one thing, and I don’t plan on falling out of the sky today.”
“Right,” Adam says, pulling on his coat and hat. “Where do you need me?”
Kris starts. “What? I mean, I know you were in army but it’s hardly the same thing. Do you have any experience with long-range weaponry? Do you even have a gun?”
“What did you think this,” Adam gestures at his Upgrade, “was for? Decoration?” He gives Kris a fiendish grin, straightens his arm and then twists it inside the Upgrade. Something clicks, a few gears start to turn and Kris finds himself literally staring down the barrel of a gun, Adam’s smile even more devilish over the top of it.
“So, what’s the plan?” asks Adam.
“Come with me and you’ll find out,” Kris answers, and Adam is halfway to the door in a second.
As they walk Kris can’t help blurting out, “That is incredible.” He looks closer now, unashamed. “Are those tiny compression cylinders?”
“For longer range or heavy lifting,” Adam explains as Kris motions him up the stairs onto deck.
“In my defence, it could have been for decoration. I mean...” Kris attempts to make a hand movement that will encompass everything from the heels on Adam’s boots through the cogs threaded on belts and chains to the feather in his hat. “Not beyond the realm of possibility,” he says, amusement breaking into his voice.
“Captain, I am more than just a pretty face,” Adam teases, shaking his head at Kris’s apparent stupidity.
Kris stops for a moment, turning on the steps to the Bridge and looking out into the night. He can see a light in the distance, bobbing innocently in the darkness. Adam follows his gaze and his face hardens.
“Here they come,” he says.
Kris opens the door to where Katy, Matt, and Anoop are waiting.
“Options?” Kris asks.
Matt grimaces. “Not a lot. We can’t out-fly them, we know that much. They’re both smaller and lighter than us. We might be able to out gun one or the other, but certainly not both at once.” He gives Kris an almost apologetic look. “We left most of our cannons behind so we’d be lighter. For speed. We didn’t think…”
“I know, it’s a bloody shock to us all,” Kris says. “Never mind that now. What can we do?”
“It’s unlikely that we can take down the larger ship with our available weapons. To have even a chance, we’d have to concentrate all our firepower on it, but if we do that we get picked off by the smaller ship.”
“It’s a tactic this group have been using for some time, according to the intel we’ve got on file from previous attacks,” Katy says, indicating the table spread with reports. “It’s not fool proof, but fairly successful, I’m afraid.”
“The smaller ship is weaker, but hard to take down quickly with gun fire because of its quickness and design. And if we spend time firing at that ship, we’ll be a sitting duck for the other one,” Matt finishes. He tries for a smile and misses.
“So we ram the larger ship,” Kris says, and he knows it’s a risky, rough idea, but rough is really all they have time for. He also knows exactly how strong the Conway is, right down to the inches of her hull thickness. She’ll hold.
“Ram them?” Adam repeats, eyebrows raised high.
“Those ships aren’t built for that kind of combat, they rely on speed and their gun batteries. I really think it could work.”
“Alright. Then we can deal with the other ship on equal terms,” Katy says and the faith in her voice makes Kris put his arm round her, holding her close.
“We can take her,” Kris says. “I trust my ship and my crew. Besides, we have a secret weapon.” He nods at Adam, who explains about his Upgrade and then casually adds, “Oh, and I also happen to be a military commander with a year in a war zone. I might be able to help with your artillery strategy.”
Anoop gives him a teasing look. “You mean, there’s more to gunning than shouting ‘fire’?”
Kris sees his hand shaking slightly as he pulls a lever, though. Anoop always makes jokes when he’s nervous. Matt says, “Idiot,” in an amused voice and pats Anoop on the shoulder. Adam’s glare mutes a little.
“In terms of artillery, we’re down to one cannon, but it’s a beauty.” Matt tells Adam. “Can’t offer you legions of men, either, me and Michael will have to do, and the Captain, of course.”
“That’s it?” Adam asks, and worry flashes across his face, just for a second. The expression that replaces it is a new one to Kris, and he figures he must be seeing Commander Adam for the first time. It’s… striking.
“That’s it.”
The bell from the look out rings five times.
“Okay, five minutes, people. Matt, Adam, I need you to give us cover as we go in. Take Michael and Scott, get the guns ready. And make sure everyone is also armed for hand-to-hand. I hope it won’t come to that, but being boarded is always a risk.”
“Oh great,” Matt frowns. “Come on, Commander, let’s go see about those guns.”
“Katy, I need you with Meg, keep the engine going no matter what, okay?” Kris says.
“Will do. Keep safe,” she says. She turns to go, but Kris catches her shoulder, salutes and says softly, “Will do, Kat”
Katy salutes back, holding his gaze for a crowded second, then leaves.
Kris looks at Anoop, “I trust you can steer us into another ship? I realise it goes against every one of your navigator’s instincts, but…”
“Won’t be a problem, Captain,” Anoop says, consulting at his dials. “I should have good visual any moment now.”
Kris says, “Never thought it would be,” and Anoop seems to stand a little taller behind the controls.
“I’ll try and hit just forward of broadside, rather than head on. That way we shouldn’t lose anything vital. The lookout is still going to be pretty close to the action, though.”
Kris nods. “I’ll go warn Lil, don’t worry. After we hit, get us away as soon as you can.”
He looks out across his ship, over the deck, still too cluttered, over the lookout, the glass of the instruments shining, and finally to where the lights are now parts of indistinct shapes against the darkness, and he feels cold to his bones.
He almost runs to the lookout. Thankfully his feet know the way instinctively, because his brain is occupied with everything that could go wrong and what exactly he is going to do about it.
Lil is waiting at the top of the steep steps, and she asks, “What’s the plan?” as soon as Kris is within shouting distance.
“Get ready to come down from there, we’re going to try and ram the larger ship,” Kris tells her. She opens her mouth, then seems to think better of it and goes back to the array, closing down most of the telescopes.
“They probably won’t survive, but this way I’m giving them a fighting chance,” she sighs, and pulls the lever that will signal to Anoop again.
“Once we’ve hit, there’s a chance they’ll try and board us,” Kris says, fingers straying down to wrap round the handle of his Acoustic, tucked safely into his belt.
Lil bends down and pulls a wicked looking knife out of her boot. Clearly tonight is the night for unexpected weaponry.
“Oh, I’m ready,” she says, and her smile is blade-sharp. She signals Anoop again and then gives the array one last pat.
“Better find yourself a good spot for shooting,” Lil says with a smirk as they start back down the steps. “Don’t want to hit a pipe.”
Kris decides he can let that go, right now. Lil settles in under the stairs, and Kris goes back to check on the guns in place around the steps from the bridge. Adam is already standing on a gun emplacement, aiming at the ships in the distance, and as Kris arrives next to him he fires the Upgrade. A light goes out. Kris and Matt exchange an impressed look. The two ships move apart, clearly trying to avoid making too obvious a target.
“This was in the intel. The larger ship will try and get closer and pick off our key gunners.” Matt says, handing Adam a case of ammunition.
“Good,” Kris and Adam say together and then there is the whip crack sound of gunfire.
“We’re going to need that cover from the small ship about now,” Adam says. “Load long range weapons.”
The ship is close enough now that Kris can make out the graffiti painted on its side, a tally of their victims interspersed with symbols, scrawled in white paint all over the hull. The other ship is still more indistinct, but Kris spots the tell tale sparks coming from a gun position. He takes careful aim, letting the world narrow to that one point, and fires.
Then the Conway surges forward. The mercenary ship tries to turn but they are too slow, too late.
There’s nothing that Kris can do now except yell, “Brace!” and duck down behind the outer railing. He takes a breath and then the world is nothing but noise, everything seems to be screaming and breaking. He keeps his eyes shut and his head down until the shuddering stops and the noise fades to shattering and yelling, then stands up, hanging on to the rail.
Matt is already aiming the cannon at the larger ship, but Adam is still, seemingly transfixed by something in the cloud of dust and splinters that is the far end of the ship. As it clear, Kris can see they’ve done it. The Conway is embedded in the side of the enemy ship, whose hull is a wreck of broken wood and twisted metal. Kris can see her insides spilling out, gears and pipes exposed, smoke and steam pouring from the hole they’ve made in her side.
He looks back and he can see Anoop through the shattered windows at the front of the bridge, pulling levers frantically, trying to get them away, then something hits the stairs next to him and Matt yells, “Boarders!”
Adam calls, “Return fire!” and Kris turns and pulls the trigger in one movement. A man standing on the Conway’s railing, gun raised, seems to freeze for a second and then falls backwards. Michael whoops in triumph and Kris takes cover behind the cannon as he reloads.
“Show-off,” he hears Adam say. Kris looks up to where Adam is sighting his weapon, arm outstretched and fist clenched, gaze locked on his target even as he commands, “And Matt, keep the cannon on the other ship. Aim for the front gun emplacement, I think that’s where their heavy artillery is.”
The Upgrade fires, gears turning so fast that they blur. Adam nods, satisfied at his shot, and calls, “There’s more. Up on the lookout, go, go!”
The Conway lurches sideways, and splinters fly everywhere, stinging the side of Kris’s face as he takes cover again.
“We must have got stuck,” Adam chokes out beside him.“Damn, there’s no way I can hit anything in this. I think we’ve lost some lights.”
“There’s no way they can either,” Kris points out, and yells, “Prepare for hand-to-hand,” hoping that he can be heard over the chaos.
“If we went now, we could surprise them …” Adam starts, peering over the top of the cannon. “And take some prisoners, get some information,” Kris finishes. Adam nods and they make their way round to the emplacement shielding that Matt and Michael are crouched behind.
“Matt, you cover us, then follow. Michael, you stay here. I want you to be firing on the smaller ship as soon as you have any sort of visual,” Kris says.
They creep out, weapons forward, through the haze that only seems to be thickening. Something must be on fire, and Kris hopes it is not something of his.
There is suddenly a scream and Kris hears glass smashing, then the sickening sound of bone snapping. Adam motions Kris up to the lookout and stands at the foot of the stairs, prepared to fire. Kris tries to be quiet as he mounts the stairs, but when he reaches the top he sees he needn’t have. Lil is leaning heavily on the array, but she’s holding her knife to the throat of a short man covered in tattoos that match the symbols that used to decorate his hull. His arm looks broken, and Lil is bleeding heavily from cuts on her cheek and shoulder.
“He tried to get me in the face, but I was faster,” Lil says. “Do you have him?”
Kris brings his Acoustic up to inches from the man’s nose and lets the catch drop, the click very clear. “Yes,” Kris says, “I have him.” The mercenary swallows.
Lil steps sideways and uses her knife to cut through a rope that Kris hadn’t even noticed, then places it back at the man’s throat. The mercenaries must have thrown hooks on lines to keep the Conway near for boarding. The bow swings sideways, out of the dust cloud, and Kris can see the deck again. Matt has the barrel of his gun pressed to another man’s temple and Adam is stalking round a pile of supplies. There is a body on the deck just by the steps, knife still in hand. Kris looks away.
The Conway finally breaks free of the other ship, which is already sinking towards the ground. Kris can’t quite believe it. They’ve knocked her out of the goddamn sky. The Conway lurches unsteadily, and Kris tries to hang on to something not made of glass. They still seem to be flying, to his massive relief, albeit slowly and at a slant.
“Don’t even think about it,” Adam’s voice rings out. Kris follows his line of sight and the aim of his arm to where a mercenary is pointing a gun directly at Kris and Lil.
Kris yells, “Drop your weapon,” and points his Acoustic at the man for good measure. He obeys and Adam goes and picks it up, then grabs the mercenary by the neck and says something that Kris can’t hear. The man’s face is going purple, and Kris has to yell again, “We are taking prisoners, remember?” Adam lets the man go and he crumples to the floor.
“Right, prisoners to the brig,” Kris orders, stepping backwards so that Lil can manoeuvre her captured mercenary down the stairs. We’ve still got a whole other ship to deal with, everyone.”
He trains his gun on Matt’s prisoner and says, “Matt, Adam, you get back to the guns. We’ll take them from here.” Adam drags the third man to his feet and almost throws him at Kris.
As they come down the stairs, Kris hears the rattle of gunfire above them. They shut the prisoners in their tiny brig, which they usually use more like a safe, and Lil slumps against the wall. There are glass shards in her hand, which Kris hadn’t seen in the dim light outside, and blood is still running down her cheek, too much blood for Kris’s liking.
“You need to go sort those out,” he says, dabbing at the slash across her shoulder with his handkerchief. “You’re not going back out into the line of fire like this, no way. You could pass out from blood loss, or worse.”
“I can still be useful. I’ll be fine. You need me,” Lil insists, wincing as she pulls glass from her palm.
“I need you to stay here and keep an eye on these useless degenerates” Kris tells her, and Lil looks at the prisoners through the bars of the door.
“Piece of cake,” she says. “I’ll need a gun, though. Just in case.”
Kris goes to find Scott, who is dealing with all the supplies, but instead he collides with Katy, running full pelt round a corner.
Kris says,“I don’t know how much info you’ve been getting from the Bridge, we’ve forced the larger ship to ground. Took out all but three boarders. Lil’s injured, I’ve got her guarding the brig. But it worked, Kat, it worked.” Katy only manages to look half relieved at best so he asks, “Problems?” and she nods.
“The impact was pretty brutal. We’ve lost a stabiliser, which is bad but not critical. But we’ve completely lost the signalling system. No messages are getting from one part of the ship to another. Plus Meg thinks one of the drive gearage rods might be damaged, but that’s minor in comparison.”
“Then we’ve no lookout and no input from anywhere else on the ship. We’re flying blind.”
“We’ve got to tell the Bridge, for a start,” Katy says, and dashes off as soon as Kris nods his agreement.
Kris carries on to the store, where Scott is loading some revolvers. As he hears Kris come in, he aims one right at Kris’s head, then lowers it quickly when he looks up and sees who it is.
“Sorry,” he says, “But there was talk of boarders.”
“Taken care of,” Kris says, and picks up two more guns and a box of ammo for his Acoustic. “The signalling system is down, I’m afraid. So you’ll have to check yourself if Meg or Anoop want anything. Meg is almost definitely going to need parts.”
“I’m on it, Captain,” Scott says with a salute, and Kris makes his way back to the deck, where Adam meets him, looking grim.
“That ship is damn fast, and they keep popping out of nowhere without a lookout to keep an eye on them. Also, Matt’s been shot,” Adam says, flatly.
“Only very slightly,” Matt assures Kris, who can only shake his head. Matt fires at the mercenary ship with his revolver, then helps Michael turn the cannon and looks at Kris and Adam. “See, I’m fine,” he says. “It barely caught my arm. I’m hardly bleeding at all, and we have more serious things to worry about, now.”
“Matthew Giraud, tie your tourniquet tighter, you are ‘hardly bleeding’ right through it,” Katy says sternly from where she is propping the door to the Bridge open.
The mercenary ship disappears from Kris’s view and everyone curses.
“We need someone on the lookout,” Adam says, “and fast. Even if they can’t use the signalling levers, they could, signal with their hands or something. They’d have a better chance of seeing where the ship was coming at us from if they were up there.”
“We can’t spare anyone from here, can we?” Kris says, knowing that it’s not really a question. They need everyone firing just to stand a chance. Adam doesn’t even bother to reply.
“Not Anoop or Meg, because they both really have their hands full,” Katy calls down. “I’ll go.”
“No. You are non-combat; you shouldn’t even be up here right now. Meg will be needing you in the engine room,” Kris points out, but Katy has angled her head in that determined way of hers.
“Don’t start that combat training required crap,” she says, disdainfully. “We don’t really have a choice right now, I’m your only option. You know I take the lookout sometimes. Needs must, Kris.”
As if to prove her damn point, the ship comes up on the other side and cannon fire rips into the Conway before they have a chance to take cover, let alone return fire.
“I can signal to one of you, and you can call it out for the guns, and for Anoop, too.”
“If there’s no one else…” Adam says, and his expression is gentle even as Kris glares at him, feeling undermined. “Captain, we need this. I don’t like it any more than you do.”
Kris has a sudden flash of memory, Katy and Adam laughing together over supper, and he can’t glare any more.
“Okay,” he says, “signal to me, like we do when it’s bad weather and we need to cast off. I’ll be at the top of the stairs. Stay as low as you can, and watch out, there’s glass everywhere up there. Go now, while we’re not under fire.”
Katy takes off at a run across the deck, making it to the lookout just as the enemy ship swerves in to view. The cannon is facing the right way this time, and they get a hit on something that tears away, shadowy wood replaced by the light of mechanisms spitting sparks into the night.
Kris fires at the exposed propeller driver and gets a hit, chains flying in all directions. The Conway turns sharply and he has to hold onto a railing, hoping that this is a tactic and not another system giving out.
“I believe in you,” he says under his breath, to himself and God and his crew and his ship.
He looks across at Katy, yellow jacket shining like a beacon, and she yells and signals, “Right!”
“On your right,” Kris calls. Adam whirls round and starts firing and rattling out orders at once. The sound of gunfire reverberates around the whole ship, and it’s so loud Kris can’t tell if it their shots or the enemy’s.
He takes aim again, but before he can fire the remaining ship lists with a scream of metal sliding over metal, and he hears Adam’s yell of triumph. The volleys coming from the other ship decrease suddenly in number, and Kris feels the giddy relief of a plan starting to work.
He looks back up at Katy who signals for right again, and then she is falling, gone, like a candle that someone has snuffed out.
“Katy?” Kris shouts, desperately. He wants to run to the lookout, but he can’t yet. “Right, right,” he calls and hears Adam’s echoing order.
His eyes keep pulling back to the empty place where Katy had been standing. The floor of the lookout is too high, hiding her from sight. He prays under his breath, the words pouring out of him as he spots a gun position on the ship that still seems functional, aims and shoots. The target drops and he hopes, with an unexpected, vicious thrill, that it was whoever got Katy.
The mercenary ship is tilting badly now; Kris can see lights going out and the shadows of things falling into the darkness below them. Scott hurries past, arms full of ammunition, and Kris stops him with a hand to his shoulder and says, “I’ll take those, go to the lookout, I think Katy’s been hit.” Scott goes white and heaps the ammo into Kris’s hands, then takes off at a run. Kris hurries to where Adam is still co-ordinating the guns, fierce satisfaction on his face as something on the enemy’s hull explodes, and drops the bullets at his feet where they glitter like treasure in the light of the flames.
“I think we’ve got them,” Adam says. “The fuckers will have to retreat or die.” He is streaked with soot and gunpowder and something that looks uncomfortably like blood, though it’s hard to tell, fire colouring everything slightly red.
He calls for the cannon and it booms out, making the whole deck shudder. Michael is methodically reloading as if everything were still and quiet and he didn’t have a vicious looking bruise developing on his forehead.
“I think they got Katy, she just dropped out of sight,” Kris says quietly, feeling sick to his stomach. He doesn’t dare even glance up at the lookout, just watches the ship turn slowly, still half ablaze.
“Goddamn,” Adam says and worries at his lip. The strange, red light is fading now, which Kris realises can only mean one thing.
“They’re retreating,” he says, softly and Adam looks stunned, frankly.
“We did it,” Adam says, almost disbelievingly, and then a little surer, louder, “We did it.”
He moves his gaze past Kris, up to the lookout and turns Kris by the shoulders. Scott has Katy. She’s being carried but Kris can see her head is upright and her hands are making ‘put me down’ motions. He looks at Adam and sees his smile reflected back, wide and unstoppable.
Scott carries Katy up to them and she frowns at them, slightly wide-eyed, and says, “I could walk.”
“Not you as well,” Kris says, overwhelmed by just how lucky they’ve been. “If you say you’re only bleeding slightly I will be, oh, only slightly put out.”
“Oh no, I’m bleeding spectacularly,” Katy says, and she lifts up her hand from her side. It’s covered in blood. “And I hit my head.”
“I’ll take her to her room and see what I can do,” Scott says. “She’ll be fine once we stop the bleeding.”
“Did we win?” Katy inquires. “I may have slightly blacked out.”
“We won,” Kris says and watches Scott take her carefully down the steps. He feels so relieved he doesn’t know what to do with himself.
“We won,” he repeats to Adam, and is half pulled, half falls into to Adam’s chest. It’s strange and so, so good just to lean, to not be strong for anyone, if only for a few seconds. The wool of Adam’s coat scratches at Kris’s cheek and everything becomes more solid, so Kris takes a breath and stands on his own two feet again. They look at each other for a long moment, until Adam clears his throat, almost self-conscious.
“Good work, Commander,” Kris says, and holds out his hand.
Adam shakes it firmly and says, “You too, Kris,” and Kris feels warm at that.
There are so many things to do, to check on. Katy, the prisoners, the ship. The drive linkage. Damn.
“And that is blood on you, too,” Kris says and Adam gives him a slightly puzzled look, then makes a unconcerned gesture.
“I’ll go see someone about it. You should go to Katy.”
“Engine room first,” Kris says, his body finally starting to wind down. Everything is losing that strange, pin sharp clarity and he is starting to ache. The engine room suddenly seems very far away. He sends Adam after Scott and Katy and takes a few moments to catch his breath for what seems like the first time in days. Then he straightens his shoulders and goes to be Captain Allen.
Part 3 <
For summary, rating, notes etc please see the
Master Post
Part One
&&&&&
Anoop holds up a schematic then turns it round. And then round again. Meg sighs and turns it back to its original position.
“It’s always the smart ones,” she mutters with a long suffering air and a smile that suggests that she doesn’t mind so much. She points at the far right drive linkage and then jabs her finger onto the drawing. “See?” she says, and Anoop nods his head quickly.
Kris peers at the engine and tries to visualise Meg’s modifications. He walks around the room to get a new angle, but it’s no good, he can’t quite make it all make sense in his head. He gets in under the pistons, trying to see if being where the new parts will go helps.
Despite the lull in the usual banter he can’t quite seem to get it, still. His brain can’t seem to focus today, flitting about of its own accord, restless.
“Could you hand me that first sketch again, Meg?” he calls.
There is a giggle and then a hand appears under the piping. On reflection Kris should have known something was up from the moment his crew stopped talking.
“Thank you, Adam,” he says.
Adam is still laughing, pleased and infectious, when Kris extricates himself, with Meg and Anoop restraining themselves to conspiratorial snickers.
“So this is what you call an afternoon off,” Adam says, laughter still threaded through his voice. “Very relaxing, I’m sure.”
“Oh, are you not on shift?” Meg asks, then frowns. “Wait, I don’t think I am either.”
Adam throws up his hands and says, “Honestly, you’re all as bad as each other.”
“Not me,” Anoop says. “I’m here very much under duress. I can think of a hundred things I would rather be doing. And if not, I have letters home to write.”
“Anoop is a good boy who writes home every week,” Meg tells Adam, who raises his eyebrows very expressively.
“Oh yes. And his mother still sends him food,” she adds.
“See if I share my cake with you again,” Anoop huffs, but Meg smiles at him and he brightens under her sunny unrepentance.
“There now. I’d much rather be eating cake, for example,” Anoop says, and Adam nods along with Meg.
“Or taking a nice long shower,” he suggests.
Anoop says, “Or reading a good book.”
“Or playing cards,” Meg and Anoop say together.
“What about you, Captain Kristopher?” Adam inquires, eyebrows raised in high judgement again.
“Oh, I’m not much good at cards. Terrible at bluffing, you see,” Kris confesses. He’s lost more money and far more dignity than he likes to think about over the years because of that.
“Alright, then what do you for fun?”
Meg and Anoop promptly fall about laughing.
“Oi! I resent that. I have fun, I know how to relax,” Kris protests. He feels like he should be able to tell teacher that the other children are picking on him, except he’s the teacher in this situation as well.
“Lying is a sin, Captain,” says Meg with a solemn nod.
“The lady has made quite the accusation. State your defence, Captain Allen,” Adam says gravely, resting easily on the casing to the right of the prop drive as if he’d spent inches his whole life from limb crushing machinery .
“I defer to the judgement of the Commander. He is by far the most qualified in… having fun,” Anoop says and winks at Adam in a very unnecessary way.
Kris flounders a little at that while Meg, the traitor, goes over and leans on the casing next to Adam.
“I read,” Kris says hopefully.
“Do you mean things like this?” Adam produces a book from his pocket with the triumphant air of someone producing the only key to your handcuffs. Which... Yes.
Meg takes the book from Adam and reads, “Computational Steam Dynamics, A Guide.”
“They’re all like that, every single book in our room," Adam says, eyes wicked even as he affects despair.
“Not even a single novel?” Meg looks shocked, which Kris feels is unfair. Meg is usually the one who, when it came to conversations that don’t involve engines or her family, tends to treat them like mental games of hot potato.
“Not a one,” Adam confirms.
“Someone has to think of these things. Not all of us can live a life of decadence, you know,” Kris teases, only Adam’s merry expression stumbles and falls from his face, and that wasn’t the idea, not at all.
“I see my reputation precedes me,” Meg laughs. She tosses her head, glancing quickly at Adam from under her hair. “I was a wild child, what can I say?”
Adam’s expression lights back up in the face of her. He holds out a hand and spins her into a twirling dance around the room. They advance on Kris who retreats backwards. “I don’t dance, don’t ask me.”
Adam lets Meg spin away and he ruffles Kris’s hair before Kris can stop him. “Live a little,” he says.
“Trust him, he is a man who knows how to let loose,” Anoop says with a laugh, like there’s a punchline that Kris just isn’t getting. Adam’s hand stops dead in Kris’s hair, then he pulls it back. It’s like Adam keeps forgetting where he is, that it’s a joke with nothing worse than a smile behind it, not something he needs to have his defences ready for.
“Am I missing something?” Kris asks, and all three turn to him with disbelieving expressions.
Adam puts on a pout and says, “Well, I’m very disappointed. I thought my exploits were legendary.”
“Oh, they are,” Anoop assures him.
Meg nods enthusiastically and asks, “Is it all true? The costume parties, the fifty piece orchestra, the six day masquerade ball, the dancing boys…”
“Sadly, the dancing boys are a myth," Adam interrupts. "And it was a hundred piece orchestra, actually. But the rest sounds right. As far as I can remember.”
“It must have been wonderful,” Meg sighs.
“It was, in its way. It’s not a period of my life I have regrets about. But it’s not one I’d care to repeat, either.” Adam’s voice keeps tipping into something much more intimate than Kris is used to hearing out here. He can’t even begin to imagine this other life of Adam’s; it’s so very far removed his own sphere of experience.
“Why on earth not?” Anoop asks, incredulous.
“It wasn’t... It wasn’t a life, exactly. It was marvellous fun, but terrible idleness. It was like drifting. I had nothing to aim for, you see,” Adam explains, hands in his pockets and eyes very blue, somehow.
Kris tries to imagine what that must have been like. He’s carried the blueprints for his and Katy’s airship around with him for half his life - what would he have been like without his two girls to push him in the right direction? And Adam is so full of drive and energy that without anything to do with them, well… A ship without a rudder is just a crash waiting to happen.
“I think my favourite story is the one about the time you nearly burned down a whole wing of the Mansion by setting a curtain on fire with your hat,” Meg says.
Adam looks charmed and not even slightly embarrassed. “That was probably my most notorious moment, it’s true. Well. Except for the exiling incident, obviously.”
“Um, the exiling incident?” Kris asks. He really should have kept a better track of what went on at the Mansion. For one thing, it all sounds far more dramatic than he had ever imagined.
“I wasn’t actually exiled. Only nearly exiled. Threatened with it, anyway.”
“That’s nearer than I’d like to go,” Anoop mutters. “I thought you had no regrets.”
“I don’t. I was in love, and my father didn’t approve and… I don’t regret it. I stood up for us, for him, because I loved him. I’ll never regret doing that.”
Adam’s words are light and honest, but to Kris they feel like standing too close to a firing cannon - leaving him reeling a little, his ears ringing. He tries to imagine standing somewhere and saying, “I loved him,” as easy as that, and he’s never been jealous of Adam before, but right now the envy is so bitter he can almost taste it.
Adam has stopped talking and is watching Kris with an intense, almost worried expression.
“I’m not… Adam. I’m not judging. I don’t. It’s not that I mind…” Kris starts but he can’t explain, he just can’t. After so many years of denial, his mind won’t even go near that path of thinking, shying away from it like a spooked horse.
“It’s rather the opposite,” Meg says gently, looking over at Kris because she knows, and she knows that he wants Adam to, as well.
There is a long pause while several mental readjustments clearly have to be made. Kris watches Adam’s face, or what he can see of it - Adam is looking down and away - but the curve of his mouth against the angle of his jaw is all Kris needs. It gets easier each day to read between the lines that make up Adam.
So when something shifts Kris is prepared, has already calmed his expression as much as he can before Adam starts to look up again Adam looks perfectly put back together again, his voice light and implausibly amused, as he says, “So, that’s why you laughed when I asked if you and Katy were...” He makes the hand gesture that is apparently his go-to sign for ‘married’.
Anoop and Meg start to snicker at that but stop when Kris gives them his best Captainly Glare, which is gratifying. Kris is secure in his command, but this has hardly been your everyday situation. He never thought he would be nostalgic for those.
“Something like that,” Kris allows. He takes a very deep breath and tries to channel some of Adam’s implausible lightness. “Come now, this is supposed to be my afternoon off.”
“I think we can take it from here, Captain, if you want to go,” Meg says, and Anoop nods obediently.
“Thanks, Meg,” Kris says and holds her gaze for a moment. Then he picks up the blueprints from the floor and asks, “Adam? Are you done here?”
Adam looks over to where Anoop and Meg are bent over the original blueprint, heads close and hands skimming over the paper in tandem.
“I don’t think we’re needed here any more,” he says, with a conspiratorial smile.
In the corridor Kris doesn’t look at Adam, just bumps his shoulder and says, “You know, when a Captain of an active military vessel can honestly say his life was less complicated before you arrived…”
“Yes. I’m looking into the state of my life. Many apologies for it,” Adam says. Kris steals a look at him. For all his practised casualness, Adam’s gaze is fixed and his jaw is still set a little tight.
Kris opens the door for Adam automatically, even though Adam isn’t technically a guest, it’s their cabin now. Adam catches Kris’s eye in a silent thank you, and Kris can feel them both relax.
“I won’t stay,” Adam says, crossing the room and picking his jacket up. “I thought I might take a couple of books and go read up on deck. I know you have valuable sleeping pencilled in around now.”
“My schedule is flexible, but yes, some sleep would be useful.” Kris sits down on his bed and undoes his cuff buttons. Adam laughs and says, “Alright, I’m going, there’s no need to undress already. Just let me pick out a book and I’ll be out of your hair.”
“It’s fine, Adam. Stay as long as you like,” Kris tells him, because that laugh still wasn’t right, was more like the echo of normality.
Adam trails his hand across the spines of Kris’s much maligned collection of books, and picks one off the shelf with a satisfied expression.
“This one looks particularly terrible,” he says. Kris rolls his eyes and concentrates on unlacing his boots.
Abruptly, Adam starts to speak again. “I wasn’t supposed to be the Heir, you know. I…” Adam swallows, hard. “I had an older brother. Neil. He would have been a great Idol; he was so much smarter than me. So me and Allie, we were allowed to, well, run a bit wild.”
He’s looking at Kris but his eyes are far away, watching his past.
“We got into trouble, but it didn’t matter because it wasn’t like either of us were ever going to be anything but minor royalty, trotted out for functions and the occasional wedding. They had Neil to be their Idol.”
Adam’s fingers are gripping the book tight, as if the only way he can keep his voice that calm is to channel out the tension through his hands. It’s painful to see. Kris has to sit on his own hands stop himself from reaching out and smoothing out the harsh lines of Adam’s fingers.
“Daniel, the priss, was always making snide remarks about Allie and me. He has terribly strict parents, you see, very keen on duty and devotion. They brought him up to be rather old fashioned, and our messing around didn’t exactly sit well with that. Neil just thought he was funny,” Adam adds, a small, sad twist ghosting round his mouth.
“I heard Prince Neil went missing,” Kris says, because he doesn’t know how to even begin. He’d heard the story, vaguely known the facts, but he’d never given it much thought. It had all been before he came to the Mansion, when Adam and Allie were names he didn’t even know the Prince and Princess had, let alone consider using. When he had never had to watch Adam struggle for control like this, and feel adrift.
“He did. They think he drowned. Idiot.”
Adam is barely constructing sentences any more, which is always a bad sign. Kris wonders if he should - make some soothing tea or something, anything would be better than sitting uselessly on his bunk with only one shoe on and probably looking like he’s been struck on the head.
“I’m sorry,” he offers, inadequately.
“It… It changed things. Changed me,” Adam tells him. His face can’t seem to settle on an expression, flitting from hurt to wistful to hopeless. Damn the tea, damn everything, all Kris wants to do is to shut Adam away somewhere safe, because the raw emotion on his face is too much, too intimate to let anyone see.
“And so that’s why you joined the army?” Kris asks, in lieu of being able to do or say or think anything useful.
“Not exactly. Remember how I said I was almost exiled? Father wanted me out of the Mansion, one way or another.” Kris has never heard Adam call the Idol that before. Adam finally looks at Kris, as if he knows he can’t say this with words alone. “So he settled on sending me to the borders,” he finishes with a casual shrug and intent eyes.
At that point Kris had been navigating his first year as Captain, trying not to break too many rules and going to more official dinners than he ever wanted. And he had heard the story of the Prince going off to fight, and maybe there had been a few wink-nudge moments that Kris hadn't had the energy or interest to wonder about. But there it had been, the turning point of Adam’s life, reduced to an amusing anecdote over entrees.
“My father made it as difficult as possible, made me a Commander. He thought I’d give up after a month and have to come home with my tail between my legs, ready to repent and play the good son. But I... I liked it. It felt like I was actually doing something, you see. Making a difference. And I was good at my job.” Adam says that like it’s a secret, a shameful confession. Whereas in truth, he had picked a hopeless, terrible combination of a border dispute and a civil war and somehow turned it around. Kris may not know politics, but he knows war. Adam had been something special.
“I heard as much. You were talk of the Fleet, of everyone, really.” It’s a little hard to reconcile this Adam with the Commander who ran a ruthlessly brilliant campaign. Even harder to imagine that either of them could once have been the hedonistic, aimless Prince.
"Oh, so this you've heard of," Adam says, rolling his eyes. Kris is about to defend his select range of interests, again, but Adam cuts him off. "Anyway, it’s fine. I've taken up enough of your time already. You should be fast asleep by now."
Kris feels a little dismissed, but then he notices the easy, loose line of Adam's back and the book resting in his hand as he turns to leave. He's not right, but he's better, at least. Adam heads for the door and then stops, silent for a few long seconds.
“Thank you,” he says quietly, not turning all the way back around. He’s already leaving when Kris, caught on the soft sincerity of Adam’s voice, remembers to say, “It’s fine.”
&&&&&
Night shift is exactly as mind numbing as Kris remembered. He spends some time up on deck, drinks some tea and wanders the corridors aimlessly.
He decides to go visit the engine and finds Michael there, watching the gears go round in an almost hypnotised fashion.
“Everything alright here?” he asks. Michael doesn’t even start, just says, “Evening, Captain. Anything I can do for you?”
“Just seeing how you were. Night shift can get you down,” Kris sighs, and shovels some more coal into the engine, to feel useful.
Michael laughs. “I’ve raised three children; sleep deprivation is practically routine to me.”
“It’s the boredom that’ll get you,” Kris says, except he should have known better, because the bell on the wall next to him starts to ring almost exactly as he finishes the sentence.
He and Michael drop everything and head for the look out, because Lil wouldn’t set that bell off unless they were in serious trouble.
“This is all your fault. Just don’t say anything like ‘how bad could it be’, okay?” Michael tells Kris as they rush up the stairs. Kris tries to smile, but his mind is already being pulled in all directions by the potential disasters that could await them.
Lil is standing in a pool of light, turning the gear handle that will be setting bells ringing all over the ship. She looks up as Kris approaches and her face is determined, though her eyes are worried.
“Two ships approaching, which I’ve identified as known hostiles,” she says, leaving the bell and leading them to the telescope array. “You can make them out quite clearly now. Approximately 15 minutes away.”
Kris looks through the eyepiece she indicates and his heart sinks. The ships are small but heavily armed mercenary vessels, covered in symbols and graffiti. Skypirates, his first Captain had called them, laugh brittle as he tried to reassure his newest recruits before the attack.
“They shouldn’t be anywhere near this quadrant,” Lil says as Kris straightens up. “They would have to get past at least two of our gun towers to be coming from that direction.”
There’s no way those ships could have simply flown by manned, armed towers. It’s a puzzle, and Kris doesn’t think he’s going to like the solution, when he has time to figure it out. Right now, there’s only one important conclusion. “They’re here for us, then,” Kris says, grimly. “Michael, ring the other bell. Wake the crew.”
Michael salutes smartly. It makes Kris feel proud and sick at the same time, his crew, ready for battle. He needs his gun.
His mind is already so busy making plans that it’s almost a shock when he opens the door to his room and Adam is standing there already dressed, looking confused and concerned.
“I’m assuming the frantic bells are not a good sign?” he says, and Kris can only shake his head as he takes his Acoustic out of the box under his bed and loads it.
“Two mercenary airships, ETA about 15 minutes. We are in for trouble.”
“Mercenaries? Here?” Adam asks, and Kris shouldn’t be surprised that Adam is not only keeping track but grasps all the implications.
“Exactly. So they can only be after one thing, and I don’t plan on falling out of the sky today.”
“Right,” Adam says, pulling on his coat and hat. “Where do you need me?”
Kris starts. “What? I mean, I know you were in army but it’s hardly the same thing. Do you have any experience with long-range weaponry? Do you even have a gun?”
“What did you think this,” Adam gestures at his Upgrade, “was for? Decoration?” He gives Kris a fiendish grin, straightens his arm and then twists it inside the Upgrade. Something clicks, a few gears start to turn and Kris finds himself literally staring down the barrel of a gun, Adam’s smile even more devilish over the top of it.
“So, what’s the plan?” asks Adam.
“Come with me and you’ll find out,” Kris answers, and Adam is halfway to the door in a second.
As they walk Kris can’t help blurting out, “That is incredible.” He looks closer now, unashamed. “Are those tiny compression cylinders?”
“For longer range or heavy lifting,” Adam explains as Kris motions him up the stairs onto deck.
“In my defence, it could have been for decoration. I mean...” Kris attempts to make a hand movement that will encompass everything from the heels on Adam’s boots through the cogs threaded on belts and chains to the feather in his hat. “Not beyond the realm of possibility,” he says, amusement breaking into his voice.
“Captain, I am more than just a pretty face,” Adam teases, shaking his head at Kris’s apparent stupidity.
Kris stops for a moment, turning on the steps to the Bridge and looking out into the night. He can see a light in the distance, bobbing innocently in the darkness. Adam follows his gaze and his face hardens.
“Here they come,” he says.
Kris opens the door to where Katy, Matt, and Anoop are waiting.
“Options?” Kris asks.
Matt grimaces. “Not a lot. We can’t out-fly them, we know that much. They’re both smaller and lighter than us. We might be able to out gun one or the other, but certainly not both at once.” He gives Kris an almost apologetic look. “We left most of our cannons behind so we’d be lighter. For speed. We didn’t think…”
“I know, it’s a bloody shock to us all,” Kris says. “Never mind that now. What can we do?”
“It’s unlikely that we can take down the larger ship with our available weapons. To have even a chance, we’d have to concentrate all our firepower on it, but if we do that we get picked off by the smaller ship.”
“It’s a tactic this group have been using for some time, according to the intel we’ve got on file from previous attacks,” Katy says, indicating the table spread with reports. “It’s not fool proof, but fairly successful, I’m afraid.”
“The smaller ship is weaker, but hard to take down quickly with gun fire because of its quickness and design. And if we spend time firing at that ship, we’ll be a sitting duck for the other one,” Matt finishes. He tries for a smile and misses.
“So we ram the larger ship,” Kris says, and he knows it’s a risky, rough idea, but rough is really all they have time for. He also knows exactly how strong the Conway is, right down to the inches of her hull thickness. She’ll hold.
“Ram them?” Adam repeats, eyebrows raised high.
“Those ships aren’t built for that kind of combat, they rely on speed and their gun batteries. I really think it could work.”
“Alright. Then we can deal with the other ship on equal terms,” Katy says and the faith in her voice makes Kris put his arm round her, holding her close.
“We can take her,” Kris says. “I trust my ship and my crew. Besides, we have a secret weapon.” He nods at Adam, who explains about his Upgrade and then casually adds, “Oh, and I also happen to be a military commander with a year in a war zone. I might be able to help with your artillery strategy.”
Anoop gives him a teasing look. “You mean, there’s more to gunning than shouting ‘fire’?”
Kris sees his hand shaking slightly as he pulls a lever, though. Anoop always makes jokes when he’s nervous. Matt says, “Idiot,” in an amused voice and pats Anoop on the shoulder. Adam’s glare mutes a little.
“In terms of artillery, we’re down to one cannon, but it’s a beauty.” Matt tells Adam. “Can’t offer you legions of men, either, me and Michael will have to do, and the Captain, of course.”
“That’s it?” Adam asks, and worry flashes across his face, just for a second. The expression that replaces it is a new one to Kris, and he figures he must be seeing Commander Adam for the first time. It’s… striking.
“That’s it.”
The bell from the look out rings five times.
“Okay, five minutes, people. Matt, Adam, I need you to give us cover as we go in. Take Michael and Scott, get the guns ready. And make sure everyone is also armed for hand-to-hand. I hope it won’t come to that, but being boarded is always a risk.”
“Oh great,” Matt frowns. “Come on, Commander, let’s go see about those guns.”
“Katy, I need you with Meg, keep the engine going no matter what, okay?” Kris says.
“Will do. Keep safe,” she says. She turns to go, but Kris catches her shoulder, salutes and says softly, “Will do, Kat”
Katy salutes back, holding his gaze for a crowded second, then leaves.
Kris looks at Anoop, “I trust you can steer us into another ship? I realise it goes against every one of your navigator’s instincts, but…”
“Won’t be a problem, Captain,” Anoop says, consulting at his dials. “I should have good visual any moment now.”
Kris says, “Never thought it would be,” and Anoop seems to stand a little taller behind the controls.
“I’ll try and hit just forward of broadside, rather than head on. That way we shouldn’t lose anything vital. The lookout is still going to be pretty close to the action, though.”
Kris nods. “I’ll go warn Lil, don’t worry. After we hit, get us away as soon as you can.”
He looks out across his ship, over the deck, still too cluttered, over the lookout, the glass of the instruments shining, and finally to where the lights are now parts of indistinct shapes against the darkness, and he feels cold to his bones.
He almost runs to the lookout. Thankfully his feet know the way instinctively, because his brain is occupied with everything that could go wrong and what exactly he is going to do about it.
Lil is waiting at the top of the steep steps, and she asks, “What’s the plan?” as soon as Kris is within shouting distance.
“Get ready to come down from there, we’re going to try and ram the larger ship,” Kris tells her. She opens her mouth, then seems to think better of it and goes back to the array, closing down most of the telescopes.
“They probably won’t survive, but this way I’m giving them a fighting chance,” she sighs, and pulls the lever that will signal to Anoop again.
“Once we’ve hit, there’s a chance they’ll try and board us,” Kris says, fingers straying down to wrap round the handle of his Acoustic, tucked safely into his belt.
Lil bends down and pulls a wicked looking knife out of her boot. Clearly tonight is the night for unexpected weaponry.
“Oh, I’m ready,” she says, and her smile is blade-sharp. She signals Anoop again and then gives the array one last pat.
“Better find yourself a good spot for shooting,” Lil says with a smirk as they start back down the steps. “Don’t want to hit a pipe.”
Kris decides he can let that go, right now. Lil settles in under the stairs, and Kris goes back to check on the guns in place around the steps from the bridge. Adam is already standing on a gun emplacement, aiming at the ships in the distance, and as Kris arrives next to him he fires the Upgrade. A light goes out. Kris and Matt exchange an impressed look. The two ships move apart, clearly trying to avoid making too obvious a target.
“This was in the intel. The larger ship will try and get closer and pick off our key gunners.” Matt says, handing Adam a case of ammunition.
“Good,” Kris and Adam say together and then there is the whip crack sound of gunfire.
“We’re going to need that cover from the small ship about now,” Adam says. “Load long range weapons.”
The ship is close enough now that Kris can make out the graffiti painted on its side, a tally of their victims interspersed with symbols, scrawled in white paint all over the hull. The other ship is still more indistinct, but Kris spots the tell tale sparks coming from a gun position. He takes careful aim, letting the world narrow to that one point, and fires.
Then the Conway surges forward. The mercenary ship tries to turn but they are too slow, too late.
There’s nothing that Kris can do now except yell, “Brace!” and duck down behind the outer railing. He takes a breath and then the world is nothing but noise, everything seems to be screaming and breaking. He keeps his eyes shut and his head down until the shuddering stops and the noise fades to shattering and yelling, then stands up, hanging on to the rail.
Matt is already aiming the cannon at the larger ship, but Adam is still, seemingly transfixed by something in the cloud of dust and splinters that is the far end of the ship. As it clear, Kris can see they’ve done it. The Conway is embedded in the side of the enemy ship, whose hull is a wreck of broken wood and twisted metal. Kris can see her insides spilling out, gears and pipes exposed, smoke and steam pouring from the hole they’ve made in her side.
He looks back and he can see Anoop through the shattered windows at the front of the bridge, pulling levers frantically, trying to get them away, then something hits the stairs next to him and Matt yells, “Boarders!”
Adam calls, “Return fire!” and Kris turns and pulls the trigger in one movement. A man standing on the Conway’s railing, gun raised, seems to freeze for a second and then falls backwards. Michael whoops in triumph and Kris takes cover behind the cannon as he reloads.
“Show-off,” he hears Adam say. Kris looks up to where Adam is sighting his weapon, arm outstretched and fist clenched, gaze locked on his target even as he commands, “And Matt, keep the cannon on the other ship. Aim for the front gun emplacement, I think that’s where their heavy artillery is.”
The Upgrade fires, gears turning so fast that they blur. Adam nods, satisfied at his shot, and calls, “There’s more. Up on the lookout, go, go!”
The Conway lurches sideways, and splinters fly everywhere, stinging the side of Kris’s face as he takes cover again.
“We must have got stuck,” Adam chokes out beside him.“Damn, there’s no way I can hit anything in this. I think we’ve lost some lights.”
“There’s no way they can either,” Kris points out, and yells, “Prepare for hand-to-hand,” hoping that he can be heard over the chaos.
“If we went now, we could surprise them …” Adam starts, peering over the top of the cannon. “And take some prisoners, get some information,” Kris finishes. Adam nods and they make their way round to the emplacement shielding that Matt and Michael are crouched behind.
“Matt, you cover us, then follow. Michael, you stay here. I want you to be firing on the smaller ship as soon as you have any sort of visual,” Kris says.
They creep out, weapons forward, through the haze that only seems to be thickening. Something must be on fire, and Kris hopes it is not something of his.
There is suddenly a scream and Kris hears glass smashing, then the sickening sound of bone snapping. Adam motions Kris up to the lookout and stands at the foot of the stairs, prepared to fire. Kris tries to be quiet as he mounts the stairs, but when he reaches the top he sees he needn’t have. Lil is leaning heavily on the array, but she’s holding her knife to the throat of a short man covered in tattoos that match the symbols that used to decorate his hull. His arm looks broken, and Lil is bleeding heavily from cuts on her cheek and shoulder.
“He tried to get me in the face, but I was faster,” Lil says. “Do you have him?”
Kris brings his Acoustic up to inches from the man’s nose and lets the catch drop, the click very clear. “Yes,” Kris says, “I have him.” The mercenary swallows.
Lil steps sideways and uses her knife to cut through a rope that Kris hadn’t even noticed, then places it back at the man’s throat. The mercenaries must have thrown hooks on lines to keep the Conway near for boarding. The bow swings sideways, out of the dust cloud, and Kris can see the deck again. Matt has the barrel of his gun pressed to another man’s temple and Adam is stalking round a pile of supplies. There is a body on the deck just by the steps, knife still in hand. Kris looks away.
The Conway finally breaks free of the other ship, which is already sinking towards the ground. Kris can’t quite believe it. They’ve knocked her out of the goddamn sky. The Conway lurches unsteadily, and Kris tries to hang on to something not made of glass. They still seem to be flying, to his massive relief, albeit slowly and at a slant.
“Don’t even think about it,” Adam’s voice rings out. Kris follows his line of sight and the aim of his arm to where a mercenary is pointing a gun directly at Kris and Lil.
Kris yells, “Drop your weapon,” and points his Acoustic at the man for good measure. He obeys and Adam goes and picks it up, then grabs the mercenary by the neck and says something that Kris can’t hear. The man’s face is going purple, and Kris has to yell again, “We are taking prisoners, remember?” Adam lets the man go and he crumples to the floor.
“Right, prisoners to the brig,” Kris orders, stepping backwards so that Lil can manoeuvre her captured mercenary down the stairs. We’ve still got a whole other ship to deal with, everyone.”
He trains his gun on Matt’s prisoner and says, “Matt, Adam, you get back to the guns. We’ll take them from here.” Adam drags the third man to his feet and almost throws him at Kris.
As they come down the stairs, Kris hears the rattle of gunfire above them. They shut the prisoners in their tiny brig, which they usually use more like a safe, and Lil slumps against the wall. There are glass shards in her hand, which Kris hadn’t seen in the dim light outside, and blood is still running down her cheek, too much blood for Kris’s liking.
“You need to go sort those out,” he says, dabbing at the slash across her shoulder with his handkerchief. “You’re not going back out into the line of fire like this, no way. You could pass out from blood loss, or worse.”
“I can still be useful. I’ll be fine. You need me,” Lil insists, wincing as she pulls glass from her palm.
“I need you to stay here and keep an eye on these useless degenerates” Kris tells her, and Lil looks at the prisoners through the bars of the door.
“Piece of cake,” she says. “I’ll need a gun, though. Just in case.”
Kris goes to find Scott, who is dealing with all the supplies, but instead he collides with Katy, running full pelt round a corner.
Kris says,“I don’t know how much info you’ve been getting from the Bridge, we’ve forced the larger ship to ground. Took out all but three boarders. Lil’s injured, I’ve got her guarding the brig. But it worked, Kat, it worked.” Katy only manages to look half relieved at best so he asks, “Problems?” and she nods.
“The impact was pretty brutal. We’ve lost a stabiliser, which is bad but not critical. But we’ve completely lost the signalling system. No messages are getting from one part of the ship to another. Plus Meg thinks one of the drive gearage rods might be damaged, but that’s minor in comparison.”
“Then we’ve no lookout and no input from anywhere else on the ship. We’re flying blind.”
“We’ve got to tell the Bridge, for a start,” Katy says, and dashes off as soon as Kris nods his agreement.
Kris carries on to the store, where Scott is loading some revolvers. As he hears Kris come in, he aims one right at Kris’s head, then lowers it quickly when he looks up and sees who it is.
“Sorry,” he says, “But there was talk of boarders.”
“Taken care of,” Kris says, and picks up two more guns and a box of ammo for his Acoustic. “The signalling system is down, I’m afraid. So you’ll have to check yourself if Meg or Anoop want anything. Meg is almost definitely going to need parts.”
“I’m on it, Captain,” Scott says with a salute, and Kris makes his way back to the deck, where Adam meets him, looking grim.
“That ship is damn fast, and they keep popping out of nowhere without a lookout to keep an eye on them. Also, Matt’s been shot,” Adam says, flatly.
“Only very slightly,” Matt assures Kris, who can only shake his head. Matt fires at the mercenary ship with his revolver, then helps Michael turn the cannon and looks at Kris and Adam. “See, I’m fine,” he says. “It barely caught my arm. I’m hardly bleeding at all, and we have more serious things to worry about, now.”
“Matthew Giraud, tie your tourniquet tighter, you are ‘hardly bleeding’ right through it,” Katy says sternly from where she is propping the door to the Bridge open.
The mercenary ship disappears from Kris’s view and everyone curses.
“We need someone on the lookout,” Adam says, “and fast. Even if they can’t use the signalling levers, they could, signal with their hands or something. They’d have a better chance of seeing where the ship was coming at us from if they were up there.”
“We can’t spare anyone from here, can we?” Kris says, knowing that it’s not really a question. They need everyone firing just to stand a chance. Adam doesn’t even bother to reply.
“Not Anoop or Meg, because they both really have their hands full,” Katy calls down. “I’ll go.”
“No. You are non-combat; you shouldn’t even be up here right now. Meg will be needing you in the engine room,” Kris points out, but Katy has angled her head in that determined way of hers.
“Don’t start that combat training required crap,” she says, disdainfully. “We don’t really have a choice right now, I’m your only option. You know I take the lookout sometimes. Needs must, Kris.”
As if to prove her damn point, the ship comes up on the other side and cannon fire rips into the Conway before they have a chance to take cover, let alone return fire.
“I can signal to one of you, and you can call it out for the guns, and for Anoop, too.”
“If there’s no one else…” Adam says, and his expression is gentle even as Kris glares at him, feeling undermined. “Captain, we need this. I don’t like it any more than you do.”
Kris has a sudden flash of memory, Katy and Adam laughing together over supper, and he can’t glare any more.
“Okay,” he says, “signal to me, like we do when it’s bad weather and we need to cast off. I’ll be at the top of the stairs. Stay as low as you can, and watch out, there’s glass everywhere up there. Go now, while we’re not under fire.”
Katy takes off at a run across the deck, making it to the lookout just as the enemy ship swerves in to view. The cannon is facing the right way this time, and they get a hit on something that tears away, shadowy wood replaced by the light of mechanisms spitting sparks into the night.
Kris fires at the exposed propeller driver and gets a hit, chains flying in all directions. The Conway turns sharply and he has to hold onto a railing, hoping that this is a tactic and not another system giving out.
“I believe in you,” he says under his breath, to himself and God and his crew and his ship.
He looks across at Katy, yellow jacket shining like a beacon, and she yells and signals, “Right!”
“On your right,” Kris calls. Adam whirls round and starts firing and rattling out orders at once. The sound of gunfire reverberates around the whole ship, and it’s so loud Kris can’t tell if it their shots or the enemy’s.
He takes aim again, but before he can fire the remaining ship lists with a scream of metal sliding over metal, and he hears Adam’s yell of triumph. The volleys coming from the other ship decrease suddenly in number, and Kris feels the giddy relief of a plan starting to work.
He looks back up at Katy who signals for right again, and then she is falling, gone, like a candle that someone has snuffed out.
“Katy?” Kris shouts, desperately. He wants to run to the lookout, but he can’t yet. “Right, right,” he calls and hears Adam’s echoing order.
His eyes keep pulling back to the empty place where Katy had been standing. The floor of the lookout is too high, hiding her from sight. He prays under his breath, the words pouring out of him as he spots a gun position on the ship that still seems functional, aims and shoots. The target drops and he hopes, with an unexpected, vicious thrill, that it was whoever got Katy.
The mercenary ship is tilting badly now; Kris can see lights going out and the shadows of things falling into the darkness below them. Scott hurries past, arms full of ammunition, and Kris stops him with a hand to his shoulder and says, “I’ll take those, go to the lookout, I think Katy’s been hit.” Scott goes white and heaps the ammo into Kris’s hands, then takes off at a run. Kris hurries to where Adam is still co-ordinating the guns, fierce satisfaction on his face as something on the enemy’s hull explodes, and drops the bullets at his feet where they glitter like treasure in the light of the flames.
“I think we’ve got them,” Adam says. “The fuckers will have to retreat or die.” He is streaked with soot and gunpowder and something that looks uncomfortably like blood, though it’s hard to tell, fire colouring everything slightly red.
He calls for the cannon and it booms out, making the whole deck shudder. Michael is methodically reloading as if everything were still and quiet and he didn’t have a vicious looking bruise developing on his forehead.
“I think they got Katy, she just dropped out of sight,” Kris says quietly, feeling sick to his stomach. He doesn’t dare even glance up at the lookout, just watches the ship turn slowly, still half ablaze.
“Goddamn,” Adam says and worries at his lip. The strange, red light is fading now, which Kris realises can only mean one thing.
“They’re retreating,” he says, softly and Adam looks stunned, frankly.
“We did it,” Adam says, almost disbelievingly, and then a little surer, louder, “We did it.”
He moves his gaze past Kris, up to the lookout and turns Kris by the shoulders. Scott has Katy. She’s being carried but Kris can see her head is upright and her hands are making ‘put me down’ motions. He looks at Adam and sees his smile reflected back, wide and unstoppable.
Scott carries Katy up to them and she frowns at them, slightly wide-eyed, and says, “I could walk.”
“Not you as well,” Kris says, overwhelmed by just how lucky they’ve been. “If you say you’re only bleeding slightly I will be, oh, only slightly put out.”
“Oh no, I’m bleeding spectacularly,” Katy says, and she lifts up her hand from her side. It’s covered in blood. “And I hit my head.”
“I’ll take her to her room and see what I can do,” Scott says. “She’ll be fine once we stop the bleeding.”
“Did we win?” Katy inquires. “I may have slightly blacked out.”
“We won,” Kris says and watches Scott take her carefully down the steps. He feels so relieved he doesn’t know what to do with himself.
“We won,” he repeats to Adam, and is half pulled, half falls into to Adam’s chest. It’s strange and so, so good just to lean, to not be strong for anyone, if only for a few seconds. The wool of Adam’s coat scratches at Kris’s cheek and everything becomes more solid, so Kris takes a breath and stands on his own two feet again. They look at each other for a long moment, until Adam clears his throat, almost self-conscious.
“Good work, Commander,” Kris says, and holds out his hand.
Adam shakes it firmly and says, “You too, Kris,” and Kris feels warm at that.
There are so many things to do, to check on. Katy, the prisoners, the ship. The drive linkage. Damn.
“And that is blood on you, too,” Kris says and Adam gives him a slightly puzzled look, then makes a unconcerned gesture.
“I’ll go see someone about it. You should go to Katy.”
“Engine room first,” Kris says, his body finally starting to wind down. Everything is losing that strange, pin sharp clarity and he is starting to ache. The engine room suddenly seems very far away. He sends Adam after Scott and Katy and takes a few moments to catch his breath for what seems like the first time in days. Then he straightens his shoulders and goes to be Captain Allen.
Part 3 <
