Chapter 13

IF THIS WERE CHESS, WE’D HAVE TOPPLED OUR OWN KING BY NOW. NOT OUT OF COWARDICE, BUT OUT OF RESPECT FOR OUR OPPONENT. BY ALL ACCOUNTS, WE’VE BEEN THREE MOVES AWAY FROM THE END SINCE THE BEGINNING. AND FOR EVERY MOVE WE MAKE, AND EVERY MOVE THEY MAKE, WE STAY THREE MOVES AWAY FROM MATE. IF THEY HAD ANY CONCEPT OF RESPECT, MAYBE WE’D HAVE SURRENDERED TO OUR FATE BY NOW. BUT WE JUST KEEP PLAYING, AND HOPING, THAT ONE PLUCKY LITTLE PAWN MIGHT MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

-CAPTAIN R. O. MONTGOMERY, MENA STATION.

.•° ✿ °•.

I’d always thought so, and my solitary time in the quarters since Lilt left had done nothing but make me more convinced of this. I knew some people that would argue against that fact until they were blue in the face, that downtime was good, that relaxation and meditation were healthy, that we were meant to have crunch and slack.

To them I’d pose the question: if we were made with the notion of nothingness in mind then why do we experience boredom? Why do our minds take us on flights of fancy into the imaginary and the surreal, if not to just be a system idle process? Why is solitary confinement and isolation used as a punishment?

I was fortunate because I never had to wander very far to find relief from boredom - I had senses that felt things others could scarcely imagine; if I laid still and with my eyes closed, I could count the fibers on the bedsheets against the skin of my lower back. I was also lucky because I had an uplink to Centra, and if I chose to I could read and enjoy every bit of news taking place on Maci Station; from maintenance reports to Run proposals to personals from lonely people looking to meet other lonely people.

Failing that, I could always just imagine a flight-of-fancy to occupy my mind.

And as a Skipper, I had an imagination like no other.

Even still, despite my ability to conquer boredom like my bladder could conquer bedsheets, I found myself feeling discontent and uneasy; anxious and jittery.

I think it was the not-knowing that made it particularly awful. I didn’t know how long I’d be here, and I had no way of influencing the outcome. The door was unlocked, but this was still a prison by any other name. It wasn’t a great state for a Skipper to be in, these were all disruptive feelings and feelings were our everything, so by extension when my feelings were uneasy, I was uneasy. When my feelings were disruptive, I felt disrupted.

I didn’t know how long it was going to be before I’d be reunited with my arms and legs, and I didn’t know how long it would be before Lilt decided she could use me again, and I didn’t know how long it might take for Maci Station to come under attack again.

Which made me wonder: did Lilt’s ship have weapons? Was it armed? It usually didn’t matter, because fighting The Burning Sky in any way other than with a Faering was an effort in desperation and desperate futility both. But then again, ever since Lilt had come into my life there’d been a lot of things I thought I knew for sure that turned out to be semi-complete understandings and misunderstandings.

It drove me crazy just how in-the-dark she kept me, just how particular she was with the information she shared; how keenly she controlled the flow of information.

She was such a fricking bureaucrat.

Maybe that was why I’d lied to her about Carmen; maybe I needed to feel like I had something that I wasn’t revealing to her so I could balance this equation that had began to feel more like a battlefield.

It made me feel guilty to categorize Lilt in such a negative way, but at the same time I couldn’t escape the simple truth that to her... I was a tool. Just like her computer, like her lab, like her ship, like her ability to change who she was at a moments notice; and like any other one of her tools, when she had no use for me she’d just put me aside until she did.

Mercifully, my thoughts got interrupted and let go of their grasp on me.

“Skipper? Is now a good time?” I didn’t recognize the voice, but I’d felt its approaching from the corridor outside my bedroom, so I wasn’t caught off-guard.

“A good time for ice-cream, yes. A good time for brain-surgery, no.” I called back with an even tone.

There was quiet and I could feel the young man’s uncertainty and discomfort. He’d probably never met a Skipper in-person before, maybe the idea of a quadruple amputee war veteran in the body of a child disconcerted him. Objectively, it ought to have.

“That was a joke,” I decided to free him from his self-conscious uncertainty, “you can come in.”

A moment passed, and then the door slid away into the wall and revealed a young man with one side of his head shaved and the other half hanging down the right side of his face, covering one eye. I had to arch my head back to see him, so my entire visual was upside-down, but I got a good enough look to decide that he was pretty attractive in that late-20’s-guy kind of way.

“Good evening Skipper, I’m Bryance; I’ve been assigned to be your technician while you’re shipside. I got your maintenance records from Ms. Maple-“

“Perry.” I curtly cut him off to correct him, and it was only because I felt like a stranger in a strange land on this ship and I needed that sense of connection to the familiar.

“Yes Ma’am; Perry, I apologize. I’ve gotten your records from Perry, and I’m here to do your Relinking.” He sounded slightly fearful, like maybe he expected me to yell at him or something. What kind of operation was Lilt running here? I considered her maybe having a stern and severe commanding persona that she wore when she took charge, and that half the crew was afraid of her, and it worried me to think how right I might have been.

In light of that, I decided to start-over with Bryance and try to give him a break, because I had the feeling he didn’t get many of those working under Lilt Jackson.

“It’s nice to meet you, Bryance; I’d curtsy for you but right now I’m presently ill-equipped.”

I paused. He didn’t breathe. I sighed.

“You can laugh at that; it was a joke too.”

He chuckled a couple of nervous ahah’s under his breath, but he did shine me a smile that felt somewhat genuine and that made me feel like maybe I’d made a difference.

“It’s nice to meet you, too, Skipper. Do I have your permission to begin?”

I turned my head back to focus on the ceiling above my new bed, and nodded my head. I heard him sigh with relief - maybe from my permission, or maybe from setting down the heavy foam-lined tote box he’d been dragging along on small wheels by a handle on one end - and then subsequently listened as the buckled latches of the box were flicked open.

“It’s Cadence, by the way.” I thought I would sound cooler than I did, but I think I wound up coming across condescending or irritated, and I didn’t want either things to be associated with me.

“I mean. I know you know that, I just mean you can call me Cadence. You don’t need to call me Skipper.”

He came into my field of view with one of my disembodied arms held in his hands and the man leaned over me to lay the appendage down adjacent to my body.

Like someone laying out an outfit on the bed, or roughing out the pieces of a puzzle before committing to their placement. At least he could tell his rights from lefts. Carmen could never remember hers.

My brow furrowed at that thought, that phantom memory that didn’t belong, and Bryance backed off quickly with a splinter of panic in his voice.

“Are you alright, Skipper? Did I lean on you? Did I hurt you?”

“Bryance.” I decided to be firm with him.

“Right, right, it’s Cadence. I’m sorry, I’m jus-“

“Bryance.” I repeated, and this time he was quiet and expectant. This time I had his attention, which was everything I wanted in that moment. Well, that and maybe a hot cup of Blackcurrant Tea.

“You’re overthinking things. Do you know the Skipper's Creed?”

He had an expression like he was being tested, and when he answered it was with a firm question-mark at the end of his response.

“Feel, don’t think?”

“That’s right. So don’t think about this, don’t think about getting it right or wrong, don’t think about upsetting me, or Lilt, or anybody. I assume you’re trained in this, right? So just trust your training. Follow your feelings.”

I didn’t think I’d find myself giving a pep-talk to my new technician, but what was a Skipper if not a source of inspirational babbling, right?

.•° ✿ °•.

Once I’d become ambulatory again, I didn’t want to waste any more time being bed-bound in that room; I’d given some cursory praise to Bryance because it seemed like he’d needed it (and truthfully, he’d done an amazing job,) and then I’d taken my leave.

I didn’t know exactly where I wanted to go, but I had a few options.

If I hadn’t been fed in my bed, I might have looked for something to eat; this ship already proved that it had supplies of wine and that meant it probably had other luxury items provisioned aboard, too. The thought made me furious again, and I balled up my hands at my side.

Maybe I’d go and find Lilt in her office, and I’d yell at her so me more. And then she’d tell me I was having a tantrum, and dismiss me, and I’d have gotten nowhere and nothing but a pair of blushing cheeks.

I could try talking to her again without the disadvantage of her feeding me like a helpless toddler who couldn’t move, but even as I ran through the scenario in my head it became abundantly clear to me that I didn’t even want to see Lilt at all.

But I did want to see someone.

And upon making that discovery, I also realized that I’d been walking in a particular direction ever since crossing the threshold from the bedroom to the hallway.

I’d been descending, and this was my second set of stairs.

Lilt’s ship wasn’t anywhere near the size of Maci Station; I’d figured on five decks (the bottom deck was double-height, so technically four,) as wide as it was tall, but much longer. The horrendously over- stimulating carpet reminded me of a cruise-ship from before the war; the kind we’d seen in movies. It wouldn’t have surprised me to see golden accents or other wastefulness, if not for the fact that freed of the failed economic policies of our burning planet, gold no longer had any value assigned.

Soon enough the plush carpet and opulent aesthetics of the Truth and Consequences gave way and I was welcomed back into the lower science and engineering decks, where everything felt comfortingly- dirty and oppressive and manageable to my overly-tuned Skipper senses.

Without concern for who might have seen me - and there were people littering the area, working at consoles, or at desks, or experimenting on disembodied Skipper limbs (if I’d been less focused, I’d have been a more than a little bit appalled by that,) - I made myself to the framework that surrounded the figure that dominated the center of the space.

It was hard to believe, as I approached the Faering, that I’d been a part of this not that long ago. It seemed so pristine and undisturbed. Ethereal, almost. If it weren’t for the ugly crane and gantry assemblies built up around the expansive rings that encircled the Truss, and for my own memories, I might not have believed that this even existed.

It looked like a render, like something from a simulated Run briefing; it didn’t look real, like the shadows cast upon it by other objects weren’t accurately arranged or lined-up.

And for a moment I considered that maybe Lilt wasn’t the most incongruent thing on this ship.

Why had Lilt been so worried about my dreams being inaccurate, anyway?

Who was it that she thought might be there, that shouldn’t have been?

I wasn’t sure what compelled me to do it, and it wasn’t clear to me just where the certainty had come from; but as sure as I would wake up wet every morning and as sure as people would smile at me gratefully in the halls but then look away in discomfort, I was sure of the words that spilled from my lips as barely a whisper.

“Hello Carmen.”

In return for my words, Carmen sent me joy.