New reader? Start here.
Back to Part 044 – Forward to Part 046
Toby had been making attempts to clean the dishes for the better part of an hour. Each start was met with a poke, and he’d turn around to entertain for a while, and then back at the dishes. This time, his tail was pulled. He dropped the plate he had been scrubbing off and on again into the sink and turned around.
“I’m booooored,” Auburn said. She leaned on the counter across from him, arms down at her sides.
Toby sighed. “Do something.”
“Like what?”
“You can help me with the dishes…”
Auburn sighed loudly. “That sounds like something you’d do on shift. I am not on shift. What’d you normally do before I got here?”
Toby dropped his eyes away, and hugged himself. “Well, usually I’d hang out with Nina…”
“Oh,” Auburn said, quietly.
“There’s books,” Toby offered, recovering the conversation.
“No.”
“You could play Shah.”
“No!”
Toby hugged himself tighter. “Cards?”
“N-maybe.”
He turned away. “I’m sorry.” He planted his hands on the lip of the sink and stared into the water. “I don’t really have much to give you.”
Auburn stepped forward. She pulled him close, nuzzling into the soft fur on his head. “No, I’m sorry. I should feel lucky for being here.” She kissed his ear.
Toby leaned back into the hug. “I’m sorry Frank couldn’t be here. You’d probably have more fun.”
The human shrugged. “But he’s happy now, which is awesome. He got to go home to his own people. I don’t think he ever though that’d happen.” She leaned forward and kissed Toby’s muzzle. “You should get back to work. Also, have you seen my room yet?”
The fur on Toby’s face grew noticeably redder. “Yeah.”
“You should come check it out when you’re done.”
Toby turned around. “Is it different?”
Auburn only giggled at him. She playfully hit him on the shoulder and left him alone in the kitchen.
Alone, he made quick work of the dishes, the weight of the day slowly working its way off his shoulders.
The intercom clicked on. “Attention, everyone.” It was Cait. “We have answered a ship’s distress call. Please prepare for incoming wounded. Tre, greet them at the docking port. Auburn, you’re with Billy.” Just before the intercom clicked off, Toby heard in the background, “Why’s Auburn get to be with Bi-”
Toby dried his hands and headed to the bridge.
Xiphos manned the helm, but had turned her chair to face Cait, who made herself busy preparing for their guests. Xiphos scowled, her arms folded tightly over her chest.
“If you would like to return to your old position you certainly may,” Cait said. She leaned over Xiphos, checking a display that said “docking ring.” All indicators said that it was “in progress,” whatever that meant. Toby tried to remember if he had seen a docking ring at all on the Rose.
“I know first aid,” Xiphos said firmly, as if this was a forgotten fact.
“Auburn has shown she does as well. She is also an organiser, and that is something we could use if there are multiple wounded on this ship.” Cait turned to look down at Xiphos. “If it pleases you, we could arrange a change of position, and Auburn could take the helm.”
Xiphos turned around and poked at her screens a bit. Her ears flattened against her head. After a moment, she turned to Toby. “What?”
“I don’t know what to do,” he said. He straightened up when he spoke to her, just as he had seen Auburn do, and made forced, brief eye contact.
Xiphos, to Toby’s surprise, said, “ohhh. Good point. I dunno. Boil water?” She looked for Cait from her chair. “Captain?”
Cait had slipped into her office for a moment. She returned and said, “If you want to help, you could-” She stopped suddenly. Her ears perked and swiveled around on her head, searching. Xiphos did the same. They were listening, and Toby strained to hear what Cait’s subconscious already had.
“Helmsman, what happened to our engines?” Cait asked slowly. Xiphos pulled a monitor up to her and rapidly paged through the displays. She froze on one page, two bright red indicators flashed at her.
“I don’t know-”
“Get them back online.”
“Captain,” Xiphos said, panic poorly concealed in her voice. “Systems are shutting down all over the ship.”
The helm shut down, its screens squeezing down to a thin line, and then blinking away. The light went out, and they were left only in emergency lighting.
“Xiphos…” Cait folded her arms.
Xiphos jumped out of her chair and flung open a panel on the wall. She started flipping breaker switches. The lights flickered, and then sputtered out again. “Maybe it’s the other ship.”
“That is silly,” Cait said flatly. “More likely, it is-”
An alarm cut her off. Cait groaned. She grabbed Toby by the arm and pulled him over to a locker. She reached in and handed him a hand gun. “The loud end points at what you want to die. Only point it at what you want to die. Understood?”
“What am I-?” Toby started.
“What’s going on?” Xiphos asked, leaving her switches. Her eyes got wider as she saw Toby’s gun. Cait pulled a gun of her own from the locker.
“Keep trying. It seems our guests aren’t interested in only our services.” She pushed Toby against the wall on one side of the door. Xiphos tried the switches again, but got no results. She huddled up behind Toby.
“Are we going to die?” She asked softly. Cait rolled her eyes.
“No. I am not interested in dying.” She closed the hatch to the bridge and screwed the locks shut, just in time to catch the faint pinging of one of their guests sprinting towards them. There was a pause, and then what sounded like tools being applied to the hatch. Cait pushed herself against the wall, gun drawn, and she waited. Toby looked back at Xiphos, who trembled where she stood, a tear welling up in her eye. He reached back and took her hand in his.
There was a loud crack, the sound of metal snapping, and the hatch slammed open. The guest came into the room screaming. Cait stepped forward with a carefully timed charge, crashing into the guest and knocking him hard to the floor. She pointed her gun down the hall to the bridge, and then back down to him. She narrowed her eyes, tilting her head so she could see him face.
The intruder shook his head. He stared into the barrel of the gun, then followed it up to its owner.
“Hey… hey, Cait,” he said.
Cait’s eyes grew wide. She stood up straight and threw her gun down at the intruder’s head. “Goddammit, Burian! What the hell do you think you are doing?”
Toby’s gun fell the the floor with a hard clank as he put everything together in his head. It took him a moment to realize he was gawking, and he closed his mouth.
Captain Burian Lake stood, and then hunched over a little, holding his side. “We needed a doctor,” he said, offering Cait a sheepish smile.
“We were entirely willing to offer a doctor.”
Captain Lake thought a moment. “Oh, right, you can just ask people for help. I’m not used to that.” He winced.
Cait slapped him. “Ass,” she said. “You can forget-” She looked at where he was holding his side. “You are bleeding.”
Captain Lake nodded. He rubbed the cheek that Cait had slapped. “That’s not what I’m here for.” Cait ushered him out the hatch. “There’s this girl…”
Toby and Xiphos were left alone on the bridge. She was shaking harder than before, her eyes fixed on where Cait and Burian Lake had been standing. Toby squeezed her hand. “I think we’re okay.” He gave her a relieved smile.
“Shut up,” she said. She crossed the bridge and sat down at the helm, shaking her fear away. She still had Toby’s hand, and Toby shuffled reluctantly behind her. He tugged his hand.
“Uhm… I should go see if I can help.”
Xiphos broke out of a concentrated trance. “Yeah…” She let go.
Toby wandered into the guest quarters. Little drops of blood made a trail to the infirmary. He stood back, not really interested in finding the source. Tre emerged, a fresh bandage on his head, and he strode over to Toby. Without so much as asking, he picked Toby up and carried him into the infirmary.
The medical table was pushed against the wall. There was a girl on the table, probably his age, unconscious, her fur a sickly pale. Her blood-stained shirt had been pulled up to reveal her abdomen, and fresh stitches poked out of her blood-matted fur. Billy directed Tre to put Toby down on a makeshift med table. He grabbed the boy’s arm and tied a tube around it. And then, before Toby realized what was happening, Billy slid an IV needle into his arm. Toby cried out, more in surprise than anything, and blood started to flow from his arm.
“Sorry,” Billy said. “You have her type.”
“Look at it this way, kiddo,” Captain Lake said. He stood just over Toby’s shoulder. “You just saved her life.”
“And with that, everyone needs to leave,” Billy said. “The girl needs rest, and I’m sure Toby has a few new trust issues he needs to work out.”
Cait and Tre, and Captain Lake and his associate, a pretty tiger, Toby noticed, all left them alone. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back. A little machine gently took his blood and passed it over to the girl, an IV also in her arm.
“It’s just like Nina…” he said, just short of whimpering.
Billy patted the boy’s shoulder. “Thankfully, it’s not this time.”
—-
Captain Lake and his partner sat down at one of the tables in the guest quarters. Tre stood by the hatch to the bridge, his eyes narrowed at both of them. Cait was the last to enter, and Captain Lake’s partner stood, a gesture Cait moments later deciphered as a show of respect. Captain Lake remained seated.
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you,” Cait said. She stood in the middle of the room, hitting him with a stare that could have broken glass.
“Mutual interest,” Lake said simply. His partner sat down, looking over at him.
“There is a lot of money to be made in bringing your limp body to the nearest Navy outpost.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Lake said. “It sounds like you’ve met our Traveler friends before. I can only guess that if that were true, you’d want to track them down as much as we do.”
Cait scowled again. “I am perfectly capable of doing so without your help. Secondly, I do not trust you.”
Lake nodded. “That’s fair. But I think we could benefit from one another’s help.”
Cait stared harder. Tre mimicked her from over her shoulder. “Get off my boat,” she said.
“I’m not leaving without my crew.”
“Then you may take her with you.”
“I can’t let that happen,” Billy said, coming in from the infirmary. “She’s in no condition to be moved.”
“Not helping, Billy,” Cait said.
“She stays until she’s better.”
Lake, looking into Cait’s eyes, said, “We’re stuck with each other. At least let me share the information I have.” Cait said nothing.
Lake continued. “We had to do some quick digging when we realized we were being followed, but we did manage to get some names from the crew list. Some of them have actually been spotted in known pirate areas. There’s the captain, a something Vu, but she’s fairly new… to… the scene.” He realized Cait, Tre and Billy were all staring now.
“Captain… Vu?” Cait asked. Her stare softened.
Lake nodded.
“What is the first name?”
“I can’t remember.”
“TRY.”
Lake traded a confused glance with his parter. She stood and bowed to Cait. “Jace Norton-Li, sir.” Billy’s eyes grew wide out of recognition. “I believe the name was ‘Logan’.”
Cait unfolded her arms. “Well,” she said. “I do believe you have our attention, Captain Lake.”
[g]
PSST! If you’ve been enjoying the series so far, please stop by and drop me a vote on top web fiction. You may do so with this link. Thanks! It’s much appreciated.
