⇤First ←Prev Archive Next→ Latest⇥
Part 11: LANCE
Cadet Lance Burgess had been a cadet aboard Medicine Leaf’s cadet ship, CT Aurelian. He was in training to be an officer, and that had rankled with some of the older hands on the ship, who weren’t in such a privileged position. As it happened, Lance Burgess had also been a charity case: he was an orphan who’d won the lottery and joined the officers’ program, one of perhaps three taken on each year in such a position.
‘So why did the boys hate you?’ Maira asked. Lance took a sip of his hot chocolate as he pondered this.
‘I don’t think they hated me so much,’ he said eventually. ‘They just didn’t like any of the cadets; the difference between me and the others was, I didn’t have a father in the admiralty I could complain to if they bullied me.
‘Anyway,’ Lance continued, ‘we put in here and had a few drinks. I was feeling pretty good, it was all friendly, when my eyes started swimming and I felt nauseous. They put me up in a bed and I blacked out – when I came to the ship was gone, and the barman said I’d been lumbered with the tab. I’ve been working here ever since.’
‘And how long is that?’ Maira asked.
‘A month.’
‘A month? And no one’s come back, or helped you out?’
‘Barman was adamant I had to pay my tab,’ Lance said sourly. ‘I’ve been working it off, but it barely makes a dent. He wouldn’t let me go unless they paid up.’
‘How much is he saying you owe?’ Ham asked. Lance stared down at the floor; when he answered it was barely a whisper.
‘Two thousand fins.’
Ham turned to Maira and shook his head slightly. Maira stared at him incredulously. She turned back to Lance.
‘Give us two minutes, we’re gonna have a quick sidebar,’ she said. She led Ham over to the bunks and bent over his shoulder.
‘We can’t afford that!’ he hissed. Maira shook her head.
‘This isn’t about afford,’ she said. ‘You know he and his mates didn’t spend two thousand fins; the barman’s defrauding this kid for free labour!’
‘Well he’s an orphan who was kicked off a navy ship.’ Ham shrugged. ‘It happens all the time! No one to pick them up, they get a job, work a couple years, steal off on a ship and live an grand old life!’
‘He doesn’t seem to want that,’ Maira argued. ‘Look, we’ll find out where he wants to go – if we can swing it, we will. But I’m having a talk with that barman, and we’re taking Lance with us. He’s a kid – I’m not leaving him to get exploited by some asshole.’
‘If you think you’re putting two thousand of our fins on the line for-’
‘It won’t come to that,’ Maira said, ‘but I agree. We can’t afford the two thousand fins. If it comes to it, we’ll work out something else.’ Ham groaned, but nodded.
‘Fine,’ he said dourly. ‘But if you can’t work it out, we leave the kid and haul outta here, okay? We can always come back for him,’ he added, see Maira’s shocked expression.
‘Thanks Ham,’ Maira said. She smiled warmly, then turned and strode back to the table. Collapsing into her seat, she regarded Lance critically.
‘What’s your plan, Lance?’ she asked. ‘Do you want to return to Medicine Leaf, get back on a Navy ship?’ Lance paled at that suggestion.
‘Oh no, miss!’ he gasped. ‘The Navy wouldn’t take me back after I derelicted my duty for a month! I’d be washed out of the program either way! Besides,’ he added, ‘I’m not sure I could look my father in the face after I was so easily duped.’
‘Your father? I thought you said you were an orphan.’
‘He’s not really my father!’ Lance answered quickly. ‘At least, not in that sense. But he adopted me, he’s my legal guardian. He’d be so disappointed if I return home a failure!’
Maira stroked her chin and considered this.
‘Alright,’ she said. ‘So you don’t want to return to Medicine Leaf – what about this ship, the Aurelian? If we caught up with it, let them know what happened… would they take you back?’
‘I… I don’t know,’ Lance sighed. Tears pricked his eyes. ‘I don’t know where I want to go or what I want to do! I dedicated my life to becoming a Naval officer, and now I’m stranded here and I don’t know what to do!’
Maira sighed and drew a scrap of cloth from her coat pocket. Shaking it out, she passed it to Lance, who wiped his eyes and blew his nose.
‘Keep it, kid,’ she muttered as he tried to hand it back. Aloud, she said, ‘okay, here’s what I’m going to suggest: you come with us. We can’t afford to hire you, but as you can’t afford a berth you can pay your way with us and at least you’ll be on the move. I’ve gotta pick some folks up at Medicine Leaf – if you wanna jump ship there, feel free, but I won’t wait for you once I’m loaded up. If you choose to stay on, we’ve got a long trip to Twin Knee Camp – no promises, but we’ll keep a weather eye out for the Aurelian and if we can detour easily enough to make contact we’ll explain your situation. We’ll do what we can to continue your training, but we’re a tiny crew – literally the two of us, Lance, running a whole damn ship – so you’ll have to be learning what you can, when you can. I won’t lie, it’ll be hard graft, but we’ll get you on your way and if you’re still with us at Twin Knee… well we’ll look at what we can do regarding a permanent berth, okay?’
She scowled as she regarded the cadet, his eyes shining, mouth agape. She pinched the bridge of her nose.
‘Can you at least act like it’s a hard choice, kid?’ she sighed. He held out his hand. ‘Criminy! I guess not.’ She groaned and shook his hand.
‘I’m really going with you?’ he asked.
‘Pending approval of your current employer,’ Maira said. ‘And for what it’s worth, I think you’re getting a raw deal here. I’ll have a talk with the barman, we’ll see what we can work out.’
Lance’s face fell. But he took a breath, set his expression with a grim nod, and finished off his chili. Maira strode over to the bar.
The barman’s name was Edmund, and his job consisted mostly of keeping a lazy watch over the patrons to make sure no one was trying to steal from him. He was, therefore, entirely unprepared when Maira approached and said, ‘I want to see your books from last month.’
‘What?’ he said, and then, ‘no? No, I can’t just-’
‘You can and will,’ Maira said, ‘because I’m employing your bus boy on my ship – he seems a steadfast lad who knows his way around an engine, only it seems he’s working off a debt here. I’ll pay it,’ she said, and continued as Edmund’s eyes gleamed, ‘providing you can verify the amount that needs paying off.’
‘That’s easy!’ he said. ‘It’s two thousand fins.’
‘It might have been when he first started working for you,’ Maira said. ‘But he’s been working – dilligently, by the sounds of it – for a month now, and I want to verify that he owed that amount originally. I also want to see his contract – I need to know what payment terms were agreed when you took him on.’
‘It was more a verbal contract-’ Edmund began, and Maira grinned.
‘So he’s not signed anything?’ she asked. ‘Then I think we’ll just be going with him! Thank you very much.’
‘Here, you can’t just poach my floor boy!’ Edmund snapped. ‘He owes me money!’ Maira crossed her arms.
‘And when you prove that,’ she said, ‘we can discuss terms.’ She leaned in and lowered her voice. ‘And you’ll want to discuss terms with me, because I own one of the last free light runners outside the cannibal lands.’
Edmund’s eyes bulged. He stared at her quizzically; she nodded slightly. Slack-jawed, he looked over to Lance, who was watching the exchange with curiosity. He cleared his throat and shook himself back to reality.
‘Let’s go into my office to… discuss matters,’ he said.
Twenty minutes later Maira returned, bearing a bundle of papers and a backpack. She shoved the pack into Lance’s arms and gestured to Ham.
‘Come on, kid,’ she said. ‘You’re with me now.’
‘Oh, thank you miss!’ Lance cried. ‘You won’t regret this, I promise! I’ll work hard everyday to-’
‘Okay, first of all it’s Captain,’ Maira interrupted. ‘Not miss. Second, I’m already regretting this – Edmund drives a hard bargain, you’re only lucky he’s got no head for contracts. Third, don’t act so eager – you’re on this boat to work, understand? It’ll be hard graft for months, at least until we can pick up a few more souls to share the workload, and there won’t be much pay until we pick up a few decent contracts.’
‘Yes Captain!’ Lance said. He half-walked, half-skipped to keep up with her as she strode out of the shed, Ham ambling along some way behind. ‘Where are we going?’
‘To the ship,’ Maira said. ‘I’m not paying his extortionate prices to get a night’s sleep. Pick a berth – they’re all free right now, save mine and Ham’s.’
Lance stopped and stared as they reached the ship. Up close, even half-buried by the dock, it was an imposing ship – back in the day it was sleek and elegant, but now it was a warhorse, bulked out for bigger cargo and bearing two huge guns and the enormous axe heads, emblazoned with the North Star design which had been infamous thirty years since.
‘It really is the Fallen Star!’ he gasped. Maira rolled her eyes.
‘Yeah, it was dad’s ship,’ she said. ‘Come on, pick up your feet!’
‘Your father was Dorian Deanfleet?’ Lance asked, barely able to suppress his glee. Maira shot him a glance.
‘Don’t get all hero-worship over him around me,’ she warned. ‘He might’ve been a great smuggler, but he was a lousy father.’
‘Oh.’ Lance deflated. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ He searched for any further words to say, realised there were none, and closed his mouth. Maira stared at him expectantly, then sighed.
‘Alright, get on board,’ she said. ‘Come on, time’s wasting!’
She watched him hurry up the gangplank with practised ease as Ham strolled up to her.
‘First crew hired,’ he said. ‘What did you have to give up for it?’
‘He wants six months worth of light for the beacon,’ Maira sighed. ‘I don’t know if this was the right call – he’s eager and he knows his stuff, but this is all a storybook for him. What’s he going to be like if we end up in a fight against the navy?’
‘You reckon we’ll get that much notoriety in a few months?’ Ham laughed. Maira shook her head.
‘We don’t need to. We just need to be caught running light once.’
She marched up the gangplank.
If Lance was disappointed to see regulation-standard crew berths, he didn’t show it. He chose one on the port side, near the engine bay, and opened up his pack. “His” pack – he hadn’t had a pack since he’d been dumped at the refuge, all his worldly possessions had floated away while he’d been sleeping off a hangover.
Inside were some clothes, an old and mostly-blunt knife, and a pistol. The pistol was a one-shot model with no powder or cartridges, but it did have a serviceable, if old, holster; he set that aside. The knife looked like some old airman’s penknife, which may have been discarded when he bought a new one from the refuge. There didn’t seem to be anything special about it, but he made a mental note to get a sharpening stone and keep it in fine trim. The clothes were a mix of everyday clothes, mostly unwashed and all ill-fitting, but they would do for now. He set them back in his pack (“his” pack, he kept saying it, he’d forgotten how much he’d missed his things) and kicked it under the bed. Then he sat on his bunk and he stared at the wall and tried to think.
As the tears came he collapsed into the sheets, so that no one would hear him sobbing.
Morning arrived to a quiet ship. Lance was in the galley bright and early and, as no one else seemed to be about, he found a scrap of paper and the stub of a pencil (from who knows how long ago? Perhaps it was a pencil that had been held by Captain Deanfleet himself!), and began to take stock. He noted the levels of food, and quality – hard tack, almost entirely. A naval ship would revolt over such a prospect. He made a note to enquire about getting some proper food on board for the journey to come.
He made his way down to the cargo hold, the naval training coming back to him as though it had never left – he shinned down ladders and swung around walkway railings like a natural. The hold was huge and dark, but he checked through boxes, and after an hour had a rough figure for spare parts, balloon canvas, timber, nails, and light.
There was not much light.
As he returned to the galley, he thought about that. A lack of light was not, in itself, a worry. Most trading ships did fine without light. But it was useful as a resource for welding metal, and the Fallen Star had a light engine; it would be particularly hungry for light. He ran a quick calculation in his head – yes, they would have enough to get to Medicine Leaf. But Medicine Leaf was turning away light shipments; would they be able to get enough to stay aloft?
He was still pondering this as he was making breakfast when Maira staggered in, bleary-eyed and half-asleep. She stared at Lance, bright-eyed and crisp in his navy uniform; he saluted perkily and continued cooking breakfast.
Now that she had taken in the scene, Maira began to focus on the details. Lance was laying out a spread of bacon, eggs, hash browns, and sausages, along with cocoa and toast.
‘That’s… breakfast?’ she asked. Lance jumped, and nodded guiltily.
‘You got any coffee?’
He pointed to a metal pot by the stove; Maira reached over the counter to grab it, pouring herself a measure in a dirty tin cup. She sat at the table, resting her bare feet on it and spreading out some papers as she looked at an almost-pristine ledger.
It didn’t take her airman’s senses long to clock Lance half-glancing at her work.
‘Balancing the books, kid,’ she said. ‘How much are we paying for this spread?’
‘Um… nothing?’
Maira nodded as if in understanding, then paused as the gears in her brain caught up to the words her ears had heard. She turned to him and cocked an eyebrow.
‘We’re paying nothing for a full navy breakfast?’ she asked. ‘How did you get meat and potatoes and eggs and… and bread for free?’ Lance swallowed.
‘Begging the Captain’s pardon,’ he said. ‘Edmund sleeps late, and most of the folks at the warehouse don’t know I’m not working for him anymore. I just told a warehouse guy I needed my usual breakfast stuff and he handed it over.’
‘And the pots and pans?’
‘All from here, Captain. I washed them up before I used them, don’t worry.’ He saluted uncertainly, and took the bacon off the stove before it burned.
‘How many days’ worth of breakfasts did you get us?’ Maira asked.
‘Um, well they usually give me a week’s worth,’ Lance said. ‘Which would be maybe two days between the three of us…’ he tailed off, and Maira recognised the naval lie. So called because a Navy airman wouldn’t lie, they’d just stop talking where the truth became inconvenient.
‘And how much did you ask them to give you this time?’ she asked.
‘...Three months.’
There was silence. Lance didn’t dare look round to see Maira’s expression, but continued diligently serving out the food onto three plates.
Maira barked out a laugh which caused Lance to drop the spatula. He turned, eyes wide, as she wiped a tear from her eye.
‘Oh man! We got a real Navy boy with you, didn’t we?’ she cried. ‘I can’t wait ‘til Ham hears about this – he’s just getting some stocks, I told him to bring aboard some real food. Do we even have enough cold storage for a month’s worth of bacon and eggs?’
‘Yes, Captain,’ Lance replied. ‘I made sure of that before I got them.’
‘You’re a clever kid,’ Maira said with a smile. ‘Thanks for breakfast, but don’t feel you have to do this each morning – we’re not the Navy, and I’d prefer if those stocks could last even longer.’ She turned back to the books, scribbling some items, and then closed it up with the receipts inside. Lance brought a plate of breakfast over and sat with his own – Ham’s he put into the oven to keep warm.
‘So I have some questions,’ he said hesitantly. Maira nodded.
‘Course you do,’ she said. ‘First things first: at least for this leg, I mostly need you in the engine bay with Ham. We’ll run shifts – a day on the engines, then a day at the helm. There’s a radio setup so yell if you need help, but it doesn’t work with the light engine running. Any questions so far?’
‘Not about those,’ Lance said. ‘But I was wondering about the light.’
‘What about it?’
‘Well you only seem to have one crate of light,’ he said. ‘That would be maybe thirty-six jars – that’s not a lot for a ship with a light engine. Are you planning to pick up some more in Medicine Leaf?’
‘I hear Medicine Leaf’s having it’s own issues with light,’ Maira said. ‘No, but we’ve got enough for now. If we ever don’t, we have a spare gas burner we can fire up.’
‘Is that your plan for when you run out?’
‘It’s one of a number of plans, sure.’ Lance glanced sidelong at Maira as something in that answer rang hollow. But he nodded and crossed it off his list.
‘You ever been on a small trading vessel?’ Maira asked. Lance shook his head.
‘I was a landlubber before I joined the Navy,’ he said. ‘Dad thought it would be good for me.’
‘And was it?’ Lance shrugged.
‘I liked learning about ships,’ he said. ‘And the Navy. The history and the regulations, all the battle formations and such. It was interesting, exciting to be a part of. But the other recruits…’ he shuddered at the memory. ‘I’m not sure I could’ve handled much more of the hazing. The other cadets singled me out because I was different; the lower-ranking boys bullied me because I was a safe target.’
He coloured as Maira chuckled at this, and shot her a glare.
‘No, no, it’s not you,’ Maira clarified, holding up a pacifying hand. ‘It’s just… they might have felt pretty good about marooning you here, but who did that leave to target for their jealousy? Sounds like they played out the rope and hanged themselves to me – I wouldn’t be surprised if half the folks who conspired to kick you off the ship ended up washing out a week later because they just had to pick on one of the other cadets, and his dad got wind of it.’
‘What are you saying?’ Lance asked.
‘Nothing, really.’ Maira took a sip of her coffee. ‘Just observing. The boys who doped you made things so much worse for themselves. I wonder that they didn’t see that.’
‘Yeah,’ Lance said, brow knotting. He chuckled himself. ‘Maybe I’m better off being rid of those idiots.’
‘Maybe,’ Maira said. ‘But you can’t learn Navy schooling from me. How do you feel about returning to cadet training?’
‘I feel… I dunno,’ Lance sighed. ‘It feels like I’ve missed so much already. I’ll miss more if I wait until we can catch up with the Aurelian. But it wouldn’t feel right going back to dad, telling him I washed out. Not without trying to get back in first.’
‘So is that still the plan? Ride with us until we can contact the Aurelian?’
Lance nodded.
‘Okay. Good. Welcome aboard, Burgess. You’ll have to work hard, but hopefully we’ll have you back with your crew in a couple of months.’
‘Thank you for the opportunity, Captain.’ Lance saluted, and Maira rolled her eyes.
‘I know you’re a Navy kid,’ she said, ‘but cut it out with the saluting.’ But she flashed him a smile, and as she took her ledger and her coffee back to the captain’s quarters Lance felt a twinge of relief that he was leaving the refuge. He busied himself with the washing up.
In short order Ham was back aboard, food was stowed, and the Fallen Star cast off. Slowly, and with increasing purpose, it rose into the sky and disappeared above the grey clouds.