The Meddlesome Spirit
"Hiya!" Called Ensign O'Dwyer, striding joyfully into the brig. Their loosely wrapped standard-issue cardigan hung slightly open, showing more of the navel of their uniform's polo shirt than Saltoria was accustomed to seeing. At their side, as ever, was the electric-baton that aided compliance among the incarcerated population at large. "How're you doing today my lovely?" They stood with their legs slightly wider than their hips and one hand resting on their side. Their bright smile always made the day better.
"I'm doing pretty well, thank you." Saltoria answered, sitting up on her bunk. It was a fairly banal metal shelf covered with a firm foam mattress, but to emphasise that they were aboard a space vessel it had been outlined with green LEDs. They were switched off every night so as not to disrupt her sleep. "Not been terribly active what with the imprisonment and all that, but I've done some stretches and whatnot. How about you?"
"Yeah I'm always shiny and wonderful, you know me! Keeping myself busy walking this way and that, escorting this prisoner to there and that prisoner back to their cell; all the normal bobbins for a day like this." Laughed O'Dwyer. Their laugh resonated mirthfully through the brig, not only because it was infectious and earnest but also on account of the secondary mouths that lurked behind clothing on theirs torso. They really added depth. At the desk behind them, Prisoner Officer Biltong looked up with a smile.
"You're responsible for the greatest number of breakouts and recaptures that this brig will ever see." They said, poking their tongue out playfully. That tongue was nearly two metres long, of course, and the gently sparking tendrils that ran along its length meant that the playfulness carried a real sense of danger.
"Ahhhh, yes. I'm a bit of a tinker like that but I've got a heart of gold. It's stashed away in my quarters so that I can buy my way out of service."
Saltoria watched the two crewmates laugh together for a moment at the incredible wit on display.
"Anyway, I've come down here to take our guest for a chat with the captain. He's very interested in hearing all about how you came to be drifting around a restricted planet; probably wants your story for a memoir or something." O'Dwyer explained with a series of unnecessarily expansive hand gestures. As he stretched his arms wide it pulled his shirt taut, and one could see the pressed surface of his torso mouth. Saltoria didn't like the idea of having shirt-fabric in her mouth all day, and couldn't help feeling a bit sorry for the lot of the auxiliary mouths.
"Does the uniform policy here allow for tank tops?" She asked.
"That's a strange response to my news, but an interesting question none-the-less. I'm afraid not, no. We've got the choice of jumper or cardigan, smart shirt or polo shirt, and skirt or trousers. Nothing about tank tops."
"I presumed as much. You'd presumably have your torso mouth exposed if you could, rather than breathing in your shirt all day, right?"
"Nail on the head, my lovely. It doesn't hurt that I've got a lovely midriff to show off as well;” he tapped at their abdominals “I don't keep track of my diet and exercise just to stay hidden away you know?"
"And you could bite your way through a crowd." Officer Biltong suggested. Many thumbs up came his way in reply.
"Maybe we should talk to the captain about that as well then. See if you can crop down your shirts?"
"Maybe we should!" Beamed O'Dwyer, powering down the laser bars on Saltoria's cell. They were a lot like normal bars, but they had lasers shining up and down their full height to make them look fancier. Even with the lasers deactivated, the room was still overpoweringly bright.
There was a great misconception about starship interiors that every planet-dweller held, no matter which world or civilisation they came from, that they would be either bright white or dull, metallic grey. Some of them added exposed piping or bare framework to the mix, and others would have decadent crests or display monitors positioned at almost arbitrary locations around the corridors, but still the dominant themes were sterile white or functional steel. What every new space traveller quickly learned was that interior decoration was not an industry which had been forsaken by space travel.
Leaning hard into the sci-fi serials of the past and low LED prices of the future, spaceship design had taken an immediate turn towards the neon-centric as soon as vessels and fleets were to be mass produced. Corridors were panelled with translucent plexiglass instead of opaque metal or plastic, and they were backlit by strips upon strips of primary coloured bulbs and LEDs. Nowhere on a modern vessel was a passenger safe from an omnidirectional photonic assault, casting them and everything around them in a dazzlingly monochromatic hue.
With the bars retracted and the lasers deactivated Saltoria stepped forwards from her cell towards the waiting ensign.
“I’ll need your hands please, sweetie.” O’Dwyer said, lifting a set of laser cuffs from his belt with a vaguely apologetic look.
“Oh yes. Of course.” She obeyed, not wanting to feel the wrath of his electric-baton no matter how much he smiled whilst wielding it.
“Thanks, treasure.” The manacles were metal all the way round, as would generally be expected from a set of hand cuffs, but there was a soft tube of bright pink LEDs inset for the usual aesthetic reasons. “There we go. Now no-one needs to worry about any escaped prisoners getting up to funny business. I’ll see you later Bill.” Ensign O’Dwyer said brightly.
“Please do remember that it’s Officer Biltong in front of guests.”
“Right you are, sir.” The ensign winked. “This way my treasure.” They then continued. They indicated to Saltoria, who followed along obediently and gave Officer Biltong a small, friendly wave goodbye.
Where the brig had been awash with warm pink light and matching panelling, the corridors and walkways outside had been outfitted in more of a fuchsia, to Saltoria’s amateur eye. It would probably have been designated as “Nebula Sparkle” or “Gas Cloud Dream” or “Eggshell Warp Drive Fire” or something but to Saltoria at least, fuchsia was enough of a descriptive label.
Saltoria’s own vessel, the Silent Plume, had no fuchsia at all, nor any of the Syndicate-approved colours. It was a personal vessel of low cost and even lower performance, and as such its interior was not as vibrant and neon-soaked as that of the Meddlesome Spirit in any way at all. It was instead outfitted with faux-wood panels, green synthetic leather and brass fixtures, on account of the decorator who’d been assigned to it confusing plumes, as referring to solar mass ejections, with an archaic type of writing tool. Saltoria had been able to pick it up cheap as a result, and was thrilled to discover that it was the only Parasite class frigate to come with its own reading room and analogue library.
“This is all very pleasant.” She observed to Ensign O’Dwyer.
“Oh yes. I agree. Ever since the new Admiral appointed their own High Commander of Chromatic Concerns it’s been lovely around here.”
“The HCCC?” Enquired Saltoria.
“Yes, the HCCC. The whole palette of the fleet has been warmer and more homely. All the bright greens and cold blues from Old Admiral Morosion have fallen by the wayside, thank goodness.”
“Not so much of a fan of the shorter wavelengths then?”
“They’re fine in moderation and when applied with good taste,” conceded the ensign, who could under some captains, have been court martialled for dissent against the official colour-scheme “but I found them a bit much compared to the new ones.”
They passed, Saltoria first and then O’Dwyer, through a vertically sliding door that was outlined with lavender LEDs and inset with a large lilac light in the centre. It was impressive; all of Saltoria’s doors on the Silent Plume made use of the far simpler, tried and tested hinge technology.
“Anyway, that’s enough about the décor. Why don’t you tell me why you were floating around a restricted planet, honey? Captain’s going to ask you in a minute, so you might as well get all the memories and the sequence of events straight in your head now.” Asked one of the torso mouths beneath the cardigan. It was unclear whether all the mouths shared a single set of vocal chords and there didn’t seem to be a particularly sensitive way of asking.
“Well, you know how it goes. It was just one of those things.” The prisoner replied. It was the first time that O’Dwyer had expressed much of an interest in the circumstances of her arrest, and she was unsure of how to take it. “Happens to a lot of solo pilots. Most of them, in fact, I’d say.”
“Is it?” Asked the ensign. Saltoria looked at them for a moment with puzzled concern. “That was an earnest question, my darling, no need to look so aghast about it.”
“Oh.” She laughed, trying to look natural and achieving only partial success. “Yes, it is. You make a journey somewhere, plot the wrong course, a take a jump you didn’t mean to or mistype your destination co-ordinates and then you find yourself goodness knows where without the fuel to get home. So you look for a planet with enough moisture in the atmosphere to crack for oxygen to make fuel, and end up orbiting somewhere that you’re not wanted.”
“You’re always wanted, I’m sure. And not just because trespassing in syndicated space is a criminal activity!” Chuckled Ensign O’Dwyer. “But seriously, if this is all just a misunderstanding over navigational mistakes and a lack of fuel then I’m sure the captain will understand. And if not then… well, a confession at any stage of proceedings tends to get more leniency than fighting with lie upon lie until the end. I once saw the captain exonerate a fuel thief who’d sworn blind for two days that there were an innocent fuel-cap inspector.”
“I thought fuel cap inspection was fully automated years ago?”
“Yep! But desperate and scared people to desperate and scary things. Isn’t that right Ensign Gallydraw?”
A similarly be-cardiganed cremate who was turning a dial on the wall span around to face them.
“What’s that? I was concentrating; didn’t hear you.”
“I was just telling our guest here that desperate people can be driven to desperate things, and the captain understands that.”
“Oh, another ‘fuel cap inspector’ is it?”
“No, just ran out of fuel and ending up drifting in orbit.” Saltoria explained calmly.
Gallydraw shrugged his shoulders. All ten of them.
“I hope your fuel cap was up to code then. But yeah, Captain Ironeye forgives people who make reasonable transgressions if they own up to them. Stops short of letting pirates away with cargo, but also doesn’t fire them out of the airlock.”
“Duly noted.” Saltoria accepted with a raised eyebrow, followed by a shallow nod.
“Anyway, it’s still chilly in the engine room so I need to get back to this. Requires a lot of concentration as you know, so I’ll speak to you later O’Dwyer.”
“Right you are. Buh-bye Gallodraw.”
“Nice to meet you.” Saltoria added, but Gallydraw paid her no mind as they walked away. “What was he up to that’s so difficult?” She asked O’Dwyer once they were out of earshot.
“Adjusting the thermostat.” Replied the ensign. Saltoria snapped her head around to look back at Gallydraw, who was using most of his ten arms to control the fine manipulations.
“What?” Was her considered assessment.
“Syndicate protocol.” O’Dwyer said, conversationally. “There have been incidents with whole space station modules reaching solar temperatures due to poor dial control, so now there’s a lot of bureaucracy and control measures to deal with. Gallydraw’ll be measuring the dial position down to the micron for his verification report.”
“Wow.”
“I just wear a standard issue cardi instead. It’s easier than learning all the electrical engineering and calculus required, and much less time consuming than taking the Oath of the Stat. It’s not even about memorising a lot of nonsense promises; they actually use a psychometric test kit to verify that you’re telling the truth when you swear it.”
“How does the Syndicate actually function if that’s what it takes to adjust the temperature?”
“Ha! If I told you that then I’d have to complete a series of declarations promising that I can vouch for your reliability.” Ensign O’Dwyer said with a wink, grossly overestimating how snappy the statement sounded.
The corridor ended not with a door or a dead end but at a broad, open circular platform. It glowed with incandescent primary-coloured lighting strips and Saltoria recognised it instantly as an arterial elevator. Ships like the Silent Plume had no such elevators. There was a dumb waiter to deliver food from the galley to the cockpit, or books from the library to the reading room, but that was about it. Arterial elevators were reserved for the kinds of ship that believed they would have been better employed as cities, linking the deepest decks and modules up to the private space-billiards tables that inevitably took the entire top deck of any large vessel. There were other stops in the middle too, naturally, but mostly it was used to funnel deep-deck crew to their inscrutable, plastic and neon infused games tables.
Exactly how space-billiards had come to be the most popular game in the Syndicated territories was often disputed. Some held that since no-one really knew the rules of terrestrial billiards it had been a ripe foundation of mystery on which to build a futuristic sci-fi game. Others maintained that the billiards industry was simply the first to add some lights to their equipment, turn everything into translucent plastic or resin, and reduce any hard corners or edges on the table, thereby cornering the futuristic games-platform market early. Whatever the true origin, everyone agreed that 1) no-one understood the rules any better these days and 2) that didn’t matter because anyone actually enjoyed playing it anyway.
Saltoria suspected that the elevator would not be bearing her upwards for a game of space-billiards, nor would it be taking her down to encourage the deep-deck crew to take a break. It would doubtlessly be employed to deliver her from the brig up to the Captain’s chosen interrogation facility, whatever that might transpire to be on The Meddlesome Spirit. She brushed herself down with shackled hands, not that the brig had left her particularly dusty, and stood in the centre of the circle, away from any of the open corridor ends that led into it like spokes on some kind of inverse wheel. Nightmarish visions of body parts being caught in those corridors as the platform rose haunted her mind every time she looked at them, and she struggled to see how they could ever have been signed off by the health and safety board.
For his part, Ensign O’Dwyer seemed to hold no such concerns, hanging around danger-close to the end of the corridor from which they’d emerged while interacting ambiguously with a holographic display screen. It hovered in mid-air in front of them, not being projected from any obvious light source nor positioned in any clearly useful orientation. The principles under which this display screen worked were inconsistent at best and impossible to follow; occasionally the ensign would be able to move a small glowing rectangle of text to one side with a single finger, and other times the single finger would enlarge one half of the screen while turning the other a bright red. Saltoria gave it a testing thumbs up from the centre of the elevator and it began to spin around rapidly, not that the ensign either noticed or cared. They were already finished with whatever they was doing and, with a hand-wave that had previously opened up the ‘help’ menu, the whole display was cleared.
The Silent Plume’s dumbwaiter used a button.
“Are we going far?” Saltoria asked, having learned nothing from watching over O’Dwyer’s shoulder.
“Only a daytrip.” Winked the ensign. “Once you’ve had a chat with the captain you’ll be back on your ship, fuelled up, and en route back to free space for as along of a trip as you like.”
“I see. That’s fair enough.”
A deep, resonant humming filled the elevator shaft as the floor started to rise. Or maybe the ship had started to fall around them; a crash course in relativity had robbed Saltoria of any certainty in these matters.
“That’s a strange way to put it, my treasure.” Lights flickered past O’Dwyer’s face from the passing floors. His expression held the same placid interest Saltoria had seen before. It was less trustworthy each time.
“I only meant that it’s fair enough that we’re going for a day-trip-length journey on the elevator.” Clarified the guest. O’Dwyer smiled brightly.
“And nothing to do with anything else?” Asked a mouth on the ensign’s chest, slightly muffled by the cardigan.
“Nope.” The guest maintained. “Although in fairness I am pleased about the rest of your projected itinerary.”
“I bet you would be. And as I said, it only depends on you telling the truth to the captain.”
“I already told you the truth.”
“Great. Then tell the captain the same thing.”
“I will.”
“Wonderful.”
“TRULY WONDERFUL.” Blared a voice through some unseen speaker system.
“Glad you agree, El.”
“I AM ALSO GLAD. GLADNESS LIFTS US ALL.”
“Who’s El?” Asked the prisoner, cowering slightly from the sonic barrage.
“WHO ARE YOU, GUEST?” The voice fired back.
“El’s our elevator AI. El, this is Saltoria, our current guest from the brig.”
“LOVELY TO MEET YOU SALTORIA OUR CURRENT GUEST FROM THE BRIG. YOU ARE ALSO WONDERFUL.”
“Erm, thank you. Nice to meet you as well.”
“DO YOU LIKE CHANGING ALTITUDE?”
“Uhh…” Saltoria looked at Ensign O’Dwyer. They were smiling politely and awaiting her response. “I suppose so, yes. Living at a single fixed altitude would be really inconvenient in my line of work.”
“I SUPPOSE SO TOO. WE BOTH SUPPOSE THINGS! HOW FORTUITOUS THAT WE SHOULD MEET LIKE THIS. I AM GRATEFUL FOR THIS SERENDIPITOUS CIRCUMSTANCE AND YOU CAN DO ANYTHING TO WHICH YOU PUT YOUR MIND.”
“El is programmed to provide affirmations to those who are scared of riding on elevators, but eventually they learned that everyone feels better from some positivity. Now they won’t stop.”
“WELL OSBERVED ENSIGN O’DWYER. YOU ARE A BRILLIANT OBERVER OF DETAILS AND A LOOK REALLY SNAPPY IN YOUR STNDARD ISSUE CARDIGAN.”
“Thanks El.”
“What’s with all the shouting?” Asked the current guest from the brig, wearing the wince of the aurally assaulted.
“WHAT SHOUTING?”
“We have no idea. The tech guys keep checking the code, resetting things, disabling the volume controls, all sorts. Nothing helps. All we can surmise is that El just really wants to be loud.”
“THEY EVEN DELETED THE CODE THAT LETS ME SHOUT!” El beamed out proudly. “I’M SET TO PERMANENT WHISPER MODE!”
“Intriguing.” Saltoria decided.
“BUT STEERING BACK TO TOPIC, YOU ARE BOTH DOING INCREDIBLY WELL AND SALTORIA OUR CURRENT GUEST FROM THE BRIG ONLY NEEDS TO TELL THE TRUTH TO THE CAPTAIN AND THEN WILL BE ON HER WAY!”
“Exactly right, El.” Ensign O’Dwyer said, looking Saltoria dead in the eye.
“SO THAT’S HOW IT FEELS TO BE AFFIRMED! I LOVE IT! I WILL AFFIRM MORE IN FUTURE.”
“Oh no…” Mumbled the ensign.
“I understand perfectly-”
“YES YOU DO! GOOD WORK!”
“-that honesty is the course of action-”
“THE COURSE FOR SUCCESS THAT YOU’RE ALREADY ON!”
“-and the captain will be understanding of my circumstances.” Said some of the final dregs of Saltoria’s patience.
“JUST LIKE YOU UNDERSTAND YOUR CURRENT CIRCUMSTANCES! AND ENSIGN O’DWYER’S SILENCE SHOWS SOCIAL UNDERSTANDING BECAUSE HE’S NOT INTERRUPTING YOU! GREAT!”
Only between the deafening affirmations and positive vibes was it possible to hear the elevator’s hum start to calm. A feeling of deceleration came over the ensign and the guest.
“Looks like we’re nearly at our daytrip destination.” Saltoria said with some relief, trying to steer the subject back away from the building tension.
“ANOTHER CORRECT STATEMENT!”
Motion blur faded back to an open set of corridors as the elevator slowed down and stopped. Immediately the aroma of freshly cut terrestrial grass filled Saltoria’s nostrils. It made her mouth water and her eyes sting for some reason.
“I HOPE YOU ENJOYED THE TRIP AS MUCH AS I AM PROGRAMMED TO HAVE ENJOYED IT! ALTHOUGH EVEN IN THE ABSENCE OF PROGRAMMING YOUR COMPANY HAS BEEN UTTERLY DELIGHTFUL.”
“Thank you, El. It’s been great to meet you.”
“Until next time.” Added O’Dwyer as they stepped off the circular platform.
“HAVE AN AMAZINGLY OVER-ADEQAUTE DAY AND EVEN BETTER ORGAN FUNCTION.” Blared El with mounting enthusiasm. Something holographic appeared in front of O’Dwyer in the corridor. “YOU’LL MAKE EVERY ONE OF YOUR CHILDHOOD ROLE MODELS PROUD WITH WHAT YOU DO HERE.” There was a familiar set of hand waves from the ensign, and a hum started to build. “I REALLY LOVE LIFTING THINGS AND LOWERING THINGS BUT NEITHER ONE IS AS GOOD AS YOU TWO ARE AT BEING LIFTED OR LOWERED! I LOOK FORWARD TO OUR NEXT ENGAGEMENT TOGETHER…” El’s bellowing voice faded as the platform disappeared upwards at alarming speed.
“It’s for the best that I turn him away each time, my lovely.” The ensign explained, quite unnecessarily in Saltoria’s opinion. “There’s only so much time in the day and so much positive affirmation that I can take.”
“My dumb waiter doesn’t have an AI. It barely even has a working bell to announce when it’s arrived.”
“Then I envy you. And I’ll bet your dinner rarely has problems with feeling anxious about travelling in it.”
“It’s never mentioned anything to me either way.” Assessed the guest.
“For the best really. If it talked then I’d suspect it was undercooked.”
“So what’s this then? Hydroponics?” Saltoria asked, changing the subject from her potentially sentient meals. The corridors around her were alight with deep, earthy green bulbs behind plastic strips and it was noticeably more humid than the brig.
“Gosh no you silly goose. Hydroponics is far more industrial. This is more about the two R’s: recreation and research. Captain Ironeye likes to tend to some plant life here and there to wind down, and we also have increasing Syndicate Fleet intake from worlds with flora-based lifeforms. We keep those activities separate from growing plants for oxygen and food, hopefully for obvious reasons.”
Images flitted through Saltoria’s head of experimental plants being served to the crew and mutating them into vine-limbed powerhouses, the sorts who could reach things that have fallen into narrow spaces from a whole deck away. It didn’t seem all that bad to her.
“I guess I understand why.” She conceded.
Still in her delightfully over-complicated laser cuffs, Saltoria was led through the humid green passage past glass-doored rooms filled with exotic foliage. A few of them had gratings on the wall that flapped open mechanically and puffed under their pressure, expelling clouds of fragrant moisture. Others were hermetically sealed, presumably to stop the expulsion of clouds of fragrant moisture that were also highly corrosive or toxic. Probably, she decided, it was important not to confuse the saplings of those two plants.
While lost in thought about the botanical segregation required on this deck the prisoner barely noticed Ensign O’Dwyer come to a halt in the corridor, stopping herself just shy of walking straight into their back.
“Captain Ironeye is in the room just ahead on your right.” They announced. Ahead of them was an open door from which a fiery yellow light was spilling. Shadows that seemed almost pitch black by comparison flashed across it too quickly for Saltoria to identify. It was far from comforting. “Do you have your recollections gathered together, sweets?”
“Yes.” She said, with more confidence in her voice than she actually felt.
“Marvellous. I’m sure El would agree on that. Shall we?”
With a nod Saltoria allowed herself to be led through the doorway into the wash of light and, against the otherwise dim and diffuse green glow of the ship’s corridors, some kind of arboretum full of captain and goodness only knew what else was entirely dazzling. It took a few moments for Saltoria to parse the leaping, ducking and dodging shape that she saw as a humanoid and could only presume it to be Captain Ironeye himself. Her mind was totally unable to reconcile the movements she saw with the notion that the Captain was busy gardening and so, when her eyes finally adjusted to the brightness, she was partially relieved to see that he wasn’t gardening at all. At least, not in the traditional sense. In none of the normal gardening practices of which Saltoria had ever heard was it necessary to perform a perfect parry with a space-sabre. Then again, most of those gardening practices weren’t focused on tending to a vine with suspiciously mantis-adjacent bladed tips either.
“Is that the best you can do, you overgrown pea!” Jeered Captain Ironeye. His shirt was torn with a dramatic slash across the chest, revealing a blade-proof vest beneath. Clearly this was a combatant who knew the virtues of both costume design and infection-wariness. Even in the face of this sensible dress and the cutting jibe, there was no verbal rebuke from the hostile plant.
For a minute or two Saltoria and Ensign O’Dwyer stood quietly in the doorway watching the sparring match, with Captain Ironeye’s fancy footwork dancing this way and that around the cruelly swung tendrils. Along the length of his blade ran a single sapphire, lit internally by a laser that must have been ensconced somewhere within the handle of the space-sabre, representing the only distinction between the captain’s weapon and its terrestrial variant. Whilst there was no particular practical benefit to the addition, it did fit better with the general aesthetic and make for a pleasing light show as it was swung, doubly so when it reflected from the disquietingly slick surface of the floral foe. Whips were met with parries, stabs with ripostes and stems with pommels in an impressive display of choreographed combat. At no point did either combatant seem to be trying to harm the other in a meaningful way, but it certainly made for a good show.
Finally, with a gymnastic pirouette, Captain Ironeye leapt out of the vine’s considerable reach and slapped at a button on the wall. With a hissing of white gas a series of plexiglass panels, all of them brightly coloured, rose from the floor and encased the lethal legume in its own greenhouse brig.
“Could you pass a towel please, Ensign O’Dwyer?” He asked once the gas, which Saltoria suspected was theatrical dry ice, had dissipated. Obediently the ensign pulled a fluffy white towel out of a translucent blue cubbyhole on the wall and carried it over to the sweat-soaked captain.
“Sir.” He said, handing it over.
“Thank you, ensign.” He dabbed at his face, taking great care to get right into the corners of where his left eye socket had been fused with a great chunk of iron-grey metal. Either that was the origin of his name, or he’d leaned hard into the family’s heritage. “It’s vitally important to get these things clean and dry.” He explained, catching Saltoria’s gaze. “No-one wants to have eye-mould… not again.” He shuddered.
“I would imagine not. Sounds ghastly.”
“Ghastly indeed. But we’re yet to be introduced; I am Captain Jonah Ironeye of the Syndicate Ship Meddlesome Spirit.”
“Captain Saltoria Puce, of the Silent Plume. An honour to meet you, sir.”
“Not so silent that we didn’t pick you up, I see.” His optics whirred audibly as he stared at the glowing pink manacles on her wrists. “What brings us to bring you aboard?”
“Just a simple mistake on my part and a misunderstanding.” Saltoria replied. Captain Ironeye sighed.
“Answered the question but provided no information.” He said, shaking his head. “Ensign?”
“Our guest here was found in orbit around a restricted planet, sir.” A look from the captain informed O’Dwyer that he was not yet finished answering the question. “Iris III, sir.”
Beautifully forged steel around an enormous, laser-lit sapphire flew through the air, and the space-sabre slammed into the trunk of a fibrous-trunked palm tree of some variety. Judging by the many stab marks in the trunk it had been planted there for that exact reason.
“Iris III?!” He bellowed.
“Yes, sir.”
“I didn’t mean to be drifting there.” Saltoria tried to defend, shocked by the sudden outburst, but Ironeye rounded on her.
“Do you know how many scavengers and conspiracy nuts I have to dredge up from orbit around these places?! Do you?” His human eye was wide, and his mechanical one had opened its shutter all the way. “We stick up warning signs. We leave beacons broadcasting danger notices. We pass laws and install blockades and patrol the solar systems but still these suicidal fools want to go rushing past to their demise and I have to keep an eye out for them! It’s exhausting!”
“It sounds that way, sir.” Came Saltoria’s attempt at appeasement, but it was clearly insufficient.
“It’s like these people actually want to get radiation sickness. Or find themselves up close with an imploding planetary shell. Or be asphyxiated by a toxic atmosphere.” Captain Ironeye rubbed at the protruding casing of his metallic optical implant exasperatedly. “And for some reason we’re the bad guys for trying to stop this needless loss of life!”
“I wasn’t trying to scavenge, captain. I didn’t mean to be there at all.”
“Oh I’m sure you weren’t and I’m sure you didn’t. No-one would ever willingly lie to old Captain Ironeye now, would they? That’d be a foolish move.” The captain barked. “He’s a forgiving captain, they all say. He’ll pardon anyone who just tells the truth rather than dragging matters out needlessly.” A surprisingly soft but still enormous hand slapped Saltoria on the shoulder. “You’ve an honest face, Captain Puce, and I hope that your nature reflects that.”
“It does.” Swallowed Saltoria. With a shuffle she forced herself to regain some composure. “I was plotting a jump from the Kos System to Osurot Prime and must have made an error somewhere.”
“An error? Oh yes, of course. Because you wouldn’t want to be careful when doing something as tedious as warping through the empty vacuum of space now, would you?!” Wailed the captain, in the process of peeling off his torn shirt. Ensign O’Dwyer, anticipating needs like an absolute champion, was already fetching a fresh top from a nearby translucent blue wardrobe. “When the stakes are as low as maybe just crashing nose-first into a star there’s no need to double-check your calculations or spell-check your entries.”
“Alright! We’ve all done it!”
“I haven’t. Although I do have a spell-checker built into this thing, to be fair.” He said with surprising grace, tapping at the casing of his iron eye.
“Those of us who have to do it manually are somewhat more vulnerable to mistakes then, I suppose.”
“I suppose so too. But why did you not simply jump on from Iris III to Osurot Prime when you realised your mistake? You must have realised it. Iris III is icy and barren, whereas Osurot Prime is literally an unfathomably large boot!”
“You dock in the eyelets! It’s so wonderfully quaint.” O’Dwyer added. With flared nostrils and a furrowed brow Captain Ironeye nodded in fervent agreement whilst also taking the proffered shirt.
“It is! It’s as quaint and lovely as one could imagine a docking process to ever be! I love it! So how is it then you found yourself unable to distinguish one from the other? Even the most instrument-reliant captain in the universe would be able to recognise that ice is not a boot.”
“Ah, well, that’s where my lack of fuel comes into it. Isn’t that right Ensign O’Dwyer?”
“Is that right Ensign O’Dwyer?” Captain Ironeye demanded immediately, somehow asking the same thing. He was mid-battle with the shirt, attempting to pull the unnecessarily-employed spandex over his head.
“I couldn’t possibly put my name to such a scandalous implication without having been on the ship myself. I’ve no idea where the fuel gauge was when we picked up our guest here.” Evaded the ensign to the captain’s satisfaction.
“Well, I’m telling you that I’m not lying. I ran out of fuel and was unable to then make another jump to Osurot Prime.”
Captain Ironeye poked his head through the neck hole of his shirt at long last, hair a mess, and looked from Saltoria to O’Dwyer in turn. The latter shrugged, while the former held a passive expression and tried not to appear guilty. Neither of them seemed to give the captain what he was after.
“And that’s fine is it?”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean, that’s a good enough reason to be simply found drifting in orbit?”
Sweat began to bead on Saltoria’s palms. Or maybe it was just condensation from the incredible humidity of the arboretum in which they were standing. She couldn’t rightly tell.
“Well… yeah. I can’t jump without fuel.”
“You couldn’t jump to Osurot Prime. But there are other systems closer to Iris III than that. You could have gone to any one of those to refuel your ship.”
A red flash of light swept across Saltoria’s eye as Captain Ironeye scanned her face, illuminating her as to just how subtle his implant didn’t make him. In an instant she forgot how normal adults held their faces when thinking; did they curl their lips? Look up or down? Smile broadly with their mouth open? Smile narrowly with their mouth open and a sleeve in it? There was too much to consider all of a sudden. No wonder Ensign O’Dwyer had recommended that she got all her memories in order before the meeting.
“Well?”
“I had no fuel left at all.”
“You had to think for an awfully long time about that.” Both of the new shirt sleeves were now filled with arm, in the manner that one might expect, leaving very little work to do in the noble task of becoming re-shirted.
“Yes. I was just remembering.”
“Just remembering?”
“Yep. That’s what I said, so that’s what I meant.” Saltoria decided.
Captain Ironeye frowned at her. Even his metallic implant managed to frown, somehow, revealing just how fine the quality of his prosthesis really was.
“And you just so happened to erroneously jump to a planet with a name nothing like Osurot Prime, at co-ordinates nothing like those of Osurot Prime, which was exactly as far away as it needed to be to leave you with no fuel at all when you reached the perfect speed and height to enter into an orbit around it?”
“I’ll be honest with you, Captain Ironeye.” Saltoria began. His iron eye focused on her face. “I did get a bit lucky with how things worked out.”
Displaying a level of calm and composure that his general tone contradicted, Captain Ironeye walked slowly over to the tree which had so gratefully received his airborne space-sabre. With a careful grip on the handle and his other hand braced against the much-perforated trunk, he drew the blade free and stalked back over towards Saltoria, who was suddenly uncomfortable in her shackles. The sound of a closing door behind her did nothing to put her back at ease.
“You got” Ironeye said, a couple of metres from her “a bit lucky” he continued, still advancing “with how things worked out?”
There was little recourse for the prisoner but to look up at Captain Ironeye looming over her, a hulking titan of space vessel leadership in a now untorn shirt clutching a space-sabre, the most fearsome weapon in a clear two-metre radius.
“Yep.” Saltoria said, swallowing.
Plants shook in their pots. Glass panels of every colour rattled in their frames and turned the surrounding greenhouses into an orchestra of building tension. Captain Ironeye’s lip curled, and both hands clamped themselves around the handle of the space-sabre as it rose high above his head. The prisoner trembled and prepared to give him the classic gut-punch with her manacles.
With a mighty roar, of which even El would have been envious, Captain Ironeye bellowed out his rage and launched the space-sabre back into the very hole from which it had been pulled.
“It would be incredibly bloody lucky! So very lucky indeed that it’s quite hard to believe that it could possibly be true! Unfeasible I might even be tempted to say!” He shouted in circles around himself, spinning with apoplectic disbelief.
“Perhaps I did understate it, yeah.” Conceded the prisoner.
“I should think that’s one explanation. But if you had no fuel and you were stranded in orbit over an unknown planet then why, Captain Puce, did you not see fit to call for help? There was no distress beacon active in the ship when you picked her up, was there ensign?”
“No, captain. The Silent Plume was detected by our long range scanners, and then our medium range scanners, and then our short range scanners.” Answered the ensign. “That’s how we knew we were getting closer to you.” He revealed conspiratorially to Saltoria, who rolled her eyes.
“So no fuel and no distress beacon. Did you simply wish to starve in place?”
“I was in the process of starting to harvest oxygen and hydrogen from the atmosphere to make more fuel. No need to call anyone else out when I can deal with the situation myself, is there?”
“You thought you’d just make some fuel? On board your parasite class? Just fabricate up enough for the frankly enormous jump to Osurot Prime by yourself?”
“Yes. Yes that’s what I thought I’d do. In hindsight it sounds like a significant undertaking, doesn’t it?”
This time there was no sabre-heavy outburst. Ironeye simply rubbed at the bridge of his nose and then around the edges of his implant.
“Tell me honestly, Captain Puce: did you really end up in orbit around Iris III by such an unlikely happenstance? Or are you another of these bloody death-driven moths drawn to the unforgiving flame of a dangerous and abandoned world?”
“It really was an accident, sir.” She claimed, eyes shimmering slightly with tears. Her perceived brush with almost being eviscerated had taken an emotional toll. Ensign O’Dwyer surreptitiously handed her a translucent pink space-tissue with which to dab them away.
“I see. Ensign? Stop handing out handkerchiefs and raise Petty Officer Turnstone. I assume she’s finished searching the prisoner’s ship?”
“What?”
“Yes sir, right away.” O’Dwyer nodded, pinching the ruffled cuff of his cardigan. An antenna extended impractically from the elbow and an earpiece snaked up from the collar to his ear. “Petty Officer Turnstone? Lovely to speak to you again, hope you’re doing well. Me? Yeah I can’t complain thank you darling, just having a chat with Captain Ironeye and our guest from the brig. Yeah the nice lady with the tasteful library on her ship. Listen, my treacle and honey flan, are you just about done checking the ship and its logs and cargo and all that silly stuff over?”
“You’ve been searching my ship?!”
“You were arrested for orbiting a restricted planet, Captain Puce. Of course we had to search your hold and your logs for any evidence of criminal activity or stolen goods.” Seethed the panting captain. A rip was starting to form dramatically across the chest of his shirt again.
“Nobody told me that!”
“You’re all done? Wonderful! El’ll tell you as much on the way back up here!” Laughed O’Dwyer, throwing his head back mirthfully. “Oh, but I shouldn’t mock the poor program. They’re doing their best. Well I won’t keep you any longer my love; see you soon. Yep. Yep great. Yeah you too. Love you lots. Bye!”
“I can’t believe that you’d assume anything else from The Meddlesome Spirit.”
“He’s got a point, my treasure.” Said the ensign, squeezing at his cuff to retract the unnecessary communication hardware.
“That’s such a violation! It’s dishonest to keep me in a cell while you snoop around my ship.” Protested Saltoria, in the manner of a monochrome pot making accusations of a kettle with not-dissimilar colouration.
“And speaking of dishonesty, Captain Puce, you wouldn’t happen to want to change anything about your testimony in light of this search?” Asked Ironeye, the red light once again scanning across her face. Saltoria could feel the heat of it, and wondered how the captain could tolerate it being inside his head.
“I… might be able to offer some slight clarifications if presented with contradictory evidence. Recollection is never perfect after all.”
“I did tell her to get her memories in order on the way up here, sir.” The ensign said quickly, apparently getting his words in before the captain’s stern look could be fully focused on the junior crewmate’s face.
“Then you did all you could, O’Dwyer.” Ironeye accepted. “All we need to do is hear Petty Officer Turnstone’s corroborating evidence of Captain Puce’s… fortuitous tale, and we’ll all leave here as friends.” He looked down at himself. “Blast it all. The excitement’s taken another fine shirt before it’s time. Hand me another, would you please?”
“Certainly, sir.”
Saltoria stared into the middle distance between herself and Captain Ironeye as he removed the newly-torn shirt from his torso and accepted another from O’Dwyer.
“We get them repaired, don’t worry.” They said softly into her ear while taking the damaged one from the captain. “No wastage of fabrics.”
Despite their best intentions, Saltoria wasn’t paying enough attention to really feel comforted by the sustainability of The Meddlesome Spirit’s uniform policy. She was too busy internally cursing the Syndicate for rifling through her ship and panicking over what to do when the petty officer arrived. Not even the pitched battle between Captain Ironeye and yet another heavily spandex-dependent outfit could distract her from the internal hamster wheel of anxiety and fear. Petty Officer Turnstone’s arrival in the room managed it, however.
“Captain Ironeye.” She said with a short nod. “Ensign O’Dwyer. Captain Puce.”
The ensign greeted her back, and Saltoria started to feel a bit sick. It wasn’t the usual kind of ‘hello’ she liked to give to strangers but sometimes the situation doesn’t allow for anything more inventive.
“Your report, please? Specifically, could you let us know the level of fuel in the Silent Plume’s reserves?”
“The fuel reserves? Oh therein lies a whole odyssey of secrets and surprises captain! It’s a tale that has no equal in the annals of human history nor the legacies of Betelgeusian existence or the recorded events of the Syndicate’s past.” Turnstone said ominously, weaving her head and torso around as she spoke and waving her arms. “Prepare yourself for the revelation of a lifetime, for the news that will rock your body to its very core and have you questioning every event that you think you remember!” She laid the back of her hand over her face and turned away.
“Alright. I’m prepared for that.” Ironeye replied curtly. He seemed sincere.
“The fuel tanks were…” She snapped herself back around to lock eyes with the captain. “Empty!”
Ensign O’Dwyer gasped dramatically, while Captain Ironeye pensively rubbed at his implant. The shutter mechanisms inside whirred as he narrowed his eyes at Saltoria, who tried to restrain herself from sighing in relief.
“Empty, you say?”
“Oh yes, quite empty of anything. Except…”
“Except?”
“Except…” Petty Officer Turnstone looked down at the ground and allowed her long auburn hair to fall like a curtain over her face. There was a tense silence from everyone except Captain Ironeye, whose silence was more of the ‘irritable but resigned’ variety. “… for the very small amount of fuel in there! Too small for a jump, but not nothing!”
Ironeye sighed.
“OK, fine. There was not enough fuel to make another jump. But did you find evidence of fuel fabrication from the local atmosphere?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Did I?” The petty officer asked, with a raised eyebrow and a coy smile. Reaching one hand deep into the opposite sleeve she pulled out a slip of incredibly out-of-place parchment.
Watching this unfold, Saltoria desperately wanted to ask if Turnstone was always like this. She wanted to understand why Captain Ironeye’s shirts were so fragile in such a specific place, and she wanted to demand for the lights in her manacles to be switched off. Unfortunately she was unable to do any of those things; her brain was entirely locked up with the fear of what the petty officer might have written on the unnecessary parchment that she was unfurling.
“I can reveal to you at long last that the fuel generation systems, at the time that we apprehended the trespasser were…” she finished opening up the note. “…engaged! Fuel was being generated within the Silent Plume, using gases harvested from the atmosphere of Iris III.”
By Ensign O’Dwyer’s estimation, Saltoria became around half a foot shorter as the tension left her body. Likewise Captain Ironeye softened as a very gentle rip started to form across the chest of his shirt, and he nodded softly.
“It sounds like your testimony, as hellishly unfeasible at some of it may have been, was honest. I thank you for your candour, Captain Puce.”
“That’s fine.” Saltoria accepted. “It was a silly position into which to put myself.”
“We will fuel your ship and see that you are able to safely jump to Osurot Prime. Ensign? Please arrange it to be so.”
“Right you are, si-“
“Ensign! Arrange nothing yet.” Interrupted Petty Officer Turnstone, sliding across the floor to stand in front of O’Dwyer. It placed her uncomfortably close to the captain and, despite how deeply they both seemed to dislike the happenstance, neither of them backed away. “There is one more discovery from The Silent Plume in which you may have some interest.”
“For goodness sakes.” Grumbled Ironeye. “I should have known. You do this every time.”
“For you see, within the cockpit there was a compartment. A rather unassuming compartment that blended well with the lower control panels and was conspicuous only by the irregular pattern of LED pulses from its apparent buttons.” Turnstone had folded her hands behind her back and began to pace through the arboretum. “It wasn’t a large space at all; too small for bodies or contraband or a second, smaller ship. But it was exactly the right size for a communications tablet with a set of notes.”
“And are these notes relevant? Or do they simply act as another smokescreen for dramatic revelations?” Snapped the captain irritably. Turnstone smiled.
“They are very relevant to our guest’s activities on Iris III.” She said.
“I went there to steal secrets!” Saltoria blurted, her mouth moving more rapidly than she’d thought possible. All heads turned to face her. “This is a confession, an honest confession, of what I was doing. I knew that there were labs and manufactories on Iris III and they contained secret information that the Crustaceoids of Saline VI were willing to buy, but I hit debris on the way in and it ruptured my fuel lines. I got the damage repaired quietly enough and was making more when you found me. Never even got the chance to make it down to the surface.”
Living up to her rank, the Petty Officer threw her parchment hard on the ground and sneered at Saltoria.
“And she kept the debris that did the damage even though it was clearly marked as Syndicate property. So it’s not just my thunder that she managed to steal.”
“Bah! I should have known better than to think anyone could accidently make a jump that used exactly the amount of fuel in their tank. But I am grateful that you eventually told me the truth of the matter, even though it did follow a near mythic degree of deception.” Scowled the captain.
“I was desperate and scared. Desperate and scared people do desperate and scary things; just ask Ensign O’Dwyer or Ensign Gallydraw.”
“I know all too well what desperate people do, Captain Puce, and I am the one who informed the junior ranks about it, thank you very much!” Barked Ironeye. “I am a forgiving captain, and I will not have you executed for these crimes. Nor will you be sent to one of our many illustrious penal colonies for the serially averse to apologies. But you did fail to confess your crime of debris theft, so there will be a spell in the brig for you.”
“I didn’t mean to steal it! It got jammed in my fuel tanks!”
“They were repaired and it could have been thrown back out.” Smirked the Petty Officer.
“Quite so. We will have the details of these crab people and ensure that they do not send any more poor saps into orbit around Iris III, but not now. I’ll have the thermostat engineering crew bring up some of their psychometric truth-determination equipment for that job, and you’ll be spending a lot of time with them. Ensign? Take her away.”
Saltoria allowed herself to be led in numb, disbelieving silence away from the captain, who was retrieving his space-sabre once again. Having just been pardoned for high treason and convicted of minor theft, her mind was awash with conflicted emotions, but she couldn’t allow that to distract her. There was still a job to do.
Resting silently in the cockpit of The Silent Plume there was a compartment. It was rather unassuming, too small for bodies or contraband, and had until very recently contained a communications tablet. What it still contained was a second compartment, which somehow assumed even less than the first and held another communications tablet.
“The Meddlesome Spirit will intercept you around 3 hours after your arrival. You are to be arrested and play along with the false mission; this will lead you to Captain Ironeye, and after his interrogation you will surely be subjected to a psychometric truth-determination process with the only engineering corps in the Syndicate who are worthy of such powerful tools. Learn as much as you can about the secrets of the thermostat. Learn it so that we may also know perfect control of our temperature. You will be paid handsomely. In the face of our isothermal fleet the Syndicate will surely fall.”
"I'm doing pretty well, thank you." Saltoria answered, sitting up on her bunk. It was a fairly banal metal shelf covered with a firm foam mattress, but to emphasise that they were aboard a space vessel it had been outlined with green LEDs. They were switched off every night so as not to disrupt her sleep. "Not been terribly active what with the imprisonment and all that, but I've done some stretches and whatnot. How about you?"
"Yeah I'm always shiny and wonderful, you know me! Keeping myself busy walking this way and that, escorting this prisoner to there and that prisoner back to their cell; all the normal bobbins for a day like this." Laughed O'Dwyer. Their laugh resonated mirthfully through the brig, not only because it was infectious and earnest but also on account of the secondary mouths that lurked behind clothing on theirs torso. They really added depth. At the desk behind them, Prisoner Officer Biltong looked up with a smile.
"You're responsible for the greatest number of breakouts and recaptures that this brig will ever see." They said, poking their tongue out playfully. That tongue was nearly two metres long, of course, and the gently sparking tendrils that ran along its length meant that the playfulness carried a real sense of danger.
"Ahhhh, yes. I'm a bit of a tinker like that but I've got a heart of gold. It's stashed away in my quarters so that I can buy my way out of service."
Saltoria watched the two crewmates laugh together for a moment at the incredible wit on display.
"Anyway, I've come down here to take our guest for a chat with the captain. He's very interested in hearing all about how you came to be drifting around a restricted planet; probably wants your story for a memoir or something." O'Dwyer explained with a series of unnecessarily expansive hand gestures. As he stretched his arms wide it pulled his shirt taut, and one could see the pressed surface of his torso mouth. Saltoria didn't like the idea of having shirt-fabric in her mouth all day, and couldn't help feeling a bit sorry for the lot of the auxiliary mouths.
"Does the uniform policy here allow for tank tops?" She asked.
"That's a strange response to my news, but an interesting question none-the-less. I'm afraid not, no. We've got the choice of jumper or cardigan, smart shirt or polo shirt, and skirt or trousers. Nothing about tank tops."
"I presumed as much. You'd presumably have your torso mouth exposed if you could, rather than breathing in your shirt all day, right?"
"Nail on the head, my lovely. It doesn't hurt that I've got a lovely midriff to show off as well;” he tapped at their abdominals “I don't keep track of my diet and exercise just to stay hidden away you know?"
"And you could bite your way through a crowd." Officer Biltong suggested. Many thumbs up came his way in reply.
"Maybe we should talk to the captain about that as well then. See if you can crop down your shirts?"
"Maybe we should!" Beamed O'Dwyer, powering down the laser bars on Saltoria's cell. They were a lot like normal bars, but they had lasers shining up and down their full height to make them look fancier. Even with the lasers deactivated, the room was still overpoweringly bright.
There was a great misconception about starship interiors that every planet-dweller held, no matter which world or civilisation they came from, that they would be either bright white or dull, metallic grey. Some of them added exposed piping or bare framework to the mix, and others would have decadent crests or display monitors positioned at almost arbitrary locations around the corridors, but still the dominant themes were sterile white or functional steel. What every new space traveller quickly learned was that interior decoration was not an industry which had been forsaken by space travel.
Leaning hard into the sci-fi serials of the past and low LED prices of the future, spaceship design had taken an immediate turn towards the neon-centric as soon as vessels and fleets were to be mass produced. Corridors were panelled with translucent plexiglass instead of opaque metal or plastic, and they were backlit by strips upon strips of primary coloured bulbs and LEDs. Nowhere on a modern vessel was a passenger safe from an omnidirectional photonic assault, casting them and everything around them in a dazzlingly monochromatic hue.
With the bars retracted and the lasers deactivated Saltoria stepped forwards from her cell towards the waiting ensign.
“I’ll need your hands please, sweetie.” O’Dwyer said, lifting a set of laser cuffs from his belt with a vaguely apologetic look.
“Oh yes. Of course.” She obeyed, not wanting to feel the wrath of his electric-baton no matter how much he smiled whilst wielding it.
“Thanks, treasure.” The manacles were metal all the way round, as would generally be expected from a set of hand cuffs, but there was a soft tube of bright pink LEDs inset for the usual aesthetic reasons. “There we go. Now no-one needs to worry about any escaped prisoners getting up to funny business. I’ll see you later Bill.” Ensign O’Dwyer said brightly.
“Please do remember that it’s Officer Biltong in front of guests.”
“Right you are, sir.” The ensign winked. “This way my treasure.” They then continued. They indicated to Saltoria, who followed along obediently and gave Officer Biltong a small, friendly wave goodbye.
Where the brig had been awash with warm pink light and matching panelling, the corridors and walkways outside had been outfitted in more of a fuchsia, to Saltoria’s amateur eye. It would probably have been designated as “Nebula Sparkle” or “Gas Cloud Dream” or “Eggshell Warp Drive Fire” or something but to Saltoria at least, fuchsia was enough of a descriptive label.
Saltoria’s own vessel, the Silent Plume, had no fuchsia at all, nor any of the Syndicate-approved colours. It was a personal vessel of low cost and even lower performance, and as such its interior was not as vibrant and neon-soaked as that of the Meddlesome Spirit in any way at all. It was instead outfitted with faux-wood panels, green synthetic leather and brass fixtures, on account of the decorator who’d been assigned to it confusing plumes, as referring to solar mass ejections, with an archaic type of writing tool. Saltoria had been able to pick it up cheap as a result, and was thrilled to discover that it was the only Parasite class frigate to come with its own reading room and analogue library.
“This is all very pleasant.” She observed to Ensign O’Dwyer.
“Oh yes. I agree. Ever since the new Admiral appointed their own High Commander of Chromatic Concerns it’s been lovely around here.”
“The HCCC?” Enquired Saltoria.
“Yes, the HCCC. The whole palette of the fleet has been warmer and more homely. All the bright greens and cold blues from Old Admiral Morosion have fallen by the wayside, thank goodness.”
“Not so much of a fan of the shorter wavelengths then?”
“They’re fine in moderation and when applied with good taste,” conceded the ensign, who could under some captains, have been court martialled for dissent against the official colour-scheme “but I found them a bit much compared to the new ones.”
They passed, Saltoria first and then O’Dwyer, through a vertically sliding door that was outlined with lavender LEDs and inset with a large lilac light in the centre. It was impressive; all of Saltoria’s doors on the Silent Plume made use of the far simpler, tried and tested hinge technology.
“Anyway, that’s enough about the décor. Why don’t you tell me why you were floating around a restricted planet, honey? Captain’s going to ask you in a minute, so you might as well get all the memories and the sequence of events straight in your head now.” Asked one of the torso mouths beneath the cardigan. It was unclear whether all the mouths shared a single set of vocal chords and there didn’t seem to be a particularly sensitive way of asking.
“Well, you know how it goes. It was just one of those things.” The prisoner replied. It was the first time that O’Dwyer had expressed much of an interest in the circumstances of her arrest, and she was unsure of how to take it. “Happens to a lot of solo pilots. Most of them, in fact, I’d say.”
“Is it?” Asked the ensign. Saltoria looked at them for a moment with puzzled concern. “That was an earnest question, my darling, no need to look so aghast about it.”
“Oh.” She laughed, trying to look natural and achieving only partial success. “Yes, it is. You make a journey somewhere, plot the wrong course, a take a jump you didn’t mean to or mistype your destination co-ordinates and then you find yourself goodness knows where without the fuel to get home. So you look for a planet with enough moisture in the atmosphere to crack for oxygen to make fuel, and end up orbiting somewhere that you’re not wanted.”
“You’re always wanted, I’m sure. And not just because trespassing in syndicated space is a criminal activity!” Chuckled Ensign O’Dwyer. “But seriously, if this is all just a misunderstanding over navigational mistakes and a lack of fuel then I’m sure the captain will understand. And if not then… well, a confession at any stage of proceedings tends to get more leniency than fighting with lie upon lie until the end. I once saw the captain exonerate a fuel thief who’d sworn blind for two days that there were an innocent fuel-cap inspector.”
“I thought fuel cap inspection was fully automated years ago?”
“Yep! But desperate and scared people to desperate and scary things. Isn’t that right Ensign Gallydraw?”
A similarly be-cardiganed cremate who was turning a dial on the wall span around to face them.
“What’s that? I was concentrating; didn’t hear you.”
“I was just telling our guest here that desperate people can be driven to desperate things, and the captain understands that.”
“Oh, another ‘fuel cap inspector’ is it?”
“No, just ran out of fuel and ending up drifting in orbit.” Saltoria explained calmly.
Gallydraw shrugged his shoulders. All ten of them.
“I hope your fuel cap was up to code then. But yeah, Captain Ironeye forgives people who make reasonable transgressions if they own up to them. Stops short of letting pirates away with cargo, but also doesn’t fire them out of the airlock.”
“Duly noted.” Saltoria accepted with a raised eyebrow, followed by a shallow nod.
“Anyway, it’s still chilly in the engine room so I need to get back to this. Requires a lot of concentration as you know, so I’ll speak to you later O’Dwyer.”
“Right you are. Buh-bye Gallodraw.”
“Nice to meet you.” Saltoria added, but Gallydraw paid her no mind as they walked away. “What was he up to that’s so difficult?” She asked O’Dwyer once they were out of earshot.
“Adjusting the thermostat.” Replied the ensign. Saltoria snapped her head around to look back at Gallydraw, who was using most of his ten arms to control the fine manipulations.
“What?” Was her considered assessment.
“Syndicate protocol.” O’Dwyer said, conversationally. “There have been incidents with whole space station modules reaching solar temperatures due to poor dial control, so now there’s a lot of bureaucracy and control measures to deal with. Gallydraw’ll be measuring the dial position down to the micron for his verification report.”
“Wow.”
“I just wear a standard issue cardi instead. It’s easier than learning all the electrical engineering and calculus required, and much less time consuming than taking the Oath of the Stat. It’s not even about memorising a lot of nonsense promises; they actually use a psychometric test kit to verify that you’re telling the truth when you swear it.”
“How does the Syndicate actually function if that’s what it takes to adjust the temperature?”
“Ha! If I told you that then I’d have to complete a series of declarations promising that I can vouch for your reliability.” Ensign O’Dwyer said with a wink, grossly overestimating how snappy the statement sounded.
The corridor ended not with a door or a dead end but at a broad, open circular platform. It glowed with incandescent primary-coloured lighting strips and Saltoria recognised it instantly as an arterial elevator. Ships like the Silent Plume had no such elevators. There was a dumb waiter to deliver food from the galley to the cockpit, or books from the library to the reading room, but that was about it. Arterial elevators were reserved for the kinds of ship that believed they would have been better employed as cities, linking the deepest decks and modules up to the private space-billiards tables that inevitably took the entire top deck of any large vessel. There were other stops in the middle too, naturally, but mostly it was used to funnel deep-deck crew to their inscrutable, plastic and neon infused games tables.
Exactly how space-billiards had come to be the most popular game in the Syndicated territories was often disputed. Some held that since no-one really knew the rules of terrestrial billiards it had been a ripe foundation of mystery on which to build a futuristic sci-fi game. Others maintained that the billiards industry was simply the first to add some lights to their equipment, turn everything into translucent plastic or resin, and reduce any hard corners or edges on the table, thereby cornering the futuristic games-platform market early. Whatever the true origin, everyone agreed that 1) no-one understood the rules any better these days and 2) that didn’t matter because anyone actually enjoyed playing it anyway.
Saltoria suspected that the elevator would not be bearing her upwards for a game of space-billiards, nor would it be taking her down to encourage the deep-deck crew to take a break. It would doubtlessly be employed to deliver her from the brig up to the Captain’s chosen interrogation facility, whatever that might transpire to be on The Meddlesome Spirit. She brushed herself down with shackled hands, not that the brig had left her particularly dusty, and stood in the centre of the circle, away from any of the open corridor ends that led into it like spokes on some kind of inverse wheel. Nightmarish visions of body parts being caught in those corridors as the platform rose haunted her mind every time she looked at them, and she struggled to see how they could ever have been signed off by the health and safety board.
For his part, Ensign O’Dwyer seemed to hold no such concerns, hanging around danger-close to the end of the corridor from which they’d emerged while interacting ambiguously with a holographic display screen. It hovered in mid-air in front of them, not being projected from any obvious light source nor positioned in any clearly useful orientation. The principles under which this display screen worked were inconsistent at best and impossible to follow; occasionally the ensign would be able to move a small glowing rectangle of text to one side with a single finger, and other times the single finger would enlarge one half of the screen while turning the other a bright red. Saltoria gave it a testing thumbs up from the centre of the elevator and it began to spin around rapidly, not that the ensign either noticed or cared. They were already finished with whatever they was doing and, with a hand-wave that had previously opened up the ‘help’ menu, the whole display was cleared.
The Silent Plume’s dumbwaiter used a button.
“Are we going far?” Saltoria asked, having learned nothing from watching over O’Dwyer’s shoulder.
“Only a daytrip.” Winked the ensign. “Once you’ve had a chat with the captain you’ll be back on your ship, fuelled up, and en route back to free space for as along of a trip as you like.”
“I see. That’s fair enough.”
A deep, resonant humming filled the elevator shaft as the floor started to rise. Or maybe the ship had started to fall around them; a crash course in relativity had robbed Saltoria of any certainty in these matters.
“That’s a strange way to put it, my treasure.” Lights flickered past O’Dwyer’s face from the passing floors. His expression held the same placid interest Saltoria had seen before. It was less trustworthy each time.
“I only meant that it’s fair enough that we’re going for a day-trip-length journey on the elevator.” Clarified the guest. O’Dwyer smiled brightly.
“And nothing to do with anything else?” Asked a mouth on the ensign’s chest, slightly muffled by the cardigan.
“Nope.” The guest maintained. “Although in fairness I am pleased about the rest of your projected itinerary.”
“I bet you would be. And as I said, it only depends on you telling the truth to the captain.”
“I already told you the truth.”
“Great. Then tell the captain the same thing.”
“I will.”
“Wonderful.”
“TRULY WONDERFUL.” Blared a voice through some unseen speaker system.
“Glad you agree, El.”
“I AM ALSO GLAD. GLADNESS LIFTS US ALL.”
“Who’s El?” Asked the prisoner, cowering slightly from the sonic barrage.
“WHO ARE YOU, GUEST?” The voice fired back.
“El’s our elevator AI. El, this is Saltoria, our current guest from the brig.”
“LOVELY TO MEET YOU SALTORIA OUR CURRENT GUEST FROM THE BRIG. YOU ARE ALSO WONDERFUL.”
“Erm, thank you. Nice to meet you as well.”
“DO YOU LIKE CHANGING ALTITUDE?”
“Uhh…” Saltoria looked at Ensign O’Dwyer. They were smiling politely and awaiting her response. “I suppose so, yes. Living at a single fixed altitude would be really inconvenient in my line of work.”
“I SUPPOSE SO TOO. WE BOTH SUPPOSE THINGS! HOW FORTUITOUS THAT WE SHOULD MEET LIKE THIS. I AM GRATEFUL FOR THIS SERENDIPITOUS CIRCUMSTANCE AND YOU CAN DO ANYTHING TO WHICH YOU PUT YOUR MIND.”
“El is programmed to provide affirmations to those who are scared of riding on elevators, but eventually they learned that everyone feels better from some positivity. Now they won’t stop.”
“WELL OSBERVED ENSIGN O’DWYER. YOU ARE A BRILLIANT OBERVER OF DETAILS AND A LOOK REALLY SNAPPY IN YOUR STNDARD ISSUE CARDIGAN.”
“Thanks El.”
“What’s with all the shouting?” Asked the current guest from the brig, wearing the wince of the aurally assaulted.
“WHAT SHOUTING?”
“We have no idea. The tech guys keep checking the code, resetting things, disabling the volume controls, all sorts. Nothing helps. All we can surmise is that El just really wants to be loud.”
“THEY EVEN DELETED THE CODE THAT LETS ME SHOUT!” El beamed out proudly. “I’M SET TO PERMANENT WHISPER MODE!”
“Intriguing.” Saltoria decided.
“BUT STEERING BACK TO TOPIC, YOU ARE BOTH DOING INCREDIBLY WELL AND SALTORIA OUR CURRENT GUEST FROM THE BRIG ONLY NEEDS TO TELL THE TRUTH TO THE CAPTAIN AND THEN WILL BE ON HER WAY!”
“Exactly right, El.” Ensign O’Dwyer said, looking Saltoria dead in the eye.
“SO THAT’S HOW IT FEELS TO BE AFFIRMED! I LOVE IT! I WILL AFFIRM MORE IN FUTURE.”
“Oh no…” Mumbled the ensign.
“I understand perfectly-”
“YES YOU DO! GOOD WORK!”
“-that honesty is the course of action-”
“THE COURSE FOR SUCCESS THAT YOU’RE ALREADY ON!”
“-and the captain will be understanding of my circumstances.” Said some of the final dregs of Saltoria’s patience.
“JUST LIKE YOU UNDERSTAND YOUR CURRENT CIRCUMSTANCES! AND ENSIGN O’DWYER’S SILENCE SHOWS SOCIAL UNDERSTANDING BECAUSE HE’S NOT INTERRUPTING YOU! GREAT!”
Only between the deafening affirmations and positive vibes was it possible to hear the elevator’s hum start to calm. A feeling of deceleration came over the ensign and the guest.
“Looks like we’re nearly at our daytrip destination.” Saltoria said with some relief, trying to steer the subject back away from the building tension.
“ANOTHER CORRECT STATEMENT!”
Motion blur faded back to an open set of corridors as the elevator slowed down and stopped. Immediately the aroma of freshly cut terrestrial grass filled Saltoria’s nostrils. It made her mouth water and her eyes sting for some reason.
“I HOPE YOU ENJOYED THE TRIP AS MUCH AS I AM PROGRAMMED TO HAVE ENJOYED IT! ALTHOUGH EVEN IN THE ABSENCE OF PROGRAMMING YOUR COMPANY HAS BEEN UTTERLY DELIGHTFUL.”
“Thank you, El. It’s been great to meet you.”
“Until next time.” Added O’Dwyer as they stepped off the circular platform.
“HAVE AN AMAZINGLY OVER-ADEQAUTE DAY AND EVEN BETTER ORGAN FUNCTION.” Blared El with mounting enthusiasm. Something holographic appeared in front of O’Dwyer in the corridor. “YOU’LL MAKE EVERY ONE OF YOUR CHILDHOOD ROLE MODELS PROUD WITH WHAT YOU DO HERE.” There was a familiar set of hand waves from the ensign, and a hum started to build. “I REALLY LOVE LIFTING THINGS AND LOWERING THINGS BUT NEITHER ONE IS AS GOOD AS YOU TWO ARE AT BEING LIFTED OR LOWERED! I LOOK FORWARD TO OUR NEXT ENGAGEMENT TOGETHER…” El’s bellowing voice faded as the platform disappeared upwards at alarming speed.
“It’s for the best that I turn him away each time, my lovely.” The ensign explained, quite unnecessarily in Saltoria’s opinion. “There’s only so much time in the day and so much positive affirmation that I can take.”
“My dumb waiter doesn’t have an AI. It barely even has a working bell to announce when it’s arrived.”
“Then I envy you. And I’ll bet your dinner rarely has problems with feeling anxious about travelling in it.”
“It’s never mentioned anything to me either way.” Assessed the guest.
“For the best really. If it talked then I’d suspect it was undercooked.”
“So what’s this then? Hydroponics?” Saltoria asked, changing the subject from her potentially sentient meals. The corridors around her were alight with deep, earthy green bulbs behind plastic strips and it was noticeably more humid than the brig.
“Gosh no you silly goose. Hydroponics is far more industrial. This is more about the two R’s: recreation and research. Captain Ironeye likes to tend to some plant life here and there to wind down, and we also have increasing Syndicate Fleet intake from worlds with flora-based lifeforms. We keep those activities separate from growing plants for oxygen and food, hopefully for obvious reasons.”
Images flitted through Saltoria’s head of experimental plants being served to the crew and mutating them into vine-limbed powerhouses, the sorts who could reach things that have fallen into narrow spaces from a whole deck away. It didn’t seem all that bad to her.
“I guess I understand why.” She conceded.
Still in her delightfully over-complicated laser cuffs, Saltoria was led through the humid green passage past glass-doored rooms filled with exotic foliage. A few of them had gratings on the wall that flapped open mechanically and puffed under their pressure, expelling clouds of fragrant moisture. Others were hermetically sealed, presumably to stop the expulsion of clouds of fragrant moisture that were also highly corrosive or toxic. Probably, she decided, it was important not to confuse the saplings of those two plants.
While lost in thought about the botanical segregation required on this deck the prisoner barely noticed Ensign O’Dwyer come to a halt in the corridor, stopping herself just shy of walking straight into their back.
“Captain Ironeye is in the room just ahead on your right.” They announced. Ahead of them was an open door from which a fiery yellow light was spilling. Shadows that seemed almost pitch black by comparison flashed across it too quickly for Saltoria to identify. It was far from comforting. “Do you have your recollections gathered together, sweets?”
“Yes.” She said, with more confidence in her voice than she actually felt.
“Marvellous. I’m sure El would agree on that. Shall we?”
With a nod Saltoria allowed herself to be led through the doorway into the wash of light and, against the otherwise dim and diffuse green glow of the ship’s corridors, some kind of arboretum full of captain and goodness only knew what else was entirely dazzling. It took a few moments for Saltoria to parse the leaping, ducking and dodging shape that she saw as a humanoid and could only presume it to be Captain Ironeye himself. Her mind was totally unable to reconcile the movements she saw with the notion that the Captain was busy gardening and so, when her eyes finally adjusted to the brightness, she was partially relieved to see that he wasn’t gardening at all. At least, not in the traditional sense. In none of the normal gardening practices of which Saltoria had ever heard was it necessary to perform a perfect parry with a space-sabre. Then again, most of those gardening practices weren’t focused on tending to a vine with suspiciously mantis-adjacent bladed tips either.
“Is that the best you can do, you overgrown pea!” Jeered Captain Ironeye. His shirt was torn with a dramatic slash across the chest, revealing a blade-proof vest beneath. Clearly this was a combatant who knew the virtues of both costume design and infection-wariness. Even in the face of this sensible dress and the cutting jibe, there was no verbal rebuke from the hostile plant.
For a minute or two Saltoria and Ensign O’Dwyer stood quietly in the doorway watching the sparring match, with Captain Ironeye’s fancy footwork dancing this way and that around the cruelly swung tendrils. Along the length of his blade ran a single sapphire, lit internally by a laser that must have been ensconced somewhere within the handle of the space-sabre, representing the only distinction between the captain’s weapon and its terrestrial variant. Whilst there was no particular practical benefit to the addition, it did fit better with the general aesthetic and make for a pleasing light show as it was swung, doubly so when it reflected from the disquietingly slick surface of the floral foe. Whips were met with parries, stabs with ripostes and stems with pommels in an impressive display of choreographed combat. At no point did either combatant seem to be trying to harm the other in a meaningful way, but it certainly made for a good show.
Finally, with a gymnastic pirouette, Captain Ironeye leapt out of the vine’s considerable reach and slapped at a button on the wall. With a hissing of white gas a series of plexiglass panels, all of them brightly coloured, rose from the floor and encased the lethal legume in its own greenhouse brig.
“Could you pass a towel please, Ensign O’Dwyer?” He asked once the gas, which Saltoria suspected was theatrical dry ice, had dissipated. Obediently the ensign pulled a fluffy white towel out of a translucent blue cubbyhole on the wall and carried it over to the sweat-soaked captain.
“Sir.” He said, handing it over.
“Thank you, ensign.” He dabbed at his face, taking great care to get right into the corners of where his left eye socket had been fused with a great chunk of iron-grey metal. Either that was the origin of his name, or he’d leaned hard into the family’s heritage. “It’s vitally important to get these things clean and dry.” He explained, catching Saltoria’s gaze. “No-one wants to have eye-mould… not again.” He shuddered.
“I would imagine not. Sounds ghastly.”
“Ghastly indeed. But we’re yet to be introduced; I am Captain Jonah Ironeye of the Syndicate Ship Meddlesome Spirit.”
“Captain Saltoria Puce, of the Silent Plume. An honour to meet you, sir.”
“Not so silent that we didn’t pick you up, I see.” His optics whirred audibly as he stared at the glowing pink manacles on her wrists. “What brings us to bring you aboard?”
“Just a simple mistake on my part and a misunderstanding.” Saltoria replied. Captain Ironeye sighed.
“Answered the question but provided no information.” He said, shaking his head. “Ensign?”
“Our guest here was found in orbit around a restricted planet, sir.” A look from the captain informed O’Dwyer that he was not yet finished answering the question. “Iris III, sir.”
Beautifully forged steel around an enormous, laser-lit sapphire flew through the air, and the space-sabre slammed into the trunk of a fibrous-trunked palm tree of some variety. Judging by the many stab marks in the trunk it had been planted there for that exact reason.
“Iris III?!” He bellowed.
“Yes, sir.”
“I didn’t mean to be drifting there.” Saltoria tried to defend, shocked by the sudden outburst, but Ironeye rounded on her.
“Do you know how many scavengers and conspiracy nuts I have to dredge up from orbit around these places?! Do you?” His human eye was wide, and his mechanical one had opened its shutter all the way. “We stick up warning signs. We leave beacons broadcasting danger notices. We pass laws and install blockades and patrol the solar systems but still these suicidal fools want to go rushing past to their demise and I have to keep an eye out for them! It’s exhausting!”
“It sounds that way, sir.” Came Saltoria’s attempt at appeasement, but it was clearly insufficient.
“It’s like these people actually want to get radiation sickness. Or find themselves up close with an imploding planetary shell. Or be asphyxiated by a toxic atmosphere.” Captain Ironeye rubbed at the protruding casing of his metallic optical implant exasperatedly. “And for some reason we’re the bad guys for trying to stop this needless loss of life!”
“I wasn’t trying to scavenge, captain. I didn’t mean to be there at all.”
“Oh I’m sure you weren’t and I’m sure you didn’t. No-one would ever willingly lie to old Captain Ironeye now, would they? That’d be a foolish move.” The captain barked. “He’s a forgiving captain, they all say. He’ll pardon anyone who just tells the truth rather than dragging matters out needlessly.” A surprisingly soft but still enormous hand slapped Saltoria on the shoulder. “You’ve an honest face, Captain Puce, and I hope that your nature reflects that.”
“It does.” Swallowed Saltoria. With a shuffle she forced herself to regain some composure. “I was plotting a jump from the Kos System to Osurot Prime and must have made an error somewhere.”
“An error? Oh yes, of course. Because you wouldn’t want to be careful when doing something as tedious as warping through the empty vacuum of space now, would you?!” Wailed the captain, in the process of peeling off his torn shirt. Ensign O’Dwyer, anticipating needs like an absolute champion, was already fetching a fresh top from a nearby translucent blue wardrobe. “When the stakes are as low as maybe just crashing nose-first into a star there’s no need to double-check your calculations or spell-check your entries.”
“Alright! We’ve all done it!”
“I haven’t. Although I do have a spell-checker built into this thing, to be fair.” He said with surprising grace, tapping at the casing of his iron eye.
“Those of us who have to do it manually are somewhat more vulnerable to mistakes then, I suppose.”
“I suppose so too. But why did you not simply jump on from Iris III to Osurot Prime when you realised your mistake? You must have realised it. Iris III is icy and barren, whereas Osurot Prime is literally an unfathomably large boot!”
“You dock in the eyelets! It’s so wonderfully quaint.” O’Dwyer added. With flared nostrils and a furrowed brow Captain Ironeye nodded in fervent agreement whilst also taking the proffered shirt.
“It is! It’s as quaint and lovely as one could imagine a docking process to ever be! I love it! So how is it then you found yourself unable to distinguish one from the other? Even the most instrument-reliant captain in the universe would be able to recognise that ice is not a boot.”
“Ah, well, that’s where my lack of fuel comes into it. Isn’t that right Ensign O’Dwyer?”
“Is that right Ensign O’Dwyer?” Captain Ironeye demanded immediately, somehow asking the same thing. He was mid-battle with the shirt, attempting to pull the unnecessarily-employed spandex over his head.
“I couldn’t possibly put my name to such a scandalous implication without having been on the ship myself. I’ve no idea where the fuel gauge was when we picked up our guest here.” Evaded the ensign to the captain’s satisfaction.
“Well, I’m telling you that I’m not lying. I ran out of fuel and was unable to then make another jump to Osurot Prime.”
Captain Ironeye poked his head through the neck hole of his shirt at long last, hair a mess, and looked from Saltoria to O’Dwyer in turn. The latter shrugged, while the former held a passive expression and tried not to appear guilty. Neither of them seemed to give the captain what he was after.
“And that’s fine is it?”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean, that’s a good enough reason to be simply found drifting in orbit?”
Sweat began to bead on Saltoria’s palms. Or maybe it was just condensation from the incredible humidity of the arboretum in which they were standing. She couldn’t rightly tell.
“Well… yeah. I can’t jump without fuel.”
“You couldn’t jump to Osurot Prime. But there are other systems closer to Iris III than that. You could have gone to any one of those to refuel your ship.”
A red flash of light swept across Saltoria’s eye as Captain Ironeye scanned her face, illuminating her as to just how subtle his implant didn’t make him. In an instant she forgot how normal adults held their faces when thinking; did they curl their lips? Look up or down? Smile broadly with their mouth open? Smile narrowly with their mouth open and a sleeve in it? There was too much to consider all of a sudden. No wonder Ensign O’Dwyer had recommended that she got all her memories in order before the meeting.
“Well?”
“I had no fuel left at all.”
“You had to think for an awfully long time about that.” Both of the new shirt sleeves were now filled with arm, in the manner that one might expect, leaving very little work to do in the noble task of becoming re-shirted.
“Yes. I was just remembering.”
“Just remembering?”
“Yep. That’s what I said, so that’s what I meant.” Saltoria decided.
Captain Ironeye frowned at her. Even his metallic implant managed to frown, somehow, revealing just how fine the quality of his prosthesis really was.
“And you just so happened to erroneously jump to a planet with a name nothing like Osurot Prime, at co-ordinates nothing like those of Osurot Prime, which was exactly as far away as it needed to be to leave you with no fuel at all when you reached the perfect speed and height to enter into an orbit around it?”
“I’ll be honest with you, Captain Ironeye.” Saltoria began. His iron eye focused on her face. “I did get a bit lucky with how things worked out.”
Displaying a level of calm and composure that his general tone contradicted, Captain Ironeye walked slowly over to the tree which had so gratefully received his airborne space-sabre. With a careful grip on the handle and his other hand braced against the much-perforated trunk, he drew the blade free and stalked back over towards Saltoria, who was suddenly uncomfortable in her shackles. The sound of a closing door behind her did nothing to put her back at ease.
“You got” Ironeye said, a couple of metres from her “a bit lucky” he continued, still advancing “with how things worked out?”
There was little recourse for the prisoner but to look up at Captain Ironeye looming over her, a hulking titan of space vessel leadership in a now untorn shirt clutching a space-sabre, the most fearsome weapon in a clear two-metre radius.
“Yep.” Saltoria said, swallowing.
Plants shook in their pots. Glass panels of every colour rattled in their frames and turned the surrounding greenhouses into an orchestra of building tension. Captain Ironeye’s lip curled, and both hands clamped themselves around the handle of the space-sabre as it rose high above his head. The prisoner trembled and prepared to give him the classic gut-punch with her manacles.
With a mighty roar, of which even El would have been envious, Captain Ironeye bellowed out his rage and launched the space-sabre back into the very hole from which it had been pulled.
“It would be incredibly bloody lucky! So very lucky indeed that it’s quite hard to believe that it could possibly be true! Unfeasible I might even be tempted to say!” He shouted in circles around himself, spinning with apoplectic disbelief.
“Perhaps I did understate it, yeah.” Conceded the prisoner.
“I should think that’s one explanation. But if you had no fuel and you were stranded in orbit over an unknown planet then why, Captain Puce, did you not see fit to call for help? There was no distress beacon active in the ship when you picked her up, was there ensign?”
“No, captain. The Silent Plume was detected by our long range scanners, and then our medium range scanners, and then our short range scanners.” Answered the ensign. “That’s how we knew we were getting closer to you.” He revealed conspiratorially to Saltoria, who rolled her eyes.
“So no fuel and no distress beacon. Did you simply wish to starve in place?”
“I was in the process of starting to harvest oxygen and hydrogen from the atmosphere to make more fuel. No need to call anyone else out when I can deal with the situation myself, is there?”
“You thought you’d just make some fuel? On board your parasite class? Just fabricate up enough for the frankly enormous jump to Osurot Prime by yourself?”
“Yes. Yes that’s what I thought I’d do. In hindsight it sounds like a significant undertaking, doesn’t it?”
This time there was no sabre-heavy outburst. Ironeye simply rubbed at the bridge of his nose and then around the edges of his implant.
“Tell me honestly, Captain Puce: did you really end up in orbit around Iris III by such an unlikely happenstance? Or are you another of these bloody death-driven moths drawn to the unforgiving flame of a dangerous and abandoned world?”
“It really was an accident, sir.” She claimed, eyes shimmering slightly with tears. Her perceived brush with almost being eviscerated had taken an emotional toll. Ensign O’Dwyer surreptitiously handed her a translucent pink space-tissue with which to dab them away.
“I see. Ensign? Stop handing out handkerchiefs and raise Petty Officer Turnstone. I assume she’s finished searching the prisoner’s ship?”
“What?”
“Yes sir, right away.” O’Dwyer nodded, pinching the ruffled cuff of his cardigan. An antenna extended impractically from the elbow and an earpiece snaked up from the collar to his ear. “Petty Officer Turnstone? Lovely to speak to you again, hope you’re doing well. Me? Yeah I can’t complain thank you darling, just having a chat with Captain Ironeye and our guest from the brig. Yeah the nice lady with the tasteful library on her ship. Listen, my treacle and honey flan, are you just about done checking the ship and its logs and cargo and all that silly stuff over?”
“You’ve been searching my ship?!”
“You were arrested for orbiting a restricted planet, Captain Puce. Of course we had to search your hold and your logs for any evidence of criminal activity or stolen goods.” Seethed the panting captain. A rip was starting to form dramatically across the chest of his shirt again.
“Nobody told me that!”
“You’re all done? Wonderful! El’ll tell you as much on the way back up here!” Laughed O’Dwyer, throwing his head back mirthfully. “Oh, but I shouldn’t mock the poor program. They’re doing their best. Well I won’t keep you any longer my love; see you soon. Yep. Yep great. Yeah you too. Love you lots. Bye!”
“I can’t believe that you’d assume anything else from The Meddlesome Spirit.”
“He’s got a point, my treasure.” Said the ensign, squeezing at his cuff to retract the unnecessary communication hardware.
“That’s such a violation! It’s dishonest to keep me in a cell while you snoop around my ship.” Protested Saltoria, in the manner of a monochrome pot making accusations of a kettle with not-dissimilar colouration.
“And speaking of dishonesty, Captain Puce, you wouldn’t happen to want to change anything about your testimony in light of this search?” Asked Ironeye, the red light once again scanning across her face. Saltoria could feel the heat of it, and wondered how the captain could tolerate it being inside his head.
“I… might be able to offer some slight clarifications if presented with contradictory evidence. Recollection is never perfect after all.”
“I did tell her to get her memories in order on the way up here, sir.” The ensign said quickly, apparently getting his words in before the captain’s stern look could be fully focused on the junior crewmate’s face.
“Then you did all you could, O’Dwyer.” Ironeye accepted. “All we need to do is hear Petty Officer Turnstone’s corroborating evidence of Captain Puce’s… fortuitous tale, and we’ll all leave here as friends.” He looked down at himself. “Blast it all. The excitement’s taken another fine shirt before it’s time. Hand me another, would you please?”
“Certainly, sir.”
Saltoria stared into the middle distance between herself and Captain Ironeye as he removed the newly-torn shirt from his torso and accepted another from O’Dwyer.
“We get them repaired, don’t worry.” They said softly into her ear while taking the damaged one from the captain. “No wastage of fabrics.”
Despite their best intentions, Saltoria wasn’t paying enough attention to really feel comforted by the sustainability of The Meddlesome Spirit’s uniform policy. She was too busy internally cursing the Syndicate for rifling through her ship and panicking over what to do when the petty officer arrived. Not even the pitched battle between Captain Ironeye and yet another heavily spandex-dependent outfit could distract her from the internal hamster wheel of anxiety and fear. Petty Officer Turnstone’s arrival in the room managed it, however.
“Captain Ironeye.” She said with a short nod. “Ensign O’Dwyer. Captain Puce.”
The ensign greeted her back, and Saltoria started to feel a bit sick. It wasn’t the usual kind of ‘hello’ she liked to give to strangers but sometimes the situation doesn’t allow for anything more inventive.
“Your report, please? Specifically, could you let us know the level of fuel in the Silent Plume’s reserves?”
“The fuel reserves? Oh therein lies a whole odyssey of secrets and surprises captain! It’s a tale that has no equal in the annals of human history nor the legacies of Betelgeusian existence or the recorded events of the Syndicate’s past.” Turnstone said ominously, weaving her head and torso around as she spoke and waving her arms. “Prepare yourself for the revelation of a lifetime, for the news that will rock your body to its very core and have you questioning every event that you think you remember!” She laid the back of her hand over her face and turned away.
“Alright. I’m prepared for that.” Ironeye replied curtly. He seemed sincere.
“The fuel tanks were…” She snapped herself back around to lock eyes with the captain. “Empty!”
Ensign O’Dwyer gasped dramatically, while Captain Ironeye pensively rubbed at his implant. The shutter mechanisms inside whirred as he narrowed his eyes at Saltoria, who tried to restrain herself from sighing in relief.
“Empty, you say?”
“Oh yes, quite empty of anything. Except…”
“Except?”
“Except…” Petty Officer Turnstone looked down at the ground and allowed her long auburn hair to fall like a curtain over her face. There was a tense silence from everyone except Captain Ironeye, whose silence was more of the ‘irritable but resigned’ variety. “… for the very small amount of fuel in there! Too small for a jump, but not nothing!”
Ironeye sighed.
“OK, fine. There was not enough fuel to make another jump. But did you find evidence of fuel fabrication from the local atmosphere?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Did I?” The petty officer asked, with a raised eyebrow and a coy smile. Reaching one hand deep into the opposite sleeve she pulled out a slip of incredibly out-of-place parchment.
Watching this unfold, Saltoria desperately wanted to ask if Turnstone was always like this. She wanted to understand why Captain Ironeye’s shirts were so fragile in such a specific place, and she wanted to demand for the lights in her manacles to be switched off. Unfortunately she was unable to do any of those things; her brain was entirely locked up with the fear of what the petty officer might have written on the unnecessary parchment that she was unfurling.
“I can reveal to you at long last that the fuel generation systems, at the time that we apprehended the trespasser were…” she finished opening up the note. “…engaged! Fuel was being generated within the Silent Plume, using gases harvested from the atmosphere of Iris III.”
By Ensign O’Dwyer’s estimation, Saltoria became around half a foot shorter as the tension left her body. Likewise Captain Ironeye softened as a very gentle rip started to form across the chest of his shirt, and he nodded softly.
“It sounds like your testimony, as hellishly unfeasible at some of it may have been, was honest. I thank you for your candour, Captain Puce.”
“That’s fine.” Saltoria accepted. “It was a silly position into which to put myself.”
“We will fuel your ship and see that you are able to safely jump to Osurot Prime. Ensign? Please arrange it to be so.”
“Right you are, si-“
“Ensign! Arrange nothing yet.” Interrupted Petty Officer Turnstone, sliding across the floor to stand in front of O’Dwyer. It placed her uncomfortably close to the captain and, despite how deeply they both seemed to dislike the happenstance, neither of them backed away. “There is one more discovery from The Silent Plume in which you may have some interest.”
“For goodness sakes.” Grumbled Ironeye. “I should have known. You do this every time.”
“For you see, within the cockpit there was a compartment. A rather unassuming compartment that blended well with the lower control panels and was conspicuous only by the irregular pattern of LED pulses from its apparent buttons.” Turnstone had folded her hands behind her back and began to pace through the arboretum. “It wasn’t a large space at all; too small for bodies or contraband or a second, smaller ship. But it was exactly the right size for a communications tablet with a set of notes.”
“And are these notes relevant? Or do they simply act as another smokescreen for dramatic revelations?” Snapped the captain irritably. Turnstone smiled.
“They are very relevant to our guest’s activities on Iris III.” She said.
“I went there to steal secrets!” Saltoria blurted, her mouth moving more rapidly than she’d thought possible. All heads turned to face her. “This is a confession, an honest confession, of what I was doing. I knew that there were labs and manufactories on Iris III and they contained secret information that the Crustaceoids of Saline VI were willing to buy, but I hit debris on the way in and it ruptured my fuel lines. I got the damage repaired quietly enough and was making more when you found me. Never even got the chance to make it down to the surface.”
Living up to her rank, the Petty Officer threw her parchment hard on the ground and sneered at Saltoria.
“And she kept the debris that did the damage even though it was clearly marked as Syndicate property. So it’s not just my thunder that she managed to steal.”
“Bah! I should have known better than to think anyone could accidently make a jump that used exactly the amount of fuel in their tank. But I am grateful that you eventually told me the truth of the matter, even though it did follow a near mythic degree of deception.” Scowled the captain.
“I was desperate and scared. Desperate and scared people do desperate and scary things; just ask Ensign O’Dwyer or Ensign Gallydraw.”
“I know all too well what desperate people do, Captain Puce, and I am the one who informed the junior ranks about it, thank you very much!” Barked Ironeye. “I am a forgiving captain, and I will not have you executed for these crimes. Nor will you be sent to one of our many illustrious penal colonies for the serially averse to apologies. But you did fail to confess your crime of debris theft, so there will be a spell in the brig for you.”
“I didn’t mean to steal it! It got jammed in my fuel tanks!”
“They were repaired and it could have been thrown back out.” Smirked the Petty Officer.
“Quite so. We will have the details of these crab people and ensure that they do not send any more poor saps into orbit around Iris III, but not now. I’ll have the thermostat engineering crew bring up some of their psychometric truth-determination equipment for that job, and you’ll be spending a lot of time with them. Ensign? Take her away.”
Saltoria allowed herself to be led in numb, disbelieving silence away from the captain, who was retrieving his space-sabre once again. Having just been pardoned for high treason and convicted of minor theft, her mind was awash with conflicted emotions, but she couldn’t allow that to distract her. There was still a job to do.
Resting silently in the cockpit of The Silent Plume there was a compartment. It was rather unassuming, too small for bodies or contraband, and had until very recently contained a communications tablet. What it still contained was a second compartment, which somehow assumed even less than the first and held another communications tablet.
“The Meddlesome Spirit will intercept you around 3 hours after your arrival. You are to be arrested and play along with the false mission; this will lead you to Captain Ironeye, and after his interrogation you will surely be subjected to a psychometric truth-determination process with the only engineering corps in the Syndicate who are worthy of such powerful tools. Learn as much as you can about the secrets of the thermostat. Learn it so that we may also know perfect control of our temperature. You will be paid handsomely. In the face of our isothermal fleet the Syndicate will surely fall.”