Warp Riders

Thanks to the Orb, they’d been living large outside of time — until it all came crashing down.

Stranded on a strange moon, four space pirates and one stowaway find themselves forced to discover what comes next.

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Warp Riders – Chapter 11

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The next planetrise, she dragged herself out of her tent and drank half the Bosun’s first pot of coffee; the Engineer talked at her for what felt like an hour about scanners and photogrammetry and sampling methods; the Navigatrix handed her a compass-like device she’d built; the Stowaway packed her both a dehydrated lunch and dinner, and strapped a few bottles of water together for easier carrying.

The Captain had a growing suspicion that they’d all worked out this plan before the Engineer had even brought the data collection idea up with her.

It wasn’t a good feeling. That said, she figured it could join the fatigue headache, the stomach ache from the coffee, the lingering bad mood from a sleepless night being angry, and the constant piece of gravel in her boot in the competition for “why is the Captain Angry Today.”

And off she stomped, heading for high ground to do a long distance scan first, and then with explicit instructions to get underground if possible and see how far down into the soil the artificial structures went.

Warp Riders – Chapter 12

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No one did anything so rude as to, say, sigh with relief as the Captain disappeared in the distance, but the Navigatrix caught the Engineer and the Bosun exchanging a meaningful look, and the Stowaway sat down and stretched back in a cat-like yawn that almost looked forced.

She had to ask. “She hasn’t been that bad, has she?”

The Engineer snorted as the Bosun raised an eyebrow.

“I’m happy to make her coffee and send her on her way, but yesterday she kept interrupting me, trying to tell me how to wash out the percolator. My percolator.”

The Stowaway was trying to suppress their smile.

“And!” said the Engineer, “AND she started taking my short range radios apart without me while I was eating lunch. She made me explain to her everything I was doing for the whole afternoon.” She huffed. “Set me back by days.”

“She not bothering you?” asked the Bosun, as the Stowaway gave up and started giggling at the Engineer’s expression.

The Navigatrix tilted her head. “Well, she’s certainly around more. I don’t mind her taking an interest in my work.”

“Looked more like nagging to me.”

“Doesn’t get under my skin, I guess. Maybe you could find more joy in sharing?”

The Engineer glowered at her. “I’m happy to share, but she’s been miserable since we got here and you know it.”

“No good at relaxing, I’d say.” The Bosun gestured. “This kid, now, they get it.”

The Stowaway had stretched out, hands under their head, eyes closed, clearly enjoying the breeze.

The Navigatrix honestly thought the pose looked forced, but far be it from her to nag anyone. There were much better ways to spend the day.

Warp Riders – Chapter 13

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The Captain thought of herself as the most physically capable of the crew. She was undeniable The Muscle on gigs – hauling storage crates, busting open doors, throwing the odd punch when things came down to it. Hiking uneven terrain was almost a welcome challenge, honestly.

She certainly didn’t get out as much as she used to, back before the Orb. Nowhere to go, really, outside of time, except what place you brought with you. Maybe it was silly of her to have stuck so close to the campsite so far; moving her limbs was definitely doing her good.

The ruins were less visible away from the lake edge; the landscape had a soft undulation to it, each hill covered in swaying treelike plants. The ground underfoot was a crumbling cinnamon soil, soft and porous and held together by tiny vines that formed a mesh at the surface.

The plants’ leaves were stiff blunt spines, the blue of oxidized steel, and they rustled and rattled in the morning wind. Now and then, a stone ridge would appear, thrust up through the netted vines, too regular to be natural; but overall, it was a fairly pastoral planet.

The high ground she had in mind was a sharp ridge they had picked out from camp. It had looked somewhat artificial in shape in the Navigatrix’s scope, which intrigued the Engineer to no end. The hike there took over two hours, up and down, and it was extremely good for her.

What an infuriatingly simple truth: she needed to be doing things. Everything was simpler when there was something to do! She hadn’t thought about Lucy the whole time she’d been moving – what a joy, what a pleasure, what a relief.

Of course, then Lucy was at the center of her thoughts again. Lucy would have loved this, maybe. She had loved the scenic tourist resorts they used to relax at between gigs, when it was just the two of them and the Navigatrix. At least, she loved the beaches.

It was strange how sandy the soil stayed, even as she started to climb the ridge. Could sand make a ridge? Questions like that probably meant it was time to take a sample; and the Captain paused between a few larger … trees, was a good enough word for them, and knelt down.

The Engineer didn’t want immediate surface soil – she said they’d probably already contaminated it, simply being out in the breeze, so the Captain used the provided tools to dig down half the length of her arm. As she scooped the sand into the vial, she brushed against something – something hard, but smoother than the stone ruins. She did something very unscientific and scrambled around in the soil with her hands until she unearthed it; smooth, tinted a little darker than white, dry as a – well, it was a bone. A human bone.

Probably even less scientific was the noise she made when she realized she was holding a jawbone, and flung it away from herself.

“Augh, augh, no, no, augh -”

It rattled against the tree needles as it rolled down the slope of the ridge.

Well, there was no retrieving it now, what a tragedy.

After a thorough session of sanitizing her hands, the sampling equipment, and her face for good measure, she pulled the pack onto her shoulder and turned back towards the peak of the ridge. Nowhere to go but up, old girl.

Warp Riders – Chapter 14

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Back at camp, the Stowaway lay in the planetglow, visibly relaxing, until the Navigatrix was out of earshot. She was getting suspicious, and they thought they might know why, but there was nothing to be done about it. Things were in motion and that was that.

The Engineer had put together an audio translation device that took over the entirety of the ship’s computer. She wanted them to try it sooner than later, because once they were back in there full time, the computer would be otherwise occupied. They hated to disappoint her.

They stood up and caught her eye; “We can try your machine now if you want.”

The Engineer’s face took on the troubled look of anyone hearing the Stowaway’s transformed voice, but she said “Would you like to try the device now? No one will bother us.”

While she tuned radio signals and plugged in wires, she babbled on about the system she’d set up, all the scientific principles she was working with, the codebreaking approaches the computer would run through… and she smiled at them, and said “I’m excited to learn your name!”

The Stowaway had never met another group that used names less, but they smiled at her as best they could. They had the sense that their facial expressions weren’t coming through clearly either, but it was worth a try.

Before this had all started, they’d been part of a small community in the permanently lit zone of a tidally locked planet. They had not, they could admit, been a particularly good kid, and it wasn’t really surprising that they had been kicked out so young. Family had to earn it.

And maybe it was silly to go through the twilight into the night communities without a convoy, but it wasn’t like they could have afforded to join one. The Stowaway didn’t pride themselves on much, but they were a consistently good shot. Good enough to get into trouble, at least.

And so maybe it had been inevitable that they would end up in the wrong part of some nightside town, in some rundown, abandoned neighbourhood, paranoid and twitchy, and shoot the wrong window out, and get the attention of the witches. They replayed it in their mind over and over.

Maybe this was indeed fated; but they’d made the trade, taken the job, tried to find a way to survive it. This was on them. They’d intentionally become the Stowaway and they were going to have to see this all through.

So when the Engineer held up a microphone that she had plugged into a huge array of switchboards and radio transmitters, they held it and calmly recited each step of their journey onto the ship, every trick they had used, each secret they had been given. And the lights blinked…

…and the ship’s engines revved up to support the computer, and they all turned and looked at it, half-immersed in high tide and rumbling and boiling the water around it, and the little lights kept blinking…

…and then finally it all wound down, the air went quiet, and the lights all turned off except for one red one.

The Engineer huffed and frowned and almost looked hurt by the result.

“This should have worked. This is the best audio cipher I’ve ever made – that I’ve ever seen.”

The Stowaway almost felt bad. They reached out and patted the Engineer’s hand.

“It’s not your fault. It’s just the Curse.”

The Engineer’s frown deepened at the untranslatable words that reached her ears, and she turned away, already pulling out wires and unscrewing covers.

Warp Riders – Chapter 15

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The Captain was nearly at the top of the ridge. Climbing was much harder than she remembered; it was not helped by the skin of sandy soil, sliding around on top of the stonework walls and plazas that seemed to make up the skeleton of this structure.

She’d taken a few more samples, and as she pulled herself up onto the narrow cusp of the ridge at the top, she pulled out the scanning equipment and took a moment to calibrate it before really taking in the vista herself.

It was one hell of a vista.

Looking back towards camp, she could see the shine of the lake in the golden glow of the planet; she could see a distant shore of cinnamon-dusted cliffs with bluegreen trees; she could see, right at the edge of her vision, a large bank of clouds, the first she’d seen at all.

Looking away from camp, the view stretched and stretched and barely changed; just rolling undulations of tree-covered hills, not even another ridge in sight. In the distance she thought she caught another hint of clouds, but she couldn’t be sure. The scanner would pick it up.

While it clicked and beeped and did its thing, she adjusted her perch, and looked down the far side of the ridge. Going down there would put her too far from camp to get back for dinner, and it wasn’t that she was curious, of course, this was all a foolish quest, but there was what looked to be an opening in the side of the ridge.

The Engineer had asked her to get underground if possible. And if the Captain could do that as part of this excursion, then everyone could stay focused at camp until the ship was void-worthy again.

It was clearly the practical choice.

So she slid down the far side of the ridge, carefully, slowing herself on outcroppings of the stonework ruins, until she was beside the hole she’d seen.

It was bigger than she’d been able to tell from above; easy enough to slide through.

Her headlamp showed her similar terrain inside as out; slopes of sand laid over stone blocks. Easy enough.

The first stage, while the light of the sky still crept in and illuminated the cavern, was straightforward. The rocks were a little more slippery, but it wasn’t a problem.

As the Captain made her way deeper into what was turning out to be a deep crevice within the ridge, and the skyglow faded away behind her, things started to feel damp. The stonework was covered by a thinner and thinner layer of sandy soil, and a chill set in.

Carefully, she reached the end of the tunnel and felt a cool breeze on her face; she’d reached a huge cave. Below, the slope she’d been making her way down sharpened quickly into a drop, and the dust and grit she disturbed rattled down until finally it splashed into hidden water.

The Captain got out the scanner again, planning to do one or two more scans down here and then head back up; the rest of this cave was well beyond solo climbing, she was certain.

She perched the device on one knee and initiated it. As before, it whirred as it extended antennae.

But she had misjudged how long those spinning antennae were, and it smacked her on the nose as it revved up, which made her jump, which made it wobble on her knee, which made her try and lift her leg to steady it, which unbalanced her, which caused her to throw her hands behind which was stonework too slick to be grabbed properly. Which was why she fell.

It was a rough fall, sliding down first on her ass and then, unfortunately, rolling sideways down the sharper slope. Stonework pummeled her as she braced her arms around her face and pulled her legs up into a ball – and then suddenly she was free falling through the clammy air.

She couldn’t help herself – the darkness brought out the wrong instincts, and she extended arms and legs in desperate need to stop her fall. Which meant that she was all the wrong shape when she hit the water, and the shock of it pushed the air from her lungs.

When she found the surface, it was with hacking gasps and loud splashes. She could feel her whole body stinging from the impact, and her headlamp was on crooked, though mercifully still working. There was no shore to be found; the cave walls were vertical or worse at water level.

If she’d had her spacesuit, this would be no problem, but no, she’d gotten comfortable in mere fabric clothes, and she felt panic rising as she spun herself in circles, trying to find anywhere to climb out of the cold water, even just halfway.

And there! finally! a rocky island.

Swimming felt strangely awkward, but she made it to the isolated outcrop of stone blocks, and clumsily dragged herself up onto the small, uneven surface.

As the Captain lay on her back, breathing out the panic, she gently scanned herself for injury, flexing her fingers and toes and as she shifted her left leg, there it was, the lightning bolt of pain. She’d done something to her knee; something that made her yell aloud as she tried to put any weight on it. Even just sitting up and stretching the leg out was desperately painful, but she needed to see.

But for all it cost her to sit up, straighten her headlamp, and take a good look around, her reward was a bitter one. She was stranded, on one of a very few small stone islands, in a briny subterranean lake bordered by cliffs of stonework and sand.

Well, shit.

Warp Riders – Chapter 16

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It wasn’t that the Navigatrix was worried about the Captain, but it was very out of character for her to be late to dinner.

The Captain was the one who decided when dinner happened, for one. She was also usually the one to round the rest of them up when the Bosun gave the signal. She also, it turned out, carried a lot of the dinner conversation.

After the third attempt by the Engineer to draw them all into a rousing explanation of the microtransistors she was using in the short-range radio comms, the Bosun slammed the lid back on the pot.

“Why would she stay out this late?” She huffed. “Food doesn’t stay good forever.”

“I’m sure it’s not a personal slight.” The Navigatrix gently lifted the pot lid and served herself seconds. “It’s certainly her loss.”

“You don’t think there’s anything dangerous out there?” The Engineer let only the slightest hint of guilt into her voice.

The Stowaway also, somehow, looked guilty; they rarely wore emotions on their face, and the Navigatrix tucked that fact away for later contemplation.

“I’m sure she’s wrestled worse than this planet,” said the Bosun. “Saw her disable two security bots with one right hook once.”

There was a moment of silence while they all contemplated that feat. Then, one by one, they turned to the Navigatrix.

“Sorry, but I don’t throw hooks of any type.” She folded her arms. 

“Your entire job description is finding things,” countered the Engineer.

“Things in space!”

“We’re all technically in space!”

“Yelling at me won’t make me better at a thing I don’t know how to do.”

The Engineer huffed and sat back. “You want us to all sit here and wait to see if she’s coming back at all?” Behind her, the green glow of the horizon threatened sunrise.

Suddenly, the Stowaway stood up. They looked pointedly at the Navigatrix, and then grabbed a water bottle and walked to the edge of the camp. When the Navigatrix returned their gaze, they tilted their head to one side in a gesture that felt half challenge, half dismissal.

“Well.” She stood up and stared them in the eye a little longer. They didn’t flinch, just stood there. “Fine.”

The Navigatrix picked up a water bottle for herself, and looked at the Engineer. “Did you reassemble those short range radios? I see I’m going on a rescue mission.”

Later, as she and the Stowaway walked away from camp, the silent guest in front, she considered the possibility that this was a way to murder them all, one by one. They were small, yes, but who knew what skills they had besides, apparently, tracking captains through wilderness.

“For the record” she hissed, “I don’t really trust you.”

The Stowaway gave her a withering glare, then returned to scanning for signs of their errant Captain.

Warp Riders – Chapter 17

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The Captain was cold, somehow still damp after hours of lying in the dark, headlamp off, trying to conserve battery while she let her knee calm down. Flexing it wasn’t too bad now, but putting weight on it was unsteady and threw her back into the water once already.

Climbing steep cliff walls was no joke with all four limbs; she wasn’t sure how she was going to get up them with only three, but, as she kept repeating aloud, she’d been in much worse scrapes than this before. Now, normally she wasn’t alone for them, but the point stood.

Normally, of course, she would be lectured at length by her crew; she thought fondly of the Bosun’s robust vocabulary of swear words, punchy little four letter additions to the mood, whether tense or triumphant; she could almost hear the Engineer’s elaborate threats and curses delivered in a spirit of motivating dialogue, despite the content thereof. She could remember, so clearly it hurt, Lucy’s stubbornly optimistic listing of all the cocktails and novelty foods they were going to eat once they were out of whatever scrape they’d all fallen in.

She could bring to mind the perpetual absentminded hum of the Navigatrix, some tuneless noise that was annoying in how relaxed it always sounded, as if she never really was worried, no matter how dire the straits they were in.

And honestly, after hours in the echoing dark listening to the kind of silence a huge body of utterly still water made, her ears were starting to hallucinate. It was as if that irritating hum was getting louder, realer, the more she thought about it – and that couldn’t bode well.

And then, blythely, her imagined Navigatrix shouted “Captain! Any chance you’re in this hole?” and, well, what was there to do but to reply?

“Navigatrix, you’re going to need a lot of rope, and an inflatable raft, and a splint, and hurry up!”

“Let me relay that to my guide here -” and then the imagined, or real, or did it even matter? – the Navigatrix could be heard, ever so quietly, talking to someone else. The Captain laid her head back down on the stone, and reached over to the water, to prove she was really awake – and confusingly, the water was farther away than she remembered.

That also didn’t bode well. She bit the bullet, sat up again and switched on the headlamp. Mercifully, the lake was still there – she hadn’t imagined it – but it was at least a foot lower than she remembered.

“Well, Captain, the Stowaway’s heading back for your shopping list, but I think I’ll stay here and keep you company by shouting into this hole.”

“Is it sunrise already?”

“Is it what? Sunrise? I can’t see it over the ridge –” Frustratingly, scuffling noises echoed down the tunnel.

And then silence, long enough for the Captain to return to her prior suspicion that this was all a stress dream, and yet; 

“I’m guessing it’s about half an hour after sunrise, maybe?”

“Ah shit, shit, the tide’s going out in here -”

“Are you … swimming?”

“You’re gonna need more rope.”

“Oh, I’ll tell camp -” and then a very confusing array of beeps and static echoed off the rock walls. A robotic version of the Engineer’s voice could be heard crackling through the static, and she and the Navigatrix had a clipped shouting match about rope and climbing equipment.

Further beeps and then silence, and then further scuffling.

“What are you doing? Don’t come down here and fall in as well!”

“I would never. I’m sitting down in the tunnel so I don’t have to bend over to talk to you.”

“Real brave of you to rest here instead of lug supplies.”

“You sound like you could use cheering up, honestly. Want to play Eye Spy?”

“Fuck you.”

Warp Riders – Chapter 18

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If it was possible for the subsequent silence to be awkward, after all their years in absurd situations together, it somehow was. The Captain felt the silence descend again, so complete that she thought she could make out the subtle sound of deep water draining out of the cave.

She was starting to hear drips, presumably as the cave walls were exposed, and whatever slime grew in an unlit lake shed its water. She could even, she was absolutely certain, hear the Navigatrix breathing, as if the tunnel magnified it into intimacy across the distance.

It was awful, absolutely unbearable. Silence was not an option.

“How, uh, how is everyone?”

“At camp?” The Navigatrix sounded as sulking in a cave was a perfectly normal thing for the Captain to do.

“Yes at camp! Did the Engineer’s cipher work?”

“Oh, her cipher. She revved it up, yes. She was able to start the engines from shore to power it.”

“But did it work, Navigatrix! Could you talk to the Stowaway?”

“Oh, no, not at all. Not even remotely.” The Navigatrix paused as if in respect. “The Engineer said that she may have to do a hard reset on the computer tonight after the shit she put it through today.”

“Goddammit.”

Silence again, with definite audible drips now, torturously echoey.

“Navigatrix!”

“Yes, Captain?”

“What, uh-” Topic, Captain, find a topic, what did they normally talk about? “-what made worried about the Stowaway?”

“Oh, well, I’d be delighted to tell you. Just a moment.”

Scrabbling noises again, the sandy crunch of footsteps receding, footsteps returning, and a flap of what had to be the Navigatrix’s cape, and then.

“Just checking that we’re actually alone, Captain.”

“If it’s this big, why am I only hearing about it now?”

“Well, I did warn you-”

The Captain felt the comfortable irritation returning finally.

“You gave me a cryptic warning and then never mentioned it again! How worried could you really be?”

The drips echoed in the silence.

“Well, my Captain, I wouldn’t like anyone to think I worry.” She sighed, audibly. “But-” she continued, “it was hard to put my finger on for a few days. Hard to be certain without being able to check. I didn’t have any further information for you at the time.”

“Why are you so infuriatingly cryptic!” The Captain returned the audible sigh as loudly as she could.

The Navigatrix did not snap back with some glib remark immediately. The Captain let herself breathe out some of her frustration, however helpful she found it. Then, gently, calmly:

“Feet back on the ground, Navigatrix, and tell me what’s wrong.”

Drips, breathing, a distant glug as some natural drain continued pulling the water away. Gravel skittering down the tunnel and falling into the water as the Navigatrix moved around up there for some reason. This was so much worse than face to face conversations.

“I’m going to need you to let me get cryptic, Captain.” The Captain kept her thoughts about that to herself this time. “It’s been strange times for us, quite literally. And I didn’t pay much attention to our … guest… when they arrived.”

“You were always in the Orb.”

“Yes.” A huff, echoing into the cavern from the tunnel. “Yes, I was always in the Orb. And if I could, now, I think I would still be in there. Time is beautiful, and I miss looking at it.” 

That was a strangely vulnerable statement, and it sounded like it cost her to say it aloud.

“But since I am forced out of the Orb, trapped here, I have been paying more attention to the Stowaway.”

“We all have,” the Captain grumbled up the tunnel. “Have you seen them use a knife?”

“Yes, but that’s not it. Their voice – or whatever it is we hear -”

“Nonsense noises.”

“No. Well. I don’t know. But Captain – they sound like the Orb.”

“They- what?” The Navigatrix did not repeat herself. “The Orb. Navigatrix, do you think the Orb speaks to you?”

“Well I didn’t, but now I’m worried that it might be trying, the same as them!”

“You told me it was inert! Are you saying it’s conscious?”

“No, but…” She sighed. “…what if it’s relaying someone else’s voice?”

That gave the Captain a shiver. She’d gotten so used to weaving in and out of time, she had forgotten how little they really knew about the Orb. The idea of someone eavesdropping on them through it was surprisingly credible.

“We need to get at it. I need you to figure this out, Nav.”

“I know.” The Navigatrix did sound worried, which was actually really worrying. “I know, I know, I know, but if I hold it again it will be very, very hard for me to look away.”

The Captain let that sink in.

“If I have to climb in it and drag you out so you can tell me if we were sabotaged, so be it.”

Warp Riders – Chapter 19

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Wind whistled across the cave mouth, sending a deeper hum around the cavern. The Captain tried bending her injured knee again, gently, and it felt fine, totally fine and then– “Fuck!”

“Captain! What are you doing down there?”

She breathed slowly through her nose until the pain spike passed. 

“I’ve fucked up my knee. It’s fine.” Well. “I mean it’s not fine, but it’s… I’m fine. They’re sending a splint, right?”

“Splint, boat, rope, more rope – anything else?”

“Wouldn’t mind a stiff drink and a beach umbrella, actually.”

A snort was just audible, echoing down into the cavern. And then silence once more. The Captain focused on massaging her knee, which had swollen up enough her pant leg was tight around it.

They had enough medical supplies on the ship itself that she wasn’t worried long term about it; short of a full break, they could handle most things in the field. She’d be off it for a few days, but that was fine. She could supervise; no more research trips, stick to repairs.

It did hurt like a bitch, though. Maybe shock had worn off? She was shivering a bit still; maybe it hadn’t quite passed. How long a trip was it back to camp if you were jogging? How fast could the Stowaway run for supplies – and how heavy was the inflatable raft?

The logistics of her own rescue were fascinating, and the Captain was deep in thought about how best to optimize the immediate circumstances when the Navigatrix mumbled something down the tunnel.

“You what?”

“I said it’s – it’s very peaceful on this moon.”

“Besides my peril?”

No response to that, of course.

“No, no, it’s a very peaceful sort of spelunking disaster, my mistake.”

Quiet. Then.

“Captain,” almost too quiet to hear, down the tunnel and into the cavern, “do you miss Lucy?”

Oh, no. No no no. Not now. “Don’t do this, Navigatrix.”

“It’s just, I thought I missed her before, but now we’re here – I just, I really feel it, her absence.”

The Captain flopped back onto her back in frustration. Why NOW. “We all miss her, for sure, but, it’s been a long time–”

“Well, now, no. It actually has been almost no time at all–”

“–that’s not what I mean, you pedantic–”

“I think we’ve had maybe a month of linear time–”

“She’s gone! She’s gone, and we all had that meeting about it, and why are you bringing her up now?”

Wind whistled.

“I just keep thinking that she would have gotten a kick out of all this.”

“She made it clear she didn’t enjoy any of this when she LEFT US.”

“Captain, are you still this mad at her?”

The Captain was overwhelmed by frustration with the Navigatrix; so much, her eyes pricked and she had to blink and blink and whisper “fuck” under her breath a few times.

“I’m not mad. I’m disappointed.”

“Are you sad?”

“Disappointed!”

It was amazing, how audible the Navigatrix’s skeptical silence was down in the cave. The Captain rubbed her face, extremely furious.

“Captain – I’m not going to tell you what to do, but you’re allowed, if you like, to miss your little sister.”

“She doesn’t deserve to be missed.”

Well, that came out of her own mouth, didn’t it. Might as well dig this pit even deeper. “She’s the one who abandoned us! We were a crew. We had a job to do!”

“We all know we’re only doing them for fun now, Captain.”

“They’re still jobs!”

“Well, don’t you ever think about retiring?”

“What?!” Why was she bringing this up? “No! Why! Are you planning to leave me too?” The Captain cringed to herself as her voice cracked. “Because just – just tell me and fuck off so I can find another navigator.”

That got a snort.

“I might be the least likely of this crew to do such a thing, Captain.”

It sounded like a joke, but the Captain heard some of that gentleness in her voice that so often pissed her off. She must be out of adrenaline, because she had to admit she almost felt comforted.

No need to say it aloud, though.

Warp Riders – Chapter 20

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The drips were louder, echoing all over the cavern. She didn’t feel like sitting up and checking, but the Captain thought the water must be meters lower than before. She was probably going to be stuck on this island till high tide again.

That is, unless she was on a particularly climbable island, and the squared off edges of the flat bit did not bode well. Ruins, ruins, everywhere on this damn moon.

“It’s like the whole damn thing is built of these horrible blocks!”

“The what? Oh-” and the Navigatrix was moving.

The Captain could hear her voice, talking to someone outside as the last pieces of disturbed gravel rattled down the cavern. Disturbingly, she didn’t hear them splash.

Caving in to curiosity, she sat up and turned her headlamp back on.

“Oh, shit.”

The water was gone – completely gone from anywhere she could see. And she was indeed resting atop a steep pile of overlarge stone bricks, stacked upon one another haphazardly, stretching hundreds of feet in the air above a sandy, silty floor. In fact, it was one of many.

In fact, it really did look like the only thing holding up a layer of sandy soil and foliage was piles and stacks of these worn out bricks. What the Captain had read as cliff walls were, closer to the bottom of the drained lake, clearly made of the same blocks.

The lake floor was sand and gravel and rubble, except for where the current of the draining water had revealed, underneath, bricks. In fact, it almost looked like the vertical piles were originally evenly spaced, as if this … cavern, had been made intentionally.

Grimacing, the Captain looked up to the ceiling – and mercifully she saw something that looked more like a natural cave. There were mineral deposits dripping down, and thin tendrils that could be roots. If there were ruins involved, they were hidden well.

Scuffling noises returned, the scrabble of gravel as it moved underfoot.

“Navigatrix?”

“Just had to secure the rope; heading your way now.”

“No, wait! Tide’s out, it could come back at any moment!”

But the Navigatrix’s headlamp was illuminating the tunnel now, growing brighter. The glare flooded the Captain’s eyes as she made it to the end of the tunnel.

“Lovely to see you, Captain!” Then the beam pointed away, at the rest of the cave, and the Captain could see her, loaded down with climbing harnesses, rolled-up raft, another rope, who knows what else. “Not what I was expecting, I have to admit.”

She started winching herself down the steep cliff side.

“Navigatrix, seriously, it’s going to flood again, just wait.”

“No – huff – I don’t think – hff – – that I’ll bother with waiting.”

She paused to salute the Captain.

The Captain pulled herself closer to the edge of the flat block she was reclining on, to better see as the Navigatrix landed on the cave floor and shook out the cramps from her legs and arms. She immediately bent down to poke at some rubble.

“Hey! No time for research!”

“There’s bones here, Captain.” She pulled out what was visibly a femur, even from a distance. “Human bones.”

“Are you – are you collecting them?”

Muffled, as she was half bent to the floor sifting through sand, the Navigatrix shouted “I promised the Engineer!”

Finally she started walking over the slimy, rubble-strewn terrain, picking her way towards the base of the Captain’s tower of blocks.

The Captain strained her ears desperately to try and catch any hint of water crashing back into the cave. The drips felt like a cacophony.

She looked down, and once again the Navigatrix was bent over something half buried in the sand.

“You are going to get very, very wet if you don’t hurry up!”

“Do you still have your scanner, Captain?”

“What?” The Captain had to pause to check. “No, no it fell first, then me.”

The Navigatrix pulled a rattling pile of rust out of the sand. “Well, I found it.” She tucked it into her pack. “Trust me, you’ll want to see it.”

“Could you please focus?”

“It’s fine, Captain, I’m sure–”

And that’s when the gurgling noise came back, but much louder.