The Captain

Warp Riders – Chapter 19

by

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 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 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 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 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 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 10

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She tossed and turned in her tent later, trying to get some sleep, unnerved by the casual tone everyone had about being stranded here. Didn’t they want to get back through the warp? Escape time again? They’d had plans, schemes, jobs to do; important jobs, she thought.

When they had been flying outside time, everyone had been so… professional. The Engineer kept the ship’s systems running; the Bosun kept things comfortable; the Navigatrix kept track of where and when they were; and the Captain stood at the helm interface, making decisions.

And Lucy had – Lucy’s job had been – the Captain’s mind stuttered for a moment, like missing a step on a stair.

…Lucy had done a little of everything, she remembered. Lucy filled in all the gaps, covered breaks, watched the prox sensors, kept point from the ship on jobs…

The Captain huffed in her camp roll, trying to block out the tide of emotions that hit her as she remembered them running back to the ship, proud of their haul, ready to take off, only to discover Lucy gone. A quick “goodbye, good luck” left flashing on the helm screen.

It was so angering, such a betrayal, so pointless – they lived outside of time! They were immortal! They could pull off heists and runs and jobs no one else had ever dreamed of! The Captain could not understand why someone would walk away from that life.

It still stung, she had to admit. It still made her angry. She was lying in a tent on a moon with her ship half drowned and her crew going around telling her what to do, but she all she could really care about was how mad she was at Lucy.

What was wrong with her?

Warp Riders – Chapter 9

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They’d crashed on a very accommodating moon, it turned out. The weather was clear, the temperature mild, the air breathable, the flora and fauna both edible and minimally aggressive.

The only discomforting element was the ruins.

They were so well incorporated into the landscape in some places, it was almost hard to notice them. All that was left was stone and metal, but enough of it was there to intrigue the Engineer.

“Just one day trip!”

She and the Captain were arguing while fishing in the briny lake. There was a stone plaza – or maybe a stone roof – that protruded out into the deeper part of high tide and made for good hunting; the construction of it was tantalizingly mysterious.

“We need you focused on getting us out of here, not settling in.” The Captain sighed and started pulling her line back in. “I need you to make the ship livable enough we can get inside and repair it.”

“I just need to collect some data; I can examine it after we leave.”
“No!”

Around the camp stove at dinner, the Captain found few allies.

“They’re creepy,” said the Bosun. “Ruins don’t work like this, so evenly spread out. I say send her out for a day.”

“Don’t you want to get out of here? We need the ship working!”

The Navigatrix raised a hand –

“I agree, we can’t ignore how strange this place is. But if you can’t spare the Engineer, Captain, you could send someone working on less urgent things?”

“Everything is urgent right now! Are you angling for a day off too?”

The Navigatrix gave the Captain a withering look.

“Supervising is not an urgent role, Captain. Why not go take a walk tomorrow.”

The worst part was, everyone else agreed.

Warp Riders – Chapter 7

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The Orb had come to them about a year after they’d officially started running gigs together – the Captain, the Navigatrix, the Engineer, the Bosun, and Lucy. At that stage, they’d pulled off a few good tricks for some high rollers, and they’d gotten cocky.

Mostly clients communicated via parcel coordinates – they’d send galactic positioning system coordinates, and the Nav’d find them on the map, and Lucy’d pilot the flight, and they’d all have a good nap until the ship dinged and they’d haul in a tiny little box with instructions.

They’d drop off scores and pick up payments the same way; they only went planet-side for the runs themselves, and the occasional shopping trip.

So it wasn’t unusual to pick up a faint signal full of numbers and letters; and it wasn’t particularly hard for the Engineer to decode.

It was, notably, a pretty remote corner to go fishing for a tiny box in, but the Captain’d told them that was how the best clients worked; they were too rich and powerful to know the difference between reasonable requests and inconvenient ones. So off they went.

But it wasn’t a box at the coordinates; it was a small, very small, very dark, very hard to find chunk of an asteroid. Lucy saw it first, noticed its dust trail on the scanner. They’d pulled it in, and the first person to pick it up had been the Navigatrix – and that was when things got weird.

First, she froze. For a full minute, no one could get her attention or pull the rock from her hands.

Then, the rock exploded, sending dust across the common room, larger fragments rattling against the ceiling, the floor, the lockers… when they blinked the dust away enough to see, the Navigatrix had pulled whatever was still in her hands right up to her face, and she humming the way she did when charting a drop, but faster, higher, frantically.

When she finally lowered them, she revealed the Orb.

They’d passed it around; the strange sphere of gas that simply… held itself together. It had almost no weight, but it also had no momentum – they could gently push it from hand to hand and it would simply stop midair if they disengaged.

The Captain had taken it first, eyes wide with fear even after the Navigatrix had woken up and laughed with delight. The Captain stared at it for a minute or two, then scoffed at it with some relief.

Next it went to the Engineer, who mostly talked about its mass and energy and glow.

She hadn’t bothered staring into it particularly; she just pushed it around until she got bored, and then gently shoved it over to the Bosun.

The Bosun cast a skeptical eye across it, shook her head, and handed the Orb, though they didn’t know it was the Orb then, to Lucy.

Lucy smiled, like it was all a fun game, as she caught the Orb and pulled it towards her face; but she grew deadly serious as she squinted into it. There was a hint of awe on her face when she locked eyes with the Navigatrix.

“Is this thing – is this a chart?”

The Navigatrix grinned like a mischievous child.

“If I’m right, Lucy, this thing is a chart of time.”

It took a few creative modifications to the ship, but within a month they were ready for their first trip outside of time. The Captain had brainstormed a list of new possible gigs to try if this thing really worked, and she kept them all on task.

First, they went into warp – as usual – but then came the new part: they went all the way through, out the other side of light speed. Suddenly, they weren’t going impossible fast – they were simply floating motionless in a churning, smearing maelstrom of stars.

Then the Navigatrix sat down at the helm and raised the Orb to her eye level. She shoved all ten fingers into its gaseous form and began to stretch it, pulling it wider, taller, deeper, until it became a huge bubble that she was completely hidden within.

Her voice was muffled as she hummed her busy-thinking hum, and the Orb started to churn in sync with the lights outside the ship — and then the ship began to move, driven by the Navigatrix from deep within the Orb.

And once she proved they could move in and out of time at will, the Captain sent word out that they had new, longer term capabilities, and the real fun began.

The Navigatrix started spending more and more time inside the Orb, coming out to locate more mundane locations on the usual computer, or to eat, or to sleep, but very rarely. She was the first one of them to realize that eating and sleeping had become … optional, essentially.

In fact, a lot of things felt optional after a while. The accounts they’d set up once while a century or two in the past were taking care of most of their material needs, and being outside of time really reduced those to almost nothing.

They still did client work, but more for the fun of it; maybe that was why the jobs they took got so much more dangerous.

Warp Riders – Chapter 5

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The Engineer was a helpful person at heart; she just, often, found herself worn out by the disinterest – honestly the ignorance – of everyone else regarding the inner workings of the equipment that kept them all alive.

That day, as she lay on her side in her tent smelling fresh coffee, she was building a radio.

She’d done the trek to the ship with the Bosun at low tide, under the heat of the green sun, and returned at a run with two clanking bags full of scrap parts from the upper store room, all mercifully dry, and a soldering iron she was going to hook up to their solar battery.

And, not that anyone asked, but the Engineer had also rebuilt the solar battery, so that it would work efficiently with the green sunlight. And she and the Stowaway had taken the camp stove apart and put it back together twice already, as they’d sourced new materials to combust.

She had a few radios in mind; one to communicate short range, so one person could work on the ship repairs and another could stand atop a hill and watch for the tide. Another broader, more sensitive receiver, to scan the system for noise.

And a third radio-like tool that she was particularly proud of, that would connect wirelessly to the ship’s research computer, where she had, before the crash, been building an ingenious translation software that she was confident would unlock the words of the Stowaway.

The Captain liked them all to have formal roles on the crew, but the Engineer had taken to thinking of the Stowaway in less rigid terms, referring to them as “kid” and “short stuff” and mostly, while they collaborated, “hey you.” It’d be nice, she thought, to learn their name.

The most delicious part of the communication puzzle, to her, was that the Stowaway clearly understood everything they said, or wrote, or typed. The kid was an active listener, and they followed instructions perfectly. She even caught them reading the waterlogged battery manual.

So, in her engineering mind, she pondered the similarities between the physical locks on the ship doors, and the linguistic lock on the Stowaway’s words, and the strange, locked-in-place feeling of being immersed in the flow of time again. Maybe she just needed a new kind of key.