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Chapter 3 - Fallout
🕑 Added 2025-08-24 15:04:01 +0000 UTCThe lights in the room were still dimmed when Heath next woke up. He rolled over and saw Carter passed out a few feet away. Medpacks were essential, but the healing took a lot from the body. His friend’s breathing was smooth, and with the blankets pulled up, it wasn’t obvious he had been injured at all.
The timepiece on the wall said he had slept a full eight hours, but he wasn’t rested. His body screamed with aches and pains, reminding him that even if he wanted to pretend yesterday hadn’t happened, his muscles wouldn’t let him. There was a deep dark hole in the back of his mind, and Heath let himself fall into it.
The next time he opened his eyes, it was because Carter was shaking him. Heath moaned at the jostling and batted his friend’s hand away.
“Have to get up, buddy,” Carter murmured.
“No.”
“Please?”
“No.”
The darkness pulled him back in one more time. Maybe if he stayed down, the guilt wouldn’t swallow him whole. Technicalities didn’t matter. Walt might have blamed the Loon and the sensors, but he was the one in the pilot’s seat when they flew straight into an astral storm. Or the Classer without the Skills to pull them back out again.
**********
The sound of metal striking metal had him sitting bolt upright. Heart racing, Heath frantically scrambled out of bed and over to the hatch. It slid open to reveal Masterson, arm raised and holding a jagged length of broken pipe. Heath ducked down and braced for impact but the older man was able to hold back the next blow.
“Wha – how – why? Just why?”
“Time to get up boy. We let you wallow for a day, but that’s not good for the soul. There are things that need doing, and you need to be involved.”
Heath’s shoulders slumped as his head fell forward to break eye contact. Masterson wasn’t family by blood, but Walt had been friends with the man for decades as they worked the same circuits on the Rim. He’d only signed onto the Loon in the last three years as a favor to Walt, but Heath had been hearing stories about him since childhood. The older Spacer’s disapproval hit him like a hammer blow and looking in his face while he did it was a step too far.
“I know, boy, I know.” Masterson said, voice dropping down into the closest approximation the man had for gentle.
“I’ll be out in a few, let me get dressed and cleaned up. Ten minutes.”
“Meet on the bridge in 20 and get something to eat as well. You’re fading away.”
Taking that for the expression of affection it was, Heath nodded and followed directions. Carter was out of their bunk, recovered enough to get back to work. A small blessing that meant Heath actually had enough room to change without bumping into anyone.
“Ten minute timer.”
He froze when he didn’t get a response from the ship. Another reminder that things were different now. He set the timer himself on his pad and quickly got changed, along with a sonic shower in the corner. Thank all the gods that hadn’t stopped working or everyone on board would be itching to jump out of the airlock to escape the smell long before reaching their next destination.
Clean, and feeling marginally better for it, he stopped at his shelf on the way to the door. Each bunk had a small area for personal effects and decorating. Carter’s side was filled with pictures of his siblings and extended family each making a wacky face. After his yearly leave, he would come back with new versions to hang up in the collage.
Heath’s bottles and jars were his own history on display. A bit of sand or dirt from every place they visited. Or something else if it was just a station without a landmass attached. A thought struck him that he should reorder by color to replace their current alphabetized arrangement. He sunk into the task, taking the darkest black gravel from Penumbra on one end, the pristine white of the pleasure beaches at Tuxor Five on the other, and started sorting. It was a distraction but one he welcomed for a few minutes of quiet peace.
His alarm went off, flashing in the corner of his vision and forcing him to turn away. He would finish it later. Stepping back into the corridor took more effort than he expected. The bunk was nice and safe. He’d once thought the same of the whole ship, but had been proven wrong in the worst possible fashion. He forced himself out anyway. Masterson was right, he was starving. And Uncle Walt didn’t allow food outside of the mess hall. When 20 minutes rolled around he had made it back to the bridge, turning sideways to get through the still-stuck hatch.
The first thing that hit him was the smell. Weird and unmistakable, it was the mix of oranges and stacil flowers that accompanied repeated uses of [Ship Maintenance] to clean off grime. He’d heard there were specialist Skills further up in the tree that let you choose the scent, or remove it entirely. But no one he knew had ever admitted to taking one. Heath was pretty sure Uncle Walt only mentioned it to mess with him. That thought dragged his eyes to the Captain's seat like a lodestone. It was empty and that threw him off. He couldn’t expect the crew to leave a corpse lying around. Then he was panicking.
“Uncle Walt, you didn’t, did I miss …?”
“No, no. Your uncle is down in one of the freezers,” Raquel said. “You’ll still get to say goodbye. Now come in and take a seat.”
He stepped further into the room, cataloging the damage. Ash and charred metal had been wiped away, along with the blood. All that remained was a series of dull metal scars, breaking up the bright motif of the usually-pristine bridge. Nothing in the wide range of space could have made him take the Captain’s chair just then. But the idea of sitting in his usual spot made him nauseous. Instead he leaned against the main sensor readouts and crossed his arms, trying to fold in on himself.
Raquel took a deep breath and began. “I’m sorry Heath but we need to make some decisions.”
He nodded along but didn’t offer anything. He looked at her braids or her boots, avoiding direct eye contact and the pity he wouldn’t be able to stomach.
“We’ve gotten some rudimentary steering and thruster controls back. Not enough to change course, but enough to slow down for a little while. Enough to put Walt to rest.”
Heath reeled back as if struck. “So soon?”
“I know you haven’t been out here long, compared to us old-timers, but this is the way things go. Bad luck to carry a body.” Masterson’s gruff explanation was a relief, a bastion of normalcy in the sea of uncertainty Heath found himself in.
“I don’t know…what do we have to do?” Heath looked desperately between the older Spacers, begging for some direction.
“Can you go through his bunk? It makes sense for you to be the one. We’ll keep working here, see what other systems we might get control over.”
“Yeah, sure.” He murmured the agreement and fled the bridge, emotions too turbulent to say anything else.
Instead of turning back towards crew quarters, Heath ducked into the suite tucked behind the bridge. A Captain has to be ready to respond to anything, and so Walt kept his rooms right behind his work station. It was the way things were done on the ships he had started out on, and Walt had always praised those Captains and tried to emulate how they ran their crews.
Everything looked so normal. There was a plasti-glass mug of something laying on the floor, contents spilled and congealing beside it. A few knick-knacks sat on their usual shelves. A marble statuette had fallen to the side, he put it back upright. A carved wooden puzzle in the shape of a lotus flower had somehow escaped the storm unscathed.
Heath picked one up and started spinning it as he walked around the room. A lump of some sort of metal, or crystal, or something, in a rough sphere, with gold flecks speckling the surface. The Loon’s good luck charm, from Uncle Walt’s delving days. Not that it had worked.
No, that wasn’t fair. Uncle Walt would have said this was the lucky outcome. After all, his entire crew survived.
The wide living-area, luxurious by Spacer standards, was filled with plush cushions and blankets. They were scattered about, and he tossed everything back onto the couches as he made his circuit. It was downright cozy. By design, Heath knew. One of his Walt’s many lessons on being a Captain and the Spacer classes in general: if you spend your whole life on a ship, you damn sure made it comfortable.
Looking at all the detritus of his uncle’s life was getting to be too much, so he sat at the desk. Top left drawer, envelope in the back. Walt’s instructions echoed through his mind as Heath pulled out a will. On an honest-to-gods sheaf of real paper. Heath had been assured all his uncle’s documents were kept in more lasting formats as well, but the persnickety bastard said he’d liked being able to feel his whole life in his hands.
Heath unsealed the envelope and pulled everything out. Good old Uncle Walt wasn’t one for long, heartfelt letters, or mysterious clues. Everything was being left to Heath, besides a few trifles and personal gifts for the long-term crew members, and a few things for Heath’s mom. It was way too much, but Uncle Walt should have had centuries left before it became relevant. The packet ended with a simple note.
Heath,
I’m proud of you. Helping you get a Class and take your first steps in the world has been one of the most incredible experiences of my life, and I’ve had a few. Keep your head on straight and get some good people around you,
Love,
Walt
That was it. ‘I’m proud of you and don’t be a fuck-up’ was quite the way to end a will.
