The Lost Star's Sea

by C. Litka

01

  PerLain solemnly assured me the late stokers, Tzi and MetsGive did not die in the soot and sweat stained, spark-holed jumpsuits I purchased. They had been soaked in oil, lit, and set adrift - smoldering corpses - in the sweat and soot stained, spark-holed jumpsuits they died in. Stoking is not a skilled position - the only requirement for the job is poverty. Poverty usually as a result of drink. And the threadbare wardrobes of the late stokers reflected this poverty, this life. He then led me aft and down into the engine room, a very hot and cluttered compartment crowded with iron and brass machines linked by pipes snaking through a mist of steam and the thick aroma of hot oil. We followed the narrow foot paths around the machinery and under the pipes, until we found its boss, Chief Engineer Dejan working on a condenser.

  'Your new stoker,' PerLain said, adding with a look - "and good luck with that," before he hurried off.

  The Chief proved to be a rumpled mountain of man and the only other fine-feathered man aboard the ship.

  'Chief,' I said with a respectful nod as he looked up from his work to give me a long, hard look, slowly taking in my trim, tramp ship captain's rig with a disdaining eye. He blinked and stared harder when he realized I was wearing a small Simla dragon around my neck. Hissi gave him a low hiss of greeting.

  'So you're "Captain" Wilitang are you?' he muttered, slowly wiping his hands on a rag. It doesn't take long for word to get around a ship.

  'It's stoker Wilitang, Chief,' I replied with a smile and a shrug. 'I've got my stoking kit right here,' I added, hold up my newly purchased bundle. I was hoping that the "captain" title would be quickly forgotten, though of course, it wasn't. I remained "Cap'n Stoker" throughout my time aboard the Bird of Passage.

  He grunted, 'This way,' as he climbed to his feet.

  'Ever stoked before?' he called back as we passed through a narrow passage through the black cake bunkers to the boiler room.

  'No,' I admitted.

  'I thought not,' he muttered, and on entering the steamy boiler room added 'Your new mate, Fret. Show him the ropes.'

  Fret, who had paused with a shovel of black cake in hand, looked me over without enthusiasm. 'Right, Chief,' he muttered, and shoved this black cake into the furnace.

  The Chief grunted and left, and I, eager to get on the right side of my new mates, began to strip off the clothes of my old life and shoved them into a canvas satchel I'd also purchased from the slop chest. After I had donned one of the grimy jumpsuits of my dead predecessors, I turned to Fret. 'What do I do?'

  Fret nodded to one of the shovels latched to the bulkhead alongside the boiler. 'Grab a shovel and do what I do.'

  Which pretty much said all you need to know about stoking. Still, for the sake of completeness - a stoker's job is to shovel black-cake - pressed charcoal bricks - from the bunker into the fire box beneath the boiler which produces the steam to drive the ship's twin triple expansion engines. The stoke hole was a hot, soot-black compartment just forward of the ship's engine room amongst the black-cake bunkers. It was lit and kept slightly cooler than the boiler it served by two grated openings in the ceiling and in good weather, by keeping the bunker access hatches located on either side of the hull partially open. The shovel was a mesh tube that, if you swung it carefully, you could keep the black-cakes in it until you stepped on a plate that opened the firebox gate and shoved the black-cakes into the glowing hot furnace. Opening the firebox gate released a cloud of hot embers and a blast of heat, meaning that a stoker needed to work deftly to dodge the glowing embers. In the weightless conditions of the Pela, the black-cakes themselves were not heavy, but they needed to be managed skillfully to get and keep them in the enclosed shovel, carried to the boiler, and shoveled in fast enough to keep the steam pressure up and the engines going. Fret was the only surviving stoker and so we worked alternating watches, doubling up when two shovels were needed to get the pressure up. Fret knew his job and was resigned to teaching it to me. He was resigned to just about anything. A willing, if untrained, hand, to help him did little to brighten his dreary outlook on life. Still, as KaRaya indicated, a new stoker was welcomed by the engine room gang who'd been filling in for the dead ones. They were all hard-bitten, broad-feathered men and women, save the Chief. Still, once they saw that I was willing to pitch in, they accepted the fine-feathered Captain Stoker readily enough - treating me gruffly as due my lowly status as the newest stoker, but without malice.

  Whenever I wasn't sleeping or shoveling black-cake, the Chief would have me tearing down, cleaning or rebuilding some element of the engine, boiler or generators that filled the engine room. The Chief was rarely, if ever, completely sober, but knew his job, and loved his engines above everything, save his bottles of whiskey. Everyone aboard loved whiskey. It was that kind of a ship. As the Captain implied, you had to fall pretty low to take a berth aboard an Outward Island slaver. In any event, the Chief lavished his love on his machines and expected his gang to love them as well. I readily fell in with his desire, since I didn't view stoking as a career, but did think acquiring a ship-borne skill would be a wise investment for my mission. And, well, having spent most of my life aboard a ship, all this was merely an adjustment in details. I knew the life and fell in with it quickly enough. There was little else to do in what little idle time I had aboard the Bird of Passage, so I used it to learn what I could about the engine room.

  Hissi loved the heat of the black hole, and would cling to the bunker, though well out of the way of the sparks, and soak it in while she slept. She didn't mind the galley food, and since Simla dragons grow fast, she grew to be over a meter long by the time we parted company with the Bird of Passage. The crew was not quite as superstitious as the natives, but treated her cautiously, letting her do what she wanted to. Besides soaking in the heat, she like to hang on the bunk room ceiling when we were off duty, watching the off-duty gang play cards for hours on end. Only the engine room, with all the moving cylinders shafts, pumps, and gears, was out of bounds for her.

  I can't say much about the Outward Islands. While on duty, the boiler generally demanded my constant attention to keep enough steam at pressure to drive the two engines. Once up to pressure, I could take brief breaks - a minute or two - to cool off in the air wafting through the open access ports and watch the lush green islands drift by. Still, these were just glimpses, too short to allow any time to study them - though every one seemed just like every other.

  The ship always kept the engine running, but when the air currents served, would fly sails as well. Unlike the sailing ships that sailed the seas using their keels and water to sail close to the wind direction, the Bird of Passage could only use the air current when it was going the same general direction as the current. They used free standing kite-sails and rigged large fore-and-aft sails that acted as keels and rudders, allowing the ship to sail at slight angles from the current. We followed those wires I saw on the chart, island to island - but never sailed very close to any of the larger ones. I gathered that the ship's safety depended on keeping the natives well away from the ship. While the Outward Islands were lush with life - floating, flying, and growing green and rainbow colored - I saw no sign of villages or farms. From what my shipmates told me, the natives lived mostly by hunting, gathering and raiding, and that the villages were hidden in the trees or in caves as protection from other raiders.

  When we did stop to conduct our business, we did so well away from any island to give us a clear field of fire. And we were instructed to keep any large native boat well away, using rockets, if our steam whistle was ignored. Only the small, four to six man boats were allowed to close, and only so many of those.

  I soon lost radio contact with the Phoenix. As much as I hated giving up the security of the gig, I realized that it was inevitable - for a while. I'd made up my mind to make the Saraime my new home, and though being introduced to my new life as a slave, or rather an indentured worker, may not have been the ideal way of entering it, it served its purpose. Becoming a sailor seemed the best way
to get about the islands. And signing aboard the Bird of Passage was as good an entryway as any, more or less. In any event, I intended to use my time aboard to learn my new trade and be on my way as soon as I could pay my ransom.

  Leaving the Phoenix hidden in the Outward Islands was far from ideal. Still, I was likely going to have to ditch it somewhere, and as hidden as it was, it served that purpose. The natives would be unlikely to find it, and they'd never get in if they did. The alternative - taking it aboard the Bird of Passage - did not appeal to me. While I might have contrived to escape the Bird of Passage in it, I'd still have to start over again. And if I allowed it to be carried to Tyrina, then I'd likely have to deal with salvage rights. I don't know how the Saraime law works, but I'm sure I'd have to share more than I cared to with the slave ship owners.

  Captain KaRaya, on the other hand, was another matter. My impression of our Captain was that, as long as I kept an eye on her, we might be able to do business and keep it quiet. I was far from sure she was trustworthy, or from her remarks, reliable, but I gathered from the crew's gossip that she was an old hand in the Outward Island trade, so that I was pretty sure we could recover the Phoenix when the time came. And after all my dealings with drifteers I believed I could look after myself when dealing with her.

  As she had warned me, I hadn't seen a lot of her from the stoke hole. I was in the Chief's realm, not hers. I only spoke to her once in the following few weeks.

  'The Chief says you're not completely useless,' remarked Captain KaRaya lightly, as she walked by while I, and most of the off-duty crew bathed and did our laundry, on the bunkhouse deck. We were passing through a thick rain cloud at the time so the off-duty crew took the opportunity to strip down to basics and wash both our bodies and wardrobe in the rain-like mist. She was the only one fully dressed on the deck - in an oiled cloak. 'For a former deck officer, that's quite an accomplishment,' she added.

  'Thank you, Captain. I'm working hard to live down the fact that I was once a mere ornament.'

  'Getting the black-cake in your blood, are you?'

  'Just about everywhere, but at least, I'll no longer have to negotiate with Chief Engineers. Just following their orders makes life so much simpler.'

  'So you had Chief Engineers in your faraway skies as well?'

  'The Entirety is run by Chief Engineers, Captain. You can't escape them.'

  'Well, you won't for a long time,' she replied with a bright smile, and moved on.