by C. Litka
03
After I awoke, I went up to the surgery to see how the Captain was. ValDare was sitting alongside the Captain's hammock. The Captain was unconsciousness and very pale. ValDare didn't look too much better. Seeing me, he got up and drew me outside into the corridor.
'She's been unconscious all this time and LieTa doesn't like the look of that wound on her leg. She stitched it up, but is now thinking it might be infected. Is there anything you can do?'
I shook my head. 'I'm afraid not. I don't know anything about healing?'
'But you claim to come from such an advanced society, surely you can give LieTa some advise.'
'Where I come from, we have machines to treat injuries. They analyze the patient's condition and using robotic arms, and a number of different energy fields, manipulate and stimulate on a cellular level to keep alive and then repair or rebuild the patient's body. I have a basic med unit in my boat which I'm sure could have had the Captain up and on her feet within several hours. But that's no help for us now. So with med units, we never really had to deal with health issues on our own. I'm sorry.'
He shrugged, and said rather doubtfully, 'Well, LieTa seems to know what she's doing. She says if it is infected, we have drugs in stock to deal with it and that I shouldn't worry? But it's just that, well, this is all my fault?'
It was, but I didn't say it.
He pondered that for a moment, before saying, 'Let's go up to the bridge. Lin wants to settle on a tentative plan with me and you might as well be involved as well,' ValDare continued.
We were still hanging just outside the passage into the Shadow Sea of the ship island. The bridge now had a canvas shelter rigged to cover the gaping hole in the center of the bridge.
'How's the Captain?' TeyLin asked as we entered.
ValDare shook his head and gave a brief report.
TeyLin drew a long breath, and then said, 'As the head of the charter party, what do you suggest we should do?'
ValDare shrugged. 'I haven't really thought? What do you suggest?'
'I don't feel comfortable starting the voyage back without the Captain on the bridge. Our gyroscope was destroyed by the collision and without that, the record it made of our passage is pretty useless. While we have the log to go by, navigating by the sparse and rather general log entries over the course of 60 rounds would be...unreliable. To be honest with you, I don't have a great deal of confidence in my ability to find our way home. I have the sightings we took on arrival, but between the air currents and the great distance we have to travel without anything to fix our course? Well, I have a great deal more reliance in the Captain's memory than my own. To retrace our course home, she would want to start at the end point. Given the length of our journey, even the smallest error at the beginning can have a big impact 50 or 60 rounds down the course.'
The bridge crew had recorded the ship's approach angles, relative to several island groups, so that on the return voyage they could use those readings to retract the original course back. Like TeyLin, I was sure that the Captain had the ship's course in her as reliably as the lost gyroscope record.
'So you want to stay here until the Tara recovers.'
'I think we can move to our arrival point on the outer edge of the islands. It might be safer, and I'm confident I can get us back to our initial point. There we can wait for the Captain's recovery.'
ValDare turned to me. 'Chief?'
'I agree with Lin. As long as we're not in immediate danger, awaiting the Captain's recovery seems to be our best option. We are not short of supplies and have no timetable to meet. I did, however, notice some islands on our approach that looked to be a promising source of peat moss. If we have time, we could cut and harvest them to refill our bunkers. Hopefully it wouldn't be necessary - we have well over half our black cake bunkers filled yet. But if we have time? well it would give us an extra margin to play with on the other end.'
'A good idea, Chief. We also should replenish our water tanks as well. There are plenty of water-well trees about that we can tap and distill their stored water. Without DeArjen to steer us home, even with the Captain on the bridge we may end up going the long way back - 50 or 60 rounds of dead reckoning can create a wide error for even the most astute navigator. I'm sure the Captain would have ordered those precautions in any event, now that we don't have DeArjen's sailor's sight.'
'Right. Carry on, Lin,' said ValDare.
TeyLin turned to me, 'Get steam up, Chief.'
I nodded and went down to get my ex-mutineer black gang working.