“Yeah,” Evans added. “You could’ve recounted everything Glim here was on. Or offered an extra set of hands for when he ran out of fingers and toes.”
They laughed, then carried on their conversation.
“I had another question for you, actually,” Mikhail said. Speaking lower now, he continued, “You mentioned seeing Ben a couple of times?”
“Yeah?”
“How did he seem? You said he was a bit vacant?”
Francis chewed a piece of puceal smeared with mashed potato and swallowed. “Yeah, kind of. Seemed a bit … I don’t know, jerky. As if his brain wasn’t quite switched on.” He pushed peas onto his fork with his knife. “Why?”
“He came out earlier. I thought he was going to shout at us because these two were making such a racket. But …” Mikhail’s brow creased. “He just stood there and stared at the wall. Seemed funny at first, but I spoke to him and he was just …” He waved his hands. “Like you said. Like his brain wasn’t quite switched on.”
“Maybe he’s overworked. I mentioned it to Ruby, but I guess she hasn’t done anything.” Not that that surprised Francis. She was obviously so single-mindedly focused on finding this Ghost Armada she had Ben breaking his back to get them there as fast as possible, never mind the consequences to the man’s sanity.
“Maybe,” said Mikhail.
“Did you say something about Ben?”
They looked around. Vala leaned forward, listening curiously.
Mikhail: “Yeah, why?”
“I saw him yesterday. Well, we did, didn’t we?”
Stefan gave his wife an obligatory nod and carried on eating.
“I thought it was a bit weird, seeing how rare it is to see him outside. Thought it was even weirder when I realised he was staring into space. Just frozen, like a statue. Creepy, wasn’t it?” She looked to Stefan for support; another nod.
“Is he okay?” Vala asked. “Stefan here tried to speak to him, but he was just kind of blank and slow. Then he hurried off muttering something about not going down there.”
“He means the Volum room,” Mikhail said. “He told me that, too.”
“And me,” Francis added.
“He’s protective of that thing,” said Mikhail. “Still, kind of weird, isn’t it?”
Vala glanced around. Leaning further forward, she pressed a hand to one side of her mouth and whispered, “He smelled funny. I don’t think he’s been washing.”
Francis listened for a while longer as Mikhail and Vala talked. How odd, he thought. Clearly Benjamin was already something of a strange man—Francis had had enough indication of that from the rest of the crew. But now his oddness had ramped up enough that his crewmates were taking notice.
Francis glanced around. There was Trove, sat at a table by himself, dinner half-forgotten as he scrutinised his ever-present clipboard. But no Ruby. And that was a shame. If she were around to hear, maybe she would stop pushing Ben so hard.
Or then again, as Francis had already mentioned it to her once before, maybe she wouldn’t.
6
A lone voice wafted down the corridor a half-dozen metres before Francis arrived at the control centre.
“Ben? Benjamin? Benjamin Thoroughgood!”
Francis loomed at the doorway, plate in hand. He thought maybe he ought not to interrupt, but then changed his mind. He’d brought Natasha dinner, after all, and judging by the irritation in her voice, maybe she could do with it.
Natasha wasn’t at her usual station: today she stood in front of the main console, her back to Francis. Her wrist pressed to the side of her face, she jabbed down a button on her communicator and half-yelled, “Benjamin, damn well respond when you’re hailed!” There was no reply. “Benjamin Thoroughgood!”
“Maybe you’re not shouting loud enough.”
Natasha whirled. She let her arm drop and heaved a sigh, then crossed the room and hefted down into her seat. For a few seconds she didn’t say anything, merely stared sullenly at her screen. Then she looked at the plate in Francis’s hands and said, “That’s for me, right?”
He handed it over. “Here you go.” From his pocket came cutlery, wrapped in a napkin. “You weren’t at lunch or dinner, so I thought I should bring you something.”
“Thanks.” Plate balanced on her legs, Natasha began to eat. Every now and again she’d glare at her communicator. The rest of the time her eyes were fixed darkly on her screen.
Halfway through the meal, she huffed a breath and placed the plate on top of her workstation. Cutlery banged down, hard. Then she started to scroll through whatever had her attention at the console.
“So,” Francis finally said, “what’s the problem?”
“Nothing.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter. Can’t get the right people to pay attention to the damn thing, so just got to live with it.”
“Who’s the right people?”
“Ben.” For emphasis, Natasha lifted her wrist again, pressed a button and yelled, “Ben! Answer your damn communicator!” Still nothing. She punched the workstation, a heavy metallic clang.
“What about Ruby?”
“Never around.”
“Where is she?”
Eyes rolled. “Probably poring over that stupid diary again. Where else?” Natasha stared at the screen. Then she let out another breath, this one more a sigh than a huff, and turned toward Francis. “Thanks for coming out to see me, but I’m pretty stressed right now. It’s every man for himself, apparently.” She raked fingers through her hair. “I don’t feel like talking right now. Sorry. But I’ve got a day off tomorrow—at long last—so how about we catch up in the morning, right after breakfast? Can sit on the deck; gives me an excuse to get outside instead of spending every waking hour shut in here.”
Francis nodded. “Okay, that sounds good.” He rose. “I hope you feel better soon.”
“Hah. You and me both.”
He pointed at the plate. “Want me to take that?”
“Nah,” Natasha said. “Might finish it later. When it’s stone cold and I’m still no further along. See you tomorrow, Francis.”
He left her to herself. Partway up the corridor, her calls for Ben resumed. Judging by the irritation in her voice, and just how far it carried, Francis guessed Ben still wasn’t answering.
Overworked. Everyone in this ship was being overworked. Or at least the ones responsible for navigation. And where was the captain?
Nowhere to be found. Unless she had a finger to point.
Francis grimaced. What a surprise.
7
After a somewhat lacking breakfast of beans on toast, Francis and Natasha headed out for the Pantheon’s top deck.
“Did you finish the meal last night?” Francis asked.
“Eventually,” said Natasha. “Freezing by the time I did, but I ate it nonetheless. Thanks for bringing it over.”
“No problem.”
“And sorry for being ratty.”
“It’s okay. You were stressed. Happens. I’m hardly one to talk, am I?”
Natasha gave a little grin at that. “I suppose not.”
They climbed the ladder and stepped out. The morning sun was beating down. It would be hot later today, Francis could already tell. Cloud hovered a little way below. It seemed closer this morning, Francis thought as he stopped by the railing to peer.
No floating islands to spy, today. Just cotton wisps and land down below—or, rather, the absence of it, as everywhere Francis looked he saw only blue ocean waters. Not even the head of a tiny island pocked its surface.
“Pretty,” he mused.
“Bit boring,” said Natasha. “Lot more sea than land down there. We’re over this most of the time.” She held the railing and leaned forward to stare straight down. “Or some variant thereof. Come on, let’s sit.”
They plodded back across the deck and took up position under one of the Pantheon’s fins, this one near the front of the shi
p. Francis glanced up at it. Like a great wall terminating in a notched point, it rose high into blue skies.
“So what was up yesterday?” Francis asked.
“It’s complicated.”
“Try me.”
Natasha inhaled. “Okay. We’re not making as much progress as we ought to be. And the ship seems to be dropping in altitude. Nothing much,” she added at the bolt of alarm that must have crossed Francis’s face, “but we’re not packing quite the lift we should be. We’re generating less power, and I don’t know if it’s because of the Volum, or if there’s something wrong with the ship’s circuitry. Loose wires, something like that.”
“You said the wires are faulty throughout the whole ship,” Francis said.
“I did.” Natasha chewed her lip. “But that’s impossible. So it must be a computer error. But every time I run diagnostics to try to figure out if there’s something wrong with our systems, they’re running perfectly. Or they were; last night they started bugging out on me too. Error messages.”
Francis frowned. Something was going wrong with the Pantheon. They were dropping height—and right over ocean, too. His heart thrummed in his chest. Not outright panic, not yet, but concern. It was a long way down.
“Has anything like this happened before?”
“Now and again. The Pantheon is pretty old. Older than me, definitely older than Ruby. Things don’t always run perfectly in a vessel this age—hence why a battery and condenser blew out last week. It’s no big deal really, but I haven’t been able to speak to Ruby or Ben, and it’s stressing me out. I’m in charge of navigation, but the ship isn’t giving me what I want out of it.”
“Hm.” Francis looked out. A rolling puff of cloud loomed ahead; they would pass over it soon. So it had looked larger. “We had sunk down into a cloud formation the first morning I was here,” he said. “So I guess it’s pretty normal, right? No danger?”
“No danger,” said Natasha. “Still, I really think we should check in with the nearest SkyPort when we can, get someone more qualified to fix us up. Reuben is great, but the condenser alone has caused him trouble all week; I don’t think he’ll be much better fixing a full operating system.”
“He’s still working on that?”
“I think Ruby pulled him off; now it’s more of a backburner project. He hasn’t had much luck with it. I don’t think that’s going to change.”
“The hull is rusting down there,” Francis said. “It’s getting pretty bad in places. I never realised how fast that stuff spreads.”
“Hm.”
They were quiet for a while. Francis watched as the cloud up ahead disappeared below the Pantheon’s front rail. A soft creak split the gentle breeze, and he glanced up as the fin above them turned a few degrees left. Course correction.
“So where’s the nearest SkyPort?”
“Couple of days out still. Cacophonous Harmonics. Little place, by the sound of it, but there’ll be someone who can help us out. Just a matter of convincing the captain to make a stop.”
A couple of days out. Francis’s heart sped.
“We could ask around,” he said.
Natasha nodded. “We could.”
Footsteps interrupted the thought.
“Ben!” Natasha stood and rounded the fin. Francis scrabbled to his feet and followed. “Ben, I spent hours yesterday hailing you! Why didn’t you answer?”
Francis stopped in his tracks. Natasha stopped too.
Awful: that was the only way to describe Ben. He stood by the porthole, a half-dozen metres away, glassy-eyed. Stubble was turning into a short matted beard, smeared with something brown. The same streaks covered Ben’s clothes, which were more bedraggled than ever: a crisscrossing maze of endless creases and something Francis didn’t care to think about. His eyes were pale, the pupils miniscule. Dark rings hung under them. His skin looked papery, both the wrong texture and colour. His jaw was lax, and a runner of saliva had trickled down one corner of the man’s downturned lips.
Natasha breathed, “Ben?”
For a second, no response. Then his body jerked—more of a twitch, really, it was so slight—and he blinked. His mouth worked.
“Don’t,” he said.
He moved, across the deck, heading for the side. There was an instant of doubt in Francis’s mind—Natasha’s too—and then it clicked for both of them at once. Exactly what Ben was about to do—and they were too many steps away to stop it.
Both flew forward.
Ben hit the railing, lurched sideways, and tumbled end over end and out of sight.
“Ben!” Natasha screamed. She slammed into the rail, held firm. “Ben!”
Francis grabbed the railing, bent forward, stared. A body spun, receding—then it was swallowed by white cloud and was gone.
“Ben!!”
8
“What happened?”
All around was a flurry of voices. The morning’s activities had ceased; the entire crew—entire remaining crew—had gathered on the top deck, most pressed as close to the railing as possible and looking down through the heavens. There was nothing to see but blue.
“He just came out,” said Natasha. Tears streaked her face. She stood alongside Mikhail, whose arm was thrown about her racked shoulders, as well as a pale and shaken Francis, a similarly complexioned Trove, and Ruby. Who, for the first time in days, looked concerned. “I tried to call to him, but he didn’t reply, did he?” Francis shook his head. “And then he just … just …” Her words were lost to a hiccough. Mikhail squeezed tighter.
“Did he just fall?” Ruby asked. “Did he jump?”
“He wasn’t walking properly,” Natasha said. “I don’t think he could have jumped if he tried. He just kind of lurched.”
“But did he do it on purpose, I want to know,” said Ruby. She looked at Natasha, but no answer came. Next she stared at Francis. Confused lines wrinkled her forehead. “Did he do it on purpose?”
Francis thought. He’d always read that terrible events seemed to happen in slow-motion. Yet there was no slow-motion replay of Ben going over the edge. One moment he was there; the next a chaotic tumble of limbs, and then he was simply gone.
“I don’t know,” he said at last. “Like Natasha said, he just walked at the side and …” He waved his arms lamely. “Went over.”
“There’s been something wrong with him for days,” Natasha said. “We saw him in the library the other night, and he looked weird. And Francis saw him a few mornings ago, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” he said. “I did.” His eyes met Ruby’s, and he did everything he could to communicate his vehemence: I told you he was overworked, you should have listened, and now he’s thrown himself into the sea. She seemed to understand, because her gaze flitted away.
“A few of us saw him,” said Mikhail. “He came out yesterday while we were taking inventory. And Vala said she and Stefan saw him.”
Ruby was silent.
Trove stepped in. “Perhaps there’s a clue in the Volum room. Or his personal quarters.”
They exchanged glances. “Worth a look,” Mikhail said.
9
The walk through the ship was one of the longest of Francis’s life. Every step seemed to last an age. And yet, as the five reached the stairs onto the bottom deck, their journey’s conclusion came nonetheless.
Rust had bloomed everywhere. Somehow it seemed worse than this morning. Every flower of red had grown, worsened. Flakes of metal littered the floor. Two bulbs were dead. Both had been fine when Francis was gathering ingredients for breakfast.
“This—” he started, but stopped.
They all stopped.
Up ahead, the door to the Volum room. It was shut, as always. And around the edges of the door, inches thick the entire way, was uneven grey: solid and steely, but not steel. Not exactly.
“Well,” Mikhail breathed at last. “I think we found what happened to our missing sealant.”
A Snippet of Stein
(Chapter Twelv
e)
The phone rang. Angry thoughts were sidelined.
Rhod broke his stare from the desk. Fat fingers picked up the receiver, pressed it to his ear. “Stein.”
A whispery voice answered. “Ah, Rhod.” A lilting, gleeful voice he despised.
And yet, she was calling him.
“Imelda. I assume you have news.”
“No small talk?” She tutted. “So impolite, Rhod. It’s good manners to ask a lady how her day has been.”
Rhod’s grip tightened on the plastic. “I assume you have news,” he repeated.
Imelda tittered. “You oughtn’t assume. You know the saying.” She waited, but Rhod didn’t give a snide reply. “Yes, Rhod, you assume correct. I have news.”
He leaned forward. Knuckles turned white. “Which is?”
“We’ve found her.”
“Yes.”
“I thought you’d be pleased.”
“Where?”
“Heading north-west. Within spitting distance of a port called Cacophonous Harmonics. I expect that’s where she’s headed.” Imelda paused. “She won’t make it.”
“See that she doesn’t.”
“I will.”
“Remember—”
“Yes, yes,” Imelda cut across, sounding bored. “Head on a stick. I shan’t forget. She killed one of my men, after all. The head on the stick is the best part.”
The Volum Room
(Chapter Thirteen)
1
Seventeen men and women arranged themselves on the Pantheon’s top deck that afternoon: the sixteen remaining crew members, plus Francis. Even the handful of night shift workers were here; a trio of two women and a man whose names Francis didn’t know. A couple of people were dressed in black, Ruby included, but only a few. Evidently funeral clothes were in short supply on the Pantheon.
Ruby stood alone at the fore of the group, which was arranged in two uneven lines; Trove had taken up place in the rear row.
“And thus, we bid farewell to Benjamin Thoroughgood: caretaker to our Volum. Often obsessive, irate at interruptions, but a wonderful man who did us proud.” Ruby removed her hat. “To Ben.”
The Ruby Celeste Series - Box Set, books 1 - 3: Ghost Armada, Dire Kraken, and Church of Ife Page 14