THE SPACE NAVY AU (18+)

"It's not permanent," you assure them, but frown as you help Murfey find a place to lounge that doesn't strain his injuries. "It's just that the bioware's growth has accelerated, and I had to take a lot of it out just now, which was hard on his nerves." You meet her eyes with a sympathetic grimace. "Physically removing the growths is no longer enough. Cells have migrated around his body. I'm going through back channels to get a helm specialist in, someone who knows neural tech."

 

"Fuck," Lainey says, pulling on one of her pigtails. "Shit goddamn motherfuck. He was a really good captain. You need anything? Money? Information services?"

 

"He's still a good captain, we're not giving up on him yet. Not sure yet what I need, I'm going to try using Whitey to bring the specialist in so the trail doesn't point to Erskin. If you have some good, secure way to get a message to a disgraced helmstech who's a bit too nice to his patients -- oh, or to a writer in the Imperial Entertainmentalist Division, the specialist's matesprit is an old friend of Bel's, that's how we met. He's surprisingly sly with security for a romance novelist."

 

"No shit? Well, let's see if we can raise your disgraceful helmstech. Arguus, hey, eyes forward, we need a private line. What's his handle, Sergeant?" Lainey parks herself on a loop of snake and pulls her phone out, then gives it to Arguus. Smoothly, not entirely letting Erskin go, Arguus takes the phone and enters the handle in, his eyes iridescent from edge-to-edge, like cabochons of opal. The phone starts to shine with a small, eerie, localized aurora, and then the psionic gives the phone back to Lainey who hands it— still glowing— to Pancho.

"Should be as secret as secret gets," Lainey says. "Any machine on the other end of the line won't see or hear or say a damn thing about this call. Probably make your horns glow for awhile, though, sorry." She does not sound very sorry. "Also like, I better not have to explain to you two how private Arguus and I like to keep this aspect of his talent. You guys seem pretty smart."

 

You nod seriously, and Murfey zips his lips.

It's hard not to jitter and fidget while you wait for Sigmah to answer your ping. You're just about to compose an explanatory text when he connects.

NE: hi Pancho, it's been a while. how are you doing? ∑:3
SL: no time for kittyface chat, this line is super secure rn but i'm not sure for how long.
NE: ooh, intriguing.
SL: how would you like a posting where you'd be outright encouraged to treat helmsmen as precious moonbeams?
SL: downside is, nobody can know.
NE: i'd love to transfer to the Sunslammer, but not without Jethro.
SL: gdi you're annoyingly quick.
NE: no, you just gave too many hints. ∑:3
SL: i'll get jethro. some disreputable sorts will come 'kidnap' you soonish. three nights if all goes well.
NE: gosh, this is exciting!

Snickering at his typical Sigmah-ness, you drop that call and make a similar one to Jethro. He takes even less convincing. As you hand the phone back to Arguus for de-secretifying, you say, "It's lucky my friends hate their postings. They're in."

 

"Well, there's a piece of good news," Lainey says. "Now I gotta get back to running this fucking garbage scow. If he dies during the day I'm going to throw the Empire's biggest piss-fit, so like, don't let that be a thing. Ok, bye." She takes her phone back, kisses Arguus and then Erskin on the forehead, and briskly sees herself out.

Arguus seems alright until he realizes that he is now alone with two near-strangers, and shyly tries to hide behind Erskin, who gets upset all over again at the sudden jostling.

 

It's not merely an effort to distract him from his anxiety when you ask Arguus, "Do you have like a tapping code with him or something? I need to be cooling his stump with damp dowels now and I'd rather not startle the hell out of him."

Murfey, for his part, is worn right the hell out, and apparently Lainey's lusus feels enough like his own that he'll just doze right off on her coils. Either that or he's feigning sleep to put Arguus at ease. He really does need the rest, so you approve either way.

 

Arguus shakes his head, looking upset and trapped. "Playing," he says, tapping Erskin's hands again. "Um. Go... go try. It."

 

"Okay. If all he's getting is touch, well, this should feel fairly pleasant." You soak a fresh towel, gently unwind the warmed-up towel, and replace it with the cool one.

 

Erskin is tense but cooperative, and tries to pat Pancho as she works— gently, not urgently. He makes garbled, mushy noises that might be questions, but looks more resigned then terrified, or angry, when communication fails. Arguus pets his hair and plays with his fingers, and slowly Erskin relaxes into a doze.

 

You work steadily with the cool cloths, taking his vitals at intervals, until the swelling no longer threatens to split healthy skin and close off blood flow. Then you coat the area thoroughly with antiseptic gel and re-bandage it. You offer Arguus a water bottle and a couple of pills. "Can you get him to take these?"

 

Arguus shrugs uncertainly, and turns Erskin's hand over. He sets the pills in Erskin's palm, then, when Erskin crunches them in his back teeth, looking puzzled, hastily gets him to take hold of the water bottle. Erskin drinks messily, whimpering again, then paws at his tongue and face in upset confusion. Arguus pets him again, looking nearly as miserable.

"Okay?" he makes himself ask Pancho.

 

"I guess taste is working too," you say wryly. "Got any tasty treats you can try on him?"

The medicine you gave him isn't remotely strong enough to knock him out, but hopefully it'll take the urgent edge off things, as well as its more important function of reducing inflammation and fever. You don't want to admit how little you can do right now, but this is about it. You feel kind of helpless.

 

"Licorice," Arguus mumbles, producing a small bag. He puts a scottie dog in Erskin's hand. Erskin cautiously nibbles it, scowls, and sticks the wet lump to Arguus's shoulder. Arguus giggles, silently, and switches to a jelly bean, then a twist, laughing harder at each increasingly disgusted and indignant face Erskin pulls. Finally Erskin pounces— fairly accurately, even— and they tussle gently and squeakily among Psybil's coils, smearing small black dashes of licorice across her white scales. For someone who's functionally deaf-blind and missing a leg, Erskin manages to win in fairly short order, and sits on Arguus's head.

 

Stifling some fond but perhaps impolitic giggles, you pretend to be very involved with your medical scan until they settle down a little. Then you give Erskin's good leg a gentle pat and stand up. "Contact me right away if there's any change in his condition, okay? Better or worse. Keep an eye on the stump. If it gets inflamed again, you can try cooling it down yourself, you saw what I did, it's just cool damp towels."

 

Arguus nods, squirming out from under Erskin and wrapping him up in his long arms. He's even brave enough to give a shy little wave when Pancho leaves.

 

Time goes by. It's some part of three days— or so?— you remember Pancho telling you, and you never quite manage to get around to writing the list for her. People come and sit with you— sometimes you get scent straightened out, or sight, or even your fins for awhile, but your leg still needs to be attended to, and a fever comes and goes.

Your leg hurts, constantly, no matter how many pills you choke down, and you had no idea it was possible to be this bored: there's usually a tablet playing cartoons or reading out a story, but most of the time it's just a blurry, buzzing rectangle to fumble with, and only adds to the headache and confusion. You do sit-ups and push-ups, when you're too frantic to just lie in a pile, and Lainey brings you a variety of modeling clays and ring puzzles. Sometimes, if she's not exhausted, you can get her to fuck you. Touch is a sense that always seems to work, and the soft warmth of her hands and mouth renders the choking static shining and sweet and beautiful, for a time. But mostly, she's exhausted. You're carried here and there to relieve yourself, or wash, or choke down some food— it all tastes like sand, or a handful of ants, or worse, but you have to trust no one would be making you swallow anything you aren't supposed to be eating.

Bel visits a few times. He seems nearly as tired and worried as Lainey, and sometimes you can't bear for him to be looking at you like this, visiting you out of pity for your helplessness or in hopes that you're something other than a lump of blind, helpless meat. You drive him off with horns and claws more than once, for all that the violent motion makes you sick for hours. But sometimes you pull each other's hair, or arm-wrestle, or play keep-away games. He does paperwork beside you, when you're calm enough or lonely enough to let him, and once he gives you a feather as long as your arm that you spend some small and entertaining while pulling apart. Sometimes you're so angry and scared that you cry, though mostly you manage not to. Someone's always sitting with you.

At some point, a doctor will come, and you will be carried off for an operation, and one way or another this will be over with. You try, very hard, to be patient.

 

==> Bel: Ganbatte!

You are definitely doing your best, and you think it just might be good enough to stave off disaster.

You're not the type of troll who gets a thrill out of being Acting Captain, and it certainly doesn't bother you that the crew gives you a bit of pushback when you do things differently from Erskin, though you don't let them waste too much time and energy on it. Your rival is probably the best captain in the fleet, in terms of inspiring loyalty and willingness in his crew, and one of the reasons you're his kismesis is because you aspire to his achievements. On this short notice, though, and with everything already a mess thanks to the Zero Sum, there's no point trying to show him up. The best you can do is hold things together.

The beginnings of your Stuffy Stickbutt Division are a great help. You've picked out five particularly organized and practical trolls, and given them the additional duty of functioning as a phone tree to match tasks up with workers. There's still some trial and error to do involving priorities, timing, and so forth, but in general any job that's going begging gets kicked up and down the tree until someone is found who can do it. Sometimes that someone is you, but mostly you manage to have robot tasks done by robots, specialist tasks done by specialists, and officers doing officer work. Which you're absolutely going to wave smugly at Erskin when he's feeling better -- the officer work was sorely neglected. Not just Fleet paperwork (which really does matter, if you want everyone fed and paid) but crew troubles like housing complaints, uniforms arriving in the wrong sizes, allocation of cargo carts and personnel carts so nobody has to walk a kilometer to lunch if they don't want to (it's good for their health, but it makes them late).

Pancho is handling the business with Whitey for now. He's bloodist enough that he checked with you a couple times at first, but you got annoyed and reminded him that she's your moirail, and also a shining gem of duty, honor, and competence, and you have already trusted her with the life of everyone aboard, so what was the question again? And he stopped after that. Much as you'd like to talk with Jethro and Sigmah about it -- they were your friends before they were hers -- the need for secrecy is no joke. So you just trust and wait.

When it comes time to dock with Rat King Station (it really looks like one, a spoked wheel made of hollowed asteroids bolted together), you conspire with Galley to give the impression that you're the stuck-up, hidebound douche everyone expected you to be when you first came aboard. You insist on everthing being done by the book, with all proper ceremony, and make a great show of checking every item and person who enters or leaves the ship. Galley takes a bit too much pleasure in complaining about your authoritarian ways to the station's helm -- you get to listen in on it a bit -- but it's all in good fun, and he doesn't mean it to sting. All in all, you think you do a pretty good job of giving the inevitable tattle-tales some juicy gossip to take back to the Admiralty, on the topic of how your kismessitude with Erskin is a rancorous, disruptive one that makes the ship and crew victim to a tug-of-war between your egos.

In order to keep from drawing attention, neither you nor Pancho can be present when Whitey brings aboard his 'casino staff', but you watch on the cameras. His people have disguised Jethro so well you wouldn't even be able to spot him if you weren't looking for him -- they did something to his hair that makes his horns look way smaller and like they're coming off his head at a different angle, it's probably good enough to foil recognition software. Sigmah's a bit harder to disguise, tall as he is and with those distinctive knob-capped lyre horns, but they put him in a dress and padded him out considerably, did his hair up fancy, and presumably gave him teal contacts -- you can't tell from the camera feed, but his torch-singer getup has teal trim -- so there's a good chance someone looking for a skinny male helmstech will miss him.

You wish you could go see Erskin before Sigs gets to work on him, but this is a crucial time for the ship and you need to be on the ball so Lainey can be with him. You won't let him down.

 

You're at Lainey's, checking on Erskin, when Sigmah shows up at the door. He's wearing Sunslammer deck crew coveralls. According to the text Jethro sent you, Whitey's people had him done up in a teal cocktail dress to bring him aboard, impersonating the singer for their casino, who was in turn disguised as a bellhop and very annoyed about it. "You're a regular Mattah Harrei, aren't you?" you greet him, grinning at his obvious excitement.

"We're still docked," he explains as you let him in. "Can't risk someone seeing a helmstech uniform, right?"

"I'll get you a regular medbay uniform as soon as I can. He's through here."

"Any change?"

"Not really. It's worrying."

Lainey and Arguus are with Erskin when you bring Sigs in. You make introductions all around. Sigmah is more polite and less distractable than you remember him being; Jethro's been working on his manners.

 

Lainey stands up, Arguus squeezes you tight and huddles against your back, and Psybil rearranges enough of her coils that she's probably raised her head. Someone new's entered the room, a stranger, and unless your friends have started giving caegar tours it's the medic. Signal? Sigrid? You don't remember. You cast around, but it's just touch at the mo', so you politely stick out a hand for a shake or, or whatever. Maybe they want to take your pulse. Or stick you with something.