“I didn’t kidnap you,” Fiearius corrected her instantly, now finding more interest in the wall than in her again. “You just happened to be on my ship when I decided it was leaving. Not my fault you weren’t paying enough attention to get off before that happened.” He turned his head slightly to face her, his eyes narrowed. “And yet you think you’re entitled? That’s cute. How ‘bout we scratch that and you just go ahead and tell me what kind of doctor my brother dragged onto my ship? Off a merchant vessel, he said? What were you doing on Vescent?”

“Research,” replied Leta at once. Technically, it was not a lie. She’d just also been living on Vescent while she’d done this research.

Trying to ignore just how tense she was feeling, she gathered a cloth in her hand and poured salve solution into it. It was a basic easy routine, but inwardly, her mind was racing. This was a game, she realized. She had to be careful.

“I’m not sad to leave,” she continued, relieved to hear her voice was more relaxed. “The feds are a bit — uptight there.” As she leaned in to swab the wound, her eyes flashed toward his tattoo, the primary symbol of those feds. “No offense.”

Fiearius’ eyes followed her own to the marking on his arm where they rested in thought. “None taken. Your little ship must not get around much though,” he commented briskly. “That ain’t exclusive to Vescent.”

“I know.” Carefully, she placed the cloth back in the cart at her side. “Vescent. Acendia. The Society’s spreading through Ellegy.” Her voice might have been wistful, were it not for the bitter smile at her lips. She stared down at the rusty tools in the tray, ready and waiting to be picked up and used.

But first, she could stand it no longer. Casting her eyes to him, she held his gaze. “But you have the mark. Are you with them or not?”

Fiearius’ eyes narrowed even more and settled upon her face as though reading it for something hidden. “They just sent six fighter birds after me and more to come, isn’t it obvious?” he pointed out, raising an eyebrow brow at her.“No. Not anymore.”

Leta blinked her eyes slowly, now a perfectly captive audience. “Why?” she asked at length, a tug of desperation in her voice. “What’d you do?”

There was a long passage of silence as Fiearius just glared at her curiously. A passage so long, it seemed he might never answer at all. Even when he did, in fact, he did not. “You here to fix my arm or interrogate me, kiddo?” he asked harshly, deepening his glare, which Leta ignored.

“The Society’s no friend of mine either,” she continued, trying and failing to contain the lift in her voice. She knew it was important to not be too eager, but it was no easy feat. “To say the least. And people don’t just ‘quit’, or leave. Those people end up in bodybags. Not captaining spaceships.”

“Well,” the captain replied cheerfully, despite the look of apathy engraved in his features, “Maybe I’m just special.”

Leta was not deterred by his lack of enthusiasm. “Special enough to evade them. Some people — ” she hesitated then, choosing her words carefully as her expression tinged with sadness, “aren’t quite as lucky. So how?”

“Do I have to say it again?” he growled, jabbing his finger towards the still unattended wound. “I need this thing to stop being a problem by the time we land in two days. I’ve got a job to do. People to feed. Ship to run. So let’s hurry it up, shall we?”

This time, silence fell between them, sharper now. He’d given her more questions than answers. Her curiosity was burning.

But, with an intake of breath, she told herself to wait. For now. She’d waited three months for answers, she could wait a bit longer. After a long, stiff pause, she reached toward the cart and slowly withdrew another vial and, this time, a syringe.

“Well it’s not doable in two days,” she told him flatly. “Try weeks. You need antibiotics. Long-term treatment.”

“I don’t have weeks,” Fiearius replied grimly. “I don’t care what you have to do to make it work. Give me all the antibiotics you want, cut me open, slice me up, whatever, I just can’t show up with my arm falling off. Two days.” He glared at the purple and green infected mess of his shoulder. “Figure it out.”

“I am. This is preliminary work,” she deadpanned, adjusting the needle carefully before half-glancing back at him. “Unless you’re planning to drop me at this next stop.”

A small chuckle rippled out of his throat. “I don’t think you’re gonna wanna be at this next stop,” he remarked, visibly amused at his unexplained joke. “I ain’t gonna keep ya if you’re so damn desperate to leave though.” He glanced back at her, knowingly. “I ain’t gonna stop ya from stayin’ either. Do what ever ya damn please. I leave it to your wise doctorly discretion.”

From her far corner of the cabin, Leta glimpsed the side of Fiearius’ face and the broad smirk that arrived on it. “That’s what I thought,” he said, satisfied. “Route all the power we can spare out of the engine and into shields.”

“Fiearius, don’t–”

“Just fucking do it, Cyrus,” he snapped, and with a growl in his throat, he pulled the gear into the sharpest swerve yet. Now, the view of the bay window shifted in a flash as the Dionysian was spun directly around 180 degrees. Now the ship faced the blurry blue-green mass of a planet and, in the foreground, the six fighter ships.

Directly.

Before she knew what the captain was going to do, Leta knew what the captain was going to do. “He’s not — “ she started, though it was in that moment that the ship surged forward into the assailants and the metal rattling within the cabin drowned out any other noise.

Leta anticipated every excruciating second of the impact. She squeezed her eyes shut and, below, her chair went from humming, to vibrating, to positively shaking in protest beneath her grip. Through the slits of her eyes she saw the silhouette of Fiearius, and beyond him, the peak of the Dionysian break through the fleet, a half-dozen silent explosions in the darkening sky as the walls roared and roared around them.

Dimly, Leta thought she could see, now, how this might be satisfying, in a terrible, destructive, awful sort of way. Even with the grimace masking on her face, she glimpsed one the metal sheets imprinted with the Society symbol blast apart as easily as beach-glass. It flew past the window of the ship and was lost, lost into the black of space.

The moment of peace was short-lived.

Easing her eyes open fully, Leta realized three things just as the cabin swam into view. First, the walls had slowed their shaking. Second, Fiearius was laughing like somebody had just told him a particularly off-color joke.

And the last thing she noticed was her stomach. It was lodged somewhere in her throat.

Hands shaking, body trembling, Leta fumbled to pull the seatbelt off her waist and pushed herself to unsteady feet. Her legs wobbled as she crossed to the door and staggered out of the cabin into the hallway. Behind her, dimly, she heard raucous yelling echoing from one end of the ship. It must have been the crew. Celebration, perhaps? Or perhaps, pain from that impact.

She picked the other direction.

The grated metal floor was rocking up and down like a boat on water and the air was as thick and heavy as she staggered forward. The pit in her stomach was not shrinking, but growing and growing, and before she could think to do otherwise, she stopped short, she grabbed the nearest railing and her mouth filled.

It was too much.

Leta could not truly remember the last time she’d gotten sick. She certainly couldn’t remember the last time she’d gotten sick in public. Coughing, eyes watering, she bent over the railing for several agonizing seconds longer until, finally, cool, steady air began to inch into her lungs.

Behind her, as her senses returned, she heard the approach of forceful, pounding footsteps. Cyrus, she realized, as she glanced with streaming eyes over her shoulder and the young man stalked past her in a furious rush toward the bridge.

Seconds later, just as Leta was shakily wiping her mouth with her wrist, the hallway near the bridge erupted in shouting. It was undeniably Cyrus’ voice that yelled, probably at his brother, “What the fuck was that?!”

Leta straightened herself up and watched as the party of three — Fiearius, Cyrus and Corra — exited the bridge. Something of a swagger was in Fiearius’ walk while Cyrus followed, muttering darkly behind him, “You are damn lucky our shields held. They’re meant for minor debris or stray rocks. Not for high-class fighter ships moving forward at full sp– “

“But it did work,” Fiearius replied, smiling.

“Do you know what it means to have a hole in your ship at a hundred twenty thousand feet?!” Cyrus yelled, tossing his hands in the air. “‘Cause I promise you won’t like –”

“Relax, little brother,” sighed Fiearius, putting his hands on his brother’s shoulders as they walked. “It’s fine. Everything’s fine–”

Merely a stunned observer, Leta was frozen against the railing as she watched the three of them approach down the hallway without sparing her a look. It occurred to her as their conversation continued (“I don’t know, Cy-cy, we are still alive,“ Corra was saying now), that they were going to stride right past her lest she wave her arms and yell.

The realization caused a sort of sudden anger in her chest. Anger she did not she even possessed. Gritting her teeth, she pushed herself away from the railing and forced herself in front of them. The trio awkwardly stumbled to a stop before her like dominos as she glared at each of them, most especially at Fiearius.

“You need treatment,” she growled. She ignored their stunned looks. “And I need off this ship.”

A nervous sort of laugh bubbled out of Leta’s lips, though it faded off awkwardly. Arms master? Meanwhile she continued to shake Corra’s hand for an unnecessarily long stretch of time. Finally realizing, she dropped her hand, blinked and said, “I’m Leta. And I don’t know how long I’ll be aboard. Actually. But your captain does need treatment and … “

“Fraid you ain’t gonna be treatin’ anything til we’re airborne,” Corra told her briskly. “And if we’re gonna make it airborne, better get strapped in. I was gonna head up to the bridge. Some seats up there to hold on to. ‘Sides. If the cap’n was right and we’re gettin’ tailed, should be a mighty fine show and no denyin’ they’re the best seats in the house.”

Turning around, the girl gestured merrily for Leta to follow along as if they were headed out the door for a picnic. Without much else to do, Leta irked an eyebrow, stared, and then started after. Beneath her feet, the floor was beginning to lightly tremble, humming to life. Trying to ignore the unpleasant swoop in her stomach, she carefully followed on Corra’s heels through the narrow hallway and up a short staircase toward the bridge.

Leta had never been in a ship’s bridge before. She would have imagined it quite a bit larger, but then again, the only ships she’d ever been on were commercial travel vessels. This cabin had only two chairs, a half-moon dashboard of controls, and it would’ve fit a handful of people. Presently it held just one, the infected captain, at the controls. Once Leta and Corra halted in the doorway, he turned around in his chair and said bluntly, “Can I help you?”

“The passenger seats are broken,” Corra informed him, folding down one of the cockpit chairs hidden in the back wall. He just stared back at her blankly. “Needed a place to strap in so you don’t kill us.” His expression shifted toward a glare. Corra smirked in return. “How’s the fever?”

“It’s fine,” he snapped, and then spun back round in his chair, away from them.

“Not gonna go all crazy again, right?” Corra continued to tease, though the smirk in her lips was a little cruel. Fiearius didn’t even bother to look around or respond so she just went on. “But if you do, it’s all right, I brought the doctor along.” She looked back at Leta and gestured for her to have a seat next to her in the other chair. “Strap yourself in, chika, gonna be a bumpy ride. You been on a ship like this before? Let me rephrase that, you felt like you’re gonna die before? Basically the same thing.”

Apparently determined to ignore the both of them, Fiearius picked up the intercom and spoke into it, “You ready for this, little brother? I’m counting on you.”

There was a long pause before Cyrus’ muffled voice filled the room, rather bitterly. “Ready when you are, captain.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Fiearius said brightly, putting the intercom back in its place and adding, “Hold onto your seatbelts, ladies,” while he seized the main controls.  On the console screen above his head, six red dots appeared on the radar. Even from the door of the bridge, Leta could feel the power of his smirk as he said, “And the fun begins.”

The look Fiearius gave him in return was even more out of place. It was as if he didn’t even recognize him for a moment. His pupils were wide and fuzzy and he appeared less angry now than just plain confused. Though only missing a few beats, he finally managed to yell back, “Nothing! What the fuck are you doing?” though a little half-heartedly. He then turned back towards the house and shouted, “Get the goods and let’s go, now!” Without hesitation, he’d hit the cowering merchant with the butt of his gun, clomped down the stairs and made for the street. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Fiearius had then gone through a great deal of trouble to pretend that nothing had happened, but it was a flimsy mask to say the least. However, Cyrus had been willing to perhaps overlook it had not the condition gotten slowly worse. Over the next two days, more than once, Fiearius had been subject to random bursts of emotion before apparently feeling faint and storming away before anyone could do anything. This morning, however, having found his brother talking to himself alone in the bridge of the ship for a good twenty minutes, switching between uncontrollable laughter and incalculable anger every couple seconds, Cyrus decided it was time to actually do something about it. Delirium, he was pretty sure, was a bad sign, even for someone as volatile as Fiear.

It didn’t take long for Cyrus to figure out what the problem was, after confronting his surprisingly accommodating patient. Fiearius had even admitted that he wasn’t feeling well, though that admission had been delivered in the form of a tortured laugh. Just one touch of his skin told the story and it was a story of an unbelievably high fever. The story behind that wasn’t too hard to figure either, once Cyrus managed to unwrap the bandages on his brother’s arm, revealing the purple and green, swelled, veiny mess of a very infected wound, the likes of which had spread from the simple gunshot Cyrus had forgotten about, all the way down his arm. He pointed out that he needed to see a doctor immediately. Fiearius just laughed and said, “It’s okay, little brother, I’ve been to the circus before, I know.” Which was when Cyrus decided it was time to take helm of the ship.

And now, who knew if Fiearius was even up for flying her? But if the low rumble of the ship’s walls was any indication, they would soon find out.

In the hallway, as he hurried toward the staircase, he mercifully intercepted Corra, who was walking (much less worriedly than he) in the opposite direction.

“Corra,” he said, catching her arm, “can you help the doctor here with the passenger seats? Or, I don’t care what you do, survive take off. Figure it out. I have to go before he pushes her into critical revolution just to piss me off.” Grumbling under his breath, he turned towards the stairs down to the engine room and ran off.

–  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –  –

Corra. Yes, that was her name. This was the same girl from the ramp. Names and faces were coming a bit easier to Leta now that some of her shock was wearing off, although she still felt like she was being led through some kind of twisted circus show, meeting the various performers along the way.

But this girl, at least, had on a friendly face. She was a head shorter, but built in a way that suggested boyish strength. Her black hair was tied back in an unkempt bun, her dark skin sprinkled with darker freckles. Although Cyrus and other crew members were shooting off in urgency, Corra seemed nothing but relaxed and casual. In fact, she smiled broadly and stuck out her hand.  “Corra. Chief arms master. You’re the doctor right? What’s your name? Probably not a bad thing, having a medic around. Considering how much we seem to get shot at.”