The Airship Aurelia (The Aurelian Archives) (12 page)

             
“Reece,” Hayden's voice cracked. Reece swiveled till he found him sitting on a cushioned loveseat suspended from the ceiling by thin brass poles, like a fixed porch swing. Hayden spread his hands helplessly. “I didn't know, I promise. I was on my way to find you and—”

             
“Harry didn't know,” Scarlet verified, still unfolding clothes.

             
“Well, that's great,” Reece snapped. He fumblingly started unloading his hob and pocketing the bullets, just to be on the safe side. “But did
Hayden
know?”

             
“Who's Hayden?”

             
After gaping wordlessly for a moment, Reece marched over to the loveseat and pointed in Hayden's pink face. “That's Hayden! Hayden bleeding Rice! You've known him for nine bleeding years! Get it right!
Bogrosh
! Bleeding—
what are you
doing
here, Scarlet
?”

             
Scarlet calmly picked up a bundle of her clothes and walked them to her bed. “Don't be crass, Reece. I'm on board, and it's too late for that to be changed. I'm coming with you to The Ice Ring.”

             
“The—” Reece faltered. He looked at Hayden, who shrugged, pulled off his glasses, and started tiredly rubbing his eyes. “How do you know about that?”

             
“I slipped a broadcaster link into your pocket at Emathia.”

             
Reece started methodically checking his jacket with a clenched jaw. Sure enough, a tiny silver button, no bigger than a coin, was nestled in the corner of his inside left pocket.

             
“So you heard everything.”

             
“Enough to know you'd be leaving with Aurelia soon. It was lucky I came aboard this morning to begin unpacking. Oh,” Scarlet suddenly spun about, holding up a triumphant finger, “and I
knew
that Orpha girl from the masquerade was in on the whole affair. You'll have to explain all that to me later.” She took one look at his stubborn expression, and her green eyes flashed in warning. “I'm here to help you,
Captain
. You've acquired yourself quite the crew, but there's still one thing you're lacking.”

             
Reece knew where this was headed, but he still couldn't help but hopefully toss out, “A cook?”

             
“A people person,” Scarlet corrected distastefully. “I'm a highly-capable diplomat and a learned anthropologist; I've studied the governments of more than three dozen Epimetheus planets. Admit it, Reece, you need me to speak the language of the people. You may be charming, but you're more or less a social cripple.”

             
“Thanks for that,” Reece said with a wince. Letting out a long breath, he collapsed onto the seat next to Hayden, who gave his shoulder a pat. As if
he
minded having Scarlet along. He'd had a crush on her since they were Twelves. Her not knowing his name was apparently neither here nor there. “So you weren’t the one who clubbed Mordecai on the head?”

Scarlet straightened from wheeling her now empty trunk into the bottom of her wardrobe and faced him with a bemused expression.
“Mordecai—you mean Gideon's grandfather? Why would I do that?”

             
“Someone clubbed Mordecai on the head?” Hayden inserted, startled. “Is he alright?”

             
“I haven’t seen him yet.” Reece stood, dusted his hands, and pointed at Scarlet. “Alright, look. You're here, so you might as well make yourself useful. You can start by dividing up the rations and organizing our cargo.”

             
“Yes, sir,” she said meekly.

             
Giving her a flat look, Reece shook his head and stalked towards the door. “Hayden,” he said over his shoulder, “set yourself up an infirmary somewhere so you can check on Mordecai and make sure he's not acting any loopier than usual. Then help Scarlet find everybody their coats and gloves and earmuffs. Get the luggage distributed.”

             
“Earmuffs?” Hayden asked as he hurriedly joined Reece at the door, throwing a fleeting look back at Scarlet, who was watching them while thoughtfully tapping her lips with a finger. “Why?”

             
“Trouble with the Afterquin. It's going to get cold in here.”

             
“How cold?”

             
Hesitating, Reece slammed Scarlet's door behind them, shutting her probing green eyes away, but also sealing out the light. He clicked on his photon wand.  “Cold enough. Po's trying to do something, but…” With a sigh, he nodded for Hayden to follow him towards the cargo bay. “Just keep an eye on everybody, alright? And be in the cargo bay at eighteen hundred hours for a crew debriefing.”

             
Hayden split off from him in the cargo bay, crossing to the lit starboard corridors while Reece rattled down a set of winding stairs and veered towards the engine room. The corridors down here were Aurelia's tightest—Gid would probably have to tilt his shoulders sideways to walk them comfortably—and warm, dewy and almost foggy with steam. They ran in all directions like arteries trailing away from the beating heart of the Afterquin, which by itself took up a room half the size of the cargo bay. Reece could hear it thrumming from here. The thrumming sounded sick, off, with an extra whine lying beneath it.

             
He followed the sound to the foot of an iron ladder by itself at the end of a dimly-lit hall, and climbed up through an open hatch. The ladder didn't stop where the new room—the Afterquin's room—began, but kept going up two more stories, spanning the height of the engine. Other ladders branched off it in all directions at all levels, weaving an elaborate network around the room that made Reece think of the blueprints of the unrealistic play fort he'd drawn up as a kid.

             
The Afterquin itself was a tall cylinder, a tower of gears and fans and pipes. Most engines Reece had seen were compact, squeezed for space. Not the Afterquin. And it might look disjointed, even messy, but it had its own perfect order. If he could compare the design to one thing, it would be a tree. A brass tree with tubes for roots, pipes for branches, and countless mechanical gadgets, whatsits, and doodads for leaves.

             
Po, sitting cross-legged on a horizontal-running ladder two-thirds of the way up to the ceiling, spotted him, stood, and started walking to meet him, placing her feet carefully but quickly on the rungs, as if they were stepping stones. He slipped off the mainline ladder onto a grated platform and watched her with interest.

             
“That height doesn't bother you at all?” he asked as she came closer.

             
Po shrugged, dropping the short distance from her ladder to his platform and quickly brushing her blonde bangs back from her face. “Nope. You gotta be used to bein' up high, if you wanna be an airship mechanic.”

             
Reece nodded, giving her a troubled onceover. Like Gideon's, her face was smudged with oil, and there was soot on the knees of her jumpsuit, which was unzipped and tied off at her waist with her sleeves. Her white, long-sleeved undershirt looked like it had been washed in engine grease.

             
“So,” Po prompted, expectant.

             
“So,” Reece repeatedly dryly. “The Sim and the turbine?”

             
She made a face and gestured for him to follow her as she hopped back onto the mainline ladder and descended to the ground level. “I think I might be able to do somethin' about the Sim, but the turbine…even if I get it back to how it was, the Afterquin is just too powerful for a Jax I86 turbine, Cap'n. She needs her own, especially now that she's breathin' so heavy.”

             
“We don't have her own, Po.” Reece grunted as he skipped the last few rungs and landed beside her. “We've got to make due somehow.”

             
“I'm tryin',” Po said quietly, not meeting his eyes.

             
With an internal sigh, Reece took her arms and turned her to face him. “I know,” he reassured her. “Trust me, I know. But we only have a few hours until things get bad. You'll figure something out. You're too good at what you do not to.”

             
Po beamingly ducked her head till he could barely see her face, blushing crimson. “You're really good too. At what you do, I mean, not just in general. I mean, you
are
, though. Good. I—”

             
“Hello, down there.”

             
Po and Reece looked up together to put a face to Mordecai's gruff tenor voice. The old man was smoking a cigar and dangling his legs off a ladder some twenty feet above them, Gideon standing beside him, head and shoulders deep in a funnel contraption fanning away from the Afterquin.

             
Mordecai tipped an invisible hat at them and blew a smoke ring. “Just thought I ought’a let you know we were here before things got awkward.”

Peeking out of the funnel, Gideon gave Reece a raised eyebrow look.

              “Me and Mordecai got the rudders fixed,” Po said quickly as Reece dropped her arms and took a too-casual step backward. “Aurelia's autopilot should work now.”

             
“Good. That's good.” Bleeding bogrosh, but the engine room was
warm
of a sudden. “Er, Mordecai, Hayden will be looking for you. To take a look at your head.”

             
“Meh, my head's fine. But you know, I
have
been havin' this weird double vision the last hour…maybe he can tell me somethin' about that.”

             
Reece stared as the Pan scrambled across the ladder like a much younger man. With Mordecai, the only way to tell what was head trauma and what was the man's chronic craziness was to see if the thing could be cured.

             
“Everyone,” Reece began as he backed towards the exit hatch, “be in the cargo bay at eighteen hundred hours for a crew debriefing. Po, keep in touch about the Sim. If you can slow the temperature drop—”

             
Po cut him short by holding up her black-stained palms. “Leave it to me, Cap'n.”

             
“What's eighteen hundred hours?” Gid asked from above.

             
“Six o'clock.”

             
Gideon muttered something in a low voice, and Reece testily called, “What?”

             
“I said, so why didn't you just say that?”

             
“It's air talk.” Another mutter-filled pause. “What was that?”

             
“I said yeah, but we're in
space
.”

             
“Just be there at six o'clock, Gid.”

             
“Do we have to call it a crew debriefin'?” Po threw out as Reece finally began lowering himself through the hatch. He stopped to stare at her, but she was already scaling another ladder, on her way to join Gideon at the funnel, as quick and nimble as a mouse. Reece didn't envy her; Gid was looking as surly as a sliptooth fish. “It's
such
a mouthful. Hey, maybe we should call it a moot! Whadya think, Cap'n? Don't it have a ring to it? A crew moot.”

             
“Ain't them one'a those things rich folk have around their houses?” Gid grumbled as he backed up, making room for her. “With the water, and the bridges?”

             
“That's a moat, ginghoo,” Po laughed at the same time Reece dully corrected, “
Moat
, Gid.”

             
Scowling, Gideon crossed his arms and sat down heavily on a rung, his big boots swinging. “Alright!” he snapped. “I ain't stupid!”

             
Shaking his head wordlessly, Reece lowered himself through the hatch. The helm. He needed the helm, and the quietness of The Voice of Space. He'd been captain for officially—he checked his pocket watch—three hours, and between the possibility of freezing to death before tomorrow and living with the constant company of Scarlet Ashdown, his nerves were already starting to feel frayed. Gid's bad mood was trivial in comparison, but still, it grated.

             
Nivy shot him a look over her shoulder as he joined her on the bridge again, but he slid into his leather chair without a hello. The Euclid Stream streaked against the canopy window, a soft vapor of white, giving the cockpit an airy glow.

             
“Po fixed the autopilot,” he said as his hands slipped into the grooves of the yoke. “And we're calling the crew debriefing a moot.”

             
Nivy stared at him like people tended to stare at Mordecai. He ignored her.