For a while, the world was black.

  The first sensation Tolly was aware of was the rattling aluminum gangway swinging back and forth overhead. Then, the dull roar of turbines. Finally, and loudest was the searing pain that started at her cast-covered broken arms and wormed up to the base of her skull. The cot Tolly lay in was drenched in what she hoped was sweat, in what she knew could not have been her own bed.

  On a shuttle headed for an unknown destination, she struggled to sit up, arrested by the restraints that wrapped her chest to the cot’s side rails. Tolly wailed for someone to free her, wincing from the pain. A medic that had been attending another crewman nearby her cot rushed over to check on her.

  “Miss?” the woman said, before adding an unsettling, “–shit.”

  The nurse turned the valve on a bag of fluids that hung above Tolly's bed.

  “Sorry for that,” said the nurse, overwhelmed, “we're a bit shorthanded. That's a muscle relaxer in the bag. Should help you through the palest of it.”

  All Tolly could do was groan. Again, she struggled against the straps.

  “Groen... where's–? I have to…” she said, delirious.

  “I don't know a Groen,” the nurse answered, “I think there's a Greg three cots over. Is that who you're looking for?”

  Unpacking a fresh needle from its wrapper, she forced it into a man's arm on Tolly's right. The man didn't react.

  “This one right here, though. Connor– Heimar?” she proposed, reading his name off of a wet and smudged patient chart, “he wasn't so lucky. He took a nasty bump on the belfry. Lucky to be alive.”

  “Henrik,” Tolly struggled to say. The nurse walked back over to her.

  “You, however, miss–?” she said, snatching up Tolly’s chart, “Captain Ignacio? Gods, you're a young one, aren't you?”

  She grabbed Tolly's arm and lightly squeezed. Tolly yelped.

  “Yes, just as I thought. Broken clean through,” said the nurse as she stepped away.

  “Wait! Where are you going?” Tolly called after her, her own eyes wide and trained on the grated ceiling.

  “I've got to see to those worse off than you first, dear.”

  That reminded her of Groen. Oh, gods, Groen’s gone, she thought, isn't he? Him and Marco and Philipe and Dixon. All gone.

  “Wait!” Tolly pleaded.

  “Drugs will kick in soon, miss Captain. You'll see,” she started to trot off before turning back. “And someone should be by shortly to change your bedding. But you'll probably be asleep by then.”

  She hurried out of sight, and Tolly realised that she had been truthful about the drugs. Quickly and with an unforgiving tingle, the drug enveloped her. What seemed like minutes bled into hours. And, as Tolly became aware of herself again–her bedding had been changed, the rumbling of the turbines and rattling of the grating had stopped. The pain in her arm had vanished.

  Tolly tried to sit up. No straps, but there was a bitch of a migraine. Tolly winced at the light that filtered in from the hospital room window. She raised her arm to shield herself and noticed the casts had been removed.

  “They do decent work here,” a slender silhouette said as it hovered over from across the room. “Expensive, but decent.”

  “Blane?” Tolly said, holding back tears. Blane drew the curtains, and the silhouette of Tolly's older sister suddenly came into view. She came over and sat on the left edge of the hospital bed.

  Tolly was bewildered to find she was in a private hospital bed. Expensive, she thought. And she had undergone sudden and complete bone regrowth. Very expensive.

  “Blane, what am I doing here?” She asked.

  “You lug. I heard about the accident. There's no way I would let you sit in that pit of a federation trauma ward. I got you in here; spared no expense.”

  Tolly raised an eyebrow.

  “I'm paying for this, aren't I?”

  Blane smirked.

  “Sort of. The Federation came through with compensation astonishingly quick. It's almost like they thought you were the captain or something.”

  That's when the memories came flooding in, the deaths of Groen, Marco, and the other men, the destruction of The Perun. Oh no, Connor. Tolly turned to her right side, expecting to see Connor passed out beside her. Instead, nothing. Just a white wall.

  “Where's Connor?” Tolly asked, trying to sit up.

  “Sit, Trolley,” Blane said, using her kid name for her.

  Tolly got one whole leg out of bed before Blane landed a flick on her forehead like she used to do when they were kids. The flick rippled through her migraine and rebounded off of the back of her skull.

  “Ow.”

  “Doctor said bedrest, so sit. I'll go find Connor,” she ordered.

  Blane stood and walked toward the doorway. “Captain?” she asked.

  “Captain,” Tolly shrugged. Blane disappeared through the open door.

  Nearly an hour passed, and Tolly was getting restless. All she could think about – all she could see – were the faces. Faces of crew members both in the reactor tube and on the command deck with her before the collapse. She could see Groen's face the clearest, the whites of his eyes wide in the seconds leading up to the explosion. The look of horrified defeat washing over his face on the phantom-blue of the wallscreen.

  She remembered seeing men tossed, torn apart, impaled by the explosion as chunks of the floor rose upwards through them. She remembered Silva, poor Silva, her eyes bleeding with tears in the loss of Marco.

  She remembered it all as it came back to her all in one painful sequence. The whole thing was overwhelming, and Tolly knew she was going to puke. Blane, who had just dragged Connor in behind her on a mobile cot, rushed over to her and pushed the bedpan into her face. Tolly dry heaved several painful times while her sister held her head.

  “That’s disgusting, Captain,” Connor said, sitting up in his bed.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Tolly looked up at him, bewildered. A clump of hair glued to the sweat on her forehead.

  “Don't start, Connor,” Blane said, heading over to wheel his cot up beside Tolly's.

  “Now you kids play nice,” Blane said as she left the room.

  “I know what you're going to say–” said Tolly.

  “Do you?” Connor sat up in his bed.

  “How many crewmen were hurt? Can we reclaim The Perun?” she asked.

  “Too many. And no hope in hell. She's likely buried under several feet of mud, and that's nothing compared to the new growth that must have sprung up in the last two weeks. Best we can hope for is that she's just buried. Worst of all, the Perun's a burnt wreck.”

  “Two weeks–?”

  “Yeah– Blane didn't say?” he asked. Tolly just shook her head.

  “Well shit, sorry. I suppose someone had to. Either way, it looks like you’re now captain of nothing. Not to worry, The Federation will likely have you re-assigned before next season.”

  Tolly was surprised she hadn't thought of that. It was somewhere at the back of her mind, buried under and stifled by what had happened almost two weeks ago.

  “I guess you're right. You'll be reassigned too, surely,” she said.

  “Don't count on it. You were a full-fledged captain when The Perun went belly up. I was only acting Chief Engineer.”

  “Any crew would be chomping at the bit to have you.”

  “I wouldn't say that. In my short tenure as chief, the firecrawler suffered a catastrophic loss of property, crew and, most importantly, the entire load of harvested vitreol. I don't see any crew clambering to have me, at least in the present. No– I'll likely have to settle for a junior ensign rank again after this.”

  “You've got me there,” she said.

  “No sense dwelling. That's what the nightmares are for. Besides, did anyone tell you? There's a flock in town,” said Connor.

  “I've been a little cut off from the outside in here, Henrik.” Tolly smiled sardonically. She had just come out of a two-week coma, after all.

  “Yes, right. Well, Matriarch Nagoya has brought the whole Cattleheart Flock to our backwater by request of our lady Matriarch Lathe herself. The whole fleet’s in orbit right now. Has been for a few days. There's going to be a Parade and everything.”

  Tolly knew of the Cattleheart Flock well. One of five major flotillas under the Herd Federation’s control, the Flock was nomadic and renowned for the fantastic trade goods they brought with them. She could only recall one other time the Flock had come here in her lifetime, but that was when she was only four years old.

  She and Conner talked for a few more hours before Blane came back with a nurse and a smile on her face. Thankfully, her recovery was over, and she was about to be discharged. Connor was less lucky, having another day before he was let out.

  Groen's funeral was two days later. Held on a hillock at the end of Market Street and on the outskirts of Blane’s and her home district, Libourne, the service was surprisingly small. With most of the crewmen's families absent, dealing with their own lost loved ones left only a handful of attendees. Tolly was just glad at least some had come so that it was not just her and Blane alone. More bizarre was that Brenna Lathe, Matriarch of the planet, was standing on the other side of the congregation from her, as Tolly tried not to make eye contact.

  Connor had come and with him his mother and father and youngest sister, Elenie. Silva was there, although Tolly felt as though she shouldn't have. She was seated on a chair near the front, sobbing into a handkerchief. Tolly suspected that Silva's grief over losing Marco was the real driver behind it.

  A handful of Captains of vessels nearly identical to The Perun, as well as captains of trade ships, were in attendance as well.

  There was another man Tolly didn't recognize. He was wearing burgundy military finery in the colours of the Cattleheart Flock. On his jacket were several rows of epaulettes indicating a high rank in the flotilla, possibly on the Cattleheart’s flagship, but Tolly couldn't say for sure. He was a handsome man, with an angular jawbone, that every so often Tolly would catch sneaking a glance over at Blane.

  Blane was hard as stone. Her expression unchanged since this morning when she'd wept in her room by herself. She had loved Groen, Tolly knew but could not discern just exactly what was walking around inside her sister's head any day, to say nothing about this day.

  Blane had always been reserved, at least around her. Tolly could remember a time when they were both very young, and their mother and father were still around, that Blane had shown some joy. However, ever since their mother died and their father faded away, her sister had been changed.

  The two of them had been left alone together for a long time, struggling to survive on the fringes of the city on whatever their father remembered to send their way. Sure, there was Uncle Groen, but he had always been out of touch with what was happening in the city and in their lives. It wasn’t until this past year that he had finally made an effort to be in their lives.

  What help Groen did send, every few seasons when he was in port, Blane would stash away for Tolly’s education fund, which she had kept hidden from Tolly until it came time to use it. And so, Blane, working two jobs at the time and with some sparse help from Groen, Tolly was able to attend The Academy. Blane had sweat to give her sister the chance at a life that was never available to her, and she had succeeded. Even after Tolly had been expelled, Blane still showed her the same calm fortitude that she always had.

  The funeral ended before Tolly realised and she found herself standing alone staring at a patch of fresh soil. Connor and his family had gone. Most of the others in attendance had cleared out as well, and for a moment, Tolly imagined herself back in the mess hall aboard The Perun after Groen had just given his last speech as captain.

  She hadn't realised that Blane was staring at her, her own eyes puffy, and her tears long since dried.

  “I'll have to stop by the market quickly before we head home. I'm going to make us something special for lunch. How does taro curry sound?”

  Tolly nodded numbly.

  “I won't be opening the cafe today. We can just have a you-and-me day, “ Blane said, “Sounds good?”

  On her way home, Tolly took the surface route around the city. Her train headed out of Libourne, crossed over Kingsborough, through the Eastern Wall, then Lacave, then back around to Libourne.

  Libourne, a small industrial neighbourhood, was lined with below-ground factories on an island flanked by rivers—The Bloc and The Gromonde—on two sides with the massive South Sea that ran the southern length of Risen on the third.

  The factories were buried under a mixture of high rise dwelling complexes and general-use park spaces. Summer was now, and the sun never completely set, just kissing the horizon beneath the northern mountains before heading back up at the start of every day. The factory levels below housed several subterranean farm complexes to supply the small city with the food it needed. There was also farmland above each squat factory to maximise arable land. Most days of the year, the sky was a dusty white, the smoke from the constant wildfires getting trapped in the upper atmosphere. On these days, the sun would filter through as a vibrant red jewel.

  Along with the farms, the factory levels supported a wide array of manufacturing, much of which was devoted to the construction and maintenance of everything from shuttles, loop trains, and upgrav cargo transports to various types of farming equipment, most notably the firecrawlers.

  Tolly's home was one of the few left near the ground not otherwise sold off decades ago to make way for more manufacturing. She would often see workers on their way to or away from a shift in the subterranean city when they stopped by Blane's cafe, The Elysees, which she ran out of the lower level of their two-storey home.

  Tolly had worked what seemed like an age ago in the Elysees—and now, standing back in the vacant cafe, the seats were empty, the cups shelved, the doors locked. Still, somehow the place felt crowded. Groen was sitting in every chair. Over by the checkout, Marco was ordering a laté, triple foam. Phillipe was behind the counter, twisting dials and lowering the steam arm. Behind her, Dixon mopped up the rainwater that had tracked in through the doorway.

  They were everywhere. Their thoughts – their fears – they were plastered on the walls and ceiling. She turned around, and Connor was there beside her, rigid. His eyes were fixed on the bay window that wrapped the southern and eastern walls. Tolly knew what had grabbed his attention. She turned, and a wall of mud exploded through the window, glass shattering towards her.

  It was then that Blane walked in. Tolly reeled to face her. Her brow was moist, her heart pounding through her teeth.

  “Did I.. are you okay?” Blane asked, one hand on the open door.

  “Yes, I..” Tolly wanted to say everything that was trapped in her mind. There was so much that it fought to get out all at once but could not do so.

  “Yes.”

  Blane shut the door and placed a tan paper bag on the nearest table.

  “Tolly– Tolly, are you sure you're alright? I mean, are you okay?” She asked, “Because it's okay to be shaken up going through what you did.”

  “I see them everywhere, Blane. I can't get their faces out of my thoughts. They even spoil my dreams.” Tolly confessed.

  “I see that. I see you are suffering. But why do it alone?”

  “Alone? I'm not alone; I have you. At least, I hope I do.”

  “Sure, of course, you do. I'm not saying you don't have me. I would assume, going through what you have, that there's only so many that can sympathise with how you're feeling.”

  She paused then said. “Go see Connor.”

  “I will. Promise. But not today.”

  “Well, curry will need an hour to simmer. Go get some rest until then,” she said, hoisting her bag.

  Tolly spent the rest of the day in a haze with a small respite during an expertly spiced bowl of saffron taro root curry. Afterwards, the high faded and she slumped back into silence. She dug herself a pit in her comforter, crawled in, and said an indifferent farewell to the midday sun.