Plight of the Navigator

by Shannon Kostyal

She pressed against the cold glass of the observation deck, body vibrating with an echo of tension. She could feel the hum of the engine pulsing through the bones of her ship, buzzing dangerously along the surface of the glass. The rush of that sensation would normally enervate her. Fill her with both unbridled joy and a shock of adrenaline, knowing how fragile safety was. Just one sheet of glass from a long plummet down.

Today, she felt none of that mixed rush of joy and fear. Today her anger was all consuming. Livid over Marcus’s latest ridiculous ploy, she had come to the observation deck to collect her anger and hone it into something more efficient. As she stared out at the expanse of clouds below, she wondered briefly if walking the plank was still a viable solution. It would be quite a long drop from the deck to whatever lay below. Maybe an ocean. Maybe a volcano. Win-win, either way.

N’tarya had lived her whole life on the ponderous hulk of an airship. Her father had been second in command for a decade, and then assumed command. He’d held the position for nigh on twenty years. It had come with some level of privilege; namely, the right to travel with family. That privilege was a double-edged sword, however. Raiders were common; both in the sky as well as at dock. 

The hazards were no stranger to her. That couldn’t be said for her mother, though. The woman had disappeared when she was only five. Nerves strung out, her mother had spent her last four years on the ship strung out on laudanum. It had at least kept her out of the way on the occasions they’d faced off against raiders. When her mother had quietly slipped away during a docking resupply, N’tarya hadn’t even realized until a week after the fact. 

By the time she’d turned fifteen, the chaotic life of an airship captain’s daughter had become a comfortable, if strange friend. She’d gone from toddling after the marines, imitating their sparring movements like a drunk kitten, to actively engaging in training. When not training with the marines, she studied. Math, alchemy, philosophy, mechanical engineering, flight navigation, language; even the arts. There were no regulated schools in the sky, so she studied at the feet of field experts.

By her twentieth year, she was quite proficient in armed combat. Due to her unorthodox education, she had also matured into a remarkably level-headed asset. Whether it was helping the ship’s engineers with repairs, or shadowing her father on the bridge, the crew had come to accept her as a legit comrade, rather than just the captain’s brat.

And now, ten years later, her cool, collected demeanor was shot all to hell, and she found herself seriously contemplating murder. Fucking Marcus.

Marcus had been with her crew for all of a year. She’d initially brought him on board as her navigator because his father had been her father’s comms officer. She’d clearly made an egregious error in assuming the two would share similar personalities and work ethics. Where Lt Ghali had been straight forward, hard working, and brilliant with aether-con, his wastrel of a son’s navigation duties seemed to focus solely on finding the next party, or the next brawl.

Maybe Lt Ghali’s wife had fucked a bard while Ghali was out on mission. 

And now she had to figure out how to extricate her crew and more importantly, her ship, from the mess Marcus had dumped in their lap. And then find herself a reliable navigation officer.

But first, she would finally rid them all of Marcus. She owed it to the crew. And to the memory of her father. There was no place on her ship for a trafficking piece of shit. 

After she dealt with him, she would have to figure out what to do with the shell-shocked youth he’d managed to smuggle on board right before they’d undocked. And then, she’d figure out how to evade or obliterate the Syndicate, which was now after them for making off with unpaid for goods. Those goods being the afore mentioned shell-shocked youth.

Pushing back from the glass, she drew a deep breath, and her mask of cool objectivity slid into place, disguising the seething rage that simmered just below.

Jaw set, she strode from the observation deck, her steps deliberate as she navigated rails and narrow corridors down to the brig below.

The brig was probably a rather lofty term for the tiny cage of space. It was a carved out spice between piping and the sewage recycling mechanics. Dull, iron bars served as it’s door. The space beyond was just large enough to lie down, but only if diagonal to the corners of the cage.

Behind the bars, a man sat slumped in the corner, arms lazily draped across his knees. The dull light of the wire-wisps running the length of the overhead piping left him illuminated in an odd greenish glow.

“Ah. The good and noble captain, come to read me my sentence?” The resigned bitterness in the man’s tone set her nerves even more on edge. As if he were the wronged party.

N’tarya felt the careful mask crack a little, her lips thinning with barely contained anger.

“Tomorrow.” She bit out the word, and abruptly turned, marching out of the claustrophobic space. She’d had a speech worked out in her head. Accusations. Rationale for the sentence. But there was something in his tone, and the shadowed, haunted depths of his eyes that had derailed her. 

And that made her even more angry. She was not giving him a chance to spin up another ridiculous lie for his abhorrent behavior, or for endangering her crew. No excuse he could make up would justify it.

Hours later, she was still plagued by the dark shadows in his eyes. She hunched over an antique oak desk—one of the only luxuries she’d allowed herself as captain—and stared at the dim glow of a wire-wisp bundle. Just what the hell was she going to do?