Captain's Away! Chapter Thirty
"Settling In"
Captain’s Away! is a long form, weekly serial. New chapters come out every week (more or less). Comments and suggestions welcome as we go along.
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Previously in Captain’s Away!
Yolande and Bertrand Doucette are refugees after escaping the destruction of two space stations in the opening salvos of an interstellar war. Their son, Alain, is missing and presumed dead, and their daughter Marie-Josée is comatose for reasons they don’t understand. Yolande and Bertrand have just been rescued by an Akkadian starship called the Beausoleil.
Unbeknownst to them, the mind of their daughter Marie-Josée has been transferred into the body of the captain of the Beausoleil by means of an ancient technology. To save herself, and maybe everyone else, Marie-Josée must pose as the captain of the Beausoleil. Meanwhile, Yolande and Bertrand attempt to settle in with the rest of the refugees.
Chapter Thirty
“Settling In”
It’s awfully hard to get settled after your home has been blown to smithereens and your only belongings are the clothes on your back. Also, you’re tired and angry and grief-stricken and you find yourself in a cramped ship feeling about as welcome as cosmic radiation. Still, it was important to try, which is why four days after boarding the Beausoleil the survivors of the Northumberland and the Evangeline and the Nouvelle-Écosse decided to celebrate Mass. The survivors had been granted access to the ship’s theatre for the occasion. Reverend Arsenault conducted the service.
At least half the survivors did not attend church regularly (and of the half that did one third were not Nouveau Catholique) but everyone attended Reverend Arsenault’s service. Yolande sat beside Bertrand, who sat beside Evelyn and her mother, who sat beside Liette and her husband. The Beausoleil’s avatar sat beside them, not entirely convincingly (her derriere did not quite touch the seat). Behind them all sat the rest of the survivors: children, adults and squalling babies alike. A couple of ship’s officers also attended, though not the captain or her XO.
Directly in front of Yolande, Mathieu was hunched over and fidgeting incessantly, obviously barely holding it together, incapable of concealing what the rest of them were feeling. Probably he had lost just as much as she had if not more. Dimmed lights, strategically placed candles, and a plainspoken eloquence on the part of Reverend Arsenault created a moving service, though Yolande did not allow herself to be moved. She was not ready for that yet. Afterwards the survivors removed the candles and the Beausoleil turned the lights back on and its officers departed to allow the survivors time alone. The Beausoleil remained in avatar form because there was no point pretending that she wouldn’t have been there anyway, and in any case the survivors wanted the ship visibly there, because they had questions.
Yolande had declined the opportunity to chair the meeting that followed. She was only responsible for her immediate family now. One of the more prominent personalities from the medical bunker called the meeting to order from the theatre’s stage, an older man with fashionably long white hair and expensive looking silver spectacles by the name of Jocelyn Bastien. Apparently, he’d held a prominent administrative position on the Northumberland.
Bastien droned on, evidently having mistaken this for a board meeting. Yolande paid little attention to what he was saying, aside from observing that he had a habit of saying “the reality is” a lot. The reality is we’re going to be here a while, it’s only a matter of time until they start rationing food. The reality is we’re going to need to be organized, and so on. The reality was Yolande was starting to resent the sound of his voice. What did Bastien know about reality? They were all inconsequential, fragile beyond comprehension. Tiny specks in a puny ship in the vastness of space. It was only a matter of time until reality snuffed them all out just as it had so many of their loved ones.
Her breathing felt off. The stuffy air inside the theatre was incapable of sustaining life. Her life, at least. She needed to be someplace else—with her daughter, Marie-Josée. She forced herself to stay put. A tiny part of her wanted to know what everyone else was thinking. She would visit Marie-Josée as soon as the meeting was over.
In front of her, Mathieu thrust a thick arm in the air. He didn’t wait to be called upon before speaking. The words spilled out of him like water from an over-pressurized hose, blasting Jocelyn Bastien mid-drone. “Where are they taking us? I need to know where we’re going. Can anyone tell me that? Does anybody even know?”
Distaste registered briefly on Jocelyn’s face. Yolande understood why: there was something off-putting about Mathieu. Something beyond the young man’s outlandish beard and skittish manner. Mostly it was that he was afraid. They all were, but not like Mathieu: fear radiated off him like a fever—a disease nobody else wanted to catch.
Jocelyn composed his features into a smile. “Why don’t we save our questions for later? There are a few pressing matters I’d like to address first.”
Mathieu lowered his arm and hunched forward. Yolande wondered, not without compassion, what the future held for the fearful young man. The last few days had obviously pushed him to the brink. She did not think his future looked promising. But then, it didn’t look all that bright for any of them.
From her seat in the front row, Reverend Arsenault turned around. “Those are good questions, Mathieu. We’ll make sure we get to them.”
The Reverend’s words provoked a frown from Jocelyn Bastien.
Mathieu nodded but didn’t appear any less miserable.
Bertrand groaned and shifted beside Yolande. He didn’t like sitting too long in one spot: his back, probably. A woman started talking. Yolande closed her eyes and tried to ignore her. She decided that she would read to her daughter later. Even though Marie-Josée was unconscious maybe she would be able to register Yolande’s words on some level. It couldn’t hurt to try. But what story?
The woman’s harsh voice was like someone snapping their fingers in Yolande’s face.
“What I would like to know,” the woman concluded, “is who can take that on?”
Yolande opened her eyes to find the woman staring straight at her from the stage.
“Take what on?” she asked, startled.
“Yvette thinks we ought to have a special liaison to the captain,” Evelyn whispered, from Bertrand’s side.
“Oh.” Yolande had no interest in that.
Her attention wandered again. She made up her mind to read a contemporary Akkadian thriller to Marie-Josée.
Someone said her name. She looked up. Now Jocelyn Bastien was staring at her.
“What about you, Mrs. Doucette?” he said.
“What about me?”
“Would you like to represent us to the captain?”
No. No, she certainly would not. She had already agreed to take on technologist work. That was quite enough, and she had only accepted that because she hoped it would provide a distraction from her troubles.
The Beausoleil said, “I think that’s a lovely idea.”
“No, thank you,” Yolande said politely.
“In fact,” the Beausoleil said, “I discussed it with the captain just now and she tells me that she would very much like to have the opportunity to work with you.”
“That settles it then,” Jocelyn said, with finality. “Good. Thank you. Moving on—”
Over the years Yolande had discovered that it was necessary to speak over some men. She did so now. “It’s not settled. I said no and I meant no. You’ll have to pick someone else.”
Awkward silence.
“Are you sure?” Jocelyn asked. “You’d have the opportunity to—”
She spoke over him again. “I’m not interested. Okay? So why don’t you just—”
She had been perilously close to suggesting that Jocelyn do something obscene when Mathieu interrupted her. “I’ll do it. I’ll be the–the link or liaison or whatever you call it.”
“Oh,” Jocelyn said. “I don’t—”
“Let him do it,” Yolande said sharply. “He’ll be terrific.” She seriously doubted that, but Mathieu needed a distraction even more than she did.
Jocelyn looked sceptical but shrugged.
Reverend Arsenault said, “I think it’s a great idea. Thank you for volunteering, Mathieu.”
Mathieu folded back up into himself.
Leitte’s husband spoke up, Monsieur Ste-Croix—Yolande had forgotten his first name, if she’d ever known it. “Look everyone. What do we know about what’s actually going on? I mean about the war, where this ship’s headed, and so on.”
“Ship, what can you tell us?” Reverend Arsenault asked.
If it bothered Mathieu that he had been ignored while this man had not for posing pretty much the same questions, he didn’t let on.
“I can’t tell you much concerning the activities of this vessel,” the Beausoleil responded. “Certainly nothing of a military nature. All I can tell you about the war you probably already know.”
“Where are we going?” Liette asked.
The Beausoleil shook her head. “I can’t say.”
“How long until we get there?” Liette persisted.
The Beausoleil only smiled.
Others took turns asking the ship questions. Colette Letourneau, mother of two boys, asked, “Are we still in regular space?”
Yolande was pretty sure that they weren’t. She’d felt the transition to the aether, subtle yet discernible. The Beausoleil confirmed that they had been in the aether for a while now.
Yannick Shequin had lost one of his three daughters on the Northumberland. He asked, “When are we going back to Akkadia?”
“I’m sorry, Monsieur Shequin,” the Beausoleil said. “I don’t know the answer to that.”
Chauvet Dabat was all that remained of his family. Solemnly, he asked, “Will we even make it back home?”
“If any ship of the line can make that happen, I can,” the Beausoleil said. “And if any crew can, it’s mine.” From her it sounded like a fact rather than a boast.
Loiseau de Chamberlin, all of nine years old, asked, “Will I ever see my friends again?”
“I don’t know,” the Beausoleil told the child gently. “But you will make many friends in your life, of that I am sure.”
Loiseau accepted that.
Elderly, dignified Eschevin Landreville asked, “Beausoleil. You are, as you say, a ship of the line. You have seen action already in this war. You are likely to see it again. Is our presence here going to hinder your ability to do what you need to do?”
The Beausoleil did not hesitate. She did not need to, processing her response in less time than it took for a human to fire a single neuron. “Much will depend on you,” she told Monsieur Landreville. “But I feel your presence will help. Some of you possess skills that will prove useful and may well tip the balance in our favour.”
“And the rest of us just need to stay out of the way,” quipped Obin Paradis, a thirty-something engineer whose cheerful disposition irritated Yolande.
When it became apparent that the ship really would not tell the survivors where it was going and what it was up to, Jocelyn Bastien turned to Bertrand. By now, everyone knew that Bertrand was a journalist. “What about you, Monsieur Doucette? What have you managed to find out?”
Bertrand wilted at having been called upon. He could not answer and Bastien damned well knew it. Yolande glared at the man. There was a moment of awkward silence before Bastien moved on. Sympathy for her husband washed over Yolande.
She placed a hand on his knee.
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This has been an installment of the ongoing serial Captain’s Away! A Strange Dimensions book.
Also by Joe Mahoney: A Time and a Place
An unlikely hero travels to other worlds and times to save a boy who does not want to be saved in this unique and imaginative adventure, by turns comic and tragic.
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