Captain's Away! Chapter Twenty-Three
"The Commander"
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.
Now, having been rescued by the Akkadian starship Beausoleil, Yolande Doucette has taken their daughter Marie-Josée to the ship’s sickbay while Bertrand settles into the ship’s gym with the rest of the survivors.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“The Commander”
While Yolande was away, the fusiliers took Bertrand’s group to the ship’s gym, which wasn’t far away. The athletic equipment in the gym had been pushed up against the bulkheads allowing for cots to be placed on the laminate flooring in rows next to one another. Home, Bertrand realized, for the next little while. The survivors that had been shuttled over earlier had already settled in. Bertrand spotted Evelyn and her mother and exchanged a wave. Liette and her husband had claimed a couple of cots in a corner. From the look of Liette’s belly soon they would need three. Ponytailed Beardo had chosen a cot in the middle of the gym. He was sitting there now, cross-legged, eyes closed, not bothering anybody for a change. Reverend Arsenault had yet to arrive. Bertrand knew that the reverend would wait until everyone else had been removed from the emergency bunker safely before allowing herself to be transported over.
The gym was small and afforded no privacy, but compared to the rest of the ship it was well lit. A little too well lit. Bertrand hoped they had some means of dimming the lights when it was supposed to be ship’s night. He claimed two mats as far away from Beardo as he could manage.
Yolande arrived half an hour later, escorted by a fusilier. She made a beeline for Bertrand. Bertrand had been afraid that she would use this opportunity to try to distance herself further from him, but she didn’t, and thank God for that.
A few minutes later a uniformed man arrived and addressed them from the front of the room.
“Can I have your attention please? Thank you. My name is Commander Choki Saito. Welcome aboard the Beausoleil. All of us here are doing our best to make you comfortable. We’ll have some food brought to you shortly. You’ll have access to medical staff immediately.”
The Commander paused, gathering his thoughts, perhaps. He looked quite young to Bertrand. Older than he looked, maybe.
“You’ve been through a lot,” Saito said. “I can’t even begin to imagine. I—”
“Why did you leave us alone for so long?” Beardo interrupted him.
Bertrand groaned. Oh, here we go.
“We thought you were going to abandon us!” someone else shouted.
A chorus of voices erupted. Bertrand shared some of these sentiments too, but he said nothing, not that he could have. He just listened.
The Commander held his hands up, palms out, and didn’t speak until the voices subsided. “I’ll do my best to answer your questions honestly. I may not be able to tell you everything. You should know that this is a military ship in a time of war, a war that is escalating rapidly. The Beausoleil has a particular role to play. We didn’t anticipate taking on… passengers. It’s a fluke that we were in this region of space at all. Just in the right place at the right time. We didn’t take you aboard immediately because of other factors at play.”
There were shouts of “What factors?” and “What could be more important than saving lives?” and so on.
The Commander waited patiently for the voices to die down. He was quite poised for one so young.
“The important thing is we did take you aboard,” Commander Saito pointed out. “Captain Khiboda made the call herself. It was, in the end, the right thing to do. But here’s the thing. We can’t take you to another station right away, and Miscouche is out of the question.”
He raised his voice slightly to override objections. “We will get you someplace secure as soon as we can. Also—and this is critical—you need to know that there are areas on this ship that are off limits to civilians. You do not have the run of the ship. You do have access to the Beausoleil’s interface. Isn’t that right, ship?”
An avatar materialized beside the Commander in the form of a pleasant looking woman about Bertrand’s age. She was wearing an Akkadian uniform with no rank insignia. “That is correct, Commander.”
“The Beausoleil will be only too happy to tell you what’s off limits and answer any other questions you may have. Now. Anything else you’d like to ask me before I return to my duties?”
There were a few, most of them run of the mill, such as what’s for lunch, where are the washrooms, would they be remaining in normal space long, and so forth. The Commander informed them that they would be having pressed turkey for lunch, that the washrooms were just over there, and that they would be shifting to the aether soon, but that most people probably wouldn’t notice the transition because the ship was so well shielded.
Beyond that Bertrand barely listened, too busy fantasizing ways that Alain could have survived the destruction of the Northumberland. He still absolutely refused to believe that his son was anything other than alive. He wondered how to convince Yolande of that. He was vaguely aware that Yolande had her hand up when the Commander finally called upon her.
“Commander, if this is a ship of war, and we’re at war, and you can’t drop us off anywhere soon, where are you—we—headed?”
A darned good question. As a journalist, Bertrand wished that he had been the one to ask it.
“I can’t tell you that, I’m afraid. The Beausoleil will take the rest of your questions. Thank you for listening.” Commander Saito spun on his heels and left the room.
Leaving Bertrand to wonder whether they might have been safer on board the emergency bunker.
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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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