Frowning, she surveyed the layer of flotsam just below the forecastle’s railing. Twisted bits of the ship’s collapsed lift balloon, the trailing reinforced lines, and jagged edges of other ruined trash. Hazardous to try and push through in her suit, and likely to tangle up in her own line. Worse, something sharp and unseen in that mess might sever it entirely.
Imagining worst-case scenarios triggered her captain’s paranoia, and she looked up. Nothing felt good about being this far from her ship and crew, and without comms. But the skies were clear. Wind Sabre was still alone up there.
She flipped the bar around in her grip and gave the iced hinges an angry whack with the sally bar’s hammer end. Frost flew off in chips, but the metal itself only dented. Flattened hinges wouldn’t rotate any better than frozen ones. She put the bar away and cursed its failure under her breath. There was also a portable blowtorch on her belt, but it didn’t have a large paraffin tank. She’d meant to save it in case she ran into a vault door below, but if she couldn’t get that far, there was no use in having it.
A small jet of blue flame popped to life as she opened the torch’s valve and hit the striker. With the line wrapped around her elbow to keep it out of the way, she worked the torch back and forth over the frozen hinges with one hand and pulled on the stubborn hatch with the other.
The ice gave up its hold quickly, and Talis pushed the hatch open all the way. Darkness below. The lamp on her shoulder came to life at a flick of a toggle switch on her belt. To reduce the height of the drop, she sat with her legs dangling into the forecastle cabin. Took a big inhale, as though about to drop into a pool of water, then let herself down into The Emerald Empress’s dark interior.
There were a couple of possible ship designs that would have placed the great cabin at the bow, but she wasn’t that lucky. From the multitude of hammocks, this was clearly crew quarters. Something crunched under her boot, and she looked down. Her light fell across the brittle frozen wrist she had stepped on. She shuddered. Instinctively tried to kick the body away, but frost had sealed it to the deck. She closed her eyes for a moment, tried to pretend she was anywhere else. Her breathing slowed.
Assuming the ring was with The Emerald Empress’s captain, and assuming the captain was in his quarters, Talis needed to make her way aft. After a self-indulgent look back up at the open skies above, she secured her line on a hammock cleat to keep it from rubbing on the edge of the hatch.
With a kick, the door swung out—or rather, down. The layer of loose garbage was thickest overhead, giving her clear space to rappel down the slope of the ship’s middle deck. To either side, over the railing, there was more to see of open skies than if she looked up. Shadows from the shifting debris crawled across the deck, only allowing a teasing dapple of light. She left her lamp on. Her breathing, it occurred to her, sounded a little uneven. From moving in this gods-rotted heavy suit, she told herself.
The ship creaked as she landed against the central deckhouse, sending a ripple of noise through the air. The echoes ricocheted off the frozen field of trash above her. She stood, muscles tense, until they stopped. Nothing else moved or shifted, and she turned back to the cabin at the stern and its handsome wooden door. The great cabin.
The frost thinned and disappeared as she continued aft. The humidity was low in the thin atmo here. No chance for surfaces to collect the sparkling ice as they froze. Though her suit was even more cumbersome as it got colder, the extreme chill was a blessing in its own way. Hinges turning properly, the heavy door opened outward and fell back against the cabin wall. The impact sent echoes skittering across the ship again.
The regal wooden furniture of the great cabin was either bolted down or secured on ratcheting rails, but everything else had been rearranged by the deck’s sickening tilt. Bedding and personal items piled against the cabinets along the decking. The captain lay silhouetted against the wide window built along the stern, his head turned to one side. Only the glass separated him from the twinkling stars beyond. He was laying on his right arm, with his left hand out as though he’d attempted to brace against the tumble. The fingers splayed against the thick glass.
Talis let her line out to cross to the aft window. Tried not to look beyond the windowpanes. She was as skysure as any Cutter, but the emptiness outside Peridot was something else entirely. Infinite, soulless, the vacuum beckoned to her.
She braced her feet against the frame of the window to avoid stepping on the glass, which already had a diagonal split running across it. Death pallor faded the captain’s skin, as the frost had muted the paint on the hull outside. The knotted prayerlocks of Cutter religion were tangled around his head. A cream-colored ribbon still looped around a few of them at the nape of his neck. Must have come loose during whatever tragedy sunk The Emerald Empress.
His forehead had a blunt-force wound corresponding to the starburst center of the crack in the glass. Dark blood streaked his face.
Lucky bastard was dead before he could freeze.
Lifting him up by his torso,
