Tolly Ignacio stared southward across a waterless pond.
A brace of pond skimmers lay by the waterline, dried and curled like broken straw. Around the pond, a clearing of fallen enik tree trunks and ash spread out a kilometre in each direction. Tolly sat on a charred stump at the pond's edge, charcoal muddying up her coveralls as veiled sunlight warmed her olive skin.
Far off and nearing the horizon, a coupling of topwalkers led their younglings away after having their fill of sodden ash. The creatures were fantastically tall, the foals walking on six needle-like appendages, while the adults walked on ten. Each of them walked only a portion of their available legs, resting the others for the long walk across the burnt forest, always staying ahead of wildfire. The resting legs raised high doubled as heat sinks on which expanded foil-like ridges, syphoning off the worst of the day's sunlight. It was from this perfection of nature in these harsh wilds that gave people the idea for the firecrawler. Tolly came to see this family of topwalkers as often as she could, whenever her firecrawler passed through this valley at this particularly familiar pond.
The pond had been waterless for nearly a day, its normally jade waters having only recently dried. The pitch beneath her feet was still warm from when the last wildfire rolled through. The topwalkers, pond skimmers, and several other hardy creatures emerged from their places of refuge after the fires passed by.
Tolly looked up at the faded stars, barely visible through the atmosphere lit by early morning sun. She thought about how beautiful this scene would be if she had been here before the wildfires passed through, draining the pond and levelling the forest, as it did every week or so.
"Ignacio! What are you staring at?" Tolly heard a distant voice say from atop the three-storey tall firecrawler behind her. Looking up, she could see Connor's head, nearly as small as a pond skimmer from where she sat on the ground. His head poked out over the crawler's mid-level railing as he said something else that was lost in the distance between them.
"You're too far, Connor. Just open a bulletin!" Tolly yelled back at him.
"Hold on, signal's out again," he barked. "I'll be right down!"
Connor's head burst back out of sight, and Tolly heard the dull whine from the firecrawler's access elevator's winch. Tolly let out a grunt as she tried to recenter herself. Her focus wandered back towards the topwalkers, the pondless pit, and the ashen ground blowing in the wind. After a minute or two, the lift screeched to a halt, as did any hope she might've still had of concentration.
The lift slammed unceremoniously into the ground, kicking up a slew of ash and dust. Connor stepped out before the doors had a chance to open fully, squeezing his way through the slowly widening gap. He took off in a gallop across the moistened, fallen logs, stumbling twice as he headed towards her. Tolly swivelled on her stump, turning to face him.
"This should be good if you had to come all this way."
Connor came to a full stop, gasping for air. He leaned down on his knees with sweaty palms.
"Shit, are you in pale shape. Did you need something, or are you just out for a jog?" Tolly said. Connor straightened his coveralls.
"I..." he began, wincing for breath. Tolly started to stand, thinking she could slip away as he struggled. He raised a finger and pointed downward for her to sit.
"I thought... you could use more... Connor in your life." he chuckled through grit teeth. "Besides, I know you've been aching for more time with your only friend on this rust bucket. Am I warm?"
"Dismal," Tolly mocked. "Now, let's hear it."
"The captain..." he started again. "Groen is looking for you."
"Looking for me?"
"Yep. He asked me to track you down. Seems important."
"And you ran all the way down here for that?"
"Communications are down – no bulletins in or out. That's why he asked me to get you," Connor said, his voice finally calmed.
Tolly let out a relieved sigh. The last time the Captain had called her like this, he had just put a quickbolt through his forearm. The communications array, however, was something different.
"That's it?" she grumbled and asked if Connor had sent Phillipe, the smallest and most junior crewman, to clean the filter last week as she'd asked.
He shook his head, no.
"Just get him up there. It's likely the area's overheated and needs a reset after all this direct sunlight we've had this season. Let's just hope the control board is not fried again, or the Captain will ship me back to Risen at the next stopover."
"Will do, Commander," Connor said, giving her a half-cocked salute.
Although technically the second in command aboard the firecrawler known as Perun, Tolly shied away from using any sort of title. She had been brought on board nearly two years ago, back when she had dropped out of vocational training at The Academy. The Perun's captain, who also happened to be her blowhard, mountain-sized uncle Groen Ignacio, had invited her as part of a sort of familial obligation. Maybe he felt sympathy that Tolly's mother was dead, her father was gods knew where, and her sister had put everything she could into raising Tolly and sending her to The Academy in the first place. Whatever fate had for her, she was here now, where she figured she would be spending the next decade of her so far hapless life.
"I've asked you not to call me that," she said, testy.
"Okay, okay. Skip over the part where you bite my head off. When can I tell the old man he can expect you?"
"Well. This moment is ruined." She said, gesturing outward to the pond. She stood. "Tell him I'm headed straight up."
"Right," Connor said, tossing another playful salute.
Connor turned and trotted back towards the crawler's lift, his lanky limbs flailing as he strode.
"Connor!" she yelled after him. "Get Phillipe up to those filters. Gods be damned if I have to get up there myself."
Connor gave her a thumbs-up as he slipped back into the lift.
Tolly started back towards the firecrawler, but not before getting one last look at the pond. This patch of ash felt different now, but she just couldn't understand why. Tolly looked down to see that a sprouting had popped up between her boots, a small coiled green twig poking out from under the ash. Looking around, she could see more sprouts had started to break through.
As she headed up the slight slope toward the crawler, more and more enik sprouts rose, multiplying as they did after each fire. In a matter of days, the forest would return, the pond would swell, and the pond skimmers lucky enough to have buried themselves deep beneath the last wildfire would dance again across the water's surface, preparing for the next blaze.
"Tolly, my dear," said Uncle Groen as she entered, seated at his office desk, between bites of his smoked meat sandwich. "Take a seat."
"Captain," she said, sitting across from him and using his formal title. Whether he liked or disliked that as much as she did, he never showed.
Groen was large for a man his age, with a long, shaved upper lip. His beard hung nearly a foot from his chin and was woven into a series of knots and braids. Tolly always thought he looked how an ape might if you dyed its fur white.
Charts and other disparate papers were crumpled, torn, and scattered across his desk. Several days' worth of coffee mugs, some knocked over, their contents long ago absorbed into the papers' fibres. On the wallscreen, a map of the surrounding Malfjordur valley was split by a blue-lit string of markers, destinations for their next stops.
Groen started to speak again. Interrupted by a piece of stray pastrami that made a break for his windpipe, he held out his hand and pointed to a glass of water on the desk just out of reach. With the back of her palm, she maneuvered the glass around a roll of maps and over to him.
"Captain, if this is about the communications array..." Tolly started.
He gulped. "No, no. Not that. Communications are fine as far as I am aware." he said, glancing at the green connection status on the wallscreen.
Connor, she thought. She would get back at him for that.
"Then why—?"
"No, I've called you here because I need to size you up," he interrupted.
If she didn't look confused before, now she definitely did.
"It pained me to see when your father left. Felt a sort of l'appel du vide, that one. Never could sit still for long. I guess I'm not too far off from that myself. And you know, Tolly, I would never leave you in a situation I didn't think you could succeed in."
What did he mean, leave?
"Now–"
"What do you mean, leave?" she pressed.
"–I've only got a year left on my contract with the guild."
She saw where this was going.
"You can stop right there," she interrupted.
Now it was his turn to look confused.
"I'll save you the trouble of letting me down gently. You know I'm not cut out for this work. I know it. The entire crew can see it." Tolly's heart fluttered as she spoke. "I will spare you the trouble and just get off at the next port."
"Whoa! That's not what I– what I'm trying to say is if you want my job when my contract is up, it's yours. I've watched you work. I know you can handle the crew, especially that Connor boy.
"Oh!" Tolly froze. Of all the things that had just been racing through her head, this certainly was not one of them. "Uh..."
"No need to answer yet," Groen grinned a wide, bearded smile, "You have just under a month to file the paperwork for your promotion. That is... If you don't think I should give it to Connor instead? Or perhaps Phillipe?"
Tolly was stiff in her chair.
As much as I'd like to see those halfwits fail... she thought.
"What about Marco?" she asked, "he's got seniority."
"Sure, he's got seniority. But his heart's never really been in it, you know?" Groen shrugged. "Besides, Silva is all he's ever wanted, and they're a packaged deal now. Something I might now go out after myself..."
With only a distant thrum of the engine to be heard, the long moment of silence was interrupted by the appearance of Connor's face on the wallscreen.
"Bulletin's back up, sir," Connor said, the translucent sapphire holo of his head flexing as he spoke.
"Excellent to hear, Ensign Henrik," Groen began, speaking to Connor's three-dimensional face. "Now get The Perun battened down. We're southward in thirty."
Connor nodded, his visage flickering out of existence.
"Thirty minutes, sir?" Tolly asked.
"Might as well get a move on the next harvest. Thinking, gods willing, that we might make it back to port a little early this time around. Might even make it back to Risen for the festival." Groen said.
"A festival, sir?" Tolly asked.
"Seems some dignitary of sorts and her entourage are making a stopover to our little backwater world. The whispers on the bulletins were deaf to why, though."
"Did they say who the dignitary was?"
"Nope." He took another giant bite of his sandwich, some crumbs tumbling into his beard. "Gods, I can't remember the last time anyone important came to town. Matriarch Lathe must be bored near to death up in her white tower, attending state function after state function. I know I would be were I her."
Tolly smirked.
"I'll bet, given a chance, you'd die to live up there with her. Or at the least, eat yourself into an early grave."
"You might have me there. Especially with her," said Groen, laughing and wagging the deteriorating sandwich in her direction.
"The gods aren't that kind, uncle." She was laughing now too.
After the giggling subsided, Groen said, ushering her out the door, "No. No... I would rather spend my days down here in the dust with you, my dear."
That night, back in her quarters, Tolly stripped out of her coveralls and sprawled out on her bed. The hangman fliers from the morning still flitted about in her head. She could even feel the slow breeze come in from across the pond, or was that just the crawler's air recycler?
She thought of the conversation she'd had with her Uncle. She thought of him retiring, an odd thing to consider. The idea of him sitting in one place for more than an hour perplexed her. Maybe, when he did retire, he might travel. He might go out and see the other worlds in the Federation, or even farther than that. There was plenty to see in the space beyond their solar system, worlds that she'd only ever heard of in stories or history books at The Academy.
One day, Tolly knew she would go out and see the stars. But for now, at least, she was stuck in the dust, and as luck—or what an outside observer could misconstrue as luck—would have it, Tolly was set to become the matriarch of her little corner of the planet, even if it never really stayed in the same place for long.
Tolly was undoubtedly grateful to Groen for inviting her aboard the firecrawler these last four seasons. Hell, it wasn't as if she had much else to do ever since she left The Academy. A bitter stain on her past, Tolly was glad to have moved on from it. The one silver lining from her time at The Academy was that it was where she had met Connor.
As lanky then as he was now, Connor was always one to cheer her up on those occasional times she needed support. In fact, when Tolly had been passed over for her degree for the third year in a row, it was Connor who had tugged on Uncle Groen's heartstrings to invite Tolly onto the crew in the first place.
It had been rough at first, transitioning from a planned path, from when she first dissected a pond skimmer in junior academy to a life surrounded by gruff men aboard a firecrawler. But somehow, she had managed.
The firecrawler Perun was, like it or not, her home now. A gigantic bundle of poorly managed parts, The Perun was a miracle for even staying together for as long as it had. The triple-decker factory on dozens of articulated spider-leg-like stilts was a marvel of engineering; at least, it was when it had been built nearly a century prior.
And Tolly, at twenty-six Earth-standard years, had decided she would be the next captain of it all. For now, at least.
Excited about her decision, Tolly had to tell someone. She rolled over and hit call next to Connor's face on the wallscreen by her bed.
It wasn't until the call was ringing until she realized that she was still lying on her cot near-naked. Quickly, she scrambled over to the edge of the bed to slip something on.
"Yeah?" Connor asked a groggy husk.
"Oh, forget it," Tolly said, reaching to end the call.
"Hold on," he said. She could hear rustling in the background, succeeded by a dull thump.
"Ow," he croaked, his face had slipped out of view of the wall screen.
"You're an idiot," said Tolly.
Connor's face slid back into view.
"Sorry, slipped off my cot. You were saying?"
"Captain's retiring," Tolly said bluntly.
"Gods. Really? Never thought I'd see the century he'd finally retire. You're sure? Who told you?"
"He sure is. Told me in his office before the crawler went legs up. I'm not sure he's ready for retired life."
"It's a strange thought, him trapped in one city for the rest of his life. Never setting foot on The Perun again may halve his life expectancy."
"Strange? I guess so," she said, bemused. "I trust he's doing what's best."
"Speaking of what's best," Connor continued. His voice grew louder, and he sounded suddenly more awake. "Any spark on who's set to replace him?"
"Well…" Tolly cringed slightly. She hoped he didn't see.
"No way!" Connor barked. "I would say congratulations, but you would just snap it back at me."
"You know me too well."
"Well, gods, congratulations anyway. The Perun will love to have you. Better be a decent pay raise in it for you from The Ministry," Connor said, referring to the state-run organization that leased the crew and firecrawler rigs out to respective captains.
"That's the thing. Signing on as a captain means the paychecks stop. I'll be living solely off of profits made from each harvest." Tolly explained.
"Gods... no wonder Old Groen is always so uppity running into each harvest," he said, using a moniker for the captain he would never dare use in any other company.
Tolly went silent, the thought of the pressure she was considering taking on suddenly penetrating her calm. It was all she could focus on. She let out a heavy sigh.
"Tolly?" Connor said
She could hear him, but it seemed like his voice was coming through a locked door, down the hall, around the corner, and outside the porthole of a sinking ship. She tried to answer, but nothing rose to the surface.
Connor, having known Tolly for years, now sensed what was wrong.
"Tolly, listen." His tone changed, coming at her like a flood. "Tolly, there's no need to get bent out of shape over this. You said it yourself. The decision is long-off; you don't need to make it tonight. Bullying yourself into a corner here is not going to help you make any decisions."
His words hurt, but Tolly let him continue.
"...All you need to do now is sleep. You and me, we can weigh the pros and cons in the morning, okay? Once you see it laid out in soot and sod, I'm sure I can make you see that you will be perfect for the position. Just hang in there," he urged.
"Thanks," Tolly said, finding her way back to the surface.
"There. That's better." Connor grinned.
"I get the appeal, being the captain and all. I'm just not sure I'm cut out for it," she said.
"You say that now. Besides, if you don't take it, I sure as shit-earth will."
"And if you did, we'd be a roasted-out husk in a month," she smiled.
"Easy now. And I was going to give you a raise as Captain."
"Yeah, I'd bet you were—"
Tolly was cut off by a barely audible crash coming from the deck above. An alarm chirped thrice and sent a panic through her chest.
"What was–" Tolly started to say when the bulletin dropped.
"Connor? Connor!" Tolly's heart leapt from her chest, and she rushed to the door.
The door panel was dead, so she busted open the emergency lever above the door frame and cranked it. Grunting and flexing, she slid open the door.
From down the corridor, alarms sounded, and amber warning lamps flared, turning the walls into glimpses of sudden sunset.
Across the hall, Silva and Marco, working together, were prying open the door to their quarters.
"Any news on what this is, Tolly?" Marco said between grunts.
"No word, bulletins are down," said Tolly.
"Again?" Silva chirped. "I'll bet we have Connor to thank for that."
"We don't know that, dear," Marco said.
"Well, we'll have to blame someone for this," Silva said as she squeezed out of their quarters. Marco followed close behind her.
The three headed down the hall, letting the flashes of warning light illuminate their way through the dim space of the interior corridors. The sun had risen higher in the sky, its light still struggling to worm its way around corners and into the deeper areas of the vessel.
Tolly came to a halt when she reached the nearest viewing deck. Stepping out onto the glass-domed space, she knew something was very wrong.
"The Perun's not moving..." she said, her heart sinking to the forest floor. Marco's eyes widened.
"What do you mean, not moving?" Silva asked, catching up and pushing pasted them.
"She means the legs have stopped. We are at a standstill. The explosion, whatever it was, seems to have ceased all locomotion," Marco explained.
Silva's eyes widened also.
"What's worse," Marco continued, "...is that a storm front?" he said, pointing to the clouds rolling in from across the valley. "I have been tracking that storm for days. It was on my recommendation that we left the last site early. If that mass passes even near us, the rain will come."
"With the rain," Silva said, picking up her husband's thought, "the ash will liquefy, and if that happens, the crawler will sink with no hope in green old earth that we'll be able to dig her out before the next wildfire passes through."
"What do we hope to–" Marco started to say.
"We find the captain," Tolly affirmed, surprising herself with a burst of willpower. "We find the captain, and we get the power back."
Thunder hissed from across the ash as if on cue. The three flinched. A cracked whip of lightning trailed behind, lighting their faces between the orange flares. More bodies ran through the halls now as others freed themselves from confinement in their quarters. One familiar face stopped briefly to yell at them to hustle to the mess hall.
"Captain's called a general meet," Phillipe said, "–'spects us to be there in five." Phillipe didn't wait for a response, disappearing as soon as he'd appeared. It was probably a good thing; he didn't stay long enough to recognize the horror that paralyzed their three faces.
Marco was the first to speak.
"Well, the kid said it. We better get going. The Captain will know more. Hopefully, he's already got a way out of this," he grabbed Silva's hand firmly, tugging her toward the hall. Silva grabbed Tolly's and pulled her with them. When the three of them reached the mess, the most expansive room on the ship now seemed somehow small.
"Gods, they're packing in like cattle," Silva scoffed.
"Most people I've seen here ever. Are there really this many crewmen aboard The Perun?" Tolly said, momentarily thinking back to her taking over command of The Perun and feeling selfish. The whole thought now made her feel silly.
"No," Marco said to break some of the tension, "must just be a convention in town."
Tolly knew the number: there were precisely two hundred and thirteen crewmen aboard the crawler during peak season. But as this wasn't peak season, and the total was somewhere closer to sixty or seventy. Most of the crew was spread out evenly between night, morning, afternoon, and evening shifts, with most of the actual work handled by automation, so it wasn't uncommon to be understaffed even during the slow seasons. But knowing and seeing, she felt, were two very different things.
Tolly recognized Phillipe and some of the crewmen standing around, gossiping with him. For a kid not even seventeen, he sure made friends fast.
Tolly, Marco and Silva squeezed past a few large men cowering by the doorway and moved over to Phillipe.
"...and then we'll have to leave the whole haul to burn," one of Phillipe's cronies finished saying, yelling over the alarms.
"It won't come to that," Marco interjected. "I'm sure the captain's already got a solution cooking."
The alarms ceased, and the lights flashed back on as the hum of a generator kicked in. The crew seemed to relax, and the ones by the door stopped forcing their way in.
Groen stepped up on a tabletop, and a crewman, who Tolly was surprised to see was Connor, handed him a bullhorn.
"Can everyone 'ear me?" The captain's voice wailed, causing a cringe to ripple through the crowd. He handed the bullhorn back to Connor, who quickly fiddled with the controls and passed it back to the captain.
"Better?" His amplified voice echoed comfortably about the room.
"Now then," Groen started, "you've all no doubt been speculating about the cause of the blast. And I wanted to clear up right now that the blast has not caused any lasting damages."
Tolly caught that one; lasting damages.
"The blast occurred in an auxiliary rotary, one that directly controls articulation of the portside graspers. The damage to the rotary has been isolated and is being assessed as to what can be done to rectify it. However, there is a better than good chance that the portside harvester will be down and out for the season."
Groen paused, his voice suddenly becoming heavy.
"Now to the shit. The blast wasn't the main issue, merely a side effect of the overall ailment within The Perun. The damage to the auxiliary rotary showed us, and thanks to Connor, our new acting head of general engineering, for finding this."
Tolly was taken aback by this. Until this evening, the head of engineering was Braustur Hurns, definitely not Connor.
"What happened to Hurns?" barked a crewman who was too deep in the crowd for Tolly to see.
"What happened to Hurns..." the captain let out a heavy sigh, "Mister Hurns suffered fatal injuries while trying to isolate the blast to the auxiliary. Without his sacrifice, I'm afraid The Perun would already be well on its way to a burning wreck."
The crowd began to roil at this. Chatter started to rise, forcing the captain to slam his boot down on the table.
"I am sorry, but there will be time to discuss and mourn later," Groen said firmly. He tugged at his beard. "What was I saying? Ah yes. The damage was just a sign of larger problems within the crawler's upgrav field generator, which has suffered a breach in the main coolant line in an unshielded section of the lower deck."
Tolly felt her hair rise on the back of her neck. She could sense where this was going.
"Now, while this damage is repairable, it does present a problem that will need a clear decision, a decision I don't believe I, even as your captain, can make. We have tried to shut down and isolate the generator, but I am afraid we will need to patch the coolant line before proceeding. To make matters worse, as some of you may be aware, a storm front is set to pass through our position, and I aim to have us moving before it does because without the upgrav, we won't be able to dig ourselves out, and I don't believe help will arrive in time. I have requested assistance from the nearest research station, but so far, they are grounded by the storm. It looks like we're on our own."
"Friends, what I need to ask of you is not easy. The generator cannot be patched without those doing the patching taking in a lethal amount of radiation. I am afraid we must decide which three souls will be taking a one-way ticket to the gods."
"It will take at least four to make those repairs!" Silva shouted.
"Right you are, Steward Fisk." Groen said, his grip tightening on the bullhorn, "I will be the fourth."