Chapter 6:
Sunday, June 11th, 2243
The Lady Grey
On the North Atlantic
The lifeboats were being battened down; in the heavy, dim, gray predawn light, the rain had mostly turned to a cold but faint drizzle. A few of the shell-shocked Wildstorm survivors threw in and helped the Lady Grey’s crew secure the deck gear and work on putting her back in Bristol fashion, or they watched as off some ways away, the last of the Wildstorm vanished below the waves. Everyone else was just trying to recover or help their rescues recover.
Except Corry.
He would have stopped and taken a moment to admire that camaraderie, if not for the frantic searching he was doing.
There was at least three feet of water in the hold. He’d headed down there right after leaving Sean because he’d thought maybe Scotty would have tried to get at the damage from the bilge, and the only way to get there was from the hold. He’d gone down there expecting to find Lewis, Scotty and repairs already underway.
Cor had known that his ship was damaged. Had known it was a potentially mortal wound. He’d known it. But until he saw that black water rolling like an ocean inside of her hull, a miniature tide answering to the waves down there in the dark, he hadn’t realized how badly.
No one was down there, and it was only then that he remembered what Scotty had said--
“--so any repairs'll have to be done from outside--”
--and he turned and pounded up the stairs, past the over-occupied gun deck, up onto the main deck and that was when he ran right into Lewis, who was throwing himself down from the quarterdeck, eyes filled with fear and -- so much worse -- apology.
He knew the horrible truth the instant before Lewis even opened his mouth to say, “He’s not aboard. But there’s a rope anchored to the stern taffrail.”
The invisible lance through his heart jerked a wounded sound out of Corry, even as he bolted up the stairs of the quarterdeck.
The penlight vanished like a firefly; bright, to green, to nothing; tumbled and flashed
d
o
w
n
away from him and he remembered when it was gifted to him. Sixteen, at the salvage yard; he’d just disproven Perera’s beautiful theory about linked Klingon shielding systems three weeks before. Mister McMillan had given the penlight to him, then walked away, never to return.
Later, though; later was the first time he saw a firefly. A field exercise in Basic, in the North American south. A moment of wonder; light, in the darkness.
He’d run out of strength even before he ran out of air. It wasn’t even a panicky moment; by then, he was beyond tired. Beyond cold.
Beyond.
He took one last breath, but couldn’t even reach for the next canister. Somewhere above or sideways or behind, the Lady Grey’s hull was patched; his last uncoordinated swat had sealed the last bit of the liferaft to her, and he’d tried to swim, then. He maybe even succeeded a little.
Now, though, he’d lost all orientation.
It’s April-- he thought, but that wasn’t quite right.
Across from him in the lobby, lit in monochrome, his best friend;
between them, all the unspoken heartache and a choice to be made.
And at sea, Cor beside him, on the other side of the brace of the bulwark, a bookend.
Before that, then-- go far enough back, to a podium.
Up or back or sideways, the Lady Grey; blood and sweat and tears from the keel on up;
up or back or
beyond.
No one had ever shown him, when he was younger, that there were things worth giving up your right to breathe for.
It was dark. A place he knew well.
His chest hurt, in some distant way. He thought he’d be able to breathe, though, if he tried, that he wasn’t really underwater, that all this darkness--
He’d been drowning for awhile now;
forever now;
breathing in the water was just a formality, aye?
It’s March-- he thought, but-- not quite
right
It’s--
something grabbed around his chest, something stronger than a rope
It’s--
--the smear of white or gray or--
"Don't fight," the voice said, and it was panic-stricken; even distant, sharp with fear and--
--he didn’t know if he was fighting or not or breathing or not or--
"Please!" The voice was closer, had become a plea so raw it ached to hear it.
He knew that voice.
Corry.
He’d lost all orientation. Somewhere above the iron gray sky, Polaris was one degree off True North and he was here, or there, or--
But it turned out that he was breathing, if raggedly, and it turned out that he wasn’t down in the dark anymore, that his head was above the still rolling water, and that the band of steel around his chest was what was holding him up, instead of what was holding him down, and so he did something he’d never done before and stopped fighting--
--and managed to make his mouth work long enough to ask, “Got me?”
And Cor answered, after a moment, confusion creeping into the fear in his voice, “I’ve gotcha.”
An answer, all its own.
“A’right,” Scotty said, and was somewhere he had never been before; here, or there, or elsewhere.
He just laid his head back against Cor’s shoulder and, for the first time in his life, trusted that someone else would fight for him.