The captain strode into the command centre where it sat on the bridge, the door closing behind him with a slight-wooft and then immediately reopening with the same sound as LEon and Merlon followed behind him. He was manful and commanding, his jaw set rigid and his strong thighs commanding as he walked purposefully. Percy glanced up from where he was still typing on the ship's computer leybpad, his metal fingers moving twice as fast as his flesh ones, tapping a swift rhythm of urgence.
"What news?" Arthur barked at Percival's back. Gwain scowled at the rudeness of his tone slightly but the big man simply smiled and scooted his small chair over, gesturing for the blonde man to stand closer.
"Look at this" Percy said, as Merlin also stepped nearer, moving into Arthur's personal space in a ways that warmed his cockles and felt immernsly right to have the other man to hand.
"We're looking.... What are we looking at?" Asked the dark haired man. Gwaine glanced between them watching them with a subtle waggly of his eyebrow.
"It looks like you're looking at Arthur" he jested.
"You look here Gwaine-" Arthur started, unconsciously moving a step close to to the starman to protect him from the Celtic rouge's charms.
"It's you Arthur, a dead or alive issued on you" interputed the communications man. His tone was gentle but firm. Arthur felt his stomach frown in confusion.
"A dead or alive? What do you mean?" he asked, still in shick.
"A bounty. A huge one, bigger than the other combined" Leon explained from next to him.
"On my life?" Arthur asked dumbly, glancing across to Merlin, worried.
"And just yours, Princess, seems whoever wants you dead doesn't consider the rest of us important enough to kill" Gwaine pouted.
"You have a bounty on you Gwaine" Elyan interjected.
"I want a bigger one! I'm a feared pirate, I've stolen priceless jewels and hearts all across the galaxy. I deserve it. We all deserve it! We're the best crew in the universe!" Gwaine flounced back into his chair in a sulk.
"Cheer up" Percy grinned,"if someone's after Arthur you might live long enough to get to be collateral damage." Gwaine stuck his tongue out at the bulky man as the rest of the men chcukcled deeply at the usually quiet communications man's joke.
"Who issued it?" Merlin asked, his face burning with concern as the rugged pirates laughed at death.
"No idea, there's no name, no seal, nothing. Just a letter of Marque for the captain." Percy explained, expanding the relevant parts of the screen.
"I don't like it" the star continued, with a sideways glance at the captain.
"Don't worry, Merlin, you've seen how good I am with a sword" Arthur responded. Just as Gwaine opened his mouth to make a salacious comment, Lancelot jumped in, his liquid brown eyes serious.
"He's right, Arthur, we need to take this seriously" he said, seriously. Arthur sighed in resignation and looked around his crew. He scruffed his hand through his hair and down the back of his neck.
"Fine. It's late, the autopilot's on and we're light-miles from anywhere. We'll work out a plan in the morning. But you all need to get some sleep now. And that's an order." Arthur said, as if just remembering his role as captain. The other men filed out of the bridge and towards their quarters.
"We have an autopilot? So why do we have Gwaine?" Elyan muttered good naturedly to Percy and they triped out.
*
Arthur padded along the corridor, a beaker of water in his hand. After heading back to his quarters he had lain in bed, tossing and turning and failing to sleep. His mind raced with danger, not the fear of danger, at least not fear for himself, but with the burning nearness of danger, and fear for his crew:for Merlin. All the calculations, diversifiications, and alterations had chased sleep away from his night. And it all somehow swirled and circled back to one light, shining figure who lit up Arthur's darkness, Merlin.
Giving it up as a bad job, he had left his chambers wentto the kitchen to clear his head, it hadn't worked. Arthur was sure that Merlin would never leave his mind again. Around the corner of the corridoor he heard a faint noise of a door wooshing closed. Looking around for a weapon, he found none but the element of surprise and his wits and so he snuck in, meaning to surprise the stowaway.
He gasped. The door closed behind him.
"Arthur" came a voice gentle with the lateness of night,"what are you still doing up?" Merlin stton in the middle of the holodeck surrounded by stars. Not just stars, but planetary systems, star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies - asteroids, moons, planets, and stars all swirly around him, away from him, towards him, their colour blending and separating and expanding.
"Could sleep" Arthur replied gazing around him in wonder as he approached.
"So you thought you'd go about sneaking up on poor unsuspecting stars?" asked Merlin.
"I heard a sound, you could have been anyone" the captin replied with a blonde shrug, but merlin heard the underlying tension in his shoulders. He grimaced. Cedeic had set him on edge.
"Where is this?" The blone man asked looking around him in wonderment at the projected comsogeography.
"Home." Merlin replied simply. Arthur was struck now by how well he fitted in, the barkness of his hair the exat shade of the inky void of space, his skin luminescing in the glow of the stars around him, making him almost twinkle reflectively, the purples and reds of the nebulae patterning his skin like shifting tattoos. It was where he belonged. Arthur felt something wrench in his chest.
A bright glimmer caught his eye and he stepped forward, gazing in the evvervescent shine of the astronomical object before him. MErlin glanced at him curiously, eyescaught by the way the starlight played in his hair, the look of awe on the face of this man who dominated the drifts of space, the respect and dignity he showed to this place he had never been, could never go: the final frontier. Arthur raised his hand to the brilliant Cepheid variable before them,
"It's the North Star. I always used to look at it when I was a kid and dream of the adventures I'd had. You know back when there was Earth people used to use it to guide them. They'd have no maps, or GPS or satellittes, they'd just elope off over the dark waters into the unknown horizon with nothing but a star and their dreams to show them the way. I always thought I'd have made a good pirate." Arthur eulogised, his eyes carried with them the milky dreaminess of nostalgia, his crooked smile was far away- as if it'd been transported to the distant corner of the galaxy and past that that long dead planet enhabited.
"You do make a good pirate" Merlin replied, watching the other man's whist with ears that twinkled as they reflected the bluegreen hologlow. Arthu smiles as softly as the downy hair of a snow at the gentle compliment.
"It was always what drew my to the sky, you know, sure we needed the money but you can get money on land. It was always the Pole Star, pulling me towards it like a magnet pulls a nother magnet towards it." He stepped towards Merlin leaning in.
"There's something I should tell you" Merlin whispered.
"Now?" ARthur asked, staring at the human stars pink lips as they moved closer to each other.
"No, not now" smiled the star, also moving closer to the captain's mouth. Scant centimetres separated them and Merlin could feel his heart beating a joyous tattoo.
In a split second the joyous tattoo was disrupted byt the rending tearing of titanium alloy as the ship shook around them the projection of stars flickering and fuzzing.
YOU ARE READING
Dismantle The Sun
Science FictionFor Arthur Rothwell, space has always meant freedom. Since he was young he has been called to a dangerous life amongst the stars, but the arrival of a mysterious man on his ship changes the course of his life. If only he could work out why the stran...
