The Heartless Void

4: Abyssopelagic

"Look up for me, sir. Higher, that's it. Stay there."

Starbuck stared at the flickering light bar above his head. There was a large fuzzy halo around it, and he was sure that it had not been that big the last time he had been here. His eyes ached at the illumination, especially when Zacharias shone a torch into them. Starbuck resisted the urge to blink. "Worse?" he asked simply.

"It's not good news, sir. The inflammation is still there, and it's not like to improve. How's the vision?"

"The left eye is fine. The right is blurred all the time now."

"That's what I thought, sir. You took a rotten hit."

He removed the torch and Starbuck looked back down, squeezing shut his eyes for a moment. He still felt like there was grit inside of them. It had taken days to wash everything out – tiny particles of hull and smoking wreckage that had exploded not five feet in front of him. But that wasn't even the worst of it.

Zacharias – who was everything from their shipwright to their doctor – helped him out of his shirt. It peeled away from the twisted patchwork of scars down his right side. The burns stretched all the way from his shoulder to his hip, eating half across his abdomen. He had to remind himself that he had been fortunate to get away with just this.

"That's better, at least," Zacharias said with a nod. "They're healing up nicely. Are they still giving you trouble?"

Starbuck shook his head, though it was not exactly the truth. He allowed Zacharias to treat and dress the wounds, and marvelled once more at how many there were. Then again, there was no pleasant way out of a scalding hot blast of steam and chemical.

When he was ready again, Zacharias stood back and gave him the final once-over. He had reports to write up, but Starbuck had never seen him note anything down. It would only be consigned to the useless virtual filing cabinet of bureaucracy.

"How you are you holding up, sir?" he asked.

Starbuck frowned as he did up his uniform. "I'm fine."

"Have you attended any other sessions?"

"I've had no time."

"They were put in place to help you."

"I know."

Truth be told, Starbuck had only attended one of the long-distance therapy sessions. He could see how it might work for others, but the terror of having to relive those fateful moments was too awful to contemplate every week. He had taken a month off with the minimal sick-pay the company agreed to give him, then promptly attended the inquiry, and got straight back to work as soon as he was given the green light. They had cleared him for service again, and that was good enough.

Good enough, officially – but every league closer to Moby-Dick was scratching off the veneer.

"You should really consider it," Zacharias insisted. "It would be a shame to lose such a good officer."

"You won't lose me," Starbuck insisted.

But his scars itched and burned after Zacharias had dismissed him, and his eye would not stop blurring. Those were only the physical wounds. They could be patched up as often as possible, and not touch what was truly wrong under the surface.

He climbed down to the hangar where the teams were still processing the Ambergris' oil. All had been siphoned off now, and the disabled captured vessel was drifting far, far behind them. Once the patrol ship had picked them up and the prisoners had been transported away, a sliver of prize money might be transferred to the Pequod, but Starbuck was not holding his breath. Time and time again, such entanglements became snared in court arrangements. Their real income would come from the shares of this oil.