Exodus Nebula

Chapter Seventeen

Snowfall matted the deck and its ruins, and the intermittent breezes and gusts abraded it away.

Thirteen hours after the attacks on their ship, thirteen hours after the other ship, the Majie Celeste, had exploded and sank, the great storm passed beyond them, withering out to the north. Gireiah stood on the dreadfully remodeled deck, witnessing. Windborne ice had acted abrasively on the wood-like material of the ship, carving into it, through it. Strewn across the deck were shards and fragments of uplifted and broken decking. Eulliam had told that the decking would grow back and repair itself. The ship was hardy after all, though, the damage was severe, especially that done to the hull during the attacks. In terms of the recognizably living, the damage was just short of a mortal wound, something that, according to Eulliam, could not be repaired by the ship alone.

Rays of hard sunlight supported the last few final giants of grey strata, divine columns escorting the final perversions of nature. At their heading, a clear stretch of white sea and white sky: the arctic ice.

Gireiah helped set up and deploy two more weather balloons. Although it wasn't looking likely they'd see another storm for a few more days, they needed the greater certainty. If they were quick cutting through the ice, landfall was less than a week away.

After clearing the deck of the major shrapnel, Gireiah found Eulliam below deck, in the personal quarters. One of the quarters had been outfitted with medical supplies and apparatuses, to care for the one Cheung had rescued from the ill-fated ship.

Eulliam sat cross-legged in the corner, as if again meditating, ready for the rescued one to come to consciousness. Gireiah, for the first time, laid eyes on the one who nearly killed them.

"So, this is them?" His tone was molded into surprise by what he saw. She was young, perhaps no older than fifty, and beautiful by many standards. She was classically human, with, by his reckoning, Northern Norland ethnicity. He gave a questioning expression to Eulliam.

"Yes," Eulliam answered the unasked question, "she was alone on that ship. She was its only captain."

"I would have never surmised. She does not look like one ready to kill."

"And what should one who is ready to kill look like?"

"Big, muscular. Missing teeth, missing eye. A bitter disposition, male."

"She wasn't firing at us out of hatred, anger, or even fear," Eulliam said.

"So, you were able to see that night, so far from the Spine?"

"I suppose so. She fired at us because it was the logical thing to do."

"Logical how?"

"There were many variables in her thinking. She chose the most tactically suiting one. In truth, her wrecking is more or less our fault. We had pushed her delicate arrangement to topple. We could have done better in addressing ourselves."

Gireiah examined her more closely. "What happened to her?"

"A most abnormal concoction of ailments, it seems: burns, hypothermia, asphyxiation and drowning, bruises and breaks, haemorrhages in the lungs, a recent hand injury, carbon monoxide poisoning, and the list continues."

"Is she comatose?"

"Undoubtedly. Her condition is stable now. There's no telling when she wakes."

"Would she be a threat?"

Eulliam was a moment answering. "Probably not."

"So, what? Are you going to remain in here until she wakes?"