Conflagration

The Great Beer Heist

As it turned out, Lyssa didn't make the dive the next morning, after all.

In the morning, Lyssa got dressed, as usual, in the cleaner of the two sets of coveralls she'd brought with her. She sniffed them as she put them on and was pleasantly surprised to find they didn't stink. Erin had washed them for her the previous day. Lyssa was glad that if she was going to be trapped inside the stupid HEVA suit all day, at least she wouldn't be smelling several days of own body odor.

Shortly thereafter, Matty came by, just as he usually did. Lyssa expected that he would have his usual cup of coffee with them and then they would be off to the steam barge. She was none-too-eager to climb into that HEVA suit and go to the bottom of the lake where all sorts of dangers awaited her from pressure and darkness to dangers she didn't even want to imagine. There was certainly something lurking in that lake and for whatever reason, it had taken a special interest in her. It wasn't her imagination, she was sure of it.

Lyssa estimated there was a 70% chance that HEVA suit would become her coffin and the lake bottom her final resting place.

She hoped her brother would understand.

But Matty brought with him a reprieve for Lyssa. Matty wasted no time. As soon as Lyssa opened the door to Sister Judith's one-room cabin, Matty stated in his near-perfect Estrellan: "Lyssa, sorry, but you're not going to the platform today. Change of plans."

"Why? What's going on?" Lyssa made no effort to hide her relief at not having to make the dive today.

"I ain't supposed to talk about it," Matty looked nervously around the room. Both Erin and Sister Judith were sitting around the breakfast table and watching him eagerly. Though neither of them could understand Estrellan, they could see that something was happening. Matty continued: "But I figure you're gonna hear about it soon enough anyways. Lots of guys don't like the colonel. Major Tolbert is challenging him for command, and we're gonna vote on it today."

This news concerned Lyssa. The idea of that sociopath, Tolbert, being in command didn't bode well for anyone⁠—least of all for herself and Erin.

From out in the pre-dawn darkness, a man's voice speaking Gonian shouted at Matty: "Hurry the fuck up, Moss! Kiss your girlfriend goodbye and let's get moving!"

Matty turned and switched to his broken Gonian as he shouted at his comrades out in the darkness. "I come moment." Matty turned back and addressed Lyssa and the other two women in the small cabin. "I come back evening. Tell you how goes."

"How what goes?" Erin asked.

Before Matty could answer, a whistle sounded from the direction of the docks. Lyssa recognized it as the steam barge's whistle. "We're leaving, Moss," one of Matty's cronies shouted. "Move it or lose it!"

Matty nodded at Lyssa and, without any further conversation, turned and left.

"What's going on?" Erin asked.

Lyssa translated into Gonian what Matty had told her.

Erin just shrugged it off. "One brutish warlord is just as bad as another."

Lyssa didn't bother to contradict her. She knew that Tolbert was far more dangerous than Raith, even if Erin couldn't see it. Instead, she sat back down at the table to finish her coffee.

"Well," Sister Judith said, "I suppose I should inform Father Elijah and the rest of the elders about this. They'll want to be kept informed." She gathered up her things, including her nursing bag and made for the door. On her way out, she turned to Erin: "I'll go and see to my patients after I talk to the elders. You can tidy up and see this one to the fields?" She'd nodded to Lyssa when she'd said "this one."