The Hold
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Michael left for a time, leaving Trevor in the room with a distraught Tasha.
“He ruined my teeth and hands!” she lamented, with an edge of hysteria creeping into her voice.
“I think you still look like you,” Trevor ventured, immediately regretting it. He gathered from Tasha’s glare and frustrated exclamation that it was the wrong thing to say.
“Boxy, ugly fingers, and sheep teeth!” she fumed.
“Well, I have fingers and teeth like that,” Trevor said, perhaps a bit insulted.
“You were born that way,” Tasha replied dismissively. “I had mine taken from me, and no one asked!”
Trevor thought of some choice things to say regarding the enchantments she used on him, but it didn’t seem like the right time to bring them up. “I’m sorry,” he said.
By the time Michael returned, Tasha had calmed down. When he came in, she immediately jumped up. “Michael, could you just send me through again, and put me back how I was?” she asked.
Michael sighed. “Pouring out the Fire of the Ophiuchus Write Head to serve your youthful vanity is not something that we are going to do, and creating a new instance wouldn’t fix you, anyway.”
Trevor looked at Tasha and got the feeling she was about to burst into tears or explode. Trevor felt this was entirely understandable, but Michael continued on briskly.
Michael hefted a very large bundle of supplies over his shoulder. “Grab your things and follow me. There is an ancient Terran Ghing freighter docked here. We are going to travel in it to the Rho Ophiuchi Tumor.”
Trevor picked up the small piles of their remaining belongings and grabbed Tasha by the hand.
When the large, circular hatch opened, they were greeted with an acrid wave of foul air.
“Ugh! What is that?” Tasha exclaimed.
Trevor and Tasha coughed and gagged, and Trevor felt his eyes sting and water. “Ammonia,” Michael said, “and a few other things.”
Michael began a low chant as he stepped through. Suddenly a dark streak darted through their legs. The smooth metallic floor afforded them a brief look at a sleek emaciated creature. Bones stuck out in sharp relief under its fur-covered skin, and its tail was skewed at an odd angle halfway up. Its paws finally found purchase and scrabbled down the corridor.
“Come along,” Michael prompted. “We don’t want to let any more in.”
“What was that thing?” Tasha said as she stepped cautiously through. Inside was a long dark corridor. Cold, sterile lights began flickering to life as Michael continued his chant.
“A cat,” replied Michael. “Since there are some alive, the ship is probably functional enough for our needs.” The heavy doors shut behind them.
Trevor thought of the cats that hunted around the docks and felt rather bad for the wretched thing. “A ship? So, is this a port?” he asked.
“Of sorts, I suppose. More of a pirate’s cove. This ship is a Terran Ghing freighter, captured before the Heart War.”
The floor of the corridor was covered in a layer of dust and filth. Scattered along the length were piles of fur or bone, marking where a cat had met its end. The air felt dry and chill, like the night on Faye’s mountain. The stench had lessened, and Trevor wondered if Michael was countering it or if he was just becoming used to it.
They came to the end of the corridor, and it opened suddenly into an enormous room. The ceiling was about twenty feet above, perhaps made of metal crates. Both the floor and ceiling seemed to curve up. Trevor looked to the right and left, and the room seemed to extend forever. Here and there he saw cats darting between the containers which sat in occasional clumps on the floor.
“This is the cargo hold,” explained Michael. “I don’t recommend jumping. It will be awkward to get back safely.”
“How does the ceiling stay up?” wondered Trevor. He couldn’t see any sign of it being connected to the floor.
“That’s the cargo,” replied Michael. “Hasn’t been touched in thousands of years. They just float it in the middle. I think there might be attachment points on either end.”
Michael set down the large bundle and marked out a large circle with his boot, and had them stack some of the crates scattered around the entrance into a fort. Michael then stood in the middle and began singing something unfamiliar. Trevor watched closely as crimson lines traced erratically from the center of the circle. He wasn’t sure if the dust and filth disappeared from the floor, or if it was somehow pushed out, but the floor of the circle was now clean, polished metal.
“Now I need to unbind the ship,” Michael said. “You two can go exploring, but don’t go out of sight, and stay away from any sealed corridors. If there are cats, there could be worse things too!”
So Trevor and Tasha left him to sit in the center of the circle intoning a low chant. A few curious cats watched from some stacked crates a safe distance away.
“I wonder if we will be on an ocean, or in space,” pondered Trevor.
“Space, I think,” said Tasha. “Too big for going on an ocean.”
Trevor looked over at Tasha as they walked along. He took a deep breath and came out with it. “Tasha, I’m sorry about your teeth,” he said.
She continued walking without response for a while before saying, “It’s okay. Can’t do anything about it now, I guess.”
“Yeah, I guess not,” was his reply.
They had come now to a fairly large collection of crates that looked as though they had been tossed about haphazardly in a roughly oval patch. In the center was an opening much like the one they had entered through, but it had heavy metal bars melted over the opening. A terrific stench crept out, and they found it easy enough to keep their distance. Behind the bars was formless black. It all made Trevor feel very uneasy.
Trevor looked up and saw the containers that composed the ceiling were higher up and less ordered. He wondered if they had fallen down somehow, and if they should perhaps take precautions.
“Look, some of the crates are open,” observed Tasha, pointing to a number of those nearest the opening. They looked around, but the rest seemed to still be closed.
Out of curiosity, they busied themselves with opening a few. Imagination suggested they might find something interesting. This was unfortunately not to be, as the crates contained various sorts of powders and granules rather than anything of particular interest to the two explorers.
Something made Trevor turn back to the grate. Had he heard a sound? He stood for a moment, staring. Suddenly a dull eye appeared near the edge, staring at him briefly before receding into the darkness.