The Lost Star's Sea

by C. Litka

  02

  The ship shuddered as it slowly nosed the floating trees aside. They banged and scraped along the hull, doing the paint no good, but that was a small price to pay to escape the Island - or Ship - of the Dragon-people. We proceeded slowly, in stops and starts, for the better part of an hour until we had apparently cleared the blockade. The RPM needles on the control panel for the main propellers jumped as the passage opened up and there was a faint sensation of acceleration, that lasted only a few seconds before there was a dull bang The ship shuddered and

  a red light sprang to life on the control panel I was monitoring. We had lost connections with the bridge. Not good.

  I killed the main engines, yelled to BayLi down by the turbine to come up and monitor the controls, while I went up to see what was wrong.

  Even as she was arriving at the control station, ValDare called down from the passage, 'To the bridge, Chief! We need gear to clear wreckage!'

  'I'm on it.' And turning, I called down to the depths of the engine room, Dis, Cas, MasTe, get up here!'

  I raced over to the tool locker to hand out several salvage axes and some crowbars to my crew as they arrived. I grabbed a large power saw. 'Follow me,' I said and led them racing up the steep stairs to the upper superstructure and then up to the bridge.

  We found it to be a shattered mess, small bits and slivers of debris, and shards of shattered glass floating about a central pile of twisted wreckage. The first mate, TeyLin, dazed and bleeding from a long gash on his forehead was standing, weaving about, vainly trying to staunch the flow of blood with a rag. ValDare had returned and was clawing his way through the twisted steel panels of the bridge's after wall and ceiling, amongst a cloud of broken glass, splintered wood and shattered fixtures. Several of the deck crew had arrived shortly before me, awaiting orders.

  'One of you, get TeyLin below to the surgery. Find someone to patch him up, if you can't. The rest of you, start shoving this wreckage. overboard'

  'She's in there somewhere!' ValDare exclaimed, digging frantically through the small debris of the bridge.

  'Who?'

  'Tara.'

  'Right, Dis, help ValDare clear the debris. Carefully, we don't know where the Captain is. The helmsman should be somewhere within there as well. Te, Cas follow me, we'll tackle this from the other side.' We had to go down a deck and across to the port side, since a great trunk of a tree had apparently come smashing down from behind to plow through the chart room and bridge.

  Several more crew members arrived and I put them to work, clearing the floating debris so that we could get at the more substantial wreckage. It took only several minutes of work before we spied the Captain pinned under the collapsed after wall of the bridge.

  'We've found the Captain!' I yelled. I heard them acknowledge me, and made my way carefully through the twisted wreckage and the cloud of glass, dust and debris toward her, with my power saw to cut her loose.

  She was alive, and conscious, more or less, but I could see dark blood staining her brown hair.

  'I'm pinned,' she whispered, as I knelt beside her. 'Dare, TeyLin, and the KenTre?'

  'Dare is fine. TeyLin has a gash in the head, but should be okay. Don't know about KenTre yet. Don't worry. Just relax, we'll get you clear.'

  'My mistake...' she muttered.

  DisRay, the 2nd mate had arrived and was putting the crew to work prying away the wreckage I cut away to get her out. The crew, working from the other side, found KenTre alive, but badly banged up with several broken ribs plus cuts and bruises. Hitting the chart room first had significantly slowed the tree trunk's momentum, and while it had still pushed through to the bridge, it had done so with less violence than its first impact.

  The Captain had slipped into unconsciousness soon after we'd found her, having lost a fair amount of blood from a ragged wound in her left leg. ValDare had bandaged the cut on her head even before we managed to pull her completely free. We staunched the flow of blood from the gash in her leg before carefully carrying her to the infirmary. There Scholar PinTin and his two students were patching up TeyLin and KenTre. One of PinTin's students, with emergency medical training, had taken charge. She examined the Captain's leg. It didn't appear to be broken, but it would need to be carefully cleaned and sewn up.

  While the Captain, TeyLin and KenTre were being looked after, I returned to the bridge to help Dis Ray and his crew clear the wreckage from the bridge. A still rather groggy TeyLin had returned to the bridge as well. As we worked to clear the wreckage, salvaging everything we could, he told us what had happened. He said that the ship appeared to have cleared the blockade. However, there must have been some sort of a thick vine caught on the lower part of the bow that they didn't see. So when the ship surged ahead, this vine, still attached to one of the large tree trunks that the ship had already passed, pulled the tree trunk towards the ship from astern with the force of the accelerating ship striking the center of the upper superstructure from above and the back, tearing through the chart room and the center of the bridge. One moment everything looked clear, the next, there was a great rending sound and the bridge dissolved into a mass of splinters and debris.

  The crew spent the better part of a watch cutting away the damaged superstructure, leaving a gaping hole in the center of the upper deck and no working controls on the bridge. The ship did, however, have emergency controls at the stern of the ship, in a small deckhouse. While the Dragon-people had yet to appear, none of us was eager to linger, so as soon as we had most of the debris cleared from the bridge, we began to slowly navigate the passage once again, with DisRay on the bridge calling back orders to TeyLin and the helmsman at the emergency controls. It was slow, wearing, work, but getting clear of the vast ship/island, and its strange and unfriendly natives was our priority.

  I relieved TeyLin at the helm so that he could get some rest and we cleared the passage near the end of it. There we halted, rested, and took stock.