Chapter 11: Homesick (2204 words)

The human talked Vievel into opening his prison cell, and then revealed he wanted Vievel in the cell with him.

Fire. Vievel was blinded by the bright flickering; an intense heat pushed up against his skin as the searing sensation wracked his body. Stabbing pains in his abdomen begged for his attention, dealing a series of sharp blows as an overwhelming pressure around his stomach rose and fell in concert with his steps.

His eyes screamed for relief, irritation scratching at the edges of his eyeballs as he opened and closed his eyelids rapidly, trying to blink away the pain, and a dryness, coarser than the stone of the Dwurkn frigate, raked at his tongue whilst he wet it with what little saliva still sat in his mouth. He was burnt through, exhausted and stripped of his energy.

Every minute spent travelling played out as a series of pictures, still scenes interspersed with agony-rent amnesia as the memories failed to stick in his mind from one moment to the next. First, he was fumbling around the Dwurkn frigate, pushing against the stone walls as he mapped his route, guided by echoing instructions in the back of his skull, and the next he was floating, flying across the deep and dark with a jump-rig mounted to his back. He didn’t remember putting it on.

Vievel tried to steady his thoughts, tried to clear his head, but then he swallowed and his muscles spasmed; whatever constriction lay inside him gripped painfully hard, tighter than it had before, and his consciousness went silent.

When he came to Vievel found himself already alert, already in-action. Only the memories had vanished, only his mind had slept. His body was still awake, stumbling across the sleek hallways of the Ulmadr home-ship.

Did I make it through the off-lock? It was a redundant curiosity. He was aboard the Ulmadr flagship so, somehow, he’d made it into the same forgotten entrance that he’d originally left by; Halycen had intentionally broken a half-busted air-lock on their journey out, taking advantage of the older and rawer tech’s malleability. He wasn’t in the custody of the military, so he couldn’t have used the boarding channel’s entrance, and he recognised the room he stood in.

The off-lock was an undesirable and abandoned place, one of the hundreds of forgotten places inside the ship. With a quick glance around, Vievel saw no-one. The sector as a whole was empty, a rotten and decrepit underbelly that lay dormant and unused by all but the most unfortunate of the maintenance staff. He closed his eyes, just briefly, feeling the persuasions of his eyelids and surrendering to them; he woke again elsewhere, having already made his way through the manufacturing sector he’d landed in.

“Viev-” The voice was quick and mumbled, passing by him before he had a moment to register it. It felt familiar but he couldn’t place the speaker, his head swimming at it was. He opened his eyes to a yet different sector of the ship, one that was a great deal closer to his quarters than where he had been a split-second ago. The speaker was long gone, as was he.

“Stop it- focus-” he said aloud, trying to order his body to obey him. Even inside his mind, the words were groggy, slurred. He had to dwell on them to even make sure he’d even heard them.

His thoughts were slippery, difficult to pin down, jumping about from query to doubt and back again before he could make sense of it: ship to home, the sickness, the jump-rig. He’d had an easier time of organising his head after drinking an entire bottle of Skulla to himself.

As the image rose in his mind’s eye he felt a bitter taste and a soft, almost pleasant, burning in the back of his throat. It hung on his tongue until a wave of nausea threatened to send the taste flying and the contents of his stomach along with it.

Vievel gagged, retching violently but producing no vomit. His chest burned as he doubled over, his internal muscles babbling amongst themselves in confusion as nothing tried to make its way up his throat. He took a deep breath and then burped violently, an acidy expulsion which left a much worse taste in his mouth.

The ship, to home... Something was pressing at the edge of his consciousness. He didn’t remember much of his expedition into the Dwurkn frigate, only fragments of memories seemed to stick. One of these fragments rose to the surface, passing by all others; a pair of metallic manacles hammered into a jewelled wall, a prison cell of some kind.

Where was that? Some part of Vievel knew the truth, he could feel a familiarity with the picture, but it was a barred to him. As he tried to focus on the prison cell his mind worked against him, throwing other memories at him, threatening to drown his already-struggling focus beneath waves of irrelevance.

Strange images continued assailing his memory, slanted and distorted pictures which felt like a recording witnessed on the LAN. He was standing somewhere he’d never been, chained, bound to two wooden poles which strung his arms up so high he couldn’t move; each pole was ground into the dirt, dirt piled high in a cavernous room the likes of which Vievel was sure he’d never seen, sure he’d never see. Even the Dwurkn frigate would have struggled to fit such a space inside it.

Two hooded figures in walnut brown robes advanced, single-file, approaching him with care and deliberation. Their features were obscured by their hoods but both of the figures were slim and short, not much taller than Vievel himself, and they filled his heart with a sick kind of vigour as he looked upon them; panic filled him, coursing through his arms as he tried to pull them free of their bonds. He wrestled with the ties but he was stuck fast, the leather straps were wrapped around his wrists several times over. Looking up, for the ceiling, he found himself almost unable to make out the grainy stone that hung so high; his vision began to blur as his eyes strained against the distance, never having attempted to focus on something so far away.

No- I… The whole place was wrong, it wasn’t the right cell. He’d never been in such a place before. He didn’t, couldn’t remember this. The cell on the edge of his thoughts was beginning to slip away and the image, the memory that he didn’t remember, suddenly vanished.

As his mind returned to him Vievel was standing in the hallways of the Ulmadr home-ship again. Fatigue suddenly struck and he stumbled, falling toward the nearby wall until he braced himself quickly with his hand. He panted rapidly, drawing in breath as quickly as he could whilst confusion wrestled with his exhaustion.

Sick. The word punctured his growing delirium and he grabbed at it, pulled himself aboard it. I have to get home. Vievel staggered forward, taking wide unsteady steps in short bursts before stopping to rest up against the wall again.

He kept moving forward whenever he could, only to find himself resting more often, and for longer, the further he got. A hallway that should have taken him seconds to cross instead became a journey of minutes; he couldn’t have been more than a few minutes away from his family quarters but he felt like he’d been travelling for hours. It was difficult to tell with his memory loss.

Each time Vievel stopped focusing on what he was doing, even for a moment, his eyes found a way to close and his experience jumped forward. Sometimes he would make progress, and sometimes he would collect his thoughts still standing in the same spot he’d been standing before, unsure of how long he’d been standing there.

A shrill bell sounded out from somewhere inside the ship, signalling the change of shifts. Different houses were suddenly marked on the displays above each doorway as shapes began to emerge from behind each opening door. The shapes passed by him in the hallway, Aælfir going to and from their work duties; one of the passing strangers offered up a loud greeting so close to his ear that he almost flinched, but without looking up he couldn’t tell if they’d recognised him for who he was. Most others simply moved by without speaking, or looking up from the floor and their netcomms.

Though they’d spoken to him only a split-second past, Vievel was unable to picture the greeter’s face, their voice quickly lost in the murmurings of the growing crowd. He noticed a stranger turn, and then another. He could only imagine what they were looking at; the strange short Aelfr braced against the wall as though it was threatening to buck him off, dirtied and bruised but wearing military armour and clinging to a fraying knapsack.

The curious stares only increased as the corridor filled, and Vievel kept his head down, avoiding eye contact in case anyone would recognise him. He resolved to flow with the corridor and, an unsteady step later, he found a rhythm he could move in, gently easing forward in slow and considered movements as to not further disturb his dizziness and already unsettled stomach.

The shapes in the hallway returned to avoiding him, bustling busily throughout the passage as they swiftly moved from one responsibility to the next. In a matter of only a few minutes, the hallway was again as clear as it had been when Vievel had heard the bell.

He stumbled forward as best he could, finding himself navigating by instinct more than anything. The home-ship's corridors were like a maze, but it was a maze he had the map to after so many years spent exploring it for fun. The hallways were growing gradually wider the longer he walked. He was almost there.

Just keep going. With the corridor finally to himself again he didn’t care to move strenuously, instead resting as he needed and lurching whenever he could summon the energy. He bent over, feeling a fresh wave of nausea, but it quickly passed, leaving in its place a respite from the sickness and a moment’s clear-headedness. His knapsack slipped from his shoulders as he relaxed, the drawstring falling open as the bag landed upright on the floor against his leg. Vievel breathed easily until his thoughts started to slip again, as stranger images struck his mind.

He was standing in the Ulmadr home-ship hallway, but not the same hallway. He was elsewhere. Several soldiers pushed past him, taller than any soldier he knew, bearing the marks of the military’s medical core. His father’s cries began to echo in the distance before a different voice broke the spell that consumed his thoughts.

“Vievel!” Ria was standing in front of him, in the same navy-blue dress she’d worn to the last Gathering. It seemed to be sporting fewer ribbons than he remembered. “Get help,” Ria said, turning to the soldier standing beside her, an Aelfr of a quite normal stature. Vievel tried to turn towards the soldier but the sudden movement of his head shook his footing, making his world tilt He stuck out an arm as quickly as he could in order to steady himself, grabbing the wall.

“Ria?” he asked, his voice rasping and grating. In an instant her hands were on his arm, his shoulder, trying to hold him up as best they could. Vievel found his words difficult to form as he looked at his friend, his tongue seemingly content on ignoring his commands.

“V- what happened? You’re so pale- sit down, please-” Ria stammered. He pulled away from her, drawing closer to the wall. As he pushed up against it he glanced down and saw into his knapsack. The bag was brimming with his possessions, so full that it was threatening to burst open even further: his suit-mask, an empty bottle of Skulla, various Dwurkn medicines, a jump-rig-

The jump-rigs... That wasn’t right. Where was Halycen’s?

“Sick-” he managed to murmur, avoiding Ria’s concerned gaze. His voice broke, cracking deeper than it ever had and sounding entirely unlike him. Vievel shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts, but they swirled around and made a home where they were unwanted. He opened his mouth to speak again, but the words didn’t come. His hand slipped from the wall as a rush inside his skull offset his balance. The ground rose up to meet him before he understood why.

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A web of thin lines broke the otherwise perfectly-maintained ceiling tile. Something inside his mind was drumming, to an inconsiderately raucous and distracting beat, but he recognised that ceiling immediately. He was laying in his bunk. Still feeling half-asleep, Vievel shifted to try and free himself from the heavy blankets that were lain atop him, and then kicked someone sitting at the foot of his bed. He opened his eyes.

“You-” he said, as his memories came crashing back. “How are-”

“You’re not sick kid,” Calito replied, shaking his head. The human was sitting at the base of Vievel’s bed, dressed in the long-coat that had sat on the floor of his amethyst cell. He patted Vievel’s leg. “Get some rest. There’s time for explanations”.