Brightly Burning(38)
And nothing happened. I tried again. Same result.
I was locked out.
Hugo was gone and, with him, access to his favorite spaces on board. To the spaces we shared. Something inside me boiled, like anger. It didn’t seem fair—?I really wanted to read that Agatha Christie—?but I couldn’t because Hugo had chosen to run away.
I retreated to my quarters and, for the first time since I’d left the Stalwart, allowed myself to cry.
Chapter Thirteen
Hugo unwittingly left one piece of him behind. His precious Jungle Book lay forgotten in my quarters until two days after his departure, when I found it inside my bedside storage drawer. At first I ignored it, stowing it at the bottom of my wardrobe, underneath a pair of dress shoes I’d not yet worn. But each morning and evening as I dressed and undressed, it called to me. I had to know what was so beloved by Hugo and his father and grandmother before him that he’d been willing to die for it.
Fortune would have it that I wasn’t locked out of the library. I found a copy of Kipling’s biography in the archives, transferred it to my reader, and devoured it alongside The Jungle Book. I also found Agatha Christie’s entire catalog digitized, easing the blow of the study a bit. I dug in to her mysteries just as the mystery of the ship quieted down to nothing. There were no more strange sounds, and two weeks after my plea, Jon responded and put to rest my paranoia.
Hey, Stella—?
I’m sorry it took me so long to respond. The water-filtration system broke, so that’s forty-eight hours of my life I won’t get back again. Then, when I tried asking my uncle to check out your crew, he gave me The Look again, so I had to implement a different tack. You are looking at Captain Karlson’s new apprentice! Part-time, of course, on top of my engineering shifts. My uncle is finally happy with me, though I don’t plan on telling him that I have no intention of taking over as captain someday. I’ll be on Earth before that happens. But in the meantime, I have occasional access to his tab unit, and it only took me three days to figure out his password.
So basically: I didn’t find much on your crew. Poole and Xiao appear to have been born & raised on the Rochester, and there is limited data, since the private ships don’t have to release medical records or work progress reports. Carmichael comes from the Lady Liberty—?school records are standard. He’s gay, and yes, you should be as disturbed as I was that that was in his fleet record. I probably don’t want to know what they know about me. Hawes also comes from the Lady Liberty and graduated top of his class from their culinary program. There’s a note that Fairfax must have paid him top digicoin to transfer to the Rochester, given the Lady Liberty was paying him a fortune to head their entire food program. Hanada comes from the Nikkei, transferred to the Marie Curie as a teen, where she rose through the ranks until she transferred to the Rochester. Her files note, more than once, that she has a genius-level IQ and was at the top of the list for fleet enrichment. Apparently smart, talented people from rich ships get special enrichment! I’m learning so much already in my apprenticeship. Oh, and there’s a note of dismay that she chose to transfer to the Rochester instead of staying on the Marie Curie.
I know you didn’t ask me to, but . . . I checked on your captain, too. Out of everyone, there was a ton of information in his file. The fleet has been keeping tabs on him. I couldn’t memorize it all, but I did note that he’s been sanctioned for drunk & disorderly conduct more than once on the Versailles (he frequents the Moulin Rouge Deck, apparently). Watch out, Stella.
Jon
Hugo and the Moulin Rouge Deck? I couldn’t help the furious heat that rose to my cheeks reading it. The stories were notorious—?any salacious pleasure one could hope to find, the Versailles’s Moulin Rouge Deck had. High-stakes poker, drugs, men and women—?all available for a price. Perhaps that’s where he was right now. I just hoped he didn’t gamble away the Rochester on his bender. No one came to claim the ship, so I figured we were in the clear.
But soon Xiao enlisted me to prepare several rooms. When I asked her why, she replied, stonefaced, “Guests are coming.”
“Prepare,” as it turned out, meant I was to sub in as a chambermaid. Xiao and I went to the lower deck, and I finally got a look inside the old crew quarters. We opened each room, instructing Rori to leave the doors open to get a bit of air circulation going, then fitted freshly laundered bedding onto each mattress. There were four beds—?two bunks—?and a bank of lockers in each room, like what we had on the Stalwart before I’d been promoted to a single.
“Am I allowed to ask who the guests are?”
“It’s technically insubordinate, but I’ll allow it,” Xiao said, clearly joking, while she aggressively tucked in a bed corner. “Captain Fairfax will be bringing back with him visitors from the craft Ingram. Needless to say, they are used to a higher level of service than the crew of the Rochester can provide, and thus some members of their crew will be joining us ahead of the party. Maids, valets, a personal chef.”
“Albert isn’t good enough?”
“They’re picky,” Xiao said. She clearly was not the biggest fan of the impending party.
“How long will they be here?”
“It was a month last time, though that was before . . .” Xiao grimaced. “Well, it was a long time ago. This time, I’m not sure. Bianca is older, and I suspect, well . . . that is neither here nor there.”