State of Decay (Chp.1)

The krew of a slip-vessel, designed to pass between the threads of space and time into quantum space, gets stuck there and must find a way back as they traverse the underside of the universe.

Okay, so everyone has that thing in history they’re fascinated by. Some people have the Romanovs, others have the Ancient Greece. I have u-boats. I think it’s the tragic what-could-have-been that gets me. Like, a boat that can go underwater and sink other boats like a water ninja? And then because the Nazis were Nazis, they never expanded on such cool tech and the allies figured out the gimmick and killed most of the u-boats anyway. God, Nazis ruin everything. Anyway, this story is u-boats in space, they’re not Nazis or Nazi adjacent, there’s honestly not that much combat action since it’s predominantly humorously character-driven, probably gonna self-publish this as an episodic novella but that’s TBD, go watch Das Boot.

Chapter 1

Wiley is her name. It was an ironic naming. 

But Wiley, in this moment, is feeling rather clever. She’s not sure what the barrel was originally meant for, something pungent and tart that stings her nostrils. Yet here she’s found it empty with probably enough room to fit her long spindly form and the nicked jug of something orange and somewhat reminiscent of diesel, though it makes her forget where she is which is good enough. 

Hide and forget. 

Wiley’s very familiar with the taste of a launch eve. 

Warm red light glitters around her, sparkling against the night’s gloom. The din has faded to a raucous buzzing in her mind. It reminds her of the inside plating of a slip-vessel, hard curving steel embedded with wires and heat. A smooth, uninterrupted hum against her face. 

Wiley smiles as she climbs into the barrel. “‘S when she starts buckin’ n’ cracklin’ s’when’ya gotta worry. Bounce! Ya’git’up’ere an’ fix yer ven—venilation sy—sasda—sysdum—thingie. ‘Fore we all die.”

Nobody hears her. 

There’s an actual name for this place, but Wiley and her ilk call it Sin Street. Every naval port has one. A shuttle taken down from an orbiting station, land in the first civilized area they can find, and head for Sin Street. They prefer larger cities, because then it’s an entire area to crawl, but deep down they prefer streets. Navy isn’t the walking type. 

WIley has to wiggle to get down into the base of her barrel, wrapping around her jug with the little rubber hydraulics hose she’s cut off of a nearby hoverbike for a straw—which might be contributing to the diesel taste—gripped firmly between her teeth. 

Part of it is the white navy coat she’s traded most of her backpay for in a terrible deal. The thick, bulky material balls up beneath her and makes it all a squeeze. 

But Wiley’s rather pleased with the deal. She thinks it was good foresight to trade for this white coat. She also considers herself clever for having noticed the giant ‘NO MARINAUTS’ sign beforehand, rather than finding out from the employees. 

And this planet’s locals seem to have horns, so she’d rather not find out from them. 

Ah, there. The bottom of the barrel. Wiley cackles to herself and adjusts her face so her knee isn’t quite so buried in her left eye before she starts sucking up her orange drink through the hydraulics hose. Clever. They’ll never find her here. Nobody ever will. This is why they call her Wiley. 

Everything is dark, but for a pale indigo halo overtop of her, speckled with pink and green and white stars with a flickering red reflecting off of the periphery. There is mud slopping as shoes kick it up against her barrel, and a great cacophony of shouting and laughing and drinking. 

Wiley cackles again and tries to kick her feet in triumph but only succeeds in moving her right ankle two inches forward. “Sin Street Win Street I give muh love ta you, Sin Street Win Street someday y’ll love m’too…”

She pauses as she tries to remember the rest of the words. Are there more words? Is that even a song she knows? Ah, who cares. Wiley takes a few giant gulps through her hose and spits out a drowning bug, one of those tiny hardback roaches, before taking a deep breath for her next song. 

“Yes’erday I almos’ died, jus’ like th’ day b’fore. Startin’ ta think th’ uniform lied, when ‘e tol’ me I’d see the gala—galasx-galaxs—galaxy more. Bu’ all I see’s a hull o’ steel, stuffed in like a rat o’ thread, all’s’I wan’ ‘s’a good meal, but tom—tommor—tommora’ I’ll pr’o’lly be dead—”

“Stuck?”

Wiley starts at the interruption, and her head flinches back into the barrel behind it with a fleshy thud. She wraps her arms tighter around her jug before looking up at that halo overhead. 

“Occ’a’pied,” she replies. “Fin’d yer’own barrel.”

It’s a face peering down at her. Wiley squints, but as far as she’s concerned, this face has an odd relationship with reality because it keeps swinging back and forth across her vision like a pendulum. Right alongside that halo and the stars beyond. 

Wiley sucks up more of her drink, following it with her eyes. Weird. 

“Right,” the strange swimming face says. Wiley hears a squelch of mud and then, “Briggs, get her out.”

“I don’know’you—”

“Quickly.”

A moment later, her barrel shoots off of the ground with a rocky thrust, before turning in the air and shaken upside down. The halo is no longer indigo and star-speckled, but a lumpy surface of mud and brownish water sitting stagnant in footprints. 

Wiley’s booze is the first to go. 

She wails and attempts to catch the falling stream of liquid—there isn’t much left—in her hand. All she manages to do is let the jug go, though, and now her only remaining solace is the hug of her barrel. But even that she can feel waning as her body and this wretched coat slowly slip down the sides. 

A moment later, Wiley tumbles out headfirst. 

The barrel splatters a storm of brown droplets as it’s dropped next to her. 

Wiley pushes her face from the stagnant puddle, which she has decided is actually more green than brown and can assume the overwhelming ammonia scent scorching her sinuses is probably why. 

She spits mud from her lips and carefully wipes her face on her jacket. She has to ration what she wipes. There’s only so much white space left. 

“There,” her intruder announces. He shifts impatiently from boot to boot behind her, mud squelching with his weight. “You’re welcome.”

Wiley thinks about her jug, then about how long it’s been dark and how it’ll be light soon. She looks upwards at the sky. It’s more a purple indigo than a blue indigo, and the striding archer constellation, Cassian, seems to grin down at her. 

Right after Cassian comes the fish twins, and when the fish twins appear, Wiley and the rest will have to catch the shuttle to make it onto the orbiting station. Otherwise, it’ll be another hour to wait for the next rotation, and they’re supposed to launch at first light. 

Wiley considers missing the shuttle, but that won’t result in anything. Just another demerit, brig time, and then right back to patrol. There’s not a marinaut alive lucky enough to miss their slip-vessel launch, and Wiley is well aware of this fact, even in this state. 

“A sailor, huh?” goes her captor, reaching out a large fleshy hand to flick at her white coat collar. Squelch squelch squelch. He’s circling her. 

Wiley catches sight of black trouser legs with a red stripe running from hip to ankle. A square jaw, pointed nose turned down slightly, a soft gray freckled hue to his skin, though Wiley can’t tell if he’s a northern kretz or a southern kretz, probably northern, though. The southern kretz tend to be nicer.

Wiley squints at him. Is that a boatcloak? He’s actually wearing his boatcloak?

She groans. 

“Tell me, you work in the dockyard, do you?” Boatcloak says, pointing upwards. 

Wiley considers this for a moment. Technically…she does. “Yuh.”

“Then you’d be familiar with the slip-vessel, Nightmare, and her krew?”

“Yuh.”

Boatcloak takes a step closer, hands on his hips. He’s young, head still shaved on the sides from the Academy. “Then you’d be able to show me where my krew is.”

“Ah,” Wiley shoves her hands into the mud and uses them to prop herself up on her feet. She’s practiced enough in this that she doesn’t spend too much time wobbling before standing all the way up. Boatcloak has half a head on her. The behemoth that has stepped around behind him, has half a head on Boatcloak. Wiley stares for a moment, squinting. Then she turns back to Boatcloak. “So yer Nightmare’s new Kap—Kapi—Kapa—”

“Kaptain,” Boatcloak supplies impatiently. 

Wiley laughs and leans forward to pat him on the shoulder. His boatcloak is so clean. Lovely, black and woolen. Must be warm. But it’s already so hot here. Is it hot? Maybe not. Is that why Wiley can see her breath? Huh. 

“Imma big fan’o’yer presen’se ‘ere, Kap. Lemme show ya’yer krew here…uh…there’s’a ghost ‘round, gotta catch’er’re she’ll disappear ‘gain, real real ‘portant. ‘Kay, folla’me.”

Wiley sways, nearly toppling over as she pivots in the mud, and stumbles down the center of Sin Street. 

It’s one of those pop-up towns built along the station’s orbit, all boxy steel buildings and imported personnel. Wiley’s not sure the name of this dwarf planet, only that it’s dusty and gray and is half covered in industrial farms while the other half is still being terraformed. Maybe they’ll put trees down. Wiley likes the idea of trees. They’ll probably mine, but still. Trees would be nicer. 

She ducks as passes between two young ensigns in the midst of a duel, then steps over a snoring mass facedown in the street. A wisp of a recruit swings at an iron-jawed brothel guard, while a dog bursts from the curtain door of the brothel across the street with a sailor’s pants. Not a second later, the sailor sprints out after the dog, a bedsheet callously wrapped around his waist while a worker follows, demanding her payment.

Wiley claps as the dog and sailor pass by. 

The Kaptain follows close behind her, brow creased in bemusement while that giant, Briggs, brings up the rear. His scowl gives them a healthy gap between them and the hooligan behavior. 

Wiley stops short, squinting up at a tavern next to them. Three stories, with a giant glass window out front, packed with white coats and bodies. 

“Say, Kap,” she turns to the Kaptain, “wass’yer name ‘gain?”

The Kaptain’s nostrils flare. “What’s your name, sir. And it’s Bol Meserhein.”

“Whenj’ya graduate?”

Kaptain Meserhein darkens. “None of your concern, sailor. Where’s my krew?”

The front window of the tavern shatters as a body comes flying through. 

No coat, just black trousers with that red stripe and the suspenders pulled over the previously white blouse. His hair is near white, as is the patchy beard they can just make out from his side profile. 

Wiley gestures clumsily to the little man gurgling into the mud. “There’s’yer Chief Eng’er’neer.”

Meserhein’s lip twitches. “Right.”

The little man rolls over onto his back, mud spitting as he rants at nobody in particular. “Ain’t nothing more beautiful’n my Nightmare! So’s I want ya to lie still n’ be a little colder? Nothin’ wrong with that! You don’ hum like she does! Don’ you go callin’ my gorgeous lady ugly, you common wh—”

“Chief Engineer Leuhaus,” Kaptain Meserhein says sharply. 

The Chief Engineer hardly stutters in his rant, though it’s mostly gibberish now. Yes, hair and patchy beard are completely white, small eyes and a pinched, surprisingly youthful face. Hardly an old man. Bride is almost thirty. 

Wiley offers the Kaptain a grin. “He dun’t know tha’name.”

Kaptain scoffs. “Sir. He doesn’t know that name, sir. Slip up again and I’ll be bringing you up on disciplinary charges, sailor.”

But Wiley has hardly heard him. She sways over the little man still screeching and taps him on his brow, right on his thinning hairline, like you would tap glass. “Bride! Bride! Nightmare’s gotta new Kap’n.”

Bride stops abruptly, finally seeming to notice Wiley, the Kaptain, and whoever Briggs is. He blinks, then narrows his eyes. “My girl eats infants.”

“Leuhaus,” Kaptain says. 

Bride roars and slaps both hands into the mud. “Who in the blazing black void is Leuhaus?”

“This’s the Mare’s Bride, Kap’sir,” Wiley says. 

“Now why is that the name—”

“Don’ ask qu—ques—ques’ian’s y’don’ wanna know ‘th answers too, Kap’sir.”

Kaptain purses his lips. He really wants to strangle Wiley in this moment, and he fully intends to make her life and whatever job she has on that orbiting station much harder after this. 

Wiley is blissfully unaware of this. 

She steps over Bride and continues her winding journey down Sin Street, squinting because she can’t fully see with the world swinging back and forth as it is. 

She stops, leaning up against the porch of another tavern. “‘Umble!”

The young man sitting on the steps scoffs. His black jacket collar is undone, revealing a dribble of bright cherry blood down into his white blouse beneath. He’s packed a bit of mud over the wound, which looks concerningly like a bite mark, and now sits with a smoking pipe dangling from the corner of his mouth. 

Despite how cold it is, his curly black hair is plastered to his face with sweat, and one of his spectacle lenses is perilously close to falling out of their bent wires. 

Humble narrows his eyes, looking past Wiley, Kaptain, and Briggs to Bride still throwing his tantrum. “Insane little bugger.”

Wiley almost loses her balance, but Kaptain manages to catch her and prop her up against the porch again. “This’s’th’nav. ‘Umble, this’s’th’Kap-sir.”

Humble pulls his spectacles from his face and carefully pushes the lens back into place before cleaning them on his sleeve. He gives Kaptain an icy up-and-down before going back to such lofty work as his spectacles. 

“Kaptain Meserhein, I presume.”

“How’ya’know’tha?” Wiley leans forward, mouth agape. 

Humble makes a face as he inches away. “I actually read the documents they give me. Kaptain? I expect you to do something about that squalling little animal,” he points at his bite mark. “I have no doubt this will become infected with some flesh eating bacteria, Bride is a walking biohazard as it is. Need I remind you of my value, I’m the only person on that crypt of a craft that could so much as add, much less compute physics to navigate, unless you’d rather be lost in space. Should’ve bitten Chuck. Anyone could learn to steer.”

Kaptain Meserhein blinks. “He bit you?”

“We were trying to clean him,” Humble grumbles, glaring at his boots bitterly. “Me, Chuck, Fearless, and Barbarian. We managed to hose him, it was when we were holding him down to shave him that he bit me.” Then, in a mutter, “I hate it here.”

Kaptain Meserhein clears his throat, clearly unsure. The books cover quite a bit, but none of them explain how to handle a situation where a krewmember bites another krewmember. 

He shifts beneath Wiley and Humble’s gazes, one cold and indifferent, the other bleary and unfocused. Kaptain clears his throat again. “I’ll handle this when we get back to the station.”

Humble scoffs and gives Wiley a knowing look. “How long you thinking?”

“Mmmm, whole patrol?”

“Generous. He showed up in his boatcloak.”

“Perhaps you can direct me to the rest of the krew, kriegsmarinaut,” Kaptain says coldly. 

Humble scoffs again. “Chuck’s inside losing all his backpay, Barbarian’s down the street in Windy’s spinning some yarn so a streetworker he’s already in love with will take him upstairs, Speedy’s probably on body number eighteen of the night, Bounce is still asleep on the vessel, Fearless is working up the courage to take his pants off, enlisted are all scattered to the wind, and I have no idea where—”

“Ghost!” Wiley tumbles forward, pointing frantically across the street as she faceplants, having forgotten to use her hands to brace, as most grotesquely intoxicated people are likely to do. “Y’see? We gotta catch’er, ‘r—”

There’s absolutely nobody there. 

Kaptain stifles an impatient snarl and turns back to Humble. “Perhaps you can tell me where my XO is, as well. And my second watch officer.”

Wiley manages to scramble up and wobbles across the street, calling after this ghost of hers. 

Humble gives Kaptain a curling, malicious smile. He enjoys watching people flounder. “You know why they call her the Nightmare?”

The impatient huff, built up in Kaptain’s throat, escapes and enters the world in a hot trail of steam. “Slip-Vessel VIIBU-48 has destroyed more Federation warvessels than freighters. She has a feared reputation among them, now answer my question, Chief Rytoff. And if you lot don’t start calling me sir, I’m going to—”

“They call her Nightmare because she’s a nightmare to handle,” Humble inspects his nails, entirely indifferent to his Kaptain’s growing ire. “A lever that turns the vents on one day will be the lever that turns her gravity off the next. She pulls to the left, then she suddenly decides to pull to the right. And some days, she decides to work, then she doesn’t. Usually when a convoy is passing by. And she curses all of her kaptains, of course.”

Kaptain Meserhein flinches, despite himself. “I don’t put stock in curses.”

“No?” Humble tilts his head, sinister smile growing. “So you don’t find it odd Nightmare’s had three kaptains in three patrols? That none of them ever come back? I’ve only been with her since her second patrol, but the first kaptain they gave her to was the legendary Orl KuTua. Forty patrols on two separate ships, a competent veteran, then the instant he steps aboard Nightmare, a bolt bursts from a pipe and carves his brain in half. Second kaptain broke his neck, the last one was more shrapnel than flesh when we found him in the head. But right, you’re correct, sir. There’s no ‘curse’.”

Wiley has managed to make her away across the street. She clings to the side of a building while two smoking streetworkers watch on in silence. “Ghost! Ghost y’get’back’ere! Don’ steal ‘nythin’! I can’t bail’y’out this time! Spent all my backpay on this coat!

Humble snorts, looking past Kaptain and Briggs. “How goes it, Ghost?”

A lightboned woman steps out from behind Briggs. She’s spotless despite the mud, dark glittering eyes peering out from beneath black flat bangs while two pointed ears stick out of her regulation low bun. 

She doesn’t reply, just glances across the street at Wiley before handing Briggs his entire belt back. 

“Here’s your second watch officer, Kap,” Humble sneers, before pointing with his pipe across the street at Wiley. “And there’s the second in command of your entire vessel. Academy graduate and everything. Welcome to the Nightmare.”