Chapter 38: Questionable Intentions

Things could not have looked any more bleak.

The sail had been assembled, the systems worked – but the mast was too weak. The Sapfir did not have nearly enough materials on hand to reinforce it adequately, and so they drifted, day after day, gathering up what wreckages they could.

It was a dreadful business. The men were sent in teams of three aboard the remains of ships that had long since been destroyed, the structures unstable and threatening to cave at any moment. It was a sacrifice, a risk that the crew was willing to take for one another.

Decimus was never among them – in the event that one of the wreckages did collapse (none of them had yet, thank goodness), they could not afford to lose their chief architect. It was for the good of them all, but the overall spite towards him was still the same, if not greater than before.

Although this was by far better than being taunted by those hallucinations day and night with none believing his words when he spoke of them, the fear that they would simply dispose of him once they had left the abyss was still present.

What if they give me back to her?

She was dead – he had seen her die – but he would not put anything past her.

What if they are rid of me, the first opportunity that passes.

What if they turn on me.

Were they ever with me to begin with.

Even now, Decimus was unused to having so many questions that simply had no answer. Not even chances could be calculated.

He was below the decks under the pretenses of evaluating their stored weapons – but it was a ruse to allow him to escape. He was vulnerable while he was thinking. If the possibility for them to turn on him existed, precaution was vital. For about three hours now, Decimus had stood in front of the same group of racks, doing anything but what he said he was.

The thick, long Polarian uniform jacket was heavy on his thin frame, but it fit him and served its purpose nevertheless (keeping the wearer from freezing to death) – he drew it tighter around his shoulders and sank further into thought.

It was not just the crewmembers' spite that was concerning – it was the aggressive, barely-contained anger that seemed to pass between them, between those who called themselves comrades and brothers. Their survival depended on their cooperation, with him and with each other. If they could not even come together amongst themselves –

Decimus would not think on that any longer. He would not let himself. They were too analytical – too survival based, for humans, to let pride and frustration get in their way.

Finally stepping away from the weapon racks for the first time in hours, Decimus climbed up the ladder and out of the storage hold, now still below decks but in the narrow hallway system that he was so familiar with.

It was still down here, the crew was all on deck –

That was, save for two hushed, but urgent voices.

Decimus could not quite make out what they were saying, not from where he was now, and so he moved closer. They were switching in and out of their native tongue, their voices harsh and angry.

"Pyotr! Now is not the time!"

"Now is the perfect time! For too long, we've let ourselves be manipulated!"

Decimus froze. Manipulated by what?

His first thoughts were of Dangler, the invisible puppetmaster of the fates that no one could see, and yet, she toyed with them like they were little more than her playthings. Illusions, false hopes and victories – the tools of her trade.

"He's the only way we'll make it out of here!"

"We're not reliant on him anymore, Vladimir. You heard him, he said it himself – all we need to do is reinforce the mast!"

"And if it fails again, after we try it?! If there is still another hidden problem, waiting to be revealed?! What then – will you let your hatred blind you?!"

They were talking about him. One of them was defending him, the other was making his loathing clear. Decimus recognized the second rasping voice as that of the soldier who had been seconds away from terminating him.

Pyotr. He now could put a name to his face.

Suddenly aware of his own being and presence more so than usual, Decimus pressed himself to the wall, a single turn around the corner being the only thing needed to expose either party. This was not optimal, no, far from it, this hatred of him and his kind – but it was nothing that he had not predicted earlier on.

"You act as if my hatred is unfounded."

"It most certainly is!"

"How can you say that genocide – that the murders and crimes committed by his kind is not a good enough reason?!"

When the Armada had intervened in the Polarian war, they had stopped at nothing to achieve their objective – and they had spared no one.

And yet, he had learned to coexist with them, even though it had been a Polarian that stabbed him. Decimus traced his fingers over the outline of the wound, which was almost fully healed by now. He wondered why they couldn't do the same – why they couldn't put aside what had occurred in the past, why they couldn't differentiate their emotions and their logic.

Because, he answered himself, they are mortal beings and emotion is woven into them. It is how they operate. And the clockworks, as everyone knew, were all programmed with a common objective. In the end, no matter what, they would want all mortal beings dead.

Pyotr was right – his views were founded, and strongly so – but this would hinder their progress, and as of now, Decimus would have to find a way to either work around it or work with it.

"I don't know, Vladimir – sometimes…sometimes I wonder."

"About what?"

"You, of course – whether your loyalty still truly lies with your own kind."

Vladimir shouted wordlessly in indignation.

"How dare – "

"And yet you bring one of them aboard our ship out of sympathy! You carried him on here like a wounded soldier – "

"That's what he was!"

"He's a PUPPET!"

There was a hand on Decimus' shoulder and he nearly shouted, which would have blown everyone's cover – but this was stopped by a powerful hand closing over his mouth, muffling any sound. He looked up. It was the Captain, his eyes calm but deliberate. He released Decimus slowly, indicating for him to be silent as he leaned against the wall beside him, listening just as attentively.

"Just because you can't seem to look past history for the sake of our survival doesn't – "

"So I should take a page out of your book, yes?! I should follow your lead? Since when, Vladimir, were you above any of us?"

Next to Decimus, the Captain tensed. Decimus wondered why he didn't do something. It was perfectly within his power to stop this now, to order them both into silence and back to work.

But as Decimus watched him – his eyes, his hands, his expression – he understood. By exercising authority only to quiet them, it would not solve anything – the source of the problem, of their disagreement, would still remain. He was trying to understand the situation first, to get an idea of what was running through the minds of his crew before deciding how to best address it.

"I think that you should stop threatening to hinder the process!"

"So you mean I should sleep with the enemy, just as you did?!"

Decimus went rigid, trying to process the full meaning of what had just been said.

Vladimir cursed in his native tongue and roughly clocked Pyotr upside the jaw with a loud thwack, and Decimus heard the other man grunt as he stumbled back, spitting blood.

"You bastard, how dare you accuse me of - !"

"EXPLAIN THIS, NOW!"

In the short time that Decimus had been so stuck in thought, the Captain had stormed around the corner, now standing directly in front of the two quarrelling scavengers. Neither of them said anything – there was nothing to explain. "I will not tolerate such pathetic bickering on my ship!"

Decimus could see just enough of the scene from his hidden position to know what was going on. The Captain gave them each a ferocious glare that let them know that he had heard everything.

"You! Can you not follow the example that the rest of the shipmates are setting?! Why, even I am following the clockwork's plan – unless you have a better one, I suggest that you silence yourself!"

He was talking to Pyotr, obviously.

"And as for you – it is beneath you to waste effort and blood on such a trivial disagreement!"

"Understood, sir," Vladimir replied, calmly and coolly. He knew that the Captain held no true quarrel with his words, but only with his most recent actions – in general, fighting amongst teams was never beneficial.

"Up with the both of you – back to work."

"Sir," they both acknowledged, and started from the small corner that they had chosen to occupy. Decimus quickly slipped away and back into the storage hold before he could be seen, waiting until they both had passed before reemerging. The Captain was standing by the top of the ladder, waiting.

"I have dealt with it," he said curtly, "it is my hope that this problem will not continue to be prevalent in the future."

Decimus nodded, almost numbly, his processor still sitting stuck on Pyotr's words and accusations – and of his perception of Vladimir's motives for saving him, helping him, protecting him.

The guarded, hyper-alert part of his processor suggested that this was just like Bishop – that when it came down to it, he would be another observation, another test subject, because it is better to know one's enemy.

But there was nothing to confirm that. It would be dangerous to make a baseless conclusion.

"Understood. What is the status of operations?"

"Very slow so far," the Captain replied, and said nothing more. Decimus had already known. They had come across very few wreckages over the past few twenty-four hour periods, but material was material – and the sooner they were able to reconstruct the mast, the better.

With a short nod, the Captain left him, and Decimus was again alone, a thousand unworked thoughts and scenarios spinning before him.

Again, he touched the wound at his side.

"Why did he…?"

Decimus had wanted to be terminated, he had wanted his function to cease. He had felt safe with the blade in his torso, with his blood pouring out onto the snow beneath him, because wherever he was going and wherever this would take him, she would not be able to reach him.

Or so he thought.

Retreating back into the storage hold, where there were none that could potentially turn on him and stab another blade into his back when he wasn't looking, Decimus pondered this.

He had seen her die.

Humans could not live with all of their bones exposed, once their flesh and tissue and organs had turned to dust. It was impossible – they needed all components to live, every single one of them was important and vital. She had to be dead.

She had to –

Then why is she here?

Decimus thought back to the wreckage of the Marleybonian ship that they had come across weeks and weeks ago, only for the crew to morph into multiplications of her. He thought of the undead creatures that had crawled onto the deck accompanied by waves of maggots and that ringing, piercing laugh.

I've got you now, she said, but she didn't. She could no longer contact him through the brand on his throat. The scars that she had carved into his back had healed long ago.

Why –

And how is she still here?

The question still loomed. And as alarming as it was for him to be kept in a constant state of not-knowing, he was not quite sure that he truly wanted to find out.

Just a mild bit of tension. I hope you enjoyed, and do be sure to leave a review!

- Severina