Chapter 39: The Death of Captain Link

…

"NESTER!"

Link's horrified scream jolted Nester out of his chair, causing the old man to rise to his feet and knock over a tray bearing a couple vials of medicine. "By Din's left tit, Captain!" Nester swore. "What the hell!?"

"Nester, I'm bleeding!"

The cantankerous old man paled, his face the perfect look of shock. He stumbled toward Link, having to brace himself on the beds due to a spasm in his back. He pulled himself to Link's bed to find that Link had already positioned himself sitting on the edge. Link revealed the wound in his side, already having stained his lime-green body suit an unsightly shade of dark crimson almost black under the poor lanterns around them. His entire side was soaked, and, as Link held his arm raised as if afraid of touching his own blood, the discoloration was slowly making its way down and around his hip and thigh. He glanced behind Link at the bed. A dark pool the size of a pillow sat on the mattress behind Link, its volume deepening the dread Nester was feeling.

"Oh, fu—… Captain, can you get out to the hold?" Nester asked urgently.

"I-I think so," Link said, although he had to admit to still feeling light-headed.
"Get out there now!" Nester told him. He then marched to the front of the sick bay while Link slowly negotiated the bed. "RESPOND TO CARGO! ANY HANDS, RESPOND TO CARGO!" he then screamed into the cargo bay, hands cupped around his mouth to help his voice spread.

Naturally, the first one there was Layna, having jumped out of the women's side of the berthing deck in response. Nester turned at the impression that someone was behind him and started. "Yikes! Don't you warn anyone!?" He pointed into the sick bay. "Get the captain, bring him into the hold!"

Layna turned in response. Her desert-born complexion turned a few shades gray at the sight of Link, right arm holding a wounded side, most of his left leg stained with blood, slowly pulling himself by the bed in an effort to walk to the cargo hold. She stood in shock for what felt like forever. Then, as she saw Link begin to stumble sideways, she rushed forward and caught him just before he tripped into a cabinet next to Nester's desk.

Harley and Gold, having heard the call from the galley, came up the starboard steps. "Wha's goin' on, Doc?" Harley asked.

"The captain's been injured; I need to stitch him up," Nester told them as he stepped forward to meet them. "I need a cot, and I need blankets. Now!"

"Wai—'ow'd the cap'n get 'urt?" Gold asked.

"Do I look like I know?" Nester asked, pointing at himself. He clapped his hands at them. "Now, boys, now! Line!" Line, coming down from the port stairs, stopped on the last step. "If there's another lantern free around here, I need it."

"You got it," Line said as he joined Gold and Harley in searching the back of the cargo hold for supplies.

"Doctoh, we just heahd youh call," Leynne said as he came down the stairs flanked by Dholit and Cale. "What's the—" He turned wide-eyed, the same look as Dholit and Cale once all three of them saw Layna haul a barely-conscious Link out of the sick bay behind Nester. "Goddesses Above…"

"That's quick thinking, Number Two," Nester told him. "We could use the prayer. I need a bowl for my instruments, and I need a way to heat them."

"Dholit," Leynne said over his shoulder, "see if Biluf has anything like that that won't explode."

"Right," Dholit said before rushing back up the steps.

"Cale," Leynne continued as he stepped out of the staircase. He turned to address Cale. "Theh's a floweh vase in my room with a bowl undehneath. Bring the bowl."

"Right," Cale said with a nod. Then he slipped past Leynne and took the stairs down to the next deck.

"I got 'em." Nester turned to see that Randy, having been slow to respond to the call, had come out of the berthing deck behind Layna and took up Link's other arm.

"What's happened?" Leynne asked.

"Set it right there, boys!" Nester called to Gold and Harley as they started back with the supplies they had been asked for, pointing to the large, open area in the middle of the hold. He then moved to Leynne's side as Randy and Layna dragged Link past. "I don't know. Scream scared the hell outta me, and the next thing I see is my bed covered in blood."

"That doesn't make any sense," Leynne told him. "Up to this point, The Night has neveh so blatantly hahmed him."

"Lay him on his side!" Nester hollered at Randy and Layna. "Make sure that wound is facing up!" He brought his voice down as he said, "Well, it's damned happening now, Number Two. And what's worse, he's already been bleeding so much on the inside that he might as well have a sieve in his side."

"What's the plan?" Leynne asked.

"Someone keep pressure on that wound!" Nester barked at them. "Use your hands if you have to!" He tapped Leynne's shoulder. "C'mon."

Nester hustled back into the sick bay with Leynne close on his heels. And then Leynne saw the trail of blood leaving the bay. "My wohd…" he said in awe to himself.

"C'mon, Number Two!" Nester snapped from the back of the bay as he looked through a cabinet. "I need help with this!"

Leynne strode over to him just in time to catch a black bag. He watched for a moment while Nester started throwing tools and bottles into the bag. "What's the proceduh foh this?" Leynne asked.

"The procedure is to pray to Farore that whatever cut him didn't so much as kiss his large intestine," Nester said as he stopped to look around the bay. "The last thing I need is to try stitching up an intestine as well as his side."

"Is it a serious concehn?" Leynne asked.

"The large intestine is where shit is made, Number Two," Nester told him in an annoyed tone. "You don't want shit in your blood."

"What ah you looking foh?"

"I'm trying to think," Nester said. "Ssssssssshit… got it!" He reached into a foot locker set underneath the bed Geordie was sleeping on and grabbed out a number of cloth bandages. "C'mon, Number Two, this is gonna be mess—wait, wait, wait!" Leynne, in the middle of turning to hustle back into the hold, nearly fell forward stopping himself. Nester, as he stepped by, indicated a small shelf behind Leynne. "Grab that bedpan there and explain to me why I only have one." Leynne, after picking up the bedpan, gave an annoyed look at the memory of the argument the two had had about the division of ship's funds for the sick bay.

They returned to the cargo hold where most of the airmen who had responded to the crisis now waited around Link. Harley was holding a hand over Link's wound while Randy washed his hands off in a bucket brought to him by Lilly. Layna was hunched at the head of the cot with one hand pressed against Link's forehead. Link, for his part, was pale and unconscious.

"Talb!" Layna said as she saw Nester return. "My Captain yibiynwokotak!"

"What'd she say?" Nester asked.

"She said he feels cold," Leynne replied.

"Set that down there," Nester told him, pointing at the foot of the cot. "You boys see any bubbling from his wound?"

"Doc, I can barely stand to look at it!" Randy said.

"Tha's why I took over," Harley said.

"Okay, lift your hand so I can see it," Nester told him. The rest of the crew looked away as Nester glanced over Link's wound. "Number Two, take these," he told Leynne, heaving the bandages at him. Leynne accepted the armful, but Nester kept one that he immediately passed to Harley. "Hold that over it; it'll keep things relatively sanitary." Harley did as he was told, and Nester leaned over to prod around Link's abdomen with one hand. "Okay, no indirect evidence of a cut in the intestines, but I suspect he has some blood buildup in his abdominal cavity."

"What can we do about it?" Cale asked.

"I'll have to open the wound a little to double-check that his intestines are fine," Nester told him. He pointed to Cale. "You've just been promoted to nurse, Chief Twig."

"I what?!" Cale cried.

"Mister Gold," Nester said as he knelt down to search his bag. As Gold came to the foot of the cot, Nester held up a jar of clear liquid. "Empty about half of that into the bowl. Half, because we'll need the rest of it for our hands."

"Aye aye," Gold answered. He pulled the cork off the top and brought it up to his nose. "Whew!"

"Well, don't smell it, you dumb ape!" Nester snapped at him. "That stuff'll blind you in seconds! Cookie!"

"Yes?" Lilly replied.

Nester held up the bedpan. "Fill this about halfway with water," he told her.

"Okay."

"All right, Nurse Twig," Nester said as he pulled out a pair of scissors. "I want you to take these scissors and cut off the captain's clothing. Start from the back of his neck, cut to about the middle of his back, come around his side, make sure you don't cut where his clothes have already been cut, and back up to his neck in the front."

"Yes, Doctah," Cale replied.

"Don't worry about making it pretty; we'll be throwing the clothes away," Nester told him. "Mist—"

"Harup," Randy croaked.

"If you're gonna puke, go where I can't see you!" Nester snapped at him. "Mister Harley. As soon as Nurse Twig is done, I want you to pull away his clothes…" He offered a small jar to Harley. "… and put this around his wound. Not in, around."

"Aye aye," Harley replied as he took the jar in his free, blood-stained hand.

"Anything we can do?" Airman Hunter called from the cots set at the front of the cargo hold.

"Hunter, you just shut up and be sick!" Nester snapped at them.

"Can do."

"Leynne?" Leynne turned around to see Dholit approach him. She held up a brass shell with a piece of paper protruding from the top.

"Doctoh," Leynne said. He indicated Dholit with a side-nod. "You'h heat is heh."

Nester gave the shell a derisive look when Dholit offered it to him. "What the hell am I supposed to do with that, light it or shove it up my ass?" he asked.

"It's a slow-buhning combustion element," Leynne explained, giving Nester an annoyed look. "It should be enough to boil youh instruments."

"If you say so," Nester replied. "Can you set it up?"

Leynne turned to Dholit. "Switch with me," he said as he offered the bandages to Dholit. Dholit took them, and he snatched the shell from her. "One moment."

"You got half of one!" Nester hollered while Leynne jogged past him toward the back of the hold. He moved aside slightly as Cale squeezed in to finish cutting Link's bodysuit apart. "Nurse Twig, do you know how to check a carotid artery for a pulse?"

"Yes, saah?" Cale answered.

"As soon as you get that done, check and make sure he's still alive; he's not breathing very much."

"Where yeh want this bowl?" Gold asked.

"Just set it next to his feet here," Nester said. "Line."

Line, who had gone unnoticed for a bit, jerked in response. "Yeah?" he asked.

"Is that lantern lit?"

Line held it up as if to check it. "Yeah."

"Good, just standby," Nester told him. "You're gonna play lamppost for me."

Nester watched for a moment as Harley peeled away Link's clothing from the wound. "Just leave the bandage on while you get some on your fingers. Put a new one on when you're done."

"Aye aye," Harley answered as he opened the jar.

"He still has a heahtbeat, Doctah," Cale reported. Nester glanced at him to make sure he was checking it with the correct fingers.

Leynne returned with a short tripod and a small, thin plate of iron. He dropped to his knees next to the bowl and set the shell on the deck with the plate underneath and the tripod over it. "What do you need heated?" he then asked Nester.

"Where's Cookie with the water?" Nester asked.

"Here," Lilly said, stepping over to them from where she was waiting near the starboard stairs.

"Get that water boiling," Nester said.

"Brin' me one o' those," Harley told Dholit, holding out an empty hand.

"It doesn't look like he's bleeding too much," Leynne observed as Harley switched out a new bandage. He accepted the bedpan and set it on the tripod.

"Don't let it fool you," Nester said. "He's probably clotting on the surface, but I've still got to see if his large intestine is all right."

"How ah his chances?" Cale asked.

"I don't know yet," Nester said. "Depends on the damage."

FZZZzzzzzz. Nester glanced over to see that Leynne had lit the top of the shell, which was now spewing a small, yellow flame. "As soon as that water's boiling," he told Leynne, "I want you to take every metal instrument you find except the tongs and put them in there for about five minutes." He looked up at Harley. "I can spare you for now, so I want you to get another cot and a set of blankets. Set him up a space opposite of the food poisoned boys." Then he turned to Line. "Come closer, Line."

"Yeah?" Line asked as he stepped forward.

"Gimme a free hand." Line offered out his left hand while Nester grabbed a jar out of the bag. He placed it in Line's empty hand. "You get to play IV stand, too."

"What is this?" Line asked.

"Saline."

Line frowned at him. "Is it safe? Because I get shaky with this kinda stuff."

"It's just salt water, you dipstick. Your buddy doesn't have a lot of blood in his veins, so he needs something to keep him going for now."

"Shouldn't we give him a blood transfusion?" Leynne asked.

"Later," Nester said. "I'll have to check his blood and some of the crew's blood to make sure we can actually do it. Right now, we just need to make sure he has some kind of liquid volume in him."

"Doctoh, the wateh is boiling," Leynne reported.

"Nurse Twig, front and center," Nester demanded.

…

Link's vision blurred. He was pulling himself along the bed, but it was not doing him any good. He was only vaguely aware of someone grabbing his arm to help him out. He wanted to follow Nester's directions, but his mind was losing coherency too fast. His hand fell from the bed. It came down to him willing his feet to walk. And then he lost feeling. He thought he would fall.

Then he blacked out to the dull drone of someone hollering nearby.

For what felt like forever, he simply perceived the darkness. His worries were gone. His duties did not exist anymore. It felt as if all of the memories he had of the past two years faded away. He just floated in the middle of nothing. For a moment, he wondered if he should follow where this darkness went.

Then, two figures appeared in front of him. They were so small, Link could barely tell what they were. One wore blue while the other wore yellow. He felt a bit of familiarity with them, but he could not place them.

"Hey, Skipper!" one of them called in a deep voice. "Is this how a Skyrider goes down?"

Link put on a questioning look.

"We fell out of the sky, same as you," a younger voice told him. "You survived that. This is nothing."

Link turned away from them as he realized there was a light behind him. He hesitated, unsure of what he was supposed to do.

"Get your ass back out there," the deeper voice told him. "You've got a crew to save."

Link could feel his mind clearing. He remembered everything. He had a crew and a kingdom to save. With just his thoughts pushing him, he flew straight into the cone of light.

In the next moment, he was looking at a wood ceiling. A deckhead. Which deckhead was that? he asked himself.

"Captain." Link turned his head only slightly while his eyes found movement nearby. Nester had risen from a bench set next to a bulkhead on his left. He stepped toward Link with his head angled. He stared for a moment. Then he grinned. "Welcome back to the skies of the living."

"Where am I?" Link asked through a gravelly voice.

"You're outside the sick bay, in the cargo hold," Nester answered.

Link raised his right hand and rubbed his eyes for a moment. Then he told Nester, "Doc, you look like hell."

"Well, what do you expect?" Nester said, his grin falling. "I've been up more than half a day keeping an eye on you."

"Did you… the bleeding?" Link asked, unable to fully articulate his sentence.

"You've got more silk holding you together than a pair of women's underwear," Nester told him. "If you die now, I'm giving it to the ladies."

"How bad?" Link asked.

"You were bleeding into your abdomen," Nester told him. "If you can't breathe, that's why. I put in a drain to empty your abdomen out; I'll probably be taking it out tonight. I had to stitch part of your intestines shut, too. Now I'm just hoping you won't develop peritonitis."

"Am I gonna be all right?"

Nester's frown turned into a concerned look. "Unfortunately, you're not free yet," he said. "I had to improvise quite a bit just to get you sewn up. You've had massive blood loss on top of having Randy and Harley putting their filthy hands on your cut. If we didn't sterilize things right, you've got a good chance of developing an infection. And this isn't the best place to put you with the hungry trio across the bay."

"We can hear you, Doc," someone groaned.

"What about the sick bay?" Link asked.

"The boys are scrubbing it down," Nester said. "You left a trail of blood all the way to the middle of the hold when we found you. We chucked the bed overboard."

Link sighed. "Sorry…"

"Oh, please. If you could've helped it, you'd've gone up to the deck to bleed. That wasn't my point. My point was that you bled in the first place. Sure as hell made our night interesting."

"Is everyone okay?" Link asked, trying to raise his head.

"We had one casualty. Randy fainted."

"Airman… Randy? Big guy? Eyepatch?"

"Same one."

"How come?" Instead of answering, Nester pointed over Link's bed.

Link turned his head to see that there was a second cot lying next to his, this one raised slightly on a pair of crates. Randy lay on the cot, unconscious, and with a tube protruding from his exposed right arm. Link followed the thick, purple-colored tube with his eyes to discover that it was connected to a needle sticking into his own arm.

"As it turns out, Mister Randy is afraid of needles," Nester explained as he stepped in between the cots. He glanced at a bottle of clear liquid that had been nailed to the bulkhead surrounding the nearby staircase. Then he checked the tube connecting him to Link. "He fainted while I was trying to test the crew's compatibility with you. Mister Randy was the first person whose blood did not attack yours, so I siphoned him. We had to do this person-to-person since I don't have a clean jar to put his blood in."

"What about the engine room?" Link asked. "He has duty tonight."

"I wouldn't trust him so quick after volunteering his blood. Besides, Leynne assigned Gold to lend a hand tonight. Randy'll be up and about tomorrow." He rounded Link's cot and sat on the bench. However, instead of asking the obvious question, he picked up something to show Link. "Look what we found."

Link had to raise his head to better recognize his green tunic. He noticed that one side of the tunic had a slit.

A slit right where he was bleeding.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," Nester said as Link's face registered shock. "You weren't wearing this tunic when you went to bed, or else it'd be covered in blood, too. But we figured it helps explain why you're bleeding."

Link shook his head. "That… can't be right," he said. "The Night has only affected my body."

"Something I suspect might go deepeh than you've been letting on."

Link glanced toward the foot of his bed to find Leynne stepping into view. He carefully shook his head and said, "N-no. There wasn't—there wasn't anything different last night. I mean… I don't think."

"You'h cehtain?" Leynne asked. "You need to think hahd about this one, Link. We neahly lost you last night. If it wehn't foh Nesteh's call to action, we might not be talking."

Link dropped his head back on the pillow and stared at the deckhead for a moment. What was different about last night? The foremost thing that came to his mind was the fact that his plan to use the goggles had incredibly failed. He remembered walking down the long corridor after he had fired a flare into the mine. That first one had been easy. It was the second flare he had been walking to when he had fallen into a pit. And he had needed to remove the goggles in order to… what was it? He had been in a pit, so… he had needed to fire another flare to see. Then he realized that it had not been that simple since he had not been able to see. He had fired a smoke signal first, and then he had had to reload for a flare. It had not been long after that when the fight had begun.

And the creature had had the Sorian whitesword because he had dropped it.

"The sword," he said as he began to understand the situation.

"The swohd?" Leynne asked.

"I didn't think anything about it until now," Link told him. "I fell into a pit while I was there and dropped the sword. Well, there was a monster down there who was using it against me. The cut in my side would have been the cut it made."

"I told you it was a sword wound," Nester said.

"Think about it," Link continued. "Janni explained that the mystics left those treasure chests in there. But we never found the one in the library because I crushed it when I was fighting The Night there. The sword is one of the mystics' tools."

Leynne scrunched his face. "Okay, I think that I can follow that logic," he said with a nod.

"That's probably why I've been able to defeat The Night," Link continued. "We can't hurt The Night in the real world because it'll grab us up if we try. The mystics must have figured out how to get around that by fighting it in the dream world with a weapon that affects things in the real world, too."

"Yes, but, as you've said, the dream wohld can be just as dangerous," Leynne pointed out. "Why, The Night has even attacked you on this very ship. Theh's something else that must be at wohk; even in the dream wohld, The Night shouldn't be so vulnerable."

"Maybe there's limits to what it can do in the dream," Link said.

"Pehhaps," Leynne said. "Still, I feel theh's something we ahn't seeing."

"Well, maybe part of it has to do with the Dreamweaver."

Leynne blinked at him. "I'm sohry, the who?" he asked.

"The Dreamweaver."

Leynne shrugged. "Who is the 'dreamweaveh'?"

"Oh," Link said as he realized that he might not have said anything to Leynne. "The Dreamweaver is the person who made the shield I found."

"Oh?" Leynne asked.

"He's someone Janni brought up a couple of times," Link explained. "But think about it. If this Dreamweaver existed at the same time as the mystics, maybe he knew how to use the dream world against The Night. Maybe he even created the dream world and trapped part of The Night in it!"

"Link, Link," Leynne said gently, one hand raised. "Try not to excite youhself too much; we only have so much suhgical silk. But, pehhaps you'h right, and The Night is somewhat limited in the dream. But that still leaves us with the fact that, limited oh not, it is still a potent fohce. And, foh the time being, I would like to ask that you wait until you heal propehly befoh you go into those mines again."

"Ah," Nester spoke up just as Link opened his mouth again. "You can't argue your way outta this one, Captain. I'm administering some potion to your wound, but you still need at least two days to rest before you go running back there. You've been low on blood for half a day, too. So instead of finding out what running around like that would be like, just stay on the ship for the next two nights."

Link technically did not have to listen to Nester; the Skyriders' regulations stated clearly that, once a doctor had laid out the orders, the only one who could violate those orders was the patient. In any other circumstances, Link might have written off Nester's and Leynne's worries to get back to work. However, things had taken another step up in seriousness. Link respected them in this situation, especially since he was far too drained to try arguing anyway. So, with a reserved nod and a small sound of acknowledgement, Link settled his head back on the pillow.

…

Link lay in bed for the rest of the day, not even trying to sit up to eat. Instead, Leynne had put together a feeding tube with a funnel and a piece of rubber tubing from Nester's supplies. Lilly poured warm broth into the tube for him. Leynne did not bother Link with ship's business, so Link resolved to order it out of him tomorrow. Many of the crew were kind enough to wish him well as they passed by on their regular routine. Irleen gave him an earful after Link explained that it had been the sword that had caused the physical wound to appear. Since Link was on bedrest, Leynne had split the morning shift to explore the western reaches of the island for technoworks while, in the afternoon, Cale and Line took the opportunity to help Irleen search the library. It was not for very long, and Irleen explained that she had to double back for a moment because she could not remember where they had stopped the last time they were there. Unfortunately, Link never heard a report on the morning exploration and assumed that it was a failure. He resolved to get back to work in the morning.

He slept some more in the late afternoon. Then Leynne stepped down into the hold to wake up him, Hunter, Stan, and Gillam so that The Night was not affecting their dreams. While the other three were at least capable of sitting up, Link felt like his spine was just a plank of wood. Not that he tried to move anyway since Nester was adamant that him even trying to sit up could mess up the stitches in his side. It made that night difficult for him since, without moving, he had to struggle to keep himself awake.

He had forgotten about the Dreamweaver's Shield.

Naturally, he transitioned into the dream without realizing it. His only hint was a figure sitting on the bench to his left. He turned his head to see a pair of spindly arms wrapped around a pair of legs. The mess of untied blue hair resting on the knees hinted to him who it was.

"Hey, Janni," he said.

Janni raised her head just enough that Link caught a glimpse of her amber eyes over her knees. Then, with an audible f-pwoof, Janni disappeared in a burst of black smoke. Link stared at the spot and, other than responding to other disturbances, continued to glance at that spot for the rest of the night, wondering if he had done something to upset her.