"Okay, okay, okay!" shouted Meryl. The girl she still held in a headlock was trying to scream through Meryl's fingers and she shook her, tightening the lock. Milly's hand fell on Meryl's shoulder and squeezed. Meryl let up on her hold again (a little), picturing the stern look Milly was almost certainly giving her now. "Just shut the hell up!" she shouted again.
The eldest woman helped Meryl shush the girls, clearly made of sterner stuff than the rest of them. Meryl wondered how long this woman had worked steamers. It was a hard life, and not a lot of people stayed long; if she had started at the same age as most, she was in her second decade aboard one ship or another and Meryl's respect for her grew. And she wanted to make note of it.
"Thank you, Ma'am," said Meryl, nodding to the woman. She looked shocked to hear the honorific, and nodded at Meryl in return.
"Okay," Meryl went on, more softly, trying to radiate an aura of calm to mollify the girls' amassed panic. The girl in the headlock was fighting to get out and Meryl tightened it again until the girl stopped struggling. "Are you done?" she asked, quietly. The girl nodded as best she could in the lock, tapping out against Meryl's elbow.
"Now," said Meryl, addressing the whole room. The girl previously in the headlock was rubbing her throat, but stayed silent. "All that fuss is still several decks up from here, so you're not in any immediate danger. I need you to just stay quiet. You can just hunker down in here and try to stay out of the way until this all blows over, whatever it is." She didn't want to use the word hijacking. In steamer terminology it was basically piracy, and there were always casualties. "There's nothing of any real importance on this deck, in the way of resources or vital mechanical processes, so it's likely no one will even come down this far."
"But what if they do?" asked one girl, anxiously.
"Just stay quiet," said Meryl again. "Don't give anyone any reason to look in here. Ma'am, can you—"
"Sarah," offered the eldest woman. "Sarah's fine."
"Sarah," said Meryl, nodding. She tried again, "Can you—"
"Why do you keep saying, 'you'? " asked Sarah. "Like, 'You can stay down here 'til it's over'? "
"I have to go up the main decks," explained Meryl. "I need to see what's going on."
"What?" said the girl so recently in a headlock.
"Why?" Sarah asked, glancing uncertainly from Milly to Meryl. "Who are you people?"
"It's a long story," sighed Meryl, trying to focus. If she was going to be sneaking around, she couldn't wear her boots; they would make far too much noise. So she'd be running around in just underwear and her nightshirt; leggings were out, they gave her no purchase on smooth metal flooring. For an instant Meryl considered wearing Vash's clothes—but they were far too big; they'd just get in her way.
Fine. As-is, then.
Barefoot and pantsless. Wonderful.
"What about me, Ma'am?" asked Milly, worriedly. "Shouldn't I come with you?"
"No, you don't know your way around the steamer," Meryl said, shaking her head. "Stay with the girls—"
"I know my way around, I can help you," interrupted one girl. Meryl guessed her to be the youngest, maybe 13 or 14, only a few iches and five pounds short of Meryl's build, and she seemed to have gotten over her initial panic pretty quickly. She still looked a little anxious, but seemed more level-headed than the rest, and eager to help.
"No," said Meryl, shaking her head at the girl (though she admired her spunk). "It's too dangerous. What's your name?"
"Evangeline—Evie," the girl told her.
"Okay, Evie," said Meryl. "I need you to stay here and help Milly keep the others safe. She knows what to do if something goes wrong, but the girls know you better, they'll listen to you." Evie nodded. "You all just stay here, stay quiet, and lock the door after me. Don't let anyone in."
"What about you?" asked Evie.
"I'll shave-and-a-haircut," Meryl told her, opening the hatch an ich to peer out down the corridor in the direction it offered view.
"What?" asked Sarah, bewildered.
"Two bits," chorused Milly and Evie. Meryl turned again to grin at them both.
"Good girls," she told them. "Back in a bit."
Meryl pushed the door open as slowly as possible, waiting to hear any exclamation of, "Somebody's over there!" or the like. When none came, she stepped out into the corridor. Two plates of the metal flooring met just in front of the room and Meryl's heel fell on a loose rivet meant to seal them together. She jumped off it immediately, swearing (almost) silently, and for a long moment reconsidered her boots, stuffed in the corner of her bunk. But they would clomp loudly on the metal floor, and she decided against them, again.
Damn.
Standing with one foot inside the bottom of the curved hatch door, balancing herself with the other foot on the open frame, Meryl used the extra few iches of height they offered and reached up to gingerly unscrew the light bulb above the door. She did so as quickly as possible, but it still burned her fingers and she was glad when it finally flickered out for good. The bulb sat loose in the socket now and Meryl hoped it wouldn't fall out and call any attention to the door below it.
In the near dark, Meryl could barely see Milly waiting just inside the door as she stepped down to the floor again (avoiding that same upraised rivet). But she nodded anyway and heard the hatch swing shut as her eyes adjusted to the dark. The locking mechanism clanked into place and Meryl let out a quiet breath that was both a sigh of relief and of resignation.
After a moment, Meryl's could see well enough to find the number 9 she had written earlier on the hatch exterior. Now she scrubbed away all traces of the chalk; one less thing for any hijackers to notice. This hatch could lead to anything. Locked and unmarked and hidden in shadow, it would most likely be unnoticed or passed over.
Or so she hoped.
And she ran.
Her stride was irregular—long-long-short, long-short-long, short-short-stumble—trying to avoid any more seams in the flooring that might cut open her bare feet.
Step on a crack, break your mother's back...
Meryl had always won that game as a child. She thought it had been skill, but probably it was just small feet.
Either way, she was making good time now.
Meryl was following a series of service corridors leading her more toward the interior of the steamer. Mostly her guidance was just from memory, and very few of these narrow hallways were lit at this time of night so Meryl had to be careful not to run face-first into a dead end she might not remember.
A few more explosions rocked the steamer and threw Meryl against the wall, but she picked herself up again each time and kept running. The gunfire had mostly ceased (steamer crew weren't armed, after all, there wasn't going to be any resistance), but there was still plenty of shouting and screams to lead her up toward the commotion.
Several minutes later—this ship seemed even bigger than she remembered!—Meryl reached the next main corridor, stretching from bow to stern, wide enough to accommodate large groups of people at a time. She knelt and peeked around the corner into the well-lit hallway, and was relieved to find it empty.
Ten yarz away she could see what she'd been searching for: a tiny, round alcove off the corridor held a narrow ladder that led both to decks above and below the one where Meryl stood now. She hurried across the hall, practically diving into the alcove and standing half-hunched on the ladder, listening hard for any noise from the decks directly above or below. Hearing nothing, Meryl glanced down to see the ladder descended another three decks before ending on a metal floor platform. Looking up, she guessed there to be another five decks accessible above her—maybe six—before the ladder ended at the ceiling of one of the uppermost decks.
She started climbing up, bare feet cold on the metal ladder rungs, trying to move silently, stopping at every floor with just her eyes above the metal deck plating, looking and listening for any hijackers. Meryl climbed four levels without finding anyone at all, but at C-deck she could hear people coming, dozens of shoes and boots clanking along the metal floors.
At least two men were shouting at the others in the crowd, and Meryl assumed they were some of the hijackers, rounding up passengers. She wondered where they would be taking everyone...
Meryl raised her head just enough to look down the corridor and saw a mix of passengers and crew being ushered toward where she hid in the ladder alcove. Climbing down another few rungs to stay well out of view, Meryl was taken completely by surprise when one of the shouting men called out, "Hey! Stop her!"
A blur of movement above and Meryl realized someone had thrown themselves into the ladder alcove, dropping down toward her. She recognized the figure as a girl in a stewardess uniform, sliding down the ladder faster than Meryl could move out of her way, so Meryl just pulled her feet free and dropped, trying to hold the side-rails loosely to keep herself from free-fall without burning her hands.
Two decks lower, the girl still hadn't seemed to notice there was someone stuck below her, and Meryl was close to shouting her presence before she looked past the girl's shoulder and saw a familiar a gas mask faceplate on the man looking down from the mouth of the alcove.
Then Meryl saw the barrel of the machine gun pointed down at them.
She shouted in alarm as the man opened fire, and the girl above her screamed. Meryl abruptly planted both feet on the ladder again and caught the girl around the waist from behind as she fell, throwing them both sideways out of the ladder alcove, out of the line of fire, and into the main corridor of the nearest deck.
Meryl landed hard on her back on the cold metal floor plating and, still holding the girl around the middle, was nearly crushed as the girl fell heavily backward onto her chest. Meryl immediately clapped one hand over the girl's mouth, cutting off the continuous scream. The girl was so tall that the back of her head almost hit the floor over Meryl's shoulder and she was struggling frantically to escape Meryl's grip. Meryl just held her more tightly.
"Play dead!" Meryl hissed in her ear, speaking through a mouthful of the girl's long blonde hair.
The girl froze and the rapid gunfire stopped. For a moment she and Meryl just lay there, silent save for both their labored breathing. Then the girl started shaking in her arms, whimpering from behind her hand.
"I think I got her!" shouted one of the men, his voice echoing down the ladder alcove.
"Then leave her," said the other. "Neon wants the passengers, he won't care if we lose one idiot stewardess on the way." The man seemed to turn his attention back to the rest of the group, saying, "And unless any of the rest of you want to end up like her, you'll keep moving. Got it?"
Soon the sounds of the hijackers and their captives disappeared into the distance and Meryl breathed a sigh of relief. The girl was still shaking and Meryl released her, helping her sit up properly, though the girl gave a small strangled cry and both her hands flew to cover a bloody hole halfway up her thigh.
"You're hit," said Meryl. It would have been a miracle if she wasn't.
The girl nodded, crying. "M-my leg," she whispered, her voice strained to the point of breaking. "It hurts."
"Keep pressure on it, just like that," Meryl told her, adding her own hands over the girl's. The bleeding wasn't as bad as it could be, so she figured the bullet was still in there, blocking at least some of it. "What's your name?" asked Meryl, trying to keep the girl's mind off the wound as much as possible.
"Candice," said the girl, through gritted teeth.
It was clear to Meryl, at least, that Candice was doing her best not to burst into noisy sobs. Meryl wouldn't blame her for it; gunshot wounds do hurt, they burn like fire buried deep inside flesh. And Candice was taking it a lot better than Meryl had, her first time...
"Well, hi, Candice," Meryl said, nodding, trying to sound comforting. "I'm Meryl, and I'm going to get your leg taken care of."
"O-okay," said Candice, seemingly hesitant. Meryl couldn't blame her for that, either... She wasn't the best at patching up wounds, and she would much rather just send Candice down to the bunk room one deck down and leave her in Milly's more capable hands.
But there was no way the girl would be able to get there with that kind of leg injury, so they would just have to manage.
Meryl knew there weren't any sick bays amidships, and she certainly couldn't carry Candice anywhere. She'd have to drag the poor girl somewhere out of sight, somewhere they could hide, somewhere she could find some kind of bandaging materials...
"Do you know where the nearest linen closet is?" Meryl asked, suddenly.
"Um—a few minutes starboard, maybe?" said Candice, puzzled.
"Okay," said Meryl, thinking too many steps ahead. "I need to take off your shirt." She reached forward and Candice almost jumped away, clutching at the neck of her blouse.
"What?" squeaked the girl.
"Oh—ah... Or your skirt," Meryl said, realizing the alternative. "If you're not wearing anything under the blouse..."
"Why?" Candice demanded, still regarding Meryl warily.
"I need to put something on that wound just to keep from leaving a bloody smear-trail when I move you," said Meryl. "And we need to move you quick, to take care of that leg."
"Oh," said Candice. Then her cheeks went faintly pink. "Better be the skirt then," she said. "Go on."
Meryl pulled down the zipper at Candice's left hip and ripped out the rest of the seam, unwrapping the ruined garment from her waist. At the sight of purple-polka-dot panties, Meryl had to hide a small grin—she had that same pair!—in hopes of not embarrassing Candice any further. Meryl gently pulled the girl's leg up from the knee, just enough to slip the skirt fabric under her thigh, and then wrapped the ends up over the wound. As the skirt touched Candice's leg it bled through, turning the dark maroon fabric almost black, and though the blood stain spread quickly at first, it slowed enough that Meryl knew it wouldn't make it under Candice's leg before they could get somewhere safe.
Suddenly Meryl had to swallow an almost manic giggle as she realized what she was doing.
It's a bandage with pleats.
She put the ends of the skirt together at the side and twisted them until the fabric tightened around Candice's leg like a makeshift tourniquet. The girl cried out, but cut it immediately short, gritting her teeth.
"Okay, you've got two jobs now," Meryl told Candice. "Still keep pressure there, right over the wound, with one hand, but hold tight to the ends of the skirt, here, with the other. Cinch it as tight around your leg as you can. Got it?"
Candice nodded mutely, looking pale, and took the ends of the skirt from Meryl's hands.
"Good girl," Meryl told her, gently. Then she grimaced. "This isn't going to be a pleasant trip. You keep pressure on that wound no matter what, but I have to pull you there and we have to make it quick. We don't want any more of those guys coming down here after us."
"After me," said Candice, managing to frown miserably despite the pain. "It's my fault if you get caught with me."
"Don't worry," Meryl assured her. "We can hear those idiots' boots clomping from iles away, and I know plenty of places to hide. They have shitty peripheral vision, we'll be fine." She bent low and grabbed Candice under the armpits from behind, testing the grip with a gentle tug. The girl gave a strangled noise but didn't cry out, and her hand stayed pressed tight over the bullet hole in her thigh. The bleeding had slowed considerably, but Candice' knuckles were white from how tightly she held the skirt together.
"Okay, here we go," said Meryl, pulling Candice slowly backwards across the metal deck plating. She decided to pick up the conversation again, in another attempt to keep the girl's mind occupied elsewhere. "So how old are you, Candice?" Meryl kept glancing over her shoulder to make sure she knew where she was going, pausing at every junction to look out for any hijackers that might have come down this far.
"Seventeen," grunted the girl. The trip was already taking its toll on her.
"And you were working tonight?"
Candice nodded.
"Was he cute?" Meryl asked, conspiratorially. Candice actually gave a laugh at this, albeit a weak one.
"He was... okay-looking," she allowed.
"Any good in the sack?"
"We didn't get that far, before—ah!"
"Sorry!" said Meryl. She had tripped on another loose rivet and nearly pulled Candice's hands free.
"We didn't get that far," Candice tried again. "Before those men came, kicking down doors and dragging people out of bed..."
"Hmm," grimaced Meryl, peering around another corner.
"You know who they are, don't you," said Candice, trying to look over her shoulder to talk to Meryl properly.
"Uh—yeah," said Meryl, surprised. "How...?"
" 'They have shitty peripheral vision'? " said Candice, giving another weak laugh. "I'm not that blonde. Who are you?"
"Long story," Meryl sighed, for the second time that night. "A friend. I just want to get you safe."
"Okay," said Candice, shaking her head. "Who are they, then?"
"BadLads gang," grunted Meryl, pulling Candice carefully over a bump in the floor plating where two corridors intersected. She glanced back over her shoulder and saw a likely candidate for a linen closet door. "Here?" she asked, pulling Candice around to look.
"That's janitorial," said the girl. "Look for the same door, a little ways farther towards the bow, on the opposite side of the hall."
"Here?" asked Meryl again, following Candice's directions. She reached for the doorknob and, relieved to find it unlocked, pushed it open and dragged Candice inside so she could rest her back against the wall. Candice kicked the door shut with her good leg and groaned.
"Now what?" she asked.
"Now we ruin some perfectly good linens," said Meryl, rummaging around through stacks of folded sheets, blankets and towels. Her hands were leaving bloody streaks on everything she touched, but she couldn't be bothered to worry about it now. She grabbed a pillowcase and tossed it down to Candice. "Fold that in quarters," Meryl ordered, and Candice obliged, awkwardly, one-handedly.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Candice begin pulling the skirt-bandage off her leg and Meryl spun around to stop her.
"Don't!" Meryl hissed, clapping her hand down over skirt and wound before Candice could finish peeling the fabric away. The cried out at the sudden extra pressure on her leg and Meryl winced, apologetic. "Just put the pillowcase over the skirt. We don't want to risk pulling off any clotting that's already helping stop the bleeding."
Candice nodded, more pale than ever, and pressed the pillowcase down over the bloody skirt fabric.
Meryl found the oldest, most worn-looking sheets in the room and went searching for holes; cigarette burns, mice holes, anything. Eventually she found a hole cut cleanly in the sheet as if by a knife—which was troubling to think of—but suited her purpose just fine. She ripped from the hole outwards, tearing off a long strip of fabric about two hands wide and nearly three yarz long.
"Meryl, it's already bleeding through," said Candice, worriedly.
"Another one," Meryl said, handing down a second pillowcase. "Just put it on top, layered over." She folded the ripped stretch of linen lengthwise (not an easy feat for a piece so long), and knelt at Candice's side, pulling her leg up by the knee again and starting to gently wrap the sheet around the girl's thigh.
"Do you do this a lot?" asked Candice, gritting her teeth against the pain. "Deal with gunshots, and stuff?"
"It's more common than I'd like," said Meryl, grimacing. She was playing close attention to her work now, but also knew she needed any information Candice might have. "Do you have any idea what's going on?" she asked her. "You were on C-deck when, uh... when..."
Meryl faltered, and Candice looked at her curiously.
"When we met," Meryl finished, coolly. Candice actually laughed.
"I suppose you could say that," she allowed.
"Were you initially there? Or—"
"No, I was down on E," Candice told her. "Those guys marched us up two stairwells before we passed a ladder, and then I was like, 'Why the fuck not?' "
"Wow," said Meryl, torn between impressed and horrified, trying not to show either in her expression. "Gutsy," she managed.
"Yeah, gutsy," Candice said, nodding. She hissed as Meryl pulled the last few wraps of the makeshift bandage tight around her leg. "But not too bright."
Meryl tied the ends together and surveyed her finished work. It was bulky and messy, but it would do.
"Not my prettiest field-dressing," Meryl admitted. "But you sure as hell won't bleed out."
"Alright, so now what?" asked Candice. She had her eyes closed, head leaning back against the wall, breathing steadily through her nose. Meryl stood, letting out a sigh.
"I need to go up and take a look around," she said, glancing skyward as though she could see through the ceiling to the few decks above.
"What?" said Candice, alarmed. She seized Meryl's hand. "You can't!"
"You'll be fine in here," Meryl promised, gently pulling her hand free of the girl's grasp. "Just keep the door locked, no one will—"
"Not me, stupid," interrupted Candice, scowling up at Meryl exasperatedly. "You go up there, you'll get caught! Those guys are everywhere, the passenger decks are crawling with them!"
"But I need to know what's going on," said Meryl, equally exasperated. "You say they're rounding up passengers? I need to know where—"
"The casinos on B-deck," Candice interrupted again. "That's where they were taking us." She folded her arms over her chest and looked expectantly at Meryl. "What else?"
Meryl opened her mouth, but honestly couldn't think of anything else. That was what she needed to know. "But why B-deck?" she asked aloud, puzzled. "It'd be easier to keep everyone up on the main deck, just block off all the accessways and leave them there while they raided the rooms. What's on B-deck that's important enough to risk—oh..." This time Meryl cut herself short. "Shit," she said. "The vault."
"That'd be my guess," said Candice, nodding.
A steamer's vault was always nearest the most money, which put it smack-dab in the center of five casinos; two on B-deck and three on the deck above, which literally funneled money into the massive strongroom below. An outer partition separated the main body of the vault from two smaller rooms full of safety deposit boxes for passenger use. The only door to the vault led only to these safety deposit boxes, and the casino money was stored behind secondary and tertiary locking mechanisms.
"But that's impossible," Meryl said, shaking her head. "There's no way into the main vault, they can only open it when the steamer docks directly to a bank with the right security systems."
Candice shrugged resignedly, saying, "I'm just telling you what I know." She grabbed Meryl's hand again. "Please let it be enough to keep you from going up there." Meryl hesitated.
"If I could get just a guess at how many of them..."
"They cleared E-deck within a matter of minutes," said Candice, shaking her head. "The three guys in my hall had ten rooms open and emptied sooner than I could even get dressed properly, eight passenger wings, double for the port side, six decks, at least..."
"A lot," concluded Meryl. "Great."
"Please don't go," Candice said again, looking pleadingly up at her. Meryl sighed.
"I won't go up," she sighed, finally. Yet. "But I have to go down, find my partner, try to figure out what to do next." Candice looked like she wanted to argue, but Meryl shushed her. "Lock the door, keep quiet, and you'll be fine. I'll send a medic for you as soon as I can, I promise."
Candice nodded miserably, and Meryl opened the door as silently as possible, checking for any movement outside. When she was certain the passageway outside was clear, she slipped out into the corridor and pulled the door shut behind her. Meryl tried the knob and was glad to find it had locked properly.
Then she made her way back down to the housekeeping bunk room as quickly as she could, taking the same route as she had come up. She wasn't as careful as she should be, she knew, taking corners too quickly, letting the occasional footfall thud against the deck when she avoided a seam in the floor plating. But when she came to the corridor for the bunk room, Meryl knew it wasn't just her own safety on the line anymore and took each corner and each step with expert care.
The unlit bulb still hung above the bunk room's hatch door, if loosely, and Meryl hurried across the narrow distance to crouch low in the darkness, just at the edge of the hatch so it need open only a few iches for her to slip in. She touched her knuckles to the metal as softly as she could and still be heard.
Tap, tap, tap-tap, tap.
It seemed to Meryl that the noise rang out in the silent corridor like a church bell on Sunday, but probably that was just anxiety, fueling paranoia.
But there was no reply from within the bunk room.
Shit.
She couldn't believe the BadLads would come this far down, when presumably they were just looking to roust rich passengers. So Meryl gritted her teeth angrily and hoped Milly had gotten everyone to safety first, or was at least looking after them in all the chaos going on upstairs. She continued down the corridor, biting one thumbnail as she desperately tried to think of a new plan—of any plan. Then the locking mechanism of the door clunked open behind her, and Meryl froze in the shadows.
"Ma'am?" came a whisper.
"Milly?" Meryl replied, just as quietly.
She hurried back to the door, half scowling at Milly as she climbed inside and pulled the hatch shut behind her.
"Why didn't you two-bits?" Meryl demanded.
"I thought you were supposed to two-bits," said Milly, looking confused.
"No! It's a response to the shave-and-a-haircut, so I know you're still—oh forget it," said Meryl. "We'll argue about this later." She sighed and rubbed at a growing ache in her forehead. Milly's eyes went wide and she grabbed Meryl's hand at the wrist.
"Ma'am!" Milly gasped. "What happened?"
Meryl glanced down at her own hand, almost surprised to see the dried smears of Candice's blood across her skin.
"Nothing," she said, shaking her head. "I mean, it's not mine. A girl, a stewardess, got shot—her leg, I patched her up, she's fine. I'm fine." Milly still looked worried.
"What's happening up there?" asked Evie, almost excitedly. She didn't even seem phased by Meryl's report of another girl's gunshot wound.
"It's the BadLads," Meryl told Milly. The younger woman took in a sharp breath through her teeth.
"BDN?" Milly asked, looking hopeful that maybe Meryl would say otherwise.
"I didn't see him, but he's giving the orders," Meryl said, nodding.
"Who's BDN?" Sarah asked.
"Brilliant Dynamites Neon," said Milly.
"Bad news?" asked Sarah.
"Really bad news," Meryl affirmed. "We've dealt with them in the past." In truth, she and Milly had just been back-up on that case, and the two of them were actually never needed to step in. But she had seen what the gang and their leader were capable of.
"What do we do, Ma'am?" asked Milly. Meryl puffed out her cheeks with a sigh and tried hard to think. They were two, against a veritable army. What could they do? What could she do, except—
Recruit.
"I'm going for Vash," said Meryl, quickly. She was glad Milly didn't need any explanation.
"And me?" asked Milly.
"Do you think you could find your way back to the storage unit where we left—"
"My stun-gun?" said Milly coolly, raising an eyebrow. "You think I'd ever not know where it was?"
Meryl grinned. "Just be careful. I'll get Vash and meet you in storage."
"What about us?" asked Evie, suddenly. She had been listening to their conversation, turning from one to the other as they spoke hurriedly, and now she looked less excited and more anxious. "What are we supposed to do without you?"
"Just the same as you have been," Meryl told her, one hand on the girl's shoulder. "Lock up and keep quiet. I'm leaving you in charge now, got it?" Glancing up over Evie's head, Meryl caught Sarah's gaze. The older woman nodded and Meryl knew things were well in hand. "Okay, we're going—"
The steamer bucked under their feet again, throwing all the bunk room's occupants against each other and then to the floor as the steamer abruptly changed heading and began accelerating wildly.
"What's going on?" squeaked one of the girls, clinging to the rungs of the nearest step-ladder.
"I don't know," said Meryl, darkly. She clambered up to her feet and caught her balance. "But it can't be good."