left Maria, you know there’re no Scavenger ships this far north. You’re becoming paranoid, Volker,” I remark. “Cigar?” I suggest, handing him a finely rolled up piece of tobacco. “Witzel wasn’t very interested.”
“His loss,” Volker jokes, accepting the second cigar from me. Witzel turns around for a brief moment, a blank look in his eyes before turning back toward the chart. How long does it take to analyze such a thing? Probably just looking at it to avoid conversation.
“Not like we get many chances to smoke anyway,” I say, holding the cigar between my fingers. The campfires flicker down below, as shadowed bodies stumble their way about past the various guns welded to the deck.
“Wife doesn’t like me smoking,” Volker complains, releasing a cloud of smoke. It goes past his shallow eyes; bags have made their home underneath the sockets, a legacy of stressful days in this place.
“Wife probably doesn’t like you going over for months at a time into this hot cauldron, but here we are,” I say with a smirk.
We both stand in silence for a brief moment, holding onto our cigars, looking out into the vast expanse. The outside winds batter against the walls.
“Hear the attacks are getting worse out on the border near Africa?” he explains, pointing off into some unknown target in the distance. “Some Nests even had their defenses overrun. Had to call in the Drops to even get them to scatter.”
“Where’d you hear that?” I ask.
“Just rumors.”
“Everything is rumors,” I mutter, while finishing off whatever whiskey was left in my flask. Damn.
“Rumors are the newscasts of the desert, Captain,” Volker sneers, as more smoke trails past his jagged face.
I raise the empty flask in mild agreement to his words. Scavenger attacks have been something that the Reich has dealt with ever since the Reclamation. The Eternal Führer banished them from the Continent, and ever since they’ve wanted nothing more than to get back inside.
“That one Scavenger vessel two years ago, remember that?” Volker reminisces with a grin, “Fucking thing flared and gave away its position, then tried to lob rounds at us before we even reached the range of their guns!”
“And the damn shots landed a hundred meters from our ship,” I say. “Gave their position away and we could just blow them up.” My hands whip into the air to illustrate the ship combusting from our artillery shots. Volker’s wide smirk slowly devolves into an emotionless face before taking another swig.
“Where do you think they go?” Volker asks in a somber inflection.
“Where do they go?” I repeat in puzzlement, attempting to process the question.
“Like, do they just park those ships in caves or something. Do they live in cities? What causes a people to just hop on machines and try to pillage innocents? You ever think of that?”
I never actually have. Does somebody need to question why the sun beats down on the desert? Or why a storm can destroy all in its path. It is just nature.
“Just figured it’s how they were. We have loot and they want it. It’s that simple,” I conclude, walking toward a cupboard, opening it, and revealing a bottle of whiskey among its contents. “Do flies need a reason to seek honey? No, they simply buzz toward it and get stuck. Maybe that was the burden we carried, attracting the flies.”
Volker agrees with a grunt and takes another puff.
“If I was on the other side of the Reich border I know that would be all I’d want to do,” Volker comments.
My attention turns back to the huddled groups down below. I hear the cheers and songs rising like the smoke from fires.
“What do you think they’re talking about down there?” I ask, pointing to the orange lights scattered upon the deck.
“Usual stuff. What Nests we’re going to. What they’ll do when we reach them. What they did on their leave,” Volker lists off in a dull fashion.
“That would be a quick conversation. Most probably went and whored around, got drunk, then came back,” I reply.
“Speaking from experience, Captain?” Volker teases. To this I laugh and raise my bottle another time.
The engine buzz carries on like a constant rhythmic hum. Like a low voice chanting out. Wait. No, those actually are voices. Music gently rises from the deck, along with the noise of the drinking men. There are more sounds however. An odd, distant and fuzzy chanting.
Raise the flag! The ranks tightly closed!
The SA march with quiet, steady step.
“Odd song,” I state to Volker, taking one last drag from my cigar. “Ever heard that before?”
“Nah,” Volker denies. “How did they even get a sound system onto the deck?”
Putting out the cigar bud, I walk toward the door, tossing the wasted cigar into a rubbish bin. “I’ll go investigate,” I announce to Volker, before opening the door and exiting the Bridge.
The door leads to an indoor staircase that descends down the tower. The creaking of the ship is always the most prevalent here. Sometimes it sounds like the wires and metal plating that hold this tower together will break apart at just a strong breeze. During the day, with the sun beaming down and temperatures up, I’d need to wear a helmet, but at night, when the moon is out, there is no need.
Opening the door, I pace slowly onto the metallic deck. Ashes and sparks dance about the ship as the soft Kiln wind carries them away. The crew have divided themselves into various campfires with six or seven crowded around a flame. Some men are singing, some are brawling. Most are drunk.
Comrades shot by the Red Front and reactionaries
March in spirit within our ranks.
The song of trumpets and chants is coming from a group considerably louder than all the others near the bowsprit. While making my way over, a few of the men notice my armor and immediately stand a little straighter. The larger, bronze-colored armored one with a shaved bald head is standing above them all, knee raised up, arms outstretched in theatrical display at the story he is telling.
“And the fucker came up to me and said, ‘If you talk to me like that one more time…’ and it was right there when I knocked him onto the ground. I don’t like knives you see, gotta just—”
He wrestles with the air, pretending to down a figurative man. The crowd’s attention has now turned to me placing myself on a chair, joining the group bunched around the flames. The air becomes thick with nervousness. They aren’t used to the Captain himself joining them in their drinking.
“After I stopped throttling his neck, he eventually regained consciousness but you should have seen the wedding party—” he pauses, as his good eye slowly turns to meet mine.
“That’s a good story you should continue,” I encourage.
After a few seconds of wide-eyed befuddlement, the man quickly regains his composure and waves his arm down to the fire.
