Chapter Text
"You've got to be fucking joking."
"No joke, Iz."
Izzy stared in disbelief at the email displayed on the tablet Ed had just handed him. When Ed had first suggested it to him, he’d been sure that this scheme was going to fall apart before it even got off the ground. He hadn’t even tried to talk him out of it, because it was completely fucking ridiculous. There was no way they would hire him for that role.
But there it was, right at the top of the screen: Employment offer for Jeff Teach: Head of Passenger Services.
Who in their right mind would have interviewed Ed and thought he would be a good fit for that? And why the fuck did Ed want to call himself Jeff?
"Who even interviewed you?"
Izzy finally looked up to see Ed was grinning at him, smug satisfaction visible in every line of his face.
"The captain. He’s fucking fascinating.”
He had yet to meet Captain Stede Bonnet, but he’d read about him in preparation for this job. The man sounded like he had a good range of experience under his belt, even if hiring Ed for passenger services threw his judgment into doubt. Izzy wished he’d had his own interview with him, instead of that salty fucker who called himself head engineer.
Izzy scoffed, "We could have padded that resume enough to get ‘Jeff’ hired as anything. Why would you even want passenger services? You're going to fucking hate it."
Ed waved a hand dismissively. "It'll be fun! I've always wanted to try my hand at fancy shit like this. Sounds boatloads more interesting than your dull job."
Izzy grimaced. His own interview had not gone nearly as smooth as Ed's. It helped that he actually had the skills and experience and wasn't just pulling it out of thin air like a magic trick, but the head engineer had been a complete twat.
He still hadn’t heard back yet, and wouldn’t that be just his luck? Ed would get hired on in a role he was utterly unqualified for, while Izzy got passed over for a job he could do with his fucking hands tied behind his back.
"Engineer is the perfect position. Behind the scenes, and I’ll have an excuse to be in the ship's systems."
“Y’have to get hired first.” Ed took the tablet back and leaned across Izzy’s bed, folding his arms behind his head as he sprawled. Izzy looked away quickly as Ed’s shirt rose up, and shoved away the interest that sparked at seeing that sliver of skin.
He was well practiced at ignoring it by now. Getting involved with Ed would be too complicated; Ed was too complicated. But it’d be a lot fucking easier to ignore if Ed didn’t insist on lounging on his fucking bed.
He turned his chair back to his desk, scowling down at his own tablet like he could make the email he wanted just appear.
“We’ll need a new plan if I don’t get hired,” he said stiffly. Ed couldn’t do everything planned by himself, especially if he was working passenger services, of all things.
When Ed had first brought up this scheme, Izzy had been skeptical. Holding up a luxury space cruise? It sounded ridiculous, especially when their crew was so small, and the cruise was absolutely massive in comparison.
The passengers alone numbered in the thousands, and that didn’t even take into account the crew. Meanwhile, their crew could be counted on one fucking hand.
But they didn’t need numbers to pull this off. Most of the job would just be tech, honestly - let the luxury liner get to the right place, knock it off course, and then have their own ship perfectly primed to help tow it back on course.
For a price, of course.
Between the money in the liner itself, and the wealth of its guests, they shouldn’t have any problem meeting whatever price they demanded. When it was that or face a multi-year journey to return home, they’d pay it. If they could actually pull this off, it had the makings of the biggest job they’d ever managed.
Big ships like that were unwieldy things; once knocked off course, it was hard to get them back on track. And if it went off course without assistance at the ready, everyone on the ship would be at risk.
Ed huffed out a little laugh. “Nah, we’ll be fine. I can handle it, easy breezy. You could just come in with Fang and Ivan, help with the cleanup.”
If all went according to plan, it would look like a random glitch that caused the problem and their crew would just look like opportunists, but not villains. How was Ed supposed to even get into the necessary system, with the job he’d gotten? And what if something went wrong? He’d be alone on a ship of thousands with no back up and no support.
Izzy bristled, spinning his chair back around to snap at him, when he heard the ping come through.
Oh thank fuck.
Employment offer for Israel Hands: Second Engineer.
He was in.
Izzy shifted uncomfortably, staring at the room with dismay. These were the people he was going to be spending the next eight weeks with? They were all complete idiots. How the fuck were any of them actually the experts they were supposed to be?
That one little shit - Pete, he thought his name was - had just stared at him blankly when Izzy had started asking about the communications systems. Wasn’t that his fucking job? He was the communications officer! How the fuck could he not know which relay system the Revenge was using?
The only people who seemed to have a clue about anything were the engineers. At least the people he’d be spending most of his time with had more than a single braincell between them.
The ship was scheduled to launch the next day, and some twat had decided there should be a crew dinner before launch. They should get to know each other, apparently, since they’d be stuck with each other for the next eight weeks.
The ship was awful. It looked like it had been decorated by some toff with no taste, with painfully bright white walls with gold detailing, ridiculous gold statues everywhere, and the corporation name was on everything. He was pretty sure there’d even been a B on the fucking toilet paper.
The room of the crew dinner had been referred to as the ‘executive private banquet room’, and was just as gaudy and overdone, even if it was different than the rest of the ship. The stark white and gold had been done away with, and had been replaced by wooden paneling, casting the room in warm browns and creams.
It must have cost a fortune. Wood wasn’t easy to come by these days.
Every detail Izzy noticed about this room was more ridiculous than the last. From the chandelier - a fucking chandelier - to the fireplace, it was insane. Who would put a fireplace on a fucking space ship? Where would the smoke even go?
Maybe that was the point. Maybe it was designed to suffocate the sort of rich twats who would actually burn wood.
At least he didn’t have to spend much time in these sorts of spaces. The corporation had clearly not wanted to waste money on decorating the parts of the ship the tourists wouldn’t see, so the engineering bay at least looked like you were on a ship and not in a fucking asylum.
Izzy could see Ed chatting up some blond ponce on the other side of the room, and the way Ed was looking at him made his fingers curl and a scowl grow on his face. He had the same look as the rest of the bridge crew, perfectly coiffed and handsome, and he was beginning to suspect that the captain had hired for looks instead of skill.
The blond said something, hand waving in the air, and Ed laughed. Surely he couldn’t be that funny. Maybe he was the shipboard entertainment; he had that sort of blandly handsome look that could peg him as an entertainer.
“Did ye work on the Apate?”
“What?” Izzy dragged his attention away to see a strange balding man with long blond hair staring at him intently. He hadn’t even noticed him walking over.
“The Apate. Ye’ve the look of one who’s seen disasters in the void.”
Izzy stared blankly at him for a moment, before he remembered the name. It had been a transport ship that had experienced a cascade of mechanical failures that had led to a disturbingly high death toll. That disaster had been - fuck, over 30 years ago? Had it been that long?
“No,” he said flatly.
The man continued to stare at him, hands folded behind his back, and Izzy resisted the urge to do something violent. He stared back.
Everyone at this dinner was dressed casually, but he looked particularly casual, wearing a loose blue button down with a short red paisley tie around his neck.
“Huh. I thought ye had.”
Izzy could feel himself growing tenser, gritting his teeth as the other man just looked, eyes drilling into him. Who was this, and why wasn’t he just fucking off? He had the thousand-yard stare of a man for whom sanity was just a loose concept.
There was a flash of movement and Izzy jerked back, hand flying down to his weapon - shit no, he didn’t have one, not here - before he realized what he was seeing. That was a fucking bird. How had a bird gotten onto a space ship?
“Don’t move,” he said sharply, eying the white bird and then considering what was around them. Maybe he could use the table cloth? He might be able to get the bird wrapped up before it could peck this strange fucker’s eyes out.
“Ah, Buttons! How are you finding your accommodations?”
Izzy turned to see the blond ponce who had been across the room standing there, beaming at them. He had a flat American accent that just didn’t suit him at all, even if it further solidified his impression of the man as an entertainer of some kind. He also seemed completely unconcerned by the bird that was sitting on top of the other man’s head.
Come to think of it, the man himself seemed unconcerned. What was wrong with these people?
“Karl finds it acceptable, but I’m no’ pleased with him bein’ restricted to the crew areas.”
Izzy looked between them incredulously.
The ponce winced. “Ah, yes. While I was able to convince Banes to allow Karl aboard, that was his one stipulation; he can’t go anywhere passengers can see him. He has run of the ship tonight, but that’s the end of it.”
Izzy finally demanded, “Do neither of you see the fucking bird?”
“Excuse me?” Ponce asked, sounding offended.
Izzy waved a hand at the bird, and the other two men stared at him like he was the crazy one. “What the fuck is a bird doing here? This is a space ship!”
“Oh, that’s Karl. Haven’t you been reading the newsletter? The last spotlight was on Buttons and Karl.”
Obviously not, or else he’d understand why his crewmates were all completely fucking insane. In an effort to build ‘crew solidarity’ up before they actually launched, the ship had been issuing weekly newsletters with a highlight on different aspects - and sometimes crew - of the ship.
Izzy had read the first one, found it completely fucking useless, and hadn’t touched it since. Ed had read every one. Shit, where was Ed? Maybe he’d know what the fuck was going on.
“Clearly not,” he said stiffly. “What’s the point of the bird?”
Karl fixed a beady-eyed stare on him, before launching into the air and flying the other direction.
The man - Buttons, really? - followed after, calling over his shoulder as he left, “There’s no’ call t’be rude.”
What was wrong with everyone? This was a fucking dinner, on a fucking space ship. Why did no one else see the problem with a bird being here?
The blond ponce was frowning at him. “That really wasn’t very nice of you. You should apologize to him.”
“I’m not here to be nice. Having a bird flying around the ship is a major safety hazard. Not to mention that it’ll shit everywhere.”
“I’m sure that’s not true! Buttons promised that he’s very well-behaved.”
Who was this twat? Izzy narrowed his eyes and studied him further. He’d pegged him as a shipboard entertainer from across the room, and he still had that vibe; too-handsome features, too-perfect hair, too-stylish clothes.
If he was the one who told Buttons he could bring a fucking bird, maybe not an entertainer. HR, maybe? That would explain why Ed had been talking to him. He was just an annoying as fuck coworker.
That didn’t explain why Ed had been giving him that doe-eyed look, but at least it explained why he’d been talking to him in the first place.
Izzy scoffed. “No fucking way will the captain be fine with him bringing a bird on a space ship.”
“Oh, I don’t think he’ll have any problem with it,” the blond twat said with a sniff, drawing himself up to his full height. Why did he get to be tall, too? It just added insult to fucking injury.
“Point him out to me. We’ll see what he thinks about it.”
The twat smiled at him. “Captain Stede Bonnet.”
“Yes, that’s who I’m looking for.”
“No, I was introducing myself,” he said casually, extending a hand. “And you are…?”
Izzy stared at the hand. His skin was smooth and uncalloused, his nails perfectly manicured. No fucking way was that the hand of the captain whose background he had read up on. That man was experienced, gritty.
He certainly wasn’t this, some too-handsome idiot strutting around like this was a weekend at a country club.
“No you’re not,” he said incredulously.
A crease appeared in the blond’s forehead, the first sign of him breaking his charade. Izzy felt a pulse of smug satisfaction at breaking that mask of politeness, even as whatever he was about to say was cut off by a call from the front of the room for the captain.
He gave Izzy one last dark look, before he turned and walked away to the front. Izzy’s heart fell with each step, realization settling in.
Shit. Maybe he was the captain.
“Hey Iz.” Ed sidled up to him, munching on some tiny pastry on an equally tiny plate. “Have you tried these? They’re fucking delicious. They’ve got this yummy buttercream-”
“Was that the captain?”
He didn’t know why he was even asking, except out of some desperate hope that he was wrong. The twat had reached the front of the room and was speaking with a man holding a microphone.
“Who?” Ed asked, then followed his attention to the front of the room. “Oh, him? Yeah, that’s Stede.”
“Stede?” Izzy tore his eyes away from the captain to stare at Ed. “You’re calling him Stede?”
“Yeah mate, he asked me to. Real interesting guy. Not nearly as boring as I thought he would be.”
The sound of someone tapping a microphone rang through the room and he flinched as the captain began to speak into it.
“Hello, all! I hope you’re enjoying this little soiree. This is your chance to get to know your new co-workers and build a pleasant working environment.” Bonnet’s voice was cheerful and utterly fake. He knew it was fake, because as Bonnet looked around the room with that cheesy grin on his face, it slipped when his gaze landed on Izzy.
“After all, we all are going to be stuck with each other for the next eight weeks. We can’t let one bad apple spoil the whole bunch!”
Izzy felt his shoulders rising up towards his ears and glared. The captain glared right back at him, obvious even across the entire room. He continued with his little spiel, but Izzy was absorbed by the heat of that glare instead, the words losing meaning.
“He’s fucking fascinating, isn’t he?”
Stupid fucking Stede Bonnet.
TRANSCRIPT // HEAD OF PASSENGER SERVICES
filed due to passenger complaint
PASSENGER: They’re so loud that I can’t even sleep.
JEFF: Have you tried the complementary ear plugs?
PASSENGER: It doesn’t matter, they shout loud enough to wake the dead.
JEFF: Have you asked them to scream profanities at each other more quietly?
PASSENGER: I just want a new cabin.
JEFF: There aren’t any other cabins available, but you’re welcome to sleep in the soft play area.
PASSENGER: Are you serious?
JEFF: There’s also the lounge, but you’d have to listen to all of the comedian’s sets there. I’d recommend the ankle biters over the comedian, personally.
PASSENGER: I don’t know what sort of game you’re playing at, but I want a new cabin.
JEFF: Well, I can check if anything’s become available.
JEFF: It’s your lucky day, mate. There’s another passenger looking to swap cabins.
PASSENGER: Great! When can I move in?
JEFF: Oh, you can move right now. Room 2402.
PASSENGER: You’ve got to be [CENSORED] kidding. That’s just on their other side!
JEFF: You’re welcome! If there’s anything else we can help you with, just let one of the staff know.
PASSENGER: Oh, I’ll let them know, you [CENSORED]-
[TRANSCRIPT ENDED]
“How long is this going to take?”
Izzy paused, letting his screwdriver go still, and turned to look at the annoyance buzzing by his side. He knew that he should finish this up and just get the fuck out, but there was some perverse little voice urging him to slow down.
The longer he took with this, the more Bonnet’s face screwed up like he’d eaten something sour, his mask of politeness slipping away with each additional minute. Of course, each additional minute was also time that Izzy had to spend with him, which was its own special kind of hell.
“It’ll take as long as it takes,” Izzy said coolly, and felt a stab of glee at the way Bonnet’s face twitched and the heat in his glare amped up.
He stood in the doorway to the captain’s cabin, toolbox on the ground beside him as he attempted to fix whatever Bonnet had done to the fucking door. It had been stuck partially open for half the day, and he had the gall to insist he hadn’t done anything to cause it.
And then he’d also had to the gall to request that Izzy come fix it. Like he wasn’t fucking second engineer, like he was just a maintenance man at his beck and call.
He’d ignored Bonnet’s coms all day. He’d ignored them up until the captain had commed Steve, the chief engineer, instead. And then he’d ignored Steve’s com, when he’d seen the first three letters and thought it was the captain.
Why the fuck did their names have to be so similar?
Steve had not been happy once he’d finally tracked Izzy down, and had told him to get his shit together and deal with it. He had refused to listen to a single word about this not being Izzy’s job.
So here Izzy was, dealing with it. As slowly as he fucking could.
“I have to meet with Banes in-” Bonnet looked at his watch. “Ten minutes. Isn’t there some way to speed this up?”
“Just go. I don’t need you to stand there staring at me to get my job done. Not all of us need a fucking audience to perform.”
Bonnet narrowed his eyes. “I don’t know how you do things, Iggy-”
“Izzy.”
“Whatever - but I can’t just leave my cabin open like that. There are private documents in here!”
Izzy rolled his eyes. He doubted anything this lemon curd of a man kept in his cabin could be that important. But he got back to work anyway.
The door to Bonnet’s cabin was stuck open just enough for a person to be able to slide through. They might have to turn sideways and wiggle, depending on their girth, but they could make it through. There definitely wasn’t room enough for two, as Izzy had to slide out of the doorway and let a young man with severe sideburns through.
“Oh, hello Lucius-” Bonnet began, before he was interrupted.
“Good, you’re still here. Banes wants to meet in the atrium instead.”
“What?” Bonnet asked, and despite himself Izzy looked up at his tone. He sounded frustrated. “But everything is set up for the conference room, why would he change it?”
Lucius shrugged. “He’s set everything up for the ship to break a record, and thought recording it would be good for the video call with corporate. “
Izzy stood there to the side, waiting impatiently for the door to clear so he could get back to work on it.
“Why wouldn’t you just com him about it?” he finally asked, his curiosity getting the better of him.
He immediately regretted asking as Lucius turned to face him. Banes’ assistant might be the most useless fucker on this whole ship, outside of the captain, which was saying something. He didn’t even understand what he did, besides taking notes on his tablet and distracting the crew.
He flirted with everyone. Literally everyone. He wouldn’t have been surprised if the man had flirted with the goddamn computer, at this point.
“Oh hello there, Iggy-”
“Izzy,” he repeated through gritted teeth, and felt a flash of anger as amusement crossed Bonnet’s face.
They had crossed paths a few times now. Izzy had not particularly enjoyed it.
“I didn’t notice you, glowering there in the corner like some depressing little shadow. And to be honest, I just needed a break from my boss.”
He took the time to walk across half the ship to deliver a message in person, instead of taking five seconds to send a message? Useless fucking fucker. Although he could understand needing a break from Banes. If his job required him to interact with that twat, he’d want to burn the fucking place to the ground.
He already did want to, of course, but he’d want it even more badly. At least he had the satisfaction of knowing they were going to financially burn this place to the ground.
Izzy’s watch buzzed, and he looked down to see that Steve had sent him a message. There were only three people in this place who weren’t useless, and he was one of them. He would have said four, but as Ed was currently calling himself Jeff and pretending to do customer service, he also qualified as useless.
“Well Bonnet, looks like your door’s going to have to wait.”
“What?” Bonnet squawked. “But I’ve been waiting all day!”
“I have actual engineering shit to do, which takes priority over this. Find a fucking maintenance man to fix your door.”
Lucius hadn’t moved, still standing in front of the doorway, so Izzy fixed a glare on him until he rolled his eyes and got out of the way. Then he collected his toolbox, turned sideways, and slipped through the door.
He could hear Lucius already speaking as he left the room. "Why would you even want that angry little man to fix your door?"
He didn't linger, disappearing into the hallway with its perpetual crowds before he could hear Bonnet's response, even if he was curious. He suspected it had been just to piss Izzy off, but would have appreciated the confirmation.
This wasn't his job and Bonnet knew it. Izzy had been hired on as an engineer - second engineer, even - which meant his first and foremost priority was the ship itself. Bonnet wasn’t even technically his boss.
Izzy reported directly to Steve, the first engineer, and Steve had somehow managed to keep the engineering hierarchy entirely disconnected. Steve was what he had expected Stede to be, frankly; rough around the edges, confident and a little crass, but at least he knew what he was doing.
Izzy had done his best to avoid the captain when he'd first come aboard, after their rough start. There really wasn't much call for them to interact in their official roles; Izzy mostly worked in the bowels of the ship, while Bonnet pranced around on the bridge and hosted fancy dinner parties for passengers with more money than sense.
But somehow, they kept bumping into each other. And every time, Izzy couldn't resist the urge to poke and prod and see if he could get Bonnet to snap. And each time, Bonnet dropped that politeness and put so much fucking snark into his voice.
He blamed Ed - or rather, Jeff, as he had to remember to call him. At least half of the times he'd encountered Bonnet in these past three weeks had been because of him. Ed had a bad habit of turning off his coms, and Bonnet had clued in fast that they were friends. So if he couldn't find Ed for something, he tracked down Izzy instead.
He hadn’t made it far before his watch buzzed at him again, and he glanced down to see a message.
JEFF: DINNER TONIGHT?
Izzy stopped and stepped to the side of the hall to send a response, letting the crowd of passengers in bright colors and patterns pass. If the garish decor of the ship didn’t burn out Izzy’s retinas, spending too much time around these fuckers and their awful fashion choices would.
IZZY: YOU’RE NOT DOING THE CAPTAIN’S DINNER?
That seemed to be the only part of Ed’s job that he actually liked. He helped Bonnet plan those fancy dinners, along with other events, and spent far too much time with him. Did they really need daily fucking meetings to plan that shit?
He didn’t understand why Ed liked the man; he was a complete fucking idiot. The only fascinating thing about him was that he had survived in space for as long as he had.
JEFF: NEED A BREAK OR I’M GONNA STAB ONE OF THESE FUCKERS WITH A FUCKING FORK. GOT ANOTHER COMPLAINT.
IZZY: HOW MANY IS THAT NOW?
JEFF: TOO MANY.
Izzy felt his lips twitch and valiantly resisted the urge to send back an I told you so. There had been quite a few times in the past three weeks where he’d had to resist that urge.
JEFF: DON’T SAY IT.
IZZY: DIDN’T SAY A WORD.
JEFF: KEEP IT THAT WAY.
IZZY: DINNER IS FINE.
JEFF: YOUR QUARTERS, AFTER SHIFT.
That settled, Izzy continued on to the engineering bay.
The engineering bay was exactly what Izzy expected - and wanted - from a ship. Everything had a purpose. There was no paint or gilt, and his fellow engineers were the only people on this ship he could stand to spend time around, outside of Ed. He suspected they were the only ones who even knew how to do their fucking jobs.
The engineering crew was small - engineers were hard to get these days - but he was surprised to just see Oluwande and Jim in the bay when he entered it. Oluwande was watching him as he came in, but Jim was turned away, head down as they did something on their monitor. Steve was the one who had called for him, so where was he?
Oluwande called over to him nervously as he entered. “Hey, uh, did Steve tell you what you’re doing?”
Oluwande was tolerable enough. Pleasant, knew what he was doing, and didn’t bother Izzy unnecessarily. His nervous tone but Izzy on edge though, because what the fuck would he have to be nervous about?
He shook his head and watched as Oluwande fiddled with his sleeve. “Yeah, I thought not. Banes wants us to fix the delay.”
“He wants us to what?”
Izzy stared incredulously at his fellow engineer as the man winced. “Apparently it’s for some kind of video call with Earth?”
Communication between Earth and the Revenge were as smooth as it could be when you were that far away. The delay in live audio or video wasn’t a glitch, it was the result of the immutable fucking speed of light.
“Does he understand that we’re in space? The delay isn’t something that can be fixed.”
“We know that, man. Banes is the idiot, not us,” Jim cut in, spinning their chair around to glare at Izzy. “Steve told him. He either didn’t believe him or didn’t care.”
Izzy scoffed and shook his head. “Then what are we doing?”
Oluwande shrugged. “Steve’s gonna do an EVA, he’s getting suited up for it now. He thinks he can boost the signal a little and get the picture clearer. Maybe that’ll be enough for Banes.”
Not fucking likely.
His watch lit up with an incoming call, and he looked down to see Bonnet’s name flashing across it. Again. He just rolled his eyes and hit reject. He could deal with that shit later.
The computer was screaming an alarm, the status lights on the display were all flashing red, and Izzy knew they were absolutely fucked.
“Steve?”
The only response coming from the speaker was static.
Izzy hauled himself to his feet and tried to make sense of the warnings flashing across the display. He didn’t understand what had happened.
One moment, Steve had been doing work on the outside of the ship. The next, the computer was throwing alerts and errors at him. He’d barely had time to do more than start reading them before everything had turned.
Literally. The ship’s gravity had flipped.
Izzy had managed to reach the reset - on the complete opposite side of the room, of fucking course - but the coms had gone silent the moment he’d hit it. He was frantically hoping that they’d just knocked out the coms entirely. There was no other good reason for the chief engineer to suddenly stop responding.
He hauled himself up on the ground and shut off the alarms, trying to make sense of the data scrolling across the screen. His watch lit up with an incoming call from Oluwande, and he muttered a curse before accepting it.
Coms weren’t down after all.
“Izzy! Oh thank fuck, you’re there. Where’s Steve?”
He grimaced. “Still outside the ship, not responding. Hasn’t responded since I reset the gravity.”
“What happened?”
“Don’t know,” he said curtly, wincing when he saw the cascade of errors across the screen. Communications errors, power failures, and even fucking structural damage warnings. “But we need to get Steve back in here.”
“I’ll get him,” Jim cut in. They must have been with Oluwande in the engineering bay. Izzy didn’t even want to think about gravity getting flipped when in a space like that. At least he’d just been in the small control room-
Wait. The whole ship’s gravity would have flipped, not even just this section. Everything - and everyone - on the ship would have moved.
“Oluwande, check our course,” he said tightly, staring at the scrolling report of damage across the ship.
He didn’t have access to the navigation in here, but there was a growing dread spreading through his limbs. This had been similar to what he and Ed had planned, but it was too early and too much. They were a week out from being in place for their own ship to arrive and tow them back on course.
They were going to do a little push. It wouldn’t have taken much for their ship to fix things. Izzy suspected that this was more than a little push.
“…it’s bad.”
Fuck.
“How bad?”
“I don’t know yet, just bad! Our course is way off.”
Izzy closed his eyes and let out a slow breath, pushing away the panic beginning to press in on him. There was no time to panic when he had to try and fix things.
“I’ll get Steve,” Jim repeated grimly. “We’ll get maintenance started on fixing shit, and Olu will figure out the damage. But Izzy, you have to tell the captain. He has to know what’s going on. And if something’s happened to Steve-”
“I know,” Izzy interrupted, gritting his teeth. “I’ll tell him.”
With Steve unresponsive - injured, or worse - then Izzy was in charge of engineering. Which meant he was also in charge of telling the captain what was happening.
He opened his eyes and pushed away from the console with an annoyed grunt. “Update me as soon as you know anything.”
He ended the call, and pressed the button to call Bonnet instead.
The screen flashed red.
Did he just reject his call? They were in the middle of a crisis, and he was rejecting calls from engineering?
Izzy felt a flare of outrage, and hit the call button again. He watched with narrowed eyes as it immediately went red.
He swore and left the control room; he’d just have to track him down face to face. The most logical place to find the captain would be the bridge, so at least he knew one place to not check; wherever Bonnet was, it wouldn’t be logical.
As he went, he tapped to call Ed. Unlike that little shit they called a captain, he answered immediately.
Izzy started speaking before Ed could get a word out. “Are you alright?”
“I got thrown across a room. What the fuck happened?”
“But you’re not injured?”
Izzy passed into the public hallways and grimaced at the chaos that greeted him. People were crying, injured were staggering around, and he hadn’t even considered the sort of chaos that would result from that many people being thrown around a ship without warning.
They were going to be lucky if there weren’t casualties from this.
“I’m fine, Iz. Are you-”
“I’ll call you back.”
He ended the call and tried Bonnet again. He stared at the screen as it immediately flashed red and realized it was too quick to be a rejection. The captain wasn’t rejecting his calls: he had blocked him.
He must have done it after Izzy had ignored his last com before all of this had happened, the petty fucker. Izzy hadn’t regretted any of what he had done that day, until that point. If he hadn’t been a petty twat, then maybe Bonnet wouldn’t have been one either.
Right, he just had to track him down. Hadn’t he been doing that stupid fucking video tour with Banes? It meant they could be anywhere, but at least it gave him an idea of who else to com.
He tapped his watch and called Lucius.
“Izzy, what-”
“Do you know where the captain is? He’s not answering his fucking coms.”
He passed by the door to the spa and made the mistake of glancing in. Someone must have been getting acupuncture when the gravity flipped. It wasn’t a pretty sight.
Someone was already in there with a first aid kit, so he kept moving.
“You’re not even going to ask if I’m alright?” Lucius demanded, sounded annoyed.
Izzy just rolled his eyes. If he could sound that annoyed, then he was completely fucking fine.
“No. Is he there or not?”
“I tweaked my back, actually. But he’s here, we’re in the atrium. It’s insane down here, people are absolutely losing their minds. I’m losing my mind.”
“I’m on my way. Tell him to stop being a fucking child and unblock me.”
He jabbed the end button and sped up.
When he entered the atrium, he understood what Lucius had meant. People were either injured and sitting or lying as they awaited help, or they were being loud and useless, and getting in the way. He caught a glimpse of Ed on the other side of the room, passengers clustered around him.
Izzy could see Bonnet in the middle of the chaos, directing first aid crews and calling out reassurance to passengers. It was good to see him finally acting like a fucking captain for once. His background suggested some sort of crisis management skills, but this was the first evidence he’d seen of it.
He tapped his watch to com the man again - no, still blocked . But Bonnet looked over in his direction and did a double take at seeing Izzy, so he waved him over. He wasn’t having this conversation surrounded by passengers.
Bonnet raised an eyebrow at him and waved his hand at the chaos of the atrium. Izzy scowled back and shook his head, beckoning again. The annoyance was clear on Bonnet’s face when he finally came over.
The moment he was close enough, he started speaking. “Why didn’t you just com me-”
“Because you fucking blocked me.”
“Oh,” Bonnet goggled at him, then winced. “I may have done that. In retrospect, that might not have been a good idea.”
“You think? Blocking the second engineer wasn’t a good idea?” Izzy let sarcasm drip into his voice, then shook his head. “Just unblock me so I don’t have to hunt you down over the whole fucking ship again.”
Bonnet was already tapping at his watch to unblock him, so he continued.
“The gravity’s been reset. There’s some minor structural damage, but the bigger problem is our course. Oluwande’s looking into it-”
Bonnet looked up from his watch, alarm crossing his face as he interrupted. “Wait, no. Our course can’t change.”
“Yes, it fucking can.”
“But we’re on a schedule!”
“A schedule?” Izzy stared incredulously at Bonnet, then squinted at him. “Do you have a head injury, or are you just a half-wit? Five-fucking-thousand people all got thrown at one side of the ship. Our course has altered, your schedule means fuck-all.”
“I don’t appreciate your tone at all,” Bonnet huffed at him, drawing himself up to his full height. “I want to talk to Steve.”
Izzy grimaced and glanced down to see if Jim had reached out with a report yet; still nothing.
“Wait, why are you making that face? Where is he?” There was panic growing in Bonnet’s voice.
“He was doing an EVA outside the ship. He hasn’t responded since the gravity reset.”
“What? Why would he do that, he’s the-” Bonnet’s voice got higher. He paused before continuing. “He’s the chief engineer! Why would he leave the ship? Isn’t that a job for you?”
“He wanted to do it! Maybe he wanted away from all the twats on this ship for a fucking minute!” Izzy lowered his voice, muttering the next words to himself. “Can’t blame him.”
Bonnet dropped his face into his hands with a groan. When he pulled his hands away, the panic had been wiped away from his face, but it was still present in his eyes, and in the jerky way he moved his hands when his watch buzzed.
“Oh, it’s Banes,” he said faintly, staring at the watch and making no motion to answer it. “That’s just lovely. Just what I need right now.”
They watched the screen flash, neither of them saying a word. Of course the owner of the fucking ship would want updates, but that was the absolute last priority.
Once it stopped buzzing, Izzy continued, “Jim’s gone out to get Steve. We’ll know what’s going on soon.”
“Right. Steve will be fine, maybe his com system was just damaged.”
Bonnet’s tone was full of as much fake cheer as he’d ever heard from another person. Then he glanced across the room, and Izzy followed his gaze to where Ed stood, now surrounded by even more passengers.
“I should probably go deal with that. Jeff looks like he could use some help.”
Ed looked like he was fraying at the edges, and the passengers didn’t look any calmer. In fact, they looked even more frantic than they had a few minutes ago.
Bonnet shot one last annoyed look at Izzy. “This has been an absolutely terrible conversation, by the way.”
And then he turned and went off towards Ed, leaving Izzy scowling behind him. He could see Bonnet’s watch buzzing again as he went. Then his own watch buzzed, and he tapped the accept button without even looking at it. Either Oluwande with an update on their course, or Jim with an update on Steve-
“I’m still offended you didn’t ask if I was okay, you know.”
Or it was that useless fucking twat with an update on absolutely nothing.
“Lucius, why the fuck are you calling me?”
“I thought you might want to know that coms with Earth- and everywhere else - are completely down. Only the shipboard system is working.”
Izzy closed his eyes and let out a slow breath. That was just fucking perfect. That meant he and Ed couldn’t contact their own ship and get help on that front either. They were alone out here until they got that figured out, unless their ship somehow figured out what had happened.
“Fuck.”
“My thoughts exactly. Also, is the captain with you?”
Izzy re-opened his eyes and looked across the room. The passengers were still clumped around Ed, but Bonnet was talking to them now as well.
“He’s here.”
“Great. Tell him to get up to the conference room, my boss is absolutely losing his shit.”
“Updating Banes is the last fucking prior-”
“I know, but he is technically in charge,” Lucius’s voice lowered and his next words came slightly muffled, as if trying to conceal what he was doing. “We really don’t want him making decisions without the captain’s input. Right now he trusts Stede, but if he keeps dodging him like this…”
Izzy grimaced. Banes owned this entire fucking ship. He owned everything, and had security permissions for everything as well. If he decided to start running the show, then he could do whatever the fuck he wanted. What interactions he’d had with Banes had been limited so far, but anyone - literally anyone, even Bonnet - was a better choice than him.
“I’ll get him up there.”
He ended the call and considered the crowd. That veneer of civility had fallen away as he heard one of them shouting about having paid to be here, as he approached, as if that made any kind of difference.
An anxious looking woman dressed in bright pink and wearing a fucking visor - why the fuck was she wearing a visor? There was no sun in space - shouted at Ed as Izzy approached, “Should we be scared?”
“Well, yeah, if you’re someone who feels fear.” Ed shrugged. “Don’t think there’s a should or should not about that. There’s plenty of reason to be scared.”
“You’re supposed to say no, you prick!” a man in the crowd shouted.
“Oh, you want me to lie to you? I can do that. Everything is completely fine! There’s nothing to be scared of!”
“What I think Jeff is trying to say,” Bonnet interjected, stepping closer to Ed. “Is that the crisis has passed! We’ll have answers for you soon, but for now we just need you all to give us some time! Take some deep breaths, drink some water, and we’ll fill you in as soon as we have new information.”
The crowd grumbled. Bonnet looked among them all earnestly. “I promise, everything will be fine.”
Bonnet was a surprisingly good liar; Izzy hadn’t expected that. He might have even succeeded in calming them, if that hadn’t been the moment where things went awry.
The atrium was set up to showcase the beauty of space, with large viewscreen windows set along the multi-story space of the atrium. The windows even extended directly overhead. There were always people there, admiring the stars and celestial bodies they traveled by.
No one would be admiring this.
Someone screamed and the crowd burst into exclamations and panicked cries. Bonnet and Ed spun to face the window, and Izzy finally stepped alongside them.
Ed grimaced. “Well shit, did we just bump into him?”
“Is that…?” Bonnet began in a weak voice, and Izzy nodded grimly, watching the body drifting alongside the window, tether floating limply beside it.
“It’s Steve.”
He was dead.
In normal circumstances, the owner of the ship would have had nothing to do with the day-to-day workings. Banes was here primarily to enjoy himself while other people did the hard work of running the ship. He did a few photo ops with passengers, participated in the events Ed had planned, and pushed for marketing shit like that video tour he’d been in the middle of when everything had happened.
In the three weeks that they’d been on the ship so far, Izzy had only seen Banes in passing. He’d had more interaction with Banes’ assistant, and that had been more than enough for him.
But in a situation like this, Banes held the reins. He was technically in charge, and he wanted to know what the fuck was going on.
“I want you to assure me that it will not happen again.”
Izzy could feel his fingers digging into his palm as he clenched his fist.
Izzy was going to rip hair out of his head. Or maybe he would just rip Banes’ hair out instead. Maybe that would satisfy the urge for violence. This was his first time speaking with the man directly, and he would be very pleased if it was his last.
Unfortunately, given there was no longer a chief engineer and they were in the middle of a crisis, that seemed unlikely.
“I can’t make any fucking promises when we still don’t know why it happened.”
Lucius had been taking notes for Banes, but looked up and glanced between them uneasily. “Jeff is on his way with that update you wanted on the passengers, boss.”
Banes leaned back in his chair, finally breaking the glare he and Izzy had been locked in, “Good. Maybe there’s one person on this ship who can actually help me keep the situation under control.”
Izzy scoffed but didn’t say a word. If Banes was hoping Ed could keep the entitled twats they called passengers happy, he was in for a rude surprise. Had he even seen how many complaints Ed had gotten? He was getting at least one per day, for fuck’s sake.
They had been going over status updates for the ship as they rolled in, and so far they’d been lucky. Medical had reported a fuckton of injuries, but most weren’t serious, and the only fatality so far had been Steve.
There were three big concerns still plaguing them: they still had no contact with anyone off the ship, the electrical system was acting up, and they still didn’t know what the impact to their course would be.
“I’m sure Jeff will be a great help on that front,” Bonnet reassured Banes. “But why don’t we just leave the technical bits to the engineers? We just need to keep everyone motivated and calm.”
That was the first thing he’d said that Izzy could agree with. At least he wasn’t trying to shove himself into the middle of things he knew absolutely nothing about.
Izzy kept his eyes fixed on the tablet in front of him as the other three kept chattering, looking over the data and reports that kept rolling in.
The structural damage wasn’t too bad; all things they could fix from inside the ship, thank fuck. He suspected no-one would be eager to volunteer for an EVA anytime soon.
Oluwande’s name popped up on the tablet screen, and he jabbed the accept button immediately.
“Do you have the new course?” Izzy demanded, and the other three in the room went silent as Izzy flicked the video call from his tablet to the conference room screen.
“Oh! You’re with everyone,” Oluwande began nervously. Izzy could see he was in the engineering bay, and narrowed his eyes as he saw Jim pace through the background. “And yeah, I uh…I have our new course.”
Then he stopped speaking, fidgeting with his sleeve. Jim disappeared from the screen, before sweeping back across the other direction.
“Well?” Banes demanded.
Izzy was aware of the conference door opening and Ed arriving to join them, but kept his eyes fixed on the screen. The way Jim kept pacing across the background of the screen was making him tense up, and the expression on the other engineer’s face wasn’t helping.
Bonnet gave a reassuring smile to the screen, as Oluwande continued to hesitate. “It’s alright, the sooner we know, the sooner we can-”
“Three years.”
There was a moment where they were all silent, before Lucius leaned in and asked, “Three years for what, exactly?”
“To get home. That’s our new course.”
“That’s can’t possibly be right,” Banes said incredulously as Ed came into the room and let the door close behind him with a mumbled fuck.
“No, it is. That’s why it took me so long,” Oluwande grimaced. “Ran the calculations twice, and then had Jim check it over just to make sure. We are way off course.”
Lucius dropped his tablet, and Izzy could hear him mumbling a rolling ditty of oh my god over and over again.
“Three years?” Bonnet whispered. “How can our trip go from eight weeks to three years?”
“Wouldn’t take much,” Izzy said grimly. “It pushed us off course a fraction of a degree - doesn’t sound like much, but it was at the exact wrong fucking moment.”
“No,” Banes interrupted. “That is absolutely not correct. We cannot be out here for three years!”
“You can argue all you want, it won’t change a fucking thing. It’s physics, it’s not going to change just because you don’t like it.”
Banes glowered at him, and Izzy met his glare with just as much fury. Fucking idiot. He actually did prefer Bonnet, as bizarre as that felt. At least Bonnet didn’t try to argue about the fucking laws of reality.
“It was the gravity failing that did it, so why don’t we just turn it off again - fire everyone at the other side of the ship?”
Lucius kept mumbling to himself, but Bonnet perked up and looked hopefully at Izzy. “Can that work?”
“No!” Izzy scoffed. “We were relying on the gravitational pull of Saturn and we missed it. We can’t fix that now.”
“Well, if you can’t fix it, then we need our coms with Earth back up! Someone there will have the brains to fix this,” Banes said sharply to Izzy, before turning his gaze on Bonnet. “You’re the captain. Do something.”
Bonnet visibly shrank under that stare, and Ed stepped up behind and put a hand on his shoulder. “Hold on mate, he’s not a magician. He can’t just make something happen.”
Oluwande waved his hand and caught their attention as he interrupted. “Are we good? Can I go now?”
Izzy grimaced at him. “Go. We’ve got too much shit to do to waste your time.”
His own time was a lost cause, when he had to be stuck in this fucking conference room with the most annoying people in the universe. At least it wasn’t the bright white of the passenger areas in here; no, Banes had leaned into the rich twat design style with this room, with the same warm wood paneling that had been in the executive dining room.
The screen went blank, Oluwande not wasting any time with getting the fuck out of this conversation. Izzy wished he could do the same.
Banes stood up from the table, jaw clenched. “Get the coms back up. That is first priority over anything. Captain, I expect you to make this happen. Is that understood?”
He had never seen Bonnet look that out of sorts, nodding frantically in agreement with Banes. What the fuck, where was the composed captain at? Bonnet was utterly ridiculous, but the most Izzy had seen him lose his cool had been with Izzy himself.
“I’ve had enough of all of this incompetence,” Banes said tersely, before turning and making for the door. “Teach, type up your report and send it to me. I’ll go over it alone.”
Lucius didn’t move as his boss left the room, face still buried in his hands. Izzy just watched as the door shut, before grimly noting, “He’s going to be a problem.”
“No kidding,” Ed muttered before dropping down into the chair next to Bonnet.
Bonnet was staring down at the table, so Izzy leaned forward and directed his next words at him.
“We need a fucking plan.”
Ed nudged Bonnet encouragingly. “Yeah mate, you’ve handled shit like this before! Your profile was full of crisis-management shit.”
“What?” Bonnet squawked, pushing away from the table he’d been sitting at. “I don’t know what to do!”
Lucius finally looked up from his hands at that. “But this is your whole thing. I’ve read the reports. What about on your last ship-”
“What is wrong with you people?” Bonnet rose to his feet, and his voice rose with him. His voice changed, getting higher pitched and changing strangely. “That wasn’t me! All I did was stand there while the paramedics did their job!”
He began to pace, waving his hands as he spoke. “I don’t have crisis management skills-”
“What the fuck is wrong with your voice?” Izzy interrupted, bewildered more by his voice than by Bonnet admitting he didn’t know what he was doing, because frankly, that didn’t surprise him one little bit.
Bonnet froze and cleared his throat. When he spoke this time, his voice had gone deeper and flatter once again. “My apologies, I raised my voice. That wasn’t appropriate at all.”
“Nah mate, your voice changed.” Ed leaned forward, frowning at him.
Lucius gaped at Bonnet. “Are you Australian? Why are you putting on a voice?”
“No! I’m from New Zealand, thank you very much!” Bonnet huffed, before his shoulders slumped and he looked despairingly at them all. His voice stayed high pitched this time. “Oh god, I don’t know what I’m doing! I’m a fraud.”
Ed winced. “Oh c’mon mate - I don’t really get why you’d wanna pretend to be American, of all fucking things, but it’s not that bad.”
“No, it is that bad," Bonnet mumbled and dropped back into his chair dejectedly. “I'm not really a captain. I’m an actor.”
Izzy stared at him in disbelief, for once entirely silent. Normally, he would have had a string of expletives at the ready, he would have been prepared to absolutely destroy the fucker sitting in front of him. But instead, all he could think was, yeah, that makes sense.
Lucius finally dropped his tablet to the table, which he’d been gripping like it was a security blanket. “Wait, if you’re an actor, who’s the real captain?”
Bonnet looked at them all with such an expression of panic, that Izzy knew the answer before he even said it.
“Steve.”
“Dead Steve?” Ed clarified, and Bonnet nodded.
They were completely fucked.