Shipfall: Jekka the Rat

Scav Crews are an expendable resource

Photo by Sanela Arsenić on Unsplash

(Note: If I did my job, this story should stand on its own. That said, if you would like to get an introduction to the setting, read this first)

The Valley of Bones was a deeply unpleasant sort of place. The only ‘settlements’ were slaver encampments, the wildlife was always hungry, and of course there were the mutants and metallings to worry about.

Unfortunately for Jekka the Rat, the Valley was also situated in a spot that seemed to naturally attract shipfalls. So his crew, in their collective wisdom, had decided that it was worth the trip.

They had names, of course, but to him they were just the Crew. The Tinker, the Scouts, the Haulers, the Trader . . . All interchangeable in his mind. Only one of the Haulers had been on the crew as long as he had, but she’d never bothered to remember his name and he’d returned the favor. So long as the stars kept flowing, they’d all be happy and fed, and that’s what mattered.

Though Jekka had to admit that he’d much rather they be flowing through a region less . . . Moist. The southwest corner of the Valley of Bones held a massive swamp full of razor pike, sinkholes, ghost lanterns, and who knew what other nasties. Not the worst place he’d been for a job, but bottom ten for certain.

He shuddered as he remembered the demi-squirrels. Never again.

One of the scouts led the way, using a long pole to test for solid ground. Their tinker was still complaining about it, claiming that he hadn’t had enough time with the piece of sky tech to determine its true purpose. The scout argued that a stick is a stick at the end of the day, and this one was long enough to do the job at hand, and if the tinker didn’t like it he could walk right into a sinkhole. The Trader tried to intervene, cool the tensions, and at that point Jekka just tuned them out. Tinkers were all the same, always offended that the rest of the crew actually wanted to do something with the wonders they found.

He couldn’t be too upset of course. A previous tinker had sewn his starsilk cloak and that had seen him through quite a few close calls. She’d had kind eyes and freckles, and he’d kept the sketch he’d made of her in his pack as a reminder. She’d died on a job, like so many others.

As the sun set two of the haulers pulled the ripcords on each other’s packs, bringing the engines coughing to life and lighting the massive torches they carried. The fuel stunk of old metal and oil, but he was used to those smells. The ships they scavenged had a similar smell, so while a couple of the others covered their noses and coughed, he inhaled it deeply. Home.

His reverie was interrupted as one of the scouts missed a step and plunged through the muck. The other two haulers rushed forward, and the lead scout swore and thrust their pole down towards them. Jekka hung back. This wasn’t his role, after all, he’d just be in the way. One of the haulers was crying, something about a promise, and when they pulled the scout from the mud he and the hauler embraced despite the mess and the stench. The trader called for a break, and Jekka squatted down and pulled out a strip of blubber to chew on.

While everyone else drank from their flasks or, in the case of the saved man, shivered and sobbed, the tinker approached Jekka.

He asked if Jekka was ready for the job ahead. By all accounts it was a size three craft, a month old, but thanks to its remote location likely filled to the brim with salvage. He wanted to know if Jekka knew how to tell what was valuable, then descended into a mess of tinker gibberish.

“I’m a good rat.”

The tinker didn’t doubt that, he just blah blah blah blah blah . . .

“I’m a good rat.”

The tinker finally got the point and left, shaking his head. Jekka knew he’d feel differently when presented with the haul he could pull from a size three craft, but it was better to just show him. Either this tinker would believe him, or he wouldn’t. Maybe the next one would, after this one inevitably blew himself up.

They finally moved on, and as true night fell, flowers bloomed all through the swamp. Brilliant petals with shades from blue to violet scattered in every direction, glowing dimly.

One of the scouts spoke with reverence. Evidently this was a rare sight. The very one that had once made this swamp sacred. One of the haulers interrupted, saying it would just rile up the local cultists. The trader insisted they’d picked a path that should avoid the camps etc etc etc. Jekka just kept walking. Maybe, after the job, he’d draw this. He’d need some new paints to get the right hues. He swept his eyes back and forth, gathering the details, but realized he did have to ask a question.

“What are they called?”

A few of the others seemed surprised. Finally the first scout spoke up. She called them Moonbeams, and then descended into a very long explanation of why they were called that and what the colors were said to mean and something or other on and on until they finally reached the ship.

It was half sunk in the muck, and if it weren’t for the strange compass the tinker had made they probably wouldn’t have found it in the darkness. Still, once the hauler’s torches illuminated it, Jekka grinned. Even buried, it towered above them like an ancient tree, filling the sky as they approached. A size three indeed. The trader had sworn by the information, but he’d learned not to count his ships before they were stripped.

The haulers got to setting up camp, and Jekka dropped his larger pack and pulled out his job kit. The trader was giving a speech, the scouts were setting a perimeter, the tinker was babbling again, but Jekka wasn’t concerned about any of that. Now it was the rat’s turn.

He approached the side of the wreck and started knocking the metal with the iron stud on his right glove. The same dumb scout who’d nearly drowned asked what he was doing, but the lead scout promised that he was a good rat, shutting the idiot up. A dull ring announced a likely spot, and he gestured to it.

“I’ll enter here.”

After a long pause, the haulers approached with large hammers. Those had been reinforced with starmetal, and combined with the hauler’s strength the hull quickly buckled and bent inward at their repeated blows. They stepped aside, and he shimmied through the tiny opening.

Even with the violence of the shipfall only a month prior, some Moonbeams had either survived or grown up into the wreck. He still pulled out his wrist lamp to be safe, and as he tapped it three times it produced a soft halo of light that glinted off of the ship’s interior. This was something he’d never shown any of the tinkers. They would’ve taken it.

The ship was half sideways, so he often had to climb through it at odd angles. After several minutes, he finally found a gap worth exploring. He pushed his left arm through first, feeling around. Nothing sharp, at least not immediately. He turned and pushed deeper, his hand moving up and down in sweeping arcs as it was joined by his front foot. Nothing there either. Best he could tell, this had been a hallway, once, even if the crash had jumbled it all together. Carefully, he squeezed another step forward, then another. It took a bit of wriggling, but once his left shoulder was in the rest of him followed, finger by finger..

His wrist lantern provided just enough light to avoid the worst snags, but Jekka still took his time. He shuffled his feet a few spans forward, then followed the curve of the wall. His outstretched hand hit something. “Rust,” he spat, but didn’t turn around just yet. Sometimes, what seemed like a dead end was just another door.

He crouched down and felt along the floor. As he’d hoped, there was a small opening. It took a few minutes to twist his body around so he could lay flat, and his legs were twisted around a corner, but once he was in place he pulled himself forward. He felt his cloak catch on a bit of exposed metal, but the strong cloth didn’t tear, giving him a chance to scoot back a finger, then forward again unimpeded.

After another minute, the metal above him ended and he could see a row of blinking green lights on the wall ahead. Excellent. He approached, and tapped his wrist lantern against the lights.

An image appeared. It was broken and fuzzy, but still clearly depicted the ship itself. He ignored all of the red blinking lights with their unreadable characters and traced the outline until he found a spot near his entry point that was outlined in yellow. He touched the spot with his finger, and a loud creaking metal sound echoed in the distance. He found a few similar spots and pressed them as well, and more noises accompanied each one as doors opened between him and the rest of the crew.

He tapped his wrist against the display again, banishing it as the tinker came scurrying in along with one of the scouts. He immediately asked Jekka how he’d opened the doors, and apologized for not trusting him, and was about to launch into some tirade about the ship when Jekka held up a hand.

“I do my job. I’m a good rat.”

The tinker looked baffled, but finally shook his head and began poking around. The scout stayed by his side, holding a fire spitter casually in one arm. Now that the rest of the scav crew could access this part of the ship, Jekka could move on. There was so much more to find.

Hours later, long after the Maiden and the Menace must have risen into the sky, Jekka was picking through a pair of corpses down a side corridor. Their clothes would be salvageable, enough to make another cloak like his, or a decent tarp. There was nothing else worth grabbing here, so he kicked at the bones until whatever sinews or mold was holding them together collapsed, allowing him to fold up the skysilk and put it in his small pack.

Then he heard the screaming.

Screaming sometimes meant a rival scav crew, sometimes it meant some idiot had disturbed metallings or a local monster. But it always meant trouble.

He began to run through the halls, climbing up what had once been walls and dodging around twisted metal. There were two ways he could go to get back to the others. Either the safe way, around toward the ship’s core, or the direct route through a flooded section.

Another scream. The direct route then.

He climbed through a gap and onto the side of a cabinet that served as a sort of balcony over the flooded room. Dozens of Moonbeams floated in the water, giving it a deceptive beauty. He cinched his pack tight under his cloak, drew his long dagger, and jumped in.

The water was freezing cold but he pushed on, stroking with his free hand and relying primarily on powerful kicks to propel him forward. He saw movement out of the corner of his eye, and slashed his blade toward it immediately. It cut through a fish the size and shape of his head, mostly teeth in a massive mouth that must’ve left little room for any other organs. The body sunk down into the water as a veritable swarm of the critters rushed forward to tear it apart.

He didn’t wait to watch. Someone would name them, study them, figure out the best way to kill them. Not Jekka though. He was just a rat.

He climbed out the other side and shook himself. Thankfully the cloak was waterproof and had protected his gear, but he still hated running with soggy socks.

He emerged a level above the chaos. Several mutants had arrived, each draped with strings of Moonbeams. The lead scout was swearing, holding the shattered halves of his fire spitter. It’d taken down two of the mutants based on the piles of rotting char, but that hadn’t been enough. At least one of the haulers was dead, arms flung to opposite ends of the room and body draped across a table.

Jekka couldn’t help against mutants.

Unless he . . .

“Rusting idiots,” he sighed, and took off his wrist lantern. If they all died it would take weeks to get out of the Valley of Bones. “Tinker, catch!”

He threw the small device right toward the cowering tinker. He looked up and his eyes met Jekka’s, wide with amazement. Jekka gestured at the approaching mutants, and the man finally refocused on the moment. He jumped up and ran to the same console Jekka had used, opening the image and staring at it. He just kept staring as one of the scouts screamed in pain when a mutant with four insect-like arms tore into her.

Jekka leapt down, rolling to dodge a stream of sizzling bile that would’ve melted his head off before coming up next to the tinker. “We’re here,” he said, stabbing his finger at the appropriate piece of the map. “I did my job. Do yours.”

The tinker was shaking. But he looked at the wrist lantern, then at the image, and muttered more tinker gibberish. One of the haulers was barely holding a massive muscled tail back from smashing the trader flat. Another gob of bile flew their way, and Jekka whipped his cloak up to intercept it. There was a loud hissing at the impact, but the vile liquid fell to the ground before it could burn a hole in the fabric.

The tinker who’d made the cloak. Her name had been Nisha. Jekka didn’t like to remember Nisha, because it hurt. But she’d saved his life again.

With a cry of triumph, the tinker tapped the wrist lantern twice and swiped it through the image. Large metal tubes burst from the walls, and the temperature in the room doubled as bolts of blue energy poured out with loud whines and a smell like lightning. The last time Jekka had seen this happen, it’d cost him half a crew. This time, they only hit the mutants.

Charred Moonbeam petals fell from the mutant’s corpses as the machines finally slowed. Everyone was panting, then the cheering started. Cheering for the tinker. Jekka began to walk away when the man grabbed his shoulder.

He apologized for earlier. Said he never should’ve doubted. He said his name was Rel.

The rat hesitated. Life was easier when you didn’t care.

“Jekka.” He said, finally.

“Thank you Jekka,” Rel replied. “You are definitely a good rat.”