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Sometimes, when someone locks you in a part of the mine abandoned for good reason, having figured out you were the one who reported them after all, someone else catches on in time. Sometimes she can contact Mia, or Jewel, or an emergency number. Sometimes they come and get you out again.
And sometimes you die.
Today she dies.
And then she is somewhere else.
"It can wait. We're going to pass the night here, since we're already tied down. Take care of some chores, rest, maybe forage up some wood and floatseeds. You don't need to help, as passengers. I'll show you the cabins now if you like. We can give you two cabins with two beds each, or move a third bed into one, whichever you prefer. Oh, but we do have safety rules. No fire or sparks. Don't go on the top deck or outside without a harness. And stay out of the working sections, engines, bridge, and so on - those will be clearly marked in yellow. Have any of you got experience on airships? If you have, we might want you to help out in case of an emergency, help with damage control. If you haven't you should probably just stay out of the way if something happens."
Move a third bed into one, please. (She doesn't need Mia looking at her, though of course Mia does that.)
Understood.
They've been on airships before, but it was far away so they wouldn't want to assume it transfers.
She can help with some chores, if they might like?
"What kind of 'something happens' would you be thinking of there? Are you anticipating attack?"
"Wildlife attack. Debris strike. Storm. Random accident, engine breach or something. Pirates. Nothing is very likely to go wrong, but precaution saves lives."
If an attack might happen, it'd be useful if they'd tell her about their procedures. If they don't trust her with details, which would of course be fully understandable, at least enough so they won't get in each other's way as she protects her friends.
"Two long rings and two short rings of the bell mean we're doing hard maneuvering to avoid something we'd rather not fight. And we're certainly not going to go picking fights. Look out for loose objects and be careful in the halls if you hear that. Five short rings means emergency damage control. I'll get Sam to quiz you later to see if you three'd do more harm than good helping damage control. Mostly, stay out of the way, preferably in your cabin. And don't go shooting that slug-thrower onboard unless you absolutely have to, hear? It could set off sparks and set the whole gas envelope on fire. So for the love of god, keep it unloaded and safetied."
"Understood." She'll take that for a 'no they won't explain and she'll have to be figuring it out in the moment if they do get attacked'. Well, she can do that.
"I think that's everything we wanted to cover? If so, let's get you aboard and settled." He indicates the rope ladder they've unspooled.
It might be hard to climb the ladder with the crate, but other than that they're ready to go up.
There's a little cargo net they can lift up the crate with.
Here's a ship! It's built more fancily than the first one, with wood paneling and fancy inset lights and such. Their cabin is just this way, they'll steal a bed from the one next over.
They go to the cabin. May they look around the rest of the ship if they don't go to off-limits areas?
Sure. No crossing the yellow lines into engineering areas or the bridge and no going into other people's cabins and cook might chase you out of the kitchen but there's still the lounge and observation deck and storerooms and library and stuff.
It's a ship so there's not really that much space, but the lounge is spacious at least. The library is more like just two bookshelves. The storeroom has a bunch of large lockers with padlocks on them all.
What does the kitchen seem to be like, if she can be near it long enough to see? What books do they have? Is there anything to suggest how they keep things clean?
The kitchen is made of white plastic and metallic and slightly off-color glassy surfaces everywhere, to prevent fire. There are hooks and cabinets everywhere, and no loose implements or dishes at all.
The books seem to be mostly novels and magazines and so on. A few beat-up and low-tech-calibrated textbooks on algebra and chemistry and such. Four slightly better ones, on the weather, and Dangerous Fauna, and fire prevention and fighting, and Safe Weapons. There's also a dictionary.
They get water out of a tank on the bottom deck, with taps or hand pumps on the upper level. There are brooms and mops and tins of soap and the like in the supply closets.
She wonders how they get the plastic. (Wonders in a practical sort of way. 'Less common, going by everything else' doesn't mean 'going to surprise'.)
There are lots of dangerous fauna! Vicious alien pack predators with sharp claws and beaks and huge solitary alien predators with poisoned bladed tentacles uncreatively called 'bladesquid' and these red and orange spiked things called 'fire floaters' that tend to explode and sky whales, which are more dangerous for their massive size than anything else.
Safe weapons are mostly crossbows and slings and pneumatic harpoon launchers and pressurized-air rifles and the like. The magazines are very eclectic, no one series seems complete. There's fashion magazines and gossip rags and restaurant reviews and political treatises and popular science magazines with flashy illustrations and a couple History Of Our Noble City type things. They're all beat up, and it doesn't seem like more than three are from the same place.
Fire prevention is a hard job! Ship fires are nasty even if you use helium as a lift gas because there's nowhere to run and nowhere to get water. Honestly a fire on a ship without a very excellent suppression system is a death sentence unless you have escape pods or something. It's better on a large town, but most native life is, er, highly flammable, so always be careful! The best thing if you can manage it is to toss whatever's burning overboard, not your problem anymore. The chance it'll land on someone else and still be burning is very small, but such a thing has ever happened before.
She will remember about fauna and weapons for Mia. She will bookmark political and science and history of noble city for Xeyr. She will read science! Illustrations? And fashion and gossip.
What do they have for suppression, and escape pods? Does the material the islands are made of catch fire, or explode, or something else dangerous?
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