Clarissa wasn't willing to try the manoeuvre the captain and Mercy used to get across the hall so quickly, so she was left to follow in their wake to the cargo hold. She trundled as quickly as she could manage, but walking was a peculiar experience with the weak pull of her clingy boots.

By the time she reached the stairwell the others were out of sight. The door, however, had been left open, and when she made her way down Clarissa could see Mercy standing in the middle of the cargo hold, her head titled up and her hat in her left hand.

"Vincent!" Mercy cried out. She slapped her hat back on and ran to the back of the cargo hold, and then up the wall. For a moment, Clarissa wondered who Vincent was. She had gotten rather used to calling him 'captain' in her head.

Clarissa tromped into the cargo bay to see the black box spinning in the air a dozen feet over her head, with the captain clinging to one of the sides. The box was as tall as the captain, and just as long, and was drifting lazily towards the far wall. Red lights were flashing all along the sides, and a quiet siren was humming in the distance.

"Mercy!" the captain called out, as he spun around in the air. "Grab a fire suppressor, would you?"

Clarissa thought it was the oddest request, but Mercy moved like they were following a well-rehearsed plan. She walked up the wall to a nearby canister resting in a bracket, ran across the wall until she was as close as she could manage, spun about so that she clung to the wall with her hands, and then pushed off towards the cube.

Mercy's trajectory put her behind the box in just a couple of seconds. Clarissa thought she had missed, but as Mercy passed the cube she matched the captain's spin, and handed the canister to him as easily as if she had been standing still. Mercy passed on, and stopped with a gentle bend of her knees as she stuck to the cargo bay ceiling.

The captain, meanwhile, pointed the nozzle of the canister ahead of him, and squeezed the lever. A cloud of white foam filled the air and formed a ring around the captain and the box, growing larger as it spat across the cargo bay. A dozen seconds later, the nozzle sputtered, gave out a last cough, and died. But the box's spin was little more than an idyllic twirl now, which seemed to be enough for Captain Locklear. When the box drew close to the wall a few seconds later, the captain was able to both guide it to a stop, and keep it from crashing.

Captain Locklear sighed and whistled in relief. He turned to Mercy and shot her a glib question. "You know I'm holding the fate of the sky in my hands right now?"

"Here's hoping you treat it like a newborn babe, sir," Mercy replied, her voice strained. But she was smiling and scooped up the empty fire extinguisher floating in the air beside the captain.

"Clarissa, Mercy, would you take over for a minute? I need to keep Tonya from doing any reckless flying for a little while," Captain Locklear said, stepping away from the now mostly stationary cube.

Clarissa marched up to the position the captain had abandoned and tried to reach for the box. "Mercy, what happened? How did the box come loose?"

"I don't know. But that's a problem for later," Mercy said, quietly but sternly. "Right now, I'm going to tilt the box so that the edge comes down to you. I'd like you to catch it slowly and don't push it back up. Treat this like the fate of millions is riding on you."

Clarissa thought that last comment was oddly specific, but held her hands up towards the cube and waited. Mercy twisted her arms, pulling on one side of the box while pushing on another, and the whole contraption descended towards her.

Clarissa caught the box with her outstretched hands and gently pushed against it until it stopped descending. Once it did, she gripped it by the edges, and nodded to Mercy, "Got it, ma'am," she said.

"Good. Now we walk it down to the floor. So just take nice, slow steps, and just worry about keeping it level. I'll push and pull," Mercy replied, and gently shoved the box towards Clarissa.

They took one slow step at a time, making slow and awkward progress as Clarissa tried to learn how to walk backwards in magnetic boots while clinging to a box that would pulverize her if the ship turned at all. She held her breath as she managed the first few steps and breathed a sigh of relief when she could stretch out her foot directly behind her and touch the ground.

"The bottom of the box is still on the roller assembly the Monastery used to get it aboard," Mercy said. "Get ahead of it, and we'll lower the box onto the wheels."

Clarissa nodded and helped guide the box down until the wheels kissed the deck. Mercy sighed happily, and patted the top. She then pushed the box forward, so that it rolled forward just a few inches, then walked down behind it.

To her left, Clarissa heard Tonya's voice ring out on the relative silence. "Cap, without the sails we'll miss our window. Every few minutes we don't turn into the winds could cost us half a day."

The captain, standing beside the speaking tube, grimaced a little at the news. "That's an acceptable outcome. If we have to pass behind the ruins, we'll only lose a couple of days. Our job is to get Clarissa and the box intact. We aren't paid more for alacrity."

"Aye cap. But how did the damn thing get loose?" Tonya asked through the tube. "Monastery normally rigs the thing up so the only way to steal it is to cut the wall it's attached to."

"I'll let you know when I find out. Stand by," the captain replied, then turned away and marched over to help move the box.

"Clarissa," the captain said as he took one of the handles and started to pull. "What do you know about the container? Not the contents, but the case."

Clarissa grinned and glanced at Mercy. "Funny, I was asked this earlier."

"Something I suspect I'll need to take up with my first officer later," Captain Locklear said, giving Mercy an odd smile. "But you know the box uses electricity to generate magnetism, right?"

"Yeah."

"And some of that is supposed to be dedicated to holding the box in place during the voyage. Tonya was right in that once it's magnetically locked to the wall, the box shouldn't move unless someone hacked through the steel hull and took the slab with it," the captain explained, and then pointed back into the air above them. "So, question is, why was I riding it like an Olencian waterwheel?"

"Did it run out of power?" Clarissa asked, though a quick look at the lights confirmed the unlikeliness of that possibility.

"Rather doubt we'd be having this or any conversation if that happened," the captain replied. "Let's get this back into position."

They pushed the box across the room until they arrived at the spot in the corner where Clarissa suspected it had been previously. Once it was settled, and flush to the walls, the captain crouched down beside the box and opened a small panel.

"Could it be so simple?" the captain asked himself quietly, and Clarissa tried to peer into the panel over his shoulder. She caught sight of about a half-dozen small metal levers, each as long as a finger, shrouded in cobwebs and covered in a film of dust. There were labels on the levers, in small and neat writing, with some of the letters smudged or worn off.

The captain twisted one of the levers until it clicked into place. To her right, Clarissa heard a short, high-pitched whine, and the sudden hiss of grinding metal. Mercy leaned over and ran her fingers over where the box touched the wall. "Clamps are on, cap."

The captain tested the lever by flicking it, just a gentle tap of his finger, and the lever popped back down with unnerving eagerness. There was a small grumble that sounded from the wall, and Mercy pushed at the end of the box with her finger. "Disconnected. Nothing holding the box now but its own weight in zero g's."

The captain pulled the lever back up again, reached into a small pouch on his thigh, nearly identical to the one Anita had given Clarissa, and pulled out a wrench. He then jammed it between the lever and the panel until it was stuck fast.

"Captain, not to uh, how would you say it in an officer's record, disparage your technical acuity," Mercy began to say.

"Acumen," the captain replied.

"That's it, acumen. But for the record and so that my concerns are voiced aloud, sir. You understand," Mercy said with a wry smile. "Just wanted to say I felt more confident when Leslie insisted he could fix the waste water piping. You know, when he flooded the cargo bay with it. And we had to-"

"Please let me throw myself off the side before you keep recounting that," the captain grimaced.

"Anyway, sir, I feel even less confident about your, uh, monkey-wrenching job here."

"Duly noted. Grab the cargo straps, and we can cinch this up like we were carrying Volantian artillery powder."

"How many strap should I grab, sir?" Mercy asked.

"All of them. Clarissa, in the interim, would you head upstairs and let Yannick know I'll need him to plot our course again? We're going to have a full ship meeting in two hours," the captain said.

"Yes, sir," Clarissa said.

"And Clarissa, while you wait for that meeting, ponder a little riddle for me. Why would the Monastery be using an old box to transport the Shield's power source?" the captain asked, and there was something simmering just beneath his words. Not anger, not entirely.

Fury was a better word for the terrifying tremor in the captain's voice.