Chapter Text
Now, Boothill wasn’t the most informed man in the galaxies about the inner-workings of the Astral Express, as experienced as he was with mechanics, but — he was pretty certain that the guest cabins weren’t supposed to be this cold .
The guest cabins were humble and comfortable, much more homey than the VIP rooms back in The Reverie, and that Welt Yang had set Boothill up with a nice charging port made out of spare parts they had found around The Reverie and the beat-up old junker ship that Boothill had crashed into Penacony during his hunt for… whoever he was hunting for last week. He had been so comfortable when he finally set himself into sleep mode that he didn’t wake up until he found himself forcibly ejected from the crappy-scrappy port and kissing the carpet.
This wasn’t usually how his nights went on the Express. The train had been slowly chugging away from Penacony for a few days, getting enough distance and speed for a warp jump out of Asdana without worrying about colliding with the numerous ships constantly pulling in and out of the luxurious hotel. On the first day they pulled away, Boothill could still see the small hole his own ship had made, and the little Family workers scuttling around to fix it.
During the days, the Express crew were busy with tasks around the train. Stelle and March cleaned, Dan Heng updated the archives on their latest adventures, Himeko did more research on Edo Star, their next stop, and Welt searched through IPC logs to figure out what the disaster waiting for them there would be. In the meantime, that left Boothill and the Memokeeper a lot of free time to kill. Even then, Black Swan made herself useful and helped Dan Heng in the archives, filling in blanks in the plot that the boy wouldn’t have first hand knowledge about. Which ultimately left Boothill to his own devices.
At first, he liked this. He spent his time on the computer in his room looking up basic information on his next target. That flashy Stoneheart hadn’t given Boothill much to go off of besides being warned not to pursue his target if Boothill had any sense of self-preservation, but if it was the IPC calling the Express to Edo Star, then Boothill could also try to wring information out of the person in charge there. He briefly considered asking Welt and Dan Heng for help with research on Oswaldo Schneider, but where was the fun in that? The man was high-ranking enough to have his own inter-astral web page, which was helpful at least. He also got a minute to chat with Himeko and swap war stories with her, he even got to try her coffee. It really wasn’t that bad, but the shocked reaction that Stelle had at him casually sipping a cup was priceless.
After a while, however, he found himself with increasing free time and increasing boredom. The traffic in Asdana was increasing due to the factions leaving Penacony over the canceled Charmony Festival and more regular guests pouring in now that rooms were available, meaning that the Express had to drift further away from the former prison to attempt to warp jump. Boothill had his baseline information on Oswaldo Schneider, his makeshift charging port, endless views of the cosmos, and nothing but comfort to let himself fall deep asleep in without worrying of waking up in a creepy clock-themed amusement park. So, he tried to sate his boredom in other ways. He tried unsuccessfully to talk to the masked Memokeeper’s hologram stationed in the corner next to a broken mirror, he listened to almost every song in the Express’ phonograph - and it was a stupidly large selection that they carried - and he read every page in the Express’ guest log book. Boothill was pleasantly surprised to see the names of other intergalactic criminals like himself, but was just as unpleasantly surprised to see so many IPC big shirts appearing in the log, too. Still, the Express being close with IPC management could help him in the future if he remained friendly to them. Even if Dan Heng wouldn’t give him private, unrestricted access to the Express’ archives, there could definitely still be ways for Boothill to speed-up the vengeance process in these velvet walls.
So one can imagine his shock when he was forcibly awakened just seven days after the train’s departure. Boothill sputtered out what he guessed was rabbit fur - still deliberating on that one - that was in the carpet and stood, looking at the port and out the portcullis window that protected him from the harshness of space. As he tried to figure out why he was suddenly thrown off his charge, he heard someone running down the hall outside his cabin and the frantic voice of the Trailblazer shouting to see if everyone was okay.
Boothill grabbed his hat and gun, and slid his door open, finding Stelle going to each door and looking inside.
“Hey, Stellaron Girl, what the flip happened?” His auto-censorship kicking in as soon as he tried to speak.
She shut the door in front of her. “I don’t know, there was a loud bang and everything shook! I think the Express might have hit something?”
“Is that even possible?” Boothill stepped into the hallway and his internal computers instantly recognized that the temperature had dropped by four degrees in the time between him opening his door and now. Was there something wrong with the Express?
“It’s not the weirdest reason we’ve stopped before.” Stelle shuddered. Boothill couldn’t tell if it was from the temperature or some unpleasant memory.
Boothill tucked his pistol into its holster and started walking towards the parlor car. “Let’s just ask your glorious conductor what in the Sweet Helen is going on.”
Stelle nodded, and started after him. Boothill approached the door separating the guest car from the car containing the crew’s personal cabins and everything went sideways and then black.
Boothill woke up to the blackness of space staring back at him. He swore as best as he could, and jerked backwards, finding that he was laying on one of the Express’ large windows.
Wait, laying?
Yes, Boothill looked down the dark car to see that it was, in fact, sideways. As in, the artificial gravity in the train was pulling him to the car’s wall. He gingerly moved to be on his stomach, shifting his shirt so that the longer fabric of the back was under his metal torso and careful of his weight on the glass. He was treating it like he was on a fragile frozen lake, and started sliding towards the end of the car where the window stopped. He was sure that the window would hold him just fine since it survived regular warp jumps through space, but seeing only the universe below his boots was just too unsettling.
Boothill rolled off the window and stood, looking around for Stelle. Where had she gone? Was she hurt? His answer was one of the doors above him sliding open and a gray shoe dangling down, trying to touch the windowed “floor.”
“Woah there, Stellaron.” Boothill pressed himself against the velvet flooring that was now the wall to his left and hopped up on top of the cabinet nestled against it. The wood groaned under him, but held as he reached up and touched Stelle’s ankle. “Easy, easy, I’ve got you.”
“How far down am I?”
Boothill looked down at the window. “Too far to just take a fall by yourself. Here, I’ll catch ya. Just drop.”
It took her a second to work up the courage, but she did, and Boothill caught her by the waist, pulling her onto the cabinet and then down with him onto the small space between the window and car floor before the cabinet drawer decided to break.
“I’ll pay for that.” The Galaxy Ranger apologized and started towards the door to the crew’s car. “Come on, let’s see if there’s any injured.”
“Black Swan wasn’t in her room, do you think she was in the Parlor?”
With how big that parlor car was, Boothill wondered just how banged up someone would be if they were suddenly thrown sideways.
He pushed the door up and held it open for Stelle to crawl through, being blasted by a cold wind and finding that the lights were off in this car, too. Boothill’s computer told him that the car was ten degrees colder than the one they just came from, and the temperature was continuing to drop. A small puff of visible vapor escaped Stelle’s mouth, so Boothill took his tiny shirt and scarf off and handed it to her. It wasn’t much, but she layered the shirt under her jacket and zipped that up to try to cover her legs more. He had his own internal heater that could keep him warm for weeks and even though Stelle had a Stellaron inside her, she still seemed entirely human on the outside. Boothill only hoped that there wasn’t a hull leak somewhere ahead of them causing the Express’ problems and all of this was just a weird power outage.
Speaking of power outages, Boothill also noticed that his battery was only about halfway charged, and his heater ate into that more than he liked. He pulled his hat down more on his head to force his hair around his neck to keep his remaining skin warm. Starting a fire for warmth was completely off the table if the power didn’t come back on soon, the flames would eat up all their remaining oxygen faster than they could freeze to death.
They tip-toed along the wooden paneling of the windowed wall-floor, looking up at the closed cabin doors and calling out to the crew members, getting no responses. Boothill hoisted Stelle up to the doors to slide them open to check inside, finding Welt and Himeko’s rooms to be locked, and Dan Heng and March 7 th ’s rooms to be empty. The quietness of the Express was getting to be a lot at this point. Stelle lowered herself down from the archive’s door and put her hands on her hips to think.
“Maybe they all ended up in the Parlor.” Her voice had a stutter and her lip trembled. It was only getting colder, what were they going to do?
“Maybe.” Boothill’s jaw was stiff.
He held the door to the parlor car open and the two carefully slid down the wall to the one now on the floor. The car was also empty, if not a disaster. Anything that wasn’t bolted down was thrown around, a table that used to hold a strange looking board game was broken and its legs were missing. Potted plants were spilt all over the gigantic windows that made Boothill dizzy just thinking about walking across, so he started assessing how well he could jump onto the couches and counters from where he was. That is, until he heard something shift towards the front of the car.
His hand went to his gun and the other shot out in front of Stelle as if blocking her from some unseen projectile. She in turn summoned the hat of the Watchmaker and looked around for the source of the movement.
“Who’s there?” Boothill called to the silence.
“Is that the Galaxy Ranger?” A woman’s faint voice responded. Boothill recognized it as belonging to Black Swan the Memokeeper.
Stelle did, too. “Miss Black Swan? Where are you?”
A gloved hand stuck itself up from behind a couch on the opposite end of the car. “I’m afraid I’m in a bit of a predicament, if you would be kind enough to offer a hand.” Her voice cracked slightly as if she was biting back pain. “I’ve taken a rather unfortunate fall.”
Boothill jumped onto the back of the couch closest to him. “Hold on, Miss. We’re comin’.”
Slowly, very slowly, the two of them tip-toed along the metal divide between the giant windows until they managed to cross all the way to Black Swan’s extended hand. Unfortunately, what they found wasn’t just an unfortunate fall.
“Oh, sweet n’ sour.” Boothill cursed.
“Good evening to you, too.”
Black Swan was tucked behind the side of the couch with the missing legs of the table at the other end of the car laying around and in her. As in, she had fallen on a splintered edge and was impaled by a rod of wood in her abdomen.
Stelle gasped and ripped Boothill’s scarf off of her neck to try to stop the blood slowly trickling from Black Swan’s wound, but both she and the Galaxy Ranger stopped her.
“Don't move her too much.” Boothill knelt down next to her and examined the wood. “Looks like she’s taken care of it herself.”
It was true, Black Swan had done what she could by tying the belts on her veil around herself and bunching the fabric underneath her to catch the blood falling out of her back. The rapidly falling temperature wasn’t helping at all, Boothill could see both her and Stelle’s lips starting to turn blue as the tiny thermometer in him slunk closer to Zero.
“Stellaron,” he turned to Stelle. “Where’s the conductor’s room at?” They didn’t have time to focus on the missing crew members, they needed to save themselves first.
Stelle shivered and pointed to the sideways staircase leading to a door that was too high up for them to reach on their own. Boothill stared at it for a second before he asked Stelle to take the half-cape attached to his shirt off and hand it to him. She did and Boothill tied it loosely around his waist.
“Memokeeper,” he turned his attention back to Black Swan.
She visibly winced as she forced herself to sit up. “I understand.”
The two helped her to her feet and had her sit on the back of the couch, slipping her legs into the sling that Boothill now had on his back. He hiked the fabric up to be where his diaphragm would have been if he had lungs so that Black Swan could sit in a way that didn’t push the wood in her abdomen one way or another. She wrapped her arms around his neck for support and Stelle grabbed a table that hadn’t been broken to place next to the wall. Boothill carefully climbed onto the table and tried to push the door open while standing on his toes, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Is this fudging thing locked?!” Boothill banged his fist against the wooden paneling of the door before looking down at Stelle.
The Trailblazer took a deep breath and exhaled just as deeply, a cloud of vapor swirling around her face as she did. “M-Maybe it only opens for Pom-Pom or Himeko.” Her lip trembled from the cold.
“Well, I don’t see either of them, so does anyone have any other ideas?”
Black Swan sniffled a little and shivered with a sharp intake of air. “There’s a lot of radio parts in Mister Dan Heng’s room, perhaps this is the part where we call for help?”
Stelle and Boothill looked at each other incredulously like that thought should have occurred to them earlier, and the three trekked back across the parlor car to the door leading to the cabins. Stelle stood on the counter now on the floor and boosted Boothill up so he could push the door up and crawl on his stomach under it while Black Swan continued to push it up. Stelle jumped up after him and Black Swan got to watch them recreate their method of checking the rooms over their heads for Stelle’s friends.
This time, Boothill pushed Stelle all the way up into the Archives and she helped pull him up with a lot of difficulty. By himself, Boothill wasn’t the lightest guy in the galaxy, but Black Swan’s limp weight on his back wasn’t helping. Wait… limp?
Boothill scrambled on his stomach for a bit to get his legs inside the room and became aware that Black Swan had fallen unconscious on his back, her arms hanging loosely from his shoulders.
“Shirt, shirt, shirt shirt, fork me sideways and through a door.” He remained on his stomach as he untied the sash around his chest and had Stelle carefully slide Black Swan off of him.
Stelle cradled Black Swan in her lap with an alarmed look. “What should I do?”
“Give her to me and get started on the radio.” Boothill rolled onto his back and motioned for the unconscious woman. “We should be close enough to the other ships goin’ in and out of Penacony that a shortwave radio should work. You do know how to get one working, right?”
“I can figure it out?”
“Then get figuring.”
Stelle gently moved Black Swan so that her back was across Boothill’s chest and did as she was told, piecing together machine parts and trying to remember what Dan Heng had taught her about radios. Boothill watched closely and turned his internal heater up more before pinching Black Swan’s nose shut to get her to wake up.
She did and jerked slightly, causing the wood in her side to shift and make her wince.
“Morning to you, too.” Boothill locked his arms around her so she didn’t fall off of him. “Gonna need you to stay awake for a little longer.”
Black Swan relaxed as Stelle presented a make-shift metal box to the two of them and pressed a button on the side, a small light on the box turning on and an antennae poking out of the top.
Stelle brought the box to her face, sneezed, and started to speak. “Mayday, mayday, this is the Astral Express! We’ve lost power and are drifting! The crew’s missing, and we have injured on board!”
The radio buzzed quietly in response. Boothill pulled his hat off and laid it over Black Swan’s legs. “Try again.”
Stelle did, her voice shakier than before. Her lips were fully blue and she shivered uncontrollably. Some of the computers along the walls of the room had tiny bits of frost dripping out of them. Boothill’s battery wasn’t faring too well, either, but he could deal with losing power for a few days before his brain fully shut down in the best scenarios. The others, the squishier humans, couldn’t afford that much time.
But Stelle kept trying the radio. She dragged it over to Boothill’s side and curled up next to him to try to siphon some warmth from his heater as the air became thicker from a lack of recycled oxygen. “Mayday, mayday,” she kept calling despite how her teeth chattered horribly, “the Astral Express has lost power and we have injured on board!”
But each time came with no response. Just static. Long, unbreaking static that swallowed them and sent them drifting deeper into the abyss.