2
of the room; the floor below the string mesh is gray and scuffed and something tells him he isn't on land any more. *Shit*, he thinks, pushing stiffly against the edge and trying not to fall as the hammock slides treacherously out from under him. *Why am I so tired?*
His bare feet touch the ground before he realises he's bare-ass naked. He shakes his head, yawning. His veins feel as if all the blood has been replaced by something warm and syrupy and full of sleep. *Drugs?* he think, blinking. The walls --
Three of them are bland, gray sheets of structural plastic with doors in them. The fourth is an outward-leaning sheet of plexiglass or diamond or something. And a very, very long way below him he can see wave-crests.
Huw gulps, his pulse speeding. Something strange is lodged in the back of his throat: he stifles a panicky whistle. There in a corner is his battered kit-bag, and a heap of travel-worn clothing. He leans against the wall. There's got to be a crapper somewhere nearby, hasn't there? The floor, now he's awake enough to pay attention, is thrumming with a low bass chord from the engines and the waves are sloshing by endlessly below. As he picks at a dirty shirt a battered copper teapot rolls away >from beneath it. "Shitfuckpissbugger," he swears, memories flooding back. Then he picks the teapot up and gives it a resentful rub.
"Wotcher, mate!" The djinn that materializes above the teapot is a hologram, so horribly realistic that for a moment Huw forgets his desperate need for a piss.
"Fuck you, too, Ade," he mumbles.
"What kind of way to welcome yer old mate is that, sunshine?" Hologram-Adrian's wearing bush jacket, pith helmet and shorts, a shotgun slung over one shoulder. "How yer feeling, anyway?"
"I feel like shit." Huw rubs his forehead. "Like I've been shat. Where am I? Where's Bonnie gotten to?"
"Flying the bloody ship. We can't all sleep. Don't worry, she's just hunky-dory. How about you?"
"Flying." Huw blinks. "Where the hell --"