The Lost Wreck of the Spero

by Nemo West

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: An Auspicious Relic

Sam lit up as soon as Triss walked in. Although Chelle hadn’t seen that look in years, she remembered what it meant. Sam still had it bad for Triss. As the colony’s most-talked-about prodigal’s daughter flashed a tight-lipped smile and crossed to their table, Chelle sighed her disappointment into a glass of plummy Chianti.

Rafters of holm oak arched overhead, bracing the barn-like ceiling they’d supported for more than a century. A haphazard arrangement of terracotta pots dangled from those rafters, housing an equally haphazard collection of plastic flowers, many yellowed with age. Kitschy incandescent bulbs glowed in red hurricanes on the chandeliers above each table. Although the décor betrayed Dante’s as a middlebrow tourist trap, its well-maintained prep-bots and food fabrication arrays had made it the colony’s favorite trattoria for generations.

“Welcome home!” an overeager Sam greeted.

“Hey,” Triss replied as she slid into their old booth between the stout brick pizza oven and a faded plastic oleander.

Chelle noticed that Triss looked tired and impatient. She showed no sign of excitement about being back on her homeworld for the first time in almost five years or about seeing her childhood friends again. Growing up, Triss had always been a center of attention: the most bewitching girl in the small colony of New Tuscany, on the planet Etruria. In her twenties now, her air of glamour and sophistication had only intensified. She wore a chic lavender traveling suit with magenta pinstripes and had styled her hair with luminite fibers that pulsed fuchsia when they caught the light.

“It’s so great to see you!” Sam said with the earnest grin of a retriever wagging beside its favorite stick. He had a build like undercooked pastry — doughy and slightly wilted — but, beneath a shock of aimless hair, his eyes held an inquisitive spark. Eccentric interests had always kept him aloof from the rest of the colony, but he’d never really seemed to mind his self-imposed social exile.

“Thanks,” Triss acknowledged with a perfunctory nod. Flicking through messages on her sleek, palm-sized Digit, she asked, “So, what’s this about?”

The corner of Chelle’s mouth pinched. “It isn’t enough just to see your old friends?” she asked.

Triss creased her brow and glanced up from her Digit. “Look, it’s nice to see you guys again and everything, but we all know I didn’t come home to socialize. I came to help my family get ready for the evacuation. But Sam said there was something really urgent he needed to talk to me about.” She turned to him now. “So, what is it?”

“Well, it’s something I need to talk to both of you about, actually,” Sam said. “I’m telling Chelle for the first time, too, because she and I don’t really hang out much anymore, either.”

Triss glanced from Sam to Chelle, reading something in the mood between them but choosing not to comment on it. “Alright, then tell us,” she said.

Sam leaned over the table and his eyes flashed with the familiar excitement that animated him when discussing his lifelong fixation. “What’s the most famous legend on Etruria?”

Triss sighed so sharply it almost sounded like a hiss. “Come on, is this seriously what you wanted to talk about?” She shook her head. “I have to help my family pack. I don’t have time for this.”

“Sam, this really isn’t the right time,” Chelle added with a milder tone, realizing as she did that she was slipping right back into her familiar role as the trio’s mediator.

Sam cracked a giddy smile and brushed their protests aside with a wave of his arm. “Trust me, you both made it clear years ago that you’d lost interest in the wreck of the Spero. But I have a hunch this will change your minds.” With that, he produced a fist-sized object from his trail-worn field vest and placed it reverently on the table.

Chelle and Triss blinked and sat back. Sam had deposited a present on the table, wrapped in glittering silver paper and tied with a red ribbon. “What’s this?” Chelle asked.

“Instead of a going-away present,” Sam explained, “I’m giving you both a staying-home present.”

Triss narrowed her eyes. “A what?”

“A staying-home present.” Sam pointed at the gift. “Because if this means what the legend always said it means, then we’ll be able to afford the atmosphere scrubbers we need to save the colony.” Then he grinned with what Chelle had to admit was truly endearing sincerity. As much as she resented him now, she still felt the charm of his dauntless enthusiasm, along with echoes of the doomed infatuation that charm had once inspired.

“Okay, so what is it?” Triss asked with a skeptical arch to her brow.

Sam gestured toward his gift and sat back in the booth, causing its burgundy vinyl to creak beneath him. “I didn’t wrap it up so I could just tell you what it is. Open it and see.”

Triss looked to Chelle. “Do you know what this is?”

Chelle shook her head. “I hardly see Sam anymore. He’s always off roaming the marsh.” She paused to frown at him. “Even when he has chores to do in the vineyards.” She turned back to Triss and shrugged. “I honestly have no idea what this could be.”

“No idea, huh?” Sam chuckled. “Come on, you can both guess, and the curiosity has got to be killing you. So, quit stalling and open it.” Suddenly remembering something, he glanced cautiously at a table near the front of the trattoria and then leaned in toward his friends. “Just remember to keep quiet when you do.” He nodded toward the other table. “What’s left of Dalton Tham’s crew doesn’t need to overhear our discovery.”

Triss and Chelle peeked at the table Sam had indicated. With much pomp and fanfare, the renowned explorer, Dalton Tham, had led an expedition into Toboso Marsh months earlier, seeking the lost Spero and, most importantly, the priceless Croesine amrathyte in its hold. More than half of Dalton’s party, including Dalton himself, had never returned. Now, a handful of gaunt, haggard adventurers sat together, sullenly finishing one of their last meals in New Tuscany before limping offworld in defeat.

Like so many others who had come to the Tyrrhenian star system in search of the Spero, this motley collection of treasure hunters, vagabonds, and frontier thugs had failed to find so much as a scrap of the missing freighter. Native Etrurians recognized the survivors’ morose expressions. Over the past two centuries, countless other explorers had staggered out of Toboso Marsh empty-handed, with the same broken, demoralized glare.

Intrigued but apprehensive, Triss and Chelle now looked down at Sam’s present. Then they looked at each other. Chelle nodded toward Triss. Triss shook her head and pointed at Chelle. With a resigned shrug, Chelle picked up the present, untied the ribbon, and pulled apart the glittery silver paper. Her efforts revealed a charred hunk of metal that she soon realized was a dented and deformed buckle from a flight harness.

Chelle held it up and Triss squinted at it. “So, you found a piece of trash?” Triss asked.

Struggling to restrain his excitement, Sam pointed eagerly at the metal. “Read the inscription.”

Chelle turned the buckle over in her hands and peered closer. On the obverse side, she found an inscription and read it aloud, “T.N.S. Spero.” Her jaw dropped and she gasped, “Oh, my god! Is this real?”

“According to the inscription, that buckle is from the Terra Nova Ship Spero,” Sam replied with a nod.

Triss and Chelle gawked.

“Where did you find this?” Triss asked as she took the tattered buckle from Chelle and peered at it closely.

With a satisfied grin, Sam draped an arm over the back of the booth and said, “We started our explorers club as kids hoping we might be the lucky ones who finally found the wreck of the Spero.” He paused to sigh. “You two gave up on that dream, but I never did.” He pointed at the buckle. “I kept scouring Toboso Marsh until I found proof the Spero is out there.”

Triss cocked her head. “Wait, you mean this is all you’ve found? You didn’t find the ship itself?”

“No,” Sam answered with a grin. “Because the three of us are going to go out and find it together.”

“What?” Chelle balked.

“When?” Triss asked, focused intently now on Sam.

Chelle balked again and turned to Triss. “Wait, you’re actually going?”

Triss turned, surprised. “You’re not?”

“Well, I... don’t know.”

“Guys,” Sam interrupted, “don’t you see how great this is? We’ll all be back together again, just like when we were kids!” He leaned in. “And when we actually find the Spero, we’ll be able to save New Tuscany, and then we can all stay together.” He gestured to Chelle. “You won’t have to work at the winery anymore.” Then he gestured to Triss. “You won’t have to go back to your job offworld anymore.” He spread his arms wide. “And we can all go back to hanging out again, like we used to.”

Chelle and Triss both paused and shared a quick glance. Then they looked at the buckle, and then down at the table. Just before Chelle spoke up, Triss said, “When do you want to head out?”

“What?” Chelle peeped.

“You just got home yesterday,” Sam said to Triss. “We have another eight months before the atmosphere turns bad enough to toxify the vineyards. So, take a few days, catch up with your family, and we can head out whenever you’re ready.”

“What about me?” Chelle asked.

“Well, you live here,” Sam replied. “I figure you can always get a little time off from the winery.”

She frowned. “I haven’t even said whether or not I’m willing to go.”

Sam blinked in surprise. “Wh-why wouldn’t you go?”

“She’ll go,” Triss assured.

Chelle cocked an eyebrow at Triss. “I will?”

“Just let me talk to her,” Triss said, patting Sam’s arm. “You go ahead and get everything set. I’ll let you know” — she paused to eye Chelle — “when we’re both ready to join you.”

“Great!” Sam clapped his hands and hopped out of the booth. “I already have all the gear we need in my rover. I’ll just have to grab some extra food. We could head out as early as tomorrow morning, if you want.” He raised a reassuring hand. “But again, you just got home, so take your time.”

Triss nodded. “We’ll let you know.”

Sam lingered beside the table for a moment more, grinning eagerly at his friends. “This is going to be so awesome!” Then he clapped his hands again and dashed away to finalize his preparations.

After he was gone, Chelle glowered at Triss, but just as she opened her mouth, Triss cut her off with a raised hand. “Don’t start,” Triss warned.

Chelle exhaled sharply. “You’ve been gone for five years, but you still think you know what I’m going to say?”

“That depends.” Triss pursed her lips. “Have you found something new to say in the past five years?”

Chelle slumped in her seat. “I guess not.”

Triss softened. “Look, I didn’t come back here to break Sam’s heart again.” She frowned. “And just as a reminder, I was never trying to break it in the first place. He had a crush. I was never interested. He wouldn’t let it go.” She shrugged. “The rest is history.”

Chelle sat forward. “Then why are you going into Toboso Marsh with him? It’s just going to get his hopes up all over again.”

“Well, I’m certainly not going alone.” Triss peered at her childhood friend across the table.

Chelle rolled her eyes. “Oh, great. So, I get to be on chaperone duty again?”

Triss sighed and let her gaze flicker around the trattoria. “This is exactly why I was afraid to come see you two, why I was afraid to even respond to Sam’s message. I’ve been gone for five years and nothing’s changed.”

“Well, that’s not my fault.”

“Well, it’s not mine either.” Triss frowned. “To be honest, if a giant volcano hadn’t started spewing toxic gas into Etruria’s atmosphere, I probably never would’ve come back here.”

Chelle let that sentiment linger over their table for several moments before replying, “So, that’s how little your best friends mean to you?”

“Oh, you guys are my best friends?” Triss asked sarcastically. “Let’s see, one of you is relentlessly obsessed with me, and the other is relentlessly jealous of me. Wow, I guess I never realized what great friends I have.”

“I’m not jealous,” Chelle pouted.

“Then what are you? Because right around the time Sam started writing me sappy poems, you stopped treating me like your best friend and started treating me like I ran over your puppy.”

Chelle nudged a saltshaker across the checker-patterned tabletop as if moving a chess piece - a habit she’d developed as a child, bored during monthly meetings where her parents’ generation fretted over the responsibilities of maintaining their small colony. “If all that’s true, then let me ask you again: Why are you going into Toboso Marsh with us?”

“With us?” Triss narrowed her eyes. “So, you are going then?”

Chelle grimaced but allowed her thoughts to slide back to all the years she’d spent roaming the marsh with Sam and Triss, dreaming of the day they might be lucky ones to find the legendary wreck. For some reason, she’d always conjured a vivid fantasy of being interviewed by some normally dignified newscaster whose gravitas cracked with amazement over their discovery. Confronted now by the previously intangible prospect of making that dream come true, she had to admit that she really couldn’t resist. With a grunt, she conceded, “I’ll go if you go.”

“Good,” Triss acknowledged matter-of-factly. “Then I’ll meet you at Sam’s first thing tomorrow morning.”

Chelle tilted the saltshaker onto the rim of its base and twirled it in slow pirouettes with her finger. “You still didn’t tell me why you’re going through with any of this.”

“No,” Triss sniffed, “I didn’t.” She slid out of the booth and hesitated for a moment at the edge of the table. “See you tomorrow.” Then she left.

With a sigh, Chelle dropped the saltshaker back into its cradle. Then she swung the point-of-service tablet toward her; stiff with age, it wobbled on its slender boom arm. After she wrestled it to a suitable angle, she punched in the code to credit her drink to her family’s account. Once she’d completed the transaction, she shoved the tablet out of her way, threw back the rest of her wine, and grimaced. She still had a batch of de-stemming paddles to clean before dinner, so she pushed out of the booth and headed off to her chores.

Like many of her fellow New Tuscans, Chelle worked at the local winery. Their colony had originally been founded as an outpost where hardscrabble merchants sold provisions to visiting treasure hunters. As that semi-permanent campsite grew into a small town, the residents discovered the soil had good terroir for vineyards, and a blossoming business developed.

As she trudged back to the winery now, under pale orange Tyrrhenian twilight, Chelle wondered whether she’d actually show up at Sam’s in the morning. As she thought about it, she found herself unexpectedly skittish about spending time with her old friends again; they’d certainly given her plenty of reason to be apprehensive.

Proceed to Chapter 2...

Copyright © 2022 by Nemo West

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