In which The Emperor sits in Buenos Aires smelling of diesel and wet laundry, a cadet is medically disembarked for reading the muster list too carefully, the end-of-cruise report now asks about sparkle, and Bosun Cosmos returns from leave to learn that someone called Murphy is about to become everyone’s problem.
The ship was called The Emperor.
Not Endeavour, and certainly not something modest like Wave Whisperer. The Emperor. A name suggesting power and dominion over uncharted territories, which would have been more convincing if the ship had actually discovered anything uncharted since 2005. Even that had only been a poorly documented sandbar that turned out to be an abandoned fuel drum and a confused pelican. But the name persisted, because, like many things with aristocratic titles, it projected a confidence that had long since detached from reality.
The Emperor was launched in the late 1990s, that strange decade of dial-up internet and Tamagotchis. Her interior was a mixture of tasteful teak and slightly too much beige, with safety signs designed by someone going through a minimalist phase who had since moved on to other projects and could not be reached for comment.
She had a dining room, a lecture lounge, a rarely visited gym, and a small spa offering quiet music and teas of uncertain origin. The souvenir shop was stocked with hats no one wore and postcards no one mailed. The bridge was open to passengers “when not underway or actively alarming,” which meant it was almost always closed.
She carried a fleet of auxiliary craft, as all respectable expedition ships must: ten Zodiacs in assorted psychological states ranging from eager to existential, a compact yellow submarine (pun intended by the manufacturer) whose enthusiasm contradicted its colour, and a handful of inflatable kayaks described in the brochure as “nimble” and in the maintenance log as “a concern.” In the brochures, all of this looked ready for heroic adventure. In reality, it was mostly covered in seabird deposits that seemed less like accidents and more like strongly worded feedback.
To the untrained eye, an expedition cruise ship looks like any other cruise ship: long and white, bristling with antennae. But unlike the floating cities full of water slides and slot machines, expedition ships go to places that still vaguely resist being accessible. They visit destinations whose names are double-checked before printing. And while promising “adventure,” they must also deliver fleece-lined slippers and sustainable hand soap.
It is a fine line to walk between discovery and delivery. No one walked it with more confusion than The Emperor.
The port of Buenos Aires, in the early afternoon, smelled like sun-warmed diesel and wet laundry.
It was embarkation day. Every railing on every internal deck was hung with uniforms drying in the heat, every dryer roaring at full capacity, the crew moving with the focused panic of people trying to dry three thousand kilograms of damp polyester before afternoon tea service. Towels hung like surrendered flags. The provision shell door was open. A forklift beeped apologetically in reverse, narrowly avoiding an open pallet of semi-ripe mangoes. Two massive cruise ships occupied the adjacent berths, having their own turnaround days and their own mangoes.
Captain Wexley Thorne stood on the port bridge wing with a coffee.
He was known to the crew and to the IMO database as Captain Walrus, and he watched the chaos below with the expression of a man who had survived too many embarkation days to be surprised by any of them but had never quite stopped being annoyed.
He didn’t turn when he heard footsteps behind him.
He knew those footsteps. One ordinary step, one slightly heavier, a cadence as familiar to him as a specific engine note in a specific sea state. Twenty years of sailing together had made it the kind of thing you didn’t forget.
“‘Bout time,” he said.
Bosun Cosmos, back from two months’ leave with his usual punctuality (which is to say two hours before anyone expected him), dropped his bag, stepped up beside Walrus at the rail, and wrapped him in a brief, solid hug. Walrus returned it with the stiffness of someone who claimed not to care for hugs and had quietly missed this one.
“You’re heavier,” Cosmos said, stepping back.
Walrus grunted.
They leaned on the railing and looked down at the pier the way they had done at a hundred other piers in a hundred other ports. Below, the usual theatre played itself out.
“Busy down there,” Cosmos said.
“Old guests gone. New ones in an hour. Crew change, stores, bunkering, garbage. Everything that was supposed to happen, just slightly later and more confused than anyone anticipated. You know where we are.”
Cosmos nodded. “Anything exploded while I was away?”
“Not technically.” Walrus sipped his coffee. “We lost a cadet.”
“Lost?”
“Medically disembarked. Existential burnout. The doctor’s report said, and I am quoting, ‘persistent fatigue, moderate anxiety, and significant confusion over hierarchical expectations.’”
Cosmos raised an eyebrow.
“They say he stood reading the muster list for over an hour, asking whether it was alphabetical justice or bureaucratic poetry.”
A pause.
“Badger?” Cosmos said.
“Badger.”
Cosmos started to say “he doesn’t mean to” and Walrus said “I know he doesn’t mean to” at exactly the same time. This had happened before, with a different predecessor cadet, and the one before that.
“That’s what makes it worse,” Walrus continued. “He has this quiet gravity about him. Intellectual, you know. The cadets orbit too close and one day they look in the mirror and start questioning their career choices and the fundamental nature of accountability at sea.”
“Who’s the replacement?”
“Name’s Murphy. HR says he’s a great fit.”
Cosmos groaned in the specific way of a man who knew exactly what that meant.
“Opposite,” Walrus said. “Total opposite.”
They stood together a moment longer.
“Took me two hours to fill out the new end-of-cruise report,” Walrus said eventually.
“They changed it again?”
“They changed everything.” He reached into his coat pocket and produced a folded page with the careful deliberateness of a man presenting evidence at a trial. “Question seven: In what ways did your leadership style foster interdepartmental sparkle during the last cruise?“
Cosmos stared at him.
“I wrote: ‘Minimal sparkle. Enhanced level of threats during the lifeboat drill.’” He flipped the page. “Question twelve: Describe one moment from this voyage where a crew interaction felt genuinely connective. If none occurred, explain why not.“
Walrus folded the form and returned it to his coat. “There’s a twenty-seven-year-old itinerary experience architect in the home office who once interned at a floating yoga retreat. Because of him and his experience, this is now part of the End of Cruise Report.”
Below, the forklift beeped again. The mangoes did not survive.
“So,” Cosmos said. “Murphy.”
“Murphy,” Walrus confirmed.
“What are you expecting?”
Walrus considered the question the way he considered most questions: slowly, and without flattery.
“I expect he’ll arrive overpacked and convinced he’s a gift to maritime tradition.”
“And?”
“I’ll let him be wrong.” He finished his coffee. “The sea does the rest.”
Somewhere below, the gangway creaked under the weight of twelve crates of bananas and two deck boys who were beginning to understand they had made a structural error. Walrus watched without expression. Cosmos watched with slightly more interest.
Neither of them said anything. There was nothing to say. The Emperor had seen this before. She had seen everything before.
Captain Walrus 
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