by Reese Hogan
So here she was. Half-drowned in an enemy submarine surrounded by monsters, missing a piece of her disguise, and holding incriminating evidence that she was responsible for the attack. But she’d gotten the intel she’d been sent for. The dekatite veins, the arphanium pipes, Kheppra Isle, all of it.
Now she just had to get out alive.
It felt like forever, but Mahanner finally surfaced again. Klara Yana immediately yelled, “Get CSO Blackwood, sir! She might still be alive!”
The dark man nodded and dove across the compartment, coming up right at Blackwood’s side. Klara Yana released the board, relieved when it didn’t budge. She swept up her necklace before Mahanner could turn and catch sight of it, and pulled the chain free of the pendant. She unzipped her coverall just long enough to stuff the pendant into the soaked fabric holding her breasts flat. The chain, she kept in her right hand.
“She’s alive,” Mahanner said, “but unconscious.”
“Xeil be praised,” said Klara Yana. She took off her headlamp. “Catch!” Mahanner caught the light. “Get over here and help me get her out of the water.”
“On my way.”
She dove under, the same way Mahanner had, but hurriedly kicked toward the left wall – the portside bulkhead – as soon as she was submerged. She tried opening her eyes, but they burned in the salty, pitch-black water. So she did it by feel, brushing her aching palm over chains, metal frames, and vinyl mattresses with the threadbare sheets still on them. By the time she’d rid herself of the dekatite chain, her lungs were begging for air. She kicked herself back to the front of the compartment – the fore – and burst to the surface with stars spotting her vision.
“By the moons,” she gasped.
“Get lost?”
“I must have gotten turned around! I couldn’t even see your light.”
“Calm down, kid. You’re OK now. Help me with Blackwood.”
Together, they managed to get Blackwood on top of the flat locker by the maneuvering hatch – normally taller than Klara Yana, but now only a half-hand above the lapping water.
“There’s some sort of… injury… on her arm,” grunted Mahanner. “What happened up there? It looked like some sort of energized shock or something. Was it that thing that kept hitting the boat? That… what was it?”
“No clue,” said Klara Yana. A shiver shook her, rattling her words. Mahanner’s mention of an injury reminded her of the sharp pangs still coursing over her own left palm, excruciating in the undercurrents of icy seawater. Was her blood leaking out in the water? She kept her fist submerged, not daring to look in front of the other sailor.
Klara Yana could just see Blackwood’s wound beneath her shoved-up sleeve. It was on the bottom of her forearm and resembled a lightning bolt, etched in something much darker than blood. Something dark gray, almost metallic.
When Mahanner wasn’t looking, Klara Yana opened her palm for a quick glimpse of her own wound. Although it was slightly distorted by the tight grip she’d had on the pendant, the shape of the Broken Eye was unmistakable. Burned into her palm… with dekatite.
Chapter 3
BLACKWOOD’S MARK
Instinctively, as she forced the shole up to the overhead with all her strength, Blackwood knew she’d been here already, done this before. There’d been a monster just outside the hull, fighting its way in to rip the crew apart. She knew the lives of every sailor in the Desert Crab were in her hands. And that was why she pressed against the flooding water until her shoulders screamed with pain and her hands went numb.
But it wasn’t a monster’s growls that reached her ears from outside the submarine this time. It was Andrew Blackwood’s terrified yells, and the sound of his fists banging against the hull.
Mila! Don’t abandon me! Please!
Blackwood pushed harder. Their lives… her hands…
Mila! You abandoned me!
“No!” she shouted. “That’s not how it was! You don’t understand, you’re just a kid–”
“You abandoned us!” That voice definitely wasn’t her brother’s; too deep and forceful for a fifteen year-old boy.
Blackwood’s lips turned down, her eyes twitching behind her eyelids. No, not fifteen… he’d been fifteen when she left. How old now? Seventeen. Right. Plenty old enough to be on his own. Fifteen had been old enough. Stupid to keep having these dreams when there was so much else to worry about. Andrew was fine. Aside from Ellemko’s air raids, and his own haunting grief, his self-imposed silences, his passive-aggressive moodiness…
“The compartment was lost!” someone yelled. “It was suicide to stay there! The CSO said as much when she let us go. If she wanted to sacrifice her life–”
“And you better be glad she did! If she and Holland hadn’t gotten that breach sealed, this whole boat would be in shards by now, and you’d be a dismembered corpse at the bottom of the sea.”
“Holland? Really? You’re giving him credit? It’s his fault! I bet my life he’s carrying dekatite. We all knew better–”
“Deckman Vin!” Blackwood growled, forcing her eyes open. Harsh light greeted her, and her lids clamped shut again. She put a hand out, feeling a metal bunk rail against the mattress she laid on. Her forearm throbbed, the whole surface a strange combination of needles and numbness. The smell of antiseptics and bandages filled the air. “Deckman Mahanner,” she added. Her voice was rough; she swore a layer of salt still coated the inside of her mouth. “Who else is here?”
“At the moment, no one, ma’am,” said Mahanner. “How are you feeling, CSO?”
“Just the two of you then?” She pried her eyes open again, more successfully this time, and found herself, as she’d expected, in the sub’s medbay. Mahanner and Vin were close to the hatch, an arm-span away from each other. The other two bunks in the space were empty. Blackwood glanced from the glass-fronted metal cabinet in one corner, filled with bandages, tools, and ointments, to the stainless steel sink bolted against the bulkhead at the other. Empty.
Mahanner came closer, leaving Vin at the door. “Do you remember anything, CSO?”
Struggling to seal the breach. A banging on the hull. Andrew screaming. No. A monster. She looked up.
“We succeeded?” she said. “We kept it out? We came out of shrouding OK? Did… did anyone die?”
His smile softened his whole face. “No, ma’am. We did it. You, me, and Holland.”
She felt her own lips curve up. “Holland, huh?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Spanking brand new recruit, barely trained, scared out of his mind… and he was up there with me, pushing that thing away from the boat. Wouldn’t have guessed he had it in him.”
Vin started forward, his face dark with anger. “It was probably guilt that put him up there in the first place, ma’am–”
“It’s guilt making those accusations, deckman.” Blackwood pushed herself to sitting on the little cot, swinging her legs over the unrailed side of the bunk. She was in dry coveralls, and her curls were unbound. She glared at Vin. “Deckman, go find Captain Rosen and inform her I need to speak with her at her earliest possible convenience.”
“Ma’am, if this is about–”
“Go, deckman!”
With a sharp nod, Vin went. Blackwood turned to Mahanner. “Where is Deckman Holland?”
“With Captain Rosen, ma’am. Corpsmate Tolonen is with them, since she was the one who treated the marks. Holland has one, too. We’ve been informed to keep them as low profile as possible.”
“Marks?” Blackwood followed Mahanner’s gaze to her right arm – the same one that had been tingling since she woke. Her eyes widened.
“It’s dekatite,” she whispered.
Mahanner nodded. “Yes. The corpsmate and captain agree.”
“But what do they–”
“Whatever was there at the hull by you and Holland left those marks. A creature of dekatite, or you scraping against the interior of the stone, no one knows. Holland has a round mark on his palm, righ
t where he had it up at the breach. But you were shocked much worse than he was.”
“Shocked?”
“That’s what it looked like. From the outside, anyway. Given the shape of your mark, it’s almost like a lightning bolt of dekatite traveled right down your arm. It’s… it was…”
She held up a hand. “Where are we now? We are back on Mirrix, right?”
“Yes, but the captain turned us as soon as we were struck, and we came back out in our own waters. We’re almost back to Belzen now.”
“I didn’t realize she could turn us during shrouding.”
Mahanner shrugged. “To us, it’s just hanging on till we get there. She’s doing all the navigation.”
Blackwood remembered Holland’s question in the wake of the strike. Where are we? Inside the dekatite? Through the center of Mirrix? The answer was, no one knew. Anyone who’d ever tried to find out was dead. Her jaw clenched.
“Shrouding is too dangerous. We can’t keep doing this.”
“It’s not our call, ma’am. You know that.”
“And I’m not just talking about what goes on inside shrouding. It’s the increased volcanic activity on Kheppra Isle. The more we use it to shroud through, the more unstable the whole island gets.”
“That’s true,” Mahanner conceded. “But that just makes it a safer place for the research base. The Dhavvies would never suspect our scientists are working on the side of a semi-active volcano. And who’d guess we’re using it to shroud through?”
Blackwood’s lips thinned. “If this war hadn’t rushed them into it, they would have taken the time to find somewhere safer. They would’ve figured out how to navigate that realm without us being attacked. But now they’ll slap another shoddy repair on the Desert Crab like last time and we’ll be shrouding again in three days, as if this accident never happened! They’ll ignore every Xeil-cursed–”
The medbay door opened and Blackwood clamped her lips shut. Corpsmate Tolonen walked in, followed by Kyle Holland.
Tolonen gave a start to see Blackwood awake and sitting up. “CSO! Are you feeling alright, ma’am?”
“A bit of a headache and a stiff neck,” said Blackwood. “Other than that, it’s just this mark on my arm. It stings and tingles a bit. Do you have any idea what happened?”
“No, ma’am. The captain summoned Holland before I’d had much of a chance to look, and I went along in case I could help. From what we could tell…” she glanced down at Holland’s hands, frowning, “…it is dekatite. Branded right into the skin.”
Holland stood at Tolonen’s shoulder, his hands pressed together and fingers tapping against each other. He probably meant the gesture to look nonchalant, but it came off as nervous. He caught Blackwood’s gaze and his shoulders straightened, the tapping stopped. Blackwood was struck for the first time that it wasn’t just a Criesucan slant to his eyes that set them apart – it was their color. Or, more specifically, colors. His irises were olive green with gold flecks. In dimmer confines, like the aft torpedo room, they’d swallowed the light and turned nearly black. But here, in the brighter lights of the medbay, the colors were obvious. It wasn’t that it was so rare, but with his Criesucan features and pale skin…
“Ma’am? Is something wrong?” Holland said uncertainly.
“No, deckman,” said Blackwood. “Just hadn’t noticed your eyes before.”
He seemed genuinely surprised for a moment, then a smile quirked his lip. “Well. They’ve been there, ma’am.”
Blackwood dipped her head, acknowledging the point. “You really came through for us back there, Holland.”
The smile broadened. “Thank you, CSO.”
“So what about this mark we got? What do you think?”
The smile slowly faded again. “Don’t know, ma’am. Something grabbed my hand, right before we got the hole sealed. That’s when it happened, I think. That’s when you fell.”
That’s right. She’d forgotten she fell. Holland really had saved their necks. If he hadn’t been sent from the academy at the last minute, she would have been down a member during that accident. She’d be dead now. Very likely, they all would.
“Don’t get up yet, CSO,” said Tolonen. “You got hit a lot worse than Holland, and I want to give you a full examination before I send you out again. Give me a second to slap a bandage on Holland’s hand.”
“A bandage?”
“Captain wants these marks covered, and discreet. We’ll get Holland some gloves, and you’ll be OK in long sleeves, at least until…”
“Until what?”
“Sorry, ma’am. That’s not for me to say.” She ducked her head and walked around Blackwood’s bunk to the aft, Holland in her wake. Blackwood tried to catch a glimpse of Holland’s mark, but the deckman had his hands in his pockets now, and his eyes were roaming over the medical bay rather than watching her. Blackwood turned back to Mahanner, but the door opened again. This time, Captain Rosen herself walked in. Blackwood began to push herself to her feet to salute, but Tolonen’s voice stopped her.
“I said, don’t get up, CSO.”
Blackwood settled for saluting from her bunk, pushing her shoulders as straight as she could. “Sorry, captain. Corpsmate’s orders.”
“I understand,” Rosen sighed, glancing around the room. “I guess I’ll just have to speak with you here. Deckman Mahanner…”
“Say no more, captain. I’m on my way out,” said Mahanner, pressing his fist to his shoulder.
Rosen nodded, and Mahanner let himself out. The captain spared a single glance for Tolonen and Holland, at the aft, but chose not to expel them. After saluting, the two had fallen into a quiet conversation, and paid them no mind. Rosen found a chair and pulled it to Blackwood’s side.
“First of all, I want to commend you for your bravery in tackling a breach that anyone else would have given up as lost. You, Mahanner, and Holland showed great courage and admirable teamwork. That you did it during shrouding is even more impressive.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” It wasn’t until Blackwood spoke that she realized how dry the inside of her mouth was. She swallowed, waiting.
“But,” said Rosen, “there are mixed accounts of what happened in the aft torpedo room just before we shrouded. In fact, one of your crewmembers insists that someone is hiding dekatite.”
“Let me guess,” said Blackwood with a sigh. “Vin accusing Holland?”
“Do you believe it was him, CSO?” said Rosen, watching her closely.
“No, ma’am!” Anger made Blackwood want to raise her voice, but she forced herself to deliver the words quietly. “Not in the slightest. I’m sure he was briefed on the way over, and even if he wasn’t, no one wears dekatite jewelry anymore. Most of it goes into tread for the tanks we don’t use for shrouding, same as most of the arphanium has been repurposed for pipes we do use for shrouding. Besides, dekatite’s always been associated with Dhavnak trinkets; it’s hardly fashionable these days. The idea of him accidentally wearing something when he was called out of class is… outlandish, frankly.”
Simultaneously, they turned to look at Holland. The kid was smiling at something Tolonen had said and shaking his head. Blackwood detected a hint of subtle flirting there.
“Did you ask him, ma’am?” she said, turning back to Rosen.
“Of course. I’ve asked every sailor in your department. Except you.”
“Well, I don’t have any.”
“I know. Unless there’s some hidden in the compartment somehow…”
“…Or unless dekatite’s not the only thing that causes that reaction,” added Blackwood. “This is still a raw science, after all.”
“That’s a good point,” said Rosen, nodding. “However, I do need to talk with you about something else.”
“Yes, captain?”
“I think there was a lack of clear leadership in that department.” Blackwood went cold. “Ma’am?”
“When firm orders aren’t given, it creates division and conflicts within the depa
rtment. In times of high stress or battle, soldiers need to be given orders that are easy to follow, without thinking, rather than being offered chances for second-guesses and doubts. But the way I understand it, you gave them a choice between staying or leaving.”
A choice? She’d wanted to fix the damn breach – to save the boat, and all their lives – but Vin, with his constant insubordination, would’ve hampered her every step of the way. And he’d thought Holland would get them killed? It was just as good he’d left.
A voice spoke from behind Blackwood. “Captain?”
Rosen’s eyes hardened, and her gaze snapped over Blackwood’s shoulder. Blackwood turned slightly on the cot to see Holland coming forward, his wide-eyed gaze flickering between his two superior officers.
“What is it, deckman?” said Rosen, irritation creeping into her voice.
“It’s just… CSO Blackwood did give a firm order, ma’am. ‘Anyone not willing to help, get out now.’ Couldn’t have been more straightforward, if you ask me.”
Rosen watched him for several moments, her lips pursed. “Thank you, deckman. Your observation is noted.” She looked back to Blackwood, but the angle of her head kept Holland included this time. “In any case, the dispute will be put off for the time being. We’ll have to review this in more detail before you’ll lead your next command, CSO Blackwood.”
Stripped of command. After she’d helped save the submarine. Her jaw clenched hard enough to send pain shooting through her face.
“Both you and Deckman Holland are being sent back to Ellemko,” Captain Rosen continued. “Because of the dekatite now in your skin, shrouding is out of the question, obviously, and it’s critical we get to the bottom of what happened. In short, you both need to be studied, to find out what effects this had on your bodies. It’s the first time anything like this has ever happened, and we can’t ignore it.”
Blackwood heard a strangled gasp from Holland, and felt close to echoing the sound herself. Not just stripped of command, but sent to some laboratory at the capital? During wartime?