Ship Breaker

by Paolo Bacigalupi

  “She’s too soft,” Pima said.

  Nita looked at him fiercely. “I can run. I took first in the hundred meter at Saint Andrew’s.”

  Nailer smiled at Pima. “Well, then, if Saint Andrew says she can run, then she must be pretty fast.”

  Pima shook her head and made a small prayer to the Fates. “Swanks run on funny little tracks against other swanks. They don’t run for their life. They don’t know how.”

  “She says she can run.” Nailer shrugged. “I say we let Fates judge.”

  Pima glanced at the girl. “You better be as fast as you say, ’cause you only get one chance.”

  Nita didn’t blink. “I ran out of chances a long time ago. It’s all Fates now.”

  “Yeah, well, welcome to the club, Lucky Girl.” Pima grinned and shook her head. “Welcome to the damn club.”

  14

  RUNNING OR NOT, they needed to get away from their captors. In whispered conference they made a plan and settled in to wait. It was a fight for Nailer to stay awake. Even though he’d been out for three days, he was still having a hard time keeping his eyes open. The breezes in the trees and the warmth of the night made him sleepy. He put his head down, telling himself he would keep watch. Instead, he slept, woke, and slept again.

  Blue Eyes, alert and wide-awake, switched to Tool, who simply sat and stared. Every time Nailer peeked between slitted lids there was Tool, staring back at him with his yellow dog’s eyes, patient as a statue. Finally, Tool stood down to Moby. The skinny bald man settled himself comfortably against a stump and started drinking. He was half reclined and it wasn’t long before he had drunk himself back into his deep slumber, trusting in the shackles and the sleeping forms of young people for his sense of security.

  Nailer lay awake, waiting. Glad to still be unrestrained. Even if he wasn’t one of this adult crew, he was one of his father’s and so he had some trust. Between association with his father and their own memories of him as a feverish invalid, he had some wiggle room. He wasn’t a risk in their minds, just a skinny light crew kid recovering from sickness. That was all to the good.

  The problem was that Blue Eyes had the keys to the girls’ shackles, and she scared the hell out of him. Nobody who got in with the Life Cult was good news. Novices were always looking for new recruits. And they were always hungry for sacrifices.

  As soon as Moby was snoring, Nailer began easing toward where he had seen Blue Eyes bed down. He went slowly, as slowly as any child who has learned to steal at an early age, whose best chance of survival is in silence and remaining unnoticed.

  He gripped his duct knife with sweaty fingers, his hand slick with fear. There was no way to search Blue Eyes and find the keys without waking her. The knife felt small and useless in his palm, a toy. This was a necessary thing, but he didn’t have to like it. It wasn’t as if he felt guilty. He didn’t. Blue Eyes had done worse in her time and would do worse in the future. He had seen her torture people who held back on quota, or who fell behind on loans. He had seen her take off a man’s hand for stealing from Lucky Strike, and then watched the man bleed out under her cool blue gaze. And who knew how many beach rats she’d drugged and collected into the mysteries of her church? She was hard and deadly and Nailer had no doubt that if his father asked her to do it, she would kill him and Pima and Lucky Girl, and sleep well afterward.

  He didn’t feel guilty.

  And yet still, as he stole close, his heart pounded in his chest and the blood thudded in his ears like beach drums. It was the sort of killing that his father would accomplish with quick efficiency. Richard Lopez understood the qualities of kill or be killed intimately, the zero-sum calculations that said it was better to be alive than dead, and he would not have hesitated to take advantage of a sleeping opponent.

  Quick and fast, Nailer told himself. Across the throat and be done.

  A few years before, his father had made him kill a goat, to show him the method of the knife, to show how a blade pierced flesh and snagged on tendons. Nailer remembered his dad crouching over him, wrapping his fist around Nailer’s own. The goat had lain on its side, legs bound, its sides heaving up and down like a bellows, breath whistling through its nostrils as it sucked its last air. His dad had guided Nailer’s hand, setting the knife against the goat’s jugular.

  “Press hard,” he’d said.

  And Nailer did as he was told.

  Nailer parted the ferns. Blue Eyes lay before him, her breathing gentle. In sleep, her features were smooth, unbitten by the smolder of violence that lurked there otherwise. Her mouth was open. She lay on her belly, arms tucked under her and held close against the relative cool of the night. Nailer said a prayer to the Fates. Her neck wasn’t as exposed as he had hoped. He needed to strike fast. She needed to die immediately.

  He slipped close and steeled himself. Readied the knife and leaned in, holding his breath.

  Her eyes opened.

  Panicked, Nailer rammed the knife into her throat, but Blue Eyes moved too fast. She rolled away, bouncing to her feet. She swept up her machete. She didn’t say anything. Didn’t shout or beg or yell in anger. Her shadow blurred. Nailer leaped back as her machete whistled past his face. She lunged after him again. Nailer raised his knife, but instead of coming at him again with her blade, Blue Eyes simply swept a leg under him. Nailer crashed to the ground. Blue Eyes landed on top of him, driving the air from his lungs. She slapped his knife away, leaving his fingers numb and stinging.

  He lay panting, pinned under her weight. Blue Eyes pressed the machete to his neck.

  “You poor dumb kid,” she muttered.

  Nailer’s breath rasped out of him. He was shaking with fear. Blue Eyes smiled and hefted her machete. She gently touched his right eye with the blade. “I grew up with men sneaking up on me in the middle of the night.” The blade moved and tapped lightly on his left eye. “Little licebiter like you doesn’t stand a chance.” She grinned and moved the machete back to his right eye.

  “Pick,” she said.

  Nailer was too frightened to understand. “W-what?”

  Blue Eyes touched each of his eyes significantly with her blade.

  “Pick,” she said again. “Right or left?”

  “My dad—”

  “Lopez would take both.” She smiled. “And I will too, if you don’t choose.” Again the blade caressed his eyeballs. “Right or left?”

  Nailer steeled himself. “Left.”

  Blue Eyes grinned. “Right it is.”

  She flipped the machete and drove it toward his eye.

  A whirl of shadow crashed into Blue Eyes. The machete stabbed past his head, leaving a burn on his cheek, and Blue Eyes’s weight came off him. She rolled, locked in struggle with another form. Shouts rose all around in the darkness. Steel clashed, accompanied by the screams and whimpers and grunts of people fighting. There were people all around.

  Blue Eyes and her opponent rolled, tangled limbs flashing, a furious scuffle. In the moonlight, Nailer could make out his savior: Pima’s mother, grappling with Blue Eyes for the machete. Sadna slammed a fist into Blue Eyes’s face. Bone crunched. Blue Eyes bucked and tore free of Sadna’s grasp. She rolled and came up with her machete. The two women circled.

  “Break off, Blue Eyes,” Sadna said. “It’s not your fight.”

  Blue Eyes shook her head. “Boy owes me, Sadna. Thought he could take my blood. Can’t let that go.”

  And then she swept forward, faking high with the machete before slashing low. Sadna leaped back over a mossy log and scrambled for footing. Blue Eyes plunged after her, seeking an opening. The blade whirled. Blood sprayed from Sadna’s hands where she tried to ward off a blow. Sadna cried out but didn’t falter, dodged out from under Blue Eyes’s follow-up cut.

  Blue Eyes lunged again, testing. “Run, Sadna,” she said. “Run.” Blood ran from her nose where Sadna had crushed it, but she didn’t seem to care. When she smiled, her teeth were black with it.

  Nailer scrambled to find his knife. Al
l around, other bodies grunted and fought, a tangle of forms that had to be Sadna’s heavy crew. He fumbled through the grasses, seeking the gleam of his blade.

  Sadna slipped behind a tree, using it for a shield. Blue Eyes circled, chasing her, then stopped and smiled. “I’m not playing chase,” she muttered. “You want the boy alive or not?” She turned and lunged for Nailer. He scrambled away, but it was enough to bring Sadna out from behind the tree. Blue Eyes reversed from her feint and surged toward Sadna in a flash of steel.

  “No!” Nailer shouted.

  The world seemed to slow. Blue Eyes’s machete carved for Sadna’s throat. Nailer watched, horrified, expecting a flare of blood from Sadna’s neck. But Sadna wasn’t there. She ducked and tumbled on the dirt, crashing into Blue Eyes’s legs and knocking the other woman off her feet.

  Again they rolled, entangled, a whirl of limbs and the machete’s blade. Nailer cast about for his knife, saw it lying in the leaves. He grabbed it as Blue Eyes came up on top of Sadna, her machete pressed against Sadna’s throat. Sadna’s own fists gripped the machete as well, fighting to keep the edge from pressing home. Her breath rasped raggedly under the blade. Blue Eyes increased the pressure.

  Nailer slipped toward Blue Eyes, his knife slick in his hands. Sadna’s eyes widened as he came up behind. Blue Eyes, warned of the threat, started to turn.

  Nailer leaped onto her back and rammed the knife into her neck. Hot blood poured over his hand. Blue Eyes screamed as his blade tore at the corded muscle of her neck. Just like killing a goat, Nailer thought inanely.

  But Blue Eyes didn’t die. Instead she reared up, carrying him clinging on her back. He tried to yank out the knife and stab her again, but the blade was stuck. Blue Eyes flailed for him, trying to reach around and get hold of him, then bent forward sharply and tumbled him over her back. He clung desperately, but she hammered him off with the hilt of her machete. Light exploded in his head. He hit the ground.

  Blue Eyes stood over him, one hand pressed against her gushing wound and the knife still embedded in her neck. She swung her machete at Nailer, a clumsy swing that nonetheless whistled through the air. Her gaze followed him, devil bright, determined to take him with her to whatever afterlife her cult promised. Curses bubbled out of her mouth and blood with it, thick. She lunged again for Nailer.

  Nailer dodged, trying not pin himself up against a tree or allow himself to trip. Why didn’t she die? Why wouldn’t she just die? Superstitious fear shot through Nailer. Maybe she was actually a spirit, a zombie creature that could not be killed. Maybe the Life Cult had done something to her, made her immortal.

  Blue Eyes slashed again, but as she lunged forward to follow up, she tripped and sprawled on the ground. Still she reached for him. Nailer stood frozen before her. Her hand touched his feet, clutched for his ankle. Her blood was black in the moonlight, a deep pool spreading. Nailer yanked his foot away from her twitching fingers. Blue Eyes stared up at him. Her lips moved, promising death, but no words came out.

  Sadna pulled him away from the dying woman. “Come on. Let her go.”

  Blue Eyes’s blood was all over him. The dying woman’s eyes followed him, hungry. Her fingers twitched.

  Nailer shuddered. “Why won’t she die?”

  Sadna glanced at the shuddering woman. “She’s dead enough.” She ran her hands over him. “Are you okay?”

  Nailer nodded weakly. He couldn’t take his eyes off Blue Eyes. “Why won’t she die?” he whispered again.

  Sadna pursed her lips. “Sometimes people have more will to live. Or you don’t hit them right and they don’t lose their blood fast enough. Sometimes they just don’t stop the way you want them to.” She glanced over at the woman. “Look, she’s gone now. Let her go.”

  “She’s not.”

  Sadna jerked his face around to look into her dark eyes. “Yes, she is. She’s gone. And you’re not. And I’m glad you were there when I needed you. You did good.”

  Nailer nodded. He was shaking with adrenaline. Pima and Lucky Girl were freed and they ran over to where Sadna and Nailer squatted.

  “Damn,” Pima said. “You’re as fast as your dad. Even with that bad arm of yours.”

  Nailer glanced at her. A shiver of fear washed over him. He’d killed things before. Chickens. That goat. But this was different. He threw up. Pima and Lucky Girl backed off, exchanging glances.

  “What’s his problem?” Pima asked.

  Sadna shook her head. “Killing isn’t free. It takes something out of you every time you do it. You get their life; they get a piece of your soul. It’s always a trade.”

  “No wonder his dad’s such a devil.”

  Sadna shot her daughter a hard look and Pima fell silent. Other people from Sadna’s heavy crew were all around, cleaning up from the attack. It turned out that Richard had had more sentries posted than Nailer had guessed. Perimeter guards that he had never even seen. He felt doubly lucky that Sadna and her crew had arrived. He and Pima and Lucky Girl would never have gotten out on their own.

  Suddenly Tool’s doglike face rose from the shadows.

  “Watch out!” Nailer screamed.

  Sadna spun, then relaxed at the sight of the half-man. She turned back to Nailer and patted his arm. “He’s fine. He’s the one who told us where to look for you. We’ve got good history, don’t we, Tool?”

  Tool came over and stared down at the body of Blue Eyes, his expression flat. For a long time, he didn’t say anything. Finally he turned his dog gaze on Nailer. “A good kill,” he said. “As fast as your father.”

  “I’m not my father.”

  “Not as skilled.” Tool shrugged. “But the potential is there.” He nodded at the black puddle around Blue Eyes and smiled, showing his needle teeth. “Blood tells. You have good potential.”

  Nailer shuddered at the thought of mirroring his father. “I’m not like him,” he said again.

  Tool’s smile disappeared. “Don’t be too sorry for Blue Eyes,” the half-man rumbled. “It’s human nature to tear one another apart. Be glad you come from such a successful line of killers.”

  “Leave him alone,” Pima said.

  “Where’s Lucky Girl?” Nailer asked.

  “The rich girl?” Sadna pointed. “She’s gone down to the beach. Her people are here, looking for her. A whole clipper ship of them showed up an hour ago.” She looked over at Tool. “Richard was trying to meet with them, looking to broker a deal.”

  “Her people are here?” Nailer glanced at Pima, puzzled. “She told us no one knew where she was…” He trailed off, wondering if he’d been lied to again.

  Nita burst back into the clearing. “It’s them!”

  “Your people?” he asked skeptically.

  She shook her head, gasping. “The ones who were chasing me. Pyce’s people. And he’s got half-men.”

  Sadna studied her. “The ones on the beach… they’re your enemies?”

  Nita could barely get a breath. “They want me, for leverage against my father.”

  “Well, they know you’re here,” Sadna said. “Richard as much as claimed it when they came ashore.”

  Lucky Girl’s face took on a shade of panic. “I can’t let them catch me. I need to hide.”

  Sadna and Tool exchanged glances. “If you go into the jungle—”

  Tool shook his head. “Lopez will know to hunt for her. How will you supply her with food? Who will stand for her if he catches her? Better for her to flee.”

  Nailer spoke up. “We were planning on catching the salvage train to the Orleans. She says she’s got crew there who would protect her.”

  Sadna frowned. “You can’t go into the loading yards. No one gets in there without Lucky Strike knowing. And Richard and Lucky Strike are tight now.”

  “We can catch the train outside, once it’s moving.”

  “Dangerous.”

  “Not as dangerous as waiting around to see what kind of deal my dad cuts with the swanks.”

  Tool looked thoughtful.
“It could be done. If they are quick.”

  “She says she’s fast,” Nailer said.

  “If she isn’t, she could die.”

  “No worse than she ends up otherwise.”

  “What about you, Nailer? Is that a risk you want to take?”

  Nailer started to answer, then stopped. Was it? Did he really want to tie himself to this girl? He shook his head, irritated. The fact was, he had already set himself in conflict with his father. There was no hope of resolution now, no matter how much he might have wanted it. Richard Lopez would never leave an insult like the killing of his crew unanswered.

  “It’s not safe for me here,” Nailer said. “Not now. He’ll come after me with everything he’s got. He can’t afford to lose this much face. Too many people would be laughing.”

  Sadna shook her head. “I can’t do this thing. I can’t leave my crew. No one will be with you.”

  “With me and Pima—”

  Pima shook her head. “No. I’m not doing it.”

  “You’re not?”

  “I’m not leaving my mom.”

  “But we talked about getting out. Getting away from here.” Nailer tried to keep the desperation from his voice. For some reason he had assumed they were crew and that they were together.

  “You talked about it. Not me.”

  Nailer stared at her. Pieces clicked into place. Pima had family. Something to cling to. Something solid. Of course she wouldn’t risk the run. He should have seen it. Nailer forced himself to nod. “Still, we can catch the train and make it to the Orleans in two days. It can’t be that hard.”

  Pima held up her hand, showing him her splinted fingers. “You think? Reni had both hands for the jump, and he still ended up looking like ground pork.”

  Sadna looked down toward the beach. “We can broker a truce with your dad, Nailer. I can protect you.”

  “If you think so, then you really don’t know my dad.” Nailer shook his head. “Anyway, I don’t want that. I want out. Lucky Girl says she’ll get me out if I help her.”

  Sadna glanced at the girl. “And you believe her?”