Ship Breaker

by Paolo Bacigalupi

  “What about your dad?”

  Nailer made a sound of exasperation. “If you’re worried he’s on the boat, then why go out there at all? Since you won’t listen to me and stay away, I’ll go take a look. I know how to sneak up on them, and it’s a hell of a lot easier if I go alone.” He grimaced. “Stay out of sight. I’ll meet you at the squat and let you know.”

  Without waiting for a response, he jogged down the planking and waded into the black water. He made his way out toward the floating docks, swimming slow and off the main marked path through the water. At least this way he could approach unnoticed.

  Cool water lapped around him, the darkness almost total. He kept swimming, making his way toward the beautiful ship. He had dreamed about ships like this, about being on their decks, about sailing on them, and now he was on the verge of sneaking aboard one.

  When he thought about it, the only thing that had ever seemed truly beautiful to him were these ships with their carbon-fiber hulls and fast sails and hydrofoils that cut the ocean like knives as they crossed the great oceans or made their way over the pole. He wondered how cold it was in the North. He had seen photos of ships rimed with ice as they went through the polar night on their way to the far side of the world. The distances were immense and yet they sailed so fast and so sleek, undeterred.

  It took fifteen minutes of swimming and his arms ached by the time he reached the Dauntless. He slipped beneath the docks, bobbing in the salt water, and listened. Conversation: men and women joking, talking about shore leave. Another complaining about resupply rates and local con men. He listened as he bobbed in the depths.

  A pair of half-men waited at the gangway, keeping guard and another pair were on the ship fore and aft. He shivered. He’d heard they could see in the dark, and Tool had never seemed uncomfortable in dim light. Now, all of a sudden, the fear that they would pick him out in the blackness filled him with an almost paralyzing terror. They would see him. They would hand him to his father and he would die. His father would cut him open.

  Nailer drew deeper under the dock, listening to the tramp of feet. A few conversations mentioned a captain, but no name to go with it… only “the captain” wanting to be under way. “The captain” having a schedule.

  Nailer waited, hoping for some mention of the saintly Captain Sung. The waves jostled him. He was starting to get cold from a lack of exercise. Even this warm tropic water was starting to suck the heat from him. The floating dock and its anchor moved and swayed. Footsteps thumped overhead. The whine of a motor launch, someone burning biodiesel to reach the ship. Faces gleaming in the darkness. Men and women with scars and hard looks. Someone hurried down to greet the craft.

  “Captain.”

  The man didn’t respond, just climbed out. He looked back. “We need to be under way.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Nailer waited, heart thudding. It wasn’t Captain Sung. This was a man, not a woman. And there was nothing of the Chinese about him. Lucky Girl had been wrong. Things had changed. Nailer forced down his disappointment. They’d have to find another way.

  The captain was standing almost directly above Nailer. He spit into the water no more than a foot away.

  “Pyce’s people are all over the docks,” he said.

  “I didn’t see a ship.”

  The captain spit again. “Must have anchored off site and shuttled in.”

  “What are they doing here?”

  “No good, I’m guessing.”

  Nailer closed his eyes. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, he thought. The captain and his lieutenant were climbing the gangplank. “We’ll leave with this tide,” the captain said. “I want to be under way before we have to speak with them.”

  “What about the rest of the crew?”

  “Send back for them. But hurry. I want to be gone before dawn.”

  The lieutenant saluted and turned for the launch. Nailer took a deep breath. It was a risk, but he didn’t have any other choices. He swam out from under the dock and called up.

  “Captain!”

  The captain and his lieutenant both startled. They drew their pistols. “Who’s there?”

  “Don’t shoot!” Nailer called. “I’m down here.”

  “What the devil are you doing down in the water?”

  Nailer swam close to the planking and grinned. “Hiding.”

  “Get up here.” The captain still was wary. “Let’s see your face.”

  Nailer scrambled out of the water, praying that he hadn’t made a mistake. He squatted, panting on the deck.

  “Dock rat,” the lieutenant said with distaste.

  “Swank.” Nailer made a face at him, then turned his attention to the captain. “I have a message for you.”

  The captain didn’t approach and he didn’t put down his pistol. “Tell me, then.”

  Nailer glanced at the lieutenant. “It’s only for you.”

  The captain frowned. “If you’ve got something to say, say it.” He called behind him. “Knot! Vine! Toss this rat back in the water.” The two half-men rushed forward. Nailer was stunned at how fast they were. They were on him, grabbing his arms before he even had a chance to consider fleeing.

  “Wait!” Nailer cried. He struggled against the iron grip of the half-men. “I have a message for you. From Nita Chaudhury!”

  A sudden intake of breath. The captain and his lieutenant exchanged glances.

  “What’s that?” the lieutenant asked. “What did you say?” He stormed over to where Nailer was held. “What’s that you say?”

  Nailer hesitated. Could he be trusted? Could any of them? There were too many things he didn’t know. He had to gamble. Either he’d gotten lucky or he’d walked into a trap. “Nita Chaudhury. She’s here.”

  The captain came up close, his face hard. “Don’t lie to me, boy.” He took Nailer’s face in his hand. “Who sent you? Who’s behind you with lies like this?”

  “No one!”

  “Bullshit.” He nodded at one of the half-men. “Whip him raw, Knot. Get me some answers. I want to know who sent him.”

  “Nita sent me!” Nailer screamed. “She did, you rotten bastard! I told her we should run, but she said you could be trusted!”

  The captain stopped. “Miss Nita is dead more than a month. Drowned and dead. The clan mourns.”

  “No.” Nailer shook his head. “She’s here. Hiding. Back in the Orleans. She’s trying to get home. But Pyce is hunting her. She thought she could trust you.”

  The lieutenant smirked. “Christ almighty. Look what the Fates dragged in.”

  The captain stared at Nailer. “You baiting me?” he asked. “Is that it? You’re baiting me the way they did Kim?”

  “I don’t know Kim.”

  The captain grabbed him, pulled him close. “I’ll strangle you with your guts before I go down like she did.” He turned away. “Whip him. Find out who sent him. If the girl’s out there, we’ll go hunting.”

  The lieutenant nodded and turned. As he did, the captain raised his gun and shot the man in the back. The gunfire echoed in the darkness, running flat across the water. The lieutenant crumpled to the planks. Smoke curled from the barrel of the captain’s pistol, slowly disbursing.

  Nailer stared at the dead man. The captain turned back to the half-men. “Let the boy go.”

  Nailer found his voice. “Why did you do that?”

  “He was my minder,” the captain said simply. To the half-men he said, “Weigh him down and then go with the boy. We’re leaving with the tide.”

  “And the rest of the crew?”

  The captain grimaced. “Find Wu and Trimble and Cat and Midshipman Reynolds.” He stared out at the water. “And do it damn quietly. No one else, you understand?” He turned to look at Nailer. “You’d better not be lying to me, boy. I don’t fancy a life of piracy, so you’d better damn well be right.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  The half-men Knot and Vine guided him into the launch. They were huge and daunti
ng. The boat moved slowly away from the dock, aiming for the deep streets of the Orleans.

  “Where are we going?” Nailer asked. “She’s close to shore. We don’t need to go so deep into the drowned city.”

  “First our men, then her,” Knot said.

  Vine nodded. “She will need protection. It is better not to drag her into the open until we are ready to run.”

  “Run from what?”

  Vine grinned, showing sharp teeth. “The rest of our loyal crew.”

  19

  KNOT AND VINE were fast and efficient, moving from bar to nailshed to bar, seeking silently and collecting their fellows. They said little to Nailer as they worked the Orleans. The rest of the crew were regular people, not half-men at all. Wu: tall and blond and missing fingers. Trimble: thickly muscled, with forearms like hams and a tattoo of a mermaid on one bicep. Cat, with his green eyes and steady stare. Reynolds, with a long black braid running down her back, short and stocky and with a pistol in her belt.

  Reynolds was the first located and she took command. At each venue, all she said was “Nita” and the drunken crew sobered or dropped their whores and came away until they were a fast-moving knot of muscle and bare steel cutting through the drowned city’s revelry of sailors and traders.

  It was astonishing to watch how efficiently they moved. An entire team mobilized instantly at the invocation of Lucky Girl’s name. Astonishing to see the value these people placed on her. Until recently, Nailer had mostly thought of her just as a rich girl who bought the muscle she needed, but here was something else, this clustered tribe of weaponry and purpose. Total loyalty. More intense even than crew loyalty in the ship-breaking yards.

  Reynolds pointed them to scouting locations. “Anyone seen Kaliki and Michene?”

  Heads shook. She smiled tightly. “Good. Keep your eyes out for anyone you’ve seen on another of the company ships. We know Pyce’s lackeys are around and they’re hunting, too.” She turned to Nailer. “Where is she?”

  Nailer pointed out the drowned mansion that over-looked the Orleans waters. “Up there. In one of those rooms. Where the trees are growing out of the roof.”

  Reynolds nodded at Vine and Knot. “Go get her.” She waved at Wu. “Bring the skiff around.”

  Nailer said, “I’d better go, too. We saw some other half-men before. Pyce’s. They were hunting for her. She’ll think you’re with Pyce.”

  Reynolds hesitated.

  Cat shrugged. “Captain Candless believes him, right?”

  “Go,” she said.

  Nailer ran to catch up with Knot and Vine. “She’s up here,” he said breathlessly. He slipped ahead of them, leading.

  They sloshed into the collapsing house, water splashing around them. Rotten stairs creaked as they made their way up to the squat. The house was strangely silent. No one was in it at all. None of the other slum dwellers, none of the other scavengers and dock laborers. It should have been full of the snoring bodies of coolie laborers, all exhausted and unconscious from their day shift work. Instead, there was silence. Their own room was empty except for the rusted bed and its springs.

  Nailer came down the stairs to the flooded main floor, shaking his head, followed by the half-men. “I don’t get it. She’s—”

  A shadow in the waters moved, sending ripples. Knot and Vine growled.

  “Lucky Girl?” Nailer called softly. “Nita?”

  The shadow resolved into a thickly muscled form, slumped against a rotting wall, water up around its waist as it sat, breathing heavily in the darkness. One hard yellow eye opened, flaring like a lantern in the darkness.

  “Your father has her now,” the shadow rumbled.

  “Tool!” Nailer rushed forward.

  Blood smeared the half-man’s muzzle and more black blood ran sticky down his chest, slashes from machete cuts. His cheek was laid open with claw marks and one eye was completely closed with a swelling bruise, but it was Tool nonetheless.

  “And you didn’t fight for her?” Captain Candless stared at Tool, incredulous. “Even when your patron wished her protected?” They were all on the Dauntless, a huddle of demoralized sailors standing around Nailer and Tool, as Tool explained what had happened.

  “The boy is not my patron,” Tool rumbled. He daubed at the blood still oozing from the cut above his half-closed eye.

  The captain scowled and stalked over to Dauntless’s rail. Dawn was just breaking the sky into pale gray, illuminating the floating docks and the distant mist-shrouded structures of drowned Orleans. “They said they were taking her to a ship? You’re sure?”

  “I am.” Tool turned his gaze to Nailer. “Your father was disappointed that you weren’t with Lucky Girl. He wanted to keep the ship waiting while he hunted for you longer. The man has plans for you, Nailer.”

  “And you just sat and listened while all this went on?” Midshipman Reynolds demanded.

  Tool blinked once, slowly. “Richard Lopez had many half-men, well armed. I do not lunge into battles that cannot be won.”

  Knot and Vine curled their lips at Tool’s answer and growled guttural contempt. Tool didn’t flinch, just looked at the pair. “The girl is your patron, not mine. If you enjoy dying for the sake of your owners, that is your business.”

  Nailer felt a thrill of dread at the half-man’s words. There was a challenge there, and these other half-men, Knot and Vine, sensed it. Their growling rose. They started forward.

  The captain waved them off. “Knot! Vine! Go below. I’ll handle this.”

  Their growls cut short. Their stares were still hard, but they turned away and went down through one of the clipper’s gangways, disappearing belowdecks. The captain turned back to Tool. “Did they say the name of their ship?”

  Tool shook his huge head.

  Midshipman Reynolds pinched her lip, thoughtful. “There’s a couple ships that might be down here. We’ve got Seven Sisters on the north-south passenger run. The Ray running charter. Mother Ganga carrying iron scrap down to Cancun.” She shrugged. “No one else scheduled down here until harvest season when the grain comes down the Mississippi.”

  “The Ray, then,” the captain said. “It will be the Ray. Mr. Marn was quick enough to declare confidence in Pyce when Nita’s father was forced aside. It must be the Ray.”

  Nailer frowned. The list of ships bothered him. “Are there any other ships on your list?”

  “None that would be carrying half-men as crew.”

  Nailer chewed his lip, trying to remember. “There was a ship, another one, or a different name at least, that chased Lucky Girl into the storm. It was a big ship. Built for the north… North Run, maybe?”

  Reynolds and the captain looked at him, puzzled.

  Nailer scowled, frustrated. He couldn’t quite remember the name. North Run? North Pole Run? “Northern Run?” he tried. “North Pole?”

  “Pole Star?” the captain prompted, suddenly interested.

  Nailer nodded uncertainly. “Maybe.”

  Reynolds and the captain exchanged glances. “An ugly name,” Reynolds muttered.

  The captain looked hard at Nailer. “Are you sure? Pole Star?”

  Nailer shook his head. “I just remember that it was a ship for crossing the pole.”

  The captain grimaced. “Let’s hope you’re not right.”

  “Does it change anything?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing that concerns you.” He glanced at Reynolds. “Even if it is Pole Star, they shouldn’t know that we’re their enemy yet. None of you did anything to identify yourselves onshore.”

  “Except you,” Reynolds observed dryly.

  “Our late lieutenant is hardly going to complain.” The captain paused, thinking again. “We can take them. With a bit of trickery and their trust, it can be done. A bit of trickery, a touch from the Fates—”

  “—and a blood offering,” someone muttered.

  The captain grinned. “Anyone on the Ray or Pole Star we can trust?”

  The others shook the
ir heads. “They’ve been shuffling crews,” Reynolds said. “I think Leo and Fritz might have ended up on the Ray.”

  “And you trust them?”

  Reynolds smiled, showing black teeth from chewing betel nut. “Almost as much as I trust you.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “Li Yan?”

  Cat shook his head. “No. If she’s there, she’s gone over.”

  Nailer watched, not comprehending. The captain glanced at him. “Ah, boy, you’re in an ugly fight, you are. A bit of a contested leadership right now in the shipping clan.”

  “Rook,” Trimble said suddenly. “Rook would stay loyal.”

  “Is he on Pole Star?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s it, then?” When no one else spoke, the captain nodded. “Well, then. We’re hunting for Pyce’s traitorous lackeys and we’re going to take their ship and we’re going to free Miss Nita, and take back our company from the usurper.” He nodded at the crew. “Get us under way. Reynolds, you’re promoted now that poor Henry took the plunge.”

  Reynolds grinned. “I was doing his work anyway.”

  “Wouldn’t have gotten rid of him if I didn’t know it.”

  The crew scattered to their jobs, running to release the lines on the ship and raise the anchors.

  Tool heaved himself upright. “Hold the ship,” he said. “I will not be joining you.”

  Nailer turned, surprised. “You’re leaving?”

  “I do not crave death on the seas.” The half-man’s sharp teeth showed briefly, a feral smile. “If you’re wise, you will join me, Nailer. Walk away from this.”

  The captain watched, curious. “Who is your patron, then?” he asked. “Not the boy, not Miss Nita. Who, then?”

  Tool regarded him steadily. “I have none.”

  The captain laughed, incredulous. “Impossible.”

  “Believe what you wish.” The half-man turned and shambled for the dock.

  Nailer ran after him. “Wait! Why can’t you come with us?”