Fleet of Knives

by Gareth L. Powell

  “Pour me a coffee?”

  He glanced up and his eyes widened.

  “Y-yes, ma’am.” He turned and reached for a plastic beaker. The tips of his ears were going red. He filled the cup but, as he handed it to me, didn’t seem to know where to put his eyes.

  “How’s Nod holding up?” I asked.

  Preston waggled his hand. “On one hand, he seems quite philosophical about it. He keeps going on about how Chet has gone to rejoin his ancestors in the roots of the World Tree.”

  “And on the other hand?”

  “I don’t know. He seems preoccupied by something.”

  “Do you think he’s grieving?”

  “I can’t tell. He’s not exactly communicative at the best of times.”

  Preston’s gaze started to drift downwards towards my chest, but then flicked away as he caught himself. His hands fidgeted like anxious kittens.

  “Oh, good grief.” Leaving the cup steaming on the counter, I crossed the corridor to my cabin and pulled a black t-shirt over my head. When I returned to the kitchen, only my forearms and calves were exposed. “Is this any better?”

  The blush had spread to his cheeks.

  “I’m sorry, Captain.”

  “So you should be. Jeez, anyone would think you’d never seen a—”

  Preston’s chin dropped to his chest. He looked like a flustered schoolboy. And suddenly everything about him made a weird kind of sense. I had found the missing piece of the puzzle.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know.”

  He shrugged miserably. “It’s okay.”

  “Of course it’s okay. It’s fine. Virginity’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “I never said I was ashamed.”

  I looked at his red face, his defeated shoulders. “You didn’t have to.”

  I started to reach out to reassure him, but stopped, knowing if he misinterpreted the gesture it would only make things even more uncomfortable. Instead, I cradled my coffee in both hands and blew steam from the cup.

  Preston looked up with worry in his eyes.

  “Are you going to tell everybody?”

  “You mean Alva and Nod?” I shrugged. “I don’t see why not. Nod won’t care. The Druff only mate half a dozen times in their entire lives.”

  “And Alva?”

  “She’ll make it her personal mission to get you drunk and laid the next time we hit port.”

  Preston blanched.

  “Oh, come on,” I said. “It’s not as bad as all that.”

  “Isn’t it?” He started counting off on his fingers. “I lied to get this job, I’m useless in a crisis, hate space travel. And on top of all that, I’ve led such a sheltered life, I’ve never even seen a woman naked, let alone had the chance for anything else.”

  “So what?” I perched on the edge of the table and clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re studying to make up for the gaps in your medical knowledge. You’re getting better. The rest will come in time.”

  “Will it?”

  “Of course it will.” I waved a cautionary finger at him. “But that doesn’t mean I want to find you knocking at my cabin door in the middle of the night, you understand?”

  His cheeks coloured again.

  “That was just one time. It was a misunderstanding.”

  “See that it stays that way.”

  I left him brooding at the table, and took the coffee back to my cabin. The face of the ship’s avatar appeared on my wall screen.

  “Why are people so difficult to manage?” I asked her.

  She raised an elegantly sculpted eyebrow. “That’s a question I’ve been pondering since my inception.”

  “And your conclusion?”

  “I think you’re all broken in some fundamental way, but you’re not all broken in the same place. And it’s the ways you each find to work around those breaks that make you who you are.”

  I smiled. “That’s very profound for a teenager.”

  The Trouble Dog shrugged a graceful shoulder. “Birthdays are a time for introspection,” she replied, ignoring my amused expression. “After all, you never know which of them might be your last.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  JOHNNY SCHULTZ

  By the time the first crustacean appeared, we’d covered less than half the distance to the doorway on the far side of the cavern. I heard the whine of Addison’s rifle. Plasma bolts crackled the length of the room. They crashed against the creature’s metal casing, leaving molten yellow hot spots where they hit. The animal staggered with each impact and thrashed its tail. Its indignant high-pitched shrieking echoed from the walls, but it didn’t seem appreciably injured. As soon as it recovered from each knock-back, it continued to advance, chomping its mouthparts and swinging and snapping its quartet of claws. At the same time, a second crawfish appeared behind it, even larger than the first, with a mottled bronze-coloured shell and dark obsidian pincers.

  I checked over my shoulder. Dalton and Santos were moving as quickly as they could, but Santos’s injured foot prevented him from moving at more than a hurried limp.

  “Start falling back,” I told Addison.

  “Then what?” She let loose another shot. “What do we do when we get to the corridor?”

  “I don’t know. Find something to hide behind, I guess.”

  I raised my own rifle and, walking slowly backwards, aimed at its face. When I pulled the trigger, a flat crack issued from the barrel and the stock bucked against my shoulder. I fired again, and again.

  Addison was also retreating, matching me step for step. Lightning sizzled from her weapon as she sprayed the creature with pulses of superheated material.

  “Aim for its face,” I told her. The thing was only a few metres away now. I sighted on its mouth and, as soon as it opened it to issue another nerve-grating screech, squeezed off three rounds. The reports were deafening. The giant crawfish squealed and tottered. Greenish-brown fluid welled from the left side of its maw, dripping onto the stone floor. Addison dropped to one knee and fired a single plasma bolt. The creature’s scream choked off. For a second, it stood swaying. Then, smoke trailing from its open mouth, it collapsed.

  I helped Addison to her feet, and we continued our retreat, guns at the ready. However, instead of following us, the larger crawfish pounced on its fallen comrade and began to dismember it with its fearsome claws. Legs were snipped off at the knees. Sections of metal shell were cut and peeled away, and chunks of flesh ripped from the quivering, keening mass within.

  Addison looked away. “Come on,” she said.

  Running to catch up with Santos and the doc, she took the chef’s other arm and slipped it around her shoulders. With two people now supporting him, he was able to move more quickly, although I could see his jaw was still clenched against the pain.

  We made it to the corridor entrance where Bernard and Lucy were waiting for us, and paused to look back at the grisly cannibalism that was taking place in the centre of the cavern.

  “That is literally the worst thing I have ever seen,” Bernard said. His lip curled in disgust.

  “Yeah, well we’re not safe yet.” I took a few steps along the corridor. It was easily high and wide enough to accommodate the large crawfish, should he still be hungry after his feast. “We need to find somewhere they can’t get to us.”

  Back at the entrance to the corridor, Lucy was watching the mutilation of the smaller crustacean. She turned with a smile.

  “Maybe I can help, dearie?”

  “Sure. What have you got?”

  “Pressure doors.”

  Behind her, the larger creature let out a howl. It flung aside a torn-off leg and stepped down from the corpse of its gutted brother.

  “I don’t understand.”

  The monster clattered towards us. There was no way we could outrun it now. I raised my gun, but Lucy held up a hand.

  “Get out of the way!” Addison shouted.

  But Lucy’s eyes were glowing blue. She t
ook a step inside the corridor’s threshold, and a thick steel door snapped into place behind her, sealing the cavern. I heard the beast crash against the metal, and listened to its enraged screaming.

  Beside me, Gil Dalton whistled. “Holy crap,” he said. “How did you do that?”

  Lucy looked back at the solid door now separating us from almost certain death, and gave a satisfied smile.

  “The same way I turned the lights on,” she said. She tapped her forehead. “I’m connected to the ship.”

  Santos collapsed to the floor. He was red-faced and puffing from exertion and discomfort.

  “If that’s true, señorita,” he said between gasps, “then why are we killing ourselves to find the communications room? Can’t you send a signal on our behalf?”

  Lucy blinked, as if the thought had never occurred to her.

  “Well, yes. I suppose I could.”

  “And you could access the ship’s sensorium?” Addison demanded. “And tell us if the House of Reclamation sent a ship?”

  The little girl widened her eyes. “Yes, that should be possible.”

  Addison’s posture stiffened. Her knuckles went white on the stock of her rifle. “Then why didn’t you mention it before?”

  Lucy stuck out her bottom lip and gave a shrug—an expression that made her look like a cross between a recalcitrant child and a stubborn old woman.

  “I’m sorry, dearie. Those systems have been dormant for centuries. I didn’t even think of them. Plus, you know, I’m still integrating the two halves of my mind—the part that used to be the Restless Itch, and the part that used to be the Lucy’s Ghost.”

  The door behind her rang with infuriated blows. She didn’t even flinch.

  “Can you do it, then?” I asked, annoyed the idea hadn’t occurred to me when Lucy had first accessed the ship’s systems in order to turn on the lights. I guess none of us had been thinking straight. “Can you find out if anyone’s out there?”

  “Of course I can, dearie.” She gave me a beaming smile. “And if they are, what should I tell them?”

  I listened to the racket in the cavern and swallowed back my urge to turn and run.

  “Tell them where we are, and tell them to come the fuck in and get us.”

  Lucy clicked her heels together and threw a cheery salute.

  “Will do, skipper.”

  “And tell them to bring guns.” I took a deep breath, my mind’s eye filled with pictures of clacking pincers and stabbing feet. “Lots of guns.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  ONA SUDAK

  With Pelapatarn behind us, the bear escorted me down from the podium at the centre of the white ship’s bridge, and guided me to a suite of cabins separate from the ones I had been using, but which had obviously also been fitted for human habitation, and which—to my astonishment—were also inhabited.

  The man standing before me, wiping his hands on a handkerchief, wore a pair of antique thick-lensed spectacles. His hair was an Einstein-like explosion of dandelion white, and his attire consisted of a faded khaki jumpsuit, a violet silk scarf, and a baggy hockey jersey at least three sizes too large. His boots were unlaced and he had a stylus tucked behind his left ear.

  “Hi,” he said, “I heard we had somebody else joining us. What’s your name?”

  “Sudak. Ona Sudak. And you are?”

  Beside me, the bear cleared its throat.

  This is Alexi Bochnak.

  The man finished wiping his hands and frowned.

  “Ona Sudak the poet?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Didn’t you write ‘How We Die in a Vacuum’?”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “Only three years.”

  “In poetry, three years is a long time.”

  As if impatient with our prattle, the bear stirred restlessly. It grumbled deep in its chest.

  I will leave you to get acquainted, it said.

  When it had gone, Bochnak flopped onto one of the beanbags that had been strewn around the cabin in place of chairs.

  “So.” He laced his fingers behind his head. “What brings you here?”

  I looked down at the nearest bag with distaste. It had been made from red corduroy, and I couldn’t imagine any way to perch on it and still retain my dignity. Bochnak might be comfortable sprawled on his back like an infant, but I elected to remain standing.

  “I’m an enabler.” I crossed my arms. “The white ships are on a mission, but they need a biological mind to approve their actions. Apparently they were designed that way, so I guess it’s supposed to be some sort of safety feature.”

  “And they chose you?”

  “You seem surprised.”

  Bochnak sat forward, elbows on knees. “Don’t get me wrong, I know what the Fleet’s up to. I grok the mission. Hell, I even approve of it. I’m just surprised they chose a poet.”

  “I haven’t always been a poet.”

  I looked at his civilian bearing, scruffy clothes and unlaced boots. “And anyway,” I said. “What are you supposed to be?”

  He grinned. “I’m an historian from one of the universities on Camrose. My department applied to the House of Reclamation. They negotiated with the Fleet.” He spread his hands like a languid conjuror. “And here I am.”

  I shook my head. I’d been hoping he was from Conglomeration Intelligence. Right now, I needed an academic the same way I needed a backpack full of rocks.

  “Are there any more of you?”

  “No, I’m the only one aboard. At least, I was until you got here.”

  “And what exactly are you doing here?”

  “Studying the Fleet of Knives. As I said, I’m an historian. I specialise in the history of the Hearthers. You know who they were, right?”

  I gave him a sour look. “Everybody knows who they were.” We learned about them in school. They were one of history’s greatest and most tantalising ambiguities, on a par with the disappearance of Atlantis.

  Bochnak didn’t seem to notice my testiness. “Well,” he said, “they didn’t leave much behind when they left, so when the chance came to study one of their ships, I had to take it.”

  “You say they left?” My frown deepened. “I was told these ships were grown from their cultured stem cells.”

  Bochnak smiled. “Only some of them were incorporated into these vessels. All the records are here, in the Fleet. What actually happened was that the majority of them packed up their whole civilisation and fled.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “Through the Intrusion.”

  “They flew into it?”

  “Hell yes.” His eyes were glittering with the eagerness of a specialist discussing their chosen field. “In fact, they were the ones who opened it, using the same technology they used to hide these white ships in a pocket universe for five thousand years.”

  “But why would they do that?”

  “Why would they flee the universe?” He shrugged happily. “They were afraid.”

  “They could build an armada this large, and they were still afraid? Of what?”

  “Something. I’m not sure.” He rubbed his hands together, obviously relishing the task of finding the answer to this question. “The translations are sketchy and there are no pictures or footage. I guess the closest I can render it in human terms is that they were afraid of mythological beasts, and of tools that ultimately turned against their masters.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Mythological beasts?”

  “Something from their ancient legends. Something that frightened them so badly during their early history that they renounced all forms of warfare and dedicated their entire species to helping others. Hence they founded the organisation that inspired the House of Reclamation.”

  “So if they fled the universe, why did they leave this fleet behind?”

  “To protect the younger races?” He spread his hands. “They obviously expected the monsters would return, otherwise they wouldn’t have fled.” For the
first time, his expression sobered and he looked pensive. “Apparently the monsters are drawn to conflict.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  SAL KONSTANZ

  As we approached the Restless Itch, Alva Clay gave a low whistle.

  “That,” she said, “is one big bastard.”

  We were in the main crew lounge, preparing to mount a search and rescue mission, and the Trouble Dog was piping through the view from her external cameras. From a few kilometres away, the Restless Itch resembled a stony, cratered world, its rounded peaks and impenetrable shadows illumed only by the dead light of faraway stars.

  “You’re not wrong.” I pulled a sniffer from the shelf. The handheld device had been designed to detect signs of life—the byproducts of respiration, the soft beat of a heart, and the warmth of a trapped body—in the tangled wreckage of crashed starships or earthquake-levelled buildings, but I figured it might work just as well at detecting giant crab-like monsters in the corridors of that alien leviathan. Clay noticed it in my hand and raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “I don’t want a repeat of what happened on the Hobo,” I said. “You saw that creature. If there are any more of them here, we’ll want to stay well clear of them.”

  “Don’t worry.” Clay gave a pat to the Archipelago pistol at her hip. “This baby can blow a hole in just about anything.”

  “Yes, but I still don’t want to take any chances.” I took a deep breath to steady my voice. “I’m not losing anyone else, okay?”

  Our eyes met. For a moment, George’s ghost seemed to hang between us like the echoes of an argument. Clay coughed and looked away.

  “Yeah,” she said quietly, talking to the wall, “I know what you mean.”

  A couple of baby Druff were helping us organise our equipment. I didn’t know which of the brood they were; to me, they all looked pretty much identical, like kitten-sized, six-armed starfish covered in oil-blue scales. I made a mental note to suggest that in future, Nod fit each of them with some sort of different-coloured harness, or maybe a nametag. For the moment, I settled for tapping the nearest on its shoulder.