“Uh oh.” He grabbed the hose and gave it a few hard tugs, hoping that the oxygen flow would start up again. Nothing happened. He’d never thought about a time limit before. In all the times he had flown on airplanes and watched the stewardesses explain the safety features, he’d never heard one say that you only have ten or fifteen minutes of life-saving oh-twos before we leave you high and dry.
“My oxygen is no,” stated Haley, who was now looking even more worried. Kettle also made a mental note that the crisis definitely wasn’t helping her English fluency.
“I know,” he replied, pulling his mask off. He could feel the airplane still climbing, but he had no idea how high they were. He also didn’t know at what altitude people started blacking out.
“What do we do?” Haley asked.
“You stay here,” he told her.
“And you?”
“I’m going to see if Jay needs my help.” There. He said it. Now he had to do it. He had to show that he could act boldly under pressure. Anyway, clinging to an oxygen lifeline was no longer an option.
He pulled himself up onto his feet and shuffled out into the aisle. This gave him an entirely new vantage point. At the front of the cabin, chaos reigned. Men in their fatigues were swearing and squawking, some of them banging on the ceiling overhead where the plastic tubes disappeared into the compartment above, some of them bent over in the brace-for-impact position despite the fact the plane was gaining altitude.
He took two steps and then staggered. A bout of wooziness washed over him and he leaned over awkwardly against a seatback. His vision narrowed momentarily until he re-focused and forced himself to concentrate. There was a voice inside Kettle’s head telling that there was no longer any point in going to the back. He wasn’t going to make it that far unless the plane descended to an altitude where the air was more conducive to human life. He tried to decide whether he should go back to his seat or just wait where he was.
Then Kettle looked back to the front of the plane and saw something new, something his mind instantly labeled frightening and disturbing. The door to the cockpit had been opened, and a man had come out. Presumably this man was the pilot. He looked like a pilot, or if not a pilot, then a co-pilot. He was wearing suit trousers and a white, short-sleeve shirt with a black tie. If he wasn’t a pilot, then he was a Mormon that had snuck on board. Most of his face was covered by a grey oxygen mask with a tube that ran down to a canister secured to his belt. In his left hand, the man carried a plain black briefcase.
Some of the soldiers at the front were calling out to the pilot, asking questions and making what Kettle could only describe as unconstructive criticism of his flying skills up until this point in the flight. The pilot ignored all of them and instead walked down the center aisle straight toward the spot where Kettle was standing.
The wooziness came back again and Kettle bowed his head down onto the top of the chair he was leaning on to try and steady himself. The plane must have still been climbing, though not steeply. Maybe it was leveling off again for another plunge. He thought about what that would mean; either it would be the continuation of the cycle or the beginning of the flight’s final minutes in the sky. When he looked up, the pilot was nearly on him. He had stopped just two rows away and turned to face Haley. He plopped the briefcase down on the chair nearest the aisle and opened it up. Kettle couldn’t see the contents from where he was standing.
“What are you doing?” Kettle croaked. It was definitely getting harder to suck in enough air to function properly, and his ears were doing strange things. They were continually popping and re-pressurizing. He teetered forward. When he got closer, he could see Haley looking at the pilot with a dazed expression on her face. He also saw the pilot pull a slender grey canister out of a foam insert in the briefcase. The canister was about the length of a ball-point pen, though much thicker.
The man leaned over with one knee on the seat to stabilize himself and reached out to grab Haley’s left arm. He pulled her closer. She offered no resistance, albeit it was unclear if the absence of any sort of struggle was due to shock or a lack of oxygen. The pilot lifted up the arm of her tee-shirt to expose her shoulder. And then, as Kettle looked on in bewildered fascination, the pilot jabbed the canister into the flesh at the top of her bicep. There was a sharp clicking noise and a hiss that was just barely audible over the auditory discord of the disaster unfolding around them.
“What was that?” he yelled and started to careen forward to intervene. But he was moving very slowly now. A dull pain was forming in his chest, and before he could even reach Haley’s row, the pilot had pulled out a second canister, yellow instead of grey. He jabbed her again in almost the same spot, this time about an inch lower.
The pilot finally took notice of Kettle’s approach. With one smooth motion, he backhanded Kettle in the face. His head snapped back and his legs buckled at the knees, causing him to fall in a heap in the aisle with his legs tangled pretzel-like beneath him. His head was groggy; he shook it back and forth with no effect. He tried to hoist himself up by using the nearest chair for leverage, but to no avail.
The pilot had turned back to Haley, whom Kettle could no longer see. Out of the briefcase came a third device, much bigger than the other two. It was Ferrari red and looked a lot like a staple gun that he had once seen in Home Depot, but with a much wider snout. The pilot for a third time bent over the helpless Korean ornithologist. Kettle’s line of sight was blocked, but he could hear mechanical snapping sound, like a trigger releasing. He also heard Haley yelp in response.
Kettle was losing consciousness. He could feel himself going. The last thing he saw was the pilot turn toward him with the grey canister in hand. The last thing he thought of when he closed his eyes was Emma, the daughter that he would never get to meet.
Then everything went black.
He snapped back to consciousness with a jarring pain coming from the skin at the scruff of his neck. He grunted as his vision came back to him. He was lying on his stomach in the aisle of the airplane. They were still airborne – he could tell by the noise of the engines and the motion of the fuselage – but they must have shed off a lot of altitude because he wasn’t struggling for breath anymore.
He managed to use his arms to twist himself around and take a look at what was going on around him. Shockingly, there was someone standing above him, a foot planted on each side of Kettle’s hips. Oh, right, the pilot! He saw the strange looking red staple gun in the guy’s hand. Oh, shit, the pilot!
The pilot’s other hand was extended out palm first toward Kettle as if to tell him to stay still. Just as well, since Kettle really didn’t feel like getting up at the moment. Instead, he reached back with his right hand to see if he could identify what the pilot had done to his neck with the staple gun. Panic struck when he felt something plastic-ey stuck to his skin. No, it wasn’t plastic. It almost felt like an ultra-thin layer of carbon-fiber or Kevlar. Whatever it was, it was about an inch long. Maybe an inch and a half. “What the f…”
“Don’t tug on it,” the pilot hollered above the engine noise and the various yells and shrieks from the other passengers. “You can’t take it . . .”
Before he could finish, the pilot was hit from behind by about a hundred and ninety pounds of pissed off Dallas. The Marine somehow managed to tackle his target, lift him clear off his feet and send him to the floor about three rows back without trampling over Kettle in the process. More surprising, at least from Kettle’s point of view, was that the stricken pilot didn’t stay down. Even with Dallas on top of him, he managed to press himself up onto his hands and knees. Dallas wasn’t having any of it. He uncoiled a quick right hand strike to the side of the pilot’s head, which promptly smacked against the nearest hard plastic armrest. This time, the pilot stayed on the floor.
Dallas, content that the job was finished, scrambled back to his feet and moved to help Kettle do the same. Kettle quickly discovered that whereas his mind was willing, his legs weren’t so accommo
dating. His knees in particular launched an immediate protest. When Dallas hoisted Kettle into a quasi-standing position, his legs crumpled. He would have hit the floor again had it not been for the Marine’s strength.
“Come on, dipshit,” Dallas said. He wrapped one of Kettle’s arms around his muscular shoulders and leveraged Kettle toward his chair.
“Haley,” Kettle mumbled.
“I think she’s okay.”
Haley was conscious. Her eyes were wet and a stream of tears ran down over each of her cheeks. Both of her hands were behind her neck, apparently trying to work free the new accessory the pilot had embedded in her skin. “It don’t come off,” she sobbed.
“Oh, fuck me,” Dallas stated suddenly. Kettle followed Dallas’ line of sight to the window next to Haley’s head. The plane was starting to bank sharply, which gave the three of them a frightfully alarming view of just how close they were to the surface of the water. The white crests of waves were clearly visible.
Very glumly, Kettle said “We’re going to crash.”
“Yep.” Dallas heaved his companion into the middle seat and proceeded to do up Kettle’s safety belt for him, a process that involved using one arm to pin the barely functioning Kettle back in an upright position while doing up the belt one-handed with his free arm. Once he had cinched the belt in place, he then made sure Haley’s belt was tight. Finally, the Marine sat down in the aisle seat that Jay had once occupied.
“No, no. Oh no.” He wondered if his bladder was going to let loose. It definitely felt like he might piss himself.
“Hey!” Dallas yelled. “Brace for impact! Like this!” He put his forearms against the seatback in front of him and then pressed his head into the space between his forearms. Kettle nodded and followed suit. Haley did the same.
From his hunkered over position, he couldn’t see past Haley’s head to the window, so he had no idea if they were holding altitude or about to make contact. He wasn’t sure if not knowing was better than knowing. He could see that Haley wasn’t bothering to look. Instead, the poor girl was crying and saying something in Korean. He heard her repeat the word omma.
“Kettle!”
Kettle twisted his head around to see who had called his name out. There, right beside Dallas, stood the pilot, blood covering the left side of his face. He looked exhausted, as if he were barely able to hold himself upright. Fatigue was written throughout his posture, all except his eyes. His eyes burned with intensity, an intensity that was squarely focused on the waste management technician from Seattle.
“How do you know my name?” Kettle shouted.
“Radovan Mozik!” he yelled back.
“What?”
“Maglipan . . . Radovan Mozik Maglipan.” He was enunciating the words loudly and carefully to make sure Kettle understood.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You and Haley have to get to . . .”
When the plane hit the water, the impact sounded like a cement truck running into a concrete barrier. The last thing Kettle saw before he was knocked back unconscious was the pilot’s body getting catapulted forward and out of sight.
1.9 SAELIKO
The voyage out of Meshaltown had been uneventful. Saeliko’s late night activities hadn’t been uncovered by the time the Epoch raised its anchor and began tacking northward. Three days later, she and the crew found themselves hauling on ropes to pull the massive ship out of the water onto a powdery white sand beach with a long, gradual slope.
The ship’s harker and qarlden joined in with the others in the arduous work. They always did; it was one of the ways they showed their commitment to the crew and its shared labors. In great rhythmic repetitions, they heaved on the taught ropes, inching the ship forward. Beneath the hull, the rising tide aided the process.
“Hoy! . . . Hoy! . . . Hoy!” The chant rang out with each collective pull. Women and men alike dripped in sweat, muscles straining under the baking sun. “Put your fucking backs into it, you fat-assed whale turds!” big Brenna bellowed. She had a knack for creative insults. “My grandpa could pull harder than you lot, and he’s got one arm, a fucked leg and a big bag of rancid squid cocks for a brain!”
It was going to take all morning to prepare the ship for a good scrape. They usually careened the Epoch every seven or eight weeks. It had been nearly ten weeks since the last careening, which was about as long as they dared leave it, especially in the Sollian. The problem was the climate. The warm waters were a breeding ground for all kinds of sea life that clung to the outside of the hull beneath the waterline. A thick coating of barnacles and seaweed could cut a ship’s speed in half. The Epoch was a privateering vessel; it often depended on speed to hunt down prey.
Worse than barnacles were digger stones. The name was a misnomer. They weren’t actually stones; they were a shellfish of sorts. And once they latched onto a wooden hull, they would start burrowing into the planks, slowly drilling little holes of potential death-by-drowning. As such, even the happy-go-luckiest of sailors took careening seriously and were more than willing to pitch in.
All the better, since careening was a massive undertaking. Before the Epoch could be beached, all of the heavy items that were deemed portable were ferried off the ship in dinghies and stored on shore. This included the barrels of drinking water, which was fine since the fresh water needed to be replenished on the island anyway.
Once the ship was sufficiently lightened, it would be dragged up onto the beach and then carefully laid over on its side. The same ropes that they used to beach the vessel would be tied around the nearest, largest trees to hold the Epoch prone on its starboard side. Once the port side was scraped clean, the ship would be pushed over until the starboard side was facing upward, and the process would be repeated. Overseeing it all was a middle-aged, grey-haired man named Dommel, the ship’s carpenter. In all matters related to careening, Dommel outranked even Janx. Throughout the entire ordeal, he would pace back and forth, sometimes crawling on the overturned hull on his hands and knees, rubbing his fingers across every last bit of wood. He examined every groove and digger stone hole, assessing the damage. If he so much as suspected that a plank was nearing the end of its seaworthy life, he would order it replaced, which would significantly extend the amount of time they would be staying on the island.
The crew wasn’t averse to a semi-lengthy stay. They had been to this island before, and everyone agreed it was quite pleasant. No one knew its proper title, so it was designated with the name Butterfly Island. This reflected two facts: there was a plethora of colorful butterflies flittering through the trees, and Maelian sailors were not that creative linguistically, Brenna’s cursing notwithstanding.
The only things missing were the strumpets and rentboys. Their absence put a natural limit on just how long the crew were prepared to sit on the beach getting drunk.
Butterfly Island was an ideal location to careen the Epoch. The beach wasn’t too steep, and there were at least three streams supplying fresh drinking water. Turtles were easy to find, and stocky fisher birds waddled along the beach. Both made good eating. On top of all that, Butterfly Island was well off the standard trade routes and far away from any settlements, which meant there was little chance that the Epoch would be stumbled upon by pirates or other opportunistic adventurers when she was least able to defend herself.
Saeliko watched Janx haul on the rope. The woman’s muscles belied her age. They flexed and rippled, a deep brown jumble of toned cords covered in rivulets of sweat. Her quads and calves contracted and expanded, her legs buttressing the power in her arms. But she was not the woman she used to be, and Saeliko knew it. There was a poorly hidden fatigue written in her movements. An extra half breath between pulls, head bowed a hair lower, back not quite as rod straight as it used to be; these were the signs of too many seasons battling against time and inevitability.
Saeliko could forgive the deterioration of Janx’s body. She couldn’t forgive the deterioration in Janx’s grit and met
tle. Where once the harker had been bold and savage, she now reeked of timidity and uncertainty. It wasn’t hard to guess why. Age was re-shaping Janx’s thinking. During the war, privateering had made the woman enough coin to be comfortable and even cocky. Now, with the potential for long-lasting peace, times were tougher. To Saeliko, the solution was obvious – raise the pirate flag and go hunting. For the harker, however, out and out piracy – and the severing of all ties to recognized legitimacy – posed too many risks.
Janx hauled on the rope, her eyes set on the Epoch. Saeliko hauled on the rope, her eyes set on Janx.
* * *
Six days later, the careening was almost done, the hull scraped clean. A few repairs had been carefully administered to. Dommel was overseeing the last of the caulking, instructing a few trusted sets of hands to tightly pack the sticky blend of oakum and pitch into gaps between planks.
It was early in the morning. The sun hadn’t been up for more than half an hour, but almost all of the crew were up, and the sun was already starting to bake the sand with its heat.
The Saffisheen qarlden found Brenna preparing the crates to be re-loaded onto the Epoch. “Call ‘em in,” she told her.
“All of ‘em?”
“Aye, every last one.”
“Harker’s not here. Her and Lofi went exploring up past the bluffs.”
“I know.”
“Looking for carron eggs, me thinks. Probably going to commune with the Sisters while she’s at it. You know how she is.”
“I know she’s gone. Call the crew in.”
A dubious look came across Brenna’s broad face. Qarldens didn’t usually call a palaver. Harkers did. She looked at Saeliko and measured her disposition. Resolve. Will with a purpose.
“Now.”
Brenna capitulated and dropped the rope she had been using to secure two crates together. She spun and began walking toward the shaded southern end of the beach where the majority of the sailors were resting out of the sun. As she trudged through the sand, she puffed out her chest and let her voice boom out over the relative serenity of the island. “Get up, you cunny warts!” she yelled. Curious heads turned to take in the spontaneous commotion. “Qarlden’s callin’ a palaver! Someone go get Dommel. Tell him and his deck monkeys to take those tar sticks out of their arses and get off the ship. And you! Yeah you, Fat Rat, you big lump of whale tit! Stop eatin’ that bird and get over here. By the Five, I can smell your cavernous armpits from here!”
Children of Zero Page 10
