Children of Zero

by Andrew Calhoun

  “Skillins was stupid” Saeliko told him. “She left half her fleet in port and then exposed herself to the bulk of the Lavic navy. Cadezla and Zoffin were madly in love with each other, and then decided to kill one another when they discovered that each of them was cheating on the other. They led the navy to each other’s doorstep. As for Talia, well, she was just crazy. You might want to be Rikol the Silent instead of Mad Talia. Fair enough. But I’m telling you that I don’t want to be either of them. I will just be Saeliko.”

  “And you want my blind loyalty?” His eyebrow lifted again. “You want me to tell you that I’m your man until I have my testicles blown off by cannon fire in an epic naval showdown with the Maelian navy?”

  “Ha!”

  “I’ll make a deal with you,” the big Lavic offered. There was a newborn smile written in the raised corners of his mouth. His mirth was somewhat refreshing.

  “What’s that?”

  “You keep making the right decisions, you’ve got my undying loyalty.”

  “So as long as I keep serving your interests, you’ll keep scrubbing the decks and swinging your axe at people’s heads?”

  “Isn’t that what a pirate harker is supposed to do? Serve the interests of her crew?”

  “Aye, fair enough. And truth be told, I might not always like your answers, but I do appreciate your honesty.” She looked back toward the rest of the crew. “It’s not an easy trait to find on the Epoch, or anywhere else in the Sollian for that matter. Just watch. Our partners in piracy are going to swear their loyalty to me up and down in the next couple of days, but you and I both know that if things start to take a bad turn, the crew will turn on me just as easily as they did on Janx.”

  “Aye,” he confirmed matter-of-factly. “They will.”

  “I want you to know something else as well.”

  “What?”

  “If you were a woman, I’d try to make you our new qarlden.”

  “Try?”

  “I would put your name up for the vote. Anyway, the crew would never stand for a man being qarlden. It’s unheard of.”

  “You see, there’s history impeding on your life again.”

  Saeliko ignored him. “What do you think I should do about them?” she said, changing the subject. She tilted her head toward to the newcomers, some of whom were now standing and looking around. “What in the names of the Five should I do with that lot?”

  “Use ‘em or kill ‘em.” He said it very matter-of-factly.

  “But what if they’re . . . you know . . .”

  “Divine?”

  “Precisely.”

  “They’re not.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I just saw shimmer sharks tear apart a bunch of men in the water. Blood and body parts everywhere. Gods don’t die. These were men being ripped up.” Saeliko hadn’t thought of that.“What about the thing they crashed in?”

  “Never seen anything like it, but it sank just like one of our ships would.”

  Except that it fell from the sky, Saeliko added silently. She sighed. “One last thing. Tell Brenna to take the rum away from the crew. I want them sober.”

  “You think Janx is going to try and get a little revenge?”

  “Definitely. She won’t attack yet though.”

  “When do you reckon?”

  “Tonight, sometime after dark. We’ll need to set up a perimeter of campfires. Maybe eight or nine of them. Make sure everyone is armed.”

  “How do you know Janx’ll come?”

  “Because that’s what I’d do.”

  2.2 JANX

  Janx seethed. Her anger was a living thing that roiled around inside her skin. It smoldered within her heart. It fermented inside her belly. It took all of her training to keep that anger from unhinging her focus. She wanted to lash out. She yearned to get up and run down to the beach right now and bathe the sand in blood and bone.

  Her training told her to wait, to be patient. It was hard to listen to that training. Her fury hammered against it like an enraged bear slamming itself against a tree trying to knock it down. The roots held the tree in place, but only just barely. Bark was torn away. Cracks appeared.

  Her training held. Storming the beach in daylight would amount to suicide – glorious, vengeful suicide, but suicide nonetheless. She could probably stay clear of the flintlocks for long enough to get close, but not close enough to avoid being shot by Saeliko and her crew. That backstabbing, ungrateful, malicious, venomous, two-timing whore, Saeliko. She could feel bile rising in her throat and into her mouth.

  The sun was low in the sky and getting lower. It was time to leave her hiding spot. She wanted to reach the edge of the tree line just as darkness fell over the island. It was a safe assumption that Saeliko would be getting the Epoch ready to sail. It was also safe to assume that she would post guards around the camp, but they would have to spread themselves thin. A lot of muscle would be needed to shuttle the stores and equipment from the beach to the ship.

  The plan was simple – infiltrate the camp, kill Saeliko and take back her rightful place as harker. Once Saeliko was a lifeless lump of perforated skin and bone, the others would drop their weapons and beg to be taken back into the fold. Such was the way with sheep.

  Moving through the jungle, Janx let her thoughts drift to the future. She would have to be more careful once she acquired new crew members in New Dagos. She was too close to securing her retirement to let another mishap throw her off course again. She pictured it in her mind – the house, the estate, the bluff overhanging the coast. It was almost hers. She had powerful friends in New Dagos. Governess Teverin herself was keeping Janx’s money safe for her in the vault beneath the colonial offices. She hadn’t saved the necessary amount yet, but she wasn’t far off. Another year at sea, two at most, and she would have enough money to buy the estate and the staff with enough left over to cover expenses. She would be a made woman, a privateer-turned-respected-landholder.

  Before that could happen, Saeliko needed to die, preferably in a lot of pain.

  Janx approached the edge of the trees about two hundred paces south of the camp, choosing a high piece of land topped with rounded off boulders from which she could observe the beach. As planned, the last remnants of light were just now melting away into blackness backdropped by faint tendrils of moonlight. She counted eight campfires in a semicircle curving out from the sea. Within the perimeter sat piles of crates and barrels along with cannons and the extensive stores of shot.

  The Epoch itself was already in the water. She could see the lanterns on the deck casting their soft light across the wood, steel and canvas. That’s my fucking ship, she reminded herself. Again, urges began slithering into her head, all of which involved inflicting violent wounds on a lot of women and men. She tilted her head back and looked skyward. It was all she could do to stop herself from letting loose a primal scream.

  “Control yourself,” she whispered angrily. She shook her head for a few seconds, her short-cropped hair whipping back and forth. It wasn’t helping; she could feel the anger coursing through her veins, begging her body to rush forward and get on with the death and destruction. “No, no, no,” she whispered again. “Patience.” She let the s sound at the end of patience elongate.

  The old Saffisheen pulled a bone-handled knife out of a sheath sewn into the inside of her leather boot. The blade was pitted with age and slightly twisted. It was her favorite. It had sent dozens of women to Deshala over the years.

  She raised the knife to her left forearm and put the point of the blade to her skin. She pressed down slowly, watching the skin bend inward beneath the steel until the tension broke. The knife punctured through, beads of red instantly welling up around the cold metal. Ever so slowly, she dragged the knife down the length of her forearm, leaving a trail behind it. Janx grunted and smiled simultaneously, her eyes squinting with mild euphoria. She lifted the knife from her arm. A few snakes of blood worked their way down either side of her arm and be
gan dripping down onto the leaves and dirt beneath her. In her chest, her breathing calmed and her heart rate slowed.

  Momentarily soothed, she reassessed the task ahead of her. There were two problems that needed to be overcome, one insignificant and the other extremely significant. First, there was some distance that needed to be covered between her current position and the camp. This distance was entirely exposed. She wasn’t overly worried about this problem. Stealth and darkness were on her side. She would have the first strike. The second problem, however, was more cantankerous. The problem was that Saeliko was nowhere to be seen.

  Janx had expected this. She knew the training that the young Saffisheen had been pummelled with growing up. Saeliko would act, not react. She would anticipate Janx’s coming, and she would prepare accordingly. Janx knew a trap was waiting for her.

  Had the circumstances been different, Janx would have held off. Why walk into a trap when you didn’t have to? Unfortunately, she had no alternatives. Saeliko had forced the situation with her coup d’état. The older Saffisheen had to give the little wench credit for her timing. She had turned the sailors against their harker just before the Epoch was ready to set sail. If the ship departed, she would be stuck hoping against hope that some other ship would wander off course far enough to stumble upon Butterfly Island. Sure, there were worse places to be stranded, but after all of these years of service to her country, she wasn’t about to spend the rest of her days alone and forgotten on an uninhabited island in the Sollian.

  This left only one choice: kill Saeliko before the ship could leave.

  Janx slid out of her position in the trees and stepped onto the beach. Instead of heading for the camp, she made a bee-line straight for the water. No sense in trying to find a gap between the fires and sentries when the sea gave her free cover all the way into their midst. All she had to do was avoid being spotted by the dinghies ferrying goods out to the Epoch. When she reached the edge of the water, she dropped her pistol to the sand. She wouldn’t need it anyway.

  The cool sensation of the water was equal parts refreshing and cleansing. She kept walking out until the lapping waves came up to her waist, and then she sank down onto her knees, letting the sea conceal her up to her neck.

  Easing forward parallel to the beach, Janx kept her eyes trained on water in front of her. There was no rush. She had plenty of time. She savored the gentle sting of the salt water on her open wound. It was a delightfully tortuous tickle, reminding her of her mortality at the same time as it assured her of her vitality.

  She could see the crew. There weren’t that many of them on the beach, which made sense. About half of them would be needed on the Epoch to unload the dinghies and get things sail-ready. Nevertheless, there was obviously still a lot of work left to be done. Barrels stood piled on top of pallets and crates. Heaps of steel pulleys and rigging equipment sat on blankets of canvas to keep the sand from getting into the parts. A few of the cannons were still set up on their wooden brackets, truncheons set into grooves, rear breaches set in position over wedge-shaped quoins. They would have to be dismantled again before making the short trip to the Epoch. Sailors hustled about, pulling this, pushing that, and all-in-all making themselves useful.

  Except for Saeliko. The traitorous whale-shite-for-brains was still unseen.

  Janx was close now. She was inside the circumference of the campfire perimeter, and the firelight illuminated the figures, making them easy to pick out. The harker looked at her crew members and decided who she was going to kill first. She mentally recited their names as they passed by her position in the water. Mohdheri, Amba, Fat Rat, Cassami, Karsha, Brenna.

  The bile re-ascended in Janx’s throat. She sat there in the calm sea with only her head above the water and stared at her prey. She hated them, these women that knew nothing of loyalty. She loathed their very existence. After all she had done for them, all the opportunities she had given them, all the chances she had provided for them to learn the ways of the world, this is how they thanked her. They all deserved to die. But she would start with Brenna. And then that Kalleshi maggot, Amba. Amba already had a long scar on the right side of her face, so Janx decided she would give her a matching scar on the left side, although much deeper.

  When this night was all said and done, she would also have to find the time to come up with a special heaping of torture for the two Lavic sailors, Shen and Ollan. Those white-skinned parasites had been the first to react when Janx had set herself on attacking Saeliko. They would come to understand what a terrible mistake that had been.

  Janx pulled her sword out and held it in front of her beneath the surface of the water. It was time to exact payment for the wrongs she had been subjected to. The harker pushed herself forward, crouching lower as the water became shallower. Eventually she had to slide forward on all fours like a crocodile. She kept her eyes and nose above the water, but everything mouth down remained submerged. No one noticed her even though she was now just a few paces from the water’s edge.

  The harker finally lifted herself out of the water and moved forward. Cassami was the first victim. Before anyone was aware of her presence, Janx walked up behind the unsuspecting sailor and plunged her sword straight through her back. Cassami wailed out in a gurgled scream of terror. Everyone on the beach spun to look at the horror. That was fine by Janx. Let them see what was coming.

  She was aware of pistols being pulled from belts and aimed in her direction. She paid them no heed, knowing that firearms were no match for speed and proper tactics. Placing a boot on Cassami’s ass, Janx wrenched her sword free while simultaneously kicking her writhing victim to the ground where she would bleed out. Using the momentum created by the maneuver, she changed direction and sprang toward her next victim, who happened to be the terrified looking master rigger, Sammaraeli. In one smooth, unbroken motion, Janx used the flat of her sword to bash the flintlock pistol out of Sammaraeli’s right hand and then pivot around Sammaraeli’s body so that she ended up with her sword at the master rigger’s throat while positioning herself behind the woman. This kept the others from firing for fear of hitting their own ally.

  A sharp, long whistle pierced the air. Here comes the trap, Janx thought to herself. The whistle was followed by several loud but muted hammering sounds – wooden mallets pounding on wooden frames. The sides of four of the larger crates suddenly popped open and revealed a dozen more sailors, some holding cutlasses and axes, others holding pistols. One of them, master gunner Karsha, was holding a big fat blunderbuss.

  Stepping out from their midst was Saeliko, that wickedly curved scimitar clutched in her right hand. Janx could see drops of sweat puddling down over Saeliko’s tattoo. The younger Saffisheen had donned her armor, something she only did when expecting a hard fight. Steel pauldrons sat on her shoulders with a series of spikes pointing upward and out to protect against neck strikes. Vambraces were strapped to her arms with steel guards that ran down over her knuckles and ended in a blunt ridge that not only protected her hands but also inflicted considerable punching damage. The breastplate had been designed and molded specifically for Saeliko, curving around her bosom and flattening out lower down where it was connected to a steel mesh that covered her midsection. Tassets covered her hips and her thighs, and angular greaves ran down her chins to her boots. All of it was painted black, though Janx could see at least a dozen places where the paint had been chipped away, evidence of past battles. Between her breasts, just above the tip of her metal cleavage, the head of a rock lioness was etched in silver.

  Saeliko held her arms out to either side, signalling her crew to fan out and surround their enemy.

  “How predictable,” Janx commented under her breath.

  The edge of the harker’s blade made short work of Sammaraeli’s throat, leaving the master rigger to gurgle her last.

  She had to move quickly now. Speed was essential. If they could catch her standing still it would be the end of her. She dodged to the right of Sammaraeli’s crumpled body an
d dashed between two stacks of barrels, emerging out the other side of the gap to find Amba. The scarred sailor shrieked in surprise and raised an axe up in self defense. Janx darted inside the axe and brushed aside the weapon, bringing her own face within inches of Amba’s. Janx slammed her forehead into the Kalleshi’s nose, breaking it instantly. Amba’s head snapped back and she fell ass-first onto the sand.

  Brenna was the next closest. The two women momentarily faced off against each other, Janx with her blood-splotched sword, Brenna with her well-worn cutlass. Janx smiled cruelly. Brenna shook her head. “No. Fuck this,” she blurted. She then spun on her feet and ran in the opposite direction as fast as her chunky legs could carry her, dropping her cutlass on the sand without breaking stride.

  Janx was already moving. She knew better than to chase after Brenna. Rounding a stack of rectangular chests, she almost burst out in laughter when she saw how quickly Saeliko’s ambush was unraveling. Jren had already dropped her gun and was running off in Brenna’s direction. Fat Rat was also in the midst of waddling toward the water, apparently planning to swim to safety like a bloated walrus. Karsha was setting down her blunderbuss with one hand and holding the other hand out toward Janx in a gesture of submission. Bleating sheep, the lot of them.

  Janx advanced on Saeliko. This was going to be enjoyable. She wasn’t bothered in the least that her adversary was fully armored. In fact, she saw it as another needless blunder on the qarlden’s part. Had Saeliko been fighting a normal battle, armor would have been a smart choice, However, Saffisheen operated on fast reflexes, meaning that in a fight between two Saffisheen, the quicker of the two was likely to triumph. Wearing armor might ward off a few blows, but it would ultimately slow the wearer down, putting her in mortal danger.