Children of Zero

by Andrew Calhoun

  “Really? That’s good, I guess.”

  “It’s quite astonishing, actually. You see this part here?” She was pointing to a spot where the remaining skin was stitched shut around the bone. He didn’t like looking at the wound. For lack of a better term, it grossed him out. Nevertheless, he focused on the area she was indicating and saw the thread running in and out of the damaged flesh. It did look a lot better than it had just the day before.

  “Yeah, I see it.”

  “I was expecting it to still be blue and black and gooey.”

  Kettle laughed at the Maelian word for gooey. It sounded like shlaeng-oo. He wasn’t sure why he had laughed; it just seemed like a funny word to him. It also seemed kind of similar to the English word in that it was onomatopoeic.

  “Why’s that funny?” Lofi asked.

  “Sorry, it’s not. I was just thinking of something else.”

  “Well, congratulations on a fine recovery so far.” She began wrapping up the little stump again, making sure that no grit or grime would be trapped between the cloth and the wound. “Your other welts and bruises are improving, too.”

  She was referring to the numerous marks left on his skin from his training. They had only let him rest for a day before bringing him back up on the deck to start learning how to use a cutlass, and they certainly didn’t go easy on him either. Cutlass training involved him facing off with a seasoned pirate, usually Brenna or Jren, and basically getting the crap kicked out of him. They never cut him open, which was a testament to their own control with their cutlasses and axes, but they fairly consistently whacked him on the arms, legs and face with either the flat side of their blades or the hilt.

  “I’m about to go get some more,” he told her.

  “Training time again?”

  “Yeah, joy of joys.”

  “Are you improving?”

  “I don’t think so,” he confessed. “I mean, sort of. I don’t drop my weapon as much as I used to, but I’m not fast enough. By the time I see which way their weapon is coming, it’s almost always too late for me to block or parry.”

  “You need to stop focusing on their weapons and start focusing on their bodies,” Lofi told him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that if you watch the tip of their cutlass coming at you, you’re only witnessing the end result of your opponent’s intention, the last stage of her attack. If you study the movement of her shoulder position at the beginning of the move, you can see the first stage of her attack. Wouldn’t you rather see the strike from its origins rather than from its endings? It would give you more time to react, no?”

  “Seems pretty obvious when you put it like that.”

  She smiled. It was a pretty smile. “Well, I’ve had a few lessons myself.” She winked, and Kettle felt himself slightly besotted. “Now, I think you’re ready to go.”

  He looked down to see that she had finished securing the cloth on his hand. She then gave him a smack on the shoulder with the flat of her right hand.

  He thanked her and then made his way up the stairs to the deck. As he clambered up, he happily realized that he was getting better at walking around the vessel without overcompensating for the rocking motion of the waves. He was getting his sea legs.

  A light rain and a stiff breeze greeted him when he came out onto the deck, a nice change from the sweltering heat that had followed the ship for the last few days. He found Dallas, Haley and Ollan standing near the port side of the Epoch in between two cannons. He could see by an open cut on Dallas’ brow that he had already gone through a rough training session. Haley had some fresh bruises on her arms and legs, too. The Lavic man was talking to Dallas, using Haley as an intermediary. When Kettle got closer, he could hear the pirate’s gruff tone, and he realized that the man wasn’t speaking Maelian. He was speaking his mother tongue.

  Haley listened and gave a live translation. “You’re stance is bullshit,” she said.

  “Bullshit?” Dallas asked.

  “Actually, the Lavic expression translates as cow fart puddle. I’m approximating.”

  “Okay, whatever. Ask him how I fix it.”

  Haley repeated the request to Ollan, who nodded and demonstrated by putting his right leg back and turning his foot at a forty-five degree angle to his body. Dallas was watching intently, simultaneously trying to mimic the stance. To get it right, the United States Marine turned around so that he was standing side by side with Ollan and didn’t have to reverse right from left in his mind.

  “Solmaak,” Ollan said.

  “Good,” Haley translated.

  Kettle grudgingly had to accept to himself that Dallas did in fact have some good qualities, and this was a prime example. Whereas a couple weeks earlier, Kettle had witnessed the inebriated, uneducated, politically incorrect, moronically womanizing side of Dallas on the beach of Diego Garcia, know he was looking at the all-serious, professional side of Dallas. The Marine was in his element here learning how to handle himself in a combat situation.

  Ollan looked satisfied with his student’s body position, so he spewed off another set of terse instructions for Haley to relay.

  “He’s going to come at you with an axe. He wants you to try to deflect the blows to your right.”

  Dallas nodded alertly and moved toward the mainmast where there was more room to maneuver. Ollan gave his own nod to indicate he was about to begin, twirling a big, nasty looking axe with a few notches chipped out of the blade.

  For a hulking figure, Ollan was very fast, and he brought the axe down from over his head with speed. Dallas did as he was told. It was a difficult task because if he accidentally made contact with the axe head at the wrong spot, the bottom of that axe head would hook onto the blade of the cutlass and slide in toward Dallas’ body, defeating the whole point of the blocking maneuver. Dallas got it right, however, and was able to push Ollan’s attack to the side.

  “Kumos,” Ollan commanded.

  “Again,” Haley translated.

  Five, six, seven times they repeated the motion, each time Dallas growing more confident with his block.

  And then Dallas got cocky. Just after deflecting the axe to his right, he brought his left hand around in a roundhouse aimed at Ollan’s shoulder. Kettle could see that it was a playful move, a Hey, I gotcha! punch.

  Ollan apparently didn’t appreciate the jest. He let the axe fall out of his right hand and then promptly used that hand to deliver a fast, hard punch to Dallas’ stomach. The Marine let out an elongated groan and fell to a crouching position on the deck where he tried to suck some air back into his respiratory system.

  “Surrakaesh dollami naga sorras ar kumareeshic!” the Lavic man said before picking up his axe and wandering off.

  “What did he say?” Dallas inquired, still in obvious discomfort.

  Haley shook her head. “You don’t want to know, but I think next time you should just stick to his instructions. I think he has a bit of a hot temper.”

  “Thanks, Magnum P.I.” He winked at Haley and then looked at Kettle. Slowly he pulled himself back up to a full standing position and rubbed the sweat and rainwater off his forehead.

  “You all right?” Kettle asked.

  “Yeah, sure, dipshit. Just a little love tap.” He smiled that handsomely arrogant smile that Kettle hated. “Hey, I’ve been working on a theory.”

  “What’s that?”

  “My time travel theory.” Kettle searched for any sign that Dallas was joking, but as far as he could tell, the Marine was being sincere.

  “What . . . why do you think that?”

  “Because we’re on an 18th century pirate ship. I’ve been looking around, and I can’t see a single piece of equipment that goes anything beyond the 1730s or so. You see that woman up there?” He was pointing to someone up on the quarterdeck.

  “Who?” Kettle asked. “The fat one?”

  “No, not her. I mean the blonde chick up there. Kind of hot. I like her freckles.”

  �
�Okay, yeah. I see her.”

  “Well, brah. She’s the navigator of the ship.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, stop saying brah,” Kettle muttered.

  Haley added her own two bits to the conversation. “Her name is Shen. They call her a plotter, actually.”

  “Same thing,” Dallas said. “The navigator plots the course on a map, but to do that, she has to know the current position of the ship. I’ve been watching her do that, and I’ve seen the tools she’s been using, including a backstaff.” He could see that Kettle and Haley had no idea what a backstaff was. “It’s basically an old-fashioned device that sailors used to calculate how high the sun was in the sky. If they could figure that out, then they could work out their latitude. That’s what this chick has been doing.

  “But that’s where it gets interesting,” he went on. “It’s pretty easy to figure out latitude, but longitude is a whole other can of monkeys.”

  “Can of worms,” Kettle said. “You’re mixing metaphors.”

  “Whatever. Sailors in the early 1700s had to estimate longitude by comparing the exact time at whatever location they started at with the time at their new location, which was a bitch to do because they didn’t have clocks that were accurate for that sort of thing. The Harrison chronometer solved all that, but it didn’t come out till the 1760s. And that lady up there definitely doesn’t have a Harrison chronometer, or even a proper sextant. Do you see what I’m saying?”

  “Yeah, I get it. You think that we somehow transported ourselves back in time to somewhere before 1760.”

  “If I had to guess, I’d say 1710s or 20s.”

  “Dallas,” Kettle said slowly. “How in the holy hell do you know what a Harrison chronometer is and when it was invented?”

  “I’m from Nassau,” Dallas replied, as if that answered the question satisfactorily.

  This one stumped Kettle. He had no idea where Nassau was or why it was significant to the conversation. He looked over to Haley, but the Korean was equally confused.

  “Nassau,” Dallas repeated. “You know, the Bahamas?”

  “I . . . umm.” But Kettle really had nothing for this one.

  “Okay, look,” Dallas said. “I grew up in Nassau, which is in the Caribbean. It’s like less than an hour from Miami by plane. But when you grow up as a child in Nassau, you get taught about the history of the place, which is actually pretty cool because the history of Nassau basically reads like a history of piracy in the Caribbean. Plus, my mom is an author. She writes books about this sort of stuff, so she knows a lot about sailing.

  “Yeah, well, I’m impressed, but your theory is a cow fart puddle,” Kettle retorted. “If my PlayStation has taught me anything about pirates, it’s that the ones in the Caribbean were primarily speaking English. The other inhabitants of the area were most likely speaking Spanish or French or Dutch. If you haven’t noticed, these people are speaking Maelian and Lavic.”

  “I didn’t say we were in the Caribbean,” Dallas shot back. “Just that we traveled back in time. Maybe we’re in the Indian Ocean.”

  Kettle shook his head. “I don’t think there were any places called Mael in the Indian Ocean. Anyway, it still doesn’t make sense.” He pointed up toward the women on the quarterdeck. “This is a female-dominated society. And it’s not just this ship. They talk about their home country the same way, with empresses and governesses. I’ve never heard about a country like that in the history books. We might have travelled back in time, but we didn’t travel to our time.”

  “What do you mean?” Dallas asked.

  “Kettle’s right,” Haley said. “We’re not on Earth anymore.”

  “How do you know?” Dallas asked. Kettle was equally curious.

  “Because of that,” she told them, pointing toward the port side.

  “The cannon?” Dallas and Kettle both said at the same time.

  “No, the bird sitting on top of it.” There, on top of one of the cannons, a seagull was casually hitching a ride on the Epoch and eyeing the crew, probably with the hope of snagging a few fallen morsels of food.

  “It’s a seagull,” Kettle said.

  “To be precise, it’s a laughing gull,” Haley told them. “Leucophaeus atricilla. You can find them in North and South America. They used to be categorized in the Larus genus until we figured out that the categorization was wrong. Anyway, they’re easy to spot. They have that red beak and the black tips at the end of their wings.”

  “Sorry, Haley, I don’t get your point.”

  “It’s too big,” she said. “The laughing gull is supposed to be a medium-sized gull, which means its wingspan is supposed to be about a hundred centimeters. I’d say that one’s would be closer to a hundred and fifty. Plus its knees are a bit too high on the body, not to mention the fact that it’s too far away from land. They stick closer to the coast than this.”

  Now Kettle got it. “That bird doesn’t exist.”

  “Exactly. I did some research on laughing gulls before I switched to boobies.” She paused for a moment. “Oh my God! Now I get why you guys were confused back on Diego Garcia when I said I studied boobies. Whoops! Oh dear, that’s embarrassing.

  “Anyway, that bird that we’re looking at right there doesn’t exist anywhere on planet Earth, or at least not to the knowledge of the scientific community.”

  “Maybe it did and it went extinct,” Dallas said.

  “Nope.” Haley raised a finger at the bird. “We would have a fossil record. I’m telling you, that bird has never existed on Earth.”

  Before the discussion could go any further, Brenna came striding down the steps from the quarterdeck to the main deck and walked straight toward the three of them, bellowing all the way, as usual. “All right, Mr. Kettle. My apologies again for cuttin’ off a wee bit o’ your hand, but I’ll be bettin’ the remaining stump is still bigger than the wee bit dangling between your legs!”

  “She has an affinity for imagery,” Haley commented just before the qarlden arrived.

  “Let’s continue your lessons, shall we?” Brenna pointed to the cutlass hanging from Kettle’s belt. “Yah bloody craven monkey humper,” she added.

  “What’s she saying?” Dallas asked.

  “Never mind,” Kettle told him. He then pulled out his cutlass.

  Brenna had a short sword. “I’ve decided something,” she said while branding a short sword. “Do you want to know what I’ve decided, Mr. Kettle?”

  “Yes.” He tried to mask the shakiness in his voice that usually appeared when talking to any of the pirates, but especially Brenna.

  “I’ve decided that you lack motivation. You are a very slow learner, you see. Dallas here is much faster. I think it’s because we haven’t motivated you to a sufficient extent, you lazy turtle shite.”

  Kettle was learning that turtle shite was a very popular swear word in Maelian. Its use was frequent among most of the women on the Epoch, and even the usually creative Brenna relied on it sometimes when she ran out of other vulgarities.

  “I’m very motivated,” he told her, sensing where this was going.

  “Obviously not! How else might we explain your lack of progress? For the love of the Five, what would happen to you in a real fight? What about your friends over there? What if they were depending on you to watch their back in a fight? Fuck me, I’d rather have my nipples tickled by a shimmer shark than have you fighting by my side!”

  Kettle tried to purge the imagery from his mind. “I’ll try harder,” he said lamely.

  “Precisely what I had in mind!” barked the qarlden. “And if the effort you put in doesn’t make me happier than a tray full of creamy lemon tarts, I’m going to take off another of your fingers. Now how’s that for some fucking motivation?”

  He couldn’t help glance at his missing pinky and then over at his still whole ring finger. His stomach suddenly felt weak.

  “By the Five! Are you going to have a wee cry like a little boy who stubbed his toe?”

  “No,
” he told her. “Sorry, I’m ready now. I’ll be better. I promise.” This was like getting scolded by a vicious kindergarten teacher, but with far deadlier consequences.

  “Good! Now get into the first defensive stance I showed you yesterday and get ready.”

  And so began another long, grueling session of getting his ass handed to him. First they ran through a series of drills designed to get him to ward off incoming strikes. She tried to teach him to block her incoming sword in such a way that it would open her up for a counterstrike. This was followed by some role-switching; she would go on the defense and let him practice trying to chop her head off.

  Kettle tried to follow Lofi’s advice, looking toward Brenna’s shoulders and hips, trying to interpret the body movements of the big woman and how those movements might predict different attack patterns. It didn’t seem help much.

  It was hard to tell how much time had passed as the session wore on. He felt like he had more energy than in the previous few days, but that may have been due to the cooling rain rather than improvements in his technique. Sweat was pouring down his face, but he wasn’t suffering from exhaustion. Even still, he struggled against his own frustration. He desperately wanted to get better at this.

  During a pause between drills, Brenna gave him a disgusted look. “Which finger do you want to lose next?” she snarled.

  “None,” he replied with one hundred percent honesty and tried to summon more strength and speed from deep down inside. Kettle saw an opportunity. He noticed that when she pivoted to keep up with his change of direction, she had to shift her weight from one leg to the other. There must be a way to take advantage of that. Perhaps he could force her off balance by appearing to come in from the right and then weaving over to the left.

  He dashed around to Brenna’s right side, almost at full running speed. He watched her weapon come up to belt him as he came in, just as he hoped she would do. Kettle then did his best Roger Federer impression, planting his lead foot onto the deck and laterally reversing direction with his cutlass outstretched toward the left where he could come around behind her defenses.