Children of Zero

by Andrew Calhoun

  Over the next hour, Shen oversaw the voting, making sure the process was fair and anonymous. This was a new experience for the crew. Saeliko liked it; she wanted her sistren and brethren to feel invested in their joint venture. Sailors that chose their destiny together and stood to profit more from the outcome would tend to fight for each other rather than looking for ways to spare themselves from danger.

  There was a stereotype that prevailed in the minds of non-pirates that pirates didn’t think of the future, that they only looked forward to the next bottle of wine or the next rentboy at port. Pirates were thought of as the dregs of society that were incapable of envisioning a respectable existence. Saeliko knew this to be false. Oh, there were some among the Epoch’s crew that were short-sighted and overly attached to imbibing spirits and seeking out pleasures of the flesh, but there were many more among the crew that understood that life at sea was not an end in itself but rather a means to a more prosperous future.

  This was in fact the great attraction of piracy. These women and men came from places and occupations where such a path to financial and/or spiritual security had been prohibitively difficult to access. Aboard a well-tuned, well-led pirate ship, women who would have otherwise suffered under the yoke of strict class barriers could finally detach themselves from their bonds and take their lives into their own hands so as to pursue their own particular dreams. It was not too much of an oversimplification to boldly declare that piracy was freedom.

  Saeliko waited at the front of the ship, her eyes seeking out the Triumph. Brenna came and joined her harker after a time. The qarlden brushed some of the wet hair out of her face, evidently forgetting that Kettle had scored a direct hit to her cheek. She winced but quickly regained her composure. “Was a good speech.”

  “Think it worked?”

  “If I had to guess, I’d say aye, it did. Anyway, we’ll find out soon; I think Shen is tallying the numbers now.”

  “Good.”

  “There’s another matter that needs your attention.” Brenna sounded apprehensive. Saeliko couldn’t remember the last time she had heard uneasiness in the brash woman’s voice. She wondered if Brenna knew about the possible outbreak of Qomari Tears below deck.

  “It’s about Ollan,” she said.

  Obviously not the Qomari Tears problem. “What of him?”

  “Well, some of the crew think that you give him too much privilege.”

  “How so?”

  “They noticed when you invited him in to interrogate Haley after I cut off Kettle’s little digit. And they’ve been talking about how you talk to him now and again, just the two of you.”

  “The crew has noticed, or you’ve noticed?” Saeliko asked.

  “Both,” came the reply. “He’s a man in a woman’s world, is all. He should know his place. I’m not saying we should drop him off at the nearest port and not look back. The crew like him well enough, and he’s not bad with that crossbow of his, but harkers don’t heed the counsel of men. That’s just not the way it’s done.”

  “Turns out that Ollan’s not your average man,” Saeliko commented, still looking out toward the Triumph.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He gave me some information that might turn out to be very valuable for our long-term future.”

  “Information? What information?”

  “All in good time, Brenna. Let’s worry about the Triumph first.”

  Before Brenna could ask any further questions, Shen approached. “It wasn’t even close,” the plotter reported. “Looks like we’re going Triumph hunting.”

  “Good,” said Brenna. “Why go hunting for sardines when you can land a whale.”

  “Thank you, Shen,” Saeliko nodded. “Brenna, go get me Kettle and Dallas.”

  “Kettle and Dallas? Why?”

  “We’re going to need some bait if we want to land that whale.”

  2.10 KETTLE

  “I’m going to throw up,” Kettle declared with no small amount of misery in his voice. He was leaning over the gunwales of the dinghy as it lurched and heaved over the swells between the Epoch and Triumph. The two frigates were about fifty meters apart, with the Epoch’s dinghy now about halfway across the gap.

  “Because of the waves?” Dallas asked.

  Kettle looked up at him indignantly. “Not because of the fucking waves.” A bulge of acidic bile was steadily working its way up his throat, preventing him from giving Dallas a more thorough explanation. The Marine shouldn’t have needed elucidation in any case; the peril was blindingly obvious. Kettle torqued his body around so he could see the Triumph over the dinghy’s breasthook. The imposing vessel sat in the water with its sails furled and a line of brown-skinned Maelian sailors leaning over the rails. They were in uniform, blue overcoats with white epaulettes on the shoulder. He could see cannons on the main deck, too. Lots of them. There were also rows of closed shutters arranged over the width of the hull that were no doubt concealing more cannons.

  It wasn’t the cannons that were making Kettle ill. The dinghy was bringing them straight to the Triumph where a rope ladder awaited their arrival, which meant that when the shit hit the proverbial fan, Kettle and Dallas wouldn’t have to worry about being bulldozed by a bloody big cannonball traveling God knows how fast. Rather, it would be the hundreds of armed-to-the-teeth sailors ready to shoot them with bullets and stab them with pointy things. That was the driving force behind his desire to vomit.

  And then he did.

  “Ah, Jesus, garbage man,” Dallas said as the contents of Kettle’s stomach entered the frothy water beside the dinghy.

  “Fuck you, you jarhead cockthistle,” Kettle blurted, excess chunks and spittle dripping off his lips. “I think we’re going to die in about five minutes. I think I have the right to feel less than perky.”

  “We’re not going to die.” The Marine sounded sure of himself, though Kettle concluded that his confidence stemmed either from naivety or stupidity rather than intelligence. “It’s a good plan.”

  It’s a suicidal plan, Kettle retorted internally. And it’s going to get us maimed or killed, and I don’t know which is worse.

  The weight of everything that had happened over the past week was just now hitting Kettle full force. His psyche was attempting to interject, urging him to dial down the panic level and embrace a sense of calm, but it was like trying to erect a badminton net across the road to stop a sixty-mile-an-hour Mack truck. He was a waste management technician, not a damn pirate, and he was about to be pitched into a full-on naval battle.

  He couldn’t help but think it insanely inexplicable that he hadn’t been in constant hysteria since the moment his pinky had been hacked off by that psychotic wretch of a woman. In the days after becoming a nine-fingered pirate-in-training, he had even thought the whole experience sort of fun, for the lack of a better word. Like a vacation from reality, an adventure to tell his friends about.

  And then there was that brilliant, shining moment in his last sparring match with Brenna when he had belted her in the cheek. The exhilaration that had pounded its way into his chest in that instant was like nothing he had ever felt before. Visceral, vitalizing, salubrious; he lacked the vocabulary to give the experience justice. It were as if he had been born again. Not in the ridiculous religious sense; it was more in the I-just-woke-up-and-everything-suddenly-became-crystal-clear sense.

  But now any such buoyancy had abandoned him, leaving him to mire in the squalor of his unjust reality. He was going to die. It wouldn’t be a nice death, either.

  He supposed that he should be blaming Saeliko for this. The reckless woman was marching them – well, rowing them actually – to their demise. Yet, laying the blame on the Saffisheen harker seemed specious. In this place called the Sollian Sea, wherever that was, death for Kettle was really just a matter of time. Saeliko was simply expediting the matter.

  Saeliko had taken the time to explain her plan to Kettle in Maelian and then told him to translate it all into English for Dallas�
�� benefit. Phase one was already complete. The Epoch had made its way close enough to the Triumph to signal the latter vessel with a lantern that had a purpose-built open/close shutter. Kettle didn’t know Morse code, but he suspected that the lantern signals were something akin to that.

  Saeliko had essentially told the Triumph to stop and get ready for a special package delivery. The Triumph then signalled back that it was prepared to comply.

  Phase two consisted of Brenna using her bull horn of a voice to yell across to the Triumph once they were in shouting range. This had actually been possible from quite a distance because the rain had stopped and there was no real wind. The qarlden told those listening on the Triumph in her most dutiful, servant-of-the-Empire voice that the Epoch had picked up two prisoners that were wanted for execution back in New Dagos. Moreover, since the Triumph was headed toward New Dagos and the Epoch wasn’t, they had hoped that the Triumph would be able to handle the final delivery. Brenna was also sure to yell out that for a meager fee, the Triumph could collect seventy percent of the bounty from the governess.

  The key to all of this working, Kettle had learned, was that no one on board the Triumph knew that the Epoch was a pirate vessel. Ollan, who was also onboard the dinghy, had assured Kettle that no one in the Sollian could possibly know of the Epoch’s actual decision to raise the red, a decision made just before the bihaengi crash. On the other hand, he also admitted that rumors had been circulating among some groups in power that the Epoch had been on the verge of raising the red for the past few months due to its unprofitability as a privateer. So this whole endeavor had a chance of going tits up very quickly.

  The last phase of the plan, which as of yet had not happened, was, in Kettle’s opinion, asinine. Once the occupants of the dinghy climbed onto the deck of the frigate, Saeliko would ask to formally hand over the prisoners to the Triumph’s harker. When the harker stepped forward, Saeliko would kill her and, if luck went their way, the qarlden as well, thereby creating all sorts of confusion and lack of clear direction on the part of the Triumph’s remaining officer class. There was a chance that this would end all opposition, but it wasn’t likely, so Saeliko and the others would continue to cut into the foe with blade and bullet. The others included big Ollan with his axe, the blunderbuss-wielding Kalleshi woman named Mohdheri, scar-faced Amba, and a smiling woman named Jren, who apparently thought this was a fun outing. Imbecile, Kettle thought.

  Kettle and Dallas weren’t allowed to carry weapons since that would give away the ruse.

  Brenna was back on the Epoch getting ready to carry out her part of the plan. While the Triumph sat relatively motionless in the water, the Epoch was in fact still moving. Not forwards. Sideways. Kettle didn’t entirely understand the science behind the maneuver despite Saeliko’s brief attempt to explain it to him, but it evidently had to do with anchor placement and drift. Regardless, the end result was that the Epoch was very gradually moving closer to the Triumph kind of like a fat kid edging closer to the cookie jar all the while hoping that none of the adults would notice.

  The instant Saeliko made her move, Brenna was going to direct the bulk of the Epoch’s crew to begin boarding maneuvers as quickly as possible. Grappling hooks would be thrown, great, long planks would be readied to span the gap, and women would ready themselves to hurl their bodies from one ship to the other. At the same time, the shutters concealing the Epoch’s lower cannon ports would be opened and the Triumph would be given a good old-fashioned pounding in order to further entice its occupants to discard any thoughts of valor.

  The dinghy bumped up against the Triumph’s hull and Saeliko reached for the rope ladder, nodding toward Ollan before she began the ascent. Ollan then turned and pointed his crossbow at Kettle. “You’re next,” the big Lavic said. “Up you go.”

  With very weak knees, Kettle moved to the rope ladder and began following the harker up toward his bleak fate. He did Saeliko the courtesy of not looking up her skirt. Well, it wasn’t really a skirt; tassets they were called. But it basically looked like a skirt covered in metal plates. Instead of looking at her ass, he cogitated on the fact that Saeliko had a fair bit of protection on – her sculpted chestplate with the big cat’s head beneath her collar, spiked pauldrons on her shoulders, and the greaves running down her shins – not to mention the fact that she had two flintlock pistols strapped to her belt and her scimitar on her back. This stood in stark contrast to the complete absence of armor or weapons at his own disposal.

  Kettle clumsily pulled himself over the edge of the Triumph’s rail and found himself being stared at by a couple dozen uniformed women. Then, without warning, Saeliko grabbed him by the scruff of his dirty tunic and shoved him forward toward the center of the frigate’s main deck. Kettle stumbled and fell onto the wooden planks, and then promptly decided he was happy to stay right there.

  “Pardon my ignorance,” Saeliko addressed the crew of the Triumph, “but I don’t know who harkers this ship.”

  Kettle saw a gaggle of blue uniforms part to let an older, more weathered looking woman step forward. She was also in uniform, but her epaulettes were a shade of copper, and she had a slender sword with an intricate, silver half-crescent cross-guard above the grip. The blade looked more ornamental than functional.

  “I harker this ship,” the woman said. Her voice was strong and salted with experience. “My name is Mallequ . . .”

  She never finished. Her mouth remained open, but the sound ceased when she saw Saeliko in motion, perhaps realizing that the Epoch’s harker was in armor not for ceremony but for battle.

  Saeliko devoured the distance between herself and her prey. Kettle, who had known full well that this was going to happen, couldn’t help feeling just as surprised as the Triumph’s harker, who, incidentally, was raising an arm to defend herself, probably more out of instinct than a plan.

  The scimitar sliced downward with sheer, unbridled savagery, slicing into the flesh of the woman’s neck halfway between the collarbone and the jawbone. The speed and strength of the blow nearly took the victim’s head clean off. A fountain of gore sprayed into the air in an obscene display of horror.

  Things got very confusing for Kettle after that. He was still lying on the ground fairly close to the mainmast, and as much as he wanted to just close his eyes and play dead, his brain refused to oblige. His eyes began taking in the absolute anarchy that was unfolding in helter-skelter fashion around him.

  Ollan was yelling, roaring, blasting a battle cry. The brawler was swinging an axe at a terrified, white-eyed girl who was probably know more than seventeen or eighteen years old. Had Kettle had a spare moment to heave his guts again, he probably would have. Amba, Mohdheri and Jren were all firing their weapons. Mohdheri’s big blunderbuss was stupefyingly violent. Its barrel was short but fat and splayed out at the end, enabling a horrendous amount of shot to come blazing out to inflict grisly wounds on the cluster of Maelians standing in its way. Amba and Jren had more conventional pistols, forcing them to aim more carefully.

  The advantage of surprise had allowed the band to exact a heavy cost on the Triumph’s sailors; maybe a dozen women had been killed or badly maimed in seconds. And then things became even more confusing for Kettle. Shouts exploded out of mouths all around him. He could hear someone on the Triumph shouting orders. Maybe it was their qarlden; he had no way of knowing, really. But he could also hear Brenna, though still at a distance. The percussion of gunfire – first rhythmic and then random – rang out from the Epoch, and then all of the sounds together were suddenly overtaken by the deafening roar of cannon fire.

  Beneath him, he felt the entire deck shudder and reverberate like a pickup truck coming to a sudden stop by high-centering itself on a boulder. People all around him stumbled from the impact, and when the ringing in his ears subsided, he could hear some very panicky voices shrieking commands and warnings somewhere below decks.

  Blood splattered across Kettle’s face. He had no idea where it came from or whose blood it was. It
was warm and sticky. For some reason that he wasn’t sure of, he began looking around to see if he could determine the original owner of the crimson liquid on his cheeks and forehead. He never figured it out, but he did spot Dallas, who was just now springing into action. The Marine had scavenged a cutlass from a fallen Maelian. Just in time, too. A big woman was striding toward Dallas while raising a rifle to aim at his midsection. Dallas was able to swing his weapon into the side of her barrel just before it fired, causing the bullet to burry itself harmlessly into the deck. However, before he could bring the cutlass back around to strike at her, she was on him and the two went tumbling down to the ground in a heap.

  A shadow danced across Kettle’s blood-strewn face, providing him just a fraction of a second’s warning that his life was in real, imminent peril. His eyes caught the shiny glint of a cutlass cleaving through the air toward his head.

  Kettle’s brain had no response to the threat. Fortunately, the muscles in his body, no doubt directed by some sort of ancient coding deep within his DNA that had been carefully crafted and honed through evolution to enable the human species to cope with life-threatening moments just like this, took charge of the situation. He hurled himself to his right just before the blade could strike home. He then threw himself back to the left when she struck at him again.

  He immediately realized that this tactic wouldn’t work for long. He was a lake trout flopping around on a dock trying to avoid the fisherman’s club.

  Before she could strike again, he lashed out with his feet, first hitting nothing, but then ramming his heel into her shin. The woman grunted in pain and froze for just a moment. Kettle immediately reached up and seized the wrist of her cutlass-wielding hand, and with no other options immediately evident, he pulled her down on top of him so that if nothing else, she wouldn’t be able to swing that blade at him.

  And then he panicked. This was real. This was actually happening. This woman on top of him was going to try to kill him, to snuff out his life in brutal, animal-like barbarity. Kettle wanted to plead for mercy, but he knew none would be forthcoming.