Children of Zero

by Andrew Calhoun

  Kettle suddenly noticed that his hands hurt like hell. His knuckles were bleeding and there was a throbbing sensation going on in the back of his right hand in particular. He paid it no heed.

  Not wasting any time, he rolled the Saffisheen over onto her stomach, pulled her arms behind her back and sat down on her again, using his weight and the pressure he was applying on her arms to make sure that she wouldn’t be able to escape once she regained her capacities.

  “Saeliko!” Haley called out. “Saeliko, get up!”

  Kettle watched as Saeliko shakily got herself up onto her feet. The younger Saffisheen’s own tattoo was covered in blood from an ugly wound on her forehead, and both arms had various cuts and gashes, presumably the aftereffects of shrapnel from the grenade launcher. Kettle could also see the shredding that the back of her black, sleeveless jerkin had taken. The flesh beneath was a mess.

  “Don’t try anything or I’ll shoot you,” Haley told her. The Korean ornithologist held the big assault rifle with her right hand on the grip and her left the underside of the front hand guard.

  “What are you doing?” Saeliko asked, one elbow leaning on what remained of the shattered tree beside her to keep her steady. Her voice was husky, and it was clear that she was mentally trying to push the pain aside.

  “Improvising,” Haley said.

  “Being proactive,” Kettle added.

  Saeliko nodded and smiled despite her wounds. Splotches of blood pooled around her lips, giving her smirk a macabre touch. Her free hand came to rest on the grip of her flintlock, which was still in its holster on her belt.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Haley told her.

  Saeliko gave Haley a long look and then shrugged. Her hand came off the pistol. She straightened her back and rotated her shoulders, groaning as the mauled skin shifted over her muscles. The harker then slowly walked toward Kettle, though she took a moment first to spit out some blood that had collected in her mouth.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” Haley warned.

  The younger Saffisheen ignored her and lowered herself to her hands and knees right in front of the older Saffisheen trapped beneath Kettle’s weight. Saeliko, long wisps of hair coming down off the top of her head and sticking to the blood on her face, looked at her adversary curiously. Her green eyes practically burned with intensity. “Janx,” she said with no small amount of loathing. “Wake up, Janx. Time for your last words, you pathetic, sanctimonious old sea cow.”

  “You’re not going to kill her,” Kettle said.

  “Oh yes I am,” Saeliko stated. “I very much am.” She reached over and picked up Janx’s long knife from where it had fallen after Kettle’s surprise attack.

  Janx finally came to her senses and saw Saeliko with the knife in hand. She suddenly strained against Kettle’s restraining maneuver but he responded by pushing down harder on her body and straining her trapped arms to near breaking point.

  “Want to hear something funny?” Saeliko inquired. She was looking into Janx’s eyes, and Kettle found himself becoming more and more uncomfortable with Saeliko so close. He felt like he was the chain holding the goat in the T-Rex enclosure at Jurassic Park.

  “What?”

  “I never believed that the Five and Twenty-four were out there. I never believed they cared about womankind. I never believed they interfered in our affairs. I thought they were the absent architects, a bunch of carefree trouble-makers that created the world all those eons ago and then left us women to our own devices. That is, if they even existed at all.”

  “Heathen.”

  “Oh yes, very much so. I was a heathen, a non-believer. But you weren’t. You always prayed so hard, didn’t you? You always sat in that absurd chair and communed with the Five, asking them to impart their wisdom upon you and guide your actions, asking them to give you power over your enemies, asking them to put aside whatever it was that they were doing at that moment just so they could fly down from Karramoor and bless you with their favor.” Saeliko bent down further and moved even closer so that her face was no more than a foot away from Janx’s face. “Where are the Five now?” she asked in a whisper. “Why have they favored me, a heathen, and treated you so poorly?”

  “At least I’ll go to Karramoor,” Janx retorted.

  “And I won’t? Are you so sure about that? Look what the Five have done for me. You see, I used to be a heathen, but not anymore. Not since Butterfly Island. The Five brought me Haley and Kettle, and then they led me all the way to Radovan. It’s looking more and more that the Five have got big plans for me. But what have they done for you? You’re going to die here in the woods on a little Lavic island, a one-handed ex-harker with no claim to glory and no one to mourn your meager death.”

  “No,” Kettle said. “You’re not going to kill her.”

  Saeliko raised her glare from her soon-to-be victim and looked Kettle in the eye. “Yes I am,” she said. “I’m going to take this knife and shove it straight into her face. And then I’m going to go find Radovan and make him tell me all his secrets. And after that, I’m . . .”

  “You’re not going to kill her,” Kettle repeated.

  Saeliko lifted herself up and squatted on her knees. “Why not?”

  “Because if you try to kill her, Haley is going to shoot you.”

  “I don’t understand. Why do you care what I do to this woman? You don’t even know her.” The Epoch’s harker stood up and looked down at Kettle like an angry mother getting ready to scold a child. Or possibly beat a child senseless.

  “That’s not the point.” Kettle’s tone remained firm. He aimed to convey strength without seeming emotionally unbalanced. “We’ve followed your orders and suffered your whims ever since we came to your world. You put us behind bars and tortured us from time to time. You threw us into battle knowing full well there was a good chance we would get cut to pieces. You even tricked me into punching a prostitute in the face, and earlier today, you left us to get shot or drown in a Lavic ambush. We’re not going to take orders from you anymore. In fact, you’re going to start taking orders from us for a while, and my first order is to stop killing people that don’t need to be killed.”

  Saeliko turned to Haley and gave her an inquisitive look, only to see the Korean nod to concur with Kettle.

  “That’s right,” Haley added. “What he said.”

  “This day just gets more and more interesting,” Saeliko mused and spit some more blood out of her mouth. “Now let me point out a couple of things.”

  Janx, from her lowly position beneath Kettle, cut in. “Don’t believe anything that backstabbing daughter of a cow says!”

  “Shut up!” Haley and Kettle commanded simultaneously.

  Saeliko continued. “The first thing you have to know is that the moment you let her go, she’s just going to try to kill me again, and she’ll happily kill the both of you if you get in her way. Second, without me, you would have been shimmer food a long time ago. I don’t think you appreciate how disposable life is in the Sollian, Kettle.”

  “Okay, to your first point, we can just tie her up. By the time anyone finds her and unties her, we’ll be long gone. Second, speaking of debts, do you remember what you told me on the voyage here? Right after you revealed to me that you had sent Ollan to feed Numa a bunch of lies about jumping ship? I’m sure you remember. You told me that I owed you a debt, and that I had to repay that debt by the end of this excursion. Well, we just saved your life about three minutes ago. As far as I’m concerned, I just paid you back in full, and not just for withholding information. I mean for the whole lot of it. This woman . . . what’s her name? . . . Janx. She would have killed you had we not shown up when we did.”

  “Well, she would have tortured me, actually.” Saeliko looked back down at Janx and smiled again. Then she pivoted around to face Haley, taking a long moment to look at the two barrels – one small and one fat – of the rifle pointed directly at her.

  Kettle understood exactly what was going on in the
harker’s mind. She was rattled. Never mind that she had lost the mighty Epoch and nearly all of her crew. Never mind that she had just witnessed death and carnage all around her. Never mind that her back was covered in wounds and she had blood plastered to the side of her face. None of those things shook. She was hardwired to battle through adversity and come out the other side with blood on her blade and a smile on her lips.

  This time, however, it was different. It was that gun. That terrifying gun. She had never witnessed that kind of firepower before. She had never believed that there existed a weapon that could render her considerable skills impotent in a moment of need. What’s more, she was rattled by the implications behind that gun. She must have felt a similar disquiet when she saw the airplane fall out of the sky. With that vision came the knowledge that there were powers and entities far beyond her understanding.

  “Is this how you feel, too?” Saeliko asked Haley. “Tell me woman to woman. Do you feel your debts to me are paid?”

  “They are,” Haley said firmly.

  “And you’re really going to shoot me if I go ahead and kill this spineless dog?”

  “I don’t want to,” she said honestly, “but I will. More than that, I’ll shoot you if you don’t agree to what we have to say.” The Korean’s eyes were locked on the harker and her hands held the rifle steady as a rock.

  Saeliko paused and listened. In the distance, coming roughly from the direction of Radovan’s cabin above the sea, gunfire and explosions rang out. They could hear the screams and shouts of Lavic sailors between the bursts of bangs and booms. She looked over at Kettle and back to Haley again, finally nodding and raising her palms in acceptance. “Fine,” she said.

  “Fine?” Kettle mimicked.

  “Yes, fine. Your debt is paid; you owe me nothing. I grant you your liberty and all that goes with it. Now, tell me what you have in mind. I’m all ears, and to be perfectly honest, I think we should come to some sort of agreement in all due haste.” She tilted her head toward the sound of gunfire and screams.

  “You can’t trust her!” Janx blurted.

  “Shut up,” all three of them said.

  “What do you want?” Saeliko asked Kettle.

  “I want us to work together.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  “To what end?”

  “That’s where it seems complicated,” Kettle admitted. “But it’s actually pretty simple. The problem is that we both want to find Radovan, but for very different reasons. You want his knowledge, so you’re going to beat him up or cut off his fingers one by one or whatever until he tells you everything he knows. Haley and I want to find Radovan because we just want to go home.

  “So the solution is that we work together to achieve both of our goals. You help us get Radovan away from Harker Mikka and her crew, and after he tells us how to get home, he’s all yours.”

  “That’s your deal?” Saeliko asked. When Kettle nodded, she shook her head. “It seems like you need me more than I need you. Give me that weapon and I can get Radovan myself.”

  “In fact, you need us more than we need you.”

  “How so?”

  “One, we’ve got the weapon, and we’re not giving it to you.” Kettle knew his logic was problematic. Yes, they had the rifle, but there was no telling how many bullets and grenades were left in the thing. For all he knew, Janx might have already fired the last bullet. In any case, Saeliko didn’t need to know that, so he just plowed on. “Two, you need us to not shoot you and leave you for dead right now.”

  Another shrug. “Fine. Deal. We’ll work together. Now stop pointing that thing at me, and let’s go find Radovan.”

  “Not yet,” Kettle said. “We need you to do something first.”

  “Really? Did you miss what I said about all due haste? What do you want to do now, have a picnic?”

  “We need you to give us your word.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Look, I’ve recently come to terms with the fact that I’ve been living a life without much merit.”

  “I won’t argue with that,” Saeliko said.

  “I’ve never really taken responsibility for my actions,” Kettle continued, ignoring the harker’s jab. “I’m going to change that; I’m going to be a better man. I’m going to start taking responsibility for my actions, past and present. And part of that is admitting that until recently, my word wasn’t worth the breath it came out on.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “My word was worthless, but yours isn’t. I know that when you say you’ll do something, you’ll do it. I want you to give us your word that you’ll help us; that you won’t stab us in the back the first chance you get and leave us to bleed out; that you won’t kill Janx, and that you won’t find a way to screw us over. Give us your word that you’ll help us get home.”

  “Yes.”

  “Huh?”

  “Yes, well played Merrick Kettle. I give you my word.”

  “Umm, okay. Thanks.” He looked over at Haley, who lowered the rifle for the first time. “Then let’s go, I guess.”

  Saeliko grinned and then, without a word of warning, stepped forward and kicked Janx hard in the side of the head. The prone woman’s head snapped to the side and then flopped down to the earth. At first, Kettle couldn’t tell if Janx was dead or unconscious, but after a few moments, a dull groaning sound passed her lips. He stood up and watched her arms fall limp at her sides.

  “What the hell?” he asked.

  “No rope,” was her only reply. “Let’s go.”

  Kettle looked over at Haley, who just shrugged. He then noticed that Saeliko was gazing out to a distant point in the woods. Kettle followed her line of sight and saw a woman sitting down with her back to a tree. Whoever she was, she wasn’t moving.

  “Who is that?”

  “Lofi,” Saeliko answered quietly.

  Kettle felt a great pang of sadness. “Is she dead?”

  “Aye. Let’s go avenge her.”

  4.7 SAELIKO

  They were half way to the house when the shooting stopped. That meant one of two things; either Seventy-two had the situation under control or Harker Mikka had Seventy-two under control. Then she heard a few women break into a rapid discussion. They were speaking Lavic. That answers that.

  Depending on how many pirates Seventy-two had managed to kill or incapacitate, that was going to make things more difficult. Though the way this day had gone so far, she shouldn’t have been surprised. Apparently, nothing was going to come easy on the Skag.

  Nevertheless, the Saffisheen was optimistic. Players were slowly being removed from the board. She just had to use her wits and her talents to make sure that when this day was over, she was the last player remaining.

  She considered the strange couple stalking through the trees beside her. There was still much she didn’t understand about Haley and Kettle. They had dramatically transformed themselves since the day they fell out of the sky off Butterfly Island, both physically and mentally. How they had done it, she had no idea. There was an outside chance that they were extremely clever and had been playing Saeliko for a fool from the beginning. She doubted it though.

  One thing she was certain of was that she couldn’t trust Kettle, and not just because he was a man. She didn’t believe for a second that he was going to let her walk away with Radovan once this day was finished. It would fly in the face of his new moral streak. Owning Radovan meant owning the power to destroy people; it meant controlling weapons like those rifles, and it meant owning the technology to create the Big Bang. Kettle wouldn’t want that sort of death on his hands. He was going to break his deal and turn on her in the end, and Haley would help him.

  That was fine. Saeliko would keep up her end of the bargain. She would work with Haley and Kettle and help them find the answers they were looking for. But when the moment of their betrayal came, she would slit their throats.

  She cast those thoughts aside for the time being.
She was getting ahead of herself.

  “Hey, Haley,” Saeliko whispered.

  “Yeah.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “Gunshots.”

  “You came looking for me, or you came looking for Radovan?”

  “Radovan, to be honest. When we came up the trail from the waterfall, we eventually saw Maglipan and spotted the Black Star crew. They were starting to head up the trail, but they were moving pretty slowly, so we sprinted cross-country to get ahead of them. Then we heard some explosions and shooting. We followed the sounds and saw two people shooting at you – Janx and another guy with one hand and big shaggy, coiled hair. He ran back toward the house when he heard the Lavic crew show up. The weird thing is that I’m pretty sure he was on the airplane with us when we crashed.”

  “Yeah, his name is Seventy-two. He wants to kill you.”

  “Okay, that makes no sense,” Kettle whispered.

  “His name or his desire to murder you?”

  Kettle shook his head in confusion. “Both. Why does he want to kill us? Does he just want to kill people from the Epoch?”

  “No, you two, specifically.”

  “What do you mean specifically?”

  “He said he wanted to kill the two people with attachments on their necks. How’s that for specific?”

  “God damn it,” Kettle muttered. “Why . . .”

  “Shush.” Saeliko crouched and waved for Haley and Kettle to do the same. They were still some distance away, but they make out movement – a group of women huddled around the entrance to Radovan’s house – through the trees.

  They could also see signs of death all around the property. Bodies were sprawled around the yard, most lying still, but a couple of them moving very slowly and in clear agony. Saeliko could see one of the wounded pirates lying near the windmill half-groaning, half-crying, a bullet having shattered both knees. There was blood everywhere, and bullet holes sprinkled the entire front wall of the first floor. Part of the goat fence had been demolished by a blast and wisps of smoke lifted from the remains of wooden fence posts. The goats were nowhere to be seen.