"Well...were you?"
"Was I what?"
"A cowgirl."
"Yes."
"Really?"
"That's how I learned to shoot. It's rough territory around Los Gatos. Pretty much everyone there is a half decent shot. I got a lot of practice on my grandmother's ranch."
"How the hell did you end up in the Navy?"
"I don't like the Spanish." She didn't elaborate.
David took aim at the bottles again. He missed.
"Imagine those bottles are the guys who tried to take you," she said. "Imagine what they would have done to you. Imagine what they're doing to your professor." Her eyes were hard, her mouth a thin line. David had never seen her express this level of emotion before.
"What did they do to you?" he asked, almost whispering.
"My parents," she said.
He said nothing.
"My parents were ranchers on the Austin-Estrella border. One day, my father sent me out to find some heads that had run away during a storm the night before. When I got back, our ranch house had been burned. I didn't bother looking for the bodies, but I knew they were dead. A Spanish death squad had made a border raid. It happened all the time in those days. I was nine."
"They took everything I cared about. Everything I cherished. I was in shock when I got back to the ranch. I didn't notice that the Spanish were still there. They took me, stripped me naked, beat me. They..."
She stopped. Her face was still expressionless, but she'd turned ashen.
"Their leader was a tall, blonde man. They called him Pollo. He was the worst."
She took David's pistol, fired two shots, and again shattered the bottles. She set up two more.
"They were going to march me back over the border, but I got away in the night. I don't think they were trying very hard to keep me. I was just something they were having a little fun with. They were probably planning on killing me."
"Good God," said David. "I'm so sorry."
She shrugged, she was returning to her normal self. "I eventually made my way to the closest town and told the authorities. Because we were Latinos, they didn't care. The local sheriff took my parent's land and sold it for a profit. He claimed that they were illegal immigrants.
"In my mind," she spat. "That was worse then what the Spanish did to my family. The Americans ruined my family's name, and left their corpses to rot in the Austin sun. I eventually made it to my grandmother's ranch. She ended up raising me. It wasn't the life for me, though. Not after what had happened. I went over the border and lived in Estrella for a while. I eventually found Pollo. It took me a while, but I did it."
David didn't ask what she did with him when she found him.
"That's why I hate the Spanish."
CHAPTER EIGHT
The ship was beaten, battered, and dented, but she was a damn pretty sight to Harriet.
Harriet's position at the bottom of the loading platform gave her a view of the U.S.S. Calista in all her glory. This was the end of a busy morning. The past few days had been spent making sure she actually had a crew to run the ship. She had been a bit worried. There were a lot of sailors in port, and almost all of them were already spoken for by captains senior to her. She was hoping not to get stuck with a large proportion of impressed sailors, drafted hands who were the dregs of society. These often included drifters, convicts, and mad men. Even the poor souls who had enlisted out of love of their country were a handicap. They knew nothing about life on a ship, the rules of the Navy, or how to do their job efficiently. They required on the job training.
But she had been lucky. A number of sailors in dock were itching to get off-planet and many of these had worked under her in previous commands. She had made a name for herself, and her most recent daring escape from the clutches of the Spanish had elevated her from a Naval household name to something akin to a swash-buckling god. Any commander that could achieve what she had must be a proper sailor. She eventually had to turn hands away and she was able to fill out her roster within a few hours.
No, the main time sink had been provisioning the ship. The dockyard was in disarray. Every ship was being refitted and repaired. This necessarily meant that the scarcity of materials that is always common in shipyards was even worse. Guns, food, water, parts, and all the things that were required for a ship to function often went to the most senior captains, and more often, to captains who were willing to grease the wheels of the bureaucracy with cold hard cash.
Luckily for Harriet, her first lieutenant was more than capable of intimidating the shipyard clerks into submission. Lara was not afraid of throwing Harriet's new found favor in their faces and threatening that heads would roll if the cheese order was not filled, or if the newest cannons were not loaded within two days. Harriet smiled.
Her morning had been spent at the Naval office. She'd waited for the admiral for several hours. He couldn't meet with her, but she was given sealed orders to be opened once she was twenty-four hours away from New Boston. This was strange, but those were the orders.
She saw Marr climbing down the ladder.
He had been the center of some confusion early in the day. He had received Naval orders posting him to the Calista as the Master Engineer, an amazing accomplishment given his age. Later in the morning, he was given orders from the Naval attaché at the university to report to the Miskatonic research institute. It took several hours to resolve the discrepancy, but the orders to take a post on the Calista came from higher up in the food chain than the university orders. She had also learned through the admiral's secretary that Governor Wu had an interest in seeing that Marr left the star system at the earliest possible moment, preferably to a location that was going to see intense combat. She admired Marr's ability to make such a powerful enemy so quickly.
"Interested in food, Marr?"
He nodded, nervously, "Sounds good, Ma'am."
They found a small seafood stand, serving the feathery mollusks that New Boston was so famous for.
"No more trouble with carriages, I assume?" she asked.
"None." He had started carrying his service pistol, though he knew he had as much chance of stopping someone with it as he did with one of the mollusks he was eating. Lara and Harriet knew about the attempted kidnapping, but no one else. He wasn't sure who he could trust, and he was nervous about the fact that he was possible linked to a murder.
"There is something I wanted to talk to you about," he said.
"Let's have it."
"I have a new engine design based on that rig I put together in the lifeboat. The advantage of it is that it saves coal and I think it could move us faster than the standard engine."
"How fast?"
"I think we could get a twenty percent increase in efficiency."
"Wow."
"Exactly. It could give us a huge advantage! The entire fleet could run circles around the Spanish. We could win the war in a few months and then be home by Christmas."
David started to go into the details of the design, and he sensed that Harriet's attention was not wholly with him. "I'd like to build a prototype to use with the Calista."
She almost spit out her drink.
"You want the Calista to be your guinea pig?"
"I wouldn't put it like that..."
"This isn't an experiment in your lab, David."
"I understand."
"The ship and her crew are my responsibility."
"I understand that too."
"Are there any risks?"
"I don't think so. We'd have to test it out first."
She shook her head, "Look, this sounds great, David. But it's too risky. I can't put the welfare of the ship in danger. Have you taken it to the higher ups? The Corps of Engineers?"
He looked disappointed. "I have, but you know how it is. I'm guessing I won't hear anything for months."
"Years," she corrected with a smile.
He sighed. He was the smartest engineer she'd ever met. She was half tempted to let him tr
y out the design, but she knew she couldn't. If it went wrong, it could mean a delay in fulfilling her orders, or even worse, the destruction of the ship.
"I'm glad to have you on as engineer," she told him. "You handled yourself well on the Dakota. Most midshipman wouldn't have been able to even think straight much less problem solve the way you did."
He blushed, shaking his head, "Fear of death is a powerful motivator."
"It might be the only motivator."
"I figured you for a mathematician not a philosopher," he said, smiling. He thought for a moment, "Why do you do this, Harriet?"
"This?"
"Everything," he said pointed to the docks and the direction of the ships, "Why are you willing to die for these people?"
"You mean our country?"
"Yeah," he continued. "It's not like this country has been great to blacks. They put your people on reservations that they knew were contaminated with gold. Then, when they discovered that gold was worth something, they tried to take it back."
It was true. The only reason the U.S. Government hadn't taken it back was because they lacked the political capital. White guilt. That, and lingering suspicions about the danger of the metal.
"Indians have had it even worse. They killed off almost all of my people. It makes me sick to think about it. My mother drank herself to death thinking about it."
Silence.
"I can't get behind this." He continued. "And so my question is. How can you?"
She thought for a moment. "It's funny that you think of it that way. My life in the Navy has nothing to do with the government."
This obviously surprised him.
"Like I told you, I grew up in Baltimore. It's a rough place, and I grew up there without any family. My parents had me on American soil so that I wouldn't have to live on a reservation. It meant that I was born a full American citizen. They dropped me off at an orphanage the day I was born." This was not uncommon. Blacks on the reservations were given only partial citizenship and there were many stories of families traveling off the reservation to have a child so that they could have a better life.
"I've heard of that sort of thing," said David. "It's hard to imagine what they must have gone through. They must have really thought you'd be better off."
"I don't know that they were wrong. Life on the reservations was hard before the gold mines were nationalized. It was a different time then. But growing up in the orphanage was also hard. No one wanted to adopt a black kid. By the time, I was twelve I was hustling on the streets, running errands for the local opium gangs."
She stopped. "Do you want a drink?"
"Sure."
She called over the waitress and ordered two beers that came in large cool mugs. They sipped in silence for a while, enjoying the relief from the heat.
"It's not a time of my life I really like to think about. Lets just say that I was eager to get out of Maryland. I wanted off-planet. I had dreams of seeing the wonders of the Caliphate, but I would have gone anywhere that wasn't Baltimore. I eventually stowed away on a cruiser."
"How is that even possible," said David smiling. "That's the kind of thing you read about in books. How does a kid sneak aboard a U.S. Navy vessel?"
"It was pretty easy, actually. One of the local canneries provisioned the Navy base. I snuck into one of their warehouses one night. I was pretty good at breaking and entering and snuck into a food container. The container was taken on base and eventually loaded onto one of the ships. It was the perfect plan. I had plenty of food and water to last me. I figured I'd just sneak out to stretch my legs or use the bathroom."
"Your plan was to spend the entire transit in there?" said David. He was incredulous. "It could have been months."
"I was just a kid. I didn't really think it through."
They finished their beers, and David ordered another round.
"Needless to say, they caught me the first time I went out to use the bathroom. I got taken to the Captain. It's still completely clear in my head. His name was O'Neill. He was a skinny bastard with crazy red hair. He took one look at me, raising his scraggly head from the papers on his desk and said throw her overboard."
"I peed myself I was so scared," she laughed. "Now looking back on it, he must have been kidding. Captains don't do that anymore, but I didn't know that at the time. I didn't know anything about anything in the Navy. I started crying, and he looked at me again with a twinkle in his eye. He was pretty twisted, but fundamentally a good person. He said, 'On second thought, we need some help in the galley. It'd be a shame to waste a worker. You up for it?'
"I agreed, of course, and spent the next month cleaning the head, serving food, and keeping the kitchens clean. I was on that ship for a two year tour. It changed my life."
"Let me guess," said David. "It inculcated you with a sense of duty, honor, and patriotism." They had drunk quite a bit at this point. He wasn't feeling it too badly, but Harriet seemed more than usually talkative.
"No, not really. Over those two years I learned something about myself. I love flying through space. I love the order and structure of the Navy. This world is strange and unpredictable. The Navy is not. It's lovely in its consistency. That order is something that I craved at the time, and now, it's a part of who I am. I cherish it."
"So what's your point?"
"Well, I guess my question for you is, what do you cherish?"
When they finally left the tavern, David realized that he had drunk a good deal more than he had thought. So had Harriet. They made their way through The Curve back towards the ship to continue with the preparations.
He heard a shout. Carriage wheels. A pistol shot. Screams. He was on the ground.
Harriet was above him. She did not have her pistols with her, but she deftly slipped David's out of his holster and fired at a carriage that was twenty yards further down the street. The street had been crowded, but as soon as shots were fired, the streets cleared. Sailors, who had been drinking and eating at street tables, ducked for cover.
David felt himself all over. Was he hit? No. Harriet must have knocked him down.
Men jumped out of the carriage, shooting as they ran towards them.
They scrambled up. She pushed him towards an alley. "Get back to the ship!" she yelled. Then she shouted, "Help! Thieves! They're trying to rob an officer!" and followed David down the alley.
Her uniform and her shouts snapped the sailors on the street out of their daze.
"What's this?" shouted a large sailor.
He picked up a nearby chair from a restaurant patio and hurled it at the carriage men. Shouts filled the street. Two of the men were surrounded by dozens of angry sailors.
David and Harriet ran. She looked back. They were still being pursued. The alley opened up to a large public square. It was filled with sailors, businessmen, women taking a walk, and children playing. David hoped the crowd would deter their pursuer.
More shots. A scream. David turned around. Two women who looked about seventeen were screaming and crying on the ground. A man beside them was not moving. David was able to get a better look at the men chasing them. They were two dark gentlemen, dressed in expensive suits, running with enormous pistols.
They took an alley out of the square. They were closing in on the docks, but David was unsure about their exact location. They reached the end of the alley. It was a dead end with a tall brick wall."
"Up," ordered Harriet. He was able to jump and grab the top of the wall, and she gave his feet a helpful shove over the top. He landed hard on the other side, but the adrenaline dulled the pain. He jumped up to help her down.
"Run!" she yelled from the other side of the wall.
"No way!" he said.
"I've got a pistol, remember? Go!"
He hesitated. Then he ran towards the docks.
More shots.
He stopped in his tracks. He ran back to the wall and heard a scuffle. A noise. It stopped.
There were muffled voices speaking Spanish
. Grunting.
He looked around. The wall was perpendicular to a fairly large thoroughfare that had several alleys that shot off to homes and walk-ups. He ran to the closest alley, so he could double back to the square. Once he arrived at the corner, he scanned the entrance of the alley that they'd originally run down. He waited.
The square was filled with confusion. Crowds had formed around the fallen women and the police were on the scene, trying to maintain order.
The two men eventually appeared. Between them was Harriet. She was being supported by the two of them, arms over each of their shoulders. She must have been unconscious. Otherwise, she would have raised holy hell. They laughed and swayed, singing a song. They looked like two drunken businessmen helping a passed out officer buddy walk back to the port. They went unnoticed in the confusion.
What do you cherish? Her voice was crystal clear, as if she were right behind him instead of being whisked away by homicidal maniacs. Everything that he cherished was being taken from him: his father, his academic career, and now his best friend Harriet. Running hadn't stopped it. It wouldn't end until he finished it.
Upon realizing this, he felt a sense of peace.
He followed them, trying to keep his distance. They walked out of the square into a heavily trafficked road.
Before he could consider the monumental stupidity of what he was doing, they stopped. They hailed a coach. It pulled along the side of the road. They lifted Harriet inside.
David walked towards the coach, timing his approach so that just as the coach was about to move, he could sit on its rear bumper. This was a common practice among folks who didn't have money to pay a fare. The drivers didn't mind as long as they had a full cab, and David had perfected the practice while living in Champaign. As he sat, he stared behind the coach, heart racing. If they took him for a fellow looking for a cheap ride, and there was no reason why they wouldn't, he'd be able to find out where they were taking her. If they noticed him, the upshot would be that he probably wouldn't feel the back of his head being blown off.
The Gold Engine (The Gold Chronicles) Page 11
