Zero Site 1607

by Andrew Calhoun

  “We’re on the same side of the river we started on,” Haley pointed out. “Isn’t that bad? I mean, aren’t they going to come down this way with the dogs and find us again?”

  “Unavoidable,” Vasper said. “The Zero site is on this side, and anyway, I don’t think we can cross even if we wanted to.” He reactivated his hologram map from his wristband and studied it. Kettle and Haley looked over his shoulder trying to pick out blue dots.

  “I can’t see blue Caurfo dots anymore,” Haley stated after a few seconds of silence. There was concern in her voice, for obvious reasons.

  “No red dots either,” Vasper said. He was calm and analytical. “It just means they’re out of range.”

  “They crossed the border?”

  “Yeah. And there’s Jovis.” Vasper’s finger pointed to a blue dot on the right side of the map. “Looks like he’s stationary now.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “No idea, but he’s alive.”

  Kettle shifted his eyes to the twisty line that marked the river that they had just crawled out of. “What about us? Where are we?”

  “Right here. And there’s the Zero site.”

  “That looks close.”

  “Well, the river took us in the wrong direction, so we’re further away than we used to be.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, but look here.” He zoomed in the map and focused on the region next to the river. “They’re going to be coming down the riverbank, which will take them a while. We can cut straight through the bush here.” His finger made a straight line moving away from the river. “That’ll put us on this road here, which should bring us back almost to the field we were in when they found us.”

  “A double-back,” Kettle muttered. “What if they left some people behind?”

  “We have to risk it. It’s only a matter of time before they pick up our trail again, so our best shot is still to get to the caves as fast as we can. The road will let us cover ground quickly.”

  That made sense to Kettle. “Yeah, okay.” He looked over to Haley, who nodded silently.

  The three of them shoved another infuse-block in their mouths to get some more calories in their bodies, and then they set off. Almost right away, Kettle felt sharp stabs of pain coming from his ribs, and his breathing was labored and interrupted by the jolts of electric agony.

  He told himself to ignore it, to push it deep down inside and put all his concentration on placing one foot in front of the other. He tried to distract himself by thinking of double cheeseburgers and vanilla milkshakes. When that didn’t work, he tried thinking of beautiful, busty models in French maid outfits eating double cheeseburgers and drinking vanilla milkshakes, one of them accidentally dripping some milkshake into her cleavage. That worked for a while.

  He coughed hard and immediately regretted it. His front lower ribs felt like . . . well, they felt like they had just been slammed into a logjam.

  A couple minutes later and he coughed more violently. He stumbled to a knee and tasted the iron tang of blood in his mouth. Just get up, he told himself. Keep moving. Keep running.

  Haley was beside him. “Come on, slowpoke. We’re almost there.”

  “Yeah, just a quick stroll through the park.”

  “Yep. A lovely meander through woods and meadows.”

  One step in front of the other. Their steaming shirts had dried out, but the heat had fizzled away. It was better than running in wet clothes, but Kettle still felt miserably cold. He kept wishing that his Zero Stock DNA would kick into an extra gear that he didn’t know about, but there were no magic get-out-of-jail-free cards this time. He had to suffer through it.

  They exited the brush and came onto a dirt road, or what passed for a road in these parts. A better description would be two parallel tracks that weaved a narrow path through the forest. There were potholes, deep ruts and mud bogs, but Vasper said it led in the right direction, so they began running its length.

  The moon was almost directly overhead, and now that they were out of the trees, the lighting could almost be described as bright. In any case, it was bright enough that they could avoid the worst of the puddles and other obstacles. They stayed quiet as they ran. Kettle understood why. Even if they hadn’t been exhausted nearly to the point of collapse, there was nothing to talk about now. The die had been cast. Either they would make it to the caves, or they’d be run down again.

  Now and again, Kettle heard the sounds of wildlife – a bird chirp here, an owl hoot there. They gave him comfort. The unconcerned calls of little creatures meant the absence of predators, human or otherwise. In particular, it meant that hunting dogs weren’t bearing down on them.

  He couldn’t have said how long it took to reach the field where the wild chase to the river had started. It felt like hours, but it could have been thirty minutes. He didn’t rejoice upon seeing it. What he wanted more than anything was to lay down and go to sleep. Instead, he threw up.

  A medium-length stream of vomit poured out of his mouth. It surprised him more than anything else. In a moment of quick thinking, he spun his head sideways to avoid jogging straight into his own puke spray. He heard the liquid splat onto the ground and then came to a stop a few feet later to bend over and spit out some bile. Again, he could taste blood.

  Haley came up behind him and put a hand on the back of his neck. Her hand massaged his neck muscles for a moment and then tussled the hair on the back of his head. She didn’t say anything, but he felt better with her there. It flashed through his mind how stupid it had been to argue with her earlier. He had been a complete and utter stubborn asshole, too stupid to apologize and make things right.

  He stood up straight and looked her in the eyes. They shared a moment together and then wordlessly started running again.

  Vasper led them onto a single-track trail that began ascending the side of a mountain. It wasn’t steep at first, but gradually became more so as they stumbled ever forward. All three of them were in trouble now. Vasper fell hard twice, the first time tripping over a root and the second time for no reason that Kettle could make out. Both times, he got up without saying a word and resumed his trajectory.

  Haley began mumbling in Korean. Kettle could make out a few words here and there – he was fluent, after all – but she wasn’t making any sense. “The horse has a purple nostril. Two cups of dirt make a pancake.” The ramblings of someone who was half awake and half asleep. For a while, she spoke single words, each one a good ten seconds apart. “Complexity . . . stew . . . Philippines . . . cosmetics . . .” And so on and so on.

  It occurred to Kettle that Haley hadn’t said anything, and that it was all part of his imagination. Maybe he was going crazy. He didn’t much care.

  Dogs barking. Did he imagine that, too? Haley and Vasper both stopped. The three of them looked in the direction they had come. There was nothing to see, but they had definitely heard the hunting dogs.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sakes, Vasper,” Haley said, exasperated. “How much further?”

  “Maybe two kilometers.”

  “Can we make it?”

  He let out a long breath of air, tilted his head to the side, and said, “Fifty-fifty shot.”

  2.7 SAELIKO

  The Epoch charged the squall head on, cresting each wave and diving into each trough with strength born of the sweat and blood of the women who built it. Its red banner flailed and cracked in the wind, testifying to the ferocity of the gale-force gusts. Saeliko stood by the port railing on the main deck, feet planted shoulder width apart, shifting weight from one leg to the other to compensate for the ship’s undulating movement beneath her. The spray from the sea reached up and smacked her across the face, once, twice and once more for good measure. She took it with pleasure. The rain came in horizontally to make doubly sure that her clothes were soaked head to toe. A shiver ran down her spine unnoticed.

  “More speed!” Saeliko turned to make sure Brenna heard. “We need more speed!”

  “
Aye, harker!” the stocky qarlden yelled back. The woman began belting out orders to the crew, Saeliko watching with approval. Shen stood atop the quarterdeck, spyglass in hand. Amba ran between the fore and mainmast, rope in hand to secure loose crates that might otherwise slide across the deck and slam into the crew. Jren and three others raced to untangle a snarl of lines that had caused the foresail to only come two-thirds unfurled.

  And then there was Lofi. Calm, curious, playful Lofi. Ship’s surgeon, purveyor of wisdom and, most importantly, a trustworthy friend. Lofi walked across the main deck on sea legs. She had long since left the life of a distinguished doctor on terra firma in Mael’s capital, and she was as comfortable as any riding the waves of the sea.

  “Harker,” she said, voice barely audible over the storm. She tipped her head in deference but smiled warmly. “Are we closing in on her?”

  “Aye, we’ll catch her.” The Kalleshi schooner was out there in the storm, its main topsail yard and pennant occasionally visible when the squall permitted. “Before sunset, I reckon.”

  “What do you think she’s carrying?”

  “The crew’s been asking the same question. Brenna thinks it’s carrying quickspice out of New Dagos. Dommel wagered ironwood or bitterbrew leaves. Fat Rat thinks it’ll be wine, but he always thinks it’ll be wine.”

  “And you, harker?”

  “I’ve wagered they’re all wrong. There’s silver on the ship, mark my words.”

  “That’s your guess?”

  Saeliko answered with a wink.

  “Ah, I’ve long since deciphered the meaning of your winks.”

  “Oh?”

  “Aye, I have. You’re not so mysterious as you once were.” The surgeon said it not as an insult, but in jest.

  “Tell me then, what does my wink mean?”

  “As clear as day, it means that you know something the rest of us don’t. It means that while you’ve left the rest of us to guess and make bets, you’ve known for a long time what that schooner was carrying.”

  “I admit nothing.”

  “Your thinly veiled smile already did the admitting for you. And if I were to make my own wager, I’d bet that not only do you know what that ship is carrying, you also know where it picked up its cargo, which route it was scheduled to take and whether they have six, eight or ten guns to defend themselves.”

  “And if I know?”

  “Well, you could tell the crew, but that wouldn’t serve our purpose, would it?”

  “Why not?”

  Lofi tilted her head toward a half-dozen sailors trying to un-jam a jammed block and pulley. The six women were laughing and jabbering at each other while they worked. “Not knowing keeps them distracted.”

  “And happy,” Saeliko added.

  “Plus, it makes you look like a brilliant harker, doesn’t it?”

  “Explain.”

  “Well, you told them you had a hunch that we should hunt for schooners in a not-oft-used corner of the Sollian, and lo and behold, we just stumble upon a schooner. Amazing intuition, that! And your intuition will look even shinier when they crack open that ship and find silver.”

  Saeliko raised one eyebrow and then returned her attention to the angry sea. She spotted the schooner’s mast on the horizon dipping into a trough. The Kalleshis were trying their best to outrun the Epoch in the storm, but they were only delaying the inevitable. The Epoch was an old ship, but she was one of those rare frigates that had been manufactured for just one purpose – to hunt and kill. The builders had made her big enough to carry a full crew and plenty of firepower, but they had also streamlined the hull and designed the bow to cut through the water with as little friction as possible. The Kalleshi schooner was built to carry lots of weight and get it to port safely. Speed hadn’t been a priority, and now it was going to pay the price.

  “Just a theory,” Lofi said, mirth still dancing around the edges of her tone. “Feel free to call me a liar.”

  “Eight.”

  “Pardon, harker?”

  “The Kalleshi ship. It has eight guns.”

  Lofi laughed. “You’re wily for someone so young, you know. Tell me, do you know the schooner’s name, too?”

  “Aye, I do.”

  “And the harker’s name?”

  Saeliko ran a hand through her dripping wet hair to pull it back over her head out of her face, after which she gave Lofi a more serious look. “You love all this, don’t you, Lofi? The weeks and months at sea between ports. The sweat and the blood. The excitement.” She paused and searched Lofi’s face for agreement. “And the danger. You love that, too, don’t you? For better or worse, you take pleasure in it.”

  “Danger’s not such a bad thing, really. How many great achievements in humanity’s history would have never been achieved if women and men hadn’t put a brave face to danger? Besides, my old life was boring.”

  Saeliko knew about Lofi’s old life. She had been an up-and-coming surgeon in Mael with a bright future ahead of her. “You’re one of a kind, Lofi. Most legitimate doctors would shudder at the thought of piracy. They think of us as a bunch of degenerate imbeciles – a blight on civilization.”

  “You don’t know civilized society like I do,” Lofi countered. “It’s full of liars, cheats, backstabbers and power-mongers. You know what’s really funny? I had to leave civilization behind and come all the way out here to find honesty and friendship. So what does that say for civilization?”

  Saeliko snorted in agreement. “Is that what we are, you and I? Friends?” She waited for an answer while she searched again for the Kalleshi ship. However, the answer didn’t come. Instead, a strange gurgling sound came out of the woman’s mouth.

  Saeliko turned in surprise. Lofi was holding her hands over her belly, where Saeliko could see blood welling up and turning the surgeon’s white shirt red. More blood was coming out of Lofi’s mouth.

  Behind Lofi, Brenna lay dead on the deck, bullet holes scattered around her torso and legs. Jren was similarly sprawled out beside Brenna. Other women were groaning and wailing in pain, writhing on the deck from a variety of gruesome injuries.

  Standing in the middle with a contemplative look on his face, Ollan, the big Lavic man, stared at Saeliko. He had a cutlass rammed through his chest, but for reasons unfathomable to Saeliko, he wasn’t in pain. His eyes sought out hers.

  “Ollan?” Saeliko mouthed his name softly.

  Blood dripped off the cutlass.

  “Saeliko.”

  The Saffisheen looked around to see who had called her name. Not Ollan. The traitor only stared at her. But she couldn’t see anyone else that wasn’t writhing in pain or already dead.

  “Saeliko.”

  Again, she couldn’t find the owner of the voice.

  “Wake up, Saeliko.”

  She did, and for just a moment, couldn’t remember where she was. Eliska’s face looking down at her brought it all back to her.

  “You’re a deep sleeper,” the doctor stated. “Who’s Ollan?”

  “Huh?”

  “You were calling someone’s name. Ollan. He a friend of yours?”

  “No. He’s a dead man who doesn’t know how to stay dead.”

  Eliska leaned back and frowned. “I don’t know what that means.”

  Saeliko ignored her and got herself into a sitting position. Her face hurt from where Dallas had punched her. Her throat hurt even more.

  A brief glance at the cockpit confirmed that they were still flying. Mr. Toad had told them the flight would take five or six hours, so he had urged them to get some sleep while they had the chance. Eliska had decided to nap in her chair. Saeliko, Dallas and Soup had taken the more practical approach and crashed on the floor. Even better, they had taken her handcuffs off.

  When she had first laid down, she had thought she wouldn’t be able to get more than a few spurts of spotty sleep. In fact, she hadn’t had a good night’s rest since the Epoch. Dry land; that was the problem. She missed the old boat; the rocking back and fo
rth, the reassuring creaks and groans of wooden planks flexing with the ship’s movement, the smell of salt air wafting into the cabin. The Cloudrunner had its own motions as it navigated the skies, and its own sounds as well, but they were foreign to her.

  Surprising, then, that she had slipped into dreamland so easily. More surprising to see Lofi and Ollan, the former a pleasure to recall, the latter unwelcome. She pondered the significance and wondered if her subconscious was trying to tell her something. She reminded herself that Ollan wasn’t that bad. Her anger was clouding her judgment. Ollan had been honest about his intentions starting from the moment Saeliko had mutinied against Janx and claimed harkership of the Epoch. He had told her very clearly that his loyalty was not blind, that he would lend Saeliko his strength and support only so long as her actions weren’t stupid or reckless. Ollan was a pirate because he saw no other way to freedom. When he suspected that Saeliko’s luck was running short, he had betrayed her and switched sides because he believed her actions threatened his future. And when viewed with an objective eye, given the way things worked out on the Skag, it was hard to blame him.

  What would Ollan do? Saeliko wondered. If he were here, right now, in my place, what would the big Lavic man do? Would he put his trust in Eliska? Saeliko watched the doctor sit back in a chair and rub the sleep out of her eyes. Eliska was still a jumble of raw nerves. Trusting her wasn’t a matter of questioning her moral compass. No, it was a simple problem of whether or not her naivety would get people killed.

  Speaking of which, Mr. Toad was showing Dallas and Soup and open black briefcase with some sort of gun in it, no doubt in preparation of giving it to them and sending them off to fight. The Sage man was like Brennov; he thought he was clever.

  “Saeliko,” he called out after noticing that she was awake. “We’re nearing the drop point, and I need to go over a few things with you before we land.” He handed over the briefcase to Dallas and picked up a second briefcase, this one yellow, before approaching her and motioning toward the nearest vacant seat. “Please, have a seat.”