by Chris Howard
Wilraven shook his head.
Levesgue pointed to the chair, a silent command for Wilraven to get back in it, before he headed off toward the work being done on the far side of the Irabarren.
Broken Nose and the Cowboy were still a couple of minutes off. The captain dug out Paulina’s eavesdropper and put it to his ear. Nothing but static. He was hoping to catch some voice traffic from the approaching ship. The blue-hulled offshore vessel was still ten minutes out and Levesgue hadn’t said anything about it—although he was jumpier than normal. The new arrival was clearly stressing him out.
They waited, most of the crews glancing up from work every few minutes or moving to the decks to watch the ship approach.
She was called Katren, a big OSV that had to have five meters or more on the Marcene, thrusters low-powering the ship into position, starboard side to the crane platform’s north edge. She eased between the Irabarren’s anchor lines, bumped up around 1400, looking like a blue-and-white metal city that loomed over the aft stores, ROV control, and the welding shed.
Levesgue waved over his pair. “Get the crews of both our vessels rounded up. Everyone. Quickly.”
Guns out and swinging threateningly, the Cowboy and Broken Nose shouted for the crews of the Marcene and Irabarren, waving at one of the welders—Jack Minier—turning to rap on the shoulder of Walker, who was still masked up and bent over something small gripped in the vise. Cowboy took the Marcene’s gangway in three strides, cutting toward the bow and up into the structure to check cabins, offices, and the bridge.
Wilraven stood, kicking the lawn chair away. It collapsed on the deck with a springy aluminum snap. He wasn’t fucking sitting down for what looked like a boarding party waiting at the rails. Levesgue just pointed at him with a deadly stare. “Stand there. Don’t say a word.”
The crew of the Katren took a minute to get their gangway lowered to the Irabarren’s deck, but as soon as it struck something solid, two men and three women, all in slate-blue coveralls and armed with short, blocky machine guns, jogged down it, fanning out around the gathering crews of the two vessels.
The last one down the gangway could have been the captain of the Katren, a muscular guy in a white shirt and dark glasses, hair cropped so short it was difficult to say what color it was. He was a taller, angrier, stronger-looking version of Levesgue.
He smiled sharply as he approached, stretching his arms. “Who’s coming with me?”
Levesgue stopped grinding his teeth, his voice grinding the words out instead. “Reyes. Where the fuck have you been?”
Reyes kept his dark, glassy stare on him. “Something came up. Took us on a little detour.” He waved around the deck, at the close to eighteen crew members standing around, arms folded, waiting. “I showed up. That’s the important thing. Who’s going with me?”
“You’re not taking my crew anywhere.”
Levesgue spun on Captain Wilraven. The soldier wasn’t in the mood for talking. It was clear in the dark intensity in his eyes. He closed on the captain, blocked a punch, and took him to the deck, getting one fist up to hammer it into his face, neck, leaning back to put some weight into two lung-emptying, bone-cracking strikes to the ribs.
Then he snapped to his feet, jumping clear of anything a more capable street fighter than the captain might have rallied with. Wilraven rolled on the deck, curling around several new points of pain, including the warm spread of blood at his right thigh where Paulina’s tiny eavesdropper had been crushed, plastic edges cutting into his leg. He just lay there, breathing hard.
Levesgue had his gun out, waving at the crews. “I want every cell phone, every walkie-talkie, anything with a radio or microphone here on the deck. Now.” One stiff finger indicated a point two feet from his boots.
Cowboy came down from the Marcene with some scanning gear, running a looping sensor bar over the crew. Inda just said, “Fucking prick” when he took a concealed second phone off her.
One of the Katren’s soldiers brought a plastic postal bin, scooped up the phones, and dumped them over the side. A couple of the devices skipped sideways out of the bin, screens bright and flickering as they tumbled on the deck. He kicked them one by one into the water.
The crack of gunfire brought Wilraven up, blinking, trying to focus on the motion across the Irabarren’s deck. He was still on the ground. He had faded into the pain, maybe even unconscious for a few minutes; every breath came with a wave of pressure against his ribs.
Levesgue had a heated talk with Reyes, the captain of the Katren, something about where the crew was going, and to Wilraven’s fuzzy perception, it appeared that Reyes had won his right to keep things secret. There was some protesting from crew members of the Marcene and Irabarren, more threatening gunshots—that sounded as if they had gone into the air instead of into Dewayne or Olad or Inda, the three aboard who not only seemed to have no fear of death, but were a bit overzealous on the subject.
Wilraven swung his arms out, a wave of dizziness taking him by surprise. Angelo was helping him into a sitting position. “Just hang in there, Cap.”
His voice came out rough as he leaned to one side to find the Katren sailing off. “Who did they take? Where did they take them?”
“Almost everyone, including Clark. Just carried the bag from the walk-in.” His voice broke and he had trouble getting the words out. After a deep breath he continued. “The whole dive team, welders, the crane ops. Inda put up a bit of a fight, had one of the blue-coveralled guys in a headlock—and almost had his weapon—before they broke the hold and took her away in restraints. Guns on all of us. Better if I say who they left behind. You, me, the chief, two ABs—Miles and Jerry-- Tam Thadison from crane support, Jeanetta and Aramesh: barely a crew.” His voice soured on the next name. “Royce Cordell.”
Feeling the pain, he said, “What about the doc?”
Angelo glanced up at the Marcene. “Gone, but they left the two in the med. Kozcera convinced Levesgue they’re too dangerous to move: even has a quarantine sign on the door. I don’t know where he got it. Looks like something from an old cholera-epidemic documentary. Levesgue made Doc zip-tie them to the gurneys.”
“Fuck. Need to get up. Help me.”
On his feet, leaning heavily on the crutch, Wilraven looked around the Irabarren’s deserted decks.
Angelo whispered the words he was thinking. “Weird seeing her like this.”
“Yeah. Especially anchored out in the middle of the sea.”
Levesgue left them alone for another couple of hours, and the captain was getting along without the crutch, sitting in the galley with a hot cup of coffee—some of the fresh-roasted beans from the Errantes trade. The chief showed up soon after, followed by the ABs, Miles Shantz and Jerry Barke.
Wilraven looked over at Angelo, then beyond him through the windows. “Where’s Aramesh? Jeanetta?”
First shook his head, glanced around to see who was listening. “Levesgue locked them in DuFour’s cabin. Said he didn’t need them right now, but maybe later.”
Wilraven spent a few minutes wondering what that meant. Jeanetta was the Irabarren’s first mate. Maybe Levesgue wanted them as backup in case he had to kill what remained of the Marcene’s bridge crew?
All of them turned at the noise of tearing foil and plastic wrap, the walk-in door slamming repeatedly, and drawers pulled open and shut. Jerry looked up from a box of food. “Putting together some supplies for Jean and Aramesh.”
Minutes after the moon set, Royce came down to order the captain to the bridge and the chief and others to stations. Angelo led the way, making Royce walk ahead of him and giving the turncoat every impression that he wasn’t safe with his back to him.
Right at 2100, the Marcene’s engines were idling with a low rumble through the deck. Cap nodded to the first officer, and he spun up the bow and aft thrusters, pushing the ship away from the Irabarren and into a gentle counter-clockwise spin. Levesgue left Jerry behind as the sole crew member of the Irabarren—the only one wh
o wasn’t locked up-- and the AB waved away the Marcene with his arm raised high.
Fifteen minutes later, the Marcene had her stern to the lift platform, with the Serina Beliz floating on the air-filled sling bags over two hundred feet below, pulling lightly on the cables from the roller winches. She headed east on easy swells, the night sky full of stars, lights out and no moon in sight.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Damaris
They met Damaris seventeen miles offshore and ten meters down. Laeina led the way, holding Andreden’s hand with a confident grip. She told him to close his eyes, and he felt the slip of gravity for a second, nothing under his feet; then she told him to open his eyes.
That was it.
Blue water all around them in walls that looked like glass—an inverse idea of an aquarium. They were standing in front of an open doorway, and Andreden was trying to look over his shoulder for the way they had come in. Seventeen miles offshore was where they had left the boat, but it was as if they had traveled thousands of miles in a single moment. The sun seemed brighter, bolts of it shooting through the water, as if most of the day that had passed was judged inauspicious for a meeting, and time had been rolled forward to the next morning, with a new day’s sun bold and clear.
“What time is it?” His whisper sounded hoarse and harsh in the entry space.
Laeina ignored him, pulling him through the door, letting go of his hand as they entered the meeting room.
A wash of deep blue light, brighter ovals wobbling and shifting along the walls. Underwater, but in a tall cube of air with the sun coming in through waves above. Laeina didn’t look at all uncomfortable. Andreden watched her move gracefully through space and take a seat at the table, glancing back with a thin, inviting smile to him.
He followed, taking the last seat at the low table, a slender glass of water in front of each of them. He wanted to reach out and grab it to give his hands something to do.
Underwater—in a room made of an air-filled void in the depths of the ocean-- and he had never been so out of water.
A blond man, maybe in his thirties, in a tailored suit sat across the table from them, calmly watching them approach. He didn’t get up as Laeina took her seat. He didn’t ask for their names. Blond hair stylishly tousled, he looked like a surfer with a taste for expensive wool suits. Cold blue eyes like Arctic ice cliffs landed on Andreden. The surfer image was still in his head, but it suddenly paired up with a surfboard made of human bones.
Laeina had made it clear. Observe. Do not speak. Just watch and listen. We will talk afterward.
She produced one of her sheets of paper out of thin air and placed it face down on the table. “What are you doing here, Damaris?”
He smiled and appeared to read his response right off a marketing brochure. “Offering my services to the governments of this world, helping them reach for loftier goals, helping them get out of their own way, lifting them out of their own heavy footprints.” He looked at Andreden for another moment, frowning slightly as if puzzled. Then he swung on Laeina and took things in a completely different direction. “I know some of the others in this dawnworld with me: Baikuloph, Ameinôn, Diosemia, Eknephias.” He made a tight fist with one hand. “Baikuloph and Ameinôn I will destroy if they get in my way. Diosemia I will avoid. She’s a dangerous bitch. Eknephias . . . I do not know if he is still here. Once dangerous: I will keep an eye out for him if he surfaces somewhere. I still have water on my side. None of them work well with the sea, and the old ones who do—Akastê and her brood—do not venture far from their internal realms. The seaborn are the same-- powerful if confronted as a group in their own backyard, but you won’t find many who travel to the Thin or walk on the lands.”
He pointed a finger at Laeina. “You, now . . . You’re seaborn, but you’re different. I can see it in you.”
Laeina opened one hand, webbing showing, and gave him half a shrug. “We brought you into this world, Damaris. We opened the way. We protected some of you during the transfer wars. We hid the cloud-gatherer from his father. We are the Makers. We are the Telkhines. I am one of them.”
Damaris was nodding, but his focus was somewhere far away. “But not well-liked. The seaborn themselves threw you out. Hunted you down.” Absently, he said, “Yes. I remember.” He said the last as if he was digging through memories a thousand years old.
Laeina cleared her throat and added, “A long time ago. Change is in the tides.”
Damaris picked up the glass of water off the table, sniffed before drinking. He looked bored.
Laeina glanced at Andreden and then plodded on. “What do you mean by services? What sort of services are you offering the governments of this world?”
That made him smile again, a show of teeth, one side of his mouth sharpening with malice. “My specialty. Numbers and the machinery of destruction.”
She tapped on the paper on the table, and it flipped over to reveal the swarming shadowy shape of the ship-killing monster. “This? Ekhidnadai?”
“Nicely rendered, Laeina.”
He leaned forward to give it a closer look, then locked eyes with her. Andreden watched some silent exchange between the two of them. The force of it made her shake. She didn’t look away, but her words came out strained. “And what do these governments give in return for the use of your swarming ship-killing monster?”
Damaris broke first, turning northwest, waving in that direction. “Some nice men from this one, America, have helped me refine the breeding process.”
A crawl of fear inched its way up Andreden’s back, tightening around his neck. He reached for the glass of water in front of him, but just held it with both hands because he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t choke if he took a drink. Breeding? The mix of “machinery” and “breeding” seemed to bring the temperature down in the room.
For the first time, Laeina appeared angry and about to push things toward actual violence. Andreden set the glass down, readying to jump up and run for it.
“Your American friends have interfered with my family.”
Damaris casually waved the threat away. “If they’ve made a mess, they will clean it up. Or I will.”
Laeina sighed. “My sister is caught up in your games. I want her back.”
She kept the threat out of her words, but Damaris must have heard something hostile in them. “Or what?”
“I will . . . ”
“You will do nothing.” He pointed to himself, grinning. “Damaris is out of the bag, and you would love nothing more than to stuff me back in. But it isn’t going to work.” He pointed a finger at her, something deadly about the action. “Your kind is dead. The seaborn have dethroned you, driven you into hiding, and when you peek out to see if the coast is clear, they’ll take your head right off. The other eight houses rule the oceans, and their king has spies in every coastal nation. You were doomed two thousand years ago. You are extinct, Telkhinos.”
Laeina looked down at the glass of water in front of her, breathing softly and evenly. Maybe trying to regain some self-control. Andreden, looking back and forth between Laeina and Damaris, was about to reach out and ask if he could do something for her. He had no idea what they were talking about.
She sighed again, loudly. “What do you want, Damaris?”
“Ultimately?” He gestured inclusively to Andreden. “What do any of us want? A place to live. Security. A life of adventure . . . and a world in which to do or have these things. And here I sit with a Telkhines maker and a human without roots.”
Andreden looked to Laeina for cues, confused over what appeared to be an insult, but she held out a hand to him as if to say Let me take care of this.
Damaris saw the gesture, read it correctly, and turned in his seat to Andreden. “I would like to hear from the CEO of Knowledgenix. He clearly has a question.”
“Several,” said Andreden, just to say something while his mind worked on how this Damaris knew who he was. “First, what does ‘without roots’ mean?”
Laeina cut off Damaris, her voice coming out lethally soft. “It means he can’t go somewhere without you or me going there first, Jon. He has roots, things that tie him to a particular world, but you do not.” She waved toward the ceiling. “The universe is yours and mine, but not his.”
Andreden had no idea what that meant, but it did call up the dream he experienced while being tortured—of oceans that were single, world-sized organisms with the ability to travel to different worlds. Without thinking, he whispered the words aloud. “Oceans don’t have roots either. They just want to help others find theirs.”
A well-hidden jump of surprise flashed through Laeina’s expression, but she kept silent.
Damaris didn’t appear to hear him. He was right at the edge of politeness, his voice strident. “It means, Mr. Andreden, that I need your kind to make this world—and any new world—happen. I believe you took the ‘without roots’ as a slight, but maybe a better way to put it would be path-maker or way-paver?” Damaris smiled indulgently, as if dealing with an exceptionally bright child. “Or a guy with a machete, cutting the first roads through the jungle to a new land.”
Andreden leaned forward, pointing. “And what are you?”
Damaris leaned back, pleased. “An exile who has no desire to return to the Rootworld. There are doorways between the two, but I would see them all closed.” He waved around the room with walls of water and pulsing sunlight. “I rather like this one.”
Laeina leaned toward Andreden, put a hand on his arm with a meaningful look that he took to mean you don’t want to dive too deep into this.
Or he may have heard her words in his head.
Either way, cutting the conversation short suddenly made sense. It was clear that this Damaris wasn’t someone you pushed too hard without getting something bad thrown back at you. Her hand remained curled around his arm, her fingers cold on his skin. Jon, I will answer questions later.
