by Anna Burke
“No, you don’t.”
“No, I don’t.” She grinned as adrenaline lit her eyes and the challenge ahead brought some of the life back into her face. Disaster was her drug of choice. “Shouldn’t you be figuring out how to keep us alive?”
“That’s your job,” I said. “I just tell you all where to go.”
“And when to go fuck ourselves. If we survive this, you owe me a drink.”
“How do you figure?”
“Rose,” Miranda said from across the room.
“Your captain calls.”
Harper made a lewd gesture with her tongue and shoved me away. I trotted toward the hatch, shaking my head, reassured by Harper’s ability to joke in the middle of a crisis.
••••
Someone finally turned off the alarm as we climbed the stairs back to the bridge. My brain cleared as the claxon faded.
“We need a contingency plan,” Miranda said, nodding to a passing cluster of sailors.
“Like what?”
“A place to stay surfaced.”
“We could head for the nearest station.”
“You know as well as I do what kind of welcome we’d get from the Archipelago,” said Miranda.
“Polaris is close enough—”
“We’re not going to Polaris.”
“There’s nowhere else, unless you want to take the ship into the coast, and that’s suicide.”
“Not the coast.”
“Which leaves Polaris.” I stopped on a landing, forcing traffic to swerve around me. Her eyes, blue-black in the hold, met mine.
“We could make for the islands.”
“Miranda.”
“It’s what, a day or two closer?”
“Depending on the currents, yes, but we need decent material. There’s no guarantee we’ll find that on Paradise,” I said, stumbling over the name of that island, “and then we’ll have twice as far to sail. It isn’t logical.”
“We can’t trust Comita.”
“No, but I trust Archipelago supplies.”
“I said no, Rose.” She softened the command with another swift touch to my elbow. “Chart a course.”
Back in the chart room, I pulled out the binder corresponding to my captain’s order with fingers slick with sweat. Miranda returned to the bridge to help Orca keep the ship stable while I sat alone with my coordinates and the taste of dread metallic in my mouth. Miranda’s decision risked crew and ship, and her refusal to listen didn’t make sense. I was her navigator.
Maps blurred as I visualized currents and dead zones. We were a two-day journey from the Caribbean islands, which was a distance I was more than happy to maintain. We didn’t belong on—or anywhere near—land. Especially not land marked by our recent past. I felt bodiless, floating, as I once again saw the pirate Ching Shih’s bloodstained sword at Admiral Comita’s feet, followed by Miranda’s assurances that Ching had been taken care of—neutralized, killed.
I wanted to believe my captain. I wanted to forget about the prisoner we’d dropped off on Paradise’s foreign shore, the slender body hooded and alone, and I wanted to forget, too, my own fear. I couldn’t think Ching’s name without needing to throw up.
Pirate queens and mutineers and admirals. Who the fuck was I in the middle of this?
The course was easy enough: follow the current, stay out of the swarms, and pray for fair weather. No doubt Miranda was currently barking orders to deploy the tie-downs which would keep our possessions from hurtling across holds and rooms, preparing the ship for troughs and waves and wind. In the hold, our trapped sailors would do their best to conserve their air. I’d learned the tricks myself in fleet preparatory. Deep meditation. Measured breaths. Counting, three breaths per minute, first flushing the lungs, then steadying. Panic killed underwater, but if I couldn’t get us to safety, we might all die anyway.
I returned to the helm at a walk. The ship boiled around me. Children were shepherded into crèches—not so different from the nurseries of my home station—while their parents lashed down anything that could move. In the hydrofarms, technicians would be draining the pipes and deploying algaeic foam to shield the roots. Kitchens would secure utensils. The laundry would seal the water tanks. Everywhere, people prepared for a disaster I was somehow supposed to avert as second mate.
“Jelly,” Orca said by way of greeting. The bones and shells in her braids clinked as she looked up.
“Where’s Miranda?”
“Back in engineering.”
Of course. The captain went where there was trouble, and it was not my place to wish her here with me when she was needed elsewhere.
I fed Orca the coordinates and the disturbances I’d calculated, and she adjusted our trajectory. Already I felt the list of the ship as the pumps purged water from the other ballast tanks. We’d be lucky if we even managed to surface.
A monster of a man entered the helm. My face split into a smile as Kraken sought me out, the tentacles tattooed on his bare chest and arms rippling as he moved. His shaved skull wore the mask of his namesake, and within it his brown eyes crinkled at the corners.
“Orca,” he said in his deep voice as he pulled me into a one-armed embrace. “Tell Mere I’m diving.”
“Tell her yourself.”
“I can’t disobey an order I don’t hear.”
“Why are you diving?” I asked him, fear contorting my heart into a misshapen lump of cortisol and dilated vessels.
“Parker’s dive crew is down a man.”
I craned my head back to see his face. He squeezed me and let go.
“Miranda will be pissed,” said Orca.
“Then let her piss. You know as well as I do they’ll be safer with me out there.”
Sweat prickled my armpits as I thought about Kraken and the engineers swimming in the murky waters near the surface with the threat of jellyfish from above and squid from below. This was my fault. If I hadn’t taken us on this route, then the valve might have broken in clean waters, and we could have sent divers out safely. Kraken shouldn’t have to risk his life for my mistakes. Pulse pounding in my throat, I said, “I’ll come too. I can at least keep a lookout.”
“Like hell you will,” said Orca and Kraken simultaneously. I shoved aside my relief.
“But what if—”
“—you get eaten? Yeah. Then we’re stuck with the captain, which is the only reason I haven’t tossed you overboard,” said Orca. “Besides. We need your freaky navigation shit here.”
“I’ve given you the coordinates. You don’t need me to—”
“You’re staying,” said Kraken. “You’re more use to the ship here.”
“Bring back some calamari,” Orca told him as he headed for the door. To me, she said, “Don’t be a fucking idiot. You’re not a diver. You’re a liability.”
“You always know exactly what to say to make me feel better.”
She showed me her teeth. I couldn’t quite call it a smile.
The ship rose through the water as the ballast shifted, the compressed air generated by the algae tanks forcing brine back out into the ocean. We listed farther to port. The crew gritted their teeth and adjusted their stances as the first tendrils of the swarm came into view through the plex. Yellow and purple sacs followed as the lower ranks of the swarm rode the current. Their transparent bodies moved with lazy purpose, the edges rippling as they pulled in water, then expelled it, bells hung to ring into the deeps. I wondered if Miranda had retreated to engineering to escape this view.
I still found it beautiful. Sunlight lit the upper ranks of jellyfish with reds and liquid purples that shifted with the blues and greens of the sea. The tentacles caught the light and sent refractions down to the bells of the jellyfish below. For all that they had the potential to damage my ship, and for all that they had marked my captain with their indifferent malice, there was an elegance to their motion that entranced me.
“Hey.” Orca jabbed me in the side with a finger and I snapped myself back to
attention. “Any way we can scatter them?”
Something rumbled through the deck, shrill with the sound of shearing metal. The ship shuddered.
“The fuck—” Orca said.
I ran for the hold.
Harper screamed into the steam of the engine room as I shut the hatch behind me. Her voice sounded raw as her orders fought to drown out the horrible sound of something crumpling. I slipped in a pool of condensation, righted myself, and grabbed her arm.
“Pressure tear,” she said when she saw me. “We’ve got to get the crew out of there. The storage rooms are breaching.”
I imagined water pouring into the hold, jellyfish drifting, hunted by the predators who followed them, and our sailors trapped there in their midst. “How many people do we have down there?”
“I sent Jeanine and a team to do some repair work in L7. They should have time to get out. Unless . . .” Harper’s eyes widened in horror.
“Unless what?”
She bared her teeth as another shudder shook the hold, then sprinted toward the etched map of the ship hanging below the busted console. “The system’s down, but . . .”
Again, she trailed off.
“Harp, where was the breach?”
Steam screamed in the pause before she spoke. “L7.”
“They’d still have time to get to the hatch before it sealed. Right?”
“They have three minutes.”
Less, now.
“Do these doors open from the inside?” On North Star each hatch, provided the airlock functioned, had an override code for crew in emergencies like this one.
“Tia,” Harper shouted at a passing engineer. “Override on the hatch doors?”
Tia shook her head.
Irascible Jeanine, always handy with a wrench and a quip. I held my breath. On a good day I could hold it for more than two minutes. We’d know if they made it out of L7 when my lungs gave out. Harper took in my stilled chest and expression of concentration.
“Screw that. Come on.” She pulled me toward the hatch to the stairs.
Our footsteps echoed in the comparative silence as we pounded down. The lower storage bays were usually empty of personnel save for a few guards. Several cats streaked past. Five guards clustered around the airlock at the base of the staircase, staring at it with rigid expressions.
“Who are we waiting on?” Harper asked them as she skidded to a stop.
“Two of your crew, one medic—”
The medic in question tumbled into the hatch on the far side of the airlock with his arms full of supplies. A guard opened the hatch on our side and yanked him out. Brine soaked his clothes from the waist down. There was no sign of Jeanine.
“How fast is it coming in?”
“Fast.” He panted to catch his breath. “Must be huge. Whoever’s in there—”
A wall of water hit the airlock’s window. Harper keened deep in her throat as it frothed over the far plex. I couldn’t even summon a curse. Curses were inadequate against the ocean’s fury.
“Get a dive team,” said the medic.
“They’re all deployed.” I’d never heard Harper’s voice so empty of life.
“If they got into a room in time and sealed it—” But the medic stopped. There was no way to seal the rooms effectively enough to make a difference. Not without a dive team on the way.
“How long will it take them to repair the valve?” I asked Harper.
“Too long.”
“Then we find someone else. We’ve got other tanks.”
The medic shook his head in resignation and answered before Harper could speak. “Not with the debris you’ll find in there, and if it filled this fast, there’ll be worse than debris. You need a team, not a solo diver, or you’ll just have more bodies.”
The froth darkened as the water level rose against the plex window.
Harper’s fists clenched. “I’m chief, and I say we send someone. Jeanine wouldn’t leave anyone in there.”
“I’ll go,” said one of the guards. “I know the layout.”
“You’re not a diver,” said the medic. I considered throttling him. Time slipped away with the air. Jeanine had been one of the first to welcome me aboard the Man o’ War. Her cutting humor and shrewd observations were not always warm, but she cared about her ship and her crew and had risked her life for both. For her to die like this was unthinkable.
“We don’t have time to argue this,” said Harper. The emergency oxygen tank in its plex case mocked us. “Fuck it. I’ll go.”
She yanked open the case and began fumbling with the straps. I remembered a tug and the sensation of floating as the Man o’ War rushed over me, and then the stars bright and hard in the ship’s wake. The memory shone with brutal clarity. Fitting—it was refreshed regularly in my nightmares. Cold sweat slicked my skin.
Harper did not stand a chance in the maelstrom beyond the door. Her swimming had only ever been passable, and in the darkness without protection or light she’d be easy food for squid. I, on the other hand, had been the best swimmer in our fleet prep class and could navigate blind. My throat closed over the words I knew I had to say.
“Rose?”
My hand rested on hers, I realized. I tried to speak again. When I’d offered to dive with Kraken, I’d known they would refuse. This was different. Visions of hanging at the bottom of a rusty ladder with Annie looking down assaulted me. Black water. Black sky. The diving knife strapped to my thigh and the weight of the empty tank on my back.
North. South. East. West. There was only one choice I could live with. “Let me.”
She tried to shrug me off, but I tightened my grip.
“Harp.”
I could see her running the calculations in her head. We didn’t have time. Jeanine didn’t have time, and Harper knew it. The cold, brittle look that crossed her face told me everything. She knew what needed to be done, and she was commander enough to swallow her conflicts of interest.
“Move fast.”
“I always do.”
She secured the tank to my back and nodded at the guard nearest the airlock. He opened it. I stepped through and placed the mask over my nose and mouth.
My resolve wavered as I faced the second hatch. Beyond could be anything—metal sharp as light, hunting squid, jellyfish, and mangled material that could tangle and trap me. Someone else could go in my place. I did not need to risk my life. This wasn’t really my fault. As navigator, I’d had no way to predict an equipment failure. Guilt was dumb. I was dumb. This whole damn—
The hatch opened.
Chapter Two
Water exploded. I braced myself behind the open door, waiting for it to fill the airlock before I faced the torrent. Seconds ticked by. The water level rose, and within it, as I’d feared, I saw a few luminous bodies. Their bells caught the light from the hatch window. My skin tensed in anticipation of pain. I felt for the pulse of their bodies in the brine, then slid out the door, wishing I had a suit and fins as I eased the hatch shut and cranked the handle. Biolight barely illuminated the water beyond. The hallway gaped like a broken mouth and jellyfish floated in its midst, mindless, drifting, their tentacles brushing the walls in search of prey. I swam as close to the ceiling as I could. Up here, only their bells touched me, not their tentacles, and I could see anything else that might mistake me for a meal.
The tear lay out of sight, and without seeing it I didn’t know the scope or the size of the predators to expect. I knew, as did every child of the sea, that squid could squeeze through spaces impossible for vertebrates. They stalked the horror stories we told each other as children. Don’t swim in the pools at night, we whispered. They can reach out from the shower drains and break your ankles. My mother had worked in the eel beds on Cassiopeia Station, and I used to worry she’d be eaten—or worse, that I would be as I helped her, swallowed by alien mouths.
These fears came back to me now as I kicked through the darkening water. At least this time I was fairly certain anything I encounter
ed would be a manageable size, instead of the monster I’d battled with Orca and Kraken months ago. A jellyfish turned in front of me, and a glistening strand of stinging cells skimmed my arm. Pain seared. I bit down on my mouthpiece in lieu of cursing, and swam on, my body tingling with the stinging cells clinging to my skin.
Most of the storage rooms were sealed. One, however, had ruptured in the pressure change, and debris floated in a cloud ahead of me. Barrels bobbed amidst the jellyfish, labeled with numbers and letters that made sense only to the people in charge of inventory. I could not guess at their contents; I only knew each barrel blocked my view of the hallway ahead.
The current stabilized as I rounded a corner. I paused, holding on to a light tube, and felt the settling weight of the ocean. Nothing rushed. Nothing spurted. Everything hung, suspended, trapped in the body of my ship. Only the jellyfish moved. I felt their lazy motions in ripples and electric static, and as my eyes adjusted to the murky light, my fear evaporated. Clicks and groans were the only sounds. My breath came evenly. I treaded water with deliberate strokes. The cardinal directions sang in my blood, louder here than on the crowded bridge. Ahead, a dark shape jetted toward a luminescing bell and enveloped it in a snarl of tentacles. The squid was no bigger than a housecat. Not a threat. I pushed off the wall and swam past.
My position as head navigator did not require me to spend much time in the lower levels. I was familiar with engineering only because Harper worked there. Harper had found a following among her work crew once she’d revealed her enthusiasm for moonshine. I tried not to begrudge her the ease with which she’d settled in. Nobody had cut her loose from the ship to drown. Nobody had beaten her black and blue. Nobody called her fleet scum, for all that she was more Archipelago fleet than I was.
A barrel thudded into the back of my head as I misjudged a stroke. This was not the place for self-reflection. Water distorted distance, and the debris field forced me to alter my trajectory as I swam down hallways and stairwells. One of the stairwells had an airlock that hadn’t flooded, and seawater pummeled me to the floor in the ensuing tumult of displaced air and held me down until the pressure stabilized. The next level, however, was just as flooded as the one above, and so I continued on—albeit more bruised than I had been before.
