“Greenhouse repairs are done, and we’re sending the crew down island with extra bike wagons to help Zee haul some shellfish back up. They wanted to get an early start, so I didn’t want to hold them until after the morning meeting.” He waited for my grunt of acknowledgement before continuing, hitching a shoulder during the silence. “Some sheep are missing.”
“Missing?” I stopped walking and stared at his broad, entirely human face. Geordan had been too old for anything except nanite treatments when the world finished its free fall, and while that had been enough to keep him and his farming expertise alive, there were times I mourned the waste. He could have been more. The nanites could have made someone else so much more.
He kept his eyes forward and nodded, with an expression that was either New England stoic or too embarrassed to show his dislike of me.
“How are they missing?” We had no wild predators—Martha’s Vineyard was a small island, and we’d been here long enough to know what lived here. I’d inoculated or we’d bred just over 300 animals after the bombs started flying—our livestock and some well-trained dogs. Nothing big enough to carry off “some” sheep.
As I glared at him, the silence between us grew. After a long minute, my frustration cleared enough for me to connect the dots and understand. “The greenhouse crew worked through the night so they could get home, but they were supposed to be on watch.”
Geordan tensed, which gave me the answer moments before he nodded.
“And you approved it. You’re telling me before the morning meeting, so we can go after the raiders, and you don’t have to tell the collected heads you screwed up. For fuck’s sake, Geordan. Tell me you at least sent a runner to the docks to get the Ava ready.” I waited until he nodded, then turned on my heels and ran back to the main dock. I hated not completing my walk up and down the harbor. The unsettled itch of something undone would follow me the rest of the day, but better that than some assholes sailing through the world thinking we were an easy mark.
“Helen won’t be done unloading the Seven,” I muttered as we hurried, not wanting to make conversation, but not wanting to risk silence. I wanted him to be clear about how annoyed I was. “You could have sent a runner, and we might have caught Jim and his crew before they took the Biscotti out, but I suppose you just noticed.” Sarcasm streaked my voice, and I let it, not waiting for an answer. “The Ava’s the fastest ship we have, while they finish repairs on the Connor.”
The Connor, a forty-footer named for Geordan’s youngest brother, wouldn’t be repaired anytime soon, not until this idiot found a way to stop irritating me. I hated getting on my wife’s namesake, as it inevitably reminded me that all that was left of her was her once-favorite sailboat and two grown children.
Why hadn’t Geordan sent a runner? We had rarely been raided, and less often were such raids successful, but we hadn’t been able to empty all the ports in what was once Massachusetts. There were people out there who would take uncertain boats and unpredictable seas over looming death on land. With a bit of wind and a hell of a lot of luck, they occasionally made it here. Surviving their inexperience and navigating safely to shore and sheep were difficult, but it had happened often enough that patrols were still mandatory—or, they were supposed to be.
“Did anyone see them?”
“The greenhouse crew was already packing up when Sal came in with the herd count. I sent him to you, but he must have passed you somewhere.”
That wasn’t entirely Geordan’s fault. I tended to be out early on the days one of my children was away. Helen hadn’t been due back for another day or so, but I could feel a storm building. My daughter had a far stronger weather sense than I did, so I’d been fairly certain of her early return. Neither Geordan nor Sal would have had any reason to expect a storm before the clouds started changing later in the afternoon.
“I sent Red down to the docks; he was all I could spare. Someone had to tend to the chickens and cows this morning.”
I grunted. I knew it was a legitimate answer, but I had little patience for the head of Ag on a good day. According to the collected heads—Med, Ag, Repair, and Marine—we were more or less equals. According to me, as head of Improvements, with direct responsibility for saving nearly every human and human-adjacent life on this island, I was first among equals, and they forgot it at their peril.
My role also meant I had no business getting on the Ava and chasing after raiders, but with Helen newly returned, there was no world in which I was letting her ship back out without me.
She was already bellowing orders from the deck of her mother’s namesake when I reached the dock.
“Taking the Squid and the Telenovela toward the mainland. I bet they’re Nantucketers, but there’s no need to let them slip through ‘cause I got cocky.” Helen didn’t pause in hauling up the Ava’s small tender to shout the update my way, and I didn’t need to ask to know which crews were handling the other ships. Andres was head of Marine, from ship repair through fishing, and he didn’t allow anyone on the docks who wasn’t ready for whatever they got tapped to do.
“Red, tell the heads I’m going out on the run.” I pulled aside the runner Geordan had sent and gestured toward the meeting hall. The boy was gawky and eager and still adjusting to the latest of his upgrades. A nictitating membrane stuck halfway across his eye, and he blinked fiercely to clear it while I talked to him. “Geordan’s going to clean up the mess and host dinner for all of us at the end of the day.”
Geordan stepped forward to argue, but Red took off at a run, and I ignored him and hopped in the boat. Geordan couldn’t join me—one head on the water per trip, unless we declared an extreme case. That rule had stood us in good stead since a sudden storm and a lucky shot had cost us three heads in a single excursion 10 years ago. We’d avoided the mainland for a good two years after that.
Three missing sheep was no good, and raiders were a problem, but not enough for Geordan to deepen the hole he’d dug for himself. Helen shot me a look, but she’d only argue my ride-along if I got in her way.
“Lee, you ready?”
“Lines clear from the cleets!” Lee tossed the ropes over and jumped into the boat as Helen secured the dinghy that trailed the Ava on most trips. We were unlikely to need the tender on a hunt like this, but it was always better to have it than not.
Lee and Helen maneuvered the boat with the ease of a longstanding team. Lee raised the main sail while Helen took us on a starboard tack and got ready to unfurl the jib. I gestured to Tim, and we left them to it to set out the grappling hooks and unpack the weapons.
The headwind was strong, so we’d lose some time cutting the angles clear of the harbor, but our quarry would be encountering the same obstacles, and I could guarantee they didn’t have someone with Helen’s sense of direction on the rudder. I had given several of our Marine members adaptative cryptochromes that allowed them to orient against Earth’s magnetic field. Whether it was because of her age or my motivation or both, Helen had, by far, the strongest affinity for them. All of our sailors learned and practiced CELNAV, but a handful had the skill built in, and I didn’t think Helen could get lost if she tried.
The Ava moved in relative silence, cutting through the water and zigzagging through the wind with such ease, we lost sight of our island before the sun hit its zenith. Before long, Lee turned and waved to catch our attention.
He shouted, “Ship ahead. Overtake?”
Helen’s grin was predatory; I knew her answer before she opened her mouth.
“Let’s see how good they are—how long til we get them in irons?”
Lee held up two fingers to register his bet of two hours, and Tim paused, then held up three. I didn’t bet—it would be potentially safer for us to speed ahead, then bear down from upwind to steal their propulsion and slow them until we could jump aboard. However, if they had backup coming from their island, they could do the same to us. It had been awhile since we’d heard anything from Nantucket. Perhaps we shouldn’t have left
them alone so long, but they hadn’t threatened us or come our way in so long, I’d hoped they were all dead.
Since that didn’t appear to be the case, it was better not to assume and let our superior skill and more maneuverable boat make the other crew do what we wanted. It was a bold move, but that had been Helen’s style since she was a toddler, trying to take over my lab.
She kept us so perfectly angled to the wind, it only took three directional changes to cause our quarry to overcorrect. Despite a flurry of desperate motion on board, they continued to slow, drifting too far into the wind and losing any forward momentum beyond what the current gave them. They were turned in irons, drifting more than sailing. We didn’t lose rudder authority and closed the distance quickly.
We stayed low and spread out across our deck as we approached. Despite our small group of blacksmiths, bullets were at a premium, but certainly not impossible to obtain. A day earlier, I would have told you Nantucket was deserted, without a sailboat to float. There was no need to double down on my incorrect assumption and get shot for the trouble.
As we got close enough to hear the nervous sheep, we could see that there were at least two humans on board.
“Stay away—we’ll kill the sheep, we’ll kill you, and we’ll burn both ships!”
“It’s not worth losing all that. Steer off!” The second voice was notably older than the first, and I tightened my hands around the thick rope of the grappling hook. They were a grandfather and maturing grandson, or a mismatched pair allied by old experience and youthful enthusiasm. The older man sounded nearly as nervous as the sheep. He was pissed, for certain, but worry threaded equally through his shout.
“We only took what we needed. You have plenty!” Desperation. There was plenty of that in this Fallen World. If they’d lived this long without nanites, they could likely make it longer. I wouldn’t have to dip into the limited stores hoarded in my lab.
“All the quahog beds are empty, and our fishing has been shit. You’ve got plenty!”
They had caused no damage, stolen very little, and had a ship and some skills to trade. Perhaps we could come to a—
One of the sheep screamed as its throat was cut, and a third human took advantage of the distraction to take his shot. Tim staggered back, grabbing his biceps, and I released my pretty fantasy.
Alliances with strangers were hard to come by in this Fallen World, but death was easy. I spun and threw the grappling hook as Lee returned fire, dropping one of the men. The remaining two sheep were panicking from the sounds of the gunshot and screams still lingering in the air.
Helen turned us broadside just enough for the grappling hook to catch perfectly, and I set my feet to pull.
The man with the gun came rapidly into focus as the boats swung closer together, and the older man leapt across the distance, hoping to take us by surprise. He wielded his bloodstained knife with more skill than flash.
Helen ran forward to meet him, and I looked down and pulled the end of the bowline against its locking ring. When I looked up, the armed man was down, clutching his throat, and Lee was covering Tim as he leaped to the new boat.
For a moment, I wished we still used harpoons, but Andres had emphasized the need to preserve hull integrity for any prize ships we might commandeer on our adventures. Scavenging and repurposing were far more efficient than finding the trees needed to build new boats from scratch. Tim, his gunshot wound already closing, punched the youngest of our three opponents directly under his ear and rolled away as the man fell to the deck. Lee shot just often enough to keep the gunman crouched behind cover, and Tim made his way slowly around the boat.
Knowing I’d only be in the way, I kept hold of the grappling hook’s rope and watched Helen clean up before rolling the older man’s body off our boat and into the water.
It made a distinct plop—the sound of human remains hitting the ocean. I’d long ago lost count of how often I’d heard that noise, which sounded the same in both calm and choppy seas.
The sun beat down on us as Tim stalked the gunman, our boats bumping together in a calm companionship that belied the struggle on the decks. The man popped up again, but he couldn’t get a shot off before Lee did. Lee missed, but he distracted the man more than enough for Tim to close the distance, and in moments, I heard another distinctive plop.
The two remaining sheep crowded to the far side of the boat, their bleating subsiding into sad moans, and Tim slowly moved in on them, making reassuring noises that carried with ridiculous clarity to us. Thankfully the sharp breeze brought us the scent of brine and the faint smell of the tide, instead of the foul odor of mixed sheep and human effluvia.
“Leave them over there,” Helen called, smiling at our new boat with possessive pride. “It’ll be easier to tow them back than it would be to get them over here in their current state.”
“I’ll just throw—”
Bang!
Lee, one foot balancing him on the side of the boat, had already lowered his gun when we registered what had happened.
The boy had recovered, crawled after Tim, and was cleverly sneaking up behind him with a club, when Lee saw him, took careful aim, and dropped him.
A third plop.
Three clean kills, a minor injury, and one lost sheep. It didn’t feel great, and Helen had lost her smile, but it was still a win.
“Want to keep going, see what’s happening on Nantucket?”
Tim asked the question, but we already knew the answer. Nantucket had nothing we needed. We could go back with more ships and raid their island to ensure they couldn’t slip back to our island, but there was no point in a taking a fight to them that wouldn’t yield us anything. If these three weren’t the last of them, any remaining survivors would hopefully see their disappearance as further reason to leave the Vineyard alone.
Besides, there was a storm was coming, and if we made all speed toward home, we could dock before it caught us.
We’d talk about the situation with the other heads. Desperation made people do stupid things. If I’d learned anything in my lifetime, I’d certainly learned that.
* * *
“The fishing is still shit.” Jimmy slouched in his chair, hunching his shoulders in a way that called attention to the scars on his neck. After he’d almost drowned as a child, I’d tried to make him amphibious. Instead, I’d set off a cascade of failures inside my son’s tiny body. Eventually, I left him with excellent night vision and ridges of sewed-closed skin that served no purpose. He’d forgiven me, but I couldn’t blame him for hating the almost-gills.
“We hoped it would get better with the summer, but the nets are either empty or full of things too dirty to eat.” Andres had been happy about the new ship, but his delight had faded throughout the course of the meeting. “It’s no wonder the Nantucketers were hungry enough to come here. If we’re running low on food, they must have been out most of the winter.”
“Burner said the Aquinnah oyster beds are barely hanging on.” Geordan looked uncomfortable. I wondered how long he’d been letting the patrols lapse. Had the greenhouse been damaged by the storm or by the raiders? “Crops are okay, but if we have any unexpected freezes like last year, we’re going to have to use our stores.”
“Parts of the mainland are sprouting pretty good,” Helen interjected, rolling around some of the blueberries from her last trip in front of her. “We haven’t seen anyone out there since last fall. Maybe we should take some longer trips that way.”
“Med could use supplies. There’s only so much willow and appleseed we can use.” Kim, head of Medical, had been a veterinarian before the Fall. We had plenty of doctors to choose from when I started rad-proofing the critical personnel, but animal vets and combat medics would make the most of our new world. It hadn’t surprised me when her peers made her their head, given her ability to adapt and her expert knowledge of livestock—a critical combination.
“Everything reachable’s picked clean, and anything not reachable is uncertain as hell. Are
we rushing into this?” Howard was head of Repair. He had finagled our solar panels to keep critical energy flowing into the island’s batteries when the cable from the mainland failed. We used electricity sparingly, mostly through the winter. He’d also figured out how to power the kerosene lamps with coal. He had never let us down, which was more than I could say for myself.
“If we wait until the need becomes pressing, we’ll be more likely to make desperate decisions.” Like the Nantucketers had. Helen didn’t have to add that for us to hear it.
“Thanks for your reports, skippers.” Andres nodded to my children and gestured toward the door. We’d already heard from the Squid and the Telenovela, though they’d had much less to report.
The debate continued for some time, and I listened, considering. Howard wasn’t wrong— we weren’t at the tipping point yet, but we did seem to be picking up speed.
“I have an option.”
Geordan stared down at the table, clenching his mug hard enough to stress the pottery. I looked at his whitening knuckles for a moment, then shrugged. He wouldn’t like it. I couldn’t imagine any of them would.
“We head up to Ipswich.”
They were underwhelmed by my suggestion. Geordan released his mug so quickly it wobbled, and Kim let out something that sounded like a laugh.
“Vacation time?” Andres asked, eyebrows raised. “All this luxury has you missing camping?”
“You know I worked for Obsidian, before the Fall.”
Interest now. Scowls on several faces other than Geordan’s, but interest too.
“They’d taken over some old Nike sites on the South Shore for experiments, and that’s mostly where I worked. The bunkers came in handy.” Only Kim knew for sure that I’d been involved in the rise of the Geno Freaks, decades earlier. Though given the improvements I’d worked on over our time together, I’m sure the others at least suspected it. Obsidian had recruited me because of my expertise, with offers, perks, and resources way too good to ignore.
From the Ashes Page 43
