Children of Zero

by Andrew Calhoun

  “You’re sure it’s four?”

  “I’m not positive. She might have added more and not told me.” Tlell stopped walking and turned around to face her captors again. “Are you going to kill me?” she asked suddenly.

  “Not right now.”

  “Everyone knows Saffisheen don’t take prisoners. They only bring death.”

  “Not all the stories are true.” Saeliko pointed her knife back up the road. “Keep walking.” Tlell did as she was told. Her steps were still unsteady, partly due to the wine, but probably also due to the fear that accompanies an uncertain end.

  “Take me with you,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I’ll join your crew. I can sail. I’ve done it before. Besides, if I stay here, Gaemmil will have my head for treason.”

  “She might be in a forgiving mood, given the new line across your cheek.”

  “It’s shit anyway. This life, I mean. Stuck out here with snakes and crocodiles and diseases. And they don’t pay me hardly nothin’ to live on.”

  Saeliko had heard all this before; it was a common theme out in the Sollian. When you were fifteen, running away and joining the Navy might have seemed like a great choice. There were tales a plenty of adventures in exotic lands and men who either made fortunes or became national heroes, or both. The reality couldn’t have been more different. The wages made it hard to differentiate sailing from outright slavery. Long ocean voyages led to sickness and malnutrition. The work was often perilously dangerous, particularly in bad weather. Sailors fell from the rigging, rogue waves dragged people overboard, cannons broke loose and careened across the deck with crushing lethality. On a voyage that lasted a couple of months, it was common to see death rates of ten to twenty percent, sometimes more.

  Life on land in the Sollian wasn’t much better. Even if you managed to stay healthy, which was saying a lot, you were in constant danger of violence and thievery. Plus, you were inevitably sucked into periods of backbreaking labor for little or no money.

  This led a lot of unfortunate souls to make one of three decisions. They could try to escape – book passage back to Mael and try to disappear back into the fabric of civilized society. This choice usually resulted in being broke and homeless, begging on the streets. A more attractive choice was to do what Tlell was trying at this very moment. One could look for a privateering vessel to sign on with. If she or he joined the right one, they could make a decent wage. Nothing spectacular, of course, but it was enough to keep one’s self out of the worst sort of poverty and into a steady supply of wine and rum.

  The third choice was out and out piracy. The greater chances of striking it rich were balanced off by the exponentially higher risk of winding up maimed, crippled or hanging with a noose around your neck.

  “And I heard things about the Epoch,” Tlell continued.

  “What’s that?”

  “There are rumors about your harker. They say she’s going to raise the red.”

  “Like I said, not all stories are true.”

  “I wouldn’t care if she did go pirate,” the captain went on. “I’d join her.”

  “Well, all right then,” Saeliko responded. “Let’s finish tonight’s work, and tomorrow I’ll put in a good word for you.”

  “You mean it?”

  “Sure, why not? We’re short on crew.”

  “You won’t regret it.”

  “I don’t do regrets,” Saeliko stated. “How much further is the house?”

  “Not much further now. Maybe another ten minutes. This road leads right to it. Do you want me to put out the torch so they don’t see us coming?”

  “Actually, I think it’s time we parted ways.”

  “Sorry?”

  Tlell never saw it coming. Saeliko’s knife slid in to the captain’s back. It cut through her uniform and plunged in her flesh, sliding underneath the sternum and in between the fifth and sixth rib until it found the heart. At first, Tlell didn’t know what had happened. She stood perfectly still trying to sort out the sensations bombarding her wine-riddled brain. Then she collapsed onto the ground.

  Saeliko watched the woman struggle for breath. “You’re right,” she told her. Tlell’s fearful eyes looked up questioningly. “Saffisheen only bring death.” Saeliko examined the captain’s face, looking for signs of what the woman was thinking. She had always been interested in this part. Do they embrace death? Do they rage against it? On Tlell’s face, Saeliko could only read disbelief and denial.

  Then she looked at Ollan to measure his reaction. The Lavic looked unconcerned, almost as if he had expected the outcome. She liked that he was unfazed. It spoke well of his character. “Let’s go,” she said.

  They left Tlell there to die in the dirt. They left the torch as well. It would be better to come in under the cover of darkness.

  It didn’t take long before they saw the light of another campfire outside of a dismal building that looked to be more of a low-slung one-room hut than a house. When they moved closer, they saw two soldiers in uniform sitting on a fallen palm tree near the fire. She guessed that the other two were inside.

  She pointed to the guard sitting furthest from the fire and whispered “Can you hit him with your crossbow from here?” to Ollan. He nodded, set a bolt in the groove and lifted the butt to his shoulder.

  “Do it now,” she told him and then propelled herself forward into a light-footed run. As she came forward, she unsheathed her scimitar from its position on her shoulder. She had covered about half the distance to her prey when she heard the crossbow trigger mechanism fire and the low thrum of the bolt streaking over her shoulder. It buried itself in the head of its target. By the time the second soldier registered that something had happened, Saeliko was on him. One long, powerful blow with the scimitar nearly took his head clean off his shoulders.

  The Saffisheen changed direction, pacing toward the door to the shack. She reached it in three long strides, reached for the handle and swung it open. There was no need for stealth anymore. The first two kills had been quiet enough; no one inside would have been alerted.

  The room was softly illuminated by two small lanterns hanging from the rafters. When Saeliko saw the two occupants, she nearly let out a little surprised laugh. The two soldiers, both men, were stark naked lying on the ground in each other’s embrace. Everyone on this island is having sex but me, Saeliko thought to herself.

  After the initial shock of seeing a tattooed stranger enter the room, the two men started to scramble for weapons. It was far too late, however. She made quick work of them, her scimitar flashing silver and crimson in the dim light. By the time Ollan entered, both soldiers were dead and Saeliko was examining the three large Lavic chests in the back of the room.

  She lifted the lid on the nearest chest. There was the source of all this trouble – a giant waterproof bag of quickspice. She smiled. It was funny how women and men killed each other for a bit of spice.

  “What are we going to do with it?” Ollan asked. “I didn’t see any carts outside.”

  “We don’t need carts. We’re going to burn it.”

  “Burn it?” He looked into the chest and gave a low whistle. “Seems a waste.”

  “Sometimes a lesson is more valuable than spice or gold.”

  “And what’s the lesson?” he asked.

  “Don’t fuck with the Saffisheen,” she told him. “Governess Gaemmil needed to learn.”

  Half an hour later, the two of them watched the shack go up in flames. Governess Gaemmil would learn her lesson, Saeliko thought as she watched the flames leap higher. And soon, it will be Janx’s turn.

  1.8 KETTLE

  They hit the storm half an hour into the flight. The plane suddenly dropped and rocked to the right, causing Haley to gasp and Kettle to groan. The turbulence softened for a moment and then cruelly bucked the plane upwards. There was some more concerned grumbling from the twenty-plus people on board. The flight attendant walked briskly up the aisle grappling from seat top to
seat top until she reached her fold-down chair and buckled herself in. At least she didn’t look worried.

  Haley had the window seat, but Kettle could still see past her to the roiling clouds outside, which were being seared every half minute or so by lightning. The pilot slowly banked the aircraft to the right and then about a minute later, he banked left. During this process, Kettle was pretty sure he could see the ocean below. It wasn’t nearly as far down as he thought it would be. An airplane of this size usually had a cruising altitude of thirty thousand feet or more. Kettle suspected they were significantly lower.

  “Why aren’t we flying around the storm?” he asked to no one in particular. It didn’t make sense. Diego Garcia had some of the best weather monitoring equipment in the entire world. They would have seen a weather system like this coming and instructed the flight crew to plot an alternative course.

  “Relax,” Jay chided. “I’ve flown through worse than this.” The heightened pitch of his voice suggested otherwise, but Kettle appreciated his friend’s show of confidence nonetheless. As usual, Jay was thinking of others before himself.

  The plane shuddered and smacked through an especially rough patch of air. Two of the overhead compartments popped open from the impact of the punches the storm was dishing out to the aircraft’s body. Not five seconds later, Kettle felt the sudden, heart-stopping sensation of freefall. It ended an instant later with another sharp thumping sound, the same sort of bang that a car made when it nailed an over-sized pothole. The pilot must have reacted by pulling the nose up because Kettle sensed they were climbing.

  He felt something on his right arm, which he was currently using to hold onto the armrest with white-knuckled fury. Looking down, he saw that Haley’s hand had latched onto his forearm. She was starting to dig in with her nails. He looked up from her hand and made eye contact. Her eyes were wide; she looked very frightened.

  “Don’t worry. It’s going to be o . . .”

  A violent explosion abruptly deafened him. Screaming and yelling ensued.

  Time ground to a standstill as Kettle’s brain scrambled to interpret the various horrifying stimuli bombarding his senses. His chair felt like it was rippling under the shuddering forces it was being subjected to. Banging, crackling sounds came from every direction. There was a sudden, roaring rush of air and yellow oxygen masks dropped down from the ceiling, dangling in place.

  Depressurization. A sudden, hard pushing sensation against his eardrums. Panic. Kettle’s mind frantically willed his body to do something, to reach for the mask, but he was frozen in place in his seat. From the corner of his eye, he could see that Jay was already in motion, securing a mask around his face. Haley was moving, too, having released Kettle’s arm to deal with the emergency at hand. She was having trouble fumbling with the strap, trying to work it around the back of her head.

  “Kettle!” Jay bellowed, his voice strangely muffled due to the mask covering his mouth and nose. For a fleeting instant, Kettle was reminded of Darth Vader. He banished the thought and snapped to the present. Jay was already holding another mask and directing it toward Kettle’s face. And none too soon; he could already feel the thinner air overworking his respiratory system. As soon as the triangular contraption touched his nose and cheeks, Kettle took a deep breath of glorious oxygen. He held it in place while Jay got the straps into the proper position.

  “My bag isn’t inflating!” he cried out, looking at the limp air sack attached to his mask. “Is that bad?”

  “Don’t worry.” Jay’s voice was low but steady. “The bag doesn’t need to inflate. If you’re breathing, that means the system is working.”

  How did Jay look so calm? Jesus! This was terrifying! Kettle started breathing faster, his heart rate speeding up. He wanted to be anywhere but here. For a second, he thought he might hyperventilate. Either that or vomit into his mask. He closed his eyes and purposefully forced himself to slow his breathing back down to normal.

  Then he remembered Haley. Goddamn it, what a selfish prick he was in a crisis! He should have been helping her before he had sorted himself out. Or, rather, before Jay had sorted him out. “Haley, are you okay?” he yelled. He had to yell to make sure his voice could be heard over the high-pitched sound of air rushing through the airplane. It sounded like the engines were winding up as well, creating a massive roar.

  “I think so,” she yelled back. “Oxygen working.” She gave a thumbs up sign, which Kettle thought was both appropriate and wildly ridiculous given the circumstances.

  Kettle looked around and had a what-the-fuck? moment. Something wasn’t adding up. More precisely, several things weren’t adding up.

  Mystery number one was outside the window next to Haley. Kettle stared out of it, utterly perplexed. The clouds were gone. So was the lightning and thunder. The sky was a deep blue color. It looked, for lack of a better word, lovely. How could that be?

  Second, the turbulence was gone, too. The plane certainly wasn’t flying normally. On the contrary, Kettle was pretty sure that the pilot was in a gargantuan struggle to keep the God knows how many tons of steel and plastic flying in a manner that could be described as anything remotely close to normally. He could hear the engines scream as the front of the plane dipped and threatened to send them down into a nosedive. Long moments later, he felt the plane level out and then start gaining altitude in a steep climb, engines grumbling. However, this was a control problem; it wasn’t a weather problem. The aircraft wasn’t being slammed or buffeted by rough air; it was instead being coaxed by a desperate pilot to stay aloft.

  But the third and final mystery was the most mind-boggling of them all. He slowly lifted his right arm and pointed out the window, urging Haley to look out at the distant cloudless horizon. His finger trembled, partly due to his confused state and partly due to the jittery feelings he was experiencing as the plane began to tip its nose forward again. “That’s not right,” he said simply. Haley mustn’t have heard over the chaotic noises coming from inside the cabin. Men were yelling and cursing all around them, the air continued its high-pitch wail, and now there was some sort of repeated banging noise coming from the back of the plane. Kettle tried again, raising his voice to a yell and pointing with more enthusiasm at the window. “How the hell is that possible?” he bellowed.

  She looked out to where he was pointing. “How is what possible?” She had re-applied her talon-like grasp to his forearm, which was now extended in front of her. She looked back at him, obviously pondering what he was on about.

  “The sun!” He looked Haley in the eyes over the cusp of her mask, giving her a meaningful, fixated nod as if to say that this was really important. “Look where the bloody sun is.” He watched Haley spin her gaze back to the window.

  “Oh!” Now she got it.

  The sun sat low in the sky just above the horizon. It looked like it was about an hour away from sunset, or maybe an hour past sunrise. Their flight had taken off from Diego Garcia at midday, which couldn’t have been more than an hour ago, so the low hanging sun made absolutely no sense to Kettle whatsoever. It should have been above them somewhere. Had he passed out after the explosion? He didn’t think so.

  “Stay here!”

  Whose voice was that? Kettle rotated his torso away from Haley and the window. His left hand was clinging onto the armrest with renewed vigor as the plane seemed to be gaining speed in a semi-controlled descent. Much to his surprise, he saw Jay halfway out of his seat moving into the aisle.

  “Stay here,” Jay said again.

  Kettle looked at him stupidly. “Where would I go?”

  “Make sure Haley’s okay.” Jay was standing in the aisle now. He pulled off his oxygen mask.

  “Wait! Where are you going?”

  “The explosion came from the back. I’m going to see if they need help.”

  Kettle torqued his neck around to watch Jay move away. The Frenchman stopped two rows down and reached for an unused mask that was hanging down, putting it to his face for a few breath
s before leaving it and moving on. It didn’t look like he actually needed it; he was moving just fine, although he had to lean forward to counter the plane’s pitch. Kettle guessed that their altitude was low enough that hypoxia wasn’t a threat, at least for the time being. He also guessed that Jay was probably playing it safe. If oxygen levels were sufficiently low, he might black out before he realized what was happening.

  Kettle felt the onset of uselessness and self-abhorrence, the former because he wasn’t helping anyone and the latter because he was incapable of it. There was Jay, risking his life just on the off chance that he could be of assistance, and yet Kettle remained pinned to his seat trying his best not to breathe too quickly.

  Haley shifted her vice-like grip from Kettle’s forearm to his hand. “We’re climbing again,” she pointed out, eyes wide. Kettle sensed it, too. His brain kicked into high gear once more, trying to piece together what was happening. The pattern was cyclical. The Boeing was diving and gaining momentum for a minute or two followed by a long climb that would shed off the speed. Then it would start all over again. And since Kettle couldn’t think of a single reason why any pilot in his or her right mind would want to fly a plane that way, he guessed that something was badly wrong. The explosion had broken something, and now the regular methods of controlling the plane – what were the flappy bits called? – weren’t working. Or at least they weren’t working fully.

  He was also pretty damn sure that if this pattern continued, the only final outcome was going to be a crash. To make matters worse, they were in the middle of the Indian Ocean, which despite being the smallest of the world’s big three oceans, was, to put it mildly, very, very big. He began wondering how airplane transponders faired when the made contact with seawater.

  His thoughts were cut short when he saw the soldier in the seat in front of him rip the mask off his face and shout out a couple of obscenities. And then Kettle noticed why. He inhaled deeply, testing his oxygen supply. It was empty.