Children of Zero

by Andrew Calhoun

  Nate and Tyler almost looked normal, normal being a relative term given the circumstances. They both had on baggy sets of navy blue pants and white-ish shirts in relatively undamaged condition.

  Looking at Haley again, Kettle now realized that she had been given the highest quality items from the box. The leather vest seemed familiar, and he quickly remembered seeing the woman with the face tattoo and curved sword wearing something similar on the beach after they had first been rescued. Haley’s differed in that it had a series of five straps running horizontally across the front to cinch it tight. The cinching was done via slender metal buckles. The brown leather top contrasted with a black leather skirt that dropped in loose pleats over her thighs.

  She was also the only one given armor. What are they giving her armor for? Their captors had strapped some sort of metal guards onto the tops of her shoulders and her forearms. Then they gave her shin and knee guards. The steel had obviously been used before; it was dented and scarred from previous impacts. Wait a second. Why aren’t they giving me armor?

  While this was going on, one of the captors began trying to communicate with them. “Jren,” she said, slapping herself with a meaty hand on the top of her chest. “Jren,” she repeated. She then pointed to the woman next to her and said, “Lakkari.” Then to another. “Amba.” Kettle couldn’t help but notice that Amba’s face was a mess. Her nose had been broken recently. The one who called herself Jren then poked Haley in the arm with a dirty, pudgy finger and raised her eyebrows questioningly. Haley didn’t have to be an anthropologist to figure out that they were asking her for her name.

  “Haley,” she told them clearly. Jren repeated it. Badly. The a vowel wasn’t deep enough, making it sound more like Halley. She said it again, still badly, and then went on to repeat the process with the other six guys. Jren’s pronunciation of Kettle sounded surprisingly, and disappointingly, like cattle.

  Once they were all dressed, they were ushered up the steps to another compartment of the ship, and then again up a second set of steps until they found themselves outside in the sunshine squinting under the bright rays.

  Kettle looked around. He couldn’t spot land anywhere. They weren’t moving very fast, and the water seemed calm. Above him massive sails gently billowed out as they caught gusts of slow moving wind. The sails were attached to three different masts, the middle mast being by far the tallest even though the rear mast started from a higher deck.

  A lot of people were milling about the main deck around the mast. Their skin was brown and sun-soaked, and in many cases criss-crossed with scars and welts. He also spotted a few sailors with skin that was much darker and one white guy near the back of the crowd.

  Kettle was pushed forward by the husky woman with the pistol. He moved through the crowd, very aware that a lot of eyes were now focused on him, possibly out of curiosity, but maybe also out of something else. It wasn’t confusion. It was more like expectation.

  He emerged at the side of a circular clearing in the crowd, a ring of sailors awaiting his presence. Haley and Soup arrived on his right, and the other four guys stood to his left. And then there was silence. Well, almost silence. The creaking of the ship, the rippling of the canvas, the sound of the waves lapping against the hull. These were clearly audible, but from the crew of the ship, there was nothing. The captors and captives just stared at one another, eyeing each other up.

  On the far side of the circle, Kettle could see movement amongst the sailors. Someone was coming forward through the congregation, and bodies were moving out of the way to accommodate the new presence. He watched as two sailors parted and the tattoo-faced woman stepped into the circle.

  She was raw grace and sinister potential all wrapped up in one. Her outfit was the same, a leather vest that revealed her neckline and cleavage, a skirt that was slit up the sides of her thighs and a set of well-worn black boots that came up to her knees. Her long arms were bare. Her hair, previously braided, was now undone and left to fall where it wanted. A portion of that hair chose to fall over the hilt of the weapon she had strapped to her back.

  This was Saeliko. Kettle had heard the other sailors speak her name with deference and respect. It wasn’t hard to figure out why. Her eyes alone demanded attention. Those green orbs were piercing even in the bright sunshine belting down from the sky and reflecting off the water. The tattoo was equally entrancing, a set of swirls and interlocking lines that were somehow wrathful and enticing all at once.

  “Shen,” Saeliko said without taking those magical green eyes off the newcomers. “The cutlasses, if you please.”

  Kettle understood the words, but he forced himself to maintain his poker face. He would stick to the plan.

  Shen turned out to be a white woman. She was carrying an obviously heavy roll of cloth about four feet long in her arms, which she promptly and unceremoniously deposited in front of Kettle and his companions. She unrolled it to reveal about a dozen cutlasses in varying conditions. Some had chips and divots along the edge of the blade, while a couple had the tips of the blade missing entirely. Some of the cutlasses were straight, others gently curved. All of them had blades that were roughly two and half feet in length. Shen picked up one of them and offered it to Haley.

  Haley looked entirely nonplussed. Her armored arms remained at her sides. Jren moved up to her side, took the cutlass from Shen and physically forced the hilt of the weapon into Haley’s right hand. Shen saw that her job was done and moved out of the way, finding a place among sailors at the edge of the ring. Jren moved behind Haley and gave her nudge in the middle of her back, urging her to step forward toward the waiting Saeliko.

  “Shall we see what our new recruits can do?” Saeliko asked in a loud, clear voice. There was a playfulness in that question, a hint of mischief laced into the timbre of her voice. The crew of the ship roared their approval. The suddenness of the noise startled Kettle, causing him to literally jump.

  “Brenna, what’s this one’s name?” Saeliko was pointing to the Korean girl in front of her.

  “Haley, Harker. Haley.”

  “All right, sistren, brethren. Let’s give our friend Haley a little encouragement.” Kettle was startled again as a chant started from around the ring. Dozens upon dozens of voices began calling out her name. “Haley! Haley! Haley!” The owner of the name was obviously not enjoying the attention. The Korean was looking around nervously. Her grip on the leather-bound hilt tightened and her knuckles turned white.

  Whatever nervousness Haley had been feeling before went up exponentially when she saw Saeliko smile and raise her hand over her left shoulder. The tattooed leader of the raucous crew slowly pulled out that malevolently curved scimitar. The chanting suddenly ceased in favor of another round of cheers from the women and men around the ring. There were a few taunts thrown in as well. Kettle heard one of the women yell out “You’re in for it now!”

  Saeliko motioned with her left hand for Haley to step forward. Haley stood fast. Kettle wasn’t sure if she was frozen in fear or if she was pretending not to understand. Probably the former.

  Saeliko turned into an unbelievably fast blur. Not a rash, herky-jerky blur. There was no harshness to her movements. She was a perversely elegant rush of flesh and steel that closed the distance between herself and Haley so quickly that Kettle could scarcely believe his eyes. The scimitar darted forward in an effortlessly fluid strike that was aimed squarely for its victim’s head. Haley didn’t even have time to flinch.

  Luckily, and no doubt intentionally, it was the flat of the blade that smashed into the side of poor Haley’s face. It was a playful smack; it had to be. But the sound of the metal impacting her head was sickening; at least it was to Kettle. Some of the crew were laughing like jackals. He watched Haley flop to the side as her legs crumpled and crash in a heap. She lost her grip on the cutlass and it flew from her hand, clanging onto the wooden deck. Once she realized what had happened and the pain registered in her brain, Haley let out a whimper that gradually increased i
n volume.

  Among the yells and laughs, Kettle heard another more familiar voice. “Fuck this!” Dallas roared and jumped to Haley’s defense. With a surprising amount of dexterity for a big, muscular guy, he dipped down to scoop up one of the cutlasses in his right hand as he rushed to attack the smiling Saeliko. And in the fraction of a second that the scimitar-wielding woman had to observe Dallas’ approach, her smile broadened. Somewhere in Kettle’s brain, he recognized that smile despite the speed at which things were happening. It was the smile of a person who was having fun, a person who was in her element. This was as natural to Saeliko as soccer was to Lionel Messi or tennis was to Novak Djokovic. It was sport.

  Dallas raised his weapon over his head and brought it down in a quick, slicing arc just as he lunged forward. She sidestepped easily. It was graceful, really. One moment she was there, the next she wasn’t. Dallas recognized that his swing was going to carry his momentum forward. He brought his leading leg down in front of him to plant a foot on the deck and soak up his speed so that he could reverse course and swing again. However, what he didn’t plan on was Saeliko’s left fist, which pretty effectively soaked up a lot of the Marine’s momentum by punching him square in the face as he moved by. Blood shot out of his nose.

  Saeliko didn’t bother watching Dallas’ reaction. She was already focused on her next opponent. Curtis had picked up his own cutlass and was now trying to circle around behind her. Tyler followed suit, fanning out to the other side. Standard military tactics.

  She didn’t wait for the attack to come, instead moving in toward Curtis like a shark sliding through the water toward its prey. Curtis swung his blade. She deflected it downward with her own steel, ducked under a wild punch and moved in close. Her knee came up straight into his groin and then she was gone, pivoting out of the way as a bellowing Curtis doubled over in pain. This brought another round of laughter.

  Tyler was the next victim. She twisted underneath a horizontal slice of the 26-year-old lieutenant’s cutlass, arching her back as if she were merely walking under a limbo bar. This time she decided to draw some more serious blood. She held her scimitar high against his neck, causing him to freeze lest she slice into the skin. In her free hand – her left – she held a short knife. Kettle had no clue where the knife had come from; he hadn’t seen her draw it from anywhere. It had just appeared. Saeliko used the knife to slash a diagonal line running from the top of his chest on the left side to just below his right nipple. His white shirt tore open along the line, letting Kettle see the red blood emerge and seep into the fabric.

  Somehow, Saeliko sensed that Dallas was re-engaging. She shoved Tyler backward, spun on one foot and faced the Marine again. Blood was running down out of his nose and over his mouth, but his nose didn’t look that damaged. He approached more cautiously this time, having a newfound awareness of just what kind of enemy he was dealing with. He was all concentration, holding up his cutlass in a defensive posture in case she attacked, but looking for an opening should one present itself.

  “I like this one,” Saeliko mused.

  And then she was a blur once more. The Marine tried desperately to ward off the oncoming Saeliko with a downward blocking maneuver, but it was like trying to stop water with stick. She flowed around his blade and punched him hard in the stomach. When his head was jarred forward by the impact, the fist she had used to punch him immediately came up to collide with his already-wounded face. This caused his head to snap backward. Like a cat, she dropped into a crouch and then performed a fast but powerful leg sweep that caught him in the back of his ankles. He fell down hard on his ass. The crowd groaned in unison at the pain he must have felt in his tailbone.

  Before Dallas could regain his senses and try to either get up from his sitting position or roll away to safety, she was above him. With a hard smack of her hilt on his right hand, she forced him to drop his cutlass. She then kicked him hard in the sternum with her left foot. The air rushed out of him and he was thrown onto his back where he lay completely defenseless.

  She pounced on him, sitting on his stomach and pinning his arms down to the deck with her hands, although she didn’t release her grip on her scimitar in her right hand or knife in the left. Dallas was wheezing, trying to regain his breath after the hit to the sternum and not being very successful. He was, however, able to look her in the eyes as she bent over him. Those green eyes.

  She lowered her face to his and kissed him on the lips. It was a long, deep kiss, and the crew loved it, hooting and hollering their approval between guffaws, snorts and howls. Her body pressed in closer to his, her chest moving downward toward his own as she slowly – very slowly – finished off the kiss. When she smoothly rolled off of him and sprang back up to her feet, she had his blood smudged around her mouth and partway onto her cheeks.

  “Well, I can’t say I didn’t enjoy that,” Saeliko admitted to her still-laughing sailors. She then turned her head to the side and spit out some blood, much to everyone’s further amusement.

  Curtis was now standing up straight again, though one hand was still covering his probably-swollen testicles. He was contemplating attacking her again, but it was obvious from his glare that he was a man of two minds. There was a mixture of wrath and wounded pride, but with a very healthy dose of doubt. When Saeliko held her scimitar up and pointed it toward him, he wisely came to his senses, shook his head and backed away to rejoin Kettle, Haley, Soup and Nate, although it was obvious from his awkward gait that he was still in a lot of discomfort. A few seconds later, Tyler also returned to the lineup, not wishing to test his luck again.

  Soup was just now helping Haley back up to her feet, and Kettle was cursing himself for not having come to her aid earlier. He should have rushed to her side earlier, but as usual, he had been frozen by events transpiring around him.

  “What do you think?” Saeliko called out to her crew. Her scimitar gestured toward the six captors at the edge of the circle and then at Dallas, who had pulled himself up into a sitting position. People started shouting out their ideas, which ranged from pitting the captors against one another to just throwing them all overboard. Kettle’s ears perked up when he heard one of the crew mention the word gods. At first, he wondered if he had got the word wrong, but he was pretty sure that he heard correctly. “They don’t look like gods to me,” she had said. “As fucking mortal as the rest of us,” another had agreed. Kettle’s mind raced. Is that what this is all about?

  After it was clear that no consensus was being reached, Saeliko gave a signal to Brenna, who bellowed out the call for quiet in her usual manner. “All right, all right. Stuff it!”

  “Let’s push them a little harder,” Saeliko said. “Let’s see what happens when we cut a little deeper.” She then switched stances and pointed her knife at the six. At first it was pointed at Haley, but it then shifted toward Curtis and Tyler, and then back over toward Kettle and Soup. “Give me that one,” Saeliko commanded. “The one with the strange glasses.” The knife was clearly pointing at Soup.

  “Ah shit,” Soup said right before he was shoved in the back. He stumbled into the ring looking very unhappy and extremely worried. Brenna came over to his side, put a cutlass into his right hand, patted him on the cheek and wished him luck. “Oh shit,” Soup said again.

  Saeliko motioned him to advance. To Kettle’s amazement, Soup actually did advance, albeit with obvious caution and timidity. Had it been Kettle in Soup’s shoes, he would have just dropped the cutlass and refused.

  The brave 18-year old swung the cutlass at her midsection, a half-hearted blow that was easily swatted aside. He swung again from the other direction, this time at head level. She stepped back and let the blade pass harmlessly by, all the while keeping her eyes on her would-be attacker. Soup tried thrusting straight in, but she pivoted away before the tip of the blade was anywhere close to its intended target. As the motion of the thrust carried him forward, Saeliko struck.

  Soup screamed in pain, shock and confusion. Saeliko’s knif
e was imbedded into his left shoulder right up to the hilt. He dropped the cutlass on the ground and reached toward the knife with his right hand, but he hesitated right before he grabbed it, probably realizing that any pull on the knife was just going to increase the level of pain he was feeling.

  “Give me another knife,” Saeliko told Brenna, who tossed a bone-handled blade to her harker. Saeliko caught it in her left hand, still holding the scimitar in her right. She put the scimitar back in its sheath, however, and then switched the knife to her right. Now re-focused on Soup, who was still staring in shock at the hilt protruding from his shoulder, Saeliko moved back into striking range.

  “No!” Soup called out. “No, wait! Wait a minute!” His right hand was outstretched, palm toward Saeliko, a gesture clearly meant to signal surrender and plea for mercy. She ignored him, batted his arm out of the way and then stuck the second knife straight into his right thigh about halfway between the knee and the hip.

  Soup’s scream was ear-splitting. The poor Marine from Chicago fell down onto the deck and tried to stay still so as not to worsen the effects of the steel piercing his body.

  Dallas was on his feet now, and Curtis was also starting to advance toward Saeliko, but a quick look from her green eyes stopped them in their tracks.

  “Another knife,” Saeliko said calmly. This time Jren came forward holding a blade out for her harker, who took it and turned back toward Soup. The teenager was now pushing himself with his good leg along the deck, trying in vain to put distance between himself and Saeliko. She paced toward him with the third knife.