“Stop it from spreading to other planets?”
“No. Obliterate it. Cure it. Remove it from existence.”
“Which is against your god’s perfect plan.”
“And therein you see His trial for my people. How undeserving would we be should we let these heathens prevent our transcendence?”
“Okay, I get it. You and the other orthodox followers of your church . . . Hold on. What do people of your religion call yourselves?”
“We call ourselves Avolludes, but most others just call us Enders.”
“Because you seek the end?”
“An end . . . and a new beginning.” He held his arms outward and up, signifying something that Janx recognized as being religiously important to him.
“Right. So you believe that this sickness is part of an elongated apocalypse. You’re content to watch it spread. You’re not going to actively push it along like the . . . what did you call them? . . . ultraists, but you’re also not going to tolerate anyone trying to stop the sickness outright.”
“That’s a simplification, but you’re basically correct. And that also explains why I was posted to Planet Seven. I and many other Enders were working as a counter to the growing influence of Zodo Corp in the corridors of power there. We had our spies watching them, just as they had their spies watching us. Even though both sides were cut off from our home planet, we continued to balance against one another.
“About a year ago, it became known to us that Zodo’s men on Planet Seven had located two Zero Stock individuals and were planning to get them off-planet. We didn’t know if they were male or female, or where on the planet they were living. Our only advantage was that we had time to react. You see, Planet Seven has been cut off from Planet One for twenty-two years. The special airplanes that Zodo Corp had once used to travel through the gates have long since been shipped out to other planets. Zodo Corp had no way of flying through the gates. The people on Planet Seven have their own airplanes. They are less sophisticated, but they are airworthy and capable of reaching the necessary altitude. We guessed that Zodo Corp would try to use one.
“However, it is not a simple thing to just steal an airplane. Even if you could steal one, you can’t just fly it around Planet Seven unnoticed. The locals there have alert and defense systems. It wouldn’t work. We knew they would work out a plan to get around this. It was too important to them. And so we watched them. Our spies gave us clues. We slowly put the pieces together.
“In the last year, Zodo men had gotten themselves fairly deep into the military hierarchy of the most powerful nation on the planet. Once there, they used their access to start influencing the flight plans of a group of unlisted airplanes. These planes flew people and supplies from cities to various military bases, mostly in their home country, but very occasionally abroad. This was a big step for Zodo Corp because of Planet Seven’s gate configurations. It has two different entrance gates, but it only has one exit gate. That exit gate is not too far from a big military base on an island in the middle of an ocean. It’s well out of the way of regular traffic.
“Once we learned that Zodo Corp had access to these government airplanes, their plan became obvious. They would re-route one of the airplanes to that base. If they managed to get the Zero Stock individuals on the plane before going to the base, they would just fly directly to the gate. Alternatively, if the Zero Stock individuals were already at the base, the plane would pick them up and then fly through the gate.
“About three months ago, we learned that one of the airplanes was going to be re-routed to the base. We then used our own network to come up with a counterplan.”
Janx interjected. “You’re part of the counterplan,” she said.
“Yes. There was an Ender embedded in the command structure of one of the government’s intelligence agencies. He made the paperwork possible and I was passed off as a prisoner that needed to be transported on the same date and along the same route as the airplane’s flight plan.”
“As easy as that?”
“It was a very complicated thing. But when you have the right people in the right places, anything is possible.”
3.8 KETTLE
“I did a very bad thing,” Kettle admitted. He was holding onto a table that was bolted to the ground as the ship continued to buck up and down in the storm. Dallas sat beside him. Haley and Soup sat across the table. Dallas had thrown up three times already; a few loose chunks of vomit were visible on the front of his tunic. Another little chunk was in his hair. Haley looked ill, too, but she was holding everything inside. Soup looked fine.
“What do you mean, dipshit?” Dallas asked.
“Back in Myffa’s Cove. I did something really bad. I still feel guilty about it.”
“If this is about the hooker, we already know.”
“You know?”
“Yeah,” Dallas said. “Don’t be such a prude. We all went. I was there four times.”
“I only went once,” Soup added.
“I punched the hooker in the eye.”
Dallas laughed for a moment and then stopped when he realized that Kettle wasn’t joking. “Holy shit!”
“Why?” Haley asked.
“It’s a little difficult to explain,” he started. “I wanted to tell you before, but we haven’t really had a moment to ourselves since we left port.” That was true. Brenna had been overseeing their continued training with cutlasses, and she had also been teaching them how to shoot pistols and rifles. Using flintlock weapons turned out to be more complicated than he had expected.
“Try,” Dallas said.
“Well, I found out she was keeping a secret that might get me killed. From that, I figured that if I was in danger, you three might be in danger, too. I tried to get her to tell me what it was, but she kept refusing.”
“So you beat it out of her.”
“Yeah, I guess so. But the really weird thing is that I didn’t feel like I had a choice. Something just clicked in me. It was like a switch being flipped. I mean, I would have never, and I mean never, done that to a girl before we came here. Some sort of instinct just made me do it.”
“That’s not going to hold up in the court of law,” Dallas commented.
“Not helpful, Dallas. I’m serious. I felt like I didn’t have any choice about it. I just had to hit her until she told me what I needed to know.”
“Did she tell you?” Haley asked.
Kettle was about to tell them when Brenna came barging into the cramped galley where they were sitting. She looked a mess. Her shoulder was bloody and there were bits of debris plastered to her clothes and skin. T
“Oy! You lot! You’re more useless than a cock on a hen!” All four of the companions stared at Brenna as they mulled over her insult. The qarlden really was an endless repository of dirty expressions. “Harker wants a talking. Get your fat asses up to her cabin.”
“Haley and I?” Kettle asked.
“All of you. Move!”
With considerable effort, the four of them got to their feet and began moving toward the exit. They used the walls and other tables to avoid falling down as the ship churned this way and that over the waves.
To get to the harker’s cabin, they had to come out on the main deck and then move back towards the aft of the ship. It was only then that Kettle realized how much damage had been done. The top of the mainmast was completely gone. He could see Amba leading about two dozen sailors in an effort to deal with the thousands of feet of rope that had been torn loose and were now snaking all over the place in heaps of tangled knots. There were splinters of wood everywhere. It reminded Kettle of the remains of a trailer park in Kansas after a category 4 or 5 tornado ripped through.
He also saw dead bodies. The hammering rain had obviously washed away a lot of the blood, but it couldn’t hide the wounds that he saw. Most horrifying of all, there was one woman with her head completely missing. Kettle felt bile rising in his throat. He heard Dallas wretch for a fourth time.
Th
ey entered the harker’s cabin and found Saeliko sitting in her massive seawood chair. Other items had been knocked around the room and toppled, but the chair was so broad with its tentacle-like arms stretching out to either side that it had endured the storm without moving.
“Sit down,” Saeliko told them. This took a bit of work. There were only four other chairs in the room, and they were all lying on the ground. They had to pick them up and drag them over to Saeliko’s table.
When they were all seated, Saeliko just looked at them. One after another, she studied them. When it was his turn, he met her gaze. This in itself was something worth thinking about. Had this moment happened before Myffa’s Cove, he wouldn’t have been able to look her in the eyes; he would have shied away and kept his eyes down.
Then she spoke. “Kettle, do you remember our first conversation in this room?”
“Aye, Harker.”
“Do you remember why I asked Brenna to cut off your little finger?”
Oh shit, he thought. “Yes, I do.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t tell you that we could speak Maelian.”
“Indeed. I punished you because you withheld important information from me.”
“Yes, Harker.”
She reached down and pulled a knife out of her belt. She placed it on the table in front of her. Kettle’s heart started beating faster.
“I think I was very clear about the consequences of withholding information.”
“Yes, Harker.”
“Now, as we speak, there is a Lavic frigate out there somewhere in front of us.” She gestured vaguely in the direction of the Epoch’s bow. “That frigate is called the Black Star. It’s harkered by a woman named Mikka. Harker Mikka knows where we’re going, and she knows what we’re searching for. Now do you want to tell me how in the Five that is possible when I haven’t even told my own crew what we’re after?”
Oh shit, oh shit. Kettle looked around the room briefly. There was no one else there. It was just the four of them and Saeliko.
Dallas and Soup looked confused. They couldn’t understand Maelian, but they understood that the situation was getting very tense.
“Speak now, Kettle,” she said. “Or I might just start cutting up your friends to loosen your tongue.”
“Ollan!” Kettle blurted. The harker raised her eyebrows. “It was Ollan! Ollan told Harker Mikka. A girl in the Banana told me.” It was all coming out now. He might as well keep spilling the beans. “Ollan told Mikka the three words that Haley told you. Radovan Mozik Maglipan. The girl in the Banana didn’t know the words, but she knew that Ollan had betrayed you. He’s planning to switch boats when we get wherever we’re going.” There. He said it. Now he had to somehow persuade her not to cut off more fingers.
“Good,” she said. “That wasn’t so difficult, was it?”
Kettle instantly realized that something was very wrong. Saeliko wasn’t nearly as surprised or angry as he thought she would be. She already knew. Perhaps she had already beaten Ollan out of the truth. Even if that were the case, Kettle knew he was still in big trouble.
“Ollan betrayed you,” Kettle said again. He watched Saeliko’s reaction.
“No he didn’t,” Saeliko calmly told him.
Suddenly Haley jumped into the conversation. “She set a trap for you,” the Korean girl said. “You fell for it.”
It took a while for Kettle to clue into what was going on. When he finally got it, he immediately felt stupid. How did I not see that?
“That’s right,” Saeliko confirmed.
“You got Ollan to tell Numa to feed me a story about his plans to jump ship.”
“Yes, although we didn’t expect you to start punching her. We told her to play hard to get, but she would’ve fessed up if you had kept asking her. You didn’t have to hurt the poor girl.”
Kettle suddenly felt like dirt. Worse than dirt. He started talking again, but it was to himself rather than anyone else. “It was all a lie. Everything Numa said. She probably even made up that stuff about Ollan’s pain fetish.”
“No, that part is true,” Saeliko informed him. “He pays girls to whip him until he bleeds. Ollan’s a good sailor, but he has some . . . personal issues.”
“I failed your test.”
“Yes you did, Kettle. And so we’ve come all the way back to the beginning with you.”
“Are you going to punish me?”
“Perhaps.”
A flicker of hope. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I have other problems to deal with first, so I’m going to temporarily delay your punishment. Kettle, I want you . . . No, I need you . . . to understand our situation, you and I. As of this instant, you owe me a debt. You have until the end of our current excursion to repay this debt. And if you don’t find a way to do that, I will exact your punishment. I promise you it will not be pleasant. It’ll be a lot more than a finger.”
“And how do I repay that debt?”
“I’ll let you figure out that one. Maybe Haley can help you. She’s smart.”
Saeliko stood up and walked to the back gallery window. She moved exceptionally smoothly considering the extent to which the ship was bobbing up and down in the storm. From a rack near the window, she pulled down an axe. She then walked back towards the four of them.
“I really hate this chair,” she told them, pointing an axe toward the gnarled seawood structure. Then without another word, she swung the axe into one of the chair’s long limbs. It didn’t give right away. She swung again and again until the thick wood split off and clanged down onto the floor. The Saffisheen harker kept swinging and chopping. Twice she let out a guttural yell. Kettle wasn’t sure if she was furious or happy as she wreaked havoc on the wood.
She stopped. The axe was imbedded in a thick limb. She reached down and picked up one of the medium-sized pieces that had been chopped off. Her hands massaged the smooth wood. She tossed it in the air and deftly caught it again. She was testing its weight.
“It’ll make a better club than a chair,” she mumbled, and then she turned back to the four of them, all of whom were staring with mouths open.
“Who are you going to club?” Kettle asked with trepidation. He didn’t like the look in Saeliko’s eyes.
“I think I’ll start with him.” She pointed the piece of wood at Dallas, who was sitting nearest to where the harker was standing. “And then I’ll make my way to the rest of you until one of you tells me what I need to know.”
“Hold on,” Kettle said. He was standing, although he didn’t remember getting up. His legs were askance to deal with the movement of the ship. “I told you the truth.”
Saeliko looked straight at him and raised her voice to a vehement yell. “Then why in the bloody Five is the Black Star headed to the same fucking place we are!”
Nobody answered. The only sound was the dull roar of the storm outside.
That’s a good question, Kettle thought to himself. If Ollan hadn’t told Harker Mikka where they were going, then someone else must have. Unfortunately, the only people other than Ollan with knowledge of those three all-important words – Radovan Mozik Maglipan – were in this room.
Dallas started to get up and put his hands out in front of him. Saeliko stepped forward and struck him with a hard blow straight into the gut with the piece of seawood she was holding. She followed this up by wrapping her free hand around the back of his head and slamming his face down into the table. Dallas managed to turn his head just in time to avoid hitting the table with his nose first, but it was still a nasty impact.
Kettle found himself moving to the Marine’s aid. Saeliko saw him coming and advanced on him with a snarl. The word Fuck! sprang to mind. He tried to deflect her punch. Far too late he realized that the punch was just a decoy. The wooden club caught him on the right side his temple. There was a white flash of light and his knees buckled. Kettle was going down. He was dimly aware of Haley and Soup yelling something. Something like Don’t kill him!
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After landing on his back in a heap between two chairs, he heard Saeliko start talking again. “I’m not going to kill him. I’m not going to kill any of you. Do you know why?”
“No,” Haley said.
“Because my crew has it in their absurd heads that you might have been sent by the goddesses. They’re afraid that if I gut one of you and feed you to the shimmers, the goddesses might be angry with us. However, I’m fairly certain my sistren will be all right if I just cripple you.”
Kettle spoke from his position on the ground. “We don’t know anything.” He got a kick to his ribs for his trouble.
“One of you knows something,” she said. “And we’re going to find out who it is.” She raised the club again.
Suddenly Saeliko stopped. She looked towards the door of the cabin, which was still closed. There was some yelling coming from the other side. Kettle distinctly heard the words “Sail on the horizon!”
Without a word, the Saffisheen dropped her club and walked to the door. She opened it and stepped out into the wind and rain.
4 COURSE CORRECTION
Nearly two hundred and fifty pupils passed through the Temple of Pedagogues during my tenure. Some I loved, others I was proud of, others still I merely tolerated. There was only one that I truly detested, and her name was Saeliko. She alone was immune to prudence and fidelity. She alone could poison the class with whispers and deceit. She alone survived my beatings without learning a single lesson. She alone denied my will with every breath. I know not what has become of her, but I know that her future will be filled with blood, probably her own.
~ Verossa, High Pedagogue, in a private letter to the Order Council
4.1 SAELIKO
It took six days for the Epoch to limp and stumble its way to within sight of the Skag. In hoping to avoid the naval powers of the various nations with interests in the Sollian, luck was on the Epoch’s side. Colonial offices would have now been alerted that the Epoch was no longer a privateering vessel, and any naval ship with enough firepower would have been happy to catch a crippled Epoch off guard. However, aside from a few small merchant sloops and fishing boats, the seas had been empty.
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