Compass Rose

by Anna Burke

  “I’m fine,” I said. “You hit your head.”

  “Is that why I feel like squid shit?” Her fingers, still covered in my blood, probed the knot on her forehead gingerly.

  “Yeah, that’s about right.” The events of the past few minutes came back to me. A bright light, Miranda throwing herself over me to protect me, and then chaos. “You shouldn’t move,” I added as she tried to sit up.

  “Neptune’s balls,” she swore, the hand still wrapped in mine squeezing my fingers so hard they creaked. “Help me up, then.”

  “You really should stay down, just in case—”

  “Just help me sit up.” She leaned against me and I helped her into a sitting position, her head resting against mine.

  “Does anything else hurt?” I asked.

  “Nothing serious. Just don’t let me fall asleep, okay? The way my head feels, I might not wake up.”

  “Of course, Miranda.” A slight pause followed my slip in protocol.

  “I like the way you say my name.” Her face was very close to mine.

  “Captain,” I said, hating myself for voicing the truth, “I think you have a serious concussion.”

  Something bumped into the ship. I glanced up, and Miranda swore as she turned her head, both in pain and at the sight illuminated by the bow lights.

  Bodies floated past the helm. Bodies, wearing Archipelago fleet uniforms, accompanied by a flotilla of debris.

  Chapter Eleven

  My hands shook as I brought the trawler up to the surface. Waves broke over the helm, the froth matching the overcast sky. My storm was coming, and there was no sign of Man o’ War on the sonar or the horizon. I double-checked our coordinates. This was definitely the rendezvous, but we were the only ship for miles, unless you counted the ghost ship I carried in my mind’s eye.

  There was no way for me to know the name of the vessel I’d watched sink around me as Miranda and I had borne witness to the destruction, any more than I could have known the names of the dead sailors who bumped up against the helm, unnaturally pale in our bow lights, even for corpses.

  Someone had blown a hole in their ship. We never saw the bulk of the vessel; it was possible, even, that some of the crew survived, clinging to the wreckage, but I doubted it. I had seen the size of the flash, and felt the force of the detonation.

  “Give them time, Rose,” Miranda said, keeping one eye on the sonar and the other on the sea.

  For a moment I wasn’t sure who she meant— the dead sailors, or Man o’ War.

  “Of course, Captain.”

  The cut on my cheek was deeper than I’d realized. I had no idea how I had gotten it, and as I touched the tender flesh I wondered just how many scars I would rack up in Miranda’s service.

  Miranda, who had been kept awake by the rest of us in turns, looked exhausted, and Kraken, Finn, and Jeanine had all sustained minor injuries. The trawler itself was fine.

  “Death is easier when it’s a statistic, navigator.” Miranda’s voice didn’t betray any emotion. “Seeing it up close makes it personal. If it’s any comfort, you get used to it, and we learned something useful.”

  “What did we learn?” I asked, staring at her in horror. She met my eyes with a grim smile.

  “We now know that they are more heavily armed than we realized, and that they can destroy fleet battleships. And we know that we really, really don’t want to piss them off.”

  And I learned that you care enough about me to put my life before yours, Captain, and that you like the way I say your name.

  “How long should we wait for Man o’ War?” I asked instead.

  “A day. After that, she’ll get here or she won’t. If Orca got wind of the blast, she’ll keep her distance for a little while to make sure it’s safe. We’ll keep an ear out for her frequency and get a feel for the area until then.”

  She yawned.

  “Wake me up in a few hours. At this point, I don’t care if I die in my sleep, and if Kraken says anything about it, tell him he can stick to doctoring dinner.”

  She strung the tattered hammock that had come with the vessel across the small helm and climbed in, sounding more like Orca than my captain. Her breathing slowed immediately, and I had the disconcerting sensation of being alone in the helm, waiting for a ship in a cemetery and listening to Miranda dream behind me.

  • • •

  “It’s time for a christening,” Finn announced the next morning.

  I glanced up from breakfast with my mouth stuffed with a surprisingly delicious helping of stewed greens. Kraken, it appeared, knew his way around a galley kitchen. Miranda raised a bruised eyebrow and took a sip of bitter tea, which was another specialty of Kraken’s. Her tall frame lounged in the rickety chair at the head of the table, and only the knot on her head suggested that she had been anything but cool and collected for the past twenty-four hours.

  “Don’t you think maybe you’re taking things one step too far, Finn?” Miranda asked.

  “Nothing is too far for our glorious captain.”

  “Flatterer,” Jeanine said, reaching across the table for the carafe of tea. “Too bad she already knows you’re full of hot air.”

  “That’s not what you said last night,” Finn said with an exaggerated leer. I choked on my greens, horrified that they could even think about sex after the carnage we’d witnessed and the looming absence of Man o’ War.

  “Captain, do I have your leave to discipline this man?” Jeanine raised a threatening hand.

  Miranda waved away their bickering with her mug. After a full day and a half of idle waiting, I’d had a little time to explore all three square feet of the ship. The kitchen also served as the dining area, living quarters, and sleeping room. Bunks were built into the walls, one on top of the other, and aside from their lack of tact I sincerely hoped that Finn and Jeanine were joking. The thought of lying there listening to them coupling in the stifling darkness made me cringe.

  It was bad enough that Miranda’s bunk was directly above mine. The curtains that draped the shallow recess of my thin mattress didn’t do much to block the steady sound of her soft breathing or, for that matter, Finn’s snoring.

  It almost made me miss Orca.

  “Shall we hold a vote, then?” Finn dodged Jeanine’s swipe.

  “If it’s that or a mutiny, I guess I have no choice.” Miranda took another sip of tea and glanced at the keg of rum in the corner.

  Kraken shook his head at her pointedly. He had forbidden her access to alcohol until she felt one hundred percent. I chewed down another mouthful, eying the platter hungrily. Rum was secondary. This was the first time in weeks I’d had the opportunity to go back for a second helping of food, and I had no intention of letting it pass me by.

  “Miranda’s Pussycat has a nice ring to it,” Finn said.

  “I am glad that references to my genitalia occupy so much of your limited brain space, Finn, but, unlike you, I think with the head on my shoulders.”

  “Captain, I’m hurt. You know I was only thinking of your deep and abiding love for Seamus,” Finn said, affecting an injured expression and pointing at the cat in question, who was sniffing hopefully up at the counter.

  “Which is why Sea Cat is in much better taste.”

  “You should have heard his first idea,” Jeanine said, aiming another slap in Finn’s direction.

  “I did.” Miranda pressed a hand to her temple. “Which is why I still have a headache.”

  I tried to picture Admiral Comita joking around with her crew like this and failed. This level of insubordination was inconceivable, but then again, most of Miranda’s crew were from questionable backgrounds. I had no idea what passed for respect on a mercenary vessel or a pirate ship.

  “Let’s get this over with, then.” Miranda cleared her plate, and the rest of us piled ours in the washbasin while Finn, who had wash duty, muttered something under his breath and curled his lip at the full sink as he passed.

  “What are we doing?” I asked Jeani
ne.

  “Christening this little beauty. We survived our first sub, so now she needs a name.”

  “Rose was the one who saved our asses,” Finn added. “Maybe we should call her Rosie’s—”

  “Enough.” Miranda cut him off. “Rose, let’s bring her up.”

  “Up?” I said, feeling the first stirrings of panic. You didn’t surface in the Gulf, not unless you absolutely had to, and not with a storm building.

  “Up,” Miranda repeated, vanishing around the corner toward the helm.

  “Shit.” I bit down firmly on my lip and followed Miranda.

  • • •

  The nose of the trawler rose through the murky waters, sunlight filtering oddly through the thick soup of the Gulf of Mexico. I repeated our coordinates to myself, watching Miranda’s hands on the controls and wondering where in all seven hells Man o’ War was at this moment. I looked up at one point to see a half smile on her face, and I tried to wipe my obvious anxiety from my expression.

  Conditions topside had deadly potential. The storm that had chased us into the straits had yet to follow, but I could feel it building strength over the Atlantic. It could still turn into a hurricane, and even without wind and waves the probability of a toxic algae bloom in the vicinity was much higher than any sailor would risk, not to mention the fact that the Gulf was notorious for its dead zones. Breathe too much of that air, and any question of the ship’s name would be moot.

  Only the most desperate drifters trawled the Gulf, raking in microplastics in their sweeping nets. The rest of the ocean’s occupants avoided the dead zones like the plagues they were. I didn’t see any atmospheric instruments on the dash, which meant that we would be in for a nasty surprise if there were heavy levels of hydrogen sulfide at the surface. I shuddered at the memory of the putrid smell. Fleet Prep required their students to identify the odorous toxin by scent, an experience I could happily have done without. Born on Cassiopeia, I’d seen enough drifters and trawlers return to the Archipelago suffering from the side effects of the gas to keep my curiosity more than satisfied.

  The thick soup parted, and we nosed past the remnants of ancient trash rendered unrecognizable by years of sunlight and salt.

  “Ready?” Miranda breached the trawler and I felt the rumble of the bulkheads emptying their contents back into the sea.

  “Is it safe?”

  “You tell me, navigator.”

  I stared out at the overcast sky. The ocean was a flat, calm gray that showed no outward signs of contamination. Nothing bloomed across the surface, and the water was unusually still. If there was a layer of poisonous gas hovering above the smooth, rippling waves, it was past my ability to judge. It looked about as peaceful as I’d ever seen the sea.

  “It looks calm,” I said, “but we should send up a canary.”

  “A canary?” Miranda’s eyebrows contracted slightly.

  “A sniffer, someone to check for gas.”

  “Why the hell don’t you just call it a sniffer, then?” She engaged the stabilizer and leaned back, grinning.

  “I don’t make the rules,” I said, shrugging and blushing under her scrutiny.

  “I never understood why the Archipelago clings to archaic terminology. Do you even know what a canary is?”

  “No.” I had never stopped to think about it. A canary was what you called the unlucky person who got sent topside first in the event of a system failure.

  “It’s a bird. They sent them down into mines. Land mines, obviously, not the ones we have on the ocean floor.” She shook her head.

  “They don’t like to explain themselves too much on the fleet,” I said.

  Miranda considered me for a moment, and I wondered if she was remembering the little chat we’d had in her garden.

  “Do you miss your fleet ship?”

  “Parts of it,” I admitted. “But not all of it. The food, I guess.” I shifted in my chair, plucking at a loose thread in the knee of my pants.

  Miranda didn’t say anything as she flicked a few more knobs. There was another rumbling, this time from the trawling mechanisms engaging.

  “All right,” she said, stretching. “Let’s get this over with.”

  “Would it matter?” I asked, standing beside her in the cramped space.

  “Would what matter?”

  She was very close to me. I could feel the warmth of her body and the shift in the air between us, and I had an overwhelming desire to tell her that I was glad she wasn’t dead. I couldn’t think about the sight of her unconscious face without feeling like Orca had punched me in the gut.

  “If I missed the fleet,” I said.

  She tilted her head slightly, her eyes scanning my face.

  “It would mean you had bad taste in company.”

  “Do you know many fleeters?”

  “Enough to know you’re not like most of them. Come on,” she said, giving me a gentle push. “Let’s get some fresh air.”

  • • •

  Fresh was not the word I would have used to describe the air in the Gulf. There was a strange quality to it. It wasn’t sulfurous, but it lacked something. The salt wind was limpid and listless against my face, the tiny deck was slick with water and debris, and the ocean was murky with plastic sediment while the clouds hung hard and gray above us, rippled like folded steel. Kraken and Miranda stood at the bow, fiddling with their flasks. Jeanine, Finnegan, and I stood closer to the stern, the low rail of the top deck pressing into my calf.

  “To the Sea Cat. She floats,” Miranda said, raising one flask in the air. She took a sip and passed it to Kraken, who took a sip and passed it to me. I hesitated only a second before following suit, surprised at the taste of fresh water.

  “May she pass unnoticed over the deeps.”

  Kraken’s voice rumbled over the water as the next flask came around. This one was rum, and I noticed that Miranda took only a small sip.

  “We place our lives in the safety of her hold.”

  Miranda emptied what was left in both flasks onto the deck. The liquid mingled with the brine, and I thought there were a few barnacles who’d wake up with a hangover tomorrow.

  I glanced around the assembled crew, wondering what was next. It seemed like an awfully simple ceremony, lacking the long-winded speeches and self-congratulatory back-patting that accompanied christenings on the Archipelago.

  The flat sky pressed down on us, casting a dull light over our little assembly. Miranda’s shirt moved with the slow breeze, and Kraken’s smooth skull gleamed under the clouds. Behind us, the horizon was empty, with no sign of life, hostile or otherwise.

  “All right.” Miranda pocketed the flasks and gave a cursory surveillance of the ocean. “Rose, stay topside. The rest of you, back to work.”

  I scuffed a toe across some barnacles and waited for the others to descend. Miranda waved me closer.

  “Captain?” I asked.

  “What do you see?”

  “Nothing.” It was true. The weather was quiet, and the swarm had long since moved on.

  “Look again.”

  I obeyed. “Still nothing.”

  “You’re looking at the lifeblood of every ship on the ocean.”

  “It looks a little weak.”

  In truth, I had pictured the Gulf differently. Floating islands of trash, desperate marine life still clinging to the flotsam, while our miners sucked out minerals and ore from the ocean floor.

  “Do you know what I’ve learned, since being captain?” Miranda’s eyes were bright blue against the gray of the sky and the water. Her full mouth curved in a bitter smile. “Futility.”

  “That’s a little bleak,” I said.

  “That’s command for you.” Her smile lost its edge. “Really, though. What are we going to do when we lose the surface? Can you imagine spending your entire life beneath the waves? We’re fighting to keep a world we’ve already lost.”

  “Why do you bother, then?” I crossed my arms over my chest. Miranda toyed with the end of he
r braid. The gold ring on her thumb glinted.

  “I’m very selfish,” she said after a moment.

  I found myself at a loss for words and unable to look away from her eyes. I had the sense, as I usually did whenever Miranda spoke to me, that there was a deeper meaning behind her words.

  Her eyes narrowed and she took a step toward me, reaching for my arm with an intensity I wasn’t prepared for. I braced myself and nearly sent us both into the ocean as she pulled me behind her, and I caught myself at the last second with a hand on her belt.

  “Captain?”

  “Shhhh.”

  My grip on her belt tightened and I took an involuntary step closer to her as the source of her alarm breached through the murk, water running in rivulets off the narrow hull of another ship.

  • • •

  “Don’t move,” Miranda said as the other boat finished surfacing. Its hull narrowed into a knife’s edge at the prow, and while it was roughly the same size as Man o’ War, there was an air of menace to its sharp lines and the abundance of armed sailors that appeared on the deck. Miranda pulled me closer. I could feel the tension radiating from every muscle on her body.

  I tried not to enjoy it.

  The hatch popped open with a hiss behind us, and Finn’s voice carried over the rumble of the other ship’s bulkheads.

  “Vessel approaching, Captain. I couldn’t get the damn sonar in the W5000 . . .” He trailed off, then ducked back below.

  I could feel the reverberation of his running footsteps and the boom of Kraken’s voice calling out orders from the hold. The other ship inched closer. There were jagged fins welded to the side, with rusted teeth like a saw. If they came into contact with our hull, they would rend right through it, which, I realized with a shudder of fear, was exactly their purpose.

  There was only one class of ships that employed that sort of violence. Pirates. I thought of the destroyed fleet ship and a wave of hatred rolled over me.

  “Don’t, Rose,” Miranda said, stopping me from pushing past her.

  The ship inched closer until there was a real risk of it slicing through our trawler.