by Anna Burke
“Prepare to be boarded,” one of the pirates shouted.
There were footsteps behind me, and then Kraken’s bulk towered comfortingly to my left. Finn appeared at my right. Jeanine had remained below, where I hoped that she was prepping the hidden W5000 engine for an expedient escape. Our trawler was not equipped for combat, and, despite the red rage swamping my vision, I knew this was not a battle we would win.
The boarding ramp slid out from their top deck like an eel. We were outnumbered at least three to one, and I didn’t think that I really counted as a fighter compared to the two pirates making their way down the gang plank.
The man landed first, his dreadlocks swinging behind him like tangled sea snakes. The woman’s head was as bald as Kraken’s, shaved smooth to display the complex geometric shapes tattooed on her scalp. Both stepped off the plank deliberately, surveying us with interest.
Miranda broke the silence.
“I thought it seemed a little quiet around here,” she said. She let go of my arm deliberately and placed her hand on her hip, a casual inch above the long knife she carried there.
“What’s in your hold?” asked the man.
“Nothing yet,” said Miranda.
“Small crew you’ve got.” The female pirate stepped forward, the swagger in her step rivaling Orca’s.
“Had a touch of fever a few months back,” Miranda lied.
The male pirate tapped a finger on the butt of his sword, looking a little uneasy. Kraken shifted his weight from one foot to the other, emphasizing the advantage his size gave him over the rest of us.
“Mind if we take a look?” the male pirate asked, apparently overcoming any fears about lingering contagion. He took a step forward without waiting for a response.
Miranda was quicker. Her hand shot out, catching his in a gesture of greeting that brought her up into his guard. The look on his face might have made me laugh if I had not been suppressing an urge to hurl my knife at his throat.
“I do mind,” she said, keeping her voice level. “I’ve got orders.”
“What the fuck, Jeremiah,” the female pirate said, frowning at her crewmate’s sudden hesitation.
“My mistake,” Jeremiah said to Miranda as he backed up. “They’re Miranda’s, Kira.”
“An easy misunderstanding.” Miranda shrugged.
“Neptune’s balls. What are you doing out here?” Kira asked.
“Right now? Trawling. Later, who can say?”
I couldn’t see Miranda’s face, but I heard the grin in her voice and hated her for it, even as I understood its necessity.
“What about you?”
“Well,” Jeremiah nodded at his ship, “we’re not exactly equipped to trawl, so we’ve been, ah, relieving a few vessels of their haul. Mostly fleet.” He spat. “Cut off the body, and the head dies.”
I felt the heat in my glare as I watched Jeremiah. He had not admitted to destroying the fleet warship, but the pleasure in his voice boiled my blood.
“Shit,” he said, catching my glance. “What the hell is that?”
Miranda reached behind her and placed a warning hand on mine.
“One of Miranda’s crew,” Miranda said.
Kira elbowed her way past Jeremiah and walked up to us, stopping a few inches from where we stood. She raked her eyes over me, then settled them on my face.
“Who are you, wolf pup?” she asked me.
“One of Miranda’s,” Miranda repeated.
Her hand squeezed mine, more warning than reassurance.
I kept my lips sealed.
“She treat you right?” The woman smiled at me. “We could make you an offer. Sea wolves are always welcome on my crew.”
“She’s not open to negotiation.” Miranda’s voice was low.
“I could make you an offer then,” the woman said, smiling at Miranda now.
“She’s not for sale, and her contract isn’t up.” Miranda stepped to the side, pulling my right hand forward.
My palm lay face to the sky, the fresh scar red and puckered.
“That’s too bad,” the pirate said, shaking her head. “If you change your mind,” she told me, “look for Mercy.”
“Who are you sailing with?” Miranda asked, resuming her position in front of me.
“Black Daniel’s working the southern quadrant with Fever, and Iris and Jonesy are in the north. Last I heard, we were all taking orders from Ching Shih, but you know how she is.”
The woman rolled her eyes and a chill passed over me that had nothing to do with the coming storm.
“She’s something, all right.” Miranda agreed. “The woman’s got balls bigger than Neptune.”
“So does your captain, from what I hear,” said Jeremiah. “It takes real cahones to tell Ching to fuck off.”
“I’m sure she’ll be glad to hear you have a healthy respect for her gentlemanly bits,” Miranda said.
I felt Kraken’s laugh through the soles of my boots.
“Who captains Mercy?” Miranda asked.
“Serafina Lopez.”
“Well,” Miranda said, shifting her weight, “do we have your leave to trawl?”
The pirates exchanged significant looks.
“We’ll give you two days, and I can’t make any promises about Daniel and Iris.” The woman’s eyes flicked back to me one last time. “If you change your mind, puppy, come find us.”
I shivered.
“Leave off,” Jeremiah said to her, narrowing his eyes at Miranda with the look of someone who had just put two and two together. “That’s Miranda fucking Stillwater.”
• • •
Mercy disengaged, leaving me alone with my crew and staring at Miranda in confusion. Miranda Stillwater. The name was familiar. The memory tugged at me, anchorless and aggravating.
“Do we trawl?” Kraken asked.
“Not much of a choice now, and it will buy Orca some time to get here.” Miranda scanned the flat horizon.
“The debris blocked that ship from the sonar,” Finn said. “We need to get clear of it.”
“Or we can hope that it will block us.” Miranda glanced at me for confirmation.
The thought of staying in the debris field turned my stomach, but Miranda was right. I nodded.
“It will buy us a little time, but if you want to trawl, we’ll need to break free of the worst of it,” I said.
“Not quite.” Kraken glanced out at the water. “This is a trawler’s dream, minus the bodies. Man o’ War could use a few replacement parts, and fleet supply capsules float.”
Kraken was right, of course. Nothing in the ocean went to waste, and ship parts were too precious to let sink, which was why most were constructed to float in the event of a catastrophe. Comita would have done the same thing. Sure, she would have held a short service and said a few words for the dead, but in the end the fleet trawlers would launch either way. That thin veil of humanity was the only difference.
An important difference.
“Why did they try and recruit me?” I asked. Kraken, Finn, and Miranda exchanged glances.
“They think you’re something you’re not,” Miranda said.
“What do they think I am, then?” Adrenaline from the unexpected boarding strung out my voice into a reedy breath.
Miranda sighed. “Kraken, get our nets in order. Finn, see what you can do about that radar. Rose, come with me. I’ll explain once we’re below.”
• • •
“There’s no reason why you would know about the sea wolves on the Archipelago. They’re an old buccaneer legend, with a few grains of truth.”
She winked conspiratorially and adopted a storyteller’s exaggerated tones.
“It is said that the blood of Neptune himself flows in their veins, appearing now and then in old pirate bloodlines.”
I hovered on the edge of my chair with a pit in my stomach. I knew what her next words were going to be before she spoke. Crow’s Eye had asked me something similar, and I did not think it was
a coincidence.
“Where was your father’s family from?” she asked.
I wished I knew. He had sailed in and out of my young life like all of his kind, and in the years that had passed since he vanished, I had left Cassiopeia and thoughts of him and my mother behind. Guilt, ever-present in any thought of my home station, urged me to look forward. Looking back was pointless. There was nothing I could do for my mother now.
You might have asked her what it was like, to lose both lover and daughter.
But I hadn’t.
Next time I get home leave, I will, I vowed. If I got to go home.
“I don’t know. He was a drifter, that’s all my mother told me. Why?”
“The sea wolves are ruthless, elusive, and unnaturally good sailors. They also, according to superstition, have one distinguishing characteristic.”
I waited, feeling the blood rise to my face.
“It’s your eyes, Rose. That’s what gives people the wrong idea.”
She twisted the ring around her thumb. There was something engraved in it that I couldn’t make out. It might have been the roman numeral two. She looked at me.
“They give me the wrong idea sometimes, too.”
“They’re just eyes,” I said, willing my heart to resume its normal pace and failing. Miranda’s eyes were far more interesting. I couldn’t have looked away from them any more than I could have sprouted gills and breathed water.
“Comita had no idea what she had in you.”
She leaned forward until her knees brushed my thigh. Whoever had designed the rig had anticipated the pilot and co-pilot getting along. There wasn’t room for discord.
“I don’t care if you have sea wolf in you. I don’t give two shits who your dad was, or your mother. You’ve got a gift and it doesn’t matter how you came by it, as long as you stay on my ship.”
“You don’t think I actually considered signing on to Mercy for a second, do you?” I said.
Miranda’s eyes narrowed, and the corner of her lip twitched in what might have been a suppressed grin.
“Why not? Seemed like a decent offer, to me.”
“Because they’re pirates.”
Miranda’s lips curved in a cruel smile, and she took my hand and turned over my palm. She traced the scars she’d left there with her forefinger, her eyes never leaving mine.
“Honey, what exactly do you think a mercenary is?”
My brain clumsily tried decipher the meaning behind her words. Her voice was husky, and my pulse leapt at her touch like a sail in the wind.
“You’re not a pirate,” I said.
“Not today, no.” She continued tracing the scar, following the middle line down my wrist and up my thundering vein. “But last year? Tomorrow? Who knows. That’s the beauty of being a mercenary. You get to choose.”
I wanted to snatch back my hand, but my body betrayed me.
“Why are you working with the Archipelago now, then?” I asked.
Her finger slid back down my wrist and to my palm, where she drew a slow circle.
“Because I know what I want, and I know how to get it. For the moment, that means working with Comita.”
“If she reneges, she reneges,” Comita had said. I hadn’t thought about the consequences of those words at the time. I thought about them now.
“What do you want?” I asked.
Her smile hit me like a rogue wave. My ship capsized, flooded, and sank before my lookout could sound the slightest warning.
“Now that,” she said, lightly tapping the calluses on my palm, “is something a smart player doesn’t reveal until she’s sure of her hand.”
“Who are you, Miranda?” I asked.
I hardly recognized my voice. It had dropped an octave and acquired a throaty timber that sent a chill down my back. The raw desire lacing it was unmistakable. Miranda Stillwater. The familiarity of the name ached like a loose tooth.
Miranda’s smile deepened, and she leaned in until her lips brushed my ear. Her braid slipped over her shoulder and fell against my breast, and the heat of her body overrode any remaining sense I had managed to cling to.
“I’m your goddamn captain,” she said.
Her voice vibrated in my eardrum, sending a jolt through my body that arched my back as my breath caught. I reached up, grabbing her braid and turning her face to mine. Her blue eyes widened with surprise and a flash of something deeper, and her lips parted slightly as she braced herself against my chair. I held her gaze for as long as I could without pulling her lips to mine, and with my last shred of dignity forced my vocal cords into submission.
“And I’m your fucking navigator. I don’t like sailing blind.”
Miranda’s pulse beat rapidly against my wrist. My fingers tightened around her hair in answer, and her eyes closed at the sudden prick of pain. Her sharp exhale rippled over every nerve on my body. When her eyes opened, I was blindsided by the naked need reflected there.
“Careful,” she said, her voice as raw as mine. “You might not like what you see.”
“Captain.” Finn’s voice echoed down the hallway, followed by his footsteps. “I need you to take a look at something.”
She pulled away, leaving me limp as a wet rag and shaking.
Chapter Twelve
“How do you know how much is in the nets?” I asked Kraken as he cranked open the doors to the airlock above the lower hold.
“You don’t always,” he said. The tendons in his neck bulged as he worked the handle. If the squawks and shrieks coming from the joint were any indication, it was in desperate need of serious lubrication.
“So how do you know when to pull it in?”
“Every twelve hours. That way if the net needs repairs, you haven’t lost too many days’ worth of cargo, and when it’s full it can be even more of a drag on the engine than it already is.”
That much I knew. The weight of the trawl was throwing off my calculations badly. The sheer reach of the nets allowed for any wandering current to pluck at its edges, altering our course. The past day had been brutal. The trawler had bucked and wriggled under my guidance, and Finn’s news had not been comforting. Man o’ War was in the Gulf, but she was steering clear of our rendezvous the way any sane sailor steered clear of a plague ship.
There were several plausible explanations for this. The most likely was that Man o’ War was being watched, but I had a secret theory: mutiny. It made sense. Without Miranda, the captain’s seat might start to look pretty tempting to the people who had wanted me dead. At least Annie wasn’t around to stir things up.
Kraken’s hideous tattoos were oddly comforting in the light of these dark thoughts. He was shirtless as usual, and the tentacles rippled with the muscles of his back. I noticed a few ships locked in their grasp, floundering between his shoulder blades. The sight was darkly comical and I bit back a grin, wondering if I would see tiny, inked figures flailing in the surf if I looked closely.
“How did you end up on Man o’ War?” I asked.
The outer airlock doors clanged open with a bang, and he engaged the switch that raised the trawl, starting the laborious process of hauling in the nets. I felt the ship groan beneath me at the strain.
“I got tired of trawling,” he said, “right around the same time our boat came down with yellow fever.”
“Oh.” It didn’t seem appropriate to ask if any of his family survived.
“I trawled alone for a year after that. Then I signed on with a raider, for the company. That was when I met Miranda.”
He walked along the edge of the holding tank, inspecting it for flaws I couldn’t see.
“Who did you trade with when you trawled?”
I pictured a younger Kraken, all alone on a trawler for a year with the shades of his family haunting every empty day. In my mental image, his skin was smooth and free of the tattoos that now defined him.
“Gemini,” he said.
The mention of the station sent a nasty jolt through me. Gemini, site of the
recent rebellion that had weakened our defenses and distracted our fleets from the threat in the Gulf. The leader of the rebellion had been young, I remembered. A Gemini Fleet captain, top of her class, a rising star that took a spectacular fall straight into Davy Jones’s locker.
“Were you around during the rebellion?” I asked.
Kraken paused his inspection. “You have a lot of questions today.”
“Sorry. How much do you think we’ll haul in?” I changed tactics quickly, not wanting him to retreat behind his tattooed mask.
“With luck, enough to get the hell out of here. Miranda doesn’t like drifting and she can be a real bitch in close quarters. Figure that out yet?”
He winked at me. The inked eye remained open, though, which gave the gesture a grotesque effect.
The mention of close quarters with Miranda sent a wave of heat to my cheeks. I mumbled something incoherent and focused on the floor by my feet.
Miranda was a problem. The fleet had strict rules about fraternizing with officers. It was only permitted if you served outside of their jurisdiction, and the rules probably had something to do with why the officers were always irritable. It was hard to get laid if everyone around you was off-limits.
Comita would have a few choice words to say to me if she could see inside my head. Not only was Miranda my commanding officer, but she was a valuable asset to the fleet. I couldn’t do anything to jeopardize that.
Harper’s impish grin rose before my mind’s eye. “Or you could really seal the deal,” said my phantom friend. “Maybe she talks in her sleep.”
Somehow, though, I wasn’t sure even Harper would approve of my most recent wayward tendency. I closed my eyes against the memory of Miranda’s indrawn breath as my hand had closed on her hair.
Shit, I thought, as heat pooled between my thighs. Shit, shit, shit.
“You all right, Rose?”
Miranda’s voice did not help things. I jumped, nearly tumbling over the railing, and avoided looking at her as she caught my arm, only too aware that my emotions were written all over my face.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said.