Compass Rose

by Anna Burke

  “Calling it off was the right decision. She should have done that herself before she got back to the ship. Orca, though.” He shook his head.

  I took a drink and offered the flask back to him to avoid meeting his eyes.

  “Is she okay?”

  “Miranda? She’ll be fine, or as fine as she needs to be.”

  “Shouldn’t you be getting her drunk?” I asked.

  “She’s more than capable of doing that alone. Besides,” he said, taking a swig, “someone’s got to make sure nobody kills you before you get on that trawler tomorrow.”

  “Let me guess. You drew the short straw?”

  “I volunteered. Wanted to make sure you hadn’t cracked. I don’t want to deal with any squidshit from my navigator while we’re near the coast.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I said.

  “You damn well better be.”

  “Yes sir,” I said before I could stop myself.

  He laughed.

  “I’m drifter trash, kid. Don’t call me sir.”

  “Yes, Kraken.”

  “That’s better. Enjoying Andre’s quarters?”

  “Andre?” I flinched at the thought of the sailor with the bloodstained whip who’d made his dislike of me so clear when I first arrived.

  “He led the mutiny while Miranda was off ship. Orca walked him.”

  Making him the second person to die because of me. I reached for the rum.

  “Maybe he was right,” I said. “Not to mutiny, but about the Archipelago. They wouldn’t even allow him on a station, let alone thank him. Why help a nation that would rather see you dead than benefit from their technology?”

  “You’re Polaris’s prodigy, kid. You tell me.”

  “Why is Miranda really helping the Archipelago, anyway?” I asked him, ignoring his comment.

  “That’s Miranda’s business.”

  “Ching told me what happened.”

  Kraken look pierced through the rum.

  “Do you really want to know?”

  I nodded.

  Kraken took a long pull of the rum, nearly emptying the flask.

  “I told you my family trawled near Gemini. I met Miranda shortly after she was made captain. She should never have been appointed that young, but Gemini station couldn’t resist her.”

  There was a familiar bitterness in his words.

  “I hated her, the first time I met her. She seemed too good to be true. She wanted to open a medical center for drifters, and she came down to the quarantine docks to talk to us. This was right after I’d lost my family. I gave her a piece of my mind.”

  He shook his head a little, as if remembering.

  “She listened. That’s what surprised me. Called me Kraken, because all I wanted to do at that time was pull everyone around me down to Davy Jones’s. She came back to talk to me a few times. Gave me that pair of dice, and promised they were lucky. Said she always won with them.

  “There were a lot of raids that year. Ching had just moved into Archipelago territory, and Gemini didn’t have a large enough fleet to hold them off. The Council refused to send in reinforcements. One of Miranda’s brothers was a captain on a ship Ching’s sailors sacked, and she snapped a little when he died. Started talking about seceding from the Archipelago if they didn’t start intervening. She wasn’t the only one who felt that way, but she was the loudest. She sent her demands to the Council, threatening secession if they didn’t provide more ships. In response, they shut down the mutiny and destroyed half the station. You’ve never seen so much blood, Rose.”

  “Pirates attacked Gemini,” I said, wishing there was more rum. Kraken’s story directly contradicted the official report.

  “Pirates were there, but no pirate ship at that time could do what the Council did. They threatened to sink the station if Gemini didn’t stand down and give up the ringleaders. Miranda chose to walk herself, rather than face the Council. When they couldn’t get her, they executed the others, but they named it the Stillwater Mutiny for a reason, and her family paid the price.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They executed her parents, and her surviving siblings were stripped of all rank.”

  This was too much information to absorb. Kraken’s voice continued to flow around me, while my mind struggled to keep up with the changing coordinates.

  “I joined up with Ching right after the mutiny. I couldn’t stay near Gemini after that, and I was tired of trawling anyway. When I heard that Ching had pulled a woman out of the water, I identified her. I was the one who told her about her family. You could say we bonded over our mutual hatred of the Council. Ching fueled that hatred, and Miranda used what she’d learned as a fleet captain to help Ching rally the Red Flag Fleet and hit the Archipelago where they were weakest.”

  This was not what I wanted to hear.

  “Why did she change?”

  “She won a ship in a game of Crown and Anchor from one of Ching’s captains. Changed the name to Man o’ War, can’t imagine why. She was a different person when she was away from Ching. Ching knew it, too, but she also knew keeping Miranda on a tight leash would only piss her off.”

  “What’s the debt Ching was talking about?”

  “Miranda owes Ching her life. That’s a serious debt out here.”

  “Is that why Miranda hates her?”

  “She doesn’t hate Ching. She just doesn’t agree with her. Ching’s vision of the future is not that different from your Council’s, only Ching would put herself in charge, and kick the Archipelago citizens to the seven seas and call it justice. Miranda has been fighting for a middle ground her whole life. She doesn’t want to trade one tyrant for another.”

  “But the crew thinks Ching Shih has the right of it, don’t they?” I asked.

  “Some of them. Not as many as you think.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Me? I think people fuck up power, no matter who they are. You?”

  “I think I’m drunk.”

  “There are worse things to be, kid.”

  • • •

  I rolled out of bed with a hangover the size of the Pacific and a hole in my chest that wasn’t much smaller. I seriously contemplated drowning myself in the shower rather than eating breakfast. Jeanine took one look at me and rolled her eyes, muttering something under her breath that I did not care to decipher as I took my seat at the captain’s table for what might be the last time. Orca and I sat ourselves on opposite sides, and Miranda ignored both of us. I tried not to look at Andre’s empty chair.

  We all departed from the mess hall separately. Miranda’s cover for my absence was all too believable; there was just too much work to do. It would be easy enough to claim that I was working through meals, and if things went according to my plan, we would be back before anyone grew too suspicious.

  Kraken arrived at the vessel bay first. He was alone. I wondered how he had managed to dismiss the usual bay crew, but didn’t ask as I slipped down the hatch. He had done it, which was the important thing, and now all I had to do was hide until we were past Ching’s ships.

  This was the part I had been dreading, although this morning I was past caring. There was only one place to hide on the trawler where I was sure I was not going to be found, and it was the last place on earth I wanted to be.

  Well, second to last. The first was definitely inside my own head.

  I wanted to take back yesterday. I wanted to expunge it from the record, and I really, really didn’t want to be on a trawler with Orca.

  “Are you ready?” Kraken asked from behind me.

  I swallowed hard and nodded as he handed me an oxygen tank and mask. Memories of my near fatal squidding expedition flashed through my mind.

  Kraken led the way to the port side bulkhead and opened the maintenance hatch.

  “It won’t be for long,” he promised, patting me on the shoulder.

  “If I drown,” I said, looking at the salt-stained walls, “tell . . .” I trailed off. Tell who,
what? I had nothing to say that could be said out loud, and no way of getting a message back to Polaris. “Tell Orca I’ll save her a place in the locker.”

  That should be reason enough to live, I figured as I climbed inside. If I drowned, my last words would be delivered to Orca, instead of to the people I loved.

  • • •

  Air hissed as the ocean flooded in. I was grateful for the diving suit I found stowed inside, courtesy of Kraken, and pulled it on over my clothes in the darkness as the trawler took on water and sank through the first airlock.

  I had no idea how long I would be stuck in here. This oxygen tank was much larger than the one I’d used with Annie, and in theory should last me at least twelve hours. If it took longer than that, I would start wishing I was dead, anyway.

  The total blackness was disorienting. I hung on to the hatch handle as water flooded in around me, rising past my ankles, then my knees, then my waist, and finally over my head. I had to force myself to listen to my inner compass. Every instinct in my body screamed that I was trapped, with no way to tell up or down, only the crushing pressure of the ocean pressing all around me.

  Hours passed, giving me too much time to think. I could not hear anything, and despite the suit and the warmth of the water I grew chilled and huddled up around the door like a piece of lonely flotsam while the tears I had not spilled the night before flowed freely.

  Sobbing while on an oxygen tank takes a special kind of skill. I nearly drowned before I calmed myself down, but not before my mask fogged up and the tears pooled at the bottom, stinging my cheeks. I tried not to think about my nose and what might have gathered in my air tube.

  Miranda and I were finished before we had even had a chance to become something. I was not naive enough to believe that I had been simple entertainment for her, not with Kraken’s warning to her still ringing in my head, but I didn’t think her pride would let her acknowledge that now, and what Orca and I had done was unforgivable. There might have been hope before that, but I had seen Miranda’s face.

  At least you know, now, that she was lying, I thought. She cares.

  The knowledge came at too high a price, and too late.

  With it came another realization: I wanted to stay here, with this crew, despite the attempts on my life, the crappy food, and the murky origins of the captain.

  Fat chance of that now.

  This was supposed to be a good thing. The right decision. The only decision I could make, really, when I thought about it. Falling in love with a mercenary captain was about as smart as surfacing in a storm, and with similar consequences. Not only was it a violation of my training, but there was no future in it. I would return to Polaris and my fleet, and she would remain a mercenary. Miranda Stillwater would never be welcomed with open arms in the Archipelago, even if she spared us a war. And even if she wanted me, too, I couldn’t stay here.

  Knowing that didn’t make it any easier. Part of me wished it had been Miranda who broke things off, as that would have followed chains of command I was used to. I could follow orders. Making the rules myself was a hell of a lot harder.

  Another part of me wished she had fought me. It would not have taken much to make me change my mind. A kiss. A few words. A small declaration of caring.

  Then I remembered how cold her voice had sounded as she’d explained why Orca was replaceable, and shuddered.

  Orca.

  I repressed a vivid memory of the first mate. For someone who jockeyed continually for domination in the ring and on the deck, she had certainly been quick to give it up the minute things got heated.

  I had never been as thankful for anything as I was when I heard the hiss of compressed air forcing the water in the bulkhead back out again, freeing me from darkness and my thoughts. I pulled off the mask and scrubbed my face as soon as there was enough airspace, hoping my eyes were not as red as they felt. When the water stabilized a foot or so below the hatch, I floated by the ladder and waited.

  “Ready to eat something?” Kraken asked, swinging the hatch open and spilling beautiful, blessed light into the bulkhead.

  I clambered out to drip on the floor before him.

  “You have no idea.” I stripped out of the suit and took the offered towel, then followed him to the common room.

  It looked the same as before, only with Orca sitting in Miranda’s seat. The comparison did not boost my mood.

  “You look like a drowned rat,” she said, making a courageous attempt at returning to how things had been before.

  And you look as miserable as I feel.

  “How did the inspection go?” I asked instead.

  Orca was the first mate, and as such the acting captain on this vessel. I would follow her lead.

  “We hid most of the grain in the other bulkhead,” Orca said. “Good thing, too, because they took what we didn’t hide.”

  “Even our supplies?”

  “Kraken switched those out into some old drifter grain sacks. Nobody touched them.”

  She glanced down at the food cooking on the stove, and I hoped Kraken had sterilized the sacks, first. There was a reason not even a pirate would touch drifter foodstuffs.

  “So we’re good, then?” I wanted to get out of my wet clothes and into something clean and dry.

  “For now.”

  I tried not to dwell on the ominous note in her voice.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Our trawler bobbed in the murky water, the headlights illuminating the debris field left by the roving Archipelago miners. The central mining station hung suspended over the operation base, a massive ball of bioluminescence in the distance, and a warning ping registered on the sonar, reminding us this was controlled territory.

  Finn pinged something back that seemed to satisfy them.

  “All right,” he said with a grim smile. “We’re in.”

  “In?” I asked.

  “These mines have been cut off from supplies for months. Ching occasionally sells the metals back to the Archipelago in exchange for goods she needs, but you can bet your ass these miners haven’t seen decent Archipelago grain in weeks. They’ll let us on.”

  The injustice of the trade galled. These were Archipelago mines. We didn’t need to buy our own materials, and our miners deserved a decent diet.

  “What are we asking for in exchange?”

  “Discarded ore and low-grade phosphorous for the trawler. And information,” Orca said as she fiddled with the instruments on the panel.

  Finn leaned in between us to double-check the helm sonar. I wished he would stay like that indefinitely, a friendly shield between me and the first mate.

  “How many pirates do you think will be on the mining station?” I asked.

  “Enough to maintain control. Pirates don’t like working this deep.”

  “No one likes working this deep,” Finn said with a shudder.

  This was where the remnants of the ocean’s population lived, bottom-feeders tricked out with glowing eyes and mangled teeth, color rioting around the ocean vents in temperatures hot enough to melt flesh from the bone. My ancestors had spent many generations on the ocean’s surface, but down here we were all still strangers.

  I did not want to get left behind in the trawler while the rest of the crew did business with the mine. My accent would mark me as Archipelago born and raised, and my eyes were noticeable enough that anyone tracking us would eventually pick up our trail, but that logic didn’t make the inevitable any easier.

  “Who’s boarding?” I got the question out without too much hesitation.

  “Not you,” Orca said, raising my hackles. “Ching catches wind of you asking questions, and we’re all dead.”

  She was right, of course, but there was one problem with her logic.

  “You’ll never pass for a drifter,” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral. We were much more likely to get reliable information out of the station master if he thought we were drifter scum, too beneath his notice to question, and I didn’t think any
Archipelagean would open up to mercenaries or pirates, given the current situation.

  Orca was a warrior, through and through. Kraken, for his part, may have drifted once, but his tattoos told the story of his more recent past too well, as did Jeanine’s. That left me and Finn.

  Orca glared at me.

  “It’s too risky,” she said. “And you’re too recognizable with those damned creepy eyes of yours.”

  You didn’t seem to mind them the other day.

  She scowled at me, a hint of color in her cheeks, as if she could read my thoughts.

  “Nobody looks a drifter in the eye.”

  “I should have left you in the bulkhead,” she said.

  I stifled a triumphant smile at her resigned look.

  “Let’s get this over with.” She turned away from me, and I felt an absurd urge to cry.

  “Orca is the best friend you have on this ship,” Annie had told me.

  I had been so fucking blind.

  The docking bay airlock opened for us like a hungry mouth. I tensed as the bay pressurized, leaving us bobbing in the dark while we waited for the station master to send out an inspector. It was too much like my earlier stay in the bulkhead, and I distracted myself by wondering if my father had ever traded with the mines.

  I didn’t have long to ponder questions I’d never know the answer to. Finn and I clambered out onto the deck, leaving Orca to pace the trawler with Kraken and Jeanine, and stepped over the body of a grotesquely long sea creature that had wrapped itself around the railing. Long tentacles came unstuck from the deck with morbid pops as the creature died.

  A light flared into life above us, the cold blue of burning methane. I shielded my eyes with my arm.

  “Declare yourselves,” said a voice.

  “Finnegan, from the Sea Cat, here to trade for minerals, and my cousin.”

  “How many onboard?”

  “Three more. No sickness to report.”

  “How about rats?”

  “Can’t say as I’ve seen any,” Finn said, “but you know how things are down here. Can’t see shit half the time anyway.”

  “What do you have to trade?” The voice did not sound amused at Finn’s joke.