Compass Rose

by Anna Burke

  “Get the hell out of my face, Maddox,” I said.

  His eyes gleamed with predatory interest as he stepped closer to my seat. The heat from his body invaded my senses, and I snarled, rising to my feet to glare up at him.

  “I said get the hell out of my face.” I kept my voice low and even.

  “Watch your tone, drifter,” he said.

  “Get. Out. Of. My. Face.”

  His face purpled in the most gratifying display of shock I had ever seen. Between us, hidden from view, the knife Miranda had given me pressed against his groin.

  “You’re pathetic,” I said. “Get back to work before you piss yourself.”

  I sat back down, not bothering to see if he had anything to say in response. The sound of his retreating footsteps restored some of my appetite, and I smiled grimly down at my plate.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” Harper said, dropping into the empty seat next to me. “We’re ready. When will your shift be over?”

  My food, which had looked tempting for such a brief, shining moment, might as well have been bilge sludge after that. I looked around to make sure no one could hear me before answering.

  “Comita wants to launch the attack tonight. It will take a few hours to get the bulk of Polaris and Orion through the channel, and that’s a few hours for Ching’s scouts to discover us. The faster we strike, the less prepared Ching will be. That means I need to be on the bridge.”

  Harper shook her head.

  “We need to get ahead of them. We won’t last a second under heavy fire.”

  “I’m due back in a few minutes,” I said, feeling the tides turn.

  “Rose.”

  “What?”

  “If we’re going to do this, we need to do it now. Have you given Comita the coordinates?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s been admiral for fifteen years, and she was a captain long before we were born. She can take it from here. You have done your duty.”

  “I—”

  “She won’t try you for treason,” Harper said, shoving a satchel into my lap.

  I looked inside. A thick envelope poked out, stamped with Comita’s seal and the scales of Libra Station.

  “What is this?”

  “The pardon. I took it from my mother’s desk. It pardons Miranda, her crew, and you.”

  “Me?”

  “For serving under a known traitor.”

  “She never told me I would need a pardon,” I said, my voice rising in anger.

  Harper kicked me under the table.

  “She also didn’t tell you who you were sailing under, and none of this will matter anyway if we don’t get out of here now. You said yourself that it will take a little while for the fleets to sort themselves out. We won’t get a better opportunity.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “Break the damn rules, Rose. Everyone else does.” Harper slung the bag over her shoulder, smiled at the table behind us, and made for the door. I followed, feeling significantly less at ease. This was worse, somehow, than facing off with pirates. These were people who trusted me— and if I failed, Miranda sank with me.

  North Star gleamed under the healthy bio-lights, a stark contrast to the ships I’d grown accustomed to. If we got out of this alive, I vowed, I would do something about Man o’ War’s infrastructure.

  “How are we getting out of the dock?” I asked. Harper had been intentionally vague about the details of her plan, in the event it fell through and I was questioned, and the uncertainty set my teeth on edge.

  “Jessie is on duty, and she’s scared out of her mind of pirates.” Harper rolled her eyes. “I slipped her some of Jonah’s brew before I came here to help her calm her down. She won’t give us any trouble. It’s an extra-special batch.”

  “You drugged her?”

  “I would never do something like that,” she said, grinning, “but I can guarantee she’ll be too worried about standing up straight to question my orders. Go get the others and meet me at the ship.”

  Without Harper, I felt exposed. It would not be long before Comita started wondering what had become of her navigator. I quickened my pace.

  “About time,” Orca said when I opened the door to the joint living quarters the mercenary crew had been assigned.

  Harper had obviously tipped them off. The four of them were dressed in the clothes they had arrived in, and Finn had a suspiciously heavy bag over one shoulder.

  “What?” he asked, taking the defensive when he caught me staring. “It’s fruit. You know when the last time was I had fruit?”

  I ignored him.

  “We can do this,” Orca said to me. Her knuckles were scabbed and her hands were bruised, but she clasped my forearm firmly.

  The dock where Sea Cat was laid up beneath the shipping bay was only half lit. Most of the berths were empty. This was the quarantine and repair dock, and all of its remotely seaworthy previous occupants had been hastily patched up in preparation for the coming battle.

  Harper chatted with a dazed-looking sailor I took to be Jessie. The other woman smiled and nodded, her eyes struggling to focus as she read over the sheet of paper Harper handed her.

  “Calm seas,” she said, stringing the words together so that they sounded more like “calmsies.”

  “Double-check for me?” Harper asked, shoving the paper in my face.

  It was an engine checklist, and had nothing whatsoever to do with docking regulations. Jessie gave another wobbly smile. I forced one back, the risk Harper had just taken grating on my nerves.

  “Looks good to me,” I said, faking enthusiasm. “Will she even be able to open the bay doors?” I asked when she was out of earshot.

  “If we hurry.”

  Harper followed Jeanine to the engine room, and Kraken popped out of one of the bulkheads with a smug expression.

  “Still got a few explosives,” he said before vanishing again.

  “Oh, good,” I said, feeling sick.

  Orca joined me in the helm after a final sweep of the vessel. The rush of water sluicing into the berth soothed my anxiety. This was where I belonged, for all that the next phase of our plan was entirely up to chance.

  “What if Kraken’s wrong?” she asked, reading my mind.

  “Then we’re screwed,” I said, wondering if death by missile would be preferable to Kraken’s plan.

  “How long did he say to wait?” Orca guided the trawler into the water lock, turning off the running lights once the hatch sealed.

  “He said it would not take long, but we’re so far from the shelf, here. I don’t know.” I paused as the second hatch opened and we purred into the deepening water. “Stay close to the ship. If we can stay in her shadow, we’ll stay off the radar.”

  Orca hovered the trawler against the belly of North Star. Our lights were off, but the rest of the fleet had their running lights on, illuminating the jellyfish glinting in the murky water.

  More sweat trickled down my sides. At this rate, my uniform would be drenched.

  “Sweet mother of pearl,” Orca said, leaning toward the glass.

  I squinted, a shudder of primal fear rippling through me.

  Large shapes emerged from the murk.

  The first squid jettisoned past us, heading straight for the lights. I thought of Annie, and our later flight from the mines, and was glad that Orca had the wheel because I would have turned back toward the hatch in a heartbeat.

  “They use light to find their prey,” Kraken had explained back on Polaris. “The lights from all of your ships will draw them out.”

  “I thought they preferred deep water,” I asked him. Squid were not a problem around the stations, and I did not know much about their habits.

  “They do, but new lights in a new place will be too much to resist, and they do not like ships.”

  I could attest to that.

  The squid attached themselves to the boats, long tentacles groping for purchase. Archipelago vessels were far too large to be bothered
by squid this size, for all that they measured in at several meters, but they would confuse the sonar just enough to let us escape unnoticed, if all went well.

  “Move slowly,” I said, remembering Kraken’s instructions.

  Squid this size were a problem for us.

  “Slowly my ass. I hate these fuckers,” Orca said through gritted teeth.

  “Keep straight. It is open from here on out, give or take a few dead reefs.”

  “Great. Reefs. This is why I stick to the open ocean.” Orca drummed her fingers on the dash as she guided the trawler through the darkness.

  “Current will pick up in a few miles. Until then it should stay shallow.”

  “Even better.”

  Something slammed into the back of the trawler, sending me sideways in my chair.

  “That better be a squid,” Orca said.

  We didn’t dare send out sonar readings, in case they were intercepted, and so there was only one way to find out.

  “I’ll go check the stern porthole,” I said.

  “Hurry back. I refuse to die alone, covered in fucking tentacles. If I die, you’re coming with me.”

  I ducked out of the helm and hurried down the hall, past the fading bloodstains where the SHARK had met his messy end, around the narrow galley kitchen, and through the dark hallway to the stern, where the trawling doors waited in the ceiling, sealed but for the occasional drip. At the back of the wall was a porthole, and I stumbled as the ship shuddered under another impact.

  Kraken and Finn arrived at a dead run, skidding to a stop in front of me.

  “If it was a missile, we’d be dead already,” Finn said, nodding toward the porthole. “So what is it?”

  The three of us crammed our faces against the glass. Black water stared back.

  “Helpful,” Finn quipped.

  He was tossed into me by another slam and an ominous creaking.

  “That sounded like . . .”

  “The trawl,” Kraken finished for him.

  “The squid we saw were not big enough to damage the trawl,” I said, narrowing my eyes at the hatch doors. Was I imagining that the drips had increased in volume?

  “Those were just the squid you saw.” Kraken flexed his shoulder muscles, looking like a boxer preparing to step into the ring. “Do you know what squid’s favorite meal is?”

  “No.”

  “Squid. And where there are little squid, there will be big squid.”

  “What are you saying?” Finn asked.

  A sucker planted itself over the porthole window, obscuring half of it with pale, palpitating flesh.

  “I am saying that we have a monster on our hands.”

  “Squid never attack fleet trawlers.” I backed away from the porthole as I spoke.

  “That’s because you shoot them. Drifters don’t have that luxury, and the fuckers know it. They are smarter than they look.”

  The tentacle contracted, releasing its grip on the porthole with an inaudible pop. Above us, metal and plastic screeched.

  “Is it—” I did not want to complete my sentence.

  “Trying to open the hatch?” Kraken finished for me.

  “Yeah . . .” my voice trailed off.

  “Intentionally or not, that is what is happening,” Finn said, pointing to the steady trickle of seawater.

  “How do we lose it?” I asked, turning to our resident tentacle expert.

  “With great difficulty.”

  This was not what either Finn or I wanted to hear.

  “We can’t blow it off us without giving away our coordinates, and unless one of us wants to go out there with a harpoon and a diving suit, we’ll have to think of something else,” Kraken said.

  “The trawl,” Finn said, his face brightening. “Can you try to dislodge it with that?”

  “Might work,” Kraken said, heading for the control panel.

  A nasty wrenching sound pierced our ears, followed by a snap.

  “Was that the trawl?” I asked in a decidedly faint voice.

  Finn, who had remained by the porthole, shrugged.

  “Whatever it was, it just got a lot darker out there.”

  “Ink.” Kraken eyed the hatch.

  Sure enough, some of the droplets coming in fell blackly against the basin.

  An idea formed in an equally shadowy corner of my mind. It was a bad idea. A very, very bad idea.

  “Kraken,” I said, thinking of Miranda. “What if we didn’t have to go out with a harpoon?”

  “I’m listening, kid.”

  “What if we opened the hatch?”

  Finn choked on an inhale.

  “Are you out of your mind? We’d flood the ship.”

  “This room seals off.” All the compartments on the trawler did. “If we can get it in the hatch—”

  “—assuming it fits,” Kraken said.

  “—then we can close it in, open the bay doors in here, and . . .” I trailed off.

  “Cut it to pieces?” Kraken supplied.

  “Something like that.”

  “You ever done battle with a kraken? This isn’t like chopping up calamari,” Kraken said.

  “Would it work?”

  “Chopping it up like calamari?”

  “Any of it.”

  Kraken ran his hand over his smooth scalp.

  “You’ve got more drifter in you than I gave you credit for, wolf pup,” he said as the trawler groaned again. “Get back to the helm. Finn and I will handle this.”

  “It was my idea,” I said, wishing that it wasn’t. “I can’t just let you put yourself at risk.”

  “Someone needs to keep Orca on track.”

  “If this thing sinks us, it won’t matter.” I squared my shoulders.

  “Fine. But stay on the other side of the hatch and keep watch. You better be ready to open that door for us.”

  I nodded, secretly relieved to be on the other side of a sturdy door.

  Kraken and Finn drew their curved swords, and Kraken grabbed a few of the long poles drifters used to pluck valuable flotsam out of the holding tank.

  “Release the kraken!” Finn roared as Kraken cranked the outer doors open and I ran to the hatch, slamming the door behind me. The window cut off some of the view and most of the sound, but I could see their mouths open as they shouted down the predator.

  I didn’t need to see or hear to know that the squid was not happy. Loud thumps came from the hatch, and water sprayed through as the creature beat at the walls, the pressure change forcing it into the cavernous space where the trawl nets normally coiled.

  Kraken reversed the doors, his muscles and the tendons in his neck bulging with the effort.

  Finn pressed himself up against the wall, holding on to a nearby ladder rung for support.

  Kraken nodded once in my direction, and then chaos flooded the hold.

  The squid’s mantle took up most of the room, judging by the raw, red tint of the boiling waters, and its fins beat at the walls, shaking the vessel. I could not see Kraken or Finn past the flailing tentacles.

  Shouts from behind me warned me that the rest of the crew was on their way.

  “Get back to your stations,” I said, mustering as much authority as I could. “We can’t help them.”

  “Help them with what?” Jeanine pushed past me to stare through the hatch window. She swore more violently than I had ever heard her, and that was saying something.

  “I have to open the door to let them out, and that could jeopardize the ship if the compartment doesn’t seal.” My voice sounded dead. “So you all need to be at your stations, preparing for the worst.”

  “Is there anything worse than a fucking squid inside my ship?” Orca said, aiming a kick at the hatch door.

  We all jumped as something slammed back in a spray of water.

  “How much water is getting in?” Orca asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said, straining to see past the red flesh to where Kraken hacked at the squid’s tentacles. Finn was nowhere to
be seen.

  “Let me in there.” Orca pulled out her sword and tucked a throwing knife in her teeth.

  “No,” Harper, Jeanine and I said in unison.

  “As acting captain of this vessel, I order you to open that goddamn door and seal it shut behind me.”

  I placed myself between her and the hatch.

  “No.”

  “Any one of you can sail this tub without me. Now move, Rose, or I will make you move.”

  I hesitated, adrenaline obliterating conscious thought.

  “If you go, I go.”

  Orca looked almost as surprised by my words as I felt.

  “That thing will eat you alive,” she said.

  I opened the hatch and stepped into hell.

  Orca screamed at Jeanine to shut the door behind her. I didn’t look to see if she obeyed.

  Water poured into the holding tank from the doors above. They were unable to fully shut with the better half of a few tentacles lodged between them, and we were going to be in serious trouble once the tank overflowed.

  Kraken’s roars filled the room. The squid, whether by luck or design, had managed to place the bulk of its body in the tank, leaving its tentacles free to grasp at the enemy.

  The enemy in question was busy hacking at the tentacle wrapped around his waist, and black ink mingled with the churning water as the squid flailed.

  Finn lay unconscious a few feet away.

  “Get Finn,” Orca said, launching herself at the monster.

  I scrabbled across the slick floor, whimpering as I ducked beneath a red limb, and crouched beside Finn.

  A nasty lump covered his temple, and I remembered with a jolt that this was the second time he had been hit in the head. I checked his pulse. It was strong, which I took as a good sign, but there was no way of moving him safely. I would have to drag him to the hatch.

  There was only one problem with that scenario, and that was the rogue calamari between me and the door.

  Orca, true to her namesake, dove into the fray. The squid shuddered as she used her knife to climb up onto its mantle, stabbing the blade into its flesh for purchase, and it released Kraken with what remained of its tentacle.

  “The body. You have to go for the body. That’s where the fucker’s organs are.” Finn’s voice snapped my attention back to him.

  “You all right?”