Compass Rose

by Anna Burke

  “Good. Keep us that way,” Orca replied.

  There. The certainty locked in like due north. Man o’ War sailed close by, 30 degrees starboard, taking on water.

  “I found her,” I said, disbelief lacing my voice.

  “About time—”

  The second impact cut her off, and we both clutched at our seats as the boat tilted.

  “Dammit, Rose.”

  “She’s dead ahead. I can get us in,” I said, gritting my teeth as the trawler bucked against me. The nose wanted to drop, no matter how much power I gave it. “Let her know we’re coming.”

  Orca send out one last sonar blast, and I locked in on Man o’ War. Even in the dark, I knew her shape.

  The docking bay opened, revealing a wash of traitorous light before the crew extinguished it. I focused on the coordinates, bringing us out of our death spiral just long enough to sputter into the hold.

  • • •

  “By all that is holy, let’s never do that again,” Harper said as she emerged from the engine bay. Both she and Jeanine were soaked with brine and stained with grease, and Kraken, when he limped in from trying to patch up the hole from the missile strike I’d failed to avoid, looked equally grim.

  “That was damn close,” he said, leaning his large bulk against the common room counter and rubbing his leg. “This little beauty won’t be getting back in the water any time soon.”

  His words chilled me.

  There was no way out. I was on this ship, for better or for worse, and so was Harper. I felt the side of my uniform, where Comita’s pardon was shoved deep into a damp inside pocket, and let out a very small whimper.

  Orca was right. A pardon was a very flimsy thing indeed.

  “I need to get to the engine room,” Jeanine said, breaking into my tide of worry. “And you’re coming with me. Those bilge rats won’t know what hit them, and nobody sinks this ship without my say-so.” She patted Finn on the shoulder and seized Harper’s arm, towing her toward the hatch.

  Harper shot one slightly confused look back at me, and then she was gone, off to hold her own against an alien crew.

  I figured her odds were infinitely better than mine had ever been, for all that she was the Admiral’s daughter.

  That left me, Orca, Kraken, and Finn, who was looking decidedly ill.

  “We need to get him to the doctor,” I said, shifting my weight from foot to foot.

  “I can carry this sack of shit on my own, kid,” Kraken said. “You two go find the captain.” The grim expression on his face had lifted, and he was looking faintly amused at my discomfort.

  Orca cleared her throat.

  I fiddled with the hem of my shirt sleeve.

  “Come on, jelly,” Orca said. “In case you forgot, we’re in the middle of a war.”

  “Right.”

  Kraken lifted Finn gently, cradling the smaller man’s head against his shoulder, and climbed out of the hatch one-handed.

  “Where do you think she will be?” I asked Orca.

  “How the hell should I know?”

  I decided not to remind her that, as first mate, her guess was better than mine and followed her out of the Sea Cat.

  Nobody greeted us in the landing bay, and judging by the echoing shouts from elsewhere in the ship, that was because everyone had significantly larger worries on their hands.

  “Think you can keep up this time?” Orca asked, reminding me of the first time I’d set foot on this dock.

  “Screw you.” I jogged a half step to catch up with her as we waded into the warren of hallways that made up the Man o’ War. The ship creaked around us, and I heard the distant rush of water, punctuated every few seconds by another shout.

  “There’s fighting on the decks,” Orca said, unsheathing her short blade.

  I followed suit, trying not to compare the size of my little knife to her sword.

  “Who do you think it is?”

  “Either a mutiny, or the ship’s been boarded.”

  We rounded a corner and got our answer. A man in Ching’s uniform fled before a bellowing Man o’ War crew member, clutching at a partially severed arm.

  Bile rose in my throat and I fixated on the directions, reminding myself that I did not have time to feel.

  Orca grabbed me roughly and pulled me tighter into her shadow, grumbling under her breath about soft, rice-fed fleet scum who could not be trusted to hold their own against an infant with a toothpick.

  “Where’s the captain?” Orca demanded of the next sailor we saw. This one was wrapping a length of cloth around a gash in her thigh, and did not even bother looking up to answer.

  “Bridge,” she said, tightening her tourniquet with a savage tug.

  Orca took off at a dead run, which seemed a little risky to me, considering the number of blind corners we turned, but I followed.

  “Motherfuckers.” Orca’s curse came at the same moment she skidded to a halt at the doors to the bridge, where a heavily armed group of Red Flag Fleet pirates held their ground.

  “I’m the first mate,” she said, lowering her weapon in a decidedly temporary manner. “Let me in.”

  “Your captain’s gone soft, girl,” said one of the sailors. “Till she remembers who she serves, Ching wants her kept docile.”

  “So you’ve locked her in the command center?” Orca asked, stating the obvious flaw in the pirate’s logic.

  “Kill them,” the woman in charge snarled.

  We’re doomed, I thought, doing a quick head count. There were at least ten of them, and two of us.

  A roar came from somewhere down the hallway.

  Three of us, I added to myself as Kraken exploded past me, swinging a length of knotted rope in one hand and his sword in the other. Orca was a step behind him, and I was swept up in their wake, a cry on my lips as I raised my small knife to inflict what damage I could.

  “Rose.”

  I looked up as something soared through the air toward me over the heads of the pirates. Behind them, leaning out of the bridge door, was Miranda.

  My hand reached out to catch the length of pipe she’d thrown at me just as a pirate ducked around Orca, forcing my eyes away from my captain.

  The adrenaline that had been keeping me going for days threatened to give out. The pirate wasn’t very big, but he had clearly been nursed from an iron teat, and he eyed me with confident scorn as he raised a weapon that looked like the discarded offspring of a cudgel and a butcher knife.

  I blocked it with the pipe. My arm buzzed with the impact, but I didn’t have time to think about the pain. He struck again, and again, and it was all I could do to keep the pipe between us.

  “Like this,” Orca said, appearing beside me in a mist of blood. A silver blur whipped past my ear and sprouted from the man’s throat.

  “Don’t look,” Orca advised, but it was too late.

  The pirate’s blood bubbled up around the knife hilt, and his eyes went wide as he clawed at it, streaking blood up and down his neck.

  “Get to the captain and get us out of here,” Orca said, pulling me away.

  Miranda had her back to the door and her sword drawn. Three pirates ranged warily around her, trying to get past her and into the bridge.

  Orca engaged with a new foe with a grunt, and Kraken had two more pirates circling him, treading carefully around the bodies of their fellows.

  Get to the captain, I thought, my heart hammering. Easier said than done.

  The pirates were all occupied with my deadlier companions. This was my chance. I raised the pipe and brought it down on the head of one of pirates between me and Miranda. The sensation sent shockwaves up my arm as his skull gave under the pressure, and he staggered into the fighter next to him.

  “Now,” Miranda commanded, and I ducked behind her as she stepped away from the door.

  The bridge lacked the chaos of the hallways. Here, Miranda’s sailors stood glued to the instruments, and their shouts were ordered instead of bloodthirsty.

  I
turned back to Miranda, but she was still half in the doorway, the muscles in her back shifting as she swung her blade in the tight space.

  “You, navigator.”

  I’d been spotted.

  A burly sailor I vaguely recognized waved me over to the navigation panel, rubbing the back of his neck.

  “We’ve managed to patch up the portside aft bulkhead for now, but we’re not as quick as we used to be and we won’t be able to get topside till we can pump her out.”

  I stared at the sonar screen before us, my mind momentarily blank. It was a wash of color, rendered nearly useless by the conflict around us.

  “We can’t surface anyway,” I said. “It’s on fire.”

  “Where to, then?”

  “We drop further.” I paused, thinking. “As deep as she’ll go. That will give us a little more warning for any incoming fire, and then we make for the coast.”

  “The coast?”

  “The coast,” I repeated. Sailing toward Aries or Andromeda amounted to a death sentence, and so I had to hope that Comita was so worried about her daughter that she had put out a ceasefire on all ships that fit the Man o’ War’s description.

  “And put out this sonar blast when we get down there,” I added, illustrating a sequence of pings that Comita’s sailors could not fail to recognize.

  He gave me a long look, presumably taking in the fleet uniform I still wore and the blood spattered across my arms— when had that gotten there?—before nodding. I wondered if he was one of the ones who had wanted me dead.

  Not that it mattered. We would all be dead in the next few minutes if we weren’t very, very lucky.

  Thuds sounded from behind me, and I jerked around in time to see more of the crew re-forming the barricade that had clearly been hastily disassembled to let Miranda out and me in.

  The captain was nowhere in sight.

  “Where—?”

  “That’s the captain’s business,” he said, throwing the levers and switches that would open the rest of the bulkheads, allowing us to submerse further.

  “But—” I cut myself off, feeling closer to drowning than I had even with Orca’s arms around my neck, pushing me under. “Right. I’m just a navigator,” I said to myself, and I turned my face toward the cardinal directions and took the ship into the deep.

  • • •

  We almost made it out.

  I felt Ching Shih’s ship break away to follow us, and in the strange, red light of the ragged dawn, I raised the inevitable alarm.

  “Brace for impact.”

  The ships collided with enough force to knock me into the dash.

  “Where the hell is the captain?” I asked. Miranda had not returned to the bridge, and neither had Orca nor Kraken.

  Nobody answered me. The remaining crew checked the barricade at the door and prepared to be boarded. I slumped in my seat and listened, feeling the boat grind beneath me as it struggled to stay on course.

  “Remember, we don’t surrender unless we hear the order from the captain herself,” one of the sailors instructed the rest.

  “Fuck them all,” said another, wiping her hand across her forehead in a gesture that I recognized as the pure exhaustion I felt.

  I had failed. We were almost in range of the Polarian Fleet, and I had failed to get us there before Ching found us.

  Minutes turned into what felt like hours as the shouting grew louder, ebbing and flowing as the conflict raged throughout the ship. On the bridge, we focused on what we could, closing off flooded compartments and trying to keep the ship upright and on course.

  The ship shuddered again. I didn’t look up. We couldn’t afford to take on any more water.

  “Seas save us,” said the burly navigator.

  I gave my silent agreement before I realized he was laughing.

  I didn’t see anything funny about it. I had returned to Miranda, only to condemn her, myself, Harper, and the rest of the crew to death.

  “Open your eyes, navigator,” he said.

  When I obeyed, he pointed out the window.

  Ching’s ship drifted away from us, fire burning through her hull from the force of the detonation that had ripped her nearly in half.

  “Who—?” I asked.

  “Us? The Archipelago? A rogue missile? Hell if I know, and hell if I care. We’re clear.”

  He was right. Man o’ War lurched free, gaining speed as we cleared the wreckage.

  A few seconds later, we picked up a sonar reading that sent a thrill of hope and fear through me. It was a Polarian sequence, and it only had one use— to welcome home sailors presumed lost at sea. We had made it out of the battle, and into the dubious protection of the Archipelago.

  Now I just had to hope that Comita would hold up her end of the bargain.

  “That’s Archipelago Fleet clearance right there,” I explained, jotting down the sonar code and fighting the hysterical laughter bubbling up in my throat. “It worked.”

  “What worked?” he asked, but I didn’t bother answering. Our gamble had paid off.

  “I need to find the captain,” I said. “Hold her steady at these coordinates.”

  “You sure?” he asked, pointing once again at the lightening sea.

  Circling our vessel was a small silver ship, and I recognized the gray head I could just make out through the glass of the helm.

  Admiral Comita.

  I opened my mouth to curse. Nothing came out.

  “Looks like they’re trying to get us to open the landing bay,” he said.

  “I guess we open the landing bay, then.” My voice wavered. “And I better get down there.”

  The sounds of fighting still echoed through the walls.

  “Think you can make it alone?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  No.

  He helped me clear the barricade, and I stood in the carnage outside the door as they piled the crates back in front of it.

  My eyes jumped from body to body, my heart pounding in fear until I was sure that none of them belonged to anyone I knew.

  Harper, I thought. I had to find Harper.

  I ran along hallways I halfway remembered, doing my best to avoid any lingering scuffles.

  Ching’s sailors fought bitterly, now that their ship was gone. They knew as well as I did that they would not receive mercy from the victors. I passed one as he fled, though whether he was looking for his fellows or a place to hide, I could not tell, but when I did not make a move toward him he kept running.

  I had never been to the engine compartment of the ship. I knew where it was, but nothing prepared me for the gout of steam that billowed out of the hatch when I opened the door, or the massive pipes that twisted through it. Two people could have crawled through them abreast, a fact I was able to affirm when a sailor hopped down out of one of the pipes and called something back up to the man still inside.

  “Have you seen Jeanine?” I asked the man on the ground.

  He grunted and pointed deeper into the steam.

  I stepped carefully, not wanting to fall into any of the poorly marked holes in the walkway that opened onto ladders and, in one memorable case, a vat of coolant.

  “Jeanine? Harper?” I called out.

  “Rose?” Harper’s voice drifted out of the fog, followed by the rest of her.

  “The Admiral is here.”

  Her eyes widened slightly, and then she set her face in an expression of grim determination. Jeanine materialized beside her, wiping grease-stained hands on her trousers.

  “Can you find the captain and tell her to come to the landing bay?” I told her after I explained the situation.

  Jeanine looked around at the hissing engine with a long-suffering look.

  “Not much more I can do here anyway.”

  “What do you think she’s going to say?” I asked Harper when we were back in the comparatively fresh air of the corridor.

  “Nothing we’re going to like. Let me handle her, Rose, and follow my lead.”


  “Don’t I always?”

  “No.”

  We jogged on in silence. I hoped Jeanine found Miranda, and quickly. I did not want to be alone with Harper, the Admiral, and any forces Comita had brought with her.

  The hatch to the landing bay loomed at the end of the next hallway, partially buried beneath a pile of bodies.

  “Should we wait for the captain?” I asked.

  “If we make my mother wait too long, she’ll storm the ship,” Harper said. “Help me move these?”

  Together we hauled the corpses away from the door. A few were Ching’s, but I recognized some of the others from my time on Man o’ War. I flinched when I touched their cooling flesh. Neither Harper nor I said anything.

  “Together, then,” she said, putting her hand on the hatch.

  I glanced down the hallway, but Miranda was nowhere in sight.

  “Together.”

  Harper put her other hand in her pocket and opened the door.

  Comita’s crew ranged protectively about their small ship, and there were a few bodies that looked suspiciously fresh on the ground before them. I hoped they were Ching’s.

  Comita herself stood on the streaming deck, her hands firmly planted on her hips. She didn’t waver when her eyes fell on Harper.

  “Retrieve Harper Comita,” she ordered.

  “No,” Harper said, pulling her hand out of her pocket.

  I took an involuntary step away from her as the detonator glowed ominously in the blue light. Comita’s sailors froze.

  “Put it down, Harper.” Comita’s voice was calm. Cool, even, unlike the bead of sweat that trickled down my throat.

  “I will put it down when you acknowledge the pardon you had me deliver to Captain Stillwater.”

  I could tell by the puzzled reaction of Comita’s crew that this did not match with the official story.

  “Harper,” Comita said, the warning in her voice unmistakable.

  “Acknowledge the pardon, mother.”

  “Take her; she won’t detonate the ship,” Comita said.

  “It’s not my ship you need worry about.”

  Comita’s sailors hesitated.

  “The explosive is on the dock, mother.”