by Chris Howard
He wasn’t the last on the deck of the Irabarren. The doc was there just behind him, looking worried. The captain slowed, turning slightly to meet the doctor’s eyes.
“We have a problem.” Dr. Kozcera leaned toward Wilraven. “Spikes in temperature in both the patients in the med station. I am thinking it’s just the body’s response to the toxins they took in. Nothing too serious to worry about. But you need to know.”
Wilraven nodded, thinking that a fever could be useful. “Is there any way to determine if they’re carrying something dangerous, something that can spread?”
Kozcera leaned back, gave him a stern, surprised glare and part of a head shake. “What? I do not believe they—”
“I understand. I’m just looking for options. I want to know if that’s possible—even remotely.” He glanced at Levesgue and his soldiers. “I may want to use a quarantine or contagion to clear the ship. I certainly want to use it to keep everyone away from our visitors.”
Kozcera frowned, considering. “Yes. I believe it may . . . degenerate into something quite bad for any of the crew to be around.” After a moment tapping his chin and pondering the seriousness of disease spreading aboard the ship, the doctor asked, “When?”
Wilraven shrugged. “Now. Get things rolling. It could be useful at some point.”
Kozcera said, “Yes. It will keep prying eyes away.” He headed back to the Marcene.
Glancing down at his watch, Wilraven said, “Please hurry.”
Levesgue shouted after the doctor, wheeling to give everyone present a stiff warning finger. “Hey! No one goes back to the ship once you’re here.”
Kozcera ignored him—or pretended he hadn’t heard, just kept jogging up the gangway and across the deck toward the med station.
The crews of both vessels wandered in, milling under Crane One, talking in hushed tones with sharp, suspicious glances at the soldiers—an occasional shout and wave at the circling gulls.
Wilraven made his way over to Angelo. “First?”
“What’s going on, Cap?”
Wilraven gave Levesgue, Goatee Boy, and the third soldier—the security team’s radio guy, a stocky, blond-haired kid with no expression—a quick look. Wilraven started thinking of him as No Face. “Not sure, but it doesn’t look good.” He was on edge, hoping everyone heard the message and would get out of their bunks and on the decks before the five minutes were up.
Wilraven pretended to be inspecting the bolts that held together the crutch, whispering to his first officer. “Everything happens tonight. Late, probably taking the Serina away around midnight.”
“Into Cuban water?”
“Yeah.” He dropped his voice even lower. “I want to plan out how the drop’s going to go.”
Dr. Kozcera was just coming down the Marcene’s gangway when they hit the five-minute mark. Wilraven straightened to scan the crowd on Irabarren. There was no order to the mix, and he couldn’t tell if everyone was off the Marcene. With eighteen in the crew aboard Irabarren, it was even more difficult to tell.
“Time’s up.” Levesgue shouted into the address system. He made a circling gesture with one finger. Goatee Boy and No Face jogged off with guns ready to search the ships, the bunks, cabins, galley, head, cold storage, and every deck-bound shipping container.
Goatee stepped out of the Irabarren’s superstructure a few minutes later, shaking his head as he headed across the far side of the deck to duck into the welding shed and ROV control. Up on the Marcene, with his short blond hair sticking up stiff in the morning breeze, dead gray eyes on Paulina, No Face shoved the ship’s radio engineer forward.
When they reached the Irabarren’s deck, No Face gave Paulina an open-handed punch in the center of the back, and sent the woman face-first, skidding over the hard surface. Her hands came up, and a short cry burst from her. The captain was already moving toward her when she stepped onto the deck of the Irabarren. He dropped the crutch and with a painfully uneven gait raced for her as No Face put her on the deck again.
The captain crouched to help her up, wiping away the tears running down her face. One arm over her shoulder, Wilraven led her toward the first officer.
Levesgue’s face soured, and he was one step toward them when No Face leaned in for a word. The two soldiers argued in furious whispers, Levesgue gesturing, jamming a finger into the other’s chest. Then both soldiers turned to look up at the Marcene.
Wilraven smiled thinly. It suddenly made sense. Dr. Kozcera had made it happen. The two from the med station—Adista and Tychasis—weren’t brought down, comatose on gurneys. They weren’t present on Levesgue’s orders, and he wasn’t happy about it. Better yet, the Doc probably had the quarantine signs up. He glanced Kozcera’s way and got a slight nod back. Wilraven turned away from Levesgue and his tantrums, huddling with Paulina and his first officer.
Still sobbing, Paulina grabbed his arm. “Take this, Captain. To listen in.” She stuffed a palm-sized radio into his hands. “Need to tell you how the jam and relayer work. Hid them under the VHF deck. Taped there.”
He glanced down at the radio, stuffed it in his pocket, and pulled up his little notebook, tearing out a sheet and the watercolor pencil. “Here.”
Paulina took the pencil and sketched the layout of the radio room, a neat square where the devices were hidden. She gave Wilraven a meaningful look.
Angelo leaned in. “What are you writing with, a crayon?”
Wilraven gave the first officer a sharp glance. “Colored pencil. One of Ranav’s.” Then, lowering his voice, “Watercolor pencil. Dissolvable.”
Angelo chewed his lip. “Got it. Sorry, go on.”
Sniffing back tears, Paulina flipped the sheet over, holding it down against the wind, and drew two boxes, one labeled “jam” and the other “free”, tapping on the second and whispering, “Open comms channel. Both need five volts. Jam, just plug it in.” She drew a line from the first box with the letters, USB.
Wilraven nodded. “Got it. Plug it in any port.”
She looked up, eyes going wide, the pencil dropping to the deck with a thin plinking sound. Levesgue was on them, grabbing Paulina by the hair and reaching for the notebook. She spun away, opening her hand. Wilraven’s black notebook shot toward the cranes. The plans in hard red lines on the little piece of paper whipped away in the sea wind, over the north side and into the Caribbean.
Levesgue let her go, turning to follow it, already gesturing to Goatee. “Go after it. Fish it from the water. Poles and nets next to the dive shed.”
The soldier pulled his handgun and jammed it at Paulina. “Captain, I want a word with you.”
Wilraven came at him, one arm low, the other up in a guard, both hands curling into fists. Pain shot up his leg at each step. The world slowed down, and there was bright flash, like a bolt of lightning across the sky. He could feel the crunch of bone at every step. But he moved forward, ignoring it. Levesgue backed up a step, wheeling to face the captain’s attack with seagull shadows darting across the deck at his feet, narrow whips of dark blue swarming across his features. Gulls were crying overhead, swinging back and forth in the bright sun. A rush of noise swept in around them, the captain’s focus narrowing down to Levesgue standing on his ship, legs braced apart, gun raised. Wilraven felt his own mouth drawing back into a snarl . . . and let go.
The world had been reduced to this monster of a man in front of him, and everything else had dropped away, vanished from his senses.
And it didn’t do him a bit of good. He wasn’t a soldier. He had been in three or four successful fistfights in his entire life, and one of those was with a staggering drunk who had lost the ability to distinguish up from down. Wilraven had shown him how to find down.
It seemed as if Levesgue had all the time in the world to prepare for what was coming, moving so much quicker, enough for an appraising expression before what looked to Wilraven like a casual motion to stow his handgun in the holster standing out in the middle of his chest. The soldier was spinning
into a fighting stance. He had one leg braced behind him, and then his body jumped into a smear of gray and black motion.
Wilraven stepped in, looking for something to hit. Levesgue’s fist swung in low on his left, caught him hard in the ribs. He grunted, started leaning that way, turning to find something else to punch. Chop to the right side of his neck. Blinding pain, and he went to deck choking and struggling to breathe. Bolts of sunlight hit him across the face where it cut through the space between the Irabarren’s cranes. The hard flutter of seagulls passed overhead, their shadows like paint splattering the deck.
The captain was on his side, holding his throat, struggling to breathe and trying to get up. Levesgue wasn’t even breathing hard. He turned abruptly to the right, raised the gun and fired. Sharp crack in the air, echoes of it across the decks, and the ships’ crews were ducking instinctively. The seagulls swung away from the sound, annoyed.
Paulina jerked, eyes wide, startled, her hands just starting to lift defensively. She dropped to her knees and fell on her back. A narrow rivulet of blood seeped through her hair, pooled under her head, and found its way into the no-slip angles and creases cut into the Irabarren’s deck. Paulina’s eyes stared out, frightened, lifeless.
Levesgue waved the gun at No Face, indicating what should be done with the body. The young blond soldier swung his automatic around on its shoulder strap, out of the way, and in one motion, crouched, thrust his arms under Paulina’s, and hauled her up and to the edge of the Irabarren.
“Anyone moves,” said Levesgue evenly, his gun moving side to side across the crews of both vessels. “And you’re following her into the sea.”
The expressionless soldier kicked Paulina over the side and turned back with his automatic up and aimed.
Levesgue reached into the black duffel and pulled out a heavy length of rope with a noose already tied at one end. Wilraven was on his knees, still trying to catch his breath, one hand clawing to grip the swaying deck, the other trying to reach for Levesgue.
The soldier jogged to one side, stepped in and kicked Wilraven into semi-consciousness. The captain pulled up one knee reflexively, curling up against another attack. Levesgue stepped behind him and hauled up Wilraven into a sitting position, dragging the noose down over his head.
Holstering the gun, he shoved the coiled end tight around the captain, giving it a tug to keep him at the edge of choking.
“Anyone.” Levesgue jammed a finger toward the crew, daring them to move. “Anyone not with the plan here is going to make everyone else watch the captain here hang. Is that understood?” His voice went shrill over the last few words and threw a new level of unpredictability into the mix. The crews of the Marcene and Irabarren didn’t move, the wind whipping at jackets; a few gulls cried plaintively. “Yesterday was a busy day. Today’s going to be even busier. That means from here out there’s a curfew. No one goes out between 2300 and 0500.”
Fighting to breathe, Wilraven blinked hard, trying to focus on his crew. Most of the world was tilting and running in blurry streaks across his vision, the metal taste of blood in his mouth. He still managed to nod approvingly at some angry faces in the group, Inda making a fist, Olad gesturing angrily at the soldier, both Andres and the Marcene’s first officer standing with arms folded, gazes surveying some strategic landscape, planning, weighing odds.
Shaking his head, Dewayne made a half-hearted fuck-you gesture and said loudly, “And what happens if I need to get up to take a piss?”
Dead silence.
Levesgue calmly said, “I might just shoot you. My advice? Hold it until morning.”
Goatee came up with Paulina’s sketched directions fished from the water, and Levesgue released an incoherent cry of rage. He wadded up the paper and shoved it roughly through Wilraven’s teeth.
The pencil lines had probably bled into meaningless scrawls and patches of pink.
Chapter Thirty-six
Recovery
Laeina waved Andreden to the chair. “Sit. Rest and recover while I speak to these two.”
Just as she had said, the eels didn’t eat them from the inside out. They burrowed into the hands and fingers, arms, legs, neck of Captain Reyes and his assistant, and then Laeina moved them around like game pieces.
Then she made them talk.
Andreden watched, both fascinated and horrified at her abilities. She sent the guy in the blue coveralls off to get some bottles of water and food, first asking his name, which was Evan Downing.
She offered a bottle to Andreden when Evan returned. He also brought a box of Oreos and some stale crackers. Andreden grabbed a handful of them and headed to the back of the room with the hardware, while Laeina started gently with the eeled-up pair.
“The game board has been turned, Captain Reyes.”
Andreden gave her a curious look from the screens and computer hardware across the room. “You mean table: the table’s been turned.”
She shot a serious look right back. “I mean game. I am a toymaker. Not a furniture maker.”
Whatever the eels were doing to Reyes and Evan, it also loosened their defenses and tongues. Reyes was spilling everything he knew, starting with Martin’s and Rebekah’s whereabouts. “They were aboard for a couple of days—enough for scans, voice and gesture recording-- but a tender out of Wilmington picked them up and took them away.”
Then the questions shifted toward Lenient Luck.
“Lenient Luck’s something new, split off from the project. It was originally taken over by one of the deep sections in Navy Special Warfare Command, everything confiscated and history wiped.”
He heard Laeina’s tired voice. “So, what is the problem? Where will I find records for targeted ships? I am looking for a ship called Serina Beliz. Specifically, someone who was on board.”
She sounded weary. Laeina had only had a day or maybe a couple of days—he had no idea how long he had been drugged and tortured—to recover from the gunshot that had left blood all over the inside of the rental in Islamadora.
Reyes lowered his voice to a whisper, as if the whole place was wired for recording. “You’re going to have to talk to Dam. I heard it was all shut down and the man is now selling his services to others, anyone who needs them.”
Andreden came over to follow along, but couldn’t help jumping in. “Can’t they track the transaction? Follow the money and you’ll find the man.”
Reyes was shaking his head. “It doesn’t work like that. The man doesn’t want money. He trades for his services.”
“How?”
“You want a ship to vanish? He sends over terms. You do something for him—kill someone in public, destroy a bridge, release someone from prison—even invest in a company: he’s very interested in seeing certain companies succeed. When he verifies that it’s been done, he . . . returns the favor. Takes a vessel to the bottom, without a trace.” It took some effort, but Reyes put up his hands in protest. “And don’t think about tricking him. He’ll find out. He has moles in every agency, highest level in Naval Special Warfare, spies everywhere, including the other military branches. He’ll know if your end of the bargain doesn’t . . . hold water.” There was silence that seemed to deepen the space around them. “Then he’ll come after you.”
Laeina didn’t appear to be buying any of it. “Who is this man? You call him Dam?”
“Met him only once. Scared the fuck out of us all.” Reyes stopped suddenly, leaning toward Laeina, trying to focus on her. He waved a finger in her face. “You remind me of him. He came aboard. He told us what to do, and we did it. We didn’t have a choice. Don’t know anything about him except a name. Damaris.”
Laeina closed her eyes. A rolling shudder went through her body. She shook visibly, staggered to one side, reaching out for support, and almost collapsed. Andreden jumped forward, not that steady on his feet himself. It was enough to catch her.
“Who? Who’s this Damaris?”
Her eyes opened, and she looked up at him, fear clear on her face. “He
’s . . . I don’t know what you would call him. Not someone you want as a friend or enemy. He’s immortal.”
It could have been the hallucinogens still talking, but immortality didn’t sound that crazy to Andreden. It’s biologically possible. “And he’s like you? Home in the sea, stops bullets with his bare hands, and all that?”
She shook her head. “He’s not seaborn. He’s a Rootworlder.”
Which meant nothing to Andreden. So he did what he would normally do when he knew nothing about something. He went to the keyboards and screens and plied MISTIC with some terms and directions for finding anything about “Lenient Luck” and now “Damaris.”
They left Reyes and Evan to stand like chastised schoolkids in the far corners of the room while they dug through search results and tried various ways of talking to the Cons.
Glancing back over his shoulder at Laeina, Andreden said, “MISTIC’s an open global intelligence gathering service—allegedly for anyone to use. It came out of the Convenir project funded by JUSCAUSE—Joint US Canada Universal Services Environment.”
Laeina walked over to study the text and images on the screens, apparently found no explanation there, and looked at him as if he’d suddenly lost his ability to speak coherently. “I do not know what that means—any of it. Except MISTIC. You have used that name before. But I don’t understand what it is.”
“Not really an it. But a them.” He looked around, as if answers were floating in the air. “I don’t have the details of what they’re about. It’s essentially extremely powerful research and patterning services. I work in artificial intelligences, not biologic.”
She seemed surprised. “These research tools are alive?”
“Not just alive. They’re human. People—I think there are twelve of them—volunteered for it. Allegedly.” He added the last word to make it clear he didn’t believe it was voluntary. “There was serious controversy around rights, even then, and it would never be allowed today. But a decade ago? Different time. Different people in charge.”