The Sea Is Ours

by Jaymee Goh

  “And I was right, as soon as his feet touched the ground, all hell broke loose. There was a loud bang from a nearby fishing village, followed by screams and wailings. At first, I could only see smoke and fire, then someone was running down the beach towards us.

  “I said run, but actually that old woman was not really moving that fast,” Biwar added, now remembering a little bit more details of the event. It was not that easy to remember everything, given how it all happened so fast.

  “There were two… things… behind her. I think they were chasing her, but they were not moving fast either.”

  “Things?” The girl prodded. Her voice changed a little bit, sounding more interested, but he could have sworn she was still not blinking.

  Biwar could not help it. “I’m sorry, what did you say your name was?”

  “Kat,” Buto answered for her, “You can call her Kat.”

  Cat? Biwar thought it was a very strange name, but Kat herself didn’t even seem to notice the question. She repeated herself, “Why did you say they were things? Are they not men?”

  “I…” Biwar began, then paused, looking for the words. “First of all, they were grey. I mean I know they were dressed in all grey but their skin too look grey and dull, like stone. They moved like… they were dragging their feet. Their arms hung heavy by their sides… Have you ever been to those picture shows?” Biwar said, suddenly remembering the last time they had docked in Batavia. There was a technological fair by the port and the captain, fascinated with these pictures shows, had paid for all his crews to join him.

  “Cinematograph shows?” Buto asked.

  “Yes, well…” Biwar never heard that word before. While the western part of the new republic was thriving with new technologies, his own hometown in Papua was so far on the eastern side that it was more or less cut off from the rest of the archipelago. He might be one of the best sailors in the whole Nusantara, but new engines still baffled him. In fact, without wanting to admit it, he was still quite upset about last year when Buto modified their ship to fly.

  “When I went to see one, the… errr, cinematosomething machine was not working properly and whole thing slowed down. These… things… they moved like that… like still pictures forced to somehow move. Like there was an interval, a fraction of their movements that was missing.”

  Kat frowned, looking suddenly concerned. She stole a glance towards Buto, who nodded silently.

  So they didn’t know everything, thought Biwar.

  The girl shook her head, as if dismissing her own thoughts. “What happened then?”

  “The old woman was saying something about the children, something about those grey things trying to take all the children. We didn’t see any children around though, just her. Those grey things followed, and the Captain shot at them. Not really at them, he started with a warning shot, at the ground by their feet.”

  “He did not shoot at them?” It was Buto again, sounding amused.

  “No, he kept his aim on their head after the first warning shot, though, and asked them about the children and a certain professor.” Biwar paused, suddenly realizing something in his own story. He searched the faces of his interrogators, “We are not talking about the same professor, are we? Is he in trouble? Is the New Republic in trouble?”

  “You knew the professor?” Kat asked.

  “Of course! Who doesn’t? Adipati Dewanto, right? The Professor? The national hero?”

  “No!” Buto’s voice sounded a little bit too harsh and loud.

  “I… uh… is there another professor? Ah, yes, Captain Mal once told me.” Biwar nodded, recalling the old tale, “When he rescued me from being sold as a slave… He said he was once a victim like me, that he was once a slave to someone he only knew as the professor. He said the professor damaged his arm badly. You know about his right arm, right? Of course you do, I remember it.” Biwar turned to Buto. “You gave him the mechanical glove, the same week you came to fix our ship. Ah, I remember that particular year, everyone had a problem crossing the Java Sea.”

  “The currents were particularly strong during those years, yes.” Buto nodded.

  “Strong? I would say the water was sentient! It would be calm for days and then as soon as a ship was drawing near, it would go crazy. Well, anyway, you sure fixed that problem by making us fly. Thank a lot!” Biwar didn’t try to hide the sarcasm in his voice.

  “I’m sure you’ll get around to learning all the technical parts, Biwar.” Buto smiled. “You are one of the best sailors I’ve known, and a flying ship is still a ship, after all.”

  Biwar couldn’t help but take pride at that comment. The boy was right, of course; there wasn’t any ship in the world that Biwar couldn’t handle. Flying or not. Except for one obvious problem. There was no flying ship anymore. The thought soured his mood, “Anyway… The captain said your glove really helped him move his slightly paralyzed fingers. He never used his old glove ever again.”

  “I think it’s only fair that you know,” Kat said, after glancing sideways at Buto as if seeking permission. “This very same professor kidnapped your Captain from this very beach when he was just about fifteen, and did some terrible experiments on him. He had been doing experiments on other people, too. Your Captain, however, was the youngest test subject, and the only one who survived the test. How he even managed to escape after being subjected to those experiments… we could only imagine. He never really wanted to talk about those days…”

  “Experiments… Is that what happened to his fingers?” Biwar shook his head. “He never told me… They did experiments on him? What kind…” He stopped. If the captain had wanted him to know, he would have told Biwar already.

  “Anyway, while aiming at those grey men, the captain seemed to almost forget the woman, who was now hiding behind us. She said something then, something about him being her long lost son. Captain Mal ignored her, but those grey men suddenly turned back towards the village, ignoring the captain’s gun-blade that was still pointed at their head… and the Captain shot them both in the head. No hesitation. Blood oozed from the wound on their heads.”

  “Oozed?” Buto interjected.

  “Yes, I said oozed, not flowed. Their blood looked reddish grey, like mud,” Biwar confirmed.

  Kat frowned, she glanced sideways at Buto, as if waiting for him to say something. When he did not, she nodded at Biwar, “Then what happened?”

  “Perhaps hearing more than one shot, more of those strange men emerged from the village elder’s gadang house. I assumed the children were kept there while they awaited the ghost ship we have been following from Batavia. We didn’t see the ship when we arrived. It has a way of disappearing when we get close to it.

  “The Captain shot them too. Then he turned to me, and we both knew he didn’t have many bullets left in that gun. He hadn’t planned to use the gun at all. Whatever he was thinking when he came down in his pirate’s attire, he hadn’t thought of fighting. I got myself ready to fight, pulling out my own sword.” He glanced at the table where the darkened bone sword, with shark teeth carefully sewn around its edges sat. “But the captain shook his head at me.”

  “And then there were just so many more of those feet-dragging, dangly-armed men coming out of the gadang house. By this time I honestly wasn’t paying attention to numbers anymore. They were shooting at us. The Captain was shooting back while yelling at us. So much confusion in so little time.

  “He told us to go back to the ship. Naturally I refused. He had once saved my life. How could I leave him to fight those strange men alone? The old woman refused too. As the Captain repeated his order, she said, ‘I’m your mother, Malin, why don’t you remember me?’”

  “Those were her exact words?” Kat asked.

  “You know, it’s weird, everything else was a bit of a blur to me, but I remember those words clearly, there was just something in the way she said those words. So much… pain… and I think she had somehow grabbed his hand as she said this, because the next thin
g I know, the Captain was shaking his arm so hard the old woman was actually thrown back towards me.

  “He told her he didn’t know her. He told me to drag her away. I… I didn’t have time to reflect on any of this at that time, but now, now I think that it was strange to see the Captain like that. He could be fearsome in battles, but he had never treated women and children this way. He was even honorable towards prisoners of war… mostly… It was what set him apart from the other pirates. You know that, don’t you?”

  Buto nodded, “Malin has been working with us these past two years. I know how honorable he can be.”

  Biwar smiled, feeling a certain camaraderie in that last statement. He also noted how Buto had slipped and called the Captain by his real name, and without the title.

  “Well, anyway, as she fell towards me, she accidentally pulled the glove off his arm. She saw his arm. I saw his arm too. I never saw his arm without his glove before and well, it was all grey, like those men… You gave him the mechanical glove. Do you know this?” Biwar looked at Buto but the boy avoided his gaze, preferring to make more notes in his book.

  “I didn’t know what to think, but she clearly did. She threw the glove hard towards him and started to actually curse at him. She said that he was just like those stone men. She asked what he had done to her real son. And the Captain actually raised that heavy petrified arm towards her. He told her that her son had died a long time ago.”

  “How did you get separated from Malin then?” Kat asked.

  “I told you I didn’t want to leave… but then he grabbed my shirt and looked me directly in the eyes. He said that he had saved me, so that now I owed it to him to survive.” Biwar paused, remembering that moment. “I decided that whatever was going to happen, it was wiser to go up the ship and call our men. I ran back to the ship with the old lady.”

  “If you were at the ship…” Buto began.

  “You don’t understand. When I turned around towards our ship, it was already gone! I sorely remembered that we had not had the time to tie the ship nor drop the anchor. With those men shooting behind us, I ran to the water, got into the first fishing boat I could find, all the while dragging the lady, and rowed as fast as I could. The last thing I saw at the shore was the captain running towards the village.” He stopped. Somehow feeling exhausted now that he managed to recall the whole event.

  “It was daylight when we left the shore, and following the sun, I was able to go further down to the ocean without straying too far from the coast. The boat had no real shelter though, the noonday heat was enough to make the old lady pass out. She must have been exhausted. Sometime during the afternoon, lacking fresh water, I decided to rest. I woke up much later, when the boat shook violently. It was already dark, so I looked up to check the stars to get our bearings. That was when I saw the chunks of rocks falling out from the sky!

  “Well, you found me afterwards. You probably already knew more than me…”

  “I see.” Buto said, and when Biwar just stared blankly at his own hands, he added, “Thank you for your time.” It was Kat’s turn to be quiet now. Buto stood up and saw Biwar out the door.

  ~*~

  “Should we send in the lady now?” Kat asked as Buto closed the door behind Biwar.

  “Do you know you didn’t blink once while you were recording?” Buto said. “You scared the poor man to death!”

  “I didn’t?” the girl asked, blinking in a sudden, rapid succession.

  “Did you send the transmission to the headquarters?”

  “Yes, I just did.”

  “I thought so. You were suddenly quiet towards the end of the questioning. You really do need to work on those skills, you know. No one should be able to guess that you are an automaton.”

  Kat frowned. She frowned like a fifteen-year-old girl, not an automaton.

  “There you go. You look more human that way.”

  “So should we send for the mother then?” Kat asked again, still frowning.

  “No, no need. She has suffered enough already. Better she thinks her son died a long time ago at sea.”

  “So what do we know until now?” The frown remained. Buto wondered if she had forgotten how to turn it off. Ever since her last modification, her human emotion module seemed to be completely dysfunctional.

  “Well, we know that Adipati has been trying to create new, invincible soldiers. He could not recreate my mother’s automatons, so he tried chemistry instead… Those things on the beach sounded very close to what Malin told us about the experiments he was subjected to.”

  They had been chasing Adipati for several years now. The man was hailed as the Father of Steam Engines in Republic Nusantara when his steam powered automatons helped the country win their victory against Dutch colonialists. Buto and Kat’s unit, however, discovered that the man had been secretly trading technologically advanced weapons with the Portuguese, French and the Dutch as well. It seemed that his goal was to cash in as much as he could from the war—selling technology that would keep all parties equally powerful, thereby dragging the war for as long as possible. Unfortunately, due to his high connections in the government, it was not easy to bring Adipati down. The team had been forced to stop Adipati’s trades through secret operations instead, hoping to gain enough evidence to make his case public.

  “The Basilisk Serum.” Kat nodded. “So now we know Adipati had perfected them further. Between rounding up the children and fighting Malin, those new creatures at least remained mobile hours after creation. Malin, however, is still the only test subject who has gained stone-like skin, without his muscles and bones turning likewise into stone, even after eight years. You said it yourself: when you first met him, despite the slight rigidity, his fingers were definitely still moving. What if Adipati was in this port to capture Malin so he could draw his blood and try to replicate the result? Do you think he was going to use Malin’s own mother as bait?”

  “Which explains why he didn’t want to admit that she was his mother,” Buto agreed.

  Someone walked into the small room inside the gadang house. “It goes further than that.”

  “Putra.” Buto greeted the newcomer with a nod. He didn’t know Putra was supposed to join them in this particular mission, but Buto guessed the headquarters must have called for all the help they could get.

  Unlike Buto, who was tall and muscular, Putra was lean, though almost as tall as Buto. All three of them had known each other for several years, but Putra had only joined their team a year ago. Well-cultured and fluent in many languages, the young man quickly specialized in intelligence gathering missions.

  Kat’s frown turned to a bright smile when she saw him. “Hello,” she said cheerfully, “I hope your night was better than ours?”

  Putra stood in front of his friends, his arms dramatically spread to show his torn vest, bloody lips, and the cuts on his expensive-looking pure linen pants. “What do you think?”

  Buto noted that despite all that, Putra still managed to have a certain flair, as if he was a hero who just stepped out of a storybook. “I think you’ve certainly had more fun,” Buto scoffed, “When we got here, there was nothing to fight. All we got were the screaming mothers and lots of very frightened children. We were basically babysitting all night!”

  “Someone actually went back to clean up the mess before we got here. We didn’t even know Adipati was testing more of his Basilisk Serum until we heard the story from our witness. We found none of the golems he mentioned.” Kat added.

  “Lucky for me then!” Putra said with mock enthusiasm, “I did. I located the Sweet Water last night. It was not easy to spot, the mirrors you installed on the ship’s hull were actually turned on, camouflaging the ship. I went up the ship thinking I could ask it to patrol the ocean and find Adipati’s submersible ship.

  “About twenty of those golems were already aboard. I fought them as best as I could, and then about fifteen more came up. These were fresh golems, the ones that just got their skin hardened. It was th
e first time ever I have seen them fresh like that. They were really fast. I was hoping Malin’s crew could help me…”

  “And you did not put two and two together at that time? Fifteen fresh golems?” Buto interjected.

  “I was busy, remember? Fighting thirty-five golems all by myself while you were busy babysitting.” Putra rapped his knuckles quickly on Buto’s head. This made Kat smile, and Buto thought her smile was worth the slight pain on his skull.

  “Anyway, I hate to admit it, but I was not doing so well. Then, Malin came out of nowhere. Seems like that winged pirate vest you gave him worked like a charm. I knew he could fight, but I never saw him fight in a rage. When he saw what had happened to his crew, he went berserk.

  “The first golem that came close to him got stabbed by a keris right in the eye. Malin finished off the slower golems first with that keris. Then a pair of kerambits came out to take care of his own crew. Those were his favorite weapons during raids, remember? He was fast. Dodging his crew before any of them could land a hit, slashing at spots he knew were still untouched by the serum: a cut through the neck, a slash across the heels to incapacitate movements. I really need to write down all those weak spots. It could be useful if Adipati somehow succeeds in creating his army. If all those golems are as fast as Malin…”

  “Did you see Adipati?” Buto asked.

  “No…” Putra shook his head.

  “Didn’t you say you found something worse?” Kat asked. Buto was surprised to see her clutching at the hem of her jacket, so tightly that her knuckles turned white. Some of her humanity seemed to be coming back after all, he thought, making a quick note on his leather-bound book.