Salvage

by R J Theodore

  Now her crew was nothing but ready.

  They waited in silence in the quarters they’d been given, until the bell above deck was rung for the half-watch, and Talis nodded.

  Tisker sang the first line, not quite under his breath:

  “Well our captain is a high-born type;”

  Sophie’s eyes sparkled as she and Talis responded:

  “Proper man, captain! Shiny bright captain!”

  And it was begun. Timed to the song instead of the Rakkar clockwork they’d have used in Lippen, they each headed out into the ship’s corridors and accessways to cause their pre-planned varieties of trouble.

  Talis preferred a good chantey to the sonorous Ra-Kaz anyway.

  “You should see his palecoat catch the light;

  Proper man, captain! Shiny bright captain!”

  The lyrics timed her steps to the crew’s quarters where she used Sophie’s lock hammer on each door, sealing the off-duty crew inside.

  “He’ll polish his buttons straight through the night.”

  Whoosh-thunk.

  “Toast to our captain! Proper man, captain!”

  Whoosh-thunk.

  “The captain ain’t a bastard like you or me;”

  Whoosh. Thunk. Three pairs of off-duty crew were now locked inside their own cabins.

  “Proper man, captain! Shiny bright captain!

  No, the Captain’s got a pretty little ancestry;

  Proper man, captain! Shiny bright captain!”

  An all-ship receiver in the corridor outside the officers’ cabins made a sad little crackling noise as Talis walked past it. Sophie was on schedule with the electrocancellation barrel.

  Between the engines and the medical cabin, the captain’s quarters and the cargo hold, Im Ufite Rantor’s crew’s behavior was as Talis had anticipated. Eneil’s organization worked against them.

  “You could fall to your death from his family tree.”

  Eight of twelve sailors were locked in their rooms, to be handled one cabin at a time. Much preferable odds, in Talis’s opinion. She kept moving.

  “Toast to our captain! Proper man, captain!”

  Talis passed through the galley and helped herself to a couple knives. There was a mechanical thump and then the type of rattling that spoke of loose parts in a carefully calibrated system. She flinched. That sound was all too familiar. But Sophie knew what she was doing. Im Ufite Rantor shuddered under Talis’s feet as she approached the great cabin and pressed herself against the bulkhead beside the door.

  “Our captain inherited an island home;”

  Captain Chel, to whom Talis had been properly introduced to after Eneil ‘welcomed’ them aboard, burst from her quarters to respond to the emergency. Talis stepped between her and the door to pluck the family knife off Chel’s belt and press it against the her back. To herself, she thought, Proper man, captain! Shiny bright captain!

  “You’ll never take this ship.” Chel spoke through clenched teeth.

  They could hear Tisker’s voice sing from the deck above:

  “Doesn’t have to sail where the winds push on;

  Proper man, captain! Shiny bright captain!”

  Im Ufite Rantor’s captain stood tall and proud, with all the indignation she could muster, as Talis bound her wrists together and lashed her to the nearest deck rib. “Already did. You ought to pick your clients more carefully.”

  Sophie and Tisker appeared and sang with exaggerated flourish:

  “And when we dock that’s where he’s goin.

  Toast to our captain! Proper man, captain!”

  Sophie was holding a very large sally bar, and Tisker leaned on a halberd he’d requisitioned from somewhere. The coil of rope over his shoulder was significantly shorter than when they’d begun.

  “All set, Captain.” Sophie’s hair was a bit out of place, and one sleeve was torn, but there wasn’t even a bruise between the two of them.

  “Full sweep?”

  “Stem to stern. Active watch is all in the hold, now.”

  Talis hadn’t broken eye contact with Chel. “Well, that won’t do. We’ll need that space for the salvage hauls.”

  “Tip ’em out.” Tisker’s suggestion was made more than a little cheerfully.

  “Thin them out, at least,” agreed Sophie.

  Chel recognized the bravado for what it was. Heat radiated from her at the insult. First the mutiny of her ship, now empty threats against her crew. The message was received, though Talis knew they’d have to keep an eye on the ship’s former crew.

  Eneil’s silver voice sounded quite shaken as, from deeper in the ship, they shouted. “Captain, perhaps you would be so kind as to join us in the medical cabin?”

  Talis knew this would happen, but the lurch in her gut still reacted to the threat. She held up Chel’s knife, handle out. “Tisker, watch the captain, please. Sophie, go mind the engine.”

  As the other two moved into position, Talis stalked below. The chantey had come to an end; all that remained was a conference with their traitorous employer.

  No matter the ship, emergency facilities tended to look the same. Even aboard the Yu’Nyun vessel there had been polished floors, a central operating table, and lockers full of supplies lining the bulkhead. Eneil stood to one side of the table where Dug lay, peaceful and vulnerable, beneath a lined blanket. A bag of fluids hung above him, suspended from a carabiner hooked to the overhead. The medic, Vennika, held a thin, precision blade up, at shoulder height. Her focus held murderous intent though she seemed to regard Talis and Eneil with the same disgust.

  “Captain Talis!” Eneil sounded worried. Talis’s smile shifted to one of immense satisfaction and wished the Vein person could see it. “This is most unwise. Have you forgotten our bargain?”

  “I remember how you changed the terms on us. I’m changing them again.”

  “Your friend would be very disappointed to hear that. Vennika.”

  Two things happened. First, Vennika flipped the knife in her hand so that it was no longer a threat, but an offer. Second, Dug sat up and took it from her, then slid off the table and swept behind Eneil whose face was screwed in consternation, trying to follow what was happening in the room. Dug pressed the side of the cold blade against Eneil’s cheek and leaned in close to their ear. “It is not her with whom I am disappointed.”

  Eneil had the presence of mind to grow very still. The lavender undertones in their skin took on an icy hue.

  Talis couldn’t hold back the grin at seeing Dug move with something of his old grace and speed. “Welcome back. You almost missed all the fun again.”

  Vennika hissed through her teeth. “Talis, you promised me no one would be harmed.”

  Talis inclined her head toward the doctor by the barest measure. She kept her promises, but Eneil didn’t need to know that.

  “Killed. I promised you no one would be killed. But believe me, there are fates worse than death. Eneil zur Selki, given recent events, perhaps you’d like to tell us who your client is on this job?”

  With a sigh, Eneil lowered their head. “Captain Talis, I assure you that my commitment to their secret does not overpower my sense of self-preservation. I genuinely do not know. It was arranged through another party. However, I do know the client was a Cutter man.”

  Talis bit down on a curse, keeping her dismay to herself. “And he knew about the money aboard my ship, to use against me in the bargain?”

  Eneil dipped their chin. “He did.”

  Talis grit her teeth. Well, that pretty much left only the Veritors, possibly getting the information from Hankirk, or the Yu’Nyun. Lovely.

  Dug pressed the blade against Eneil’s shoulder, drawing a short line of blood and a whimper. Talis noted the anger in Vennika’s expression. It evaporated at Dug’s next words, though. “And you sent the assassin into Lippen?”
>
  “Assassin?” Eneil tilted their head, and even Talis was almost convinced of their confusion.

  But she kicked the leg of the surgery table, and Eneil flinched. “Yeah. Assassin. I don’t buy the coincidence that you were waiting for us to come aboard, with a reworked, raw deal salvage contract, at just the moment we were chased out of Lippen by the Bone man that put a nasty knife in Dug’s side.”

  “So that’s where he went off to.” Vennika fixed a seething glare on her employer.

  Talis crossed her arms. “Thank you for the confirmation, Doctor. I think that was the last piece we needed. I’ll take these two to the hold. Dug, help Tisker and Soph move the others from the crew cabins, please.”

  Vennika went quietly, resigned that a little cooperation wouldn’t spare her from the sentence Eneil had bought them all.

  Chapter 19

  There had been a lot more chanteys where Shiny Bright Captain came from. Part in celebration, part because there was no way the crew of four, and Dug still taking care with his wound, were going to get the ship about without the coordination that linesmen and firebox songs would get them. As they brought Im Ufite Rantor to a near-stop, matching the spin of flotsam, they were all exhausted.

  And the work was just begun.

  There wasn’t so much as a squeak or a rumble from the windlass as Talis and Tisker descended toward the tiny point below. Before they could see the details without a scope, Talis could feel her ship down there. No doubt Tisker could, too, though his face was half-eclipsed from view by the collar beneath his round glass helmet. They spun gently as Dug fed them toward the glinting frosted surfaces of the garbage below. Above them, Im Ufite Rantor held position low enough to reduce the descent by some without getting too deep into the thinner atmosphere where the ship’s systems might seize, lose pressure, or ice over. They wanted their little visit to Peridot’s boneyard to be brief and uneventful.

  Tisker’s voice sounded in her ear through the wires feeding off the voice tube comm. “Quite a sight, Cap.”

  She smiled up at him, in good spirits despite her morbid thoughts. It helped that the descent suits were comfortable, compared to the first suit she’d worn two years earlier, which had arrived on Wind Sabre old and musty along with their second-hand salvage gear. The coveralls crinkled with some sort of thin metallic insulation when they moved, but were warm without being dank, and the layers weren’t so thick as to restrict their movement. The fingers were slim but well lined, with pebbled tips for grip and dexterity. The lockers on the lower boarding deck of the Im Ufite Rantor had a half-dozen such suits in varying sizes to suit Cutter or Bone salvage teams and a wall of helmets, each of which clamped into place with perfect seals against the thin atmosphere and freezing temperatures. Each suit was worth a small fortune.

  Im Ufite Rantor’s corridors and accessways were strangers to Talis, but the feel of a hull moving beneath her feet, in the pull of the wind, was exactly as she remembered it. The wood was of a different tree, but the satin-finished railing beneath her hand was as natural as the feeling of her own hand brushing against her cheek.

  They’d done it. This wasn’t the final destination they had in mind, or how they’d thought it would happen as they planned their escape from Heddard Bay over two years, but they were back out in the open skies again where they belonged.

  Emphasis on that fact—there was now nothing but open skies as she dangled and dropped toward the frozen, swirling mass of Peridot’s long forgotten. The last time she’d been in such a position, she’d dredged up Lindent Vein’s ring and all the trouble that came with it—namely Meran. This time, the glitter of frost promised nothing but more trouble.

  No. With this descent, she’d finally make things right for her crew.

  Her airship came into view. Until that point, Talis had allowed herself to remember the carrack as it had once been. Whole. Patched but beautiful. The truth of it was heartbreaking. Wrecked, broken, almost indistinguishable from the trash around it. Instead of remembering the years of life aboard the ship, the narrow escapes and hard-won victories, she was faced with reality. To remember the moment it all fell apart.

  The steel engine housings were in ruin, peeled back under the force of the blasts like the rind of a stubborn orange peel. Black scorch marks like dark veins beneath the frost on the deck. Talis recalled, as if through water, the wail of angry metal components heralding the engines’ imminent explosion.

  There’d only been that moment of warning, the catastrophic fire burst. Then the twin hearts that kept Wind Sabre going had silenced, and with them went the steam to keep the lift envelope buoyant. Below, Wind Sabre’s canvas draped, heavy with ice, revealing the broken contours of the shattered and misshapen ribs beneath. It had fallen across the aft half of the deck, the slack lines coiled in a tangle along the railings and over the sides.

  They’d have gone down in a tangle with it, except Hankirk had saved them. All of them. Even Scrimshaw, who was nearly dead after Hankirk brutally attacked xin only hours earlier. But in the moments that made the difference, Hankirk got an escape boat untied, inflated the small hot air balloon, and made it ready. When they lost the engines, there he was, calling her name and helping them, one-armed, to get aboard. He’d saved them.

  Sure as stars, she knew, he’d been making that boat ready to escape alone. Up until that point, he was a thorn in her side and a wrench in her plans. But when given the chance, he’d done the decent thing.

  “Cap . . .”

  Tisker’s hushed word hung in their helmets. He didn’t need to finish the sentence. They were moments from touching down before Wind Sabre’s forecastle. The deck was listed hard to starboard. A coating of ice gave the whole ship a silver tone as if her black hull were polished silverwood. She looked as though she’d been down there for centuries. Nestled among the larger objects—furniture, cleared trees, and slabs from architecture—and the smaller like serving ware, clothing, food waste, tools and hardware, broken ’tronics, and scattered sheets of torn or half-burned paper. Seventy-five generations of the waste from Peridot’s people, silently waiting for them.

  Talis’s boot tip touched down, and they were there.

  That their equipment was shiny and new this time did not mean this salvage was safer than the last. The frost was slippery. The angle of the deck was treacherous. There were loose lift lines crossing overhead and underfoot that could entangle with their salvage lines. Sharp pieces of detritus, shrapnel from the engines and from other wrecks in the waste, that could puncture their suits or sever their tubes. There was the hungry cold, and the ever-present nothing of dizzying vacuum beyond the railing—beyond the boundaries of atmosphere held in place by the anchor of Nexus.

  Talis allowed them a moment of respect for their old ship before she said, “All right, to work.”

  It was to shake them both back to the present. She might have stood there for hours and never known the time had passed. It seemed even her heartbeat froze down here. Despite the frost, the warped and split metal that used to be the ship’s engines, the splinters of the railing, the scorch of alien weapons fire in lines across the deck, and the crumpled lift envelope, Talis felt the urge to head below to stoke the boilers and raise Wind Sabre from her grave. The disconnect between hope and reality was unsettling.

  Damage aside, everything was as familiar to her as it had been two years past, and the years before that. Phantoms of old contracts, of their brushes with Imperials, and their narrow escapes from ruin, all swirled on the deck as Talis crossed it. She’d rather be done with this work and gone again than linger and be heartsick over all they’d lost. Now was the time to recover and move on.

  After promising Sophie they’d report in within the hour, Talis and Tisker unclipped from the stiff wire-sheathed tube that connected them to Im Ufite Rantor’s radios and to each other. Then they went to work securing guide rings to cleats along the deck to keep their li
nes from tangling. Down to midship, where smaller bits of trash, much of it not of Wind Sabre’s inventory, gathered like siltwater up to their calves. Talis kicked aside a wooden bucket, the desiccated, curling roots of a glow pumpkin, and broken table legs as she walked.

  “Anything you want from your cabin?” Tisker’s voice was muffled by the helmet, hard to hear without the radio connection. With a thumb he motioned over his shoulder where, in the shadow of the collapsed canvas, the great cabin’s door hung off its hinges behind them, opening onto darkness.

  Talis considered the door. Tisker, Sophie, and Dug lost everything they owned when the crew cabin caught fire, yet her own quarters were intact. To come back with anything of her own seemed selfish. What was more valuable than the coffers they had come aboard for?

  But, she realized, there was something she missed, and something else they could all use. So she pushed back the guilt and nodded, and together they waded back through the mess on deck, pushing through a web of lift lines that partially blocked the door.

  At the threshold, she flipped the toggle for the torch on her shoulder. Its narrow beam cast dancing shadows into the dark space as she scanned her old quarters. Tisker stood near the doorframe, averting his gaze in respect for her privacy—or perhaps lost in some memory—leaving her alone with her ghosts.

  Some of the flotsam had made its way in through the open door, but most of the mess was her own. The slide of chairs against the starboard wall and against the port side of the anchored table stood testament to the list of Wind Sabre’s hull. The angle caused by the lift balloon’s tear and the escape of remaining steam on her way down. Her various instruments and belongings gathered around the chair legs along the base of the bulkhead.

  But her jacket still hung on its hook, under a sparkling coat of hoar, of course, but she recognized the softened shape of her elbows and shoulders, the patches across one bicep where a knife had once slashed it. The detail of the stitching along the reinforced forearms and the narrow collar with the buttons meant for the detachable hood that she’d misplaced a lifetime ago.