“Laser cannon powered and ready. Missiles loaded.”
“Mr. Roberts, turn us toward the enemy. Janet, fire a full spread. Given ‘em a punch in the nose.” A series of deep thuds sounded in the ship, and four missiles raced toward the Tenari. Reed decided it would be enough to cover their retreat. “Turnabout. Best speed toward the nearest friendly warship or outpost.” I’m sorry, she thought to her crew still on the freighter.
The Manta shuddered and rocked, its lights dimming. Sparks flew from several control stations, and anyone not sitting or holding tight to something was thrown to the floor.
“We’re hit!” Janet cried over the alarms. “Near the engines.”
“Damage?” Reed called.
“We’re losing power.”
“Captain!” Roberts said.
Reed looked out the window to see three of the large, predatory-looking ships, each the size of a cruiser, closing on her damaged craft.
“Missiles!”
“Loaders are jammed,” Janet replied.
“Laser cannon, Mr. Roberts.”
The cannon fired. Its deep hum and discharge left the bridge nearly dark. The beam caught one of the hostiles, slicing it in half. Debris tumbled through space. The remaining Tenari ships fired their slow moving-missiles at the wounded Manta.
“Evasive maneuvers! Engage counter-measures!” Reed felt her ship turn as she heard the soft clang of the chaff-launcher engaging. One of the missiles exploded harmlessly to starboard. The other passed over the Manta and detonated, setting off a fresh round of fires and alarms. The ship decelerated and the hum in the deck plating stopped. The Black Manta was dead in space. Reed looked out the window.
The two remaining Tenari vessels had formed up together and were closing on them.
“Are they going to board us?” Roberts asked from his useless helm controls.
Reed sighed and blinked back nausea and light-headedness. “No. I think they just want to be sure of their shot.”
Reed watched quietly as the two alien vessels closed the distance. “Janet, transmit the log to the nearest colonial base.” She paused, took a deep breath. “It’s been a pleasure to serve with all of you,” she said to her bridge crew.
“Likewise, ma’am,” Janet said. Her weapons station was dark and smoldering. “I think the Manta gave a good accounting of herself today.”
Reed nodded agreement. “Our little attack ship took out most of what looks like a cruiser battle group. The Manta did good.”
“Look!” Mira yelled, pointing at the edge of the window.
The Savros freighter, her fusion engines burning bright white in the darkness of space, slammed in the formation of smaller Tenari ships. The first of the crafts disintegrated on impact. The second Tenari vessel started to turn away, but the lumbering freighter’s crumpled bow caught it as well, sending it spinning as all three ships broke apart in space from the force of the collision.
“Goddamn it, Baldry,” Reed whispered, trying not to cry. “You crazy old bastard.” Reed slumped back in her chair and closed her eyes. Her adrenaline crashed, and the blood loss finally overwhelmed her. She blacked out.
Reed looked around the bridge of her new ship. She ran her hand over the control console. It was clean and shiny.
“Admiral Weston on the comm!” Janet Sobrinski called out.
Reed turned and looked at her view screen. An older woman looked back at her, seated from the office on the space station they had just left.
“Ready to go into harm’s way, Captain?” she asked.
Reed nodded. She liked the fleet admiral, had served with her during her first tour out of the academy, when Weston was the executive officer on the battle-cruiser Nairobi. “Yes, ma’am. The Black Manta and crew are ready for action.” Reed paused for a moment before giving the flag officer a salute. “Admiral, I just wanted to thank you again for advocating for my crew. Without your voice in the High Command, we’d all be breaking rocks on Freyr or something.”
Admiral Weston snorted. “You’re the only commanding officer to ever fight the Tenari twice and live. We need you in the captain’s chair of a warship, Kathleen, not rotting in a prison cell. A blanket pardon for you and your crew in exchange for accepting a letter of marque to raid Tenari commerce and scout their border was a good comprise for everyone.” The admiral frowned at her. “Find out what you can as quickly as possible, Captain. We need facts about the Tenari, not space-tales. Good-luck to all of you.”
Reed nodded. “Yes, ma’am,” she said. The admiral nodded and signed off.
Captain Kathleen Reed settled in her comfortable new command chair and punched up her letter of marque on the data pad resting on the chair’s arm. The Colonial Assembly didn’t want to send a Navy task force yet, wasn’t ready to commit to war with an enemy they knew almost nothing about. The Colonial Navy, however, was happy to send a flagless freelance-warship to the border, armed to the teeth.
“Mr. Roberts?” she said.
“We have permission to depart the system,” her executive officer reported.
“Ms. Sobrinski?”
“The crew is at action stations.”
Reed smiled. It was time to pay back the Tenari for Baldry, Tilly, the rest of the Manta’s lost crew from both battles, and the colonists they had taken. “Very well. Mr. Grisham, take us to Tenari space.”
“Aye, Captain.”
The Black Manta leapt forward.
Search for the Heart of the Ocean
By A.J. Fitzwater
* * *
The North Wind stood to attention as the IRATE vessel Impolite Fortune sailed past the headlands towards adventure.
Captain Cinrak the Dapper, capybara pirate extraordinaire, breathed it all in, her mind’s eye turning the scene into words she could slip to a bard for the perfect opening of an epic that should—would—be written if—when—Cinrak returned with her jewelled prize.
The grinning waves. The beaming sun. The figurehead meant to represent and yet not represent Rat Queen Orvillia straining to be off, reaching to embrace the open ocean. There, atop Shag Rock, chiffon streaming, Locqualchi, First Marmot Diva of the Theatre Rat-oyal, shrilling out the ‘Ode to the Ocean’. Before, on the docks, Locqualchi telling Cinrak she better come home alive or so help her, she’d kill Cinrak herself. And the Impolite Fortune herself, gleaming hard as the jewel she was setting out to find.
Cinrak blew her marmot lover a final farewell kiss then saluted claw to brow for the North Wind’s spectacular contribution to the day.
“Everything ship shape and ready to be fancy free, ser,” said First Mate Riddle, a patchwork rat, snapping a salute paw to chest.
“Open her up, Riddle m’lass.”
“Yes, ser!” Riddle slipped her eyepatch to the other side and glared with an empty eye socket down the deck. “You heard the cap! Let ‘er fly!”
The excited crew sang open the snapping sails which whispered taunts to the North Wind. As the breeze stiffened, Cinrak clutched her portfolio tighter. The North Wind could get frisky when excited. It would do her no good to lose years of hard-won secrets to the greedy water.
One pouting snout stood out. Riddle twitched her head towards a young grey chinchilla skulking near the down ladder. Cinrak sighed, straightened her purple paisley bow tie, and pulled at the hem of her green silk waistcoat.
Time to deal with the new cabin girl.
“With me,” Cinrak growled in passing.
The girl put her head down and followed. Cinrak could almost take it as an insult, but she remembered well her own first day on an IRATE vessel.
Cabin door clicked shut. Desk drawer lock clicked, hiding the portfolio. The pirates of IRATE loved each other, but at the end of the day they were still pirates.
Cinrak drummed forepaw claws on the immaculate desk top.
“Competition be fierce for the apprenticeship you be doin’,” she said. “Ev’ry cabin girl from the Impolite Fortune have become respected commanders in the IRATE flee
t. Ye balance looks good, m’girl, but your mind be elsewhere.”
The little chinchilla folded her arms. She was of age to serve with IRATE, but her thin arms, delicate paws, and drooping whiskers needed plenty of discipline to deal with the heavy work and merciless weather.
“Yes, ser,” the grey chinchilla sighed.
“Minerva, is it?” The girl looked away, clenched her jaw. Cinrak thought of how the youngling had winced when her mother had smothered her in farewell kisses. “I promised yer m’arm you’d be in fine and safe hands. An’ that comes with the IRATE lifetime guarantee. But you gotta work with me here, Minerva. If it be a boy or a girl or a school or a desert caravan that be callin’ yer name, ye betta be tellin’ me now. Us IRATE pirates not be takin’ disrespect.”
The restless and heavy silence grew, getting itchy around the edges.
Deepest Depths, thought Cinrak. Maybe it would be best if I dropped this little one off at the next port.
The chinchilla burst out, “It’s not that I don’t want to be here, ser!” then she looked everywhere for her escaping words.
Cinrak sat back. “Go awn.” She gestured towards a stool. The girl slumped down with a sigh.
“I do respect the Independent Rodent Aquatic Trade Entente, oh, I do, ser!” The chinchilla found her animation, black eyes gleaming. “I’ve wanted nothing more to be a pirate and serve on the Impolite Fortune and meet the people of the deep since I was a wee one, but I...”
Something familiar in the set of her whiskers, something deep in her dark eyes, made Cinrak decide. “I be listenin’. That’s what a good captain does.”
The chinchilla lifted her chin, flicked her whiskers once. “I am not who my m’arm told you I am. My name is Benj, and I am a boy. A cabin boy. If that means I must be displaced from serving on the Impolite Fortune, so be it. But please, ser. I do so want to meet the mers. And there’s something about the ocean, something out there, I can...smell it. If you must, set me ashore again, just don’t send me back home.”
Cinrak blinked once. Oh. A lost boy. This was much easier to deal with than a homesick apprentice.
“Deepest Depths, Benj. On Orvillia’s Crown, I swear yer most welcome here. The Impolite Fortune welcomes crew of many genders an’ fluidities. Ye be need guidance of that nature, talk to Cookie. Or Second Mate Zupe, they like to be a boy sometimes.”
A sigh like a great weight left Benj, and on the return breath, his chest swelled up. His smile finally crept in, if a little late to the party. “And you?” he said in a tiny voice.
Cinrak straightened her bow tie. “I be happy to teach you a thing or two ‘bout dapperness. It in me name.”
“Ser, thank you, ser.”
“Now. Go find First Mate Riddle. She be showing ye how to make bunk. Then see what supplies Cookie needs run fer dinner.”
“Yes, ser!” Benj’s salute smacked whip smart against the breast of his leather jerkin.
“And Benj?”
“Yes, ser?”
“We be makin’ a pirate of ye before this mission is over, and ye’ll earn your name addendum.”
“Yes, ser!”
The cabin door slammed, and the room winced.
Cinrak chuckled and retrieved the secret portfolio. Maybe she’d become more ship m’arm than captain to the boy, but thems the wave breaks.
The shadow trailing the Impolite Fortune made Cinrak nervous, and it took a lot to make her nervous.
And this shadow was a lot: too succinct to be cloud reflection, too precise to be a fish roil. Too early for whales this far south, and too far off share for a bank of inktons.
Cinrak didn’t believe in monsters, except when she did.
Three days past Merholm, the shadow dissipated when Cinrak gathered the crew on deck for an evening feast. Everyone came dressed in their best frills and frocks, silks and stockings. Deck feasts were a prelude to some important announcement, and the Impolite Fortune’s turn of direction had had the crew muttering for days. They heartily tucked into the platters of chilli or lemon doused fish, paella, cornbread, and orange grain pancakes. Cinrak decided to wait until they were well into their cups of cinnamon rum and honey whiskey before making her case.
As she practised her speech in her head, her gaze fell on Benj; he was a good, fluffy boy, faithful to mer-hair anemone tea. Cinrak often found him on deck late at night staring moonily down at the swift-still water, a cup of the sweet red beverage in his hand. It even sounded like he was whispering to the Paper Moon when it peeped shyly from behind clouds. He wouldn’t be the first apprentice to have a sweet love affair with the delicate celestial.
Cinrak banged her cup for attention.
“As ye can see by how well the North Wind blows, our journey didna end with the entente renegotiations at Merholm. I hope ye all enjoyed yer time partakin’ of the archipelago’s wonders and getting acquainted with our mer friends.”
While the crew hollered and whistled, Benj blushed. The charming mers had fascinated him, and he’d spent hours in their library stuffing sea lore into his small big brain.
“But that be only the first phase of our mission,” Cinrak continued. “I be sorry to inform ye, we be not on a mappin’ and patrol of the southern coasts.”
“Coast five days back-thataway,” someone yelled, and others laughed.
Cinrak took a deep breath. “I be blunt. The mission we undertake is a folly of my ego. The journey be difficult, treacherous, and one into the unknown. One which, in the end, will restore Queen Orvillia’s crown to it’s rightful place of beauty an’ style ‘mongst all the great jewels in the land. She be deservin’ only the best since I broke it asunder. Therefore, I go in search of...the Heart of the Ocean.”
Excitement rippled through the crew. Not a strand of fur moved on Benj’s body.
“I be not expectin’ any o’ this crew to fall in line with my wild schemes. As always, once ye assessed the rules of engagement, ye be more than welcome to dissent. There still be opportunity to make a swing towards the Gargan Peninsular, and I’ll let any crew member off at Gigantia and collect them on the way back.”
“That’s if we come back,” Riddle joked.
Cinrak let the feels have the run of the place for a moment: laughter, drinks swilling, quills and teeth and claws clicking, voices chittering.
“But ser,” broke in one of the deckhands. “The greatest jewel in the world is said to be guarded by the fearsome kraken, as tall as the queen’s castle with tentacles longer than ten vessels nose to tail!”
“Which is why, m’dear, we not be partakin’ of the flesh of the inkton,” Cinrak explained. “Kraken’s cousins have proven intelligent and good friends of Rodentkind. Friends not be eatin’ friends. The mer archives tell us, yes, once beasts of Kraken’s size did exist. It be not our place to tempt The Depth’s wrath.”
The entire crew undulated two digits in a v shape of warding. Except Benj whose black eyes widened, and he sat straight up. Cinrak hoped superstition would come to him soon. All good pirates needed it.
Cinrak continued. “After years of research an’ consultation with mer scholars, a bit of falling on the good side of Our Chaotic Lady, an’ a touch of ego, I come to the conclusion we must go to The Edge of the World.”
This knocked the air out of the crew and the North Wind. The South Wind kept its own council, and a good right it had to do so. The oceans did not give up their secrets lightly.
“The edge of the world, ser?” someone yelled. “Everyone knows the world is round. Just look at them horizon!”
Someone else shushed them with ‘read a book of human-tales’.
Cinrak stilled the ruddle by holding up a forepaw. Benj’s whiskers quivered, emphasizing his stillness.
“The Edge of the World not be a myth or a human-tale. It be a riddle which points towards a great force of the natural world.”
Now Benj’s eyes were bulging out of his skull. Disappointment chipped out a little of Cinrak’s pride. She had hoped the cabin boy would be
tougher than this.
Someone tapped Cinrak on the shoulder.
No. All crew were at the table.
Something tapped Cinrak on the shoulder.
A shiny wet tentacle slid into Cinrak’s vision. And kept going. And going. Undulating up onto the Impolite Fortune’s deck.
As the quivering Paper Moon pulled a cloud across its face and the rising Moth Moon peeked over the horizon, the crew dissolved into screaming, flailing chaos.
The kraken had a long, globular, and moist name.
“But she says you can call her Agnes until you get the hang of the rest of it,” Benj said, stroking a tentacle tip. The tentacle wriggled gently. A single castle-window sized eye peeped over the rail. The kraken’s orange spade-shaped head went up and up and up, slicing against the blue sky.
Cinrak closed her eyes for a moment, pretending she was below decks with the rest of the crew . If one couldn’t see the beast maybe it would stop existing. It hit Cinrak: Benj hadn’t been mooning at the water all those nights, he’d been talking to the kraken! Cinrak strained her ears in Agnes’ direction, but all she could detect was a hum like the wind strumming its favourite tune in the riggings.
“What be-” she attempted and failed the full name. “-er, Agnes wanting?”
“She’s excited that someone came looking for her,” he said. “She wants to help you find the Heart of the Ocean. She’s lost it too. She’s lonely, and she says it’s nice to have friends round these parts.”
This was all a bit too much. The tiny cabin boy translating for a monster who would barely make a morsel of him. The Impolite Fortune tracked all this time. A lonely monster of the Depths becalming the ship with a hug. Her reputation wouldn’t live it down if word spread that Cinrak The Dapper had almost wet her second-best pair of pants.
“Agnes wants to know why you’re looking for the Heart?” Benj said, quiet, like he was apologizing. Agnes blinked affirmation, her eyelid nicking a few splinters off the railing.
Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space) Page 24