Chapter Two

 

 

 

“So what did she want?” Harper asked when I slipped into her room later on that evening.

I had decided it would look more suspicious to Harper if I stayed away. I knew from experience that it was much better to feed her a white lie early on than to try and cover my tracks later.

“I’m not supposed to tell you,” I said, collapsing into my usual chair.

Her quarters could have fit into Comita’s closet. Her bunk took up one wall, and the folding table and two chairs filled the space in between. There was a small sink with a washbasin at the far end. Like me, she used the bathroom down the hall, and we ate all of our meals in the ship’s cafeteria. Being the admiral’s daughter had precious few perks. Her quarters, in short, were identical to mine, with one glaring exception: a jug of Jonah’s brew lurked evilly on the small table, glowing an unhealthy orange in the greenish cast of Harper’s bio-lights. Jonah Juice, he called it. I averted my eyes before my head started to pound in sympathetic memory of the last time I’d encountered it.

“Come on. I tell you everything that happens in engineering,” she pleaded.

“That’s because nothing happens in engineering. Except that.”

I pointed at the foul liquid.

“Let me get you a glass then,” she said with an impish grin.

She leaned across me to grab two cups from the tiny cabinet, which was tucked neatly into the recess behind the folding table. I held my breath and hoped she didn’t catch a whiff of her mother’s rum on my lips. With a sickening lurch of my stomach, I realized that there was only one possible way I could evade Harper’s nose— masking the rum with the liquid fumes in the jar before me.

“This is rank, Harp,” I said as I choked down a sip.

“What did you expect? It’s Jonah’s finest. And in case you wondered, it only gets worse with age, so drink up.” She tossed back her glass to illustrate her statement, wrinkling her nose as it went down.

“If you won’t tell me,” she said, narrowing her eyes at me, “I’ll have to guess.”

“Why don’t you ask your mother?” I suggested, holding the alcohol as far away from my nose as possible.

“And get sent to the bilges for insubordination? No thank you!”

I had a brief vision of Harper in the bilges, wearing the waders and high boots of a bilge hand while she slaved away in the bowels of the ship, operating the pumps that allowed the fleet ships to submerge in unfavorable seas.

Harper raised her glass in a mock toast. The gesture reminded me of her mother’s an hour and several lifetimes ago. For a split second the similarities between them shone through, despite Harper’s infectious charm. Her eyes were brown, unlike Comita’s gray, and her hair curled sleekly around her shoulders in dark waves, but the steel lay just beneath the veneer of youth. The steel, and the discipline. Harper would turn out all right.

The morbidity of the thought shook me, as I faced a future where I might not get to see Harper come into her own. Something on my face must have shown the tenor of my thoughts, because Harper’s voice lost a little of its playful edge.

“It can’t be that bad. What, is she sending you to the bilges instead?”

“Hardly,” I said, trying to force a smile.

“Okay. So it’s not a punishment, but you’re not excited, and she wanted to speak with you privately about it. That can only mean one thing.” She gave me a grin. “You’re getting promoted and you’re worried I’ll be jealous.”

I laughed, shaking my head at her. “I can’t keep anything a secret from you,” I said in mock surrender.

“Okay,” she said, rolling her eyes, “not a promotion then. So, if she didn’t promote you, why did my mother have me send you to her private lair?”

That was an excellent question, I realized. Comita knew I was close with Harper, and she had to know that Harper would try to pry the truth out of me. Either she had been distracted by the prospect of war with the pirates, or it was a test to see if I really could keep my mouth shut. My brain spun, and I regretted drinking both the rum and the Jonah Juice. I needed a story that would pass inspection if Comita followed up with Harper. I didn’t think Harper would rat me out, but I didn’t fancy her chances against Comita’s iron will, either.

“She wanted to see how I was liking being second to the Second Mate,” I said. It was partially true. “Walker must have given her a report recently, because she sat me down and asked me a bunch of questions about my skills and how I was handling the pressure of being a quartermaster.”

“She is going to promote you!” Harper said with a gasp and a toss of her head. The toast she gave me this time had none of Comita’s reserve.

“Maybe,” I allowed, “but Harp, think about it. She’s not going to give me Walker’s position. What if she wants to move me off ship?”

It was so close to the truth that it hurt. Harper’s hair swung around her face as she settled back in her seat to consider this possibility. A lump formed unexpectedly in my throat, and I took another sip to fight back the onslaught of unspoken words.

The North Star was my home, for all that I sometimes felt out of place. Harper’s friendship more than made up for people like Maddox, and I liked serving under Comita. Walker, too, had always been kind to me. His bright smile thawed the ice in the other sailors’ glares, and he managed to discourage the low muttering of the other quartermasters without picking favorites. In another few years, I promised myself, their resentment would fade. They would forget about the young upstart from Cassiopeia who bypassed the training protocols and slipped into the helm.

All I had to do was stay.

Or, I could risk everything on a mission that Comita didn’t dare share with the rest of her crew, including her own daughter. I wished I could spill the truth to Harper. I wanted someone else to tell me which was the right decision.

“She wouldn’t,” Harper said. “You’re too valuable. You’re practically magic.” She grinned at me.

“If she did offer me a position off ship, though, what would I do? I can’t leave the North Star.”

I ran a finger around the rim of the glass. My quarters had plastic cups. Perhaps there was some merit in being the admiral’s daughter after all.

“Sure you could. If you could be a navigator in your own right, wouldn’t that be worth it?” Harper’s eyes avoided mine.

“Only if you were my Chief of Engineering,” I said, reaching out to give her shoulder a playful punch.

“The way you steer, you’d need me.” She smacked my hand away and scowled.

“I thought you said I was magic.”

“I said you were practically magic, not magic. Otherwise you would have seen this coming.” She leapt to her feet and dragged me out of my chair, play wrestling me onto the ground and forcing another foul mouthful into my throat.

I choked on the bootlegged liquor and my own laughter.

 

•   •   •

 

Harper. Comita. Miranda.

I let the last name roll around in my mouth, tasting it as if I could learn something about the mercenary by repeating her name. The weight of the decision before me made my bed all the more appealing, and I curled up beneath the sheet for a few more moments as anxiety flooded me like water into a bulkhead.

The hiss of the showers slowed, marking the dwindling passage of time before I had to report to the dining hall for breakfast. I crawled out of my bunk, shouldering the weight of my dread, and splashed some water onto my face. It tasted vaguely salinated, as always, and I ran my wet hands through my hair before glancing into the mirror.

I frowned at my reflection. I kept my black hair short, although not as short as Comita’s. Disobedient curls stuck up at odd angles and I splashed more water on them, following up with a comb. I didn’t know why I bothered, really. It would dry however it liked. I would have to get it cut before I left.

If I left, I corrected myself. I hadn’t made up my mind yet. Comita had been right to give me more time, despite my hasty words the night before. I rubbed my eyes, wondering if their color would mark me as an outcast on a mercenary vessel the same way they did on the North Star.

Against my dark hair and brown skin, my eyes burned with a strange amber unlike anyone else I had met in the Archipelago. The dark ring at the edge of the iris only emphasized the feral gold at the center.

I didn’t like looking at them.

“Yellow-eyed drifter,” Maddox called me. I had never seen a case of yellow fever, but I knew that it was the whites that turned yellow, not the irises. None of the drifters who came to Cassiopeia would dare bring an infected person close to a station.

Drifters, with their tiny trawlers and family sized vessels, operated under the radar. They were technically not part of the Archipelago, and owed our city stations no allegiance, but they depended on trade with the outlying stations for seeds and medical supplies. None would risk exile by bringing an infection to our floating ports. They raised the yellow flag of fever and drifted by themselves until the sickness passed. A black flag meant the whole vessel was contaminated, either by one of the ocean’s many fevers or the bleeding sickness that hemorrhaged life out of every orifice. I shuddered, glad of the contamination protocols that kept the stations quarantined in the event of an outbreak.

I hoped the mercenary vessel had similar protocols.

I pulled on my uniform, rolling the sleeves up past my elbows, then took a deep breath and checked our direction. The light filtering through my ceiling was bright, and we were headed northeast. I felt a sudden urge to be on deck, assuming we were in clean waters, letting the sunlight and wind burn away the vestiges of the night before. The rum and the bootlegged liquor had left a gummy film over my body, like the slippery, burning flesh of a jellyfish. Maybe there would be a swarm on the horizon. Then I would have a day’s work ahead of me, plotting coordinates and helping Walker run risk analysis. It was not the sort of thing I would normally wish for, but there was nothing normal about my thoughts this morning.

Breakfast was rice pudding. I toyed with it until Harper’s raised eyebrow forced me to shovel the bites into my mouth with mechanical precision. At least Harper wasn’t chatty, I told myself. The dining hall was packed with the rest of the day shift. I glanced around me, trying not to feel like I was saying goodbye.

“What’s gotten into you?” Harper asked as she cleared her tray.

“Just a little hung over,” I lied.

“Lightweight.”

She pushed back from the bench and took her tray up to the compost, leaving me alone with my rice pudding. I prodded the remains of the gelatinous mass, picturing the rice paddies of Polaris and the freshwater fish that swam through the shallows. I might never see them again.

Perhaps, I thought, I should have gone into aquaculture or hydroponics, instead of navigation.

My internal compass twitched. Sunlight streamed through the windows, but to the east the winds were shifting. I could feel it in the currents. A storm was coming. I abandoned the last few bites of my breakfast and cleared my tray, avoiding the eyes of the other sailors on my way to the compost chute, which smelled strongly of last night’s fish.

Harper met me at the cafeteria’s noxious yellow door with a yawn.

“See you tonight?” she asked, preparing to descend the tight stairs to the lower levels where she spent her days. I nodded mutely, suddenly unable to force words out of my tight throat. She rolled her eyes at me and turned to leave.

“Harp,” I called after her. She stopped and I took a hesitant step forward.

“You’re being weird, Rose.”

I pulled her to me in a tight hug, squeezing some of the breath out of both of us. Her head barely came up to my chin, and I rested my cheek against her sleek hair, trying to make sense of my tumbling world. Harper tolerated this for a few seconds before pulling away.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, letting my arms drop to my sides. They hung there limply while Harper stared at me.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Storm’s coming. I have to get to the helm.”

I could feel her eyes on my back the entire length of the narrow hallway.

Walker was waiting.

Sunlight drenched the helm, which jutted out from the submerged body of the ship like a knife handle to give us 360 degrees of unobstructed ocean. Charts covered the table in the center and the ship’s computer hummed quietly, salt water coursing through the conduit wires to the wave-generated battery in the ship’s belly. I could feel the pulses. The computer reminded me of a giant octopus, with its tentacles hooked into every system onboard. The electrical impulses sometimes interfered with my inner compass.

“There’s too much water in you,” one of the fortune tellers on Cassiopeia had told me as a child. I was inclined to believe her.

“Rose,” Walker said in his gently authoritative tone. I stood to attention, noting the presence of my two fellow quartermasters. Neither glanced my way. As always, their resentment was palpable.

I wondered if Walker knew about Comita’s secret request. His warm eyes met mine, revealing nothing.

“At ease. Take a look at this.” He beckoned me over to the central table.

“Are the barometers getting any low pressure readings?” I asked him, eying the computer’s glossy screen.

“Not yet, no. You picking up on something they’re not?”

“Might be a storm headed our way,” I said, glancing out at the peerless blue sky.

“Storms I can handle. This is more concerning.” He pointed a thick finger at a chart. “One of our scouts reported some unusual activity.”

“What kind of activity?” I examined the chart. It was of an area of ocean some fifty miles east, between us and the Gulf of Mexico.

“A transport vessel reported something tonal. It wasn’t like our sonar, but it was definitely code. Whatever it is, it is closer than usual, and we didn’t get a good sighting.”

“Could just be drifters,” a quartermaster named Marjory offered.

“Or pirates,” suggested Sam, the other quartermaster.

“Could very well be pirates,” Walker repeated, looking up at me. “Pirates that are subbed deeper than we thought possible, and far too close for comfort. Rose, I need an estimated trajectory based on these coordinates, and I will keep you up to date on anything our scout can send in.”

“What about that storm, sir?” I asked.

“I’ll have someone report it to Polaris and have the ship prepped to sub,” Walker said. “In the meantime, I need you on this, Rose.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. I took a seat at the table and pulled the charts closer, running my hands along the printed plastic maps.

Deep-subbing pirate ships were bad news. It almost eclipsed Comita’s request, and I spent the morning charting possible courses and trying to determine how long it would take the pirate vessels to make contact with our supply line. The trouble was, if they had technology we didn’t know about, then I had no way of calculating their knots, which meant that at best I had a vague window of their arrival— if they meant to attack at all.

I looked up from the chart in time to catch a glare from Marjory that I wasn’t supposed to see. I ignored her. Marjory had been forced to split her duties with me when I graduated, and I couldn’t blame her for her resentment, even though it stung. At least she had a good reason for disliking me, unlike Maddox.

I rubbed the web between my forefinger and thumb, feeling for the shift in currents that indicated the shape of the coming storm.

There was a slight tug to the east, a catch in the currents that suggested the beginnings of a hurricane. Out here in the soup, monster storms formed overnight, turning the summer seas into boiling cauldrons. Even subbed there were still risks. A storm might delay a pirate attack, even if their vessels could sub as deeply as ours. On the other hand, it would also provide ideal cover for their movements. Comita was right. We needed more intel. I bit my lip in frustration.

“You’re a navigator, Rose. You see several possible courses and you take the one that makes the most sense.” Comita’s voice echoed in my ears, shadowing the bright sunshine with the memory of our conversation the night before. Nervous sweat pricked my armpits.

There was only one possible course.