CHAPTER THIRTY
“Oh, hell,” Heron growled, darting forward, bellowing at the crowd the whole time. “Make a hole! Gunners to the rail! Ladders over, now!”
The fighting stopped.
Caledonia reached the railing in time to see Pisces pulling a bloody-nosed Cepheus to her side. Twenty-feet away, five fins appeared in the water, cutting a swift path toward the two young women.
The air fractured around the pop-pop-pop of rifles as gunners aimed to keep the sharks away from Pisces and Cepheus.
“Where’s that damn ladder?” Heron shouted.
The gunners fired again. This time, their bullets struck home. Blood clouded the water, brilliant, wispy red against crisp turquoise blue. The sharks broke away, snapping their heads around as though they’d been slapped, but it was a temporary reprieve. Caledonia watched in horror as they whipped back around, aiming once again for the two women.
Finally, a ladder appeared. It rolled down the side of the hull, its tail landing a few feet from Pisces’s reach.
“Hurry!” Caledonia shouted as Pisces shoved Cepheus ahead of her. The woman grabbed the ropes and began to hoist herself onto the rungs while Pisces treaded water behind her with swift strokes of her arms.
The gunners fired again, their shots peppering the water far too close to Pisces. The girl never flinched. “Now, Pi! Climb!” Caledonia shouted.
Pisces was on the ladder in an instant, her body flying up the ropes as sharks pressed in below. Caledonia didn’t move from the rail until both women had reached the top, their feet firmly planted.
The deck was silent. Bullets looked from Cepheus to Pisces to Heron. No one seemed to know what to do.
Then Cepheus wiped water from her face, smearing blood from her nose and bottom lip to her chin, and held her hand out to Pisces. Tentatively, Pisces took it.
Cepheus turned and, pointing at Nettle, shouted, “The little girl is the responsibility of Captain Styx! She will mete out whatever punishment she determines is fair. Anyone else who touches one of her people without permission will answer to me!”
Caledonia’s heart was still beating rapidly in her throat, but the crowd listened to their second-in-command even if they didn’t like what she had to say.
“Back to work!” Heron moved across the deck with angry steps, directing traffic with the firm set of his brow.
With a nod for Caledonia and a separate one for Pisces, Cepheus followed, leaving only Caledonia and her crew still clustered near the rail. Sledge had his arm around Nettle’s small shoulders, and it seemed like he might never let her go again.
And in spite of the blood now clotting in her nose and the bruise clouding her eye, Nettle had a look of satisfaction about her.
“Nettle?” Caledonia asked.
“Captain,” the girl said, sure to keep her voice low. “I got it.”
After the fight, Caledonia expected Tassos to pounce on her at any second, but he remained conspicuously absent until midday, when she spotted him crossing onto the megaship from the bridge of the adjacent ship.
In the full sun, sweat gleamed on his broad shoulders. His brow was furrowed, his fists clenched, and there was a splatter of fresh blood across the front of his shirt. He glared as Caledonia stopped in front of him. She dropped her eyes to the blood, and just below to where that remote trigger was always clipped next to the hilt of a knife.
“Do we have a problem?” she asked.
“Not anymore,” he said. Anger simmered beneath every word.
“We sail at first light, Tassos. If we have a problem, I need to know. Now.”
Tassos bared his teeth and flared his nostrils. “Follow me.”
Tassos strode into the megaship, charting a swift course to his quarters. After a brief moment to acknowledge that following this man into a small room was surprisingly not the worst idea she’d ever had, Caledonia trailed him inside and shut the door.
When Tassos spoke next, his voice was thick with distaste. “Sedition.” The word was as much a mark against him as it was those who’d committed the act. “I’ve had to make a few changes to our Silt rations to stretch our supply and keep as many of my Bullets in fighting form as possible. Some get their usual dose; others get less. When Bullets don’t get their Silt from me, they start looking elsewhere. Five Bullets were caught attempting to defect. And when a limb is sliced and there is blood in the water there is only one way to save the body.”
Caledonia frowned, unsure that she liked where this particular metaphor was leading.
Tassos leaned in again, his hands thumping against the blood darkening his chest. “Take the limb.”
Bullets had died today. There was no doubt about that, but Caledonia suspected more than those five had suffered from this mood of Fiveson Tassos.
“You said you had enough Silt to make this work,” Caledonia said. “Was that a lie?”
Tassos snarled, stepping close enough for her to see the thin coat of sweat painting his forehead. “I said I’ll make it work and I will.”
“You need your dose,” Caledonia said, marking the pallor of his lips.
“Mind yourself, girl.”
“Until we take the Holster, your business is my business. Do you have control of your fleet or not?”
The muscles in his jaw flashed and Caledonia had the impression that if he’d been at full strength, he might have done more than glare at her. “I have control,” he growled.
“One more thing,” Caledonia said when he’d swallowed. “I’m calling the shots out there.”
Now Tassos moved. He stepped forward, reminding her that he was the punishing wave and she the tumbling stone. “No one commands my fleet.”
“In this fight, it’s my fleet.”
“And why shouldn’t it be mine?”
Caledonia raised her eyes, holding her ground. Tassos liked to try to obscure the truth with his size or his might, but Caledonia had had several days to study him, to peel back the layers and find what lay just beneath his mask. He wasn’t as cunning as Lir, but he didn’t like to lose. And he would do whatever it took not to lose to Lir. Even if that meant giving ground to Caledonia.
“Because you can’t do what I can.” She pushed her chin forward and Tassos moved back so slightly she almost missed it. “You may know how to defend your Net, but you don’t know how to fight at sea. This is my plan, my strategy. You have your hands full minding your own clip, so I’m calling the shots. Agreed?”
Tassos narrowed his eyes. “I look forward to the moment our alliance ends, Caledonia.”
Caledonia heard the threat in his words. Lir would have been more explicit, but then, Lir had been dreaming of her death for a lot longer than Tassos.
“Ready your ships, Fiveson.”