13

Swift pretends she’s not interested in the training process when she knows I’m looking at her, but I catch her curiosity out of the corner of my eye. Whenever I change around the patterning in the LED beacon, I can feel her leaning over to get a good look at what I’m keying in. She reminds me of a cat who used to lurk around the pens back home. He’d try to steal fish right out of our feed buckets, but if you ever caught him looking at one, he’d feign disinterest and start preening himself. Swift’s not out for fish, though—she’s just morbidly curious about the way a Reckoner becomes a fighting machine.

“You can ask questions, you know?” I tell her one afternoon while I work with Bao on the “stay” command. It’s slow going because he’s already got it so ingrained into his system that any LED signal means come to the ship and get fed. I have to start getting him to notice the nuances of the lighting patterns.

Swift ruffles her side-swept hair and folds her arms. “Fine. Why’s he such a slow learner?”

“’Cause he’s a terrapoid. His brain’s not as suited for this kind of stuff. Anything reptilian is a brute-force sort of animal. Cetoids are much faster—mammalian Reckoners have more logical capabilities. And … ”

Swift catches my pause and mulls it over before prompting, “And?”

“Simioids,” I tell her, and even saying the word brings a shudder up my spine. “Simioids are the fastest learners, but that’s what makes them so terrifying. You guys ever run afoul of one?”

“I don’t even know what ‘simioid’ means.”

I kick on the LEDs with the “stay” patterning and Bao wavers, still puzzling whether he’s supposed to keep where he is or come in. “Monkey-type. They’re much smaller animals, but their intelligence is through the roof. I never want to be a simioid trainer. It’s the one type of Reckoner I’ve always refused to work with.”

“How come?”

“People aren’t even sure if we should be making simioids. They’ve been shown to have really advanced language capabilities, and there’s an argument in the Reckoner development community that by making them, we’re engineering a new intelligent species. We’ve had a few simioids in our pens, and … I don’t know, you look in their eyes and you can see it. See them as thinking beings. And it’s never felt right to me.”

Swift scoffs. Her hand drops to the pistol in her holster, and I steel myself. She always touches the gun right before she starts a fight.

“What?” I ask. There’s no avoiding a spat, but if I play along, maybe we won’t waste much daylight on it.

“Thinking beings, huh? You’re all soft over a bunch of genetically engineered monsters, but those same monsters go out to kill thousands of people and you’re fine with it?”

My lip twitches involuntarily, and for a moment I forget Bao, forget training, forget anything but meeting Swift’s fiery gaze. “The people Reckoners kill are pirates. Murderers who sack ships and steal from the innocent. Excuse me if I have more sympathy for a trained animal.”

There’s something Swift wants to say. I can see it in the way her lips tense as if she’s about to spit the words out, but she curbs herself and instead mutters, “Can I try the thing with the lights?”

It’s the first time she’s ever asked to be involved in something related to Bao, and it throws me off. I don’t realize that I’ve frozen until she checks me with her shoulder, crouching to the level of the LED’s controls. “I, uh … sure,” I manage to say.

We’re in the beginning stages of training. There’s no harm in her learning the basics of the beacon, though I’d hesitate to teach her anything beyond things like “stay” and “come.” And it could be useful—if I’m out in the water with him and he gets rowdy, it’d be handy to have someone on deck who could throw him a signal.

“How do you make it change?” she asks, her hands already prying at the switches.

I take a knee and slap her fingers away from the controls. “Opcode. Basically throwing down the right switches. You memorize the switchboard and hit the ones that give the right command.” I can’t show off every combination without confusing Bao, but I’ve had the board memorized since I was ten. “First switch is the basic ‘come’ command. It’s the easiest to key in, so someone can bring in a Reckoner and put them to rest no matter what.” I flick off the other active switches, and the LEDs flash with the homing signal.

A plume of steamy breath jets from where Bao floats, and the pup swims right for us, the water cutting in a neat V-shape around his snout. When he reaches the beacon, he knocks it once with his nose and then tilts his head back, his mouth hanging expectantly open.

“Toss him a reward,” I press, elbowing Swift.

She reaches into the bucket, pulling a face as she squelches a fish in her grip. Then she straightens and holds it out over Bao, her other hand resting casually at her hip.

The pup’s eyes flick upward.

“Wait—” I start, but there’s no time for warning. I leap for Swift and wrap my arms around her waist. She shrieks as I haul her backward. Bao lunges.

He surges halfway out of the sea, his eyes bulging, his razor-sharp beak snapping shut with a wet crack. His body slams against the trainer deck, sending a tremor through the metal floor below us as we hit it. Bao bounces off the rim of the deck and slips back below the waves, bellowing once before the water closes over his head.

Swift lies paralyzed beneath me, the pulpy remains of the fish stuck to her hand. It’s fallen on the deck in two pieces, cracked in half by the sudden impact. But her hand’s still there, not down Bao’s throat, so at least something’s gone right for a change.

“I said toss,” I hiss through my teeth, my face pressed flat against the deck.

“Sorry,” she groans.

“Do you have to taunt every living being you come across?”

“I think you broke something.”

“At least you’ve still got your arm,” I spit. “Moron.”

Swift claps me on the back with her gut-soaked hand. I elbow her in the stomach and roll off her, landing flat on my back.

And then somehow we’re both cackling. Not the quiet chuckles at each other’s expense that we’ve shared from time to time, but the raucous laughter that comes from sheer relief and the adrenaline in our blood gradually slipping away. A flush fills my face.

Swift catches my gaze, and she laughs even harder. “You look like a tomato!” she crows, trying to wring the slime from her hands.

“At least I don’t snort when I laugh,” I wheeze between breaths.

This only makes her snort harder. She picks up half of the fish and throws it at me. It hits me in the shoulder with a wet slap. “You’re so good at it—why don’t you give him the fish?”

I sit up, ready to leap on her again, but then the second half of the fish comes flying at my face. “Jesus Christ, Swift!” I yelp, swatting it away.

“Yeah, that’s right, here’s your uncivilized pirate wench,” she cackles, rolling on her side and pushing herself to her feet.

A bellow from the water marks Bao’s impatience. I pull a fish from the bucket and pitch it out into the sea, not caring where it lands.

As I sit there, taking in the bright world around me and the damp deck beneath me and the blood that’s rushed to my face, I finally take stock of what’s just happened. I was in a situation where I was completely safe, where Bao couldn’t touch me. And I threw myself headlong into his path, just to save Swift from her own stupidity.

Swift, my captor. But Swift, the reason I’m still alive.

Swift, my guard. But Swift, my guardian.

She’s saved my life, and I’ve saved hers. Well, saved her arm, at least. Bao probably would have ripped it clean off if she’d left it there a microsecond longer. I acted without thinking. Maybe there’s some instinct deep inside me that wants to save people; maybe that’s why being a Reckoner trainer feels right, why I leapt for Swift the instant I realized she was in danger. Maybe I’m a good person at the core.

But in the back of my head there’s an insidious little voice telling me, “You’re part of the ship now.”

The laughter we shared sours in my memory, and I fight to keep my face straight.

Then the all-call crackles on.

“This is navigation,” an unfamiliar voice drawls. “We’ve picked up a bucket on our instruments three leagues to the North. Unescorted. The captain says we’re hitting it. Prepare accordingly.”