We stop at islands from time to time to trade for fuel and food. I’m never allowed to accompany the landing party, of course. I always get stuck in a Splinter with the homing beacon on my back, left out at sea with Swift to watch over me and Bao. Santa Elena wants to keep her pet Reckoner under wraps—show people something they’ve never seen before, and they’re bound to talk. The captain can’t afford word getting out about Bao while he’s this young, when he relies on the ship to defend him and not the other way around.
So we wait.
This afternoon, the Minnow’s gone to do business with some Islander millionaire who’s staked out turf on a chain of artificial atolls, and so once again Swift and I load into the Splinter and put out around a league away, using the LED beacon to keep Bao in place as the ship jets off to the welcoming dock. Bao gets antsy the second the Minnow leaves his eyeline, his imprinting behavior taking over, but the lights and noise from the beacon keep him rooted next to us, bobbing at the surface with his blowholes flaring in and out.
I climb out of the Splinter and drop into the sea, leaving Swift to twiddle her thumbs and fiddle with the controls. She’s not too happy about this either. She hasn’t gotten shore leave since I got on the boat, and as much as she disparages people who live on dry land, she’s itching for a chance to get away from the Minnow for a bit. “Can’t wait for the day when we can just roll into port with this guy,” she grumbles, rolling her head back. Her eyes are hidden behind a pair of mirrored aviators.
“I’d say the same, but the captain would probably just lock me in a closet on days like that,” I shoot back as I climb onto Bao’s back. His keratin plates flex beneath my feet as I scramble to the ridge above his head, where he’s grown accustomed to me sitting. The Reckoner pup makes an exasperated noise, but he doesn’t shy under my weight.
Swift’s grown a little colder after our encounter the night that the pirates took down that other ship. She doesn’t try to joke around with me, doesn’t try to participate in Bao’s training or anything. I shouldn’t be too bothered, but before that day it felt like at least I had an ally on this boat. Now I have nothing.
Well, I have a fat baby sea monster. But Bao doesn’t tell jokes, and somehow I need that.
I hate how I need that.
“How heavy is he?” Swift asks.
I want to shoot back “Hell if I know,” but that’s not constructive—it’s not what she’s looking for. I shrug, glancing over my shoulder at Bao’s length. Reckoners are designed to mature unnaturally fast so they’ll be ready to serve as soon as possible. Bao’s growth has accelerated so quickly over the past few weeks that he’s now large enough to take down a neocete. He never finishes his meals, though, and often ends up following the Minnow, dragging a carcass behind him like a pull toy. It’s disgusting, but also sort of adorable.
“Maybe fifty tons?” I hazard. It’s difficult to judge by sight, but he’s around the length of a semi truck. “He’s been gaining weight like crazy, now that he’s got neocetes in his diet.”
Swift nods, then lets her head roll back against the headrest, her fingers tightening on the controls. “I remember someone telling me that neocetes are just fleshdumps for Reckoners to eat.”
“I mean, they’re genetically engineered, just like the beasts. They’re meant to be extreme omnivores so they’ll survive in any climate, and they have to be slow-swimming enough that pretty much any type of Reckoner can take them down.”
She lets out a low scoff. “That’s super messed up.”
“You ever had beef?” I counter. “Same thing, except meat cattle live in packed conditions and get slaughtered en masse. At least the neocetes live a natural life.”
Swift pauses, considering the perspective like she’s testing the taste of it on her tongue. “I just like neocetes. Like ’em lots more than cows, that’s for certain.”
“They’re smarter than cows. They’re in a similar class with most toothed whales. Orcas, dolphins, you know. Social creatures.”
“Yeah, that’s why I like ’em. Stop making me sympathize with them—you’re just making it worse,” she grumbles.
I laugh. It’s pure nature that Reckoners eat neocetes. If we hadn’t created a prey animal to feed them, they’d have devastated the NeoPacific’s biosystem within months of the first beasts’ creation. We gave the Reckoners an easy target, and in the process spared pretty much every other animal in the ocean. It’s one of the reasons that the IGEOC regulations exist. Only a certain number of Reckoners can exist at a time without depleting the NeoPacific’s stock.
Of course, Bao throws a wrench in that plan.
Unregulated Reckoners aren’t supposed to happen. If Bao’s the only one, it might be okay, but if a whole ocean of pirate-grown Reckoner pups crops up, it will wreck the biosystem. I don’t know what circumstances led to Bao being in Santa Elena’s possession, but whatever they were, they were orchestrated perfectly. He hasn’t shown any sign of growth defects—in fact, he’s grown far faster than any Reckoner I’ve ever raised. He had to have been created in a lab at some stable, because no independent lab without IGEOC support could produce a beast so perfectly made. He came out of the purse with no obvious defects, so whatever journey brought him from that lab to these circumstances had to have been carried out flawlessly.
Could he be stolen property? I’ve never heard of a stable reporting theft of a pup, but then again, the IGEOC would shut down any stable that admitted to theft of their stock. Maybe someone’s covering for a missing pup, reporting him as unviable on paper. It’d certainly explain how he showed up out of nowhere. But the infiltration of a Reckoner facility would involve an elaborate heist, not just the brute force I’ve seen the Minnow display. Maybe Santa Elena hired out some independent contractors to pull it off.
I almost ask Swift. When I glance up at her, the words building in my throat, her gaze is fixed on the distant horizon. Not toward the shore where the ship’s disappeared to, but somewhere farther than that, out on the open sea. Her lips are set in a bitter line.
Better not to show my hand now. Better to let her dwell on whatever it is that has her thoughts.
We wait out the rest of the afternoon, me on Bao’s back and Swift in the Splinter, until the Minnow appears on the horizon again. I stay on the pup while Swift jets back toward the ship, but Bao can’t resist his imprinting. He swims after her, nose pointed directly at the boat he’s come to identify as his home and charge. I watch from his back as claws on tethers descend from the ship, scooping the Splinter back up into its resting place. Swift gets out to meet Code and Chuck, who wait for her on the deck with packages in hand. She snatches the goods roughly from their grasps, and something clenches inside me as she moves out of sight.
17
I always knew the Minnow kept its looted treasures locked up somewhere. What I didn’t know—at least until today—is that the place doubles as a training ground.
“Welcome,” Swift says in that half-baked tour guide voice, “to the Slew.” She claps me on the back, and a jolt runs up my spine. Recently, she’s been trying to make up for the way she treated me in the days after we hit the unescorted bucket. Most of the time, it’s by inviting me along whenever the lackeys do something dangerous. It’s sort of unnerving, but I can’t deny that these little excursions past the trainer deck make me feel … well, at home.
It’s weird to say that about a pirate ship, but embracing that sort of weirdness is the only way to keep going around here.