“Holy shit, girl,” she says.
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Varma agrees. “Is that what your job is always like, huh? Damn, that’s some beautiful carnage.” He leans back in the pilot’s seat, smirking as he gazes out over the sea. Something quick and low escapes his lips. It sounds like a Hindi prayer.
Chuck checks him with her shoulder. “Quit dawdling, lelemu. We’re running again.”
“Right,” he says, and guns the engines.
28
The Splinter sidles up to the Minnow, and the ship’s claws snap around our hull, winching us up to the cradles on the second deck. Our breakneck pace hasn’t slowed. This was only the first attack—the SRC will try again, and next time it won’t be just quadcopters. But I don’t feel ready to think about that. As it is, I’m not even sure if I can walk on my own when the Splinter finally settles into its mounts.
Varma and Chuck clamber out before we’re properly docked, and I try my best to crawl after them, but my arms shake as I haul myself over the ship’s side. My breath comes in unsteady gasps, and darkness seeps into the corners of my vision. The ocean has a funny way of sapping your strength without you noticing. Once you’re out of the water, you’re shattered.
But then a pair of hands finds me, and Swift is there, slinging my Otachi-clad arm over her shoulder. “She’s dead on her feet, boss,” she says, and I wince, knowing Santa Elena is seeing me at the weakest I’ve ever felt.
“Let her rest,” the captain declares, and I could kiss her if I had the strength for it. “She’s done well.”
And the worst part is, I’m glad to hear her say it. If it had been the other way around, if it had been pirate aircraft attacking an innocent ship, I’d have been ecstatic over how well the fight went. I deserve this praise. The pattern was exactly the same as a regular Reckoner fight: An act of aggression was met with a monster. Innocent lives were saved. It was self-defense, through and through.
And I don’t know anything about myself anymore if I can justify it like this.
Swift’s arm tightens around my waist, guiding me carefully past the gawking crew. My feet don’t feel real. I do my best to drag them into something resembling steps, but she has to take most of my weight, and by the time we’re down to the hall of bunks, I’ve given up on trying to contribute. I don’t question that she’s taking me to Code’s old room rather than the closet. Maybe the captain gave her the all clear, or maybe this is just another tiny rebellion, but all that matters to me is that I have a bed to sleep in.
Swift kicks the door open and deposits me haphazardly on the bunk. “I’ll get you some blankets,” she says, turning away. “Don’t go anywhere.”
“Hah,” I grumble against the vinyl of the bare mattress, but she’s gone and I don’t think she heard me. I couldn’t lift my head if I tried.
That copter must be getting back to its carrier. Must be connecting to an uplink, must be downloading the data from the fight: videos, heat signatures, statistics. A rescue ship has probably already been dispatched to the wreckage that Bao left in his wake. The families are being notified.
And my family is being notified.
First I failed to protect the Nereid. Then I failed to take the pill. And now they’re going to see exactly what I just did. They’re going to think I’ve turned, that I want to stay with my captors, that I’m one of them now. The worst failure of all, in their eyes.
E tan e epi tas.
Come back alive and victorious, or don’t come back at all.
The message couldn’t be clearer. Even if the copters succeeded, even if I’d been plucked from the ocean and dragged back to the California coast, I wouldn’t have a place waiting for me in our stables. I don’t belong there anymore. I try to picture the look on my parents’ faces when they see what I did. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to justify it to them.
At least there’s someone on this big blue Earth who doesn’t seem to care how much I fuck up, someone who’s spreading her own comforter over my crumpled, beaten body. I didn’t notice her sneak back into the room. I guess I was too busy wallowing. Swift pries at the straps around my arm until the Otachi comes loose, and a moment later, I hear a clunk as she sets it on the floor.
“Thanks,” I mumble, my eyelids sealed shut.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. For what, I’m not sure. I feel the brush of fingertips on my cheek as she tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, and then her footsteps are moving back toward the door.
“Swift?”
“Yeah?” she croaks.
My next words are whispered through my teeth, something small and secret, something I can barely admit to myself, but she needs to know. “It was worth it,” I tell her, and the rest is darkness.
29
I feel like a ghost aboard this ship. When I wander to the mess, nobody pays me any mind. I don’t get eye contact or nods. Swift’s vanished. Her trainee duties must be keeping her busy. I half expect her to be there when I wake up the morning after sinking the copters, but the only part of her left when my eyes slide open is the warmth of her blanket around me and the scent of her in its fibers.
I haven’t returned it.
I go about my usual duties, not knowing what else to do. When the Minnow makes berth at an island to refuel, I check on Bao, making sure that the quadcopters’ guns haven’t hit him anywhere vital. He’s got battle scars now, in the form of bullet holes peppering his plating. A few of them struck true in the cracks between his keratin. I have to probe them with a long metal lance to make sure no bullets made it through his hide and into his muscle. It’s exhausting work, climbing over every inch of his monstrous bulk, and when I’m done I end up napping on the trainer deck, leaning against the wall under the counter. The rattle of the engines jolts me awake an hour later as the Minnow puts to flight again.
That night, I wake to a knock. If it were another attack, they wouldn’t be knocking, so I throw on a hoodie and answer it, half-expecting the sight that greets me when I swing the door open.
Swift stands in the hall, her hair swept back and her hands stuck so deep in her pockets that she looks like she’s about to fold in on herself.
“Do you … uh, do you want to talk?” she asks, flashing me a nervous grimace. From the way she glances over her shoulder, I assume this visit isn’t captain-sanctioned.
I nod.
“Cool. Got something I think you’d like to see. Come on.”
I follow her to the Minnow’s main deck, where the hulking shadows of Phobos and Diemos loom against the night. Swift clambers up on the barrel of the aft gun and motions for me to follow. The metal is warm under my palms as I pull myself up after her; the chill of the night hasn’t stolen the sun’s heat from it yet.
“Look up,” Swift says when I settle at her side.
The moonless night is a gift. The Milky Way stretches out above us, a spillage of light in the deep black of the ocean. With the slumbering Minnow’s lights off, we can see for millennia.
“That’s Cygnus, over there—the swan. And Pisces. Fish. And there’s Cetus,” Swift says her fingertips brushing up against the sky as she connects the dots between each one. “The whale.”
“You know your stuff, huh?” I ask, leaning back against the cannon.
“Mom always told me stories. Y’know, about the goddesses and heroes and monsters. And she taught me where to find them in the sky. Showed me how to navigate with them, told me what they were like. Never quite became one, though,” she says, rubbing the back of her neck with one hand.
When her fingers fall away, I spot the little fish inked there. “So I get that everyone on this ship has one of those tattoos,” I say, “but why … ”