Sea Wolf (A Compass Rose Novel, 2) Read online

  For Tiffany,

  and for Faith, my little sea wolf.

  “It is with great satisfaction that we give the council the report that the mutineer, Miranda Stillwater, was summarily executed this evening in accordance with statute 617A of Archipelago Naval Law. Any threat to the stability of our great experiment is a threat to our very survival, not just as a nation, but as a species. Today that threat was once again held at bay. This victory belongs to all citizens of the Archipelago, and we now declare the official end to the Stillwater Mutiny.”

  Milo Korevich, Representative of Orion Station

  June 5, 2509

  ••••

  “As we mourn our losses and celebrate our victory, remember what we fought to protect: the Archipelago is all that stands between humanity and anarchy, and those who would see us fall would do well to remember that we carry the seeds of civilization in our holds.”

  Josephine Comita, Admiral of Polaris Station

  September 5, 2513

  ••••

  “Archipelageans are full of shit.”

  Orca, First Mate of Man o’ War

  Every Fucking Day

  North

  Captain’s Log

  Captain Miranda Stillwater

  Man o’ War

  February 23, 2514

  5°06’46” N, 50°01’02” W

  Increased blooms have kept us subbed more than usual to spare the filters. The toxins from the algae alone could end us if they get into the drinking water, and while Rose has kept us clear of the worst of it, the crew misses sunlight. Our sonar screens are white with noise. Jellyfish everywhere. My scars burn. These mindless, ravenous sacs will outlast us all.

  Fuck ’em.

  Chapter One

  There is no such thing as true north. This was the first thing they taught us about navigation in Fleet Preparatory Academy. Or rather, true north existed, so long as we bore in mind that the exact location shifted with the poles. I remembered the lesson the same way I remembered my first whiff of hydrogen sulfide: bitter, rotten, the poisonous truth beneath the fragile crust of logic that sustained everything I knew.

  This gave me nightmares for years. I dreamt I stood on the bridge trying to chart a course, but my inner compass spun and spun, unable to settle, unable to align, and I’d wake up in a cold sweat to the sound of my own voice chanting the only words that had ever brought me any guarantee of clarity: north, east, south, west.

  I missed those nightmares. These days, my dreams were full of blood.

  ••••

  Coordinates spooled out of my fingers as I stared at the charts, taking stock of our location and the distance between us and the coastline we’d agreed to map for Admiral Comita. I could see the course we’d take: a meandering thing, avoiding the treacherous shallows with their sunken cities while we searched for signs of mineral deposits and other anomalies that might one day be of use. Secret coves where sonar couldn’t penetrate, signs of other pirate fleets, a host of dangers known and unknown that could end an unwary navigator and her crew. The ocean pulsed. Each minute shift of the current tugged at my blood as the iron in my veins adjusted to crosscurrents and cardinal points. I was quicksilver. I was light. I was a compass needle, singing to the poles.

  I sank into the work. Beside me, Miranda flicked through a notebook, checking inventory and periodically crossing something out with a pen. A sheaf of partially transcribed whale song lay on the table between us. The shorthand flickered in and out of my focus as I pictured the charts before me in three dimensions. Danger above, danger below. Miranda’s knee brushed mine as she turned another page.

  So easily distracted, I scolded myself as my attention drifted to her instead of my work. Sunlight limned the strong lines of her fingers and blurred the thin scars spanning the backs of her hands. I traced them, sometimes, when she was drifting into sleep, half-believing there was meaning in their patterns.

  I knew better. Miranda was an unlikely oracle, and in the three months I’d spent sleeping beside her, I sometimes felt like I’d come no closer to understanding her than I had my first day on the Man o’ War. Other times, she seemed as familiar to me as my own breath. She sensed my gaze and favored me with a crooked smile, lifting one of those scarred hands to brush my jaw.

  “Trouble?” she asked.

  “Just you.”

  Her low laugh echoed in my chest as she turned the page of her notebook and made a mark by one of the columns. I refocused my attention on the charts. Admiral Comita, my former superior officer, hoped to find new deposits of minerals and iron ore close enough to the shore for Archipelago Station drills. She’d commissioned our help—albeit grudgingly. Thinking about how close we’d almost come to death at her hands still churned my stomach. I’d never be able to prove whether or not she’d meant us harm. Some days I wondered if not knowing was worse than the betrayal itself. Miranda had shrugged off my attempts to lure her into speculation.

  “Does it matter?” she’d asked.

  “How could it not?”

  “We’ll always be a liability for her. Trusting her will never be an option. Let it go.”

  The distant sound of running footsteps shattered my concentration. I forced myself to exhale, then inhale again as I listened for the ship’s alarm bells. Five seconds. Ten. Thirty. I willed the footsteps to mean nothing. Quiet moments with Miranda during our days were as rare as whales themselves, and the tenor of my thoughts felt too much like foreshadowing.

  The footsteps faded. Children, maybe, chasing a cat around the upper decks.

  Coordinates welled once more. The Archipelago stations would be drifting south this time of year, closer to the African coast than the curve of South America, where we currently sailed. A week away if not more, depending on the dead zones. Far away from Admiral Comita and Archipelago stations.

  More footsteps clattered on the grates. I set down the thin sheet of bioplastic.

  “Should we be worried?” I asked my captain.

  “Hmm?”

  “What are you reading anyway?” I reached for the transcript, but she folded it in half and slid it into her notebook.

  “Just a scout’s report. Nothing relevant.”

  I was still learning the code Miranda’s ship used to communicate with scouting vessels and other mercenaries over long distances. The ancient whale recordings were haunting to listen to, but I could only pick out the most basic sequences. Translators had a shorthand for the calls—because translating them directly into the language most of us onboard spoke was, apparently, too simple—but none of the looping symbols on Miranda’s paper made any sense to me. Comita didn’t use whale song. Archipelago code relied on sonar clicks adapted from dolphins, which translated more efficiently into binary.

  “Sounds like something’s going on out there,” I said as raised voices followed the footsteps.

  She made no move to investigate. “There’s always something.”

  “Captain Stillwater, are you hiding?” I pushed the charts away and propped my chin on my fist.

  “A good captain doesn’t hide. She practices elusion.”

  “I see. And who are you eluding?”

  “Right now? Everyone but you.”

  “That was almost sweet,” I said, reaching out to tug the collar of her shirt.

  The alarm bells clanged.

  “Neptune’s balls,” said Miranda. She sprang for the door. I pushed back my chair and bolted after her onto the catwalk outside, which overlooked the unfinished open interior of the midship where a garden would be on Archipelago vessels, and shoved past a woman carrying a load of laundry.

  “Watch it,” she shouted at me over the sound of the bell. I di
dn’t bother reminding her I was second mate and could shove who I liked. Chances were high she’d challenge me to a boxing match I’d lose, and Miranda was already half a flight of stairs ahead of me. The added muscle I’d put on during training did little to compensate for the fat I’d lost on Man o’ War’s feeding regimen. I remained slight and unimposing.

  Cats scattered out of my way as I took the stairs to the bridge two at a time. I still hadn’t gotten used to the sheer number of cats on this ship. Back home on the Archipelago, cats were carefully regulated, but here the healthy rodent population sustained their swollen numbers.

  The hatch to the bridge stood open in Miranda’s wake. I rounded it and collided with Orca, who stabilized me with what might have been a punch to the midsection or a helping hand. Odds were even either way. The red eyes of the orcas tattooed on her arms glared at me from her biceps, and the shells and bones in her braids clinked as she shook her head at me.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked when I regained the ability to breathe. Miranda stood in a cluster of frowning crew members, staring at the instrument panel. Blue water shifted past the thick plex of the helm. Glittering shafts of late afternoon sunlight filtered through the several meters separating us from the surface.

  “Breach in the portside bulkhead,” said Orca. She patted me on the back as I coughed, which did not help my winded lungs. The first mate had an estranged relationship with gentleness.

  “Orca, take the helm.” Miranda’s order scattered the sailors around her, and her long braid whipped through the air as she turned away from the ocean.

  “But—” said Orca.

  “Now. Rose, with me.”

  Orca opened her mouth to argue, but settled for a curt nod when Miranda raised her hand to cut her off. Only the slant of her eyebrows conveyed the frustration she otherwise concealed.

  Miranda set off for the stairs at a jog. I kept pace with her and tried to read the severity of the situation from the set of her jaw.

  “How bad?” I asked.

  “We’ve lost the first deck, but engineering sealed the storage rooms before they flooded.”

  “Did everyone get out?”

  Miranda slowed to allow a flustered young man herding a group of children into a crèche to pass. “We’ve got a work crew trapped in one of the storage rooms.”

  Hiding from enemy sailors in a ballast tank. The feel of water rising over my head, only the sound of my breathing in the oxygen mask keeping me company through the dark hours. I chewed on the inside of my cheek as the memory faded, ashamed at how relieved I felt that I was not trapped with the work crew.

  Tubes filled with bioluminescent algae shed their bluish light on the landing to the engineering level. Miranda gripped the hatch and rotated it, and, as always, my lips dried at the sight of her muscles tensing with the effort.

  “How large is the breach?” I asked.

  “We’re about to find out.” She held the hatch open for me and I entered a world of chaos.

  “Seal the fucking door,” someone shouted as Miranda locked us in. Whoever it was had not bothered to look up to see who had entered, and under the circumstances I doubted Miranda would take umbrage.

  The giant pipes that filtered our water and cooled the engines wrapped around the room, and access to the bulkheads was partially obscured by the control panels monitoring our systems. I saw a familiar head of curly hair emerge from behind one, followed by an order shouted in Harper’s clear voice. Admiral Comita’s daughter knew her way around an engine room.

  “Captain,” she said as we approached. Sludge streaked Harper’s coveralls, and a smear of something green marked the brown skin of her cheek. “We’re not totally screwed, but the pump is jammed, and something gave on the portside valve. We need to bring the ship to the surface.”

  “You.” Miranda stopped a passing engineer. He pocketed his wrench and came to attention. “Tell the first mate to bring the ship up.”

  “Miranda,” I said as he took off. “We’re in a dead zone.”

  “All vents are sealed,” said Harper. “And we don’t have a choice. We’ll need to pump it manually, unless you want to say hello to Davy Jones. CO2 scrubber on the algae tanks gave out, too. No air in, no water out.”

  “What do you need?” Miranda asked.

  “I need her topside and I need divers,” said Harper, looking around at the crew of people at her disposal. “Plus a new valve.”

  I ran through the inventory of what we’d brought from Polaris Station before we’d departed three months ago: new algae cultures for the biolights and printers; seeds; parts to upgrade the dilapidated technology that kept the ship afloat; minerals; vaccines; antibiotics. We were running low on all of them, though the algae, at least, was capable of reproducing.

  “Do we have a valve replacement?” I asked Harper.

  “If we don’t, we won’t be able to sub without risking the rest of the ship,” she said. “I don’t trust the pressure locks on the inner doors.”

  Miranda met my eyes and waited.

  “If we can’t sub in a dead zone . . .” I trailed off, running the calculations. Submerging the ship kept us safe from storms and waves and hydrogen sulfide, not to mention the toxic algae and swarms of jellyfish that clogged our filters. I would never have taken us under a dead zone if I’d thought this was a risk. Then again, mitigating risk was my job—I should have considered all eventualities. I cursed myself and felt for the currents, closing my eyes. The pull of the Northern Equatorial was weak, but if we could get out of the North Atlantic gyre, we’d find cleaner waters. That, at least, was in my power. I visualized the charts I’d been staring at just minutes before, orienting myself in the earth’s magnetic field. Dead zones lay inside the gyres, contained by the currents—with a few exceptions. Luckily for us, this was one of them. If we could use the nearest current to get out of this zone, we’d stand a chance.

  I opened my eyes. “I can get us out.”

  “Good.” Miranda touched my elbow—a light brush, fleeting, but enough to calm me. “Let’s see the breach.”

  Harper shooed a tech away from one of the control panels. The indicator for the portside aft bulkhead was lit up in red, and more red flashed from the storage level below us.

  “I ran a systems check last week and nothing showed up.” Harper’s brows furrowed as she tapped commands into the ship’s ancient computer. “Which could also mean we’re having a problem with diagnostics. I’ll run another check manually once we get this sorted out. The crew is in L7. They’ve got two hours of air, max, assuming they were able to seal the door in time.”

  “What kind of mess are we looking at?” Miranda asked me.

  “We’re going to be surfacing in the middle of a swarm.” I sensed the pulsing pull of the jellyfish field above. “And we’ll lose any jellies we can harvest for the squid tanks once the algae gets in.”

  “Lovely. Not only will we get stung, we’ll get poisoned,” said Harper.

  “We’ll deal with that later.”

  I ran calculations while Miranda and Harper discussed the likelihood of making repairs before a storm boiled out of the sky. In a worst-case scenario, once the crew got to safety, we could let the level flood again if we needed to sub and repairs could not be made in time. I reached for the currents again. Nothing indicated a brewing hurricane, but that didn’t mean a squall wouldn’t whip up out of nowhere.

  “. . . can’t send a diver out in this,” Miranda was saying. “Not at dusk.”

  “We don’t have a choice.” Harper turned away from the panel and I jerked my attention back to their conversation.

  “It’s feeding time.”

  Miranda, of course, would know all about the things that rose from the depths to feed on jellyfish at night, lured by the promise of the only reliable non-algaeic food source in the seas. I didn’t like thinking about the days she’d spent drifting, buoyed by Portuguese man o’ war, and left for dead by Gemini Station. The scars on Miranda’s skin gleamed in t
he low light of the engineering hold.

  “Then we’ll send out spears to keep off the squid. I need that valve fixed, Captain.”

  “Parker, get a diving team together,” Miranda said. A massive woman in hemp coveralls looked up from her work and nodded with a grim smile. Miranda didn’t need to tell her to take spears. Parker’s eyes flickered over to me, and I stiffened. There were still members of the crew who would never forget where I’d come from, and all the antibiotics and Polarian tech in the world weren’t going to change their minds. I couldn’t let it matter. Not everyone needed to like me, but I needed to keep them alive—even the people who might wish me dead.

  The ship groaned. I felt the vibration through the thin soles of my shoes. Harper turned back to the panel, keyed in a command, slammed her fist down on it, and cursed.

  “It’s frozen.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “Who the fuck knows? The wires shorted, total system failure, the—” Her mouth slackened, and her eyes narrowed as she followed her thoughts in silence. “Rose.”

  “What?”

  “We need to get the ship back to Polaris.”

  “We’re a week out at least,” I said.

  “Why?” asked Miranda.

  “Because if this means what I think it means, we don’t have the right parts.”

  “Make do without,” said Miranda. “That’s what we do out here.”

  Harper bit her lip. “But—”

  “Print a new part. We’ve got the bioplastic.”

  “I need metal.”

  “Print a plastic part for now, then,” said Miranda. “We won’t make it to the Archipelago.”

  Harper nodded reluctantly. “We’ll still need a replacement soon. I’ll have someone check the hold for metal scrap once we get it drained.”

  “Good.” Miranda surveyed the room. “Keep us stable.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  I hung back with Harper as Miranda strode off.

  “You okay?”

  “You know how I said I wanted to be chief of engineering?” Harper wiped at the smeared algae on her cheek with a dirty sleeve. “I’ve changed my mind. I want to be a hydrofarmer.”