Tool of War

  Judging from the woman’s expression, Ocho had ruffled her feathers. Mahlia glimpsed another person trailing behind them. The glow of electronic implants, blue and ethereal where ears used to be, marked him as one of Ocho’s soldier boys. Van, grinning and irrepressible, despite the chaos around them. Or maybe because of it. The boy had come to war young. It had done odd things to his head.

  “You see those things hit?” Van could barely contain himself. “Vicious epic boom boom!” He leaned far over the rail, staring out at the flames. “Fire needles and boom boom, baby!”

  Mahlia ignored him. “What’s the story with the ship?” she asked Almadi.

  Before the captain could reply, Ocho said, “Captain says we won’t sink. We’re good to go.”

  Almadi shot him a glare. “No. I said that we’ve got a lot of damage. And I’m still getting reports.”

  “She said we won’t sink,” Ocho said.

  “We’re not taking water right now,” Almadi protested. “I didn’t say we could sail into a Cat Three and expect to survive!”

  “We don’t know it’ll hit Cat Three,” Ocho said.

  Almadi glared. “It keeps strengthening. I don’t make bets on the weather. It’s why I’m still alive. I’m not a reckless child.”

  “We lost Haze,” Ocho said. “He hit his head, cracked it when the blast hit. Bled out. Plus Almadi lost Lorca.”

  Almadi’s expression said that Lorca was an experienced sailor, lost right when she needed him most, and that she didn’t give a damn about Haze.

  “Anyone else?” Mahlia asked.

  “Anyone else?” Almadi goggled. “That’s not enough already to give you pause? I haven’t even had the chance to take a roll call. It will be quite a while before I know whether we’re fit to sail at all, let alone into a storm.”

  Mahlia had an overwhelming urge to shake the woman. Don’t you see everything’s going to fall apart here? Instead, she shoved her prosthetic up in Almadi’s face.

  “You see this?” She turned the artificial hand, showing the captain its skeletal mechanical workings, blue-black steel and tiny hissing joints. “When I lost this, I called myself lucky. You see Van?” She pointed to the former soldier boy hanging off the rail, the blue glows of his implants bright in the thickening darkness of the storm. “You see what they did to his ears?”

  “You don’t know what’s going to—”

  “I know what happens to people who wait to find out! All those soldiers out there? They were parts of five different militias, at least! You think they love each other? You think they give a damn about each other? They were afraid of Tool. They were loyal to Tool. And now he’s gone. And right now about twenty different captains in different parts of Tool’s army are all about to start thinking for themselves again. About what they want. About who they trust. About who they still hate. They didn’t stop fighting because they were done hating. They stopped because Tool forced them. Now he’s gone, and I guarantee every one of them will have a use for this ship. And none of them will have a use for us.”

  “Nice thing about a hurricane,” Van commented, “is that it just wants to kill you. War maggots round here?” He tapped his implants. “They like to take you apart.”

  Ocho was nodding in vigorous agreement. “If there’s any way to sail—any way at all—we gotta take it, Captain.”

  Almadi looked from the flaming city to the churning black clouds in the sky. She grimaced. “Let me get the rest of the damage reports. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “We don’t have much time,” Mahlia pressed.

  “You hired me to run the ship!” Almadi snapped. “When it came to the sailing, we agreed that I’d make the decisions. You handle trade. I handle the Raker!”

  Ocho was looking at Mahlia significantly. She knew what he was thinking. He’d pull together a few of the boys, put a gun on Almadi, and solve things the Drowned Cities way…

  Mahlia gave him a warning look. Not yet.

  Ocho shrugged. If you say so.

  The truth was that the Raker’s crew was Almadi’s. Mahlia might pay their salaries, but they were loyal to Almadi. There was no way they’d make it through a hurricane with an unwilling crew. Mahlia made her voice soothing.

  “I’m sorry about Lorca. Truly sorry. And you’re right, you know the ship better than we do. But we know the Drowned Cities, and once the fighting starts again…” She touched her prosthetic hand. “Some things are worse than storms.”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know.” Almadi held up her hand to forestall more protest. “I’ll hurry the damage assessment. Then we’ll talk.” She strode off, shaking her head.

  Mahlia grabbed Ocho’s arm. “Go with her. If we could even sail up the coast just a little way, maybe find an anchorage that shelters us before the worst of the storm hits… anything to get out of here. Convince her.”

  Ocho nodded sharply. “On it.”

  “And see what kind of storm this really is!” she called after.

  “Who cares?” Van asked. “Cat One. Cat Two. Three, Four, Five, Six… It’s all better than a bullet in the head. If that lady won’t sail, I swear I’ll cut her own ears off, give her some real Drowned Cities living.”

  Mahlia gave him a sharp look.

  “I’m joking!” Van held up his hands defensively. “Just joking!”

  It was only when Van had followed after Ocho and the captain that Mahlia let herself turn back to the burning palace.

  The destruction was overwhelming, as if Tool’s war god had slammed a huge flaming fist into the palace, making sure that nothing stood tall, and nothing survived. Rubbing it out completely. Lady Kali stomping everything to ruins, except without any Mary Mercy to follow.

  It was hard to believe that Tool was gone. She could remember him still, crouching in the jungle after obliterating a pack of coywolv that had attacked her. A savage, half-human monster, jaws dripping blood, his massive fist offering her the fresh, hot heart of a vanquished coywolv, offering alliance and true connection.

  Pack, he’d called it. He’d been her pack, and she’d been his. And he’d been stronger than nature.

  And now what? Melted. Vaporized. Nothing left at all.

  A part of her had an urge to run toward that towering fire. To search for him. To imagine she could save him. She owed him so much…

  “Please tell me you ain’t thinking about going over there.”

  Ocho had returned. He was coldly surveying the spreading fires and the frantic, ineffectual rescue efforts.

  Mahlia swallowed, forcing down her grief. “No. I won’t.”

  “That’s good. ’Cause for a second you looked like the kind of war maggot that gets herself killed for no good reason.”

  “No. I’m not.” She swallowed again. Grief was for later, not now. Tool was dead. He would mock her for failing to think strategically. “Nothing survives that.”

  “Captain says we can sail,” Ocho said.

  “You twist her arm?”

  “Maybe a little.” Ocho shrugged. “We’re going to run for a shelter anchorage up the coast. A couple hours’ sail, if everything goes right. Should be able to beat the worst of the storm. She thinks.”

  “Good.” Mahlia pushed off from the rail. “We’re out of here, then.”

  “We coming back?”

  “What do you think?”

  Ocho looked out at the ravaged city. Made a face. “Too bad. It was a good gig.”

  “Yeah, well”—Mahlia gave him a sour smile—“nothing lasts, right?”

  “Guess not.”

  Mahlia wondered if her own face was as stoic as Ocho’s. Two people, making themselves look strong.

  A few minutes later the ship’s sails began spooling up, motor pulleys squeaking and squealing as cables ran through damaged and misaligned runners. Carbon-nylon sails flapped, billowed wide, then snapped taut, filling with the storm’s rising winds.

  Overhead, dark clouds roiled. Wind whipped across the deck. Rain began to hammer down,
heavy, bloated drops pounding the deck. Out on the waters of the Potomac, the gray waves were pocked with the falling water.

  Through the sheeting rain, she could make out Stork and Stick, Gama and Cent, all working to untie the ship. Mahlia shook off her torpor and ran to help. Ropes came free of their cleats.

  The Raker began to move, heeling with the wind.

  The clipper ship was a marvel of human engineering, designed to sail despite rough weather, but still, Mahlia found herself praying, unsure that the damaged ship would be able to survive the coming storm’s abuse.

  The sleek clipper ship gathered speed. From the docks, soldier boys watched them go. A few pointed, seeming to wonder if perhaps they should stop the departing ship, but no one was giving orders yet. Without guidance, they were lost.

  The Raker surged forward, her prow cutting gray chop and froth. Her sails billowed full. The ship began to heave as she met rising seas. Mahlia and her crew hurried to batten down the ship, preparing to battle the storm.

  So busy were they with their jobs that they failed to notice a bit of wreckage emerge in the ship’s wake. The flotsam surfaced, bobbing like a dead log. It snagged onto the ship’s hull, trailing behind like tangled kelp, forgotten garbage that the ship would soon shake free.

  Except that it began to haul itself upward.

  Hand over deliberate hand, it rose from the waters, slow but implacable, dragging itself from the deeps until at last it attached itself below the aft rail, dangling off the clipper ship’s stern.

  It was a bestial shape, twisted and horrific, that clung there. A creature out of hell, all charred flesh and tattered skin. A reborn monster, sizzling with the heat of its origins, despite the lashing rain.

  The ship plunged ahead, fighting through rising waves. The stowaway rode with it, blackened and smoking.

  Burning with fury.

  5

  “TO BLOOD,” GENERAL Caroa murmured. “To Blood, and history.”

  And an end to nightmares.

  He raised a snifter of cognac and toasted the view outside his stateroom windows.

  Six thousand meters below, the wide Pacific spread, a moonlight-sheened blanket. From the height at which he stood, Caroa almost could imagine himself looking out over the rim of an alien planet, mercury quicksilver seas glittering below him—a dark and still undiscovered place.

  In many ways it was. Much of the world had fallen back after the end of the Accelerated Age, collapsed under disasters. Droughts and floods. Hurricanes. Epidemics and crop failures. Starvation and refugee wars had ravaged the world, and left many wide expanses open to human re-exploration.

  And he had led that charge. For more than three decades, he had forged into new territory, subdued unrest, and brought the governing hand of Mercier to the disorder.

  As befitted a man of his rank, his stateroom was large, appointed with the winnings of his campaigns: a carpet memorializing the North African offensive to control the Suez; a dagger carved from whalebone, taken as a trophy after the battles for rights to the Northwest Passage. On one shelf, brandies from the French agricultural war gleamed, just above another shelf full of books printed on real paper, Sun Tzu and Clausewitz and Shakespeare, some of the volumes very old indeed, and all the more luxurious, given the constraints of space and weight on a Narwhal-class dirigible.

  The Annapurna carried nearly five thousand souls when fully operational. She required a command and engineering crew of five hundred, and carried a marine Fast Attack contingent of two thousand. She possessed drone and launch facilities, logistics, command, and intelligence centers, all of them overseen by Caroa.

  From her decks, with her electronic eyes and ears tuned to satellites and troop and fleet communications, the general’s influence stretched across a quarter of the planet—the Americas, from pole to pole, wherever Mercier Corporation required.

  His first company patch bore the image of snarling augments rampant, and the words:

  MERCIER FAST ATTACK

  Below the image, the watchwords that had guided his career were stitched in gold.

  FERITAS. FIDELITAS.

  Ferocity. Fidelity.

  Now he touched the patch, and wondered if his nightmares were finally put to rest.

  Far below his feet, the black coastline of Mercier’s SoCal Protectorate stretched northward. He could make out the campfire-dabbed ruins of old Los Angeles, accented by the bright necklace of Mercier sky towers where they lined the shoreline of the bay.

  It had taken a lifetime to climb this high. Almost no rungs existed above him in the company ranks. All that really remained was promotion to the company’s Executive Committee, a directorship on the permanent ruling council where Mercier’s finest deliberated on company strategy from atop one of the tallest of the Los Angeles sky towers.

  Odd that if he ever got another promotion, he would actually have to lose elevation.

  Amused by the thought, Caroa went to his desk and checked his status boards one last time for the night.

  There were skirmishes in the Arctic that ExCom was concerned about, possibly SinoKor putting pressure on drilling operations, and there was always the problem of piracy in the Northwest Passage, TransSiberia and their Inuit proxy soldiers reaching out to “tax” the wealth of shipping that crossed the poles. Irritating, considering that most of his forces were still deployed south, on the Lithium Plains in the Andes. Moving troops from the bottom of the world to the top, even with Mercier’s fleet of dirigibles, would take time. At least the troops were already equipped for cold weather.

  He wiped the screen clean. It could all wait. For once, he could relax and enjoy the perks of his profession. He reached for his cognac once again.

  The comm pinged.

  Annoyed, Caroa called to the room AI. “Who is it?”

  His wall screen filled with a familiar face: youthful, eager features. The analyst… Caroa tried to remember her name…

  I’m getting old.

  Jones. That was it.

  Young, eager, pimple-faced Jones. Irritating Jones. Striving Jones. Overachieving Jones. According to her files, she’d scored in the top tenth of a percent in the Mercier Qualification & Service Examination, the dreaded MX. Her extraordinary scores had lifted her out of her previous life and into service with Mercier. Adding to the accomplishment, she’d taken the aptitude tests when she was only sixteen. So, like him, she’d joined the company early, and risen fast.

  Maybe it was the hot breath of competition that annoyed him.

  I was the smartest one in the room once, too, he thought. Don’t think you’re all that. She might be sharp as a combat knife, but she was contacting him while he was explicitly off duty, and bypassing every chain-of-command protocol to do so.

  “This had better be good, Junior Analyst Jones.”

  He reached for the commlink, intending to give her a tongue lashing, but then paused. This eager little analyst had, after all, tracked down his old, nagging worry. She’d sifted the data and come up with something that others had missed for years.

  Still, this temerity couldn’t be encouraged. He opened the comm and glared. “Do you not have a watch officer, Junior Analyst?”

  She choked on her words.

  “Do you like scrubbing windows at six thousand meters?”

  “Sir, I’m sorry, sir.” She quailed. “There’s… there’s… something you need to see.”

  Caroa paused on the verge of his rant. He wasn’t a superstitious man, nor easily frightened. He’d fought on all seven continents and had the scalps to prove it. And yet the young analyst’s tone unnerved him.

  “What is it?”

  “I’m really sorry to bother you off duty, sir…”

  “You’ve already done it,” he snapped. “Spit it out.”

  “I—I just think you should come see this.”

  “You want me to come up to you?”

  She stumbled on her words, but put on a brave face. “Yes, sir. You’ll want to see this for yourself.” r />
  Five minutes later, Caroa was up on the command deck, heading for the Strategic Intelligence Center, still buttoning his uniform jacket.

  Brood and Splinter, two huge augments from the ship’s marine detachment, stepped aside at his approach. Dog and wolverine and tiger. Vicious brutes. They loomed watchful as Caroa peered into the identity scanner’s camera lens.

  He blinked as the familiar blaze of red crossed his iris. The security systems read his eye-print, authenticating his rank and his right to enter the Intelligence Center. The scanner beeped confirmation. Brood and Splinter relaxed. Even though they knew him, still they watched, every time. Unlike humans, they were never lazy, and never lost sight of their duty.

  Feritas. Fidelitas.

  Bulletproof doors slid aside, letting out a blast of heat, accompanied by the click of keyboards and the low murmur of analysts busy at computers. Caroa wound his way between workstations. Analysts saluted as he passed, a wave of respect that followed him through the room as underlings noted his arrival and then went back to work immediately, all of them relentlessly keeping tabs on the status of Mercier operations.

  “Well, Jones, what’s so important?”

  She’d been conferring with the on-duty strike officer. They both stiffened at his arrival. The analyst looked a bit more uncertain than she’d been on the comm, perhaps finally aware that she’d summoned a global commander in the middle of the night. Not so brash and smart, now, are you?

  “Well?”

  Jones swallowed. “This, sir.” She indicated one of her observation workstations. On-screen, a blot of red wavered against a cold blue background. Other blobs, orange, less hot and smaller, were scattered nearby. Human beings.

  The image fuzzed and wavered, then came back into focus.

  “What am I seeing here?”

  “It’s… it’s a heat signature.”

  “I can see it’s a heat signature. Why are you showing it to me?”

  “It’s a clipper ship. It’s the augment, sir. It’s—he’s not dead!” the analyst blurted. “He’s on that ship!”