The Apocalypse Ocean (18 page)

They were once again all being dragged into Kay’s world. Tiago stood on the top of the
Saguenay
looking out toward the mountaintop of Placa del Fuego. The ice ships had assembled in the harbor, several of them smacking into wind turbines and toppling them over. People nervously gathered near the sea wall, looking out at what they had to think was an invasion fleet.

Tiago had figured out how to manually trigger one of the airlocks after seeing Matty Mallette do it, and then he’d climbed along the giant latticework to hide from the small boats that had been pulling alongside. Eventually Nashara or Pepper would remember their threat to send him away for having shot Kay. He wasn’t going to go.

They just didn’t understand how dangerous Kay really was.

And if they were going to fight to save the island, then he was going to fight with them.

He heard footsteps clumping around as someone opened a nearby airlock and walked out to enjoy the same view as Tiago. He slunk down in between the joints of the massive lattices that held the half-metal, half-biological ship together and peeked at the newcomers.

Pepper, Nashara, and the alien Thinkerer faced the island. No one saw him behind them. 

“I’m not liking heading back in here,” Pepper said, startling Tiago. One didn’t think of larger-than-life heroes, dangerous, near-immortal men like Pepper, talking like that.

“We face the Doaq, and we shut down that wormhole – we stop an invasion force that would rip everything you’ve worked for all these years,” Thinkerer said. “We do that by getting the
Saguenay
up to the Doaq’s lair.”

“How?” Nashara asked.

Thinkerer looked toward the mountaintop. “I’ve been planning for this fight for two years,” he told them. “Marshaling my plans. The League started moving quicker than I could, though, when they got spooked and started cutting off dead zone hot spots. I had to begin this project too soon. But … I have prepared for this.”

He pointed at one of the ice ships. A large piece of fabric fluttered on the deck. “Air bags?” Pepper asked.

“Lighter than air cells,” Thinkerer explained. “They’re being inflated with helium I’ve been smuggling into Octavia from the Xenowealth for a year now. We’ll have enough to turn the
Saguenay
into an airship, with her chemical thrusters for propulsion.”

“You’re going to balloon our way up the side of the mountain?” Nashara asked. “To a location we don’t even know yet?”

“
You’re
going to balloon,” Thinkerer said. “You’re our best pilot. That’s
if
the girl can deliver.”

“If there’s one thing I know about Kay, and you know it too,” Nashara said, “she wants to hurt the Doaq.”

“If she has another nuclear bomb, and uses it on the Doaq, what happens to the rest of us?” Thinkerer asked. “You know she’s not lying when she says she doesn’t care about our lives. She said as much to the boy.”

Pepper limped forward. He was remarkably healthy looking. His eyes were only slightly hazed over now and seemed to work. Whenever Tiago saw him, the man was sneaking energy bars or any food he could scrounge. And while his muscles under his shirt were wiry, Pepper seemed to have a strong speed inside him again. “I’ve seen what a node of the Structure can do, and it wasn’t a pretty thing. The first time we encountered the Doaq, we didn’t even know it was coming. This time, you, Kay, and I, go down there. We retrieve Kay’s information. We target the Doaq. We shut down the wormhole. We deal with the fallout.”

Thinkerer folded his arms. “When the Doaq realizes we’re coming for his base, it will get ugly. And once the
Saguenay
is in the air, my ice ships won’t be able to accurately bombard the area the Doaq will be in without endangering the ship.”

“Nashara will fly her in. You, me, and Kay will keep the Doaq very, very busy,” Pepper said.

“I’ll tell the fleet to prepare.” Thinkerer nodded, then shook Pepper’s hand, nodded to Nashara, and went back through the airlock.

“Did Mallette find the kid and get him off to safety?” Pepper asked.

“His name is Tiago,” Nashara said. “No, he’s hiding somewhere.”

“We’re about to fight. We shouldn’t have a kid with us hiding somewhere,” Pepper said.

And Nashara shrugged. “He shot Kay. He grew up in the slums of the harbor there. He can make his own call. I’m not going to waste time looking for him anymore.”

They went back inside.

Tiago scuttled back onto the top of the lattice and gave the island a last look. He’d spent most of his life dreaming of getting as far away from it as he could.

But now all he wanted to do was make sure it was safe.

They headed for shore under the cover of dark. Kay sat on a tiny wooden bench in the back of the tiny inflatable boat next to Pepper while Thinkerer rowed them in quietly. The tiny craft slowly, but inexorably, plugged its way through choppier and choppier waves as they made their way to the edge of the harbor, away from crowds. 

The governor of Placa del Fuego had scrambled both police and something resembling a quickly recruited militia from anyone willing to step forward with a weapon in hand to defend the town. Several messages had been sent saying the ice ships were not an invasion force, but seeing as that the Xenowealth wouldn’t vouch for them, and the League was building its forces between Trumball and the island, Kay couldn’t blame the governor for preparing for the worst.

When she took Thinkerer’s hand, to hop onto the rocks and scramble up towards one of the coastal roads just outside the main harbor, she was momentarily hit with a shiver of disappointment.

She expected this return to be triumphant. Kay, back on her island. Coming back to take what was
hers
.

But there was nothing but weariness and a twinge of pain in her chest as they stepped onto the dark road unnoticed.

“Into town?” Pepper asked.

The two of them looked at Kay, waiting for her to take the lead.

It was dark. The Doaq’s time. It preferred the cover, the mystery, the fear it generated. It would be out there in the shadows somewhere. It had extended the dead zone. It would have noticed the ice ships.

She could imagine it ghosting around the warehouses, looking for them with a gaping maw ready to drop open to swallow them all.

It would have been nice to have kept the nuclear device for company, Kay thought. She would have felt more comfortable with it around.

She took a deep breath. “This way. Old Town area first.”

#

Kay dug them into the center of town like a tick under skin, finding an old basement safe house set up with dried foods and weapons. The old lady she rented it from glowered down at them from her porch as Kay rooted around for the key under a flagstone, then looked away as they all slipped inside.

Minutes later she came down when Kay rang the bell.

Kay handed her a handful of letter pouches, and also surprised the old lady with gold coins. “You have a number of nephews living on this street; I met them when I first came to rent your basement. I need you to get them to deliver these,” Kay asked. “Tonight. Wake up the recipients. It’s an emergency.”

The lady’s eyes crinkled. She looked at the gold, licked her lips, then suspiciously back up at Kay. “This got anything to do with them ships in the harbor?”

Kay leaned forward conspiratorially. “Well, we don’t want them just invading us. And the governor’s only going to do … so much. He is, after all, a politician.”

The old lady nodded. She didn’t know anything about Kay. This was Old Town. The rich, clean center of everything. But she had to suspect Kay, who had had large Ox-men bring the stores into the basement, was not a young student. Or a girl needing a nest to hide a lover away from her parents.

Kay had never used the basement. Not till tonight.

But the old lady had to have known Kay was a smuggler. Or criminal. Or working for one. And who better than the rough sort, Kay could see her thinking, to put up a good defense of the city.

The old lady nodded.

“Now’s the time for action,” Kay whispered to her, and patted her shoulder as she turned to send out the envelopes.

Back down in the basement Pepper had pulled a long, black coat out a duffel bag and was shrugging it on. He left out of the street-side door, one second standing by the thick wood, the next, gone.

“What’s he doing?” Kay asked, annoyance open in her voice before she could even reach out to stop it.

“Overwatch,” Thinkerer said. “High ground. In case the Doaq sniffs us out.”

“Oh.” That made sense. Thinkerer was a powerful alien. Pepper an ancient cyborg human. Nashara also. They weren’t going to wait for her every instruction, she reminded herself. They were her allies now. Allies, not subordinates.

Subordinates like Tiago. 

Tiago. That flashed the memory of the moment before the shot again. She remembered the months after the riot, and the beatings she’d taken at the refugee camp. She’d had those flashes after surviving. Random images that could come back and overwhelm her.

It was happening again. People seeking to kill her. Hate her.

She sat down on a crate of tinned food, dizzy. “You’re going to have to be careful, Thinkerer,” she muttered.

“Careful?” he raised a perfect eyebrow.

“I pushed Tiago so far he broke. I built an enemy. He can’t control himself. He acted on that rage. But Pepper and Nashara, they’re ancient. They’re like you. And I pushed them far, far harder. I’m telling you this because I want you to help me kill the Doaq, but Pepper and Nashara may play nice now because they can. But deep down … I might be on their shit list as well.”

The fear that Pepper, trapped at the bottom of an ocean and still alive, thanks to her, might hold a grudge, chilled her.

What would
that
kind of grudge look like?

She leaned forward as the bile came up in her mouth to throw up. But she held it back. 

“All of that might affect whether they really ally with you,” she said. “You might have to distance yourself from me with Pepper. You need to be careful.”

Thinkerer waved that worry aside. “Sometimes your actions come back to you. Thank you for telling me this. It couldn’t have been easy for you. It’s not in your nature.”

“I can’t read you. Or Pepper or Nashara. It’s humbling. And after everything that’s happened, I only have one tool. Honesty. It’s the only way I get out of this week alive.”

“Honesty isn’t a tool,” Thinkerer said. “If you think that, you’re still trapped inside of a mental model of the world that has worked for you, but might well be flawed. The effectiveness of your approaches has been dangerous in real crisis situations where you are not the powerful one.”

Kay stood up and walked closer, studying him. For a bronzed alien robot he was suddenly sounding suspiciously emotional. “What model do you think I should load into my head?” she asked.

He didn’t react to the bite in her voice. “I don’t know. I’m not a human being. Every creature has a reality that it thinks it sees, based on what it has seen, been told, whom it chooses to interact with, and so on. A bubble. The one I operate by was imposed on me. But you have more agency to create your own, or at least, if it is disturbed, to consider whether it’s useful, safe, or effective. Understanding that your approach is flawed is probably a prerequisite to finding a model of understanding the world and the people around you. One that will serve you better.”

Someone tentatively knocked at the door.

Kay half turned, then looked back at Thinkerer. “That sounds like a big project. I’ll stick with using honesty as a tool until this crisis is over. After that we’ll see how my ‘bubble’ does.”

The man of bronze shrugged, ultimately unconcerned. “As you see fit.”

A thin Runner waited at the door for them, her arms filled with sheaves of paper and a box of punch cards.

Data about the Doaq.

Kay opened the door further, glanced down the street, and pulled the Runner in.