Paolo Bacigalupi - Ship Breaker

Nailer watched them, forcing down the creeping fear he felt at the sight of his father’s grinning features in the spyglass. He recognized a couple of the others. A hard-faced stringy woman who everyone called Blue Eyes and who scared Nailer maybe even more than his father scared him. He startled at the sight of another, a full foot taller than any of the others and massively muscled. Tool, the half-man, who Nailer had seen last at Lucky Strike’s side. He recognized another, Steel Liu, a skull cracker from the Red Python gang. All of them bad news, no matter how you cut it.

The dragons on his father’s shoulders rippled. His father was leading the whole band, striding ahead, grinning, showing his tangled yellow teeth. Through the scope, he was so big it felt as though the man had already arrived.

Nailer shivered and it wasn’t just the creeping infection in his back that chilled him. “We need to hide.”

“You think they already know we’re here?” Pima asked.

“We better hope not.” Nailer tried to get to his feet, but it was too tiring to stand. He motioned for Pima’s help.

“What’s wrong with his dad?” Nita asked.

Nailer made a face as Pima hauled him upright. It was too difficult to describe all the things that Richard Lopez was. Talking about his dad was like talking about city killers. You thought you understood them, and then they were on you and they were so much worse than you remembered. “He’s bad,” he muttered.

Pima got herself under his arm, supporting him, and started helping him down the slope of the deck. “I saw him kill a man in the ring,” Pima said. “Beat him down and killed him, even after everyone said he’d already won. Beat him bloody, left him with his head cracked open.”

Nailer’s face felt like it was carved from wood. He looked again across shimmering water to his father’s progress across the sands. He and his crew were coming fast. This time of day they were probably already sliding high.

“If they get hold of Lucky Girl, she’s dead,” Pima said. “Your dad won’t want her getting in the way of scavenge.”

Nailer looked over at Nita. “This would be a good time for your people to show up.”

Nita shook her head. “Too soon, I think.” She didn’t even look to the horizon. “What else can we do?”

Nailer and Pima exchanged glances. “Let’s get out of here,” Pima said. “Let them search the ship. There’s plenty of good scavenge. Maybe it’ll keep them busy and we can sneak back to the beach later. Tonight or something.”

Nailer stared at the antlike forms. “He’ll still be looking for me, even when we go back.”

“We don’t know that. He’s so damn high, he probably doesn’t even remember he has a son.”

Nailer remembered the time when his father, high and angry, had taken a man twice his size, blurringly fast, a broken bottle and blood on the ground. He blew air out through his lips. “Yeah, let’s get out of here.”

“You’re sure we can hide?” Nita asked.

“You better hope so,” Nailer said through gritted teeth as they helped him slide clumsily over the side. “If they catch us…” He shook his head.

“But aren’t you family?”

“Doesn’t mean anything if the man’s sliding,” Pima answered. “Even Nailer’s afraid of his dad when he’s high.”

“Sliding? That’s a drug?”

Nailer and Pima exchanged glances. “Crystal slide. You don’t know it?”

She looked puzzled.

“Red ripper?” Pima tried.

“Bloodrock,” Nailer said. “Steely breeze? Hornytoads? Bliss bleeders?”

She sucked in her breath. “Bleeder?”

They both shrugged. “Could be.”

She looked at them both, horrified. “That’s what surge rats use. Combat squads. Half-men. It’s for animals.” She caught herself. “I mean…”

“Animals, huh?” Nailer exchanged a tired smile with Pima. “That’s about right. Just a bunch of animals here, making money for you big bosses.”

Nita had the grace to look embarrassed. Nailer stumbled out of the surf and stared up at the island’s foliage above. Dizziness washed over him. He held out a hand to the rich girl. “Help me. I don’t think I can climb.”

The haul back up into the island undergrowth was a nightmare of pain and struggle. Finally they huddled again at their makeshift camp. Nailer curled on the ground, panting and dizzy. Two hundred feet below, the white hull of the clipper was visible through the greenery. Shouts of pleasure echoed up to them. Cheers from the men and women as they swarmed onto the scavenge. They were laughing and whooping. Nailer tried to prop himself up, to see what was happening below, but he was feeling worse and worse. Chills swept over him in steady surges even though the sun was pouring down on him.

“I need blankets,” he whispered. The girls wrapped him, but still he couldn’t stand the sweeping chills and the ice that filled him. He shivered uncontrollably. Sweat dripped in his eyes. His teeth chattered, waves of fever surging through.

Below, his father and his cronies clambered over the wreck with the feral grace of tiger monkeys.

“We are so screwed,” Pima muttered.

Nailer could barely speak through his chattering teeth. He wanted to tell Pima to check the far side of the island, to make sure they weren’t going to be surprised, to tell swanky Nita Chaudhury that she needed to keep her damn head lower, that the adults below weren’t smart but they were plenty sly, and they’d look around sometime. At some point, they’d get tired of hooting about all the wealth, and start making sure they had the scavenge protected for themselves.

He wished they’d fled before the tide had come. It was stupid not to assume that someone would be coming. The ship was too big not to attract notice. Little scavengers only had so much time to profit before the lions rolled in and took the vast share of the meat. And now they were hiding and watching and stuck, while the lions stalked through the ship’s carcass and laughed and cracked open liquor they’d found in the galley. They tossed plates of silver onto the deck and shattered fine china against the rocks with shouts of pleasure, china that even he and Pima had guessed might be more valuable than the silver it sat beside. Then again, if you couldn’t smelt it, it wasn’t worth a copper yard on a ship-breaking beach, so maybe they were right to destroy it all, maybe they should light the damn ship on fire, turn the sky black…

Nailer shivered. He was going crazy. He needed to lie still. He was so tired. Needed to lie down and rest.

“We need to get you back to the yards,” Pima whispered.

Nailer shook his head. “No. They’ll get Lucky Girl.”

“I don’t care. Let her hide or be found. You need medicine now.”

He could barely force the words through his chattering teeth, but he stared at her as hard as he could, trying to make Pima understand. “She’s crew, yeah? Bloodmarked just like me and you.”

Pima looked away. Nailer knew what she was thinking. There was crew, proved over years of scavenging together and sharing the take, sharing the risks of thefts, putting aloe on belt marks after a bad night with Richard Lopez, fighting to get onto light crew and then sweating hard to keep the quota coming through…

And then there was day-old crew.

“Pima.” He clutched at her. “If you think I’ve got the fever eye then you better believe we need to keep our Lucky Girl safe, even if she’s a blood buyer. We need her.”

Pima didn’t answer.

Nita crouched beside him, studying him with concern. “He needs a doctor.”

“Don’t tell me what he needs,” Pima snapped. “I know damn well what he needs.” She peered through the ferns at the men below. “No way we can get him across the flats without them catching sight of us, and then they’ll want to know what we found.” She shook her head. “We’re trapped.”