Paolo Bacigalupi - Ship Breaker

Nailer felt his face turn hot with embarrassment. The captain made him sound like a starving mongrel, tagging at Lucky Girl’s heels, hoping for scraps. He wanted to say something, to change the captain’s impression of him. To make the man take him seriously. The captain saw a ship breaker, tattooed with work stamps and scarred with hard labor. A kid with his ribs showing through. That was all. A bit of beach trash.

Nailer stared at him. “Lucky Girl used to look at me the same way you’re looking at me. And now she doesn’t. That’s why I’m going with you. No other reason. Got it?”

The captain had the grace to look embarrassed. He glanced away and changed the subject. “Lucky Girl. Again with the nickname,” the captain said. “Why that?”

“She’s got the Fates with her. She came through a city killer and everyone else on that ship was dead. Doesn’t get much luckier than that.”

“And your people value luck,” the captain said.

“My people. Yeah, ship breakers like the lucky eye. Not much else to hang on to when you’re on the wrecks.”

“Skill? Hard work?”

Nailer laughed. “They’re nice. But they only get you so far. Look at you. You got yourself a swank ship and a swank life.”

“I’ve worked very hard for what I have.”

“Still born swank,” Nailer pointed out. “Pima’s mom works a thousand times harder than you and she’s never going to have a life as nice as what you got on this boat.” He shrugged. “If that ain’t being born with the lucky eye, I don’t know what is.”

The captain started to answer, then stopped and nodded shortly. “I suppose even our bad luck looks good to you.”

“Unless you’re dead,” Nailer said. “That’s about it, though.”

“Yes, well, I don’t plan on being dead quite yet.”

“No one does.”

The captain grinned. “I’ve got myself a regular oracle here.” He stood. “I’ll have to ask you to throw bones for me sometime. In the meantime, I can at least foretell that I’m willing to keep you aboard.” He looked Nailer up and down. “We’ll need to get you cleaned up and find some clothes and a decent meal for you.” He urged Nailer out the door and into the squeezeway beyond. “And then we’ll see about getting you trained with a pistol.”

“Yeah?” Nailer tried to hide his interest.

“Your half-man Tool was correct in one thing. If we’re going to bring Miss Nita back to us, there will be a fight. Pyce’s people won’t let her go easily.”

“You think you can take them?”

“Of course. Pyce took us once unawares, but we won’t make the mistake of underestimating him again.” He clapped Nailer’s shoulder. “With a little luck, we’ll have Miss Nita back and safe in no time.”

The ship was starting to dip into deep water, the waves churning under it as it made its way out of the safety of the bay. Nailer swayed unsteadily in the passageway, trying to keep his footing. The captain watched him. “You’ll get your sea legs soon, don’t worry. And when we’re up on the hydrofoils, it’s almost like standing on dry land.”

Nailer wasn’t so sure of that. The deck came up under his feet and sent him stumbling into a wall. The captain watched amused, then strode down the corridor, untroubled by the surge and roll of the deck.

Nailer staggered after. “Captain?”

The man turned.

“Your guy Pyce might be bad, but don’t underestimate my dad, either. He might look just like me, all skinny and cut up, but he’s deadly. He’ll kill you like a cockroach if you don’t watch him.”

The captain nodded. “I wouldn’t worry too much. If Pyce’s people haven’t killed me yet, your father won’t either.” He turned and led Nailer up onto the deck.

Wind ruffled Nailer’s face as they came up into the dawn. The sun’s light increased, a golden wave reaching across the ocean. Dauntless buried herself in the glittering waves, slicing for deeper waters.

Hunting.

WHITE SPRAY EXPLODED over Dauntless ’s prow and showered Nailer in cool shimmering drops. He whooped and leaned far over the rail as the ship plunged into the next wave trough, then surged skyward again.

What had always looked so smooth and sleek on the horizon was a rough adventure when experienced from the prow of the Dauntless . Waves flew toward him, huge surges that exploded in spray as the low-density hull slashed through. All across the decks, crewmen called and labored under the hot sun, orienting sails, drilling for fire attacks, clearing deck materials as they readied for the fight that they hoped would come.

Dauntless was patrolling the blue waters just a few miles off the Orleans, hoping for a glimpse of their potential quarry. Everyone hoped it would be the Ray holding Nita. Dauntless was more than a match for that soft target, but the other ship, Pole Star , everyone feared. Even the captain was worried about that one. Candless was too good a leader to admit that he was frightened, but Nailer could tell from the way his face turned stony at the mention of the cross-global schooner that it represented an unequal fight.

“She’s fast, and she’s got teeth,” Reynolds said when Nailer asked about the ship. “She’s got an armored hull, she’s got missile and torpedo systems that can blow us right out of the water, and we’d hardly have a chance to pray to God before we died.”

She explained that Pole Star was a trading vessel but also a warship, accustomed to fighting Siberian and Inuit pirates as it made the icy Pole Run to Nippon. The pirates were bitter enemies of the trading fleets and perfectly willing to kill or sink an entire cargo as revenge for the drowning of their own ancestral lands. There were no polar bears now, and seals were few and far between, but with the opening of the northern passage a new fat animal had appeared in the polar regions: the northern traders, making the short hop to Europe and Russia, or over to Nippon and the wide Pacific via the top of the melted pole. And with the disappearance of the ice, the Siberians and the Inuit became sea people. They pursued their new prey the way they had once hunted seals and bears in the frozen north, and they hunted with an implacable appetite.

Pole Star was a vessel that relished these encounters, baited them even.

Still, despite Nailer’s warnings, Reynolds said they would most likely encounter the Ray . “ Pole Star is on the far side of the world,” she said.

“But Lucky Girl-”

“Miss Nita could have been mistaken. In a storm, under pursuit, anyone could make a mistake.”

“Lucky Girl’s not stupid.”

Reynolds gave him a hard look. “I didn’t call her stupid. I said she could have made a mistake. Pole Star ’s shipping schedule puts her just out of Tokyo, and that’s assuming the winds have been favorable. No closer.”

The work on the decks continued. An astonishing amount of the ship ran on automation. They could raise and lower the sails on winches electronically with power from solar batteries. The sails themselves were not canvas at all, but solar sheets, designed to feed electricity into the system and add to the power available already from roof skin solar cells. But even with the electronics and automation, still Captain Candless drilled everyone on how to reef a sail if everything was dead and how to work the hand pumps if the ship was sinking and the power failed. He swore that all the technology in the world wouldn’t save a sailor if he didn’t use his head and know his ship.

The crew of the Dauntless knew their ship.

Sailors clambered up the masts, checking winch hooks and loop points for rust or repair. Near Nailer, Cat and another crewman were loading the huge Buckell cannon that was set near the prow, fitting the parasail into its barrel and checking the monofilament tether line-gossamer thin and steel strong-that sat in a shining reel beside the gun.