China Mieville - The Scar

“Gods fuck and blast it…” shouted Captain Myzovic, but the pirate commander interrupted him.

“How many of your men would you kill, Captain?” he said, projecting his voice like an actor. “Order them to drop their weapons now, and they need not feel like traitors. Otherwise you order them to die.” He drew out a thick pad of felt from his pocket and began to wipe his blade. “Decide, Captain.”

The deck was silent. There was only the faint sound of engines from the aeronauts.

Myzovic and Cumbershum huddled in conversation for a second, and then the captain looked out at his bewildered, frightened men and threw up his hands.

“Drop your weapons,” he shouted. There was a pause before his men obeyed. Muskets and pistols and short swords smacked dully against the deck. “You have the advantage, sir,” he yelled.

“Stay where you are, Captain,” shouted the man in grey. “I’ll come to you.” He spoke quickly in Salt to the pirates standing with him in front of the window. Faintly, Bellis heard a word that sounded like “passengers,” and adrenaline made her giddy.

Bellis huddled still and quiet while she heard shrieks from the corridors beyond, as the pirates led the passengers outside.

She heard Johannes Tearfly, the pitiful tears of Meriope, the frightened pomposity of Dr. Mollificatt. She heard a shot followed by a terrified scream.

From outside, Bellis could hear the terrified passengers lamenting as they were ordered onto the main deck.

The pirates were thorough. Bellis was silent, but she could hear the slamming of doors as the passages were searched. She tried desperately to wedge the door closed, but the man in the corridor shouldered it open with ease; and faced with him all grim and bloodstained, faced with his machete, she lost any heart for resistance. She dropped the bottle with which she had armed herself and let him haul her out.

The crew were lined up, almost a hundred of them, in wounded misery at one end of the deck. Their dead had been thrown over the side. The passengers were huddled together, a little way apart. Some of them, like Johannes, had bloody noses and bruises.

In the middle of the passengers, nondescript in brown and looking as subdued and miserable as all the others, was Silas Fennec. He kept his head down. He would not meet Bellis’ furtive gaze.

In the center of the deck stood the Terpsichoria ’s stinking cargo: the scores of Remade brought up from below. They were totally confused, myopic in the light, staring in confusion at the pirates.

The flamboyant invaders swung from the rigging or swept debris into the sea. They surrounded the deck and trained their guns and bows on their captives.

It had taken a long time to bring up all the terrified, bewildered Remade. When the fetid holds were checked, several dead bodies were found. They were dropped into the sea, where their metal limbs and additions took them very quickly down and out of the light.

The huge submersible still lolled fatly in the water, clamped close to the Terpsichoria . The two vessels bobbed in time.

The man in grey, the pirates’ leader, turned slowly to face his captives. It was the first time Bellis had seen his face.

He was in his late thirties, she guessed, with cropped greying hair. Strong featured. His deep-set eyes were melancholy, his mouth set taut and sad.

Bellis stood next to Johannes, near the silent officers. The leather-clad man walked toward the captain. As he passed the passengers, he looked directly at Johannes for two or three paces, then slowly away.

“So,” said Captain Myzovic, loud enough for many people to hear. “The Terpsichoria is yours. I take it that you intend ransom? I might as well tell you, sir, that whichever power you represent has made a grave mistake. New Crobuzon will not take kindly to this.”

The pirate leader was still.

“No, Captain,” he said. Now that he was not shouting over battle, his voice was soft, almost feminine. Like his face, it seemed stained by some tragedy. “Not ransom. The power I represent cares not at all about New Crobuzon, Captain.” He met Myzovic’s eyes and shook his head slowly and solemnly. “Not at all.”

He reached behind him, without looking, and one of his men handed him a big flintlock pistol. He held it in front of him expertly, squinting at it briefly and checking the pan.

“Your men are brave, but they are not soldiers,” he said, hefting the weapon. “Will you look away, Captain?”

There were seconds of silence before Bellis’ stomach pitched and her legs almost buckled as she understood what he meant.

Realization hit the captain and others at the same moment. There were gasps as Myzovic’s eyes widened, and his face crawled with anger and terror. The emotions crowded each other out in an ugly battle. His mouth twisted, opened, and closed.

“No I will not look away, sir,” he shouted finally, and Bellis’ breath caught at the sound of it, the hysteria and shock that broke his voice. “I will not , damn and fuck you, sir, you fucking coward , sir, you shit …”

The man in grey nodded.

“As you wish,” he said. He raised the gun and shot Captain Myzovic through the eye.

There was a short crack and a burst of blood and bone as the captain spasmed backward, his ruined face snarling and stupid.

As he hit the ground there was a chorus of screams and disbelieving gasps. Beside Bellis, Johannes staggered, making guttural sounds. Bellis retched and swallowed, her breath coming very fast as she stared at the dead man twitching in a slick of gore. She bent, afraid she might vomit.

Somewhere behind her Sister Meriope stammered Darioch’s Lament.

The murderer handed the gun back, received another newly primed and loaded. He turned back to the officers.

“Oh Jabber,” Cumbershum crooned, his voice shaking. He stared at Myzovic’s body, then looked at the pirate. “Oh dear Jabber,” he whimpered, and closed his eyes. The man in grey shot him through the temple.

“Gods!” someone shouted hysterically. The officers were yelling, looking wildly around, trying to back away. The thunder of those two gunshots seemed to haunt the deck like ghost sounds.

People were screaming. Some of the officers had fallen to their knees in supplication. Bellis was hyperventilating.

The man in grey quickly scaled the ladder to the forecastle and looked out over the deck.

“The killing,” he shouted through cupped hands, “is over.”

He waited for the frightened sounds to abate.

“The killing is over,” he repeated. “That’s all the killing we need to do. Do you hear? It is finished.”

He spread his arms as noise began to grow again, this time of bewilderment and untrusting relief.

“Listen to me,” he shouted. “I have an announcement. You, in blue, you sailors of the New Crobuzon Merchant Navy. Your navy days are over. You lieutenants and sublieutenants, you must reconsider your stations. There’s no room where we’re going for those who venerate their New Crobuzon commissions.” With desperate, panicked slyness, Bellis slid a glance at Fennec. He was gazing at his knotted hands with fierce intensity.

“You…” continued the man, gesturing at the men and women from the holds. “You are no longer Remade, no longer slaves. You…” He looked at the passengers. “Your plans for your new life must change.”

He gripped the deck and swept his eyes over his mystified prisoners. Slow channels of blood reached toward them from the cadavers of the captain and his first officer.

“You must come with me,” the man said, just loud enough for everyone to hear. “To a new city.”