29
WITH THE SAILS IN PLACE, THE TRIP moved in small, quick bursts, gaining speed and putting miles behind them, or none at all, as the ship moved at the mercy of the wind. Wes was on deck, in the crow’s nest at the top of the mast. He squinted. A small light emerged from the fog. It grew brighter and closer, and Wes could hear voices from the craft.
A ship!
Rescue!
Wes was not the type to believe in miracles but, against his better nature, he began to hope. If it was a mercenary ship, he might be able to make some sort of a trade—he just hoped it wasn’t a naval boat or a slaver. Then they were sunk. But if it was a fellow merc . . . Wes believed there was honor among thieves, among traders and vets and runners like him who worked on the fringes. Sure, they were scavengers and sellouts, losers and gamblers, but they had to work together, or they would be picked off one by one by the RSA, who would either throw them all in the pen or shoot them on sight, or by the slavers, who were far more dangerous and answered to no authority but their own.
He hadn’t told Shakes that Nat had told him about the stone, that she had confirmed it to be what they had suspected all along, and had even offered it to him. Why had he turned it down? He was supposed to take it—steal it from her—it was just a game to see who would win, who would give in first. Could he trick her into trusting him? He had won at last. So why did he feel as if he had lost?
She trusted him, so why was he so melancholy? Because Shakes would be disappointed, and didn’t he owe the guy his life? And more? Nah. It wasn’t that. Because if he’d accepted the stone and sold it to Bradley, they would be set up, rewarded, hailed as kings of New Vegas? Nah. It wasn’t that, either. Bradley could jump off a cliff as far as Wes was concerned, and as far as riches went, all he needed was a decent meal and a place to sleep and he was happy. He was in a bad mood because now they were closer to their destination than ever before. Only ten days away, and once they arrived there, he would never see her again.
That was what was bothering him.
There was nothing he could do to change that, nothing he could do to make her stay. He hadn’t planned on feeling this way, but there it was. Oh well, maybe he could make it up to Shakes somehow. Maybe today was their lucky day. There was a ship on the horizon.
“You see it?” he asked, climbing down to where Shakes was already at the rails with binoculars.
“Yeah. A boat.”
“What kind?”
“Hard to say.” Shakes handed over the binoculars and scratched the scruff on his chin. “Take a look.”
Wes did and his heart sank. It was a mercenary ship all right, but it was much worse off than theirs, without motor or sail. Just another unlucky crew like his, maybe even unluckier. The hull had a huge hole in it, but unlike their boat, it wasn’t patched, and the deck was quickly filling with dark water. It was sinking and was likely going to capsize at any moment. It was the ship’s luck to run into them, not the other way around.
He zeroed in on the crowd huddled on the deck. Through the green lenses, he could see a family with small children. They were waving frantically. Wes handed the binoculars back to Shakes, calculating the risks, the odds. Five more mouths to feed, he counted. Two of them children. They had so little already, they couldn’t possibly stretch their supplies any more; the soldiers were already eating bark. What could he offer this family?
His boys were massed on the deck, awaiting orders. The broken ship had drifted nearer, and now all of them could see who was on board and what was at stake. Wes knew how the Slaine brothers would vote, and Farouk would probably agree, although the adventure he had expected wasn’t turning out quite as he had hoped. They were all cold, hungry, and lost. But Shakes was ready with the rope, and Nat looked at him expectantly.
“We can’t just stand here and do nothing,” she said, almost daring him to argue with her.
“When you save someone’s life, you’re responsible for it.” Wes sighed. But even with his misgivings, he took the rope and threw it overboard, and someone on the other boat caught it. Better to let them drown, he thought; it was probably more merciful. But if he were that kind of guy, they would be heading to Bradley with Anaximander’s Map in hand and Nat in the brig.
With Shakes’s help, they pulled the sinking boat closer, and one by one the soldiers helped the family climb up on deck. The first to board was a young woman, draped in heavy black robes, her entire body and face covered in the black fabric so that only her eyes were visible.
“Thank you,” she croaked, taking Shakes’s outstretched hand. “We thought no one would ever find us out here.” Then she noticed his fatigues and shuddered. “Oh god . . .”
“Relax, we’re just a bunch of vets,” Shakes assured her.
Following behind her were a mother, father, and two children. The group of them huddled in a blanket. The parents were deathly ill, with pale and gaunt faces, profoundly malnourished, and Wes guessed they had been out here for several weeks with little water or food, and whatever there was to eat or drink had been given to the children.
“Where’s the captain?” he asked, taking the rope. The girl and the family must have been cargo; they looked like pilgrims searching for the Blue. This had to be a mercenary ship, but where was the crew?
He took the rope and climbed down to the sinking ship. Since he’d opted to do the right thing, he had to see it all through.
“Don’t—” the girl in black warned. “It’s—”
But it was too late, Wes was already on board and had headed down to the lower decks to see if he could find the crew. Down below, the empty cabins were filled waist high with water. He walked back up to the upper deck to the bridge, and there he found the answer to his question. Two deckhands, both dead—shot in the head, it looked like. The captain was at the helm, slumped over, cold and dead, another bullet in the middle of his forehead. The bridge was enclosed in glass on all sides. Wes could see the holes where the shots had entered and exited. The bullets had come from another vessel, and the clean shots to the head told the rest of the story. If the ship had been attacked by slavers, the men would have seen them coming and hid from their fire. But the crew never saw these shots coming. Only a trained sniper could take out a mark from nearly a click. The dead men never even knew they were targets.
Whoever did this hadn’t even bothered to board the ship to look for passengers. With the crew dead and the hull leaking, the ocean would claim anyone left on the boat. Only the RSA would let its citizens drown and starve as punishment for crossing the forbidden ocean.
So, the naval carriers were out on patrol. They would have to be even more careful now, make sure none of the boys or Nat stayed up on deck during the daylight hours; the crew would hate it, no one liked being trapped down in the cabins, but if the snipers were out there . . .
The ship lurched to the side and Wes climbed quickly down the narrow stairs that led back to the deck. He nearly tripped on the last step. Something had changed, the walls were moving, the ship was taking on more water. The sinking ship had three open ports and maybe even a few blast holes that were allowing additional water to enter the craft, increasing her rate of descent as she sank quickly now into the sea. Wes reached the deck, but it was too late; one side of the craft had caught on the tip of a trashberg and the other was submerged below the water. The ship’s metal hull ripped and the ocean flooded in all around him.
Wes ran back to the bridge where the dead men rested. Their blank eyes stared at him from all sides. The black water was following him up the stairs. In a moment the ship would be entirely under water. He pulled the captain’s chair from its mount and rammed it through the broken glass. The shattered pane collapsed and the chair flew into the ocean. Wes climbed out, cutting himself as he struggled to reach the roof of the bridge.