The Grace's War

1. Pirates

1

PIRATES

“I said starboard old man! You got crabs in your ears? You’d better—”

A wave forty hands high crashed over the deck and drowned out whatever else Ves was yelling, but Mann got the gist. He banked the wheel one last time hard to the right and tied it with the dripping rope dangling from a hook on the ceiling, flapping in the gale despite its sodden weight. He dove out of the open wheelhouse door across the copper deck, wrapping his arms around the cowl vent as the Heaven’s Compromise tipped into the next trough. A few shards of glass from the shattered bridge windows skittered past him and disappeared into the churning waters of the Sea of N’narad.

There was a crack, almost unheard over the driving rain, and a second later, the rail and a chunk of the aft deck blew apart. The ship shuddered.

Below, the engine growled and sprang to life, and the Compromise heaved itself up the next swell.

Ves charged, skid, fell, and slid into the door, which was opening and slamming closed again with a life of its own on the last unbroken hinge. He untied the wheel and spun it madly to the left. The Heaven’s Compromise groaned and plunged into the next trough. Through the squall, Mann glimpsed the third N’naradin ship banking, trying to line up its deck cannons for another volley, before the swells hid it again.

There was another cluster of cracks. Six geysers exploded in the boiling waves to the starboard, but none found their mark as the Heaven’s Compromise gained speed.

Mann regained his footing in time to see the other two N’naradin warships falling behind on either side, banking away from each other to avoid collision, the Compromise momentarily forgotten. Anger swelled in his gut and he groped his way back to the bridge where Ves still clung to the wheel. The pirate was laughing.

“You i***t,” Mann wheezed as he slammed the door behind him. It bounced open again and continued its mad, flapping dance. “You went between them?”

“Goddamn straight, I did.” Ves glanced over at Mann and saw the anger on his face. “What?”

“We’re faster. We could have run.” Mann had regained some of his composure and moved to stand next to Ves, following his gaze out the broken window, squinting against the rain driving into his eyes. He wiped at his face uselessly. The Compromise pitched and rolled, but she’d evened out enough that the threat of capsizing had passed.

“Maybe. In this weather, who knows? They might have had a fourth ship creeping up behind, assuming they knew that’s what we’d try.”

“You ran us towards three ships that wanted us at the bottom of the sea. We couldn’t even see where they were until we were between them.”

“Goddamn straight,” Ves said again. “And they couldn’t see us either. I knew where they were. More or less. We weren’t going to hit them, if that’s what’s got your d**k in a knot. Worst would have been if they’d hit us with their broadsides as we were going through. That would have been the end, for sure. Best would have been if they’d blown each other apart when they tried.” He clapped Mann on the back. “We got somewhere in between.”

“They did hit us,” Mann said, voice weak. The need to argue the point had fled him.

Ves glanced over at the old man, grinning. “Just once. And a graze at that. We’ll get it patched up, no problem. What you might call ‘cosmetic damage.’ As long as Saphi can keep the engine going until we can get to a port somewhere, we’ll be fine. That is, if we can find our way out of this f*****g storm and figure out where we are.”

Mann sighed, defeated. “I’ll go check on her.” He turned to the ladder in the back of the room that led to the aft hold and the engine room below it.

“You forgot to call me Captain, old man!”

“f**k you.” Mann closed the hatch behind him, cutting off the sound of Ves’ laughter.

Three years ago, as he’d stood on the deck of a naphtha tanker and watched a pillar of white fire two thousand hands high consume the city of Eheene, the former General of N’narad Albertus Mann had considered swimming back to the Foreigner’s District, walking into those flames, and falling to ash. But Vesmalimali had taken him by the arm and led him away.

The N’naradin tanker had taken the refugees it had gathered from the flames to Pom, but only the ones who could either prove their citizenship or swear fealty to Heaven and the Arch Bishop. Even then, only those prepared to pay a thousand Three-Sides in Salvation Taxes had been allowed to disembark. Mann had stayed below with Ves, afraid someone would recognize him and turn him in as the traitor who’d murdered Cardinal Vimr and escaped the Pit of Fom. The Arch Bishop would be even less forgiving than the Grace for stabbing his advisor, and she’d thrown him in the Pit to die.

Funny, Mann thought later, how fast his desire to sacrifice himself for his failures had turned into a fierce will to live so he could try to make up for a fraction of them.

The tanker had turned back and deposited the rest of them along the Upper Peninsula, where most had made their way to Maresg. For months in the tree city, Mann and Ves spent their days wandering from bar to bar, drinking to forget and failing.

Ves eventually turned his business sense and reputation again to the delezine trade. The drug wasn’t illegal in Maresg—almost nothing was illegal in Maresg—but shipping it to Fom and Tyrsh was frowned on and therefore profitable. Mann helped, the last of his moral convictions hammered into him by seventy years in the Church burned away by the fires of Eheene. He realized that somewhere between the Pit and the Foreigner’s District he and Ves had become friends, but with that thought came memories of Pasha and his sister, and the need for another drink.

In just under two years from when the sky fell over Skalkaad, they’d saved enough for a steamship. “A real f*****g ship” as Ves called it, even if it was small by steamship standards. The former Corsair scraped up a crew of nineteen in less than a week, and when he offered Mann the position of first mate, the old general didn’t see any reason not to take it.

And they’d been at sea ever since.

Five years, Mann thought. It took five years to fall from General Mann, servant of the Church, his soul bound for the Heaven of Flowers, to the infamous pirate Whitehook’s ancient first mate.

Mann found Saphi cursing and kicking at the overflow valve in the back of the engine room. She glanced at him as he climbed down the ladder, gave one more vicious kick, picked up a bronze wrench as long as her arm, and whacked it one more time with an overhand swing before tossing the wrench back on the floor and giving Mann a little wave.

“Hi old man.”

“Hello Saphi.” He dropped down, skipping the last two rungs, gave a grunt of regret when his hip almost gave out, and wobbled as the Compromise lurched over another swell. “Problems?”

Saphi insisted she was twenty, but didn’t look over fifteen. Ves said she’d been one of the best mechanics in Maresg before he’d scooped her up from the shop she’d apprenticed at. She was swarthy under the layers of grease, with a thick wedge of a nose, skeletal cheekbones, and a small mouth. The girl claimed to be next in line for chief in one of the karakh tribes, but had run away because, as she put it, she couldn’t imagine a life “trapped on the Upper Peninsula, telling a bunch of goat riders what to do.” She had a knack for machines, and Ves made sure they put it to good use. Better use than lubing pulleys, which is how she’d described her job before she’d joined Ves’ crew. Mann didn’t know if she was being metaphorical when she’d said that, and he’d always been afraid to ask.

“Not anymore,” she answered. “Overflow valve got stuck again. That’s why we stalled. Bad timing. I heard the deck get hit. Is it bad?”

Mann shook his head. “No, not bad, I don’t think. Nothing that Ves can’t fix, anyway.”

“We’re gonna need fuel soon.”

“Ves knows. He says we’re almost to a Ristroan smuggling route, as long as we can make our way out of the storm. Shouldn’t be long before we find an easier target than a trio of N’naradin warships. After that, we can find port somewhere for a week or two and get things fixed up.”

“Three of them? How’d we get away?”

“Ves ran between them.”

Saphi laughed. “Between them? That asshole. No wonder the deck got hit. Wish I was up top to see it.”

A bell sounded from above.

“You were saying?” Saphi smirked as she turned to cut the engines. “It figures as soon as I get her going, I’ve got to shut her down again.”

“See you soon,” Mann said as he started up the ladder back to the wheelhouse, where he could hear Ves shouting something over the sound of the crashing sea. His hip growled in pain. I’m too old for this.

Kaleb and Edge had done a commendable job flooding the lowest three port compartments. The Heaven’s Compromise leaned at a dangerous angle, precarious on the diminishing waves from the squall now churning to the west. A few glints of the morning sun peeked through the grey in the east.

Ristro had grown cautious since the Grace’s rebellion. Smaller, faster boats, almost always alone and hard to notice. They’d turned to smuggling supplies to both sides of the war. Since the destruction of Eheene and the Merchant’s Syndicate, the naphtha shortage had made raiding N’naradin freighters less worthwhile, and the use of the firepacks had become almost nonexistent as fuel shortages spread. With the rise in demand for Ristro goods—tarfuel engine and dirigible parts, mostly—their smuggling lanes had grown busy, but they’d grown careless too. Neither Fom nor Tyrsh attacked Ristro vessels these days, unless they knew for certain the Corsairs were bound for the other side. Even then, neither the Grace nor the Arch Bishop seemed too eager to burn their own bridges with the last reliable smugglers on Eris.

Ves hadn’t been a Corsair in over twenty years, but he still knew their old routes and how they operated. They wouldn’t be able to resist a ship foundering near their lanes, though after the third time the Heaven’s Compromise sprung their trap, Mann suspected the trick would wear thin, if it hadn’t already.

The sky had cleared to a few streaks of clouds streaming after the black shadow hanging in the west before a Ristro cruiser came into view. Ves called Mann over, smiling.

“See?” He said. “I told you it would work. One more time, at least. Corsair captains are always competing. Can’t resist easy prey. Not until the Astrologers pass it down that the prey might not be easy as it looks. Best we’re careful after this one.”

Mann frowned, but didn’t press. With Ves, there was no point. He took his place at the wheel, while Ves went below to prep with Kaleb and Edge.

He didn’t need to feign fear when the Ristroan grapples clanked onto the deck, caught the rail, and grew taut. One of these times they’d be boarded by pirates who’d call Ves’ bluff, or worse, have firepacks of their own that really had fuel. Three times was already too lucky in Mann’s opinion.

Five grapples found home. A few seconds later, five Corsairs appeared at the edge of the deck, cautious but confident. They wore the long-faced masks of the firethrower crews, but as had been the case before, their backs were empty of the bulky fuel packs. Ves had told them after the first time that the Corsairs only continued to wear them for intimidation. If there was so little naphtha that Tyrsh had resorted to buying tarfuel engines from Ristro to convert its navy, there was little fear of the Corsairs having enough to fill their weapons. Mann wasn’t fond of the thought that the big pirate was betting their lives on that guess every time they lured another Ristro ship, but he’d been right so far.

Ves, with the timing of a dancer, erupted from the hold just as the fifth Corsair set her feet onto the deck. Kaleb and Edge flowed after him. None wore masks, but all three brandished salvaged firepacks. Ves had bought them on the black market in Maresg. Of those, only one functioned at all, and Ves had only found enough fuel for it to fill a N’naradin naphtha lantern. So far, they hadn’t needed more, but once they used up what they had, they’d need to change their tactics. Ves reasoned if the other two stayed in the back, nobody would pay too much attention to them after Ves showed off the one that worked. So far, he’d been right about that too.

“Stand down, you wretched assholes!” Ves shouted at the stunned Corsairs in Ristroan. “You know who I am. I can tell by the looks on your sniveling faces. Relax, have a seat on the deck, and you might just live long enough to f**k your mothers again!” He punctuated his speech with a short blast from his firethrower, off the deck and to the side, where the thin, thirty-hand stream of blue flame cascaded into the still-rolling sea like a snake of blue magma, where it continued to burn.

The Corsairs sat. Kaleb and Edge tied them, while Ves lowered himself down onto their smaller ship.

Mann stood at the wheel, watching through the shattered window. Nobody noticed him, and he was fine with that.

Later, Mann sat with Ves in his “Office,” as Ves called it, which was just a small cabin next to the captain’s quarters where Ves had put a Brobdingnagian desk he’d spent the last of his delezine tin on. “Important people have big f*****g desks,” he’d declared to Mann, who’d watched with some amusement as the four dock men struggled to get the hideous thing down the gangway and through the door. “And I’ll be the most important goddamn person on the Sea of N’narad.”

Ves refilled their glasses with clear, slightly salty rum and leaned back. “Not much more than one, maybe two demonstrations left in the firepack,” he announced. “Maybe just as well. I don’t expect we’ll get away with doing that more than once or twice more anyway. Four times in five months is a good haul though. After next time, we should get enough to settle down for a spell. Long enough to come up with a different strategy.”

Mann sipped his drink. “Is that your way of telling me I was right when I said this couldn’t last?”

“Hah! Hell, I never said it would last. You need to think like a pirate instead of a general.”

Mann frowned into his glass, but managed to make the expression friendly. He took another drink. “What does that mean?”

“Think about now. Then think about tomorrow, maybe the day after. And don’t give a s**t about anything after that, because even if you’re alive by then, everything will be different.”

Mann snorted a little laugh. “Where were you forty years ago? I could have used advice like that when the Grace promoted me to General.”

Ves paused. “This...what we have going on now, it would probably have lasted longer if you hadn’t stopped me from killing the crews. Even spread out across Eris like the Corsairs are, stories spread when there’re survivors. I might be making you hard, but you’re making me soft.”

The old man shrugged, ignoring Ves’ inuendo. “Maybe. Or maybe Ristro would have sent out a half-dozen cruisers to hunt us down by now because their smuggling crews kept winding up massacred.”

Ves gave a grudging nod, but before he could say anything, Mann changed the subject. “You said you found something on that ship? Are you planning on telling me about it? I thought that’s why you invited me in here.”

“I invited you in here because I like your company for some reason. But yeah, I found something. A few somethings.” He filled their glasses again and sat back. Mann sipped his rum and waited.

“Got the usual. Tanks were half full, plus barrels on reserve. That should keep us in tarfuel at least another month or two. Got a load of parts too. Good ones. Bronze, even some iron and steel. Someone in Tyrsh paid a literal boatload of tin for that. They won’t be happy when it never comes. Ha!

“Also found some messages in the captain’s quarters, after he was nice enough to let me in and show me around. Some interesting intelligence.” He paused again, grinning.

Mann sighed. “Go on.”

“First, this was their last trip to the Island. Maybe just this crew, but I got the impression the Astrologers were cutting off the Arch Bishop. Interesting, yeah? Second, after this delivery to Pom, they had orders to head up to Skalkaad. Didn’t say what for—only a few names given—contacts in New Eheene who would already have their orders. My guess is they’re looking at taking over some of the abandoned naphtha refineries, or maybe some kind of recon into the ruins.”

“New Eheene?”

“It’s what they’re calling the shanty town of drunks, squatters, and s**t-suckers that’s sprung up in what used to be the Foreigner’s District. Anyway, I’d bet my f*****g boat the first and second are related. Not the first rumors we’ve picked up that a few of the refineries are back in business, though whoever’s operating them is anyone’s guess.”

Mann thought a minute. “Anything else?”

“Not much.”

“Can I see those orders? Might be something between the lines.”

Ves let out a little chuckle and pulled some papers from the top drawer of his desk. “Sure. Didn’t know you learned how to read Ristroan, since you still speak it like shit.”

Mann’s hand wavered and fell where he’d been reaching to take the papers from Ves. The big pirate laughed again and put them away. “Anyway,” he said, “Don’t need you to read between the lines for me.”

“Oh?”

“I read between them just fine: things are about to get f****d. Let’s get some sleep.”

Mann drained his glass and stood to stumble towards the door. He hadn’t realized how drunk he’d gotten until he’d tried to stand. At least his hip didn’t bother him now.

“Remember, old man.”

Mann turned in the doorway, eyebrows raised.

“Think like a pirate, because next week we might be dead.”