“The folk of Phobos,” Flint was continuing, “they’re bold but not foolish. They turned fins back to the barque soon as they saw the monster. But it was too late. They’d caught his eye and his blood was up.”
Leviathans do have eyes. They don’t exactly have blood.
Oblivious to his poor metaphor, Flint went on. “A boat is more agile than a Leviathan, but the beast is faster over long distance. The skies of Jupiter are where they live and, well, we use their brain juice as fuel for a reason.”
I snapped the last of the c-coils into place and scooted out to fire up a test pulse. Then when all I got was a smell of burned polymer and the hiss of venting coolant, I ducked back to try again.
Momentarily put off his story by the need to do his actual job, Flint gave an affectionate rap on the wing of the boat. “Focus, girl. Don’t waste material.” The ringing faded from my ears, and Flint went back to his tale. “They made it back to the barque all right, but it didn’t help them. The Möbius Beast came raging out of the skies like the wrath of whatever gods you care for. They raked it with a broadside—all Phobosi ships run cannon—and it still plowed through like it weren’t nothingbut a heavy rain. And then its jaws and its claws and its horrid mandibles ripped into the side of the barque with all the rage and malice of—”
“Progress?” Locke’s voice came sharp and clear from the internal elevator. “Or are you too busy swapping tall tales?”
“Guns’ll be ready when we find the Beast,” Flint replied, only a little sourly. “Would have been ready far sooner if you’d signed off when I asked.”
As if to illustrate his point, or undermine it depending on how things went, I sent another test pulse. Less burning this time, that was positive.
“These boats are still property of Olympus.” Even half under the hull of a flyer I could hear the disdain in Locke’s voice. “And you are making theseupgradesagainst my judgment.”
Sometimes Flint was a walking smirk. “Fuck your judgment.”
“Very professional of you.”
“Professional don’t keep the beasts right side of the hull.”
From the story he’d just been telling,nothingkept the beasts right side of the hull.
“Professional keeps the ship in the right skies, her hold full of spermaceti, and all her hands alive.”
The suspension of the boatglinked as Flint leaned against it, pushing the undercarriage just that little bit closer to my face. “Tell that to the captain. I’m fair sure she’s decided different.”
There was a pause there, ominous enough that I stopped welding.
“The captain has—” I could practicallyhearthe moisture disappearing from Locke’s mouth. “She is not currently prioritizing the mission.”
When he wasn’t a walking smirk, Flint was a walking shrug. “The mission is to hunt Leviathans. Seems to me it don’t much matter which.”
“You’ve a stake in this voyage as much as anybody. More profit and less danger should be your lodestar, as it is mine.”Locke was the only person I’d ever known who could make risk management sound sexy.
“Captain wants what she wants,” replied Flint. “And as I see it, what’ll be’ll be. And whatever comes I’d rather face it well-armed.”
There was that silence again. There was the shadow of the captain, smothering us all in a way that some railed against, some relaxed into, and I found the sweetest flavor of oblivion.
“Make your changes.” Locke’s voice was void-cold. “And pray in the style of whatever church raised you that this hunt fails.”
Flint made a sound so dismissive that it was practically blasphemous. Then he kicked another set of coils over to me. When Locke’s footsteps had faded and the elevator had hissed its way into some other part of the ship, he leaned back against the body of the boat and said, not to anybody in particular, “Locke’s problem, I reckon, is that they still think the world makes sense.”
I stayed silent. It wasn’t my place to speculate on what the officers’ problems were.
“But you and me”—okay, perhaps he was talking to me after all—“we know better. Don’t we?”
Not wanting to be part of anything if I could help it, I made noncommittal sounds.
And sure enough, Flint went on to tell me the thing he was confident we both knew. “We know it’s all a joke. A giant joke on the lot of us. Our whole species is predestinated like that—what happens happens, and you can laugh or cry or care all you want, but it won’t change a damned thing.” He chuckled fatalistically. “Not a damned thing.”
CHAPTER
EIGHTEENThe Array
Atmospheric contact went smoothly, for all Locke’s concerns. And for a while the ship permitted itself to forget that it had been subsumed into the captain’s private fixation. The regular duties of a hunter-voyage, which were mostly the same as the regular duties of a merchant-voyage (but with more harpoons) or a mercenary-voyage (but with less bombing) took over.
