Open Waters, Fleet Territory

  Mid-Dry Season, Year 17

  I crossed my arms and leaned against the wall of the captain’s cabin - the room that had first sprung up from Remus’ bathtub when he pulled this Warship out of his ass. The rest of the group had gathered around a sizable table in the centre of the room, with different levels of excitement for the coming conversation. Which was, apparently, about our next job.

  Or ‘mission’ as they called them in the Fleet.

  “Alright,” Remus said, spreading a map over the table. He paused and tilted his head up, turning to look- to face me. “Johannes? Why are you standing all the way over there?”

  “S’comfortable,” I said, reaching back to knock on the wall.

  “While I won’t question your masochistic appreciation for hardwood, you won’t be able to read the map from over there.” He gestured vaguely towards it. Remus paused, then shook his head. “Ah, my mistake. I forgot you were unable to read.”

  I frowned. “I can read a map.”

  “Thanks for volunteering, Sir Navigator. Now get over here and read it,” Julius said. “We gotta plot a route.”

  “Fine,” I sighed, pushing off the wall. Fastest way to move on was to join in, so…I looked down at the map, a crisp sheet of parchment divided into small squares riddled with symbols, then over at Remus. “Where are we going?”

  “You know where we are?” Aelia asked, sounding surprised. She was standing on the far side of the table from…almost all of us, actually, flanked by Remus and Hua.

  I gestured towards the map on the table between us.

  “Yeah, no shit.” She rolled her eyes. “I mean, you can tell where we are without a reference?”

  “Obviously? Did your eyes stop working? We left a big-ass landmark behind.” The squad looked at me, Seiwuai blinking as someone got what I was saying.

  “The islands? Where the Flotilla was?”

  “Yeah. There was a mountain range on the far side when we got there,” I said, pointing to the triangle marks on the map.

  “Those weren’t mountains,” Hua and Remus said at the same time.

  I glanced at them. “...sure.” The very-obviously-mountains were a couple squares west of a massive swirl in the centre, a blot the size of my fist that was surrounded by smaller dotted islands. Port Pelagie, by my guess, making the swirl that giant-ass storm we passed on the way in. That was enough for me to trace our route to the Flotilla and from there… “We came North. I could see the spires when we left, and they can only curve away from us if we sailed this direction.

  “Took us a week to sail to the flotilla, we’ve been sailing three days, so if we're moving the same speed then we should be…around here.” I pointed to an area on the map.

  Julius, Seiwuai, and Aelia leaned forward to look at where my finger was pointing. Remus looked up at the tall woman who shrugged. “He’s not far off. About a half-dozen league error? Honestly, I’m impressed.”

  “As am I,” Remus nodded.

  I folded my arms. “Yeah, sure. Not that I'm saying no to glazing, but it ain’t that hard to know where you’ve been. Or where you're going.”

  Remus raised an eyebrow, arching it over the blindfold. “On the contrary, such intuitive navigation is not a common skill - but you’re navigating like you’re on land. An impressive performance in this case, but you’ll need some more time at sea before it becomes reliable.”

  I grunted, the mild praise already being watered down, and decided to keep my questions to myself so we could move on.

  “Now then, Miss Yuai!” Remus turned with a clap, making Seiwuai jump. “What can you tell us about our next mission?”

  “Me?” she squeaked, looking around in a panic.

  “Yes,” Remus nodded.

  “I…um…” Seiwuai looked down at the map, face scrunched in thought. The seconds ticked by, Remus standing with his hands still together, waiting patiently. I shifted my weight to the other foot and Seiwuai looked at me, but it’s not like I had an answer for her. Besides, I just passed the test - showed my worth a little. Finally, she turned back to Remus and admitted, “I don’t know?”

  That was a bad move. Dead weight was less than worthless, and she hadn’t exactly done a ton so far. She’d have to pull something out fast if-

  “Yes,” Remus nodded again. “And?”

  Seiwuai looked at him blankly. Beside me, Alonso slowly raised a hand, getting her attention. “...I should ask?” She turned to face the kid. “Mister Seaborn?”

  “Thank you, Lady Yuai,” the kid nodded, making me roll my eyes. He took a half step forward towards the table, looking to Remus who finally let his hands drop. “As we discussed-” Remus interrupted him, gesturing to me and Seiwuai. Alonso looked at us slightly embarrassed “-aah. Yes, I should start at the beginning. People have been going missing across Fleet Territory.”

  “Shit, I could have told you that,” I said.

  “Shh,” Julius whispered loudly.

  Alonso looked at me with a slightly nervous kind of concern. “...they have been exclusively mortals. I have been investigating that for the last few months, and while I discovered a potential lead, they baited sea serpents to attack me and escaped.”

  “Months? You’ve been on your own for months?” Seiwuai looked surprised, and turned to Remus questioningly.

  He smiled. “It’s not that unusual. Alonso in particular is better suited to operating without a partner than the rest of us, but we typically operate in cells of two or three.”

  “But…why?”

  “Gets more done,” I pointed out. “You never want more hands on a job than the least you can get away with.”

  “Exactly that,” Remus nodded. “But that’s only half of it. The other half comes down to our classification. Our Flotilla assigns particular types of duties to squads based on their makeup and abilities, whether that be patrol, direct combat, or a number of other specialties. For us, we’re Scouts.”

  “Scouts,” Seiwuai looked thoughtful. “So, you split up to investigate more areas at once?”

  “Very astute, though unfortunately understated for what we get up to in reality. We do just that except for…” Remus turned to Alonso, who nodded regretfully.

  The boy withered slightly, looking miserable. “Furlough.”

  “The hell’s a fur loaf?” I frowned.

  “Furlough,” Aelia said, resting her hands on her hips. “It’s mandatory time away from duties. So you can go be a Seeker and improve your skills, mostly, but nobody’s checking what you get up to.”

  “So we get kicked out to go stand around with our dicks out? I don’t get it.”

  “Exposure is a personal choice,” Aelia raised an eyebrow. “But if you want to progress in the Fleet, you need to get stronger. You need to Seek. And the way it works, having scheduled duty and orders to follow doesn’t work too well with a personal pursuit of power.”

  “Ooh, poetry,” Julius muttered.

  I had no clue what the depths that meant but I decided to accept it as is, and shrugged. “Alright. Sure. Whatever you say.”

  “Excellent!” Remus said cheerfully. “Then did anyone have any other questions for the moment?”

  “I have a bad feeling about this,” Julius said suddenly.

  “Even better!” Remus pointed to a spot on the map, about a fingernail away from where I’d pointed. “Well, we have a few minor missions to resolve on the way but since we’re here, I think we’ll be taking a minor detour as our first task.” He ran his finger over slightly to an empty patch of sea- no, there were two tiny dots, almost invisible. “That’s an unusually large group of Direstripe Mackerel, so I think we should thin the numbers out a bit. And since they need shallow water to spawn, this is the most likely place to check.”

  “More of those fish from earlier?” I asked.

  “Smaller, since they’ll be juveniles.”

  Doesn’t sound too bad,” I said.

  “Ask him how we’re fighting them,” Hua and Julius said together. Hua sounded amused, Julius…grim.

  “...how are we fighting them?”

  Remus smiled at me.

  * * *

  “Y’know, I take it back,” Julius said from somewhere behind me. “This isn’t so bad.”

  “One day, you're going to need a favour, and I'm gonna enjoy telling you no,” I grunted.

  The fish that had swallowed my arm from the elbow down was taking too much of my attention to respond. The raft rocked as it fought me, trying to drag me over.

  “Whoa, don't rock the boat,” Julius said. I could hear him adjusting his legs behind me but I was too busy clutching the edge of the logs to look. Which I suddenly remembered weren't actually real, which made it a lot harder to trust them in keeping my ass on this side of the water. “Why are you messing around with that one, anyway? You did the rest just fine.”

  “It's been,” I grunted. “A long day.”

  “It's noon.” There was a moment of quiet. “Wait, are you just using your arm to do this?”

  “I'm sure as seas not using my dick, if that's what you're suggesting.”

  “No, I mean-. Your inner energy. Either your control is immaculate, or you've been fishing these things out the hard way the whole time.”

  The fish kicked dragging me slightly closer to the edge and I clutched the raft, pressing against it to push myself back. “Sure. Hard way,” I said, teeth clenched. “And?”

  “Shit, that sounds exhausting. Use your energy, man, it's way more effective than tiring yourself out and using it to recover.”

  The fish struggled, teeth sinking slightly deeper into my hand. “How?”

  “You-. What the hell are they doing in training?” I heard him sigh, footsteps slowly crossing the raft. “Alright. You can feel the Warship, right? Feel this?”

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  I didn't- depths, the whole raft rocked as he stomped on the edge! I slid to the side before I could stop myself, clamping down on the tilt of the formation with my attention and slowly setting it level. “The. Depths?” That was all I could manage, the fish taking the movement in the water as a sign to fight even harder.

  “Right, that. The way you feel the Warship as part of you, and use the energy to control it,” Julius said. “That's the same energy in your body, and-”

  Wait. I blinked, feeling that split focus between my body and my body-that-was-actually-the-raft. The energy flowing through them was nearly identical, the formation moving as I wanted by controlling my energy inside it. But if these were both my body, and they both had energy-

  I felt the flow of energy surge through my back and shoulders, down into my arm. The struggling of the fish almost disappeared as I pushed myself up, kneeling on the edge of the raft.

  “you can-.” Julius stopped, sitting on the edge of my vision, crossing his legs. “Need a hand?”

  “I’m,” I grunted, reaching back with my other arm to grab the mast. “Good.”

  The fish kicked- did fish kick? It flapped it’s damn tail, splashing in the water, it’s stupid needle teeth stabbing into my skin. The taste of more blood sent it into a frenzy, thrashing and sending waves across the surface of the water.

  “Come on, you can do it!” Elia yelled from the shore. “Kick that fish’s ass!”

  Did fish have asses? The moment of inattention sent me surging forward towards the edge of the raft, losing control of the energy in myself and it, the formation tilting dramatically before I got it and my grip under control.

  If stupid questions about fish parts got me killed, I’d be pissed the entire time I was dead. Time to focus.

  I flexed my arm, locking it straight and ignoring the bite of fish teeth deeper into the skin. It tried to swim away and I pulled, my arm on the mast pulling me up to my feet while my connection to the Warship I was standing on anchoring my feet to it. The fish jerked and tried to tug me but I wasn’t going anywhere.

  “One more fish!” Elia yelled, clapping each word. “One more fish! Seiwuai, come on!”

  “Uh…one more fish!” Seiwuai added, sounding…a lot less confident.

  Like hell I was losing to one of these stupid things. “Get-” I rose to my feet, hauling the fish out of the water! “-up here!” I swung it over my head and slammed it into the deck, the fish briefly going still before flopping to try and escape.

  I kept my arm locked down its throat.

  “Julius!” I yelled.

  The bald man shot up to his feet, uncrossing his legs mid-step as he got close. He slid to a halt over the fish, axe raised high, grinning maniacally-

  “Hey, my arm’s still in-!”

  The axe chopped into the fish just behind the head, the body going limp as the axe cut through the spine and killed it. I let out a breath, twisting my arm and feeling the axehead brushing against the hairs.

  “Close shave, don't you think?” I said, prying the mouth open and extracting my slimy arm.

  “All I know how to do,” Julius grinned. I looked up at him and he grinned wider, raising his hairless eyebrows at me, head like a mirror-like brown.

  “Another one for the pile,” I said, hauling the fish up by the tail. The thing was about as long as me from toe to shoulder, and about the width of a dog. “What were these again?”

  “Direstripe Mackerel,” Julius said, grabbing the jaw and hurling it into the distance. Elia gestured for us to come in to shore and he looked over at me. “That’s your cue.”

  “I’m pretty sure you know how to work a rudder,” I said.

  “You call that thing a rudder? Seeoh’s beard, we’re gonna have to keep an eye on you before you get yourself killed.”

  I let go of the fish and it fell to the floor noisily, wandering over to grab the handle and shift the rudder around in the- it was stuck. How the hell was it stuck, the whole ship was made from my goddamn imagination!

  “I guess I should give you credit for knowing what a rudder is,” Julius said, dropping to sit on the floor, crossing his legs again. “Maybe in a few thousand hours, you’ll know how to make a floor without holes in it.”

  Got it. The rudder snapped free of whatever it was caught on and I jiggled it around to point us towards shore. I turned around to unfurl the sail, glancing at him. “There’s no holes in my floor-”

  Julius pointed with his axe in hand, extending one finger. I followed it to a hole the size of a finger-tip, with water pulsing out of it like a knife wound.

  “...alright, there’s one hole,” I admitted. The sail came loose and caught the wind and I relaxed my control just a little, letting the Warship drift on it towards the shore. “But if you’re such hot shit, why don’t you show me how it’s done?”

  Julius raised an eyebrow at me. “Because this is practice and you’re not getting out of it that easily.” Caught me. He shook his head, the top of it already shifting to a darker, richer tone after being out in the sun for the day. “And my attention to detail is why there's only one hole. Come on, we both know you’re not as stupid as Hua makes you out to be. Why don’t I?”

  I held onto the mast as a wave swelled behind the ship, focusing on riding it to the top and gliding forward instead of just being smashed on the ass by a wall of water. The wave continued past us, bringing us a fathom closer to shore, and I stuck my arm out to hang just off the side of the ship.

  “You’re still testing me,” I said. “Seeing if I make the cut.”

  “Well,” Julius shrugged, as if that explained it. A few seconds later, he moved on. “We don’t really do things as formally here as some other squads do. Honestly, as far as squadrons go, this is one of the best ones I’ve seen for how well it handles weirdos.”

  “Don’t lump me in with you.”

  “Is that your whole thought? I gave you the answer,” Julius looked at me expectantly as we closed in on the beach where the rest of the group was waiting on us by a stoked fire.

  I frowned, trying to puzzle it out. “You mean training?”

  “Ah, but for what?” He chuckled. “You'll get it. You figured out Saturation pretty quick too. Good on you.”

  The Warship hit the sand of the beach and I let go of my control on it, my desire and willingness for the raft to stick around. It vanished in a wispy flare, leaving me standing on the beach. Julius got to his feet from where he'd been dumped sitting on the sand, hauling the fish up and tossing them onto a small pile beside Hua.

  They landed with a wet splat and the blonde woman gave us an annoyed glare. I held up my hands, pointing at Julius, then looked up at the fire billowing smoke towards a wooden rack loaded with layers of fish.

  “You guys know you’re usually trying to avoid smoke, right?”

  “We’re smoking the fish,” Seiwuai said.

  I looked at her, wondering what possible level of high a fish could get you, and decided not to question it. “So, why are we back on shore? There’s definitely more of these things out there. Not that I’m complaining.” I rubbed the rows of tiny, itchy puncture marks around my left arm.

  “Mate signalled we’ve culled enough,” Elia said, walking up and standing…weirdly far away. There was space for near two other people between us, though from this close, I could still feel the tightly packed air around here. Like a wall of rain clouds, circling and threatening rain…but still only just threatening. “So, we smoke this off, pack it up for storage, and take off.”

  “Suits me,” I said, dropping to a squat. I squinted up at the racks of already cleaned and scaled fish. A layer of thick green leaves rested on top, shading them; banana, or plantain, or something close. “Weren’t you guys doing this too? This just looks like my haul.”

  “We packed ours away already,” Seiwuai said, looking up at the wooden structure full of fish. “I thought it would take longer but the rack actually traps the smoke between the layers, so the food smokes more effectively. I’ve never seen it before.” The air around her was unstable, a constantly shifting mess of calm and stormy.

  “It’s an adaptation of techniques from legacies,” Alonso said, drawing both of our attention. He was sitting on a rock on the other side of the fire, poking the coals periodically with a long stick. The air around him was the same as it had been, a thunderous wall that felt like it was on the verge of overflowing. “Rack-cooking over fires like this is ancient.”

  “I’m pretty sure this is just normal cooking,” I said.

  “That’s a surprisingly enlightened world view,” Hua said. I glanced over at her, her aura like waves of shifting aura, whipping around her in bursts. She narrowed her eyes at me. “Stop that.”

  “Huh?”

  “The layered rafters,” Seiwuai said, sounding like she’d realized something. “Instead of an enclosed building, it’s just the leaves. And if you offset the meat, the smoke will form pockets. That’s- genius.”

  “Hear that, Alonso?” Elia said, grinning. “Genius.”

  The kid shrunk in on himself a little. I glanced up at Elia, who seemed unreasonably amused; then over at Alonso, who was staring blankly into the fire; then at Seiwuai, who seemed…embarassed? What-

  “Oh,” I snapped my fingers. “You adapted it.” Julius snorted. “What? I’m right.”

  “Yeah,” Alonso muttered.

  “That’s amazing,” Seiwuai said. “If it’s that new, it explains why I’ve never seen it in any books.”

  “That’s not why,” Alonso said.

  “Huh?” Seiwuai blinked in confusion, leaning to the side as Hua walked past her, peeling off the top layer of leaves to lay another rack of fish on top. “And you can just stack more layers on to smoke more!”

  Hua’s aura swirled grumpily as she turned around, spinning to glare at me. “Stop doing that! It’s annoying!”

  I blinked, her aura swinging more dramatically. “Lady, I have no clue what your problem is.”

  Hua pulled her bow off her back and I shot to my feet, Elia smoothly crossing the space to get between us. But Hua had already turned and stomped away down the beach, stringing her bow as she walked.

  “Uh,” Elia said.

  “I’m going to find the boss,” Hua said. “And find the biggest thing I can and put some arrows into its skull.”

  “Right,” Elia said, looking at Alonso. “I know you’re supposed to be-”

  “It’s fine,” he said, climbing to his feet and starting after her.

  “Buddy system,” Elia said, looking over at me and Seiwuai. “Try not to wander off alone on-mission if you can help it. Shit tends to go…wrong.”

  “Sea’s curse?” I rolled my eyes.

  “I wouldn’t rule it out.”

  We fell into silence after that and I wandered to the other side of the fire, taking Alonso’s seat on the rock and his duty as fire-poker.

  Damn. This was a nice stick. The kid had good eyes.

  “Wait, were you really not doing that on purpose?” Julius asked.

  I realized he was looking at me and shrugged. “Doing what?” There was a vague…pressure sensation, like hands briefly reaching out and pressing against me. Not roughly, but…not in a friendly way. Like a very rude tap on the shoulder, but with no hand attached to it. Just a sense of it from coming Julius’ direction. I looked over at him-.

  “That,” he said. I shrugged again and he chuckled, rubbing a hand on his bald head. “Well, damn. I thought you were just doing that intentionally to get a better handle on it. What did they teach you in training?”

  “I don’t get it,” Seiwuai said, looking between us. “What happened?”

  “Johannes here was getting a little frisky with his aura,” Elia said, making a…crossing pointer finger shape I’d never seen before but suddenly didn’t like.

  “Oh,” Seiwuai said, sounding embarrassed and making me feel very correct about not liking it. “I…I didn’t notice.”

  Elia shrugged. “Honestly, it’s surprising he can do it at all.’

  “Yeah, you’re normal, he’s the weirdo,” Julius said. “Sorry, man, you’re in with us whether you like it or not.”

  “Alright, could one of you explain with words what the hell you’re talking about? What was that?”

  “Aura sensing,” Julius said. He leaned forward, looking at me seriously. “As you gather more inner energy, you get too much to keep it all inside your body. The extra leaks out as your aura. And when you’ve got enough, you can kind of…” He waved a hand in my direction and the sensation returned.

  I frowned. “Wait, is that what I was doing? The feeling I’m getting- that’s your auras?”

  “Yep.” Elia wandered over to the pile of loose wood they’d gathered, tossing the last few onto the fire. “It’s like touching a wall to see what it’s made of. How hard it is. At first, you can just sort of feel the difference in strength but after a while, you can tell people apart.”

  “And you weren’t being very subtle about it,” Julius shrugged. “Not your fault this time, but the feeling can be…abrasive. Hua’s sensitive about that.”

  “So basically, I’ve been reckless eyeballing and I just happened to do it around somebody who just thinks I’m incompetent rather than someone who wants to kill me for it,” I said, feeling annoyed over something that would have been good to know earlier. I snapped the stick out and tossed it into the fire, feeling a little better.

  …shit, that was a good stick. What a waste.

  “How can I learn how to do that?” Seiwuai looked between them.

  “Mm…mostly you just need to get stronger. Once you have enough inner energy, it starts happening by accident and you learn how to rein your aura in and how to scan people more quietly,” Julius said.

  I got up to my feet and wandered over to the tree line to grab more loose wood for the fire. I grabbed a likely looking branch the size of my leg and lifted it up, as something crunched twice in the jungle further in.

  I hauled the branch up and balanced it on my shoulder, staring out and listening for anything else, then turned back around. “Huh. Kinda sounded like-” I stopped as I noticed Julius and Elia staring in the same direction, a faint frown on the giant woman’s face.

  “Sounded like somebody moving around.” Julius said. They glanced at each other and Elia tilted her head forward. Julius climbed to his feet with a grin, striding towards me. “Alright, buddy, let’s go.”