Blood Ocean (11 page)

Dressed in black sharkskin, he and Spike hugged the deck of a nearby ship. The unaffiliated occupants had been ushered below and were too afraid to even ask for something in trade for their discomfort. Both Kavika and Spike wore skull caps made from reclaimed rubber tubing. They had the same material on their feet, thicker pieces of rubber for traction. The only parts open to the air were their faces and hands. Each carried a knife at the waist in a sharkskin sheath. Both of them also had back holsters holding two rattan Escrima sticks.

They were as ready as they’d ever be.

Of course, they almost hadn’t gotten Donnie to help. He’d needed convincing.

“Tell me again why you want to go aboard the Freedom Ship?”

“Akamu’s attackers are there. I need to find them.”

“And then what? You think they’ll automatically cooperate? They’ll see this badass ex-Pali Boy and lay down their weapons and beg you not to hurt them?”

“I don’t think that at all. But it won’t be as hard as all that. The Real People gave us directions.”

“And that’s supposed to be a good thing?”

“They know exactly where these Boxers live.”

“And the pair of you think it’s going to be easier to go into the lion’s den than to wait outside of it?”

“We don’t think anything of the sort,” protested Spike. “We know this is near-suicide. But what choice do we have? You saw what the Pali Boys did to Kavika. What’s to stop them from doing it again?”

“They won’t touch him as long as he stays out of the sky.”

“You don’t know that. You can’t prove that. The only way we’ll get this over with is to find the Boxer that killed Akamu.”

“And when they catch you?”

Spike smiled. “There’s catching us, and then there’s catching us.”

“So you
do
have a plan.”

“Pali Boys own the sky. Water Dogs own the sea. And until someone stops them, Boxers own the decks.”

“I’ll buy that.”

“We can’t make them go to the sky, but we can get them in the sea. And if they’re in the water then they become the property of the Water Dogs. They can be killed or ransomed. Whatever’s easier and more profitable. And then there’s nothing they can do.”

“I have a feeling that there’s always going to be something they can do, but I get it. I was just worried that you two were going off half-cocked, thinking you could infiltrate the Freedom Ship like a pair of plague ninjas to find the one Boxer you need among Pele knows how many are in there.”

How many are in there?

Which was a question that Kavika was soon going to find the answer to. Ever since he was a child staring at the Freedom Ship, he and the others had daydreamed about how the Japs lived aboard. It looked so fresh and clean. All smooth lines and a fade-proof white hull. It was like a heaven they could never attain.

Ivanov had told him about the old Greek gods and how they lived on Mount Olympus. The Freedom Ship in all of its glory was like that. Those who lived aboard were gods, and the people of the city dreamed of the extravagances to be found aboard it. Showers. Movie theaters. Running water. Electricity to spare. Spreads of food fit for kings. Plush carpets and fabric. Cool metals. Soft beds. All these and more had become a mantra for generations of children growing up. On occasion a beautiful woman of the city would disappear; children would sometimes go missing. All these were blamed on the residents of the Freedom Ship. Most hoped that they’d been taken as a reward for something. But others, like Spike, scoffed at the idea that they’d been selected, or had ‘risen’ to the Freedom Ship, as people were known to say, delivering the pronouncement in soft, awe-filled whispers.

“More like gang-raped by a bunch of horny-ass Japs,” Spike once told an elderly woman. “They’re no different than we are. They’re just the rich folk and we’re the poor folk.” She’d spat. “Doesn’t make them gods.”

Gods or not, Kavika was eager to see inside.

He heard the shrill whistle from the other side of the Freedom Ship. Donnie Wu was doing his thing.

He and Spike slipped over the edge of the rail and into the water, where a pair of Water Dogs were waiting. The Water Dogs grabbed them and, with their oversized flippers, quickly propelled them across the lagoon to the ship. They found the lip of the access panel, pulled it slightly to the left, then used a knife to free the three hasps on the inside. There used to be a rubber seal around the door, but that had long ago rotted away. It took maybe thirty seconds, and the door was slowly opening.

Kavika and Spike stared wide-eyed into the darkness. No one was waiting for them; a good start. Spike entered first and Kavika pulled himself up after her. They stood for a moment, attempting to acclimatize themselves to the pitch-black interior of the access tunnel. As they did, the last of the water fell away from the sharkskin. Finally it was Kavika who whispered, “I see a light. Let’s go.”

Kavika squeezed past Spike towards an almost impossibly dim strip of light. As he moved, one slow step after another, he heard Spike close the hatch behind them.

Kavika reached the interior hatch and placed his ear to it, but heard nothing except the thumping of his heart. Now all he had to do was open the door and hope for the best. For all he knew, it might lead them into a latrine or the main dining hall. The thought made him wish that Spike hadn’t closed the hatch behind them.

They opened the door and found themselves in a closet. Except for several empty boxes, it was empty. They were as yet undetected, but they still had four floors to travel, and an unknown amount of people to get past.

The hallway was deserted and not at all what they’d expected. The Freedom Ship was universally thought of by the citizens of the floating city as a palace; a place with clear air, sharp corners, white walls and the antiseptic cleanliness of story-book royalty. Where everyone else lived in the ghetto, this was the shining beacon of civilization, just like the one he’d heard spoken about in the Bible.

But the Freedom Ship was nothing like that. In reality, it smelled terrible, with a distinct hint of feces. The floor was far dirtier than even the most slovenly third mate would allow. The walls had a coating of grime, like the lower holds of some of the older, unaffiliated ships, the ones without third mates at all.

Kavika and Spike glanced at each other. This was definitely not what they expected.

The hallway ran almost the length of the ship. It dead-ended at the engine compartment, which took up three levels of the rearmost section, but they wouldn’t be going there. They had to get to the staircase in the middle of the ship. Once there, the plan was to travel directly to the floor they needed and find the Boxers they’d come to get.

They separated as they moved down the hallway. Kavika pressed his back against one wall, Spike the other, and as a pair they skulked down the hallway towards the center of the ship. They passed several sets of closed doors before they came to an open one on Kavika’s side.

He gestured for Spike to edge forward so she could see into the room, which she did, moving inch by inch, leaning slightly forward to see in. Then she straightened and gave him a nod.

He approached the room, peered around the corner and found it empty. The only things inside were ropes and odd metal objects hanging from a wall: tools of some sorts, but he didn’t know what they were for.

They waled on. By Kavika’s count, they had thirty more doors to pass before they’d reach the first set of emergency stairs. At the next door, they heard shuffling from inside, and a pungent smell surrounded the opening. They tried to peer in, but all they saw was an empty floor. The wall to the next room had been removed. They exchanged looks with each other, but were unwilling to stick their heads into the room without knowing what was going on.

But the next room was the same way.

As was the next.

A whole series of rooms along the left hand side had been converted into something. They might never have found out what was in the room had they not heard voices emanating from farther down the hall and ducked into one of the open doors.

They plastered themselves on either side of the opening, facing into the room, and what they saw so shocked them that they stood there staring, even as a pair of Boxers walked past their door, talking jocularly about something or other in Chinese. Only when the voices had been silenced by the closing of a door down the hallway did either of them say anything.

“What the hell
is
that?” Spike asked in a wondrous whisper.

“I think it’s a cow,” Kavika said. Then, after a moment, “But I’m not sure.”

The cow stood in the middle of the room, amidst a mound of dried plankton and seaweed. It was black and white, just like the pictures Kavika had seen in books. In fact, it looked
just like
the cows from the pictures, except that this creature had been attached to some sort of machine. A metal cone was affixed to its mouth, at the end of a metal hose running from the ceiling above. A metal cone was also affixed to its rear, connected to a metal hose running into the floor. But the strangest sight of all was what appeared to be a set of metal fingers that reached under the stomach and was affixed to appendages there. These metal fingers pulsed in alternating beats, causing the metal hose to which they were attached to leap and shudder, as if something was inside.

“What are they doing to it?” Spike asked.

“I don’t know. I just can’t get over it.” Kavika turned his head and realized that there wasn’t just one cow. There were dozens, all lined up along the outside wall. The reason they hadn’t seen them earlier was because they were centered on the walls of the rooms. Each had the same hoses attached to them, running into the ceilings and into the floors. “Cows... they have
cows
on this ship.”

Kavika brought his hand up and rubbed his face. He was just plain amazed at the sight. He’d heard about these creatures. Donnie Wu had told him about entire businesses that sold nothing but beef to people driving by in cars. Cows had had a cult following in America, and had been a primary source of food, but that was on land. Not only was their presence strange, but it was damned insulting. That the Corpers had them aboard the ship, especially when there were ships where folks were starving, was an extravagance that seemed imperiously wrong.

Then he heard a sound that absolutely terrified him. Halfway between a whine and a cry, it came from all the way at the other end of the immense rectangular room, and soon it was joined by others just like it. The noises became more insistent and soon the large room was filled with their bleating.

Kavika and Spike drew their sticks from their backs and advanced carefully along the wall. When they reached a doorway, they hurried quickly past, but they were otherwise unimpeded in their journey to the source. They passed a dozen doors before they saw what appeared to be a small pen, holding smaller versions of the cows. These had yet to be assaulted by the metal hoses, and were staring hungrily at Kavika and Spike as they came into view.

They glanced at each other, then stared wide-eyed at the incomprehensible sight. Finally they just shook their heads. This was just too much. Nothing had prepared them for this sort of thing.

They checked left and right and moved out of the room, leaving the cries of the calves behind them. At length, they reached the stairs, which were covered with threadbare red material that muffled the sound of their feet.

Spike went first. Moving in a crouch, she held one stick in front of her and let the other one trail behind her.

Kavika came after her, moving the same way, his ears pricked for any sound.

They came to the landing on the next floor, and a hallway running parallel to the one below. They didn’t know what was on that floor, but they didn’t need to. They had to go up. The Real People had told them exactly where to go. Everything else was just getting in their way.

They were moving to the next level when they again heard voices coming towards them, ran back to the second level, and found an unlocked door. They dashed inside, closed the door and put their backs against it.

The room was someone’s living space. Five times larger than a cargo container, it boasted more couches and chairs than any two Hawaiian families owned. To the left of the door was a kitchen area. A tall cabinet gave out a humming noise.

“Oh, dear God,” Spike muttered. “It’s a
refrigerator
.” She opened the door and stuck her head inside.

Kavika heard her hollow giggle. He came up behind her and they basked in the chilled air blasting from the open door. Jars and containers rested on several shelves. An apple and three bright yellow onions sat on the bottom shelf. One of the jars was filled with white liquid. The other was filled with what looked like water.

Spike picked up one of the onions and inhaled deeply. She grinned in satisfaction. Then she grabbed the other two. She tried to stuff them in her suit, but it was almost skin-tight. She held them out to Kavika.

“Can you carry these for me?”

“I don’t think so.”

“But Kavika, do you know what I can do with these and some fish?”

He couldn’t help but laugh. That she’d been born a boy was impossible to tell. To him, at least, she seemed girl through and through. “We can’t, Spike. Look, if you must, you can carry them there and there,” he said pointing at her chest.

She actually looked at them as if considering it for a moment.

“I was just joking,” he said.

She blinked. “Oh... yeah.” She smiled self-consciously. “Never mind.”

Kavika chuckled softly. He grabbed the jar filled with clear liquid and opened it. A quick sniff and a taste told him it was water. He took a deep drink of the cold liquid. It was the best tasting water he’d ever had. He held some out to Spike. At first she took a small sip, but was soon gulping it down. Together they finished the water, and put the empty jar back in the refrigerator.

They didn’t go any farther into the room to check out the sleeping area or the closets. Instead, they returned to the door. There they noticed a peephole that allowed them to look into the hall. Kavika checked and found it empty.