The Abyss Surrounds Us (The Abyss Surrounds Us #1)(55)

Swift freezes. Her neck stiffens, as if the tattoo branded there has nailed her in place.

“Captain says we’ve been getting too chummy,” she mutters. “Says we shouldn’t talk as much. Says we’ll both pay if we do.”

Telling her exactly what the captain can go do seems unwise in this situation, so I simply say, “Shame,” and try to mask the fact that her words have set something boiling in my stomach. I guess there’s no need for me to be guarded on this ship anymore, not after what happened to Code. Everyone’s too afraid of the captain to try anything, Swift included.

The bruise on her face has gotten a little bit worse. It must have been fresh this morning, and it makes me wonder just how long the captain interviewed her. I want to ask her what they talked about, but she’s already through the hatch, slamming the latch in place behind her.

I eat slowly, the food tasteless in my mouth. Out across the waves, I spot Bao rising out of the water, a neocete held delicately in his jaws. Seems I’m not the only one who needed a lunch break.

When I call him back, he’s sluggish to respond. I can see the tension that coils and uncoils in his muscles when he draws up alongside the trainer deck. He’s already feeling cranky and overworked. If I push him, he might push back in a way I can’t control, but I can’t afford to lose any time.

“Sorry, little shit,” I tell him, and strap on the Otachi again.

I try to go easier on him in the second round, letting him take a few minutes to shake out his limbs before calling him back in to have another go at the tug. With each hollow thud of his plated snout against the ship’s metal side, I can feel the frustration building inside him. He can’t make sense of why he’s being asked to repeat the action, and he’s gotten too big for any sort of reward to be effective every time he strikes true. I can’t exactly furnish a host of carved-up neocete carcasses like we do back home, and red meat is the only sure way to get a Reckoner’s favor. As his frustration mounts, I start to worry that he’ll remember Code, that eventually he’ll just stick his head onto the trainer deck and snap me up.

But I’m frustrated and overworked too. It doesn’t mean he gets off the hook. I blaze the lasers again, and again, and again, conducting a hundred-and-fifty-ton orchestra with wrists trembling from exhaustion. There’s something I want to try, something I’ve never been able to attempt within the confines of regulated Reckoner training.

I want to see how far he’ll go to get me off his case.

So I keep on throwing up the same signal. The lights I project are so bright and sharp that they leave streaks across my vision in their wake, and I know they must be burned into Bao’s retinas by now. The lasers mounted on the Otachi are powerful enough to scorch things that get too close, and though the smudges in my vision make it difficult to tell, I think they’ve already started to wear a dark spot on the tug’s hull.

I wait for the moment I feel certain.

It doesn’t come until nearly evening. When I throw the Otachi’s beams against the tug’s side, Bao lets out a groan so loud that the ocean around him vibrates, and when he wheels, it’s with a burst of energy far stronger than anything he’s done in the past hour. He cuts through the waves like a freight train, his thick limbs kicking up a froth in his wake. I wait until he’s half a body-length from the tug’s side.

Then I twist one of the knobs, switching the signal from charge to destroy.

He doesn’t know what it means. He doesn’t need to. Something clicks, something falls into place, and his fury unlocks. Bao hits the tug with a roar, but instead of glancing off, he keeps going. His forearm crashes down on the deck as he locks his beak around the cockpit, and the shriek of tearing metal echoes across the waves.

I stagger back a few steps.

Bao’s neck muscles snap taut as he wrenches his head back, ripping the cockpit from the ship. His weight crashes down on the tug’s deck, and the boat’s hull warps. With a high-pitched keen, he thrusts his head back down, and when his jaws snap shut, it’s like a thunderclap. The tug cracks cleanly in two, the pieces bobbing up on either side of him as he sinks between them. Bao chases one of them, locks it in his beak, and starts swatting at it with his foreleg. His massive claws shred the hull like tissue as both he and the fragment of the ship sink into the depths beneath us.

My work here is done. A pup’s training ends when they devastate their first tug. From here on out, it’s instinct. It takes months to properly train a Reckoner.

But I did it improperly, and I did it in a day.

There’s a sudden roar from the decks above me, and I realize that we had an audience all along. Somewhere up there, Santa Elena must be watching. Somewhere up there, she’s seeing exactly the kind of beast she has on her side.

I hope she’s impressed.

As for me, I’m terrified and just a little bit proud. A Reckoner’s strength comes from careful practice, from routine and comfort and precision. What I just saw Bao do was nothing like that. Proper training is tai chi; this was a backstreet knife fight. Now not only does our beast have a taste for blood, but he’s also got a knack for savaging ships that’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

Bao is, without a doubt, the most dangerous thing in the NeoPacific.

And he answers to me.





27


Chuck escorts me back to my “cell” minutes later. I guess now that there are people out there looking for a prisoner, Santa Elena’s decided it’s time to start actually treating me like one. I settle into my nest of mops and sprays, wondering if anyone actually uses any of this stuff. I’ve seen some of the younger kids in the crew on deck duty, I suppose, but everything in here always seems like it’s exactly where I left it.