Ship Breaker (Ship Breaker #1)(69)

“Clear, sir.”

“Check again.”

A pause, then Reynolds called down, “I’ve got a sail.”

“Identify!”

Another pause and then she was shouting over the side. “It’s Pole Star, sir! It’s Pole Star for certain!”

Captain Marn and his crew grinned as the news went through Candless’s crew. “If you surrender now,” Marn said, “we’ll treat your crew as combatants rather than mutineers.” He said it loud, so that everyone could hear. “You can go free if you surrender now! Or you can die like dogs with your captain. Your decision!”

Captain Candless stared at the decks full of his crew around him, his face white. His first attempt at an order came as a croak. He tried again, and this time his voice was there, loud and angry, “Back to the ship! Ready sails!”

Already his crew was streaming back, but not all of them. Cat and three others stood by the rail watching. Cat gave a sad wave to them, and then he was allowing himself to be disarmed by the crew of the Ray.

Candless wasn’t done yet. “Vine! Knot! Destroy their nav.”

Dauntless’s gun swung around. Marn started to protest, but Candless just pointed his pistol in the man’s face. “I’d sink you, but your crew doesn’t deserve to drown just because you’re a lying dog.”

The gun fired and the con exploded in flames. Vine and Knot ran to the sails with torches and suddenly silk and ropes were burning. Flames rose high. Mutters of anger ran through the Ray’s crew. The flames leaped into the sky. The rest of Candless’s people leaped aboard and Dauntless heeled away from the burning ship.

“Full sails!”

Nailer looked to where the ship was closing on the horizon. Even without Dauntless’s scope, it looked large.

“Pole Star’s a fighter,” Candless said. “All we can do is hope they want the ship as a prize, or they’ll blow us up where we sail and we all die.”

Nailer watched the ships. “Why would they let us live?”

“We don’t have their armaments. It makes them confident.” Candless glanced back at the Ray, where the crew was pumping seawater onto their burning sails. He smiled without humor. “So now we’re the kittens being hunted.” He turned and shouted orders.

“What are you going to do?” Nailer asked.

“We’re going to run for the coast, and then see if we can make them make a mistake. They’ve got the jump on us, but it’ll be a long chase.” He looked out at the ocean. “We’ll just have to see if we can maybe make some trickery.”

“What kind?”

Candless was smiling, but to Nailer it looked forced. “I won’t know until I see it.”

He hurried up to his con, and Nailer, without any specific task, followed. The captain and Reynolds spread out maps, looking at the depths of the ocean.

“Our draft is shallower than Pole Star,” Candless muttered. “We have to find some place we can sneak into and hide.”

“We could try going up the Mississippi,” Reynolds suggested.

“They’ll radio down reinforcements for sure. I don’t want to be trapped into fighting on that river.”

Nailer stared at the maps, trying to make sense of them. The captain pointed to lines on the map. “These are our depths. Anywhere deeper than six meters, we’re okay. Shallower…”—he shrugged—“we run aground.” He pointed to a spot on one of the charts, deep in the Gulf’s blue water lines. “We’re about… here.” He pointed to a distant bit of shore. “That’s your old beach.” He returned to his discussion with Reynolds.

Nailer stared at the map, at the letters that made up Bright Sands Beach, and was surprised that he could actually make out words. He ran his finger along the depths and indicators, reading the numbers. The island where he and Pima had found Nita’s wrecked ship showed as a point of land, still connected to the mainland. “Are these maps old?” he asked.

“Why?”

“The depths aren’t right. This should be an island, at least at high tide it is.”

Reynolds and the captain exchanged amused glances. “Actually, you’re right. The real numbers are all deeper than when the maps were made, but the ratios are the same, even with the rising sea levels. So everything will be deeper than what you see on the map.”

Nailer absorbed this, studying how the island used to be connected before the sea rose and isolated it, comparing his memories of Bright Sands Beach mapped against this paper version from long ago. He frowned.

“Your map’s still wrong.” Nailer pointed to the waters off the edge of the island, where the Teeth lay. “This whole area, it’s wrong. It’s not more than a couple meters’ clearance, even at high tide.”

“Oh?” Candless studied the map, then looked at Nailer, speculative. “How do you know?”

“Ships get hung up there all the time.” Nailer’s finger traced the area of the Teeth. “There’s a bunch of buildings down there. We call them the Teeth; they chew the hell out of anything that comes into them.” He pointed. “You have to come in around this way if you don’t want to get sunk.”

“Is it possible?” Reynolds asked doubtfully. “Someone missed a whole city?”