The Drowned Cities (Ship Breaker #2)(13)

The explosion rocked outward. The iron girder of Mahlia and Mouse’s perch shivered with its force.

Mahlia gaped. “Damn, maggot! That’s a gun.”

“I told you!” Mouse was grinning. “At first, I thought they were just dynamiting, right? But they keep going. Hammering away. Some kind of big old army shells or something.”

As if to underline his words, the explosion came again, and this time there was a flare and a rising cloud in the far distance. Lot of smoke and explosion for such a distance. They were looking out fifteen miles, maybe more, and there it was.

“It’s a 999,” Mahlia said.

“What’s that?”

“Big old gun. Serious artillery. Peacekeepers used to keep them. Dropped shells on all the warlords. Used some kind of spy eye to target it, then they’d drop a big old shell right down on Army of God, UPF, Freedom Militia, whoever. Peacekeepers spiked them all when they rabbited, so the warlords couldn’t use them, but that’s a 999 for sure.”

“You think China’s sending in peacekeepers again?” Mouse asked. “Maybe rolling up the warlords for good?”

The idea made Mahlia’s chest tighten. It was her own fantasy, the secret one she sometimes curled up to when she went to bed, knowing that it was stupid, but still wanting it, wanting it to somehow all make sense.

Her father would return from China. He’d come back with all his soldiers. He’d pick her up in his strong arms and say that he’d never meant to leave, that he hadn’t meant to sail away and leave her and her mother alone in the canals of the Drowned Cities as the Army of God and the UPF and the Freedom Militia came down like a hammer on every single person who’d ever trafficked with the peacekeepers.

A stupid little dream for a stupid little war maggot. Mahlia hated herself for dreaming it. But sometimes she curled in on herself and held the stump of her right hand to her chest and pretended that none of it had happened. That her father was still here, and she still had a hand, and everything was going to get better.

“You think they’re coming?” Mouse asked again.

You think?

“Nah.” Mahlia forced a laugh. “Warlords must have fixed one of the guns. Or bought one. Or maybe they pirated something off the Atlantic shipping lanes.” She shrugged. “The Chinese ain’t coming back.”

The 999 went off again. A nostalgic sound. The sound of a war that her father had been winning.

999.

It was a lucky number, her old man used to say. He’d sit in their apartment at night, drinking Kong Fu Jia Jiu shipped all the way from Beijing, gazing out the window at the orange and yellow flares of the fighting, a fireworks display every night. He listened to the guns.

“Jiu jiu jiu,” he’d say. “999.”

Mahlia remembered the 999 particularly, because he’d claimed the peacekeepers would knock the warlords back with their lucky 999s and maybe then they’d finally teach these Drowned Cities savages how to be civilized. The paper tiger warlords would learn that shooting and hatred solved nothing. Eventually, the warlords would sit down at the negotiating table and figure out some way to get along with one another, without bullets.

Her father had sat by the window with his clear bright liquor as gunfire echoed through the canals and he had named them all. “.45, 30-06, AK-47, .22, QBZ-95, M-60, AA-19, AK-74, .50-caliber, 999.” Mahlia knew the many voices of war from her father’s chant.

Later, when those guns were turned on her and she was belly-crawling out of hell, she’d known them, too: the chatter of the AKs and the bellowing of 12-gauges as they ripped the grasses and tore the swamp waters around her.

Mahlia had whispered their names to herself as she’d tried not to be stupid and jump up like a rabbit in the open as bullets zinged all around. Trying to think like Sun Tzu and not make a fatal mistake. Anything at all to keep herself from panicking the way all the other stupid civvies were panicking and getting themselves all shot to hell.

Another explosion rocked the distance—999, for sure. A lucky gun and a lucky number.

For someone, at any rate.

Mahlia looked down at her hand and was surprised to see blood still on it. Remembered the baby and Tani’s death. Remembered why she’d come looking for Mouse in the first place.

“Mahfouz wants us to go find some food and drop it by Amaya’s place. Help feed her since she’s going to be taking on Tani’s baby.”

“The doc’s too damn nice.”

Mahlia jostled him with an elbow. “Well, he takes in lazy-ass war maggots like you, so yeah, you’re probably right.”

“Hey!” Mouse grabbed for support before he toppled off the beam. “You trying to kill me?”

“Fates, no. You hit the ground, then I got to do all the work myself.”

“And we both know you don’t got the hands for that!”

Before Mahlia could slug him, Mouse swung down off the girder, dangling nimble as a monkey. He hand-over-handed across open air to a down girder.

Mahlia felt briefly envious of his easy movement. Forced herself not to watch too hungrily. Some things, it was better not to think about. It just made you mad and angry.

Mouse slid down the girder to the next level. “Why we bother working so hard hunting up dinner if we know the doc’s just going to give it away?” he asked as Mahlia balance-beamed back to her own route off the building.