To the Estheni, a woman's place is not on the front lines. Not because we're weak—because we're in charge. The front line is for the men who belong to us, earning glory in our names.
I'm sure that idea would have pissed off my dad, but he saluted the flag on national holidays and wouldn't shut up about how my grandpa died for his country. One of the things you learn in the Academy is that the basic components of culture are all the same; it's the expression that varies.
War is culture—or at least all up in its personal business, like they're french kissing or something. If you're not a raiding culture, if you need armies working as a group, a soldier's identity can be weapon or a tripping hazard. You need a mechanism to subordinate each soldier to the greater whole. So the Estheni tell their men that their role is to heap glory on their commander, that their success is her success.
No category is perfect. There were a significant number of women charging down the boarding ramps along with the men. I didn't know the path that had brought them there or how they reconciled their identities with the male-coded role they occupied. I'm sure Kives did, if she hadn't put them there in the first place. But I wasn't a goddess; all I could do was watch while they fought and died.
My hand tightened on my sword anyway. Erid glanced at me, but gave no hint of her thoughts.
The Fool's Errand had the height advantage; our relatively high main deck, plus the screening shields, had given our archers decisive missile superiority. We'd torn through their skirmishers and harassed the defenders enough that they weren't prepared to meet the charge when the boarding ramps dropped on their deck.
The ramps were steep, accelerating our soldiers as gravity sped them toward impact. No room for phalanx tactics when your army's advancing across a set of bridges that fit one person at a time. Instead we sent in the linebreakers—our biggest dudes, in our heaviest armor, wielding the heavy spears Cades used to boast about using. If they went overboard, there was nothing they could do to avoid drowning. They didn't hesitate, hurling themselves down the boarding ramps with boisterous war cries.
The pirates were light infantry, insufficiently screened from the volley of arrows that hit them right before the linebreakers. Erid's anti-pirate task force was good at this. The linebreakers tore into them like an action hero jumping through one of those Japanese paper walls, hacking all around with their swords once they were too close for the spears. The rest of our fighters were right behind them.
It was over in minutes. If the pirates had screened themselves before the charge, they could have used their numerical advantage to keep our guys on the ramps, or even counter-charged and tried to knock them off into the sea. But Erid's tactics had robbed them of every defensive advantage, and they broke, some fleeing below. Some even abandoned their weapons and jumped overboard. I watched them swim away; there was no land in sight.
Beside me, Dal Salim made a raspy noise, fingering the scar across his throat.
I caught his attention. "The ones who went overboard. Do they know they're going to drown?"
Erid scoffed. "Anyone who tries that journey isn't thinking straight. Mad with fear, most like."
"Dancers," Dal Salim said after a moment of consideration. "They hope Rucks will sponsor them through the Black Gate if they take death over slavery."
"Godspeed," I said, keeping the irony out of my tone.
Those pirates were sinking straight into the maw of a god. Nothing I could do now but avenge them.
"Now comes the hard part," said Erid. "Usually at this point we scuttle them. Not much room to swing a blade belowdecks. Are we sure we need this ship?"
"I'll do it," I said, placing a hand on my sword and shooting her a cocky grin. "C'mon, I can take 'em. Unless you plan on just making me watch every time we fight."
Pellonine gave me an appraising glance. Her face wasn't openly skeptical, but I could tell she didn't approve all that much.
Erid was silent for a long moment.
"Fine, Calamity," she said. "But I'm not arming your pet."
"You're the worst, Erid." I stretched, limbering up for combat. "He's got feelings, you know."
Dal Salim chuckled.
"Get over there before I lose any more crew," Erid snapped.
"Aye aye, cap'n," I said, drawing my sword. There was a rigging rope just a few feet away, and it looked long enough to make the jump. I moved toward it—
An iron grip descended on my shoulder.
"I'm not going to ask, because you're an idiot," Erid's voice said from behind me, "but the ramps are that way."
I sighed dramatically and headed for the ramps.
The pirates' deck had been secured. We had few significant injuries, but I had to step aside to make room for a casualty being carried up the ramp. I just took the next one down, past the enemy casualties. The Trade Fleet soldiers were already stripping the dead and throwing them overboard. The living were being chained together, destined for an early death on a rower's bench. My hand tightened on my sword, but I stepped past them to the aft of the ship.
The slave-taking was part of the Luchenko Process. The fact that it was horrible was the point; we were here to persuade the pirates that their world was ending.
I walked toward a raised platform at the back of the ship, where Erid's troops were clustering amid the sound of shouting.
"Clear the way!" I shouted, using my hand amplifier to exude an aura of command.
Erid's soldiers obeyed instantly.
I rounded the corner of the platform and beheld a staircase heading down into the ship. There was a door sunk about halfway into the floor; the pirates had barred it, but our guys had splintered it with some kind of blunt force. Behind the door, a man armed with a spear jabbed at me as I approached. I didn't bother dodging; he didn't have the range.
Lying on the stairs, a puddle of blood and a bundle of spears told me the story. They'd tied the spears together and tried to batter down the door, but the dude behind the door had held them off. From the drag marks leading back from the puddle of blood, he might have scored a casualty in the process.
I made eye contact with the pirate through the broken door. My comm picked up his relief at the reprieve, with the terror and uncertainty that worse was coming.
Poor guy. He had no idea what was about to hit him.
"How many are in there?" I asked him.
"Enough," he snarled.
I tilted my head, as though listening. The boat was less than sixty feet long; my comm had more than enough range to pick up everyone on the boat. I filtered out everyone who'd just won a victory, then focused on everyone who thought they were about to die.
Forty-five? That couldn't be right. Must have gotten some of the rowers. I tried again, filtering out everyone who didn't have a weapon, and got a much more reasonable answer.
"I hear the heartbeats of ten enemies inside," I announced.
Door guy paled, and even the Trade Fleet soldiers edged away from me. I turned around, brandishing my sword.
"Soldiers of the Trade Fleet, this is your victory! I need some of you to secure the exit while I clear the inside. The rest can assist with cleaning up the aftermath."
One man stepped up, decorously avoiding eye contact.
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"Lady Danou," he said, "will you require assistance with the prisoners?"
"I'll send them out first," I said. "Can't have any unlawful slavery on Varas's ocean, can we?"
"No, milady," he said uncomfortably.
"Good boy," I said. "Stay here."
Even with Eifni combat training, ten on one would have been a stretch for me. But now I had augments, and I'd been training with Abby—Aulof now, I guess—for a year. I wanted to flex a little. The commander would have.
I turned to the door.
Eifni equips its operatives with the tools to fight ancient cultures. Sometimes you need to be seen with a sword instead of a sniper rifle. But the truth of the eyes, as Lirian would call it, was not the truth of the sword in my hand. I sent a mental command. Inside the hilt, a kinetic translator quietly hummed to life.
"What kind of fool thinks they're worth ten men?" said the spearman behind the door.
I smirked, quietly thanking him for giving me an opening.
"I am a warrior of the Old Ways," I said. "I give you this chance to surrender the field. There will not be another."
His face—what little I could see of it through the damaged door—hardened.
"Deeps take you," he sneered. "We have stores! We can hold out longer than you!"
I silently raised the sword, pointing it at the door.
"You think I'm scared of a little girl with a sword? I've got a spear. If you come any closer, I'll make a nice hole in—"
I fired.
The sound of the blast was like thunder. A blast of concussive force flared from the tip of the sword, visibly compressing the air into a deadly wave of white fog. It flashed towards the door, splintering and shredding the stairwell as it went. The door exploded, shrapnel flaying the man behind it and nailing his bloody corpse to the floor. I caught movement as some enemy combatants fled from the body.
Newton's third law says firing that weapon should have broken my arm and probably the rest of my skeleton, but Newton had never conceived of the possibility of just creating force from nothing.
How could he? That was the realm of gods.
On a whim, I raised the tip of the sword to my lips and blew on it like I was a gunslinger. Completely unnecessary, but it made me smile. I turned back to the troops.
"Nine," I said.
No one followed me as I descended the stairs.
My artificial eyes adjusted instantly to the dark. The inside of the pirate ship was one big cavity, cut in half by a network of beams. The rowing benches were set on top of those beams, with a long bridge giving them access to the stairs I was leaping down. Like on the Fool's Errand, there were people chained to the benches.
That is, on the right side. On the left side, there were only corpses with discolored skin.
That had to be forty, fifty people. How long had Blackfin spent in here? Two minutes? How do you even fight something that can do this?
Now I knew how Erid's troops felt about me. The thought made me smile, and I turned the smile on my enemies.
I picked out all nine hostiles, some of whom were still frantically retreating across the rowers' walkway. They were primitives; they weren't emotionally prepared to be on the receiving end of their first breach and clear. There were five on this level, and four holding position among the cargo that filled up the bottom of the ship. Apparently in their panic to escape what happened to the door, they'd failed to coordinate where they were making their last stand.
I walked to the first rowing bench and moved the sword to my left hand. With the right, I drew my wrist dagger and slashed through the rowers' chains.
"Go," I said, eyes not leaving the cluster of pirates at the end. I made sure to keep smiling. Battle begins long before your steel meets your enemy's, according to The Road of Spears. Fear would be the first knife I bled them with.
The others would be, y'know, actual knives.
The two men on the bench scrabbled to leave as I mused. I repeated the process for bench after bench, taunting the pirates with my smile, slowly making my way toward the other end of the ship. My smile widened as one of them lost his nerve and charged me.
How had I ever fought before augments? I glanced at the arc of his axe and took one step back. The blade swished harmlessly past me and my return stroke took his head off. That should have been hard—the spinal column should have given me more trouble, at least—but with my enhanced musculature it was like cutting through a bowl of sticky rice.
I kicked his corpse into the cargo hold and freed the last two benches. A slight pulse of the kinetic translator puffed all the blood off my sword, then I assessed my competition.
Four pirates, three men and a woman. Two armed with swords. One with a hook, one with a short spear. Spear and sword in front, others behind them due to the cramped battlefield. Not the best engagement, but I had an idea.
"Any last words?" I asked them mockingly.
The spearman in the front swallowed.
"Friends," he said. "If we die here—"
He'd fallen for it, the sucker. I closed the gap the instant he lost focus. My sword was in his neck before he could react, then a blast of kinetic energy hurled his body into the pirates behind him. The woman beside him raised her sword and took my dagger to her gut. I ripped it upward, the ethertech-enhanced edge effortlessly slicing her ribs open. I advanced on the fallen pirates.
My comm detected the etheric signature of an incoming strike. I dodged backward and a knife zipped past my face, slicing my cheek. I looked down; one of the pirates below was readying another throwing knife. I blasted him with the kinetic translator, but I'd just emptied the charge. At that range, it just knocked him down.
The pirates I'd bowled over were getting to their feet. I stepped in for a deathblow but a wild strike from one of them kept me from finding an opening. Worse, the short spear had fallen to the cargo level, and I saw a pirate trying to pick it up. He'd be able to stab at me from down there.
"Oh no you don't," I hissed, and made a snap judgment. There was just enough space between the rowing benches. I sighted my target and jumped.
There was a snap as my feet met his upper back. I'd broken his spine. He collapsed, screaming. I fell too, and only the agility from my augments prevented me from losing my footing and impaling myself on my own sword. The sound of my swearing was drowned out by war cries as three pirates came at me from different directions.
I blasted one with my sword and threw my dagger at another. It was a poor throw. She dodged, but it halted her charge for precious moments. The third one stabbed at me with a short sword and I barely had time to pull my own sword around to knock the blow aside.
Now the woman I'd wasted my dagger on was coming too, and I didn't have room to maneuver in here. I closed on the man with the short sword, grabbing his wrist and trying to twist the sword out of his fingers. He flailed at my sword arm. His eyes were wild and his breath was horrible. I didn't have a good angle to slash him, but at least the woman didn't have a clear shot at me.
Finally, he managed to grab my wrist. I didn't panic. I'd had combat training that made every fight he'd ever been in look like kids playing with sticks.
I dropped my sword to break his grip, leaving me with a hand free. You think I need a sword to kill you, asshole? I punched him in the solar plexus, driving the wind out of him. His descending head met the metal plate on my kneepad with a crunch. He went limp, and I stomped the back of his neck on the way down.
The pirates from the upper level dropped down to the cargo level, but I couldn't worry about them because the woman I'd been zoning had recovered the short spear and was trying to stab me. Her strikes were fast. I dodged twice, trying to grab at the haft, but only brushed my fingers against it. There was still that guy behind me, too, but I couldn't look away or I'd get shish kabob'd.
"Quit it!" I yelled at her as I ducked another stab. I spotted a smaller crate in arm's reach on the floor, so I grabbed it, heaving it at my attacker on the way back up. She jumped out of the way and it splintered on a pillar behind her. Coconuts went everywhere. The pirate with the broken spine yelled in pain—like, differently than he'd been doing—as one of them clocked him in the face.
I snagged a coconut with one hand and my sword in the other, just in time to turn around and blast the guy behind me again. The spear lady tried to stab me again.
"Enough of that!" I pelted her in the face with the coconut. It made a hollow clonking noise and she went down. Probably a concussion, given how hard I could throw now.
I giggled a little bit. Coconuts were just inherently funny.
The two pirates from the upper level had found their balance after dropping down, and I had to seize the tempo to keep my advantages here. I feinted aggressively toward them, twitchy almost-strikes accompanied by aggressive stomps and angry yells like I was in some kind of samurai movie.
They backed up, which was the mistake I was hoping for. The floor was cluttered; I could see where I was stepping, but they couldn't. On the third feint, one of them tripped on something and went sprawling.
I bellowed and lunged at the one left standing. He tried to parry, but his sword got caught on a crate and I ran him through.
Suddenly, my comm detected an attack from an etheric weapon. Shit. I jumped away as the pirate who'd tripped slashed at my legs with my own dagger. He must have grabbed it off the floor. I shuffled backward; he could cut through my sword if he got lucky. I risked a quick glance over my shoulder and saw that the pirate behind me had gotten to his feet, so I twisted and blasted him a third time. He flew backward and landed in a sprawl at the bottom of the stairs.
It was down to me and the guy with the knife; my comm said spear lady was alive but woozy, and the pinball wonder behind me wasn't getting up for a bit. Spine guy was screaming for help; his only contribution to the fight was gonna be as terrain. Knife guy was holding my knife out like a talisman. The look on his face said he knew it was the only thing keeping him alive.
How did I close this gap? A smile crept back over my face. I winked at him—remembering too late that people around here interpreted those as a sexual proposition—and stabbed a nearby coconut with my sword. Then I returned to stance, letting the kinetic translator build up charge. Coconut water dripped down the blade, mingling with the blood left behind like some kind of weird-ass health food.
Knife guy looked confused at first, then afraid as he realized what was about to happen. I grinned and pointed the sword at him.
He dived out of the way, but I'd expected that. In the graceful world of my enhanced reaction times, I smoothly traced the sword over the arc of his dive and fired the instant he landed. The coconut shot off like a cannonball, punching through his skull, splattering blood and brains over everything behind him.
"Damn, I'm good."
I calmly stepped over spine guy, who was still screaming, and retrieved my knife. Spear lady's eyes were just fluttering open when I closed them permanently. I silenced spine guy, then walked back to the stairs. The pirate I'd knocked over there was pulling himself up again with stiff movements. Points for effort, I guess.
I blasted him back against the stairs.
"No," I said, and killed him.
I looked up. Silhouetted in the doorway, members of Erid's crew were looking at me. I picked out fear and horror on their expressions.
"And then there were none," I said matter-of-factly.
I kicked the body off the stairs and walked out to the deck. Erid's people gave me a wide berth as I passed.