They ran. At first, they did things properly with half her crew running ahead to cover the other half, but as soon as the creatures were out of sight Raini ordered everyone to run as fast as possible. She kept the captured creature in front of her, with her pistol at its back, but Raini wondered if she had the creature prisoner or if it was the other way round. It was keeping pace with her small group perfectly, but she got the impression that it wasn’t even breaking a sweat. That was assuming of course that it ever did. Once or twice during the run she thought she'd heard a low mechanical whine in the distance, at other times something flickered across the edges of her vision. She'd seen enough of Involia's men to know that if any of the creatures decided to attack her there would be little she could do so she did her best to ignore them. Keep running, she told herself, that's the key. Get back to the ship and then get out of here.
They reached the Sea Dancer without incident. The crew were at their stations, not hint of panic showed on any of their faces until the creature reached the ship. With a motion as smooth as water the creature reached out two arms and grabbed hold of the rail on the side of the ship. Without even a pause it pulled itself up and vaulted over the side to land perfectly on the deck. It didn't even flinch when Sinas ordered every marine to aim whatever weapon they had at hand at its head.
Some of the crew threw down ropes to Raini and the rest of them and a moment later she too was on the deck of the ship. She looked at the aft castle and saw Tain standing there, mouth a gap and staring at the creature.
“Cast off!” Raini shouted. “Tain, get us moving, back to Tinis.”
“What's going on?” There was a harshness to his voice that had not been before, as if to suggest that the time for games were over.
“I'd give you ten years wages if you could find someone who knew.” He raised an eyebrow. “There are several of these things back there, four of them just took out the entire Tinis garrison in less than a minute. We need to get this one to someone who will find it useful.” Sinas's mouth fell, he turned to look at the creature and she could see the mental wheels turning in his head.
“Den's grave. Are they coming here?” He asked as Tain began shouting orders to the rest of her crew.
“I don't know,” she shouted as she felt the frustration rise in her chest.
“Just cast us off and get us moving now. We need to go north, back to Tinis as fast as the wind will allow it.”
“What about Avon or the Protectors,” Sinas said as he pushed his way through the crowd around the creature. She did likewise as the ship slowly began to move.
“I don't know about Avon,” she said as she reached the creature, “but the Protectors are all dead.”
“Are you sure? If there are survivors, then surely, we should-”
“There aren't any.” There was far more venom in Raini's voice than even she had expected. “This things companions tore them to shreds.”
Lilis pushed herself through the suddenly silent crowd. “What is it?” She asked.
Raini shrugged and turned to the creature. The crowd fell silent, and Raini took a deep breath. “You understood me before so you should understand this. You have five seconds to start talking before I find some way of forcing you to.”
For a few moments it didn't respond at all, then its head straightened up a few degrees and turned to face her. Raini saw the crowd around her recoil a little, but she was pleased to see that if anything the various muskets, crossbows, cudgels and axes stayed aimed directly at it. Even Lilis had a tiny, delicate but viscous looking crossbow held in one shaking hand. When the creature spoke its voice was like rocks being ground together. Once, back in the school, one of her classmates had told a ghost story of a dead man who had come back to life in search of revenge. He'd given the man an appropriate voice, harsh and without emotion. Raini had been young then and spent several sleepless nights dreading the low, passionless drawl. She couldn’t stop imagining the dead man calling her name as it walked the earth.
This voice was worse.
“My name is Mercy, of the Clan Scatha.” No one else moved a muscle.
“Why are you here?” Raini's throat was dry, her hand was almost shaking as much as Lilis'. She could feel the sweat running down her back and across her face. “What is 'here'?”
“On this ship,” Sinas blurted out and Raini's lip curled a little. Raini could see the man was tense, and tired but he could at last pretend he was calm.
“I am on this ship because I wish to be. I require your help.” The creature didn't move its head to face Sinas, nor did its voice change the slightest.
“You are here,” Raini said trying to keep her voice half as calm as 'Mercy's', “because you are a prisoner.”
“Please wait. I do not know what that word means.”
“It means I will not allow you to leave.” Even she could hear the anger in her voice but watching two hundred Protectors get themselves butchered did that to a person.
“I do not believe that you can stop me.” There was no gloating in that statement, it was merely fact. Raini spent a moment eyeing up the creature, trying to gain some insight from the way it stood, it's expressions or how it moved. But it stood like a twisted tree, maintained no expression that she could recognize, and was as still as a statue.
No, that wasn't right. The Sea Spirit was moving now, its deck swaying back and forth yet the creature remained perfectly still. Even Younie, who had spent decades on ships, moved a little. Slowly she walked around the creature, keeping her mag-pistol aimed at its head. Raini tried to make it look like she was inspecting it. She swallowed, shuddered a little, and returned to facing the creature. It was moving just a little, perfectly in time with each sway of the deck. Raini had never seen anything like it.
“The Scatha, that is the name of your people, correct?” Stay calm, she told herself.
“Hold one moment. What is the difference between the word 'clan' and the word 'people.'”
“A clan is a distinct grouping of related families that works together for protection, the people are all of us.” She said after a moment’s thought.
“Understood, then Scatha is our people. I apologize for the mistake.” The creature seemed almost polite in its responses, and Raini could almost forget what its comrades had done.
“Do you have a clan?” Sinas asked. He was gripping a black powder pistol tightly enough to send his knuckles white.
“Compassion. Maybe. The term is not perfect.”
“It doesn't matter Sinas,” Raini told him. “Why are the 'Scatha' here?”
“To find new life.” Slowly Sinas raised the pistol.
“Just so you can kill it?” he said.
“Easy Sinas.” Raini muttered. Did Sinas have a personal connection to the village? Or had he just been waiting for an excuse to let off some steam. She'd been so focused on staying calm she'd missed the warning signals in others. Lilis had taken a step back and turned to her closest guncrew. She frantically began to gesture at them but if she was saying anything then it was too quiet for Raini to hear. Sinas took a step forward until his pistol was mere inches away from the unflinching creature.
“That is not a threat,” Mercy said. “The powder in the weapon would not provide enough force to harm me.”
“Is that a fact?” Sinas kept his voice low.
“In the confrontation twenty-two minutes ago with the others, one hundred and fifty-eight such weapons were fired, of which 38 caused hits, none penetrated.”
Sinas swallowed hard.
“Sinas, stand down, let me handle this.” Raini warned.
“Playtimes over now child,” he said, and Raini felt a rush of heat on her cheeks. He turned back to Mercy. “How can you be sure?”
“If we use the data collected from the Scatha elsewhere on the planet, then we have come across a total of 412 such weapons, of which 328 have been fired once, of these only three of your kind were allowed time to reload for testing purposes and fired-”
Sinas gritted his teeth and fired the pistol. Raini shut her eyes for a second against the powder blast, half expecting to die in a flurry of slashing arms but there was not a single sound or movement. She opened her eyes to find that Sinas was staring at the creature, a look of amazement and terror on his face.
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Mercy stood, almost exactly the same as she had done before, but this time with one arm raised and holding a small lead bullet between two fingers.
“Do you understand now? Perhaps you will answer my questions now.” Raini felt the blood drain from her face and nodded.
“Have you seen a creature like me before?”
“No.”
“Have your people fought creatures like me before?”
“Not for thousands of years.”
There was no response. After a few seconds Sinas lowered his pistol his face still a mixture of the old anger and the new shock. When the answer finally came it was the first time Mercy had shown any emotion. The words were stilted, with longer than normal pauses in between them.
“No, we do not believe... that this is relevant to our current...discussions.” Then the voice changed back to normal. “Have you seen any of us recently?”
“Why should I answer you?” Raini asked.
“Our warriors have decided to pacify this planet for occupation. When we arrived there were 820.000.000 of your people here. In the time since the first battle the Warriors have landed across your world, your population has dropped to 728,889,909 and is falling at a rate of approximately two thousand per second. Although this last figure is only an average estimation, suffice it to say that your entire population will be gone within four days.” No one said anything as Mercy paused, perhaps deliberately waiting for the numbers to sink in. “The only reason why you have not been attacked, is because I may require your help. If you refuse to offer me your help, I will find someone who won't, and leave you to the warriors. Complete destruction of this craft and your crew will take between five and twenty seconds, depending on which tests we wish to run. I ask you again, have you seen any of us before?”
Sinas glanced at her, for once he was unable to come up with something to say. Would the creature believe a lie? Was there any point in it?
“Avon might have.” It was Raini’s voice which spoke the words, but her mind was gone, shattered by what the creature had just said.
“Where is he?”
“We’ll never tell,” Sinas stated flatly.
“If you wish to avoid destruction she will,” Mercy said and looked at Raini.
Raini snapped out of her brief fugue. She couldn’t afford to spend hours or even minutes thinking over the implications. She needed to make a decision if only to remind Sinas who was in charge. “Fine. He's somewhere between the village near where we captured you and a city further down the coast.”
“There are two people in those hills. Both are on horseback,” Mercy said. “What does this Avon look like?”
“Bluerobes, old, grey hair-” Mercy raised her hand, palm out.
“There is no one left there with those colored robes.” Sinas began to reload the pistol the expression on his face made it clear that he didn't care if it had no chance of working.
“Maybe he told his companion more than he told us.” Raini said, although she was secretly pleased that these creatures had shot themselves in the foot by killing the one person who could help them.
“One of the two is no longer moving. The other person will not be harmed. Our Warriors have been instructed to push him towards the shoreline, you will pick him up.”
Sinas had finished reloading the pistol and was aiming it at the creature again. “You are not in command here,” he took a step forward and pressed the barrel of the pistol against Mercy's head.
“Sinas, for Jackal’s sake, you’re not helping. Put the weapon down or I'll shoot you myself.” Mercy had not moved.
“I think we have enough information from this prisoner Captain.” He said, putting just enough emphasis on the last word to make it sound like an insult.
“We don't shoot prisoners, even then Sinas. Drop the weapon.” Raini saw Sinas swallow, but the gun did not move. Somehow, she had always known he'd end up doing something like this.
“The normal rules don't apply here child; besides, it isn't one of us.” Raini doubted he'd be doing the same if it was Younie standing here instead. Or even if Younie was still alive, he'd have come down on Sinas like a tonne of bricks if he'd ever found out.
“Sinas, take a step backwards and go below decks. Cool your head before I end up blowing it off.”
“No,” he snarled jammed the pistol into Mercy's face. He fired the weapon. Raini turned her face away from the blast and caught a quick glimpse of Sinas trying to dodge out of the way of her own weapon as she spun it madly towards him. She pulled the trigger, more out of instinct than desire to kill and felt something knock into the weapon. She heard Sinas gasp.
“Den's Grave!” She spluttered and looked up. Mercy's hand was just half an inch in front of her face, holding Sinas' second bullet. Mercy herself had ducked to the side, just enough for Sinas to miss her. If she hadn’t caught his bullet Raini would be dead. In her other hand she held Sinas by the throat, two feet off the air and had pushed him back enough for Raini's own shot to miss. Raini hadn't even seen her move; at best she had a vague recollection of blurred limbs and the smell of smoke.
When Mercy spoke again it was with a voice that was still perfectly emotionless. “Move towards the shore, you will be able to intercept this man in twenty minutes.”
“Let Sinas go.”
“You do not have any power here.”
Then she heard Lilis yell, “Ready.” Raini tuned to see one of the 18-pound cannons that her crew had wheeled back and aimed right at Mercy. “Double shotted and ready to fire on your orders Captain.”
Raini grinned and turned to Mercy, “Drop him and we will move to the shore.” Only Lilis could have thought of something so utterly insane, but she had to admire its effectiveness. A moment later Sinas thudded to the deck. Raini grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and hauled him to his feet with all her strength. He was still gasping and spluttering when she knocked the pistol out of his hands.
“Tain, take him below, lock him up until he's calmed down,” Raini ordered. Her second in command pushed through the crowed and grabbed Sinas by his shoulder.
“You can't cope with this,” Sinas spat. “You've only been in command for six months. That's nothing. You only got this far at all because of Younie.”
“Get him out of my sight.” Raini said while keeping her eyes on Mercy. She didn't dare risk looking at her own crew, she didn't want to see how many of them believed him.
***
They reached the shoreline a little while later and had to wait less than a minute before one of the lookouts spotted a figure running down the mountainside. The light was fading fast so Raini ordered all the lamps lit so they could be seen, and one of the Sea Dancer's launches to the shore so they could collect the figure.
Raini was standing on the gundeck, staring out at the shore when Tain gingerly coughed behind her. She turned and saw that Luit was standing next to the older man, his pocket watch, apparently a gift from his father on his graduation held in his hand.
“Captain, I hope you don't mind, but Luit wants to know what kind of wounds we're likely to be dealing with,” Tain said. Of course, he did, Raini thought. Luit was always asking questions and trying to be the most prepared surgeon in the entire navy. If being prepared could counter a lack of experience he'd be the best surgeon who had ever lived.
“I'm sorry but I can't give you much information. It's more likely to be cuts like a sword or puncture wounds from a fist than bullet wounds, I don't know if that makes a difference or not though.”
“It doesn't really, but I just thought I'd check,” Luit said, his voice barely audible above the noise of the waves. She turned back to watching the shore as the launch waited patiently for the running figure.
“Anything else Tain?” She asked after a minute of silence.
“The crew's a little jumpy, not just of that thing you know, but they are worried that if guns don't work how do we know cannons will?” She sighed; she'd expected her crew to get nervous eventually, but not this quickly.
“You saw the creature catch Sinas's first shot, and dodge his second, didn't you?”
“Yes captain.”
“If it did those things then it must have seen them as a danger, otherwise it would have just stood there and taken the shot. It would have been an even more impressive display if it had allowed our bullets to bounce off its skin. It tried to defend itself, so they must have been a threat, even if it says otherwise.”
“I suppose so,” he didn't sound convinced, admittedly neither was she.
“Besides, we'll reach the fleet eventually, and I'm sure that a broadside or two from a proper warship would ruin it's day.”
“Yes, I'm sure it would. Permission to check up on Sinas, Captain, I want to see if he's calmed down a little.” Raini nodded and Tain snapped off a salute before leaving.
“Is there something else Luit?”
“Sinas said that you'd run into a member of the Dead as well, is that true?” The pocket watch snapped open and shut in Luit's hand.
“Unfortunately,” she said and turned back to watch the shore where the Sea Dancer’s launch was just beginning its return journey. With a hand she motioned the surgeon to stand next to her. “They thought this was the start of the Dragons second invasion, I guess they were right.”
“I can't believe it,” Luit said, flicking his watch closed. “All this time we've been waiting for the Dragons to come back, and they finally do right into my first tour.”
Raini sighed. “Although we don't know if these are the same ones.”
“Still, it could be worse I suppose,” he said without much enthusiasm.
“How?”
“We might not have had the Dead to warn us,” he offered.
“Some warning,” she said bitterly. “They could have sent someone else to pass on the message.”
“Like who?”
“Anyone,” she snapped. “Anyone who didn't make their living murdering others.” Luit raised an eyebrow.
“Captain-” he began but Raini cut him off.
“We do it to defend our clan,” she said. She'd had this argument plenty of times before with the younger and more naïve members of her crew and was now winning more often than not.
“They do it to defend peace.”
“Really?” Raini began, not really caring how much she pushed back. Luit might be a young and perpetually terrified doctor, but it had been a long day. “I suppose that's why we just had to destroy a Lasrom frigate this morning? Or why half of our Protectors are besieging Raven’s Bluff while the other half are trying to liberate the one clan in the world that's smaller than ours?”
“Well...”
“And we've been at war on and off with one clan or another for twenty years. Have you ever seen any member of the Dead trying to stop a single one of those fights? Where were the Dead when Tessa city burned? Me and the crew of the Deathknell were the only reason why anyone in that city got out alive.”
“Right captain, sorry.” A sudden rush of guilt flooded over Raini. Luit hadn't been there of course; it was almost eight years ago now. He hadn't even been n adult during the Uniko Liberation Campaign. He hadn't seen what the Clans did to each other when the Dead Clan were nowhere to be seen.
“Don't be sorry Luit. It's my fault, I shouldn't have snapped like that. I don't want officers who are too afraid to voice their own opinions. Understood?”
“Yes captain,” he said. “I'd better get below, check through our supplies.” He gave a quick salute and practically fled from the deck. Raini gritted her teeth, painfully aware of what Younie would have said. If anyone had been responsible for the Deathknell’s rescue of the civilians at Tessa, it was him. He'd died giving the order. She'd just been lucky enough to be the only officer left standing at that point in the battle. That and young enough to actually order the Deathknell into the burning docks. Young, foolish and naïve, just like Luit, and Lilis, and almost four fifths of her crew.
She waited in silence until the launch returned. Her crew members threw down a rope ladder and Raini walked towards them ready to welcome their new visitor onboard. The first two up the ladder were members of her own crew carrying the ropes that would be used to pull the small launch out of the water. There was then a slight pause and Raini found herself wondering if the visitor didn't need any help. She was just about to take a step forward them a pair of hands reached the top of the deck. With a grunt the man pulled himself over and unceremoniously rolled onto the deck where he sat blinking for a few moments at the light.
“Well that certainly wasn't much fun,” Avon said with a splutter.