17
If it were anyone but Varma piloting the Splinter, we’d be dead. He throws down the hammer and yanks the wheel, spinning us clear just as Bao’s jaws come together with a crack like a thunderclap. The surge from his body crashes against our hull, and for a moment I’m blinded, salt water burning my eyes. I feel for the beacon’s handles and wrench it up into the Splinter before the waves steal it.
Varma’s just as blind as I am, but he flings us forward anyway. I sink back into the seat, blinking furiously as the Splinter accelerates. I should have worn my mask. Should have worn my respirator. Should have seen this all coming. We glance off Bao’s side as more of him surfaces, and a strangled yelp bursts out of me.
“What’s going on?” Santa Elena shouts in my ear. “Someone start talking.”
“Aggressive response,” I manage. “Handling it now.”
“Cassandra, is he tame or not? Is he responding to signals?”
I flip the switches, silencing the beacon. “Give me a minute. Varma, get on his blind side, keep him turning.” He hauls the wheel, bringing us around Bao’s rear as the Reckoner lets out a guttural roar. From this angle, I can finally see the mass of scarred tissue where his right eye used to be, the wound he received on the night I abandoned him. His hide is peppered with bullet pocks, and his keratin plating shows the battle damage of a seasoned beast. With a few strokes of his massive forelegs, he’s onto us again, his neck tilted at an uncanny angle to bring us into his line of sight.
This isn’t posturing. He’s genuinely out to get us. I reel, trying to understand his behavior. It’s almost territorial, like we’ve invaded his space and disrupted his routine. But Reckoners—at least the Reckoners I’ve known—don’t form any sort of emotional attachments to the oceans they inhabit. Their only bond is with their companion ship.
But in the absence of that bond, who knows what steps in?
“Cas, gonna need a plan really soon,” Varma mutters through his teeth. Bao lunges forward, and he spins the Splinter out of his path again. The waves around us are climbing higher and higher, and I swear I hear thunder.
“Working on it. Stay out of his way, but keep us close,” I tell Varma. I grapple with the beacon in my lap, wrestling it forward until I can drop it safely at my feet. This isn’t the tool for the job. The tool I need is strapped to my right forearm. I heft the Otachi, my fingers flying over the dials.
“Are you signaling him again? It didn’t work the first time, Cas!” Varma yelps.
In response, I tug the triggers, blasting the stay signal into the air. The lasers carve the low clouds above us, and for a moment—just one moment, but it’s all I need—Bao hesitates.
It’s in there. He’s remembering. A spark of joy rolls through me, followed quickly by a rush of pride. I did my job—I trained him well. Before the feeling can settle, Bao shakes his head and lunges again. Varma veers to the right, checking over his shoulder as he tries to pin down Bao’s blind spot. My stomach swoops as we plunge down over the crest of a wave, the restraints cutting into my shoulders as I twist to get a good look at Bao.
He isn’t there.
“He dove!” I yell, straining over the edge of the Splinter. There’s no sign of his shadow, no way to tell if he’s coming up under us.
“Captain’s going to kill me if we wreck this Splinter,” Varma snarls. “And that’s only if this jackass doesn’t do us in first.” He accelerates, but the waves are getting worse, cutting us off, slowing us down. “Cas, I don’t know if we can hold out if they start breaking,” he says with a worried glance at the ocean around us. The Splinter isn’t made for these conditions—if the seas get worse, they’ll swallow us.
I know what I have to do. A dark laugh builds in me as I reach down for the buckles on my restraints.
Varma tenses when he hears the snap of the safety straps releasing. “Cas, what are you doing?”
I stand, my fingers winding tight around the Splinter’s edge. As I shrug off the shoulder straps, I spot the shadow carving through the bulging waves, the waters swelling around his massive body as he charges us.
“Cas, don’t you dare—Cas, no!” Varma shouts, as if he can stop me.
“The second I’m clear, break right as fast as you can,” I tell him. “Run like hell, and don’t come back until I tell you.”
“Cas,” he pleads, but it’s a little too late for that. I vault over the edge of the boat, tuck my chin against my chest, and hit the waves like a cannonball. The flotation in my armor reacts instantly, swelling so quickly that it forces a bubble of breath out of my lungs. I tumble head over heels, regretting not wearing my mask with every second I spend underwater. A rumble shakes my chest as the Splinter’s engines cut past me, and even though my lungs are burning, even though I need to right myself and set eyes on the monster coming for me, I need to do this first.
I pull the triggers, shooting the homing signal into the depths.
As I surface, blinking salt water from my eyes, I suck in a breath and inhale a healthy dose of seawater as I do. I swallow back the urge to gag—that can come once I figure out exactly where Bao is. A wave lifts me up, and I tense, waiting for the crest, waiting for the moment where I’ll be the tallest thing around. At its apex, I see him at the instant he pauses, still on Varma’s tail, and turns his head toward the lights that call him. The Splinter skims away, Bao wheels, and as the wave drops me, I find myself in what might be the most regrettable position I’ve ever put myself in.
Bao comes in like a hurricane, every bit the monster he was meant to be. And, because there’s nothing else for me to do, I swim right for him. The suit drags me down, and I find myself wishing I had flippers, but the flotation works its magic, and I plummet down the curve of a wave, making a beeline for the tip of Bao’s beak.
Bless him, he hesitates. He doesn’t know what to make of this, of the lights and the noise and a tiny, very eatable creature swimming at him like he isn’t the same size as the Minnow. His legs stop churning, and his eye narrows so shrewdly, so uncannily, that I almost spit a laugh into the NeoPacific. The distance between us collapses from hundreds of feet to nothing. I crash against his front, the armor warping horribly as it runs up against his knobby plating. The wind gets knocked right out of me, and my next breath comes in tinged with his horrible, wonderful carrion smell. I never thought the stench of a Reckoner was something I’d miss, but here we are.
Bao rolls his head, trying to fix his eye on me. I push off his chest and make it easier for him, swimming right for that spot I know I can grab easily.
I’m barely feet away when he opens his mouth.
In a panic, I pull the Otachi triggers again, raising my arm as he lunges for me. The lasers blast from my wrists and right into his eye. His only eye. His one good eye. Bao roars, but it’s enough to stun him, to keep him in his place. The noise of his complaint hits my skull like a hammer, liquefying my thoughts.
I may be deafened, but he’s blind. And he can’t stop my instinct.
I lunge forward, my bare left hand outstretched, and this time my fingers find purchase in that ridge above his eye. With a groan, I kick myself upward, my foot slamming down on his eyelid, pinning it shut. His head snaps up, and I flail for another handhold before he manages to shake me loose. The muscles in my leg scream in protest as Bao tries to wrench his eye open.
I risk it—I grab for a line hook in the belt of the armor, unspooling the length of fiber and jamming the hook into the scales over his eye. Not a second too soon. Bao slams his head down against the waves, and I barely have time to suck in a breath before the water smashes into me, pinning me against him. My grip slips, but the hook holds true, and when he lifts his head again, I come up with him, choking and sputtering, and grab for the ridge. My dripping hair is plastered against my face, the helmet doing little to protect me from it.
Bao’s eye snaps open. With a pull of my Otachi triggers, the homing signal flashes again. He tosses his head, and I fix my glare down his neck, where his ear sits. “Listen to me—” I start, but get cut off as he throws me against another wave.
When I surface, I grit my teeth and press against his skull. “You stupid… little… shit…” I bellow at his ear. My breath comes in ragged, broken gasps.
I brace myself when I feel the rumble in his throat start, ready to lose my hearing all over again. But the noise comes out more a warble than a roar, and the muscles underneath my grip go slack. Bao blinks, tilting his head so that his eye points skyward, so that I can shift my weight to my knees. His gaze never leaves me.
“That’s right, you vast idiot.” I breathe. “Remember me?”
There’s only one way for him to answer. I raise my arm, feeling his muscles shift as his eye slides in the wake of my motion. The seas around us boil and churn, and I curl my fingers slowly in the Otachi triggers. When they trip and the signal lasers fly across the NeoPacific, his eye runs down the line, the pupil shrinking as he takes in the harsh beams of light.
Bao’s slow to start, every bit a terrapoid. First he stretches his neck forward, leaning out toward the Otachi’s path. Then his forelegs start moving, churning with methodical, elegant strokes that carve through the water. I tilt the beam up, making sure his head stays above the waterline. Now that I’m tied to his side with no respirator, my life depends on it.
The waves roil around us as Bao picks up speed. He slices through them, unmoved by their commotion. I slip my free hand from the ridge, bracing against his skull and the embedded line hook, and pull a second line hook from my belt. With two lines holding my weight, I’ll have my hands free to operate the Otachi. Once I have the second hook securely rooted in his scales, I brace myself. It could go wrong at any second, and what I’m about to do makes it even more likely.
I twist the Otachi triggers to charge and throw the signal out against the chaos of the NeoPacific.
He pauses. His blowholes flare, and his eye narrows. Every moment of his hesitation burns into me. It’s too long—he used to take commands in an instant. He can’t be the monster we need if he’s unresponsive. I press my left hand against his skull, pleading for him to recognize the lights, the sound, or even the thoughts I’m directing at him.
I’m not ready for it when he does. He bucks forward, and I can’t bite back the scream—first of terror, then delight—that bursts out of me. His limbs kick up a surge that catches me across the face. I spit the salt water in his eye and grin against the wind.
“Varma?” I ask, and the comm in my ear immediately snaps to life.
“You’re alive, then?”
“Don’t sound so disappointed.”
He chuckles. “And I’m guessing the beast is under your command?”
I snap the Otachi over to the simple homing signal, and Bao slows after only a second of processing time. “More or less.”
“Well, that was easier than I expected,” he says. I squint against the horizon and pick out the sliver of the Splinter tracing lazy paths around the rising waves.
I laugh, shifting my weight against the sureness of Bao’s skull. “Trust me, Varma. The work’s only just begun.”