12 – Salt Water
The deployment notice went up on the barracks board three days after the lecture. Patrol rotation. Every recruit pulled one before Month Three. Standard academy curriculum. Learn the ship, see the sea, try not to vomit on a senior officer.
The patrol ship was smaller than the transport that had brought Kael to Marineford, a two-masted cutter with a crew of twelve and room for eight recruits who were about to learn the difference between training and the ocean.
Lieutenant Haruki ran the deployment. He was a compact man with sun-darkened skin and a scar across his left forearm that looked like a rope burn that had never fully healed and he gave orders in a voice that expected compliance without needing volume. The briefing was short. Coastal patrol. East Blue waters south of Marineford. Pirate activity had been flagged in the shipping lanes and they were checking it out. Low threat assessment. The recruits were there to observe and assist, emphasis on observe.
Kael stood at the railing and watched Marineford shrink behind them and the ocean opened up and the salt air hit his face and it was the first time he'd been on open water since the transport. The sea was rougher than the harbor. The cutter rolled on the swells and two recruits had already gone green. Tashigi was standing near the bow with Shigure at her hip, one hand on the railing, the other holding her glasses steady against the wind. Isuka was at the stern doing stretches with her rapier like they were headed to a particularly inconvenient gym session instead of a potential fight.
They spotted the pirate ship in the early afternoon. Small brigantine, patched sails, a crew of maybe twenty. The flag was black with a design Kael couldn't make out at distance but his gut clenched when he saw it because the shape was familiar. A circle with teeth. He'd seen it in a manga cover story, one of the bonus strips that showed what happened to defeated villains between arcs. The crew flying that flag had connections to a larger network. They were couriers. The cargo they carried wasn't the point. The communications were.
He went to Haruki. "Sir, we should intercept their comms before engagement. That ship is running a relay. They'll have an active Den Den Mushi."
Haruki looked at him. "And you know this how, Chore Boy?"
"The flag. That crew runs communications for a larger network. If we board without cutting their comms first, they'll transmit our position and strength to whoever's listening."
"I see intelligence analysis in your file, do I?"
"No, sir."
"Then return to your position and let me run my patrol."
Kael returned to his position. The cutter closed on the brigantine. Haruki ordered the approach. The pirates saw them and did what low-level East Blue pirates do when a Marine ship shows up: half of them tried to run and the other half tried to fight and neither half coordinated with the other.
The boarding was quick and messy. Haruki's Marines went first, the experienced crew with cutlasses and training. The recruits followed in pairs. Kael went over the railing onto the pirate deck with Isuka at his left and Tashigi two steps behind and the first pirate who came at them was a big man with a club who swung at Kael's head and his Observation gave him a beat of warning and he ducked and Isuka's rapier went through the man's shoulder before the club finished its arc.
Isuka in a real fight was a different thing from the sparring ring. Here there was blood and screaming and the deck was slippery and she moved through it with a focus that was terrifying from three feet away. Thrust, withdraw, sidestep, thrust. The rapier punched holes in arms and shoulders and legs, disabling without killing, and every strike was placed with the precision of someone who knew exactly where to put steel to make a body stop working.
Tashigi drew Shigure and the blade sang and the blade work was textbook, each cut measured and controlled. She took down two pirates in the first exchange and moved to the third without breaking stride.
Kael fought with his fists. A pirate with a knife came at him and his Observation read the thrust and he sidestepped and hit the man in the jaw. The punch was better than it would have been two months ago. Tashigi's stance work and Gion's drills had closed some of the gap and his body was finally starting to do what his reads told it to. The pirate went down. Another came from the right and Kael read the swing and ducked and countered and this one didn't go down clean, catching Kael's punch on his forearm and pushing back, and they grappled on the slick deck until Kael got a knee into the man's stomach and he folded.
Then a recruit went down.
The kid was from Block B, Kael didn't know his name, and he'd gotten separated from his partner and a pirate with a boarding axe was coming at him and the kid was on the deck with his sword out of reach and nobody was close enough except Kael.
He moved. The Observation read was clear, the axe coming down toward the kid's chest, and Kael got between them and caught the handle of the axe on his forearm and the impact was hard enough to make his vision blur. He punched the pirate in the throat with his free hand and the man dropped the axe and stumbled back and one of Haruki's Marines finished him with a clean takedown.
Kael's forearm was throbbing. He'd blocked the axe handle, not the blade, but the force had been enough to rattle bone. The kid from Block B was staring at him from the deck.
"Get up," Kael said. "And get your sword."
The fight was over in minutes. The pirates were down or surrendering. Haruki's Marines were securing prisoners. The deck was wet with seawater and blood and one of the pirates had knocked over a barrel of salt fish during the fighting and the dead fish were scattered across the boards and nobody was going to clean them up and Kael stepped on one and almost went down, which would have been an embarrassing way to end his first real combat.
He went below deck.
The crew quarters were small and dark and smelled like bodies and old food and rum. Kael searched the captain's cabin. Charts on the table. A lockbox with berries and a few pieces of cheap jewelry. And on a shelf near the bunk, a Den Den Mushi.
It was awake. The shell was open, the snail's eyes were up, and the transponder was active. Someone had been listening to everything since the Marines boarded.
Kael picked it up and walked it topside.
Haruki was overseeing the prisoner lineup when Kael set the Den Den Mushi on the railing in front of him. The snail blinked. The transponder hummed.
"Active since before we boarded," Kael said. "Someone on the other end heard the whole fight. Our ship name. Our crew strength. Everything."
Haruki looked at the Den Den Mushi. He looked at Kael. The dismissal from earlier was gone from his face. His jaw tightened and he picked up the snail and said "Terminate" to the comms officer who scrambled to disconnect it.
"You said this crew ran communications."
"Yes, sir."
"Next time, lead with the evidence instead of the theory." He turned back to the prisoners. "Good catch, Chore Boy."
Kael went back to the railing. The adrenaline was fading and his forearm was swelling where the axe handle had connected and his knuckles were raw from the pirates' teeth and jawbones and the salt air stung the broken skin. The sun was lower now. The ocean was gold on the side facing the sun and gray-blue on the other side and a seabird was following the cutter for reasons of its own.
The Block B recruit found him at the railing. He was young, maybe seventeen, with a bruise forming on his cheekbone and his sword back in its scabbard and his hands shaking.
"I wanted to- thank you. For the axe. He would've-"
"Yeah."
"How did you know he was coming? You were facing the other direction."
Kael looked at the kid's hands. They were still shaking. "Get some water," he said. "Eat something. The shaking stops once your blood sugar comes back up."
The kid nodded and left.
Isuka sat down on the deck near him. Her rapier was sheathed and cleaned and she had both legs stretched out and her back against the railing and she was breathing with the slow deliberate rhythm of someone coming down from combat. There was a split on her lower lip. The skin had opened and blood had run down her chin and dried in a dark line from the corner of her mouth to her jaw.
She hadn't wiped it. She probably didn't know it was there.
He reached out and wiped the blood off her chin with his thumb.
His hand moved and his thumb touched her chin and the dried blood came off against his skin, a flake of dark red on the pad of his thumb, and her skin was warm underneath and slightly rough where the blood had been and he wiped the line from the corner of her mouth down to her jaw in one motion.
She froze.
The girl who'd punched holes in armed pirates two minutes ago went completely rigid because a thumb had touched her chin.
He pulled his hand back.
The blood was on his thumb. She was looking at him. Her brown eyes were wide behind the flat composure and the bandage on her cheek was splattered with someone else's blood and her split lip was clean now where his thumb had been and neither of them said anything.
The seabird circled the mast and left.
Kael looked at his thumb. He wiped it on his trousers.
Isuka looked at the ocean. Her jaw was working. She didn't say a word.
Across the deck, Tashigi was sitting against the mast wrapping gauze around her left wrist where a pirate's blade had caught her during the boarding. She was wrapping it carefully, the glasses crooked, Shigure across her lap, and she was looking directly at them. At the space between Kael's hand and Isuka's chin. She'd seen the whole thing.
Their eyes met. Tashigi's hands stopped wrapping for a second. Then she went back to the gauze. She didn't say anything either.
The cutter rocked on the swells. The prisoners were secured below. Haruki was in the wheelhouse talking to the comms officer about the Den Den Mushi. The salt air stung Kael's knuckles and his forearm was swelling and Isuka was sitting two feet away from him looking at the ocean and neither of them was going to talk about what had just happened.
The dried blood was still on his trousers where he'd wiped it. The smear was visible from where he sat. Dark red on Marine-issue white.
He looked at the ocean too.