Ann VanderMeer - Fast Ships, Black Sails

fAst ships,

BlAck sAils

EditEd By

Ann & JEff VAndErMEEr

Night Shade Books

San Francisco

BOOJUM

By ElizABEth BEAr & sArAh MOnEttE

The ship had no name of her own, so her human crew called her the LaviniaWhateley. As far as anyone could tell, she didnt mind. At least, her long grasping vanes curledaffectionately?when the chief engineers patted her bulkheads and called her Vinnie, and she ceremoniously tracked the footsteps of each crew member with her internal bioluminescence, giving them light to walk and work and live by.

The Lavinia Whateley was a Boojum, a deep-space swimmer, but her kind had evolved in the high tempestuous envelopes of gas giants, and their offspring still spent their infancies there, in cloud-nurseries over eternal storms. And so she was streamlined, something like a vast spiny lionfish to the earth-adapted eye. Her sides were lined with gasbags filled with hydrogen; her vanes and wings furled tight. Her color was a blue-green so dark it seemed a glossy black unless the light struck it; her hide was impregnated with symbiotic algae. Where there was light, she could make oxygen. Where there was oxygen, she could make water.

She was an ecosystem unto herself, as the captain was a law unto herself. And down in the bowels of the engineering section, Black Alice Bradley, who was only human and no kind of law at all, loved her.

Black Alice had taken the oath back in 2, after the Venusian Riots. She hadnt hidden her reasons, and the captain had looked at her with cold, dark, amused eyes and said, So long as you carry your weight, cherie, I dont care. Betray me, though, and you will be going back to Venus the cold way. But it was probably thatand the fact that Black Alice couldnt hit the broad side of a space freighter with a ray gunthat had gotten her assigned to Engineering, where ethics were less of a problem. It wasnt, after all, as if she was going anywhere. Black Alice was on duty when the Lavinia Whateley spotted prey; she felt the shiver of anticipation that ran through the decks of the ship. It was an odd sensation, a tic Vinnie only exhibited in pursuit. And then they were underway, zooming down the slope of the gravity well toward Sol, and the screens all around Engineeringwhich Captain Song kept dark, most of the time, on the theory that swabs and deckhands and coal-shovelers didnt need to know where they were, or what

ElIzABETH BEAR & SARAH MoNETTE

they were doingflickered bright and live.

Everybody looked up, and Demijack shouted, There! There! He was right: the blot that might only have been a smudge of oil on the screen moved as Vinnie banked, revealing itself to be a freighter, big and ungainly and hopelessly outclassed. Easy prey. Easy pickings.

We could use some of them, thought Black Alice. Contrary to the e-ballads and comm stories, a pirates life was not all imported delicacies and fawning slaves. Especially not when three-quarters of any and all profits went directly back to the Lavinia Whateley, to keep her healthy and happy. Nobody ever argued. There were stories about the Marie Curie, too.

The captains voice over fiber optic cablestrung beside the Lavinia Whateley s nerve bundleswas as clear and free of static as if she stood at Black Alices elbow.

Battle stations, Captain Song said, and the crew leapt to obey. It had been two Solar since Captain Song keelhauled James Brady, but nobody whod been with the ship then was ever likely to forget his ruptured eyes and frozen scream. Black Alice manned her station, and stared at the screen. She saw the freighters namethe Josephine Bakergold on black across the stern, the Venusian flag for its port of registry wired stiff from a mast on its hull. It was a steelship, not a Boojum, and they had every advantage. For a moment she thought the freighter would run.

And then it turned, and brought its guns to bear.

No sense of movement, of acceleration, of disorientation. No pop, no whump of displaced air. The view on the screens just flickered to a different one, as Vinnie skippedapportedto a new position just aft and above the Josephine Baker, crushing the flag mast with her hull.

Black Alice felt that, a grinding shiver. And had just time to grab her console before the Lavinia Whateley grappled the freighter, long vanes not curling in affection now. out of the corner of her eye, she saw Dogcollar, the closest thing the LaviniaWhateley had to a chaplain, cross himself, and she heard him mutter, like he always did, Ave, Grandaevissimi, morituri vos salutant. It was the best hed be able to do until it was all over, and even then he wouldnt have the chance to do much. Captain Song didnt mind other people worrying about souls, so long as they didnt do it on her time.

The captains voice was calling orders, assigning people to boarding parties port and starboard. Down in Engineering, all they had to do was monitor the LaviniaWhateley s hull and prepare to repel boarders, assuming the freighters crew had the gumption to send any. Vinnie would take care of the restuntil the time came to persuade her not to eat her prey before theyd gotten all the valuables off it. That was a ticklish job, only entrusted to the chief engineers, but Black Alice watched and listened, and although she didnt expect shed ever get the chance, she thought she could do it herself.

It was a small ambition, and one she never talked about. But it would be a hell of a thing, wouldnt it? To be somebody a Boojum would listen to?

BooJuM

She gave her attention to the dull screens in her sectors, and tried not to crane her neck to catch a glimpse of the ones with the actual fighting on them. Dogcollar was making the rounds with sidearms from the weapons locker, just in case. once the Josephine Baker was subdued, it was the junior engineers and others who would board her to take inventory.

Sometimes there were crew members left in hiding on captured ships. Sometimes, unwary pirates got shot. There was no way to judge the progress of the battle from Engineering. Wasabi put a stopwatch up on one of the secondary screens, as usual, and everybody glanced at it periodically. Fifteen minutes ongoing meant the boarding parties hadnt hit any nasty surprises. Black Alice had met a man once whod been on the Margaret Mead when she grappled a freighter that turned out to be carrying a divisions-worth of Marines out to the Jovian moons. Thirty minutes ongoing was normal. Forty-five minutes. upward of an hour ongoing, and people started double-checking their weapons. The longest battle Black Alice had ever personally been part of was six hours, forty-three minutes, and fifty-two seconds. That had been the last time the Lavinia Whateley worked with a partner, and the doublecross by the Henry Ford was the only reason any of Vinnies crew needed. Captain Song still had Captain Edwards head in a jar on the bridge, and Vinnie had an ugly ring of scars where the Henry Ford had bitten her. This time, the clock stopped at fifty minutes, thirteen seconds. The JosephineBaker surrendered.

Dogcollar slapped Black Alices arm. With me, he said, and she didnt argue. He had only six weeks seniority over her, but he was as tough as he was devout, and not stupid either. She checked the Velcro on her holster and followed him up the ladder, reaching through the rungs once to scratch Vinnies bulkhead as she passed. The ship paid her no notice. She wasnt the captain, and she wasnt one of the four chief engineers.

Quartermaster mostly respected crews own partner choices, and as Black Alice and Dogcollar suited upit wouldnt be the first time, if the