Echoes: City of Cobalt, page 1
Echoes: City of Cobalt
By S. J. McLaughlin
www.sjmclaughlin.com
© 2015 S. J. McLaughlin
All Rights Reserved.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 1
Echo swung over the railing and landed on the deck. She brushed the black hair from her eyes. The ship was decimated. Burn marks covered the walls. The two smokestacks were toppled, and the smell of salt and burnt flesh lingered.
“Hello?” Echo said. She looked both directions but saw no one. Maybe they’re all dead, she thought and walked the deck.
Unlike her own, this ship was large. It had a raised deck, which Echo needed to climb to get to, and a pointed bow. It looked like something from the old world, but she knew it wasn’t.
It had been a few years since Echo saw a ship in this style. Most Drifters preferred ships that were small and harder to spot from a distance. Her own ship was only a level tall and had the deck near the waterline. Echo had a hunch these weren’t normal Drifters. There’s only one reason someone would want to be seen.
She heard the rattle of a gun and the sound of footsteps behind her. Echo smiled and turned around, seeing two of the crew. A girl around fifteen, and a man in his twenties. Both had disheveled clothes and wool caps. The girl held a rifle in her hands.
“You’re the crew, I take it?” Echo said. “Which is the captain? Or did he burn?”
The girl with the rifle stepped forward and looked Echo up and down. “Are you alone?”
“What’s your name?” Echo asked.
The girl jumped, but kept her composure. “I’m the one in charge. Answer the question.”
“I’m alone, but I have my ship just over there,” Echo said and pointed over the railing. “Now answer mine.”
The girl hesitated for a second. “It’s Vera.”
“Good,” Echo said. “I’m looking to trade. I have dried and tanned salmon skins and some papers. If you’re interested.”
Vera glanced at her crewmate. They nodded at each other. “There’s only one thing we want from you.”
Echo smirked. “I’m interested.”
“Well, our cargo was stolen just a few nights back. And a pretty young girl like you is worth more than any of that cargo was.”
Echo rolled her eyes. She knew what kind of ship this was. “That cargo was people, wasn’t it?”
“We had a dozen of them before we were boarded and had them all stolen. Then they burned the decks and killed our crew.”
Echo scoffed. “I’m having trouble figuring out which of you was in the wrong.”
“Ben, cuff her and we’ll take her to the bridge to meet Brook,” Vera said. “If she fights, try not to damage her.”
Vera kept the rifle pointed at Echo while Ben took a pair of handcuffs from his belt. In all my years at sea, I’ve never seen a gun that wasn’t empty, Echo thought. Her eyes scanned the rifle. Ben reached for her wrist in an attempt to cuff her. Echo slid the blade from her belt and grabbed his arm, yanking him onto her knife.
He coughed, blood spitting from his lips as the blade rested through his chest. Echo yanked the blade out and let his body fall to the deck. Echo turned to Vera. “Now, is that gun empty? Or did your finger slip?”
Vera was sweating as the rifle shook in her hands. Echo took a few steps to close the distance between them.
“I’m going to assume it’s empty,” Echo said, the corners of her mouth curling to a smile.
A round of gunshots. Echo flinched as the sound stung her ears. Bullets flew in all directions. The kickback from the rifle threw Vera off balance.
Vera stopped shooting for a moment to compose herself. Echo noticed Vera’s distraction and took the opportunity to dash forward. She put her hand under the barrel of the rifle and lifted it into the air. When Vera tried to shoot again, the rounds shot into the sky.
Echo put her blade into Vera’s heart, killing her almost instantly. The two caught eyes during that moment. The body fell to the deck.
“I tried to be nice and trade with you,” she said while looking at Vera, “But you tried to chain me up and sell me and that’s practically asking to be killed.”
Echo cleaned the blood off her knife and stuck it back onto her belt. She grabbed Vera’s rifle and started towards the bridge. “Maybe the rest of your crew will be a little more reasonable.”
She peeked through the window into the bridge. Two people huddled against a fire of burning nettles. One was a young man with cuts on his face. The other was a woman with red hair and a resting scowl. Given their ages, they could have been mother and son, or lovers. Echo wasn’t sure which.
Echo stepped into the doorway and aimed the gun at them, “Which one of you is Brook?”
They both froze in place. The woman held a pan with salmon roasting on it. “I am Brook,” she said and set the pan on the ground. “Are you here to kill us?”
“I’m not here to kill you,” Echo said, “But I wouldn’t hesitate.”
“Have you come to steal from us?” Brook asked.
“I came here to trade,” Echo said, “But after two attempts at my life, I think stealing’s a better option.”
“Did you kill them?” the man asked. Echo heard the thirst in his voice.
“I didn’t check their pulses or anything like that,” Echo said, “But I’m going to assume, yes, they’re dead.”
Brook was trembling. “If we give you what you want, will you leave?”
“Sure,” Echo said.
“Then what do you want from us?”
Echo thought for a moment before answering, “You have any batteries?”
She watched them sail away from the deck of her ship. Echo felt foolish for thinking they had any batteries aboard. None of the lights were on and they were using an open flame to cook. They didn’t even have fresh water to spare. She consider asking for their meal, but she let them keep it.
Their ship vanished into the horizon of the endless ocean. Echo felt the solitude sink in. They were the first people she had seen in months. It was a risk boarding them, but she craved conversation too much to ignore them.
“Vera might have been scum, but at least it was fun talking to her,” Echo muttered as she wandered back to her cabin.
She turned on the bedside lamp. It flickered to life, struggling to use what little power the ship had left.
Her room was cozy. There was a single bed with a duck-feather mattress and a metal frame. Her sheets were wearing out, but cotton was too rare to replace it. She sat down at her desk, the chair a simple stool with a cotton cushion for comfort. She had stacks of paper and a box full of pens and brushes. Most was nettle paper, but Echo was lucky enough to have rice and bamboo paper as well.
Echo took a hair-tipped brush and dipped it into an inkwell. There was no thought or hesitation as she spread the sepia ink onto the page. She painted a crude picture of the ship she had boarded. The burnt deck and the rusted sides were drawn in loose detail.
The painting was wobbly. Echo had trouble painting straight lines and wasn’t able to do shading, but she didn’t mind. No one ever saw them, and few created art in their world.
She’d discovered a year ago, much to her delight, that squid ink gave a lush blue color. Mix that with water and she could paint a sky and an ocean. She started painting the water, trying to give it depth and shading with the limited materials she had.
The cabin shook, knocking her hand across the page and smudging her work. The lights flickered and she heard voices outside. She washed the brush off in a bowl of salt water and put her painting into the drawer.
What the hell’s going on? Echo thought as she looked out her door. No longer could she see the ocean or the sky. There was only a wall of metal.
There was a pair of footsteps outside her cabin. They landed on the back deck and were heading straight for her. Echo had to react fast. She wasn’t about to take on several people in a straight fight. If she was to have a chance of winning, she’d need to catch them off guard. After jumping in bed and throwing a blanket on top of her, she took the knife from her belt and rested it under her pillow.
Echo played the role of being asleep and unaware. Her eyes were open to slits, able to make out the shapes of three bodies searching her room. She couldn’t tell if they were armed, but it was safe to assume they were. Her hand was sweating as it held her blade tight.
“Pretty one, ain’t she?” one of the intruders whispered to the others. Echo wasn’t able to see her, but felt breath against her face. “Maybe we’ll keep her.”
Echo heard one of them shuffling through her papers and did her best to keep the anger off her face.
“Damn, look at all this paper,” a second voice said. He was male and young. “Brandt be happy to get all this. We’ve been running low on paper lots.”
“We grab the girl and take her to the Cobalt,” the female intruder said, “then come back for supplies.”
A split second and the girl was on the floor with a hole in her chest.
Echo stood up, holding the stained knife in her grip. She got her first look at the two remaining intruders. One was a heavy man with a blunt metal weapon and a blue vest. The other was a woman whose blade was too long to use in a room that sma
The man swung first, lifting his weapon over his head and putting his full weight into the swing. Echo grabbed the girl by her sword and threw her into the path of his weapon.
Echo saw the look on his face as he killed her. The girl took the swing into the side of her head, ripping through and cutting into her shoulder. A feeling of guilt hit Echo as she dug her knife into his throat. The whole brawl only took a few seconds before Echo stood victorious.
She stepped out of her cabin and felt the ocean air brushing her face. The sun had dipped below the horizon and should have left her in darkness, yet everything around her glowed.
“I don’t believe it,” she whispered as her eyes trailed the massive ship beside her. No, it wasn’t a ship. It was a city.
In the ten years Echo had been at sea she had seen a lot of cities, but nothing like this. Most cities were flat, with streets and houses on top, but this looked like an oversized ship. It was 1,200 feet long with windows littering the long side of it. Echo counted 9 stories from top to bottom, but she wasn’t sure how far underwater it went.
Her ship was anchored to a small dock sticking out the side of the Cobalt. On the deck was a door that led inside the ship. Echo knelt down next to where the ships were linked. The only thing keeping her from drifting away was a simple hook with a chain. It would be easy to get the two ships apart. Echo had enough battery to get away from their city before sunrise. She grabbed the anchor and put her foot to the railing and was ready to unhook it. She stopped.
A ship that big would have to have spare batteries kicking around, Echo thought with a smirk. She ran back into her cabin. The three she killed were wearing the same blue vest. It has to be a uniform, Echo thought and examined the bodies. If she was going to board the Cobalt, she’d have to hide in plain sight. And if they were wearing matching uniforms, she’d need one as well.
The uniforms of the two woman were damaged, but the man’s vest was still intact. Echo took off her jacket and undershirt, then slipped the vest over her bare skin. Leather shirts always feel weird, she thought as she laced up the vest. Echo noticed the neck was unusually low-cut, but assumed it was part of the uniform. On the front of the vest was a white, circular badge that read ‘COBALT’ in bold letters.
“Okay, Echo, think,” she said, sitting on the corner of her bed. “If I go into the ship, they’ll just assume that I’m one of them, but depending on how often this dock is used, they might find my ship and I’ll be trapped here.”
She went outside and looked far to her right, not able to see the front of the Cobalt. The stern, however, was only a few dozen feet away. She had an anchor at the back of her ship with over 50 feet of chain. Echo took the anchor and hooked it to the Cobalt’s dock beneath the water.
“Okay, let’s hope this works,” she said and unhooked the anchor that the intruders used.
Echo’s ship drifted away until the anchor line tensed. Echo was past the stern of the ship, far enough that she couldn’t see the dock and barely saw the Cobalt. Unless they send out a perimeter sweep, they’d never find her ship.
Echo knelt down and rubbed the deck of her boat. “Now you stay put,” she said calmly. “I’ll be gone a few hours. At most.”
She tied her scarf to one of the railings and gave one last look at her ship before diving into the ocean.
Chapter 2
The water felt like needles against her skin. She sunk instantly. Her vision was nothing but darkness. The current took her, forcing her to struggle to the surface. Once her head was above water she couldn’t see the Cobalt. The waves were high and lapping at her face. She took harsh breaths every chance she could, filling her mouth with the taste of salt water.
While she couldn’t see the ship, the light coming from it was bright enough to let her know which direction to swim. She struggled her way to the ship, taking wave after wave against her body. Her waterlogged clothes wanted to suck her under the water, but Echo wasn’t going to let that happen.
The dock was within reach. Echo lunged, throwing every bit of strength she had into it. Her fingers grazed the railing, the wetness making her hand slip as she tried to grab it. She felt her heart jolt and her hands flail as she tried to grab hold of anything. Her fingers brushed the edge of the dock and she grabbed it.
Her arms burned as she struggled to get her chest onto the dock. The rest of the pull was easier from there, swinging her legs onto the dock and then getting her waist up. Her breath was erratic and her heart was racing. It’d been a while since she had to swim and forgot how difficult it was.
Once she caught her breath, she stood up and shook some of the water off. Her hair was flat against her head and she left a trail of water wherever she walked. At least the swim had cleaned the blood from the vest.
She sat beside the door. It was a windy night, so her clothes wouldn’t take long to dry. She scratched her scalp, running her fingers through her hair to clean out the salt. Her hair was thin enough that the wind dried it in a less than an hour.
The door had a horizontal slit that let her see inside. She looked through and saw people walking down the hall. It was busy for night, with a person walking by every odd minute.
“Okay, Echo, nothing to worry about,” she said to herself. “You’re just a Cobalt and you have places to go and people to see. No one will think otherwise unless you’re nervous looking.”
Once she convinced herself, she opened the door and walked inside.
It wasn’t as pretty as Echo imagined. Perhaps it was the massive size of the ship that raised her expectations, but the inside of the ship was raw and industrial. The walls were metal plates of different quality riveted together with no pattern at all. Brushed metal made the floor, with rivets every few feet that you could snag your foot on. The lighting was dim, which made the shadows lurch along the ground.
She ended up in a lobby. It was a circular room with stairs that led in all directions. There were a surprising amount of people out this time of night. Echo took a deep breath before walking out among them.
Confidence was key in these situations. If there was any sign she looked lost they’d know she wasn’t supposed to be there. She had to pick a direction and stick with it. Any meandering around and she’d draw attention to herself.
The stairs on the left seemed a good choice.
It didn’t take long before Echo noticed that the other woman were wearing high cut vests. Echo’s was cut halfway down the chest. A pinch of fear struck her as she realized that her disguise wasn’t as tight as she thought it was. She couldn’t help but feel that everyone was looking at her, but passed it off as nerves.
The more people she passed, the more nervous she became. Not only was she wearing a man’s uniform, her hair was far longer than theirs. No one had any equipment on their belts and they wore boots while Echo was in her bare feet.
“Hello!” a woman said from behind her. “A little low cut today?”
Echo turned around and saw a woman with short blonde hair and a sharp face. The woman looked straight at her with a warm smile. Echo felt a rush of panic. She had a few seconds to think of an excuse before it seemed weird that she wasn’t speaking.
“Bit of a mix-up with the laundry,” Echo said, putting on her best look of embarrassment. “I didn’t want to complain, so I wore it.”
“Oh honey, you didn’t have to subject yourself to that,” the woman said with a smile. “It was probably one of those new servants we just got in.”
“New servants?” Echo asked, and immediately regretted. She should have pretended that she knew about the new servants, but her curiosity got the better of her.
“You have haven’t heard about the new servants?” she said. “I guess the news isn’t spread as far as I thought. Just the other night near twenty were brought on board. But, now you didn’t hear this from me, they were most likely stolen. A friend of a friend of mine said they didn’t buy from the usual slave markets. No, no, no. They found a tiny little slaver that was making rounds and stole every one. Then they slaughtered the all of the crew and torched the deck.”
Not all of the crew, Echo thought as she faked a laugh. “Doesn’t matter where you get your slaves I suppose,” Echo said, unable to completely hide the shaking from her voice.
