Ship Breaker (2 page)

Pima and the rest of the light crew swarmed around them as they hit bottom. They unclipped the spool and rolled it over to where they’d set up their stripping operation near the oil tanker’s prow. Lengths of discarded insulation from the electrical wire lay everywhere, along with the gleaming rolls of copper that they’d collected, stacked in careful lines, and marked with Bapi’s light crew claim mark, the same swirled symbol that scarred all their cheeks.

Everyone started unreeling sections of Nailer’s new haul, parting the lengths out amongst themselves. They worked quickly, accustomed to one another and the labor: Pima, their boss girl, taller than the rest and filling out like a woman, black as oil and hard as iron. Sloth, skinny and pale, bones and knots of knees and dirty blond hair, the next candidate for duct-and-scuttle work when Nailer got too big, her pale skin almost permanently sunburned and peeling. Moon Girl, the shade of brown rice, whose nailshed mother had died with the last run of malaria and who worked light crew harder than anyone else because she’d seen the alternative, her ears and lips and nose decorated with scavenged steel wire that she’d driven through her flesh in the hope that no one would ever want her the way they’d wanted her mother. Tick-tock, nearsighted and always squinting at everything around him, almost as black as Pima but nowhere near as smart, fast with his hands as long as you told him what do with them, and he never got bored. Pearly, the Hindu who told them stories about Shiva and Kali and Krishna and who was lucky enough to have both a mother and a father who worked oil scavenge; black hair and dark tropic skin and a hand missing three fingers from an accident with the winding drum.

And then there was Nailer. Some people, like Pearly, knew who they were and where they came from. Pima knew her mother came up from the last of the islands across the Gulf. Pearly told everyone who would listen that he was 100 percent Indian—Hindu Marwari through and through. Even Sloth said that her people were Irish. Nailer was nothing like that. He had no idea what he was. Half of something, a quarter of something else, brown skin and black hair like his dead mother, but with weird pale blue eyes like his father.

Pearly had taken one look at Nailer’s pale eyes and claimed he was spawned by demons. But Pearly made things up all the time. He said Pima was Kali reincarnated—which was why her skin was so black, and why she was so damn mean when they were behind quota. Even so, the truth was that Nailer shared his father’s eyes and his father’s wiry build, and Richard Lopez was a demon for sure. No one could argue that. Sober, the man was scary. Drunk, he was a demon.

Nailer unwound a section of wire and squatted down on the blazing deck. He crimped the wire with his pliers and ripped off a sleeve of insulation, revealing the shining copper core.

Did it again. And again.

Pima squatted beside him with her own length of wire. “Took you long enough to bring out this load.”

Nailer shrugged. “Nothing’s close in anymore. I had to go a long way to find it.”

“That’s what you always say.”

“You want to go into the hole, you can.”

“I’ll go in,” Sloth volunteered.

Nailer gave her a dirty look. Pearly snorted. “You don’t have the sense of a half-man. You’d get lost like Jackson Boy and then we’d get no scavenge at all.”

Sloth made a sharp gesture. “Grind it, Pearly. I never get lost.”

“Even in the dark? When all the ducts look the same?” Pearly spat toward the edge of the ship. Missed and hit the rail instead. “Crews on
Deep Blue III
heard Jackson Boy calling out for days. Couldn’t find him, though. Little licebiter finally just dried up and died.”

“Bad way to go,” Tick-tock commented. “Thirsty. In the dark. Alone.”

“Shut up, you two,” Moon Girl said. “You want the dead to hear you calling?”

Pearly shrugged. “We’re just saying Nailer always makes quota.”

“Shit.” Sloth ran a hand through sweaty blond hair. “I’d get twenty times the scavenge Nailer gets.”

Nailer laughed. “Go on in, then. We’ll see if you come out alive.”

“You already filled the spool.”

“Tough grind for you, then.”

Pima tapped Nailer’s shoulder. “I’m serious about the scavenge. We had downtime waiting for you.”

Nailer met Pima’s eyes. “I make quota. You don’t like my work, then go in yourself.”

Pima pursed her lips, annoyed. It was an empty suggestion, and they both knew it. She’d gotten too big, and had the scabs and scars on her spine and elbows and knees to prove it. Light crew needed small bodies. Most kids got bounced off the crew by the time they hit their midteens, even if they starved themselves to keep their size down. If Pima weren’t such a good crew boss, she’d already be on the beach, hungry and begging for anything that came her way. Instead, she had another year, maybe, to bulk up enough to compete against hundreds of others for openings in heavy crew. But her time was running out, and everyone knew it.

Pima said, “You wouldn’t be so cocky if your dad wasn’t such a whip-wire. You’d be in the same position as me.”

“Well, that’s one thing I can thank him for, then.”

If his father was any indication, Nailer would never be huge. Fast, maybe, but never big. Tick-tock’s dad claimed that none of them would grow that big anyway, because of the calories they didn’t eat. Said that people up in Seascape Boston were still tall, though. Had plenty of money, and plenty of food. Never went hungry. Got fat and tall…

Nailer had felt his belly up against his spine enough times that he wondered what it would be like to have so much food. Wondered how it would feel to never wake in the middle of the night with his teeth chewing on his lips, fooling himself into thinking that he was about to eat meat. But it was a stupid fantasy. Seascape Boston sounded a little too much like Christian Heaven, or the way the Scavenge God promised a life of ease, if you could just find the right offering to burn with your body when you went to his scales.

Either way, you had to die to get there.

The work went on. Nailer stripped more wire, tossing the junk insulation over the ship’s side. The sun beat down on everyone. Their skins gleamed. Salt sweat jewels soaked their hair and dripped into their eyes. Their hands turned slick with work, and their crew tattoos shone like intricate knots on their flushed faces. For a little while they talked and joked but gradually fell silent, working the rhythm of scavenge, building piles of copper for whoever was rich enough to afford it.

“Boss man coming!”

The warning call came up from the waters below. Everyone hunkered down, looking busy, waiting to see who would appear at the rail. If it was someone else’s boss, they could relax—

Bapi.

Nailer grimaced as their crew boss clambered up over the rail, huffing. His black hair gleamed, and his potbelly made it hard for him to climb, but there was money involved, so the bastard managed.

Bapi leaned against the rail, regaining his breath. Sweat darkened the tank top that he wore for work. Yellow and brown stains of whatever curry or sandwich he’d eaten for lunch dotted the material. It made Nailer hungry just looking at all that food on Bapi’s chest, but there was no meal coming until evening, and there was no point looking at food Bapi would never share.

Bapi’s quick brown eyes studied them, alert for signs that they’d gone lazy and weren’t serious about scavenging for quota. Even though none of them had been idle before, with Bapi watching they all worked faster, trying to demonstrate they were worth keeping. Bapi had been light crew himself once; he knew their ways, knew the tricks of laziness. It made him dangerous.

“What you got?” he asked Pima.

Pima glanced up, squinting into the sun. “Copper. Lots. Nailer found new ducts that Gorgeous’s crew missed.”

Bapi’s teeth flashed white, showing the front gap where a fight had cost him his incisors. “How much?”

Pima jerked her head at Nailer, giving him permission.

“Maybe hundred, hundred and twenty kilos so far,” Nailer estimated. “There’s more down there.”

“Yeah?” Bapi nodded. “Well, hurry and get it out. Don’t worry about stripping it. Just make sure you get it all.” He looked out toward the horizon. “Lawson & Carlson says a storm’s coming. Big one. We’re going to be off the wrecks for a couple days. I want enough wire that you can work it on the sand.”

Nailer stifled his distaste at the thought of going back down into the blackness, but Bapi must have caught something of his expression.

“Got a problem, Nailer? You think a storm means you get to sit on your ass?” Bapi waved toward the work camps strung along the beach’s jungle edge. “You think I can’t get a hundred other licebiters to take your place? There’s kids down there who’d let me cut out an eye if it would get them up on a wreck.”

Pima interceded. “He’s got no problem. You want the wire, we’ll get it. No problem.” She glared at Nailer. “We’re your crew, boss. No problem at all.”

They all nodded emphatically. Nailer got to his feet and handed the rest of his wire over to Tick-tock. “No problem, boss,” he repeated.

Bapi scowled at Nailer. “You sure you vouch for him, Pima? I can put a knife through this one’s crew tats and dump him on the sand.”

“He’s good scavenge,” she said. “We’re ahead on quota ’cause of him.”

“Yeah?” Bapi relented slightly. “Well, you’re boss girl. I don’t interfere.” He eyed Nailer. “You watch it, boy. I know how your kind thinks. Always imagining you’re going to be a Lucky Strike. Pretending you’ll find some big old oil pocket and never work another day in your life. Your old man was a lazy bastard like that. Look how he turned out.”

Nailer felt a rising anger. “I don’t talk about your dad.”

Bapi laughed. “What? You gonna fight me, boy? Try and pigstick me from behind the way your old man would?” Bapi touched his knife. “Pima vouches for you, but I’m wondering if you got the sense to know how much of a favor she’s doing.”

“Let it go, Nailer,” Pima urged. “Your dad’s not worth it.”

Bapi watched, smiling slightly. His hand lingered close to his knife. Bapi had all the cards, and they both knew it. Nailer ducked his head and forced down his anger.

“I’ll get your scavenge, boss. No problem.”

Bapi gave Nailer a sharp nod. “Smarter than your old man, then.” He turned to the rest of the crew. “Listen up, everyone. We don’t have a lot of time. If you get the extra scavenge out before the storm, I’ll bonus you. There’s another light crew coming on soon. We don’t want to leave them any easy pickings, right?”

He grinned, feral, and they all nodded back. “No easy pickings,” they echoed.

N
AILER WAS FARTHER
into the tanker than he’d ever been. No light crew marks gleamed in the darkness, no evidence of any other duct-and-scuttle workers marred the dust and rat droppings of the passage.

Overhead, three separate lines of copper wire ran ahead of him, a lucky find that meant he might even make Bapi’s quota, but Nailer was having a hard time caring. His mask kept clogging, and in the rush to dive back into the hole, he’d forgotten to renew his LED paint patch. Now he regretted it bitterly as darkness closed in.

He ripped down more tangling wire. The passage seemed to be getting narrower, even as the amount of copper increased. He eased forward, and the duct creaked all around, protesting his weight. Petroleum fumes burned in his lungs. He wished he could just quit and crawl out. If he turned around now, he could be back on deck in twenty minutes, breathing clean air.

But what if he didn’t have enough scavenge?

Bapi already didn’t like him. And Sloth was too damn eager to steal his slot. Her words still lingered in his mind:
“I’ll get twenty times the scavenge he does.”

A warning. He had competition now.

It didn’t matter that Pima vouched for him. If Nailer failed to pull quota, Bapi would slash out his work tattoos and give Sloth a try. And Pima couldn’t do a damn thing about it. No one was worth keeping if they didn’t make a profit.

Nailer wriggled onward, driven by Sloth’s hungry words. More and more copper came down in his hands. His LED faded to black. He was alone. Nothing but a trail of loosened electrical cable to lead him out. For the first time he feared he might not be able to find his way. The tanker was huge, one of the workhorses of the oil age, almost a floating city in itself. And now he was deep in its guts.

When Jackson Boy died, no one had been able to find him. They’d heard him banging away on the metal, calling out, but no could locate a way into the double hull where he’d trapped himself. A year later, heavy crews cut open a section of iron and the little licebiter’s mummified body had popped out like a pill from a blister pack. Dry like leaves, rattling as it hit the deck. Rat-chewed and desiccated.

Don’t think about it. You’ll just bring his ghost onto the ship.

The duct was tightening, squeezing around his shoulders. Nailer began to imagine himself stuck like a cork in a bottle. Pinned in the darkness, never able to get free. He strained forward and yanked down another length of wire.

Enough. More than enough.

Nailer hacked Bapi’s light crew code into the duct’s metal with his knife, doing it blind, but at least making a stab at saving the territory for later. He tightened himself into a ball. Knees against chin, elbows and spine scraping the duct walls as he turned himself around. Folding tighter, letting out his breath, fighting off images of corks and bottles and Jackson Boy caught in the darkness, dying alone. Tighter. Turning. Listening to the duct creak as he squeezed against metal.