The Apocalypse Ocean by Tobias S. Buckell, Pablo Defendini Page B

Palentar …”
    The boy looked exhausted.
    “I’m sorry,” Tiago muttered. “I’m very sorry. I thought you would be going with Nashara. Then you’d be back in your easy world and in your good life.”
    In another time, those words would have been said bitterly. But for now, Tiago actually wished all that for June.
    “The woman who tore the door off the wagon? Wait, Nashara? From the Xenowealth? Is she one of The Nasharas?”
    Tiago nodded. “Yes. One of them. Exactly. And she’s looking for Pepper. He fought the Doaq too, on Palentar.”
    “That was Pepper? From New Anegada?” June pretty much whispered. He put his head in his hands. “I was home alone. Then the walls exploded, and he just stood there.”
    Tiago leaned forward. “What did he say to you?” That, after all, was what this was all about. The great secret. The thing that Nashara and Kay were destroying neighborhoods over.
    “Nothing,” June hissed. “He didn’t say anything at all. He stood there for a moment, tapping his foot, looking around. When the house started to fall in, he grabbed me, set me down on the street outside, and then took off.”
    “That’s it?” Tiago said in shock. All this had been for nothing?
    All this had been for nothing!
    And what the hell would Kay do when she found out?
    Tiago looked at June. He was probably dead. He was useless, and she wouldn’t need him causing more trouble.
    Oh, poor kid, he thought.
    “Kay isn’t going to like that story,” Tiago said slowly to June.
    And to June’s credit, he got it right away. He looked frightened. “What do I do?”
    He was asking Tiago. And Tiago realized that he was probably the only thing June had to cling to right now.
    He thought about that. The Doaq was hunting them. Nashara might be dead, a victim of Kay’s machinations, just like Pepper. Tiago was going to have to run. Be on his own, again.
    He thought of the contact, the compulsion he had to do what Kay wanted. It came from her voice, her posture, the way she could read him. And it wasn’t real. With her out of the room, he could struggle away, couldn’t he? All that was left was his fear. Fear of consequences.
    Fear that she would track him down for betraying her.
    But fear could be conquered.
    “Nashara has a ship, an armed ship, she said, waiting for her. It’s called … the Strainer , or something like that,” Tiago said. Dock seventeen, he remembered Nashara saying. At the very end. But he wasn’t going to give that information up. And then he said something he never would have thought he could have dared. “Nashara came from the Xenowealth to rescue you. I think you should run for it and get aboard that ship, and get away from here.”
    And maybe, just maybe, Tiago thought, he could get aboard with him.
    “Can you help me? Can you help me get there?”
    “I could be trying to trick you,” Tiago said.
    “I don’t care. I’ll take the chance. Wouldn’t you want to be under the protection of a Nashara? That’s like being protected by the whole Xenowealth. She’s important. She’s famous for the things she did. She’s a hero of the independence. I don’t want to be trapped here; I don’t want to get eaten by the Doaq or killed by Kay.”
    Tiago found himself nodding with June. That was true. If Nashara hadn’t been killed by the Doaq, of course. They might have to convince her crew who they were if she was dead.
    They might even turn the two of them away. That would be a disaster. Kay would find them pretty quickly after that, if they didn’t get on board.
    Still …
    “I think I can pick the lock on the window bars,” Tiago said. The houses shoved up against each other tightly enough that they could jump down to the red-tiled roof of the house next door.
    “When do we go?” June stood up.
    “Once the market fills up with people. That’ll make it easier. And once it is lighter out, we’ll be able to see if rains. We don’t want to get caught out if that happens.”
    June’s