Jerico wondered what sort of things went through the scythe’s mind. Did he worry about tripping over his robe? Did he relive past gleanings? Or was he merely thinking about what he’d have for breakfast?
“He’s not a bad sort,” said Wharton, the ship’s deck watch officer, who had been in the position much longer than Jerico had had command of the ship.
“I actually like him,” said Jerico. “He’s a lot more honorable than some of the other ‘honorable scythes’ I’ve come across.”
“The fact that he chose us for this salvage says a lot.”
“Yes, I’m just not sure what it says.”
“I believe it says you chose your career path wisely.”
That was quite a compliment coming from Wharton – who was not a man given over to flattery. But Jerico couldn’t take full credit for the decision.
“I just took the Thunderhead’s advice.”
A few years earlier, when the Thunderhead had suggested Jerico might be happy pursuing a life at sea, it had annoyed Jerico no end. Because the Thunderhead was right. It had made a perfect assessment. Jerico had already been thinking along those lines, but to hear the Thunderhead make the suggestion was like a spoiler to the story. Jerico knew there were many seafaring lives to choose from. There were people who traveled the globe in search of the perfect wave to surf. Others spent their time racing sailboats or traversing oceans in tall ships modeled after vessels from bygone eras. But these were pastimes that served no practical purpose beyond the sheer joy of it. Jerico wanted a pursuit of happiness that was also functional. A career that added something tangible to the world.
Marine salvage was the perfect ticket – and not just dredging up things the Thunderhead intentionally sank to provide work for the salvage industry. That was no better than children digging up plastic dinosaur bones in a sandbox. Jerico wanted to recover things that had truly been lost, and that meant developing a relationship with the scythedoms of the world – because while ships under the Thunderhead’s jurisdiction never met with untimely ends, scythe vessels were prone to mechanical failure and subject to human error.
Shortly out of secondary school, Jerico took a position as a junior apprentice with a second-rate salvage team in the western Mediterranean – then, when Scythe Dali’s yacht sank in shallow waters off the coast of Gibraltar, it gave Jerico an unexpected opportunity for advancement.
Using standard diving gear, Jerico was one of the first to the wreck, and while the others were still surveying the scene, Jerico – against captain’s orders – went inside, found the body of the deadish scythe in his cabin, and brought him to the surface.
Jerico was fired on the spot. No surprise – after all, it was mutinous to disobey a direct order – but it was part of a calculated move. Because when Scythe Dali and his entourage were revived, the first thing the man wanted to know was who had pulled him from the sea.
In the end, the scythe was not only grateful, but exceptionally generous. He granted the entire salvage team a year of immunity from gleaning, but wanted to bestow something special on the one who had sacrificed everything to retrieve the body of the deadish scythe – for, clearly, that individual had their priorities in order. Scythe Dali asked what Jerico hoped to achieve in life.
“I’d like to run my own salvage operation someday,” Jerico told the scythe, thinking Dali might put in a good word. Instead the scythe brought Jerico to the E. L. Spence – a spectacular hundred-meter AGOR ship converted for marine salvage.
“You shall be this vessel’s captain,” Dali proclaimed. And since the Spence already had a captain, the scythe gleaned him on the spot, then instructed the crew to be obedient to their new captain or be gleaned themselves. It was, to say the least, very surreal.
It was not the way Jerico had wanted to achieve command, but had no more choice in the matter than the gleaned captain. Realizing that a crew would not easily take orders from a twenty-year-old, Jerico lied, professing to be fortysomething, but having recently turned the corner, setting back to a more youthful self. Whether or not they believed it was their business.
It took a long time for the crew to warm to their new captain. Some acted out in secret ways. The bout of food poisoning that first week, for instance, could likely be traced back to the cook. And although genetic testing would have determined precisely whose feces had found its way into Jerico’s shoes, pursuing it wasn’t worth the trouble.
The Spence and its crew traveled the world. Even before Jerico’s command, the salvage team had made a name for itself, but their new captain had the sense to hire a team of Tasmanian divers with gillform breathers. Having a dive team that could breathe underwater, combined with a first-rate retrieval crew, made them sought after by scythes around the world. And the fact that Jerico made retrieval of the deadish first priority over salvage of lost property gained them even greater respect.
Jerico had raised Scythe Akhenaten’s barge from the bottom of the Nile; retrieved Scythe Earhart’s deadish body from an ill-fated flight; and when Grandslayer Amundsen’s pleasure sub sank in icy waters off the RossShelf region of Antarctica, the Spence was summoned to retrieve him.
And then, toward the end of Jerico’s first year of command, Endura sank in the middle of the Atlantic, setting the stage for the greatest salvage operation in history.
Yet the curtains of that stage remained resolutely closed.
Without the Grandslayers of the World Scythe Council, there was no one in the world who could authorize a salvage. And with Goddard raving in North Merica that the Perimeter of Reverence not be breached, Endura’s ruins remained in limbo. Meanwhile, various regional scythedoms that had aligned with Goddard patrolled the perimeter, gleaning anyone caught there. Endura sank in water two miles deep, but it might as well have been lost in the space between stars.
With all that intrigue, it had taken quite a while for any regional scythedom to dredge up the nerve to attempt a salvage, and as soon as Amazonia declared its intention, others joined in – but since Amazonia was the first to stick its neck out, it insisted on being in charge. Other scythedoms squawked, but no one denied Amazonia. Mainly because it meant the region would bear the brunt of Goddard’s anger.
“You do realize that our current heading is more than a few degrees off course,” Chief Wharton pointed out to the captain, now that Possuelo was no longer on the bridge.
“We’ll correct course at noon,” Jerico told him. “It will delay our arrival by a few hours. Nothing more awkward than arriving too late in the day to begin operations, but too early to call it a night.”
“Good thinking, sir,” Wharton said, then took a quick glance outside and corrected himself, a bit abashedly. “I’m sorry, ma’am, my mistake. It was cloudy just a moment ago.”
“No need to apologize, Wharton,” Jerico said. “I don’t care either way – especially on a day when there’s as much sunshine as cloud cover.”
“Yes, Captain,” Wharton said. “No disrespect intended.”
Jerico would have smirked, but that would have been disrespectful to Wharton, whose apology, although unnecessary, was genuine. While it was a mariner’s job to mark the position of the sun and stars, they were simply not accustomed to meteorological fluidity.