She got to the forward edge of the superstructure. Light came from above. It wasn't the masthead floodlights; it seemed very bright in the darkness but it wasn't really, just the lights from the bridge. They weren't bothering to use the red night-lights which would keep their eyes adapted; maybe they didn't know about them. She looked at the deep shadows created by the hatches, and at the bows; the stem. Pale splinters. She went slowly forward, looking up. The bridge shone, end to end. She saw nobody. She walked backwards, then ducked into the shadow.
On hands and knees, she crawled up the slope of deck to the winches and lockers of the forecastle apron. She looked back at the bridge again; still nobody; it looked abandoned, until she saw a bloom of grey smoke climb into the air near midships, then another alongside. She waited for the smokers to appear, but they didn't. She edged forward to the closed-off V of the prow; and found herself stirring the splinters.
She was looking for the strings, but discovered the spike alone. The rest was matchwood. The pegs and strings must have been blown overboard. Whatever, she couldn't find them. She scuttled back into the shadows, the cello's spike jammed into the holster along with the Colt.
Back at the superstructure she could stand again, and did so, still trying to think what she was supposed to do. She took the spike out and felt foolish. She squatted down, gun between her knees, and looked out into the darkness beyond the bows. Insects curled above her, attracted by the lights of the bridge.
She saw Philippe fall, heard Mandamus shut up by a pistol shot, watched the cello blast out and fall, felt the soldiers push into her, smelled her own flesh burn as they pressed the cigarettes against her. She thought of the sky on fire, and looked up into the night, trying to imagine the stars beyond the cloud. The length of bridge-light was made busy by the circling insects.
She crept into the ship.
The saloon was dark and silent, and smelled of dried blood and expended smoke; the whole lower deck seemed deserted. The television lounge still smelled of semen. She sniffed the dark air, drawing the sharp, animal scent into her, stomach churning.
She took to the stairs and went up to the bridge.
Snoring came through the half-open door of the captain's cabin. She pushed the door further, waiting for a creak, or at least for the snoring to stop. No creak; the snoring continued.
She edged in, fingering the door a little wider behind her as she went, to give her more light. A suite, of course; another open door. She let her eyes adjust, then approached the bedroom. The cabin smelled of dampness and shampoo. There was a man lying on the bed, torso tangled with a single sheet, arms drawn up behind his head, face turned away into the corner of the bulkhead beneath and to the side of the porthole.
Sucre. His chest was smooth, almost hairless; nipples very dark in the half-light. She crossed quietly to the bed and fumbled with the holster at her hip.
She kissed him, hair brushing the sides of his face, shadowing. He jerked awake, eyes white. She drew back a little so that he could see her; he relaxed fractionally, then the eyes balled wide and he started up, hands clutching together at the sheet beneath him before one went back up to his head, fumbling beneath the pillow.
But he was too late, and she was already pumping down with the heels of her hands, the tip of the old cello spike on his chest then bursting through as she put all her weight on it, forcing it between his ribs and into his heart.
He tried to beat her face but she dodged, and waggled the spike inside his chest with one hand while she leant forward and round and slipped the pistol out from under his pillow with the other. He gurgled once, like somebody rinsing his mouth, and darkness spread around his lips and the hole the spike had made in his chest; the moon-white sheets turned black where his blood touched.
The last noise he made as his chest subsided surprised her; then she realised it came not from his mouth but from the wound around the cello spike. She watched the dark bubbles for a moment.
She put the pistol — another Colt — into a pocket in the fatigue jacket. There was a walkie-talkie on the bedside table, so she stuffed that in a trouser pocket. She left the spike where it was. She was terrified of one of them coming back to life, so she pressed her thumb down on to Sucre's right eye while she held the Colt against one of his ears. She pressed hard but nothing happened. She drew her hand away with a shiver, suddenly afraid of the eye bursting and the fluid trickling down his cheek.
She decided Sucre was really dead. She took his Kalashnikov because it had a nightsight and dumped the other one. There was an Uzi on the table; she took that, a silencer for it and a few extra magazines. She was starting to get weighed down, and had to walk carefully as she left, trying not to clink.
The bridge smelled of tobacco, but there was nobody there. She felt cheated. She looked in all the cabins on that deck, even the one where Orrick had killed the first soldier, but there was nobody in any of them.
She went down to the next deck.
Nothing. She looked out through the blinds covering the windows on the forward lounge and saw somebody at the bows; the light from the bridge was just enough to make the man out. She scratched her head, went back out into the corridor and stood by the companionways leading up and down but heard nothing. She went back down to the main deck level and out on to the external deck under the overhang. She could still see the man. He seemed to be leaning at the very prow of the ship, his feet in the cello splinters, looking out into the night to where the dimmed lights of the distant Nakodo shimmered on the water.
She took the beret out of the epaulette, pushed the hair not held by the strip of yukata up underneath the beret, and walked quietly up the deck towards the man. She glanced up once at the bridge as she went, seeing nothing but emptiness and lights.
He didn't even hear her until she was less than five metres away. He turned, saw her, turned away again, gazing out over the water, and only then looked back, face puzzled.
She was on him while the expression of puzzlement was starting to turn into suspicion and he was reaching for his rifle. She already had hers; it cracked up and into his chin, throwing his head back and whacking it off the bulwark. He clattered to the deck like a broken doll.
He was not one of those who'd raped her and she didn't have the heart to kill him just like that, so she dragged him to the starboard anchor's chain locker, stripped him of weaponry, chucked him in, gently closed the hatch and dogged it. Carting all this hardware around was exhausting her, so she tipped all his armament and one of the Colts overboard. The splashes sounded very small and far away. She crept away again, back to the main body of the ship.
Then she found the others.
They were playing cards, below deck level, under an opened skylight set in the deck just in front of the leading edge of the superstructure. Smoke drifted out of the aperture; tobacco and hash. She took a peek over the lip and saw a table, cans of San Miguel, a thick joint, and hands of cards and hands of men.
It had been a long time since she'd smoked any dope. She lay there, shoulder against the raised metal lip round the skylight, remembering, then quietly took a grenade out of its velcro fastening, clutched the handle, removed the pin, let go the handle, sub-vocalised 'wun-ih erephantu, two-ri erephantu, tri erephantu, fori erephantu, favi erephantu', and was still chuckling to herself as she reached up and dropped the grenade through the skylight.