Ship Breaker Quotes

Killing isn't free. It takes something out of you every time you do it. You get their life; they get a piece of your soul. It's always a trade.

I'm a chess piece. A pawn,' she said. 'I can be sacrificed, but I cannot be captured. To be captured would be the end of the game.

The problem with surviving was that you ended up with the ghosts of everyone you’d ever left behind riding on your shoulders.

It’s human nature to tear one another apart. Be glad you come from such a successful line of killers.

I do not fight battles that cannot be won. Do not confuse that with cowardice.

Your body is full of rage. Every sinew. It is easy to read. You speak volumes with a clenched fist.

When you were alone in the rising ocean, you grabbed whatever raft passed by.

Crew up, Nailer!" Lucky Girl shouted. "You think I'm going to pull your ass up here like a damn swank?

Blood is not destiny.

Some things, it was better not to think about. It just made you mad and angry.

They’d blame a castoff just for breathing. You could be good as gold and they’d still blame you.

The thought burrowed into her heart as darkness fell. It coiled in her guts as she wedged herself amongst the boughs of a tree to sleep. And in the morning, it woke with her and clung to her back, riding on her shoulders as she climbed down, hungry and exhausted from nightmares.

Never beg for mercy. Accept that you have failed. Begging is for dogs and humans.

She was too smart for his own good.

But then, that was the problem with pretty toy stitches. When real life got hold of them, they always tore out.

You couldn’t live close to war and not have it grab you eventually.

You're afraid to gamble even when you're already dead

We waste all our money throwing dice, trying to get close to Luck, trying to get the big win... To help us find something we can keep for ourselves.

Don't tell me about worth," Nita said. "My father commands fleets." "The wealthy measure everything with the weight of their money." Tool leaned close. "Sadna once risked herself and the rest of her crew to help me escape from an oil fire... Your father commands fleets. And thousands of half-men, I am sure. But would he risk himself to save a single one?

No one else could see all the bodies she’d left behind, but they were there, looking at her. Or maybe that was just her, looking at herself, and not liking what she saw. Knowing she could never escape her own judging gaze.

It only takes a few politicians to stoke division, or a few demagogues encouraging hatred to set your kind upon one another. And then before you know it, you have a whole nation biting on its own tail, going round and round until there is nothing left but the snapping of teeth.

Pain held no terror for him. Pain was, if not friend, then family, something he had grown up with in his crèche, learning to respect but never yield to. Pain was simply a message, telling him which limbs he could still use to slaughter his enemies, how far he could still run, and what his chances were in the next battle.

She’d survived the Drowned Cities because she wasn’t anything like Mouse. When the bullets started flying and warlords started making examples of peacekeeper collaborators, Mahlia had kept her head down, instead of standing up like Mouse. She’d looked out for herself, first. And because of that, she’d survived.

When people fight for ideals, no price is too high, and no fight can be surrendered. They aren't fighting for money, or power, or control. Not really. They're fighting to destroy their enemies.

If I was strategic, I would have figured out how to get out of this place. Would have seen everything falling apart and got out while there were still ships to sail.

You think you are some fine predator? A swamp panther or coywolv?” He pretended to inspect her. “Where are your teeth and claws, girl?” He bared his teeth. “Where is your bite?

Tool wondered if the girl was going mad. It happened to people. Sometimes they saw too much and their minds went away. They lost the will to survive. They curled up and surrendered to madness.

Lock it away,” the half-man whispered. “You feel, after. Not now. Now you are a soldier. Now you do your duty for your pack. If you break, your Mouse will die, and you with him. Feel, after. Not now.

Blood is not destiny, no matter what others may believe.

Maggot twitch, some people called it. If you’d seen much of the war, you had it. Some more. Some less. But everybody had it.

Hell, we’re all bullet bait sooner or later. Doubt it makes much difference. You make it to sixteen, you’re a goddamn legend.

Death is not defeat, Tool told himself. We all die. Every one of us. Rip and Blade and Fear and all the rest. We all die. So what if you are the last? You were designed to be destroyed.

Mahlia just waited. She was good at that. When you were a castoff, it didn’t do any good trying to talk to people, but sometimes, if you just kind of waited them out, people would get uncomfortable and feel like they had to do something.

Knowing all and having the necessary tools are two different things. This is hardly a hospital. We make do with what we have, and none of that is Mahlia’s fault. Tani is the victim of many evils, but Mahlia is not the beginning of that chain, nor the end. I am responsible, if anyone is.

The idea made Mahlia’s chest tighten. It was her own fantasy, the secret one she sometimes curled up to when she went to bed, knowing that it was stupid, but still wanting it, wanting it to somehow all make sense.

No one else noticed, or cared. It was just something they did. Taking other people’s livestock. Other people’s lives. She watched the soldiers, hating them. They were different in so many ways, white and black, yellow and brown, skinny, short, tall, small, but they were all the same. Didn’t matter if they wore finger-bone necklaces, or baby teeth on bracelets, or tattoos on their chests to ward off bullets. In the end, they were all mangled with battle scars and their eyes were all dead.

The horrors of the swamps loomed, wild and hungry. Kudzu vines became coiling pythons, dropping from above. Coywolv flitted from tree to tree, pacing her. The jungle had teeth, and suddenly it had become alien and feral.

Nailer smiled bitterly in the acrid wind. That was what thinking about clipper ships got you. A lungful of smoke because you weren't paying attention to what was around.

Mahlia knew the many voices of war from her father’s chant.

You cannot bargain with me. My heart is the clock. Find medicine before it ticks dry, and buy your friend’s life. Fail and his corpse is all you will find here.

Watch your mouth,” Mahlia said, “or I’ll stitch your guts shut.

Her face was smeared with mud and blood and ash. Just another bit of debris in the wreckage of war.

Suicide is not something I owe you or yours.

Tool glanced over his shoulder, looking to see if the girl might have changed her mind, but she was gone. Swallowed up by the land. The Drowned Cities ate its children.

Debts are a heavy burden. Throw them off, and you walk free.

I never turned children to war," Tool said. "Only because you fought on the side of wealth,

The Drowned Cities hadn’t always been broken. People broke it. First they called people traitors and said they didn’t belong. Said these people were good and those people were evil, and it kept going, because people always responded, and pretty soon the place was a roaring hell because no one took responsibility for what they did, and how it would drive others to respond.

Soldiers have been looting and burning for generations. Perhaps they burned the town because of you, or perhaps they did it because they disliked the whiskey. Soldiers kill and rape and loot for a thousand reasons. The one thing I am certain of is that neither you nor I did this burning.” Tool reached down and turned Mahlia’s gaze to meet his own. “Do not seek to own what others have done.

Family. It was just a word…Could see its letters all strung together. But it was a symbol, too. And people thought they knew what it meant…It was a thing everyone had an opinion about—that it was all you had when you didn’t have anything else, that family was there, that blood was thicker than water, whatever. But when Nailer thought about it, most of these words and ideas just seemed like good excuses for people to behave badly and get away with it. Family wasn’t more reliable than marriages or friendships…maybe less…The blood bond was nothing. It was the people that mattered. If they covered your back, and you covered theirs, then maybe that was worth calling family.

A final stand, then. One last battle. At least he could say that he had fought. When he met his brothers and sisters on the far side of death, he would tell them that he had not yielded. He might have betrayed everything that they had been bred for, but he had never yielded.

Save your shaming for the girl, Doctor. If I cared for human approval, I would have been dead long ago.” He turned and started wading into the swamp. “Time is passing. I, for one, have no intention of remaining here for your betrayer to bring back the soldiers and their guns.

On the second floor was the office in which Houston pounded an ancient typewriter with two fingers, always setting an example of unceasing hard work for his admiring students. They had no hint of the fact that their hard-driving dean had contracted tuberculosis while serving as a GI in France in Word War I. Houstan always seemed vibrant and impassioned in the chase for justice as he tried to expose his students to everything relating to the law that might give them an advantage. . . . "I never worked hard until I got to the Howard Law School and met Charlie Houston," Marshal told me. "I saw this man's dedication, his vision, his willingness to sacrifice, and I told myself, 'You either shape up or ship out.' When you are being challenged by a great human being, you know that you can't ship out." So Houston rescued Marshall and launched him into a career as one of the greatest lawyers in American history.

Running. She was always running. Like a rabbit chased by coywolv. Always hunting for some new safe bolt hole, and every time, the soldier boys found her, and forced her to rabbit again. The doctor was wrong. There was no place to hide, and she’d never be safe as long as she remained close to the Drowned Cities.

Why do I make room in my mind for such filth and nonsense? Do I hope that if feeling disguises itself as thought I shall feel less? Aren’t all these notes the senseless writhings of a man who won’t accept the fact that there is nothing we can do with suffering except to suffer it? Who still thinks there is some device (if only he could find it) which will make pain not to be pain. It doesn’t really matter whether you grip the arms of the dentist’s chair or let your hands lie in your lap. The drill drills on. And grief still feels like fear. Perhaps, more strictly, like suspense. Or like waiting; just hanging about waiting for something to happen. It gives life a permanently provisional feeling. It doesn’t seem worth starting anything. I can’t settle down. I yawn, I fidget, I smoke too much. Up till this I always had too little time. Now there is nothing but time. Almost pure time, empty successiveness. One flesh. Or, if you prefer, one ship. The starboard engine has gone. I, the port engine, must chug along somehow till we make harbour. Or rather, till the journey ends. How can I assume a harbour? A lee shore, more likely, a black night, a deafening gale, breakers ahead—and any lights shown from the land probably being waved by wreckers. Such was H.’s landfall. Such was my mother’s. I say their landfalls; not their arrivals.

That’s what the pig in the pen says when his brother gets knifed for dinner.” He shrugged. “You’re still in the pen. Still gonna die.

Fates he was tired.

They were hunters. But now, as night closed in on them, and the swamp became black and hot and close, they were becoming prey.

Alejandro saw you looking at them.” “I’m looking at you,” Mahlia said. “That mean you’re dead, too?

Don’t go off like that,” he said. “Makes me think you’ll just tip right off.

The theater of operation built itself in Tool’s mind.

She’d been so busy worrying about soldier boys and villagers she’d forgotten the jungle had hunters of its own, and now she was going to die for it.

A gamble. Everything was a damn gamble. Betting against luck and the Fates, again and again, and again. She kept walking, waiting for the bullet.

Doctor Mahfouz used to say living in the Drowned Cities made people crazy. Like it came in with the tide. When the water came up, so did the killing.

The only reason you think you’ve got morals is because you don’t need money the way regular people do.

The wealthy measure everything with the weight of their money.

A whole waterlogged world of optimism, torn down by the patient work of changing nature.

You call me castoff,” Mahlia said, “Chinese throwaway, whatever.” Amaya was trying to look away, but Mahlia had her pinned, kept her eye to eye. “My old man might have been peacekeeper, but my mom was pure Drowned Cities. You want to war like that, I’m all in.” Mahlia lifted the scarred stump of her right hand, shoved it up in Amaya’s face. “Maybe I cut you the way the Army of God cut me. See how you do with just a lucky left. How’d you like that?

A rush of primal satisfaction flooded Tool as his opponent surrendered to death. Blackness swamped Tool’s vision, and he let go. He had conquered. Even as he died, he conquered.

You can’t know its mind, and you can’t control it. This creature is nothing but war incarnate. If you traffic with it, you bring war into your house, and violence down upon yourself.

If she had been born in another place, during another time, he supposed she might have been the sort of girl who concerned herself with boyfriends and parties and fashionable clothes. If she had lived in a Boston arcology or a Beijing super tower, perhaps. Instead, she carried scars, and her hand was a stump, and her eyes were hard like obsidian, and her smile was hesitant, as if anticipating the suffering that she knew awaited her, just around the corner.

Her whispering lips brushed his ear. She was praying. Soft begging words to Ganesha and the Buddha, to Kali-Mary Mercy and the Christian God...she was praying to anything at all, begging the Fates to let her walk from the shadow of death. Pleas spilled from her lips, a desperate trickle. She was broken, soon to die, but still the words slipped out in a steady whisper. Tum Karuna ke saagar Tum palankarta hail Mary full of grace Ajahn Chan Bodhisattva, release me from suffering... He drew away. Her fingers slipped from his cheek like orchid petals falling.

Mahlia… understood Doctor Mahfouz and his blind rush into the village. He wasn’t trying to change them. He wasn’t trying to save anyone. He was just trying to not be part of the sickness. Mahlia had thought he was stupid for walking straight into death, but now, as she lay against the pillar, she saw it differently. She thought she’d been surviving. She thought that she’d been fighting for herself. But all she’d done was create more killing, and in the end it had all led to this moment, where they bargained with a demon … not for their lives, but for their souls” (p. 403)

Doctor Mahfouz was always yammering on about how everyone had humanity in them. From Mahlia’s experience, the doctor was sliding high, but now, as she looked at this sergeant named Ocho, she wondered if there was some bit of softness in this hard scarred boy that she might be able to work.

The man had become more unpredictable as he worked less on the crews and worked more in the shadow world of the beaches, as his drugs whittled him down to a burning core of violence and hungers.

The blood bond was nothing. It was the people that mattered. If they covered your back, and you covered theirs, then maybe that was worth calling family. Everything else was just so much smoke and lies.

It’s still a load. If there was balance, the soldier boys would all be dead, and we’d be sitting pretty in the middle of the Drowned Cities, shipping marble and steel and copper and getting paid Red Chinese for every kilo. We’d be rich and they’d be dead, if there was such a thing as the Scavenge God, or his scales. And that goes double for the Deepwater priests. They’re all full of it. Nothing balances out.

Her father would return from China. He’d come back with all his soldiers. He’d pick her up in his strong arms and say that he’d never meant to leave, that he hadn’t meant to sail away and leave her and her mother alone in the canals of the Drowned Cities as the Army of God and the UPF and the Freedom Militia came down like a hammer on every single person who’d ever trafficked with the peacekeepers. A stupid little dream for a stupid little war maggot. Mahlia hated herself for dreaming it. But sometimes she curled in on herself and held the stump of her right hand to her chest and pretended that none of it had happened. That her father was still here, and she still had a hand, and everything was going to get better.

Why did they give up?” Nailer asked. “Sometimes people learn,” Tool said. From that, Nailer took him to be saying that mostly people didn’t. The wreckage of the twin dead cities was good evidence of just how slow the people of the Accelerated Age had been to accept their changing circumstances.

It was one of those things everyone had an opinion about—that it was what you had when you didn’t have anything else, that family was always there, that blood was thicker than water, whatever. But when Nailer thought about it, most of those words and ideas just seemed like good excuses for people to behave badly and think they could get away with it. Family wasn’t any more reliable than marriages or friendships or blood-sworn crew, and maybe less.

Mouse took an idle whack at some kudzu as he passed, but his face was serious. “Hell, I don’t know. Why do you care? That was right after our farm burned. They got everyone. Mom and Dad. Simon. Shane got recruited. I saw that. They shot Simon because he was too little, but they took Shane.” He knocked aside more kudzu. “Maybe I was hoping they’d just shoot me and get it over with. I was so sick of hiding and scavenging. I think I wanted the bullet.

Weddings are friendship deal breakers if the friendship is weak. There are too many favors, too many tasks, too much required devotion and Aqua Net for imposters like me. I tried to make eye contact with Francine, to give her a knowing good-bye smile like a ghost of a loved one in a movie. It was no usue, I decided to cut my final pink wire. There would be no more yearly "happy birthdays" and certainly no more bonding with the girl in the duct tape dress. That ship had sailed.

[Robert's eulogy at his brother, Ebon C. Ingersoll's grave. Even the great orator Robert Ingersoll was choked up with tears at the memory of his beloved brother] The record of a generous life runs like a vine around the memory of our dead, and every sweet, unselfish act is now a perfumed flower. Dear Friends: I am going to do that which the dead oft promised he would do for me. The loved and loving brother, husband, father, friend, died where manhood's morning almost touches noon, and while the shadows still were falling toward the west. He had not passed on life's highway the stone that marks the highest point; but, being weary for a moment, he lay down by the wayside, and, using his burden for a pillow, fell into that dreamless sleep that kisses down his eyelids still. While yet in love with life and raptured with the world, he passed to silence and pathetic dust. Yet, after all, it may be best, just in the happiest, sunniest hour of all the voyage, while eager winds are kissing every sail, to dash against the unseen rock, and in an instant hear the billows roar above a sunken ship. For whether in mid sea or 'mong the breakers of the farther shore, a wreck at last must mark the end of each and all. And every life, no matter if its every hour is rich with love and every moment jeweled with a joy, will, at its close, become a tragedy as sad and deep and dark as can be woven of the warp and woof of mystery and death. This brave and tender man in every storm of life was oak and rock; but in the sunshine he was vine and flower. He was the friend of all heroic souls. He climbed the heights, and left all superstitions far below, while on his forehead fell the golden dawning, of the grander day. He loved the beautiful, and was with color, form, and music touched to tears. He sided with the weak, the poor, and wronged, and lovingly gave alms. With loyal heart and with the purest hands he faithfully discharged all public trusts. He was a worshipper of liberty, a friend of the oppressed. A thousand times I have heard him quote these words: 'For Justice all place a temple, and all season, summer!' He believed that happiness was the only good, reason the only torch, justice the only worship, humanity the only religion, and love the only priest. He added to the sum of human joy; and were every one to whom he did some loving service to bring a blossom to his grave, he would sleep to-night beneath a wilderness of flowers. Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud, and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word; but in the night of death hope sees a star and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing. He who sleeps here, when dying, mistaking the approach of death for the return of health, whispered with his latest breath, 'I am better now.' Let us believe, in spite of doubts and dogmas, of fears and tears, that these dear words are true of all the countless dead. And now, to you, who have been chosen, from among the many men he loved, to do the last sad office for the dead, we give his sacred dust. Speech cannot contain our love. There was, there is, no gentler, stronger, manlier man.

You will die.” “I guess. I don’t know.” She shook her head, trying to pick through her feelings. “I used to think I was alive just because I kept getting away. If someone didn’t put a bullet in my head, I was winning. I was still breathing, right?” She looked at the blackened land around her, feeling tired and sad and alone. “But now I’m thinking it ain’t like that. Now I’m thinking that once you got enough dead looking over your shoulder, you’re dead anyway. Don’t matter if you’re still walking and talking, they weigh you down.

Family wasn’t any more reliable than marriages or friendships or blood-sworn crew, and maybe less.

He was going to drown, but hey, he could read.

I’m sure whoever first started questioning their political opponents’ patriotism thought they were being quite clever.

Half-men don’t fight like people. More like hurricanes.

Certainly I’m qualified to crash a dirigible.

I don't buy that." Pearly shook his head. "What have you got without your promises? You're nothing. Less than nothing.

The boy started to thrash and cry. A tiny bundle of bones and scars, freckles and red hair. Just another human who would grow up to become a monster.

now, suddenly, the two of them were on his mind, like spirit demons, plucking at guilt.

If we are pack, then conquest is our sustenance, sister. He plunged his hand into the coywolv’s frame. With a wet tearing, the heart came out, glistening and full of blood, veins and arteries torn. The muscle of life. Tool held it out to her. “Our enemies give us strength.” Blood ran from his fist. Mahlia saw the challenge in the half-man’s eye. She limped over to the battle-scarred monster and held out her hand. The heart was surprisingly heavy as Tool poured it into her palm. She lifted the muscle to her lips and bit deep. Blood ran down her chin.

I’m like a sailor, born and bred in the deck of a privateer. Storm and battle are a part of his life, and if he’s cast ashore he pines in boredom, indifferent to the pleasures of shady woods and peaceful sunshine. All day long he walks the beach listening to the steady murmur of the incoming waves and gazing for the sight of a ship in the distant haze. He looks longingly at the pale strip between the ocean blue and the grey clouds, in hopes of seeing a sail, first like a seagull’s wing, that then gradually stands out against the foaming breakers and runs in steadily towards the desolate haven.

You should remember that, all of you. If you're just smart or just lucky, it's not worth a copper yard. You got to have both, or you're just like Sloth down at those bonfires, begging for someone to find a use for you.

I belong to myself. Always. Eternally. Without question. My own safe house. My own sheltered harbor. I am my own solid ground. I am the lighthouse beacon. I call the ships safely home from sea. I am the North Star and the compass. I am my own port in the wildest storm. I am the spell caster and the spell breaker. I am a witch of alchemy and transformation. I am the pages in the grimoire of knowledge, I am the source of all the magic ever known. I am the kiss that wakes us all from slumber. I am the white horse knight in shining armor. I am my own happily ever after fairytale godmother. I am my own rest stop on the longest journey of living. The final destination on every treasure map I will ever need. I am my own primary relationship, my own till death do us part. I am my own center and saving grace, my own best-kept secret. I am the lineage of wisdom itself, the home of my own belonging. I am my own. And my own. And always my own.

Human beings hunger for killing, that is all. It only takes a few politicians to stoke division, or a few demagogues encouraging hatred to set your kind upon one another. And then before you know it, you have a whole nation biting on its own tail, going round and round until there is nothing left but the snapping of teeth.

the women used these Enigma messages—along with files on individual U-boats and their commanders—to track, with pins, every U-boat and convoy whose location was known. At another desk, several other Goucher women, including Jacqueline Jenkins (later the mother of Bill Nye, aka Bill Nye the Science Guy), tracked “neutral shipping” based on daily position reports.

the Signal Corps recruited U.S. switchboard operators who were bilingual in English and French and loaded them into ships bound for Europe. Known as the “Hello Girls,” these were the first American women other than nurses to be sent by the U.S. military into harm’s way. The officers whose calls they connected often prefaced their conversations by saying, “Thank Heaven you’re here!

Do we see the hundred-thousandth part of what exists? Look here; there is the wind, which is the strongest force in nature. It knocks down men, and blows down buildings, uproots trees, raises the sea into mountains of water, destroys cliffs and casts great ships on to the breakers; it kills, it whistles, it sighs, it roars. But have you ever seen it, and can you see it? Yet it exists for all that.

If there are other beings besides ourselves on this earth, how comes it that we have not known it for so long a time, or why have you not seen them? How is it that I have not seen them?” He replied: “Do we see the hundred-thousandth part of what exists? Look here; there is the wind, which is the strongest force in nature. It knocks down men, and blows down buildings, uproots trees, raises the sea into mountains of water, destroys cliffs and casts great ships on to the breakers; it kills, it whistles, it sighs, it roars. But have you ever seen it, and can you see it? Yet it exists for all that.

with trembling fingers is set down in the log—shoals, rocks, and breakers hereabouts: beware! And for years afterwards, perhaps, ships shun the place; leaping over it as silly sheep leap over a vacuum, because their leader originally leaped there when a stick was held. There's your law of precedents; there's your utility of traditions; there's the story of your obstinate survival of old beliefs never bottomed on the earth, and now not even hovering in the air! There's orthodoxy! Thus, while in the life the great whale's body may have been a real terror to his foes, in his death his ghost becomes a powerless panic to a world.

was common for local authorities, knowing the unpopularity of the press, to dump their undesirables. But these conscripts were wretched, and the volunteers were little better. An admiral described one bunch of recruits as being “full of the pox, itch, lame, King’s evil, and all other distempers, from the hospitals at London, and will serve only to breed an infection in the ships; for the rest, most of them are thieves, house breakers, Newgate [Prison] birds, and the very filth of London.” He concluded, “In all the former wars I never saw a parcel of turned over men half so bad, in short they are so very bad, that I don’t know how to describe it.

The Boy’s head was spinning. Raul was real, and quite possibly not kindly disposed to him, as Marama’s potential heir and jail-breaker. The sailors worshiped Marama, who controlled the tides and commanded them through dreams? The Geolwe collected clouds and lived in the sky? And did the captain just say there were mountains in the sea? Did he mean under the water? Downing the drink in front of him, he began to laugh. It was all just so hopelessly un-real. Anselt and the captain stared for a moment, then found his mirth infectious. Before long they were laughing too, and the sound of their merriment sailed through the night and out to greet the rolling waves, wrapping itself around the ship like a cloud.

Too often in the previous months, he told the silent controllers, potential problems had been dismissed with a casual “that can’t happen” wave. Maybe the ship had a balky breaker, but it would never cause a fuel cell to fail in flight. Maybe those new pyrotechnics were a little temperamental, but they could never make a parachute fail to deploy. And as for pumping pure oxygen into the cockpit, it had never caused any problems before, had it? But what if it did? What would you do then? That was the critical question no one had been raising. It was not good enough to ask what you would accept. Instead, you had to ask what action you would take today to prevent the failure from ever happening. The answer you gave should always satisfy one final question: What is the very best thing to do in this situation?

You are odder than I expected,” she chuckled. He quirked a brow at her. “And what did you expect?” The pirate captain paused, licking her lips. “Someone colder,” she finally said, looking him up and down. “Made of stone instead of flesh. Less mortal. Like all the things Cortael tried to be.” The wind blew over the harbor again, smelling of salt. He turned into it, facing the docks and little ship. A familiar figure ran its deck, checking the rigging, though she was no sailor. It was not like Sorasa Sarn to remain still. Dom heaved a breath. “I was that way once.” The shadow of a smile crossed Meliz’s face as she followed his gaze. “Love does that.” His throat tightened and his jaw clenched, teeth gritted so tightly Dom could not speak if he tried. Meliz only gave a wave of her hand. “I’m referring to my daughter and the love you bear her.” Her grin widened mischievously. “Of course.” “Of course,” Dom managed, wrenching his eyes away from the port. His entire body felt hot with embarrassment, if not indignance.

As old horses go to the knacker's yard, or old ships to the breakers, so words in their last decay go to swell the enormous list of synonyms for good and bad.

Potentially the weakest link in the long chain that led to Pearl Harbor was actually one of the strongest. This was the busy eyes of Ensign Yoshikawa, the ostensibly petty bureaucrat in the Honolulu consulate of Consul General Nagao Kita. Presenting himself as a Filipino, he washed dishes at the Pearl Harbor Officers Club listening for scuttlebutt. He played tourist on a glass bottom boat in Kaneohe Bay near the air station where most of the Navy’s PBYs were moored. He flew over the islands as a traveler. As a straight-out spy, he swam along the shore of the harbor itself ducking out of sight from time to time breathing through a reed. He was Yamamoto’s ears and eyes. The Achilles heel to the whole operation was J-19, the consular code he used to send his information back to Tokyo. And Tokyo used to give him his instructions. Rochefort, the code breaker in Hypo at Pearl Harbor, besides being fluent in Japanese could decipher eighty percent of J-19 messages in about twelve hours. The most tell-tale of all was message 83 sent to Honolulu September 24, 1941. It instructed Yoshikawa to divide Pearl Harbor into a grid so vessels moored in each square could be pinpointed. This so-called “bomb plot” message was relayed to Washington by Clipper in undeciphered form. The Pan American plane had been delayed by bad weather so 83 wasn’t decoded and translated until October 9 or 10. Washington had five times as many intercepts piling up for decoding from Manila than Honolulu because Manila was intercepting higher priority Purple. When he saw the decrypt of 83, Colonel Rufus Bratton, head of the Far Eastern Section of Army G-2 or intelligence, was brought up short. Never before had the Japanese asked for the location of ships in harbor. Bratton sent the message on to Brigadier General Leonard T. Gerow, chief of the Army’s War Plans Division with General Marshall and Secretary Stimson marked in.

The wind stirred his loose hair and Sorasa assessed him for the first time since her memory failed. Since the deck of the Tyri ship caught fire, and someone seized her around the middle, plunging them both into the dark waves. She did not need to guess to know who. Dom’s clothing was torn but long dry. He still wore the leather jerkin with the undershirt, but his borrowed cloak had been left to feed the sea serpents. The rest of him looked intact. He had only a few fresh cuts across the backs of his hands, like a terrible rope burn. Scales, Sorasa knew. The sea serpent coiled in her head, bigger than the mast, its scales flashing a dark rainbow. Her breath caught when she realized he wore no sword belt, nor sheath. Nor sword. “Dom,” she bit out, reaching between them. Only her instincts caught her, her hand freezing inches above his hip. His brow furrowed again, carving a line of concern. “Your sword.” The line deepened, and Sorasa understood. She mourned her own dagger, earned so many decades ago, now lost to a burning palace. She could not imagine what Dom felt for a blade centuries old. “It is done,” he finally said, fishing into his shirt. The collar pulled, showing a line of white flesh, the planes of hard muscle rippling beneath. Sorasa dropped her eyes, letting him fuss. Only when something soft touched her temple did she look up again. Her heart thumped. Dom did not meet her gaze, focused on his work, cleaning her wound with a length of cloth. It was the fabric that made her breath catch. Little more than a scrap of gray green. Thin but finely made by master hands. Embroidered with silver antlers. It was a piece of Dom’s old cloak, the last remnant of Iona. It survived a kraken, an undead army, a dragon, and the dungeons of a mad queen. But it would not survive Sorasa Sarn. She let him work, her skin aflame beneath his fingers. Until the last bits of blood were gone, and the last piece of his home tossed away. “Thank you,” she finally said to no reply.

With a snarl of pain, she forced herself to sit up, her head spinning with the sudden movement. One hand touched her temple, sticky with dried blood. She winced, feeling a gash along her eyebrow. It was long but shallow, and already scabbing over. She clenched her jaw, teeth grinding, as she surveyed the beach with squinting eyes. The ocean stared back at her, empty and endless, a wall of iron blue. Then she noticed shapes along the beach, some half-buried in the sand, others caught in the rhythmic pull of the tide. She narrowed her eyes and the shapes solidified. A torn length of sail floated, tangled up with rope. A shattered piece of the mast angled out of the sand like a pike. Smashed crates littered the beach, along with other debris from the ship. Bits of hull. Rigging. Oars snapped in half. The bodies moved with the waves. Her steady breathing lost its rhythm, coming in shorter and shorter gasps until she feared her throat might close. Her thoughts scattered, impossible to grasp. All thoughts but one. “DOMACRIDHAN!” Her shout echoed, desperate and ragged. “DOMACRIDHAN!” Only the waves answered, crashing endless against the shore. She forgot her training and forced herself to stand, nearly falling over with dizziness. Her limbs aches but she ignored it, lunging toward the waterline. Her lips moved, her voice shouting his name again, though she couldn’t hear it above the pummel of her own heart. Sorasa Sarn was no stranger to corpses. She splashed into the waves with abandon, even as her head spun. Sailor, sailor, sailor, she noted, her desperation rising with every Tyri uniform and head of black hair. One of them looked ripped in half, missing everything from the waist down. His entrails floated with the rear of him, like a length of bleached rope. She suspected a shark got the best of him. Then her memories returned with a crash like the waves. The Tyri ship. Nightfall. The sea serpent slithering up out of the deep. The breaking of a lantern. Fire across the deck, slick scales running over my hands. The swing of a greatsword, Elder-made. Dom silhouetted against a sky awash with lightning. And then the cold, drowning darkness of the ocean. A wave splashed up against her and Sorasa stumbled back to the shore, shivering. She had not waded more than waist deep, but her face felt wet, water she could not understand streaking her cheeks. Her knees buckled and she fell, exhausted. She heaved a breath, then two. And screamed. Somehow the pain in her head paled in comparison to the pain in her heart. It dismayed and destroyed her in equal measure. The wind blew, stirring salt-crusted hair across her face, sending a chill down to her soul. It was like the wilderness all over again, the bodies of her Amhara kin splayed around her. No, she realized, her throat raw. This is worse. There is not even a body to mourn. She contemplated the emptiness for awhile, the beach and the waves, and the bodies gently pressing into the shore. If she squinted, they could only be debris from the ship, bits of wood instead of bloated flesh and bone. The sun glimmered on the water. Sorasa hated it. Nothing but clouds since Orisi, and now you choose to shine.

The QSMV Dominion Monarch was launched in 1938 to be a luxury passenger liner. Designed with refrigerated cargo holds, she was built to connect Great Britain with other Commonwealth countries. At that time, “The Sun Never Set on the British Empire!” When World War II erupted, the Dominion Monarch was commandeered by the Crown, painted grey and served as a British Troop Ship for the duration of the war. After the war she was the ship that carried Adeline and her daughters back to South Africa. The Dominion Monarch was released from Government service on July 21, 1947 and was restored to being the magnificent ocean liner she was intended to be. The ship later served as a floating hotel for the Century Exposition in Seattle, Washington, before going to the breakers in Japan, on November 25, 1962….

The TS American Sailor was built in Seattle, Washington, in 1919. Like the TS American Seaman, she was launched too late for World War I. Originally the two ships were intended to be used as dry cargo ships, but not knowing what to do, the government assigned them to the United States Coast Guard. In 1941, with the start of World War II the Bethlehem Steel Company in Baltimore, Maryland, converted both vessels into Maritime Commission training ships. By the time I arrived at the Academy, the TS American Seaman had already been scrapped, and the TS American Sailor was well past her time. During my first year at the Academy she was towed to the breakers, thus making room for a newer training vessel. To accommodate the expected ship, coming from the government’s “Defense Reserve Fleet,” a new sturdier dock had to be built…. In the interim, the school borrowed New York Maritime College’s vessel, the TS Empire State II. Upperclassmen, including my friend Richard Cratty, whom I have known from my days at Admiral Farragut Academy, were assigned the task of going to New York to bring her back to Castine for our 1953 training cruise.

China might have given up on trying to stop the endless civil war, but some of its companies were still here, picking over history’s bones.

The vocabulary of flattery and insult is continually enlarged at the expense of the vocabulary of definition. As old horses go to the knacker's yard, or old ships to the breakers, so words in their last decay go to swell the enormous list of synonyms for good and bad. And as long as most people are more anxious to express their likes and dislikes than to describe facts, this must remain a universal truth about language.

Maybe it will die on its own, a hopeful voice whispered, but the general suppressed the thought. Wishes were for victims.

Let’s take this out just a little bit further passed the breakers into some really deep water. Let’s talk about love. Yeah. The love for another, a father, a mother, a sister, a brother, a stranger. Danger. A self centered ship sinker is just up ahead. It surfaced once that love a stranger line was said. It’s a cold heart warmer that’s thawing out the beat. It’s reviving the rhythm that the mainstream system tried to deplete. It’s restoring the lyrics that wickedness tried to delete. It’s setting the tempo free from the obsolete oubliette that the darkness tried to keep discrete. Whew!

Not crazy. More like… rationally insane.

Even if he was dead tomorrow, he was alive tonight.

It brings great shame to turn against those ideals. Our kinship. Our honor. It is almost unbearable to think that your god and brethren despise you. To think that you shattered the bones of the weak and sucked out their marrow, believing that they deserved to die… and then to see that you yourself are one of those failures. And then to see that, perhaps, we did not eat our weakest, but destroyed our strongest.

It is difficult to hold on to the idea of some new kind of honor, and to balance it against the honor that one believed in before.

Sometimes dying’s okay,” he said. “Sometimes keeping something alive just means you’re making it hurt more.

There was definitely a problem at the foot of the ship’s gangway. Although I was too far away to actually hear what was being said, it was easy to tell that there was a heated argument between the crewmembers and the Ship’s Officers. I could see that some of the crewmembers were disembarking the ship, carrying their sea bags. For a while, I thought things would come to blows, when, amidst a lot of gesturing, one of the crew walked back and got into the duty officer’s face. Being inquisitive and wanting to get closer, I walked down the steep cobblestone street alongside the park from where I had been looking, and then crossed River Street to the pier. No one stopped me or even noticed my presence, as I approached one of the frustrated officers. “What's going on?” I asked, as he stood next to the gangway wearing a typical khaki working uniform. “What do you think? The crew is striking! What are you here for, a job?” he asked with a decided guttural accent. “Well, yes,” I replied instinctively, not even knowing what kind of jobs were being offered. “Who do I have to see?” I asked. His abrupt answer was more like a command, than an informative reply. “Get some black pants, black socks, black shoes, white shirt, and a black bow tie and then get back here. Chop, Chop!” What was “Chop, Chop” all about? I took it to mean that I had the job if I could move fast enough, and get back with these things before the ship sailed. At the time I didn’t think of myself as a strike breaker, but of course that is what I was….

but it’s not an ideal location.

What does it say?" "What do you want it to say?" she asked. "You haven't bothered to tell me what you're after." "I want to buy a battleship, of course. Who has one for sale?" Barbara shot him a dour expression and studied the blue papers. "I'm afraid you're out of luck. The Soviet Union has one left, which is used to train naval cadets. France has long since scrapped hers. Same with Great Britain, even though she still keeps one on the rolls for the sake of tradition." "The United States?" "Five of them have been preserved as memorials." "What are their present locations?" "They're enshrined in the states they were named after: North Carolina, Texas, Alabama, and Massachusetts." "You said five." "The Missouri is maintained by the Navy in Bremerton, Washington. Oh, I almost forgot: the Arizona is still sentimentally kept on naval rolls as a commissioned ship." Jarvis put his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. "I seem to recall the battlewagons Wisconsin and Iowa were tied up at the Philadelphia Navy Yard a few years back." "Good memory," said Barbara. "According to the report, the Wisconsin went to the ship-breakers in 1984." "And the Iowa?" "Sold for scrap.

The ships needed to get out to sea,’ his father told him, ‘to fish, to transport people and goods, to keep the wheels of the economy turning. But ships cannot sail on ice. So the ice-breaker was the lead ship, and that is where the word leadership comes from. It is, literally, the lead ship. It cut through the ice, and as it did so the waters opened and widened behind it, and the other ships could follow.

The men thought they were about to be saved. They were wrong. Glasgow and Cornwall opened fire at 8.30 pm. ‘This is sheer murder,’ shouted a gunner aboard Glasgow, refusing the captain’s directive and instead giving his own order to the crew: ‘She is a sinking ship. Cease fire!

We now go proudly to God,’ he said as the ship began to roll.

It nodded at his words then stepped back. As he turned for the door it smoke again, softly. "Are you sad, Joron Twiner?" "Sad?" "Smell lonely. Not a good smell." "And you would know?" "Yes," said the gullaime, and this was the cry of faraway skeers circling over their nests, the cry that every deckchild associated with lost ships, breakers smashingon to cruellytoothed rocks. It was the sound of loss. "Yes," it said again. "I know.

It nodded at his words then stepped back. As he turned for the door it smoke again, softly. "Are you sad, Joron Twiner?" "Sad?" "Smell lonely. Not a good smell." "And you would know?" "Yes," said the gullaime, and this was the cry of faraway skeers circling over their nests, the cry that every deckchild associated with lost ships, breakers smashingon to cruellytoothed rocks. It was the sound of loss. "Yes," it said again. "I know.

Spending money on the poor is like throwing money into a fire. They’ll just consume it and never thank you,” Tool said.

Since its founding in 1941, the Academy had training ships that were furnished by the U.S. Maritime Commission. The first one was the training ship TS American Seaman and then the TS American Sailor. Both ships were loosely termed “West Coast Hog Islanders,” which meant their hulls were raised in the bow, stern and amidships and they had a counter-stern. This gave them the same basic appearance as the well-known “Philadelphia Hog Islanders,” though they were somewhat smaller. These ships were designed as freighters to be used during the First World War. Their construction was completed in Seattle, Washington, in 1919, just a little too late for the war. Had they been preserved, they would now be museum pieces, but this was not to be the case. Instead they were towed to the breakers, where they were converted into razor blades. A mural of the TS American Sailor was painted onto the dining room bulkhead. Later when we got a new ship, the training ship TS State of Maine, I painted her likeness on another Bulkhead.

It was hard for me to believe that I had graduated from High School the week before and was now a crewmember on a Dutch ship. This was my first job aboard ship and now I found myself heading down the Hudson River, past the Statue of Liberty. There wasn’t much time for sightseeing since the dinner chimes had been rung and the few passengers we had, were coming into the dining room. No one had explained my duties but I watched the other stewards and followed suit. I must have been a fast learner since amazingly enough all went well, and before I knew it the dining room was empty and it was cleanup time. I’m certain that having worked in my uncle’s restaurants helped but I’m glad I survived without any mishaps. I knew that tomorrow would go even smoother now that I understood the routine. I really don’t know if getting a job aboard a foreign ship was easier in the “50’s” or was it that the ship needed another steward and I was willing to be a strike breaker? No one on the ship mentioned the strike and everyone treated me as just another member of the crew. Mostly everyone aboard spoke Dutch and amazingly enough I understood them. Dutch being a Germanic language was very similar to the German spoken in the lowlands, which included Hamburg. It didn’t take long before I was answering and then conversing with the crew…. Although I was on the bottom rung of the ladder I felt right at home. My bunk was at the top of a three bunk stack in the crew’s quarters, high up against the chain locker. The bathroom, called the “head” in English, didn’t have toilets or urinals. Instead I had to perfect my aim as I balanced myself over a hole in the deck. Fortunately there were places for my feet and handholds to help me stabilize myself in this balancing act. With no partitions for modesty I soon lost my inhibitions and became deft at this. At least they furnished the paper and considering it all, life was good!

I’d hesitated as I followed him down through the high-vaulted entrance hall with its mahogany panelling and terrazzo floor, and the glass cases covering beautifully detailed models of straight-funnelled merchantmen long dissected by the breakers’ torch. The splendour of a bygone age in miniature, where even the scaled likenesses gleamed with the proud craftsmanship of the men who had built them. They didn’t make models in the yards today. Not of ordinary, slab-sided bonus-constructed containerships. Models didn’t show a profit; they weren’t economically viable; the real ships themselves were barely viable now, despite our brave new computerised, electronic maritime world.

Canto I And then went down to the ship, Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and We set up mast and sail on that swart ship, Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also Heavy with weeping, and winds from sternward Bore us out onward with bellying canvas, Circe’s this craft, the trim-coifed goddess. Then sat we amidships, wind jamming the tiller, Thus with stretched sail, we went over sea till day’s end. Sun to his slumber, shadows o’er all the ocean, Came we then to the bounds of deepest water, To the Kimmerian lands, and peopled cities Covered with close-webbed mist, unpierced ever With glitter of sun-rays Nor with stars stretched, nor looking back from heaven Swartest night stretched over wretched men there. The ocean flowing backward, came we then to the place Aforesaid by Circe. Here did they rites, Perimedes and Eurylochus, And drawing sword from my hip I dug the ell-square pitkin; Poured we libations unto each the dead, First mead and then sweet wine, water mixed with white flour. Then prayed I many a prayer to the sickly death’s-heads; As set in Ithaca, sterile bulls of the best For sacrifice, heaping the pyre with goods, A sheep to Tiresias only, black and a bell-sheep. Dark blood flowed in the fosse, Souls out of Erebus, cadaverous dead, of brides Of youths and of the old who had borne much; Souls stained with recent tears, girls tender, Men many, mauled with bronze lance heads, Battle spoil, bearing yet dreory arms, These many crowded about me; with shouting, Pallor upon me, cried to my men for more beasts; Slaughtered the herds, sheep slain of bronze; Poured ointment, cried to the gods, To Pluto the strong, and praised Proserpine; Unsheathed the narrow sword, I sat to keep off the impetuous impotent dead, Till I should hear Tiresias. But first Elpenor came, our friend Elpenor, Unburied, cast on the wide earth, Limbs that we left in the house of Circe, Unwept, unwrapped in sepulchre, since toils urged other. Pitiful spirit. And I cried in hurried speech: “Elpenor, how art thou come to this dark coast? “Cam’st thou afoot, outstripping seamen?” And he in heavy speech: “Ill fate and abundant wine. I slept in Circe’s ingle. “Going down the long ladder unguarded, “I fell against the buttress, “Shattered the nape-nerve, the soul sought Avernus. “But thou, O King, I bid remember me, unwept, unburied, “Heap up mine arms, be tomb by sea-bord, and inscribed: “A man of no fortune, and with a name to come. “And set my oar up, that I swung mid fellows.” And Anticlea came, whom I beat off, and then Tiresias Theban, Holding his golden wand, knew me, and spoke first: “A second time? why? man of ill star, “Facing the sunless dead and this joyless region? “Stand from the fosse, leave me my bloody bever “For soothsay.” And I stepped back, And he strong with the blood, said then: “Odysseus “Shalt return through spiteful Neptune, over dark seas, “Lose all companions.” And then Anticlea came. Lie quiet Divus. I mean, that is Andreas Divus, In officina Wecheli, 1538, out of Homer. And he sailed, by Sirens and thence outward and away And unto Circe. Venerandam, In the Cretan’s phrase, with the golden crown, Aphrodite, Cypri munimenta sortita est, mirthful, orichalchi, with golden Girdles and breast bands, thou with dark eyelids Bearing the golden bough of Argicida. So that:

And the shadow gathers and becomes a tidal wave a tidal wave with riding sea gulls darkened. And the port-side heart sizzles in a breaker. Death and renewal when the wave arrives. The gathering of white birds grew: gulls dressed in canvas from the sails of foundered ships but stained by vapors from forbidden shores. The herring gull: a harpoon with a velvet back. In closeup like a snowed-in hull with hidden pulses glittering in rhythm. His flier’s nerves in balance. He soars. Footless hanging in the wind he dreams his hunter’s dream with his beak’s sharp shot.

Rising like giant breakers, cascading over boundaries as if Adira were a ship and her tongue the storm-lashed deck, the motion of the mind beyond the hairless portal of the solitary hidden eye crashing in and out, up and down, until the stringy wriggling worm thoughts broke out. Fever smashing like glass threads, a million eager maggots, Adira vomited up the odor of burnt chocolate and neglected meat.