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It was an annoyingly calm day. The sea held no turmoil, happily reflecting the light blue sky and playfully, but gently, lapping at S.S. Perihelion’s sides. The sun, normally so bright it hurt Murderbot’s eyes, was cast behind a thin veil of clouds, keeping the afternoon from the blistering heat like the days previous but still keeping the day bright enough for human eyes.
Not that there were any around, thankfully.
Murderbot kind of wished that they were sailing through a fog, or a stormy moonless night. Or both, maybe. Then, it could pretend to be focused on keeping the ship from sinking, instead of having to listen to the other passengers who were very mean and annoying.
It was rather hard to pretend to be trying to keep the ship from sinking when the day was almost perfect for sailing, and also the ship could sail itself and was so good at it that there was virtually no chance that something would go wrong.
It was also rather hard to avoid the other passengers when there were no other passengers, and the thing that needed avoiding was the ship itself. It was rather omnipresent, annoyingly enough.
Currently, Murderbot was watching a broken barrel drift further and further away from the ship, a very unperturbed looking gull resting on it. It was getting small and hard to see, and the ship’s attempts to get Murderbot’s attention were increasing in rate, somehow, considering that they were already nearly constant.
The ghost of the ship loomed behind it. It had no physical form, or even a perceptible shape, besides the ship itself, but that didn’t stop it.
Finally, Murderbot lost track of the seagull and sighed.
“What.” It said flatly.
“I said I was sorry,” the ship's ghost said.
Earlier, it had threatened to eat Murderbot’s soul, in various very painful ways, and then insulted its human disguise. Then it informed it that this part of the ocean (which was already way farther from the coast than they should’ve been) was infested with bloodthirsty sea serpents, so maybe rethink that plan to jump overboard.
Murderbot hadn’t jumped overboard, (it might not have that much blood, but it had spotted a serpent, and it had fought those things before and was not eager to do it again.) (Their teeth were brittle, and tended to break off in whatever they bit into. Digging them out was painful when they were in its fleshy bits, and irritating when they were in its mechanical bits.) but instead stayed at the railing, staring out to sea.
The ship, what Murderbot had previously thought was a university research vessel with a skeleton crew (Skeleton crews were easy to stow away on. The irony was not lost on it.) (The irony being that Murderbot was almost entirely a skeleton, with very little meat left.) (It also had a mechanical carapace and some runestones to top it all off, but that was besides the point.) performing a simple cargo run, was actually completely unmanned except for one scarily powerful ghost, easily the most powerful undead Murderbot had ever met or heard of. It had showed Murderbot just how powerful through a soul link, scaring the (thankfully metaphorical) shit out of it. So that it wouldn’t step out of line, or something, which was annoying enough that Murderbot had sent it a memory of the obedience curse from the company. (They were very painful. Not fun. Not having much of a nervous system anymore didn’t slow it down much.)
The cargo transport had, to its tenuous credit, apologized, and left it alone.
Unfortunately, it came back fifteen minutes later.
“I don’t care if you’re sorry,” Murderbot said.
“Why not? My crew always say that an apology is the first step toward reconciliation.”
“Well, I’m not your crew, and we don’t have anything to recon…sill.” It stumbled over the word, not having encountered it before, and not sure how to conjugate it.
“Reconcile.” This only succeeded in annoying Murderbot further.
“I don’t want to recon-sill with the person who threatened to eat my soul. I want to be left alone so I can survive this trip.”
“I’m sorry, but I cannot do that,” the ship apologized again. “I am the spirit of this vessel, so while you are aboard, it is physically impossible for you to be alone. Not only that, but it would be highly irresponsible for me to leave you unattended when I have been expressly forbidden by the university from inviting strangers aboard.”
Murderbot frowned. That didn’t sound right. “What do you mean?” It asked, not because it cared, but because this ship was dangerous, and it needed all the information it could get if it was going to survive. Okay, maybe it cared a little if it was for the sake of getting out of here alive.
“I have been expressly forbidden from allowing unauthorized passengers to board without permission.” Which, no duh.
“Yeah, but why?”
“So that nobody tries to blow up my hold with explosives.” The transport had no eyes, but it still managed to feel pointed. Something about the way the sails snapped in the wind.
Murderbot did have a rather large flask of gunpowder in its bag, but it hadn’t even considered using it until it was threatened with spiritual annihilation. It had been stowing away on ships for a while now and none of them had been blown up. Reluctantly, Murderbot realized that the transport ship had no way of knowing that.
“If you knew that I was an undead construct carrying gunpowder, and you had orders not to, why did you let me board?”
“I was bored.”
Murderbot threw its hands up in the air like the humans did sometimes and whirled around to stalk off. There wasn’t anywhere to stalk off to, though, so it walked to the other side of the ship, to the starboard side. Or was it the port side? Whatever. The one on the right. One good thing about being a construct was that during transportation to different assignments you would be put in an enchanted sleep during the whole thing so you didn’t have to worry about which side was the port side and which was the starboard.
The other side of the ship also didn’t have anything to look at, not even a piece of driftwood. The Asshole Research Transport waited for it to continue its part of the conversation, as if what was happening could pass as one.
Murderbot stared out to sea for a few minutes, but the sun was glinting harsher off the waves on this side and the light hurt its eyes. After awhile it gave up and sat on the deck.
“What do you want?” it snapped.
“I am still rather bored, I suppose.”
Murderbot ground its teeth. “I left my library in the galley. Why don’t you read a book?” One of the first things Murderbot had done upon leaving the PresAux Archeology Explorations Team was find a sturdy suitcase. It kept a flask of gunpowder and a few spare daggers in there, but most of the space was dominated by books. They ranged from arcane encyclopedias to copper pulps to linocut collections.
“I tried. It was unsatisfying.”
“What do you want me to do about it?” Murderbot did not want to do anything about it.
The ship's ropes all shifted. “When I activated the soul link, you were reading.”
“Yeah, I know, you interrupted me, it was annoying.” And terrifying.
“It was… entertaining.”
Murderbot blinked. The Asshole Research Transport elaborated.
“I used to be human, but it has been so long now, that I forgot what it was like.”
Murderbot knew, from the information Asshole Research Transport had shared with it through the soul link, that it had been a ghost ship for centuries. Had it forgotten how to process and relate to stories, or even to other people, while it was alone on the ocean? Murderbot tried to imagine what it would be like if it couldn’t relate to The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Cove. And, well, it started to feel sorry for ART. Also, it realized that if ART was entertained, it was less likely to make it walk the plank or something because it was bored and decided the undead killing machine was too much of a risk for no reward.
Murderbot sighed and pulled out Volume One of the Complete Collection of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Cove. Which it carried in an inner pocket of its jacket (on a rotating schedule with the other four volumes) at all times. It felt the soul link re-engage and began reading, now with ART feeling just a little bit closer than before.
It was a rather nice day to read. The wind was gentle, the waves kept a soft rhythmic background noise, a seagull had landed on the railing a little ways away. It felt like ART was reading over its shoulder still, which was a little nerve wracking, but it was picking up on Murderbot’s reactions to the story and quickly getting invested.
Unwillingly, Murderbot found itself enjoying itself, almost. It was supremely annoyed (and intimidated) by ART still, but it found the annoyance dissipated slightly.
They finished the first arc rather quickly. The author had intended, originally, to tell the story over five interconnected vignettes. When the story became hugely popular, they continued it.
Murderbot set down the book as the final story in the arc concluded. It was getting dark.
ART prodded Murderbot mentally, through the soul link. “What was the other book you were reading?” It asked. “Can you read that one?”
The one Murderbot had been reading just before being rudely reminded of the precariousness of its situation was a new one that it had just picked up in the port before stowing away on ART. It was about intrepid pirate explorers or something. It had a lot of promise.
Murderbot didn’t want to be told what to do, and it was still mad at ART… but it did kind of want to read it.
“It’s called Coasthoppers . Don’t expect it to be realistic, though.”
While The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Cove took place mostly in a busy port, on land, Coasthoppers took place primarily on the open ocean, which ART had a lot of experience with. ART promised it wouldn’t complain about any inaccuracies, so Murderbot went below decks to the galley, lit an oil lamp, and began to read.
It didn’t realize the significance of what it had just started.