The Adventures of the HMS Harlot

Part 2: Ethel Blay, Navigator

The look on Odessa's face was priceless!!

As the captain gave us our orders when we docked in the colony, Odessa's already fair complexion blanched to a ghostly white. She was assigned to run errands with me in the center of the colony city; better described as the absolute slums. Now Odessa does a fine job of covering up her high and lofty breeding, she's hardly what I'd call a snob, but the Colonies are just a sorry sight that no one ever really gets used to. The buildings are crumbling, made mostly of sheets of thin metal, the streets are covered in trash and crawling with stray animals and people who're not much cleaner. It's not their fault though, with the air being thick with smog that rises from the Down Below; everyone has a mask over their face to keep from breathing in truly vile toxins. I could tell that poor 'Dessa was trying desperately not to stick her nose up at everything we passed, just as I was trying not to burst out laughing at her for it.

Roaming colony streets is coming home for me. I grew up in the thick of a city just like this one; with the merchants trying to push wares on anyone passing by, with the people doing business in shadows and looking down so as not to be noticed and with the kids running rampant doing whatever it takes just to get by. These are my people. Well, were.

For her part, Odessa was dealing with it all pretty well. We both had our orders. She had been charged with picking up cases of gunpowder and I was heading to update my maps. We got the gun powder at a seedy little supply store owned by a man who sported quite the fetching eye patch; just one of the many perks to running a less than honorable profession, any pirate worth his ship will tell you that much. The two of us each hefted a large barrel onto our backs, left the store, and headed around the corner to a nearby antique shop. Antique stores are the best places to get maps. They are the only places where buying old and seemingly out of date maps and charts won't look suspicious. They can get away with selling non-Armada-sanctioned information because it's all just old junk, artifacts nobody cares about, right? Antique shops have things history has kept safe for us. A goldmine for someone wanting to know the real state of the world.

I set my barrel down to leave it with Odessa outside on the street and went into the shop. I didn't need much, just a map of this colony and one of the surrounding skies. When I found those, I rummaged through the bin of Armada approved maps. I know I said those are crap, and they are, but I always look to see if one of the maps has something a little worthwhile. So it would happen I found just that. One of the maps had "till days divide lands" scrolled on its back. Just what I was hoping to find.

After I paid for my purchases I heard a commotion out in the street. I emerged from the shop to see Odessa holding a teen boy at gunpoint. She was reprimanding him for attacking her from behind and picking fights like a coward

"I dinna 'tack ya miss" The boy croaked, "I' was our ball, see, it 'scaped"

It was then that I noticed a boy in the crowd holding a sheepskin ball and standing beside a fraying, woven laundry basket. A matching one was perched on a stone wall some ways down the street surrounded by four more very nervous looking children. This street was their stone ball court and we'd interrupted their game.

I burst out laughing, loud enough to stop Odessa from making a comment about the boy's own balls escaping from his body. These kids had just let their game get away from them and knocked into Odessa. I said to the boy, "We'll let you lads off with a warning...if you can beat us that is".

I grabbed the ball from the boy in the crowd and ran to the other end of the street, jamming the ball into the basket, beginning the first game of stone ball I had played in years! The rules: get the ball in the other team's basket. Simple? You'd think. Until you remember the "stone" part of stone ball. You also could fill the other team's basket with stones to make them lose points. It's a very simple yet sneaky game made up by colony kids with nothing else to do. Odessa turned out to be a great teammate, using her tiny frame and intimidating nature to dart around the lanky kids. It was fun.

Then the alarms sounded. In a heartbeat Odessa and I locked eyes. I tossed the ball to one of the girls on the other team, then 'Dessa and I took off running towards the docks. No way this didn't have something to do with the Harlot; that's just not how our life works  

Ethel Blay