Blood Ocean Read Online Free Page B

of the ship’s captain, the mates, and Princess Kamala, and also housed all the community areas. The deck was covered in metal cargo containers spaced just far enough apart to allow people to pass between them. The containers were stacked three high. Those lucky enough to live above deck were the families of former ship workers and of full time Pali Boys. Kavika and his family should have lived here as well, but his father’s death had knocked them all the way down the hierarchical ladder. He could still remember the morning after his father’s death, when they were unceremoniously removed from their third floor container and taken down to the bottom of the hold.
    “Kavika, Third Mate is looking for you. Says you need to join a maintenance crew.” The speaker was a Pali Boy named Pakelo, sitting at the opening of his container, his feet dangling over the side.
    “He knows I’m a Pali Boy. Why does he want me?”
    Pakelo shrugged, but they both knew the answer. If Kavika wasn’t willing to do every stunt, he wasn’t going to get the luxury of living the life of a Pali Boy. Instead, he’d find himself sweeping, mopping, chipping and painting.
    “Where is he?” Kavika asked.
    “He was here about fifteen minutes ago, so watch out.”
    “Thanks, Pakelo.” Kavika shot a worried glance at Spike; she smiled weakly in return but didn’t offer any words of encouragement.
    They picked their way through the containers. Most of the doors were either open or removed. Each container was roughly twenty feet deep by eight feet wide. Although they could comfortably hold a family, many were occupied by unmarried Pali Boys. There were even a few empty ones. Sometimes Kavika was greeted by the occupants. Other times they just watched him pass. He knew what they were thinking, especially the mothers and wives. They knew that they could get kicked down the ladder if their fathers or husbands died too. There but by the grace of Pele. Kavika was a reminder to them of all of the bad things that could happen.
    They passed a first floor container where a Pali Boy he had once known lived, called Keoni. His father had taken him and the others away to work on the Freedom Ship, but it seemed as if they were back. Kavika started to say hello, then stopped in his tracks.
    “What is it?” Spike peered around him, then brought a hand to her mouth. “Oh.”
    Kavika licked his suddenly dry lips. As Keoni turned his head slightly, the back of the head of the Rhesus monkey became visible. As the ex-Pali Boy continued to turn, he revealed the monkey that had been surgically attached to him. Tubes ran from the back of the monkey’s head to the top of the boy’s spine. Other tubes transferred fluids from the monkey’s torso to his human torso. Kavika couldn’t begin to guess what they did, but the connection served to make two into one and seemed irrevocable.
    “Every time I see one of them it takes my breath away.” Spike’s fingernails dug into Kavika’s arm.
    One of them , she’d said. A monkey-backed.
    Suddenly another person appeared at the entrance to the container. Looking haggard and drawn, clothes hanging like ill-fitting drapes from a once-plump frame, the boy’s mother noticed the attention. She shook her head like she saw it all the time, then flicked her hand at them.
    Kavika was turning to go when he saw the orange-robed figure of a Mga Tao. The hooded man or woman stood vigil over the monkey-backed Pali Boy from the side of a cargo container. Kavika shuddered. Partly he wished he knew what they wanted with the monkey-backed; mostly he hoped he’d never find out.
    Kavika moved on. After a blood rape, his greatest fear was to be monkey-backed. The former he could fight, but the latter was Corper sanctioned. Part of the price of belonging to the floating city was to be available for monkey-backing if a match was found. To fight against it was to harm the community. After all, the monkey-backed were walking experiments into