Standard Entry
Age 6 | — | — | Late afternoon | Hot, flat sea | Aft deck, the ship, off the Horn of Africa
You died and were reborn into the body of a child born to a mother and father you've never seen, on a container ship at sea. No parents. No country.
You remember being raised — if that is what it was. Mercenaries raising a kid: playing with bullets on the deck plates, throwing grenades into the water to watch the fish come up, an M134 on its mount off the side of the ship spitting a hundred rounds a second into the swell with a man's hands over yours. Six years flash by, to the day your father arrives for the first time.
No flag that means anything. Patriotism is a word in the books they made you read. Your mother left before you could ask her anything. The people who raised you were the mercenaries your father keeps on the payroll — they fed you, taught you to read off freight tariffs and ballistics tables, and taught you to sit facing the door. Your father owns the ship, and he owns them.
Today you are six for the second time, and Lauri puts a pistol in your hands. She is twenty-one, the youngest on the crew, and she has been on this ship longer than you have.
Lauri:
"Glock 44. The twenty-two. Finger straight. Both eyes open."
It is small and the round is smaller. Your hands remember more than a six-year-old's should. When you fire it there is barely any recoil at all — a flat crack, a brass case skittering across the deck plate, a hole in the paper. Lauri does not smile. A nod, once, which is more.
Then you notice the man standing at the rail.
Your father. The first time in your life you have ever seen him. And beside him — sixteen, ten years older than you, the only other Mathews child — your sibling, who was raised by the same men and has never found that strange either. Neither of you hate each other. It has simply always felt normal. You will not see either of them again for a long time.
Roan:
"Good grouping."
He comes down the ladder the way he does everything, without hurrying, and crouches so his face is level with yours.
Roan:
"Here's how it is. You can do anything you want. Anything. Or you can continue to work with me."
Roan:
"I'm renaming my company. Mathews and Children Logistics Incorporated — instead of Mathews Logistics Incorporated. We sell weapons to anyone that buys, and our company spans the globe."
He waits. Behind him the sea is flat and bright and goes all the way to the edge of the world. Your sibling watches you. Lauri watches the horizon.
The pistol is still warm in your hand.
[Answer your father in your first message: yes, or no. Add your name, and whether you are his son or his daughter, if the papers don't already say.]