Free Ragnarok by Ari Bach

undercooked. So thoroughly had the piratical rampage destroyed the company that what Ellessey would transfer to Pluturus from the obelisk was less than a third of what he had taken already. But it completed the hostile takeover, and when it was done, Pelamus was the richest Cetacean on Earth. His fleet was still the second strongest Cetacean navy. The Valkohai were technically stronger, but a military ruled by pacifists, never to see a fight, could hardly be considered a fighting force. Even among Cetaceans there were doubts that the fleet existed at all. In any case they would never fight with Pelamus. They were a defensive body. Cetaceans, until Pelamus, had no true offensive force.
    And what to do with it now that he had one? Pelamus and his crew walked quietly from the blood soaked office. He walked with confidence that nobody would pester him, no employee alive would dare, no land cops would know of the massacre for quite some time, and even if they did, it would be a local police department against the joined militaries of the former YUP and of the greatest pirate ever to live. Pelamus was confident, and for his confidence, all the more barren of aspirations. The lack of an immediate need was haunting. Sickening. By the time Pelamus reached the hatch to his flagship, he was deep in thought, trying to recall his youthful dreams.
    First as a guppy, he wanted to visit Atlantis. Then, as he grew older, he wanted to meet Poseidon and Neptune. Eventually his father took him on a package trip to Atlantis and let him shake the fins of furry costumed actors playing each god. Now he mused, he had such plunder that he could retire into a trough of his own, buy most of the Pacific, buy Atlantis, and hire Neptune as his personal fry cook. He laughed. His more serious dreams, he recalled, were those inspired by the books he read after school. Those in his grandfather’s mildewed library. When he set out under Jolly Roger, he donated them all to the library in the bay by Alexandria, and it was there he set his course.
    The great fleet headed northwest toward the Kemet Nile. Pelamus headed to the berth deck for a walk. On the bulkheads were more reminders of his youth. Wood carvings along every surface and stanchion depicting his grandfather’s exploits. The founding of the Ionian Colony, carved by Breluga the Elder in 2191. The defense of Patmos, 2192 by Vermircelus. It was Pelamus’s favorite as a tadpole because of the guts on top of the pile of gold. The first gill implantation unassisted by land robotics, carved by Breluga in 2197, his last work before he died. Shot to death while visiting a land museum displaying his works, shot eight times, then stabbed in the chest with one knife and beheaded by another. By humans. The damned filth, the apes from which Pelamus was ashamed to have evolved.
    He stewed and mused about the state of land races as they passed the Suez gates, which Pelamus was amused to know he now owned. His mind passed from fantasies of revenge to fantasies of superiority, and even, for a moment, of equality. His father once said that peace was no fantasy. That Cetacea could live in harmony, even in trade with the land. Unlikely, Pelamus snorted. But then he came to the very last carving. Untitled, carved by a convert from the far north in 2204. Pelamus had seen the man. He was still mostly man when he made the thing. He died a Cetacean a few years later. Nuala had been at his funeral where he was sent into the darkest deep. But his carving depicted what he claimed to be “An accident waiting to happen.” A disaster for men but, the artist bragged, a Cetacean dream come true.
    His father didn’t want him to hear just what, and the artist never explained. Pelamus had to guess. He stared at the carving for hours, as he had done when he was young. The curves and pits warmed his fingers, and he ran them over the smooth dark wood. As a child he was fascinated by the strange land formations. Jagged