Atlantic Littoral: House of Refuge

II

Agnarsson stood alone on the uppermost deck of the observation tower, scanning the frothy green surface of the Argentine Sea through binoculars. Having emptied its burden on the ocean, the wall of east-moving clouds had desaturated to a light, vaporous gray and begun to break up, allowing the passage of the first direct rays of morning. To the west, the flood lamps on the shadowy bulks of scattered seasteads began to wink out and the masts of more distant vessels became visible for the first time without aid of their navigational lights.

He had dispatched his morning report about twenty five minutes ago, received the reply and standby instruction twenty two minutes ago, and received an electronic query from the Argentine warship Furibundo fifteen minutes ago. The message informed him of “coastal security” operations conducted the previous night, and the pursuit of two known illicit weapon traffickers and unlawful combatants, listing Horacio and Sandra Vietes by name, and might these not be the same alleged refugees? Agnarsson dutifully left it unanswered. But now he was being hailed on the ship-to-ship radio. The stationkeeper considered leaving the hail unanswered as well, but he wasn’t going to allow them any excuse to “render assistance.”

“Atlantic Littoral Refuge 49, go ahead Furibundo,” he replied in English, hoping that would lend some difficulty to the affair. There was a delay, but he eventually received a reply in the most obsequious English.

“Refuge 49, have sent you electronic bulletin warning of known, dangerous war criminals. Can you please offer confirmation? We are prepared to render assistance, over.”

Agnarsson’s smile was tight and rueful. “Received bulletin. No assistance necessary. My compliments to your captain and the Argentine Navy for its responsible stewardship of the seas. Refuge 49, out.”

Agnarsson wasn’t worried. He expected the Argentines to inquire; in fact, he expected them to pester him for much of the day. This was his first assignment as a Stationkeeper, but he had seen similar scenarios play out when he was an ALERT man, and he had been told what to expect by veteran stationkeepers who had gone through the same rigmarole a dozen times in their lives. What he didn’t expect, what was nearly unthinkable, was that the Argentines might try to force the issue. To violate a house of refuge was a grave crime under both treaties and customary law. It was an act of piracy, rendering one a hostis humani generis — an an enemy of humanity — and inviting the most severe retribution that no flag or writ would shield one from. In the 29 years Agnarsson had lived, no life saving ship or station had been attacked by any state or Clade anywhere on earth.

The stationkeeper’s more immediate worry was Sandra. Her reaction reminded Agnarsson of his late father, who had fought against California in the Pan-American War. Justin, the youngest of four siblings, was born after the war, and he never knew his father before the nightmares, before the periods of depression punctuated by episodes of drunkenness and spasmodic violence, but his mother did, and she knew a very different man than the one that came back from the Klamath front. She used to tell Justin stories of the old days, of his father’s easygoing nature and the unassuming gentleness that won her love. That was before the bitterness at the horrors he’d witnessed - and maybe, Justin dared to think, the horrors he’d committed - ate him alive. Sandra’s tirade could have been quoted from Justin’s father, right down to the line about wiping their filth from the earth. It even shared the same uncaring - even welcome - recognition that those impulses were self-destructive.

Sandra’s words and her rage-contorted face burned in his mind, haunting him like his father’s ghost. It was enough of a tragedy for tough men like Horacio and his own father to live with such a burden, but it was intolerable to think of a young woman shouldering that weight. Sandra deserved to finish growing up in a place free from the hate-fueling fear and dehumanizing impulses of war, and, with time, mend her heartbreak. If she could be gotten out of the war, then maybe the war could be gotten out of her.

He had hope for that. Clade Brittania had already taken on refugees from the war, treated them with decency and dignity in Avonshire and St. Helena. They might be willing to take some more. That arrangement could have additional benefits, namely that her father might never see prosecution; the Crown-in-exile had no love for Argentina since the botched blockade of the Falklands last year.

Agnarsson turned around at the sound of footsteps. It was Sandra. She had pulled her wet hair back in a ponytail and was dressed in one of the station’s coveralls, too big for her in every dimension. She stepped off the ladder and stood stiffly, her lips pursed. “My father told me to apologize to you,” she eventually said, and in crisp English.

Agnarsson realized she wasn’t actually going to offer that apology, so he interceded. “I don’t know what for.”

“Neither do I.”

The stationkeeper smiled. “You speak English well, better than I speak Spanish.”

“My mother insisted.” Her voice took on a hard edge. All her grief had hardened into wrath.

“It was good that she did,” he said. “We’ve settled some refugees on the Isle of Avonshire, far north of here. They speak English there.”

“I know where it is,” she said. “But we’re not refugees. We’re smugglers and rebels.”

Agnarsson grew annoyed. “That’s not your determination to make.”

“Whose is it?”

“Mine!”

Suddenly, the ship-to-ship radio crackled again. It was Furibundo. Agnarsson held up his hand for silence and took the radio handset.

“Station 49, Corvette Captain Larrea requests the pleasure of your presence for supper. He would consider it a great honor to dine with you. If your duties do not allow you to leave your station, he and a small complement of officers might visit your station, food and preparations compliments of the Argentine Navy.”

‘Death by courtesy,’ Agnarsson thought and almost laughed, only restraining himself for the sake of the young woman that stood behind him. “Please extend my thanks to Captain Larrea and your crew, but I must regretfully decline. I am ill and contagious with little appetite. Influenza, I think. Another time, perhaps.”

The Argentine reply was immediate and little too enthusiastic. “We can send the ship’s doctor to you right away.”

“Many thanks again, Furibundo, but that will not be necessary. I must attend to my duties now, Station 49 out.”

Agnarsson replaced the handset and turned to Sandra, eager to reassure her. “This is just a little game they’re playing. They won’t come.”

But the girl did not seem in need of reassuring. Her voice was an intense whisper. “You should have accepted. Let me set the table. I would slit Captain Larrea’s throat with one of your shiny bread knives.”

He glowered at her. “You shouldn’t be contemplating slitting any throats, especially not with a bread knife.”

“You side with a murderer,” Sandra said coldly.

Her words and the look of contempt that burned in her eyes left him stunned and angry. “You’re a stupid child. If I did, you wouldn’t be here insulting me.”

“And you are a coward! If you weren’t, you would have joined the navy and gone to fight your country’s enemies instead of making beds for drunk fishermen!”

“Just like Captain Larrea did?”

The girl flinched, stunned into open-mouthed silence. Her hard expression softened and shame crept into her eyes, but she’d gone too far to elicit any sympathy from Agnarsson.

“See yourself below deck,” he growled. “I have beds to make.”

III

The drone could not be seen, but its buzzing was audible. As the morning wore on, it had gone from overflying the station at low altitudes to hovering in place, hidden somewhere above the light cloud cover. Agnarsson wound up the pressure hose he’d been scaling the deck with and looked over his shoulder at Horacio Vietes. “I wish you’d stay inside. It may be safer.”

“Safe?” Horacio coughed as he discarded his cigarette into the water. “How? You said they already knew we were here.”

“I said that they think you’re here,” Agnarsson corrected him. “And if that drone gets a good look at you, they’ll know for sure. If they have a submarine drone with a good microphone, they already know because you keep bringing it up.”

Horacio’s voice dropped to a whisper. “They will not give up.”

“It doesn’t matter anyway. You and your daughter will be flying north by this time tomorrow.”

“What will stop them from shooting us down?”

Agnarsson looked at him sharply. He was aggravated at having to repeat his reassurances, especially because he was starting to get unnerved himself. The Argentine corvette hadn’t steamed off. Furibundo. The longer he saw her circling them, silhouetted against the horizon, the more portentious that name seemed.

“I thought we were safe in my seastead as well, a hundred miles off the coast. That demon has no limits. I wish you had not sent that report. Why couldn’t you have waited a few more hours, or a day?”

Agnarsson sighed. ‘I probably should have,’ he thought. ‘No, don’t start down that road. They’re trying to make you sweat, but you can’t allow it. And what good does it do to worry about it anyway?’ He could not, would not, hand over the Vieteses no matter what.

“I’m going to check if there’s any word from Atlantic Littoral on your pickup. Please go back inside. Eat something, read a book, watch TV. Do anything but worry about this.”

Inside, Agnarsson found what he’d hoped for. There was a communiqué from Avonshire granting his request for a refugee transfer. A floatplane was to be dispatched tomorrow. For the first time in several hours, he felt optimistic.

Then the ship-to-ship whistled. He was being hailed again.

“Attention Atlantic Littoral Refuge Number 49, this is the ARA Furibundo. The two people you are harboring as war refugees are known unlawful combatants engaged in a state of war against the Argentine Republic. By warrant of the President of Argentina, we are charged with taking them into custody and expect your cooperation in accord with the law of civilized nations.”

With one taut movement, Agnarsson grabbed the radio handset and pulled it to his lips. His thumb shook with nervous energy on the transmitter button, sending dead air across the wire. He fought to steady his voice. “This is a house of refuge, and may not be subjected to threats or violence — in accord with the law of all civilized nations. I am the custodian of war refugees and I am neither empowered, nor am I willing, to surrender them to a belligerent.”

“Harboring pirates and terrorists is a violation of the law, as well as a breach of trust of a house of refuge. We insist that you surrender these pirates without further delay. If you refuse, you force us to take action to retrieve them.”

It was madness. ‘The whole world will come down on them,’ he thought again, only to realize that it didn’t matter if they did, because by then he and all that was left of the Vietes family would be dead. Agnarsson felt nauseous. He had been so confident, but Horacio was right after all. They had no limits.

“Refuge 49, what are your intentions?” the voice on the radio demanded.

There was only one answer he could give to that. “Go to Hell, Furibundo.”

Agnarsson activated the station’s automated defensive systems: two radar-guided 30mm autocannons and a single deuterium-fluoride laser. Both systems were for point defense against small boats and missiles — useless against Furibundo unless it blundered in much closer than she needed to, but certainly useful against a boarding party — or the damned drone that had been buzzing the refuge.

‘Assuming that any of them work,’ he thought. Both systems were as old as the station; while regular maintenance was done on them, neither had been test-fired in years. Realistically, it wouldn’t matter. He could not fight off the corvette with the paltry self-defense systems on the refuge. What he needed was outside help.

Luckily stationkeepers wielded a formula for such an unlikely contingency, an incantation against harm crafted by lawyers and diplomats. Agnarsson chanted it on the long-range radio, and it went like this: “Mayday, mayday. This is South Atlantic House of Refuge 49, requesting immediate assistance against rogue Argentine naval vessel Furibundo. My position is 38 degrees, two minutes, 1 second South, 54 degrees, 37 minutes, 31 seconds West. By my authority as Stationkeeper of an international life saving installation, I hereby issue a general Letter of Marque for the defense of this station against any and all who threaten it.”

He repeated the distress call in Spanish and French, and set it to cycle continuously.

“Chew on that, Captain Larrea,” Agnarsson said to himself. He desperately wanted to believe that he had just called their bluff, that the transmission would force the captain to withdraw. The next message from the ship-to-ship shattered that fantasy.

“Refuge 49, disarm your weapons and prepare to be boarded.”