Fast approaching the scene of carnage, a detachment of the Swiss navy arrived in the nick of time. Sweeping over the ocean’s morning horizon, the proud flotilla un-furled bright battle ensigns, fired warning shots, and sent the raiders into rout at flank speed. Rescued! The crews of rusty fishing barges cheered as their saviors hove into sight, the bright sun at their backs. Only moments before, all had seemed lost. Now disaster had turned to victory!

Nevertheless, Crat barely took notice. Amid the throng of filthy, sweat-grimed deck hands, climbing the rigging and waving their bandannas, he was too busy vomiting over the side to spend much effort cheering. Fortunately, there wasn’t much left in his stomach to void into waters already ripe with bloody offal. His fit tapered into a diminishing rhythm of gagging heaves.

“Here, fils,” someone said nearby. “Take this rag. Clean yourself.”

The voice was thickly accented. But then, nearly everyone aboard this corroded excuse for a barge spoke Standard English gooky, if at all. Grabbing at a blur, Crat was dimly surprised to find the cloth relatively clean. Cleaner than anything he’d seen since coming aboard the Congo, some weeks ago. He wiped his chin and then tried to lift his head, wondering miserably who had bothered taking an interest in him.

“No. Do not thank me. Here. Let me giff you something for the nausea.”

The speaker was white haired and wrinkled from the sun. And despite his age, it was clear that his wiry, sun-browned arms were stronger than Crat’s own soft, city-bred pair. The good Samaritan grabbed the back of Crat’s head adamantly and lifted a vapor-spritzer. “Are you ready? Goot! Breathe in, now.”

Crat inhaled. Tailored molecules soaked through his mucous membranes, rushing to receptors in his brain. The overwhelming dizziness evaporated like fog under the subtropical sun.

He wiped his eyes and then handed back the kerchief without a word.

“You’re a silent one, neh? Or is it because you’re choked up over our triumph?” The old man pointed where the green raiders’ rear guard could still be seen, fleeing west-ward in their ultrafast boats. Of course nothing owned by Sea State could hope to catch them.

“Triumph,” Crat said, repeating the word blankly.

“Yes, of course. Driven off by the one force they fear most. Helvetia Rediviva. The fiercest warriors in all the world.”

Crat shaded his eyes against the still-early sun, wondering vaguely where his hat had gone to. By the captain’s orders, everybody aboard Congo had to wear one to protect against the sleeting ultraviolet… as if the average life span on a Sea State fishing boat encouraged much worry about latent skin cancers.

The first thing Crat saw as he turned around was the listing hull of Dacca… the fleet’s cannery barge and the green raiders’ main target. Deck hands dashed to and fro, washing down gear that had been sprayed with caustic enzymes. Others cast lines to smaller vessels nearby, as pumps fought to empty water from Dacca’s flooding bilges.

The greeners hadn’t had any intention of sinking her, just rendering her useless. Still, raiders often overestimated the seaworthiness of ships flying the albatross flag. Crat was too inexperienced to guess if Dacca’s crew could save the ship. And damned if he’d ask.

Near the factory ship, a UNEPA observer craft loitered, blue and shiny like something from an alien world — which in a sense it was. The dumpit U.N. hadn’t done a gor-sucking thing to stop the greeners. But should Dacca drown — or spill more than a few quarts of engine oil saving herself — UNEPA would be all over Sea State with eco-fines.

“There,” the oldster said helpfully, nudging Crat’s shoulder and pointing. “Now you can get a good look at our rescuers. Over toward Japan.”

Is that what those islands are? The mountainous forms were low to the northeast, like clouds. Crat wondered how anyone could tell the difference.

He saw a squadron of low-slung vessels approaching swiftly from that direction, so clean and trim, he naturally at first assumed they had nothing to do with Sea State.

Smaller craft spread out, prowling for greener submarines, while in the center a sleek, impressive ship of war drew near. The nozzles of its powerful cannon gleamed like polished silver. Bulging high-pressure tanks held its ammunition — various chemical agents that it began spraying over poor Dacca to neutralize the greeners’ enzymes. Although neither dousing was supposed to affect flesh, the new bath caused Dacca s crew to laugh and caper, luxuriating as if it were a Fragonard perfume.

“Ah!” the old man said. “Just as I thought. It is Pike-man. A proud vessel! They say she never needs to fight, so fearsome is her name.”

Crat glanced sideways, suddenly suspicious. This fellow’s eyes glittered with more than mere gratitude at being saved from greener sabotage. There was unmistakable pride in his bearing. From that, and the thick but educated accent, Crat guessed he was no mere refugee from poverty, nor a foolish would-be adventurer like himself. No, he must have joined the nation of the dispossessed because his birthplace was still officially under occupation by all the world’s powers — a country whose very name had been confiscated.

Crat remembered seeing that look in the eyes of another veteran, back in Bloomington — one of the victors in the Helvetian campaign. How strange, then, to spot it next in one who had lost everything.

Shit. That must’ve been some dumpit war.

The old man confirmed Crat’s suspicions. “See how even at this low estate they must treat us with respect?” he asked, then added in a low voice. “By damn, they had better!”

The rescuing flotilla efficiently dispatched units to repair Dacca, while Pikeman turned into the wind to launch a tethered guard zeppelin. On closer inspection, Crat saw that the vessel wasn’t new at all. Its flanks were patched, like every other ship in Sea State’s worldwide armada. And yet the refurbishments blended in, somehow looking like intentional improvements on the original design.

Watching the cruiser’s flag flapping in the wind, Crat blinked suddenly in surprise. For a brief instant the great bird at the banner’s center, instead of flying amid stylized ocean waves, had seemed to soar out of a blocky cloud, set in a bloody field. He squinted. Had it been an illusion, brought on by his constant hunger?

No! There! The colors glittered again! The Sea State emblem must have been modified, he realized. Stitched in amid the blue water and green sky were holographic threads, flashing to the eye only long enough to catch a brief but indelible image.

Once again, for just a second, the albatross flapped sublimely through a square white cross, centered on a background of deep crimson.

Naturally, during the melee the dolphins had escaped. Even before the Helvetian detachment arrived to drive them off, the green raiders had managed to tear the giant fishing web surrounding the school. Crat groaned when he saw the damage. His hands were already cracked from trying to please a slave-driving apprentice net maker, tying simple knots over and over, then retying half of them when his lord and master found some fault undetectable to any human eye.

The calamity went beyond damaged nets, of course. It could mean they’d go hungry again tonight, if the raiders’ enzymes had reached the catch already in Dacca’s hold. And yet, in a lingering corner, Crat felt strangely glad the little creatures had got away.

Oh, sure. Back in Indiana he’d been a carni-man, a real meat eater. Often he’d save up to devour a rare hamburger in public, just to disgust any NorA dumpit ChuGas who happened to pass by. Anyway, today’s prey wasn’t one of the brainy or rare dolphin types on the protected lists, or else UNEPA would have interfered faster and a lot more lethally than any green raiders.