Seabound (Seabound Chronicles Book 1) (20 page)

At least she could
establish whether the extra RO filters actually existed.

Paris smiled.
“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Esther.” David
had caught up with them and tried to speak again, but she cut him off.

“Oh, and if you
could show me where that powder room is too, I’d appreciate it.”

Retrieving the filters
from the storage hold did not prove as simple as Esther had hoped. Paris led
her back down below the decks after a much-needed meal of a dense brown seaweed
she wasn’t familiar with and grilled rockfish. Even in the midst of the crisis,
she tasted a hint of butter on the fish. She hoped the goats had survived the
storm.

The passageway was
dimmer than it had been the night before because only the emergency lights were
on. Esther felt more at home as she hobbled, trailing her fingers along the
rough patterns of the walls just as she did when she walked the passageways of
the
Catalina
.

The hatch to the
supply hold wouldn’t budge. Esther slammed her good foot down onto it, trying
to force it open. With each stomp, pain sliced into her injured foot. It felt
like barnacles scraping against her heel.

“You’ll hurt
yourself that way,” Paris said, hovering nearby.

He gave the hatch
a delicate shove after looking up and down the passageway to make sure it was
empty.

“Something’s
wedged against the door.”

Esther stomped one
more time, more out of frustration than anything else.

“It’ll be chaos
down there after last night.”

Esther sat beside
the hatch, resting her injured foot. “There has to be a loading dock
somewhere,” she said, “an opening to the outside. There’s no way they brought
everything in through this hatch. And there’s probably at least one other
entrance inside the ship for fetching things while under way. It’ll be in the
side of the hold. Can you take me down another level?”

“Into the engine
room?”

For the first time,
Esther felt a spark of hope. “Yeah, that’s perfect.”

“As you wish, but
we won’t go unnoticed,” Paris warned.

He offered her his
arm.

“We’ll think of
something,” Esther said as they hobbled back up the passageway.

She was already
getting a sense of the layout. It was easier to keep things in order now than
it had been in the haze of last night. She didn’t allow herself to follow that
line of thought any further.

On the next level
down, Paris motioned for her to be quiet. The corridor walls were blank, industrial
in appearance. This was the working heart of the ship. They passed a row of
rooms in the passageway, including one labeled Control Room, and arrived at a
heavy steel door. A familiar rumbling came through it.

Using just the
tips of his fingers, Paris pushed open the door. The engine room was pristine.
It hummed with thrusting pistons and rotating gears. Esther admired the
machinery as they made their way gingerly along the metal catwalk. She imagined
working here with a big, professional crew, directing maintenance and
efficiency modifications. The crew, wearing matching uniforms, bent diligently
over their poststorm maintenance checks.

Esther scanned the
walls for some sign of access to the hold.

“You two can’t be
in here!”

A man pulled
himself up onto their catwalk from the level below and stood in their path. His
muscles bulged through his uniform, and his hair was shaved so short Esther
couldn’t tell what color it was.

“There’s dangerous
machinery down here. Get lost.”

“Excuse me, sir,”
Paris said with a flourish. “This young lady needs access to the cargo hold.
The upper hatch is blocked. Would you be so kind as to step out of our way? We
won’t be but a moment.”

The big man eyed
Esther’s disheveled skirt and scraggly hair. “You got authorization to access
the hold?”

“Not precisely,
but you know how much time the bureaucracy takes around here.” Paris smiled
ingratiatingly, but the man didn’t react. “I thought I’d let her have a quick
look. No need to bother anyone upstairs.”

“No authorization,
no access.”

“Listen,” Paris
tried again. “This young lady is a survivor from the
Catalina
. She’s
been left with nothing. Marooned on our fair ship! It would be harmless to
share some of our surplus with her, don’t you think?”

The big man
crossed his arms. “What do you think this is, the
Emerald
? Get the fuck
out of my engine room. I have work to do.”

Esther stepped
forward. “Please, sir, I’m a mechanic. Maybe I could do some work around here
in exchange—”

“You think I give
a shit? You’re no mechanic.” He leered at her rumpled skirt. “Now I’ll give you
three seconds to get the hell out.”

“We’ll find
another way, Esther. Let’s go.”

Paris tugged at
her arm as she tried to stare down the big man. The elbows of his crossed arms
were level with her face. Finally, she let Paris help her back along the
catwalk.

“And don’t think I
won’t tell the captain you’re helping Catalinans steal from the hold, Morgan!”
the big man shouted after them. He turned sharply. “Gordy, you fucking moron.
You’re putting that in backwards.”

He jumped back down
to the next level, landing with a crash on the metal floor. Esther looked
behind her as they left the engine room. She could have told Gordy he was doing
that wrong. The heavy metal door clanged shut behind them.

Chapter 20—Rendezvous

As they neared the
rendezvous point the next morning, all evidence of the catastrophic storm had
vanished from the sky. The sun sparkled, as if to taunt them, and the water was
as still as glass. The
Galaxy
Mist
glided through the sea, but it couldn’t
move fast enough for Esther.

The previous day,
she had gone back to the other hatch of the cargo hold and tried to force it
open. But without access to tools, she’d failed. The engine room was occupied
around the clock, and there was no way for her to sneak through. She thought of
her own slapdash operation back home. Cally would let anyone traipse through
the
Catalina
’s engine room without a
second thought. Esther probably would have allowed it too.

She wondered about
what the engine room boss had said. The captains needed to grant permission to
go through the hold. Could she convince them to let her look at the supplies?
She was hardly a threat to them, no matter what they were up to.

Esther had also
gone back to the bridge and talked to Reuben for a while, but he’d had no word
of the
Catalina
on the radio. Reuben
thought this meant the
Catalina
hadn’t survived, but Esther refused to
believe that. They would contact the
Catalina
somehow, and by the time they did she would have found a way to get the desal
supplies. Then all she’d have to do was get the supplies to the ship, wherever
it was.

Esther slept on a
tiny couch in the powder room behind the theater. The couch smelled like grease
paint and mildew but was reasonably comfortable. The room had been a wreck of
jumbled costumes and headdresses when Paris brought her there the previous day.
She’d cleaned it up as best she could and used a green velvet cape as a
blanket. It was a shame such good material was being used for costumes and
nothing else.

Throughout the
night, she listened to horn blasts from other ships meeting up in the darkness.
Each time Esther imagined it was the
Catalina
,
that she could dart up to the deck and see her father waving to her over the
railings. But each time the sound was wrong.

Fear was a
constant presence now, like seasickness in the pit of her stomach. The waiting,
not knowing, was torturous.

Early in the
morning she hobbled on her sore foot to the main deck to join scores of
Mist
residents as they watched the
Galaxy
ships drift into view on the
horizon. The assorted bandages and limps, evidence of the traumatic storm, made
the crowd look humbler than it had before. Their voices were hushed, more
solemn, as they watched the ships grow large around them.

Throughout the morning,
the big cruise liners arranged themselves into the same formation they’d
adopted at the previous location. The process was excruciatingly slow. A few
smaller vessels zipped amongst the ships, guiding the behemoths into position.
There was no sign of the
Catalina
.

David, his blond
hair nearly white in the sunshine, made the rounds on deck and spoke
reassuringly to the residents. Esther avoided his gaze. He’d come to ask her to
stay in his cabin at dinner the previous evening. “I’m not trying to pressure
you into anything. I swear,” he’d said. “You’ll be more comfortable. I’ll sleep
on the floor.” She had refused, unless he would help her convince the captains
to send help for the
Catalina
. Apparently, he’d been going against their
wishes by taking her to the hold last night. Why was he withdrawing his help
now that the
Catalina
’s situation was
even more precarious?

She felt confused
about what had happened between them. Her attraction to David had surprised
her. She didn’t trust him, especially now that she’d seen him morph back into
the perfect captains’ spokesman yesterday. And yet she wanted to wrap her arms
around his waist, to feel his lips on her forehead, to have him look at her the
way he had just before he’d kissed her for the first time. She buried these
feelings deep beneath her determination to help the
Catalina
.

As the
Flotilla
took shape around them, Esther
joined Paris on the lido deck. One of the bridges had been salvaged and repaired
the previous day. It would link with the
Crystal
Galaxy
, where
Paris and Marianna lived. Marianna would be the best person to help her contact
Neal on the
Catalina
. She was working on establishing a base station
that would connect to other ships via rogue satellites. She must have information
about where the ships fled during the storm. She would help.

As the bridge
settled between the ships, David stepped to the front of the crowd. He’d found
a new loudspeaker, and he made a brief speech about supporting the work crews.
“We all need to do our part to ensure that these good people have the space and
assistance they need to rebuild our community,” he finished. “We will have two
lanes on this bridge to allow some of the
Crystal
residents to board the
Mist
. Stay to your right, and please
proceed slowly. We ask everyone to return as soon as possible to their ship of
residence. The captains will conduct a full count of all the people in their
charge. May you find all your loved ones in good health.”

He stepped aside,
allowing the throng to surge forward. He nodded at people as they passed,
greeting many by name.

When Esther and
Paris reached the bridge, David touched her arm. “Esther, I want to help you.
Will you come back to the
Mist
tonight, if the
Catalina
hasn’t turned up by then?”

She studied him,
trying to see past his smooth spokesman’s face. There was something more to him
beneath the veneer, something she’d glimpsed that night. But she’d made too
many mistakes already. She couldn’t let her feelings—whatever they
were—get in the way of helping the
Catalina
.
He was a complication she could do without.

“I’m going to talk
to Marianna. She’ll help me get in touch with Neal and find the
Catalina
.
I don’t need you.”

David sighed and
stepped back. “Good luck, Esther. I hope I’ll see you again.”

She said nothing and
limped onto the bridge. Beneath her feet, a pair of small boats zipped between
the steep hulls of the two cruise ships. Seaweed dredged up by the storm was
piled on their prows. A new scratch as long as an orca scarred the hull of the
Crystal
a few feet above the waterline.
Men in harnesses hung from the decks and worked to repair it. Esther watched
them as she crossed the bridge.

Then she stepped
onto the deck and bumped straight into Neal. “Rust and salt!” she yelped.

“Esther? What are
you doing here?” he said, the first to recover from the shock.

“Me?” Esther
squawked. “What are
you
doing here? You’re supposed to be manning the
radios on the
Catalina
!”

People knocked
into her as they stepped off the bridge. She barely noticed.

“I . . . I stayed
late on the
Crystal
, after the show.”

Neal shifted his
weight from foot to foot, tugging at the tie he’d worn to the cabaret, which
now hung loosely around his neck. Marianna stood just behind him, her eyes on
Paris.

“You stayed late?
Neal, you have a responsibility to keep the
Catalina
in contact with
other ships. They’re floating loose with no way to call for help! How could you
be so stupid?”

It wasn’t fair to
be angry with him, but throughout the night she’d been focused on getting to
the
Crystal
and getting in contact with Neal. She had imagined him
swiveling in his chair in the broadcast tower, headset around his ears. That
hope had been her lifeline. She was happy he was alive, but she did not want to
see him here now.

“Me?” Neal said,
face alternating between pink and white. “What about you? What on earth
possessed
you
to stay on the
Mist
?”

“Excuse me,
Nelson, were you spending the night with my wife?” Paris spoke softly, but his
words silenced them.

“Paris,” Marianna
said, reaching out to touch him.

The crowd broke
around them as people hugged each other, laughing and calling out names,
comparing battle scars.

He stiffened. “I
know the two of you have been keeping company.” Esther could barely hear
Paris’s voice now. His words were meant for Marianna alone. She didn’t respond.

Esther and Neal
looked uncomfortably between the two. They seemed to be communicating through
eye contact alone.

When she couldn’t
stand the silence any longer, Esther cleared her throat. “Thanks for all your
help yesterday, Paris. Neal and I should get to the satellite station and try
to contact the
Catalina.
You two can talk.”

She’d do anything
to avoid another fraught scene.

Paris shook his
head, his gray curls dancing on his forehead. “No, you need Marianna’s help.
She can’t have had time to show Norbert all her tricks.”

“Will we talk
later,
mi amor
?
”
Marianna said.

“Please don’t call
me that.”

He pushed back
through the crowds toward the bridge and crossed back over to the
Mist
.

Now Neal and
Marianna were gazing at each other, oblivious to the chaos around them. Esther
clapped Neal on the shoulder to snap him out of it. “Let’s go see this
satellite thingy of yours. What do you know of the
Catalina
’s position?”

Marianna led the
way through the crowds as Neal filled her in. They’d clocked the
Catalina
heading south on radar before a disruption knocked out the system. That was the
previous afternoon. She could be anywhere by now.

“How long do you
think it’ll take the
Catalina
to
figure out you’re not manning the comms?” Esther asked.

Neal shook his
head, breaking himself out of what was surely another morose train of thought.
“Not long at all, but they’ll be limited to radio. No one else has put in the
same amount of time with the satellite system. They’d have encountered the
disruption and may have given up. We’ll need to bounce the message through
other ships with radio, unless the skip is in.”

“Any idea how much
fuel they have left?”

“Not much. At
least they can’t have gotten very far away,” he said. He paused until Marianna
had moved out of earshot. “We didn’t do anything, you know. We were just
talking when the storm hit. I swear.”

Esther frowned.
She felt bad for her friend and worse for not wanting to talk to him about it.
Even if he and Marianna hadn’t done anything, they were obviously embroiled in
a complicated emotional attachment. She hoped to avoid those from now on.

“Look,” she said.
“I think we have bigger things to worry about right now.”

“Esther! Esther!”

As they reached
the starboard deck, someone called to them through the crowd. Esther pivoted on
her good foot to see Dax running toward them. He wore a slim-fitting sweater
with wide maroon and gray stripes. His hair stood out in every direction.

“Have you heard
from Cally?”

“Did she stay on
the
Galaxy
last night? I’ll kill her.”

“No, she was on
the ferry on her way home,” Dax said, gripping his hair in both fists and
staring wildly at her. “I don’t know if she made it back to the
Catalina
before the storm hit.”

Esther’s heart
dropped. “There was a ferry of
Catalinans
in the storm?”

“It was the last
load of the night,” Dax said, still out of breath. “They were headed back to
the ship after the cabaret so they wouldn’t have to walk across all the
bridges.”

Esther’s first
attempt to speak failed. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Who else was
on the ferry?”

“I don’t know. All
I care about is Cally. I’m in love with her, Esther! I’ll kill myself if she’s
drowned!”

“You’ll do no such
thing.” Esther forced herself to sound cheery. It was like turning a rusty bolt
without a wrench. “Come with us. We’re going to contact the
Catalina
right now.” She turned to Neal. “Did you see my father last night?”

“No. I’m sure he
was on the ship. He wouldn’t have been on that ferry.”

But she could tell
that Neal too was picturing the faces of their friends, wondering which ones
might now be at the bottom of the sea. She felt like a whirlpool had opened in
her gut. She ignored it, shoving it away just as she pushed away the pain in her
foot.

They made their
way through the interior of the
Crystal
and up to the satellite station
located behind the bridge. The station, with its eclectic assortment of control
consoles and antennas, was relatively quiet. There was a large table in the center
of the room and a cot in the corner, not unlike the one Neal lived on back on
the
Catalina
.

Neal and Marianna
got to work quickly on the panel of computers, sending out calls for
information about the
Catalina
via
radio
periodically while they tried to ping the satellites. Esther
occupied herself with consoling Dax. It gave her a task, something to keep her
mind off her father, Cally, and the ferry that might be resting on the
seafloor.