Seabound (Seabound Chronicles Book 1) (25 page)

After a few
minutes, David held up a hand for quiet. “Now that you know my secret, I hope
you’ll trust me. After we save the
Catalina
, we can try to contact the
people on land. We’ll have our own ship and the freedom to go where we wish.
Alternatively, the
Catalina
seems like a nice community. It wouldn’t be
a bad place to live for a while, if anyone wants to stay on. Everyone’s equal
there.” Several people in the crowd nodded at this. David clapped his hands together
once. “But now we need to talk business. I’ve learned that the patrol ship
Lucinda
will be transporting replacement
reverse-osmosis filters for the desalination system from the hold of the
Mist
to the water ship this afternoon. Those filters are crucial to the
Catalina
’s
survival, but we’ll also bring them supplies, fuel, and water to get them back
on their feet. Adele will coordinate, but we need help from you guys on the oil
crew. We need to get everyone onto the
Lucinda
with the supplies and then get rid of their crew. She’s fast and
in good shape, so we should be able to outrun the destroyer as long as we get a
head start. With any luck, we’ll be far enough away by the time they mobilize
that it won’t be worthwhile to give chase, given the oil it would cost.” He
paused as whispered conversations in the theater picked up again. “We’ll need
to wait until she’s nearly alongside the water ship before we make our move.
Otherwise, we’ll be too far inside the flotilla to get out before they block
us.”

“How will we get
rid of the crew?” Zoe called. She sat forward in her chair, looking ready to
jump into action.

“That’s where
Paris comes in,” David said.

Paris smiled and
threw his arms wide. “You don’t become a master dramatist to put on shows in
the theater alone. The word, my friends, is trickery.”

Paris explained
his plan, and soon people were nodding and sitting a little straighter around
the theater. It was brazen, and there were a hundred ways it could go wrong,
but it just might work.

After Paris had
finished giving out assignments, Esther had the final word. Paris introduced
her, and the crowd fell silent as she walked up to the stage, still limping
slightly.

She cleared her
throat, feeling nervous. She had never spoken in front of a large group like
this, much less a group of strangers.

“My name is
Esther,” she began.

“Yeah Esther!” Zoe
shouted.

Toni whooped, and
there was a titter through the crowd. It made Esther feel braver.

“Look,” she said,
“I’m a stranger here. I don’t know what you’ve all been through on the
Galaxy
, or your reasons for going along
with this scheme.” Her eyes fell on David, who was still sitting at the edge of
the stage. “What I do know is that the most important thing in the world to me
is my family on the
Catalina
. I want
them to survive, maybe to have a better life. If you all are doing this to make
a better life for your families than the one you’ve had here, well then I think
I understand you.” She looked out at Byron, remembering his face when he’d
mentioned his wife and daughter. They couldn’t screw this up. “We’re all taking
a risk, like Paris said. But if this works, you’ll be welcome on the
Catalina
. It’ll be a home for you, and
you’ll be treated as equals with everyone else there. I can’t promise you fresh
vegetables or steak dinners or anything, but I can promise you that. So, I
guess I just want to say thank you,” she finished.

No one clapped,
though Esther didn’t think she would have either. But people nodded their
assent, met her eyes. Jaws set. Fists clenched. They understood.

Chapter 24—Before

The new crew dispersed
to
collect belongings and family members. They would move on the
Lucinda
in just a few hours. With any luck, no
one would have enough time to change their minds and alert the captains. Esther
knew the people who came to the meeting had been thinking about leaving the
Flotilla
for a while. Now was their
chance to act.

David was still
sitting on the edge of the stage when Esther said good-bye to Zoe and her
friends and joined him. She sat beside him, swinging her legs in time with his.
They watched the last of the oilmen leave the theater, talking earnestly.

After a while,
Esther broke the silence. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Esther,” he said,
watching their feet, “your sense of duty toward your friends is inspiring.
Obviously, I’ve never developed the same loyalty to the
Galaxy
, but I didn’t have the courage to leave
until I saw you fighting for the
Catalina
.”

“My dad is on the
Catalina
,” Esther said. “And it’s my
fault they’re in such bad shape.”

She didn’t deserve
praise for her role in this fiasco.

“You should give
yourself some credit. You’re all right, Esther.” He nudged her with his elbow.

“Thanks.” They
remained silent for a few minutes, then she stood to go.

David caught her
hand, his palm warm against hers.

“I have to go back
to my cabin to collect some things before we move. Would you come with me?” he
said quietly, tracing the calluses on her hand.

She let him touch
her, imagining for an instant the feeling of his hands tracing the contours of
her back, but didn’t move any closer to him. “I need to help Paris with the
guns. We’ll talk later.”

“You promise?”
David asked, and his face looked very young for a moment.

“Yes.” She turned
to go, then hesitated. “I’m glad you’re coming with us. Even if you don’t stay
for long.”

She found Paris
digging through the costume closet with Dax’s friend Connor. Connor hadn’t made
a particularly good impression on Esther at the
Crown
dinner, but she shook his hand and welcomed him to the crew.

Paris pulled gun
after gun from beneath one of the costume racks and stacked them in Connor’s
arms.

“Where’d all this
come from, Paris?” Esther asked.

Paris huffed with
the effort of bending to extract the guns. “We did a production of
War Horse
a few years back. Used painted
driftwood, spare bits of metal, anything we could find to make the weapons.
They look real enough—more real than the horses did anyway. Providing no
one recognizes them from the show, we should be able to convince the crew to
take us seriously.”

“Brilliant,”
Esther said. She took a long rifle from atop the stack in Connor’s arms. This
one was metal, and it felt cold against her fingers. “Are you sure you’ll be
all right after all this is done?”

“I’ll manage.”

“What if they
figure out you gave us weapons? And came up with the plan, for that matter.”

“I will insist you
stole them from me at knife point,” Paris said. He stopped and twisted, his
back cracking like gunfire as he did. “Oof, that’s better. Anyone who knows you
will believe it. The captains appreciate my ability to keep people entertained.
I’ll probably get off with a slap on the wrist when all is said and done.”

Esther frowned. “I
wish you’d come with us.”

Paris stood and
looked at her for a long moment. “I belong here. When we were set adrift on the
sea after the disaster, I was in a bad place. Spiritually, you know? The
Galaxy
gave me a stage, a place to
continue doing what I love in the midst of a world gone to hell. I owe it to
her to stay on and keep trying to change things from the inside.”

“What about
Marianna?” Esther asked.

Paris glanced at
Connor, but he was occupied with stuffing the stage guns into an unwieldy sack.
“Marianna and I haven’t been a proper married couple for a while,” Paris said,
“but we had a lot of plans together once.” He turned back to the closet,
briskly rustling through the costumes. “No, I’ll be better off here. Maybe I’ll
adopt an orphan or two. Besides, I’ve heard about your amateur performances on
the
Catalina
, and I don’t think I could stomach them. The
Galaxy
,
with all its faults, is the place for me.”

“Thank you, Paris,
for everything. You don’t know what this means to me.”

He smiled. “I
think I do, darling. I think I do.”

Esther and Connor
helped Paris move all the stage weaponry out to the main theater. Soon their
co-conspirators would pick up the weapons and depart for their stations. The
theater was empty, and Esther stood for a moment on the stage, looking up at
the balcony from which she’d watched the cabaret performance. So much had
changed in just a few days. She wished they could get it over with. The waiting
was the worst part.

A throat cleared
behind her. “Uh, can I go now?”

She turned to see
Connor placing the last of the guns on the stage. “Sure, I think we’re done,”
she said. “Got family to see?”

Connor blinked.
“Yeah, family, uh, I just . . . think the captains are bad, you know?”

“I guess . . .”
Esther said.

Connor nodded and
rushed off toward the exit, turning to look back at her as he went.

Soon it was time for
Esther to take her place too. She couldn’t sweet-talk people, like David, or
fool them, like Paris, but she could fix things that needed to be fixed. She
had to keep calm and make sure all the parts fit together. Everything depended
on it.

Chapter 25—Hijacking

At the appointed time,
Esther met Byron at a seldom-used platform floating beside the
Mist
.
Their new friends loaded suitcases and packages onto his water taxi, Paris’s
stage guns tucked beneath their coats. Adele held a plastic semiautomatic rifle
in her slender hands. Byron gave Esther a handheld radio. Set to an obscure
frequency, it would be just strong enough for Esther to tell him when to move.

“You all set,
Byron?” she asked.

“Yep. Got the kids
settled. So far everyone’s kept quiet enough.” Byron jerked his head behind him
to where his wife and ten-year-old daughter, Thera, sat. Other young families
huddled together in the middle of the boat between the sweating, grim-faced
Galaxy
rebels. They’d only had a few
hours to collect their entire lives and follow him.

Esther wished
there was some way to avoid taking the children into the thick of the mission.
“Are you sure they should be here?”

“Can’t leave
without ’em,” Byron said. “We’re on a bid for a new life. Gotta take the risk
sometime.”

“Just make sure
they stay on the taxi until the fighting’s done,” Esther said.

“They’ll be under
the seats the second you give the word.”

Byron saluted her
as he pulled away from the dock. Esther lost sight of little Thera’s solemn
brown eyes as the boat sped away. The taxi would stay in the shadow of the
Mist
,
lurking until
Lucinda
picked
up her cargo.

Esther jogged back
up the gangway and across the lower lifeboat deck, limping slightly on her
injured heel. She leaned over the railing to see if
Lucinda
had arrived yet. A wake trail spread
like an arrowhead pointing straight for the
Mist
,
and the telltale glint of sun on steel flashed from the sea. It was
her
, their getaway ship.

Lucinda
was
gorgeous. She had a large main deck and a sharp prow like a raven’s beak. She
was matte gray in color, blending into the sea around her. The large pilothouse
amidships had dark windows and a weapons turret on top. A thicket of antennas
rose above it. Her hull bore a faded navy insignia. She was a
Cyclone
-class patrol ship, faster,
lighter, and smaller than a destroyer. Compared to the other boats in the
Flotilla
, she was a Ferrari.

Esther turned to
make her way along the railing. She caught sight of Connor standing farther
along the
Mist
’s
deck, overlooking where the
Lucinda
was sailing up to the hull. That was strange. He was supposed to
be in David’s crew, which had taken a water taxi across to the
Emerald
almost an hour ago. Esther stopped and ducked behind a lifeboat winch. Connor
rocked back and forth on his heels, watching the ship approach. A few other
people milled about the deck, but none of them focused so intently on the
Lucinda
.

Stop being so obvious.
You’re going to give us away
,
Esther thought irritably, and then she realized he was about to do exactly
that—on purpose. She leapt from behind the lifeboat and ran.

Connor stood up on
his toes, filling his lungs, and shouted, “Look out! They’re going to
hi—”

Esther barreled
into him before he had a chance to say “-jack.” They hit the deck with a thunk.
She grabbed his arms and rolled away from the railing, pulling him with her. He
was too surprised to react. She prayed no one on the
Lucinda
had heard his shout.

“What are you
doing?” she whispered fiercely.

Connor looked
terrified. She could feel him trying to contract into a ball beneath her
weight.

“I don’t think you
should do this,” he whimpered.

“We have to,” she
hissed. “You don’t need to come, but if you give us away I swear I’ll gouge out
your eyeballs with a socket wrench.”

He spluttered, and
Esther wasted no time in standing and dragging him to his feet. He tried to
run, but she delivered a quick elbow to his solar plexus and dragged him,
wheezing, along the edge of the lifeboat deck. They had to avoid attention. She
searched for a coil of rope, a hose, anything to secure him for a little while.
Finally, she settled for stuffing him into a washroom just inside one of the
side doors.

She shoved the boy
against the wall and threatened to disembowel him or throw him overboard if he
made a sound. Satisfied that she’d scared him into silence, Esther wrenched a
metal tap from the sink and used it to jam the washroom door shut. She listened
outside the door for a few seconds, heart pounding, to make sure Connor
wouldn’t call for help.

Time was running
out. Esther ran full speed down to the engine room, praying that Connor hadn’t
tipped anyone off. Her heel throbbed against her stitches as she pounded down
the stairs. She was grateful the
Mist
was not one of the busier ships.
She wouldn’t be able to dash through the
Emerald
without eliciting comment.
A few levels down, her breath coming in gasps, Esther slowed so no one would
hear the echo of her feet in the narrow passageway. Carefully, she pushed open
the door to the engine room and slipped inside.

Thick boiler pipes
ran along the left edge of the room. She ducked behind them before any of the
workers noticed that the door had opened. She stopped breathing, the vibrations
of the hot metal pipes warming her hands. She raised her head just enough to
look over the top.

The sights and
smells of the sea flooded through a door in the hull.
Lucinda
floated in the aquamarine square,
bobbing with the rising and falling of the water. The engine room sat low in
the
Mist
, so all they had to do was
extend a ramp from the cruise ship to the patrol ship to move the supplies
across. Fortunately, the moving operation occupied the attention of all the
workers.

The head machinist
was steaming with irritation, face red, folding and unfolding his cable-like
arms. Cargo was not supposed to come through the engine room, of course, but
the upper hatch was still blocked, and whoever had ordered these supplies to be
moved had overruled him. The entrance connecting the
Mist
’s
hold and the
engine room stood open. A pair of sailors carried boxes out of the hold,
through the doorway in the hull and across to the
Lucinda
, where they disappeared below deck. Esther slid stealthily
along the edge of the room behind the pipes, trying to watch everyone at once.
The boxes making the sailors sweat and grunt certainly looked like the ones she
saw the night of the cabaret. She had to make sure they really contained
desalination filters.

The light coming
from the entrance threw a shadow over Esther’s hiding place. She breathed
slowly, measuring the intervals when the pulsing of the sea scraped the ramp
against the deck. Each scrape produced a sound like the barking of a distressed
sea lion. It would cover her if she timed her movements right.

The movers crossed
into the hold of the
Mist
for
another load
.
The machinist turned to shout at a ratty young man,
drawing the attention of the other crew members. This was it. Esther stood.

Suddenly, shadows
flickered to her right. Esther glimpsed the oilmen from the theater darting
across the ramp to the
Lucinda
one by
one. They should have been across by now! She crouched behind the pipes again
and waited as the last one disappeared through the hold door and entered the
belly of the
Lucinda
. Just behind
them the sailors returned, carrying boxes that hopefully contained more of the
precious desalination filters. Esther watched them transport the boxes across
the gangway, preparing to make her move.

But this time the
sailors didn’t reemerge from inside the
Lucinda.
Was that it? The
machinist was still shouting at his subordinates. Then the ramp began to creep
up.

“Salt,” Esther
breathed.

The aquamarine
square shrunk to a rectangle. Her window of opportunity was closing. There were
too many people around! She was going to miss her chance.

Esther felt at the
mock handgun stuck in her waistband. It wouldn’t do any good against the entire
engine crew. Even if they thought it was real, she’d give away the plan if she
leapt out and started waving a gun around. She sucked in a breath and chucked
the gun across the room, far from the rapidly closing door.

The handgun
clanged like a gong when it hit the metal catwalk on the far side of the room.
Esther didn’t wait to see if everyone had looked toward the sound. She darted
from her hiding place and hoisted herself over the closing ramp. She rolled
across the narrow promenade of the
Lucinda
and dropped into its hold
.

The ramp locked
into place behind her with an echoing thunk. She was in. It was dark inside the
Lucinda
,
nearly purple
after the shocking brightness of the sea. Esther crawled sideways behind a
stack of boxes, barely breathing, and waited for her eyes to adjust to the
dimness. She smelled grease and metal. She was in the hold, deep in the belly
of the patrol ship.

The sailors
dropped the final box onto a pile at the far end of the narrow space.

“Damn courier
duty,” one mumbled.

“Better than being
on the oil crew,” said his companion as he double-checked the seal.

“This ship is too
fine for this kind of work.”

“It’s a boat same
as any other, no matter how pretty.”

The men walked
toward the exit.

A dark shape rose
silently behind the two sailors. Esther stifled a gasp as one of the oilmen
brought a lead pipe down on the first sailor’s head. He dropped without a
sound. The second sailor only had time for a strangled croak before the oilman
felled him too.

The rest of the
men burst from the shadows like rats. They shoved the inner door closed and
quickly gagged and tied up the two sailors.

“What the hell are
you doing?” Esther hissed, emerging from her hiding place.

The man who had
knocked out the two sailors turned to her. It was Dirk, from the oil tanker.

“Being efficient,”
he growled.

“This isn’t part
of the plan,” Esther said. “You’re acting too soon, and you’ll give us away.”

Dirk shrugged. “I
had a clean shot.”

“We should take
the ship ourselves right now,” one of the others whispered.

“I agree,” said a
third. “We got enough for weapons down here. Lead the way, Dirk.” He nodded at
the man from the oil tanker.

“Wait,” Esther
whispered desperately. “We need to stick to the plan.”

Dirk glowered at
her. “Why? You think we care about your pathetic little ship? We’re leaving the
Galaxy
.
This is our
chance, and we’ll do whatever works.”

“Just listen to
me,” Esther said, feeling the situation spiraling out of control. “There might
be twenty sailors on this ship. We can’t take it without the rest of our crew.
We have to wait for Byron and Hawthorne.”

“We got the
element of surprise.”

“Not good enough,”
Esther said. “We’re still in the middle of the
Flotilla
. Someone will notice if we start fighting on the deck
right underneath the
Crown
. We need to be patient.” Esther held her
breath. They had to see she was right.

Dirk seemed to
consider what she said. Finally, he nodded. “We’ll wait, but I’m calling the
shots here.”

Esther released
the edge of a box she hadn’t realized she was gripping. “Not if you keep making
damned stupid decisions like this one,” she muttered.

Dirk scowled. “Why
you—”

“How quickly do
you think they’ll notice these two are gone?” she interrupted, pointing at the
sailors Dirk had knocked out. “What if someone comes down to check the cargo?”

“We’ll pop ’em
like fish in a barrel.”

“Great way to
guarantee they’ll notice something’s wrong,” Esther snapped. “You’d better hide
these guys and pray no one comes looking for them until we’re clear of the main
traffic channels. And until you start thinking with that lumpy head of yours,
you’d better listen to me.” Esther was bluffing, but she was also angry. They
were going to ruin everything.

Dirk, well over
six feet tall, loomed above her, muscular arms crossed. Esther waited for him
to raise the lead pipe again, but to her supreme relief he chuckled. “All
right. Calm down. We’ll stick to the plan.”

She nodded. “Good.
Now if you’ll let me get to work . . .”

The men hid the
two sailors in the corner and collected weapons. There were no firearms in the
hold, but they gathered pipes, ropes, and tools—anything they could use
to appear threatening. Anything that would defend them better than brittle
stage rifles.

Esther ripped open
the boxes from the
Mist
, nearly bursting into tears at what she found.
The boxes contained RO filters, and at least a third of them were the same type
she used on the
Catalina
. They were
exactly what she needed. She could rebuild their desalination system to
accommodate the other ones. This would keep them going for years—if they
could just find the
Catalina
.