Seabound (Seabound Chronicles Book 1) (5 page)

Esther rolled
sideways. Another tank screamed, releasing a blinding cloud of steam.
Desperately, Esther crawled over the old bowling lanes, clinging to the
scratched wooden floors. She had to shut down the system or she was going to
die. Twisted bits of melted plastic rained down around her. She could no longer
see through the smoke and steam. Another blast split the air.

Esther reached the
end of the line and crawled toward the safety valve. She yanked down on the old
piece of steel, which had once been part of a drowned sailboat. The lever
cracked and came away in her hand. Esther cursed as another eruption sent a jet
of boiling water across the room. The scalding liquid seeped into the back of
her shirt.

She groped for her
pocketknife and found nothing. She must have left it on the floor by her notes.
She pulled her precious flashlight from her belt and used it to pound at the
shortened metal of the main power switch. It took three tries to force it down
and stop the flow of electricity to the room. Everything went black.

Esther waited. The
room hissed, the usual mechanical music replaced with a painful, dying sound.
She scrubbed her nose against the acrid smell, praying that the fumes weren’t
poisonous. Gradually, the hissing of the steam grew quieter; the metal of the
tanks creaked and groaned. Not entirely sure the explosions were done, Esther
switched on her emergency light, thankful it still worked. She swept the low
beam back and forth through the fading smoke.

“Shit.”

Before her was an
ugly, tangled jungle of twisted metal. A layer of water sat in two of the
bowling lanes, seeping toward one side of the room. The mangled tanks and pipes
sagged drunkenly across the lanes. Melted plastic and burnt filters leaned into
the sweeping beam of light like corpses.

“Shit.”

Slowly, Esther got
to her feet. This was bad. This was beyond bad. The desalination system, the
source of life for the entire community of 1,003, the single most important
thing for their survival, was utterly destroyed.

Chapter 6—The Survival Plan

Esther was barely conscious
of where she was going as she stumbled from the desal room. Her ears roared
like a foghorn. Had someone heard the explosions? The desal room wasn’t close
to the cabins, but anyone could have been walking by. Anyone could have heard.
She knew that would be bad. She could barely process why. She started to run.
She pushed open the doors to the service stairwell and took the steps two at a
time. It was a long climb to the top of the ship, but she didn’t slow down
until she reached the ladder to Neal’s Tower.

Her hands shook as
she pushed open the door to the crow’s nest. Neal, his feet on the control
panel, was flipping through a pile of creased and fraying charts, his
headphones slung around his neck.

He looked up. “Es,
what happened? You’re bleeding.”

Esther put a hand
to her cheek and winced at the sting.

“And you’re
soaking wet.”

“We’re in deep
trouble, Neal. Like, Mariana Trench deep.”

“Who’s ‘we’? You
picking fights with Judith or something? I always thought she’d be good in a
brawl.”

“Listen to me,”
Esther snapped. She wrapped her fingers around her tool belt to keep them from
shaking and tried to breathe deeply. Her thoughts were quicksand.

Neal took his feet
off the console with a thump. “What happened?”

“The desal system
is gone.”

“What do you
mean?”

“Gone. As in
destroyed. Gone!” Esther slid to the floor, and pulled her knees up to her
chest.
Breathe
. “I started an extra
load of water through the system, like we always do after a storm. Best I can
figure, there was some sort of blockage that Frank forgot to tell me about. I
fell asleep, and the pressure must have started building. Everything overheated,
and the filter material started to fry. Then a bunch of the tanks exploded.”

“While you were in
there?” Neal was gaping.

“Yeah, I could
have stopped it if I’d been monitoring the gauges like I was supposed to . . .
Rust! I’m so stupid.”

“At least you’re
okay. You could have been killed,” Neal said.

Esther slapped her
palms flat on the floor. “I’m not okay, Neal. None of us are okay. The system
is fucked. We don’t have a water supply anymore.”

Neal leaned
forward, his hands moving restlessly on his face, his chin, the back of his
neck. “Can it be fixed?”

“No, we don’t have
the materials. The tanks, the pipes, the RO membranes. Everything is
destroyed.”

“Doesn’t Frank
keep extra filters? That’s the important bit, right?”

“He’s supposed to.
He told me today some of the spares decomposed in storage. They weren’t sealed
properly back when he assembled them.”

She should have
asked Frank if there was a reason he hadn’t started running the extra water
through the system. Maybe he knew about the blockage. This could have been
avoided so easily.

“Can’t we do the
evaporation thing again?” Neal asked.

Esther pulled her
pocketknife from her belt and twisted it around in her fingers. There was still
water on the blade. She’d retrieved it from a steaming puddle in the desal
room. “For a while. But we don’t have enough power to sustain everyone that
way. Back when we were kids and they used evap the whole time, they still had
fuel.”

“Guess it’s been a
while since we’ve had that,” Neal said.

“We have enough
diesel to get us to the
Amsterdam
once a year and to run from one storm, maybe two,” Esther said. “If we start
using it to evaporate salt water, we won’t be able to make it to the
Amsterdam
for new parts, and we’ll all
die anyway. We can use wind and solar, but there are just too many of us for
that to last long.”

Neal nodded. “So
we need to head for the
Amsterdam
now?”

“It’s March.”
Esther slammed her pocketknife into the wood of the floor, causing Neal to
jump. “With these currents, the
Amsterdam
is too far south.”

“You don’t think
we have enough fuel to make it?”

“Are you listening
to me?” Esther pulled out the knife. “We don’t have water.” Dug the knife back
into the floor. “We can’t use our fuel to produce water and to sail halfway to
salting Antarctica at the same time.” Esther felt panic bubbling up in her
stomach. She thought she might throw up.

“Yes, I’m
listening,” Neal said, still relatively calm. “I’m trying to understand. How
long will our current water supply last us?”

“A week. Maybe ten
days if we’re lucky.”

Neal leaned back
in his chair. “That’s all?”

“Yeah, I was
trying to replenish our reserves when this whole mess happened.”

Esther pushed her
forehead into her knees, trying to think of something, anything, that would
make their circumstances less dire. They’d become too confident in their
ability to survive at sea, floating endlessly over the ocean. In truth, they
were always one disaster away from extinction. In one careless moment, she’d
allowed that disaster to happen. Her hands found the flat planes of the floor
on either side of the quivering pocketknife. It was something to keep her steady.

Neal was quiet, as
if he too were trying to process the magnitude of their situation. Finally, he
spoke.

“It’s not your
fault, Esther.”

She snapped her
head up. “Of course it’s my fault. I fell asleep. How is that not my fault? I
should have listened to Judith and rested up to perform my community duties.”

“I don’t know what
to say. We’ll think of something. You’re great at solving problems.”

“I’d rather be
great at not causing problems,” Esther mumbled.

“Who else knows?”
Neal asked.

“No one. I locked
up the desal room and came straight here. Salt, everyone is going to hate me .
. . until we all die, that is.”

“Maybe we can
think of some way to repair the system without anyone finding out,” Neal said,
forcing a lighter tone. “I haven’t seen Judith’s secret stores lately. Do you
think she’s collected enough material to fix a few of the components? Maybe
some of them aren’t completely destroyed. We should go have a look.”

“I can fix the
basic pipe and tank structure,
if
she
has the metal,” Esther said, “but it’ll take time. We’re going to need to get
some new reverse-osmosis filter material no matter what, and we’re going to
need it fast.” Esther gripped her wet, tangled hair in her fingers, going
through a mental list of all the things they’d need to get the system in
working order again.

Neal scanned his
control panel as if looking for inspiration in the switches and wires.
Suddenly, he spoke: “Marianna.”

“It’s Esther. Now
you’re losing it too.”

“No, Marianna. The
Galaxy Flotilla
. They’re a heck of a lot closer to us than the
Amsterdam
right now. They’d have the
stuff you need.”

Neal swiveled back
to the console and started digging through his charts.

“How do you know?
They keep reserves?”

Esther had only
just learned the
Galaxy
Flotilla
existed. She doubted whether
they’d really have enough extra filters lying around to support a thousand
extra people.

“The
Galaxy
Flotilla
is huge,” Neal said. “They do some trade, like the
Amsterdam
, and they’ve built up a
massive surplus.”

“Still, Neal,
we’re going to need a lot.”

“You don’t
understand. There are thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of people living on
the
Galaxy
. If they can support that many, they’ve got to have enough
spares to trade us some filters.”

“Are you sure?”
Esther said. She couldn’t even imagine tens of thousands of people living
together at sea. There had to be a catch.

Neal nodded.
“Absolutely. I’ll ask Marianna, but I think they’re our best bet.”

“I hope you’re
right.” Esther stood and turned toward the sea. “They might be our only
option.”

Outside the window
the clouds were thinner today, like a layer of foam. The undrinkable saltwater
ocean rolled, taunting her.

“Marianna’s shift
starts in an hour,” Neal said. “I’ll get an exact read on their location.”

“Okay. So now all
we have to do is tell Judith we have to fire up the engines because I’m a
salting moron.” Esther grimaced, remembering Judith’s words:
You’re not as good as you think you are,
Esther.
“That ought to be fun.”

“Do we?” Neal
said.

“What?”

Neal looked at the
floor as if charting a course in the scuff marks on the battered surface.
“Well, we don’t technically have to tell her what’s going on,” he said slowly.
“It might be better for you in the long run if she doesn’t know how much you’ve
screwed up.”

“Great. Thanks,
Neal. What are you going to do? Sneak into the bridge at night and sail us
toward this
Galaxy
?” She laughed, but it sounded unnatural.

“Well, I
am
the radio officer. I get the storm
data and warnings from other ships, the whole shebang. I could call a runner.”
Neal’s voice was deadly serious.

The idea hung in
the air. Esther studied him. Since when had Neal become such a secret keeper?
But . . . “That could work,” she said slowly.

“No one needs to
know,” Neal said. “They’d just panic, and that won’t help anybody. We’ll run
from a big storm and ‘encounter’ the
Galaxy
by chance, dock with them
for trade and all that, and then we can pick up the parts you need.”

It was an
interesting idea. Esther felt a fleeting sinking sensation at the prospect of
lying to everyone. But if Judith and the others found out, she’d lose the
little freedom she had. They could fix this. Like Neal said, no one would need
to know.

“What about
Frank?” she said. She hated the idea of lying to her mentor, and he would
notice the damage anyway. How could he not?

Neal shrugged. “He
might be on board with the plan. He knows it’s not good for people to panic.
Plus I think he has sympathy for your whole Judith situation.”

“I’m more worried
he’ll forget and tell people the truth,” Esther said. “Doesn’t matter. This is
our only hope. You’re the best, Neal. This is why I stumbled to your doorstep
first.”

“No worries. And
you should really get that cut looked at. Just say you walked into a pipe in
the engine room or something.”

“Thanks.” She
hesitated in the doorway. “This means you’re going to meet Marianna, doesn’t
it?”

Neal nodded
slowly, his face pale. He looked down at the chart on his lap.

“I’m sure she’ll
be every bit as beautiful as her voice,” Esther said.

“Thanks, Esther. Now
go take care of yourself, and make sure no one goes into the desal room for a
while. With any luck, the repairs will be well underway before anyone realizes
what’s happened.”