Seaswept (Seabound Chronicles Book 2) (14 page)

Chapter 17—Information

An hour later Esther
’
s
ears still rang. The
Sand Queen
didn’t sink, but the explosion in the bridge gutted her
navigation and control equipment. She wouldn’t be running anywhere. The fight
was over.

The struggle
hadn’t lasted long after the bridge was destroyed. The first mate had been
right. A skeleton crew manned the ship, just enough to keep her moving and to
put up a fight. Now the
Terra Firma
and the
Sand Queen
floated side by
side. She was a big vessel, impressive from the outside, but when the
Harvesters boarded they discovered she was in terrible shape. Slow leaks spread
water across the bottom level, and half the machinery had rusted away. It was a
wonder the thing could sail at all. Despite their victory, the ship wasn’t much
of a prize.

Worse, David
wasn’t aboard. Esther checked the burned bodies in the bridge herself. The room
smelled of charred meat and hot, sickly metal. It was hard to tell what the people
inside had looked like before the dynamite did its work, but she had to make
sure. She felt shaken, repulsed both by what she saw and what she had done. It
had happened so fast, but she had followed the first mate’s orders with barely
a thought for the consequences. She forced herself to bend and examine each
body, looking for a familiar shape, familiar hair, anything that would indicate
who these people had been a few moments before she destroyed them.

David was not
among them. They had spent three days chasing the wrong ship.

“They could be
anywhere,” Esther said. “How are we going to find him?”

She and Zoe were
picking up shell remnants and shattered metal on the main deck of the
Terra Firma
. The ship was somewhat the
worse for wear. Smoke still drifted from a gaping hole in the lookout tower. It
swayed dangerously above them.

“He’ll be okay,”
Zoe said. “The survivors will have information.”

“They could be on
the other side of the Pacific by now.”

The adrenaline
that had coursed through Esther’s body during the attack subsided, replaced by
the ache in her shoulder and the anxiety that had been with her since David
disappeared. But she felt alert, cautious. She and Zoe were trying to avoid
unnecessary attention. They didn’t want anyone thinking too hard about the fact
that they were partially responsible for this madcap chase. The ship was enough
of a powder keg already.

The other crew
members were restless and agitated. They milled around, tending the wounded and
snapping at each other. Some stared wildly at the Calderon ship lolling beside
them, as if they expected it to attack again.

The battle had
ended too soon. The Harvesters had been dying to fight the Calderon Group for a
long time, but they had only faced a dozen enemies on the geriatric
vessel—and they must know their efforts hadn’t been particularly
skillful. The battle had been a shambles. They were disappointed, dissatisfied.
They had tasted blood but only got in one good bite.

Esther and Zoe
kept their heads down. The first mate had barely acknowledged Esther’s
assistance with the dynamite. She had hoped the woman would warm to her a bit,
but apart from one sharp appraising look, it was business as usual.

The Harvesters had
taken two prisoners alive, engine room workers who had been far away from both
the explosions and the battle. The rest of the bodies had already been tossed
into the sea. Rawlins and the muscular engine room lass had pinned the prisoners,
a man and a woman, to the deck.

An unruly crowd
gathered around the prisoners. Murmurs radiated through the group. The
Harvesters were growing frenzied. They wanted something to happen. They had
been waiting for too long.

Esther couldn’t
see much of the prisoners through the crowd of sailors. She and Zoe were still
gathering debris, but they slowed as a commotion broke out on the other side of
the deck. Captain Alder and the first mate had emerged from the bridge. They
approached the captives, and the crew cleared a path for them.

“Screw this,”
Esther said. “Let’s get closer.”

She dumped an
armful of warped metal into a bucket and carried it nearer to the crowd around
the prisoners. Zoe followed. Esther stood on her toes to see over the shoulders
of the men and women in front of her.

The first mate led
the interrogation. Captain Alder stood still, an island in the midst of the
seething crew.

“Where are the
rest of them?” the first mate barked. “There were nearly a hundred fighting men
attacking the
Amsterdam
. Where did
the other ships go?”

“We don’t know
anything!” said the first prisoner, a young man with a poorly patched wound in
his shoulder.

Rawlins dug his
knee into the man’s back and held his head up.

“Whaleshit.” The
first mate squatted beside him. “Burns would never send out a ship with so few
men. What were your orders?”

“He didn’t tell us
anything. We’re junior crew. Nobodies.” Tears leaked from the corners of the
young man’s eyes.

“Where’d he take
the inventor?” the mate shouted.

“Inventor?”

“You know what I’m
talking about.” The mate stood and kicked the young man’s side.

The prisoner cried
out, sweating and shaking. “I swear I don’t know anything.”

The woman lying
next to him lifted her head. She was a little older, and her thick brown hair
was plastered to her face.

“He’s telling the
truth,” she said. “The leaders don’t talk about their plans with the likes of
us. Don’t hurt him.”

The first mate
rounded on her. “Don’t tell me what to do, bitch. You’re next, and I have more
creative ideas for you than a few kicks.”

Captain Alder held
up a hand. “Now, now, Liana,” he said. “Let’s not get carried away.”

Esther and Zoe
exchanged glances. Liana must be the first mate’s first name.

Captain Alder
continued: “You are mercenaries. Name your price, and you’ll be compensated for
your troubles.”

The captain’s
voice had a calming effect on everyone. The captives looked up, naked gratitude
in their eyes.

“But sir, we
really don’t know what Burns was planning,” said the young man.

Captain Alder
smiled like a favorite uncle or a pleasant schoolteacher.

“Ah, but you know
the Calderon Group. You at least, young lady, are not a new crew member. I’ve
seen you before. You are going to lead us to a Calderon rendezvous point.”

“Sir?”

“Better yet,” Captain
Alder said, “you will lead us to the Island.”

The woman paled,
her voice catching. “The . . . the island, sir? What’s that?”

“Rawlins?” Captain
Alder said.

Rawlins reached
over and dug his hands into the young woman’s thick hair. He pulled it back slowly
while the Harvester woman held her down.

The captain
continued to smile. “I know more about the Calderon Group than you might
realize, young lady. I know you have a base on some rock somewhere, and you are
going to show me where it is.”

The woman stared
at the captain, whimpering. Rawlins continued the slow pressure on her hair,
pulling her skin taut against her skull. Tears poured from her eyes.

“We have to stop
them,” Esther said to Zoe. She grabbed a heavy scrap of metal from the bucket
and started forward.

“You can’t,” Zoe
hissed, clutching Esther’s arm with viselike fingers.

“This isn’t right.
We asked them to do this. They’re torturing her.”

“We can’t
interfere. We promised to follow orders,” Zoe whispered. But she too stared at
the poor woman as Rawlins’s grip on her hair tightened.

With a sickening
rip, a clump of the woman’s hair pulled from her scalp. The woman shrieked like
metal ripping apart. Zoe let go of Esther’s arm and reached for her
pocketknife.

“That will
suffice, Rawlins,” Captain Alder said.

Rawlins released
the woman’s head, a bloodied knot of hair sticking to his bony fingers. The
crew shifted uncomfortably, no one daring to speak. Luke’s face was pale beneath
his curls. Cody turned and vomited onto the deck. Esther felt sick herself. It
was her fault: the captives, the battle, the dead officers in the bridge. She’d
started down this path to get David back—and this was only the beginning.

“Now then,”
Captain Alder said. “You will come with me to the bridge and tell me how to get
to the Island.”

The prisoner
sobbed as the first mate and the muscular woman lifted her to her feet, but the
captain ignored her.

“Toss the other
one overboard.”

“What?” the young
man shouted, struggling beneath Rawlins’s weight.

“You said yourself
you don’t know anything. You’re of no use to us.”

“Wait, stop,
please! I’ll do anything!”

The young man was
crying openly now. Rawlins lifted him by the arms and dragged him toward the
railing with the help of another crewman. The captain turned and walked slowly,
stiffly back to the bridge.

They
could hear the young Calderon man screaming for help long after the splash.

Chapter 18—After

Esther and Zoe found
Luke, Cody, and Patrick hunched over a meal of boiled
crab legs in the mess hall that evening. They picked at the scarlet shells,
their faces grim. The
Terra Firma
had
changed course an hour after Captain Alder and the first mate disappeared into
the bridge with the prisoner. No one had seen her since.

Esther tossed a
handful of crab legs onto a plate and sat beside the men.

“What do you know
about this Island?” she asked.

“Just rumors,”
Luke said. “Not sure it exists. I almost thought the captain was joking
earlier. Almost.” Luke’s easy smile was missing. He tossed a shell back into
his bowl and sucked crab juice off his fingers.

“So it’s a base or
something for the Calderon Group?” Esther prodded. “Is it literally an island,
made of rocks and everything?”

“That’s the rumor.
They found an island tall enough to handle the storm surges, and they’re building
some sort of headquarters there.”

“What for?”

“Who knows? A
rendezvous point? Training? Storage?”

“So we need to
find it,” Esther said.

Luke spat out a
shell fragment. “If they really do have a headquarters,” he said, “it’d be the
logical place to take your inventor friend.”

“Do you think it’s
real?” Zoe asked. She ripped a claw off a crab segment and dug her fingernails
into the shell.

“If it’s not, I’m
sure the captain got the truth out of that poor girl,” Patrick said, scratching
at his chin and glancing around the mess hall. Most of the crew were focused on
their meals, heads lowered, faces obscured.

“That was . . .
not what I expected from Captain Alder,” Esther said quietly.

She couldn’t erase
the image of the sailor’s hair coming away in Rawlins’s hands from her mind. She
had never seen such cruelty before. The last vestiges of security she’d felt
with their allies was gone. They were not safe here.

“I always thought
the first mate was the harsher of the two,” Luke said. “Now I’m not so sure.”

Cody had stopped
eating altogether at the mention of the Calderon girl. The skin of his forehead
folded in a deep frown.

“What’ll we do if
we find this Island?” Esther asked. She had to focus on the practical:
strategies, information, a puzzle to solve. She had allied with the Harvesters,
and it was too late to do anything about it now. Their performance in the
battle that day didn’t give her much confidence in their ability to assault an
island base. “I assume it’s well fortified?”

“That I don’t
know.” Luke picked up another crab leg. “It’s all well and good to get the
coordinates, but if the rumors are true, it’s damn near impenetrable.”

“Maybe Captain
Alder will try to trade,” Zoe suggested.

“Nothing on this
ship is worth as much as that technology,” Esther said. The officers might not
want the crew to talk about the technology, but she didn’t care what they
thought anymore. “Burns wouldn’t trade David for an entire tanker of crude.”

Zoe leaned over
and whispered, “It might be time for you to use that trump card of yours.”

Esther frowned, a
knife of guilt twisting in her stomach. She didn’t want to think about the
“trump card,” as Zoe put it—about the fact that she knew how to build the
tech they were chasing. The Harvesters were dangerous, yes, but she had sent
them after the Calderon Group under false pretenses. It didn’t matter whether
or not they’d been planning to chase them anyway. What else would she be
willing to do to rescue David Hawthorne?

She tried to push
away the thought. Holding her hand in front of her mouth, fingers still coated
in crab juice, she whispered back, “They’ll never agree to trade it. They’ll do
anything to keep the tech from the Calderon Group.”

Luke glanced up,
but Esther didn’t think he’d heard them. She’d lost her appetite in any case.

The shift bell
sounded.

“I’d better get to
work. I’m doing maintenance on the pump system tonight. Catch you later.” She
tossed the last of the crab shells into a cracked bucket beside the galley
door.

Patrick stood too.
“I’m on duty in the armory. I’ll walk with you.”

Zoe stayed behind,
shuffling a little closer to Luke. Cody still hadn’t started eating again.

“What did you
think about today?” Patrick asked as they headed out the door. “I mean really?”

“It was a mess,”
Esther said. “There’s no way we would have beaten them if the
Sand Queen
had been fully manned.”

Patrick sighed. “I
know. We got lucky. I killed someone, though. My first.” He slowed at the
entrance to the armory and leaned against the bulkhead. For once he wasn’t
trying to show off his biceps. “Feel kinda rotten about it to be honest.”

Esther wasn’t sure
what to say to that. Patrick was looking at her as if she could say something
that would make it all okay. Something that would tell him this war was the
right course of action. But she was haunted by what she had done in the heat
and fear of that moment when she lit the dynamite. Yes, it had been a battle,
but that didn’t make it any better. She didn’t know what was right anymore.

“I helped the
first mate blow up the bridge,” she said finally, remembering the sickly smell
of the burned bodies. “There were three people inside.” Her stomach turned at
the thought.

“You mean the
lovely Liana?” Patrick winked, obviously trying to lighten the mood.

The effort was
strained, but Esther appreciated it. She sighed heavily and forced a grin.

“Yeah. She’s a
catch, that one.”

“Well, I’m glad
you made it through,” Patrick said.

He put his fingers
under Esther’s chin for a second and then disappeared into the armory before
she could react.

Esther went to the
engine room and quietly got to work on the pump system. She knelt on the greasy
floor, wrench in hand, and made her way down the line of connections. Her
shoulder ached from where she’d been hit by the flying piece of metal. She must
be growing an impressive bruise. But her hands felt sure and strong again, no
longer shaking as they did when she held that gun.

As she worked, she
listened to the late-shift engine crew talk about the events of the day. The
fight hadn’t been as big as they expected, but their small successes made them
itch for more. They were already boasting about what they would do when they
reached the Island. With each blustering statement about daring deeds, Esther
thought about David, alone on the island or on a ship far away. She had killed
for him today. Why was she getting so deep into this for him? Why couldn’t she
walk away? Their situation was becoming more dangerous by the minute, and she
didn’t even know if he’d be happy to see her.

She thought back
to when David had abandoned the
Galaxy
Flotilla
to help her rescue the
Catalina
.
At the time, deep down she thought he was doing it for her. But what if she was
wrong? What if she made it to Calderon Island and he mocked her, wondering why
she’d bothered when he had found a new group to represent? He was used to
speaking for others rather than himself. He had tried to break away by leaving
the
Galaxy
, but maybe he’d happily go
back to being a cog in another big machine.

Or maybe he was
already dead. The thought sent panic up her spine worse than any fear of rejection.

“Got a man on the
mind?” a voice boomed.

Esther jumped, her
wrench clattering to the floor. The engine room boss, Jacques, stood over her.
He was a man of extremes, either red faced and swearing or stern and quiet as
he surveyed his workers. She hadn’t even heard him approach.

“Why do you say
that?” Esther asked, retrieving her wrench.

“You got that look
in your eye. Is it one of our rust-beaten scumcanoes? You know Patrick is a
heartbreaker. Don’t waste your time with him.”

“It’s not
Patrick.”

Jacques
harrumphed. “Whoever it is would be damn lucky to have you mooning over him.
You’re not a girl who moons easy.”

“I doubt he
cares,” Esther mumbled just a little too loud.

“Aha. It is a man.
I can always tell.”

“Can you tell if
it’s hopeless?” Esther asked. “I might never see him alive again.”

“I heard you were
here for some lost love,” Jacques said. He bent down to check the pump Esther
had been working on. “Didn’t think it was true. Why do you think you won’t see
him alive?”

“No one knows how
to fight on land anymore.” It had been bothering her since she heard about the
Island. The Harvester men hadn’t been especially skilled in the sea battle.
They wouldn’t be any better on land. “Do we have any chance at all if we
assault the Island?”

“Now wait just a
salt-burning minute,” Jacques said, and he actually smiled. “Some of us were in
the goddamn US Navy long before the volcano and the storm surges and the whole
hell-on-earth thing. We’re not all as green as rusting sea cucumbers.”

“Did you ever
storm a beach? In a real battle?” Esther asked.

“Not me, no, but
the navy trained us for this shit. Anyway, if all accounts are true, we won’t
be storming a beach. We’re in for some rock climbing.”

Jacques stood, and
his bones creaked. Esther wondered how old he was.

“Do you think the
Calderon Group would kill prisoners?” she asked.

“We know what our
own beloved captain will do,” he answered after a minute. “Think it would be
any different for the rust-eating Calderon Group? They’re all alike, these men
with power. Depends on how much the prisoner is worth. I hear your boy is
valuable to more than just you.” Jacques thumped her on the shoulder, sending
fire through her bruise, and turned to go.

“And if the
prisoner turns out to be not as valuable as they originally thought?” Esther
asked.

She tried to pose
the question casually, but Jacques stopped short. He looked back at her.

“Now why wouldn’t
he be valuable to them?”

“Just a
hypothetical—”

“You know better
than most how valuable that technology is,” Jacques said. “This isn’t your
first time working an engine room.”

“I know. I know.
It’ll change everything.”

Jacques’s face
took on a purplish tinge. “If there’s a chance that inventor won’t—”

“He’ll give you
technology. I didn’t mean anything by that.” Esther spoke a little too quickly.
She had a death grip on the wrench, but she forced herself to slow down and
sound more girlish. “I’m just worried about him. I . . . I care about him so
much, and I don’t want anything bad to happen.” She gave a tremulous smile and
prayed it would be enough.

Jacques nodded but
he didn’t smile again. He stomped across the engine room to check on the other
workers. Esther returned to the pumps, stealing glances across the poorly lit
room. Was he looking at her differently? She hoped she was imagining things.

After a few more
turns of the wrench, she approached him.

“I’m finished with
that set of pumps,” she said. “Do you need anything else?”

Jacques didn’t even
look up. “No. Shift is up in five. Don’t worry about your boyfriend. You should
watch out for yourself. Salt-burning Calderon Island is the least of your
worries.”

Esther
hurriedly shoved her tools back into her belt and left the engine room at a
jog. Had Jacques’s tone been less friendly? She shouldn’t have said anything.
She needed all the friends she could get.