Seabound (Seabound Chronicles Book 1)

by Jordan Rivet

  She scratched out her latest diagram with the knife, listening to the music of the water in the pipes, and began again. She remembered when her family had driven across the country to visit her grandmother back east for Hanukkah. The land had seemed empty then. She’d spent hours with her face pressed to the window of the little blue car, gazing at the rolling fields interrupted with wandering cows and bungalows like gingerbread houses. Was any of that still there? She didn’t know what use her seafaring and engineering skills would be on land. Maybe they still needed to filter water to get rid of the lingering poisons from the volcano. She could find work replicating Frank’s water system—with her own improvements, of course.

  Esther sat back and looked over the diagram freshly etched into the wood floor. She was missing something. If only she could communicate with other mechanics. She’d love to pick the brain of someone with proper training. Esther leaned back against a water tank. She hadn’t caught up on sleep since the night of the storm. She probably shouldn’t have spent so long working last night either, but Judith had made her too angry to sleep. The gentle vibration of the water tank was soothing. She was confident in Frank’s system. It had been running itself for years. All she had to do was keep an eye on the pressure gauges. Her head tipped sideways, coming to rest on an intake pipe . . .

  Esther awoke to the acrid smell of burning plastic. She jumped up and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. Her vision was hazy. It took a second to realize the room was filling with steam. Where was it coming from? She needed the fire extinguisher. She dodged tanks and ducked under pipes, making her way toward the wall. Smoke billowed toward her from a filter panel in the second lane. As Esther reached the fire extinguisher, the tank attached to the filter emitted a high-pitched scream and a jet of steam.

  She grabbed the heavy extinguisher off the wall and leapt through the maze toward the source of the scream. She couldn’t see any flames, but as she neared she saw plastic melting. Heat came off the tank in waves. The pressure gauge on its side was going haywire.

  She looked at the other tanks, zeroing in on the gauges—the gauges she should have been watching. She had a split second to register how bad the pressure was before the tank she’d been sleeping against ten seconds earlier exploded. Steam and scalding water burst across the room. The shriek of metal scraping metal tore through the air. Esther hit the floor as a red-hot coil flew over her head. The fire extinguisher rolled out of her grasp. A second tank exploded. A deafening riot filled the air.

  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.”

  Chapter 7—The Runner

  Neal worked quickly. Esther had barely finished swabbing her cuts with precious iodine from the ship’s infirmary when the horns rang out.

  Whenever a particularly bad storm gathered in their vicinity, Neal would warn the community and send a full report to the bridge. He got most of his information about the weather from other ships via radio. Sometimes he’d get a satellite reading too, but those were sporadic at best. They’d been known to place a storm a hundred nautical miles from its actual location. Rumor had it that was how the old Helsinki went down. It might have been carrying as many as five hundred survivors, but no one knew for sure. Judith and Manny would weigh the weather data provided by Neal and the risks of a major storm against their current power supply, then they’d make the call: rider or runner.

  Technically, the council was su
pposed to decide whether to run from a storm or risk riding it out, but over time they had grown complacent. Judith trusted the information provided by Neal, and sometimes she’d have already ordered the old engine crew to move before the rest of the council had roused from their bunks.

  The crew spent most of its time harvesting food. The Catalina had a speedboat that could be taken out for fishing expeditions. They’d drive away from the big vessel and bring in a catch that hadn’t been disturbed by the Catalina’s deep draft. The speedboat was rigged with fishing poles fashioned from billiard cues and spears made out of golf clubs. When it wasn’t in use, it was hoisted onto the ship in the place of a long-lost lifeboat. Fishing was one of the many vital skills those on the Catalina had had to learn in order to survive. Isaiah Newton had proved particularly adept at this occupation, and he led most of the expeditions.

  But whenever the Catalina needed to move, the fishing crew, led by Isaiah, and the repair crew, led by Reggie, would trickle down from other parts of the ship. They’d open the engine control room to fire up the systems, and a handful of extra men would join Esther and Cally in the engine room to keep an eye on everything. The big marine diesel cylinders would grumble into motion, cranking out enough power to operate the propulsion system. The Catalina would run until it was out of reach of the worst of the weather system, and then it would drift again.

  When Judith called a runner based on Neal’s fabricated storm warning, it was no different. Isaiah dropped a load of fresh-caught Pacific herring by the kitchens and opened the heavy metal door to the engine control room. Reggie and his crew arrived in the main engine room, laughing and pushing each other, wiping grease onto their threadbare work trousers. Esther and Cally’s regular maintenance work paid off when the engines sputtered to life with barely a cough. They felt the huge propellers beneath the ship begin to turn. Together, unbeknownst to the rest of the crew, they set the Catalina on a beeline toward the Galaxy Flotilla.