Bonds

by Susan Copperfield

“The ship was headed to Maine.”

  Ugh. I didn’t want to deal with yet another kingdom that was part of the Royal States. “Any idea what they were doing here of all places?”

  “Indulging in blatant stupidity,” she replied. “They were probably hoping to get in front of the storm and head north before cutting across the Atlantic. I can’t think of any other reason why they’d come anywhere near here.”

  On that, we were agreed. I got to my feet and explored the slick, tilted deck of the ship, grunting my annoyance when I found an open hatchway that descended straight into an oily death trap. “Is it normal for the oil to be right below the main deck?”

  “No. There should be a second deck above the oil tanks.”

  Great. “Definitely looks like there are multiple breaches inside the ship then. I’m on the deck, and I’m looking at oil about five feet down.”

  “You’re not going to hear me complain about that. If we can get a hose down to the crude, we can drain it from the bottom up. My waveweavers aren’t going to like the work, but it’ll simplify things for us. You have a strong enough illumination talent to give us some light on our target? Do the cranes and lines on the upper deck look intact?”

  While I sighed, I pressed my hand to the metal and made it glow. “That’s the brightest I can do. And I have no idea if anything on deck is intact.” I eyed the equipment littering the flat deck, some of which was obviously bent and broken from the collision with the rocks. “Some is definitely broken, but I can’t tell you if anything is functional.”

  “Good enough. We have a visual. Work your magic, Alders. If you need anything from us, give us a shout.”

  Coffee topped my list, but there was no rest for the wicked, and until the crude was safely transferred to other vessels, I would barely have time to breathe. “Roger.”

  While I waited for the NYS Triumphant to send over a crew, I began my checks of the tanker to ensure no crew had been missed. If time allowed, I would retrieve the captain’s log and nautical maps, if they were available, to help France figure out what had gone wrong and why an oil tanker bound for Maine was so close to its shores.

  Few tankers came close to France. Most ventured from the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz to the Gulf of Oman before heading south beyond the Cape of Good Hope and traveling across the Atlantic to the Royal States.

  DeSoules had the right idea. The ship’s captain had, for whatever reason, indulged in blatant stupidity.

  With luck, the captain’s log or the navigation charts would shine some light on what had happened and why.

  Chapter Two

  Oil lapped at the upper deck of the ship, and the black fluid coated the lower level of the bridge, which should have been far above the storage tanks for the crude. Busted barrels littered the floor, and I had to crawl over them to reach the upper levels of the bridge. I found a pair of bodies on the second floor of the bridge, and I sighed. “Two casualties on the second level of the bridge,” I reported in case someone was monitoring my channel. If DeSoules was doing her job as a coordinator, she—or one of her officers—would be monitoring my frequency.

  “How easy are they to reach?” DeSoules asked.

  “The lower sections of the bridge are filled with ruptured oil barrels. Retrieval will be risky.” Without my mask and oxygen tank, I suspected my body would be joining theirs. “I’m still in my dive gear, and I don’t know that much about tankers, but the air in here is probably toxic.”

  The captain cursed. “And flammable. Be careful.”

  The last thing anyone needed was the tanker going up in flames, but unless the right ratio of oxygen was mixed in with the oil fumes, a single spark wouldn’t light the whole thing up—I hoped. While a single spark probably wouldn’t turn the tanker into a torch, it could happen. If my tank leaked and added oxygen to the fuel fumes, the worst could happen.

  From day one, I’d understood I did a dangerous job, but none of my rescues topped exploring a doomed tanker loaded with crude. While I appreciated the oxygen tank for allowing me to breathe, I regretted understanding I walked through a flammable brew with the final ingredient for a quick and fiery death strapped to my back.

  To reach the next level of the bridge, I had to step over another body, that of a Middle Eastern man, who stared at me with open, sightless eyes. I discovered the crew quarters on the floor, and I found several intact barrels of crude in what appeared to be a lounge. The metal steps were large enough to accommodate the size of the barrel, which was almost as tall as I was. Why had the barrels been carried up near where the crew was expected to sleep and eat?

  “Captain DeSoules, I’ve found another body, and I’m on the second level of the bridge area where the crew quarters are located. There are intact barrels of crude up here.”

  “Did you just say there’s intact barrels of crude in the crew quarters?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I counted, walking through the sections, finding two extra in a hallway. “Six total intact barrels. Four are secured, the others rolled but didn’t break during the collision.”

  “Be careful,” she ordered.

  I wondered what it would be like to have a job where being careful involved avoiding paper cuts and possibly a dangerous run-in with a paperclip or stapler. I ascended to the control room of the bridge, and I illuminated the room with my magic.

  Blood, a mix of old and new, splattered the white painted and steel surfaces. Unlike the other portions of the ship, there were no barrels, but gruesome footprints covered the floor.

  I didn’t need to be a doctor to identify gunshot wounds, and the three men, all Caucasian, had been shot in their heads. I’d seen bodies before, enough to recognize they’d been dead for far longer than it’d taken for the ship to crash into the rocks. “Captain DeSoules, please contact the French government and notify them there have been three murders, gunshots to the head, on board the tanker. The victims are in the bridge, likely officers.”

  The woman cursed a storm. “Roger.”

  I crossed the bridge, identifying one of the men as the ship’s captain by his hat and the emblem on his shoulders. While I saw no sign of the captain’s log, his body sprawled over the navigation charts. According to the charts, he’d intended to sail south of the Cape of Good Hope, just as I expected from an oil tanker departing from the Persian Gulf.

  “The original navigation chart is with the captain’s body, and it looks like the tanker was originally headed south of Africa,” I announced. “I’m leaving the bridge and returning to the main deck.”

  “Roger. Contacting the French government and awaiting orders. Standby.”

  Murder changed everything, and while in French waters, everyone had to play by French rules; until France gave New York the okay to resume pumping the crude from the doomed ship, we were up shit creek without a paddle.

  I could only think of one good bit of news: I’d discovered the bodies early enough in the operation to make certain the rescued crew could be detained for questioning. That three of the bodies had been obvious victims of foul play, and that the ship had been detoured from its original path to France, led me to several conclusions, each one a disaster waiting to happen. A mass oil spill alone could disrupt local economies. Such a wreck could be used to draw important resources away from other emergencies.

  Depending on who controlled the tanker following the captain’s death, the vessel could have been easily converted into a floating bomb, the type capable of burning out an entire harbor. All it took was a single, dedicated flameweaver to turn the tanker into a floating weapon of terror and mass destruction.

  Maybe heading back to Florida wasn’t as bad a thought as I’d believed only a few hours ago. Going to Florida beat dealing with my current situation. I could, with a little work, determine if the ship had been sabotaged, but it involved seeing exactly what lurked below the deck.

  I descended from the bridge to the main deck, walked to the hole I’d found when I’d first boarded, got on my belly,
and scooted closer for a better look. Crude didn’t cooperate nearly as well as water, but I forced it to do my bidding. I squinted, illuminating the interior so I could get a better look at the secondary deck over the oil tanks.

  The broken, twisted metal spoke of some devastating force tearing through the vessel, something far stronger than the rocks keeping her from sinking. “Captain DeSoules?”

  “What do you have for me?”

  “I’m around the center of the ship, near where I illuminated the deck. I moved the oil for a better look.” I drummed my fingers on the deck, which had sharper edges than I expected, another likely victim of some explosion.

  How the hell hadn’t the whole ship gone up in flames?

  I bet the formula involved a lack of oxygen where the bomb—or bombs—had detonated.

  “And?”

  “It looks like someone put a bunch of metal in a blender. This isn’t the sort of damage I expect to see when a ship runs aground. It looks like something exploded. I’m not a bomb expert, and I don’t know all that much about these tankers for that matter. I’m just a diver who has seen a lot of wrecks. This isn’t the type of damage I expect to see from a ship crashing into some rocks.”

  “Same type of damage as the hole in the hull?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Roger. Standby.”

  I had a new word I hated more than any other, as the last thing I wanted to do was sit around and wait aboard a ship that might give up the ghost in an explosive finale.

  In normal operating conditions, the risk of an oil tanker catching on fire was low. Add in the breached oil tanks, ready access to oxygen, and the potential of explosives, and the chances of the ship coming to a destructive and untimely end increased exponentially. I’d never had a good relationship with numbers, especially when the numbers informed me I could die in one of several brutal ways. Incineration, blunt-force trauma, and drowning were among my more probable causes of death. I’d drown only if I exerted too much of my magic trying to save the ship and its cargo.

  “Change of plans, Alders,” Captain DeSoules announced. “We’re going to directly pump the crude from the ocean into the ship and use waveweavers to filter out the seawater. The ship has been deemed too dangerous to board. How refined is your magic?”

  I returned to the starboard stern and peeked over the side of the ship, which still remained on the rocks thanks to my ice. Manipulating the volume of ice I’d layered onto the ship would test my talent.

  I’d never even thought of trying something so insane before.

  I didn’t blame anyone for not wanting to risk extra lives boarding the ship, but I loathed the idea of so much crude polluting the water.

  If I reshaped the ice to form a frozen channel for the crude, I could remove it from the ship and give the NYS Triumphant a chance of getting it out of the water before it could do too much harm. If the waveweavers did their work right, they’d be able to preserve the load for Maine, too—which would benefit New York on the political front.

  New York loved when they got to lord over other kingdoms while doing a good deed. They cared less about the good deed than they did about lording over others, but I’d ignore their tendencies if it meant keeping the crude safely contained.

  “I’m going to need a lot of coffee for this,” I muttered.

  “I’m confident we can take care of your coffee requirements. How do you want to handle this?”

  “I’ll create a channel in the ice, make a pipe up to the surface, and you pump it out. Unless the crude floats better than I expect. If it does, I’ll figure something out. You’re going to be on a major time limit. I won’t be able to maintain this for long,” I warned.

  “The crude should float. It’s typically less dense than water, but it can take time to reach the surface,” Captain DeSoules informed me. “It shouldn’t mix much with the water. They repel each other. We will get seawater in our tanks while pumping the crude, but that’s my problem, not yours. Get off that ship, illuminate where you need our hoses, and get to work. You take care of draining the crude from that ship, and I’ll get my pumps working while we get ships capable of carrying crude here.”

  “What is a New York tanker doing here anyway?”

  “Paying back a favor. We just delivered a shipment of oil to Germany. Our shipment schedule will change because of this, but it beats the alternative.”

  Nobody sane wanted the amount of crude the ship carried polluting the waters. “How long do you need to get into position?”

  “We can start pumping within ten minutes. I’ll bring the ship as close as we safely can.”

  I illuminated a section of water a fair distance from the grounded ship. “Is this area safe?”

  “I can move the ship there.”

  “I’ll get to work draining the crude to there, then.”

  “Excellent. I have a few earthweavers on board, and I’ll have them help you as much as they can.”

  I admired how many talents the woman had on her ship. “I’m headed into the water. Don’t expect to hear from me while I’m working. Keep me updated on your position, please.”

  “Roger. Shout if you have any problems.”

  I had a lot of problems, and most of them involved the huge amount of crude I was expected to move. Gravity would help get the crude out of the ship; I just needed to provide a path for it to go, and it would flow as I wanted—for the most part. Knowing I’d have earthweavers helping contain the spill would simplify matters somewhat.

  They could clean the ocean floor of crude, which meant I only needed to manifest enough ice to keep the crude contained where I wanted. Until I started moving it in earnest, I wouldn’t learn if it was heavy enough to sink. If it floated, I could create a shield of ice to keep it where it belonged.

  I doubted it would float like I wanted.

  I climbed down the hull, once again using ice to create handholds until I reached the water. My ice had held while I’d been on deck and exploring the bridge, withstanding the waves better than I had expected.

  Creating a small hole in the shell covering the hull, I allowed some crude to seep into the water, illuminating it so I could observe how it reacted.

  It floated better than I had anticipated, and it took only a nudge with my magic to send it where I wanted it to go.

  It would have to do. I had little other choice in the matter.

  The crude couldn’t decide if it wanted to float or sink when it initially spilled into the ocean. After a few minutes, where the water and crude danced without truly mixing, the oil displayed a tendency to float. For the first time since entering the damned water, something had gone right. I wouldn’t hold my breath and assume things would continue to go right, but I’d take every break I could get.

  I widened the hole in my ice, creating a tube for the oil to drain from the tanker. As it had an inherent tendency to want to rise, I directed it towards the surface, peeling away chunks of my ice to form a berm to keep the crude contained where I’d illuminated the ocean’s surface.

  With the sun sinking to the horizon, I’d have to work extra hard, lighting the rescue effort unless the French sent another illuminator in or Captain DeSoules had one on board her vessel. I doubted it. Illuminators were wanted on shore to guide ships to safety, not on the waters where they did little good.

  As most of my ice had remained intact, I pillaged it, which was a great deal less tiring than manifesting new ice. The tanker creaked and groaned on its rocky perch.

  In time, she’d slide into the ocean and be forever lost, and I raced the clock to get as much crude out through the hole and where I wanted it to go before the inevitable happened.

  “We’re in position,” DeSoules announced. “We have visual on the crude, and we are starting the pumps.”

  I took a moment to turn in the direction of the tanker, which had pulled up alongside the illuminated section of ocean. Massive cranes dangled over the side of the vessel, and the crew dropped huge hoses into
the crude.

  A low rumble passed through the water, and I was aware of the crude flowing in the direction of the ship. A tingle passed over my skin, one of the few signs another waveweaver worked the same waters I did.

  I concentrated on encouraging the thick fluid to drain from the tanker. I sucked in a breath as an idea occurred to me, one that might let me get the oil out faster.

  All it would take was a layer of ice above the oil and the pressure of water on top to force it out, much like a depressed plunger on a syringe.

  I’d expel a great deal of crude into the water, but with another waveweaver directing the oil to the ship, I could do it.

  At the same time, I could use my magic to retrieve the bodies from the upper bridge. The other bodies I’d found would be harder to retrieve, but it could be done.

  I’d already revealed too much about my true strengths, and the murdered men deserved a better rest than lost at sea without justice.

  “Captain DeSoules, are your waveweavers able to take over directing the crude to the pickup point? I’d like to try to speed up the process of getting the oil off the tanker.”

  “They can. I’ll tell them you’re increasing the volume of crude. What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to apply pressure on top of the crude to force it out of the tanker through the hole in the hull. I’ll layer ice over the oil and dump in sea water to force the crude out.”

  “If you ever need a new job, Mr. Alders, please look me up.”

  I chuckled at the odd compliment. “I’m also going to retrieve the bodies of the officers.”

  “You are? How?”

  “I’m going to break through the glass and toss the bodies out of the bridge into the ocean. They’ll be easier to retrieve, and I’ll illuminate their bodies so we don’t lose them. Once the ship sinks, it’ll be too dangerous to get to them. I won’t be able to get the bodies I found near the main deck, however. There are too many obstructions.”

  “Retrieve who you can. On behalf of their families and kingdom, thank you.”