Tally lifted her head, took a hand from her lap, and covered Maxine’s with her own. “On balance, Mom, I guess I would have done the same. I don’t blame you. You took the pain and the guilt for all of us, and you carried it in the hope that we wouldn’t get caught in the crossfire. I can’t imagine what that’s been like for you for the last twenty years. Sitting with that on your shoulders,”
Maxine’s heart swelled as Tally, many years wiser than what might have been suggested by the time she’d been alive, continued, “I think what you did was brave and selfless, and, Mom, not that you need to hear it—but I forgive you.”
“Dammit. Dammit. Dammit.” Halley thumped his fist down onto his palm, then ran his fingers through his hair on both sides of his head at the same time. When he had finished making more noise than signal, he bent over the compass again.
Dawn was creeping up over the horizon, and a steady wind had driven them from Jacksonville out into the ocean. As the Sea-Hawk’s topsails had turned pink, and the rigging had remained coal black against the clouds overhead, the whole ship had itself slowly become visible in the new, fresh daylight. They were no longer in sight of land, but as the sun rose, they could now use the shadow stick method of navigation that Poppet had taught the crew all those months ago. A yard-long piece of wood was placed upright on the deck and the end of the shadow that was cast was marked on the deck. Twenty minutes later, the process was repeated. The line that bisected the two marks would give them the direction south.
Halley had watched Josh and Poppet making the calculations, and when they had finished the first round, he’d sidled up to Josh. “That’s sweet. Really sweet. You were a boy scout in a previous life, yeah?”
“All Poppet’s work,” Josh had replied. He didn’t need Halley’s sarcasm right now. They were making a plan about where they would head to regroup and regain their strength before working out how to tackle Gabe again. The problem was that Gabe’s reach was far and wide right now. They’d met his forces and those under his influence in Florida and Georgia in the south, and as far north as Cumberland and West Virginia to the north. The Harbormen were spreading like a virus.
Gabe was building an empire, not just a castle.
And because people were scared, they followed him, and those who weren’t scared were being conscripted or forced into service. “That means,” Josh had said to Donald when they’d discussed it before Halley had come over to offer his sarcasm, “that wherever we land on the mainland, we could be vulnerable to Gabe’s forces. We need to find somewhere where he can’t get at us.”
“So,” Halley had said, “instead of you using a stick and a shadow, why don’t I make the compass work for you? And then, when I’ve done that, I could probably get the engine on this thing working. It’s not beyond the bounds of possibility, trust me.”
Except, right now it was looking like it was.
As they’d sailed on through the morning, Halley had gotten two of the crew to find all of the electrical wiring on the Sea-Hawk they could, strip out the copper in the wires, and give it to Halley to twist into the copper cage he was constructing around the ship’s compass. The compass was a beautiful brass and glass affair on a gimbal that had been rendered useless, just like every other navigational aid on the Sea-Hawk had been dead since the Barnard’s event. The needle spun randomly or stayed stock still. No amount of tapping or coaxing had been able to get it to give a true reading.
Now Halley was putting his improvised copper cage over the thing, trying to keep it steady as the ship heeled and yawed. The gimbal (and the wooden plinth it was attached to) seemed to be the problem. It was stopping the cage from going around the compass’ casing completely, and thus, as Halley had explained in words no one really understood, “The Barnard’s disruption field is still able to seep though. I think the Earth’s magnetic field is still there, but somehow the Barnard’s field is cutting the compass free of it.”
Halley slapped his forehead. “I know. Someone, get me a mallet.”
A mallet was found and brought to Halley.
“What are you going to do?” Josh asked. “Threaten to smash its face in if it refuses to work for you?”
Halley gave Josh the kind of look you’d give to an unwanted puppy before you sent it for a swim inside a bag of bricks. “Watch and learn, o ye of little faith.”
Halley lifted the improvised copper cage from the compass, addressed the mallet to the side of the compass like a golfer getting ready to tee off, and then smacked the side of the compass for all he was worth. The first blow tore one side of the apparatus from the plinth, and the second sent it flying through the air to clang onto the deck and roll to a halt eight yards away.
“There,” Halley said. “That should to it.”
“You mean destroy it?” Donald commented. “Guess we’re stuck with the shadow stick now.”
Dropping the mallet like it was a discarded apple core, Halley went to the compass and picked it up. “They make these things to last, Donny, to last.”
Halley had taken to calling Donald “Donny” in the last couple of hours. Josh could guess where the sarcasm and niggling was coming from. When Josh had told Halley what had happened to his sister and how she’d died in the castle, Josh had been stunned that the professor had taken the news without so much of a flicker of emotion. He’d just nodded, pushed up his glasses with his index finger, and gone to stand by the gunwale, looking out over the gray sea as the light of dawn began to ratchet up.
But the tenseness in his voice, the quickness to irritation, and the sarcasm which was bleeding from him at almost every turn gave a lie to the outer stoicism he’d affected at the news of his sister’s death. Inside, Josh could tell Halley was stewing, and the emotional response was coming out of him like steam through a failing gasket.
Halley bent his head to his task and, within minutes, the compass was surrounded by copper wire and the Faraday-like cage around it was in place. As Josh and Donald looked on with pure amazement, the needle on the compass began to twirl, then stabilized. When Halley turned the device in his hand, the needle stayed true as the dial rotated beneath it.
“North,” said Halley quietly, pointing off into the distance. Poppet ran forward and hugged the professor as he held the compass out of her way and her shoulder skewed his glasses to one side.
There were smiles and generous laughs all around. Even Josh, who felt Storm’s absence as a hollow in the middle of his chest and a snaky anxiety in his gut, felt that this was a step forward. “It’ll make navigation all the easier once we’ve gotten a fix on our position from charted objects on the shore,” Poppet said.
This popped a few balloons as the laughter died and expressions dropped. And so Poppet began to explain, “The compass working is fantastic, but we still won’t know where we are. There are a bunch of charts in the captain’s cabin. Remember them from before, Josh?”
Josh nodded.
“We need one that shows the coast and some objects on shore, or a buoy, so that we can triangulate a fix based off the shoreline and know which heading to take once we’ve decided where we’re going to go.”
“Go back towards shore now? Are we even sure…?” Josh couldn’t help the concern rising in his voice.
Poppet affirmed what she was suggesting with a nod. “I know it’s risky.”
“More than risky. Gabe’s Harbormen are bound to be watching the shore for us.”
“But once we’ve got a fix, we can head wherever we want. It’s worth the risk for now.”
“And if can get the engine working, which I think I can, then we’ll be able to get away pretty quickly,” Halley said, looking up from the compass. “All we need to do is decide where it is we’re going, and, Josh, I’m pretty sure I can get us there.”
They convened a meeting in the captain’s cabin, pulling together Donald, Maxine, Poppet, Josh, and Halley, who still cradled the compass like it was his newborn child.
Ten-Foot had stayed out with Tally and the other
s, keeping the Sea-Hawk running through the waves on half-sail.
“Dark Point,” Halley said. “We should head for Dark Point.”
Josh and others had never heard of it.
“Small Caribbean island in the Bahamian chain. There was a small naval facility there in the past, set into a natural harbor which will be a good place for us to head for and hole up away from Gabe’s influence. It’s about fifty miles east of Miami, so no more than two days’ sailing from Jaxport if we get it right. There’s also a lot of jungle covering which’ll give us plenty of good eating.”
“How do you know so much about it?” Donald asked skeptically.
Halley pushed up his glasses. “I had a vacation home there. You don’t work twenty years in TV without some rewards, Donny, and to be honest, I’d really like to be back on familiar ground for a couple of days. My sister loved it there. I’d like to bury her memory there if I can’t bury her body there, if it’s okay with you.”
Donald said nothing, but Josh could see in his eyes that he understood completely where Halley was coming from. He’d only recently buried his own wife, after all. Around the table, surrounded by the creaking of the Sea-Hawk, Poppet began rolling out the charts and discussing with Donald the best plan of action.
Maxine took Josh to one side, her face colorless. “Do you think this is a good idea? Leaving Jaxport so far behind?”
Josh shrugged. “I don’t know what else we can do for now. You saw what Storm was like, what he was saying and how much Gabe has gotten into his head. We need supplies. We need ammunition. And we need to rest, get our strength back. If we don’t, then we’ll have no chance of getting into Jaxport and taking Storm back.”
Maxine’s face was grave. “I know that we had to leave him there for now. But Halley’s vacation island? What if we get there and the crew and the others decide it’s safe and worth staying? What if they refuse to go back to Jaxport because it’s too much of a risk? Have you thought of that?”
Josh had to admit that he hadn’t. “We’ll find a way to persuade them, I promise.”
Maxine’s eyes fell, “I hope you’re right, because right now, I don’t think you’ll be able to do it, and I wouldn’t know where to start trying.”
10
The probationers had turned into quite the team, Maxine observed. She knew that Josh had had the devil’s own job of keeping them out of trouble when they’d been on his caseload back in North Carolina. The trip they had taken with him on the Sea-Hawk had been a last chance saloon for some of them—especially Dolan ‘Ten-Foot’ Snare.
From Josh’s descriptions of them before, coming now to the tight-knit, well-drilled crew who were steering the Tea-Clipper with consummate skill, taking in and putting out sails, working the rigging and generally being an effective ship’s crew, there was no end to how impressed Maxine was; her admiration for what they’d become went beyond measure. That they were enjoying it, too, was a bonus. They were away from Gabe’s influence now, and although not all dangers had receded, there was an easy atmosphere between them which contributed greatly to the smooth sailing of the ship.
Maxine was still pretty much convinced that, once the crew made it to Dark Point, that would be it and they would see the island paradise for what it was… a chance to start again in a world that had gone wrong for them twice. Already, Maxine had heard snatches of their conversations as they’d pulled sails and ropes. Dotty-B, all sable hair and glossy skin, was looking forward to a Caribbean beach—a world so far removed from her own upbringing as to be talked about in the hushed tones of contemplating an alien planet. Puck Gathers’ family had come from the Caribbean ‘a million generations ago,’ and he liked the idea of going back there and seeing where his distant family had originated—even if they had been slaves. Maxine got the impression he was proud of his heritage. And pride was something that, in the past, she knew had been at a premium for these kids.
Scally Lish had explained to Maxine that Gabe’s Harbormen had kept all of them on the Sea-Hawk so they could be sailed out at a moment’s notice. They’d been guarded pretty much since the boat had been captured, but when Ten-Foot had made it onto the boat on the night of the Jaxport attack, he’d killed the three guards with his gun and knife before they’d had a chance to raise the alarm. They hadn’t expected him to have changed sides in the way he had.
That accomplished, Ten-Foot had gotten their small crew to make the ship ready while he’d prepared his thermite signal to float away from the Sea-Hawk, using it to draw Josh and the others towards it.
Maxine had taken to Scally quickly, liking her quick wit and her wide, bright smile. She knew a little of the problems she’d left behind when she’d made that fateful trip out into the Atlantic, but now the girl was coming into her own with the others. Maxine could tell that Josh was just as moved and impressed as Maxine was by the way the group had come forward and coalesced into a unit since the Barnard’s crisis had unfolded.
“They’ve done a lot better without me than they did with me there,” Josh said ruefully, but not without a hint of good humor. “I don’t think my next work appraisal meeting is going to reflect well on my abilities.”
“You got them as far as you could, Josh,” Maxine replied, watching as the sails billowed in the afternoon sun and the Sea-Hawk was tacked back into the wind, turning port and then starboard in succession to move against the natural propulsion provided by Mother Nature. Halley was down in the engine room again, trying to get the motor to work and drive the prop shaft. Maxine had been down a couple of times to see how he was getting on with Jingo, Karel, and Donald, but there had been much cursing and frustrated shouting the last time she’d stuck her head through the hatch. There was a near full tank of diesel to supply the engine with fuel, but the electronic starter and management system had been fully fritzed by the Barnard’s event, and from what she’d seen and heard in passing, it was going to be the mother of all jobs to get that unit going again. Best to leave them to it, Maxine thought.
Tally and Henry had searched through the ship’s stores to make an inventory of food. The Sea-Hawk had been well provisioned with canned food, dry goods, and plastic containers of fresh water. Ten-Foot had told them the ship was being made ready for the Harbormen, at Gabe’s orders to sail up the East Coast and see what could be salvaged or stolen from the coastal towns they came upon. So much for that plan.
Now, inventory completed, Tally and Henry were at the prow of the Sea-Hawk, looking out across the gray waves since the clouds had bubbled up to glut the sky around them, hazing out what sunlight there was into an indistinct blob of gold beneath gauze, and in the lull while the clipper headed back to what they thought could be an approximate direction for land—so that they could make use of the charts in the captain’s cabin and hence move on to Dark Point—Maxine’s daughter and the young red-headed boy had been almost inseparable. As Maxine looked on, Tally put her hand on Henry’s shoulder, and his eyes looked anywhere except at hers. Maxine fancied she could see a reddening in the boy’s cheeks. It was understandable if there was some feeling developing between them, she thought, and from what she’d seen of this young survivalist named Henry, her Tally could do a lot worse if she was aimed at finding someone to hang her heart on for a while.
“They’re getting on well,” Josh said, viewing the same scene that Maxine was. “I hope his intentions are honorable.” Josh grinned.
“Are any boy’s?” Maxine countered with a similar grin. Josh’s head turned as if he had to check to make sure she wasn’t being serious.
“Hey, I was honorable!” Josh defended himself as Maxine detected the mock indignation in his voice.
“Yeah. At first.” Maxine winked. “I’m not sure we can say the same for the first time you took me home in your beat-up Honda.”
“I’m saying nothing,” Josh said quietly.
They laughed at that. It was a moment to savor, Maxine thought. In all this craziness, their conversation here and now was something normal a
nd real and simple. Two people who loved each other watching two others who were heading that way. Maybe there was hope to find in all this horror after all.
Life goes on.
Poppet joined them and hooked a thumb towards Tally and Henry. “Shall we tell them to get a room? Or do you think they’ll want to do that thing from Titanic first? ‘Jack! Jack! I’m flying!’”
Tally and Henry stayed at the prow for some time while Maxine, Josh, and Poppet helped out around the rigging with the probationers—Maxine literally learning the ropes. Scally taught her how to tie off a line so that it didn’t slip. Dotty-B showed her the best way to haul a sail, and then Goober Nash explained the finer points of how to sail into the wind with the sails turning on the masts, the boom coming across the rear of the ship and causing her to duck several times as the shadow moved over her. Meanwhile, the crabbing progress the Sea-Hawk made—like a fly making a zig-zag walk up the surface of a window—sent them into the teeth of the freshening wind.
Halley and Donald came up top after another hour, but their faces told Maxine that they’d still had had no success with the engine. Halley’s battery-operated buzzer and the cage around the compass were one thing, both being reasonably low-concept solutions to particular problems, but the engine was proving to be a whole other level of difficult.
Donald sat down with a huff on a crate as Maxine and Josh approached. Halley was scribbling on paper held on a clipboard with a pencil.
Donald looked haggard and frustrated. “It’s not the engine itself that’s causing the problem. If we can get the system running, then the fuel injectors will pump diesel into the chambers automatically and we’ll get the propeller running. It’s getting the glow plugs and the battery isolated so we can get the engine to heat up and turn over in the first place that’s the issue. There are no blowtorches on the boat to heat the engine block, and short of setting a fire around it, we’re stumped. Completely stumped.”
Supernova EMP- The Complete Series Page 84