by Jordan Rivet
It was dark in the lower passageway. Esther could feel the ship’s movement through the soles of her boots. She wished she knew exactly where they were going. As she approached the end of the corridor, she could hear a man swearing profusely over the roar of the engines. She pushed open the door.
The engine room was cramped and stifling. There were far too many workers, at least compared to the skeleton crew Esther was used to on the Catalina. The men gathered in corners, studiously avoiding the attention of a burly, tattooed fellow, who was busy berating one of their number. He wore overalls, and he’d sweated through his grimy undershirt. His face was lobster red from a combination of heat and sheer rage.
Esther cleared her throat, but the tirade of vulgarities continued. As far as she could tell, one of the men had knocked over a barrel, which had careened into a fuel injector, pushing some of the wiring loose. The unit shuddered dangerously. The apoplectic engine boss didn’t seem to notice.
Esther walked forward and replaced the wiring, securing it with a swift turn of the wrench from her belt.
The opera of curses ceased abruptly.
The engine boss took a breath, swelling the cartoon crab tattooed on his neck. “Who. The. Hell. Are. You?” he growled.
“I’m Esther.” She craned her neck up to meet his eyes. “The first mate sent me down to work here. I was head of engine maintenance on the—”
“Do you think I give a storming fuck what you did on some rust-beaten, salt-bag ship?”
“No, I—”
“No. Sir.” The leg of the crab tattoo pulsed above the engine boss’s jugular as if it were dancing.
“Sorry?”
“Sir.” The word was like a slap.
“Sir,” Esther repeated. Sweat dripped below her hairline, but she didn’t wipe it away.
“Did I tell you to fix that injector?” the boss said.
“No, sir.”
“Then why in the mother-sinking, boiling ocean did you fix it?”
No one moved. Esther’s heartbeat was nearly as loud as the clunk of the engines.
“I’m sorry, sir. The first mate said to make myself useful.”
The man’s face swelled further, as if his jaw were growing. “I’m up to my rusted and corroded throat in young krill like you trying to ‘make themselves useful.’ Don’t know what she’s playing at with all these recruits. This ship is far beyond capacity, and I can’t use all of the sea slugs she sends down here. It ain’t fuckin’ efficient.”
“Did I fix the injector incorrectly?” Esther asked evenly. “Sir.”
“That,” he said, “is beside the point. You do what I tell you when I tell you to salting do it. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Now get over there and help Cody clean that oil drum.”
“Yes, sir.”
He whirled around to continue shouting at the man who had knocked loose the wires in the first place, this time chastising him for allowing “a mother-sinking little girl” to show him up.
Esther joined Cody on the far side of the cramped space, avoiding eye contact with the other workers. Most were men, but a muscle-bound lass lounged against a rack of pipes in the corner. She watched Esther with a flat expression. Cody straightened from where he’d been cleaning muck from the bottom of the oil drum. His jacket, with its multitude of pockets, was tied around his waist. He seemed pleased to see her.
“Is he always like that?” Esther asked.
To her surprise, Cody laughed.
“Ol’ Jacques isn’t bad,” Cody said. “He looks scary, but I’d bet my berth he actually likes you. That was ballsy of you to interrupt him and fix the engine when he was on a wave. How’d you know that would work?”
“It’s basic maintenance stuff,” Esther said. “I’m sure most of the guys with any experience in here can do it.”
“That’s just it,” Cody said. “Most of us don’t have much experience. Jacques and Rawlins are the only old-timers here, besides the officers. That’s why Jacques is so pissed off all the time.”
“Why are they recruiting so many people?”
Cody shrugged. “Gotta compete with the Calderon Group, don’t they?”
He bent back over the oil drum. Esther wondered if that was all they wanted to do. They would need more ships if they wanted to bring in more metal and supplies to sell. More men wouldn’t necessarily help, especially if they were this inefficient.
Dredging the oil drum was hard work, and soon Esther was sweating into the dark pools that gathered beneath their boots. Cody was a hard worker, though, and it was nice to have the company of a familiar face.
“How’d you end up here anyway?” she asked him. “Are you from the Amsterdam?”
“Nope,” Cody said. “Grew up on a freighter. I’m too young to remember it that well, but when the disaster hit, my parents, big sister, and I were passengers on a cargo ship. My parents were adventurous types, wanting to travel the world with their family, and some freighters took a handful of passengers for cheap. After the volcano we just stayed on the ship and ate our way through a hundred shipping containers’ worth of canned food. We were doing all right, so my parents kept having kids, and we were living like a regular Swiss Family Robinson aboard that freighter. I’ve got six little brothers and sisters.”
“But you left?”
“Yeah, it gets claustrophobic, you know? I needed to get out on my own. We bumped into the Amsterdam by accident, and it seemed like the right time to jump ship.”
Esther wondered how old Cody was. Probably twenty at most. There was something fresh-faced about him, despite the tracks of oil and sweat on his cheeks.
“Did your family stay with the Amsterdam?” she asked.
“Nope. They’re out there still, floating around, arguing and fishing and trying to get by as always.”
“Doesn’t sound too bad.”
“Not really, but I wanted a change. Maybe on a big cruise ship like the Catalina you have enough different people around that it’s not so boring.”
Esther laughed. “The ship’s smaller than you’d think. Until recently I couldn’t wait to get off.”
“And now?”
“I don’t know,” Esther said. “It’s not a bad life, all things considered.”
She hoped everyone was all right on the Catalina.
They were put on cleaning duty next. As Esther scrubbed down the outside of the humming engine, she planned out how she would rearrange the machinery to make room for her algae system. The vessel could be even faster when it didn’t have to rely on diesel made from grungy crude oil. With her technology, this old ship could go anywhere.
The engine room crew was inexperienced, but they seemed open to newcomers. They questioned her knowledge of mechanics and fuel injection techniques and teased her good-naturedly. Once, the boss, Jacques, came over and hovered behind her as she took apart and reassembled a pump so she could clean it more thoroughly. He breathed heavily over her shoulder but didn’t stop her as she laid out the pieces systematically on the deck. When she tightened the last screw, he grunted and moved on. He burst out a string of curses half a second later, not directed at her this time.
Their shift lasted late into the afternoon. At the ring of the bell signaling the shift change, Esther stretched out her back and scrubbed at the grease on her hands. She and Cody went up to the mess hall, where the first shifters jovially pushed the second shifters out of their seats to make room at the crowded benches.
At the galley line, Esther picked up a metal bowl with a thumb-sized dent and dumped a lumpy mess of fish soup into it. Zoe arrived as she turned toward the tables. Esther waved at her across the heads of the seated sailors. Luke stood up from a seat beside Patrick, the Australian they had met yesterday, to wave at Zoe too. Cody had already crowded onto the bench across from them. Zoe arched one eyebrow at Luke and then joined Esther by the soup line.
“How was it?” Zoe asked.
“Not too bad. I can do thi
s kind of work,” Esther said quietly.
Rawlins was watching them from the galley door.
“My day sucked. If I never scrub another deck in my life, it’ll be too soon.”
“Sorry about that,” Esther said.
Zoe had worked on the gardening ship on the Galaxy Flotilla, caring for young plants in the greenhouse. There were no such jobs here.
“Notice anything strange today?” Zoe asked.
“They are way overmanned,” Esther said. “I bet they only need a third of these guys to do all the metal harvesting they can manage on a ship this size.”
Zoe twisted her finger around a loose string of blond hair and pushed it back into her ponytail. “Didn’t even think about that,” she said. “I was talking about the weapons.”
“What?”
“Come on, Esther. Everyone on this ship is armed, even though we’re way out to sea. Can’t you tell?” Zoe nodded toward a knife handle sticking out of the tattered jacket of a man with smooth brown skin sitting nearby, then across the table to a bulge in the pocket of the muscular woman Esther had seen in the engine room. The woman rested a hand briefly on the shape before leaning her broad shoulders over her soup.
“The knives could be for work,” Esther said.
“It’s not just the knives.” Zoe dropped her voice lower, so that Esther could barely hear it over the babble of the sailors. “There are stashes of munitions all over this ship. You saw the guns mounted on the railings, and I even found a cache of dynamite when I was looking for a place to stash the cleaning gear. Rawlins caught me opening a storage container. When I asked, he said the dynamite was for fishing, but I don’t buy it. Something’s up.”
“That’s what we want, isn’t it? People who can help us fight the Calderon Group. We assumed they would be armed.”
Esther scanned the mess hall as the sailors went about their meal. The men themselves didn’t look especially dangerous. There was no sign of the first mate or of Captain Alder.
“Maybe. But an overloaded, green crew with some serious weaponry and explosives doesn’t exactly make me feel comfortable.”
“Think we should ask the boys about it?” Esther jerked her head in the direction of Luke, Cody, and Patrick.
Zoe shrugged. “Doubt they know anything. We need to keep our eyes open and our weapons on us. That’s all.”
“Agreed.”
They went over to join the boys, preparing to be as casual as possible. Esther noticed signs of weapons amongst the dining sailors. It was beginning to look more and more like a fighting force. She frowned. Zoe was right: the combination of an overloaded, inexperienced crew and a huge supply of artillery could be dangerous—and not just to the group they were hunting.
Luke was in the middle of a story when they sat down. “This was on a sailboat, right? So after she says it, she climbs up into the rigging—I swear this was on purpose—and it was a windy day, you know? So I look up and I see—”
“Hold it, mate. The girls are here,” Cody said, tossing a crust of green seaweed bread across the table at him.
“Want me to start over?” Luke asked, flashing all of his teeth.
“You can’t tell a story like that around girls,” Cody hissed.
“There are only a few things you could possibly have seen up a skirt on a windy day,” Zoe said lightly. “Got anything better?”
Luke blinked slowly.
“Ha!” Patrick guffawed. “You tell a story then, Zoe.”
“All right,” she said, and launched into the tale of their dramatic escape from the Galaxy Flotilla a few months ago.
The young men hung on her every word. She made the adventure sound a lot more exciting than it was in Esther’s memory. She just remembered being very focused. And scared. She had been very scared.
When Zoe finished her tale, Luke pretended to bow down before her.
“Cool story, mate,” Patrick said.
“Good thing you got away and you’re with us now,” Luke said. “I’ve heard about the Galaxy before. Bunch of elitist weirdos.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Zoe said. “I heard about some strange stuff when I was locked up there.”
“You’ve been to prison too?”
“Twice. For demonstrating against the captains,” Zoe said. “No big deal.” She ate a spoonful of her soup.
“I like having girls around!” Cody declared.
Luke nodded fervently. Patrick caught Esther’s eye and winked. She looked down at her bowl, cheeks warm.
After they scraped up the last of their fish soup with crusts of seaweed bread, Patrick offered to show them how the metal-harvesting gear worked. The five of them made their way out of the mess hall together, but the first mate intercepted them on their way to the deck.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, fixing them with her hard green eyes.
“Showing Esther and Zoe the crane,” Patrick said.
The first mate looked sharply at Esther. “Why?”
“General interest,” Patrick said. “That all right?”
“Fine,” the first mate said, “but keep an eye out. I don’t want people on deck if they don’t have to be.”
“Is the Calderon Group close?” Esther asked.
“We don’t have them on radar yet,” the first mate said after a moment’s hesitation, “but they are notorious for surprise attacks, if half the rumors are true. Just be quick about it.”
“Yes, sir!” Luke said. “I mean, ma’am! First Mate.”
The first mate charged off without acknowledging him. She moved in such sharp bursts. It was disconcerting.
“What’s her story?” Esther asked.
“Beats me,” Luke said. “She was already the number two when I signed on.”
“Same here,” Patrick said. “And I’ve been with the Harvesters a bit longer than these two.”
“When did you join?” Esther asked.
“Two years ago.”
They climbed a ladder and emerged on the main deck. The rain had eased up momentarily, leaving the air crisp and cold. A steady tailwind pushed them through the sea. Patrick led the way aft.
“Actually, they put my old ship out of business,” he said. “We were salvagers too, me and my old man, but we couldn’t compete. They always got to the good stuff first, and they could afford to sail closer to shore. We both ended up joining, but he’s on one of the other ships.”
“How many Harvester ships are there?” Esther asked.
“Not sure,” Patrick said. “Gotta be at least a dozen by now.”
“Do you see your dad often?”
“A few times a year on the Amsterdam.”
They reached the stern, where a huge crane loomed like a dorsal fin.
“We use this baby to dredge metal from shallower water,” Patrick said.
He showed Esther how it worked, and they chatted about pulleys and corrosion problems. The Terra Firma swayed and lurched as she churned through the water. The sea and sky were black, the clouds hiding the stars from view.
Zoe and Luke climbed up to sit on the stern railing. Cody leaned against it beside them. He gasped when Luke pretended to fall back toward the wake spreading behind the ship. Esther caught Zoe smiling, but her face was serious by the time Luke recovered his balance.
“They’re good guys,” Patrick said. He wrapped his hands around a cable and leaned back on it, flexing his arms. He had pulled his sleeves up above his biceps despite the cold.
“You’ve been friends for a while?” Esther asked.
“Yeah. Luke’s been there for me in a tight spot or two, especially when my mum died. We’ve known each other since we were kids. Got into all kinds of trouble on the Amsterdam whenever Dad and I were in port.”
Now Luke was trying to stand up and balance on the railing. It was only about six inches wide, and he kept both hands wrapped around it, moving shakily. Zoe stopped him, then put her hands on his shoulder, using him for balance, and stood up on the railing in
one neat motion. She lifted her foot off the edge and stretched it out over the churning sea like a dancer. Luke stared up at her, not daring to move lest he disturb her dangerous balance. She met his eyes, and a smile crossed her lips.
“Why aren’t you and your dad on the same ship?” Esther asked Patrick as they watched their friends. She was thinking of her own father back on the Catalina. She couldn’t believe she was so far away from him for the second time in two months. At least this time she knew he was safe.
“We weren’t getting on so well at the time,” Patrick said. “Too much time together on a small boat, I think. Luke was the one that got me to patch things up with him. We leave messages for each other at his mum’s stall in the Amsterdam Bazaar now. We’re making plans to go back to Australia one day.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s about time, don’t you think?” Patrick said. He scratched at the reddish stubble on his square jaw.
“Probably is,” Esther said. “What’s the plan?”
“We just need to save up enough for the fuel. We still got our old boat at the Amsterdam. We figure she can make one more big trip, then we’ll be back on land for good.”
“Sounds like quite an adventure,” Esther said, remembering the voyage to land that David had proposed. Why had she turned him down?
“Yep. We’re almost there,” Patrick said. “I won’t mind leaving the Harvesters behind.”
“They don’t seem so bad.”
“Yeah, well . . .” Patrick trailed off. He hooked the cable back into place. “We’d better get back below deck before the first mate catches us out here. You don’t want to be on her bad side.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Esther said.
“Come on, you three,” Patrick called. “Let’s head in.”
Zoe stepped gracefully off the railing. Luke tried to help her, but she let go of his shoulder as soon as her feet reached the deck.
“I’m beat,” Zoe said. “Gotta get rested up for more bilge work in the morning.”