Seaswept (Seabound Chronicles Book 2) (21 page)

Instead, Chelle
was putting both her hands on David’s chest and whispering back to him. Then
she turned to lead the way through the dancers toward the door. Just before
David followed her he looked back, scanning the dancers until he met Esther’s
eyes. He winked.

What was that
supposed to mean? Esther scowled back. It was pretty obvious what he’d said to Chelle.
Was she supposed to give him a thumbs-up? A pat on the back? She understood the
necessity of all this, but it hurt to see David going off with another woman.
It hurt a lot more than she thought it would. She turned and jumped back into
the crowd, bobbing her head harder than necessary to the music.

Esther had lost
track of Harry, and she suddenly felt very alone in the middle of the dancers.
She tried to regain the thrill of joy she’d felt earlier, but it was gone. It
had become too hot in the press of the crowd. Her damp hair clung to her
forehead. There were smears of sweat on her arms from the other dancers. This
wasn’t fun anymore.

Esther gave up and
forced her way back out of the group, squeezing past arms and elbows and
bobbing heads.

When she broke
through the edge of the throng, Burns was waiting. He simply stood there beside
the boom box, watching his people dance. Esther half expected him to switch it
off and send everyone home. Instead, he scratched at the loop in his right ear,
smiling vaguely. He looked almost kindly—until his eyes fell on Esther.
He raised an eyebrow and beckoned to her with his four-fingered hand.

“Don’t you have
work to do?” he said.

“Uhhh . . .”

“You’d best round
up Harry and your friend Mr. Hawthorne,” Burns said. “I can’t be making
exceptions for prisoners, even if you’re turning out to be remarkably hardworking.”

“Sir?”

“I’ve been
receiving reports on your progress,” Burns said. “It sounds like you’re holding
up your end of the bargain.”

Esther didn’t
answer. Had David made it out the door before Burns arrived? She didn’t want
him to get caught sneaking around. They had to appear cooperative. Sweat
dropped from her bangs to her cheek, and she tried to wipe it away without
looking too nervous.

“I could use
someone like you in the Calderon Group,” Burns said suddenly. “You’d receive a
healthy share of our profits. It’s a good living.”

“I—”

“Just think on
it.” He snapped his fingers, and one of his men materialized beside him.
“Escort our inventor here back down to the workshop. And make sure she doesn’t
get out again.”

As Esther headed
for the door with her new guard, another man extracted Harry from the crowd.

“Find our Mr.
Hawthorne,” Burns said. “I want to see him.”

Back in the
confines of the workshop on Level 7, Esther couldn’t sleep. Would David get caught
wandering around Level 1? She wasn’t sure whether he had planned to excuse
himself from Chelle before or after going into her room. If it was the latter,
he had less chance of getting caught searching for the satellite phone, but she
didn’t like the implications if he went into her room.

Burns’s face swam
before her, offering her work with the Calderon Group. Such a thing had never
occurred to her. She could see the appeal of sharing the profits amongst the
whole group, as the Calderon people seemed to do. She liked the carefree way
they had danced in the canteen and the feeling of the ground beneath her feet.
There was an openness about the Calderon Group that had been missing from the
Harvesters. It was more like the
Catalina
or the
Amsterdam
.
The idea of staying was ridiculous
of course, but it was interesting that Burns had brought it up instead of
getting angry that she was out of her workshop. Maybe he wouldn’t kill her when
she was done installing the energy system in his ships after all. He must see
something in her. She wanted to talk to David about it, but he still wasn’t
back yet. He had been around the Calderon Group longer and might have a better
sense of whether Burns’s offer was genuine.
Where is he?

Of course she
still had to get Zoe away from the Metal Harvesters. Burns would change his
tune if he knew she was planning to deliver her invention to his biggest
rivals. They had to stick to the plan. She hoped David was having some luck in
his search for the satellite phone. Esther burrowed deeper into her cot, trying
not to think about why he was taking so long.

She was finally
drifting off to sleep when he returned. She rubbed her eyes as light split the
floor. David’s silhouette waited in the doorway.

“Did you get it?”
she mumbled.

David closed the
workshop door, cutting off the light. “No. I’ll try again tomorrow.”

“Did Burns find
you?”

“Yeah, but it was
fine.”

“What did
he—?”

“Go to sleep,
Esther. Everything’s okay.”

Esther rolled over,
her back to him. Why wouldn’t he tell her what had happened? Did Burns say
something? Or had things gone farther with Chelle than planned? Maybe she
didn’t want to know why he had been gone for so long.

David
settled into his cot beside her. She listened to the sound of cloth rustling
for a while, but his breathing didn’t slow. He was lying awake too. Just a few
feet separated them, but neither one reached across the gap in the darkness.

Chapter 28—The
Harbor

Esther pushed open the
heavy storm door that led to the harbor, a high-walled
alcove with a narrow outlet to the sea. Two ships and a handful of smaller
boats were moored in the jewel-bright water, looking like a school of giant
kingfish. The sky was storm-cloud gray, and the air held the freshness of rain.
But the thing that made her pause, as it had every time she’d stepped out this
door, was the smell of dirt and stone and scrubby, green life.

She had been
coming down to the harbor to work on the ships for four days. She now knew that
the Island was tall and crescent shaped. It had once been a volcano, though nowhere
near as large as the sleeping giant that had obliterated the mainland and
nearly destroyed the atmosphere. Stubborn vegetation spurted from the volcanic
rocks, hanging on desperately against the coastal winds. The bushes were a
brighter green than most types of seaweed.

Esther and her
guard walked along the high pathway beside the virulent plants and the
red-black volcanic soil, making their way toward a staircase leading down to
the boats.

“Watch your step,”
said Zeke, her guard for the day.

After Burns caught
her in the canteen on the Fourth of July, their guards had become much more
attentive. Harry hadn’t been allowed near them since then either.

With the exception
of their initial meeting in David’s cell, Zeke had turned out to be a perfect
gentleman. Whenever he accompanied her to the engine room of whichever Calderon
vessel was in the harbor that day, he made small talk about her work and told
her about the West Texas town where he grew up, a dusty place that seemed to be
all pickup trucks and gas stations.

“Have you seen
Hawthorne lately?” Esther asked as they climbed down the long staircase to the
concrete pathway bordering the harbor.

“Not since he had
dinner with Chelle last night. Looked pretty cozy,” Zeke said.

Esther stomped a
little too hard on the next step, and he raised a thick eyebrow at her.

It had been
David’s third dinner date with Chelle, and he still hadn’t found the satellite
phone. But he was moving around the island more freely without anyone stopping
him. The guards seemed much more worried about Esther than about him. Maybe he
was making progress. Was she a fool for believing that was why he spent so much
time with his freckled friend?

“This is where the
most recent landslide was,” Zeke said, as if sensing her need to change the
subject. He pointed at a newly paved swath right beside the staircase.

The slide had
exposed a chunky layer of volcanic rock. Bright patches of green still appeared
here and there on the crumbling hillside.

“Happened about
two months before you turned up, back when that massive storm tore up half the
sea.”

Esther remembered
that storm well. It had come out of nowhere and ripped the
Catalina
away from the
Galaxy
Flotilla
, leaving her stranded—with David.

“Were you here
then?” she asked Zeke.

“Yeah,” he said.
“Just in from a patrol off Hawaii. Thought the Island might sink the rest of
the way into the sea.”

“Did you lose any
ships?”

“The alcove
protects them,” Zeke said. “The rain was murder on the hillside, though, and
the waves were rough enough to destroy the dock.”

They reached the
end of the concrete walkway and approached the floating dock. It was made of
thick chunks of plastic bound tightly together with more plastic. Plastic was
the one thing that was still easy to salvage at sea.

“Why bother
repairing the dock?” Esther asked.

Another storm was
sure to destroy it. That always happened when people tried to rebuild on land
too close to the sea. She didn’t understand why the Calderon Group was fighting
so hard to make their life on the Island work.

“You could say
that about most of what we do,” Zeke said. “Why bother?”

Esther frowned.
“Yeah, but the dock isn’t even necessary if you have enough small boats.”

“It’s nice to have
a bit of permanence,” Zeke said.

“Is that why you
stay with the Calderon Group?” Esther asked. “Permanence?”

She had wondered
what kept reasonable men like Zeke and Harry attached to an organization that
would kidnap someone and then starve him. One that would attack and kill,
seemingly without hesitation. But then her friends Cody, Luke, and Patrick had
joined the Harvesters, a group that had tortured their own prisoner. Were they
really any better?

And she herself
had been willing to fight whoever it took to save the people she cared about.

Zeke was quiet for
a moment. The clomp of their boots mixed with the wind whistling across the
peak above them. The flimsy dock, an illusion of stability, swayed with each
step. The water around it was thick with algae. The Calderon Group had been
collecting it on Esther’s instructions, but there was still plenty, and it grew
fast.

Finally, Zeke
spoke. “It’s a job, the Calderon. I joined because I needed something to do, some
way to make a living. I was on an oil tanker when the disaster hit. We wandered
the sea for a while, back when we hoped things on land would clear up quick.
When we figured that wasn’t going to happen, we had to make our way, same as
everyone else. Eventually most of my buddies decided to become Calderon men.
They weren’t the most scrupulous bunch, but it was as good a gig as any. After
a while we became a community, just like when you work for any company for long
enough. You go to each other’s weddings. Your kids learn to swim together. You
become a family. Well, you’re young enough that you wouldn’t know what that was
like before, but it’s not all that different here and now.”

“What about the
attacks? The casualties? You’re basically pirates,” Esther said.

“In a world
without laws, you don’t care so much who’s stealing and who’s trading,” Zeke
said. “You just want a place you can go home to, a group of people you
understand, even if you don’t like what they do all the time.”

They reached the
end of the dock, where the
Sultana
loomed
over their heads. Esther had been surprised to see the big cruise ship the
first time she visited the harbor. She had assumed all of the Calderon ships
would be light, versatile vessels suited for attacking and then darting away.
But the Calderon Group had acquired a cruise ship a few years ago, and now it
sat within the crescent arms of the harbor like a beached whale.

“I was on the ship
that found her,” Zeke had told Esther. “Just floatin’ there, empty. Not a soul
or a body in sight. We never did find out whether people had lived there before
abandoning her or if she’d been alone at sea all that time. Her fuel chambers
were bone-dry, but Burns decided to tow her in, in case we ever got too big for
the base. Took a lot to tug ’er here, but after you fix up the power she’ll be
a regular floating barracks.”

Esther and Zeke
climbed the rope ladder to the
Sultana
’s
lowest deck. She was probably wasting her time outfitting this ship if they
were never planning to sail her (they could always use wind and solar for the
living quarters), but there was only one other large ship in the harbor at the
moment, and she’d already finished working on it. She’d also installed her
system on two smaller Calderon ships, which were now back at sea.
Probably hunting the
Terra
Firma
.
Esther didn’t like
following that line of thought. She was painfully aware that it had been a week
since she left Zoe at the mercy of the Metal Harvesters.

The hulking
Sultana
was very quiet, with its empty
cabins and neglected engines. No one had wanted to move onto her from the warm
depths of the Island. Esther didn’t like working here and wished another ship
would come back to port. She hadn’t seen very many people around the Island
over the past few days, even though she’d been moving back and forth to work on
the ships. It didn’t seem like the Island would one day hold so many people
that they would need the rooms on this vessel. Everyone must be out on patrol.

No one would tell
her anything about the other ships’ movements, of course. Esther wondered about
their communication systems. She had begun to suspect that the Calderon Group
had been using the satellites. Perhaps that was how they coordinated their
attacks without their victims picking up radio transmissions. She held out hope
that David would get her satellite phone back, but it could compromise their
position to send a message to the
Catalina
too soon.

Esther headed down
to the
Sultana
’s engine room, and
Zeke followed. He settled in on a metal catwalk above the engine while she
worked on the separator on the bottom level.

“Want to sink?”
Zeke offered her the crumbling substance, wrapped in a piece of old foil.

“No, thanks,”
Esther said. “Gotta focus.”

“Suit yourself.”

The narcotic was a
weakness for Zeke. Esther wouldn’t tell anyone he chewed on the job—and
he knew it. He had explained how it worked, making one mellow and hyper by
turns. Esther paid careful attention to how long Zeke was sinking (on a mellow
turn) and how long he was floating. Every bit of information could help if Burns
reneged on his promise of safe passage.

It was lunchtime
when David finally appeared. He stepped over Zeke snoozing on the catwalk and
joined Esther by the separator. She was covered in sweat and had just pulled
herself out from under an algae tube. It was difficult work to do by herself.
There were never enough Calderon mechanics free to help her.
Serves them right if they can’t fix this
thing the first time it breaks
,
she thought.

David was supposed
to help her, but he had been arriving later and later every day. His movements
weren’t monitored as closely as hers, and he walked down without a guard today.
It was almost like he had become a member of the Calderon family himself. The
thought gave Esther a sour feeling in her stomach.

David wore a new
red sweater and carried a metal pail. Steam rose from the top.

“Brought you some
lunch,” he said. “It’s the usual mush, but I’ve got some decent oysters in my
pocket. Here.”

“You’re late,”
Esther said as she took the pail full of boiled seaweed.

David smiled and
leaned against one of the six big engines. He looked much healthier than he had
when she arrived a week ago. His handsome face had begun to fill out again. She
eyed the fresh red yarn of his sweater.

“The cook was
telling me about his room allotment,” David said. “It’s way down on Level 6. I
suggested he ask for an upgrade, because he’s responsible for the morale of the
island as well as its sustenance.”

“Good for you,”
Esther said shortly.

David sounded like
a
Galaxy
spokesman again, spinning
people’s perceptions to his advantage.
Maybe
he belongs in a place like this
.

“Anyway,” David
continued, “he gave me the oysters as thanks, so I’d say it was worth the
delay, wouldn’t you?” He pulled the shells, already partly open, from his
pocket and handed half of them to her.

Yes, he would do
well for himself with the Calderon Group. Especially with Chelle around.

Esther took the
oysters. “New sweater?” she asked more sharply than she intended.

“Huh? Oh yeah.”
David’s smooth demeanor wavered.

“I’m sure Chelle
thinks you look very nice,” Esther said, and immediately wished she hadn’t.

“Chelle?”

“I assume she gave
it to you.”
Why can’t I keep my mouth
shut?
She shouldn’t care who was giving him sweaters.

David looked at
his clean sleeve and then back at Esther’s heat-reddened face. “She did,” he
said slowly.

“Hmm.” Esther
cracked open an oyster and averted her eyes.

Suddenly, David
threw an oyster shell to the floor, making Zeke start in his sleep.

“Damn it, Esther.
What’s the matter?” David said.

“Nothing,” she
said around the mouthful of slippery shellfish.

“You’re terrible
at hiding it when you’re mad. You’re pissed at me, and I don’t understand why.
Is it because I was late to help out? I just get in your way.”

Esther didn’t want
to answer. It seemed petty.

“What do
you
think?” she said.

He stared at her,
incredulous. “I don’t know.” He paused. Zeke snored lightly from his perch
above them. Then David threw up his hands. “Is this about Chelle?!”

Esther stared back
at him, still chewing.

“Come on. That’s
not fair,” David said. He glanced up at Zeke and lowered his voice. “I need Chelle
to get to the satellite phone.”

Esther swallowed.
“Convenient.”

“You told me to
work out an exit strategy.”

“And you’re doing
such a good job,” Esther said.

“Where does all
this hostility come from?” David began to pace, frustrated. “Seriously, Esther,
I’m trying to help both of us. You don’t think I’m selling you out or betraying
you somehow, do you?”