by Jordan Rivet
After Paris had finished giving out assignments, Esther had the final word. Paris introduced her, and the crowd fell silent as she walked up to the stage, still limping slightly.
She cleared her throat, feeling nervous. She had never spoken in front of a large group like this, much less a group of strangers.
“My name is Esther,” she began.
“Yeah Esther!” Zoe shouted.
Toni whooped, and there was a titter through the crowd. It made Esther feel braver.
“Look,” she said, “I’m a stranger here. I don’t know what you’ve all been through on the Galaxy, or your reasons for going along with this scheme.” Her eyes fell on David, who was still sitting at the edge of the stage. “What I do know is that the most important thing in the world to me is my family on the Catalina. I want them to survive, maybe to have a better life. If you all are doing this to make a better life for your families than the one you’ve had here, well then I think I understand you.” She looked out at Byron, remembering his face when he’d mentioned his wife and daughter. They couldn’t screw this up. “We’re all taking a risk, like Paris said. But if this works, you’ll be welcome on the Catalina. It’ll be a home for you, and you’ll be treated as equals with everyone else there. I can’t promise you fresh vegetables or steak dinners or anything, but I can promise you that. So, I guess I just want to say thank you,” she finished.
No one clapped, though Esther didn’t think she would have either. But people nodded their assent, met her eyes. Jaws set. Fists clenched. They understood.
Chapter 24—Before
The new crew dispersed to collect belongings and family members. They would move on the Lucinda in just a few hours. With any luck, no one would have enough time to change their minds and alert the captains. Esther knew the people who came to the meeting had been thinking about leaving the Flotilla for a while. Now was their chance to act.
David was still sitting on the edge of the stage when Esther said good-bye to Zoe and her friends and joined him. She sat beside him, swinging her legs in time with his. They watched the last of the oilmen leave the theater, talking earnestly.
After a while, Esther broke the silence. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Esther,” he said, watching their feet, “your sense of duty toward your friends is inspiring. Obviously, I’ve never developed the same loyalty to the Galaxy, but I didn’t have the courage to leave until I saw you fighting for the Catalina.”
“My dad is on the Catalina,” Esther said. “And it’s my fault they’re in such bad shape.”
She didn’t deserve praise for her role in this fiasco.
“You should give yourself some credit. You’re all right, Esther.” He nudged her with his elbow.
“Thanks.” They remained silent for a few minutes, then she stood to go.
David caught her hand, his palm warm against hers.
“I have to go back to my cabin to collect some things before we move. Would you come with me?” he said quietly, tracing the calluses on her hand.
She let him touch her, imagining for an instant the feeling of his hands tracing the contours of her back, but didn’t move any closer to him. “I need to help Paris with the guns. We’ll talk later.”
“You promise?” David asked, and his face looked very young for a moment.
“Yes.” She turned to go, then hesitated. “I’m glad you’re coming with us. Even if you don’t stay for long.”
She found Paris digging through the costume closet with Dax’s friend Connor. Connor hadn’t made a particularly good impression on Esther at the Crown dinner, but she shook his hand and welcomed him to the crew.
Paris pulled gun after gun from beneath one of the costume racks and stacked them in Connor’s arms.
“Where’d all this come from, Paris?” Esther asked.
Paris huffed with the effort of bending to extract the guns. “We did a production of War Horse a few years back. Used painted driftwood, spare bits of metal, anything we could find to make the weapons. They look real enough—more real than the horses did anyway. Providing no one recognizes them from the show, we should be able to convince the crew to take us seriously.”
“Brilliant,” Esther said. She took a long rifle from atop the stack in Connor’s arms. This one was metal, and it felt cold against her fingers. “Are you sure you’ll be all right after all this is done?”
“I’ll manage.”
“What if they figure out you gave us weapons? And came up with the plan, for that matter.”
“I will insist you stole them from me at knife point,” Paris said. He stopped and twisted, his back cracking like gunfire as he did. “Oof, that’s better. Anyone who knows you will believe it. The captains appreciate my ability to keep people entertained. I’ll probably get off with a slap on the wrist when all is said and done.”
Esther frowned. “I wish you’d come with us.”
Paris stood and looked at her for a long moment. “I belong here. When we were set adrift on the sea after the disaster, I was in a bad place. Spiritually, you know? The Galaxy gave me a stage, a place to continue doing what I love in the midst of a world gone to hell. I owe it to her to stay on and keep trying to change things from the inside.”
“What about Marianna?” Esther asked.
Paris glanced at Connor, but he was occupied with stuffing the stage guns into an unwieldy sack. “Marianna and I haven’t been a proper married couple for a while,” Paris said, “but we had a lot of plans together once.” He turned back to the closet, briskly rustling through the costumes. “No, I’ll be better off here. Maybe I’ll adopt an orphan or two. Besides, I’ve heard about your amateur performances on the Catalina, and I don’t think I could stomach them. The Galaxy, with all its faults, is the place for me.”
“Thank you, Paris, for everything. You don’t know what this means to me.”
He smiled. “I think I do, darling. I think I do.”
Esther and Connor helped Paris move all the stage weaponry out to the main theater. Soon their co-conspirators would pick up the weapons and depart for their stations. The theater was empty, and Esther stood for a moment on the stage, looking up at the balcony from which she’d watched the cabaret performance. So much had changed in just a few days. She wished they could get it over with. The waiting was the worst part.
A throat cleared behind her. “Uh, can I go now?”
She turned to see Connor placing the last of the guns on the stage. “Sure, I think we’re done,” she said. “Got family to see?”
Connor blinked. “Yeah, family, uh, I just . . . think the captains are bad, you know?”
“I guess . . .” Esther said.
Connor nodded and rushed off toward the exit, turning to look back at her as he went.
Soon it was time for Esther to take her place too. She couldn’t sweet-talk people, like David, or fool them, like Paris, but she could fix things that needed to be fixed. She had to keep calm and make sure all the parts fit together. Everything depended on it.
Chapter 25—Hijacking
At the appointed time, Esther met Byron at a seldom-used platform floating beside the Mist. Their new friends loaded suitcases and packages onto his water taxi, Paris’s stage guns tucked beneath their coats. Adele held a plastic semiautomatic rifle in her slender hands. Byron gave Esther a handheld radio. Set to an obscure frequency, it would be just strong enough for Esther to tell him when to move.
“You all set, Byron?” she asked.
“Yep. Got the kids settled. So far everyone’s kept quiet enough.” Byron jerked his head behind him to where his wife and ten-year-old daughter, Thera, sat. Other young families huddled together in the middle of the boat between the sweating, grim-faced Galaxy rebels. They’d only had a few hours to collect their entire lives and follow him.
Esther wished there was some way to avoid taking the children into the thick of the mission. “Are you sure they should be here?”
“Can’t leave with
out ’em,” Byron said. “We’re on a bid for a new life. Gotta take the risk sometime.”
“Just make sure they stay on the taxi until the fighting’s done,” Esther said.
“They’ll be under the seats the second you give the word.”
Byron saluted her as he pulled away from the dock. Esther lost sight of little Thera’s solemn brown eyes as the boat sped away. The taxi would stay in the shadow of the Mist, lurking until Lucinda picked up her cargo.
Esther jogged back up the gangway and across the lower lifeboat deck, limping slightly on her injured heel. She leaned over the railing to see if Lucinda had arrived yet. A wake trail spread like an arrowhead pointing straight for the Mist, and the telltale glint of sun on steel flashed from the sea. It was her, their getaway ship.
Lucinda was gorgeous. She had a large main deck and a sharp prow like a raven’s beak. She was matte gray in color, blending into the sea around her. The large pilothouse amidships had dark windows and a weapons turret on top. A thicket of antennas rose above it. Her hull bore a faded navy insignia. She was a Cyclone-class patrol ship, faster, lighter, and smaller than a destroyer. Compared to the other boats in the Flotilla, she was a Ferrari.
Esther turned to make her way along the railing. She caught sight of Connor standing farther along the Mist’s deck, overlooking where the Lucinda was sailing up to the hull. That was strange. He was supposed to be in David’s crew, which had taken a water taxi across to the Emerald almost an hour ago. Esther stopped and ducked behind a lifeboat winch. Connor rocked back and forth on his heels, watching the ship approach. A few other people milled about the deck, but none of them focused so intently on the Lucinda.
Stop being so obvious. You’re going to give us away, Esther thought irritably, and then she realized he was about to do exactly that—on purpose. She leapt from behind the lifeboat and ran.
Connor stood up on his toes, filling his lungs, and shouted, “Look out! They’re going to hi—”
Esther barreled into him before he had a chance to say “-jack.” They hit the deck with a thunk. She grabbed his arms and rolled away from the railing, pulling him with her. He was too surprised to react. She prayed no one on the Lucinda had heard his shout.
“What are you doing?” she whispered fiercely.
Connor looked terrified. She could feel him trying to contract into a ball beneath her weight.
“I don’t think you should do this,” he whimpered.
“We have to,” she hissed. “You don’t need to come, but if you give us away I swear I’ll gouge out your eyeballs with a socket wrench.”
He spluttered, and Esther wasted no time in standing and dragging him to his feet. He tried to run, but she delivered a quick elbow to his solar plexus and dragged him, wheezing, along the edge of the lifeboat deck. They had to avoid attention. She searched for a coil of rope, a hose, anything to secure him for a little while. Finally, she settled for stuffing him into a washroom just inside one of the side doors.
She shoved the boy against the wall and threatened to disembowel him or throw him overboard if he made a sound. Satisfied that she’d scared him into silence, Esther wrenched a metal tap from the sink and used it to jam the washroom door shut. She listened outside the door for a few seconds, heart pounding, to make sure Connor wouldn’t call for help.
Time was running out. Esther ran full speed down to the engine room, praying that Connor hadn’t tipped anyone off. Her heel throbbed against her stitches as she pounded down the stairs. She was grateful the Mist was not one of the busier ships. She wouldn’t be able to dash through the Emerald without eliciting comment. A few levels down, her breath coming in gasps, Esther slowed so no one would hear the echo of her feet in the narrow passageway. Carefully, she pushed open the door to the engine room and slipped inside.
Thick boiler pipes ran along the left edge of the room. She ducked behind them before any of the workers noticed that the door had opened. She stopped breathing, the vibrations of the hot metal pipes warming her hands. She raised her head just enough to look over the top.
The sights and smells of the sea flooded through a door in the hull. Lucinda floated in the aquamarine square, bobbing with the rising and falling of the water. The engine room sat low in the Mist, so all they had to do was extend a ramp from the cruise ship to the patrol ship to move the supplies across. Fortunately, the moving operation occupied the attention of all the workers.
The head machinist was steaming with irritation, face red, folding and unfolding his cable-like arms. Cargo was not supposed to come through the engine room, of course, but the upper hatch was still blocked, and whoever had ordered these supplies to be moved had overruled him. The entrance connecting the Mist’s hold and the engine room stood open. A pair of sailors carried boxes out of the hold, through the doorway in the hull and across to the Lucinda, where they disappeared below deck. Esther slid stealthily along the edge of the room behind the pipes, trying to watch everyone at once. The boxes making the sailors sweat and grunt certainly looked like the ones she saw the night of the cabaret. She had to make sure they really contained desalination filters.
The light coming from the entrance threw a shadow over Esther’s hiding place. She breathed slowly, measuring the intervals when the pulsing of the sea scraped the ramp against the deck. Each scrape produced a sound like the barking of a distressed sea lion. It would cover her if she timed her movements right.
The movers crossed into the hold of the Mist for another load. The machinist turned to shout at a ratty young man, drawing the attention of the other crew members. This was it. Esther stood.
Suddenly, shadows flickered to her right. Esther glimpsed the oilmen from the theater darting across the ramp to the Lucinda one by one. They should have been across by now! She crouched behind the pipes again and waited as the last one disappeared through the hold door and entered the belly of the Lucinda. Just behind them the sailors returned, carrying boxes that hopefully contained more of the precious desalination filters. Esther watched them transport the boxes across the gangway, preparing to make her move.
But this time the sailors didn’t reemerge from inside the Lucinda. Was that it? The machinist was still shouting at his subordinates. Then the ramp began to creep up.
“Salt,” Esther breathed.
The aquamarine square shrunk to a rectangle. Her window of opportunity was closing. There were too many people around! She was going to miss her chance.
Esther felt at the mock handgun stuck in her waistband. It wouldn’t do any good against the entire engine crew. Even if they thought it was real, she’d give away the plan if she leapt out and started waving a gun around. She sucked in a breath and chucked the gun across the room, far from the rapidly closing door.
The handgun clanged like a gong when it hit the metal catwalk on the far side of the room. Esther didn’t wait to see if everyone had looked toward the sound. She darted from her hiding place and hoisted herself over the closing ramp. She rolled across the narrow promenade of the Lucinda and dropped into its hold.
The ramp locked into place behind her with an echoing thunk. She was in. It was dark inside the Lucinda, nearly purple after the shocking brightness of the sea. Esther crawled sideways behind a stack of boxes, barely breathing, and waited for her eyes to adjust to the dimness. She smelled grease and metal. She was in the hold, deep in the belly of the patrol ship.
The sailors dropped the final box onto a pile at the far end of the narrow space.
“Damn courier duty,” one mumbled.
“Better than being on the oil crew,” said his companion as he double-checked the seal.
“This ship is too fine for this kind of work.”
“It’s a boat same as any other, no matter how pretty.”
The men walked toward the exit.
A dark shape rose silently behind the two sailors. Esther stifled a gasp as one of the oilmen brought a lead pipe down on the first sailor’s head. He dropped without a sound. The second sailo
r only had time for a strangled croak before the oilman felled him too.
The rest of the men burst from the shadows like rats. They shoved the inner door closed and quickly gagged and tied up the two sailors.
“What the hell are you doing?” Esther hissed, emerging from her hiding place.
The man who had knocked out the two sailors turned to her. It was Dirk, from the oil tanker.
“Being efficient,” he growled.
“This isn’t part of the plan,” Esther said. “You’re acting too soon, and you’ll give us away.”
Dirk shrugged. “I had a clean shot.”
“We should take the ship ourselves right now,” one of the others whispered.
“I agree,” said a third. “We got enough for weapons down here. Lead the way, Dirk.” He nodded at the man from the oil tanker.
“Wait,” Esther whispered desperately. “We need to stick to the plan.”
Dirk glowered at her. “Why? You think we care about your pathetic little ship? We’re leaving the Galaxy. This is our chance, and we’ll do whatever works.”
“Just listen to me,” Esther said, feeling the situation spiraling out of control. “There might be twenty sailors on this ship. We can’t take it without the rest of our crew. We have to wait for Byron and Hawthorne.”
“We got the element of surprise.”
“Not good enough,” Esther said. “We’re still in the middle of the Flotilla. Someone will notice if we start fighting on the deck right underneath the Crown. We need to be patient.” Esther held her breath. They had to see she was right.
Dirk seemed to consider what she said. Finally, he nodded. “We’ll wait, but I’m calling the shots here.”
Esther released the edge of a box she hadn’t realized she was gripping. “Not if you keep making damned stupid decisions like this one,” she muttered.
Dirk scowled. “Why you—”
