Supernova EMP- The Complete Series

by Grace Hamilton

  There was none.

  The ship’s wheel had been tied off and the post abandoned. As the bullets spat from the muzzle of Donald’s AK-47, Harbormen were ducking and hiding while trying to put out the fire as best they could. One storage crate burned on fiercely, and as Josh searched for his son and Gabriel, the shouts and screams from the Harbormen grew in intensity.

  Something thudded into Josh’s chest, and he was propelled backwards by the impact and his reaction. His feet tripped over a length of coiled rope and he fell into the gunwale, smashing against it with an almost spine-cracking impact.

  He’d been shot.

  The distance from the shooter combined with the body armor had saved his life, but the force of the round crunching into him had taken the breath from his lungs, and he sank to his backside.

  Then a shifting break in the clouds of smoke showed him a figure, lit hollow orange by the illumination of the flames; he was the only man on the deck who wasn’t trying to fight the fire or avoid Donald’s raking shots.

  It was Gabe, dressed in black, the thickly scabbed wound on his cheek like a black hole in his face as his eyes shone bright with hatred and he raised a pistol, readying himself to take careful aim at Josh again.

  Donald turned his gun towards Gabe and loosed off the last five shots in the AK-47’s magazine.

  The smoke shifted then, and Gabe was gone.

  Josh, taking his first breath in what seemed like a geological timescale, got up onto one knee and then onto his feet, at which point he unslung his own AK-47 and began to advance.

  Harbormen were scattering again as Donald and Josh moved in. Like the vast majority of the Harbormen, they were not trained soldiers or seamen—they were the dregs who Gabriel had pressed into his private army on the promise of wealth and power. They were, to a man, no match for Josh’s cop training or Donald’s military prowess. Laying down a pattern that didn’t allow for any retort, and torn between the fire and the assault, the Harbormen mostly pinioned themselves to the deck and covered their heads as best they could.

  Of Gabe, there was no sign, but the smoke billowed and rushed through the heated air, raindrops and spray from the heaving seas sizzling and dying in the air.

  The fire was licking hard at the crates now, and as Josh approached, he could see the danger signs on their sides. They were either holding ammunition, explosives, or some such equally dangerous contents which had scared the Harbormen enough to stop them from defending the ship.

  “We need to find Storm and get off this boat,” Josh said, pointing to the crates.

  Donald nodded and reloaded as a spray of gunfire chewed up the deck between them. Josh and Donald dove apart, each of them crashing into the rail on either side of the boat. Josh looked about wildly, trying to see where the gunfire had come from. As he did so, he crawled between the rail and a lifeboat, trying to get cover.

  The lifeboat shook as it was rattled with more shots. Josh followed the ghost trajectory from a splintered hole in the side of the lifeboat, on to where it had torn a hole in the deck by his foot. The shots were coming from above.

  Josh looked up, and there, halfway up the mainmast some twenty feet in the air, with his feet on a spar and his other hand holding onto a rope, was Storm. His face was lit by the flames, and his eyes were as wide and as white as could be possible. His lip was curled with hatred, too, his teeth showing as if he wanted to take a bite out of Josh’s throat.

  Steadying himself by pulling on the rope and raising his free hand, holding the pistol, he lifted his weapon and pointed it at Josh’s head.

  Maxine’s heart crashed in her chest and tried to burrow down into her gut.

  The explosion on the deck of the Grimoire lit up the surrounding sea bright yellow and almost underlit the low clouds which were throwing rain down upon the battle like a hail made from nails.

  “Damn,” Karel breathed out as the whirling wood and tattered sails rained down upon the ship. A gritty gust of heat rolled over the fifty yards of sea between the ships and warmed their faces.

  Halley, who was at their side of the deck, said, “Oops.”

  It was the understatement of the century.

  Maxine lifted the binoculars and began to scour the deck of the Grimoire for any sign of her son, husband, or father. The explosion had had one unimagined side effect. The blast had blown out the majority of the flames that had been burning. Although there were still gouts of dark smoke lifting from the ship in the near darkness, there were only a few smoldering embers of wood or sail left to provide any kind of light on the ship.

  At the stern, where the lifeboat was still grappled to the side of the larger craft, Maxine could pick out figures moving around in it. The boys were firing their weapons into the back-cabin windows, the muzzle flashes dizzying and the gunfire a staccato Morse code on the air. She flicked the binoculars up to the deck of the Grimoire. Two black silhouettes were running to the rail, dragging a body along with them. The light from the near extinguished fires wasn’t bright enough to give her full hope, but the shapes spoke of her father and Josh. Whoever they were dragging—and there was only one person they would be dragging off the ship, and that was Storm—was floppy and still between them as they hefted him over the rail and dumped the body the twenty feet into the heaving water.

  The men jumped next, straight down to approximately where the limp body had crashed into the waves. For a second, Maxine’s heart was a grenade in her chest as all three of the figures disappeared below the waves.

  She let out a lengthy sigh as first one and then another head appeared intermittently between the waves, and then they began cleaving through the water until they were reaching up into the lifeboat to be pulled inside, the limp form of Storm—she hoped—being slithered into the small boat first, and the other two men behind him.

  When that phase of the operation was completed, Maxine watched as one of the boys cut the grapple lines and the others began digging their oars into the water to bring the lifeboat back to the Sea-Hawk.

  No more gunfire came from the Grimoire, and Maxine could see little or no movement on its decks. Karel readied the others to providing covering fire if need be, but the order was never given. Dotty-B ordered the crew to make ready to set the sails to get the Sea-Hawk away from the Grimoire at the very second Josh and the others were back on board.

  Donald appeared over the rail first, and he organized a line to go down to the others. The boys and then Josh, once he’d attached the line to Storm’s still limp form, came up after that, and as Dotty-B turned the wheel to make the most of the unfurled sails, Storm’s lifeless, floppily loose body was hauled aboard.

  They carried him to the captain’s cabin and, as Maxine swept the charts and mugs aside with a savage sweep of her arm, they laid him on the table.

  Storm was as wet as a drowned spider; hair plastered over his forehead and face drained white. She felt for a carotid pulse, closing her eyes and thanking God that it was strong beneath her fingertips.

  Josh and Donald had been wrapped in towels by Poppet, and Halley arrived with rum-laced black coffee for them to drink while Maxine checked Storm over. He had taken a savage blow to the side of his head, and there was a gash there which was shipping out blood. Once Poppet had finished with Donald and Josh, Maxine got her to apply pressure to Storm’s wound while she checked the rest of him over.

  “If the ammunition they were storing on the deck hadn’t exploded… he had me zeroed,” Josh said flatly. “It blew him off the spar and down onto the deck. Donald and I were shielded from the worst of it by the boats, but it was a close thing. Gabe’s still there, and he’s still alive.”

  “More’s the pity,” said Donald, taking warming gulps of the fortified coffee. “We should stick around and finish them off.”

  Maxine shook her head, feeling down Storm’s limbs for obvious fractures or dislocations. Thankfully, there were none. The gash on his head was bad enough for a boy not at the top of his physical fitness after his recovery
from cancer; he didn’t need broken limbs to go with it. “No. Let’s just get away from here as quick as we can.”

  “We need to try to outrun the storm,” Poppet agreed. “It’s coming in fast. The barometer is lower than a rattlesnake’s belly and the sea conditions are worsening. A few hours from now, you wouldn’t have made it back from the Grimoire in the lifeboat. We’re back on course for Dark Point, though, and with any luck, the Grimoire is too damaged to follow us.”

  “What’s our luck been like recently?” Josh asked through gritted teeth.

  “Hey,” said Poppet with a smile, “gotta travel hopefully, right?”

  Maxine continued her exam of Storm by checking over his torso. There was a ripening bruise on his side that might indicate damage to his ribs from the fall, but she wouldn’t be able to confirm that until he woke up. He was deep in sleep right now.

  Maxine looked up as Halley moved in, and, reaching down to Storm’s face, the professor lifted his eyelids with his thumbs and stared down into the boy’s eyes. It wasn’t that, as a nurse, Maxine felt her professional competence was being impinged upon by the eccentric doctor, but she just wondered what the hell he was doing. “I didn’t realize you were a medical doctor as well as an astrophysicist,” she offered tightly.

  Halley let Storm’s eyelids drop back. He smiled at Maxine. “I’m not. I’m just an interested amateur, you might say.”

  Halley didn’t touch Storm again, but he watched intently as Maxine finished the exam. She noticed Halley looking from the boy to Josh several times. For his part, though, Josh didn’t notice Halley’s interest. He was too busy with Poppet and Donald, discussing what they needed to do to make sure the Sea-Hawk was as protected as possible in case they couldn’t outrun the oncoming bad weather.

  Maxine watched over Storm, and eventually, as the sea outside the ship began to move the Sea-Hawk ever more strongly, her boy began to stir. Maxine held onto his hand. Donald and Poppet had already left to go back on deck to organize the others in their preparations. Halley had brought more coffee for Josh and Maxine. Josh had changed into a dry set of waterproofs and was standing over Storm just next to Maxine, his face etched with concern. Maxine was equally concerned as Josh pulled the SIG from his belt and racked it. Josh shrugged. “Honey, the last time he looked at me, he tried to kill me. I have no idea what he’s going to be like when he opens his eyes.”

  “I know,” she replied. “Just don’t give him any more reasons to hate you.”

  “I won’t,” Josh said, and he put the gun out of sight behind his back. “Just better to be safe than sorry.”

  Waiting for Storm to wake up, Maxine experienced a yawning moment of vertigo that came when she considered how far their lives had fallen in the months since the Barnard’s event. It was a gap between then and now which was almost impossible to measure in any meaningful way.

  Storm’s eyes flickered open and he lifted his head. His face swept through several expressions at once. Mainly confusion, then discomfort at his injuries, and finally anger as his eyes settled on Josh and Maxine.

  “How did… I get… here?”

  “You were rescued.”

  Storm narrowed his eyes and shook his head, fixing his gaze on Josh. “Captured, more like. I want to go back… I want to go back… to my father… let me go now!”

  Storm sat up, pushing Maxine’s hands away. But curling into a sitting position on the table sent a wave of agony across his face, and he pressed his own hand against his side, right where Maxine had found the bruise. The ribs beneath it were fractured. That much was clear from the way he moved and breathed.

  When the pained expression on his face subsided, Storm looked from Maxine and Josh, and then back to Maxine. “Keep that man away from me. I want nothing to do with him. If you’re not going to send me back to my father, I don’t even want to look at this loser.”

  “I don’t really think you have any choice in that.”

  All eyes in the room fixed on Halley, who’d peeled away from the wall where he’d been leaning and was scratching at both sides of his head with a grin.

  “Shut up, you freak!” Storm spat. “I want this man gone. He’s got nothing to do with me anymore.”

  Halley shook his head. “Well, son, that’s where you’re wrong. I don’t care what you’ve been told, and I don’t care what you want. As the saying goes, you can have your own opinions, but you can’t have your own facts. Josh Standing is your father, and you know what, Mr. Snippy? I can prove it. Right here, right now.”

  14

  Their luck did not hold.

  Two storms hit the Sea-Hawk in quick succession as dawn rose the next morning—one the howling teeth of a gale that threatened to tear the ship apart before it sank it between the waves, and the other, a boy finding out a truth that he didn’t want to know. Both situations were potentially insurmountable and would take all of Josh’s strength to survive.

  He knew he was needed up on deck to help the others, but seeing as the ship shuddered violently, waves breaking higher than the gunwales while Storm held Halley from behind with his arm across his windpipe, there were things to sort out here in this very cabin first, before he could think about the other storm.

  The grip of the SIG felt buttery and slick in his grasp. There was no way he was going to use it on his son, especially not now that he knew the truth, but since Storm had his back to the wall and Halley was rapidly losing consciousness, Josh knew he was going to have to do something quickly… before the only hope that Josh knew of for a cure to the madness and their world’s loss of power died there in front of him. There were no easy solutions, however.

  Maxine had already tried to get close to Storm and Halley, but the boy had just tightened his grip and Halley’s eyes had bulged out like they were on springs.

  “Stay back! Or I’ll snap his neck. I know how! Dad showed me how to do it!”

  “He’s not your dad!” Halley managed to hiss out with a creditable amount of diverted effort under the circumstances. “Your eyes are brown, your Mom’s are blue, and your Dad’s are brown. Gabe’s eyes are blue. For him to be your father, there would have to be a whole upending of the current theories of genetics. Blue eyes and blue eyes never make brown eyes. Ever. So, unless your mom screwed the brown-eyed postman, Josh is your father. End of…”

  Storm tightened his forearm again. “Shut up! Shut up!”

  Josh held up the gun and put it down on the table as the Sea-Hawk got hit by another wave and the deck beneath his feet heeled and jerked. The SIG slid off the table and clattered into a corner on the opposite end of the cabin, well out of Storm’s reach. “What’s killing him going to achieve, Storm?”

  Storm’s eyes were wide. There were white flecks of spittle at the corner of his mouth, and his lips moved without making any sound.

  “It will still be true. What he said about our eyes will still be true. Killing him doesn’t undo it.”

  “Shut up! All of you, just shut up!”

  In the midst of Storm’s screaming, the door to the cabin opened and Ten-Foot came in on a gust of chilling wind followed by a huge, drenching burst of spray. His waterproofs were running with thick streams of seawater. The rivulets pooled darkly at his feet.

  “Donny sent me. We need you up on…” The words dried in his throat as he took in the scene. Storm’s eyes widened with concern at Ten-Foot’s presence, and he pulled Halley closer to him, wrenching his head back with the professor’s pony tail twined in his fist. Halley’s fingers grasped ineffectually at Storm’s forearm, the man gasping and groaning.

  There was one chance. One moment.

  Josh took one step and belted his distracted boy on the chin with one sharp stab of his fist. Storm’s head snapped back, crunching into the wall, his eyes rolling like a jackpot in a Vegas slot machine. Maxine yelled, and Halley wheezed and pushed himself away from Storm with a savagely aimed elbow deep into the boy’s already broken rib. And Josh’s son—Yes, my son, no question—slumped to the f
loor with a sigh.

  Josh paused only to secure the unconscious Storm at the ankles and hands with rope, then left Maxine to make sure that Halley and their boy were okay before following Ten-Foot out of the door and back onto the Sea-Hawk’s deck.

  The wind scythed across the bucking ship. Lines were hanging free from where they had been torn from their moorings. Sails had been ripped apart, flapping uselessly in the black gale. Waves as tall as houses—taller, even—were rushing towards the prow of the ship while others tilted the hull up towards the sky, and then let the whole seemingly matchstick-light construction thump down into the troughs between them.

  The probationers were fighting a losing battle. Some were sliding across the decks on their backs, crashing into masts, and others were hanging onto rope nets or stanchions with all their strength as gouts of water dumped in white deluges over the sides of the vessel as it was tossed and thrown.

  “Where’s Donald?” Josh screamed at Ten-Foot, who had been blown almost off his feet and crashed into a capstan.

  Ten-Foot wiped the streaming water from his face and pointed amidships. Through the drenching rains and whirling gale, Josh saw the yellow blur of Donald’s waterproof hauling an inflatable life raft pack out of the storage cabinet in the deck. Poppet was reaching behind him to pull out another.

  Looking the other way, back towards the wheel, Josh saw it was spinning crazily on its spindle. He could see Dotty-B’s feet turned up in a rushing welter of water. Her legs and arms were star-splayed and lifeless. She was either dead or unconscious. “Go check on Dotty!” Josh yelled through the gale to Ten-Foot. The boy nodded and pulled himself up, where he grabbed onto the rail and began to haul himself aft.

  Josh slid, pulled, and stumbled forward as the ship protested and creaked. Water seemed to cover the whole deck now, inches deep. There was no way it couldn’t be running below decks. Two hatches had been smashed open by falling spars already, and they were open to the elements. Hungry mouths ready to swallow as much of the water as they could.