The Complete Seabound Trilogy Box Set

by Jordan Rivet

  Esther hadn’t been over to the shore yet because she’d been too busy getting the Lucinda’s crew settled. It had been rough for everyone for the first few days. The spare water on the Lucinda was not enough to meet the needs of the underhydrated Catalinans and the Lucinda’s crew. Esther and Cally spent every waking hour installing the new filters and repairing the tanks so that they could get back to a normal filtering schedule. The new materials were superior in quality, and Esther followed Cally’s lead in using her own design when she rebuilt the system. It was more energy efficient. Judith might never have let her rebuild using her design if the system hadn’t been destroyed in the first place.

  Simon found work for the former Galaxians. After the initial transport of supplies was complete, he had them working on shield repairs and other miscellaneous projects. Their interactions with the Catalinans were still awkward, but Esther thought a few of them would like to stay. Byron had already told her how much better he thought the Catalina was for raising children.

  Still, Esther knew many of the newcomers would not stay long. They were itching for adventures and new opportunities. The Catalina would dock with the Amsterdam Coalition in a few months, albeit carefully in case the Galaxy captains had allies there. Some of the Galaxians would likely move on then.

  As Esther watched the people beneath her in the plaza, she didn’t know what she would do next. There was work for her here, but Zoe had invited her to come with them when they docked with the Amsterdam. Judith wouldn’t stop her now. But there were other things to consider.

  David climbed the staircase toward her, his left arm in a sling. “Esther.” He nodded at her.

  She kept her face straight, feeling an extra beat in her chest. “Hawthorne. How’s the work going?”

  “It’s not bad. I think I understand every inch of that ship by now. I could take her anywhere.”

  He’d taken unofficial ownership of the Lucinda and spent most of his time studying her capabilities. He sat beside Esther and watched the people milling about below. Cally and Dax had stopped shouting. A few people waited around in case it started up again.

  “Where to first?” Esther asked.

  David shrugged his right shoulder. “I don’t know. Not the Galaxy, obviously, but there’s always the Amsterdam.”

  “Are you going to set off on your own?” Esther asked, trying to keep her voice casual. “We’ll be there in a few months anyway.”

  “Not sure. I’ll probably stick around for a while. And it’s up to the crew, whoever the crew ends up being.”

  Dirk crossed the plaza with his entourage of former oil workers. A handful of Catalina men walked among them. Esther had expected Dirk to take over the Lucinda, but he had eyes on a bigger prize. David was free to take the Lucinda and go.

  After a few minutes, Esther said, “Are you happy you came?” She stole a glance at David’s face.

  He smirked and nudged her with his good arm. “You couldn’t have done it without me.”

  “That’s true,” Esther said. “I owe you one.”

  “I know how you could make it up to me,” David said.

  “How’s that?”

  David’s voice was suddenly serious. “Come along. We need a good mechanic.”

  “There are other mechanics. What about Dirk’s buddy? He’s good.”

  “How about first mate then? Everyone would rather listen to your voice than mine. I’ve had enough of talking at people.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Esther said. “Anyway, I still have a few projects to work through here.”

  She took another sip of her water.

  David adjusted his broken glasses with his right hand. “I’m not really asking you along because I need a mechanic. I’ve kind of thrown my lot in with you, Esther. I want to have you around.”

  She was quiet for a moment. “Look, David, I’m not sure what to do. It’s been kind of a whirlwind.”

  “Do you regret that night on the Mist?” he asked quietly.

  “I just want to get my feet under me again, spend a little time deciding what to do,” Esther said.

  The answer felt like a cop-out. She almost followed it with something more concrete, but she left it at that. For now.

  David touched his glasses again. His response was brisk. “Fair enough. Well, listen. I’m going over to the island. You want to come along?”

  “Sure.”

  They met the speedboat as it was returning from gathering clams. They helped unload the day’s catch and then took their turn in the boat. A few people were out on the island already, sunning themselves or just walking slowly over the rocks as the waves broke around them. When the boat bumped into the rock, Esther scrambled over the side and upwards a few steps before she really had a chance to take it in.

  She felt like she was still moving with the sea around her, making her feel queasy. The rocks beneath her boots were alien, both rough and smooth. She took a few steps and knelt down to touch the stone with both hands. It was real, solid, impervious to the motion of the wind and the waves. There were sparse patches of lichen growing on the rock. Esther dug her nails under a few gray-green wisps.

  David came up beside her. “It’s strange, isn’t it?”

  “The rocks?”

  “The fact that we could all be moving back to land someday. Maybe even someday soon. Not sure what we’ll do without the sea.”

  “We’ll never be without the sea,” Esther said. “And we don’t know anything about life on land anymore. Why can’t we just keep doing what we’re doing?”

  She crumbled the lichen, wondering if it was edible. There were sprinkles of ashy sand in the cracks of the rocks.

  “The ships will rust. The salvage we can pull from the sea is already scarce. We all have to go back someday.”

  Esther ran her fingers along the rock and thought about his words. She didn’t know what living on the land again would mean for someone like her. The Catalina was all she knew. Still, as she twisted the sand between her fingers and felt her boots on solid ground, it was tempting to think of the possibilities. Solid ground. Trees. Flowers. Wide spaces that could be crossed without a boat. Land.

  *****

  Seaswept

  Book Two

  Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty’s form

  Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,

  Calm or convulsed; in breeze or gale or storm,

  Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime

  Dark-heaving, boundless, endless, and sublime.

  ―LORD BYRON

  Chapter 1—Breakthrough

  ESTHER SLID A RAZOR blade down the length of wire, cutting a clean line through the yellow insulation. The rusty blade wasn’t much bigger than her thumbnail, but it did the trick. She peeled back the rubber and held the wire in the flame of her lighter to burn away the threads. She shook the lighter to gauge how much fuel was left, not wanting to interrupt her progress with a trip up to the new quartermaster. She did everything she could to avoid the upper decks these days.

  Esther let the wire cool for a few seconds and then joined it with another, this one coated in blue. She reached into her toolbox and retrieved a fat roll of electrical tape. She’d found it on the Lucinda and it had been like discovering a candy still in its wrapper.

  Stacks of copper and zinc wire, pipes, and gears filled the furthest lane of the old bowling alley. Esther felt spoiled with so much extra material. When she and her new allies had fled the Galaxy Flotilla and brought help to the Catalina two months ago, she had snagged any spare parts she didn’t need for the desalination system and stowed them away to use for her next experiment. After fixing the water system, Esther had begun her grand new project: a prototype separator to extract the natural oil from algae plants. One of the sailors from the Galaxy Flotilla had taken over her engine maintenance duties so she could devote more time to it. Her notes covered the warped boards of the bowling lanes all the way to the faded murals on the wall.

  Esth
er wrapped the electrical tape around the wires and ran her fingers over the connections. She tugged on the thick rubber tubes connecting the prototype separator to the closest algae tank, which was taller than her. Inside, the green goop waited to be stripped of its oil—oil that could replace their quickly diminishing supply of fuel. A spout led from the separator to a plastic tub she had borrowed from the galley. The machine didn’t look like much, considering all the time she had spent on it. And she hadn’t even started on the larger version she hoped to build for the main engine room. The oil squeezed from the algae would be refined into a biofuel that could power the engines and, in turn, the propulsion system. If it worked, this design had the potential to free them from their seabound purgatory. If it worked, it would change everything.

  Esther carefully memorized each step in the system. She’d teach her assistant, Cally, how to build another separator as soon as she had it right. Speaking of which, where was Cally? It was already midafternoon. She must be off with Dax. Cally and her boyfriend could usually be found either fighting or making out, their two favorite pastimes. But she sometimes brought down lunch, knowing that Esther wanted to avoid the tension upstairs.

  At least Esther wasn’t the source of the tension for once. She’d been quite popular since bringing help for the Catalina. But if she went up to the main decks, people would complain to her about the newcomers from the Galaxy, or the newcomers would complain about the conditions on the Catalina. She tried to assuage their concerns, but she wasn’t very good at it. It was easier to hide out in her workshop.

  Plus every time she went upstairs she ended up putting her foot in her mouth in front of a certain attractive but enigmatic former Galaxian. He had no trouble calming people down, with his smooth voice and seemingly effortless poise.

  The door at the far end of the bowling alley burst open. He’s here! Esther dropped her electrical tape, and it rolled away down the lane. She dove after it, face burning. She hated how flustered that man made her, how her body seemed to malfunction when he was around. She leapt back up, twisting the roll of tape in her hands.

  And it wasn’t even him. Instead, her friends Zoe and Anita were making their way over to her through the maze of equipment. Zoe wore her favorite vibrant purple tunic and black leggings. A black bandanna held back her sun-blond hair. Anita wore an oversize rain jacket with the sleeves rolled above her pale wrists.

  “Yo, Esther,” Zoe said. “You missed a terrific showdown between Judith and Dirk. I think Judith might have Manny dump all us Galaxians in the night and make a run for it.”

  Esther grinned. “Judith isn’t subtle. She’d do it in broad daylight.”

  “You may be right. I’d give up a ration or two to see her try,” Zoe said. “Anyway, Dirk wants a big chunk of Judith’s stores as payment for rescuing the Catalina. Claims he’ll handle the trading with the Amsterdam on behalf of everyone from the Galaxy. Judith said something along the lines of ‘You should be worshipping the clouds and the winds in gratitude for bringing you to the Catalina. I allow you, the scum of the sea, to take refuge aboard the Kingdom of Judith. You’re lucky if I give you so much as a spool of corroded copper.’”

  “That sounds like her,” Esther said.

  “I thought Dirk was going to crack her in the head with a pipe,” Zoe continued, “but he has more self-control than I expected.”

  Dirk was the leader of the tanker crew that had come from the Galaxy Flotilla. He had been making waves since their arrival, and Judith, the de facto captain of the Catalina, did not welcome his input.

  “When are you coming out of your cave anyway?” Zoe asked.

  She swung on the humming pipes of the water system, making Esther cringe.

  “I’m working.”

  “People upstairs say you’re getting as bad as your dad.”

  Esther grimaced. Her father, Simon, was famous for retreating into his work. She didn’t realize she’d gotten that reclusive. She’d come home from the Galaxy filled with ideas. She wanted to hold on tight to the inspiration, like a line in a storm, before it slipped out of her grasp.

  “I’m almost there,” she said.

  “You sure you’re not hiding?” Zoe asked. “Even Cally says she’s never seen you work this hard.”

  Zoe, Anita, and their friend Toni had been quick to adopt Esther into their posse of troublemakers. They had become honorary big sisters to teenage Cally. Anita had even been helping Cally with her songwriting in the past few weeks. The death of her sister, Eva, during the escape from the Galaxy had left Anita virtually mute, but Cally could sometimes get her to come out of her shell. Esther liked having friends her own age around the ship, especially because her best friend, Neal, had been busy moping lately.

  “I’m not hiding,” Esther said. “Actually, I’m about to throw the switch, if you want to watch.”

  Zoe gave a big holler. Anita nodded fervently but didn’t say anything.

  Esther would rather test the separator without an audience, but she didn’t want to wait any longer. It was time.

  The algae in the tank glistened in dark-green clumps, its fibers dense with oil. The plant grew abundantly in their current location. After being separated from the Galaxy Flotilla in a freak storm, the Catalina had ended up in a region dotted with tiny, uninhabitable islands. The ship had taken refuge in the half-moon arms of one such island, where they’d noticed sea algae thicker than they’d ever seen before. In some places it was like a green carpet undulating on the surface of the water.

  It had been more than sixteen years since the eruption of the Yellowstone volcano threw the earth’s atmosphere into chaos. Temperatures had dropped drastically. Storms and tsunamis and droughts ravaged the globe. At sea, they’d hung on, gleaning sustenance from the waters and praying that the hull of their ship would last a few years longer. They ate fish and seaweed and only used their fuel to run from the worst storms. Over time they’d modified the Catalina so the interior could be powered with energy generated by the wind and waves, but it wasn’t enough for them to travel very far. Once a year they traded salvaged metals and plastics for diesel fuel at the Amsterdam Coalition, a deep-sea oil platform and trading hub. They had to ration the fuel carefully to make it last. But if Esther’s new project worked, they would be free.

  She had first learned about algae biofuel from Frank Fordham, the old engineer who had lived on the Catalina for most of her life and taught her much of what she knew. He’d told her the oil in algae plants could be converted to fuel and used in any diesel engine, but this required chemicals they didn’t possess. Esther had forgotten about this type of biofuel until the Catalina took refuge among the little islands, where the sea algae grew fast and thick. As the weather warmed, the plants multiplied, spreading green fields across the water around them. She had begun to wonder whether there was another way to get the fuel from the plants.

  She experimented with the parts she’d brought from the Galaxy until she’d finally developed the idea for the separator. Her system was a mechanical rather than chemical method of separating the oil from the rest of the plant and refining it into usable fuel. That was the secret. It was a highly energy-efficient process, and the results could change their lives forever. A new fuel source would allow them to cross the sea at will, and they wouldn’t have to worry as much about constant conservation. The system could improve their quality of life immeasurably. Esther just had to get it to work.

  “Stand over there by the third tank,” she told Zoe and Anita. “You’ll have the best view if it explodes.”

  Esther tightened the final wire and removed one of her rubber gloves. The system looked like it could fly apart at any moment. She lifted the protective casing she’d placed over the on switch and held her breath. Zoe and Anita leaned forward around the water tank. Esther checked the connection to the motor one final time.

  Then she flipped the switch.

  For a moment nothing happened. Water bubbled through the desalination tank behind her. Someo
ne clunked past the door in heavy shoes. Zoe stifled a giggle. Esther put her hand on the separator machine, willing it to come to life. She felt a hum in her fingertips. It built slowly, the vibrations feeding off of each other as the system churned the algae in ever-faster revolutions. It had taken her ages to figure out how to optimize this process so that it wouldn’t take more energy to run the machine than the resulting biofuel would actually produce.

  The separator started to rattle.

  “Step back, will you?” Esther said, waving Zoe and Anita behind the tank. She pulled up her storm goggles and leaned closer to the machine. One gear vibrated faster than the others. Esther thrust her wrench inside and tapped it into place, trying to avoid getting her fingers caught. The machine settled into a low hum. Green sludge began to circulate through the system. The separator would be shaking the oil loose from the fibers of the plant and sending it to the second stage of the separator, where it would be refined into fuel. I hope.

  Esther held her breath. After a dozen revolutions, a glistening tear of green-tinged oil dripped from the spout into the plastic tub waiting at Esther’s feet.

  “Yeehaw!” Zoe cried.

  Another tear dropped. Then the oil began to pour slowly and steadily, like water from a faucet in the old days. Esther sat down on the floor and watched the oil spill from the spout.

  “It’s working.”

  After months of adjustments, dozens of setbacks, and countless sleepless nights, she couldn’t believe she had finally done it.

  “Congratulations, Esther,” Anita said softly.

  “Look at that thing go!” Zoe pumped her fist in the air. “So smooth! So quiet! You’re the man, Es.”