by Jordan Rivet
David had better be out of bed, Esther thought, fear gripping her like a vise. He had to be okay.
“Let’s go, Esther!” Zoe shouted.
“Right.”
“Be careful,” Judith called as they dashed from the bridge.
Esther and Zoe ran down the stairwell and out onto the foredeck. The night was cold as a razor. The siren wailed a warning. A dozen skirmishes had broken out around the oil platform. People fought with pipes and clubs. Knives flashed in the searchlights. Boots pounded on the decks of the surrounding ships.
None of the fighting had made it onto the Catalina yet, but their gangway still connected them to the platform. They rushed forward. They had to get it up before anyone came aboard.
“Look out!” Esther grabbed Zoe, pulling her to the ground as a ball of fire flew toward them.
“What was that?”
“Flaming oil!”
Another fireball streaked through the night. Liquid light spread in a patch on the deck.
“Get back inside!”
“We have to put out the fire,” Zoe said.
“It’s not catching,” Esther said. “The deck is fine. We have to move!”
They clambered backward to shelter in the forward entryway. Esther pulled the heavy steel door most of the way closed. The metal rattled as something collided with it, launched from the darkness.
Esther peeked around the edge of the door. Men were climbing onto the Catalina across the gangway they hadn’t been able to pull up in time. Their weapons glinted in the light from the fireballs streaking through the air.
“We’re being boarded,” Esther said. “We have to do something!”
“This should help.” Dirk had appeared behind her with a machine gun.
“Where did you get that?”
He ignored her and shoved the barrel through the gap in the doors. “Get ready for anyone who tries to sneak around the side,” he said, and then he let loose a round.
The gunfire rattled Esther’s ears. She couldn’t see anything. More shouts from outside. A woman shrieked. Esther pulled a heavy wrench from her tool belt.
A metal-hafted hammer swung around the edge of the door, wielded by a ropy pair of arms. A man had managed to get around the side of the ship out of Dirk’s line of fire. The hammer pounded down on the barrel of the machine gun, throwing Dirk off balance. He cursed as the hammer swung again, this time directed at his head.
There was a flash of metal. The hammer wielder beyond the door screamed and dropped the tool. A pocketknife was embedded in his wrist.
Esther gasped. “Zoe! You—”
Zoe leapt forward and wrenched her knife from the man’s wrist. The knife dripped red. The man stumbled away.
“Thanks, mate,” Dirk growled.
“Hurry, there are more of them,” Zoe said.
She swiped her knife against her leggings to clean the blade and handed the hammer to Esther. It was cold and heavy in her palm, matching the weight of the wrench. Dirk’s gun had jammed with the impact of the hammer. He struggled with it as Zoe and Esther ran out onto the deck.
Two figures lay on the deck, one moving feebly. Bullet holes pocked the deck around them. The man Zoe had stabbed shuffled toward the gangway, clutching his bleeding wrist. Another shape lurched toward them, taking advantage of the respite from Dirk’s gunfire. It was a man armed with a long-bladed knife. He stalked toward them, teeth bared.
“Take the right,” Zoe whispered to Esther as she ducked to the left. She jabbed her knife and danced back and forth, distracting the intruder.
Esther watched her friend, stunned for an instant, then jumped into action.
They fought the man together, Zoe jabbing at his arms like a stingray, and Esther swinging the hammer and wrench to fend off the long knife. The hammer was unwieldy, but Esther was strong from years of working with heavy machinery in the engine room. The wrench was like an extension of her hand. She barely dared to breathe, afraid the knife would cut through her defenses at any moment.
The man met their blows with his blade. Then he launched a direct assault on Esther. She swung both of her weapons forward as he attacked, striking his shoulder with a dull thud. The man cursed, and the knife dropped out of his hand. Zoe leapt in and held her pocketknife to his throat.
“What do you want?” she shouted. “Why are you attacking us?”
Eyes wild, the man clutched at his shattered shoulder. He seemed to be trying to raise his arm. Before he could answer, another explosion ripped through the night, rocking the Catalina. All three of them fell sideways. Esther’s knees slammed into the deck and she lost her grip on the hammer. The shock wave came from the direction of the Lucinda this time.
Esther regained her balance, ears ringing. She had to help Zoe! She whirled around. Her friend knelt on the deck, staring at the man they had been fighting seconds ago. He lay on his back with a long gash across his throat. He was dead. Acrid smoke drifted up the side of the Catalina. Black tendrils haunted the deck.
“What happened?”
“My knife slipped,” Zoe whispered. “I didn’t mean to kill him.”
“He was attacking our ship. He had a knife too. It wasn’t your fault.”
More of the crew joined them. Dirk and a handful of others clattered down the gangway to the Amsterdam platform, weapons in hand. Reggie and Wong prowled across the deck, prodding the fallen assailants.
“The Lucinda is on fire!” someone shouted.
Esther leapt up and rushed to the railing. David!
The fire was in the Lucinda’s pilothouse, and smoke hampered her view. Esther searched for David’s blond head and arrogant posture, but there was no sign of him. Where is he? The Lucinda’s crew rushed around the deck, hauling water and emergency fire retardant to put out the blaze. She wanted to help them, but she had to make sure the Catalina was safe first.
The wailing of the alarm from the Amsterdam ceased suddenly, leaving a ringing in Esther’s ears. The strangers had stopped trying to board the Catalina. Fires still burned on the Amsterdam, but there were no more explosions, no more gunshots. Smoke thickened above the water. The fighting was over.
Esther realized her hands were shaking. She laid the hammer on the deck and returned the wrench to her tool belt. She felt fear sinking in now that the fighting was done. They had been attacked! Who would want to fight them? And at the Amsterdam no less!
She returned to where Zoe knelt by the man she had killed. Blood stained the deck, pooling within an inch of her purple tunic. Esther put a hand on Zoe’s shoulder. Comforting her friend helped to calm her own racing thoughts.
“It’s okay, Zoe.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
Zoe looked shaken, and her usual energy had disappeared. They had seen friends killed over the past few months, but neither Esther nor Zoe had ever taken a life before. Esther didn’t know the right thing to say in the circumstances. How were you supposed to respond to something like this?
“He would have killed us,” she whispered after a while. “Come on. Let’s make sure everyone’s all right.”
People worked to control the fires that had spread across the Amsterdam during the fighting. Rain began to pour from the heavens. Smoke billowed above the platform. More people emerged from the Catalina, looking confused and scared. The crew stayed on high alert, guarding the gangway with a motley assortment of weapons clutched in their hands.
Esther wanted to check on David, but Reggie called for her and Zoe to help him move the bodies to the Amsterdam platform. None of their attackers had made it past the Catalina’s foredeck. Two fell to Dirk’s machine gun, and the one Zoe stabbed in the wrist had disappeared. Last was the man Esther and Zoe had fought together. They dragged him toward the gangway by the legs, leaving a smear of blood and rain in their wake. Esther noticed that his boots didn’t match.
Reggie kept shaking his head. “It makes no sense.”
“I know,” Esther said. “Who’d violate a neutral zone like this
?”
“Not that,” Reggie said. “It makes no sense for them to board the Catalina. Why send four people to attack an entire cruise ship? They must have known we’d have some sort of defenses. And she’s not an easy ship to sail, if they wanted to steal her.”
“You think they were after something else?”
“Well, if they were trying to hijack her, they didn’t try very hard.”
Reggie dropped the body of a woman beside the others. Her thick black hair fanned out from her glassy-eyed face. Reggie cursed under his breath.
Zoe bent down to close the woman’s eyes. “We weren’t the only ones that got attacked,” she said.
“No. Looks like they hit half a dozen ships, plus the platform,” Reggie said, coughing in the smoke trailing over the deck. He surveyed the Amsterdam in the predawn haze. “Not sure about the cargo giants. Maybe these guys were just supposed to keep us from helping anyone else.”
“The Amsterdam has always been a safe haven,” Esther said. “Why would someone destroy one of the only completely neutral places we’ve got?”
“We don’t know that’s what they wanted,” Reggie said. “Those explosions were big, but they were nowhere near the bazaar.”
“You think they were a distraction?”
“Maybe, to keep us away from whatever they were really after.”
Esther swallowed hard. The attackers could have wanted anything from the trading hub. Fuel was the most likely candidate, but no one would know for sure until the smoke cleared. It was what they had done on the Lucinda that worried her.
As morning broke, the remaining ships took inventory, counting their cargo and their dead. Large quantities of supplies had been stolen from the Amsterdam stockpiles. The oil platform remained intact, but tension shivered through the gathered ships, ready to erupt like a volcano at any moment. A persistent curtain of rain coated the sky, blocking the sun. Theories abounded over what the attack had been about. Were they only after supplies? Was it a takeover attempt? A provocation?
But only one thing Esther cared about had been stolen during the attack. David Hawthorne was gone.
Chapter 10—Abduction
Esther had gone over to the Lucinda as soon as she finished helping Reggie. She tramped across the platform in the pouring rain, telling herself she was checking on the ship, but she had to make sure David was okay too. She owed him that much. She only hoped she wouldn’t run into his copper-haired companion from the night before. But when she pushed open the door to David’s cabin, it was empty.
Diagrams of the Lucinda covered the small desk. A hand-drawn map fluttered on the floor when she opened the door, as if someone had tossed it aside as they dug through his papers. Esther had never been inside this room, but she knew David was neat and organized. The bedsheets were rumpled. She couldn’t tell if the bunk had been slept in or searched. David’s boots lay on the floor beneath the desk, one sock hanging out of them. He only owned one pair of boots. The room was still, quiet as a sinking ship.
Esther checked every cabin and compartment on the Lucinda, asking any crew she came across whether they had seen David.
“Not since yesterday in the bazaar,” said Adele, one of the former Galaxians, who also lived on the Lucinda.
“He was talking to the rig boss,” said another crewman, “but that was around lunchtime yesterday. Don’t know if he came back last night.”
“Thanks. If you see him, would you tell him I’m looking for him?”
“Sure thing, Esther.”
She searched the public areas of the oil platform next, though she didn’t think David would have gone off into the Amsterdam without checking in. Worry burrowed into her. What if he had been hurt in the attack? If he went overboard, she might never know what had happened. He had to be here. Unless . . . What if he’d been forced to leave his cabin? A grim possibility arose in Esther’s mind, making her pick up her pace as she scoured the Amsterdam for any sight of him.
There were armed sailors everywhere, stalking through the rain and glaring suspiciously at each other. She couldn’t get near the other ships without people shouting at her to stay back. She asked one of the rig officials whether he had seen David, but the man just shrugged.
“People are staying close to their own ships,” he said. “I’d look for him there.”
“I’ll try again.” Esther hesitated. “How about a woman with coppery hair. She’s . . . pretty, I guess.”
Esther didn’t like the idea of grilling David’s admirer about his whereabouts, but she had to explore every possibility.
“She with the Calderon Group?”
“Is she?”
“Maybe I’m thinking of someone else. Sorry,” the rig official said. “I been running around like an eel with my head chopped off. No time to pay attention to that kind of thing.”
As the official rushed off, Esther realized she wasn’t far from the old drill floor at the center of the platform. She had always been told to avoid this area, but it was the only place she hadn’t looked for David yet. She crept toward it, her hand wrapped around the wrench in her belt.
Tents made from sailcloth divided up the space. There wasn’t as much room here as in the bazaar, and much of it was hidden behind the tents. The drill itself still rose from the center, like a mast. Water dripped from the skeletal rig structure with a forlorn pattering. A hacking cough came from somewhere nearby.
In the rain-blurred morning light, the illicit place didn’t look as dangerous as she had imagined. A man with rheumy eyes sat cross-legged beside the drill, a rifle balanced on his knee and a pipe in his hand. He didn’t stop Esther as she peered into the nearest tents. They contained cots, blankets, and a few personal items, but nothing more than you would expect to see in any cabin. A woman came out of one of the tents behind her, stretching her back until it cracked.
“Excuse me,” Esther said. “Have you seen a man with—?”
“Sorry, honey, we don’t do descriptions here.”
“What?”
“You wanted to know if your man has been here. We have a policy of not remembering what they look like.”
“Oh . . . oh! No, it’s not that. He went missing during the fighting, and I just want to make sure he’s okay.”
The woman studied her for a moment. “Go on then.” She waved a hand, a ring glinting on every finger.
“He’s tall and blond, about thirty years old, and he was wearing a cream sweater,” Esther said. And after a moment, “He’s handsome—and really clean.”
“Good news, honey. He hasn’t been here that I’ve seen.”
The woman dismissed her with another wave and went to join the man, who handed her his pipe.
Esther didn’t think that was good news at all. She had checked everywhere that David could possibly be. What had happened to him? She fought against panic. She couldn’t allow herself to dwell on her fear, to imagine what could have caused David to leave his cabin in the midst of the attack without any shoes. She had to act—and fast.
She headed back to the northern end of the platform, where Wong and Pieter guarded their gangway. They reported that they hadn’t seen David since he left the Rusty Nail late the night before. He hadn’t returned to the Lucinda either.
Back on the Catalina, Esther raced toward the plaza. Her hair was still wet from the rain, but she didn’t bother to shake off the water. Near the grand staircase she found an impromptu meeting of the most influential leaders of the moment: Judith, Dirk, Esther’s father, and Mrs. Cordova. They stood in a tight circle beside the old gift shop. Zoe sat alone at a café table nearby, sharpening her knife and studying the window of Constance Gordon’s shop a little too intently. She glanced at Esther as she stalked up, fully alert, and then went back to her studious examination of her blade.
“. . . doesn’t sound like we had the worst of it,” Simon was saying.
“We got lucky,” Judith said. “This is what happens when we meet with strangers.”
“I’ve
been saying we need to improve our defenses,” Dirk growled. He carried the machine gun on his shoulder openly now. “We need more weapons. This might not be the last time we face something like this.”
“We’re sailing as soon as the entire crew is on board,” Judith said.
“We can’t afford to be rash.” Simon met his daughter’s eyes as she joined the group. “We don’t know what kind of dangers might be out there.”
“All the more reason to stockpile while we can,” Dirk said.
“No more weapons on this ship. Think of the children!” Mrs. Cordova said. Her hair had been twisted hastily into her usual bun, pulling the wrinkled skin back on her prominent forehead.
“I am. What if next time they want this floating piece of scrap metal for themselves?”
“We are leaving,” Judith said. “This is not a negotiation.”
“We can’t go yet!” Esther said.
“Not now, Esther. We’re in a meeting,” Judith snapped.
“Come now, Judith. Have you forgotten how recently Esther saved this community? She deserves to be here,” Simon said.
Judith gave a tight nod and folded her arms over her ribs.
A bit of the pressure on Esther’s chest eased at her father’s reassuring nod.
“Have you heard anything from the Amsterdam officials about who the attackers were?” she asked.
“The rig boss believes it was an organization called the Calderon Group,” Simon explained. “They’ve been trying to intimidate people for several months now. They have reportedly taken over a ship or two, always in remote regions. They seem to be making a statement this time.”
“I’ll make a statement if they ever try it again,” Dirk said, tightening his grip on his machine gun.
“They might have been after something else.” Esther swallowed hard to keep her voice steady. “David Hawthorne is missing from the Lucinda.”
Nearby, Zoe lifted her head. Her hands on the whetstone stilled.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Judith said. “He’s around somewhere.”
