by Jordan Rivet
When the burnished hull of the Lucinda broke the horizon, Esther reached up and planted a huge kiss on David’s mouth. It made the cut on her face scream in protest, but it was worth it. Together they watched the Lucinda grow larger. The sun started to sink. When the sky took on a rose tint, the Lucinda had traversed half the distance from the horizon.
“This has been one hell of a trip,” David said.
They sat side by side on a rock beside a cluster of wind-torn bushes. It was getting colder.
Esther laughed. “You didn’t use to swear this much.”
“You’re a bad influence on me.” He nudged her with his elbow.
“When we get Zoe back, the first thing I’m going to do is sleep for a week,” Esther said.
“The first thing?” David asked.
Esther grinned. “Maybe the second.”
The waves broke gently against the steep cliff far beneath them.
Neal called in again. “I think I see the outcropping. How close to the water are you?”
“We’re up quite high.” David held the phone together to give Esther’s hands a rest. He balanced it between them so they could both hear. “We’ll have to sneak down to the water without being seen,” he said.
“How’s the fuel supply?” Esther asked. “We’ll need to run for it as soon as we get to you.”
“Your energy system is up and running now,” Neal said. “That’s how we were able to come after you.”
“Great. We’ll head to sea level.”
“You’ll do no such thing.” A voice cut through the wind behind them. “We have you surrounded. You didn’t really think you’d be able to hide on our island, did you?”
It was Chelle, backed by a dozen Calderon men.
Esther leapt to her feet, heart pounding. One of the ships must have returned from the fight. Other armed men moved to the edges of the cliff, blocking their escape routes. David stood frozen with the satellite phone in his hand. Chelle raised her pistol. Esther made a snap decision.
“Look for us in the water, Neal!” she shouted at the device. Then she grabbed David’s arm, pulled him toward the cliff, and jumped.
The fall seemed to take a lifetime and an eyeblink. There was a rush of sea spray and cold and sound. David yelled curses into the wind. Then Esther hit the water.
She plunged deep beneath the surface, but her bones didn’t shatter on rock as she had feared. She kicked and struggled, fighting against the undertow, trying not to gasp at the shocking cold. Her head broke the barrier between sea and sky.
Waves crashed around her. The cliff face loomed nearby. They had to get away from it. She thrashed around, frantically searching the ice-black sea. Where was he? They were too close to the rocks.
Three terrifying seconds later a blond head erupted out of the water beside her.
“Rust and fucking salt. Fuck! Goddammit, Esther, are you trying to kill us both?”
David spluttered and coughed, spewing an impressive litany of curses that she’d never heard from him before.
“I could have let them do it for us,” Esther shouted. “Now swim!”
She churned through the water, trying to get as far away from the cliff as possible. The salt stung her eyes, and her fingers were already going numb, but she forced herself through the waves. David followed, choking out another curse every few strokes.
“Lost the phone,” he gasped.
“Doesn’t matter. They’ll find us.”
Esther concentrated on pushing through the burning in her lungs and the freezing in her limbs.
“You sure?”
“No choice.”
They swam onward. The sun sank, injecting the clouds with reds and purples. They were moving away from Calderon Island, but their progress was excruciatingly slow. Swells towered over them, blocking their visibility as effectively as stone walls.
“I hate swimming,” David said as he tackled the waves beside her.
“Huh.” Her laugh came out as more of a gasp. “Neal better hurry.”
The salt in her eyes and the constant dip and rise of the waves made it impossible to see whether the Lucinda was still there. Esther didn’t have the energy to worry. All she could do was swim.
“I meant what I said,” David said after a while.
“What?” Esther concentrated on not swallowing half the sea.
“To Chelle. Not happy without you.”
“And you’re barely staying alive with me.”
“Ha. Worth it.”
Esther smiled as the next wave crashed into her face. “Me too.”
David slowed for a moment to reach out and touch Esther’s shoulder. The ocean swelled beneath them, lifting them up at the same moment. As it did, they saw the Lucinda less than a hundred yards away.
“We’re going to make it, Esther,” David said.
She grinned, teeth chattering, and waved her arms desperately at the ship. The swells dipped them back down again. The next time the sea lifted them up, they heard the frantic blast of a horn from the Lucinda. A flare crackled low across the water straight toward them. Someone on board had spotted them. They were saved.
Chapter 32—On the Lucinda
Twenty minutes later Esther and David huddled together in the Lucinda’s pilothouse as Neal wrapped a blanket around their shoulders. Dirk glared down at them from the helm.
“That was a stupid thing you did,” Dirk growled.
“Jumping off the cliff? It worked,” Esther said.
It was surreal to be aboard the familiar vessel. The windscreen still had a line of bullet holes, a remnant of their escape from the Galaxy Flotilla. One matched a scar on David’s shoulder. Elsewhere, the ship still showed scorch marks from the Calderon attack. Lucinda had been through a lot. Esther shivered, numb after their swim in the frigid sea. She felt like she was floating around the roof of the pilothouse, watching herself talk to Neal and Dirk.
“I mean going off with the Harvesters,” Dirk said.
“We had to,” Esther said. “The Calderon Group would have killed David for sure.”
Dirk spit on the floor. “True, but the Harvesters?”
“What do you know about them?” David asked. Miraculously, his glasses had survived their swim. They were crusted with drying salt water.
“They’re not as squeaky clean as they pretend to be,” Dirk said.
“We figured that out,” Esther said. “We were kind of in a rush at the time.”
Dirk raised his eyebrows, the creases in his forehead squeezing together. He’d come on this rescue mission under duress. Neal had told them Judith and Simon insisted on sending the Lucinda to find Esther and Zoe as soon as the energy system was complete. Apparently Judith had threatened to throw Dirk overboard—among other things—if he didn’t go after Esther.
“What news of the fighting?” Esther asked.
“It’s pretty vicious,” Neal said. “The Harvesters called in reinforcements. They have at least five, maybe six ships in addition to the Terra.”
“What?” Esther said. “So that’s why they’re attacking now.”
She wondered if the Calderon ships knew what they were getting into when they went out to meet the attack. The Calderon Group had better fighting tactics, but if too many of their ships were away they would be hard pressed against the Harvesters’ superior numbers.
“Yeah, heard ’em on the radio,” Neal said. “They must reckon they have a chance of taking the Island.”
“I thought they’d give up after how the last battle went,” Esther said. “But with that many ships . . .”
“The Calderon Group could be getting slaughtered right now,” David said.
“My glitch!” Esther said. “Salt, they’ll be sitting ducks. We need to do something.”
“Wait. Now you want to help the Calderon Group?” Neal said, tugging at his headset. “I’m confused.”
Esther hesitated. Images rose before her: Luke and Cody, Jacques, even Harry and Zeke and their Calderon captors
doing their best to blow each other out of the water at their captains’ commands. And all for what? Her invention. Energy. Power.
“We have to stop the fighting,” she said.
David gave her an appraising look but kept silent.
“Can you get a message to them?” Esther asked. “Tell the Harvesters we’ll give them the plans for the system if they withdraw their attack and release Zoe. It should give the Calderon ships enough of a reprieve to get away.”
“You sure you want to do that?” said Dirk.
“Why wouldn’t we?” Esther said.
Everything had become freshwater clear to her. This technology was not worth dying for—for anyone. She looked at David. Other things were.
“I used to do business with the Harvesters,” Dirk said, “before I lived on the Galaxy. Not that the Galaxy folk were particularly scrupulous either. The Harvesters aren’t as flashy as the Calderon boys, but their leaders are ruthless. And their numbers are growing. They’d be unstoppable with your energy tech.”
“But the Calderon Group have it now too, as soon as they figure out how to fix my glitch,” Esther said. She met David’s eyes. “We had no choice.”
Dirk rolled his big shoulders. “That’ll even up the playing field for the two of them. They kept each other in check well enough before. It’s everyone else I’m worried about. The other ships will get swallowed up like krill.”
Esther’s stomach sank. A terrible image flashed before her: the Harvester and Calderon ships, indistinguishable from one another, sailing across the sea at will, relentless, consuming ship after ship as they ran out of fuel, unable to escape. Again she saw the faces of her friends—Luke and Cody, Harry and Zeke—transformed into monsters, glowering with teeth like a shark’s. How could she have messed things up this badly? She knew her technology would change their world, but she didn’t want this. It was supposed to make things better.
But it was already done, and Esther’s friends and family came first. “We have to give it to the Harvesters to get Zoe back.” She hesitated, then asked Dirk, “Did you ever meet the captain of the Terra Firma?”
“Alder? Once. A hard man, that one.”
“Would he harm a prisoner out of spite?”
Neal and Dirk exchanged glances.
“What?” Esther stood, letting the blanket fall from her shoulders. “What do you know?”
“Maybe you guys should get warmed up and rested,” Neal said. “We can’t do anything rash.”
“Why would we do something rash?” Esther said. “What happened?”
Neal avoided her gaze. “We . . . intercepted a message between two Harvester ships just before picking you up. The Harvesters said something about hurting a prisoner if conditions weren’t met. We were confused because we thought you were still with the Calderon Group but . . .”
“Zoe. The Harvesters are going to do something to Zoe,” Esther said. “They have to know by now that I helped the Calderon guys install my technology. Luke and Cody must think I abandoned the bargain . . . Either that or they can’t hold off anymore. Rust.”
She paced back and forth across the pilothouse. Wind whistled through the bullet holes in the glass.
“What did you think would happen when you left her behind?” Dirk growled.
“I didn’t know I’d be on the Island for so long,” Esther snapped.
She didn’t need Dirk to drive home the guilt. Every thought of Zoe was like a twist from her friend’s pocketknife. It felt like a year since they had last seen each other in their cabin on the Terra Firma.
“Look,” David said, standing and putting a steadying hand on her shoulder. “They’re in the middle of a battle. If they haven’t hurt her yet—and to be honest, we don’t know they haven’t—then they won’t do it right now. Stopping the fighting is the best we can do for everyone right now.”
“It’s up to you, Esther,” Neal said.
All eyes turned to her.
Esther nodded. “I’m going to give the Harvesters the technology,” she said. And may the New Pacific forgive me. “We have to contact them and get them to withdraw from the battle.”
The faces still swam in front of her: Luke and Cody, Jacques, Harry and Zeke. Now Zoe. Cally and Dax. Judith. Her father. It was all so pointless. It would be better if none of them had the technology. None of them or . . .
“Neal!” she said. “I have a better idea. I need your help.”
Chapter 33—The Transmission
Esther scribbled frantically on the back of an abstract drawing that had hung in David’s cabin. She had to get this right the first time. It was a good thing she had spent so much time scratching out and rewriting the plans on the floorboards of the Catalina’s bowling alley. She could do this in her sleep—and right now she felt like she could sleep for a year.
David took a turn at the helm while Dirk prepared the Lucinda’s crew for what was about to happen. They were sailing east past the northern cliffs of Calderon Island. The wind carried the sound of exploding shells and gunfire. The battle was underway.
David leaned forward over the wheel, and Esther could sense the exhaustion in his body. She felt it herself as she wrote down the final calculation. That was it: the plan for her algae energy system, the most revolutionary invention in the New Pacific. To her it had become a simple bargaining chip once again. It was her only hope to save Zoe and stop the fighting. She didn’t care about profiting from it—and never really had—but for a moment she allowed herself to dwell on the implications this technology had for their world. People could travel now, sail to land, or range further across the sea in search of sustenance. For an instant, once again she felt proud.
She stood up and shook out the papers. “I’m ready.”
Neal looked up from the screen he had affixed to the Lucinda’s control console. A large black device balanced beside it. Wires snaked out of sight. A satellite dish above their heads was poised to transmit Esther’s designs to the Harvesters locked in battle on the other side of Calderon Island. Neal took the papers wordlessly. He slid the first one into the black device and pressed a button.
The sun had sunk low, touching the horizon. It spread raw red light across Neal’s features. He puffed into the mouthpiece of his headset, which was connected to the satellite system’s computer. David nodded.
“Attention all Harvester ships,” Neal said. He waited. The radio by David’s elbow crackled, but all eyes were on Neal and his satellite contraption. “This message is for the Harvester ship Terra Firma. Do you copy?”
Esther watched Neal’s face for hints about what they were saying. The Harvesters should have gotten their satellite system up and running while they were at the Amsterdam. Everything depended on it. Finally, Neal gave a thumbs-up and listened intently to whatever was being said into his earphones.
“Copy that, Terra Firma,” Neal said. “We are approaching from the west in the patrol ship Lucinda. We have come to retrieve your hostage, and our friend, Zoe. You’re holding her in exchange for Esther Harris’s biofuel system. We are sending the designs for the system to your onboard computers via a rudimentary satellite transmission. Please cease your attack on Calderon Island so we can complete the transfer.”
Esther held her breath. The deal for Zoe’s life had been arranged with Cody and his friends. She had no idea whether it was still in place. The Harvesters would want her system, but anything could have happened to Zoe in the past week.
The radio by David’s elbow coughed again. “Lucinda! This is the Calderon ship Charley. You are trespassing in our territorial waters, and you’ve abducted our mechanic. Halt immediately!”
“They’re on our tail,” David said.
He pressed a fist into the control panel and kept the Lucinda heading forward. She shot through the iron waters at full throttle. They still hadn’t reached the battle.
Esther looked back. The Charley—a light, swift patrol ship—was coming up behind them, and she was fast. Salt. She was supposed to be
far ahead off the northeastern part of the island amidst the fighting. She must have sailed around the south side when everyone else went north.
“We are armed with an RGM-84 Harpoon missile,” said the voice on the radio, echoing through the pilothouse, “and we have you in our sights. Repeat: halt immediately.”
“We can’t shake them,” David said. “Not without sailing into the middle of the battle. We’re still too far away.”
Neal tapped at the computer screen, then pushed the mouthpiece of his headset back toward his ear and picked up the radio mic. Sweat fell in rivulets down the back of his neck.
“We copy, Charley. Hold your fire.” He put his hand over the mouthpiece and turned to Esther. “What do we do?”
Esther paced rapidly, ignoring the weariness in her bones. “How far are we from the Terra Firma?”
“Two miles. Charley will reach us first,” David said.
“How’d they get here so fast?”
“Guess that glitch wasn’t as effective as you’d hoped.”
“We need to distract them until we get closer to the Terra,” Esther said. “We have to finish the transmission and get Zoe.”
“Distract them with what?” David said. “They already have what they want.”
“Keep them talking. Neal and I will work the satellite thingy.”
Esther joined Neal at the computer console. He began scanning the second page of the design. She corrected a clumsy error on the third page. A low beeping sound came from the device.
“I hope you have a plan,” David said, grabbing the radio mic. “Charley, do you copy? This is David Elliot Hawthorne. Who is this?”
“This is the Calderon ship Charley. You must halt,” repeated the voice on the radio.
“We’re slowing down now,” David said, easing back on the throttle as he said it. He put on a soothing voice. “Don’t worry. Is this Harry? Everything’s all right. Please don’t start shooting before we’ve had our say, mate.”
