Steel Tide, page 20
part #2 of Seafire Series
“Of Cloudbreak?” Pisces asked, frowning. “He doesn’t have any ships. He’s not allowed.”
Nettle nearly rolled her eyes. “Well, he’s also technically not allowed to aid anyone Aric has an interest in, but . . .”
“How certain are you?” Caledonia asked.
Nettle lifted her chin, the paler skin of her scrollwork scars like the curling path of a wave in the ocean. “I’m certain.”
That was enough for Caledonia. But that didn’t explain why Venn was being so coy. His ships still hadn’t moved. It was starting to put her on edge.
“What’s wrong?” Pisces asked, stepping in close.
“Something feels . . .”
“Captain,” Oran called, a warning in the tenor of is voice. “We have a problem.”
“What is it?”
“Venn doesn’t sail four ships—”
“He sails five,” Sledge finished in alarm.
“Captain!” Amina called from her position on the roof of the bridge.
The girls spun. Behind them, a crusher ship was in pursuit and much too close for comfort.
Caledonia ignored the way her heart squeezed as she raced toward the bridge. “Engines to full!”
The ship roared, moving sluggishly for a few seconds before it gathered enough power for real speed. Once more, Caledonia’s body anticipated a faster transition than this ship could provide, leaving her out of sync for a disorienting second.
She was furious with herself. Venn had kept her focused on him while he sent a smaller ship to flank her. Its low profile made it nearly invisible to her Knots until it was too late. Now they were on the run, and he was in control.
“Incoming!” Amina shouted from above.
They were too slow, too heavy, too far behind the momentum of the crusher. Pine had his gunners positioned to open fire on the incoming vessels, but this wasn’t going to be a fire fight.
“Strap in!” Caledonia shouted. “Brace for impact!”
The crusher was on them in a second. It held its course and speed, and as their own engines struggled to push them faster, the incoming ship rammed them, bruising their starboard hull with its punishing metal wedge.
Caledonia slammed into the side of the bridge, her knee cracking against the wall with a spike of pain.
The crusher’s nose was still pressed into their side, yet no Bullets rushed to board them, and none fired from the deck. Instead, the crusher was revving its engines. They were pushing them. But where?
In two steps she was on the nose of the ship, scouring the surrounding plane for any sign of Venn’s other four ships, but she found none. Ahead, it was just them and the ocean.
“Captain!” Pisces called, darting up the ladder to the command deck. A bright smear of blood marked her green top and the palm of her hand. “Captain, we’ve got a breach.”
“How bad?”
“We’ve got a split on level two, above the waterline. It hit the galley.” She paused for just a second, fingers curling into her bloody palm. “Far’s hurt.”
Caledonia clamped down on her specific concern for Far. Hime would have her. “Can we contain the breach?”
Pisces frowned. “Not until they let us go.”
“Don’t let up on those engines, Nettle!” Caledonia called, moving once more toward the bridge. Venn wasn’t moving in. It didn’t make any sense, but she’d take whatever space he gave her. “We won’t make this easy for them.”
The girl was a fixed point at the wheel, her features set and determined. Behind her, Harwell was a spear of panic. He looked out the windows at the western sea over their port side.
“Captain,” he said, voice thin.
Ahead, the water had changed. It was no longer a smooth black plane, but full of chop. It was almost as if thousands of scales flashed along the surface.
Caledonia frowned. “What is that?”
“A whirl.” Sledge was braced in the doorway.
Caledonia had heard stories of the part of the ocean where a storm opened up beneath you and sucked ships down to the deep. She’d thought they were only stories.
“It’s real,” she said, turning her astonished eyes forward once more and finding the paler ridges that marked the edge of the vortex. They extended in rings just below the horizon, stretching at least a mile wide, possibly more. As they drew nearer, a thin, screeching wail rose from within the whirl as though the ocean itself screamed.
“It’s about to be a little too real.” Harwell’s voice trembled. “But it’s not on the map!”
Oran was at her shoulder, eyes pinned to the torrential water ahead. “That’s because it’s not always here. It appears once in a ten-moon.”
That was why Venn wasn’t moving in. He was keeping his distance because he could. And because he had to. The whirl would do his work for him, but if he got too close, it would take them all into its treacherous rings. That was her only advantage. With Venn holding back, all she needed to do was get free of the crusher. Then she could put the whirl between her and Venn.
“Gunners! Starboard!” Pine’s commands were accompanied by gunfire.
“They’ve come along the hull, Captain,” Sledge reported. “They’re going to try and—”
An explosion sent a short plume of fire up the starboard hull, nudging the ship hard to port. The deck tilted, the hull groaned, and one propeller rose above the waterline, smashing uselessly against the ocean.
Sledge and Pisces vanished into the belly of the ship. The gunfire faded, and Caledonia knew without being told that it was because the Bullets had accomplished their work. They’d put another hole in their hull and retreated into the protection of their reinforced ship. Why waste lives and ammo when you didn’t have to?
“Captain.” Pisces returned soaked in seawater, her breath quick. “They punched a hole in level three. In the hold and forward storerooms. We’re taking on water.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
With a hole in their side, the whirl would pull them under as easily as if they were a flower petal. Panic sang a single piercing note in Caledonia’s mind, warning her that there was no way out, that she was about to lose her second ship and kill her entire crew. It reverberated through her body, freezing her in place.
And then she quashed it.
“Oran, tell me why it appears here,” she said, letting her world narrow on him for a moment.
“We think there’s a deep trench here. The whirl shows up when two opposing currents pass over it. That’s our—their—best guess.”
She nodded, returning her sights to the whirl, her thoughts to the task ahead.
“Pi, take a team. Get everyone off level three and do what you can to seal the breach.” Pisces nodded once and was gone in an instant. “Harwell, tell everyone to strap in; Nettle, kill the engines,” she said calmly. “And give me the wheel.”
Nettle was all too happy to comply. The engines faded. The ship tilted more firmly into the crusher. The ocean roared around them, fore and aft. Caledonia placed her hands on the wheel. She let her palms rest firmly against the worn wood, her fingers curled loosely there so that she could feel the rumble of the ship in the pads of her fingertips. She adjusted her stance, placing her feet firmly beneath her hips, letting the ship become an extension of her own body.
Then she waited.
The scream of the ocean grew nearer, the rings of the vortex stood out creamy white against the muddy blue of the surrounding waters, and the air was dense with salty mist.
“It sounds hungry,” Harwell said, not even bothering to hide his fear.
“She sounds furious,” Nettle added with considerably more wonder and admiration in her voice.
Caledonia thought it sounded like a warning, but it was one she didn’t have the luxury of heeding.
“Everyone’s off level three,” Pisces reported. The edge in her voice conveyed that the damage was tremendous, but no lives had been lost. “We’ve sealed off the forward quarter. Still working on the breach.”
The ship was still taking on water. It would make them bottom heavy, front heavy, and even more difficult to maneuver in the rough waters ahead. But there was nothing to be done about it.
It was up to Caledonia now.
After another long minute, the pushing stopped. The crusher reversed so suddenly that both ships jerked as it released its bruised prey and screamed in the other direction to avoid the vortex.
The Beacon twisted, pulling itself upright and sweeping along as the ocean willed it. Caledonia held the wheel with a careful hand as she studied the current now controlling her ship.
The water will tell you where it’s been and where it’s going, her mother had said. If you know how to speak its language, you will always know what to do.
Ridges of water swirled in long arcs toward the center of the pool, where the water tucked down as though someone stood beneath the surface and tugged. Not a single current, but two, traveling in opposite directions alongside each other, forcing the water to bend and pull in this pattern.
As fascinated as Caledonia was, she had no time to consider it. The ship listed hard to starboard, spinning as the stern was snatched by the opposing current. From one breath to the next, the ship was in a spin. Their nose swung wildly around, and they pitched steeply from port back to starboard.
Caledonia could feel the sluggish climb of her ship as the water trapped on level three weighed them down. The starboard side dipped perilously low, allowing water to slosh over the gash into level two. Every single drop they took on made them heavier, less buoyant.
The bridge was silent. Her crew standing at the ready to complete any order she might give. But there was none. Not until she found her opening.
The spinning slowed, but did not stop. They rocked and spun and rocked and spun until it felt as though her own belly had been transformed into a whirl like the one on which they sailed.
She felt her internal balance adjusting to their new heft, forced herself to keep her breath even and slow, to match the new rhythm of the current around them. And as the ship spun around once more, she steered directly into the opposing current. The spinning stopped.
“Oh, thank you, Captain.” Harwell’s voice was green.
“Don’t vomit in my bridge, Harwell,” was Caledonia’s only response.
She kept her eyes on the sea road ahead, her hands firm on the wheel.
“Nettle, I need those engines again.”
“Yes, Captain.”
The engines roared and they flew, propelled both by their own power and the power of the whirl. Faster and faster, they climbed to speeds this ship wasn’t capable of on its own. The ship bit more deeply into the ridged water. And for a moment, the sea dragged at the open gash in their side, trying to pull them sideways into the center of the whirl. But Caledonia held firm.
She kept their nose aligned with the rushing water as she read every ripple and ridge and—there!—a smooth sash of water cutting toward the center of the whirl.
Caledonia aimed directly for it, letting the ship travel at an angle. While their propellers drove from behind, the water hammered against their broadside, pushing them sideways even as they traveled forward. She felt the ship bucking, stuttering as it struggled to resist its own heavy belly and the drain of the whirl.
Sweat slipped between her shoulder blades, her jaw clenched tight. She could sense the eyes in the room moving between her and the whirl. There was Sledge and Oran, Nettle and Harwell, and Pisces standing nearest of all. Each of them held tight to their trust in her, and she, in turn, held the other end of that same trust, letting it tether her in the midst of so much chaos.
The ship dipped ever lower, listing harder and harder toward its wounded side. Caledonia held the wheel steady. The edge of the whirl was visible now. She could see the place where the current transitioned to smooth, flat waters.
But they were slowing down, tipping even farther to starboard.
“Kill the engines, Nettle.”
Caledonia had no choice but to steer back into the whirl, letting the banded currents sweep them around the wide circle, ever closer to that perilous center. Though still listing, the ship regained some of its balance. They needed speed.
“When we come back around, drive the engines up.” Caledonia didn’t dare take her eyes off the roiling plane before her. If she missed a single shift, they could find themselves careering toward the center once more.
Her shoulders bunched tight, her palms began to sweat, and her arms trembled. Doubt crept in around the edges of her focus. What if this didn’t work?
A slender hand pressed against her shoulder blade. “You have us, Captain,” Pisces soothed.
The simple gesture was charged with energy. Caledonia felt her muscles settle, and the instant that sash of smooth water came into view once more, she ordered the engines to full.
With one final burst of power, they broke away from the whirl, limping out like a beached whale. Far across the whirl, Fiveson Venn’s ships were small shapes against a tired afternoon sky. If they pursued, they would have to sail around the whirl, giving Caledonia an even bigger lead than she already had.
“Engines are struggling, Captain,” Harwell warned.
Caledonia nodded. “Just keep us going until we can’t.”
The ship rocked slowly back and forth like a bell, far too heavy on the bottom, far too low in the water. But they were out and they were alive, and that was a small piece of victory.
“No signs of pursuit,” Amina reported.
“Nice sailing, Captain!” Nettle cried.
It sparked an even larger outcry of relief and approval from the rest of the crew, still mostly gathered on deck. Right now, it didn’t matter that they were taking on water or that they were still mostly strangers. It only mattered that they’d worked together and survived.
“We might be afloat right now, but we won’t stay that way if we don’t start patching those holes!” Caledonia cried, bringing the crew back to the problem at hand.
“Divers! I want you port side!” Tin was shouting.
“Shiptechs, follow me!” Pine added, heading belowdecks.
Oran stepped out of the bridge and slid down the ladder to follow. The second he was out of sight, Caledonia felt a twist of tension in her gut.
“That was a bright piece of sailing, Captain,” Pisces said, coming to stand at her shoulder.
The compliment tugged her thoughts away from Oran, straight into the hopeful pool of Pisces’s affection. “Shouldn’t have had to do it to begin with.”
“Maybe not, but you got us out of it. All of us. Like you al-ways do.”
She was speaking to Caledonia, but there was another layer to her words. They carried small knives, all pointing inward.
“I should’ve seen that crusher coming,” Caledonia admitted with as much ownership of her mistakes as possible. “But I didn’t. And now we have new problems.”
Pisces nodded, clearly unsatisfied. Whatever it was she came to say, she hadn’t said it.
“Pi.” Caledonia reached across the space between them to place her hand on Pisces crossed arms. It lasted for a second, then Pisces pulled away.
“We’d better get down there.”
Caledonia nodded, holding her breath tight in her chest. Yesterday, she’d been sure that her relationship with Pisces was breached beyond repair. Today? They may have taken a direct hit, but they were still afloat.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Everything inside the ship was wrong. The air smelled heavy and dank, sounds were uncharacteristically muted, even the bulkheads seemed to bend in ways they shouldn’t.
Pine flew ahead of Caledonia, trusting her to follow. She stayed on his heels as they barreled through the corridors, past crew members flattened against the walls to let them pass.
“The hold and forequarter of level three are sealed, but there’s a second breach in the desal room!” Pine called over his shoulder. “The pumps can’t keep up!”
Caledonia kept her eyes ahead, but there were signs of distress everywhere, and it was hard not to take stock as they passed.
Level two was unrecognizable. The crusher had pierced the wall of the kitchen, driving straight into the mess. Steel curled viciously toward the interior of the ship, destroying the pantry, stoves, sinks—everything required to feed a crew of seventy-five. The ground was littered with fallen chairs and tufts of green vegetables. It was hard to imagine anyone had survived, especially if they’d been in the kitchen at the time.
A breeze laced with smoke and the promise of rain drifted through the gash beyond, which the sky was darkening with clouds. Caledonia caught it all in a flash. Whatever they were going to do, they needed to work quickly.
“Make a hole!” Pine barked, as they passed out of the open galley and dove down the narrow stairwell to level three.
They landed with a splash. Several inches of water covered the floor in all directions, and there was a rushing sound that seemed to emanate from the walls.
Every ship was compartmentalized for just this reason. Small breaches might be stopped early, but large breaches—fast breaches— could sink a ship in an instant if you didn’t patch them or seal the chamber. The water rushing past Caledonia’s ankles told her neither had happened yet.
Voices sounded from directly ahead. Pine led them into a room on the starboard side where the crew was madly shifting equipment away from the wall and sealing off the adjoining chambers. Water poured through splits in the hull where the metal was frayed like fabric.
Caledonia’s gut pitched.
If this were any other room, they’d have closed it off and left it to fill while they protected the rest of the ship. But this was the desal room. Everything in this space was dedicated to purifying seawater for drinking, bathing, and cooking. Without it, they’d have what remained in the tanks, and then they’d have nothing.
