She had considered adding a new captain to the Hive but had no one she could entrust with the job quite yet. Former Lieutenant Hunt and Ensign Ryan were serving time in the brig for conspiracy convictions, and everyone else was too green.
Humans continued to let her down.
That was why she had transferred the AI Timothy Pepper from the Hilltop Bastion to the other airship, to serve as her cocaptain.
She knew that the ship was in good hands with the AI, and being able to trust Timothy allowed her to concentrate on the most important part of her job: keeping the two airships in the air.
Today, she had a few things on her plate. Shortly, she would check the finished renovations of forty new living quarters on the ship. When finished, they would house over a hundred people from the Hive, bringing the total occupancy on Deliverance to just shy of two hundred. The other 273 passengers would remain on the Hive.
But now she had a bigger problem on her hand than just angry civilians chafing under what they saw as unequal treatment.
Katrina made her way over to the comms stations, where Ada Winslow, a twenty-year-old engineering student turned communications officer, sat in a chair facing the radio equipment.
After losing the experience of Ensign Ryan and Lieutenant Hunt, Katrina had been forced to pull several new staff members straight from the school. Ada was at the top of her class, and though she hadn’t majored in communications, she learned quickly.
“Ensign Winslow, have we heard anything from Commander Rodriguez or Miss Katib?”
Ada twisted, her brown eyes eager to help. “Negative, Captain. I’ve been combing the channels all evening just in case they are trying to broadcast on a different frequency, but nothing so far.”
“Keep trying.” Katrina gave her a reassuring nod. She made her way down the line of new crew members. Ensign Dave Connor, a forty-year-old engineer who had lost his leg in an accident involving one of the Hive’s turbofans, manned the navigation system, tapping his prosthetic leg on the deck. He also doubled as a weatherman and was an expert at reading the storms, which made him invaluable to her.
“How are the skies looking?” she asked.
“Ma’am,” Dave said, exposing a mostly full set of yellowed teeth, “winds out of the south at eight knots. Barometer has dropped slightly. I’m detecting an electrical storm that appears to be along a fifty-mile front. We’re keeping our distance, but if we get any closer, we’re in for a rocky ride.”
“Keep an eye on that storm and let me know if anything changes.”
“Will do, ma’am.”
Katrina continued to the next officer, Ensign Bronson White. By far the oldest man on the ship, he seemed to be named for the color of his thick hair and beard. Thick spectacles magnified his pale blue eyes. He was the former chief engineer of the ship, replaced by Samson upon his retirement ten years ago.
“Ensign,” Katrina said.
Bronson nodded politely. “How are you this evening, Captain?”
“I’m well. How are our ships?”
He shifted his glasses down his nose to look at the display. “Gas bladders on the Hive are all functioning properly, and the engines on Deliverance are fully operational. We haven’t had to use a turbofan on the Hive for several days.”
“And the supports are holding firmly?” she asked, referring to the aluminum struts that Engineering had used to tie the two ships together.
“Yes, Captain.”
Katrina patted White’s shoulder before walking away.
Layla Brower was the other crew member working the night shift, and by her slouched posture and tired eyes, it was obvious she missed Michael.
But Katrina needed Layla on deck tonight. Her job was an important one: using the new archives from Deliverance to restore the archives that Jordan had destroyed. Tonight, she was also working with Sergeant Sloan of the militia to keep the peace on the airship.
“How’s it going?” Katrina asked.
Layla shook her head. “It’s been quiet so far, but the night is still young. We have four soldiers on patrol throughout Deliverance, and another ten on the Hive.”
Not a lot of boots, but to Katrina’s thinking, the fewer the better—especially since the militia had willingly carried out Captain Jordan’s orders to kill Janga, Ty Parker, and many others.
The passengers didn’t trust the militia, and that made Katrina’s job as captain difficult. Very difficult. It did help that she had been the one to kill Jordan, but even this had not gained her the trust of everyone—especially former lower-deckers.
Missing from the bridge was Lieutenant Les Mitchells, who was with his family, celebrating his son’s release from the brig. It was a happy day for the Mitchellses, and one that Katrina was glad to finally see. Ordering Trey back to his cell after he had helped overthrow Jordan was difficult, but she had to be fair. Shortening his sentence by a year was the best she could do without upsetting other passengers who had family members serving time.
Katrina went back to the captain’s chair and sat. Her crew was new, with both young and old officers, but they were her team, and she was proud to have them working with her.
They had been granted a new beginning with Deliverance. But no matter how well things were going in the sky, their future really depended on what was happening on the surface. If X and Magnolia were dead, then the one shot at finding the Metal Islands was over before it really began.
“Ensign Connor, bring up our current location on-screen,” she ordered.
The wall-mounted monitor in front of her chair flashed to life, showing an old-world map. The airships were still flying about fifty miles off the coast of Florida. A curved red line showed the location of the Sea Wolf ever since Deliverance dropped the vessel into the water.
X had sailed southeast from Florida, between Cuba and the Bahamas. They were just west of the Turks and Caicos Islands when the distress signal activated, but it had shut off not long after being turned on.
She wasn’t sure precisely where they were now, but it had to be close to those islands. Pushing another button on her monitor, she pulled up the weather overlay map.
A red cloud swallowed most of the screen, intensifying over Cuba and the Bahamas.
X had seen this map. He knew what he was getting himself into, and that was why he had opted for the route between the islands. Another dense fog of red covered most of Jamaica, Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico. Only a small chain called the Virgin Islands was visible in the blur.
In her mind’s eye, Katrina pictured the nuclear-tipped missiles striking each of the larger islands two and a half centuries ago, incinerating millions of people and destroying in minutes what had taken humanity an eon to create. But maybe the smaller groups like the one on the map hadn’t been touched. Maybe it was some sort of Goldilocks zone that had been deemed not worth destroying. And maybe the radiation and electrical storms never reached this place.
Or maybe it was just another mutated wasteland.
The sound of the hatches opening pulled her away from her reflections. Les ducked under the bulkhead and walked onto the bridge, his normally pale cheeks red. Katrina knew right away something was wrong.
She rose from her chair.
“Captain,” he said.