Noah has to shout to be heard down here, but something about the situation still feels quiet, intimate. Knowing that it’s dark outside. The gold. All of us up in the night on the water. We’re far enough down the river that our ability to communicate with the Outpost ended days ago. This call is mine to make.
I run my finger down along the map. I’m sure many are wondering if I’ll stay loyal to the path the Admiral set out for us to follow. I wonder if the person who left the note is trying to lure us off course so the raiders can attack. Maybe this much gold is a trap.
“When do we need to decide?” I ask.
“I’d guess we have about two hours before we’ll reach the fork,” Noah says. “Give or take.”
“Let’s see how much more gold comes in over the next hour,” I say. “If it runs out, the point may be moot.”
“Should I wake you again when it’s time?” Naomi asks.
“No,” I say. “I’ll stay up. But have someone take Brig’s place at the helm. I’d like to talk with both of you about what we should do.”
“I will,” Naomi says. “Though I have no opinion to offer, myself. It’s your decision to make.”
That surprises me some.
I climb up to the platform in the mining deck again, dismissing the guards for a moment so I can think. I look out over the back of the dredge through the opening at the end of the stacker, making sure the night lighting is working. That was another dilemma—when it gets dark, do we light up this part of the dredge so that we can see who might be coming on? If so, we also make ourselves impossible to miss. The Admiral and I decided that it was better to keep the ship lit during the voyages. The noise gives us away, anyway. You can’t miss the dredge coming up the river.
Footsteps behind me. Too heavy to be Naomi’s, but not without grace. Someone who could make themselves stealthy, quiet, but who has chosen not to.
Brig comes to stand on my left, so that my line of vision includes both him and the stacker. “Naomi said you wanted to see me.”
“Did she tell you about the gold?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says.
It’s hard for me to get the words out. It was easier to ask Naomi. “I’ve already talked to Naomi. Do you have an opinion about which part of the river we should take?”
“I’d stay with the course we were given at the beginning of the voyage,” Brig says. “But I’ll answer to the Admiral with you if you decide to deviate.”
The first part of his answer doesn’t surprise me, but the second part does. If this goes wrong, answering to the Admiral is no small thing. Is Brig serious? He looks it. One of the lanterns swings overhead with the motion of the dredge, and his features seem narrowed, then shadowed in the moving light. I don’t know him well, and I know him even less like this.
I look past Brig to the stacker, but I can tell his eyes are fully focused on my face.
“I was glad to be chosen for this voyage for several reasons,” he says. “One of them was because I’d get to see the armor in person. It’s even more impressive than I imagined.”
It’s a compliment. I could thank him.
“Tell the guards to come back up to their post,” I say.
Alone again. I find myself glancing for a moment at the metal plate hanging on the wall. There was one exactly like it on the other ship. The dredges are so old they predate even the Union. Those long-ago crews scrawled down codes on the plate for the bells they used to communicate over the noise of the mining equipment. One short ring means stop the trammel. Two short rings means start it back up again. Three means there’s an emergency and to cut the motor and sound the main alarm throughout the ship. Call and I used to wonder about that.
“Shouldn’t it be one short for an emergency?” I asked. “If a raider were cutting your throat, you’d want the signal to be quick.”
Call shook his head. “You’re so bloodthirsty.”
It was a joke, then.
I could change the warning system now, if I wanted. I’m the captain.
With the threat of the raiders dispelled, the most likely emergency is that we’ll need to stop the dredge because the ship has taken on something that could grind and break the gears, or because someone has fallen into the mining equipment on the inside.
The raiders aren’t the only ones who can kill. One person could shove another into the machinery, send them out through the stacker along with the tailings.
* * *
• • •
Time’s up.
The gold’s still coming in fast.
Crew’s quiet, eyes on me, waiting for my decision.
“We’ll keep to the right,” I say to Naomi. “Let Brig know.”
She nods and heads up the stairs. I stay down with the crew. “May I?” I ask Noah, and he drops a few of the nuggets into my cupped hand. Their lumpy shapes remind me of tiny fossilized hearts, heavy and dead.
CHAPTER 9
GOLD, GOLD, AND MORE GOLD. In three days, we harvest more than any other previous voyage has on its entire run.
“You running out of places to put it?” one of the crew asks Noah as we break for lunch in the ship’s cafeteria.
“We’ll throw you overboard if we need more space,” Noah jokes back. The atmosphere is so different from the first day of the voyage that everyone in earshot laughs. No one is offended, no one can imagine wanting to leave, not right now.
“If you run out of space, you can fill my room,” someone else calls out. “I wouldn’t mind sleeping on a pile of gold.”
I have a moment of gladness because they’re all so happy, because they’re smiling, but it doesn’t last.
This isn’t our gold. It’s the Admiral’s.
“Think we’ll sink under the weight?” Tam asks.
It’s true that the motor is working harder—we have a heavy cargo and a long way yet to go. We may have to return early if we reach our storage capacity before we get to the planned turnaround point in the river.
And then what? Will the Admiral send us back out? Or will we have brought back enough for whatever it is he has in mind?
“We’re fine for now,” I say. “Have you been on the mining deck again?”
“Yes,” he says. “They need the help. And you gave me permission to assist.”
“As long as the food doesn’t suffer.”
“It hasn’t,” Tam says.