Bonds Read online

  Bonds

  A Royal States Novel

  Susan Copperfield

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  A special thanks to the members of the Fantasy Worlds of RJ Blain. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it.

  * * *

  To my editors and proofreaders: thank you for burning the midnight oil with me on this one!

  Chapter One

  One day, I might understand why I enjoyed jumping out of helicopters during squalls. I checked my harness for the third time since strapping in. As soon as I was a safe distance above the water, I’d release my line and go for a swim. Had the weather been better, we would’ve used the nearby rescue ship as our base of operations. Too much could go wrong, and the rescue team on board already had their hands full tending to the crew of the oil tanker that had run aground on rocks off the French coast. The sheen of oil on the waves below complicated the already complicated rescue.

  My first job would be to plug the leaks and keep the tanker from polluting even more of the water. Once I had the holes plugged, I’d board and check for any missed crew on the floundering ship.

  The ship listed enough she’d go under in time; the rocks, a well-charted menace the captain should’ve avoided in the first place, kept them afloat. With each wave threatening to tear the monster vessel from its haphazard perch, I wouldn’t have much time to work.

  I hated when my magic became the first and last defense during a dangerous rescue. The storm darkened the afternoon sky, and it wouldn’t be long until I was forced to use my magic to illuminate our efforts.

  I wanted to give the captain a piece of my mind for endangering the crew and the rescue team stuck bailing their irresponsible asses out.

  I eyed the water again while waiting for the pilot to get the helicopter into position, close enough to the ship I’d be able to work my magic but far enough away a rogue wave wouldn’t smash me into the hull. Any other dive, I would have worn flippers into the water to make swimming easier, but if I needed to board the ship, they’d get in the way.

  I missed my flippers already.

  With so much crude in the water, without my magic protecting me, my gear and I would be in serious trouble. Crude oil could be volatile in many ways, depending on the type. I wouldn’t know if I dealt with tar-like sludge, lighter crude, or refined gas until I got into the water.

  To add to the fun, a single spark could ruin my day—and light the nearby ocean on fire.

  I’d gotten that lecture a few times already. Under normal working operations, fire risks on a tanker were low, but once oxygen in the air mixed with the crude’s fumes, things could go wrong in a hurry.

  “I’m in position. Ready, Jack?” the pilot, Louis, asked, his French accent so thick I struggled to understand him. My French was so bad everyone on the team took pity on me, using English when they needed me for something.

  The rest of the time, I pretended I understood what the hell they were saying. Learning more languages was on my to-do list, but every time I settled in to learn something, someone needed me to jump out of a helicopter to rescue a floundering vessel.

  Most of the time, I loved my job. I loved knowing I saved lives. I even loved flinging myself out of various aircraft.

  Today, however, I wanted a new job. No one sane wanted to enter oil-polluted waters with monstrous white-capped waves ready to pound me into a smear against the hull of the dying ship.

  Then again, if I quit my job as a search and rescue diver, I’d have to return to the Royal States of America, which was on the top of my ‘over my dead body’ list.

  It might really be over my dead body if I didn’t do everything just right when I entered the water.

  I checked my mask again. If I lost it, I wouldn’t be able to communicate with the helicopter and the rest of the rescue team. Once certain I wouldn’t lose it along with my oxygen tank, I replied, “Oui.”

  My limited French usually made the team laugh. Beyond a basic yes, I could cuss like a champ and ask where the bathroom was. After trying to order a drink and getting a fish instead, I’d given up pretending I had any idea what I was doing.

  A rapid conversation conducted in French filled my ears, but I’d been on enough dives with the team to know the pilot was giving the basic instructions to the rest of the team, who’d handle the wench and be prepared for when I released the line and went into the water.

  The first time I’d released my line and dove into stormy seas with a small oxygen tank, the entire crew had about shit their pants until they remembered I used a blend of illumination and waveweaving magic. Unless knocked unconscious, my chances of drowning were slim to none. Add in my minor airweaving talent, which allowed me to refresh my oxygen tank without needing to surface, and I made the perfect rescue diver.

  No one needed to know I wasn’t actually a borderline elite. Borderline elite put me one step below the elite class, and I’d made certain to leave the Royal States before I could be evaluated again.

  Being above average worked well for me.

  My real rank, elite class or better, would’ve dumped me directly into a political nightmare. Before I could get sucked into worrying about what would happen if I had to return to the Royal States, the rest of the team finished their final checks and gave the okay for me to slide out of the helicopter.

  I descended until I was only a few feet from the crashing whitecaps. After eyeing the roll of the waves, I lifted my hand to indicate I was ready, released my line, and plunged into the water.

  More French, probably confirming I was in the water, blasted into my ears. I ignored the chatter and submerged, swimming for the ship. In the eyes of most, my illumination talent wasn’t worth writing home about. Unlike the truly powerful illuminators, I couldn’t become a living lighthouse capable of guiding ships safely to harbor.

  I could, however, flood the ocean with a gentle light, which worked well for my needs. My magic exposed a gaping hole in the vessel.

  “The breach in the hull is at least ten meters long, starboard stern,” I reported before approaching, eyeing the ship until I found a suitable handhold. “There’s enough crude leaking out I need to get it back in the ship before this shit hits shore.”

  We’d gotten lucky; the waves were mostly keeping the oil near the ship, but it would be a matter of time before the rocks and the ship itself no longer protected the rest of the ocean from the mess. I closed my eyes so I could concentrate, getting a feel for the churning water and the crude polluting it.

  If we got lucky, it’d be a lighter gas, which would evaporate quickly and do minimal damage to the environment. Light gasses and oils registered as an oily warmth feathering over my skin, expressing its more volatile nature.

  The cold, sticky sensation clinging to me promised I had a heavier, toxic crude on my hands, and I’d be pushed to the limits of my skill dealing with it. Worse, it was a mixed blend, and at first glance, it hadn’t been blended well. On second thought, I suspected the tanker carried at least two crude batches, one possibly partially refined. It was also possible it was just one of those batches of oil that couldn’t quite
decide if it was a heavy or a light crude. That left me with one viable candidate for the origin of the oil: OPEC liked trying to control the market, and its suppliers, mostly from the Middle East, would often flood the market with their crude if gas prices got out of hand to make certain demand didn’t die out due to price increases.

  It just wouldn’t do if safer, cleaner alternatives were pursued due to economic factors.

  “Likely an OPEC Basket mixed shipment,” I finally reported. “It’s a huge spill, so I’m going to get as much of it back in the tanker as possible and plug the hole. Flag the wreck as critical. This shit is toxic.”

  “How toxic?”

  “It’s toxic. It’s heavy enough if I don’t get this back into the tanker where it belongs, say goodbye to France’s nice beaches for a few years.”

  A chorus of French curses blasted my ears, and once they started chattering to each other, likely cursing the Middle Eastern oil trade, I began the tedious and exhausting process of pulling the crude oil back to the ship where it belonged. At the same time, I began encasing the tanker’s hull and the rock it perched on in ice.

  The ice might help keep the ship afloat for a little while longer. Maybe.

  We’d find out soon enough.

  Whoever had designed the tanker needed to take a short trip straight to hell. Not only did I have to funnel the crude into the vessel while siphoning seawater out, I had to direct the sludge into various tight compartments and even into busted barrels, which had likely burst when the ship had hit the rocks.

  Unless I was somehow mistaken, there was no way the ship should have been carrying so much crude, not without surpassing its deadweight capacity.

  I’d seen sloppy jobs before in my time as a search and rescue diver, but none with quite so many devastating environmental consequences. Muttering curses in a mix of French and English, I pushed my magic to the brink of my abilities to remove as much of the crude as I could from the water. When I couldn’t get another drop to fit inside the beleaguered hull, I went to work sealing the vessel until someone could do real reinforcement and drain the tanker of its cargo.

  It wouldn’t be pretty.

  “Status, Jack?” Louis asked.

  “Mostly contained, but there’ll need to be a cleanup crew to get the crude I missed. I’m icing the exterior now and trying to secure the vessel to the rocks. I’m going to be useless after this,” I warned.

  “Roger. I have thirty-three minutes of fuel before I need to return to shore.”

  I loved the way the French, without fail, pronounced three as tree. I covered my laugh by clearing my throat. “Head back. I’ll hitch a lift with the rescue rig. This is going to take me a lot longer than thirty minutes, so don’t waste the fuel if they don’t need you in the air for the crew rescue.”

  “We’ve got another ship on route that can pick you up when you’re ready for a lift,” he replied. “The crew has been successfully rescued. Some injuries, but nothing they need a lift from us for. We’re out.”

  “Roger.”

  Not worrying about the helicopter in the squall made my life a little easier yet more difficult, too. With the amount of magic I was expending trying to keep the coast of France from turning into an ecological disaster, I’d barely be able to swim and become a liability to the rescue mission, which needed to get the crew to shore. Until the crude was pumped into a sound ship, I had to stay in the water and maintain my ice.

  Sometimes, I regretted the day I’d discovered I could turn water into steam or ice on my whim. It made my work in search and rescue easier, but it put me in a precarious position.

  One day, someone would ask for a current evaluation. When that happened, my ship would sink.

  As I did every time I dived, I reminded myself as long as I made myself invaluable to search and rescue in Europe and the Mediterranean, no one would ask for an evaluation. Why lose a good resource? I’d gotten so many stamps on my Florida passport I needed to get a new one if I wanted to travel outside of France.

  Apparently, there were only so many times the Royal States embassy, on behalf of Florida, would add extra pages to my passport to make space for new stamps. I sighed at the thought of having to go to an embassy for a passport renewal—or worse, return home.

  Layer upon layer, I thickened my ice to keep the ship secure. It took time, and I shivered despite the protections my wet suit and my magic offered. The chill was the first sign I approached the danger zone from using too much magic. I swam beneath the ship for a better look at my work. To my relief, the area lacked coral or any sign of marine life, which wouldn’t survive my ice.

  I suspected the rocks were too battered by the sea to make a good home for most critters.

  Surfacing, I took a few moments to catch my breath before building myself handholds so I could board the ship and do another check. On a ship the size of the tanker, it was unfortunately easy to miss someone in the chaos.

  My last job would be to do a thorough look over the ship and confirm there wasn’t anyone left to rescue.

  “Jack Alders?” a woman’s voice asked, and her lack of a European accent startled me. Other Americans worked the search and rescue circuits abroad, but I hadn’t known of any women in the area.

  “Here,” I answered.

  “I’m Captain DeSoules of the NYS Triumphant. I’ve been asked to handle communications and coordination with you for the time being. I’ve got 150,000 DWT capacity. How can we be of assistance?”

  How the hell had I gotten saddled with coordinating the damned rescue tanker? How the hell had France gotten New York to detour one of their tankers to help? Where the hell was our standard search and rescue coordinator, who should have been handling communications between the SAR teams, the French navy, and nearby ships? Half the time, I couldn’t understand a damned thing Ginette said, but Louis made certain to remind the woman my French was direly lacking.

  The weather conditions weren’t helping matters any, and I’d be willing to bet my full paycheck Ginette and the rest of the regulars were neck deep in emergencies. Humanity enjoyed testing the sea, and when a storm churned the waters, as often as not, humanity lost.

  For all I knew, the sinking tanker could be a New York vessel; it wasn’t my job to identify the ship.

  Any other day of the week, I would’ve groaned at the thought of working with a New Yorker, but her tanker’s capacity would go a hell of a long way to recovering the floundering ship’s load and keeping it from polluting the ocean. “I’m on board, and I’ll get a path opened to the crude. It’s a mixed batch,” I warned.

  “An earthweaver can deal with the crude, so don’t you worry about that. How much of the load can I fit?”

  “Sec.” I scrambled onto the deck and placed my hand on the water-slicked metal. Judging the rough weight of crude took a lot of concentration and more mental math than I liked. “About half, maybe a little less than half. I got most of the water out of the oil, but it’s a mess here. Some of the oil was stored in barrels, which didn’t survive. I’m guessing this tanker had two primary compartments, and the divider was breached when they went aground. I’m not registering many individual sources of crude.”

  DeSoules spat curses. “It should have more tanks than that, but I’ve seen some pretty dumb shit since I’ve started shipping oil, so it’s entirely possible. That tanker isn’t a standard design, at least not one we use in New York. The tanks could have also been ruptured during the crash, masking the various compartments. Anyway, we’ve got another empty tanker we can detour, but it’ll take a few hours to get her here. How long can you keep the ship in position?”

  I longed to curse, too. A few hours would test my endurance, make it obvious I wasn’t just a washed out borderline working the search and rescue circuit, and otherwise complicate my already complicated life. Add in having to work with New Yorkers, who were moody, shrewd bastards on a good day, and I’d be neck deep in trouble before I made it back to shore. “Depends on the storm,” I admitted. “Wh
at’s the forecast?”

  “Improving. Seas will be high for a while, but the bulk of the storm has made landfall.”

  I needed to stop questioning good fortune and start paying more attention to my job. If New York could provide empty tankers and prevent an environmental catastrophe, I’d accept it without question.

  The how and why wasn’t my problem. Fixing the mess without endangering lives was.

  I took a few moments to collect myself and focus on my next problem, which involved figuring out a way to get a line over to pump the crude from one tanker to the other. High seas would make the pumping process difficult at best. “What do you have for getting this tanker emptied?”

  “A waveweaver and an earthweaver team used to working together. We can get the tanker emptied. We just need you to keep the ship stable. Word on the wire is that you’re an iceweaver?”

  Huh. That was a new one. Usually, the other rescue teams introduced me as a rescue diver with just enough of a waveweaving talent to be useful. Considering the show I’d just put on, it made sense, but it bumped me to having a rare talent. “Yeah. I’m using ice to keep the crude where it belongs.”

  “I can get one of my waveweavers to help back you up. He can’t work with ice, but he can make sure any crude that leaks around your patch stays close and buffer the ship from some of the waves.”

  “A buffer zone would help a lot, especially if he can keep the colder water near the ship. That’ll make my job easier.”

  “That he can do.”

  “I don’t suppose you know who owns this wreckage?”