An excerpt from The Admiral, a swashbuckling tale of cli-fi by new author James Gilbert -- a glimpse into the world of our future, in which sea levels have risen to unimagined heights and climate change-induced storms have wreaked havoc. Much of society as we know it has devolved into warring clans, but the Admiral saw some of it coming, and created a floating offshore community called Akkadia, which his granddaughter Aqual helps to protect as a member of the Offshore Guard:
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Swimming between the deep swells, Aqual tried to keep her mind focused on the challenge ahead.
It would be easy to succumb to the panic Aqual felt welling up, seemingly, from the black depths over which she was swimming. Nobody on Akkadia knew that behind her singular fearlessness she frequently felt insecure, self-doubt sometimes seizing her unexpectedly like a sudden bout of claustrophobia. Proof, she thought warily, trying hard to keep at bay the cold jabbing fingers of self-doubt, of her grandfather's lesson about judging people from what you see on the outside. People share their strengths in the company of others, he had said, but suffer their weaknesses alone.
Now, enveloped in complete darkness, swimming between a bottomless ocean and an infinite, inky-black sky, she felt the terror creeping out of her gut and up her spine. She tried to rationalize away the fear, but found herself slipping further and further into panic. It wasn't a specific fear, of sharks or the ever-more-numerous jellyfish, but something more haunting; a chink in her armor born of what, fear of dying? Of failing? Of showing the world what a weak, cowardly creature she really was? The cold, hard knot in her stomach grew tighter with each stroke. Caught between her dark thoughts, and the equal blackness of the sea, Aqual suddenly pulled herself upright, heart racing and gasping for breath through tightly clenched teeth that still held her knife between aching jaws.
On the steely edge of full-throttle panic, Aqual rode upwards with a heaving swell, twisting her head from side to side to look for any scrap of reality to keep herself from spinning out of control. A star, a piece of seaweed, anything to hold onto that didn't emanate from her cartwheeling imagination. Out of the corner of her eye she caught a glimmer of the pirate's lights and remembered why she was there, swimming alone on an
uncaring, unknowing sea. To her surprise, she was closer to the flickering light than she thought she should be, and this gave her a whiff of renewed confidence. She slowly came back to her body, focusing on the way the warm ocean caressed her every flank and crevice, and remembering how wonderful these sensations had been when skinny-dipping off Akkadia with friends and lovers over the years.
As if to spur her on, the floating spear shank jabbed her shoulder. Aqual lowered her head back and resumed her stroke, now concentrating on pulling as quickly and silently as she could toward the flickering lights.
She swam until she was about 100 meters off the boats, then stopped to take her bearings. Carefully, she took the blade from between her teeth to give her jaws a rest. She wanted to keep the captive boat between her and the pirates. She made a silent prayer they were still on the deck of their own boat, drinking or smoking themselves into oblivion. She strained her eyes looking for any sign of a lookout, her ears for any conversation. Drawing blanks, she returned the blade to her mouth, and slowly stroked her way to the center of the sloop. When she was a scant 10 meters away, she stopped swimming altogether and listened again for any sign of life.
After a few long seconds, she thought she could hear the low murmur of conversation above the low creaking of the lateen's rigging and the steady whir of the ancient electric wind generator above the sloop's stern. She couldn't hear what was being said, or even what language was being spoken. She paddled slowly to the sloop's stern, gently pulled the spear cord and retied it more closely to her waist so it wouldn't clank against the hull. She inched her way towards the rudder, which was swaying slightly from side to side as the hull rose and fell in the waves. Reaching up, she carefully grabbed the rudderpost at the wide upper hinge strap and ever so slowly raised her small frame to bring her eyes above deck level. Aqual couldn't see into the higher deck of the pirate vessel, but she could see part of the sprawled form on the foredeck and the hunched figure next to the cabin top, just as she had seen them on the kitecam. She could also see how the boats were moored together, with two lengthwise spring lines, and bow and stern lines. Rope, not chain, she saw with relief.
