Red Eden: Sons of Mars | Chapter 7: Lochness Monster
“Today is yar lucky day,” Dave said to the bound and gagged ship captain.
Jack, Derek and Erwin sat on their ATVs on the deck of the galley. Jack wished he could have negotiated with the Captain under better circumstances. He and his companions were ambassadors, after all. Associating with the Murphy's did their image no good.
Dave growled into the Captain's ear. “Ya see that big fellow over there? His name is Jack. He's a friend o' the Murphy's. And in case ya haven't noticed, he's not from this world. He needs ya to take him and his crew across the sea. Can ya do that, Captain?”
The Captain nodded fervently.
Jack would have to apologize to him later.
Dave patted the Captain on the cheek. “You treat them right and do as they say, ya hear?” Dave drew his knife and tickled the Captain's chin with it. “Or I'll find ya, gut ya and feed ya to the fishes.”
Jack cringed. Totally gotta apologize.
Dave cut the Captain's bonds and motioned for his men to free the ship's crew. He sheathed his knife and waved goodbye. “I have a feeling we'll meet again, Jack. Perhaps then ya can tell me more about yar adventures.” With that, he and his crew departed.
The Captain got on his feet and rubbed his wrists.
“We're not really friends, Dave and I,” Jack said. “He just really likes us.” He extended his hand and put on a friendly smile. “Jack Hanlon.”
The Captain tentatively shook Jack's hand. “Raymond Lemieux.”
Jack clapped the Captain's shoulder. “Take it easy, Ray. We ain't gonna hurt ya. Can you take us to Scotland?”
“What port?”
“There's an old naval base north-west of Glasgow. You know Glasgow?”
“That is one of our stops... Well, that was before those raiders took everything.”
“I'm very sorry to hear that. We had nothing to do with it. We're not with those guys. Just be glad you weren't in town.” Jack shuddered at the memory of what he'd seen.
“Yes, I suppose my crew and I should count our lucky stars, though we – I am absolutely ruined. Fifteen thousand silver clovars' worth of cargo. Gone.” The Captain cried into his hands.
Oh jeez. Jack sucked at these things. “There, there. You still got the ship, and your lives.”
“My life is utterly worthless. I cannot possibly repay the loan I took to finance this foolish adventure. Oh, Marie, you bitch. You whore. You were right. I'm a fool-fool-fool! I should just throw myself into the sea.”
“I don't mean to kick you while you're down,” Derek said, “but you had to know the Murphy's were coming. Why did you stay?”
“Because that spineless, fork-tongued, rat-face of a mayor reassured us his men would hold the walls. And the prices were too tempting. People willing to pay triple-quadruple the usual rate. Well, the Mayor snuck away with half the merchant fleet. I cannot believe the others did not tell me. I drank with them. Shared bread with them. Even lent one of them my waggon. Serpents. All of them!”
“Maybe they saw you as competition,” Derek said.
The Captain glowered. “Then I shall have to hunt them down and kill them.”
“After you take us to the naval base,” Jack said.
“And why should I do anything for you?”
Jack was stunned. “Why because Dave...”
“You said you were not friends with that animal. Is that a lie?”
“No.”
“Then we have no business with you. We are going back to France.”
Jack heard Erwin snort. “Good job, Jack.”
Jack felt his face turn hot. “Listen here, Captain. You don't want to make me...” Call Dave back. Jack couldn't bring himself to say it.
The Captain regarded Jack with disdain. “And who are you anyway? Where are you from? That's no accent I have ever heard before.”
“We're from Mars.”
Captain Lemieux widened his eyes. “You mean from the stars?”
Jack nodded. “Yes. It would be well worth the trouble to prove yourself a friend of Mars. We have,” he drew his Solokov and showed it to the Captain, “really big guns that go boom-boom. You live in a violent world, my friend, and you need money. We can hook you up.”
“You have weapons to give to me?”
“Not right now, but in the future...”
“No. Now or I won't take you.”
“Goddamn it. This is what I get for being nice? I could've threatened your ass. I still can.”
“If you're going to threaten me, then do it. If not, then bargain.”
“You're not scared anymore?”
“Should I be?”
Jack looked to his companions. Erwin patted his Dapao shredder. Derek shook his head.
Jack decided he couldn't bring himself to threaten an innocent man. “Alright, Lemieux, you damn shrew. Here's what we have.” He took off his bag, opened it and grabbed a fistful of no-name brand nutrient bars. “These are, uh, gourmet cereal bars made from premium nuts and grains. Highly nutritious, and also delicious!”
Lemieux took a bar, opened it and took a bite. He spat it out. “This is horrible. Tastes like leftover food from the Age of Eden.”
“They're built to last. You can feed a lot of hungry people with these. There's a war going on. That means famine, right? Quadruple prices, you said.”
Lemieux shook the nutrient bar at Jack. “Weapons.”
“Look, buddy, what you see is all we got. We need them for our own use.”
Captain Lemieux pointed at Erwin. “He's got two.”
Erwin grabbed Lemieux's finger and twisted it. “I'm giving you three seconds to accept Jack's offer before I rip your puny finger off its socket.”
Lemieux fell to his knees, screaming. “I accept. Please let go!”
Erwin forcefully let go, drew his Dapao and aimed across the crew. “Get your asses to work. Man those oars. Lower the sails. Anyone else who gives us trouble...” He roared and blasted his shredder at one of the lifeboats, shredding it to woodchips.
The crew jumped to action.
Lemieux backed away, bowing so low his forehead nearly touched the deck. “To Glasgow, right away!”
“North-west of Glasgow,” Jack said.
“Yes, yes!” Lemieux ran into a cabin and shut the door.
Erwin turned on Jack. “Next time another one of these primitives try to bargain with us, I will do the talking.”
Stunned, Jack looked to Derek.
Derek shrugged. “Erwin gets the job done. You talk too much.”
“Yeah, but... principles.”
“I know. The Book of Debts and all... We'll put this one on our tab. When all this is over, we'll compensate Lemieux for his troubles.”
“Nope. He was gonna kill himself anyway,” Erwin said.
Jack sighed. “I need time to think.” He walked to the stern of the ship and leaned on the railing. Lost in thought, he gazed at the burning town as the ship slowly departed from the port.
***
The sun shone brightly in the sky, and the sea was calm. Jack, Erwin, Derek and Captain Lemieux lounged on the deck, having a laugh over a game of poker.
“So I say to Marie,” the drunken captain said, “I will tolerate your pins and needles no more, Succubus. I shall be free from you and your insufferable family. And that hag you call your mother shall rue the day she called me, Raymond Lemieux, a duck.”
“That mean something in French?” Derek asked.
“In France, we have a delicacy. The duck eats. It gets fat. Then we cut out the liver and serve it on a fancy dish.”
“So she's comparing you to a fat, useless duck?”
“No. She's saying she wants to cut me open and gorge herself on my liver. She's a harpy. Like mother like daughter, as they say.” Lemieux took another swig from his flask.
“Take it easy on the whisky,” Jack said. “The way you're going, you might just end up with a fatty liver.”
Lemieux wiped his mouth and burped. “Ah, what does it matter? Once I return to France, the bank will take my ship and throw me in prison. Death would be preferable to living through that humiliation.”
“So don't go back,” Erwin said. “If I were you, I'd sail this ship faraway.”
“And do what? Pirating? I do not have it in me to be like those savage Murphy's. And my crew. They're good, honest men. And capable too. They'll find work under another captain. They need to go home.”
Jack glanced at one of the crewmen. The man looked pretty rough around the edges, though Jack's mother always taught him not to judge a book by its cover.
“Capitaine!” A boy, probably no older than fifteen, hopped down from one of the masts. “J'ai vu un monstre dans la mer!” His eyes were wide and his face pale as the moon.
Captain Lemieux waved his flask around. “Es-tu saoul, mon garçon?”
Huffing, the boy responded, “Tu as assez bu pour nous deux.”
The Captain guffawed. “He's cheeky one, that boy.”
“What's going on?” Jack asked. “He looks like he's seen a ghost.”
“The boy thinks he saw a monster. Ah, the imagination of the young.”
Jack noticed some crewmen hollering from the bow of the ship.
“If you're paying him to watch for trouble, maybe you should listen,” Derek said.
“Oh alright.” Lemieux pushed his heavy frame off the table. “Lead the way, boy.”
Jack, his companions and the Captain followed the boy to the bow of the ship. They joined the other crewmen by the railing. A few hundred metres ahead, a long grey body lied dormant on the water surface. The creature had a prominent hump on its back and fins on the back.
“That a whale?” Derek asked.
Jack accessed the virtual interface projected by his helmet visor and zoomed in on the creature. A periscope rose out of the creature's hump and swivelled around until the lens was pointed directly at Jack. He turned off zoom and took an involuntary step back. “That's no whale.”
Lemieux leaned over the railing. “Is that a dolphin swimming towards us?”
“Torpedo!” Derek grabbed Jack and the two of them hit the deck just as an explosion rocked the galley. A cascade of sea water rained down on them. The bow of the ship slammed back into the water and started sinking. Men screamed and barrels rolled down the deck.
Erwin sprinted away.
Jack got to his feet, helped Derek up and ran after the Huoxing man. “Erwin, grab our stuff!”
Erwin grabbed the bags and tossed them over. Jack caught his bag, slung it onto his back and grabbed his Solokov. Erwin grabbed his own guns, as did Derek.
Lemieux half-staggered half-jogged up the deck, waving his flash around. “Abandon ship. Save yourselves men. My end has come.” He dropped to his knees and downed the rest of his whisky.
“Come on!” Derek waved Jack over to a lifeboat.
Jack grabbed Lemieux and pulled the struggling man towards the boat.
“Let me die,” Lemieux bawled. “I'm just a useless lump of coal.”
Jack hauled the drunken man onto the boat. “You'll thank me later.”
“The lasers,” Derek said. “They're with my ATV.”
“Shit. The ATVs! Erwin, come help.” Jack ran towards their parked vehicles. By now, the deck tilted at a dangerous thirty degree angle. The ship started to groan under its own weight.
Jack jumped on Derek's ATV and Erwin hopped on his own. They drove back to the lifeboat. By now, it was packed with shouting men.
“Ditch the ATVs,” Derek said. “Just toss the crate.”
Jack and Erwin grabbed the laser crate and passed it to Derek.
“Ain't no room for us,” Erwin yelled.
A bone-chilling snap signalled that their time was up.
“Lower the lines!” One of the crewmen screamed.
The others cut the rope from its hitch and lowered the boat down to the water.
“Just grab a barrel,” Derek shouted on the way down.
Jack turned his gaze to his beautiful midnight-black ATV. A feeling of profound sadness overcame him. “No,” he whispered.
Erwin grabbed him. “Jack, let's go!”
They ran towards the rapidly sinking bow of the ship where a bunch of barrels now floated in the water. Jack leaped and caught one of the barrels. The weight of his bag and his gun threatened to pull him down. He tightened his grip around the slippery barrel and held on for dear life.
The ship snapped again, this time shearing in half.
“Aaah!” Erwin splashed into the water, grabbed a barrel and dipped below the surface of the water. Over the radio, Erwin continued to scream, verging on squealing. “Aaah! Aaaah! Aaaaah!”
“Jesus, Erwin, just hold on,” Jack said. “You can breathe underwater with your helmet on.”
“I'm under the fucking water!”
“As long as you're not sinking. Calm down.”
“I've never seen so much water in my life. I can't swim.”
Jack could feel himself getting sucked down with the sinking ship. “Oh shit. Just hold on tight, Erwin, and we'll resurface just fine!” He wrapped his legs around the barrel and plunged into the dark, blue sea. The ambient glow of his virtual interface lit up the inside of his helmet. His frantic breathing had fogged up his visor. In the corner of his virtual interface, he saw that his oxygen usage had spiked but remained within limit. As long as light shone on the biofilm on the surface of his helmet, whether natural light or from the helmet's internal LED, the genetically modified cyanobacteria would continue to convert carbon dioxide and water back into oxygen.
He rose to the surface and broke into daylight. “Erwin, still with me?”
Erwin bobbed next to him. “Get me outta here, Jack.”
“I see Derek and the others rowing towards us.”
A few minutes later, the boat arrived. Derek leaned over and cast them a line. “Don't let go of those barrels. Hold the line. We'll drag you with us.”
“Where are we?” Jack asked.
“We're close to Glasgow. You can see land just ahead.”
“The sub still out there?”
“It dived. Hopefully it doesn't come back for round two.”
“We're too late. She got the subs. She got the nukes.”
“All she needs now is the tritium gas. Save your energy, Jack. We'll talk once we get to shore.”
Link to table of content:
https://www.minds.com/ME2007Vigil/blog/red-eden-sons-of-mars-table-of-content-967907646284259328
Red Eden: Sons of Mars is the sequel to my first book, Red Eden: Homeworld Bound. To catch up on this series, please click the following link, which will re-direct you to the table of content:
https://www.minds.com/ME2007Vigil/blog/red-eden-homeworld-bound-table-of-content-913570321625583616
You can purchase the full novel on Amazon at this link: