Within Stranger Aeons

by Fisher, Michael

  “Oh god!”

  The boat struck amidships and at a slight angle. If it had struck head on the entire keel would have crumpled and the Boat would have collapsed in upon itself. A thunderous groan gripped the boat as it ground its portside hull against the massive object it had struck. Galad and Jeyte were thrown forward, rebounding off the helm controls before falling to the deck. Galad tasted blood from where his jaw had struck the wheel. He struggled to his feet, the deck beneath his feet swaying violently as the boat tried to continue its forward motion in spite of the massive object it had just stuck and ground against it with an unearthly wail of tortured metal and the crack of shattering decking.

  For what seemed like hours, the boat shuddered and bucked beneath Galad and Jeyte, eventually settling down into a sickly swaying motion. Both men knew that something serious had happened below decks and that the boat was in serious trouble. Galad got to his feet first and did his best to settle the boat’s motion, but the action of the rudder was being overwhelmed by the engines attempt to push the boat into whatever obstacle they had struck. Galad was about to order Jeyte to cut the throttle but the man was already hauling the twinned levers to the idle position. The engines slowly spun down, stopping the boat’s futile push against whatever they had struck. Galad looked out the forward windows, now covered by a spider’s web of thin cracks; in the dark he could not identify what they had hit. Surely this far out to sea, it had to be another ship but there were no running lights, no portholes shedding their warmth into the night; even now, after a collision, there were no searchlights or alarm klaxons. Galad was about to go on deck to investigate and seek help when a massive groan came from below which caused the entire boat to shudder violently and Jeyte yelped as the throttle controls jumped in his hands.

  “Shut it down, Shut it down!” Galad yelled, but Jeyte had already pulled the ignition circuits, as there never were any keys to begin with, and the engines died.

  “What’s happened?” Jeyte asked, frantic for reassurance though it was obvious what has happened to the boat. “What do we do?”

  “We’ve struck something. Get on deck and try to flag down help. I need to check the engines!”

  Galad slid down the steep stairs heading below decks, leaving Jeyte looking about him confused. He popped his head up back up to confirm that Jeyte was moving. The man was standing in the middle of the bridge not moving, staring out into the night. Stunned to immobility by shock or fear.

  “Jeyte! Jeyte!”

  Jeyte shuddered, as if Galad shouting his name had roused him from a deep sleep. He turned glazed eyes towards the first mate.

  “Huh, wha?”

  “Jeyte, get your ass on deck!”

  Jeyte shook his head and headed out into the dark. Galad noticed he at least had the presence of mind to take a flashlight with him. No doubt the man was in shock, no doubt Galad was himself, but they didn’t have time for shock. He ducked below deck and was quickly surrounded by a cloud of acrid smoke streaming up from the engine room threatening to fill the entire below deck area. Galad hunched over to keep his head beneath the black oily smoke crawling across the ceiling and now leaking onto the bridge. That would become a problem soon, but Galad had to make sure the engines were stopped before the boat caught fire or exploded. He needed to find and rouse the crew, they needed every man on deck to save the boat.

  A resounding boom echoed through the boat and a blast of heat billowed up at Galad’s face. He threw one arm over his face to protect himself from the worse of it but inhaled a lungful of smoke as he did so. He collapsed to the deck and spent precious seconds hacking and coughing to clear his airways. Eventually, he began crawling towards the engine room on his elbows and knees until he reached clearer air and could rise to his feet. Wiping tears from his soot covered face, he began an uncertain run amidships to where the engines were mounted.

  The state of the engine room was appalling. The boat was taking on water through a gash along one wall of the room, the engines were aflame in spite of the water lapping at their base. Here and there, spits of flame ignited and sputtered out on the oil sheen covering the water’s surface. In the middle of this was Jean Paul looking like an old testament devil surrounded by the flames of hell. The Nigerian engineers was operating an ancient pump trying to clear water from the engine room, and at the same time dowse the engines with a fire extinguisher—he wasn’t making headway with either task. Galad took the extinguisher from Jena Paul, noticing how badly burnt the man’s hands were, and set about spraying foam across the burning engines. After a few minutes, Jean Paul had managed to force most of the sea water through the pump, along a leaking hose shoved unceremoniously out a porthole, and back into the sea. While Jean Paul dealt with the flooding waters, Galad had extinguished the fire that threatened to consume the ship.

  Once the immediate threats were taken care of, the pair examined the engine room. Broad cracks had appeared between the wooden hull beams which had separated during the collision. Luckily they had mostly rebounded into shape and the room was relatively watertight. The initial impact had allowed a lot of water, but hadn’t shattered any beams or twisted the keel—which would have doomed the boat. Galad helped hammer a handful of chocks, wedges and braces into place to help seal the worst of the remaining leaks then sagged against an overturned metal cabinet, while Jean Paul bandaged his burnt hands with strips of cloth torn from his shirt.

  “You okay?” Galad asked the engineer.

  “Yeah. You?”

  “Mostly. Can you manage here?” Galad asked. “I need to find the captain.”

  “I think so. Where’s the rest of the crew?” Jean Paul gasped clutching his damaged hands close to his chest.

  Galad look out the hatch leading to the rest of the boat. The crew should have rallied by now to save the boat. Where were they?

  “I have no idea.” Admitted Galad, “They should be here by now. Can you get the engines running?”

  Jean Paul looked at the engines and the mess around him. There weren’t any open fires and the bracing was keeping the ocean at bay—for now. Galad knew that might change as soon as they got underway.

  “Sloshing diesel on a hot engine is a recipe for disaster. As long as we don’t do that again, I think I can clean up the engine and get underway in under an hour.” Jean Paul looked at the walls of the engine room and the wooden bracing jammed against the hull. “We’ll need to go slow to keep pressure off the hull, but I think we’ll be fine as long as the rest of the boat is sound. Where is the Captain?”

  “I don’t know,” Galad said, left the engine room, “But I better find him and the rest of the crew.”

  It didn’t take long to find the rest of the crew, or the captain.

  Akoni was slumped against the galley door ankle deep in water. Galad called to him, but he seemed not to notice until he was only a few feet away from him. Galad could see freshly placed beams and chocks holding the door in place, but even from halfway down the hall, he could see water spilling from the edges of the galley’s hatch. The galley had taken the brunt of the collision as it was set forward of the engines and close to the boats prow. Galad steeled himself and looked through the tempered glass window set within the solid metal of the galley door.

  It was horrific, the crew had been enjoying their supper in the mess or sleeping. Galad looked through the porthole and saw his crewmates suspended in the frigid seawater. Their faces were pale and bloated and their limbs limp. The remnants of the bedding were strewn about them. The hammocks the crew used for berths, once strung about the galley, now served as shrouds for the corpses tangled in the sodden cloth. Plastic cutlery and tin plates floated in the remaining current within the room, bumping against the bodies, as if urging them to finish their meals.

  There would be no more meals for these men.

  “I tried, but there was too much water.’

  Galad looked down at his captain, seated in water up to his hips. Akoni was rocking back and forth.

 
; “I tried.”

  “You have to get up. Get up and help me Captain or we’ll all die.”

  The usually strong, driven, even vicious captain was oblivious to the fact that his first mate was even present, let alone that his ship was sinking about him.

  “Captain!” Galad yelled directly into his captain’s face, but to no effect. He grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him hard. “Captain Akoni!”

  The touch of his first mate’s hands, more than the shaking, brought Akoni around. He exploded up from his crouched position, throwing Galad back against a bulkhead.

  “NO!”

  Galad rebounded off the bulkhead and into his arms of his captain. Akoni wrapped his hands around Galad’s throat and, using all his strength, pushed him down to the deck and into the frigid water. Air rushed from Galad’s lungs as Akoni placed all his weight on his back, all the while tightening his grip.

  “I did what I could! I had to do it! I didn’t want to!”

  Galad’s vision began to dim and his lungs ached for oxygen. He tried to fight off Akoni, to twist beneath him, to get his face out of the water and draw precious air into his lungs, but Akoni was too strong.

  “I DON’T WANT THIS!”

  The strength was leaving his limbs and even the shouts of his captain were becoming dulled and muted. His vision failed and Galad slipped into unconsciousness.

  TWO

  Galad came to slowly, feeling every muscle in his body strain and tingle as they struggled to draw oxygen into their fibres. His lungs burnt from lack of air and his head throbbed, but he was alive. Akoni stood above him, slamming a clip into a solid looking Russian rifle. The massive Nigerian looked down at Galad with a look that seemed half disgust and half embarrassment; either emotion was dangerous.

  “You awake?” Akoni asked, thrusting the AK-47 at Galad without waiting for a reply. “Get up. We have work.”

  Galad sloshed upright and managed to catch the rifle before it fell into the water. The water wouldn’t have hurt the weapon, but Akoni would no doubt have punished him if he had. Now armed, Galad was tempted to turn the rifle on his captain. Then he noticed an automatic pistol in Akoni’s waistband and knew the man would drop him in an instant if he made a move on him. All sign of the man’s breakdown had fled, leaving only the ruthless Nigerian pirate. The same violent, driven man whose greed had taken him across Africa to seek bounty in an unfamiliar sea.

  Akoni had always been a man on the edge, Galad wondered if he had slipped over it now. He got to his feet and followed his captain above deck.

  THREE

  Above deck the damage to the Boat was hard to see. A slight crumpling of the deck railing, a few shattered windows and a steady, thankfully thin, stream of smoke coming from the rear. There was no hint of the carnage below deck or the dead. What Galad notice immediately was the massive wall of steel plates the boat was wedged up against. Plates which arced above the boat in gentle curve before transforming into a sheer cliff of steel. The ship they had struck was immense, a freighter or tanker of some sort.

  Galad looked at his captain and saw the greed in his eyes. This would not end well.

  “We board.” Akoni announced.

  Galad looked over at the boat’s bridge where Jeyte was watched them. Jeyte had the radio’s headset back over his ears. At first, he thought the man was trying to radio for help or contact the ship, though when Galad looked closer, he could see that Jeyte was moving his lips, chanting something. That damn radio broadcast again. Even in these dire circumstances, Jeyte was still was trying to locate that radio source, it was an obsession. It wasn’t the most insane thing all thing considered. He turned back to his captain who was swinging a grappling hook attached to thick rope punctuated by knots every two feet.

  “We can’t do that.”

  “And why not?”

  Akoni swung the rope around and up. It struck the side of the ship and rebounded back to their boat. He reeled in the rope and prepared for a second try.

  “There must be dozens of crew on a ship this size.”

  Akoni swung the rope and the grapple up again. Again it failed to catch.

  “Then where are they? Why do they not come?”

  Galad considered this. Where was the crew and why were the running lights off? What was going on? Was it possible the ship was a derelict? He placed a hand against the towering steel wall of the ship’s bow. It was cold as he expected, but it was also covered in a greenish slime which no crew worth their salt would allow to accumulate. He picked at a flake of paint jutting through the slime. The paint easily peeling back to reveal the ship’s steel hull. It was badly pitted and scored with rust. This ship had been out to sea for a long time, and was in dire need of maintenance, perhaps it was derelict after all.

  “This isn’t right.”

  Akoni looked back at his first mate, his hand holding the grapple more like a weapon than a tool.

  “What isn’t right?”

  “This… this isn’t right,” Galad stammered, his bravery blanching in the face of his captain,

  “This is why we are here,”Akoni stepped closer, waving the grapple in a broad arc to indicate the ship, ”This is it, our big score.”

  “Something’s wrong.”

  “Of course something’s wrong. She’s adrift and I’m going to take her.

  Akoni turned back to the ship and swung the grapple high over the ship’s railing. This time it caught, in an instant, the large man was climbing up the side of the ship. Galad followed reluctantly, his feet sliding against the ooze-coated hull while his thighs gripped the knotted rope. Perhaps if the crew had abandoned the ship, they could claim it as salvage and not piracy. It was an encouraging thought but did little to setting the gnawing pit of fear in his stomach. After an eternity, he struggling over the railing of the ship, concentrating not to lose his grip on the slime covered railing and fall the twenty odd feet back into the ocean.

  His captain was waiting as Galad clambered over the railing. Of course he didn’t help his first mate onboard. He was too busy trying to pry open the rust covered hatch which would allow him to enter the ship proper.

  “Give us a hand, Galad.”

  The hatch was tightly sealed and covered in the mold and rust that was everywhere. It took an immense amount of effort to open. Eventually Akoni ended up using the butt of Galad’s AK-47 to break the rust and hauled open the hatch. The air within the ship reeked with a combination of mold, rot and some unrecognizable corruption. The air was foul beyond belief. Galad gagged uncontrollably, but Akoni simply covered his face with a thick palm and pushed in.

  They ascended quickly, climbing to the ship’s bridge. Along the way, Galad noted that all of the hatches were sealed shut. He would expect this of a ship expecting rough weather, but a working ship would have many of their hatches secured open for ease of access. A ship hastily abandoned would also still have many doorways open, but this ship was sealed tight. The two men climbed the steep narrow stairs to the ship’s bridge, coming up hard against a final steel door. It took both of them straining to crank the wheel and unsealed the hatch, Finally, the hatch gave way with an awful screech that surely alerted every able bodied seaman on the ship—but there was no response.

  No clatter of boots on metal decking, no voices raised in alarm and no sirens or klaxon warning of intruders.

  No one came, and then they were on the bridge.

  Galad preparing himself as best he could, wrapping a thick, woollen scarf about his mouth and nose, but is was little help blocking the putrid all-pervasive stench within the room; but the smell and texture of the wool distracted him enough that he could enter that charnel house. A charnel house it was, the bridge was occupied with the corpses of three seamen, each evidently having died of exposure or dehydration. Two were huddled against the outer lock evidently attempting to escape the constraints of their vessel—unsuccessfully it seemed.

  A third was still seated at his post, apparently a radio technician or some such. Akoni
was standing over this corpse pulling a wallet out of its breast pocket. He was struggling to get the leather billfold free without actually touching the body. It struck Galad as funny to watch his captain, usually so strong and undeniably vicious to so gingerly pull and pry at the object. At least he thought it was funny until the object came free with a sickeningly wet sucking sound and Akoni had to shake scraps of flesh and cloth free of it to open it. Galad doubled over and heaved, emptying his stomachs contents upon the metal deck.

  “Galad! For God’s sake man, its rank enough in here as it is.”

  Galad wiped the bile from his mouth with one end of the scarf and tried to regain his composure. The room was vile and the remnants of vomit in his mouth almost made him throw up again.

  “Hmmm… German.” Akoni muttered, pulling a few bills from the wallet before throwing it to Galad.

  The wallet contained a driver’s license and German passport, both of which were old and stained nearly beyond recognition. There were a couple of pictures of what Galad assumed was the officer’s family. A charming depiction of an ideal German family; husband and his wife holding a young boy by his hand set against the backdrop of a well-groomed backyard. The picture was old and yellowed with age and Galad wondered if the father in the picture was the father of this dead officer. Was there a grandfather somewhere grieving his lost son, or had this officer long ago put his own father to rest in the cold ground?

  “Find me a manifest. I want to know what salvage we’ve got here.”

  Galad looked about the bridge for a log book, a quartermaster’s legger, anything that would indicate what the ship was carrying. He estimated that the ship itself was probably worth a few thousands dollars just as scrap metal and salvaged electricals. If the engines and hydraulics were still good, then it could easily be worth a quarter million or more. Of course, Akoni wouldn’t be satisfied with that, he would only be satisfied if its holds were filled with European gold bullion.