by Hugo Navikov
Like sat with like, the professional sailors in one corner of the room, the scientists and techies in another, the communications crew in another (Kevin sat with them, not with the other boat chiefs, because he didn’t have anything particularly interesting to say other than maybe Keep your comms on the right frequency) and then the chiefs of the mission in the final corner, standing in front of their table. The actual captain of their little seafaring fleet was the chief of the maritime captains, of course, and he stood with the other three. Sean Muir was there too, of course.
Mickey rapped an empty coffee mug against the table to get everyone’s attention.
“This is it,” Mickey said, speaking first since his words were the most general. “Tomorrow we start hunting Gigadon. If we succeed, we will all be richer than our wildest dreams. If we fail, we get nothing. This is fair, because we have been outfitted by Jake Bentneus himself with tens of millions of dollars of equipment. We have the best of the best in every department. If we blow it with that kind of advantage, we deserve to float home with our heads down.
“But that ain’t gonna happen. We’re gonna beat this damned dinosaur and bring its head back to rot on the beach.” Mickey laughed at himself. “That came out kind of more dramatic than I intended. Anyway, the mission director of our expedition wants to say a few words. Sean?”
Sean Muir stood from leaning against the table and cleared his throat. The only sound heard was the water slapping against the sides of the boat. Every set of eyes was on him, every ear cocked to hear what this near-mythic figure was going to say. He had predicted the deep-sea dinosaurs; he had gone to prison because of the cable sabotage murder; he was a cipher.
“I’m very happy to be leading this expedition. We will learn a great deal as we hunt Gigadon, findings that will astonish the world. But first and foremost, we’re going to bring Jake Bentneus what he has paid us to bring him. Our science chief and her team will direct us, our sailing captain and his sailors will place us right where we need to be, our communications chief and his team will record it all for posterity, and our winch team will make it possible to actually catch, kill, and bring this thing to shore. The winch and other equipment operators will also be in charge of ordnance.” He could feel a tenseness in the room at these words and smiled. “Don’t worry. We have former military weapons experts working under the winch ‘chief,’ but they’re autonomous. We won’t have Slipjack blasting us with the giant laser.”
Slipjack spit right on the deck and then spit out words that sounded a lot like “duck shoe.”
Mickey jumped in. “Actually, boss, it’s a maser. Wait ’til you guys see it in action. Holy smokes.”
Sean nodded in thanks for the distraction from Slipjack and continued, “If any of you have a concern about how I’m doing things, get with your chief and have them talk to me about it. If the problem is your chief, then just come to me directly. Or email me from your ship’s connected computer. And that’s it, I guess. Oh, one last thing. I know it’s the elephant—or maybe the whale—in the room, and let’s just get it out of our minds right now.”
The room couldn’t have been more silent if they were in dry dock.
“I did not murder my wife.”
If the sound of eyes going wide open could have been heard, it would have been the only sound in the grave-still room.
Sean looked at every crew member as his gaze swept the room, ready for any rebuttal or question. None came, and Sean nodded. “Thank you. Holly, you’re up.”
The science chief stood from her leaning position and said, “Hey, I’m Holly Patterson, the chief of science and tech on the mission. What I want to say is that all of us should be open to teaching and learning at every point of this unprecedented mission. If there’s something technical that you need to know, radio us at Sharkasm or, if we’re here on Spit, just come up and ask us. We may very well do the same to you if there’s something we need to know that falls within your wheelhouse. The more we share information and knowledge, the more able to autonomously do our part we will be. That’s all I wanted to say.” She stepped back and leaned against the table once again.
Stepping up next was the captain of the sailing crew speaking to the need to work together—and keep the ships as a whole together as much as possible—during even calm seas. “Because the huge flotilla of lubbers is already arriving. They’re going to be packing a lot of stupid into each of those tubs, and we need to stay out of their way. Most of them should give up soon enough, since maybe they know fishing, maybe even shark hunting, but none of them have any idea what taking down this big bastard is going to require of them. And of us. So give them the right of way so they can screw up faster and get the hell out of here.” Quiet laughs spread through the room, and the captain smiled before turning solemn as he said, “I believe in every member of this crew: science, communications, operations, sailing, all of you. God bless this mission and everyone on it.”
Mickey applauded with everyone else as he stood from against the table. “All right, that’s what we—”
“Luch, you pile of shit,” Slipjack snarled as he took a long step forward to the place where the others had spoken, “it’s my turn.”
Mickey’s eye twitched, but he put on the appearance of good humor and said, “The floor is yours, Mister McCracken.”
Slipjack scoffed and mumbled, “Damn right, it is.” He shook off the attempted insult to his person and hooked his thumbs around his suspenders. “You all know me. I’m Slipjack, chief of the winch crew and over the weapons guys and all that. I want to address an area of possible concern around here. By that, I mean the cable.”
A murmur spread through the mess.
“I’m taking special precautions to make sure that we don’t have no problems like what happened on the previous Muir mission where the boss’s wife was …”
Silence. They could practically hear Slipjack weighing his words.
“… killed. Where she lost her life due to an issue with the cable. I’m assuring everyone here that a close eye will be kept on every inch of that line as it unspools. And it’s gonna unspool only if we got to send somebody down, probably el capitan. But all of us, we’re hoping that the Gigalodon—”
“Gigadon,” Holly couldn’t help but whisper at him.
“—is gonna come to us. It’s got a taste for the surface now, that’s what the eggheads say, so we on the operations crew or whatever it’s called are gonna be ready.”
Nods and a smattering of applause followed. Mickey stepped back up and—
“One more thing,” Slipjack said, and eyed them all. “Just to clear the air, like Muir did.”
He had the floor. Mickey stepped back, silently hoping Slipjack was going to say something about the weather conditions or something, but knowing damned well he wasn’t.
“Katherine Muir and I were in love.”
Mickey actually had to hold Sean back in his sudden fury.
“Kat and I were in love, and she wanted to leave her husband, our Captain Supreme. For me. But she couldn’t find the will to hurt her husband’s precious feelings. I don’t know what woulda happened if things didn’t go FUBAR back then, but the only thing that kept us from being together was her telling her husband about us. That was before we headed out for the expedition. She told him and then she was, like I said, killed. Sean Muir was convicted and sentenced, if that means anything to anybody. If it wasn’t for Jake Bentneus and his revenge mission, our Dear Leader would still be rotting in solitary.”
He turned and looked at Sean, who was still behind Mickey’s strong arm but wasn’t trying to get at Slipjack anymore. He just looked weary and resigned to this asshole saying whatever the hell he was going to say so they could all get out of there.
“Speaking of which, Cap—why were you shut down in that hole for an entire year? They mighta kept you in solitary for the rest of your time there. You musta done something seriously bad.”
Sean’s heavy-lidded eyes now reflected his wearines
s, even surrender. “There was a fight in the yard. A guy got shanked—stabbed—to death. We were in lockdown for a week, and then they took me to solitary.”
“Why you?”
“Jesus Christ, Slipjack,” Mickey said.
“Come on, boss, why you?”
“Because I’m the one who shanked him.”
The room exploded into shouts and frenzied activity. Some of the men rushed at Slipjack and others pushed them back. Or maybe they were trying to get at Sean Muir.
Mickey yelled over the chaos, “That’s it, get back to your boats! Let’s run a smoother mission than this briefing, for Chrissake, or we’re all gonna die out here! Dismissed!”
The crew filed out, some throwing glances at Slipjack, others at Sean. But they left in a relatively orderly manner, leaving just the chiefs in the mess. When Sean looked at each of them, he saw the disappointment and suspicion in their eyes.
Mickey stepped up to Slipjack, his bulk making the skinny winch chief look even smaller. “Get out of here, asshole, or God help me, I will pitch you over the side of the goddamn boat.”
Slipjack hurried out, but at the door he called back, “You all heard that—Mickey Luch just threatened to kill me.” Then he slid out of the room.
Mickey turned and said, tears just about forming in his eyes, “Shit, Sean, why didn’t you tell me about this?”
Sean smiled and said, “Because it’s a lie. I never stabbed anybody, even though there was a fight where a guy got killed. I wasn’t even in the yard at the time.”
The sailing captain furrowed his brow, plainly unable to get his mind around whatever the hell was going on. “Doctor Muir—Sean—why … why would you say such a thing, tell a lie like this in front of your entire crew?”
“I want Slipjack to stay far away from me. He tried to take my wife away, and when she wouldn’t go, he set up the cable to kill me on that test dive so he could have her to himself. But he didn’t figure on Kat replacing me in the sub, and he killed her instead.”
“S-So the affair?” Holly said in distress. “That was true, what Slipjack said?”
Sean nodded, but then shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe. I still think he was blackmailing her into sex with him. He was delusional, thinking she loved him, and so he tried to murder me, ended up murdering her. That’s all I got.”
“Blackmailing her? With what?”
“I don’t know. He might have gotten ahold of some of her early, unpublished speculation … about marine lizards living near sea-floor hydrothermal vents.”
The disappointed and even frightened looks in his chiefs’ eyes were replaced with looks of sympathy and camaraderie. Holly gave him a hug, the crew captain shook his hand, and Mickey patted him on the shoulder as they left Sean alone in the mess.
But a few seconds later, Mickey came back. “Boss, I need to ask you something. We’ve been friends a long time, so I just want a simple answer, not a lie.”
“All right.”
“Why were you in solitary for a frickin’ year?”
“I tried to escape. Almost made it, too.”
“Jesus, man, you didn’t have that long to go! What the hell did you do that for?”
A tenuous and twitchy smile danced on Sean’s face. “You don’t want to know, Mick.”
The mission chief put a heavy paw onto his boss’s shoulder. “I really do, Sean.”
Sean sighed, then took a good, deep breath in and out. Then he smiled again at Mickey and said, “I know where Slipjack lives. It’s not too far from the prison. I could’ve made it on foot.”
Mickey didn’t have to ask the question. Sean answered anyway.
“I was going to torture the son of a bitch until he signed a confession saying he tampered with the cable. And then I was going to hang him from a belt in the bedroom closet of his shithole flophouse apartment.”
Mickey’s eyes were wide, but narrowed as he tried to make sense of what Sean was saying. “But … they’d know it was you, unless you slipped back into the prison unnoticed. That’s got to be impossible.”
“I’m sure it is. I didn’t really have that part of the plan worked out.”
Now the mission chief looked askance at his boss. “That doesn’t sound like you.”
Sean kept his face totally still, his eyes boring into Mickey’s, unblinking.
“Boss …?”
“It wouldn’t matter if I went back or not. Slipjack would be dead, Kat is dead, and prison—especially solitary—drives you insane. Literally, insane. There really isn’t any place for you in the world after that.”
“Boss …did this actually happen? I’m not calling you a liar.”
“It would be okay if you did. I am lying.”
“What?”
“I’m lying to you. I never escaped or even tried to escape.”
“Then wha—you—bwahahahahaha! You got me! Oh, my God, I’m crying here …”
Sean’s smile was as weak as watery tea. “Okay, enough whimsy, eh? Cappy was right—it’s gonna be amateur hour out here tomorrow. I already see lights from at least fifty buckets out there. Let’s get some rest and start winning this damn thing.” He clapped Mickey on the back as he headed out of the mess.
“But, Sean …”
“Yes, my son?” he said, and snorted a laugh—at what, Mickey had no idea. “Sorry, that was funny. Yeah, what’s up?”
“Well … why were you in solitary for the past year?”
Sean turned and leaned against the bulkhead, his tone still light. “Oh, yeah, that.” He scratched his head and said, “Well, it was because I took the fall for stabbing a guy to death during a big fight in the yard.”
“Wh-what?” Mickey said, then gave a wary smile. “You’re messing with me again.”
“No, no,” Sean said, smiling. “The guards couldn’t see who exactly had done the shanking, but they heard from enough cons it was me. Assholes. But nobody really had anything on me, there was no proof, so they couldn’t extend my sentence or anything like that. What they could do is toss me in solitary for the next six years or so.”
Mickey stood stock-still. His emotions had gone up and down, back and forth so much in the preceding hour that he was unable to register any particular emotion. It felt like a dream, a nightmare where nothing gets completed, where you just keep trying to do one simple thing and fail until you wake up. But this wasn’t a dream. A nightmare, maybe, but the waking kind.
“Okay, you murdered another prisoner.”
“That’s what they say.” Sean held out his hands. “I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you. Shit happens in prison. You do things you never would have thought yourself capable of. It’s a horrible place, especially for an innocent man.”
That’s right, Mickey thought, you were innocent when they locked you up. He remembered he had heard many times of prison being called “the animal factory,” where someone who had committed a crime (or, in Sean’s case, didn’t) learned to become a criminal, to lose his humanity. “I’m no one to judge you, man. Thank you for telling me.”
“I’m glad to tell you,” he said, pausing as he saw the look on Mickey’s face. “Are you wondering if this story is true?”
“No,” Mickey said, “it’s not that. I was just wondering why you, um, you know … killed that other guy. To death.”
“That’s usually how killings end.”
“Ha, right. But did he … I don’t know … try to make you his ‘bitch’ or whatever?”
Now Sean let out a good laugh again, and Mickey smiled and nodded, waiting for an answer. Sean recovered and said, “I didn’t even know the guy. Or maybe I did, just seeing him around. But I could see the guards’ sight line was blocked and so they wouldn’t be able to see what was going on. The weapon was spare shop glue and newspaper rolled to a point to make a nice shiv, and it got used on the poor bastard. Just rotten luck on his part, not that anybody’s luck in that place could be called good.”
“Okay, sure, but why?”
Sean
shrugged like it was obvious. “I wanted them to put me in solitary.”
“Wait, what?”
“It’s the only way I could get some serious work done. It was far too distracting in with the general population to really read and write in the concentrated way scientists need, though God knows I tried. But I couldn’t, so I found a way to secure my own quiet space to continue my research.”
“I … that’s some dedication, I guess? I don’t know what to say.”
“It’s harsh, I know, but we always have to keep our eyes on the prize. That’s what I did getting sent to solitary, because think about it: without the serious additional publication I did on my theories, would Jake Bentneus have sought me out and sprung me free? Can’t let your personal feelings or prejudices throw you off that focus. My focus is getting free for good. Do you have your eyes on the prize?”
“I think I do … I mean, yeah, I’m not gonna murder anybody, but yeah, winning it all, getting the Gigadon, definitely.”
“Good man,” Sean said, and clapped him on the shoulder a third time. “Now let’s hit our bunks. Big day tomorrow. Idiots on parade—and maybe even someone else to compete with! Eyes on the prize!” With that, he left the room at last.
This left a blank-eyed Mickey standing alone in the mess, watching the lights from the cavalcade of inadequate fishing vessels in the half-mile around them and listening to the cursing of their crews as the boats bumped into one another again and again.
He thought that maybe he was losing his mind, just like it seemed Sean Muir definitely had. But no—if he was losing his mind, he wouldn’t feel so anxious for this mission to be over, whether or not they collected one dime from Jake Bentneus.
***
When the blackness of the sky over the ocean first yielded to a thin gray in the east, a member of the dogwatch mariner crew on Sharkasm stepped out onto the deck to make a visual scan of their surroundings, like a real sailor did, instead of staring at computer screens and tallying numbers that meant nothing to anyone aboard except for the scientists.
