Velvet poked his food with his fork. “You gotta eat,” he said gently to Fishy. “Come on, buddy. Theo wouldn’t want you to—”
“Theo didn’t get what he wanted, did he?” Fishy said.
Velvet withered. “I’m sorry, Fishy,” he said hoarsely.
“Oscar.” Fishy replied.
“What?” Garret asked.
Fishy said, “My name is Oscar.”
Twitch looked up at him.
Velvet groped. “We… we know that, buddy.”
Oscar didn’t reply. The conversation was over.
And just like that, Fishy was no more.
Twitch stood suddenly and turned from the table. He moved quickly away, but Garret caught the look on his face as he turned. It was cold and terribly resolved, like that of a soldier sent to the front lines as cannon fodder.
Garret stood reflexively. “Twitch?”
Twitch was disappearing fast.
Garret glanced from Twitch to Fishy and waffled between them.
“Go,” Velvet said to Garret. He was still ashen and his voice was unsteady. “We’ll keep an eye on… Oscar.”
Garret went quickly after Twitch, nearly knocking down a mess steward on the way.
“Twitch,” Garret called as he jogged to catch up.
Twitch started jogging too, maintaining the distance between them. It was the stride Twitch had used in bootcamp, a smooth, unvarying trot, back straight as a ramrod. Garret had watched the stride carry Twitch mile after mile without wearying.
“Twitch—”
“Go back to dinner, Lover Boy.”
They were headed for the stern of the citadel. Garret poured on the speed and caught up just as Twitch was dropping down the ship’s ladder to the berth deck.
“What are you doing?” Garret asked.
“I said go back to dinner!” Twitch glared over his shoulder.
Garret paused, taken aback, but then he pushed ahead faster than before. He knew the look. He’d felt it himself a year ago as he’d run towards the Malvern’s mansion to do something unspeakable.
“Twitch wait!”
Twitch had walked straight off the bottom of the ladder to the ship’s starboard armory and was talking to the guard.
“I can’t let you in here without authorization,” the guard was saying.
Garret came off the bottom of the ladder and stood tensely beside Twitch. Twitch was facing not one, but two guards, armed with Springfield rifles, on either side of the door to the armory. The guard from the port side armory, thirty feet away, had heard Twitch’s tone and decided to leave his post. They didn’t have enough men to keep the ship running, but someone had stationed two men to stand by the armory door and do nothing all day.
“Sorry, can’t let you in, Colson,” one of them was saying.
Twitch suddenly looked tired. “I know,” he said simply. “And I’m sorry too.”
“For wha—?” one of them began.
What happened next was blindingly fast. Twitch hit the guy on the right with a jab that bounced his skull off the steel bulkhead behind him. He rebounded into Twitch’s haymaker, and was out cold before he hit the floor. The other guard only got his rifle halfway up. Twitch used the excess motion of the haymaker to turn his upper body and step through. The haymaker folded, then snapped out into a backfist. The backfist stunned the guy a split second before Twitch’s opposite haymaker came through and landed solidly on his jaw. This time, Twitch absorbed the excess motion of the haymaker by spinning bodily, coming around into the other guy. Twitch hit him back-of-the-leg to back-of-the-leg. It was a sweep, though it looked more like a dance step. The guard’s head and his feet traded places. His head hit the deck like a melon. He was out, too.
Jesus, he never did that when we were boxing.
Twitch went through the door into the armory and closed it in Garret’s face.
Garret’s vision was greying out and his sense of smell was sharpening.
Twitch reemerged with a service revolver in one hand. He had the cylinder out, making sure the gun was fully loaded. He slapped the cylinder closed and pointed a finger in Garret’s face.
“Go back to dinner.”
Twitch tucked the revolver into his rear waistband and pulled his uniform shirt down over it. Then he trotted back up the ladder again.
Instead of going back to dinner, Garret followed him. “Twitch,” he said. His voice was beginning to rasp wolfishly. “Whatever you’re doing, you can’t.”
“Someone has to,” Twitch said, as he came out into the chatter and clattering utensils of dinner again. “This has gone far enough.”
Garret caught up to him just before he exited the citadel onto the stern main deck. Garret grabbed his elbow and spun him around.
“Twitch, you gotta think, this—”
“I have thought,” Twitch said quietly. “I’ve thought and thought and thought, but I haven’t acted. That’s why we’re in this situation. That’s why Charlie and Curtis and Theo are dead. I’m not going to fail again. Not this time.”
Twitch pulled away. Garret could have restrained him, of course. Wolf strength was flooding his body. He was beginning to feel his posture hunch as his defensive urges pressed him towards the full shift. Garret lost a few precious seconds getting control so he didn’t turn into a wolf right in the middle of the ship. It didn’t take terribly long, but in the few moments it took for the color to return to his vision, Twitch was already gone.
Garret sprinted after him towards the rear turret. He didn’t know what Twitch was doing, but he had a good idea of where he was going, and that meant Garret had to stop him first. Unfortunately, that proved to be more difficult than Garret thought. Twitch had pulled his vanishing act again, though Garret suspected he’d run under the guns and down the private ladder that accessed the Captain and Admiral’s quarters. By the time Garret reached the top of the ladder, Twitch was at the bottom, pressed against the bulkhead beside the door into the captain’s cabin. The door was closed.
Twitch stood there, arms at his sides, seamless resolve on his face. Garret leaped down the ladder, but he was too late. As Garret’s foot touched the top tread, the door to the captain’s cabin opened. Lieutenant Bartram came out. That was what Twitch had been waiting for. He elbowed the lieutenant out of the way and rounded the facing, drawing the revolver as he went. Garret crashed to the bottom of the ladder, his hands outstretched to grab Twitch, but he missed the back of Twitch’s collar by a few inches.
Garret tripped over Lieutenant Bartram and the two of them got tangled up. Garret extricated himself and dove through the door, but as soon as he had, he stopped so fast that he stumbled. It was akin to entering the cave of a sleeping bear only to find that the floor was littered with broken glass. One false step, and the beast would wake and rend everyone limb from limb. However, the engine of potential disaster wasn’t a bear. It was the pistol in Twitch’s hand.
Commander Sharpe was standing a few feet away from Maxwell’s desk. Sharpe’s mouth was open in shock and his chair was overturned behind him. Maxwell was still seated behind the desk, calm as death. Twitch stood in the middle of the room, his expression colder than the steel barrel of his revolver, which he had trained on Maxwell’s chest.
Garret’s heart dropped. Twitch was holding a gun on his Captain, threatening the life of a superior officer. No matter what happened from here, only terrible consequences could result. Garret had done something similar not long ago, throwing himself at Maxwell, and if he had hit Maxwell, he would have been court-martialed and probably jailed.
A pistol was far more than a punch.
“Twitch, stop,” Garret pleaded.
“Stay there, Garret,” Twitch barked. Then he raised his voice. “Get in here, Bartram, and close the door.”
Lieutenant Bartram reentered the cabin. His thin jaw was set. His eyes glittered with malice, but now they appeared more snake-like than rodent. Bartram kept his motions
smooth and nonthreatening as he closed the door.
“Sit over there,” Twitch said. He neither took his gaze from Maxwell nor indicated which chair he meant. Bartram went to the chair by the bookshelf and sat. Above Bartram’s head, the spar into which Twitch had tackled Garret was still broken. It stuck out above the Lieutenant like a torn-off arm. Twitch had saved Garret that night, but Garret had no idea how to do the same.
Commander Sharpe snapped out of his initial shock. “Have you lost your corn-fed Nebraska mind, Gunner’s Mate?!” he thundered.
Maxwell held up a restraining hand to the Commander. When Sharpe stopped, Maxwell simply laid the hand back on the desk and continued watching Twitch. Tension built. Lieutenant Bartram really did look like a cobra now, thin as a whip, coiled up on the seat of the chair, warily watching everything and everyone, ready at a moment’s notice to spread hoods and strike. No one said anything. Tension compounded. Garret began to feel queasy.
“Well Gunner’s Mate,” Maxwell said. “It appears you have the floor.”
Only Maxwell and Twitch were calm. In fact, they wore the exact same expression. Cold and hard as the underbelly of the Kearsarge, hidden deep in the water, dragging them all to an unwanted fate.
The revolver was so steady in Twitch’s hands that it looked to Garret as though the gun was the only fixed point in the world, and Twitch had simply walked up and taken hold of one end of it. Or as if the past had been focused and compacted down into one small firearm, as though the revolver was the single point from which the future would take shape and spread.
“This ends now,” Twitch said, without raising his voice. “Turn the ship around.”
Maxwell did not reply, but Twitch didn’t seem to have expected a response. “We’re going back for that man in the water,” he said. “We’re going back right now.”
Garret stood dumbly and listened to the calm conversation spoken by the motionless men who had murder on their minds. They were all going to kill Twitch, or he was going to kill all of them. Death was all anyone wanted. Anyone except Garret, that was.
At last Maxwell replied to Twitch’s demand. “The man in the water is already dead, Gunner’s Mate.”
Twitch came back evenly. “He is not. Even a man who knows he is doomed will tread water to the end of his strength. We have time.”
“Did you think I was going to let him die a slow death of fear and exhaustion?” Maxwell said. “You thought I was going to leave him to tread water for as many hours as he could, staring death in the face until his strength failed him? I had him shot as soon as your gun crew went inside the citadel. He is dead.”
Garret felt ill. There was no visible change in Twitch other than a tightening of his neck and jaw muscles, but he ground out, “Someone else might have come along.”
“No one else was coming,” Maxwell said.
“The North Dakota is right behind us!” Twitch shouted. “She’s been shadowing us, just over the horizon! If your lookouts weren’t so bad, you’d have known that weeks ago. I’ve caught glimpses of her twice. He didn’t have to die. Nobody had to die for this fucking mania of yours!”
The North Dakota appeared to be news to everyone, including Captain Maxwell, though nothing more than an incremental lift in his eyebrows gave it away.
“Then why,” Maxwell asked as if he already knew the answer, “would you be trying to turn us around to retrieve him?”
“Don’t,” Twitch warned. “This is not about one man. Not about him. Not about me. And sure as shit not about you.”
Twitch’s face was belying him, and it was confusing the hell out of Garret. Somehow, despite what Twitch had just said, this was all about one man, and it looked like that man just might be Captain Maxwell.
“More importantly,” Bartram interjected, “why would the North Dakota be shadowing us without firing upon us?”
Maxwell pressed his lips together in a vexed line and held up a hand to silence Bartram.
“Insurance?” Twitch spat at Bartram. “For when this all goes to hell? How should I know? I’m not what you think.”
“That much is clear,” Bartram said dryly.
“You ignored what I told you,” Maxwell said to Twitch. “About the necessity of this. I gave you a second chance, and this is how you use it.”
“Damn right,” Twitch hissed. “Turn the ship around.”
They all glared at each other in silence again. Seconds ticked by. Maxwell was unruffled. Garret was about to puke. The pressure was creating a tangible density in the air, but none of this was making sense to Garret, so he was afraid to say a word for fear it might be the wrong one. Bartram, on the other hand, had wandered off on a tangent.
“It makes sense, Captain,” he mused darkly. “It’s what I would have done. We will only get one shot. If we miss, or the Astra doesn’t detonate, then the North Dakota will put us on the bottom so that no one survives to tell the tale of how the United States Navy sanctioned an operation against our own allies. Clean and neat. If we succeed, then so be it. If we don’t, then the US Navy loses a useless antique and a handful of renegade officers. The Navy comes out clean either way.”
“Stop talking, Lieutenant,” Maxwell snapped.
“You think you’re a saint, don’t you?” Twitch said to Maxwell. The words were laden with accusation. “You think you’re going to get to be a martyr. At first I thought maybe you really were the man they said you were.” Twitch’s face grew dark. “Then I found the Astra.” He thumbed the hammer. “Turn. The ship. Around. Now.”
Maxwell calmly replied, “What do you plan to do, Gunner’s Mate? We’ve already passed through the Straits of Gibraltar. Even if I were to capitulate to your demand and reverse course, do you intend to stand there and hold a gun on me for the next three weeks as we sail all the way home?”
Twitch took a breath and his resolve hardened. “Last chance. Turn—”
Lieutenant Bartram chose that moment to make his move. He came out of the chair quickly, but Twitch, true to his name, was faster still.
Twitch didn’t speak, but simply pivoted and put a bullet into the bookshelf a few inches over Bartram’s shoulder. It wasn’t a miss. Twitch never missed. He had aimed high. Bartram stumbled and fell, and Twitch kicked him in the face, sending him back against the chair in a heap. It would have been simpler for Twitch to shoot Bartram through the heart, but Twitch chose not to kill him. That fact wasn’t lost on anyone in the room.
Perhaps it was the reason Commander Sharpe didn’t immediately kill Twitch. Twitch pivoted back to Maxwell, but during the distraction, Commander Sharpe had drawn his side arm and trained it on Twitch.
“Drop it, Gunner’s Mate,” Sharpe roared.
Twitch again settled into his stance, gun trained on Maxwell. The Captain moved for the first time since Garret had entered the room. He simply took a breath, stretching back a bit in his chair. “Your father would be proud of you,” he said. “You’ve accomplished much for one person, misguided though it was.”
That time, there was a visible tensing all down Twitch’s body. “Admiral Colson is not my father,” he said.
Lieutenant Bartram, who was still slumped against the chair, savagely wiped blood away from his nose, then snarled at Twitch, “What in the hell were you trying to do in the dynamo room anyway?”
Garret blinked. Wha…? He stared at Twitch with new eyes. Twitch?
“Trying to burn out all three of the damn things,” Twitch growled. “I almost had it. All this would have been over then and there. Charlie would still be alive. They’d all still be alive!”
Garret blinked again, shell shocked. Twitch is the…?
Twitch turned his anger back on Maxwell. “All the time,” he fumed, “all the time I was on this ship, I was trying to save your life. Because I thought you were worth it! You’re nothing but lies!”
“Sailor, put the gun down now!” Sharpe ordered.
Garret was still reeling. Twitch is the s
aboteur? It made no sense, but there wasn’t time for anything to make sense. Murder was rising in the room like a cloaked figure.
How can Twitch be the…
Twitch was yelling at Maxwell now, but as Garret tried to make sense of the ranting, he realized that the words weren’t important. The real communication was subtext. Twitch was angry, but it wasn’t the anger of hatred towards one’s enemy, this was the far stronger and more dangerous anger that can only grow towards a person whom one loves deeply.
With that realization came Garret’s first inkling of what might actually be happening.
Garret looked at Twitch, then Maxwell. As he compared them, a few loose ends began to sort themselves into a possible order, but Garret didn’t know if that made the situation better or worse. The more Garret thought about it, the more sense it made: Twitch, jumping to obey every order he was given. Twitch, bubbling over with pride every time Maxwell spoke. It had looked like obedience to the US Navy, but what if it wasn’t that at all?
“All I had to do was cripple this thing,” Twitch yelled. “So you’d have to turn on that damn wireless and surrender yourself to the Navy. It didn’t have to be this way!”
It didn’t have to be this way. Garret knew the tone. He’d used it himself when he’d said a great many things. Things like, Do you know what you did to Sarn? What you’re still doing to him?! Or, But Sarn thought you were dead… I thought you were dead…
So that was it then. Everything about Twitch began to make sense. Even his naval pride wasn’t really pride in the organization at all. It was the desperate love of an estranged son, and the desperate hope that he could find a path to reconciliation. And now, it was the crushed rubble of that hope.
It was the sudden loss, exactly as Garret had felt it, the night his Pa died. The night Garret realized they were simply different people, and his Pa had never truly loved him, except in a small and selfish way. Garret had not handled it well. Twitch was handling it even worse.
Twitch was ranting. “Just for once, I wanted you to see me for what I am! You had to know this was the wrong thing to do! You were smart enough to see it, you were just too damn stubborn to change! That was all that had to happen to save everybody, you self-centered bastard! I told you who I was all along!”
Ironclad Page 45
