by Lucas Flint
Unsure what he was going to do, I stood my ground, holding my pole staff firmly in my hands. If Red Tide was going to attack me, I wanted to be ready to defend myself. Of course, if he used his paralyzing toxins on me, then it wouldn’t matter if I had my pole staff or not.
Red Tide stopped at Tiny, yet he didn’t even look down at the fallen member of his crew. He just continued to look at me with that crooked grin on his lips, his eyes having somehow become even more bloodshot than usual just within the last few minutes.
“You put on quite a show there, boy,” said Red Tide in an intimidating voice. “Tiny was one of our best members. Few men have ever fought him and lived to tell the tale.”
I rested my pole staff on my shoulder to look confident. “I’ve fought worse.”
A tense silence existed between me and Red Tide all of a sudden, made even tenser by the expectant expressions of his crewmates all around us. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Fingerprints reaching for a gun in his pea coat, probably just in case a fight broke out.
Then, without warning, Red Tide laughed. “Ha! Good one, my boy. That’s exactly the kind of attitude you need if you’re going to be part of my crew. Welcome aboard, boy, to the crew of the Red Tide. It’s good to have another killer on board because we’re going to need them if we’re going to make the whole ocean our kingdom.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
After that, Red Tide and his crew went back into the Dead Man’s Inn to party. They all tried to buy me drinks, but I had to keep refusing because I wasn’t twenty-one yet. I was worried that that might make them suspicious, but they were apparently all too drunk to notice that I wasn’t drinking myself. The only one who seemed to notice was the Japanese guy, whose name I still didn’t know, who also didn’t drink. He seemed to glance at me every now and then from his seat near the end of the table, but he didn’t say anything about it, either, although I got the feeling that he didn’t trust me very much.
Fingerprints, on the other hand, did drink, but not as much as Red Tide and the others, of course. The two of us didn’t get to talk much due to sitting on opposite ends of the table, but every now and then he would glance at me with an expression that clearly told me didn’t understand how I had made that work. I would just shrug and go back to listening to Red Tide’s drunk stories, which always seemed to end with him killing people and stealing their loot.
As for Tiny, he woke up pretty quickly after the fight was over, but instead of coming back to the Inn to party with us, Red Tide sent him back to the ship to get it ready for sailing tomorrow. Evidently, Red Tide didn’t want a ‘loser’ drinking with him. Tiny seemed extremely angry about that, but he wisely did not argue the point with Red Tide. He did, however, shoot daggers with his eyes at me, which was a good reminder not to let myself get too cocky because I had a feeling Tiny wasn’t simply going to forgive and forget this.
But we didn’t stay in the Dead Man’s Inn for very long. Red Tide abruptly stood up and announced that it was time for us to return to his ship, the Red Tide, so we could all get a good night sleep for tomorrow’s voyage. He did not specify what he meant by ‘voyage,’ but I assumed that we were probably going to sail to whoever Red Tide was going to sell the weapon to.
The Red Tide was a large sailing ship. At first glance, it looked like an ordinary, old-fashioned wooden sailing ship docked not too far from the Dead Man’s Inn, but as we got closer, I began to see that it had more than a few modern upgrades. The ship’s cannons looked more like lasers than normal cannons, while thick metal sheets covered its hull. It had three big sails, but from the look of them, they seemed more for decoration than practicality, which made me wonder why they were there at all. And it was definitely a massive ship, easily big enough for the whole crew to sleep in and with room for more, although as far as I could tell, Red Tide’s dozen or so pirates were the only members of his crew.
“Here we are, lads,” said Red Tide, gesturing at the massive sailing ship as we approached it. “Me pride and joy, the Red Tide. Ain’t she a beauty?”
I grimaced when I inhaled a strong pungent scent of, well, Red Tide that blew in on a sudden midnight breeze. “Yeah, I guess so. How tough is she?”
“Toughest ship on all of the Seven Seas,” Red Tide replied. Despite having consumed an inhuman amount of alcohol, he seemed shockingly sober, with the only clue to his intoxication being his bloodshot eyes and slightly slurred speech. “Ain’t that right, Katsuki?”
The Japanese man—who must have been Katsuki—nodded as Tiny lowered the ramp for us to enter the ship. “Indeed. It can handle military-grade artillery without suffering any holes or leaks. It would take a MOAB to do any real damage to it, and even then, such a bomb would need to be followed up by an air strike just to make sure it works.”
I looked at Katsuki curiously. “How do you know so much about ships?”
“I am the crew’s shipwright,” said Katsuki. Unlike Red Tide, he showed no signs of intoxication at all, probably because he hadn’t drunk anything. He gestured at the Red Tide. “I built this ship myself and know every corner of it like the back of my hand.”
“Best dang shipwright in the world,” said Red Tide, slapping Katsuki on the back abruptly. “Wouldn’t know what I’d do without him. Picked him up in Japan a few years ago and he’s been one of my most trusted mates ever since.”
“I am also in charge of security for the ship,” said Katsuki. He brushed back his long dark hair. “That’s why I didn’t drink, aside from the fact that I dislike alcohol. Someone needs to be sober enough to make sure that the ship is safe, after all.”
Ah. That explained why Katsuki and Red Tide seemed so close. I wondered if that was why Katsuki had been keeping a close eye on me and Fingerprints ever since we joined the crew. He likely didn’t trust us, but that was fine because we didn’t trust him or Red Tide, either.
Once the ramp finished lowering, we all walked up it without further ado. As soon as everyone was on board the ship, the crew scattered. Red Tide and Katsuki went off to discuss something I couldn’t hear, while the rest of the crew went off to their quarters, which were apparently scattered all around the ship. One of the crew members—a small, monkey-like man with a rusted knife in his belt—even climbed up the rope to sleep in the crow’s nest, while the rest of us went below deck to where most of the sleeping quarters were.
Because Fingerprints and I were the newbies, we ended up being shown to our quarters by Hilda, the large, drunk blonde woman I had noticed before. Unlike Red Tide, who handled his beer very well, Hilda seemed to struggle to stay sober and conscious, managing to show us to our quarters—a tiny room with two hammocks that was barely big enough for both of us—before staggering away back to her quarters while muttering something about how she was going to have a horrible hangover in the morning.
Not that we minded that, however. With Hilda gone, this was the first opportunity the two of us had to talk to each other in private since we arrived in Hooktown. Admittedly, the room was very small and smelled like wet animal fur for some reason, but the walls of the ship were thick enough that we felt comfortable talking to each other down here, although we kept our voices low enough so that any potential eavesdroppers wouldn’t hear us.
“Whew,” I said as I laid down in my hammock, which swayed slightly under my weight. “Can’t believe that worked.”
“You mean your plan?” said Fingerprints, who, unlike me, wasn’t lying in his hammock. He was walking around the small room, bending over every now and then to inspect a corner or standing on his tiptoes to examine the ceiling a little more closely.
I frowned, putting my hands behind my head as I said, “What are you doing?”
“Looking for bugs,” said Fingerprints. He stopped and turned to look at me. “There don’t seem to be any, so I think it’s safe for us to talk.”
“Bugs?” I said. “Are you an arachnophobe or something?”
“I’m talking about devices that allow people to listen in on our
conversations,” Fingerprints explained. “Red Tide is supposed to be a controlling captain, so I figured he would have every room in the ship bugged in order to listen in on the conversations of his crew. But I haven’t found any, so I assume it’s safe for us to talk.”
“Geez, good thinking,” I said, glancing around the room. “I was so tired that it never even occurred to me to look for something like that.”
“Part of being a spy is knowing when you are being spied upon,” Fingerprints replied as he sat down on his hammock and laid down, putting his hands on his stomach. “I do this with every room I enter. It’s a good habit to get into, especially on these types of missions, where hiding our true identities is necessary in order for us to succeed.”
I nodded and decided I would have to keep that habit in mind myself next time I needed to do something like this. “So, what do you think so far?”
“About the mission?” said Fingerprints. He chuckled. “We’ve been lucky. Very lucky. Red Tide is supposed to be very picky about who he lets on his crew. I can only guess you got him in a good mood tonight because there’s no way in hell he would have let us join otherwise.”
“I just took the direct route,” I said with a shrug. “Like I do with everything. Seems to work out for me pretty well so far.”
“True, but that was a gamble and you know it,” said Fingerprints. “Especially against Tiny. He was one of the crew members I wasn’t debriefed on, so I didn’t know his powers. It’s a miracle you managed to beat him without having to use your own powers and end up revealing our identities in the process.”
“I’ve been practicing my powerless training recently,” I said. “Lots of superhumans just flat out don’t do it. They rely on their powers too much to protect themselves and have no backups in case they can’t use them.”
“Ain’t that the truth?” said Fingerprints with another chuckle. “I am a powerless training practitioner myself. Although my powers are useful for spy work, they don’t offer me any great advantage in battle, aside from sometimes allowing me to disorient foes who aren’t aware of my abilities. That’s why I prefer spy work over the usual missions most G-Men get.”
“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “What will we do tomorrow, then?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” said Fingerprints, looking at me in surprise. “We find out where the weapon is located and where we are going. We should also find out what kind of security they have put around the thing so we can come up with a plan to steal it from them without them knowing.”
I began to sit up. “Why not go look for it now? Everyone is asleep and we’re still awake.”
“I wouldn’t risk it,” said Fingerprints. “I bet at least one of the pirates are staying up to act as the night watch. It would too risky to wander around this ship at night without knowing her layout and end up getting spotted. As the newest members of the crew, they already don’t trust us very much, and doing something like that might give them an excuse to kick us off the ship entirely.”
I lay back down on my hammock. “What if I told them I was looking for the bathroom?”
Fingerprints rolled his eyes. “Forget about it. Anyway, it’s getting late. I’m going to go to sleep now. You should do the same because we are going to have a big day ahead of us tomorrow and we will need all the sleep we can get.”
With that, Fingerprints rolled over onto his side so his back was facing me. A second later, I heard loud snores coming from his nostrils as he apparently fell asleep instantly. I guess Fingerprints had been a lot more tired than he let on.
I also rolled over onto my side so my back was facing his, but I didn’t go to sleep right away. I was thinking about Blizzard, wondering how she was doing and whether her condition was worsening or getting better. I knew Fingerprints was right when he said we should wait until tomorrow before we start snooping around, but that gave us even less time to save Blizzard. Tomorrow, Blizzard would only have six days left before the virus killed her, which meant we didn’t have much time left.
I put my hand on my ear to talk to Valerie, but then I felt nothing in my ear and remembered that I had removed my earcom before coming here. We didn’t want to risk Red Tide and his men finding out who we were, so I had removed nearly every identifying piece of equipment on me. The only thing I still wore was my suit-up watch, which was so inconspicuous that I doubted any of Red Tide’s crew had noticed it.
My hand falling to my side, I closed my eyes and forced myself to go to sleep. Like Fingerprints said, we had a big day ahead of us tomorrow, so I needed to make sure I was well-rested for it.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It seemed like as soon as my head touched my pillow, the door to our quarters burst open and Hilda jumped in and yelled, “Wake up, you two! It’s time to get to work!”
Startled, I sat up so fast that I accidentally fell off my hammock onto the floor, while Fingerprints grunted and raised his head, blinking sleepily as he stared at the large blonde woman standing before us.
“Already?” said Fingerprints with a yawn. “We just went to bed. It can’t possibly be morning already.”
“Oh, but it is,” said Hilda. That was when I noticed she had a thick German accent, which I had completely missed the night before, probably due to how late it had been. “Look at your watches if you don’t believe me.”
Rubbing my head, I glanced at my suit-up watch and saw that Hilda was correct: It was seven in the morning eastern standard time, which was weird because it didn’t feel like it was morning. Guess I must have slept so well that I didn’t even wake up once last night. I certainly did feel refreshed, although with my head pounding from my fall this morning, I could have been better.
“Come on, come on,” said Hilda, gesturing at us to get up. “Captain Red Tide gave me the responsibility of showing you two landlubbers around the ship. After that, I will assign both of you your duties as part of the crew.”
Rising to my feet, I found it weird how Hilda had been dead drunk the night before, but she seemed perfectly sober and awake now. Either she was like Red Tide and could handle her alcohol better than she appeared or else she had some way of quickly recovering from her hangovers that I didn’t know about. Either way, I was in no mood to question the lady in charge, so Fingerprints and I followed her out of the room and onto the top deck of the ship.
As we emerged onto the top deck, I saw activity all around us. The rest of the crew must have awoken before us because everywhere I looked, I saw pirates working. Some were steering the massive steering wheel above us, while others were adjusting the sails in accordance with the direction of the wind, and still others were fishing or tossing bad food and drink overboard. Some appeared to be running to and fro, barking out orders to their fellow mates or delivering messages from one end of the ship to the other. I was amazed at how active everyone was despite all of the alcohol they had consumed last night. It made me wonder if they were all equally immune to hangovers like Hilda and Red Tide or if they were so used to getting drunk and then getting up early the next morning to work that it didn’t even bother them.
“This is the top deck,” said Hilda, waving one large hand in an arc to indicate the entire deck. “This is where the bulk of the work is done, even in storms. Likely, I’ll have you swabbing the deck, but you might also have to do other things. Depends on what work needs to be done and all that.”
“Uh huh,” I said, glancing up at the crow’s nest. “What about the crow’s nest? Do we have to anything up there?”
“No,” said Hilda, shaking her head. “Crow’s nest is already occupied by Crow. It’s his job and he doesn’t like it when someone else tries to take it from him, especially a newbie like you.”
“You mean the crow’s nest is manned by someone named Crow?” I asked innocuously.
“Yes,” said Hilda bluntly. “Anyway, as you can see, we have already set sail from Hooktown and are currently en route to our next destination.”
Hilda was right. When I looked out over the
side of the ship, I couldn’t see any towns or land anywhere. Just endless blue ocean water and waves, with the occasional seagull flying by overhead with a fish caught in its mouth. Despite the frenzy of activity on the deck, the sea seemed strangely peaceful, with no storm clouds or anything.
Of course, being this far from civilization meant that Fingerprints and I were on our own if anything went wrong out here. Given the somber expression Fingerprints wore, I could tell that he knew that as well, which made it hard to enjoy the beautiful view all around us.
Then Hilda led us back down to the lower decks again, but instead of taking us back to our rooms, she led us to the room where the cannons were. As I suspected from last night, these cannons were not ordinary cannons at all. Instead of firing cannonballs, they were shaped like large lasers, connected to what seemed like a huge battery on the opposite wall. The cannons appeared to be off, but I could still hear a low hum of energy coming from the battery as if it was constantly active.
“This is the cannon room,” said Hilda, gesturing at the huge cannons. “As you can see, these are our cannons. They are laser cannons, meaning they fire beams of pure concentrated light that can set whole ships ablaze.”
“That seems surprisingly high tech for a pirate ship,” I said.
Hilda looked at me with a mischievous smile. “This is a modern pirate ship, boy. Why should we limit ourselves to yesterday’s technology when today’s technology is so much better?”
I couldn’t argue with that, so instead, I said, “Will we get an opportunity to use these cannons anytime soon?”
“You two?” Hilda said. She laughed. “Of course not. This is very expensive, dangerous technology, far too priceless to put into the hands of newbies like you. You won’t even be allowed to touch these for months unless we get into a tussle and require some extra hands on deck, though I doubt we’ll ever end up in a situation like that.”