by Jase Kovacs
OPEN THE HATCHES. FREE US. WE'LL WAIT UNTIL DARKNESS AND THEN COME. YOU MAY SHOOT US, BURN US, KILL US. BUT YOU CAN'T DEFEAT US ALL. WE ARE YOUR DESTINY. YOU CANNOT RESIST OUR EMBRACE.
I reach the forward hatch, where Blong waits. I'm gasping for breath but I wear a tight smile. I wonder if this was how the men who stood at Thermopylae felt. About to face a horde, happy to die because it was on their own terms. I go around to the last hatch, smashing out the pins, the last one falls and I turn to Blong.
"Now?" he asks.
I nod. Never has a gesture held more conviction, less hesitation. "Now."
He pushes the bundle of 'heavy stuff' I had him collect overboard. The collection of expended fire extinguishers and scrap metal and a couple of poles. About forty kilos of weight. All tied together by a long thin rope which is whipping over the side as fast as it can go, the weight falling down to the ocean below. The rope runs across the deck and into the gantry of the crane and around the diesel's crankshaft.
I spent twenty minutes wrapping that rope around the metal crankshaft, where it comes out of the diesel and runs into the generator. You don't need a starter motor to start a diesel. You just need to spin the crankshaft and the flywheel fast enough for the cylinders to compress the air in the pistons. Diesels don't even have spark plugs - the fuel/air mixture ignites spontaneously when it reaches full compression. So diesels are hard to start - unless you can turn the crankshaft fast enough. Impossible to do by hand on a big engine.
But there's ways around that. If you're creative.
The rope goes taut and spins the crankshaft, like a giant pull cord on a lawn mower, and the engine doesn't chuff, it doesn't struggle and crawl its way into life like Voodoo's diesel.
It just roars. A mad out of control full bellied howl as the cylinders catch and its fiery heart blazes into being. I jammed the fuel injector regulator all the way open and it comes to life and screams as it climbs up to maximum revolutions in seconds. The crankshaft spins off its own power and the rope runs out and slithers across the deck to disappear over the side.
The diesel has no cooling system, no lubrication and no power regulator system. I'm not letting this guy idle and warm up in its own time. Instead I send it screaming on a one way voyage towards its own death, its pistons racing up and down cylinders with no oil, the friction heating it quickly, the metal absorbing the heat, radiating it a little out into the open air, but nothing will stop it seizing once it overheats.
I've only got a few minutes.
But that's all I need.
Chapter 32
DO IT MATAI. FREE US. LET US COME TO YOU.
Like me, he is beyond pleading, bargaining, anything other than absolute hatred. Hate so dark and pure it has passed over into something like love, an all consuming passion that would send me sprinting across the battlefield to face him if we were warriors in times of old.
Instead, I climb the ladder to the crane's cabin. I can smell a faint chemical smell of heating wire, something about to catch fire but that's fine, that's a-okay because there are lights. Green lights across the board. Dials showing power, showing that the generator works. A lot of needles in the red but whatever, that's cool, at least they're live. My hands shake as I reach out for the joystick, relief flowing in and tension out, like a cup being poured away. I don't bother with the pedals. I just press the retract button on the top of the joystick.
I scream when I hear the whining come from above me. A scream of victory, a scream of release, a scream of pure unmitigated emotion because the moment is passed. That instant of maximum risk, where everything was ready to fail, has passed and is behind me now and I never need to see it in the future again.
The winch works.
The bloody winch works.
Instantly I see it happening, the cable on this last crane tightening. And because I spent all afternoon daisy chaining the cranes together, when the winch tightens this cable it draws on all the others. I'm winching them all in with just the one crane.
The hatch below me, that covers Hold One, shifts as the cable goes tight. A note of desperation creeps into the throaty roar of the diesel and I know its time is coming. The whine of the winch too climbs in pitch, as the strain comes on and the motor starts to labour.
Green lights on the Load Moment Indicator, creeping up as the pressure comes on. All over the ship, cables tighten, the load being transferred from one to another as the winch works. The Load Moment Indicator climbs into the yellow and things slow down. The winch is really unhappy now, a high protesting hum as it struggles to draw the cable in any further. The tension on, the strain lifting all those hooks and weights and cables, the pressure it's exerting transferring into the hatches. A little blip in power as the load comes off and I see the third hatch has slipped. Shifted a whole foot. A tiny slip of black along its rim.
Going to have to do better than that. The winch's whine climbs until it disappears beyond my hearing and I can only hear the despairing moan of the diesel, its roar weakened as it heats up, as it the temperature needle climbs up through the green zone and heads to the red.
The Load Moment Indicator going up now, yellow, yellow, and now red. I smell burning insulation and I'm glad I taped down those breakers. Red. Red.
OVERLOAD.
It's time for me to go, before something catches fire up here or breaks in spectacular fashion.
I climb down and Blong is waiting, amazed at the noise and the sudden activity and the huge sentinel cranes, that stood silently over him for all of his life, now groaning like old men and swaying as the tension of cables are transferred to their jibs, their topping lifts, their gantries. Puffs of rust spurt from their joints as tension comes onto them in ways they were never designed to withstand.
There is a sudden twang as the aft most crane, the one most damaged in the fire, shifts, rotates a few centimetres to the left. Its cable pulling it forward. A loud series of pops come from the control room of my crane and a shower of sparks splatters against the windows. Something has burnt out. The winch goes silent, dead. But the clutch and the brakes have engaged. My daisy chain remains tight.
But the hatches, aside from a few initial shifts, haven't moved.
OH. I'M ALMOST DISAPPOINTED.
The First Officer sounds bureaucratic as he lectures me.
YOU SHOULD HAVE TOLD ME THIS WAS YOUR MASTER PLAN. I COULD HAVE POINTED YOU TO A FEW LOADING TABLES. IF THE MATH WASN'T BEYOND YOU, YOU COULD SEE THERE WAS NO WAY ONE CRANE COULD LIFT FOUR HATCHES. YOU SIMPLY DON'T HAVE THE LEVERAGE.
"Leverage?" I say. Out loud this time and Blong looks at me warily, like, oh boy she's going full crazy now. "Let me tell you about leverage. Blong?"
"Yes, lady?"
"Hide."
I walk forward. The diesel wails, hard metal grinding, like insane cicadas on the hottest day of the year. Then, with a shuddering clatter, it dies, as something inside fails catastrophically. In the abrupt silence, I can hear the whole ship groaning, as strange new loads are applied via the four cranes, shifting the way the metal hull lies on the rocks, the way it has sat for who knows how many years. It's almost like the whole deck is a sleeping animal, quivering in the moment before waking.
I carry my sledgehammer into the forepeak. I carefully step over the tight cable running forward at knee height from the first hatch to where I have anchored it.
If you want to open something, I say. You don't use steady pressure.
THE CRANES—
Were only to tension the rig. To get everything good and tight.
So I could apply a short sharp shock.
I follow the cable to where I have anchored it - literally anchored it. The cable, which is vibrating with the suppressed tension built up by the crane, humming as the wind blows over it, as a bow is drawn over a violin string, runs forward to the main ships starboard windlass. It is a giant cousin of the one on Voodoo. A steel drum as tall as I am. Around its base run the starboard anchor's chain. The links of this chain are each as big
as my thigh. It is around one of these links, just forward of the windlass, in the gap between the drum and the hawse where the anchor stem lies, that I have attached the cable's hook.
The main anchors of Black Harvest hang still in the bow. The ship listing to starboard gave me the idea. I looked over the side, when I was up on the bridge and I could see it; the rocks on which Black Harvest ran aground run away to the port side of the ship, forming the sheltered lagoon where all those vessels - Voodoo now one of them - lie.
But the ridge slopes away on the starboard side of the ship. It is deep there, even with the bow up the way it is. Maybe ten, maybe only twenty metres deep. It's no ocean abyss. But I only need a little depth for this to work.
MATTY, NO.
How's this for leverage?
I bring the sledge down on the pawl that holds the windlass tight.
Then a lot of things happen very quickly.
The chain explodes into movement. The anchor on this ship must weight ten or twenty tons. All of that weight has been hanging on this chain for years. I released the clutch earlier so it was only the windlass pawl holding the chain in place. Barely. Only needing a simple knock to let go, for those ten, twenty tons of anchor to plunge down into the sea. Twelve or so metres down, then into the water and down the side of the ridge, sliding and spilling, shattering rocks and destroying coral, a catastrophe for the creatures of the seafloor.
Usually the chain is lowered under control but not today. It whips around. The noise is incredible, like I'm in a steel drum being pelted with a thousand sledgehammers. I can feel the shock, the reverberations in my feet, my legs, my organs, the noise striking me with a physical force.
But it is nothing to what I hear outside.
The cable was tense, tight. If I did this with the cable untensioned, it would have just snapped with the sudden shock. But the rig is already at full load, tensioned drum tight by the crane, and so the shock of the anchors release goes straight down the cable, to the bends, to the loading points, the weakest parts of my daisy chain.
To the locks holding the doors closed.
The tail of the chain, where it feeds into the windlass, whips around like a mad creature as it flies up from the mammoth chain locker under the bow. The windlass is rotating so quickly that smoke and fire is rippling from underneath. There's nothing to burn down there - that is just how fast the red hot metal is moving. The cable sings, moving so fast that it is nothing but an ochre blur, as it is goes down with the anchor. I am well aware that the cable could snap at any moment and, when it does, it will lash through the air, slicing anything in its path in two.
So it's time to get the hell out of its way.
I step out of the doorway into a world turned upside down.
The aft most hatches are airborne. They have been catapulted from their mounts, their empty hinges free, the shock of the anchor's release lifting them bodily into the air. They look like a huge book flung by a giant. Hatch Three has just lifted up off its mounts, spun half sideways and dipped, folding along its centre on the pivot formed by the lock.
Hatch Four comes down, crashes into the third hatch and plunges into the hold. For a moment I remember all those trucks down there, those lovely cars I was salivating over and I can imagine the shock and destruction having four hatches plunging into the one hold would cause.
The clutches on the first and second cranes have failed and cable is running out of them at a smoking pace. In seconds they will reach the end of their drums and I don't know what will happen then.
For a split second, I stand there, paralysed with the shock of what is unfolding before me.
And then I put my head down and run.
The noise is incredible. I am screaming, my mouth open as I sprint, the world shattering. The whole ship is shuddering, vibrating, everything loose rolling and falling, paint cracking and metal bending as huge weights are shifted.
The aft and third hatch doors have crashed down in the hold, but the cable is still tight, still drawing down. The jib on the aft crane, the one that already shifted, bends, the pivot failing and the jib falling down, its cable slack, releasing tension on the third crane.
The anchor continues to sink and it draws the cable tight again and with a horrible rending screech the third crane's mount screeches and comes down, in its entirety, its entire gantry twisted off as if it was nothing more than rotten fruit.
The cable whips though the air, sparks leaping when it strikes the deck, scouring deep wounds and leaving painted metal sandblast shiny. It's an avenging arm of God leaving a trail of thunderous destruction in its wake.
Simultaneously with the last two cranes failing and falling, the first two swing on their mounts, moving together like a pair of mating waterbirds engaged in a sinuous and seductive dance. Their cables run out, their drums tight and shifting and flying loose. Something twangs and then the first hatch slides from its mounts and comes towards me like the blade of an enormous guillotine. I'm running as fast as I can to portside, but I'm not going to make it, there's no way so I dive beneath the side of the hatch, and it passes over the top of me, crashing into the forepeak where it rests.
Noise, my body thrumming with shockwaves, deafening me, juddering on the deck, sliding sideways from the harmonic resonance as the entire ship cries out in agony.
I hope Blong found somewhere good to hide. Damn it, I should have sent him off first, made sure he was locked away somewhere safe. The deck vibrates with a thousand impacts, as shards of metal and links of chain and random detrius that was thrown into the air comes crashing down. The mad insane clattering forward slows and stops as the anchor reaches the bottom.
Dust fills my mouth and eyes and my ears ring like I've spent the afternoon in a cathedral's bell tower. I'm flat, down, just repeating to myself you're alive, you're alive. It's incredibly, impossibly quiet. As if the whole island was shocked at the sudden violence of what I just unleashed. And I don't blame it, I'm surprised as well. I expected the cable to lift and pull the hatches aside, maybe tip them into their holds.
What I got was something else entirely.
There is no noise but the ringing in my ears and the abused cries of seabirds.
I stand and look at what I have done.
The whole ship smokes. Dust and powder rises from every surface, enveloping the boat in a halo of particles shivered off by the shockwaves that crumpled through it. Smoke ripples up from the aft cranes and Hold Three, where the cars are. Smoke comes also from the forepeak, behind me, where the windlass grew redhot before the anchor ploughed its way to a stop on the ocean below. It must have only sunk ten or twenty metres. But that was more than enough.
The third and fourth cranes are crumpled wrecks, the third's jib sticking out of the hold where it tumbled, like an accusing hand rising from the grave. The aft hold is open, the third filled with wreckage. The second hatch, the charnel house, is bizarrely untouched, still closed and I see that the chain I used to secure the cable to the lock snapped. And the forward hold, the one where he and I first met, where he seduced me with his Dark Star, is right in front of me.
Trembling, I lean over the edge. My rifle is over by the forward crane, along with my drybag, placed carefully in the locker but I don't go for it. If he is in here, if he can leap up from the depths, then the rifle will do nothing at this range. Still, I slip the pistol from my belt and hold it with both hands as I look over the side.
The hold is empty. More than empty, it is bare. Nothing on the floor, nothing on the walls but yellow and black hazard stripes and a big painted number one. Collected in the corners, like drifts of snow or dust, are wheat husks, the remnants of the last cargo held in the hold. There is no throne, no void, no dark stars or cosmic entities. And there is no pale king, no insane First Officer, no marys nor sign of marys.
It is utterly, completely empty. Except for two things: the rifle magazine I dropped and my folding lockblade that he plucked from his shoulder.
The ship shudders. The we
irdest thing. It moves, the deck rippling as if alive. I have the strangest impression of a dog, shivering as fleas crawl on its skin. A low grumble fills the air, like the far off thunder of a distant storm. It rolls and grows in strength, as do the vibration in the deck.
MATAI.
Hearing him a disappointment, yet also reassuring. I hoped he was crushed when the doors and the crane fell into the third hold. But, also, I am glad he was not.
He and I are yet to finish our business.
WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?
That is a good question. A strange mirage makes me blink. I must be right on the edge because it seems like the bridge is blinking back at me. The row of windows gleaming in the afternoon sun, the portholes that remained intact on the third level, where the captains quarters are located, are disappearing one by one. So strange it takes me a moment to realise; they are exploding out under great pressure. The bridge too is doing something odd. It's dipping. Bending. It couldn't be. Then something, a spanner, perhaps left by a long departed scavenger, slides across the tilting bridge and falls over the side, its shiny surface catching the late afternoon sun. And I realise: its tipping. The whole aft of the ship is tipping.
The whole deck leaps beneath my feet. It rises sharply upwards and I fall back, flat on my back again, as if it bucked me off and I know.
I look up into the deep blue of the afternoon sky. The wind is cooling, the deck heat fading as the day comes to its end. Above me birds circle, wondering what strange calamity has befallen the ship. And I wonder too.
Then I know what I have done.
Black Harvest is breaking in two.
Chapter 33
It's so nice here, lying on the deck. So cool on my back, on my neck, my hair matted with sweat, oil and filth caking my skin. Orange light, golden sun bands the inside of the starboard railing and I think oh good, night time, sleepy time. I could close my eyes and let rest take me, silken, beautiful rest, calling me calling–