Owen took his coffee to go and headed for the cargo hold to try and reinforce Chips’ patches. When there was finally a cup of coffee in front of everyone remaining in the galley, and the empty bowls had been pushed into the middle of the table, Percy brought them to order. “Next agenda item: assuming we don’t fucking sink, how do we get my lady moving again?” She looked at Hemi.
Hemi put his pencil down. “Perhaps in your time on the sea some of you have become familiar with the Angler fish? In some species, the female is enormous compared to the male, maybe a hundred times bigger. The females are complex, highly evolved organisms, with sophisticated traps for catching and devouring other fish. The males are nothing but tiny sperm repositories. They swim around until they find a female, attach themselves to the female’s underside, and then fuse with her body, essentially becoming nothing more than a sperm organ for her.”
“Hemi, let’s try stepping around the long-winded symbolism and get to the fucking point,” Percy said.
“Here is what I propose,” Hemi continued, unfazed. “The Prospect has a hatch with a mating collar on the bottom side of the boat. Its normal intended use is underwater docking to another sub’s topside hatch for discreet transshipping of small cargo. We could rig something so we could mate the Gnat to the underside of the Prospect, and then feed up fuel and power into the Prospect from the Gnat. As a male anglerfish might…”
“Got it,” Percy interrupted. “And you think there’s enough juice left in the Gnat for…what? How far could that possibly take us?”
“How far do you want to go Sylvia?”
“Hold the fuck on a second,” Shakes cut in. “what exactly do I get out of your little biology lesson, Hemi? The fundamental pin of this here plan of yours is really me casting my lot in with you loser a-holes. Basically, you’re turning my boat into a reserve tank, and I’m donating all my fuel to you. And maybe even more fuckin’ ‘gregiously than that: I’d be giving up the independent operator’s sacred right to self-determination. Suddenly I’m demoted from captain of my own boat to rank-and-file in some backwater freight-trucking crew. What’s the payoff for me? And it better be a whole lot more than a couple of bowls of fried rice, or I’m taking my boat rollin’ on. I mean, I thought I could just sell you some batteries or something and be on my way. But yer talkin’ about something quite above and beyond my fuckin’ baseline generosity.”
Percy blew out her cheeks. “OK, look. First: you are not going to be crew, you are our guest, Shakes.”
“Captain Shakes.”
“Our guest, Captain Shakes. Second, I’ve recently made a contact that has put me on to our possible next job, and let me say, gentlemen, it is a downright fuckin’ doozy when it comes to potential profitability. You throw in with us right now Captain Shakes, and it’s like you’re making a good bet on a large payout in the near future. Assuming you’re all done gorging yourselves, let’s regroup at the navigation table and I’ll show you what I’m thinking.”
“Anything that profitable has got to be illegal,” said Shakes as they slid out from the galley table bench seats.
“As you know, what is illegal in one territory is a high-value commodity in another, at least for most cargo,” said Hemi.
“Oh, I wasn’t judging, just, ya know, clarifying. Regional high-value commodities are the Gnat’s bread and butter.”
They made their way forward and regrouped around the navigation table, most still holding their tin coffee mugs.
“So where are we now?” asked Shakes between sips.
Hemi pointed to the obvious small x at the end of a string of grease pencil dashes.
“To pick this job up, we need to reach the destination I had been aiming for before we got side-tracked,” said Percy, “and that destination is here.” She pointed to a small feature on the chart with a grease-stained finger.
Shakes set his coffee mug down on the glass covering the chart and pulled down the retractable magnifier. He leaned over the chart and read the label of the feature Percy had pointed to. “It says, ‘deserted.’ That’s where your big fuckin’ score awaits, Captain Percy? A deserted island?”
“It was deserted when this chart was made. And the current residents would probably prefer the charts remain labeled that way. But over the last ten years or so, a small depot was built there. Look…” She took the grease pencil and drew a lightweight but long line across hundreds of miles of ocean. “The Territorial Authority boundary is roughly about here. With total assholes on this side we are currently on, and only sort-of assholes on the other. So you can see how it makes sense to put a depot on that deserted island just across the line to help facilitate trade in, out, and through Asshole-vania over here.”
“The Authority on this side of the line are a bunch of aggressive motherfuckin’ assholes,” agreed Shakes. “They must just hate having that depot there.”
“That’s why the proprietors would prefer the island to generally be understood as ‘deserted.’ And it’s also why the assholes patrolling the water we’re currently in are particularly unfriendly dicks to good folks like ourselves in the business of shipping. Hence my priority to get us moving again, and why we would be particularly grateful to have your assistance in that endeavor, Captain Shakes.”
“Well, when you put it that way — that particularly profitable way, I mean…”
Hemi picked up a pair of calipers and measured the distance between the small grease-pencil x and the deserted island. “About 100 nautical miles…” he muttered, mostly to himself. He set his notebook on the glass and scribbled calculations, pausing to take further measurements at some points. “We have to cut everything to the bone, but the maths says we could make it. Could.”
“Wait a damned second, I put it to you again: what do I get out of this fuckin’ mechanical monstrosity of a plan?” Shakes was stabbing his finger against the table, leaving smudgy black prints on the glass.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“I can pay you up front for the fuel we take from you today Captain Shakes,” said Percy, “and at the depot I’ll pay you your standard hull rate, plus refill your fuel oil. So it’s like you’re getting paid for a full shipping run just for accompanying us to the depot.”
“You mean if you get into that there ‘highly profitable’ line though don’t ya? What if you find that fuckin’ line has dried up?”
“In that case, we’ll have to work something else out that is within our means. You afraid of a little gambling Captain Shakes?”
“What about my current load? This little fuckin’ adventure of yours is going to set me back a couple of days at least. What do I tell my current client?”
“Where is your drop-off?”
“Well, I was headed for the Longland Islands trading center. Refuel there, and then on to my drop-off destination a few days out beyond that.”
“C’mon, buddy,” said Bastian, “look at the fuckin’ chart; it’s nearly the same direction! There’s no way the difference in travel time between this depot and Longland Islands is more than a day. You can tell your client you were delayed by any whatever-the-fuck-thing you want. Hell, tell them the truth. You’re probably still going to be within your delivery window anyway!”
Shakes considered the chart. There was no arguing with Bastian’s point.
“Plus, we will fit a nice mating collar onto the Gnat. You may find that to be of some use in the future,” said Hemi. “Think of it as a deluxe feature.”
“And hot meals ’til we get to the depot,” added Gregory.
Shakes glanced at Gregory with a look that suggested he might be bought cheap if the pay satisfied his stomach. “I need one other thing, though…I want you to keep a line open to me on any future job possibilities.”
“What, like fuckin’ partners?” Percy bristled.
“Fuck no. I work alone. But an operator has to have connections in this game. You’d be a big cheese for me, feeding me future prospects. That way I get long-term payoffs for my investment in your sorry-ass fuckin’ futures right now.”
“Alright. Any job that seems suitable for a specialty cargo hauler like yourself, I will send your way with fuckin’ pleasure.”
Shakes grinned. Now they were negotiating from a place he understood — most profit is future profit. “So, ah, Hemi, what exactly are ya going to do to my beautiful little boat?”
“Well,” Hemi said, looking at Percy, “first, we need to rouse Chips. She is the only one on board who might know how to fit a mating collar that could work.”
Percy was grinding her teeth. “Alright, Fuck. Hemi, go see if you can rehire Chips on a temporary and ad-fucking-hoc basis to do some of this welding we need. I don’t want to see her though. Tell her to stay the fuck out of my way or she’ll find herself swimming in the prop wash…once we’re moving again.”
Hemi loaded up another bowl of rice from the galley and led Shakes to the crew quarters, where they found Chips in her rack with the curtains drawn.
“Chips,” Hemi addressed the curtain. “I brought you some food.”
“Ah, fuck you and your gestures, Hem’,” came a muffled voice. “Go spoon it into that asshole you work for until she fuckin’ chokes on it.”
“Chips, you are certainly tough, no one would deny that. And I think that toughness comes partly from a genuine mean streak in you, and partly from the fact that you believe you know how to do things right. The problem is that Captain Percy has both of those qualities too, so just like you, she is both sometimes mean and also not going to be the one to admit when she did something wrong.”
“Spare me the fuckin’ you’re-both-so-fuckin’-alike speech, Hemi. Just fuck off.”
“I am just explaining why she is not going to come apologize, Chips. I am also going to tell you I believe she was entirely wrong, and risked your life by not warning you she was going to blow the tanks. You were right, and she should apologize, but you know her — she will not.”
“So fuckin’ what? You think I give a shit?”
“So, I do not believe you want to die out here, just because she is never going to do the right thing and admit she made a mistake. But that is what is going to happen: we are going to sink and die on this bleak stretch of ocean right here if you do not help us. We need you to keep the welds on that patch of yours together. Please.”
There was a silence. Then a small, filthy hand stuck out from behind the curtain. “Give me that food, I’m fucking starving.” Hemi put the warm bowl of rice into the hand, and it withdrew. The fork clinked for a minute, and then Chips opened the curtain a little. That was when she saw Shakes. “Who the fuck is that?”
“I’m fuckin’ Shakes,” said Shakes.
“Captain Shakes,” said Hemi.
“Is that your name or how you reproduce?” asked Chips.
“Like you’re one to fuckin’ talk. Didn’t they call you ‘Chips’?”
“Look,” Hemi interrupted, “we found Captain Shakes here on the surface. He has a boat — a small sub. I want to weld a mating collar onto the sail of his boat. It has to fit to the Prospect’s belly mating collar. I want to attach his boat to the underside and run with it that way. This is another project we cannot do without you. Think you could rig something like that?”
“Well, fuck. I might have some scrap steel that could do that. Depends on what the hatch on his boat looks like, so I’ll have to fuckin’ eyeball that. Possible it could be done.” She thought for a second. “But that’s a fuckin’ tricky bit of sonar listening to make that mating work, steerin’ the boat up from underneath, like. You think you got the fuckin’ skills to do that Captain Shakes?”
“I’ve squeezed that boat through any number of tight places — narrow fuckin’ gaps pushing through Authority anti-sub fencing and the like. I’m as good a sub pilot as there ever fuckin’ was.”
“His boat, the Gnat, has a viewport in the sail. He should be able to see enough to execute the mating maneuver without the aid of sonar,” said Hemi.
“A fuckin’ window on a submarine. Stupidest fuckin’ thing I ever heard. Fuckin’ crazy shit ya want to pull here. Look, Hem’, you’re right about me not wanting to die out here. Way I figure it is, to best push that priority forward, I gotta spend my time workin’ on my fucking patch in the cargo hold. I may in fact spend the rest of my short fuckin’ life working on that fuckin’ patch. I ain’t got time to be up there fuckin’ around with welding scrap steel onto what — and I’m just taking a wild fucking guess here — is some barely-afloat rusting sea-tractor.” She paused. “You might get Owen to do it.”
“The kid?” asked Shakes. “Fuck that. If there’s welding to be done, I’ll weld my own boat.”
“She is right though,” said Hemi. “The patch in the Prospect needs more work. If it fails, it could take both boats down. Before you do go back to your patch, though, Chips, get Owen and go out with Captain Shakes and take a look at the Gnat. Make sure they have what they need to get this done right. It is not going to help us much if the mating collar leaks and floods the Gnat. Have Owen haul up the spare welding rig.”
“Aye, Hem’,” she said, clearly understanding that what Hemi actually meant was that she should instruct Shakes on how to do the job correctly. She swung down from her bunk, handing Hemi her empty food bowl. “And fuck you for workin’ around my bad mood by siccing me on a right mechanical challenge. Come on, Captain Shakes, we’ll go find the fuckin’ kid and have a look at this boat of yours.”