Lunars of the Caribbean

The Boarding Party (8)

Before Scarlet and Cinder could make it out the door, they heard a muffled cry from on deck. One that drained all of the color from Scarlet's face.

"Enemy ship on the stern side!" a crew member shouted. Scar's eyes popped from her skull for a moment in fear. The same thought transmitted between Cinder and Scarlet.

The Lone Wolf.

Scarlet was the first to burst out of the Map Room. Cinder was right on her toes and rushed into the madness of the frantic crew. Desperately, the men raced around the ship, trying to make things to more smoothly and to get the ship up to a higher speed.

At the helm, Thorne shouted orders to the men, and Scarlet and Cinder marched up the steps to join him.

"What's going on?" Scarlet demanded. "What's following us?"

Taking one hand from the wheel, Thorne pulled a spyglass from his long jacket. "Look and see for yourself."

Scarlet snatched the telescope out of his hands and moved to the rail of the ship. She extended it and aimed the end towards the trail the ship was leaving behind in its wake. Next to her, Cinder could faintly make out a blip on the horizon. Not close enough to tell what it was or what it was doing. Weary, Scarlet handed the spyglass to Cinder, allowing her to take a look.

As the blip was enlarged by the telescope, Cinder saw what was causing such a ruckus. The ship in the distance was no one of any navy that Cinder had ever seen. The vessel was covered in mossy webs of seaweed and grossly rotted planks. Despite the fact that the ship was one of the poorest in condition that Cinder had ever seen, the ship was gaining on them. That pile of shipwreck from the bottom of the ocean that was miles behind them, on the fastest ship in Port Royal, was catching up on them fast.

Scarlet was trying to get Thorne to stop talking for a moment, a nearly impossible task. Thorne was still hollering orders from the helm to the crew. His face was growing hot as he kept shouting. The crew was tense as all of the men ran around like scurrying rats.

The stench of fear was prudent in the air. Somehow, every last sailor on this ship knew the story of the Lone Wolf. The phantom ship that sailed the seas, crewed by mutant soldiers.

Somehow, there were somethings more terrifying than Lunars out there. And those things were the Lunar Soldiers. Cinder had never seen or heard of one before today, when Scarlet told her about them. After learning about them only moments ago, she hoped that she would never have to meet one.

She guessed that her hopes were to die now.

Looking back at the ship, she nearly fell over the rail in shock. The ship was twice as close as it had been before. At most, it was a mile away from them. Even that was a long call for Cinder, who could almost exactly calculate how long it would take the ship to be right on top of them.

"Thorne, I have to hide! It's the only way that you and the crew will make it out of this alive!" Scarlet roared. Thorne refused this notion, making Scarlet's temper grow worse. "He will kill you if he finds me on this ship with you! You know that! If he gets the idea that I snuck onto the ship and you had no idea, he might let you live."

Thorne shook his head and went on steering the ship. "I'm not going to throw you to the wolves like a sacrifice, Scarlet. We're going to face them head on and that's that!"

This argument kept going as Cinder kept an eye on the ship, checking every so often how close it was to the Solstice and doing the math in her head as to how long it would take the ship to catch up.