Tevun-Krus #62 - Best of 2018

Captain Ahab's Lonely Hearts Club Band - @krazydiamond - OceanPunk

Captain Ahab's Lonely Hearts Club Band

An OceanPunk story by krazydiamond

A melancholy tune rose from the bowels of the Ponaturi, slow and mournful like a bloody whale song. I shared a horrified expression with my first mate Ajax, who shrugged a 'I told you so' and pivoted with me for the door. The engine room was six decks down, six decks until I could wring Jonah's scrawny neck for putting the whole crew in danger, again.

It was the fifth time this week. Last time the doctor threatened to sew his lips shut. It wouldn't have helped, the boy would pound sound out through those freaky looking slits on the side of his neck, which only appeared when he sang. Ajax suggested we just cut his head off and be done with it, but dammit, I had a soft spot for the kid.

There were also no other qualified engineers onboard the Ponaturi. We were stuck with him. No matter how much we wanted to shove him out the pressurized lock to watch the crushing depths pop him like a grape in a massive fist. I bet I could make a hefty sum selling tickets to that show.

"Val, we can't keep doing this," Ajax puffed as he jogged beside me. "Either we shut him up or we draw the heat of the entire Sea Dog Navy on top of us.

I ground my teeth. It would be easy to shift all the blame on the kid, but that wasn't the truth of it. It wouldn't matter if Jonah sang like a canary in a mine shaft if the last job hadn't exploded in our faces.

"I didn't understand," I said.

Jonah was an idiot savant. A nineteen year old kid who made the fussy bucket of rust and outdated mods that was the Ponaturi's engine purr like a well fed tiger. In all my years pirating this quadrant of the Endless Seas, I'd never seen anything like it. The problem was that talent came with a huge downside.

I turned the corner before the engine room, boots skidding over the polished floor. Here, the song was almost deafening. It throbbed against my ears, filled my head to the brim. It was terrible and beautiful and full of dark promises if only you listened, if you followed the song to its end.

I snarled. I had about enough of that nonsense. The door to the engine room was wide open. It only closed if the engine was on fire, though the gears were probably so rusted the door would fail to do that. One of the many repairs the interior of the ship needed, like new engine parts, but I'd spent all the excess money from our last gig on the exterior of the ship, strengthening the hull, patching the weak points. The crew grumbled at me then, but they weren't whining now, not when that strengthened chrome held up nicely against the vise of water outside.

Jonah stood at the edge of the observation platform, the thick dome of clear plastic a window to the outside darkness. His arms were spread wide, like a conductor to the grand orchestras that performed in the port towns. The slits on his neck were open, his mouth a perfect 'O' while his eyes were closed. His expression was lost, blissful, while outside the window, shapes moved, lurking in the dark. I stopped short as some hulking creature rubbed against the glass like an affectionate cat, the scaly underbelly an iridescent violet that sparked with bioluminescent blue lights.

Good lord, what sort of monster had he dredged up from the depths now? I crossed the floor to my engineer. My ears popped at the pressure of the song. I ignored it, hoping my brain didn't liquefy and pour out of my skull as I laid a hand on his shoulder. The song abruptly cut off. The shapes outside the window scattered into the pitch black water.