Strandline

Strandline - Episode 3: Topside

‘Veen! Craig’s mental voice rang in Naveen’s head. He jumped, and the pipe wrench he’d been using clattered to the engine room floor. Topside, now!

Naveen scooped up the wrench and bolted for the exit. (What’s wrong?!) He wasn’t sure if his friend would hear him. He wasn’t a nict, and there were probably a few decks between them.

It’s–

Metal groaned as the cargo ship listed to port. “Holy shit!” The emergency alarm blared, all but drowning his cry. Naveen’s left arm collided with a half-assembled winch. It hurt like hell, but the machinery had kept him on his feet.

Once the boat stopped listing–it had to be at least 10 degrees!–Naveen darted the rest of the way to the stairwell. Glad for the metal handrails, he took the stairs up two at a time. His shipmates’ shouts and footfalls sounded above and below him.

Naveen stepped out into bright sunshine and the acrid smells of smoke and diesel. Squinting and coughing, he stumbled away from the stairs. “Craig!” he shouted.

His friend didn’t reply in the seconds it took for Naveen’s eyes to adjust to the sunshine. He almost wished they hadn’t. With his back to the aft tower, he could see most of the ship tilting to port, which he presumed had everything to do with the titanic bite taken out of the hull near the number two hatch. Dark fuel spilled into Mamala Bay. The diesel wasn’t on fire, but some of the supplies in the middle of the deck were, and…

Naveen did a double take. A white guy with long blond hair and dressed in plain military fatigues stood against the bent railing near the hull breach. He was gesturing at the oily water, which was moving. Moving up and swirling, like a waterspout.

A cable snapped, and fiery debris slid across the deck toward the number four hatch. The raised lip of the huge metal hatch blocked the smoldering crates’ path, sending them tumbling like a sooty rockfall.

Craig’s scream filled Naveen’s ears and mind. Naveen sprinted toward the hatch, peering through the smoke for his friend. He found him curled in a fetal position, blood pouring from a gash on the side of his head, and his dark skin blistered on his back.

“Craig!” After making sure that they weren’t in the path of any more mobile fires, Naveen kneeled beside him, pulling one of Craig’s arms around his shoulders. His friend’s scream made him wince, but he persevered. “C’mon, man. We gotta get out of here.”

Gritting his teeth and leaning heavily on Naveen, Craig got to his feet. Naveen steered the two of them toward the nearest lifeboat. Craig mumbled something.

“What?” Naveen asked, half-listening. Only twenty more feet until the lifeboat.

“Greenmen.”

Naveen’s eyes went wide. He resisted the urge to look over his shoulder to see what the magical/psionic/whatever terrorist was doing. “Bastards,” he growled, continuing forward. “Almost there, Craig.”

A tremor shivered through the metal deck. Air rushed past them toward the middle of the ship, and Naveen knew that they wouldn’t make it.

Fire roared behind them, but Naveen felt almost cold, pins and needles all over as he lurched forward. His foot caught on something and he fell, his wrench clattering on the floor like it had not long ago. Pain shot up his left arm. That was new. And Craig was gone. “Craig!”

No answer. Again.

Naveen picked up his wrench with his right hand; his left arm throbbed. The ship had righted itself somehow and it was cooler and darker and nothing was on fire. What the hell had those Greenmen bastards done now?

“Hello there,” a woman’s voice said.

Naveen rounded on it. On her. The Greenman.

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Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomwahlin/4706576441/