Abyss Crew

2 - DSMV Virginia Outrider

"You sure they didn't just sink? 'Sides, how do you know they hit a mine?" Whitman said, raising an eyebrow.

Nielsen shrugged, still not blinking. "I really don't, but I'm sure that's how Marty would've liked to go."

There was a long awkward silence, like the one that comes after an old lady narrates her past sexual exploits, and all they could hear was the distant rumble of the engine and the waters swirling along the hull. The captain's eyes wandered: to the left, to the right, and then to his pilot.

"Well, that ain't how I wanna go," Grant said.

"Nope," Whitman agreed as he took an internal radio communicator in hand. "Allerton, how are things on your end."

"Everythin's perfect, cap'n," the gravelly voice of his chief mechanic answered merrily. "She's singin' like a passerine."

"Good. Keep her happy."

"Will do, cap'n."

They had been at it for hours. The low monotonous purr of the engine, the steady beeping of the radar, the bubbling and gurgling of the pipes, the creaking of the hull, the voice of Nielsen: it was all starting to get on their nerves.

"'Nother one ahead. Two miles. We're gonna pass right under it. No problem," Nielsen announced.

Whitman sighed. He had paid good money to be certain that his sonar was the best quality that he could find. It would have been suicidal to venture into these waters without excellent radars and an operator that was just as good.

Luckily, Nielsen was as keen-eyed as he was dumb.

Hawkeyed and birdbrained.

Time crawled on, and after one or two more hours, six mines, two whales, and three shoals of fish, northern pikes if Nielsen was to be believed, the radar operator finally gasped in excitement. "Think I see it, cap'n."

Whitman raised an eyebrow and sat up straight in his chair. "You sure, Nielsen?"

"It's big enough that it's gotta be it and... wait a minute... There's another ship."

"Goddamn scavengers," Grant said, audibly crossed.

"Bunch o' dumbasses." Whitman grumbled. "Takes a special kind o' dimwit to go and strip a White Ribbon ship."

But then, there was no shortage of dimwits in the Atlantic Ocean, or any other ocean, for that matter.

He brusquely took the radio's microphone in hand, but then remembered that he had thrown his last communications officer off his ship for being a cheat, a whoremonger and an all-around jackass back in Boston. For nearly twenty minutes, he had to dutifully scan for the right frequency until he found it amidst the white noise.

"This is Cap'n Waylon Whitman of the Virginia Outrider. The vessel that you're plundering an' all the goods it contains're the sole property of the White Ribbon Marine Company. Unknown ship, identify yourself, or we'll open fire on your sorry ass."

The answer was nearly immediate, and it came in a light Scandinavian accent. "I'm Captain Eirik Magnussen, of the Fýrisvellir. That ship is at the bottom of the ocean. It's nobody's property."

Wihtman made a sound that was in equal parts a grunt, a sneer, and a chuckle. "The Gibaraltar Accords state that any sunken boat remains the property of its rightful owner for a full year after it's wrecked," he recited. "Now, if you take a gander at the hull, you'll see that there's a name plastered on it: City of Doodlecastle. And I got a title of ownership proving that it belongs to the White Ribbon Company, plus a Salvage Contract, both signed and stamped. You gotta think real hard 'bout your next move, though, cause even if you thought I wadn't bein' truthful with ya just now, you'd still have to take the chance o' callin' my bluff 'bout havin' my torpedoes trained at your shiny backside."