SWNOVELS Chapter Maritime Mayhem
I can navigate around a hurricane! the captain thought. I’ve been running this ship for thirteen years!
Captain Shiloh had commanded his cruise ship through hairier situations than Tristan. He had avoided whirlpools, icebergs, rouge tidal waves, and obnoxious pirates. Tristan wasn’t the most devastating force in the ocean. For Captain Shiloh, it was Wednesday.
“We have veered to 78 degrees, and are moving at 32 knots, Captain!” the helmsman said.
“Reroute to 93 degrees, slow to 26 knots, and keep Hawaii astarboard. The Panama Canal should be safe harbor from Tristan,” Shiloh said.
“Aye aye Captain!” the helmsman acknowledged.
Captain Shiloh had ultimate control of his vessel. He knew every bolt. He knew how long the gourmet meals took to prepare from the galley. He knew who was seasick or hung over from the night before. He was what was called an ‘unconscious competent’,he didn’t know how much he knew.
That made him an amazing captain. Everyone under his command respected him. When he commanded, he treated everyone with respect. That was what beckoned reciprocation. When he didn’t berate his crew, they ran like silk. The events that were about to transpire would show the crews allegiance. To stare death in the face, and smile the entire time it’s happening.
Captain Shiloh checked the azimuth compass. They were moving towards 93 degrees, and the speed was dropping to 26 knots. The only passengers who knew of Tristan, heard from news broadcasts. They knew the sky got dark, and the wind became brisk, however, if you asked them if they were near a hurricane, they would say they weren’t. Captain Shiloh almost wrote the playbook on hurricane avoidance.
Everything was running smoothly. He was wondering about his rebellious daughter. She was a senior in high school. Her dad wasn’t home much. He was a responsible captain of a cruise ship. It was almost like being in the Navy. He gave her anything she wanted. The price for that luxury was he was abroad more than he was at home. Many people think money makes you comfortable. When you have a family, time is a dominant contender.
She had a stoner boyfriend. Not the accurate, precise, appropriate kind; the drug addled, constantly inebriated kind. Women either emulate their fathers by finding a like boyfriend, or resent them. With the lack of fatherly guidance at home, she chose the latter.
Her boyfriend’s nickname was Mud. Shiloh thought that moniker was appropriate. The kid never did anything except get drunk and wasted. He wasn’t even going to graduate! He checked her FaceSpace page one day. He wanted to log on and chat with his daughter on-line. He read a conversation she was having with her best friend, talking about Mud. It wasn’t his speculation; he got the information from the horse’s mouth. Mud was failing.
He was thinking about intervening. When he wasn’t there often, why would she listen to him? That was his parental conundrum.
He was her dad, damn it! He was a responsible parent who provided for her! Why wouldn’t she listen to him!? There was one factor he couldn’t overcome—she was a teenager. A teen knows no rationality. All they know is what they want right now! What could he do?
At least his wife understood his hardship. She knew he had to journey to slay dragons, in order to rescue her from the tower. She knew no one else would save her but him. That was why her negotiation for his lack of being home made sense to her. She took up many extra activities. She had an award winning garden. She participated in a book club, and she fired many pottery pieces in her kiln, and sold them at the local decoration store. She knew he wasn’t running around on her. He didn’t gamble, was an alcoholic, or dealt drugs. Her man was a stoic ship captain. He wasn’t a deadbeat. She knew what he was before she married him. Why would she change mid-stream? Certain women can be stupid that way.
“Hawaii is Astarboard, Sir!” the navigator vociferated. “We have moved to 289 degrees, and are underway to the Panama Canal with swiftness!”
“Aye Charlie, we need to check the liquor stock for the Alkochen businessmen. This is their vacation,” Shiloh said.
“We should’ve picked up a couple vats of tequila when we pulled into port in Mexico,” Lieutenant Adams, his first mate said. “Those businessmenare bonafide lushes.”
“They’re on vacation, Lance. Let them indulge,” Shiloh said.
“I don’t want to be around when the sexual harassment claims began to sprout up,” Lance said.
“We have a squad of Navy SEALs on board on leave. Their mere presence should nip those claims in the bud. Don’t worry, Lance, they’ll behave,” Shiloh calmed him down.
Shiloh gazed at the horizon. The storm was nowhere in sight. Hopefully, it will blow itself out, before it hits San Francisco. That was their main port. He didn’t want to worry about docking. Even if it struck in Mexico and headed towards America, California was a long state. Hurricanes seemed like they were scared of Los Angeles anyway. It would probably fizzle in the Pacific.
The ocean was calm. All they had to do was sail to the Panama Canal, and begin their trip to Bournemouth, England. They were stopping off in Cuba, Jamaica, Monaco, and Spain. It was the way to travel the world. The passengers paid enough for the excursion.
Shiloh was looking at the horizon, when suddenly the ship felt as if it were hit by a rogue wave! Shiloh almost lost his balance. The crew felt like the crew from that space show getting hit by a laser blast! They all stumbled in unison.
“What the... Lance! Find out what hit us!” Shiloh was emphatic.
“There are no aftershocks from a hurricane!” Lance expressed. “We aren’t in enemy territory, and the ocean is calm as glass, so no rouge waves!”
“Great deduction, Lance. I’ll repeat my order, because you must not have heard me. FIND OUT WHAT THE HELL HIT US!” Shiloh pushed his point.
Lance left the control room to find the elusive culprit.
The ship not only slowed down, it became avast. There was no advancement. Shiloh wondered what happened. They were well on their way. Then the ocean, harshly halted their advancement. Actually, not the ocean, something in the ocean.
Shiloh scrambled to the port side of the ship. That was the direction of the hit. He looked into the water. He saw mysterious, violent bubbling at the base of the ship.
He ran back to the helm, and grabbed the intercom.
“Engine room! Why have we stopped!?” Shiloh asked.
“The engine room is flooded, Sir! There are… fish things spilling in the hole!” The engine room transmitted.
“What fish things!?” he asked.
“They swim, and have sharp teeth, Sir!” The engine room said. “I haven’t the sligh...AHHHH!”
The engine room was abruptly cut off.
“Engine room... engine room, come in, dammit!” Shiloh yelled into the intercom.
Shiloh heard the clicking of the intercom. He heard, “What are those things!? They’re eating the hull! Abandon the engine room! Oh God, the blood!” It became peculiar, immediately. What were they screaming about?
“The ship is sinking, Sir! These monsters have killed Sandow, and are sinking the ship!” The engine room transmitted.
What was sinking his ship? Why were they sinking his ship? What had the power to sink his ship!? He had to know. He took the elevator down to the engine room. He was lucky he was in the private elevator, and avoided the chaos around the ship.
He went down to the engine room. When the door opened he was greeted by salt water all over the floor. It looked like a salty swamp in the hallway going towards the engine room. There had to be a little more than a leak; the salt water was flowing profusely.
Shiloh walked towards the engine room. The hatch was open from the crew abandoning the room, quickly.
From down the hall, he saw the engine room’s flooring was submerged in ocean liquid, and fodder.
What did this!? Shiloh thought. What could devastate a cruise ship so quickly!?
He thought he got his answer, when a mako shark lunged at him from the room! The shark landed in the hallway, and was stopped by the shallowness of the water. He was an unstoppable killing machine in the ocean, but without water, he was a floundering fish, with fruitless, murderous intentions.
Shiloh jumped back, so the shark wouldn’t sink its teeth into Shiloh’s foot. Although the shark was out of its element, it still had determination, and sharp teeth.
The shark kept inching, and splashing the water to try to get to Shiloh. The attempts were futile. It had no advantage, and Shiloh wasn’t stupid enough to feed it his foot.
All of a sudden the shark began to wildly flail, and emit a sound Shiloh hadn’t heard before. It was a strange grunting sound. When did sharks grunt? Then he heard the sound of a band saw. That sound wasn’t indigenous to the ocean. That was when he saw movement.
Shiloh had done everything there was to do in his ship. He braved many obstacles, and conquered them. Unfortunately, for him, this wasn’t Wednesday. They had gills and fins.
He saw... something, with teeth, tearing at the shark! The… things weren’t fish. They weren’t ocean animals, or plants either. They had gills and fins, but he had never seen this before. It kept eating the shark. It had no recourse. Whatever it was, it made one of the Earth’s greatest predators, into one of Earth’s most helpless prey.
There were many of them. Some of them were finished with the shark. They fell to the hallway. Shiloh thought they would suffocate, like the shark was doing. He was waiting to see them flail and flounder, like the shark, but they surprised him.
They didn’t flail, and splash in the water. They began to morph! They transformed from a fish-like creature, to a reptilian, Komodo dragon type of animal! It was changing right in front of him!
That thing ain’t from around these parts! Shiloh thought, and pulled out his service revolver.
He was equipped with a .38 because of pirate attacks. He hoped he could use it to ward off psychotic, hungry, morphing creatures. He shot at the closest one.
It made no hole. It didn’t even make a mark! It didn’t even phase that thing! By not phasing the animal, this meant it didn’t even acknowledge him! It was on the floor, and it began to tear at the metal of the hallway with its teeth! That thing ate... everything! Not only animals, but inanimate objects also!
Shiloh saw what he needed to see. He ran back to the elevator, and jumped inside. The doors closed, and he pressed the button to return to the control room.
In thirteen years, he never had to go mission critical. Nothing this devastating had threatened his ship before. He knew the procedure, he just had never implemented it before.
The doors opened, and he ran to the transmitter. He switched to the emergency frequency, and began to express his Mayday.
“Emergency, emergency! The Aniju, call number 1453h65t4e has been struck at 2.37 degrees latitude, -95.712 degrees longitude! The Aniju is sinking, repeat, sinking!” he yelled into the intercom.
“The distress of the Cruise Ship Aniju has been acknowledged. The Coast Guard will be able to assist you,” the emergency operator said.
Shiloh replaced the intercom, and grabbed a few life jackets. He went out on the deck to assist.
“Oh my God, what are those things!?” A passenger said, as he ran desperately to a lifeboat.
He couldn’t believe it, but it was happening. His ship was being sunk, with all his passengers on board! This was a scenario he never thought would happen. Everyone was panicking, and not helping. Everyone was out for themselves. They didn’t care if the elderly were in trouble. They’ve never dealt with a sinking ship, infested with monsters either.
The ship began to creak. The wood of the deck began to crack. The ship suddenly dropped ten feet deeper into the ocean. Whatever these things were, they were fast! They were, literally, eating the ship from the bottom, up!
The hull was the first non-human, casualty. There were many of these... erasers. They constantly ate the wood, the metal, and the passengers! People were screaming at the ethereal carnage. There were splinters of wood, shards of metal, and bloody body parts flying from these things! Shiloh looked, and the image of Cookie Monster eating cookies popped into his mind. The only difference between the two is these monsters ate their crumbs.
It didn’t take two hours for the ship to sink, like the famed Titanic; the Aniju sank in ten minutes! It didn’t just sink, the entire ship was simply not there. Not the metal, wood, deck chairs, swimming pool, people, nothing!
Captain Shiloh always had the question of him going down with his ship. He never thought he would be put in the situation where the question would’ve needed to be answered. He didn’t drink where he would run his ship aground, so the question didn’t come up. This was his moment of stoicism. He met the inevitable head-on.
All the passengers were eaten as quickly as the mako shark. There were a lot of those creatures, but not enough to digest two thousand passengers, and an entire cruise ship! Where did it all go?
Shiloh fell in the water, along with the Komodo dragon-like creatures. As he looked, they morphed back into a fish-type creature! What on Earth are these things? Was the last thing he thought, as the creatures sank their teeth into his arm.
The proper question, which he never would know was, What on Valan-Cheanus were these things? Earth was just their new residence.
They were actually here before we were. The Cheasu just thought we would know about interstellar space travel by now. I guess their calculations were slightly off.
The Coast Guard was swift. They were patrolling off the coast of Mexico.They arrived for rescue. They were going to call in all available guards to assist with the passengers. The captain took his binoculars, and saw nothing.
“Lieutenant, repeat the Lat Long coordinates,” the captain said.
“The coordinates are 2.37 degrees latitude, -95.712 degrees longitude, Sir,” the Lieutenant said.
“How long ago was the emergency call?” the captain asked.
“Twenty four minutes ago, Sir,” the Lieutenant said.
“I’ve been on the Aniju, cruising, on vacation. That behemoth is a floating city. There’s no way it could completely sink in twenty four minutes! There are no deck chairs, lifeboats, or any passengers, for that matter,” the captain said.
“Maybe we should troll the area, Sir,” the Lieutenant suggested.
“And waste more taxpayer money locating nothing?” the captain asked. “Face it, Lieutenant Arland, we’ve been punked.”
Arland looked out. He didn’t even see any frothy wave activity.
“Turn about, and tell no one they got us, Sir?” Arland asked.
“Affirmative, Lieutenant, tell no one. I’m going to talk to the emergency dispatcher, and tell her karma’s a bitch,” the captain said.
Everything switched from terrible pandemonium, to nothing.