S. Welles - To Ocean's End

I ran to the mess of wood and metal and helped clear debris. “Jacobi, where are you?” My right ankle felt sprained but whatever. The pain was nothing compared to my cargo pusher’s plight. How the heck was he even alive and yelling?

“I’m right here! Get the damn crane off me!”

“Sauna, go find Cancer and bring him here!” The Dominican disappeared.

The crane had crashed right through a small crate and the dock holding it up. The dock surrounding the impact site formed a hazardous crater. I spied a patch of bloody flesh near the middle and yelled for everyone’s attention and pointed. Seven of us gathered around the top half of the broken crane and wedged our hands under it. Together we heaved the crane up a few inches. An eighth person slid down and grabbed Jacobi, then pulled him out from under everything. He screamed and swore at his rescuer. We let go of the crane, which made the dock sink more on impact. I helped the dock worker carry Jacobi out of the mess and set him on his back on stable dock space.

Jacobi was drenched in bloody seawater and his right thigh was kinked at an unnatural angle. My insides squirmed. Blood I could handle. Unnatural skeletal compositions? Not so much. He was bleeding from his head and shoulder, but everything was attached and his voice sounded devoid of fluid.

Cancer arrived with a medical bag in one hand. I ordered my cargo pushers to salvage what they could from the shattered crate, which had been full of fuel pellets for the engine. They were compacted wood soaked in a chemical that made them burn nice and hot, and not too fast. Rammus and Mido began collecting the dryer pellets in mesh sacks but kept glancing at Jacobi. Sauna, Ed, Ted, and Jessie watched from the railing.

Cancer checked Jacobi’s vitals, then tended to his cuts and assed the other injuries. He relieved us all with new that he had no concussion and had gotten away with just bruised ribs. The cuts weren’t deep enough for sutures. His leg would need to be set and bound.

Jacobi said, “It’s that bitch. Get her off the ship. She’s bad luck! First Jersey and Mike, then Scully, and now me. She doesn’t belong with us!”

I looked up in time to see Jessie run off. Ed and Ted ran off, hopefully to chase after her. Sauna hesitated before chasing after the rest. I knelt over Jacobi. “I would punch you right now if you weren’t terribly injured.” I wanted to tell him the real reason she was on my ship, but the truth would only make matters worse. We were already reeling from the loss of our two techies. They didn’t need my curse thrown in with it. I spoke in a deadly calm voice. “You will show her more respect or I will fire you right now.”

“That would be more of a threat if you’d get rid of a particular weapon you’re carrying.”

He almost had me there. “And your threat would carry more weight if you didn’t have a broken leg.” I rapped his swelling leg with a knuckle. He cried out and reached for his leg. “Right now she’s far more useful than you, which puts you in no position to bargain until you’ve healed. Chances are she’ll be back home before you’re walking again. So shut up and put up.”

His grey eyes watered with hurt. I’d just sucker-punched his pride. “Yes, Captain,” he said submissively.

I turned my glare on Cancer. Right before my three-hour rest, Rammus, who’d been informed by Mido, had warned me about the doc’s dislike of having a woman aboard. Cancer met my gaze, then looked down. I was almost disappointed he didn’t try to put up a verbal fight. I felt in the mood for a fight, even though it would accomplish nothing.

“I heed your wishes, Captain.” He injected local anesthesia into Jacobi’s leg. I stormed off before the sight of watching a bone get reset could make me vomit. I headed for the dock house, a squat wood hut with a huge solar panel on top, and slammed the door open.

A man sitting at a desk looked up from his paperwork.

I paused, taken aback by this mousy man’s obliviousness to the ruckus outside. “Did you not just hear that crash? I need to speak to the person in charge. Your crane almost killed one of my crew.”

Cremation would have to wait until the dust from this mess settled.

Jessie balled herself up as small as she could in the bunk she’d claimed last night. First Cancer, and now that guy who’d nearly been crushed to death. How long before they beat and raped her? She’d seen hungry looks in Sauna, the Dominican. He wouldn’t stay away from her forever.

She didn’t feel like crying; just getting away. But Port Chesapeake was way too rich and far from home to meet her needs. Her best bet was to hide out on Dyne’s ship until Morocco. Bodyguard was definitely out of the question. Why should she guard men who hated and disrespected her? But… if she didn’t do that, then what else did Dyne have in mind to work off her new attire?

For a whole second she thought of giving everything back, but that’d leave her naked. So no, really bad idea there. She’d keep everything, even her boots. There was no way she was dumpster diving back the clothes she’d been freed from.

Footsteps thumped down a flight of stairs and drew closer, but more muffled once they hit the thin carpeting.

“Jessie!” Ted’s deeper voice called out.

“Hun, where are you?” Ed yelled.

It was unmistakably them. No one else had their girly-sounding voices.

“She probably went this way,” Sauna’s accented voice said.

Jessie scrunched up further. She should’ve picked a better hiding spot. Her heart began pounding as three sets of boots stopped outside her cabin room. She held her breath and scolded herself for not having at least buried herself under the blankets. That might have made it possible for them to overlook her.

No one moved or said anything. It was dead quiet and the boat dead still. Jessie was almost certain they could hear her heart pounding against her ribcage.

“I’m not going in there, amigos. She hits hard. You saw the captain’s face, no?”

“That was her?” Ed said.

“Yeah.”

“Oh, my. What did he do to deserve that?”

“He just touched her. Mido got beat up too. She don’t like being touched. She was with some real bad men before us. She’s pretty, but I’m leaving her alone like Captain said.”

“We’ll take over from here then,” Ted said.

“Yeah. By the way, where are our bunks?”

Sauna laughed nervously. “This room. Take good care of them. Jersey and Mike were good people and techies.”

Jessie’s heart leapt out of her chest and she began feeling lightheaded. How stupid of her to assume she’d have three bunks to herself all the way home.

“Okay, thanks,” Ed said weakly. “We’ll grab our stuff off the main deck once we get her calmed down.”

“Bueno suerte.” One pair of boots ran off, then all fell dead silent again.

Jessie started sweating all over from anticipation. Even though she knew Ed and Ted were gay, they were still men, still had the same equipment. But…

“So what do we do?” Ed asked.

“There a stick or something anywhere? I don’t wanna get punched.”

“Lemme look.”

Feet shuffled away and objects got moved around. With the silent grace of a cat, Jessie snuck to the foot of the bed and curled up into a ball against the storage cabinet wall blocking the bottom third of each bunk. She wedged her head away from the curtain draped across the other two thirds. She pulled the top blanket over her legs and torso and hoped it’d be enough to keep her in the shadows. The wood framing pressed against her elbow and shoulder, and her legs started cramping.

“This’ll work,” Ed said from one cabin over.