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1 - The Solar Wind
6th of April, 2116. Rust-coloured waves, calm sea fading into the haze towards the darkening east. A minimal breeze, just enough to keep the perfectly balanced white ship moving forward dreamily, southwest towards Bermuda.
Young boy high up in the archaic Crow’s Nest, playing a haunting tune on an ocarina, carried down in snatches on the wind. Young man leaning against the foremast, newly bearded and unkempt from the day’s work, strumming on a Clarsach, a small Celtic harp. Ancient acoustic instruments, rare calm moment, the great sea hushed. Young sailor with red hair cropped as painfully short as her two brothers’, leaning against the rail with an infuriated scowl, humming a fragmented alto line. The fast-sinking sun painting the trio orange. Three musicians, the Donegal Troubles, hired for the Solar Wind in Dublin. Dark eyes watched from the shadows of the jib stowage bay.
Blood! An ocean full of it! Paean Donegal stared at the thick red waves; and the way the setting sun lit up the blood that was still clinging to her hands right up to the elbows, blood that she hadn’t managed to wash off in a whole week.
Her knuckles stood out as she gripped the rail, trying to calm herself down. There was nowhere to run; if she made any suspicious moves, the game was over. For a whole week they had managed to stay alive now without spilling their secret to the crew on this ship. But she felt trapped. By now she couldn’t eat a single bite of food; couldn’t keep it down. Her stomach was in a permanent knot. And it was not from sea sickness!
Her older brother’s hand on her shoulder. She shrugged it off with irritation.
“You alright, Pae?”
They should have left her behind! She hadn’t wanted to leave Dublin, run away like a common criminal. Here she was, travelling off into the sunset like a hero. Hired to play the happy fool and sing inane stupid little tunes and be the entertainment…
“Open yer eyes!” She made a wild gesture at the rusty sea.
“Tha’s only the plankton bloom, sis,” he tried to pacify. “The light catches the little plants that way at sunset. Now if you’d kindly pipe down.” His eyes flitted uneasily to the bridge and the shadows at the bow, and he raised his voice to retake the tune. “An’ I’ll tak’ the high road an’ you’ll tak’ the low road...”
She glared at him.
“Please, can we be done gloaming?”
Ronan smiled placatingly. “But don’t you want to be in Scotland afore me anymore, Pae?”
She groaned. “I never ever,” she said pointedly, “ever want to be in Scotland! Or Ireland, either. Get that, Ronan?”
Her brother scowled at her. She turned away from him, her eyes moving back to the thick, red sea, her mind compulsively returning to a place she had called home all her life, only a week ago.
Shawn Donegal came shimmying down the rigging with a monkey’s agility. Old Sherman Dougherty watched him, thoughtfully drawing on his old-fashioned tobacco pipe. The ancient sailor with the thick headful of shoulder-long white hair had been listening to the angry music; now he was listening to the bickering.
“Tomorrow we land at Hamilton,” he commented.
“Yay! Land!” piped the youngest Donegal. “Can’t wait!”
“Shawn!” warned Ronan. Paean glared at both and turned away, disgusted. She could wait. She’d be quite happy never to have land under her feet again! Ronan thought they ought to get off in Hamilton, Bermuda, and restart their lives there. She didn’t think so. It wasn’t far enough from Dublin.
“Play the Britches full of Stitches!” she demanded snappily.
The jolly Britches! Shawn grinned around his ocarina as that old ditty spilled out of the clay whistle. Paean always demanded that tune when she wanted to punish him. Poor Pae.
Oh hey, but her temper didn’t help! He wished she could just relax. Everything would be fine. They were on a ship, they had escaped. Things might be a bit dubious here, but at least the Unicate would never find them as long as they stayed aboard and kept a low profile.
He watched the First Mate, Mr Marsden, and that mysterious being called Rushka, move about in the dusk. Rushka wore a black leather cap, knee-high black boots and black clothes all over. A hint of dark-red hair peered out under her cap. They were currently testing signals from the self-tuning sails, the automated winches, and the hand-holds system. Feeding back the results to Captain, on their wrist-coms. Shawn wanted such a com. None had been offered to him or either of his sibs.
Captain Radomir Lascek emerged onto the command deck and shouted something at the sky. Probably Hungarian.
Shawn briefly thought back to their first, intimidating encounter with the ship’s Captain. Tall, powerful and formidable, with hands that looked like they could break a neck at the drop of a hat. His coarse black hair and short-cropped beard showed first signs of greying, and his eyes like blue steel seemed to cut through any cover-up and straight to the truth.
Except that he hadn’t. They had been called to the bridge, where Captain Radomir Lascek had demanded to see their credentials. Ronan, forever the organized, cool-headed planner, had produced their identity documents and his own school leaver’s cert. He was the only one who had finished his junior cert. Lascek had read the three identities with a deep scowl.
“Why are you aboard?” he had challenged.
“Sir, we’d rather be employed, and a ship is the only place that will employ people of Shawn’s age.” Ronan’s answers were studied, self-possessed.
As opposed to Paean. She had stood there with her eyes downcast, unable to look at any of them, with guilt scribbled all over her – or perhaps depression. Until the Captain had ordered her to look at him. She’d raised her eyes, in defiance, tears lurking just under the surface, and glared at him.
“Yes, sir?” she’d barely whispered.
“What did you do in Dublin?” he had asked. She had gone pale and only stared.
“Captain, she’s our essential violinist,” Shawn had come up for his sister. “Gigs don’t work without her. We’re the best harbour-side band in town,” and he’d grinned, hoping desperately that the Captain would stop putting pressure on Paean. If she cracked...
He got his wish. Captain Lascek released Paean from his interrogating glare. His expression had turned cold and official, and he’d beckoned to Rushka – that same Rushka, to come forward with some documents.
“Sign here, and here, and there,” he had instructed them. “You’re hired. We need you to play a gig whenever one is called for, and for the rest you’re deck hands and cabin boys. You shall be trained on the job.”
“Works for me,” Ronan had muttered and signed, his siblings following his lead.
That had been a week back, as the ‘San Diego’ was already putting distance between herself and Dublin, leaving a small host of Unicate harbour guards behind in her wake. Shawn had known it would be alright, as long as none of them said anything much. What was Captain going to do, throw them overboard?
Actually, what would stop Captain? Who would come looking for them? Shawn had realized since that he wouldn’t want to mess with that man. Radomir Lascek had both the ship and her crew in absolute control. Watching him operate, Shawn could sometimes imagine that the crew were merely automatons responding to his signals. He trained them like that: Responses had to be instant and dead accurate.
The Captain had a military bearing, and he seemed to have an unfailing instinct where sea and sky were concerned. The Solar Wind’s sails were self-tuning; but often he would override that and take an active hand, ordering ‘all hands’ onto the deck to tweak and influence the sails, and every time, this resulted in greater speed.
There were many rumours flying around the ship concerning the Captain. Some of the sailors said that he preferred storms to clear skies, and that there was more to Captain than met the eye; that he was ex-military, that he was an
alien… Shawn chuckled. The Captain’s military attitude and his alien glares at old Sherman discouraged the old storyteller from spreading such rumours. For a few hours at a time.
Shawn yawned and played the Britches one more time, in his own altered version with a beat missing, making them sound as though they were limping. It had been a long day. The break in the Crow’s Nest had been a respite from a lot of scrubbing, chopping, polishing, handing on tools, and tightening of things on deck. His fair, freckled skin was burnt from the work in the sun. His freckles were fusing. He’d be one big freckle soon, he thought pensively, staring at the by now purple plankton bloom and the waves that were slowly losing their gloaming as the night deepened. Surely Pae had no problem with the purple? Tonight the waves would have fluorescent peaks again. He sighed. When was this watch over?