Alister leaned over the railing surrounding the Lunar Dial’s helipad, watching the ship’s wake mar the otherwise glassy ocean. There were two trucks and a modified humvee strapped down, but they didn’t occupy too much of the overall space. The flight deck didn’t see much use except perhaps as an exercise area when the weight room got a little too stuffy for the crew. For the most part, the exercise room held only weights. There were two treadmills, but the stuffiness tended to get a bit much for the small room. Though, comparatively speaking, it was one of the larger rooms aboard the ship. It had been designed as a drone hangar. But Alice didn’t have any drones aboard. Or aircraft. She always talked about wanting to get a helicopter, but never had gotten around to it. Aside from exercise, the only other time people were out on the helipad was when they wanted fresh air. Maybe they would read a book or work on their tan. So soon after launching, no one really had the time for recreation just yet. Once everything was sure to be running smoothly, people would begin milling about.
At the moment, it was just him and the new girl.
Alice had given him the honorable duty of babysitting. Just until she got accustomed to the ship. Supposedly. Alister wasn’t sure that she would ever get used to it. Every day that passed only worsened that feeling. Three days had gone by since she had showed up. Two days since they had set out from Greece. And only a few hours since they had finished preparations in Gibraltar and set out to the Atlantic Ocean. It would be over a week before they reached Mexico.
Throughout that whole time, the curly haired girl could be found in one of two places. Either in her assigned bed or sitting on the helipad, sighing to herself as she watched the unchanging scenery. The sheer amount of self pity expressed in each sigh was mind boggling. He had figured that she would snap out of it on her own sooner rather than later. Another sigh from the girl had his eyebrow twitching. He had asked Doc if she could give the girl some therapy, but she had walked away claiming that she wasn’t that kind of doctor. Given that it was a half-hearted attempt to pawn the girl off on someone else, he really couldn’t blame her.
That still left him with the irritating problem of having to listen to her sighs constantly.
“So, Dorothy. What do you do for fun?” That sounded like a good open-ended question. He honestly had no idea what nineteen year old Harvard students did for fun. Especially not these days. When he had been her age, he had been well into enlisting with the British Army with an InfoSec specialty.
After one last sigh, she glanced up at him and started blinking her eyes. With the warm sun at his back fighting off the cool sea breeze, he probably wasn’t the easiest to look at from down below. So he knelt down at her side to give her an easier time.
“Fun?” She turned to look out at the blue ocean with a snort. “Fun. I liked to learn languages.”
“Ah. Alice mentioned that you are a linguistics student.”
“How did she—” Dorothy cut herself off with a shake of her head, turning back out to the ocean.
Alister didn’t find learning languages fun. It was a matter he had experience in, though it had been some time since he learned anything. He had done it once aside from his native English. That was more than enough for him. Still, he put on a smile. Probably best to not mention his personal feelings on the matter. Seeing that she had decided to not continue the conversation, Alister turned his back to the ocean, resting against the fence bordering the helipad so that he could look at the girl as she stared off to the horizon. “Know any good ones? Ich kann Deutsch sprechen. Habe es gelernt, als ich bei der Armee war.”
Dorothy looked to him with a scowl. He had thought that bringing up a bit of German might cheer her up, or at least help take her mind off whatever troubles she had. Apparently he had been mistaken.
“You don’t speak naturally,” she said, looking away from him again. “And the guttural noise in the back of your throat is a bit much. It’s like you learned from movies.”
“Well, I haven’t really used it in ten years or so. My duties in the army mostly dealt with computers. I barely used it then. And we don’t operate much in Germany. Alice prefers Northern Africa, the Middle East, and some parts of Asia.”
“So how is your Arabic or Farsi? Mandarin and standard Chinese?” When Alister didn’t immediately respond, her frown deepened.
“Gideon handles our Arabic usually. We don’t get to mainland China much, more the Philippine Islands and Indonesia. Anyone we deal with there speaks English…” Alister trailed off. That wasn’t strictly true. There were a few of the crew that they could count on to translate if the issue came up. “You never answered the question about which languages you speak,” he said, desperately trying to keep something of a conversation going. This was already the most she had said since showing up, something that might have been at least partially his fault for not engaging her.
“I specialize in English, Mandarin, Spanish, Russian, and Arabic. By specialize, I mean that I believe I can speak them without notable accent. I am fluent in seven additional languages and passable in seventeen others.” She stared for just a moment, eventually letting out another long sigh. “I wasn’t lying when I said that learning languages is my hobby.”
“And you’re only nineteen?”
“Yes. Haha. I know, I have no life. I’ve heard it all before.” She backed away, about to get to her feet.
“No,” Alister said, grabbing her wrist before she could run off. “I wasn’t making fun of you. That’s extremely impressive. Most everyone here speaks at least two languages. Some three and I think Alice speaks four. Just knowing two of the right languages can get you pretty much any government or military job that you want. And you’re only in your first year of college? Impressive might be understating it.”
Dorothy flopped over, letting her short hair spread out over the helipad in a wavy halo behind her head. “What am I even doing here?”
That was a question that Alister had rather been hoping she would answer. Aside from saying that she had rescued Dorothy, Alice had hardly said a word about it. No mention of what or who Dorothy needed rescuing from. An American student originally from the state of Kansas. She was admitted to Harvard right out of high school. Apparently a language genius—Alice had left that bit out of the dossier he had insisted on—with no known ties to any government agency. But whatever reason Alice had to bring her aboard was apparently ‘sensitive’ enough that she didn’t want it getting out among the crew until she had finished her own investigation.
At least Dorothy seemed aware that she wasn’t being kidnapped. They had pulled Maxwell out of a hot zone in the middle of Syria. He had been wounded and half delirious at the time. They pulled him out under enemy fire, having to fight with both the enemy and Maxwell. There hadn’t been enough time to explain. They practically had to sedate him and properly explain things after he awoke. Thankfully, he had been injured and not much good at fighting back. Alister found himself rubbing at a bit of phantom pain where he had gotten a tooth knocked out thanks to the man. That tooth was back in, but it was a dead tooth. He had to have a root canal on it. Not exactly a fun experience.
Unfortunately for delving deeper into Dorothy’s problems, he had been explicitly forbidden from asking questions regarding how she came to be aboard the ship.
“Maybe Alice is planning to drop you off back in America after we finish our delivery mission.” It was a complete guess. Just something that might make her feel a little better about the situation. Trying to puzzle out what Alice was thinking never worked out well. Even when she explicitly declared a course of action, that would be subject to change at her earliest convenience.
“I doubt it. They took my passport. I’ve heard horror stories about people being trapped in airports for thirty years.”
“I think those stories are mostly fiction, but we do specialize in… extra-legal activities. I’m sure we can smuggle you home.”
Dorothy bolted upright, eyes wide with panic. “Home!” Her hand shot toward her pants’ pocket. Tears welled in the corners of her eyes as her hand came out empty. “Please tell me you have a phone.”
“Not many cell towers on the open ocean.” They did have a satellite phone, but just letting her use it was not an option. As much as it seemed that she wasn’t in some sort of spy, there was always the chance. “What’s wrong?”
“They have my passport! What if they figure out where I live? My family, my friends! They could go after them.”
“Calm down. I’m sure Alice has thought of that. We can go ask her and maybe find a way to contact your family and let them know that you’re alright.”
She was on her feet and running across the helipad before Alister had finished speaking. He gave chase, following her up two sets of stairwells to the bridge. A full crew of six, including Alice, were in their positions around the central console. One stood at the radar displays, another at the electronic charts. The pilot and captain chairs were both occupied by Thomas and Edvard respectively while the helmsman stood behind the helm, though his hands were off the wheel. This far away from port, the pilot had control of the ship using the joysticks on his armrests. Behind them all, Alice sat on a raised dais, overseeing everything.
“—following us?”
Dorothy sprinted straight to Alice’s side, latching onto her arm with tears in her eyes. “You have to help me!”
Alice looked her over for just a moment before gasping. “Did Alister touch you inappropriately?” Without even waiting for an answer, she turned her head and wailed out, “Gideon!”
“Would you please get the full story before threatening to throw me off the ship,” Alister said in a flat tone of voice. Gideon wasn’t on the bridge. He probably wasn’t within earshot. If Alice had truly been serious, she would have activated the ship-wide intercom system. Still, Alister felt the need to protest on principle. “We’re not pirates… Well, not usually. And not the type who send people to walk the planks either.”
“You touch anyone and I’ll grab my eye patch and peg leg and you’ll see just how pirate-like I can be,” she said with a disarming smile. “Now, what seems to be the problem, Dorothy?”
“Those people! My bag had my passport in it! And everything else I brought with me including my laptop. They’ll find out where my family live and go after them! I need to—”
“Slow down, slow down. First of all, they aren’t going to chase you halfway around the world to find your family. The information you overheard wasn’t important enough. They’ll just change their plans. Second, the person they were talking about assassinating was my brother. I thought about letting it be a surprise, but in the end, I told him. My brother is probably going to make them all very dead, very soon. If he hasn’t already. Either way, you don’t have anything to worry about. Unless, of course, that is them in our rear-view mirror,” Alice said with a casual wave of her hand toward the radar station. “In which case, I have severely underestimated how mad they were about breaking that one guy’s neck.”
Dorothy turned a little green in the face, shuddering. As Alice patted her on the head, Alister walked over to the radar and leaned over Walter’s shoulder. A few lights blinked here and there but nothing on the main radar. Those few on the console didn’t mean much. Everything looked normal as far as he could tell.
“It was just a light signal on the RWR, sir. Could have been nothing. The CIC is trying to suss more out of it.”
“Could have been nothing my ass,” Alice said. “I have a feeling and I didn’t survive eighteen years by not listening to my instincts. Captain, sound the alert. I want both miniguns set up on the helipad watching the skies immediately.”
“Yes ma’am.” He leaned over to the intercom and hit a few switches. A series of deep alarms started ringing as he picked up the intercom’s microphone. “Action stations, action stations. Condition zulu. Potential hostile ship. Action stations, action stations. Condition zulu. Potential hostile ship.”
“Wh-What’s going on?”
“Nothing you need to worry about.” Alice smiled, taking Dorothy by the hand as she hopped out of her chair. “Come on. We’ll see if we can’t send your family or whoever a message.” Just before reaching the stairs, she threw her dark hair over her shoulder and glanced back. “Try to keep us from sinking, XO.”
Alister sighed as she left, taking her seat at the back center of the bridge. A series of laptops and computer monitors were set up around it, all displaying a cornucopia of information. Some were websites and news reports, most dealing with either Mexico or an investigation regarding a body found with a broken neck in Greece. He dismissed those and focused on the ones relaying information from various parts of the Lunar Dial. It was too much to go through in a hurry, however.
“Alright,” he said to the bridge crew as he started skimming the screens. “Tell me everything.”
Author’s Notes:
Character Page updated.
“Ich kann Deutsch sprechen. Habe es gelernt, als ich bei der Armee war.” — “I can speak German. I learned it when I was in the army.”
RWR — Radar Warning Receiver — A device that detects potentially hostile radar signals.
CIC — Combat Information Center — A room with a bunch of people standing around computers who are trying to figure things out.