Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 11:27:10 +0100 Reply-To: MB Overton Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: MB Overton Subject: "Atlantic Games" Part 1 (of 8) Historian's note : "Atlantic Games" is the third in a series of stories which began with "End of the Road" and "Box of Tricks". It is a prequel to the latter, but you need to read those two first to understand this one (if you follow that). Copies of EOTR and BOT can be obtained from me, Grail, at u4d41@keele.ac.uk if you need them. "Atlantic Games" Part 1 by Mark Overton (Grail) 23rd July 1976 12:17 "How could we know? How could any of us know?" Seated in his comfortable leather chair, the curtains drawn over the windows, the central heating turned up to maximum to fill the stateroom with warmth, Captain Trenchard looked at the shivering blanket-wrapped figure in front of him and thought how pathetic the man looked, sat there like that with his right hand wrapped around the coffee mug as if it were his only lifeline. "Know what?" he asked. The man raised haunted eyes to him. "Know someone could come back to life." "Back to life? As in a resurrection?" Trenchard asked sceptically. "Yes." The man lifted his mug of steaming black coffee and convulsively gulped down a couple of mouthfuls of the bitter liquid. It must have burnt his throat on the way down, but he made no sound that indicated any reaction to the pain. The bullet wound in his shoulder must have been worse, anyway. "Alright, Captain Myles." Trenchard leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. "I have your passport and papers over there. They confirm you're the registered owner of the trawler Blue Ribbon and that you were to be fishing this stretch of the Atlantic. And yet here we are, fifty miles more north, and we find you floating in the water half-dead from exposure." "Had to stay afloat," Myles muttered. "Had to live. Got a wife and kids in Plymouth." "I understand," Trenchard nodded briskly, "but we are on our way to New Jersey. It might be some time before you see your family again." Myles said nothing. Trenchard sighed. As captain of the cruise liner Empress he hadn't expected much beyond a gentle run between Bristol, England, and Atlantic City NJ, so discovering the captain of a fishing trawler in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean had been a surprise. A real surprise. A surprise he could have done without. "Okay, captain," he said, making an effort to appear encouraging rather than impatient. "Let's hear your story. Right from the beginning. What happened to make you lose your ship?" 20th July 1976 17:56 Alexander Myles turned when he heard the yell. The seaman had been hauling in the nets when he had jerked convulsively, let out that attention-drawing shout, and his foot had lost its grip on the slippery deck. He toppled backwards and hit the deckplates with a crash and a grimace of pain. "What the hell's wrong with you, man?" Myles demanded angily. "You've let the nets go, you fool!" Red in the face, the seaman climbed to his feet. "Sorry sir. Just made me jump. There's some kind of dead body in that net." Myles stared at him blankly. "A body? Dead?" "Yes sir." Myles joined him at the rail of the trawler as the seaman began to haul in the nets again. The skies were beginning to cloud over and Myles noticed absently that the sea was getting choppy, indicating that a storm would be on its way soon. The Blue Ribbon was a sturdy ship, built in the early sixties in Plymouth, and it should handle the weather adequately, but it meant that the six men and two women onboard were likely to be in for a rough ride overnight. The seaman had hauled in half the net now, and Myles dropped his gaze to the surface of the Atlantic as a pale shape became visible. An arm bobbed to the surface, and then the rest of the body, caught up in the black mesh of the net. It was face down, but Myles could see that the corpse was female from the short white voile dress she was wearing. Her feet, unsurprisingly, were bare, and her blonde hair hung lankly around her head, reaching to the small of her back. "Get over here!" Myles waved to two other sailors, who were lounging near the stern having a quick fag together. "Come and help us!" As the two ran over, he turned and helped the other seaman, whose name was Easton, haul the body of the woman over the railing and onto the deck. Her skin was slippery with the water and both of them lost their grip towards the end; the body hit the deck with a dull thud like a cabbage, and she looked similarly inanimate lying there, her hair over her eyes, unnaturally still even on the shifting deck of the trawler. "Jesus," one of the two arriving sailors, Penner, said. "Yeah," Myles agreed. "Get her below, will you?" "Us?" Penner's companion, Quill, asked uneasily. "No, the fish," Myles said sardonically. "Yes, the two of you. Now." "Come on, Rob," Penner said encouragingly, bending down to lift the corpse by the ankles. Quill reluctantly lifted the other end by the shoulders and the of them started carefully back along the deck of the trawler to the door which led below. Myles watched until they were out of sight, then turned to Easton. "You okay?" he asked, noting that the inexperienced seaman had gone a little green. "Sure," Easton said bravely, finding his voice. "Good lad." Myles clapped him on the shoulder, then started aft. He paused, then turned back. "Well, what are you waiting for? Keep at it with those nets, lad." Easton jerked, seemed to remember what he was doing, and turned back to his task. Andrew Penner coughed as the smell from the fish in the bowels of the Blue Ribbon reached his nose. Despite four years' experience sailing, three and a half of those years on this very trawler, he still hated the smell of fish, freshly caught or a day old. If not for his family being impoverished, he would have gone to London and become a writer. Still, at least he was getting what they called "life experience". "Oi, watch it!" Rob Quill complained as his shoulder banged into the metal doorframe of the cargo hold, Penner not looking what he was doing. "Sorry," Penner apologised. Quill rubbed his shoulder, giving his cabinmate a dirty look. Then he took hold of the dead woman again and backed into the hold, a big gloomy room that took up about half of the trawler's length, the other half being given over to the engine room. About three-quarters of the hold was separated from the remaining quarter by a waist-high barrier; on the other side of this barrier were the fish that the trawler had caught so far. As the two sailors and their burden entered the hold, another catch dropped through a hatch in the hold roof with wet slapping sounds as they hit the already-caught fish. "Who d'you reckon she is?" Quill asked, nodding down uneasily at the corpse they were carrying. "Someone who got shipwrecked," Penner guessed. "We'll put her against the barrier, down there." "I mean, she's got to have been in there for ages, look at her clothes," Quill continued, as they laid the dead woman down in the corner of the hold. "But wouldn't you expect...urgh...decomposition?" "Maybe saltwater's got something to do with it?" Penner suggested. Quill, with two years more sea experience than his companion, shook his head. "Nah. That's not what the sea does to a body. It - " "I don't want to know," Penner said hastily. "Come on, let's wash our hands and get ourselves a bite to eat. I reckon Myles'll have called it a night by now; it's nearly half six. They'll be sitting down to eat upstairs." Quill nodded and followed the younger man out of the hold, pulling the door shut behind him as the hold lurched a little, the trawler buffeted by a particularly brutal wave outside. The hull creaked a little, then settled down into silence again. A few fish slid into a more stable position. Seawater dribbled out of the dead woman's mouth. Penner and Quill walked back up to the galley-cum-living space. With a gasp and a cough, the Magician vomited a stream of seawater out onto the hold floor. Her eyes opened and she pulled herself up onto one elbow. Bewildered for a moment, her ears caught the sound of water lapping against the walls, and she guessed she must be on a ship, probably in the cargo hold by the looks of things. How she came to be there - Memory returned in a rush, and she remembered her fight on top of the half-constructed skyscraper in Bristol, against Duncan Macleod and Malcolm Marsden..falling backwards through an open window, watching the floors of the skyscraper rush past her as she tumbled head over heels through the night sky. The River Severn looming up before her and then - only blackness. "I must have drowned," she murmured aloud, then coughed up some more seawater. Obviously the crew of the ship she was now on had seen her and pulled her aboard, believing her dead. She was grateful they hadn't tried an autopsy as yet. Shakily, she rose to her knees, and then stood upright, wrinkling her nose in distaste at the fishy smell which reached her nose. The room lurched and the Magician grabbed hold of the barrier for support. She was still unsteady after spending so much time dead and - She stopped that train of thought for a moment. Why had the words "so much time" occurred to her? Somewhere deep inside her, a body clock that had kept going even through her death seemed to be trying to convince her that it had been some years since her fall into the river. Had she been floating all that time? Surely she would have washed ashore by now? Another lurch, this time toppling the Magician backwards. She started to rise, then had time only to grimace in pain as the fish in the hold overslid the barrier and buried her in a damp smelly avalanche. This wasn't her day. 23rd July 1976 12:30 "I was just sitting down to dinner when the storm started properly," Myles continued, after taking another gulp of the coffee. "Dallas - that's Mandy Dallas, my navigator - reported that she was having difficulty keeping her on course with all the wind and rain, so I gave orders to hold position for the night, or until the storm cleared so we could get underway again." Trenchard nodded understandingly; it was standard procedure in a small ship like the trawler must have been. "And then?" Myles looked haunted again. "I told one of the men, Ivanov, to go down below and check the fish hadn't overspilled the hold. The barrier which held them back had been damaged early in the voyage, so we had a reduced capacity, and I was worried they'd been tipped out of their container." A knock at the door sounded loudly in the sudden silence as Myles paused for breath. Irritated, Trenchard swung round to the door. "Come in." The door opened. "Sorry to disturb you, captain, but the navigator insists on seeing you now." His attendant had a suitably apologetic expression on his face. "What is the problem, Salford?" Trenchard demanded irritably. Salford, the navigator, was a small nervous man with curly hair and thin glasses. "Sorry, sir, but it's all the business about the Blue Ribbon." "My ship?" Behind Trenchard, Myles rose attentively. "What about her?" "We've just spotted her," Salford said. "She's drifting about half a mile ahead." ..to be continued... 23rd July 1976 12:17 "How could we know? How could any of us know?" Seated in his comfortable leather chair, the curtains drawn over the windows, the central heating turned up to maximum to fill the stateroom with warmth, Captain Trenchard looked at the shivering blanket-wrapped figure in front of him and thought how pathetic the man looked, sat there like that with his right hand wrapped around the coffee mug as if it were his only lifeline. "Know what?" he asked. The man raised haunted eyes to him. "Know someone could come back to life." "Back to life? As in a resurrection?" Trenchard asked sceptically. "Yes." The man lifted his mug of steaming black coffee and convulsively gulped down a couple of mouthfuls of the bitter liquid. It must have burnt his throat on the way down, but he made no sound that indicated any reaction to the pain. The bullet wound in his shoulder must have been worse, anyway. "Alright, Captain Myles." Trenchard leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. "I have your passport and papers over there. They confirm you're the registered owner of the trawler Blue Ribbon and that you were to be fishing this stretch of the Atlantic. And yet here we are, fifty miles more north, and we find you floating in the water half-dead from exposure." "Had to stay afloat," Myles muttered. "Had to live. Got a wife and kids in Plymouth." "I understand," Trenchard nodded briskly, "but we are on our way to New Jersey. It might be some time before you see your family again." Myles said nothing. Trenchard sighed. As captain of the cruise liner Empress he hadn't expected much beyond a gentle run between Bristol, England, and Atlantic City NJ, so discovering the captain of a fishing trawler in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean had been a surprise. A real surprise. A surprise he could have done without. "Okay, captain," he said, making an effort to appear encouraging rather than impatient. "Let's hear your story. Right from the beginning. What happened to make you lose your ship?" 20th July 1976 17:56 Alexander Myles turned when he heard the yell. The seaman had been hauling in the nets when he had jerked convulsively, let out that attention-drawing shout, and his foot had lost its grip on the slippery deck. He toppled backwards and hit the deckplates with a crash and a grimace of pain. "What the hell's wrong with you, man?" Myles demanded angily. "You've let the nets go, you fool!" Red in the face, the seaman climbed to his feet. "Sorry sir. Just made me jump. There's some kind of dead body in that net." Myles stared at him blankly. "A body? Dead?" "Yes sir." Myles joined him at the rail of the trawler as the seaman began to haul in the nets again. The skies were beginning to cloud over and Myles noticed absently that the sea was getting choppy, indicating that a storm would be on its way soon. The Blue Ribbon was a sturdy ship, built in the early sixties in Plymouth, and it should handle the weather adequately, but it meant that the six men and two women onboard were likely to be in for a rough ride overnight. The seaman had hauled in half the net now, and Myles dropped his gaze to the surface of the Atlantic as a pale shape became visible. An arm bobbed to the surface, and then the rest of the body, caught up in the black mesh of the net. It was face down, but Myles could see that the corpse was female from the short white voile dress she was wearing. Her feet, unsurprisingly, were bare, and her blonde hair hung lankly around her head, reaching to the small of her back. "Get over here!" Myles waved to two other sailors, who were lounging near the stern having a quick fag together. "Come and help us!" As the two ran over, he turned and helped the other seaman, whose name was Easton, haul the body of the woman over the railing and onto the deck. Her skin was slippery with the water and both of them lost their grip towards the end; the body hit the deck with a dull thud like a cabbage, and she looked similarly inanimate lying there, her hair over her eyes, unnaturally still even on the shifting deck of the trawler. "Jesus," one of the two arriving sailors, Penner, said. "Yeah," Myles agreed. "Get her below, will you?" "Us?" Penner's companion, Quill, asked uneasily. "No, the fish," Myles said sardonically. "Yes, the two of you. Now." "Come on, Rob," Penner said encouragingly, bending down to lift the corpse by the ankles. Quill reluctantly lifted the other end by the shoulders and the of them started carefully back along the deck of the trawler to the door which led below. Myles watched until they were out of sight, then turned to Easton. "You okay?" he asked, noting that the inexperienced seaman had gone a little green. "Sure," Easton said bravely, finding his voice. "Good lad." Myles clapped him on the shoulder, then started aft. He paused, then turned back. "Well, what are you waiting for? Keep at it with those nets, lad." Easton jerked, seemed to remember what he was doing, and turned back to his task. Andrew Penner coughed as the smell from the fish in the bowels of the Blue Ribbon reached his nose. Despite four years' experience sailing, three and a half of those years on this very trawler, he still hated the smell of fish, freshly caught or a day old. If not for his family being impoverished, he would have gone to London and become a writer. Still, at least he was getting what they called "life experience". "Oi, watch it!" Rob Quill complained as his shoulder banged into the metal doorframe of the cargo hold, Penner not looking what he was doing. "Sorry," Penner apologised. Quill rubbed his shoulder, giving his cabinmate a dirty look. Then he took hold of the dead woman again and backed into the hold, a big gloomy room that took up about half of the trawler's length, the other half being given over to the engine room. About three-quarters of the hold was separated from the remaining quarter by a waist-high barrier; on the other side of this barrier were the fish that the trawler had caught so far. As the two sailors and their burden entered the hold, another catch dropped through a hatch in the hold roof with wet slapping sounds as they hit the already-caught fish. "Who d'you reckon she is?" Quill asked, nodding down uneasily at the corpse they were carrying. "Someone who got shipwrecked," Penner guessed. "We'll put her against the barrier, down there." "I mean, she's got to have been in there for ages, look at her clothes," Quill continued, as they laid the dead woman down in the corner of the hold. "But wouldn't you expect...urgh...decomposition?" "Maybe saltwater's got something to do with it?" Penner suggested. Quill, with two years more sea experience than his companion, shook his head. "Nah. That's not what the sea does to a body. It - " "I don't want to know," Penner said hastily. "Come on, let's wash our hands and get ourselves a bite to eat. I reckon Myles'll have called it a night by now; it's nearly half six. They'll be sitting down to eat upstairs." Quill nodded and followed the younger man out of the hold, pulling the door shut behind him as the hold lurched a little, the trawler buffeted by a particularly brutal wave outside. The hull creaked a little, then settled down into silence again. A few fish slid into a more stable position. Seawater dribbled out of the dead woman's mouth. Penner and Quill walked back up to the galley-cum-living space. With a gasp and a cough, the Magician vomited a stream of seawater out onto the hold floor. Her eyes opened and she pulled herself up onto one elbow. Bewildered for a moment, her ears caught the sound of water lapping against the walls, and she guessed she must be on a ship, probably in the cargo hold by the looks of things. How she came to be there - Memory returned in a rush, and she remembered her fight on top of the half-constructed skyscraper in Bristol, against Duncan Macleod and Malcolm Marsden..falling backwards through an open window, watching the floors of the skyscraper rush past her as she tumbled head over heels through the night sky. The River Severn looming up before her and then - only blackness. "I must have drowned," she murmured aloud, then coughed up some more seawater. Obviously the crew of the ship she was now on had seen her and pulled her aboard, believing her dead. She was grateful they hadn't tried an autopsy as yet. Shakily, she rose to her knees, and then stood upright, wrinkling her nose in distaste at the fishy smell which reached her nose. The room lurched and the Magician grabbed hold of the barrier for support. She was still unsteady after spending so much time dead and - She stopped that train of thought for a moment. Why had the words "so much time" occurred to her? Somewhere deep inside her, a body clock that had kept going even through her death seemed to be trying to convince her that it had been some years since her fall into the river. Had she been floating all that time? Surely she would have washed ashore by now? Another lurch, this time toppling the Magician backwards. She started to rise, then had time only to grimace in pain as the fish in the hold overslid the barrier and buried her in a damp smelly avalanche. This wasn't her day. 23rd July 1976 12:30 "I was just sitting down to dinner when the storm started properly," Myles continued, after taking another gulp of the coffee. "Dallas - that's Mandy Dallas, my navigator - reported that she was having difficulty keeping her on course with all the wind and rain, so I gave orders to hold position for the night, or until the storm cleared so we could get underway again." Trenchard nodded understandingly; it was standard procedure in a small ship like the trawler must have been. "And then?" Myles looked haunted again. "I told one of the men, Ivanov, to go down below and check the fish hadn't overspilled the hold. The barrier which held them back had been damaged early in the voyage, so we had a reduced capacity, and I was worried they'd been tipped out of their container." A knock at the door sounded loudly in the sudden silence as Myles paused for breath. Irritated, Trenchard swung round to the door. "Come in." The door opened. "Sorry to disturb you, captain, but the navigator insists on seeing you now." His attendant had a suitably apologetic expression on his face. "What is the problem, Salford?" Trenchard demanded irritably. Salford, the navigator, was a small nervous man with curly hair and thin glasses. "Sorry, sir, but it's all the business about the Blue Ribbon." "My ship?" Behind Trenchard, Myles rose attentively. "What about her?" "We've just spotted her," Salford said. "She's drifting about half a mile ahead." ..to be continued... =========================================================================