Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 13:26:15 +0100 Reply-To: MB Overton Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: MB Overton Subject: "Atlantic Games" Part 3 WARNING : From this episode onwards, the violence picks up and there is some reasonably nasty gore. Probably a 12 or 15 certificate in English parlance (don't know about the American film system). "Atlantic Games" Part 3 by Mark Overton 20th July 1976 19:10 "Where's Andrei?" Myles asked absently, laying his cards face-down and folding once again. "He went down to the hold ages ago. He can't still be picking up fish, can he?" Dallas exchanged a grin with Penner. "Could be. With all this storm, the fish are probably falling out faster'n Andrei can shove them back in again." Myles groaned. "Poor bloke. Somebody go down and help him." Nobody moved. "Andrew," Myles decided. "Aw, captain!" Reluctantly, Penner rose from his seat and headed for the door. As he stepped through it and closed it behind him, Quill shivered. "Glad you didn't pick me, cap'n." "Oh? Why's that?" "Because of who's down there." Quill made the sign of the cross automatically. "Why d'we have to have her onboard anyway? I mean, not that I've got anything against the woman, but she's dead, for Chrissake. Let her stay buried in the ocean." Myles transfixed him with a glare. "And suppose she's got family, friends, eh? Wouldja like to go for the rest of your life not knowing what had happened to your sister, Quill? At the very least, the woman deserves a decent burial." Dallas coughed. "Another game, captain?" "Sure." Myles didn't look round. "Anyway, we'll be turning round and heading home tomorrow. By six o'clock we'll be back in Plymouth and you can go home to your loved ones. Or, in Mandy's case, she can go home." "Har har, very witty." Dallas shuffled the cards, dropped two fifty pieces in the pool, and started to deal another hand. "Who's in?" "I am." Victoria tossed a pound note in. "Me too." Myles followed suit. "We need a fourth now," Dallas noted. "Hey, John, want to play?" Easton looked up from his comic and shrugged. "Sure, why not?" He rose and sat down at the table as Dallas finished dealing. Quill sauntered over and picked up his shipmate's comic as the two men and two women began to play another round. Andrew Penner opened the door of the hold and stuck his head in. He frowned as he saw the fish strewn around the floor of the hold. "Andrei?" he called loudly, voice echoing in the gloomy room. "Andrei, you fallen in the fish or something?" There was no answer. With a sigh, Penner stepped into the hold and began to pick up fish, tossing them one by one over the barrier to join their comrades. "Bloody Russians," he grumbled absently. "Walk off with a job half-finished and - " He stopped. Walking slowly towards the barrier whilst picking up fish, he had gradually come to stand around on the other side of a wooden crate containing spare lanterns should the trawler's crew have needed any. On the other side of the crate, where he and Quill had dropped the dead woman earlier, there was now an empty space - plus the white voile dress she had been wearing, crumpled and casually tossed aside. Penner went white. Dropping the fish he held in his hand, he looked aound. "Andrei?" he asked quietly. "Andrei, are you here?" He started for the hold doorway, intending to warn the others that something very strange was going on, but at that moment the trawler gave a tremendous lurch. Penner, who was treading on slippery fish, lost his balance, skidded forward, and crashed his head against the metal hull. He slid gracelessly into unconsciousness without even realising what had happened. The Magician awoke after an hour's sleep with a sense of pleasant refreshment, though this dimmed somewhat as she looked up and saw the rain soaking the glass of the wheel-house windows, heard the banshee- like howling of the wind outside. With a yawn, she rose to her feet and tidied her still-damp hair in the reflection from one of the windows, then stepped out onto the slippery deck and returned to the inner corridors of the trawler. Once inside, she paused for a moment's rest leaning against the wall of the walkway, and then started towards where she could hear the low murmur of voices. The voices proved to be coming from the crew room, as she might have suspected, the entrance to such a thick riveted metal door. She reached for the door-handle, then paused for a second to think. A smile appeared on her face, and she bent down to the base of the door. Hoping nobody was planning on coming through, she reached out.... Five minutes later, The Magician opened the door and stepped in. "Good evening," she said cheerfully as she entered. The reactions of the crew varied from amazement to shock to horror, but there was surprise somewhere in everyone's expression. The Magician folded her arms, enjoying the effect she had caused, and leaned against the wall. "Back from the dead, as you see," she said. "Who's first to try and imitate me?" Dallas pushed her chair back. "So maybe we just made a mistake and you weren't dead," she said, finding her voice. "How long were you in the water? Perhaps just an hour or two?" "Nine years," the Magician informed her. "Assuming the seaman in the wheel-house was telling the truth when he said this was 1976." "It's 1976 alright," Myles nodded. "But you - nobody can survive nine years in seawater without dying of exposure, or drowning, or - " "I have a little advantage called immortality," the Magician smiled. "I don't suppose you have any swords hanging around, do you? Just in case, you know." "You just stay right there," Victoria Waterfield said steadily. While Dallas and Myles had been talking, she had moved across to a cabinet on the desk and extracted a small black Walther pistol from it. The barrel of the pistol was centred directly on the Magician's heart. "Don't move or I'll blow a hole right through you." "And would I stay dead?" The Magician shook her head a little. "No." Suddenly Easton jumped on her from behind, having been edging closer bit by bit during the previous conversation. The Magician was thrown to the ground, the breath knocked out of her, and when she looked up Waterfield was crouched beside her with the pistol inches from her face. This close, the bullet would certainly cause brain damage if nothing more, so she stayed still. "Dallas, get to the wheel-house," Myles ordered. "I can't explain this, but I know one thing. We're going straight back to Plymouth, never mind waiting overnight. Easton, check the hold. Find out where Penner and Ivanov have got to." As the two crewmembers nodded and left the room, Myles beckoned to Quill. "Take over from Victoria guarding her. Vic, come with me." He stepped out of the crew-room, Waterfield following, and the Magician was left alone with Quill levelling the pistol. She considered him thoughtfully. "That was nice of them, wasn't it?" Quill blinked nervously. "What do you mean?" "Well, it's obvious why your captain gave all those orders. None of them could bear to stay in the room with something they couldn't explain." The Magician folded her arms. "It's a bit cruel that they left you alone with me, isn't it?" "You're not going to do anything," Quill said tightly, gripping the hilt of the gun. "I don't know how you came back from the dead, but one shot at this range and you'll be sent right back there again." "I wasn't going to do anything," the Magician smiled. "I mean, I haven't done anything wrong, have I? Just come back from the dead, but nothing else." "You killed - " "Whom? Whom did I kill? Did I mention killing anyone?" Confused, Quill hesitated. Then he shook his head. "No," he said slowly. The Magician leaned forward, widening her eyes in her best innocent expression. "I haven't hurt anybody, Mr - what is your name, anyway?" "Quill. Rob Quill." "Rob." The Magician slid her tongue sensually over her lips as she said the name and noted with cold satisfaction the way Quill blinked nervously at the action. "And what's your captain's name?" "Myles. Alex Myles." "Captain Myles." She showed slight disgust at the name. "He obviously understands, doesn't he? A miracle's happened here and I'm being treated like some kind of common prisoner!" Quill bit his lip. "Maybe. Let's wait until they come back and find out, shall we?" The Magician smiled reassuringly. "By all means." Mandy Dallas opened the door of the walkway and stepped out onto the rain-lashed deck. She carefully made her way towards the wheel-house, wincing every time the wind sent shivers of ice-cold through her already soaked clothing and drove strands of her hair to whip at her face, and got as far as the wheel-house door before her foot slipped on the deck. As she fell, her hand yanked on the wheel-house door and pulled it open. There was a huge boom and flames exploded out of the wheel-house, roiling up towards the storm clouds before being put out by the rain. Dallas lay flat on the deck, not looking up for a long moment until the echoes of the explosion had died away. She raised her head, eventually, and saw the charred wreck of the controls; the trawler was plunging rudderless through the storm. "Trenton..." she murmured in a single-word elegy. Then her face hardened as she thought of the Magician. 23rd July 1976 13:03 Devis frowned as he flashed the torchlight into the dark and silent crew room. He had caught a glimpse of colour there, in the shadows. Stepping properly into the room, he swung the torch around again. The smell of fish was heavy in his nostrils, in contrast to the clean atmosphere aboard the Empress, and he wondered how many times this trawler had been cleaned. There. In the very corner. A flash of white. Devis bent down and discovered it was a white voile dress from the 1960s, stained in a couple of places with the dark scarlet of blood. He tugged at it experimentally and frowned; it seemed to be stuck somewhere, or on something. He gave it a big pull. The dress erupted in flame and Devis did too. Those watching from the Empress saw the trawler momentarily shiver a little, as if something had pushed it from inside. Then the top of the trawler disintegrated in a shattering explosion and a wave of flame and heat, debris fountaining up fifty feet in the air and out into a mushroom cloud, the smallest fragments actually reaching up to the decks of the cruise liner. A crewman walking on the upper deck of the Blue Ribbon was lifted off his feet and hurled a tenth of mile through the air to splash into the sea, his clothes on fire and instantly put out again when he hit the seawater. On the bridge of the cruise liner, Trenchard dropped the binoculars from his eyes and gripped the railing with white-knuckled hands as the trawler began to sink, still flaming wildly. Devis had been a good officer, one of the best. "She's going down, sir," an attendant reported. "I know," Trenchard said heavily. He looked sideways at Myles; the man was shivering convulsively and looked like collapsing. Trenchard thought the captain had good reason. On the uppermost deck of the Empress, arms folded as he looked down at the wreck of what had once been the trawler Blue Ribbon, Connor Macleod knew the Magician had escaped again. =========================================================================