NEW SCI-FI THRILLER NOVEL "SEAGORA" - SLICE 24

What will happen when Escapo's arrogance meets an uncompromising ocean?

Masher was multi-tasking like never before.  It was helping The Mesh provide some subtle and favorable changes in the wind direction.  It also was trying to hack the A.I. security cloud that was holding Setarcos and Ventorin hostage, looking for any weakness it might be able to exploit.  It also held constant surveillance of the three sailboats,, as well as guiding the four splinters that were charging towards land.  

Escapo, Cactus, and Cidel had had mixed experiences within the first hour of their low-tech, barebones expedition.  

All faced the same natural conditions.  Near-freezing temps.  Steady, icy winds of 30-35 knots.  Gusts up to 50 knots.  Waves consistently around 15 feet.  Driving rain pounding them mercilessly.  

With wind coming strongly from the back, Escapo had raced out with the spinnaker sail and skillfully maneuvered among the routinely 15-foot waves.  At this sprinting pace, he would make landfall in less than 4 hours.  

Cidel and Cactus had gone the more practical and conservative route.  They were both using double-reefed mainsails, which allowed for better management of rough conditions.  This part of the southern seas was notorious for such conditions, and had been for centuries.  Government weather control systems kept these conditions in place, and sometimes added to their extremity for defensive purposes.  With all this in mind, they both figured it was only a matter of time until the winds and seas would shift, so they wanted to be prepared for that.  They also had the shared idea that Escapo was quite possibly making his last voyage.  

While Cactus hadn’t run into any trouble yet, Cidel had not been so lucky.  A devilish gust of over 50 knots and a rogue whitecrest of over 20 feet had thrown him off balance.  His head was knocked against the boom and he was now nursing a mild head wound.  

Just as Escapo was mentally congratulating himself on nearing the halfway mark at such impressive speeds, the forces that surrounded him formed a confluence that sent his ill-advised pride literally crashing to a halt.  

Within the never-ending, unseen battles that constantly raged between government A.I. and The Mesh, trillions of moves and counter-moves had occurred within a second that changed Escapo’s journey.  

These unseen battles caused winds to shift erratically.  Water and air temperatures had micro-fluctuations.  Atmospheric energy patterns fluxed on the micro level as well.  Waves swelled past 25 feet in some areas.

One of the wind shifts slapped Escapo in the face.  This got his attention.  He checked his heading and was now veering wildly off course.  He struggled to keep his balance as his ship was being rolled and tossed about like a toy. Of course, he cursed Masher under his icy breath for allowing such erratic conditions.  While he should have attempted to change sails, his arrogance got the best of him yet again, and instead, he struggled mightily with the wheel in a vain attempt at correcting the coarse with the rudder only. 

The pressure on the  rudder under these extreme conditions was too much, and it snapped, along with a bit of Escapo’s ego.  He now had no way to steer the ship effectively and was almost completely at the mercy of the elements.  

That wasn’t all that was in store for Escapo, though.  While gripping hand rails and trying to keep his big frame from being thrown overboard,  his eyes bulged at what came before him.  In a slow-motion second, a wall of water 30 feet high swelled and came upon Escapo like a monster from the deep.  The crash came wickedly fast, and the salty beast swallowed the yacht with an astonishingly vitriolic roar.  

Rolled a complete 180, the multi-ton vessel was now keel-up in the aftermath of the beast.  Escapo had been thrown into the abyss like a rag doll, and his safety harness was stretched to the max as it saved him.  Along the way, a poorly secured supply box had smacked him in the jaw just before he splashed down.  He clung to the harness and struggled to pull himself to the hull of the ship.  

After reaching the ship, he clung to it and weighed his limited options.  He did this with considerable fog in his brain, as the box that struck him had rattled him significantly.  Adrenaline, though, and the will to survive, allowed him to at least groggily weigh his options.  He could cling to the outer fringes of the ship for a while and hope that another wave would right the ship.  The longer he waited, though, the greater his chances of dying from hypothermia.  Another possibility was to dive under and try to get the auto-inflatable life raft that was tied down near the cockpit.  

He decided to give it a few minutes, as he didn’t feel dangerously cold yet.  This changed after about two minutes.  Shivering, he swallowed an enormous cloud of air and dove under to seek out his possible saving grace.  Suddenly, another surge came up and thrashed the vessel over again.  After the surge,the battered vessel leaned to starboard, and then settled momentarily.  Escapo was scooped up in the mayhem, and managed to stay on board.  He thrashed around violently for a moment, like a fish out of water.  On his hands and knees, he lunged for a railing to grab ahold of as he coughed violently and cursed even more violently.  Twisted visions showed him that the boat was taking on water at an alarming rate.  

Now he had another decision to make on the fly.  He could try to bail out the water manually.  This might buy him enough time to stay afloat and find the leak, and hope for a rescue.  The other possibility was to abandon ship and go in the life raft.  Either way, his life depended on being rescued by either a sick old man or a somewhat timid sailor who hailed from the desert.  

These ultra-slim hopes didn’t appeal to him.  For the first time in his life, Escapo felt terror surge throughout his shivering frame.  The terror that this was the time of his death and that he was powerless to do anything about it.  He thought of dying alone and never seeing his son again.  What a horrid, regrettable blend of feelings.  What kind of life had he lived? Why couldn’t he see his son just one last time? Why had he done something so horrible as to kidnap Setarcos in the first place? Was this karma thundering down on him so soon? 

He lunged and stumbled towards the cockpit.  Saltwater splashed and taunted him in all directions.  Winds howled and pounded him as he managed to undo the security latches from the life raft.  With his backpack of supplies latched on him securely, he put the raft over the railing, pulled on the inflater, scanned the swirling mess around him, and rolled overboard.  He splashed down mightily into the bright orange last resort.  

Cactus and Cidel weren’t too far behind Escapo.  Cidel, however, had been blown off course and was having trouble managing some of the larger waves.  Neither of them knew what had happened to Escapo.  This was because they weren’t carrying any electronic communications equipment.  There were also no flares, because those would be an obvious tip-off to government forces that something was afoot.  

The pulverizing conditions had actually galvanized the old man with a surge of vigor and adrenaline that he hadn’t felt in decades.  He stood firm as he managed the tiller and steered the ship with expert precision, rolling with the waves just right, using the wind to his advantage, and not taking any extreme risks.  He was hyper-focused consciously, but deep in his subconscious, memories and feelings were surging through him.  His good times on The Moneybit with Miss Moneybit and K.  Simpler times in the SeAgora.  The pleasures and the pains.  And his distant past, as an agent of the state.  That cruel world he’d helped maintain and create while with MI6, and how, no matter how much good he’d done since and how much he’d changed, he still felt a twinge of guilt that couldn’t be nullified.  

Fresh spray teased his face and he smiled inwardly on what he figured would be his last sail.  Lightning danced and illuminated the sky miles away.  The sheets of driving rain downgraded to a swirly shower.  He continued in this pseudo-enjoyable zone for about another 45 minutes, and then was rudely snapped out of it.  

Shifty gusts came from seemingly multiple directions like invisible howling demons, whipping cables along the mast.  At the same time, a 25-foot whitecrest surprised Cactus from leeward.  The 44-footer rose and angled sharply towards the mighty blue.  The old man lost his balance and was slammed to the floor.  In that slow-motion moment, his head was nearly clotheslined by the boom.  As the wave subsided, the yacht was slammed back down, sending saltwater chaotically into the boat.  It soon corrected itself as it wobbled on its venerable keel.  Cactus gripped a siderail and pulled himself up, then lunged to take control of the tiller once more.  After correcting coarse, the waves subsided back down to a more manageable 15 feet.  

Just as he was about to breathe a sigh of much-deserved relief, he was blown away by the sight that overtook his senses.   About 30 degrees to leeward, he was startled to see what appeared to be a ship keeled-over, rolling helplessly.  He squinted hard and shook his head emphatically.  “That damn arrogant fool,” he groaned darkly.  He quickly stabilized the tiller to hold the rudder on its coarse, then scurried into the cabin to grab some binoculars from his backpack.  

Once back in the cockpit, he scanned the horizon with the binoculars and, after a few slow visual passes, a small orange speck came into view.  He examined the speck and decided that it must be that overgrown fool clinging to life in a glorified balloon.  A fleeting moment passed where the temptation to not go after the ship-less smuggler seemed irresistible.  After all, it was mostly Escapo’s fault they were even in this mess.  On top of that, he’d had the audacity to try and run with the storm with a god dammed spinnaker.  And for what? This wasn’t a race.  Maybe the fool deserved this seemingly karmic result.   

The old man’s heart got the best of him, though.  He couldn’t leave someone stranded like that.  In his mind, it would make him something of a murderer.  

Now he had to decide if a rescue was possible, and if so, how.  The wind wasn’t exactly in his favor, but it wasn’t the worst case scenario, at least.  He hurriedly turned the handle that controlled the mainsail, folding it again and making it triple-reefed, in order to slow down his approach.  Slowing down wasn’t the hardest part, though.  He needed to angle near the life raft by less than 300 feet, which was the maximum his rescue speargun could reach.  Symphy crossed his mind and he thought out loud, “Come on Symphy, I need help, and you and The Mesh know it.”

Symphy looked on in her mind and thought out loud as well, “I know, old friend.” Symphy, Masher, and the rest of The Mesh stealthily hacked deeper into the government’s weather control systems with increased allocation of computing resources.  It had to be careful not to be noticed by government synths, as any drastic change would give away The Mesh’s increased presence.  Within a few minutes, wind shifted slightly a few degrees and slowed by a few knots. 

“That’s the best we can do,” Symphy thought.  

When Cactus gripped the tiller to change course slightly, it jammed.  Not believing his luck, he cursed and wiggled the stubborn old thing up and down and side to side.  Nothing budged.  He glanced at an oncoming wave and cursed even louder as the boat rolled at a steep angle.  Cactus held on with a steely grip on a nearby handrail.  After being let down in a splash, he recovered his balance.  

Getting desperate, he started pushing and pulling in rapid succession for what seemed like an eternity.  Finally, the long tiller gave way and Cactus hurriedly tried to make the necessary coarse adjustments.  He now ran the risk of overcompensating and pushing the rudder too hard, which could cause it to break.

The rain let up a bit, making it easier on his old eyes to target the helpless giant.  Out of the corner of Escapo’s eye, he saw a glimpse of the oncoming ship.  He started and nearly flipped the tiny floater.  He screamed louder than an unhappy brat fiending for sugar and waved his long arms frantically, cutting through the ubiquitous drops.  

The old man couldn’t hear him, of course.  He set the tiller with a stay and hustled below deck to grab his speargun.

An oddball wave rocked the boat and Cactus stumbled his way up the steps.  Catching himself, he focused on the quickly approaching raft.  He could now clearly see Escapo waving frantically.  He would be passing by in mere minutes and it appeared that their paths would cross about 150 feet from each other.  This would stretch the speargun’s range to the limit.  It had a range of 300 feet in the air, but in chaotic, twisted winds like these, it was a crapshoot whether or not it would come anywhere near Escapo.  

The idea was to shoot the speargun’s hook to within range of Escapo’s grasp.  Once he had hold of it, he could be reeled in automatically by the pulley system in the speargun’s recoil.  There would only be time for one shot, because if the first was unsuccessful, by the time the speargun was reloaded, Cactus’s ship would be too far away.

He positioned himself a few steps shy of the bow on the leeward side, which he figured would give him the best angle.  He took a deep breath and felt the motion of the sea, closing his eyes to focus and get centered.  Upon opening his eyes, he waited for an oncoming wave to push the ship up.  After ascending, he focused his old eyes, steadied his grip, and squeezed the trigger.  

The hooked cable lashed out and whistled through the wind.  Escapo’s eyes went to saucer status as he leaned into the raft on his stomach and held his oversized hands out in anticipation.  Cactus held stone-cold still as he waited for the arc trajectory to finish and the hook to drop.  His eyes bounced between the lumbering Escapo and the sailing black hook.  Finally, the arc ended and the shiny black hook fell into the raging blue just a few feet shy of the bright orange raft.  Escapo did a not-so-graceful half-dive, half-fall into the freezing waters.  Adrenaline carried his large frame as he darted through his rolling aqueous adversary in search of his fallen, would-be savior.  After moving a few feet at surface level, he drew a deep breath, lunged down, and resurfaced empty-handed.  He dipped face-first again and found a floundering black hook.  He snatched it like it was life itself, put it in a death-grip, and went up for air.  Cactus secured the speargun to the railing, and then watched Escapo carefully through binoculars.  Once he was sure that Escapo was pulling himself in, he reversed the tension in the mechanical machine and started to reel in his catch.  

After a rough ride over and through freezing waves, Escapo emerged on the leeward side of The Moneybit.  After much panting and struggling as he made the final climb with the cable, Escapo finally flopped onto the deck.  He lay spread-eagle for a moment, oblivious to his surroundings, then his big cueball dome sprang up and his huge saucer eyes beamed into the old man’s.  He sucked copious amounts of air and gathered himself as his vision danced and played cruel tricks on his other senses.  Cactus gave a sour, toothy grin and shook his head in dark amusement, then went to put his full attention back on the ship and some minor course corrections.  

A drenched and shaky Escapo, with slightly blurred mental acuity, staggered and wobbled.  He gripped the handholds as he made his way to the cockpit to greet his saving grace.  Once he reached the old man, he was promptly ignored.  He patted a big paw on Cactus’s shoulder.  Cactus slapped it away, “Don’t fucking touch me or talk to me.  There’s a blanket and an oil lamp below deck.  Go warm yourself if you’d like.  If you don’t die from hypothermia and want to make yourself useful, come back up and bail some water off the deck.”

Escapo’s normally relaxed and pseudo-clownish face turned long and forlorn.  It was quite rare for him to feel so disgraced, ashamed, and temporarily powerless.  His ego was deflated and he disappeared under the deck and left the old man to mind the ship.  

Slice 25 Coming Soon!
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