A Christmas Storm
Part 1
Lightning flashed across the sky, fluorescent green through the low-light vision enhanced windscreen of the bridge. Fiona tried and failed to suppress a shiver as the thunder rolled again, seemingly almost on top of them. The ship shuddered and rolled as a wave struck her, white sea foam glimmering in the moonlight as it cascaded across the deck.
“Breakers ahead!” one of the lookouts called suddenly. Fiona heard the note of panic in his voice. “Rocks on the port bow!”
“Turn us two points to starboard,” the first officer said, his own voice calm. Fiona felt the crash of the waves ease a little as the ship answered her helm in response to the order.
She wished the charts for this area were more accurate. Normally their sensors and navigational systems would have easily compensated for any inaccuracies in the data, but with most of their long range systems scrambled by the storm, as well as long range communications, they were reliant on dead reckoning and the flaws in the charts were becoming painfully obvious.
“Clear ahead,” the lookout reported, his voice now under control. Fiona tried not to breathe a sigh of relief. She wished there was something she could do, but she knew that when it came to navigation her first officer was more experienced than she was. If anyone on the ship could keep them safe, he would, and she wanted her crew to know she trusted him. But she was the captain, and her place while the ship was in danger was on the bridge. So all she could do was sit here and watch, and try not to flinch at every flash of lightning.
She had never minded storms when she was little. She had felt safe and snug at home with her father, even as lightning flashed and thunder rolled. Until that horrible day came with the news-
“Captain?”
Fiona mentally shook herself and looked across at the communications watchstander. “Yes?”
“The lookouts on the foredeck report that there’s a...a pod of some sort of sea creatures off the starboard bow.” The communications officer looked almost embarrassed. “I think you should speak to them yourself, captain. They think there’s something strange about them.”
Fiona wondered what could be strange enough to justify reporting a few sea creatures in the middle of a force 10 storm. Yet she was glad of the distraction.
“Put me through,” she said, touching her earbud to bring it online.
“Captain?” a voice said in her ear. “Chief Petty Officer Rajan here. Sorry to disturb you, but Benson here thinks there’s something odd about these creatures. He thinks...well, I know it sounds unlikely, but he thinks they could be...Seakin.”
“What?” Fiona couldn’t help looking startled. The Seakin were a legend, which was quite an achievement on a planet that had only been settled for around fifty years. There were stories that the early settlers had met and talked with a race of sentient sea-dwelling creatures who had once had a civilisation of their own on the planet humans called Estel. There were stories told among sailors, a shape glimpsed far from land, a mournful call heard in the night, but nothing definite. Fiona had never heard of an encounter that she was sure was more than just a story, and she had thought that if the Seakin had ever existed, they were long extinct.
“I know it seems daft,” the chief’s voice continued. “Thing is, I...I think he’s right, captain. And it’s like...like they want us to follow them.”
Fiona shook her head. Maybe it was the storm, but Chief Rajan was usually reliable.
“All right, I’ll come down there and see for myself,” she said. She stood up and glanced at the first officer. “Carry on. I’ll be on the foredeck.”
In the passageway just outside the bridge she quickly pulled on her waterproof overalls, remembering to seal the ankles, wrists and neck baffles before pulling up the hood. The water would still find some crack or gap to get in, if she was outside long enough. She had been a sailor long enough to know that was inevitable. But the overalls would at least save her from getting soaked. She braced herself and stepped outside.
The wind nearly buffeted her over the side. She grabbed the rail and struggled forward, turning her head away from the wind and the light of the bridge windows. As her eyes gradually adjusted to the dark she looked around.
There were no lights of other ships, no sign of any settlement on the rocky islets they had found themselves too close to for comfort. Above, the stars were almost lost in the swiftly-scudding cloud-wrack. Fiona shivered in the wind. Times like this were a reminder that humans were still relative newcomers to Estel, clustered in a handful of towns and farming settlements. Orbital surveys were good, but there were still places out here where no human had ever set foot, and no ship had ever sailed.
Or at least, nagged an uncomfortable thought, from which no ship has ever returned.
Fiona reached the foredeck at last, and clipped the safety-line on her belt onto the rail.
“What have you got to show me, chief?” she asked, shouting above the gale. Chief Rajan pointed, and Fiona peered down into the dark. At first only the white crests of waves were visible in the light of the two moons as the clouds dashed past. Then Fiona saw something, a patch of something darker against the dark sea. She stared harder, trying to make out its shape.
Lightning shot through the sky again, and for a moment the sea lit up, a boiling mass of water and foam. Somewhere behind her she heard the lookouts feeding information to the helm as the flash revealed a rocky island on their starboard beam. Sensors and computer guidance were all very well, but in a storm like this there was no substitute for human input.
In the light from the flash Fiona saw them. Dark shapes bobbing in the water under their bow, seemingly taking advantage of the shelter the ship gave from the wind. Wind, Fiona noticed with a dull thump of dread, which was pushing them slowly closer to the rocks.
One of the shapes looked up, and she gripped the rail tight as it met her eyes. In the moment before the lightning faded, she saw understanding in those eyes.
Then the light faded and Fiona was standing once again in the dark and wind. She switched her ear comm so that she could talk just to the chief and Benson.
“All right,” she said. “I see them. Chief, you said you think they want us to follow them. Why? From what I can see they’re just bobbing along in our lee.”
Rajan looked at Kari Benson, who spoke up after a moment. Fiona thought he sounded hesitant.
“I can hear them, captain,” Benson said. “Not with my ears- in my head, somehow. It’s not very clear, but I definitely can tell they want us to follow them.”
“Follow them where?” Fiona said, trying to keep her incredulity out of her voice.
As if in answer, she heard a low-pitched moaning sound from the patch of dark sea where the creatures bobbed. A moment later, she heard an answering moan from somewhere ahead.
“I’m not sure,” Benson admitted. “Somewhere ahead.”
Fiona looked down again. Another flare of lightning showed her the creatures. One seemed to heave itself partially out of the water, and swung a leg- no, an arm- in a gesture that both beckoned and indicated a destination. Fiona’s eyes followed the direction it pointed, ahead and slightly to starboard. The horizon there was as dark and unknown as anywhere else.
She tried to shut out the storm and think. Part of her wanted to dismiss the whole thing as some sort of mistake. But another part of her was intrigued by the mystery. At the very least, they could update the somewhat rudimentary charts that had been drawn from orbital satellite data, and which had not shown these rocks. Knowing whether they were a reef or islands and how far they stretched could be important. Important enough to risk her ship and crew? She wished for a more definite sign.
Then as she strained to see ahead she thought she saw a tiny glimmer, a warmer light than the silver moonlight or fluorescent lightning. A lamp? Or a fire?
“All right,” she said over the comm to Rajan and Benson. “We’ll see where they want us to go. I’m going back to the bridge. You two stay here and pass on directions, but- try not to make it sound like we’re just following a bunch of sea creatures! This isn’t the time for arguments. Just say which way to go.” She looked from one to the other. Chief Rajan didn’t look too happy. Did she think Fiona was wrong to follow the creatures, or was she just bothered at not being fully honest?”
“Those are my orders,” Fiona said, firmly but gently. “It’ll be my responsibility if anything goes wrong. Keep a sharp lookout and report at once if we’re getting too close to land. And I’ll keep this comm channel open, in case there’s anything else...unusual.”
“Yes, skipper,” Rajan said, nodding.
Fiona gave the chief a nod in reply, and then turned to struggle back to the bridge.
That light, faint though it was, had made the difference. It could be a fire made by survivors of a shipwreck, or some village of settlers no one had known about or thought lost. Or it could be something to do with the Seakin, and maybe they had a chance to see something no humans before them had ever seen. She couldn’t pass up this chance to learn more about the creatures. But her officers would be rightly sceptical. Henry, her first officer, would say it was irresponsible to risk the ship during a storm, and Newton, the officer next in seniority, would say they should treat the creatures as potentially hostile.
And they might both be right. But they hadn’t seen the look in the creature’s eye as it beckoned them on.
