Chapter Two - Crew Meeting
As Alethea left the café and stepped out into the streets of Atlantis, she instinctively pulled her blood red scarf across her face, glancing around for anybody who would recognise her. She knew she was being overly paranoid, but there were always enemies somewhere Undersea. Even in a neutral sanctuary city like Atlantis, she preferred to be cautious.
Today, she had all the more reason to be wary. The streets were already in a frenzy. Half the city’s population – Pirates, Vikings, Knights, Musketeers, Gladiators, Gauchos, and all the other Undersea factions rushed to their subcraft. They battled with each other to be first out of the hatches and into the open ocean. Even the old ladies who sold cakes from their boats were heading out along with them. Alethea dodged through the chaos with well-practised steps. She had come to know Atlantis well in her eighteen years Undersea.
Ducking out of the way of a Viking’s horned helmet, she finally reached her submarine, the Barracuda, in dry dock with the crew still banging out the most recent dents and polishing the stubborn stains. Their previous mission had been an easy pillage of a forgotten smuggler’s horde in a cave on the English coast, but the seagulls had left the boat in a mess.
Alethea stroked the Barracuda’s polished flank, taking in the sight of the flag of crossed spears flying from the top and the skull and crossbones painted on the side; the unmistakable mark of a Pirate submarine. Shaped like the fish which gave the boat its name, the gold coating and silver rivulets gleamed in the ocean-light. The great toothed jaw, which was supposed to appear threatening to their enemies, always seemed in Alethea's mind more like a smile greeting her home.
“Where’s Marina?” she asked Kei, her quartermaster.
“She said she was going out to spend her share,” Kei replied as she gave the Barracuda a once-over for leaks and broken rivets, her russet eyes missing nothing. Cantonese, with her greying hair tied in a neat bun, she had a decade on Alethea.
“You let her go by herself?” Alethea said, pulling her scarf back around her neck, exposing her face.
“She is sixteen, Alethea. And she knows Atlantis well,” Kei said without looking up from her work.
“But have you seen it what it's like out there today? Did you hear about Redscalp’s stone?”
“Yes, I heard. I think everyone from here to Pacifica will have heard by now,” Kei replied, glancing slightly to the side.
Alethea followed her gaze to see her daughter trying to sneak up the gangplank.
“Marina!” she said in the firmest voice she could manage.
Her daughter halted. Ling stopped dead behind her, holding his hands up in surrender. Marina only crinkled her nose and curled her lip slightly.
She had her father’s thoughtful forest green eyes and dark ringlets, although hers were cropped close to her head on one side, something which Alethea had argued against. The only trait she shared with her mother was her thin face. Next to Alethea’s own loose chestnut hair and steely eyes, it was almost impossible to believe that they were related.
“Where have you been? Haven’t you seen how dangerous the streets are today?” Alethea asked.
“I’m allowed to spend my share, aren’t I?” Marina said in the sulky voice she saved only for her mother, refusing to look at her.
“You went out on your own when I told you not to?”
“I wasn’t alone. Ling was with me.”
“Yes, I was with her, Captain. Nothing happened,” Ling said.
Alethea opened her mouth to argue then shut it again. She supposed that technically she hadn’t disobeyed her orders. It was on her for not making the orders stricter.
“I let my own son out in Atlantis on his own,” Kei said, tapping Ling’s shoulder. She bore a much closer resemblance to her own son than Alethea did to her daughter. “So why are you so worried about letting Marina do the same?”
“Well, you weren’t wasting your money on sweets again, were you?” Alethea asked instead.
“I can spend my share on whatever I want!” Marina growled, thrusting something into Alethea’s chest. “I wasn’t even buying sweets. I bought this.”
“Leif Erikson and the Golden Sea,” Alethea read the book’s title, looking over the cover illustration depicting Leif Erikson, the famous viking explorer, standing on the shore of a newly-discovered island, no doubt how he’d looked when he’d discovered Vinland. “This was your father’s favourite book too.”
“Really?” Marina said, her voice softening and her eyes widening slightly in the way they always did when she heard stories about her father.
Every day she came closer to adulthood, she resembled her father more, Alethea always thought. Yet it also made her sad, knowing that Robert had died not even knowing that he’d had a daughter.
He’d only been a few years older than Marina was now when the incident with the crocodile monster had happened. The time they’d been betrayed.
“Yes. We didn’t think much of the opera version, though. The Vikings of Vyborg is much better.”
“I’ll bet it’s not that bad,” Marina said, taking the book back a little too forcefully.
“Well, someday you can go see it with your own boyfriend and decide for yourself.”
“What makes you think I want a boyfriend?” Marina’s head snapped up and her eyes turned a venomous green.
“Oh, I just meant that… Nevermind. Meeting in the galley.”
Alethea inspected her crew as they filled up the galley, finding seats at the wonky tables. They were a truly mixed bag from all across the world. Some had been born Undersea and some had come here as an escape from the surface, as Alethea had so many years ago. Some of them had been on the Barracuda for even longer than she had. Others had joined up only recently. A boat’s crew changed constantly Undersea. But the one thing they did share was that she trusted each of them with her life, and the life of her daughter.
“Well, no doubt you’ve all heard about the jade stone by now,” Alethea began once all thirteen of them had been rounded up.
“And it really is Redscalp’s jade?” one of them asked.
“The enchanted jade which leads the way to Redscalp’s treasure stash?” somebody else added.
“The one worth more than any other stash which has been found in a thousand years?”
“The one which has been missing since Redscalp died?”
“Yes, that jade,” Alethea confirmed to excited murmurs.
“Perfect timing. We’re all stocked up and ready to go,” Kei said with an eager smile.
“We’d best be leaving, then. A chance like this doesn’t come too often.”
“Yes, la Barracuda triunfa! That jade stone is going to make us richer than the King of Spain!” Rico Hernández – the boat’s gunner – said, slapping the table. His rust-coloured eyes shone almost as bright as a sunset and dimples formed in the corners of his mouth just under the newly-gelled tips of his moustache.
“Oh, we’re not going out there to look for the jade.”
“What?” the others said in a bemused chorus. All except for Marina, who leant against the wall with her arms folded, and Ling, whose hand was halfway out of Rico’s pocket. Disappointment crossed his face when he found only a recently used handkerchief.
“With everyone Undersea going after it all at once, every other treasure stash will be left for the taking. We can pillage as much as we want without anyone else getting in our way.”
“Mum, that’s so boring,” Marina said. “That’s all we ever do. We went all the way to England just to scale some gull-infested cliffs. And you wouldn’t even let me do that! We can’t turn down the chance to find Redscalp’s treasure.”
“I know what finding Redscalp’s treasure would mean, but I don’t want us to be too hasty like all those others.” Alethea indicated out the window where a Highlander and a Cleopatran ship had come close to colliding. “They’ve forgotten that the Pohjola Trench is one of the most dangerous places Undersea. That’s why nobody goes there.”
“That is true,” Kesä, the ship’s accountant, said and nodded. The mousy Finn-woman usually didn’t say much and spending so much time squirrelled away in her office working on the accounts meant her English skills were lacking compared to the rest of them. “In my homeland there are stories saying there are dangerous things in Pohjola. We should not go there.”
“Exactly, Kesä. I know that Redscalp’s treasure is valuable, but is it really worth our lives?”
She tried hard to prevent her voice from breaking as she spoke. She had never told any of them (except for Kei) how much she had sacrificed once for a valuable treasure.
“I suppose not,” Rico finally said, crossing his arms over his chest.
The rest of the crew nodded or muttered their agreement, their heads hung and their eyes averted.
“I know this isn’t what all of you want, but you have to trust me. Now, I think that the wreck of Leif Erikson’s ship would be a good one to go after.”
“The Vikings won’t like that,” Marina scoffed as she ran a finger over the edge of her new book.
The wreckage of what everyone believed was once one of Leif Erikson’s ships had been fought over by various factions ever since it had been discovered. But with so many constantly fighting over it, nobody had been able to claim it yet.
“No, but it won’t matter. It’ll be easy pickings. And probably worth a lot too. We’ll get going just as soon as we hire a new janitor.”
Their previous janitor had marched off the boat seething with rage over the seagull poo incident the moment they’d docked in Atlantis.
“We won’t have time to hire anyone if we want to get to that shipwreck,” Kei said. “Besides, I doubt there’s anyone left looking to go anywhere other than Pohjola.”
“You’re right. We’ll just have to split the chores between all of us,” Alethea said to a round of groans.
“Fine, but I'm not doing the dishes,” Rico said as he rose to head to his duties.
“And I’m not doing the laundry,” Marina said, sharing a look with Alethea before she withdrew along with the others.
“Donovan, new recruit. Find him a place to sleep,” Bjorn ordered his cook, not even looking at Varri as he sauntered to his cabin and shut the door.
“Don’t worry about the chief,” Donovan said as he led Varri through the Fenrir's corridors, dodging crewmen on their knees making repairs. His neat golden-brown hair and middle-class Londoner accent sounded highly out of place amongst Vikings. Then again, none of them were real Vikings. They only dressed up and played pretend, like everyone Undersea. “Just stay out of his way and try not to rile him up and it won’t be so bad.”
“Right,” Varri said, biting his lip.
“I’m Donovan, the ship’s cook. I’ve been on the Fenrir longer than most. So, if there’s anything you need to know, then just come to me.”
“These are the barracks. Just find a spare blanket and an empty spot,” Donovan said, indicating a cramped room with blankets laid out on the floor and a few Vikings lying snoring on top of them. “More importantly, this is the kitchen. We spend most of our free time here.”
He led Varri into a room full of Vikings, just as filthy as the rest of the dingy submarine. Varri’s nose turned up at the putrid smell. None of the other Vikings noticed as they hunched over their bowls and steins, their eyes distant and empty. Varri recognised those looks; the faces of people who had given up long ago.
“There’s some bread to hold you over, if you want,” Donovan said, offering Varri a loaf hard enough to knock out a grown man.
“Thanks,” Varri muttered, tearing off a piece with some difficulty.
“Where have you been, love? We’re starving,” a Viking said as he rose to put an arm around the cook. He was one of the men who had been accompanying Bjorn in Atlantis; a tall Polynesian man with ink-black skin and long flowing hair. His Viking attire was decorated with patterns and symbols of the Polynesian islands and a shark-toothed club hung from his holster. The man looked as if he could punch through walls and kill an elephant with a single fist. Yet when Donovan arrived in the room, a bright smile crossed his face and he pulled the man into an embrace, which Donovan readily returned.
“I was showing the new recruit around,” Donovan said, twisting in the man’s embrace to face Varri. “Varri, have you met Inoki Kekoa, my other half?”
“You two are married?” Varri said, looking between them with a tightness growing in his chest.
“Going on twenty-two years now. And I wouldn’t change a second of it,” Inoki said, placing his forehead against his husband’s so that they seemed to share the same air for a moment.
“Must be nice,” Varri said, looking to the floor.
“Ignore those two lovebirds. Maybe then Donovan will actually get started on dinner,” a particularly huge Viking said.
Donovan grinned, gave Inoki a final kiss, and wended his way through the cramped kitchen to the stove.
“What do you want, Thorstein? We’ve got egg and kelp. Egg, beans, and kelp. Egg, sausage, beans, and kelp.”
“Well, it’s all we have.”
"What kind of impression is that for the new recurit?" Thorstein said, turning to Varri. The man was distinctly Scandinavian with a wind-battered face, matted dirty blonde hair in a braid that reached to the small of his back, and a beard nearly as long decorated in elaborate braids. Varri could’ve almost sworn that his axe was an actual antique from the Viking age. “Name’s Thorstein. Thorstein Erikson,” the enormous Viking said to him, taking Varri’s hand in an embrace so strong it nearly crushed his fingers.
“Yes, as in Leif Erikson. I’m his brother!” Thorstein said, puffing out his chest.
“Not this again,” Donovan sighed.
“For the last time, Thorstein, you are not a real Viking!” Inoki said.
“I am so! I fell off my brother’s boat and was frozen in the ice. Next thing I know I’m thawing out in your underwater boat, and here I am,” Thorstein argued.
“Don’t worry about him,” Inoki whispered into Varri’s ear. “He’s a bit screwy in the head, but he’s alright, really.”
The rambunctious laughter was quickly halted as everyone looked towards the kitchen door. Varri followed their gaze to see Bjorn standing in the doorway.
“Why haven’t we left dry dock yet?” he asked.
“We’ve been making repairs all day. The crew need to rest,” Inoki said, stepping forward, almost as if he were forming a barrier between Bjorn and the rest of the crew.
“Rest when you’re dead. I'm not wasting any more time. If any of you don’t like it, you’re free to leave and find some other crew. That’s if anybody else will take worthless rats like you.”
His words were met only with silence.
“That’s what I thought. So, do your jobs.”
The Vikings slunk out, their heads down, complaining under their breath about their lack of dinner. Even Donovan ducked behind the kitchen counter, hoping not to be noticed. It was just as Varri had suspected. They were all there for the same reason he was; because they had nowhere else to go.
“You, fresh meat,” Bjorn said to Varri, making him stiffen. “There’s a fresh load of laundry for you. Hope you enjoy scrubbing underpants,” he said with a throaty chuckle.
As Varri ducked out of the room, he heard Inoki talking to the captain.
“I still think it’s too risky. You know how dangerous Pohjola is,” he said.
“It will be worth the risk,” Bjorn said. “That treasure will make me the richest and most powerful man Undersea.”
“Us, you mean. We all get a share of the treasure.”
“Yes, yes. You all spend your money however you want. But I want something more than just money to pay my bar tab,” Bjorn said. “Redscalp’s treasure is what I’m owed.”
