So hello there, old friend. Welcome back to the story, Harry.

Music? Let’s put on some old Genesis. Squonk, to be a little more specific. No need for tea today; this is a fairly short bridge to the next part of the story.

First You Make a Stone of Your Heart

Part 5.2 – Shadows of Shadows Passing

Callahan and Sara stood on the port side of Amaranth’s Portuguese bridge, her long auburn hair adrift on cool winds coming off the Chesapeake. Though it was not yet completely dark, a full moon was just coming up beyond the eastern shore, and a few small crabbing boats could be seen working the hazy shoreline a few miles away. Commercial traffic was still light, too, with only a few small ocean going cargo ships seen in the ship channel all day, and while Callahan had never been much for yachts after his Hawaiian misadventure, after almost two days on Amaranth he was beginning to doubt the wisdom of that choice. In fact, he was enjoying himself. He knew he was working on a world class sunburn – on his shoulders and arms – but he simply couldn’t get enough of standing up here in the slipstream watching the world glide by.

Yet everyone onboard could see that Callahan still needed his space.

Once onboard, Admiral So-and-so’s chief henchman had shown him to his cabin on the lower level – which, happily, had turned out to be far away from Richardson’s – but then he’d tried to keep to himself the rest of that first morning. Until he’d smelled something wild and impossibly hunger-inducing around noon and found his was back up the circular staircase to the main floor, where it turned out the galley and dining room were located, but then he’d discovered the aft deck just beyond the sliding glass doors at the far end of the huge living room there. He’d immediately walked aft and out the automatic doors to the teak floored patio on the back of the boat, then saw twin stairways that led down to a huge swim platform that was, literally, almost awash with water. He walked down to teak platform and slipped his shoes off, sat down and with his good foot dangling over the side, he watched as it bounced around in the powerful wake. The sensation down there was, he thought, almost like a whirlpool for his remaining foot, but that only brought up another rush of unwanted memories.

And then he saw the six foot tall black dorsal fin slicing through the water about fifty feet behind Amaranth and quickly pulled his foot aboard.

“Well…damn…” he grumbled.

“Damn what?” MacKenzie said, suddenly appearing behind Callahan.

Callahan pushed himself up slowly, the change to this colder climate bothering his knee, and when he was standing beside the admiral – and being a solid six inches taller than the other man – he felt less vulnerable again. “Well, Admiral, I was enjoying the water,” Callahan said, “until I saw that thing,” he added, pointing at the scything fin.

“Oh – him” MacKenzie grumbled. “I see he’s back again.”

“Again?”

“He’s been with us for days, and while Richardson won’t quite admit it, I think he knows why.”

“Richardson? Really?”

“I think there’s a lot about the current situation you aren’t aware of, Mr Callahan…”

“Harry, please.”

“Alright, Harry. I’ve got a briefing paper in my cabin that goes into some detail concerning the…nuances…of the current situation, and you might want to look it over…”

“I might, thanks. Where are we headed now?”

“New York, Nantucket, Boston, then up the Maine coast and across the Gulf of Maine to Halifax.”

“Why not just head straight…didn’t the Titanic go down near the Grand Banks?”

MacKenzie nodded as he sighed, then he looked away for a moment. “We’re being watched, Harry. By what or by whom we have no idea, but there’s some kind of…object…following us. Underwater, very stealthy, and maybe a mile behind us. And whatever it is…well, it simply skims along a few inches above the bottom. It got careless once and we pinged him on sonar, recorded enough noise to work up a track on it.”

“Did it follow you up the Potomac?”

“All the way into D.C. DHS and the Secret Service went nuts.”

“So…why take the scenic route up the coast?”

“Oh, in case we can spoof them into thinking we’re not a threat.”

“A threat?”

“To their operation,” MacKenzie sighed.

“Shit,” Callahan sighed.

“You took the word right out of my mouth.”

“You said we’re going to intercept the Titanic. Were you being…serious?”

MacKenzie nodded. “Yup.”

“Are you going to stop her…from hitting that iceberg?”

MacKenzie shook his head. 

“Then…why?”

“Because someone else is going to try and keep all that from happening.”

“And you’re going to try and stop them from stopping the Titanic?”

MacKenzie nodded.

“Then all those people…they’re all still going to…”

“Yes, exactly. All those people…”

Callahan put his hands in his pockets and shook his head. “So…you can’t mess with history? Is that it?”

MacKenzie shrugged again. “No one has the slightest idea what the aims of this team really are, but I have a sneaking suspicion that a whole lot more may be at stake than just the lives of those passengers. It makes me sick to my stomach, but essentially it boils down to a numbers game.”

Callahan shrugged. “Doesn’t it always?”

“I guess.  So maybe in the end it all boils down to a simple utilitarian calculus, but I doubt we’ll have the luxury to waste time on all that esoteric bullshit.”

Callahan turned and looked at MacKenzie, his eyes full of sudden curiosity. “You said someone. Someone is behind all this. Who?”

MacKenzie turned and looked directly into Callahan’s eyes. “Peter Weyland.”

Callahan gnashed his teeth as his face turned scarlet, then almost purple. “But, how? I mean…I killed him. Like twenty five years ago…”

“Yes, I know. You did not, however, kill his son.”

“His son? I didn’t know…”

“Few people did, apparently.”

“But how? How did he…?”

“Amass so much power? Well, Harry, that is the question. And, well, we think we now know part of the answer.”

“Oh?”

“Sorensen. Ted Sorensen.”

The name hit Callahan like a hammer blow. He stood there beside MacKenzie, staring up at the sky while unwanted memories of his childhood friend and mentor came back to him in a rush, then he turned away from MacKenzie and walked back down to the swim platform. He finally sat – after a few more minutes passed – and once again he let his foot dangle in the passing sea. He looked for the black dorsal fin back there, and wondered what it would be like to live that kind of life when he realized the orca was nowhere to be seen.

He shook his head and had just looked up at a passing cloud high overhead when he felt something grab hold of his prosthetic leg, and then he realized that this something was pulling him overboard. And there was nothing he could do to stop it.

© 2024 adrian leverkühn | abw | adrianleverkuhnwrites. com | this is fiction, plain and simple.

More to come soon. How ’bout one more track before going? Maybe Conquistador, by Procol Harum?

AI generated images from story prompts: Image Creator by Microsoft at bing.com