HYMN TO THE SEA …
Pairing : B'Elanna Torres / Seven of Nine
Rating : Mature (M)
Feedback : I took the time to write this, so give me the courtesy of writing back. :)
Chapter I : Southampton …
The shuddering clang of a door as it crashed back against its frame echoed down the hallway, accompanied by the screech of badly-oiled hinges forced to close a little too quickly. The sound reverberated around the tiny cell, as surely as if a lump hammer had been taken to the cast iron bars that passed from floor to ceiling. The rhythmic tapping of shoe leather against the faded, lime-green tiles of the floor grew steadily louder until it came to an abrupt halt beyond the bars.
A series of bangs, thumps and the sound of metal scraping against metal broke the silence before the shoes turned on the floor with a squeak, heading back from whence they had came and slamming the door at the end of the hallway one final time for good measure. Blinking her eyes open Isabelle rolled over towards the bars, grimacing as the poor excuse for a mattress she lay upon compressed, forcing her ribs to push against the hard metal of the bed frame underneath.
Swinging her legs over the edge and sitting up, Isabelle tipped her head to the side and grimaced at the stiffness in her neck and back; kneading at the toughened muscles with a free hand as she pushed herself up to standing. Using the bars at the front of the cell for support, she leaned over the dented metal tray that balanced precariously on the shelf in front of the hatch. Her nostrils flared as she took in the familiar smell of cabbage and mashed potato, a grimace spreading across her tanned features.
Puffing her cheeks out with a long, frustrated sigh Isabelle pressed her knotted back against the cold brick wall opposite. Lowering herself to the concrete floor she took what comfort she could from the cooling affect it had on her flushed, grimy skin. A fingertip climbed her neck to press against the bruise she couldn't see but could certainly feel, spread across her temple. She grunted in pain, pulling her hand away and slapping it against the wall in irritation.
Isabelle shifted her shoulders awkwardly, her stained, sooty vest using the previous night's sweat to stick to her clammy flesh like a second skin. The bandages bound around her other hand and upper bicep had long lost the battle to stay white; stained progressively worse from cream to grey and darker still. She grimaced as her stomach twisted and grumbled loudly, demanding something more than regret and frustration to dine on.
Reluctantly she pushed herself up to her knees and shimmied forwards, pulling the tray from the ledge down onto her lap. Holding the dented metal mug up, towards the tiny window set high into the far wall and the minimal light it provided, Isabelle watched the particles of grit and whatever-else suspended in the water dance and twist in the brightness. Very reluctantly she brought the cup to her lips and tipped it back.
Wielding the fork like an offensive weapon, she stabbed at the mix of cabbage and potato and shovelled it up; chewing on a mouthful with all the enthusiasm of eating razor blades or bumble bees rather than mere vegetables. At least a condemned man got to choose what was for lunch before they juiced him.
She forgot the cabbage and lumpy potato instantly as a deafening, thunderous groan filled the air – a terrific howl that rattled the tray on her lap and seemed to bang and crash against the surrounding concrete; a rolling, palpable wall of noise that she could feel pushing against her grimy skin. Isabelle was off the floor and across the tiny cell in a single moment, jumping onto the tiny bed with enough force to make it groan and bow under the impact.
Reaching both arms up above her head she grasped the narrow bars securing the cell's tiny window, gritting her teeth as she strained to pull herself up. Biceps trembling with the effort, Isabelle pushed her head into the tiny gap, pressing her temple against the edge of the concrete window frame. A glimpse of the burning fury of the sun forced her to squeeze her eyes shut but other than the cellblock opposite, a few excited strangers hurrying below Isabelle's window and the barely-audible conversations of a thousand-strong crowd somewhere close by, there was nothing to see.
Lowering herself back down onto the mattress, she sighed in frustration. Eventually making her way to the tray she'd abandoned earlier, she pressed her back against the concrete and slid down the wall. Isabelle got no further than stabbing the mound of cabbage and potato still left when the door to the cell block crashed open, unexpectedly. Several sets of shoe leather competed to be heard this time, filling the cell with a maddening tap-tap-tap as they drew closer.
Isabelle craned her neck around to watch a lanky, painfully-thin guard draw a heavy baton from his belt and tap it menacingly against the cell's iron bars. "Step back," He warned with a tip of his head towards the bunk against the far wall. Plunging his free hand into his pocket he heaved a ring of dozens of keys up to the lock, frowning for a few seconds as he tried to place the right key from memory.
"It's probably the silver one," Isabelle offered helpfully with a wink as she sprawled out on the mattress and folded her arms behind her head. "That's quite enough of your lip!" The Guard muttered, doing as she suggested anyway and being rewarded with a dull click of the bolt retracting back into the lock.
Pushing the ring of keys back into his deep pockets and stepping into the cell, the end of the baton tapping in his spare palm, the Guard watched his charge carefully. "Isabelle Towers, is it then?"
"Depends on who wants to know," She drawled lackadaisically, staring up at the ceiling. The guard smirked, pushing the baton back into the loop of his belt and stepping aside from the door with an arm gestured out towards the bunk Isabelle lazed upon. "I'll tell you who bloody well wants to know!" A third voice boomed, stepping into the cell with shining silver buttons and a peaked, white cap crossed with the gold braids of authority.
Blue eyes stared unflinchingly towards Isabelle, her head snapping towards the impeccably-dressed newcomer as his voice crashed against her ears like the peals of a church bell. A bushy, half-moon moustache hid the sneer curling his top lip. "The Chief Engineer of the most fantastical ship to ever sail wants to bloody well know! Is that good enough, Towers? I can always get Captain Smith down here if you need the seniority; I'm only a Commander … "
Isabelle tried to scramble to her feet but got no further than slipping on the scratchy blanket, the back of her head banging against the concrete wall. Grunting with pain, she buried her elbows into the mattress and levered herself up and off the bed. Simultaneously rubbing the back of her head and trying to look like she was standing vaguely to attention, Isabelle watched one of the White Star Line's most senior engineering officers circle her like he was picking out the best-looking leper from a colony.
"Look at the state of you, Towers," He sighed with a shake of his head. He snatched the peaked cap from his head, scratching at the thick brown hair underneath. "You're supposed to be that filthy after you've finished in my engine room for the day – not before you've even bloody well reported for duty!"
Isabelle bit her tongue, not even being in a position to see the position she might then be able to talk from. Like a million dressing-downs from superiors the length and breadth of the civilised world, she was going to have to take all the Chief Engineer opposite could give … And Joseph G. Bell had a lot of steam to power his voice.
Digging into the folds of his waistcoat, the moustached officer opposite produced a heavy, gold-plated pocket watch on a length of glittering yellow chain. Snapping the face open to glance at the arms, he shook his head and offered a loud sigh towards Isabelle. "Fifteen minutes until anchor up," He announced expectantly, returning the pocket watch to the folds of his suit.
"I heard her clear her throat earlier," She nodded, recalling the screeching roar which had assaulted the ears earlier and motivated Isabelle to literally climb the walls, desperately trying to catch a glimpse of the incredible sight she knew lay only a short distance away. Her head turned back from the window towards the engineer, trying to match the intensity that smouldered in his piercing blue eyes.
He folded his arms across his broad chest, eyes narrowing as he watched Isabelle carefully. "She's got a terrifically powerful voice on her, hasn't she? The greatest ship ever put together, ever conceived; perhaps the greatest piece of engineering in the history of all man-made and god-inspired things. She'll write an incredible legacy, make every newspaper from Southampton to Cape Town. Every corner of the Empire from India to New Zealand will know her name, remember it forever.
"She won't just carve the good name of the White Star Line into history … She'll write her own name on the tops of the bloody waves! No-one will forget the name Titanic, my dear. No-one."
Gritting her teeth at the mere mention of "Izzy", she still found herself nodding; found her mind filled with images of the incredible ship – possessing of a grace and delicacy which was somehow bolstered, rather than shattered by her brute power and enormous size; foreboding in the way it towered over even the warehouses lining the sides of the dock, while still being something to be admired rather than feared.
Something a person would never forget being a part of … Unless that person was Isabelle Towers. Anger boiled up inside her belly, twisting the gut and stoking the balling fists she hid behind her back. The rage was direction-less, like a ship at sea without a rudder and it swirled without a point or purpose. It simply pushed and prodded at her common sense, as it always did – goaded her good nature into submitting and lashing out. It stood able and willing to ruin so many things, as it had ruined this wonderful opportunity.
An opportunity to be a part of something so spectacular, so awe-inspiring, so ground breaking that it challenged the most religious of men to disbelieve in the capacity of mere men to create works of God.
Joseph blew his cheeks out, stirring the coarse brown hair of the moustache spread across his upper lip. "I'm not going to waste my time asking how you ended up in here, Towers. You've been a part of my engine room for a long time … How many ships now? The Adriatic, Zeeland and the Belgic … Probably more? We've been around the world a half-dozen times now, spent years working together and you still haven't grown up! You're still a silly little girl who can't control her temper!"
Isabelle snarled, Moving forwards before her common sense found itself, and reigned in her aggression at a single step closer. Joseph looked unimpressed, shaking his head slowly. "Do you know how hard I worked to bring you on-board Titanic? Have you any idea how many good sailors were knocked back? Good god Isabelle, full-blown Officers – men with gold stripes on their cuffs and commissions – were turned down for this ship! It took every ounce of the weight that comes with a position like Chief Engineer to make sure I got the engine room I wanted ..."
"And you can't let a drunken comment slide, or you can't just get up and leave when some lecherous dog makes some crass comment at your table … You can't turn the other cheek just once. You're not on a tramp steamer any more! Punch whomever your heart desires out cold, spend the cold nights at port-side cradling whatever gut rot it is you like to imbibe until you're three sheets to the wind … Feel free to ruin whatever future you might have, but do it when you're hauling mail or rubbish. You don't do it the night before the R.M.S. Titanic sails for New York!
"You know how life at sea works," Joseph grumbled with a flick of his palm. "It's all about who you know, not what you know. You want gold stripes on your cuff, Izzy? You want a commission, to be an Officer, to have the respect you crave and the responsibility I think you might just be about able to handle?
"Everything about you says no. Your mother's an angel, bless her all the way back to Ireland but there's no money in being a seamstress. The less said about your good-for-nothing father the better but sailing around the world with the stars-and-stripes flying from your bow, cavorting with whatever local riff-raff throw themselves at you in whatever foreign port you lash up your battleship is conduct unbecoming to an Officer … And one presumes a gentleman. When it comes to him, the two are certainly not mutually inclusive."
Frowning deeply, he tapped a finger against his lips. "Still one can't expect much from the Americans or their supposed Navy in that respect … Still new to the high seas and all that. Fact is Izzy you don't have the breeding, the training or the prestige to entitle you to a place at Officers' Candidate Schooling. That leaves you with one of two options …
"Give up, be content with stoking boilers or befriend some old, half-befuddled old fool who'll tolerate your nonsense and put his good name and reputation on the line for some headstrong, angry young woman who should have been cast aside in all good sense half a dozen times over."
Joseph cupped his chin with a hand, rubbing the freshly-shaved skin thoughtfully. "What's it to be, Towers? You can do what the world expects of you, what I now half-expect of you, and sit down on that bunk. I won't need to look far – not further than the side of that dock – for someone to replace you. I'll sail on to New York and you can sign on to the next tramp steamer heading out to Nova Scotia, once they let you out of here. Forget being an Officer, forget dreams of your own engine room … That would take hard work, sacrifice … Much easier to spend your nights drinking and punching out strangers, right?
"Or you could take the last chance, and I do mean very, very last chance I'm offering you. The chance to step through that door, work your way through a very large throng of people, climb up the aft gangway and find yourself a shovel. Once you've done that, find your way down to the engine room and bend your back to the task at hand; feeding the hungry boilers of my ship until they've had their fill and Southampton is a tiny grey dot on the horizon."
Isabelle sucked in a long lungful of air, as if she might cool the swirling tempest threatening to tip her from her feet as surely as any ship might list in a terrible storm. Dark brown eyes stared, almost burned into their opposite number as she struggled to keep her temper in check at the mention of her family, her upbringing, her father ... and the smile from her lips at the mention of friendship, of talent and dreams …
This man was equal parts infuriating and captivating. As if the oriental, eastern forces of Yin and Yang had found themselves in the desires to both drive her fist into the Engineer's temple and throw her arms around him in a bone-crushing hug. She hesitated for a moment but all hope of turning him down, heading for Canada or whatever far-flung parts of the British Empire might best hide her failure and shame evaporated with the terrible, screeching din of Titanic's whistle.
It blasted once, twice and three times – a tuneless cacophony of raw power and majesty which could not be ignored by anyone … Least of all Isabelle Towers, Stoker 2nd Class.
Joseph's moustached lip curled upwards slightly as he read the decision in her eyes, not bothering to give her voice time to confirm it. "I would rather not miss the departure of my own ship," He announced dryly. Turning towards the jailer, he dipped his head respectfully. "Are we in order here, my good man?"
"Absolutely sir," He acquiesced, stepping away from the cell door and clearing a path through. The Chief Engineer of the R.M.S. Titanic stepped out of the cell, the tap-tap-tap of shining black shoes echoing against the worn wooden floor. "Quick as you like, Izzy!" Joseph shouted loudly as he marched towards the door that led out into the greater dockyards. "Best not to keep the White Star Line waiting!"
One hundred and fifty nine furnaces were stoked to life, each one a shining metal prison restraining raging, roaring fires which only grew on a fattening diet of the richest coal – piled high in great mountains of black rock, whose high peaks still did not reach above the enormous ship's waterline. One hundred and fifty nine burning furnaces fuelled twenty nine boilers containing the terrible pressures of the water, super-heated to a scalding steam that would scour the flesh from bone, were it somehow ever to find a way free of the endless maze of metal pipes and valves.
These miles of pipework carried the angry steam aft, forcing it to turn the ship's outboard propellers despite their great weight. Heavy lines were cast clear, as the shore surrendered its last tenuous hold on the Titanic and the great curved blades of the ship's engines, hidden deep beneath the cold blue of Southampton Docks, worked hard to push the great ocean liner towards New York.
Thousands cheered, waving their hands or their caps as they bid farewell to the greatest miracle of engineering ever conceived by the dreams of men and made real by their hands. Some had hammered the great rivets which now held Titanic's hull together, others had laid the carpets which complimented the incredible opulence and luxury of the ship's First Class facilities. Some had laid the hundred of miles of electrical cabling, while others still had installed the great cast-iron doors which divided the ship into five watertight compartments.
Many were the family of the hundreds of immigrants aboard the magnificent ship, waving off their dearly beloved or cherished child as he or she charted a bold course to the New World, a new start and a new life. Others still had no connection to Titanic other than to catch a glimpse of the incredible sight; to tell their beloved or their children or to wait for the day they had either, or both, of the time they had seen her set sail with their own eyes.
Regardless of the role they did or did not play in relation to the enormous ocean liner, they cheered together as one. They whooped and sang and danced merrily, as the Titanic fought and won its battle against the brooding seas. The waves crashed against her shining black hull, doing their very best to roll the ship one way or the other but the pride of the White Star Line would not be so easily upset.
Her enormous propellers span ever faster, fed by thirsty boilers and furnaces which drank and ate deeply of the labour of the men and women bending their back so painfully to the cause. She busied herself with the business at hand – to carry her two thousand, two hundred and twenty three souls across the vast, freezing waters of the North Atlantic in comfort, in peace and relative speed. For all her enormous, gigantic size the R.M.S. Titanic could not compete with the raw dimensions of the ocean and gradually, to those crowded about the docks at Southampton she seemed to shrink.
A thick pall of grey smoke hung lazily against the horizon, drifting up from where the ship's funnels disgorged the industry of the engines into the sky. Eventually even that dissipated on the four winds and the unforgettable ocean liner disappeared from view, smoke and all.
Still they cheered on the dockside, if only for a while longer.