Guten Tag! Well, provided youse all haven't given up on me, here I am, back again. Not much to say really, you can all speculate as to why I haven't posted for a while, and you can speculate all you like, I'm remaining schtum on the matter. Anyhow, this chapter was brought to you by V For Vendetta.

Cheers!

P.S. www.joinme.info

R.R.S. James Clark Ross

9.15 P.M. December 2nd, 2004

Thirty-five minutes later the seven survivors of the wave were all together in the infirmary. CJ had stumbled across Dr Zoe Monroe, huddled on her bunk with a thousand yard stare that had freaked him out inordinately. It had taken him the better part of five minutes of soothing words to even get her to take her eyes from some invisible point several miles beyond his right shoulder. It had taken another ten minutes of incredibly repetitive reassurance that strained his patience to its habitually limited – ha – limit. He had resisted the urge to slap the almost catatonic woman across her face a few times. It worked for his dad after all…

Shouting had apparently worked. She had finally focused on him and while she didn't actually appear to be entirely all at home he had finally got her to her feet and back to the infirmary. He had noticed as her lead her through badly lit passageways that the water level had dropped discernibly. Now it merely lapped around their ankles, but to two people utterly soaked to the bone wearing clothes suited to – at best – lounging around a roaring fire in some alpine log cabin that didn't make things any less cold. CJ was beginning to seriously regret not being fat. He recalled for a second the story of a lardy Norwegian (probably) sailor whose ship had sunk beneath him into the icy waters of the North Sea, and had survived simply because he was such a fat bastard.

"Bastard…" CJ had muttered as he continued to drag the zombie-like Zoe through suddenly endless passageways whilst all the time trying to keep his balance as the decking rolled beneath his feet. He remembered that the sound of the storm and the sea had sounded far louder and he wondered why now as he stood in the infirmary watching Donna Phillips thrash in agony as Chris and Tony Willis tried to pin her down and let Roddy McIntyre splint her badly broken arm. He was busily taping a compress to the ugly gash on Oliver Cole's forehead whilst Zoe Monroe was sat opposite him, still staring into space in a way that would be deeply worrying and highly disturbing to CJ if he had been playing her the slightest bit of attention.

Another piercing shriek filled the room and reached over the crashing of the sea rolling over the James Clark Ross. CJ noticed with some concern McIntyre look around with worry whilst still trying to pin down his hysterical friend.

There was one huge scream, which made CJ's stomach turn and then he heard McIntyre's thick Glaswegian voice shout "The morphine! Now!" and he felt a surge of relief as Donna's screams melted into moans and then gasps as the opiate flooded her bloodstream.

"Oh thank Christ," CJ muttered as the screams went away and he applied the final strip of tape to the compress.

"Cheers, pal," Cole said, a mixture of pain and painkillers dulling his eyes.

"I'm no first aider, mister," CJ joked uneasily.

"If I croak I know who to blame."

"Is that likely?"

Cole looked up at McIntyre who was saying soothing things with his mouth to Donna and radiating panic with the rest of his face.

"After what just happened to us all?" Cole's grin was laced with black humour. "You really don't want to know."

CJ leaned in closer, keeping his voice low. "We gonna sink?"

"Hope you can swim, son." Cole's eyes closed and he leaned back against the workstation he was propped up on.

"Better n' I can drown," CJ muttered to himself.

"Right," McIntyre said, standing straight. "If you all want to make it out of this alive, this is what we are going to have to do…"

… And so it was fifteen minutes later Christopher John David Greenough found himself in sole command of six thousand tons of British research vessel. He was stood on the torn open bridge of the James Clark Ross, genuinely afraid that he would be swept away if he loosened his grip even one iota. The bridge was now open to the elements and he could barely see beyond the torn steel of the remaining walls. He was frankly petrified, and the engineer McIntyre screaming instructions into his ear didn't help.

So this was the plan that was to save their lives. Fucking genius, he thought. There were seven people left alive on this ship. Donna had very nearly had her arm broken off; she was no help to anybody. That Zoe woman was practically comatose, and the sailor he had patched up – Cole – was probably concussed and likely out of action for the foreseeable future. That left himself and Chris, who knew nothing about sailing, boats, the sea or storms like this, and McIntyre and Willis, to steer this damned ship to safety! And of course one of them had to be in the infirmary at all times to look after the wounded.

And from what he could gather, Willis was just a weatherman anyway and probably didn't know a whole lot more than he did. And soon not even McIntyre would be here, once he was satisfied (so he said) that CJ and Chris had mastered exactly enough to not sink them all then he was going down to the engineering deck and start work on pumping out the flooded compartments.

To tell the truth it wasn't all that hard. All he had to was keep one eye on the readout on the console before him. It told him what direction he was steering, and provided he kept the ship on a heading of ninety degrees – due west – then with any luck they wouldn't sink. They couldn't head south, said McIntyre, putting the ship broadside onto the wind and the waves. The James Clark Ross was so battered and waterlogged that they couldn't do anything that stupid and simply take the fastest route from under the storm without being driven to the bottom of this storm-wrecked ocean.

So now, here he was, driving a ship with, temporarily – Willis had insisted nobody could stay on the exposed bridge for more than an hour – the lives of himself and six other people in the palm of his hand.

Oh God I wish I was home