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[October 2022]
I was rusty. Rusty - rusty - rusty. This is the first really new content in years.
I was a little intimidated I think, reading my previous work and using it at as a bar for myself. Geez, I said. I'll never write that well again. Maybe, maybe not. Who the hell knows? As long as I get the general gist across - I guess I can call it done.
So much of this was off the cuff. This chapter ended up being far more than I originally intended. I was supposed to be done with the Blue Skyline Vista sequence at the end of this chapter. But who was I kidding? Too much was too cool to leave out!
Again, I read that usually novels over 110,000 words are considered too long. I guess that's considering the costs of publishing VS a decent storyline. I don't know. But I'm well over that. And this won't ever be a published book - I'd say. I may trim it and cut some chapters. Maybe re-jig the order of some chapters too before this is done. I'll be on my death bed typing the last chapter to this - just wait and see.
The story continues
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*20*
Blue Skyline Torment
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Mountainous waves hulked through the darkness and worsened with every surge of the malevolent wind. Whitecaps that dared climb the towering peaks were lashed into sheets of spray and sent seething into the bitter void of night. Violent, driving rain pelted down from supercharged thunderheads and assaulted the enraged, swirling sea with savage fury. Every so often, ferocious slashes of brilliant lightning would spear through the black clouds and and hit the wave peaks with a crackling cold blue fluorescence, vaporizing the foaming crests altogether. At times, the murderous water and turbulent heavens seemed to merge in the onslaught, making it impossible to tell where one hell finished, and the other began. As the deep-sea fishing trawler Blue Skyline Vista fought her way through towering colossus waves, that continually broke over the entire vessel with unabated vengeance, the men aboard were left with little doubt that disaster hunted their every move.
The storm was building into a nightmare. Winds threatened to rip the Vista's screaming weather station clean off the mast atop the superstructure. Her bow crashed and drove under waves that swept across her open decks, before the highly-charged wash cascaded out of her scuppers in raging torrents. Thrashing propellers were thrown free of the water each time the stern rose, rolling the starboard rail down dangerously close to the angry sea. The trawler should have been anywhere but here. Yet here she was - in the mighty grip of a building hurricane.
The three men within the Vista's wheelhouse peered out into one of the worst storms they had seen in their lives. Joseph Sahain deftly worked the throttles, while Albert and Idris scanned across the tortured waves with searchlights mounted atop the mast where the weather station and radio antennas sat. The powerful marine LED lights operated by remote, and could be controlled by wireless handheld joysticks from anywhere on the trawler. At over five hundred thousand candelas each, they cut through the inky blackness with ease. But even so, making anything out amid the turbulence and heavy rain was almost impossible. Joseph had also switched on every other external light the Vista had, trying to make themselves as visible as possible in the vast open void of the Atlantic ocean.
"Well this is freeking jolly ain't it?" said Albert dryly as he fought to keep his light searching the waves; not an easy task as the trawler pitched and rolled through the storm.
"I see only storm and bullshit," said Idris in his heavy Russian accent. More often than not, he was a man of few words.
They all braced as the Vista's bow railings again became submerged in water that appeared slate grey, even under the trawler's powerful array of halogen running lights. In the skipper's chair, Joseph swore silently as the decks and cabin windows again became awash with frothing seawater, but outwardly he said, "This was a crap idea."
Joseph's hand had to be constantly on the throttles, easing off each time the Vista crested a wave and plunged back down the other side, and then boosting them a little once the trawler had righted. The Blue Skyline Vista was not the biggest trawler afloat, but with a gross tonnage of near 250, neither was she the smallest. But at the moment, she appeared a speck against the storm. Joseph peered up into the clouds as lightning flashed the scenery a brilliant cobalt blue.
"We're just never going to see a plane up amongst all of that," he said, his frustration more than evident. "I don't care how big it is!" It had been several minutes since Seheira's distress call came over the old marine band radio, the ridiculous story still refusing to settle in Joseph's mind. Not even a b-grade movie, he thought, would dare such an improbable tale. "If they've crashed already," he said, pleading that it wasn't true, "we'll never find them."
"Come on Joseph!" said Albert as he worked his searchlight's joystick. "You know Angelfire, and that odd friend of hers! What's her name again?"
"Lara."
"Right! Lara! Do you really think they'll just fade out of this world without a whimper? Do you? They'll come up with something to let us know where they are. Give them a chance!"
"I know. I know," said Joseph, more softly than he wanted, returning his gaze to the inky black maelstrom ahead of them. "It's just that the stupid old man is supposed to die first. Not her!"
The big Russian leaned over and touched Joseph's shoulder with a burly hand. "She not dead Joseph. Idris knows."
But Joseph only barely heard the words. For on the trawler's bow, amid the whitewash, a ghostly apparition had appeared. The translucent specter was only dimly discernable against the decks lit bright by the powerful halogen lights. It raised an arm to point - off into the pitch darkness. Joseph blinked, his eyes going wide, a tingle coursing the length of his spine. Lord have mercy! he thought... Now wasn't the time to be going mad.
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The gargantuan thunderheads boomed with anger as they dared pass by, and the wind shrieked around them as if a thousand banshees all yelled in unison for their deaths in impassioned hate. Lara grappled with the RAM-air chute's steering lines as she and Seheira attempted to navigate the hostile gloom with anything resembling control; Lara's arms tightly corded as the chute wrenched against the gusting blasts. Not a single sane person on earth would chute through a storm such as this, the odds of survival more than razor thin. Yet, sheer persistence was why they had survived for as long as they had. Lara pointed to a flare that Seheira gripped in her stoic hand.
"Light us up!" she yelled through the freight-train wind.
Seheira nodded, her vision partially shuttered with a mix of entangled blonde and powdery-black hair. Fighting the squalling wind, she popped the flare's ingnition cap and yanked the yellow tab underneath. The flare started to smoke, and Seheira immediately shoved it out to arm's length, not wanting any hot slag to blow onto them, or the chute for that matter. Within moments, a brilliant red flame erupted from the small tube, but flickered and sputtered hellishly in the wind's onslaught.
"Let's hope it's enough!" Seheira yelled.
Lara scanned the lightning-riddled cloud mass beneath them for the light they had seen moments before, which had since become lost in the mire. She flared the steering toggles to gain forward momentum and steered wide of a massive thundercloud bluff ahead, that flashed angrily from within. Once clear, another lightning flash at middle distance revealed harshly-strobed glimpses of the turbulent sea below, and the huge storm-driven waves that swirled furiously across the surface. She paid them no mind however, her cystalline mind focussing on where her dead-reckoning told her the light should be in the vast emptiness.
"Search for the Light!" Lara yelled, again straining mightily with the chute's scrapping steering toggles.
The expanse below them appeared devoid of anything except the ravages of the storm, the blackness of night covering each direction they looked. Frequent lightning, plus the red glow of the flare all served to fool their eyes into seeing things that weren't real. Soon the red IKAROS flare sputtered out, having only a 60 second burn time. Seheira let it fall through the blackness, useless to them now. She fished through her backpack, now strapped to her front, for the one spare they had. Before lighting it however, she scanned her eyes around, hoping to see something without the bright flare interfering with her night-adjusted eyes.
Lara did the same, immediately sensing what Seheira was doing. She put the chute into as gentle a turn as she could manage in the conditions; hoping to reveal the light from behind some hidden obstruction they could not see. She held this for several moments, but nothing appeared. The waves were getting closer. Distant lightning flashes glinted off the roiling water, revealing its distance below them. Lara circled back in the opposite direction, halting their descent as much as she could. Still they saw nothing. A sense of urgency began to rise; Lara knew the chances of them being found once they landed were very long indeed.
Seheira had the same sense of creeping hopelessness that Lara had. The light they had seen from the B-17 was now nowhere to be found, and she began to wonder if they had really seen it at all. Perhaps, she thought, it had only appeared because they had wanted it to so badly, but in truth was no more than a concoction of their desperate minds. Refusing to give up however, she flipped the cap on the second IKAROS flare.
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The specter pointed over the starboard rail, it's face not quite discernable in the wet hell, and as a gobsmacked Joseph peered that way, he knew their already-perilous predicament would worsen considerably if he pointed the Vista in that direction. He blinked furiously, and wiped a hand across his heavily-tensioned brow, but the ghostly figure remained. You better know what you're doing my love, he thought silently to himself. Joseph was a hard-working man, with little time for fantasy or make believe. Bullshit only made him furious; he had no time for it. This was... something else. A figment of his distress? His past grief coming back to haunt him? Being one of the plainest of men, Joseph supposed he may never know.
Joseph sighed, patted the Vista's console, and said - almost to himself, "C'mon baby, don't let me down." Then he spun the wheel to where the specter pointed.
Like an outnumbered street brawler fighting for life against an endless tide of attackers, the trawler changed course in the blackness, but immediately came under fire as the mammoth waves became a deadly following sea. In high winds and treacherous conditions such as they faced, Joseph knew the very real potential existed for large waves to overtake the Vista from behind and wrench the stern sideways, causing a capsize in a split second. All boats, he knew, no matter how big or small, shared one thing in common; they were all subject to the whims and wiles of the sea on which they traveled.
"Whoah!" said Albert, as he felt the boat's course change. "You sure that's a good idea Joseph?"
"Not in the slightest." replied Joseph evenly. "But I thought I saw something out this way." It was a lie, but what else could he have said?
"If you see dancing Russian barmaid out there," said Idris, "you let me know and I take over for you OK?"
Joseph harrumphed. "I'm not seeing ghosts in the night just yet," he replied. That was a lie too, incredibly - but he chose not to dwell upon it. He pointed a loose hand out toward the bow. "Something caught my eye, I'm sure of it."
Albert swung his searchlight ahead, but the rain had not eased and it was difficult to see much of anything. After several silent minutes peering into the chaos, Albert said, "I dunno Joseph, I got freeking noth-" The sentence was brutally cut short. Albert leaned forward, his eyes suddenly narrowing intently. He gazed this way for several moments, then said, "Wait! There... is something out there!"
Joseph peered anew at where Albert was looking, but saw nothing "The Hell?" he shot back. "I don't see anything."
"What you see?" queried Idris also, swinging his own light out ahead of the trawler.
Albert killed his searchlight, and then they all saw what he'd seen. The clouds ahead seemed shot through with some kind of internal red light, that flickered as if on fire.
Joseph's eyes went wide. "Up!" he shouted. "Get those searchlights up on the clouds!"
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The last of the flare sputtered out. Seheira resignedly let it fall from her gasp and into the soft embrace of the mist. There was no chance her father could find them now. She closed her eyes, not knowing what more they could possibly have done. It seemed Cortez would have his way, and they would find their end in the storm-struck depths of the Atlantic Ocean. As she drooped in harness, Lara suddenly shook her shoulder. When she opened her eyes, it was not dark. A white light was filtering up through the cloud from below. "Are we dead?" she yelled back to Lara.
"Not yet sister!" Lara yelled back, grinning. Again, she flared the chute to dump them down below the clouds. Once they were clear, a brilliant array of halogen lights shone up at them, from the heaving decks of a deep-ocean trawler. Only one vessel - Lara knew - would be mad enough to be out here in this withering tirade.
Seheira shreiked. "It's them! It's the Vista!" The one in a million cockamamie plan had somehow meshed into place, and she was ecstatic.
Lara's grin faded quickly as the wind surged viciously and flung them beyond the Blue Skyline Vista and into the path of the behemoth storm-driven waves and the peppering sea spray sheeting off the massive rolling crests. Lara battled the steering toggles but the air this close to the surface of the sea was too unstable. Strong updrafts forced off the peaking waves clashed with insidious wind shear, and threw Lara and Seheira's descent into barely-controlled chaos. It felt more like a randomized jetsteam that blasted from all directions. The sea salt began to sting their eyes and the crashing white water atop the wave crests mixed with the wailing wind in a destructive symphony, making any talk all but impossible.
"Hang on to your Shorts!" Lara yelled, as their altitude quickly vanished. Seheira could only nod her assent and give a harried thumbs up in reply.
They were coming in way too fast. Lara had needed to give them forward speed to get even a shade of control, but now, that speed was her enemy. She cleared her mind of all clutter, and willed her fears into crystalline silence, allowing only the predicament into her processing thoughts. At the last moment, Lara pulled the toggles to their limits, halting the chute's downward momentum as much as she was able. Even so, it wasn't pretty.
Lara and Seheira Bulldozed through the top of a massive wave at 45 degrees, and came crashing out the other side spinning in midair. The chute's lines spun and entangled crazily, before they hammered sidelong, and with venom, into a deep trough. The punishing blow drove the wind from their lungs with little mercy, as if being slugged with a baseball bat in a dirty street brawl. Their world went utterly mad, and for several moments, knowing which way was skyward in the pandemonium was impossible. The sudden embrace of the water was like an ice-blast shock to both girls, and fighting for air became their next anarchic task.
Seheira stole a quick breath as they were barraged through the breaking crest of the next wave, all seemingly as massive as multi-storey concrete factories. Her face ruthlessly plunged into the depths again as she and Lara rolled in the unforgiving swells.
In the sloshing upheaval, Lara felt for the straps that bound them together, running searching hands down her body until she found one of the buckles. In the submarine rock-breaker dark, she worked the straps free and searched for the remaining tie points that still bound them. The seconds ticked by as she worked, not knowing if the struggling Seheira had been able to steal a breath. She prayed she had.
After what seemed like hours, but was in truth less than a minute, the straps came free allowing Lara and Seheira to separate. Although Lara kept a concerned grip on Seheira's Foxhound Jacket, she needn't have worried, Seheira had responded the second the final strap had parted, her body wheeling around in the water and her coughing face rushing up before Lara's. Seheira flicked sodden hair from her eyes.
"Are we dead?" she asked again, with a subtle-but-wry grin. She reached out and held Lara by the shoulders, to avoid becoming separated from her. Lara did the same back to her.
"If we are," Lara replied, spitting out water, "I'm afraid we didn't go upstairs."
Seheira purged some additional coughs. "And there was me thinking"-her voice was throat-catching strained-"that I'd been saintly all these years."
Lightning flashed and thunder hammered with an electric boom that rolled across the supercharged sky. Lara's intense green eyes almost glowed in the strobed light as she regarded her old schoolgirl friend. She was relieved to find Seheira putting on a brave face, and not caught in the grip of utter panic, which, she reasoned, most people probably would be. Seheira still seemed to be the adventurous, resolute girl she remembered from highschool, who'd not cared in the slightest that Lara wasn't like most other girls. A girl who trained heavily in martial arts, studied archeology like a demon, spoke several languages, and who had little time for the usual cafeteria girl talk, wasn't the exactly the popularity queen. Seheira, being the daughter of a trawlerman, and Lara, being of old-money British aristocracy, had made them a very unlikely duo. Both girls, in their own way, had lived a harder upbringing than most, and that similarity had kindled a friendship from the very first time they had met.
Lara couldn't help but laugh. "Well 'Saintly' is my middle name! So you must be telling fibs!" Lara pointed a finger into the middle of Seheira's chest.
The driving wind thrashed them though the charging white-water of a breaking wave, sending them both under, and spinning though the inky-black water. Still gripping each other - they surfaced moments later. "I can't believe you said that!"-Seheira mock-slapped Lara's shoulder-"I never lie!"
Lara had a full fall of wet, night-black hair across her face. "Pffft!" she replied, again spitting seawater. "Whatever you say Miss Sahain! We arrived in Hell somehow!" Lara then peered aside as another wave lifted them higher, and she caught what could only be a spotlight beam streaking through the night in the distance. Cresting the wave, she glimpsed the brilliantly lit superstructure of a vessel in the distance. "Look!" said Lara, suddenly pointing to it. "That has to be the Vista!"
"How are they going to find us?" Seheira wondered, looking where Lara pointed, straining to catch a better glimpse. "They're further away than I thought." However, just as soon as Seheira had said the words, one of the LED spotlights on the radar tower shone directly into her face, and remained fixated, almost as if the light operator knew exactly where both she and Lara were. The second light followed it almost immediately.
The impossibility of being picked out in the water at such a distance, during a storm, twinged briefly at Lara's ever-alert mind, but it was relegated aside quickly, upon the realisation that the Vista was indeed making straight for them. "Your father seems to have the knack for knowing where you are," she answered. "They're coming straight for us."
"They must have seen us land," Seheira said. "Thank God!"
The lights on the Blue Skyline Vista danced over the horizon as she battled the ferocious swells. Soon, Lara and Seheira could hear her spirited turbo-diesel engines and the crashing water from her bow as she pushed through the storm toward them. As the Trawler drew near, both girls frantically waved their arms, even though the spotlights had not wavered since first spotting them. The Vista came as close as she dared, and when the foghorn blasted out to greet them, they knew without a shadow of a doubt they'd be saved.
The trawler thrashed in the seas as it tried to remain stationary. Both Lara and Seheira could see that getting aboard was going to be a dangerous affair, the possibility of being crunched beneath the hull as it bashed against the sea with each turbulent swell a very real prospect. However, as their rescuers edged alongside them, their method of attack revealed itself. The Blue Skyline Vista had a large hydraulic deck crane, which was mainly used for loading and unloading cargo while in port, or to move equipment around on deck, but it was now extended over the starboard rail with a bright yellow rescue sling dangling from the end. Amid a throaty growl of reverse thrust, the sling was lowered, and a man in bright orange foul weather gear waved furiously.
Seheira waved back. "I think that is Idris waving at us!"
Lara knew the name from listening to Seheira's fishing stories at school. "Idris," she said. "The big Russian guy right?"
"That's him," Seheira replied, grinning. "He and Albert are practically my uncles!"
The rescue sling hit the water and immediately came under the influence of the strong wind and sea currents. The Vista slowly adjusted position to allow the sling to drift directly out from the vessel's side, rather than remain caught up alongside it.
"Come on!" Lara shouted. "We'll have to swim for it!"
Both girls were fit and able swimmers, however both found it a battle to make headway through the strong current and wind-blasted conditions. Lara powered though the water ahead of Seheira, and reached the floating rescue sling first, but had no intention of being the first to be rescued. The second Seheira swam up behind her, she placed the sling firmly over her head. There would be no argument.
"You first Girlfriend!" She said.
Seheira might have protested, but Lara's voice held a gently commanding presence, and she knew there could simply be no dissent. Seheira looked Lara in the eye and nodded. "You better not get into trouble without me here," she replied.
Lara rolled her eyes theatrically. "I guess I can behave for ten minutes," she said. She waved a ready signal with both arms up to Idris, who immediately waved back. "Now get out of here!"
The line began to tighten as a hydraulic winch aboard the Vista sprang to life. Seheira adjusted the sling beneath her armpits and gripped the rope above it as tightly as she could; it was going to be a very bumpy ride. She could hear the Vista's engines throttling up and down as her father gave stabs of reverse thrust here, and a jolt of forward there, trying to keep the big trawler as steady as possible. Though Joseph was a master seaman, only so much was possible in such terrible conditions, and she soon received a massive jolt as the Vista smashed its way over another hulking wave. The rain seemed to drive all the harder as her body momentarily lifted from the water, before being dumped harshly back into the sea as the Vista fought through a chasmous trough. Again, she lifted into the air as Idris saw what was happening and fed a burst of speed into the winch to lift her clear. This time, she rose crash free upward toward the crane. Seheira twisted around to search the water below for Lara, finding her still spotted by the LED spotlights, she gave the thumbs up, and Lara retuned it with a wave.
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Idris worked the winch controls with expert finesse, but he could still see Angelfire swing dangerously as the trawler rolled in the maelstrom. He had to get her onto the deck before another monster wave hit and she was smashed into the crane or any other part of the trawler's superstructure. He quickly angled the hydraulic arms upward to give her some extra height as he begun swinging her around above the deck. He'd known Angelfire since she had been a child in Joseph's proud arms, and had been there to console her when Juliette had been taken by the sea. No matter what the stupid rules were, no matter what the stupid convention was, he was her uncle Idris and he'd tear apart anyone who said different. He held her suspended a brief moment as the decks lurched, then dumped her down quickly when they had a few seconds of calm. Then he rushed at her.
"Angelfire!" he yelled, as he scooped her up into his massive arms. "You are hurt?" It was almost a plea that it wasn't true.
"Uncle Idris!" Seheira yelled back with happines, retuning his massive bear hug. "I'm not hurt, but a b-bit bloody chilly." Then she pointed toward the trawlers railing. "Lara!" she yelled, amid the stinging rain. "You have to get Lara!"
Idris nodded quickly. "I will," he replied. He helped her up, and was immediately chuffed that her sea legs had not deserted her. "Inside!" he said with one last hand on her shoulder. Seheira refused. She was frozen to the core, but there was work to be done.
"Not with a girl overboard I don't!" she replied, fixing him with her aquamarine fire. "We get Lara first, then we must look for Forde. Then I'll rest!"
Idris knew the tone, and the look. The unwritten trawlerman's code - to never leave a crewmate behind he knew all too well. That, and the fact Angelfire would never leave people she cared about in peril. Argument was useless. He nodded in resignation. "Get raincoat on at least," he said, pointing to one he'd draped over a crate lashed to the deck. He pointed to her sodden singlet top, "You'll be ice cube just wearing that!"
As Seheira quickly took up the bright orange foul weather coat and threaded her well-practiced arms into it - she realised she'd been running on adrenalin for entirely too long. She felt fatigued to her very soul, but she quickly brushed the feelings and discomfort away, rushing up to the rail to again search for Lara the second she'd fastened the coat enough to be workable. She was there, but the maelstrom she battled seemed all the more formidable from the deck of the Vista.
Idris quickly had the loading crane back in position and the rescue sling again floating over the waves. Joseph again angled the Vista so that Lara was in no danger of being crunched by the hull. Having learned from Angelfire's rescue, Idris quickly had her suspended mid-air, then worked the crane and winch to maneuver her over the decks. Waiting for the same brief moment of stability between waves, Lara was also dumped to the safety of the Vista's deck. As Seheira rushed to her, she sat up and wrung out her lengthy sodden hair, though it was futile in the storm-angry rain. Seheira knelt down beside her and reached out to place a worried hand on her shoulder.
"Are you all right Lara?" she asked, her voice battling to rise above the tempest.
Lara appeared utterly bedraggled as she stood, yet - not. Her clothes were badly torn, her skin clearly chilled, and her body still tensed on the same adrenalin high that Seheira had experienced. Yet she appeared ready for a fight, her feet firmly planted, her abdominal muscles clearly evident and tensed, as if ready to take on a lion. Her gaze was luminous-green hell. But then, as if slipping from a trance, her eyes suddenly softened, and she reached out to gently grip Seheria's concerned forearm.
"I think I'll live," she replied. Then she took a breath, as if a sudden thought had crossed her mind. "Jesus Christ it's cold!" she grimaced, as a stream of water dripped from her chin.
"OK inside!" said Idris in a booming voice, stepping up to the two girls and noting Lara's discomfort. "We start looking for the other guy!"
"Idris isn't it?" asked Lara cordially. "I'm Lara Croft."
"Yes yes!" said Idris, his grinning face almost lost inside the hood of his orange jacket. "Girl who shoots boogy-men! Angelfire tells me all about you!"
They made for the ladder that led to the Vista's upper forward deck. "I hope she told you about my good side," replied Lara conversationally.
"Oh..." replied Idris jovially, letting his reply hang a moment. "Mostly... yes." He began climbing the short ladder, then peered back at her conspirationally "But your secrets are safe with me."
"Idris!" blurted Seheira, horrified.
"Secrets?" Lara asked of them both, sounding mystified as she began to follow Idris up the ladder. "What secrets? Seheira - what did you tell him?"
"I-" Seheria started. But before she got any further, Idris, standing at the top of the ladder now, turned to face the girls as they followed him up, and interrupted, pointing a kind-yet-firm finger at Lara.
"Hey boogy-man girl," he said. "On this boat you call her Angelfire. Yes?"
Even in his bulky bad weather gear, 'Uncle Idris' looked as though he could bend toughened steel with his bare hands; he appeared to be half again as big as most other men. Lara could instantly see his protective side when it came to Seheira. "You got it," Lara said, reaching up to grip his offered hand. She knew a family bond when she saw it.
"Good!" Idris said, as Lara stepped onto the upper deck also. "I'll think of proper name for you too!"
Albert opened the cabin door just as Idris was helping Seheira off the ladder. "Are you lot going to freeking lolly-gag out here all night?" he asked them all. "Or are you going to come inside and put Joseph out of his misery?"
Seheira rushed past him with a lightning-quick hug and an equally fast "Hello Uncle Albert!" Then made straight for the man in the skipper's chair and enveloped the man within it with the biggest hug the world had ever seen. "Dad!" she said excitedly, "you found me!"
Joseph could only spare one hand from the wheel for a few seconds, but he made it count, and hugged her to him. "Angelfire!" he replied, his voice clearly strained with emotion. "I thought you were De..." but he couldn't finish the words. After some of the most precious seconds he'd ever had, he asked, "What the hell are you doing out here?" with a little more venom than he'd wanted. As if to emphasize the question, they all had to brace as the Blue Skyline Vista bulldozed her way through a huge mass of white water that again had her decks running awash.
"Honestly," she said, "I don't even know where to start."
"You jumped from a plane?" Joseph asked. "Into this?" He swept a hand across the view out the window.
"We had no choice Dad," Seheira replied simply. Lara had stepped into the control cabin behind Seheira, and Seheira pointed her out. "A madman named Cortez kidnapped me and a man from Foxhound Security, and Lara here came to our rescue. To escape we stole an old plane, but we got chased by some fighter jets and... " It sounded ridiculous, even though it was all true.
"Well,"said Joseph in resignation, "I wouldn't have believed it, yet here you are, dropping out of the sky in the middle of a hellish storm. I thought I only had nightmares like this when I was asleep." Then he looked back to where Lara stood in front of the doorway; her bright green eyes blazed at him, and for a moment he was taken aback. "It's good to see you again Lara," he said, after quickly recovering. "I'd ask if you were staying out of trouble, but I think I know the answer."
Lara smiled with perfectly white teeth, and suddenly her persona seemed instantly to change. "Hello again Mr Sahain. I'm sorry about dropping in on you like this - in a storm. It's very lucky you were here. If you weren't..." Lara let the thought fade, not wanting to voice the rest of the thought out loud.
"I'm not even going to think about it Lara," Joseph replied, gazing at her evenly. "But we're all here now, and there's another man out there to find"- Joseph used his head to indicate the side windows -"so I think we'd all better get busy. He won't last long out in that mess."
Joseph then quickly introduced Albert, who asked, "Did you see him come down at all?"
"No," replied Lara. "He's ex-military though, so he knows what he's doing."
"He should be close by though, right?" asked Seheira, her voice betraying a sudden heartfelt concern.
"Maybe," said Joseph, pinching his bearded chin in thought. "That wind is pretty terrible; he may have gotten blown off course."
"We have to find him!" Seheira blurted. She spun and took up a spotlight remote, and immediately began searching the hideous liquid terrain.
Joseph's eyes narrowed, sensing something in his daughter's impassioned plea. Yet all he said was, "We'll find him, or run ourselves ragged trying." Then he returned his gaze to the view through the forward windows and gunned the throttles. Albert took up the wireless controller for the second spotlight, and Idris headed back out onto the lower decks to ready the loading crane. Lara followed Idris out into the storm.
The minutes trickled over into double-digit time, the vicious sea revealing nothing. Joseph had marked Lara and Seheria's pickup location on the Vista's GPS, and he circled the location in ever widening arcs, though interference from the storm was making their location jump crazily over the map. The Vista's bow began to throw up bigger and bigger sheets of sea spray as the waves got bigger and the storm worsened. Soon, the wind began to howl mournfully through the Vista's superstructure, and the brilliant stabs of lightning were followed almost instantly by malicious thunder that boomed and cracked through rain that poured with an utter vengeance. Out on the open deck, Lara and Idris tied themselves to safety lines, as the torrents of white water gushing over the decks also worsened and threatened to wash them overboard.
Seheira felt the tension rise within her; it was becoming too dangerous. Again they were thrown dangerously broadside as storm fuelled cross currents converged to produce un-navigable pyramid shaped waves, that worked to throw the Vista around like a cork. Seheira knew they would soon have to call it; the safety of the crew already aboard taking precedence over anyone in the water. She peered again out into the waves, ever searching, and then something caught her eye, up at the forward rail. She swore she had seen some type of movement there, but as she peered more intently, nothing seemed out of place. Joseph caught her frowning in the reflected glare of the cabin windows. He turned to her.
"See something?" he asked.
"I'm... I... I could have sworn I saw something out there," Seheira stammered. "Just at the rail there." She brushed a long tress of blonde hair aside and sharpened her gaze.
Joseph turned to look where Seheira stared, a familiar tingle starting to form up his spine, yet he saw nothing. He looked further afield, "Well there's noth-"
But there was. He knew there was.
Then Seheira's eyes darted to where Joseph looked. "What the hell!" she breathed.
There in the gloom, an unearthly apparition stood, exactly at the pointed tip of the bow. With a ghostly upraised arm, it pointed urgently out to sea.
"You see her too?" Asked Joseph with quieted breath.
"Yes I bloody-well see her!" Seheira knifed back. "Who the Hell is it?"
"It's your mother," replied Joseph simply. "It's Juliette."
"What?" Seheira was thundershot with disbelief.
Joseph peered directly through the windows at the unearthly figure. "Soon after she died," he explained, "I began seeing her at night around the Vista. I thought I was going mad, that it must be the grief I was feeling, somehow affecting my head. So, I didn't tell anyone. She doesn't appear all the time. Sometimes months go by without a single appearance. Sometimes during the day I can... feel her presence I suppose. But look at her"-he gently nodded toward her-"you can only actually see her at night."
"What?" Seheira retorted. Her mother was... a ghost? "Why didn't you tell me this?"
Joseph's eyes dropped a moment at the question, and he nodded, almost to himself. Then he turned to give her a questioning look. "Oh sure," he replied. "Hey Angelfire? How's your day?"-he paused briefly, as if listening to a reply-"ohhh I'm fine," he continued. "I saw your dead mother today... You'd have collared the first white-coated doctor you could get your hands on."
"But my mother is a freaking ghost!" Seheria replied, exasperated. "Don't you think I should have known?"
"Until now," Joseph placated," I didn't know what I was seeing. Maybe I was going mad. I didn't really know."
"You both aren't mad." The voice was Lara's. She stood dripping wet in the doorway to the wheelhouse, regarding them with laser sharp eyes, but just when she had reappeared, nobody could say. "I met Juliette the moment I got dumped on the Vista's deck," she said.
Joseph, Seheira, and Albert - who'd been dumbstruck at the conversation - all turned to her at once. "What?"
"Call in your white-coats if you want," said Lara evenly to their wide-eyed faces, "but I see dead people." Her malachite green gaze upon them held not one inch of humor. "Sometimes I can speak with them too." She pointed assuredly to the trawler's bow, and the specter of Juliette Sahain. "I can speak with her, but she has not yet learned to speak back."
All at once, the room erupted.
Joseph said, "The Hell?"
Seheria again blurted out "What?"
And Albert said "Freeking bullshit!"
"I wondered how you found us so easily in this mess," Lara said, moving her outstretched arm to the side of her, to indicate the storm outside. "The chances of finding someone in the water in this dark chaos are very thin indeed," she said evenly. Lara then softened, and said, "But you had help, didn't you Joseph?"
Lara's presence seemed to bore into Joseph's very soul, yet he detected no menace there, but he was left in no doubt that she was somehow more than she seemed. "Yes," Joseph replied, the truth laid bare. "If it wasn't for Juliette, I'd never have found you."
The wheelhouse fell into stunned silence, with only the wailing wind, thrashing seas, and the purr of the Vista's faithful engines to fill the void.
After a moment, Seheira turned to face her mother's ghost. "So she's pointing at..."
"Where Stanley Forde is," Lara finished for her. Then she ducked back out through wheelhouse door and into the cutting rain, but as she left said, "So chop-chop you lot."
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Lara stood with feet firmly planted on the Vista's starboard rail, with one hand on the ladder rail for support, and the other shielding the stinging rain and sea spray from her eyes. With a quick glance up toward the bow, she could see where Juliette still pointed. She had no explanation as to why some spirits appeared to her; it was a mysterious enigma to solve another time. The trawler pitched and rolled dangerously in the mountainous swells, yet every time she was thrust upward, Lara was able to catch a glimpse along the path Albert's spotlight created through the mire. The lightning had turned furious, and the clouds seemed to dip ever lower as every minute passed. The sea salt stung her eyes, and her long black hair, although sodden, flew to her side whipping in the wind. She wore no raincoat, as it only served to slow her, the deep chill of the storm raking her body without relent. White water thrashed beneath her feet on the decks as the Vista drove through the huge swells, pushed on by its expert trawlerman skipper and her iron-tough crew. Lara looked back at Idris, who clung halfway up the loading crane; he was looking out to sea, searching as she was. If he was having a difficult time, it wasn't obvious; trawlermen were certainly a tough breed, she mused.
Suddenly the Vista's foghorn sounded, and Lara whipped her penetrating gaze back to the sea. The Vista suddenly slowed as Joseph threw in a burst of reverse thrust, making the railing beneath Lara's feet hum in concert with the engines. In two steps, Lara scaled the ladder to the upper decks and cast her gaze to where Albert's spotlight lit the surface of the sea. Something was there, barely noticeable amid the night-darkened depths. As Lara peered, she could make out a dark camouflage material mostly submerged amid the waves. It was Forde's parachute; it had to be. The B-17 thugs had been using military spec chutes, no doubt hoping to drop in uninvited on some evil business of theirs or other. The chutes were great for night jumps into enemy territory, Lara knew, but terrible for spotting a person lost at sea in the dead of night.
Lara stilled. She scanned the dark sea with her crystalline gaze, but saw only the dark material of the chute all but drowned in its wet hell. Immediately, a sense came over her that something was very, very wrong; she could not see Forde at all.
An instant later, she dove from the Vista's railing as it rolled toward the surface, somehow knowing that Forde's life hung perilously in the balance of fate. It was as if a veritable truth had been whispered in her ear by an unseen and unfathomable force. She hit the water with smooth precision and used her momentum to thrust through the depths toward her mental map of the chute's location. Breaking the surface, she switched into powerful strokes that propelled her the rest of the way with a speed that surprised those watching on from the Vista.
"What the hell is she doing?" Joseph suddenly blurted, gobsmacked. He craned his neck to see Lara over the side railing and stared wide-eyed at her utter lunacy.
"Being Lara Croft," said Seheira, with an all knowing, yet long suffering tone. "If you knew her, you wouldn't be surprised."
"She'll get herself killed!" Joseph shot back in exasperation.
"You're about the billionth person to say that Dad," replied Seheira, with a little amusement now. She stepped across the wheelhouse to stand next to Albert, who had Lara pegged with his spotlight, and said, "But does she look dead to you?"
Joseph spun the wheel and jabbed on a little more reverse as he spoke, adjusting the Vista's position relative to those in the water a touch. "She must have sixty damn lives!" he almost growled. "Like in one of those video games."
Lara found a tangle of lines and a bunched-up mass of torn chute material. Something had definitely gone wrong. She dived beneath the surface and immediately saw the silhouette of Forde's still body rolling in the waves, mired and entangled by the chute. Panic tinged at the outer edges of her mind, but she paid it no heed, and with a few purposeful kicks, she swam up to Forde and began working furiously on the clips and buckles that held him attached to the chute.
Precious seconds ticked by as she worked; she had no idea how long it had been since Forde had stopped breathing. Considering the time it had taken to find him, Lara knew that if she didn't perform CPR on Forde within the next few moments, he might well be making a trip upstairs without them. A prospect she didn't relish.
Forde still had some of the chute wrapped around his legs, and Lara knew untangling it all would take time that Forde didn't have. She swam around to his back and hooked her right arm under his armpit and then across his chest, then she stroked for the surface with deeply fired willpower; she was damned if Cortez was going to claim another one of her friends.
Frustratingly, the chute acted like a massive sea anchor, making Forde's weight ten times harder to drag through the water. Yet Lara fought with every last ounce of strength she had, and just as her own lungs were beginning to scream murderously for oxygen, she broke the surface and sucked in fresh air like a girl possessed. But the torment was not over, as the enraged surface of the sea continued to be battered by the storm. Lara immediately began mid-ocean CPR as best she could. In calm conditions it was trial enough, but in a hurricane it was close to impossible. She stroked toward the Vista, giving Forde life-giving breaths as she went, and slammed her fist against his chest for compressions with as much force as she could muster. It was chaotic, and far from perfect, but it was something.
As before, Joseph maneuvered the Vista with all his years of experience and attempted to drag the rescue line across Lara's path, but with all the forces in play, the outcome was far from ideal. Only Lara's sheer force of will got both her and Forde to the floating rescue sling in the blasting chaos. Lara was exhausted but drew on energy reserves residing deep within her very core. There was no time to send Forde up separately. There was no time to attach Forde to the sling securely. There was no time to think about what to do next. Only a thin avenue existed to save Forde's life, and the odds of pulling it off were counting ever thinner with each passing second. Lara slung her own arms through the sling, and then wrapped them underneath Forde's arms, and clenched her hands together across his chest in a vicelike grip.
Watching from the crane's controls, Idris was no fool, and saw what was unfolding beneath him. The second Lara was set, he set the winch in motion; God only knew the strength it must be taking for Lara to haul Forde's deadweight from the water, he thought.
As they began to rise, Lara felt the drag of the chute - still mired around Forde's legs - begin to fight back and threaten to drag Forde back into the water. Looking down, she could see a portion of it still dragging and billowing in the waves. Lara tightened her grip, but it was pushing her close to limits that were already well beyond any strength she knew she had. She gritted her teeth and forced her mind to calm, yet only so much was possible, and she felt her grip beginning to give.
Suddenly a shout cut across her mind, and she looked across to see Seheira bolstering herself against the rail of the Vista with a speargun in hand; she had it aimed at the chute that was now starting to dangle beneath Lara's feet. Clever plan, Lara thought to herself, and she looked into Seheira's aquamarine eyes and nodded.
Seheira let fly with the speargun. The silver spear ripped through the night and pierced through the portion of the chute still in the water. A direct hit, Seheira noted with satisfaction. The spear was attached to a thin nylon line, and Seheira immediately began hauling on it to drag the chute up and out of the water. The waves and ocean currents fought back viciously, at times making the braided line fizz back through her hands, but gradually she began to make headway, soon having a decent portion of the chute free of the water. Idris, noting this, again cranked the winch.
Lara felt the drag of the chute lessen considerably as Seheira lifted it into the air. Forde's deadweight on its own was beginning to make her muscles burn however, and she knew she couldn't hold him much longer. Mercifully, the rail of the Vista soon appeared beneath them, and she and Forde were dumped down onto the sloshing decks in a tangled heap of limbs, lines and shredded chute material.
The second her storm-numbed legs hit the solid decks, Lara writhed amid the tangle to kneel beside Forde and begin CPR properly. Seheira slid to a stop beside her and yelled something amid the tumult of the keening wind. "He isn't breathing," Lara yelled back, before providing Forde life giving breaths.
"Forde!" Seheira yelled. "Come back!"
Lara continued CPR on Forde's unresponsive body as again the precious sands of time trickled by. Nothing. A thwarted, powerful anger began to build in Lara's very soul. They hadn't been able to rescue him in time. She pictured Cortez' grinning face, mocking their loss with utter satisfaction. Something caught fire deep within her.
"Move aside!" said Joseph's booming voice, as he suddenly appeared looming through the inky black. In his hands he held a beeping device lit with several buttons and indicator lights, casting an orange hue over his age weary face. It was an Automated External Defibrillator. Seeing it, Lara ripped the foxhound uniform from Forde's chest as Joseph knelt and placed the electrodes.
"Is it a good idea in the rain?" asked Seheria, staring into Forde's vacant eyes.
"Probably not," replied Joseph simply. Yet they were out of options, and he pushed the button in any case.
Forde jerked as the pulse shot through him. A moment passed. Suddenly, water erupted from his mouth as he choked his airways clear. Lara immediately shoved Forde onto his side, aided by Joseph, who seemed calm despite the threat of death. Forde vomited yet more water, sounding like a growling beast as he was wracked with convulsive coughs. Lara's green eyes appeared to glow in the dark as she patted Forde's shoulder, relief evident, yet interwoven with something else. Joseph noted it and frowned ever so slightly. Unbidden, the same spine tingle occurred, that he got when things beyond his known world happened. Somehow, there was power in those eyes, but Joseph could fathom no sense of what it was. Added to what Lara had said earlier about spirits... As Joseph removed the defibrillator's electrodes, a sixth sense played at his mind, that it had not been the defibrillator at all that had saved Forde, but something else. He quickly softened his pensive face; it wasn't the time for such thoughts. Quickly darting his eye's around, he noted that nobody else seemed to have noticed anything.
Seheria cradled Forde's head in her lap and leaned over his blinking Face. "There you are," she said softly to him. "Did you think I'd let you go that easily? Besides, you still owe me that dinner. Remember?"
Forde looked up at her, his eyes taking on their usual jovial bent. "Oh I remember," he croaked. "How could I forget? But - there's this idiot who keeps trying to kill me."
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