Disclaimer: I don't own Ultimate Muscle, and I don't claim to.
Chapter One: Running for the Marmara.
Within moments of waking up, Jaeger was looking out of the porthole that adorned one wall of his cabin.
The brightly lit skyline of Istanbul was still there, but its constant sodium and neon glare was now perforated with reddish flickers of gunfire, spasmodically erupting as the invading force encountered the disrupted pattern of police patrols that were trying to counter the invasion.
Then, without warning, the lights went out in one great wink, blinked back for a moment, and then fell back into blackness once more.
On the bridge of the Herculean, the captain was surveying the scene before him in the Bosporus, where the President Ataturk was heaving further and further over to one side. Her attendant frigate stood a little way off, watching to try and catch her assailant of guard. The communications officer ran onto the bridge.
"Sir, radio message from the frigate!" the lieutenant handed over a sliver of paper to the captain.
"Seems that she wants us to clear out…" He looked around the bridge, soaking up the looks in the eyes of his men, then peered back out towards the Bosporus through his binoculars.
"If we don't leave now sir, then we risk being trapped here." The captain ran a hand through his beard and murmured distantly, trying to focus his mind on the task in hand. It went against very moral fibre in his being to do this… but.
"Stay here. Open the weapons locker and arm the crew. No-one leaves or boards this ship unless I say so!"
"Aye sir!" came the reply from his men. The captain only made eye contact with his XO, who gave a worried squint.
Shaking this off, the captain turned back to the scene on the Bosporus with intent. Why the hell hadn't the frigate caught the submarine (he assumed it was a submarine) yet? What the bloody hell was taking so long?
On board the President Ataturk, the half-dressed Turkish President was being rushed up the slanted corridor by his secret service agents.
"Come ON Mr President!" urged one of them as the ship made another high-pitched squeal from her belly. The President muttered darkly and pressed on, dragging himself up on the handle of a cabin door.
Then, without warning, the ship made a violent lurch right over onto her port side, turning the corridor into a vertical shaft. The President's hand slipped free of the door handle and he fell backwards. One of the agents reached out to grab him, but to no avail.
The President tumbled down the corridor, and cracked his head off a door hanging open across the corridor. Not long after that, he smashed clean through the window at the end of the corridor, and slipped into the black waters of the Bosporus, his broken neck allowing his head to loll horribly around as his lifeless corpse vanished into the depths.
Moments later, with water gushing in through innumerable vents and gaps, the President Ataturk rolled over, exposing the horrific scar left by the torpedo, before she slipped serenely beneath the waves, leaving nothing more than ripples and a few handfuls of survivors. The frigate stopped her engines near to the scene and began to swing out her boats to pick up the survivors.
By now, the whole of Istanbul was crawling with insurgents. Police Stations were stormed, telephone exchanges and substations seized and shut down and the radio and TV stations taken over. On board the Herculean, events were moving just as fast.
A shell whistled absently through the radio wires of the yacht and burst a few yards away from her flank, causing everyone on the bridge to duck instinctively. The captain stood back up and peered back into his binoculars at the Asian shoreline.
"It's the Turkish army batteries – bloody idiots are going to kill us sooner than the rebels!" Another shell went off next to the bow, and the whole ship lurched violently upwards.
The lurch threw Kevin out of his bunk and onto the floor with a thump. His mask rolled off its perch on the table and clattered down next to him. Rubbing his head, Kevin sat up from the floor, and was knocked back down by another blast. He paused; waiting to see in another explosion would follow this one. None came, so, cautiously, he sat back up and looked around. Everything was jolted from its normal place, pictures hanging at odd angles from their nails, books lying open on the floor and the light shade still swinging from side to side.
Kevin stood up, still nursing the back of his head, and his ears immediately picked up the hammering of boots on the floor of the corridor outside, then the insistent pounding of a fist on the plasterboard door. Kevin stomped over, and swung it wide open to face a dishevelled and topless Jaeger.
"Kevin, they want us in ze…" Jaeger stammered to a halt, and left his jaw hanging loose. Kevin looked down, and released he was still start naked. He hastily swung the door back to cover himself up, and poked his head round the corner.
"Where do they want us?" he asked dryly, trying to regain some sense of authority and composure.
"Err… in ze…" Jaeger stuttered.
"Spit it out!"
"Main hall…" Jaeger said, before turning and racing off down the corridor. Kevin distinctly heard a spluttered laugh from him before he closed the door.
He leaned back into the door, and sighed heavily. He took a glance down at his stomach, and ran a couple of lazy fingers over the contours of the dragon tattoo that coiled up one side of his stomach. He pushed himself off the door and walked over to the wardrobe. Another shell burst somewhere over the city, and a machine gun crackled lazily. He switched on the bedside lamp, and swung open the wardrobe door to face the crumpled heap of clothes at the bottom. He rooted around for a moment, retrieved a dull khaki T-shirt and a tatty pair of jeans.
A few moments later, he emerged onto the corridor – and was nearly knocked over as Kid Muscle raced past.
"IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD! THE END OF THE WORLD!" he shrilled as he whistled past, with Meat hanging on his tail. Kid disappeared round the corner at the end of the corridor, leaving only the ringing echo of his voice. Terry poked his head out of the cabin next door, and glanced at Kevin darkly.
"Whadya want?" he asked. Kevin sniffed coldly and walked off, leaving the Texan to ponder the encounter.
It took a full half an hour to assemble everyone in the main hall. By then, Kid Muscle had been reduced to a quivering wreck, Jaeger was still giggling occasionally at his mental image of Kevin's less-than-manly tattoo and most of the other Chojins were half-asleep. The hail of shells had grown all the more intense as time went by, and it was now joined by the occasional rumble of jet engines, as Turkish F-16s now began to make tentative appearances in the skies over Istanbul.
The captain stood up on a table, and coughed loudly. Silent eyes were cast towards him.
"OK, here is the situation. We have received confirmed reports that there is a submarine in the straits, which has already sunk one vessel. Both sides of the harbour are now crawling with insurgents, or rebels, or whatever they are. I have chosen to arm the crew and see what comes out of it."
"VHAT?" Brocken Juniors protest echoed over the background rumble of war.
"Is there a problem?"
"Ja! Ve are just going to sit here und let ze enemy fire shells at us and not try to do anyzing?"
"What else do you want me to do?" The captain glared coldly at Brocken, who uncurled his fists in submission. "Nothing else can be done. We just have to sit, and pray, that nothing bad happens. In the meantime, we'll try and contact someone on shore and see about letting us escape."
He said nothing more, because there was nothing more to say. No-one wanted to say it, no-one wanted to utter the truth, but they all knew it. It was highly likely they would only leave here in body bags.
For the first time in his life, Checkmate was sweating with cold fear.
To be continued…