The ropes fell away as the last strand parted under the blade of the knife, and Cassie rolled out of the chair onto her feet. "Hey buddy, not to complain or anything," she said to the hapless goon lying unconscious on the floor, "but you could stand to sharpen this thing more often." She slid the knife into the sheath on her calf which had been empty since her capture at the hands of the Ocelotl, dragged the man into the corner of the room, and then carefully stepped out into the corridor. "Time to find a way off this thing!" Cassie muttered as she padded toward the door at the far end. She was pleased to note that the neoprene booties of her SCUBA suit dampened the sound of her footsteps, so that even on the steel plate floors she was able to move almost silently. One upside to an outfit that's otherwise almost completely impractical outside the water, she thought wryly.
She was halfway across the next room when the ship rolled deeply, causing a narrow door on the side wall to swing open, and making her lose her balance. Amidst the complaints of creaking and groaning metal, Cassie windmilled her arms in a fight to stay upright, but before she could fully recover she heard the handle of the hatch in front of her start to turn.
Crap!
The floor pitched back the other way as the vessel heaved into the trough of the wave, and Cassie used the motion to launch herself into the open door to her side, which in turn slammed closed behind her. Crammed in a closet between several mops and some cleaning supplies, Cassie waited breathlessly as she heard someone entering the room on the other side, their heavy footsteps ringing out clearly as they walked. The tips of a feather duster brushed across Cassie's nose as the angle of the ship sent it sliding, and she bit back a sneeze.
At that moment the ship rolled back the other way, and, to Cassie's horror, the door concealing her swung slowly open once more. Wide-eyed and unbreathing, she stood frozen in place and watched as the Ocelotl goon came into view, standing almost directly in front of her. All it would take was him turning his head just a little…
The goon staggered unsteadily with the heaving deck, his arms outstretched to catch himself and his mouth muttering a steady stream of curses under his breath as he planted his shoulder heavily into the wall. Clearly, this guy was not exactly used to life at sea. Still, Cassie's heart felt like it was in her throat as she watched the man steady himself on the wall while the ship passed back through level and the closet door creaked shut again. In the dark once more, she breathed a quiet sigh of relief as the goon let out another wave of profanities and continued out of the room.
"That was way too close!" Cassie said to herself as she stepped out of the closet and slipped through the other door.
Once through, she found herself on the landing between two narrow flights of stairs: one led up towards a room which- judging by the rays of sun streaming in through some portlights- was presumably at deck level; the other led downward, deeper into the bowels of the ship, and was illuminated only by a bare lightbulb that hung from an exposed wire and flickered with the vessel's movements. As Cassie hesitated over which way to go, she heard fragments of animated conversation drifting down to her from the room above, and despite her efforts to remain hidden, curiosity got the better of Cassie. As she heard Tristan begin to speak in his unmistakably assertive tone, Cassie crept slowly up the stairs until she reached the top, where she carefully peeked around the corner.
Over the top of a desk, which was partially blocking her view, Cassie could see both Tristan and one of his men standing with their backs to her in front of a large window, with a spread of dials and buttons on a panel in front of them. The goon raised a hand and gave a sharp flick of his wrist, and Cassie caught a glimpse of the spokes of a wheel and the soft hiss of the steering hydraulics.
She listened in as Tristan continued, occasionally pausing to leave space for his subordinate to reply, but Cassie couldn't comprehend much of what they were saying. Most of what she did recognize were isolated words like "mirror… moon… tonight… Cortès…"- as well as a few names of men she assumed were more of his thugs. Mentally, Cassie kicked herself for her underdeveloped Spanish skills, and her eyes drifted to the desk in front of her as she lost hope in gaining any significant intel from her eavesdropping.
In the kneehole of the desk in front of her, Cassie saw a small wooden bin with several sheets of glossy paper that were rolled into tubes standing in it. Charts! she realized with a flash of inspiration . While the two men at the wheel were distracted, Cassie slipped around the corner and behind the cover of the desk, staying in a low crouch so they couldn't see her. Quickly and quietly, she rifled through the contents of the bin, bending back the corner of each chart as she passed it so that she could check its label, all the while chewing nervously on her bottom lip as she kept an ear on the men at the wheel. "Chart 475: Central America- East Coast- Honduras, Isla De Roatàn to Puerto Cortès… Chart 1022: Caribbean Sea… Chart 234: Central America- East Coast- Gulf of Honduras and Yucatan Channel…" As she reached the last chart in the bin and rolled its corner back, she smiled to herself. "Carta de la Sociedad de Ocelotl 24: La Nueva Instalaciòn y las Ruinas Aztecas Circundantes." Even with her limited knowledge of the language, it wasn't hard to pick out the key words and understand that this was the map she was looking for- one that would help her find her way around Tristan's base of operations.
As Cassie pulled it out of the bin, the charts next to it shifted, clattering softly as they fell against the wooden sides. The conversation between Tristan and his goon stopped abruptly, and Cassie felt her heart skip a beat as she braced herself for one of them to come around the desk and find her. The suspense was broken as the ship once again pitched to the side, triggering another mournful chorus of flexing metal and clanging tackle that apparently distracted Tristan and his goon. Cassie risked a glance around the end of the desk and saw that the two Ocelotl both had their eyes on the ocean ahead, and the man at the wheel was working to correct their course. Cassie blew out a grateful sigh and slipped back down the stairs.
Pausing when she reached the landing once more, Cassie stared at the tube of paper in her hand and frowned as the question of how she was going to carry this item on her person came to the forefront of her mind. After a few moment's consideration, she glanced down to the zipper on the front of her SCUBA suit, rolled her eyes, and blew a quiet stream of air through pursed lips. Removing the rubber band from around the chart and slipping it over her wrist, Cassie carefully unrolled the glossy sheet and then folded it several times until it was about a foot-by-foot square. "Better not make it too small, I guess," she muttered to herself. "I prefer to keep history close to my heart and not close to… anything else." Giving a quick glance around, she quickly unzipped and stuffed the folded chart inside the top of her suit, and in doing so her fingers briefly brushed against the silver ouroboros ring hanging from her neck. She smiled at the familiar feel of the artifact, then zipped her suit back up, closing it over top of the chart. "A bit chafey", Cassie mumbled to herself, and grimaced at the feel of the paper's crisp edges against her skin, "but it'll do."
With only one other available path, Cassie turned to the stairs leading downward. This flight was steep, almost more like a ladder, and Cassie took it carefully for fear of her soft neoprene boots slipping and resulting in a noisy fall. As she passed the lone, flickering bulb and rounded the corner, she saw another short corridor with one door on each side, and an open room at the end. It was a clearly utilitarian part of the ship: even with the already austere appearance of everything she had seen thus far, the loud clatter of machinery, the added layer of grease and dirt, and the exposed wiring of this section told her she had found the mechanical rooms and workshop.
"This could be useful," Cassie mused as she started down the corridor. "I really need to get to one of the ship's boats and get out of here, but I'm not sure storming on deck would be such a good idea. Maybe I could do a little sabotage and make some chaos- buy a few moments to make my escape." The sound of the machinery got louder as she moved down the corridor, and she stopped outside the room it seemed to be coming from. "Let's see what's behind door number one!" she said to herself as she pushed her way in.
The door opened into a small shop area with a workbench along one wall and an Ocelotl goon standing in front of a diesel generator on the far side. The goon, who had his back to her, had apparently heard the door opening over the deafening sound of the generator, and was turning to face Cassie as she stepped inside. Their eyes met, and a beat passed in surprised silence.
Then the goon opened his mouth to shout for help while simultaneously drawing his pistol from its holster. Moving quickly, Cassie scooped up a heavy mallet off the bench and hurled it at him, cutting his cry for help short as it struck him square in the forehead. The man's eyes his rolled back in his head, and he crumpled onto the floor.
"Ugh," Cassie said, wincing and wrinkling her nose. "Sorry. 'To make an omelet', and all that."
She picked up the pistol and the mallet off the floor, strapped the pistol to her thigh, and then shoved the handle of the mallet through the loop on the door, effectively jamming it against anyone coming in. "Alright!" Cassie chirped as she spun on her heel and approached the generator. "Time for a little…" She paused, scanning the workbench until her eyes landed on a soldering iron, which she picked up and turned over in her hands. "… harmless sabotage."
She worked quickly, plugging the iron in to heat up, then took her knife and jabbed it into the generator's fuel line, poking a small hole in it which promptly began to spray a thin stream of diesel across the room. With a quick scan of the room, she then spotted a ventilation hatch in the ceiling above her that was easily accessible via a wooden shelf which hung about head height. Grinning, Cassie took the hot iron and pressed the tip into the gathering puddle of diesel on the floor; a few moments later a flame licked up.
"Well guys, it's been real," she said smugly to herself as she dropped the soldering iron into the diesel and reached for the control panel on the generator. "But it's time for lights out!"
A flick of the main switch on the panel shut the generator down, and with a mechanical sigh all noise on the ship, save for the faintly ongoing ruckus of the engines, stopped. For an instant it was remarkably quiet, almost peaceful.
Then the pandemonium erupted on deck.
As the confused shouts and cries of the Ocelotl drifted down to her, Cassie quickly pulled herself up onto the shelf and lifted the hatch cover in the ceiling enough that she could peek through. About twenty yards away, toward the front of the ship, she could see a few men rushing about in response to the sudden lack of power, but the deck immediately outside the hatch looked to be deserted. Then she spotted the lifeboat dangling from its davits almost directly across from her, and Cassie's smile broadened. From below her, shouting and cursing outside the workshop caught her attention, and Cassie turned to see the door to the generator room flexing and straining against the mallet she had jammed in it as the Ocelotl attempted to force their way in. Meanwhile, the fire she had started was spreading quickly and had now overtaken the workbench as well, the smoke billowing up and hanging thick in the air. "Time to go!" Cassie said as she hinged the hatch cover fully open and slipped out onto the deck.
As her feet landed silently topside, she heard the door to the generator room crash open, and immediately the frantic cry of "Fuego!" resonated through the vessel, adding to the chaos which had taken hold. Keeping low and out of sight, Cassie scurried across the narrow side deck to the rail, where she quickly loosened the tethers that tied that lifeboat to the ship. There was a weary creak from the ropes that made up its lifting gear as the small boat swung lazily outboard and caught in the steel cradle that supported it. "Damn it!" Cassie cursed, casting her eyes up and down the deck to make sure she hadn't yet been spotted. Her luck was holding out so far while the Ocelotl rushed to meet the new crisis onboard, so Cassie slipped over the rail and hung from the nose of the lifeboat, then kicked out against the bars of the cradle with her feet.
The first time her feet- clad only in the thin layer of neoprene her SCUBA boots afforded- connected aggressively with cold, unforgiving steel, waves of pain shot up Cassie's legs, and she sucked air through her teeth. "Ooowww…" she grunted, almost in a whine. "Holy hell, that hurt!" She braced herself, and a few kicks later the hinged arms were beginning to move backward, out from underneath the lifeboat. "Wow!" Cassie grunted, her steady kicks punctuating her words. "Turns out… this is actually… way easier than… trying to escape from the Adler lodge!"
"¡Ey! ¡Es Drake!"
Cassie sagged in irritation, momentarily stopping her efforts to look over her shoulder toward the sound of the voices. A group of three Ocelotl goons were jogging in her direction, their guns drawn and rage on their faces. "Every… single… time!" she muttered, kicking the lifeboat cradle with increased ferocity. "C'mon, goddammit, move!"
Bullets ricocheted off the rail and the deck, making her wince and draw in on herself to make as small a target as possible. Putting all her strength behind one final kick, Cassie finally moved the cradle out of the way, the metal arms slamming against the hull with a crash. Free of its constraints, the lifeboat dropped a couple of inches before catching in the lifting tackle, and Cassie had to scramble to not lose her grip as it swung. "Gotta move!" she yelped, shimmying around the side to avoid the bullets that were now peppering the prow of the lifeboat as the Ocelotl closed in on her. A heave of her arms got Cassie over the side and into the boat, and she immediately rolled and used her knife to slash the lifting tackle on the back.
"WHOOAAA-god!" she yelled, grabbing hold of the steering wheel as the back of the lifeboat dropped suddenly. Now suspended vertically by the gear on the front, the bottom of the boat made for a shield against the gunfire that strafed the exposed underside of the hull, just on the other side of a thin plate of steel from where Cassie dangled by one hand. "This is either going to be amazingly cool," Cassie said, drawing her gun with her free hand, "or maybe I'm going to die!"
The lifting tackle on the bow groaned as the boat- carried by its momentum- swung forward and crashed into the side of the ship with jarring force, then slowly swung back toward the stern. Timing her shot for the apex of the backswing, Cassie lined up the sights with the bundle of four ropes coming out of the pulley at the bow, then fired. The bullet grazed one of the lines, which immediately unraveled under the strain. There was a moment of weightlessness as the lifeboat came free of its final tie to the ship, then Cassie was plunged forcefully to the bottom as it plummeted and crashed violently into the water.
As the boat bobbed on the waves, Cassie groaned and picked herself up out of the bilge, gingerly rubbing her throbbing temples. "That was… almost as cool as I imagined." She ducked low behind the console as bullets continued to sail her direction. "Didn't really help my headache at all, though," she added grumpily as she reached for the pull cord and started the engine.
The outboard roared as she rammed the throttle forward and pulled away from Tristan's ship, ducking the last few shots fired at her from the goons on deck. As she got out of range of the Ocelotl's guns, Cassie turned towards a growing strip of land visible on the horizon, cutting a parallel course through the turquoise sea as they approached the mainland. Casting a look back toward Tristan's ship, Cassie grinned when she saw the smoke beginning to billow up from below decks.
"Oh, this is a terrible idea," she chided herself as she smirked and turned back toward the ship.
With the amount of sheer chaos on board the ship, Cassie was able to get close enough that she could spot Tristan amidst his crew, frantically gesticulating and giving orders as the men rushed around him. Easing the lifeboat's engine into neutral, Cassie cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled, "Excuse me!"
Caught off guard by her sheer brazenness and audacity, Tristan- as well as a few of his goons- turned and stared at her.
"Your boat is on fire!" Cassie shouted.
Tristan just scowled.
"Just- wanted to make sure you knew!" Cassie called cheerily, and gave a friendly wave.
His face twisting in disgust, Tristan screamed, "SHOOT HER!"
Cassie shoved the throttle all the way forward and tore off across the water as more gunfire rang out, the bullets pursuing her as she quickly left them behind again. "Oh yeah," she smiled, giving the wheel a spin. "That was totally worth it!"