A Ship Outside of Time

conclusion

by Jonathan Ruland

Table of Contents
Part 2 appears
in this issue.

“Fire!” bellowed Smitter. The silver-toothed pirate put the match to the fuse.

The gun belched flame and smoke and all sound disappeared. The air shook as seven other guns roared around him. Then his hearing was back and men were shouting and cannonballs were tearing holes in the ship’s sides and his heart was pounding adrenaline through his veins, making his encounter with Skag seem like nothing.

“Reload, dammit!” the old pirate was shouting.

He jumped. “Right, Gret!” He remembered the man’s name was Gret. Silver-tooth — his name was Tak —was ramming the plunger. Ray dropped the ball in after him, and Tak put the match to the fuse and the gun roared again. Ray saw their shot fly over the other ship’s deck and out to sea.

“Damn!” said Gret. They reloaded.

Before he knew it they were boarding, and then there was hand-to-hand fighting on the other ship, and then it was over. Afterward he realized that it was only a merchant ship, and the Hammer had twice as many guns and fighting men and the outcome had never been in doubt. But it hadn’t felt like it when there were cannon and musket balls flying by his head.

Of their crew they had lost four men in the battle, and seven had been wounded. He made sure he stayed above deck while they were seen to below, and though he tried his best not to listen he couldn’t stop the sawing and screaming from reaching his ears.

After they had relieved the merchant ship of its cargo, they left the survivors to bring their crippled vessel back to wherever they were headed and sailed away.

As the sun set and the merchant ship’s mast dwindled beneath the crest of the horizon, Gret and Tak joined him at the railing.

“You did good today, kid,” said Tak, spitting over the side through his gleaming silver teeth. “You did real good.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I helped kill those men and take what wasn’t ours.”

Silence followed. Gret scratched the stump of his left arm and Ray began to feel uncomfortable, like he had said the wrong thing. Well, that’s because I did. So what.

“I know what you mean, kid,” said Tak. “But the truth is, we’re in a war. Those men we fought today, they’re the enemy. Or at least they work for the enemy, and that makes them the enemy too.”

“What do you mean?”

Gret spat through missing teeth and spoke in his grizzled, old man’s voice. “They’ve had it their way for too long, boy! Those rich men in their curly wigs and pretty coats. Too damn long.”

“I don’t know if I can accept that to justify this.”

Gret and Tak scowled, and exchanged a look. Tak started away and Gret followed him. “You have to, boy,” Tak called over his shoulder. “Believe me, it’s a whole lot easier that way.”

At sunrise five days later, he saw land to the east. As they drew nearer it became a line of towering cliffs five hundred feet high or more. They came to a river and headed upstream, and the cliffs rose up out of the misty water high over their heads to either side. They passed other vessels, smaller than the Hammer, and came at last to a little town cut into the rock, with wooden bridges and houses strung over their heads and docks reaching into the water.

He could feel the eagerness among the men as they put into the little port, and when they piled out of the ship and into the town they were suddenly surrounded by hundreds of people. They broke off into little groups and invaded the taverns, and as the men began drinking Ray saw what people meant by the phrase “spending money like a drunken sailor.”

Then Gret and Tak got him to have a few drinks, then he decided to have a few more, and then they found some women whose sweet perfumes and soft flesh made his own money disappear as fast as he could pull it from his pocket. When he woke up the next morning, he was glad he had kept most of it back on the ship.

Two nights later he found himself in a tavern high above the canyon on a wooden balcony, with the silvery water far beneath him and a bewitching woman in his lap, when he was confronted by a group of men.

“Hi,” he said. “Can I help you?” The woman in his lap was suddenly quiet, avoiding both his eyes and theirs, and he thought the four men... five men? He squinted, shook his head. Too much to drink again... The five men weren’t smiling at all when the other people in the tavern were enjoying themselves. “Have a drink,” he said.

The woman squealed as they pulled her from his lap, and a big man with an ugly face lifted him to his feet, reached back, and slammed his fist against his jaw. He staggered back against the railing and nearly toppled over before he remembered there was a hundred feet between him and the water.

Footsteps approached. He wouldn’t have heard them if the tavern hadn’t gone so quiet all of a sudden. He made his eyes focus, and saw that the big ugly man was inches from his face.

“Got a problem?” came a voice, and he blinked because he knew the voice and hadn’t expected it at all.

Skag stepped forward and cut the big man off. Gret and Tak were behind him.

“This doesn’t concern you,” said the big man. The four men behind him voiced their support.

Skag sneered. “Anything that concerns one of my mates concerns me too, friend.”

The big man’s eyes flickered behind him for the briefest of moments, but even as drunk as Ray was, he could tell he was nervous.

“The kid took my girl,” the big man said. The others behind him crept up, looking ready.

Skag punched him in the nose, and the man’s head snapped back and the fight began.

When it was over, Ray, Skag, Gret and Tak were bruised, battered, and still not entirely sober.

“I think we won that,” said Gret.

“Yeah,” said Skag. “Cost me a tooth, though. I haven’t got that many left to spare.”

“Ah,” said Ray, waving it away. His hand didn’t go exactly where he wanted it to, and he decided he needed to sober up, so he stood, wavered, toppled back to the floor. “Yeah, we kicked their asses.”

“Asses?” said Tak.

Right, they might not be familiar with that. “Means we won.”

* * *

Two days after that they set out to the open sea again. They put off at sunset, and when full night settled a million sprinkling stars were splashed overhead in a crystal black sky. When the land disappeared behind them, a wind rose from the east and filled their sails.

Ray slept on the deck that night beneath the stars, and when he awoke the next morning the sea was golden with the sunrise and there were seagulls crying and fish jumping. He rose, stretched, and stood at the prow, watching the ship split the waves. Skag joined him a few minutes later.

“Got some good ham n’ eggs down below,” he said. “Better hurry before I go back and take your share.”

A black hump rose above the waves. Ray stood up straight, staring. “What’s that?” he said.

Skag blinked, rubbed his eyes. When the hump rose again, a spout of water shot into the air, and Skag let out a whoop. “Never seen a whale, boy?”

“A whale? No.”

More humps rose, and more spots shot upward.

“More than one, looks like.”

Ray felt like he wanted to grin, so he didn’t try to stop it. “This is better than ham and eggs, Skag.”

Skag laughed, turned. “Ye won’t be sayin’ that when ye head down there in five minutes and don’t find anything.”

Ray watched the whales until they had left them far behind, then he went below for his breakfast. Skag hadn’t been kidding about taking his share. But he had been wrong about what was better.

* * *

A week later they met a heavy, dark ship lumbering along a shipping route. They took it easily, and a week after that they put into a port on an island with sandy beaches and palm trees. Then they sailed the open sea again, prowling the major shipping lanes.

They attacked a freighter that turned out to be a frigate and fought a fierce battle before they managed to escape. After that they had to put into a little cove and sneak into a city miles away to get supplies because they were in unfriendly territory.

They raided merchant ships, they ran blockades, they evaded warships sent to track them down, and they caroused the towns. Time passed and Ray knew it, but he put it from his mind. He could go back whenever he wanted, and everything would be as it had been.

* * *

Then one day when they were on the open sea and blue waves stretched out to all horizons, Smitter called him to his cabin.

“You’re free to go,” he said.

“I am?”

Smitter nodded.

“Why?”

“It’s been a year.”

He blinked. “Has it?” He felt he had to sit down, so he did.

“I don’t recall ever offering you a seat,” said Smitter.

“Sorry,” he said. He could go back now. Behind that door was everything that had been his life...

“You’re still sitting.”

“You know, I think I’ll stay on awhile,” he said.

“Will you now?”

“Everything’s still the way it was when I left, right?”

Smitter nodded.

“Then I think I’ll stay.”

“Suit yerself. Now get up!”

There was no emotion in Smitter’s face, but Ray still had to grin. He stood.

“Go.”

Ray left.

That evening as he was watching the waves, Skag approached him and leaned against the railing. He stared off into rolling blue. “Some night, huh?” he said.

Ray smiled. “Some night.”

“Listen, kid. Smitter wanted me to talk to ye.” Skag swallowed, fingered a long scar on his left shoulder. “I hear it’s yer one year anniversary.”

Skag looked like he was having trouble, so Ray helped him out. “Yeah. I decided to stay on awhile.”

“Why is that? Why do ye wanna stay on this ship with all of us dirty, smelly, roughneck pirates?”

“Oh, come on. You’re not roughnecks...” But yes they are. And maybe I’m becoming one too.

“I hear ye’ve got a girl back home. In fact, I hear she’s the reason ye came here. Why’re you puttin’ her off all of a sudden? I would’ve thought ye’d miss her more after an entire year.”

“I do,” he said. “It’s just...” He rose and looked out to sea. The cool, salty wind lifted his hair and whistled in his ears. “I love this,” he said, sweeping his arm across the waves, the sky, the ship. “I love feeling the waves beneath my feet. I love hearing the seagulls in the sky and knowing that we only have a day to go before we reach land. I love this ship, I love...” He swallowed. “I love you guys. All you guys. I’ve never experienced anything like this. Back home I was just another programmer — I guess you don’t even know what that is — another programmer working a nine to five in my cubical day after day, week after week. This isn’t anything like that. Out here I’ve learned how to... how to...”

“How to live.”

“Yeah, how to live. Maybe I haven’t even been alive until now.”

Skag blew a sigh through his lips. “I know what ye mean, kid. Believe me, I do. I grew up in a city so full of people you couldn’t take a step without kicking somebody in the shin. It wasn’t uncommon to find bodies lying in the street, urchins usually, sometimes peasants who got in the way.

“I had a girl once, back in that city, and she was just the greatest thing in the world. I didn’t realize it until years later when she was long gone, but she was. Whenever I was feeling down — which was pretty much every day — she’d listen, and she’d hold me, and she’d care. But to me it was nothing, because I was used to it. I didn’t even have a family; they’d left me on the street years ago, probably because they couldn’t afford to feed me any more. Ten or so of us lived in a big run-down building, scratching a living from day to day. Me and my girl scratched for each other.

“When I was tired of the streets, I left her without even saying goodbye. Eventually I wound up here, and I fought with Smitter and the rest of the men, and... I meant something. But now I can’t stop thinking of her. I mean, days pass sometimes, even weeks without seeing her face in my head, but...”

Five minutes ago Ray wouldn’t have thought Skag even knew what tears were, but he could have sworn he saw a wet glimmer in his eyes before he turned his face away.

“Do ye know how old I am, kid?”

Ray shook his head. “No, Skag. How old?”

“Call me Pete. That’s my real name. All the guys know it, but they call me Skag anyways. You can call me Pete, though... No, call me what ye want.” He hardened his face. “It’s probably better if ye call me Skag...” He cleared his throat. “I’m thirty-seven, kid. Everything but this ship and this crew is behind me now, and it’s gone. Now I kill for a living and I’ll kill for a living until I’m killed myself.”

Denial leapt instantly to Ray’s lips. “We kill our oppressors, Skag. Pete. Skag. We hurt them by...“

”I know it feels good to say that, but that’s why we do it. The reason we never stop to think about what we’re doing is because we know we’ll think too hard. Do you wanna do this all yer life, kid, or do ye wanna go back to yer girl who loves you and who’ll hold you when you fall asleep at night?”

Ray didn’t answer. The last purple glow of the sun faded from the sky and a crystal, star-filled night descended.

“Well think on it, kid. Think real hard.”

Ray did think really hard. Later that night he went to see Smitter. “I think my time is up,” he said.

Smitter nodded. “You’re a bright kid. I thought ye’d make the right choice.” Ray nodded, started toward the door.

“Yer going right now?”

“Yeah. I have to. Tell them...”

“I will, kid. Good luck. Ye did real good, and I mean it.”

“Thanks, Captain.”

“Ye can call me Smitty if this is the only time ye’ll ever do it.”

Ray forced a smile. “OK, Smitty. See you around.”

“So long. Tell ol’ Ben I said hey.”

Ray nodded and turned the doorhandle. He stepped through.

* * *

Splat! Something gooey landed on his head. He fumed as the smell of old cigarettes and burger wrappers nagged at his brain, mixing with something more putrid... Then he burst out laughing.

He went home and cleaned up, changed. After a quick stop at a jewelry store he went to Ellen’s apartment and rang the bell. He took a deep breath as he waited, and he realized his heart was thumping so hard it hurt, even harder than that first battle with the merchant ship.

The door opened, and he froze, staring into her face.

“Oh!” she said. “You need to shave more — I just saw you two days ago! When did you go to the beach, Ray? Why didn’t you call me?” She planted her fists on her hips and glared at him.

She squawked as he lunged forward and took her in his arms, pressing her against the wall. She fought away his kiss and smacked his chest. “Who said I wanted to be kissed by you?”

He reached into his pocket and put the ring in her face. “Marry me, OK? Please?”

He almost suffocated beneath her kisses, but he didn’t mind.