Adrift (Book 1) (10 page)

"Is it ready?"

"Yep. Are
you
?"

"Shut up, Herb."

Mark was lying flat on his belly, listening to the words of a group of men—at least three, maybe more—who were gathered in one of the larger junction boxes that connected the various parts of the Climate Control Centre. He couldn't see them; not quite, but a vent a few feet ahead of him would offer him a view.

He crawled toward it, sliding on his belly like a snake, doing his best to make no noise. Occasionally the thin metal beneath him creaked a little, but in the abdomen of the ship, the engine was much louder than on the passenger decks, and he thought the ever-present rumble would cover any low-level noise he made.

He inched forward, listening intently.

His pulse thundered in his ears. The hunch he'd had, that the men were not supposed to be there, was feeling more and more like accurate intuition with each passing second.

Who the fuck are these guys?

"Phil? Seb?"

"Yeah. Yeah, everything looks ready, Ed."

"What time do you all make it?"

Three voices answered almost simultaneously.

"Seven twenty-seven."

"Sun's setting. There will still be light for another half hour or so."

"Not much, though."

"So...shall we do it now, Ed? We're in international waters. Have been for a least a couple of hours."

"Just hold on. I'm thinking."

"Thinking that maybe this is all a terrible idea?"

"Shut
up
, Herb."

Mark slithered forward, and finally a little of the room beyond the vent hovered into view.

He saw four men, all wearing maintenance uniforms that he recognised as belonging aboard the Oceanus. Engineering staff, he thought, though he couldn't be absolutely sure. Most of the uniforms the staff aboard the ship wore were nearly identical, with only small insignias on the chest and tiny variations in colour differentiating between officers or maintenance or entertainment staff.

There
was
something off about the men, though, and it took Mark a few seconds to work out what it was: they all looked alike; their facial features similar enough that Mark was certain they had to be related, and were most probably brothers.

Mark didn't know all the people who worked on the ship, not even close, but he thought he would have been aware of four brothers working among the staff. It was the kind of odd detail that stuck in the mind.

What was
really
strange, though, was what the men were doing: the four of them were sweaty and oil-stained, and surrounded by tools that were casually strewn across the floor around their feet. Through the narrow slit in the vent, Mark saw wrenches and screwdrivers, and even something that appeared to be a welding torch. It looked like they had been hard at work on building something. That something, Mark thought, could only be the strange device that sat on the floor between them.

It was metallic, roughly the size of a large suitcase, and Mark didn't have the first idea what it was. What he did know was that despite its mechanical appearance, it was
not
part of the Climate Control Centre. The air conditioning unit behind the men looked untouched. Judging by the tools and the dishevelled, weary state of the four men, the strange object looked like something that they had only just constructed.

He waited a moment, until one of the men moved aside and gave him a clearer view. Mark focused on the device, and felt clammy fear grip his mind.

A large cylinder formed the bulk of the machine, surrounded by lots of exposed wiring and circuitry, wrapped in a skeletal metallic casing that looked to have been hastily welded together. It was ugly and functional; definitely not in keeping with the Oceanus. There was only one thing it could possibly be.

A bomb.

Mark hadn't seen a bomb in his life, but he'd seen plenty of them in the movies, and the exposed wires particularly brought back memories of frantic races to cut the correct wire before the timer ticked to zero and killed the star. Mark couldn't see a timer, but once he saw the wires,
bomb
was all he could see.

In a world gripped by fear of terrorism, there was no way to get such a device aboard a cruise ship. The days of minimal security were long gone, even on a boat that expected to play host to wealthy people who planned only to spend weeks lazing by a pool and drinking champagne.

The men had circumvented the security checks at the terminus by building the bomb once the Oceanus was at sea.

Terrorists
, Mark thought dimly.

His mind raced. He carried no weapon other than the heavy flashlight, and all of the men looked physically imposing. All were surrounded by tools that could easily become weapons if the need arose.

Fighting the men was not an option, yet still it was the urge that came to Mark’s mind first, despite the fact that he had not inherited what his father called the Ledger family’s
talent for violence
.

His father had taught Mark never to run; never to back down from a confrontation, and that virtually any problem could be solved by swinging fists at it until it went away. But then, Mark’s father had been a violent drunkard, living on faded memories of his time as a semi-successful boxer. The only useful lesson he had
ever
taught Mark was how to throw a punch, but Mark could never forget the disappointment in Paul
the hammer
Ledger’s eyes when it became clear that learning how to step into a swing, how to drive from the hips to increase power and how to follow an uppercut with a well-timed hook held no interest for his only son.

Still, some relic of those days spent in his father’s garage as a kid, working the heavy bag with his puny arms and trying to stave off endless boredom came back to him; a genetically-coded response to threat. Somehow, the old bastard's programming was still in him somewhere; the urge to fight.

Mark dismissed the idea. In a four-to-one battle in a confined space, he would have no chance.

That left only one option. The one Mark’s father would never have taken. Mark had to get the hell out of there. Get back to the security suite and somehow persuade Steven Vega that there were terrorists aboard.

He just had to hope that the words he had heard the men speaking meant that they were not planning to detonate the bomb immediately.

They said half an hour, didn't they? That's plenty of time to reach Vega and get some backup.

And some firepower.

Mark reasoned that there had to be a timer, and that the men had to plan to escape the Oceanus somehow before they detonated the weapon.

Unless they're suicide bombers.

Suddenly, the fact that the four men were obviously related terrified Mark. He imagined a group of children being raised by some monster, their young lives darkened and poisoned until they were capable of carrying out unspeakable atrocities. Capable, even, of sacrificing themselves in the name of some twisted cause that Mark would never understand.

Get the fuck out of here.

Wincing at the soft creaking of the metal beneath him, Mark began to awkwardly shift himself backwards in the vent, grateful that the distant rumbling of the engine drowned out the noise he was making.

The men wouldn't hear him, and as he eased away from the vent and back into the shadows, he knew they wouldn't be able to see him, either.

No problem. Just move fast, and move quiet.

Mark shuffled back a little further, until the men disappeared from his sight. Once he was clear of the vent, he began to move through the duct a little more quickly, confident that even if the men heard the noise he was making, they would not be able to see him and would most likely assume it was mechanical.

It would be okay. The bomb wasn't attached to anything that Mark could see. If worst came to worst, it could be tossed overboard and the Captain could be informed that he should gun the engine and get as far away as possible.

Mark began to think that despite the sudden, frightening turn his day had taken, everything might just be okay. He had stumbled across the danger with time to defuse it. Hell, even Steven Vega would be proud of him.

And then the blood in his veins turned to ice as the walkie-talkie clipped to his belt shattered the silence. Static blared, and Vega's voice rang out like an alarm.

"Ledger, get the fuck away from that deck, and do it—"

Panicked, Mark fumbled at the radio, finally locating the volume dial, and twisting the noise away into pulsing silence.

For a heartbeat, he remained frozen in the thick, quiet air, straining his ears and praying that he would hear nothing; praying that the engine was loud enough.

"Where the fuck did that come from?"

A whispered hiss reached Mark's ears, floating through the air and into the vent like toxic gas.

"There's someone here. In the vents."

Mark grimaced.

Fuck.

*

"I'll go," Herb yelled.

Edgar wanted to stop it, but it happened too quickly. If he had been able to react in time, he would have grabbed Herb's collar and physically restrained him; would have yelled at his little brother that their work was done, and the authorities finding out that they had intruders on the ship wasn't going to matter now.

Let whoever was in the vents listen. Let them run for help. By the time it arrived, it would be far too late. The Rennick boys had done the hard part. All that remained now was to push the button and get to the extraction point. They just had to stick to the damned plan.

But Herb had panicked, and for reasons Edgar didn't think he could possibly understand, had charged from the room, snarling about catching whoever was watching them. Before Edgar could react, Herb was gone, and Phil and Seb were staring at him uncertainly.

Fucking Herb.

What Edgar wanted to do—what he absolutely knew that he
should
do—was arm the device and be done with it. Let Herb pay for his recklessness and his inability to keep a level head. Let him stumble around out there, lost like all the others would be.

Edgar even found himself reaching for the button, reaching for the moment that had become the whole purpose of his life, the reason they were all there.

He couldn't press it.

Herb was blood.

"Fuck," Edgar roared. "Phil, go after him. Bring him back."

"What about whoever was in the vents?"

"Fuck
them
," Edgar snapped. "They don't matter. In five minutes, I'm setting the damn thing off. If you haven't found Herb in three, get yourself back here. Got it?"

Phil nodded, his face stricken, and charged from the room, following the chaotic clatter of Herb's footsteps.

Edgar watched another brother leave, and clenched his jaw in anger. They were so close. He felt rising fury at Herb for throwing a spanner into the works, but the true reservoir of anger pooled around himself. Herb was unstable, and bringing him was a risk. His skill with electronics far outmatched that of his brothers, and Edgar had insisted that Herb be a part of the team despite his doubts, purely because Herb being there would mean the device would get built more quickly.

Edgar dropped his eyes to the device, and wondered if he had it in him to set it off if Phil didn't manage to bring Herb back. If doing so meant losing Herb, would Edgar be able to live with himself?

Can I live with myself if I
don't
set it off?

Frustration seethed in Edgar's mind. Despite the promise he had made to Herb in the back of the van, Edgar knew that doing his duty was the only thing that mattered. Getting off the ship was secondary. There was simply too much at stake.

He'd set the device off.

If it meant losing Herb.

If it meant dying himself.

The alternative was too terrible to contemplate: a disaster of epic proportions that would affect the entire world. Edgar wouldn't be the one responsible for that. For the betrayal of centuries of blood spilled to maintain the peace.

He glanced down at his watch, staring at the second hand as it ticked slowly, like a failing heartbeat. Phil had been gone for almost a minute.

Edgar fixed the doorway with a blank stare, and ignored Seb's gaze as it burned into him.

Phil had four minutes left.

It was plainly obvious to Mark that, as long as he remained in the ventilation system, the man pursuing him would have a difficult time tracking his position. The ducts took unpredictable turns, deviating away from the corridors in some places; returning to run parallel to them in others.

Several times, Mark heard running footsteps draw near only to fade away again. A couple of times, he thought he heard more than one man running out there.

Yet they could not locate him.

It would have been easy to wriggle deeper into the vent system; to hide, safe in the knowledge that the men chasing him would almost certainly never find him. Mark considered it, he really did.

But there was the matter of the bomb.

Even if Mark was doomed to discover that playing the role of hero was beyond him; even if he couldn't prevent the men from detonating the weapon, he was certain of one thing: he had to get out into the open air at the very least. If it came to it, he could launch himself from one of the lower decks and take his chances in the Atlantic.

Some part of Mark's mind reprimanded him for his foolishness. The Oceanus was in the middle of the world's second biggest ocean, a long way from the nearest land, and night was falling. The water would be freezing, and survival would be extremely unlikely even
if
he could get far enough away from the ship to escape the blast that he knew was coming.

It didn't matter. A choice between the bomb and the freezing waves was no choice at all. At least the sea offered him a chance.

Hiding in the ducts was not an option, and so, when he reached a vent, and couldn't hear footsteps in the space beyond, he launched himself from the duct, propelling himself into the corridor outside it like a bullet. He landed awkwardly, twisting as he fell. Something popped in his ankle, sending a brief pulse of pain through his mind.

Just a sprain
, he thought as the pain dipped back to a bearable level.
Nothing serious. Get the hell out of here.

Worse than the sprain was the noise he had made: almost immediately he heard footsteps headed in his direction.

Mark was fairly athletic, but he was far from being a big guy; certainly, he was nowhere near the towering wall of sinew that Steven Vega was. Speed was Mark's best physical attribute, but in the cramped confines of the vent system, any advantage his pace might have given him had been eradicated. It was impossible to move through the vents quickly.

He had put all his energy into getting out into the open, where he could put his head down and run, and he would have backed himself in a foot race, but he had exited the vents too hastily, and the pain in his ankle from the fall slowed his progress considerably.

He bit down on the simmering pain in his ankle and charged forward, moving as fast as he could.

With each stride that Mark took, he heard the footsteps of the man—no,
men
—who were chasing him growing louder.

Gaining on him.

As he ran, Mark looked to his left and right, trying to get his bearings. He had been aiming to leave the system of ducts where he entered it, next to the service elevator that would take him back to the park level and the security suite, but somehow he had turned himself around, and it took him a moment to realise where he was.

Close to the fuel tanks.

The wrong side of the ship entirely.

Mark wanted to scream in frustration, but the footsteps were close now, and he could hear one of the men shouting the other's name.
Herb
. The one that sounded like he was pissing the others off.

The temptation to run blindly was almost overpowering, but Mark forced himself to pause and mentally run through a map of the ship.

He knew the layout of the Oceanus fairly well, but hadn't had a chance to get to know every corner of it as he had the previous ships he had worked on. That knowledge came with time. Usually, by the third or fourth voyage on a vessel, Mark knew every hallway, every stairwell and corner, and could calculate the quickest route to the nearest bar almost instantly.

He hardly ever bothered learning the layout of the engine rooms in the vessels he served on, though. There was simply no need; no pressing reason for senior security staff to venture into that part of a ship. Even if he had cared to study the engine room, it would take a long time to memorise the layout on the Oceanus: the engine
room
was actually a network of dozens of rooms spread across the three lowest decks, and running almost the entire length of the ship.

He had taken a wrong turn.

He thought he had to double back from his current position. Somewhere nearby, there was a door that would take him to a flight of steps that would lead up to the deck that housed the nightclub. From there, Mark would be able to navigate just fine. The nightclub was one of the locations that he had programmed into his mental GPS as soon as he got the job on the Oceanus. Whether Vega forbade mixing with the passengers or not, Mark fully intended to spend most nights getting drunk there.

He set off at a light jog, wincing at the pain in his ankle, but grateful to find that it seemed to be receding a little. No real damage done.

As he ran, he silently cursed Steven Vega for his pettiness, and for sending him down to deck three on a bullshit mission that had become something far more dangerous than he could have imagined. Yet even as he cursed Vega, he found himself wishing that the ex-marine would pop into existence right in front of him. God knew, Vega's macho bullshit would come in handy right now.

He considered trying the walkie-talkie again, and all of a sudden his hand was slipping the radio from its holster on his belt almost by itself, like his mind had finally had enough of trying to piece together the right course of action, and had decided that he needed to do
something
.

Still running, he depressed the button, and drew in a breath to yell at Vega to get the hell down to deck three.

The words never came.

The breath exploded from Mark's lungs as he collided with something solid moving in the opposite direction. He had been so focused on the radio, he hadn’t even seen the man coming around the corner in front of him.

That
, Mark thought, as he toppled backwards and saw the walkie-talkie flying from his grasp and disappearing into the shadows beneath a mountain of pipes,
must be Herb
.

Mark hit the floor hard and rolled instinctively.

And time slowed to a crawl.

For a moment, as the world froze around him, Mark was back in his father’s garage, listening to his father drone on about the Ledger family
talent for violence
; promising his pre-teen son that the love of the fight would come some day, and that in the meantime he should train.

According to Paul
the hammer
Ledger, a man needed to be a blunt instrument if he was to survive in the world; needed to be ready to knock down the obstacles that stood in his way. Becoming a boxer was more than just having a profession; more than survival. It was about becoming a
man
.

Growing up on one of the roughest estates in Birmingham, a place that even the police only ever visited with significant backup, meant fighting to survive in every sense of the phrase. Fighting for jobs, fighting for money and food, and just plain old fighting. Almost every house on the Weyford Estate got broken into frequently, and muggings were as common as autumn showers. It paid to toughen up.

Mark's house was only ever broken into once. Once was all it took for the neighbourhood to realise that his father was the same Paul Ledger who had once been a moderately successful middleweight boxer.

Mark's father had little time for the police, and so the two men that broke in one night, brandishing cricket bats and demanding money and jewelry had to face a different sort of justice.

The hammer
left them alive—barely—and when he was done with them, and he had hauled them out onto the street and left them in pools of their own blood, Paul Ledger walked back into the house and came face to face with his nine year old son.

You saw all that?
he had asked gruffly.

Mark would never forget that he had been unable to speak, his tongue locked in place by a cocktail of fear and excitement. He forced a nod.

Good. That's how you take care of yourself, son. I won't always be around to help you, and you can be damn sure no one else will. When life knocks you down, you hit back, and you hit back
hard
, you hear me?

After all these years, maybe it turned out that the old man had a point after all.

Mark pushed himself up from the floor, roaring an incomprehensible bellow of pure rage, and he shoulder charged Herb, tackling him around the waist and lifting him clear off his feet, driving the man back into a metal valve.

Mark heard the cracking of the man's spine, and knew immediately that the fight he expected was over before it had begun. He watched in satisfaction as Herb crumpled to the ground, his face creased in agony.

Mark gave silent thanks to his dead father for a moment. The old bastard had been a terrible dad in most ways, but he had raised a scrapper, using the poverty and relentless violence of the Weyford Estate to harden his son. That upbringing had been outdated and useless for the most part.

Until he needed it.

Mark bunched his fists and leaned over Herb, ready for anything the fallen man might throw at him.

Anything, that is, except the look of fear and surrender on the man’s face.

"Listen," Herb said weakly. "I’m not here to fight. You have to call for help. Right
now
, before it's too late. Get the captain to send out a distress call. Broadcast the ship’s position."

Mark stared down at Herb in confusion.

"What?"

"Everyone on the ship is in danger," Herb coughed.  "Call for help. You don't have much time."

Mark's mind raced. Herb's words had to be lies, but they were delivered with sincerity. The confusion that Mark had felt when he first heard voices in the air con system suddenly ratcheted up several notches. The terrorist had chased him to
warn
him?

"Help?" Mark asked. "Help with what? The bomb that you and your terrorist buddies are planning to—"

The words were knocked back down his throat by a wrench that caught Mark in the temple, ringing his skull like a bell and toppling him to the floor. A suckerpunch he didn’t see coming, and he had time to curse himself for forgetting that he had heard a second set of footsteps following him, and the world went dark.

*

"You wouldn't actually do it while they're still out there, would you?"

Edgar sighed impatiently and glared at Seb.

Seb was the second eldest of the four brothers, beating his twin by around five minutes, and he was also the brother that Edgar trusted most to have his back in any given situation. He was a quiet, thoughtful sort of guy. The type of person that faded into the background and occasionally piped up with some profound statement that could alter the course of a conversation in an instant.

It was the same question that Edgar was asking himself, over and over.

Can I really do this to my own flesh and blood?

"If I have to," Edgar snapped. "You know what's at stake here."

Seb rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, bro, I know what's
at stake
. How could I not? We've all had this shit drilled into us since we were munching on rusks.
One day, the time may come
and
yadda-yadda-yadda
. Neither you nor Dad have ever given us a chance to forget what's at stake. Well, what's at stake
right now
is the lives of two of our brothers, and Dad’s not here. This is down to you. So I'll ask again. You wouldn't actually set that thing off while they're out there? You know they'd never find their way back."

Edgar grimaced, and tried to keep a lid on his mounting frustration. He didn't do a great job of it.

"You act like I'm signing their death warrants, Seb. But what if they don't come back? What if, instead of Herb and Phil, we see a security detail walking through that door? What then?"

Seb stared at him blankly, but Edgar saw a flicker of emotion fizz across his brother's eyes, and abruptly realised that Seb was working really hard to hold his shit together. Behind the implacable facade, an inferno of doubt raged.

Edgar heaved in a deep breath.

"Look," he said finally. "I get it. I really do. You think I don't struggle with it, too? One way or another, we
are
signing death warrants. Best case scenario is three thousand. Worst case...well, I don't even want to think about what the worst case could be. We all came into this with open eyes. We all knew there was a chance we'd never see land again, right?"

Seb nodded morosely.