Adrift (Book 1) (6 page)

Mark Ledger leaned on the rail and stared down at the sea tenderly kissing the vast hull of the Oceanus far below him. Down there, at sea level, and even at deck level, everything looked tiny and sort of serene. For Mark, things were a little more...turbulent.

He was standing on the highest point of the Oceanus, a narrow maintenance walkway that wrapped tightly around one of the gigantic twin funnels that vented the engine exhaust hundreds of feet up into the sky. Mark knew from experience that when you got a certain height above the deck of any ship, the wind became a savage monster that howled and buffeted relentlessly.

The wind made the walkway a terrible place to take a cigarette break, but the complete lack of Steven Vega made it perfect, and worth the long climb up the ladder and the difficulty in keeping his lighter flame alive for more than a half-second.

Vega was in charge of security on the Oceanus, and it was a job the ex-marine took very seriously indeed. He was Mark's boss, well, his immediate boss at least, and Vega clearly revelled in the role of
commanding officer
.

Vega was fresh out of the military; new to cruise ship security, and Mark had clashed with him immediately. Every time Vega barked orders like he was some drill sergeant preparing his troops for war, Mark felt an irresistible compulsion to either openly mock the man, or dissolve into a fit of giggles.

The simmering feud between the men might not have escalated, if it hadn’t been for Vega insisting that behaviour in the crew bar on deck four be nothing less than exemplary. Any sign of misconduct among
his team
would, Vega insisted, be a disciplinary offence. That appalled many of the staff, and Mark more than most. What happened in the crew bar stayed in the crew bar. Everyone knew that. It had been the same on every ship Mark had ever worked on, and he let Vega know it.

Let him know, too, that maybe the sizeable stick up Vega's arse would fall right out if he'd just join the party and indulge in some less than
exemplary behaviour
himself.

In hindsight, Mark thought he probably shouldn't have said that in front of the whole staff.

Vega, by way of response to what he called Mark's
attitude problem
, had clearly vowed to make Mark's life hell, and to land him with every shit job the Oceanus had to offer.

That was exactly why Mark was standing alone, far above the deck and out of Vega's reach, rather than reporting for duty in the security suite.

Mark drew in the last lungful of smoke the cigarette had to offer, and lit another. Chain smoking made him feel a little queasy, but the prospect of finding out what Steven Vega had in store for him made him feel a whole lot worse.

The ship had been travelling for three or four hours, Mark figured, putting them somewhere in the mid-Atlantic. He saw nothing but featureless ocean for miles in every direction and dropped his gaze to the crowds of people milling about on the deck far below.

Most of the passengers, having settled in to their cabins, were venturing out to see what entertainment the Oceanus had to offer, and discovering that the answer to that question was
plenty
.

In addition to all the shops and eateries, there were numerous ways to idle away time on the ship; everything from movies and theatre shows to rock climbing and surfing on a huge artificial wave machine. A handful of celebrity entertainers had been booked for the maiden voyage, and when dusk fell, the Oceanus came alive: bars, casino and nightclub drawing the passengers in and ensuring that there was no chance of getting bored on the journey.

Unless Steven Vega was calling the shots.

Mark's first shift—predictably—had been standing guard outside one of the busier men's toilets. Mark had asked what could possibly need guarding, of course, and Vega had simply smiled serenely and asked if Mark was
disobeying a direct order
.

The guy thought he was still in fucking Fallujah, or something. It wasn't Mark with the damn
attitude problem
.

Still, Mark was forced to comply. He had a feeling that Vega would jump at any excuse to have him fired, and a job working security on the Oceanus was too good a gig to throw away—even if it did come with a built-in problem like Vega.

Mark inhaled deeply, letting the anger at the memory of Vega's smug smile build as the smoke filled his lungs, and the combination of the two made him feel a little sick.

He tossed the half-smoked
Marlboro
away just as the walkie-talkie clipped to his belt crackled loudly.

"Ledger. Where the fuck are you? Over."

The man himself.

Mark couldn't help but grin at the sound of the disembodied voice that rattled from the walkie-talkie. Somewhere far below, deep in the ship, it sounded like Steven Vega was working himself up into a frothing rage at Mark's unscheduled absence.

Mark depressed the button on his walkie-talkie.

"On my way now, Steve-O. Just stopped for a smoke."

He lifted his thumb off the button and smiled at the lack of an immediate response.

Right now, Steven Vega would be riding a bubbling wave of repressed rage, and Mark knew the head of security would be struggling to decide which was the greater crime: the unscheduled cigarette break, the use of the hated nickname
Steve-O
, or Mark's continued refusal to end communications with the word
over
.

The walkie crackled again.

"Get back here
pronto
, Ledger. Vega out."

Vega out
, Mark thought, as he clipped the walkie back to his belt.
Fucking ridiculous.

He made his way to the ladder that would take him back down to deck level, and sighed. The new chief hadn't yet worked out that being part of cruise ship's 'security' never got much more demanding than shepherding drunk passengers back to their cabins or dealing with the occasional petty theft.

Cruise ships were like floating gated communities; stuffed with the wealthy and the complacent, and working security on a ship like the Oceanus was practically a vacation in itself. It wasn't often, in Mark's experience, that life threw you a situation that it was so easy to make the best of.

Nothing would go wrong on the Oceanus. Nothing
could.

Steven Vega needed to lighten up.

*

The security personnel on the Oceanus were neatly divided in two. The more junior of the staff had designated areas to patrol, and mostly their job was to check cabins or maintenance areas and ensure that there were no problems among the passengers. They were the beat cops, trudging endless circles around one part of the ship or another.

The senior staff—numbering just twelve, with only six on duty at any one time—reported to directly to Steven Vega, and he had decided that they needed to be micromanaged.

On all of the other vessels that Mark had worked, the security officials knew what their roles were and they just
did them.
By contrast, Vega insisted that his senior staff check in with him constantly, inserting himself into their day every couple of hours with meaningless instructions and abrupt changes of duty.

It was a farce, and Mark thought it existed purely so that Steven Vega felt like he had something to actually
do
. Already the other senior members of the team were taking bets on how long Vega would last in his role. The guy seemed incapable of relaxing, and
relaxing
pretty much summed up the entire job. Mark thought the new security chief would drive himself mad within the first three voyages. Maybe sooner.

As Mark sauntered into the security suite, he saw Vega glowering delightfully, while the remaining five members of security waited behind him.

Four men, one woman, which made for a better ratio than every other ship Mark had worked on. Better still for the fact that Katie was attractive and single. Mark had already manufactured a couple of reasons to talk to her, and the conversations had been easy and fun.

He winked at her as he walked in, and she smiled.

Mark chalked that smile up as one more reason to talk to Katie when he got the chance.

"Where the fuck have you been?" Vega snarled in a tone that Mark thought was just begging to punctuate the sentence with the word
soldier
.

"Cigarette break, Steve," Mark responded amiably.

"Shift breaks are scheduled, Ledger," Vega growled dangerously. "One every three hours. You know that just as well as—"

"Won't happen again, Steve," Mark interrupted with a contrite smile.

Steven Vega's face flushed a dangerous purple, and for a moment Mark wondered if it was possible to push the man so far that he might suffer a heart attack. Mark hoped not. Vega dying would ruin all the fun.

From the look on Steven Vega's beet-coloured face, Mark guessed that the head of security was busy breathing deeply and quite possibly counting to ten before he spoke again. Vega hated being called Steve. He had made it perfectly clear on his first day aboard the Oceanus that he answered to
Mr Vega
or, preferably,
boss
. Mark had immediately resolved to never use either monicker.

"You're a fucking smartarse, Ledger," Vega spat at last.

As comebacks went, Mark thought it was a little uninspired, if not exactly unexpected.

"No surprise you can't hold down a job for more than five minutes with an attitude like yours, is it?"

Mark blinked in surprise. Steven Vega took protocol extremely seriously, and his words had breached the confidentiality of the personnel reports that only he was privy to. Breaking the rules, even in such a half-hearted manner, had to mean that Vega was close to boiling point.

Mark didn't much care about the dig at his employment record. Most of the other staff knew he had trouble staying in any one job for more than six months. They probably figured that his mouth got him in trouble sooner or later; usually sooner.

The truth was that his mouth
did
have a role to play, but most ships had parted company with Mark Ledger because of his continuing determination to
fraternise
with the passengers. Cruise ships generally frowned on that, so Mark frowned on
them.

"What can I say?" Mark said with an ambivalent shrug. "I guess I haven't found my calling yet."

"Your
calling
?" Vega repeated with a sneer. "What, you think you're a fucking poet or something, soldier?"

Mark's eyes widened.

Soldier
. Vega had actually gone and said it. Gone full-on 'Nam flashback or some shit.
Jackpot
, Mark thought as a faint ripple of suppressed laughter washed through the room.

Vega flushed again, brighter this time, and turned without a word and strode from the main room into the smaller adjacent room that served as his private office.

Katie sidled up to Mark.

"What do you think he's doing in there?" she asked with a grin.

Mark smiled.

"My money is on meditating. Or putting the finishing touches to a voodoo doll that looks suspiciously like me."

Katie snorted a laugh.

"Speaking of which, you
do
know we're running a sweepstake on when he's finally going to snap and do you actual harm, don't you Mark?"

"Oh? What sort of harm?"

Katie giggled.

"The options are many. Everything from firing you to murdering you in your sleep. We've got one vote for Vega losing his mind completely and making you walk the plank."

Katie tried to get the last few words out without dissolving into giggles once more, and failed spectacularly.

Mark laughed.

"Just trying to get him to lighten up, that's all. For his own good. Guy thinks we're in the middle of a fucking war or something."

Katie nodded sagely.

"Yeah, this is
just
like war," she said with heavy irony. "I hear that on the frontlines it's nothing but sunbathing and champagne and dips in the jacuzzi."

Mark opened his mouth to respond, thinking that taking the conversation toward the topic of
dips in the jacuzzi
could only be a good thing, and shut it again promptly when Steven Vega reappeared. Whatever meditative measures the man had undertaken in the privacy of his office must have worked, because the angry red colour in his face was gone, replaced by a serene smile.

Mark felt his stomach twist. He'd only known Vega for a couple of weeks, but already he felt that he knew that smile well. It was the smile Steven Vega wore when he had come up with another awful task to hand out to Mark.

Wait for it
, Mark thought.

"I've had a report that there may be a security issue in the ventilation system," Vega said. "Looks like I'll need someone to go down to Climate Control and check it out manually. Now, let's see..."