NaNoWriMo sjjh 2007

Banter unknown chapter number twenty-four

[Some time after uc21.]

 

 

By the time the taser wore off, Chris had been bound with cargo ties and hoisted onto the might Chinook.

A suited man rolled him over to lie against some other prisoners.

“Shanghaid, eh shipmate?”

“Freed from the barge, you mean.”

“Yes!” came a muffled shout.

Chris twisted around to see a suited and gas-masked figure punching the air.

“High five?” The figure raised its hand.

Another suited figure gave it a softened high five.

“Or should I say six?”

The suited figure held up a metal number six.

“Shall we get more prisoners or go?”

“Let’s blow this joint.”

The other figure raised a walkie-talkie.

“All units return to the aircraft. We came, we got what we want, we’re going home. Can I get a yee-haa?”

A crackly “yee-haa” was the reply.

Geeks, Chris thought.

He lay as suited men piled into the Chinook’s hold. Eventually the door closed and the helicopter lifted off.

“Hey, I thought we weren’t going to burn the great barge.”

“Yeah, it’s way valuable, what with our engines powering it.”

Good spot Bob, thought Chris

“Why’s it, like, smoking, dude.”

“What, let me see. Hey it is on fire. The other Chinook’s firing on it. What’s Brad doing?” The man pulled a telephone receiver off the wall. “Hey Doug, what’s Brad doing?”

“What’d he say?”

“Brad’s not responding.”

“Filthy Cheyenne, must’ve mutinied.”

“But … but … we had an alliance.”

“Well, newsflash, the alliance has been broken.”

One of the geeks pulled off his mask. He wiped his nose on the sleeve of his suit.

“Well don’t cry, you big dork.” Another geek pulled off his mask. “Hey, everybody, Jed’s crying ‘cause of the Cheyenne.”

General derision followed.

The geeks all took off their masks. All wore glasses underneath.

“Crying like a baby, boo Radley hoo.”

“Not in front of the prisoners, man.” The sniffling geek bowed his head and turned to the wall.

Chris wondered if Bob was Okay. And Patch. Would she have gone down with her ship?

“Ye traitorous dog,” breathed a voice in Chris’s ear.

“Forget the pirate banter,” said Chris. “They’ve sunk the great barge.”

“Never, she be unsinkable.”

“Hey you guys,” shouted Chris.

None of the geeks looked around.

“You in the suits.”

Some heads twitched but still nobody looked over.

“They’s geeks, fool. They won’t ‘elp ye.”

“I was just going to ask them if they could show you the great barge sinking.”

“No, t’ain’t possible te sink it. Not from a little bird like this.”

“We can pack rockets on these, y’know.” A geek shouted from where he was sitting on a crate.

Chris looked at the skinny scrap of bad skin. Pinned to his chest was a tag with a 1 printed in bevelled style, next to “Robin” and a picture of the geek’s face.

“D’you want to show bone brain here the great barge sinking, Robin?”

“It cannae be sinkin’ I tells ye,” said the pirate. “Now shut up yer liein’ or I’ll … I’ll …”

“You’ll what?” said Chris. “Roll on me?”

“Here’s what I’ll do to ye.”

Chris felt hot breath on his ear. He’s going to bit me, he thought. Chris rolled himself across the floor.

“Hey, stop,” said Robin.

Chris came to a halt against a crate. He was facing back the way he had come.

“Scurvy dog.” The trussed pirate was wriggling towards him. “Not fit to be a swab, sink me, not even fit to be a slave.”

“Tell him to stop, Robin,” Chris said.

“Yeah, you have to stop.”

“Or what, geek?” The pirate continued to wriggle towards Chris.

“Or I’ll, like, make you stop.” Robin’s voice tailed off into a mutter. “Or something.”

“Ye’ll what?” said the pirate. “Whatever he tried te say, ye’d be best forgettin’. Nothin’ smart gets in the way of a pirate on an avengin’. Nothin’ smart that wants te live anyways.”

“An avenging what?” said Robin.

“Eh?” The pirate stopped wriggling.

“You said, nothing smart gets in the way of an avenging,” said Robin. “And avenging what?”

“He said nothing smart gets in the way of a pirate on an avenging,” said a geek from somewhere out of Chris’s sight. He emphasised the words ‘a pirate on’.

“No he never,” said Robin.

“Yeah, he ever,” said the geek.

“Not so,” said Robin.

“So true,” said the geek.

“I’ll settle it,” said a third geek.

There was a rustling.

“What you going to do, call somebody on your phone?”

“No, I’ve got the memo recorder running.”

“What all the time?”

“I coded up a five minute rolling buffer.”

“Cooly.”

“Lamey.”

“Yeah, but that’s pretty easy. Does it, like constantly upload to a blog site?”

“No, why would I want to do that?”

“Gosh, I don’t know, in case your phone runs out of memory? Or you want to hear something recorded more than five seconds ago.”

“Five minutes. It’s a stepping stone, not a panacea.”

This is worse than being Patch’s second sex slave, thought Chris. He rolled his eyes, and made contact with the pirate’s.

The pirate squinted back, then smiled and snapped his jaws. He renewed his wriggling.

“… Nothin’ smart gets in the way of a pirate on an avengin’ …” A tinny version of the pirate’s voice blared.

“Okay, at fault,” said Robin.

“Well at fault.”

“Hang on, I’ll fix the equaliser.”

“… Nothin’ smart gets in the way of a pirate on an avengin’ …” A less tinny version of the pirate’s voice blared.

“Better.”

“Cooly.”

“Yeah, coo-wul.”

“Hey,” said Chris. “Now we’ve cleared up what he said, can you stop him please?”

“You want me to?” said Robin.

“Yes.” Chris twisted up to make eye contact with Robin.

The geek was standing with his head bowed.

“I was at fault though. This is rubbish. I’m always at fault and nothing I ever do works out. Everything’s rubbish. My whole life is rubbish.”

“Robin,” said Chris. “Help me.”

“What can I do?”

“Now I’ve got ye, traitor.” The pirate blasted the words and the smell of vintage rum and salt into Chris’s face.

“Haul him away by his wrists, Robin.” Chris tried using the geek’s name again, it had worked last time. “Before he bites my nose off.”

“Yaaagh,” the pirate shouted as Robin grabbed the cargo ties at his wrists. “Let me down ye scum-sucking son of a filth crab.”

Robin hoicked the man around. The pirate’s face was no longer near Chris’s. He breathed a sigh of relief.

“I’ll let you down, alright,” said Robin. “Down into the ocean, since you love it so much.”

“Ye wouldn’t dare.”

“I would so dare. I could open one of the waste hatches.”

“He wouldn’t fit.”

“Could use a rocket tube.”

“Not without a rocket.”

“You could rig a dummy housing and shim it up.”

“Yeah, but he’d just pop out. He wouldn’t, like, go flying.”

“Just dropping’d be enough. There’s no requirement for propulsion.”

“Cooling. Let’s do it.”

Chris heard a sequence of metallic noises.

“What … what are ye doing, shipmates?” said the pirate.

Three geeks carrying different tools walked across in front of Chris.

“I said-” said the pirate.

“What?” said a geek carrying a tape measure and an offcut sheet of metal. “We’re shimming the rocket housing.”

“Wh- why?”

The geek sighed.

“You tell him Robin.”

“To shoot you out,” said Robin. “Have you forgotten?”

“Aye, but really, shipmates,” said the pirate. “Ye wouldn’t, would ye?”

“D’you think he’ll pass out on the way down?” said a geek behind Chris.

“No, why?” said another.

“I don’t know, falling, compression of the ear drums?”

“Sky divers don’t pass out.”

“They do sometimes. Or choke on their own vomit.”

“We could attach a life-signs recorder to him.”

“Then we’d have to recover it to find out.”

“Okay okay okay. A life signs recorder and a radio transmitter.”

“And an altimeter, so you’d know what height he was at.”

“And how deep into the sea he sank.”

“The transmitter would probably be destroyed on impact.”

“Yeah, water’s like rock if you’re going fast enough.”

“He’d only be at terminal velocity.”

“Mates, stop,” said the pirate. “I’m sitting quiet aren’t I?”

“You said these guys are geeks?” said Chris.

“Aye, that they be.”

“Well unfortunately you’ve aroused their curiosity and given them a project,” said Chris. “That’s the single most dangerous thing you can do when you’re around geeks.”

“Mates, geeks, quell your curiosity I beg ye,” said the pirate. “I be a valuable prisoner.”

“Valuable to whom?” said Robin.

“To me cap’n o’ course.”

“But your captain’s prolly, you know, dead.”

“Dare ye not te speak such lies.” The pirate started twisting himself around.

“Can’t be a lie, it’s like, she’s gotta die sometime,” said Robin. “You must have had captains die before.”

“Twistin’ my words, ye be, landlubber,” said the pirate.

A geek shambled up to the pirate and reached inside his shirt with some pads on wires.

“He-he-he, ye be ticklin’ me, shipmate,” said the pirate. “Be this part o’ the torture?”

“Life sign reader.” The geek looked at a tiny monitor in his hand.

“And am I alive?”

“’course.”

“Then keep me that way an’ ye’ve got yourselves a valuable prisoner. ‘Tis all wi’in the rules o’ the factions.”

“Yeah, but, rules have changed, man,” said Robin.

“Rules ne’er be changin’ ye soft-headed geek,” said the pirate. “Leastways not rules o’ the factions. Property, prisoners, invitation.”

“Yeha but think about this, man,” said Robin. “’f a faction’s been destroyed and all its member killed then,like, what calue do prisoners have, yeah?”

“Destroyed?” said the pirate. “Since when could a faction be destroyed?”

“Ever since these guys, like, came on the scene anything could happen.”

“What guys?”

“Him and his friends.”

“Me?” said Chris.

“Yeah, man.” Robin pointed at Chris. “You took the Cat Totem Cheyenne’s number, man. That was like …”

“Awesome?” said Chris.

“No man, not awesome. Well, it was awesome in like, provoking awe, but it was also, like, rilly, rilly destructive, no not destructive, but it shook things up. Seriously.”

“Why?”

“Because, dude, nobody had ever done that before ever,” said Robin. “Like, just steal another faction’s number. We were all like, wow, that’s rilly appalment to the maximax, but then we were like, no it’s not appalling it’s genius.”

“Coolmost,” said another geek.

“All change, man, all change.”

Chris looked around and saw that other geeks had gathered.

“Yeah, all change. Like, up until then we’d just bin trading, inviting, rading, for y’know, years. I mean, years. And we’re all doing stuff for each other sometimes and going against others sometimes. Like, the barge, we made the engines.”

“That’s how we found you.”

“Traitorous dogs,” said the pirate. “Wait. How did ye find us, latrine-dweller, and why now?”

“How? There’s a radio transmitter in the great barge’s engines, man. Always has been,” said Robin. “And it’s now ‘cause now we’re, like, at war.”

“War?” said Chris.

Are they saying I started a war by taking the Cat Totem Cheyenne’s number, he wondered. I just wanted some leverage so I could find my dad.

“Yeha, but it’s okay, y’know. We figured this is a new stage,” said Robin. “We have to go through the war to get to the next phase.”

“What’s the next phase?”

Sniggers bubbled out of the geeks.

“D’uh,” said one. “We don’t just … know.”

“Careful what he tells him,” said the pirate. “He might be plottin’ against ye.”

“No man, we’re plotting against you,” said a geek. “Us and the Cheyenne.”

“Is this the same Cheyenne who stole the other Chinook?” said Chris.

“Well, yeah, but we couan … y’know … we can …” The geek waggled his head as he spoke.

“You can what?” said Chris.

“We can get them back,” said the geek. “Yeah.”

“How?” said Chris.

“You tell us, man,” said Robin.

“What?”

“Yeah, you tell us. You’re the one who showed us the way. You tell us how to get the Cheyenne, man.”

“Me? But, I’m not one of you. I’m not even a faction member.”

“That’s the point right there, man,” said Robin. “You bring a fresh perspective. But don’t worry, you’ve got a few hours to think. We won’t be back at base for a while. Then you can meet the council.”

“That’s okay then,” said Chris.