Kingfisher Ch1

Kingfisher

Chapter One

         The wind blew cold and wet, carrying the dark fury of the storm. I had often baulked at storms like these, fearing the traitorous demons that lurked at the edge of Vardero Bay threatening the thin hull of my craft. That night, or rather in the early hours of the next morning, I was as calm as the storm was not. I had completed my run early, and was making good time returning home.

         The roving, glaring eye of a searchlight made me set the calm aside, and I called to Felipe to cast out the rods. As Felipe struggled with the wet, tangled lines, one was blown above his head, and hung there like an unclaimed noose for a brief moment before descending to the rain-soaked deck, where my first mate's feet scrabbled for purchase. Just as the last line slithered quietly over the gunwale, the foreboding illumination descended upon us again, and a voice like the stutter of a god crescendoed over the sides of the ship.

         "Stop your engines," came the command, echoing through the blank night despite the best efforts of the torrent, "You are in a restricted area!"

         Of course, I was in a restricted area, but so were the multitude of fishermen who bobbed up and down in these waters by the light of day, fruitlessly casting line after line in the hopes of landing a fish worthy of legend, or at least of Hemingway. These waters, only some five miles from shore now, had been restricted for years, but it was a restriction that both fisherman and border guard alike disregarded, once money had been exchanged.

         I shut off the engine, whose low purr was at this point overcome by the roar of the cruiser's counterpart, and waved congenially to the looming, dark shape as the sky wept directly onto my small craft.

         "Mart Pescador! Prepare to be boarded!" The man wielding the megaphone had changed, and this one's voice came out high and questioning, nothing in comparison to the tauric bellow that had called us to a halt. I exited the pilot-house and stood on deck, and Felipe joined me shortly. We waited for a moment as a clamor arose on the ship beside us, and flinched as a heavy-based ladder crashed onto the rain-softened wood, creating an indelible impression.

         Two men dropped onto deck, or rather one man dropped and one man tumbled, ungainly, to the deck and struggled to recapture his composure, which had already attempted to dive over the low rail behind him. The man whose gracefulness had kept him afoot stood tall, an assault rifle slung across his back, and said not a word. The other man - short, fat, and the polar opposite of his companion - sported a heavy mustache across his upper lip and spoke so quickly that, after three sentences, I was forced to call him to a stop and ask for him to begin again.

         "I said," He said, in the deep, rumbling tones that we had heard previously, "I am Lieutenant Something-or-Other of the border guard." I have since forgotten his name, though his facial hair made a great impression on my wandering subconscious. "You know, you are in a restricted zone."

         "Ah, yes."

         The mustache blinked hard and asked, "So you were aware?"

         "Yes, I had been..." I paused as the rifle slid his eponymous device off of his broad shoulder and into a spade-like hand.  I regained my composure, which, luckily, had only taken a small step back, and began again. "I had been trying to re-enter the permitted area, but the storm..."

         Felipe broke in, "the storm was very powerful."

         The rifle grunted, and the mustache took an unnecessary step forward. Rubbing his chin with an unseemly vigor, he spoke. "This cannot be true, mi amigo, for we have encountered no such struggles on our journey this night." His booming voice had to carry to his own ship, as its crew started when he spoke.

         "Our engines, Lieutenant, are not so powerful as those on your beautiful craft."

         "Ah," said the mustache, smiling a broad, Cheshire grin that gave his face the appearance of an overripe fruit, "You know how to please an officer, Ser..."

         "Rivera," I supplied, "Alejandro Rivera de la Quinua."

         "Ser la Quinua. Now that we have become acquainted, I think that it is time to begin the business at hand."

         Having encountered men of his kind before, I decided to feign ignorance. "What would that be, Lieutenant?"

         As I asked this oblivious question, the mustache's smile receded as quickly as a wave from the shore. "Surely, Ser la Quinua, you cannot expect to be un-penalized for this grave transgression?" His voice beat against my eardrums with a strength of which his words were undeserving. He took another step forward, and the rifle shrugged ominously, as if he were Atlas preparing to drop the weight of the world on top of my head. "I assure you, there must be penalty. You are in a restricted area."

         I knew how this would go, of course; I had seen it before, as the mate on Hyperion and once before on Mart Pescador as well. The mustache would beat around the bush for a while before asking for the bribe. I would, of course, ask what the normal "fine" was, and he would find some abstract method of determining exactly how much money I had on board before asking for an amount just above that elusive figure.

         "What - what is the normal penalty? For something like - like this?" I stumbled with care, tiptoeing just close enough to the point that the mustache's grin slowly began to wash back up onto his visage.

         This repugnant man was grinning broadly by the time he spoke again, making no effort to conceal his abject pleasure at my supposed discomfort and his imminent and illicit new source of income. As the damned thunder of his voice rang out once more, it seemed that even the storm ceased in its efforts, listening raptly to this corrupt and repulsive little bit of facial hair with a body beneath it. "I assume that this is your first offense, mi amigo, so I'll let you off with a simple fine."

         I sighed with heavy drama in my breath, and looked sidelong at Felipe, who nervously fiddled with a rod out of sight of rifle and mustache alike. "How much - how large - what would the fine be?" As I asked, I realized that the mustache had missed a step in the standard modus operandi of the corrupt officer and nearly swore aloud. "Let us discuss this out of the rain, Lieutenant," I said quickly, and took a step toward the pilot-house, hoping to belay the blow that I knew was on its way, a blow that I knew would fall heavily upon my now-weary head. "It is starting to lighten, but I am thoroughly drenched, and I would not want for you also to be."

         The mustache followed me into the sheltered area, and fell heavily into my chair as I watched, knocking a nearly-full tumbler of coffee to the linoleum floor, where the liquid roved to and fro in a mad pursuit of the exit before pooling coldly around my feet. "Ser la Quinua, you should not leave things uncapped, they tend to leak."

         I felt as though the rain outside was still falling, pouring down directly onto my temple with the furor of one hundred storms, and I urgently breathed in deeply through my nose. This horrid impersonation of a man was too much in control, and I could think of no way to wrest the wheel of my fate from his grasp at this moment. And all the while, he continued to speak, his voice washing vigorously over me as a swell does over a submerged flounderer in the deep surf.

         After I paddled my way to the surface, I reemerged to his gracious estimate of a 2500CUP fine for this offense. "That's truly a very low estimate," he informed me, ever the purveyor of fair and balanced information, "If we were to return to Vardero, I can assure you that the fine would be increased. Would you be able to pay that now, or shall we..."

         "Okay. That's fine," I burst out, "That's fine - I have that." As the steady and insidious drumbeat of the mustache's voice pounded against my ears, I snapped at him in annoyance and anger, and immediately realized the weight of my error.

         "Oh you do?" The mustache pounced with vigor, like an animal a third his size would upon wounded prey. "Well then, barring any other violations that my associate may find..." I noticed then that the rifle had disappeared in a manner far too stealthy for a man of his size, and I urgently indicated to Felipe that he should find the man.

         As it happened, Felipe's task was accomplished far too easily. The rifle knocked my poor comrade to the ground as he attempted to leave the pilot-house, and as Felipe sprawled on the coffee and rain-soaked floor, he began to speak in as falsely-urgent a tone as I have ever heard a man muster.

         "Lieutenant!" His voice was as unremarkable as could be, and his flat tones barely reached my ears. It seemed as though he were attempting to whisper a secret to the entire room, and the storm picked up again as he spoke. "There is a leak in the hull belowdecks. We must go, this ship will sink!"

         I stepped forward angrily, and the rifle's weapon again materialized in his bulky hands. "How could there be a leak? There is no leak!" I looked at Felipe, my fury contorting my face uncomfortably. "Did you hear a gunshot?!"

         At this, the mustache extricated himself with some difficulty from my chair and gave the offending item of furniture a less-than-swift kick. "Do you accuse my man of something, Alejandro?" Before I could give some ill-conceived and life-threatening retort, he continued, his voice now at a bellow to rival the torrents battering my roof. "You should collect your valuables, or else you will not be able to pay us."

         "Pay you? Diablo take you, Lieutenant! My ship is apparently sinking, and..."

         The Lieutenant's deadpan face twitched with some attempt at an appearance of generosity. "We will give you a ride back to shore. You may pay your fine in my very own cabin, aboard my ship." He signaled the rifle, who stepped outside and waved to the border guard ship, which had been patiently lurking abreast Mart Pescador for this whole time. "Collect your things, Sers, and join us above. My man will escort you aboard." With this, he lumbered outside and made his way fitfully up the ladder.

         The rifle looked at me, and Felipe picked himself up at length from the floor. "Your ship is sinking. Move fast." We did.

         As the border ship powered away from Mart Pescador, I thought that I heard two distinct reports through the downpour, and my beautiful ship began to list. As she sank I swore, and the mustache glanced up from his desk, where he was immersed in some fictitious paperwork for my fine.

         "Is there a problem, Ser?"

-

"You're done. That's it, Ale, you're done." Tia spoke softly, but there was as much power behind her words as there had been falsehood behind the mustache's. "This is the final straw. I cannot do this to your father's memory."

"Of course I'm done, Tia. I don't have a damn boat!"