shipwreaked

The sun was hot, the sky was cloudless and the sea a deep crystalline blue. Rising from the burning wreak the smoke was an unsightly black plume, quickly turning to white steam now as the boat sank lower into the water and took on the sort of list from which there is no return. It marred a near perfect day, an unsightly spot on the ocean that stank of death and destruction, the sudden and violent end of a ship and her crew. But from where she lay, clinging casually to some wreckage the girl with the fair hair and grey eyes watched it all with a casual indifference, as the boat took on more water and finally slid beneath the surface with barely a sigh.
She should feel something she supposed, by it grief, terror or anger. But Gwenllian Cochrane had never been one to do as other people did and all she felt was a vague sort of satisfaction as the patrol boat slid gently under the waves. Unconsciously her hand moved to caress the name painted on the wreckage she was clinging to; Ariadne. What until very recently had been her boat and as good a boat as any that sailed on the ten seas. But the Ariadne had vanished completely, and there wasn't even an oil slick to mark her grave, nor the final resting place of two men and one woman who'd gone with her. At least there were no survivors from the patrol boat either and Gwen sincerely hoped that the two wreaks never got entangled up on the sea floor. She didn't want some smart-arse in years to come believing that the two boats were one and the same, and she didn't want her friends to spend the rest of eternally entangled with their executioners.
She'd been the captain of the Ariadne for nearly two years, ever since the death of her father when upon the boat had passed to her. She'd been a single hulled ocean going yacht, very fast given the right conditions and if handled correctly, and Gwen had made a good captain. For two years her luck had held, until this particular voyage when they'd had the misfortune of stumbling upon the patrol boat in mid Atlantic. Somewhere she'd thought that they would be safe being so far from the Americas archipelago and with Euroasia still nearly seven days hard sailing to the east. She'd never heard tell of a patrol boat acting with such instant aggression either, as normally they preferred to bring in their prisoners alive. Not out of any compassion but so that their bosses could set an example to all who defied their control. Gwen grimaced at the bitter irony, because for once they hadn't actually been running any contraband nor been nosing around in a forbidden zone. The Ariadne changed colour and appearance more frequently than Gwen's hair style and so she didn't think they'd been identified with any pass misdemeanants either. They might have been tipped off by someone of course because all four of them had their fair share of enemies. If that had been the case then she would make certain she found out who did it and she would make them pay, but Gwen had a vague suspicion that all she'd done was fall victim to a bastard and a sicko. Heaven alone knew that High Sea inc employed enough of them in their ranks.
However she could think about that in the future, and plot revenge accordingly. At present she had enough to occupy her self with the immediate challenge of staying alive. The board she was clinging to wasn't big enough to support all of her weight and was more of a float than a raft. Her lungs and the back of her throat felt like they were on fire from the amount of salt water she'd swallowed and she knew that she would most likely die soon from secondary drowning. Either that or exposure, and she was for once glad that the climate had altered so dramatically because if this had been the old north Atlantic then she would already be dead.
Gwen was quietly confidant that she would be rescued, because the ill fated patrol boat hadn't gone and blown up of its own intention. She'd seen the flashes on the horizon, and the sudden roar like summer thunder before her attacker and been blasted into scrap and she knew what it meant. The rumors had been true, there was a warship at large that was not controlled by High Seas inc, and if this was anything to go by it was some warship. She hoped they at least obeyed the old code of the sea, because she'd rather not contemplate the alternative if they did not.