Director of Intelligence
Posts: 7,214
Joined: 3 Dec 2005
Gender: Female
Country: USA
SAK owned: Camper&Swissbit
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Season: season 5
Episode:Serenity
Vehicle: Jeep
Jacket: Brown bomber
House: House boat
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Note from Loth: This chapter is a special birthday present for Beth, who also edits for me. Thanks!
Sea Shepherds
Chapter Three: The Pirate
MacGyver felt a certain detached sense of calmness coming over him as he watched the other ship closing with them; her bow seemed to stretch toward them like the point of a harpoon, sharp and deadly. He could read clearly the name painted on her prow: Sea Shepherd.
“Who is this?” Everyone could hear the captain’s voice loud and clear, broadcasting over the loudspeakers. “What do you want, eh?”
“Clear your decks,” the voice commanded. “I’ve got you, you b*stard. Prepare to be rammed. Repeat, I intend to ram you.”
The crew began to mutter; Mac saw that several of them had abandoned the assembly to disappear into the questionable safety of the hold.
“He’s bluffing!” Captain Nordengen shouted. “He wouldn’t dare ram us – he’ll sink himself in the process!”
“The captain is wrong,” a voice breathed in MacGyver’s ear. Mac turned to see Knut standing behind him. The sea wind was whipping his blond hair crazily around his tanned face, and he looked like a Viking straight out of the bloodiest folktale Mac could imagine.
Knut was holding a rifle in his hands. “I suggest that you find something to hold on to. If that man is who I think he is … he will most certainly ram us.”
“Who is it?” MacGyver asked.
“His name is Watson. I have heard tales. He sails the oceans to save the whales. He once placed himself between a whale and a Soviet kill-boat. He has no thought for his own life at all – he only cares about the whales.”
“He sounds crazy!”
“Ja, he is quite mad.” Knut grinned. “I am curious to see what will happen now.”
MacGyver watched as Sea Shepherd raced with Sierra. The ship was close; he could see clearly into the wheelhouse.
A man with a thick shock of black hair was at the helm. Another man appeared out of the hold and ran to the wheelhouse. Holding his side as if he had a stitch, the man gasped out a message to his captain, who responded calmly. Mac saw them grin at each other, then to his wonder he saw the black-haired man raise a camera toward the Sierra and snap off several shots. He then reached up to sound the air horn mounted to the roof of the cabin to signal imminent collision.
“Here we go!” Knut grabbed MacGyver by the collar and hauled him back just as the entire ship shuddered violently.
The Sea Shepherd struck Sierra just behind the gunner’s platform, her concrete-reinforced bow delivering a massive bite to the smaller vessel. Sierra shrieked as metal twisted; the deck tilted crazily as she heeled over to her starboard side. Sea Shepherd shouldered her aside and kept going.
MacGyver found himself on the deck as the ship righted herself; Sierra bobbed like a crazy cork in the water after the Sea Shepherd passed. He heard Knut laughing somewhere ahead of him, and when he raised his head, he saw the man standing beside the gunwale, holding the rifle above his head like a trophy, laughing. MacGyver shook his head in wonder.
“She’s taken off the harpoon! What a hit!” MacGyver couldn’t figure out why Knut seemed so pleased. The man seemed delighted that some lunatic captain was trying to sink the boat from beneath them!
“Knut!!” A commanding voice hammered down from above them. Captain Nordengen was beside himself with anger and shock. “That goddamned pirate... where is that rifle? Get up here and shoot that – ” the captain’s words dissolved into a string of harsh Norwegian that MacGyver was sure could not be found in any nautical dictionary – in any language.
Mac couldn’t see where the other ship had gone; she had swung around to Sierra’s starboard side, out of his sight temporarily. He hurried forward to assess the damage that had been done. If the ship was going to sink, he wanted to know. Sierra's captain seemed more interested in shooting at their attacker than protecting his own ship and crew. Mac could hear him shouting angrily above on the wheel deck as he made his way toward the bow.
The harpooner’s platform was wrecked; the deck was buckled and the harpoon cannon had been dislodged and was now dangling over the side of the ship in a tangle of cable. Leaning over the gunwale, Mac could see the massive dent in the prow, giving Sierra the look of having a broken nose.
The damage could have been much worse, MacGyver realized. Given the Sea Shepherd's advantages of size, speed, strength, and tonnage, the captain could have easily ruptured the hull at the stern instead of the bow, where such damage would easily sink the Sierra – especially given the extra weight of the refrigerated hold and its grisly cargo.
Mac couldn’t see any holes in the hull below the waterline, but he could see, as he raised his gaze toward the steaming pirate, that the Sea Shepherd was not satisfied with first blood. In spite of her superior speed, she was dropping back behind the Sierra … clearly getting ready to make another run at her.
A crewman with a rifle ran past MacGyver. He positioned himself on the port side and began to load cartridges into the gun. He dropped a few; one rolled along the deck to MacGyver’s feet.
He picked it up and examined it. It was a hollow-tipped round with a full metal jacket. Such a round was not intended for scare tactics or warning shots – it was meant to kill.
MacGyver reached the crewman just as Sea Shepherd sounded a second warning blast. The crewman was squinting down the sights of the rifle, aiming at the men on the bridge, but before he could squeeze the trigger, MacGyver grasped the rifle’s barrel in his left hand and shoved it upward, following the motion with a right cross to the fellow’s bearded jaw. The rifle went off, the bullet ricocheting off of the railing of the wheelhouse above. The crewman folded onto the deck, clutching his face and cursing.
MacGyver looked to see how far away the Sea Shepherd was. If Knut was using the same ammunition – Mac knew he would not miss his target.
Tossing the rifle over the rail into the sea, MacGyver took the stairs to the wheel deck two at a time. He saw the captain standing at the rail, pointing, and Knut beside him drawing a bead on the approaching ship. Mac heard the captain give his first mate an order: “Kill him.”
“Knut! Don’t – !” Mac shouted. He tried to intervene, but Nordengen straight-armed him back.
“You! What are you doing? That b*stard is trying to sink my ship!”
“No, he isn’t!” MacGyver retorted. “If he’d wanted to sink us... we'd be sinking! He’s just trying to stop us – stop you! – from killing more whales!”
Nordengen’s eyes gleamed suspiciously. “You’re one of his, aren’t you?” The captain took a step back, as if Mac were threatening him. He seemed to have forgotten about the ship speeding toward them; he grabbed at Knut’s sleeve – ruining his aim in the process – and pulled the man between himself and MacGyver. “Him! He’s the traitor … the saboteur!”
MacGyver stepped back himself, raising his hands. “What? No, I’m not – ”
“Shoot him, Hustvedt! That’s an order!”
In spite of the captain’s jostling, Knut had not taken his eyes off of the Sea Shepherd; she was coming in and closing fast, her bow aiming just forward of the Sierra's beam. He saw Watson across the shrinking gap between the ships, manning the helm, unflinching. The man raised something and pointed it toward the Sierra. Knut’s muscles tightened to react – to raise his own weapon and return fire – but he quickly realized that it was not a gun that Watson was aiming at them … but a camera.
And then there was no more time. Sea Shepherd struck again, this time several yards back from the Sierra's bow. The entire ship quaked and there was a terrible sound of screaming metal; a flat, imperfect echo of the death cries of the many whales that had been sacrificed to the whaler’s greed.
Again, Sierra rolled onto her starboard side, the Sea Shepherd mounting the smaller vessel briefly before executing an oddly graceful maneuver of pivoting off slightly and letting the Sierra slam her damaged port side against Sea Shepherd's reinforced hull. A dozen yards of Sierra's portside hull crumpled inward as her support beams snapped like bones.
Everyone on the wheel deck grabbed for the rail as the ship tilted insanely. Debris that had been scattered by the first roll shifted across the deck. The helmsman clung to the wheel while the captain cursed his attacker, shrieking obscenities at the top of his lungs.
The ships were hull-to-hull, the bridges of both vessels no more than fifty feet apart. The captain of the Sea Shepherd waved at Nordengen and shouted, “This is for the whales, a**hole!”
MacGyver had just lifted his face to peer over the rail when he felt a hand close on his arm, helping him upright.
Knut spoke in his ear. “You don’t belong on this ship, my friend … and if you stay, the captain will remember that he told me to shoot you. So it is time for you to make ‘other arrangements’, ja?” And with that, Knut grabbed Mac by the collar and the belt and tossed him like a mackerel off the bridge of the Sierra.
Long practice enabled Mac to roll himself into a ball as he landed on the deck of the Sea Shepherd, just before the ship broke away from the Sierra and surged ahead. Mac tumbled until he came up against the cabin, groaning. He’d be covered from head to toe with bruises, he was sure – if he wasn’t tossed overboard by the captain of this vessel for trespassing.
But he managed to open his eyes and shake his head clear in time to see the Sierra had engaged her engines finally and was steaming away toward the safety of Portugal with all the power she could muster. Mac could see the long tear that had been made in Sierra’s skin, rupturing her refrigerated hold, spilling the tons of meat that had been raped from the oceans. She was already beginning to list to port.
On the bridge of the Sierra, MacGyver could just make out the shape of Knut Hustvedt, holding his rifle over his head again. He imagined, or perhaps he actually heard, the laughter of the crazy Norwegian hunter as the Sierra scrambled to get away from the vengeance of the shepherd of the sea.
~~~tbc
 Everyone, sometimes, needs a camel.
Old troubleshooters never die...
They just wait til the last moment and then rescue themselves!
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