Chapter 7

Captain Ironbuttocks sat in his captain’s chair and puffed on a cigar.⁴⁰ He was feeling pretty pleased with himself. He had thwarted the crazy boy with the boots and now he could dictate terms. The shutters and the hatch were made of the highest quality tempered steel. Nothing short of an industrial laser could cut through his defences. Back when he had purchased the ship, he’d made sure the bridge was reinforced as a final bastion. As a Slaver Captain and a member of the Pirates Union, Ironbuttocks knew that captains often had to face the danger of a mutinous crew or a rebellious cargo, so he’d made sure he had a fortified place to ride out any uprising. For once he was glad he’d been so paranoid and paid the extra money.

“I’m a pretty smart guy, me!” The Captain chuckled. “Super smart.”

He was fairly certain that he had driven the nasty boy with the boots mad with frustration when he heard Hamish X laughing for no apparent reason. The Captain’s aura of superiority evaporated when the boy shouted, “Are you ready, Captain Ironbuttocks? I’m coming for you!” Something in the tone of Hamish X’s voice cut right through the Captain’s wall of contentment.

The final vestige of Ironbuttocks’s smug self-confidence was dissipated by a loud clang as Hamish X kicked the hatch with all the pent-up power his boots could muster. The impact knocked the Captain out of his chair and onto his metal bottom. The hatch held, but an alarming dent appeared in the centre. The dent was roughly the same shape as one of the mad boy’s boots.

“Uh-oh,” the Captain said softly. Another ringing clang saw the hatch dent grow even larger. The hatch wouldn’t hold much longer. Captain Ironbuttocks felt a cold, burning hatred deep in his soul.

“I hate you, boy! I hate you and your silly, stupid boots!” he railed. He loathed the thought of losing his ship to these ragged kids. If he lost his ship, his employers would not be pleased. He doubted he would survive the displeasure of the ODA. “I won’t give up my ship! I won’t give up my ship! I … I …” He looked around the bridge and his eyes caught the radar screen. What he saw there made him smile. He leapt to the wheel and slammed the engines full ahead. The ship lurched forward.

“Hey, Mr. Big Feet! You think you have a lot of smart thinks in your mind? Well, phooey! If I can’t have this beautiful ship, nobody will! Tee hee! Christmas Is Cancelled is cancelled!”

Though the threat was difficult to decipher, Hamish X still felt a trill of dread when he heard it. Outside the hatch, he was just rearing back for another powerful kick when he felt the ship change direction. Puzzled, he shouted to the Captain. “What’s going on, Ironbutt? What are you up to?” He turned to look out over the bow of the ship, scanning the darkness. At first, he saw only blackness and the reflection of the ship’s running lights off the wine-dark sea, but after his eyes adjusted, he saw a winking red light in the distance. Concentrating on it, he felt his vision shift. His pupils widened like telescopic lenses. The red light leapt into stark relief. The dawn was coming. Outlined in the growing daybreak, a series of jagged rocks rose out of the sea. On the largest of them a red beacon winked on and off to warn sailors of the danger. Hamish X’s face turned ashen as he realized what the Captain was going to do. He turned and hammered on the dented hatch.

“What do you think you’re doing? You’ll wreck us on the rocks!”

“You won’t get my ship, you booted freak-boy,” came the muffled, manic reply. “You won’t get my ship! Tee hee! Tee hee!”

Hamish X feverishly began to hammer the hatch with his boots. He had to stop the Captain from wrecking the ship on the rocks. “Hurry, Maggie,” he muttered to himself.

Down below, Maggie hurried. She pelted through the corridors of the ship. Everywhere she looked, there were signs of a titanic struggle. She ran through the mess hall and found the tables overturned, chairs broken, dishes shattered. She ran down a corridor past the crew cabins. The doors hung open or dangled from shattered hinges. In a heap, four crewmen lay tied together with electrical tape and nylon rope, a child standing guard over them. She was about to ask the boy where her brother was when she heard shouting and the sound of metal clashing against metal. She followed the din and came to a steep metal ladder. The sounds were coming from below. She gripped the handrails and slid down the ladder, landing lightly on the metal floor.

She found herself on the lowest deck of the ship. The remnants of a heavy battle were strewn along the corridor. Two sailors lay unconscious. A little girl sat with her back to the wall, holding a rag doll against a cut on her forehead.

“Where’s Thomas?” Maggie demanded. The girl pointed down the corridor and Maggie sped off. She came to the end and turned the corner, almost running into a knot of children gathered in front of a large metal door. Lined up against the wall, bound and gagged, was a group of vanquished crewmen.

The door was scratched and dented but seemed solid. Thomas swung a massive wrench. It bounced off the door with a sound like a metal gong, shivering the wrench from his grasp. The tool fell to the metal deck with a clatter. Thomas danced out of the way, avoiding a crushed toe, then examined the hatch. The wrench had barely scratched the surface.

“Ow!” Thomas winced and twisted his wrists experimentally. “This is hopeless! We can’t get in!” He shook his head.

“What’s going on?”

“The last of the crew is holed up in the engine room, Maggie. They’ve locked the hatch and we can’t get through. We’ll have to starve them out.”

“Hamish X says we have to shut down the engines,” Maggie insisted.

“Well, unless he has a blowtorch,” Thomas snapped, “or a bazooka, we are not getting into the engine room.”

Maggie shook her head. “Hamish X is trying to get into the bridge, but the place is like a fortress. Keep trying.” She turned on her heel and ran back the way she came.

Thomas watched her go and shrugged. “Let’s find a bigger wrench.”

HAMISH X WAS DRENCHED WITH SWEAT. He had kicked the hatch with all his might for the last minute and, though it was severely dented, the portal would not yield. He staggered back and looked at the rocks. They loomed ever closer. Even without the enhanced vision afforded him by whatever alterations the ODA had made to his eyesight, he could make out the deadly obstacle in the growing dawn light. He calculated that, at their current speed, the ship would crash into it in a minute, maybe less.

Maggie burst out of the lower deck hatch and ran towards Hamish X. “The engine room door isn’t going to break down any time soon. We can’t shut down the engines.”

Hamish X felt panic well up inside him. Fear wrapped itself around his heart and squeezed.

Maggie stood looking up at him, her blue eyes huge in her grimy face. She needed him to do something.

Before, when he remembered nothing about the past, he never felt this fear. When he was alone in the world on his adventures, he had never known fear because there was nothing and no one to lose. Now he missed Mimi and Parveen. They could have helped him, but he’d left them behind. He had found these new friends in need of his help, and now he was going to fail them.

Inside the bridge, the Captain had gone quite mad. He thumbed the switch on the Tannoy⁴¹ system. The laughter of Captain Ironbuttocks rang out on the loudspeaker system. “Tee hee! Tee hee! We’re all going to die! If I can’t have my ship, no one can.” He gripped the wheel of the ship with insane intensity, his eyes glaring and foam spraying from the corners of his mouth.

Hamish X snarled, “No. I won’t let this happen.” Suddenly, he had an idea. He ran down the steps to the main deck. As he passed Maggie, he pointed at the hatch-way to the bridge. “Don’t let him out!” He didn’t wait to see if she obeyed but set off towards the bow, running as fast as his amazing boots could carry him.

Reaching the absolute front tip of the ship, he skidded to a halt, his boot soles sending up a shower of sparks. The rocks were looming ever closer. He had no time to lose. A spare anchor chain lay coiled on the deck. He grabbed the end, wrapped his fists around it, and dove out in front of the speeding ship, disappearing into the furiously boiling bow wave.

He plunged into a maelstrom of churning water, immediately losing track of which way was up and which way was down. He held on tenaciously to the anchor chain as if it were the only thing in his world. Wrapping the end of the chain around his forearm, he tried to orient himself. The barnacle-encrusted hull of the freighter rushed by overhead, the current threatening to bash him against the razor-sharp coating of shells.⁴² Spinning in the fierce current, he got his boots up just in time to push the deadly surface away before his skin was scoured off.

Holding his breath, though he was desperate for air, he began to bounce along the bottom of the ship as it rushed by, like a rock climber rappelling down a mountain face horizontally instead of vertically. His boots surged with power. He felt the bubble of joy expanding in his chest that always came when he used the power of the boots. If he hadn’t been underwater, he would have laughed aloud.⁴³

The hull began to curve upwards towards the bow where the propellers thrashed the water to foam, driving the ship forward. Hamish X felt the powerful suction created by the massive props’ blades. Timing was critical. The keel loomed out of the darkness, a sharp fin of steel carving the water in two directly in front of him. Hamish X pushed off with his right foot, kicking with all his might. Swinging in a wide arc, he felt the pull of the propellers as he sailed past them and loosened his grip on the chain until he barely hung on. In seconds, the chain straightened out and, with a jerk, was pulled painfully out of his fingers, taking some skin as the propeller blades caught it.

The chain wound around the propeller like thread on a spool. The torque of the crankshaft was so powerful that the anchor chain was yanked from its housing on the fore-deck and reeled in at high speed. In a matter of seconds the thick steel links were completely entangled in the propeller blades, freezing the crankshaft and stripping all the gears inside the engine room. The engine spouted black smoke as the tortured inner workings tore themselves apart. The sailors holding out in the engine room gagged on the poisonous fumes. They were forced to open the hatch to escape the toxic smoke. They ran into the waiting arms of Thomas and his cohorts, coughing and wheezing as they sucked in the sweeter air.

Hamish X kicked to the surface, finally heeding the cry of his aching lungs. He broke through the choppy seas, instantly swallowing a mouthful of brine as a wave swamped him. Choking and spitting, he scanned the waves to see the rear end of the ship sporting the name Christmas Is Cancelled in peeling black paint. Oily smoke billowed from the stern as the ship coasted gently, slowing as it lost momentum. Hamish X grinned. He had done it. He’d stopped the ship. He pounded the warm water of the sea with his fists, crowing with delight. “Ha! It worked! It worked! I did it … I …”

His delight suddenly ebbed when he saw how close the rocks loomed. In the gathering dawn light they glistened in the pounding spray. A rainbow hung over the black stone teeth, but Hamish X couldn’t take time to appreciate its beauty. The ship, deprived of power, was drifting on the current. The inexorable pull of the sea would grind the ship to pieces.

His work wasn’t over yet.

“Boy,” he spat out another mouthful of sea, “you solve one problem and create another. Life can be very annoying.” He smiled ruefully and began to swim after the wayward vessel.