Fic: Sing a song of sixpence (6/10)
Fic: Sing a song of sixpence (6/10)
Series: Special Projects
Summary: Pirates, Arrr!
Author: pen37
Beta: Strangevisitor7 and Clarksmuse
Fandoms: Smallville/Supernatural
Characters: Chloe, Sam, Dean, Sarah, Bela Talbot
Pairing:Chloe/Dean Sam/Sarah
Rating: pg
This is a part of the Special Projects series. You can find the rest of the series here.
Ch. 1, Ch. 2, Ch. 3, Ch. 4, Ch. 5, Ch. 6, Ch. 7, Ch. 8, Ch. 9, Ch. 10
Chloe retrieved her laptop for some quick research into the Lady Washington while Sam and Sarah found them all a restaurant that overlooked the harbor. From the vantage point of their seats, they could see the tallship out in the bay silhouetted against the setting sun.
An Internet search showed that the Lady Washington made its home in Aberdeen Washington, but it traveled around the world teaching about the history of maritime travel. Over the years, it had been used in several period and pirate movies.
Currently it was making its home in Beaufort and the bell they were looking for was on board.
The research wasn't as easy as the young reporter would have liked: the restaurant was a Japanese Steakhouse. Things were going well until the chef offered to let Dean juggle knives. After five minutes in which he'd managed to attract the attention of most of the other diners and secure a job offer from the management, Sam finally managed to wrestle the knives from him and let the chef leave so that they could go back to talking about the hunt in peace.
“According to this, we can rent the ship for parties,” Chloe said.
“Would we have it to ourselves?” Sam asked thoughtfully.
“I'm sure they'd leave a skeleton crew to make sure we didn't wreck the ship,” Chloe said. “But we could probably distract them and lift the bell.”
“And how do we keep them from tracing the theft back to us?” Sarah asked.
“The old fashioned way,” Chloe said. “We launder it.”
“Oooh!” Dean grinned at her. “I get chills when you talk like that.”
“How soon can we get it?” Sarah asked.
“Let me check the availability,” Chloe said as she tapped a few more keys. “Looks like we're in luck.” She picked up her phone and dialed the number. “Hi, my name is Carla Woodstein. I was calling to see if I could reserve your ship for the night. It's for a birthday party. Just dockside. It's for my husband and he gets seasick.”
While she was talking, Chloe typed furiously on her keyboard. Soon she rattled off a credit card number, and hung up the phone.
“And we've just rented a ship for the night.”
“Awesome,” Dean turned back to stabbing his steak with a single chopstick.
“That's not how those work, you know.” Sam said.
“You use them your way. I'll use them mine,” Dean said.
* * *
By the time the four of them arrived on the pier, the moon sat high in the sky like a pearl in a diamond - studded ebony crown. They were escorted onto the foredeck by the captain, and given a brief tour of the ship. Then the captain retired to his quarters, and the rest of the crew dispersed for the night.
“That's it?” Dean whispered to them. “They're just going to leave us here?”
“Why shouldn't they?” Chloe whispered back. “We rented the boat. Thieves and vandals sneak on. They don't rent the place.”
“You don't say,” Dean whispered back.
“I don't see the bell,” Sarah said as she craned her neck to look around the deck.
“It's not down here,” Chloe said. “My research said that it was up on the main mast.” She pointed to the massive beam that grew from the center of the ship.
The four of them looked up at it, and Sam let out a low whistle. “How tall is that thing?”
“89 feet,” Chloe said.
Sam nodded, and then leaned over to punch Dean' s shoulder. “Okay, Captain Blood. You wanted to swing from one of those things. There's your chance.”
“What?” Dean frowned at Sam. “You're kidding, right?”
The younger Winchester shook his head. “You've got better balance.”
“Fine,” Dean rolled his eyes and reached for the ladder.
Chloe looked up the mast dubiously. “Be careful.”
“I'm always careful,” Dean sounded offended.
The tiny blonde responded by shooting him a look that said yeah right. He responded with a cocksure grin before turning and scrambling up the rigging.
Chloe, Sam and Sarah watched his ascent with faces locked in various poses of trepidation.
“Don't forget to muffle the clacker when you touch the bell!” Sam called up.
“I know that!” Dean called back irritably as he reached the crossbeam and straddled it.
Their attention was riveted to Dean until the sound of a throat clearing drew their attention back to deck level. Bela stood there, hands holding a colonial era firearm at her shoulder.
“You're kidding, right?” Sarah said flatly. “A blunderbuss?”
The mercenary responded with a smirk. “Unless I'm mistaken, these antique firearms tend to shoot wide. So I wouldn't make any sudden moves. Hands up, if you please. I'd like them well away from any tasers you might have on your person.”
Chloe and Sam shot one another annoyed looks.
“And I would encourage Dean not to even think of dropping the key on the way back down, less I startle and fire my weapon accidentally.”
From the mast high above, they heard Dean mutter a quiet oath.
Chloe turned to give Sarah a wry frown and realized that the tall brunette was staring intently at the rudder. She turned in time to see the line securing it untie and the stick move under its own power. A sound from the dockside next drew their attention. As they watched the lines were severed at the rail one-by-one as if cut by a ghostly axe.
“Sarah?” Sam asked as the ship slid past the dock and out into the bay. “Those marauding ghost pirates?”
“Yeah?”
“You think they've seen Captain Blood?”
All of a sudden, it seemed as if they had been dropped into the scene of a battle. Around them, spectral British sailors battled with pirates for mastery of the deck.
Bela ducked as a ghostly cutlass swung at her head. She turned, and released the blunderbuss into her ghostly sailor. The shot sailed through the ghost, and into the side of the ship, taking a chunk out of the railing.
“Bloody hell!” she twisted away and vanished into the fray.
“What's going on?” A shout came from the captain's quarters. An answering cry from the hold alerted them to the fact that the ship's sailors were aware of the new dangers.
The captain and crew appeared, only to stop short and stare at the battle with wide eyes. One of the ghostly buccaneers turned on them, brandishing a weapon. Chloe recognized the danger and threw herself against the captain, bringing him down before the ghost pirate's cutlass could cut him in two. Instead, it passed through the space where he had been standing, and took a chunk out of the door in front of where he had been standing.
He looked from Chloe to the door and back with wide eyes.
“Is this part of the rental?” Chloe asked innocently. She glanced up to see the ship's crew members throwing themselves overboard to avoid the violence. Taking his cue from the others, the captain shook Chloe off, ran for the rail, and dove overboard.
“Well he was brave!” Chloe said.
Sarah, for her part, ducked around two clashing ghosts and ran across the deck.
“Where are you going?” Sam called.
“Armory,” Sarah responded. “Where the swords are!”
“Good thinking!” Sam spun and ran for the hold. “I'll find the kitchen - and the salt!”
Chloe nodded in acknowledgment as she crawled under the stairs to the aft deck, where she could watch Dean in relative safety.
* * *
The bell hung from the crossbeam by the handle, where sailors could grip it to signal passing ships. Dean was just about to cut it free, when the sounds of clashing metal on metal and gunfire reached his ears. He looked down to see ghostly sailors clash with one another.
“When did we walk into the set of Treasure Island?” He furrowed his brow.
Suddenly, a voice like aged whisky drew his attention back up to the crossbeam. There a ghostly sailor with hollow eyes and a black beard stood.
“Prepare to defend yourself, scurvy cur.” Slowly, he drew a very sharp, very solid-looking sword and pointed it at Dean. “Whomever lives the longest shall have it.”
Dean sprang, catlike, back across the crossbeam as the ghostly pirate swung at him.
“Let's go hunting artifacts that belonged to pirates, Sam.” Dean muttered in a falsetto imitation of Sarah's voice. “It'll be a nice, family activity.”
With a final, desperate lunge, Dean seized the bell, tore it free and brought it up to block the pirate's next swing.
* * *
Sarah fought her way from the armory, thankful for the fencing lessons she'd had at camp when she was twelve - and even more thankful that she'd brushed up on them after meeting Sam.
“Speaking of which,” she muttered as she spotted his tall frame. He'd found a salt-filled wooden cask and taken it over to one of the three pound guns on the starboard side. His intent was obviously to pack the salt into the gun and then pepper the deck with the shot.
It would work too, if he didn't have to fight off the marauding pirate ghosts at the same time.
Sarah adjusted her grip on her commandeered sword and strode toward Sam. Before she could reach him, a grinning, toothless ghost stepped into her way, brandishing his own saber. Sarah sighed in frustration. The ghost appeared to be tipsy, so she knocked his blade out of the way with a beat attack and then pushed him over as she rushed past.
“Where did you learn that?” Sam asked, nodded at her sword as she took up a defensive position in front of him.
“Camp Kukamunga. It was this, or horseback riding, and I'm allergic to horses,” she said as she fended off a ship's petty officer in a blue sailing uniform with a straw hat.
“Okay?” Sam shrugged and went back to packing salt into the gun. When he finished, he rolled the contraption around into place, and grabbed the fuse.
“Fire in the hole.”
With a nod of acknowledgment, Sarah knocked back her current opponent and jumped out of the way. When she was clear, Sam pulled the chord. The gun fired with a mighty burst of salt and powder. The force of the blast knocked it back against the rail while the report echoed like thunder across the deck.
Sarah bit her lip as she looked at the lights of the harbor. With a start, she realized how far away the ship had drifted. Even still, she could a set of search lights bobbing along the pier that they'd been on. Obviously the crew had reached shore and called for the authorities.
“Guys, we'd better wrap this up. Soon.”