Silver Spirits

Commander Benjamin Griffith was not having his best week. It had started out well enough, and he was wondering how it had ended up like this. He and his small, trusted crew had completed their top secret mission successfully. They had stopped for supplies in his home port and he had enjoyed a pleasant visit with his family. Now they were on their way to London to hand the object of their secret mission over to Edmund Triggs and the Royal Secret Service. Everything had been going swimmingly.

Now Ben found himself in his stateroom with the rest of his crew, and a stowaway. Ben shook his head in exasperation at the teenaged girl standing in front of him.

"Emily, what in God's name were you thinking?" he demanded.

"Come on, Ben. I just wanted to see what it's like aboard a Navy vessel. Besides I've missed my big brother. You're always away working these days." Emily gave him her best pout, widening her brown eyes imploringly. Ben was not her brother by blood; Emily was the youngest child of the man who had adopted Ben as one of his own in order to ensure he received the best education. Emily had been only three then, and grew up always thinking of him as her brother. Normally her pleading and doe eyes allowed her to get away with anything, but Ben was not amused today.

"We have very important business to attend to," he informed her briskly. "It could be very dangerous and we don't have any time to spare taking you back home."

Emily smiled triumphantly. "Why do you think I made sure I wasn't caught until we were three days out to sea?"

Ben sighed. Emily Weldon had always been too clever for her own good. Absent-mindedly, Ben smoothed out the piece of paper that was the reason for their urgency. At first glance it seemed like nothing special. A tattered and torn piece of parchment, faded and covered in tiny words and markings that required a magnifying glass to see. But it was in fact something quite special. It was the final piece of a map. A map that allegedly led to a treasure worth more than all the gold in England. There were those who would and had killed in search of it. The very people Ben was trying to prevent from ever obtaining it. As if the universe had decided finding his kid sister had snuck aboard his ship wasn't vexing enough, his navigator burst into his stateroom at that moment looking positively out of sorts.

"Mr. Foley, shouldn't you, as navigator of this vessel, be in the control room, navigating?" Ben asked mildly.

"Commander, the ship is being boarded! It's the crew of The Silver Spirit. They somehow cloaked themselves from the scanners and hacked into the system and overrode the controls."

"Blast." Ben was on his feet in an instant. How had they discovered he was in possession of the map so quickly? He seized the wide-eyed Mr. Foley and tugged him into the room, shutting the door. The locking mechanism failed to work.

"Blast," he said again. His eyes fell on the map on his desk. Acting quickly, he snatched up the paper and activated the fireplace against the far wall. He tossed the map into it and within seconds it was reduced to nothing but ash. His second in command, Simon Tully, removed his laser gun from its place at his hip and aimed it at the stateroom door as footsteps sounded in the hall. The stateroom door flew clean off its hinges and both Ben and Tully were forced to leap out of its path lest they be crushed. An enormous burly man stepped through the ruined doorway holding a gun in each hand. A small army of scalawags crowded in around him, also armed to the teeth.

"That seems a bit uncalled for," Ben remarked as he climbed back to his feet. "The door wasn't even locked."

"We just couldn't wait to pop in for a friendly chat. Perhaps over some tea and scones."

The pirates moved aside as the woman who had spoken entered Ben's stateroom. The notorious Captain Scarlett Rose herself. She smirked, blue eyes alight with triumph.

"With all due respect, Captain Rose, I'm typically much more inclined to sit down to tea and chats with people who aren't aiming guns at my head," Ben replied. He was in a most unfortunate predicament. His crew consisted of only six men, plus Emily. They were hopelessly outnumbered, and for all her brave talk Emily was only seventeen. Ben would prefer not to have his kid sister wind up in the middle of a shoot out.

"Well we can just skip the chat then and move on the the part where you give me that map, if you please." Scarlett held out her hand.

"I am afraid I am no longer in possession of the map." He looked at her apologetically. Scarlett's crystal blue eyes narrowed.

"Do you take me for a fool?" she asked. "I know the fourth piece of the map was found, and have good reason to believe you are the one who found it. Do you really expect me to believe that you don't have it?"

"You are many things, Captain, a fool is not one of them. The map is in this ship, but it has unfortunately met with an untimely end, you see." He nodded toward the fireplace. Scarlett's lip curled.

"That is most unfortunate indeed," she said, reaching for the gun at her hip. "I don't have much need for you, in that case."

"Captain, wait." The giant of a man who had broken down the door spoke up. "This Commander Griffith is known as a genius, it's why he holds such high rank in the Navy. We don't need the map, we just need him. If what I read about him is true he had the contacts of that map memorized two days after he discovered it."

"My good sir, I can assure you that is not true. It was more like a day and a half," Ben corrected.

Beside him, Simon Tully rolled his eyes. "Humble, Commander. Very humble."

Scarlett eyed Ben with a calculating look for a moment. "Remove their weapons and we'll take them all," she said to her crew.

"While I appreciate the invitation, we are on a rather tight schedule," Ben said. Scarlett shot him a scathing look.

"Consider all appointments henceforth canceled," she instructed him. "We've taken the liberty of setting this barge on auto-sail, and programmed the coordinates for the Port of London. Your ship will arrive right on time. You just won't be on it." Scarlett smiled. She was every bit as cunning and lovely as the tales said. Perhaps more so. Her crew followed her orders, stripping Ben and his men of their guns and placing handcuffs on their wrists. Ben had to give Emily credit; she didn't once cry out or break down weeping though her brown eyes were full of terror. Ben didn't care for the rough way the man cuffing her handled her, nor did he care for the way the man leered at her.

"Surely you can let the girl continue on to London," he said reasonably to Scarlett's back as she strode ahead. She paused and turned to look at him.

"Absolutely not," she replied. "She is the best leverage we have. I expect nothing but your full cooperation, Griffith."

"I always do my best to be accommodating. However you may find that I can be less than genial if your mindless heathens don't treat the young lady with some respect."

"Are you threatening me, Griffith?" Scarlett asked and she seemed genuinely surprised.

"Not at all," Ben replied. "I'm threatening your crew."

She seemed greatly amused by that. "I don't believe you're in any position to be making demands or threats," she said. "You do what I ask of you and she won't come to any harm."

Ben caught Emily's eye and gave her a reassuring smile as she was marched along beside him.

"I'm so sorry Ben," she whispered. "This is all my fault. If you hadn't been dealing with me you would have known they were coming."

"Now now. None of that talk, Em. You can always count on pirates to be sneaky and underhanded. They would have come for us no matter what."

"How very touching." Scarlett regarded them haughtily from where she stood at the ramp leading from Ben's ship to The Silver Spirit. Despite her slight build she radiated a confidence that made her seem much taller. She flicked a strand of curly golden hair out of her eyes and sauntered onto her ship with all the grace of a ballet dancer. Ben shook his head. No wonder Captain Rose was always making fools of men. She must play them as easily as a musician plays the strings of his fiddle.

"Put them all in the brig," she said. They were each placed into a separate cell and the doors clanged shut with an ominous finality.

"Everything will be all right," Ben said, his tone far brighter and more certain than he actually felt. They were hostages of pirates, with no idea where they were headed and it would be days before anyone even knew they were missing. No, this was most assuredly not Ben's best week.