CYCLOPS

[An Account from the PRISM Chronicles]

Chapter 1

Darkness

The darkness seemed to have a shape and a movement of its own.

His thoughts were filled with a mix of fear that he would be waylaid by somebody and an excitement at the size of the payment he and the guard beside him would receive for their work tonight. In this part of the Port of Salvador, Brazil, you could never be too careful. Both men appeared for all the world like any other drivers of a loud, huffing gasoline vehicle who, day or night, struggled to make a life for themselves and discovered unfailingly that no matter how great their efforts, the odds were stacked against them.

The one at the wheel kept his eyes down, not meeting the gaze of anyone else, laborer like himself, street corner troublemaker, or the dangerously few policemen who patrolled that late at night. He snorted with contempt...how many of them ever wanted to lay themselves open to doing their job without un soborno, the eternally necessary money under the table to get anything done in Latin America. They were all far more corrupt than he was.

Beside him the other man hunched against the door in his greatcoat, an Ithaca 12-gauge coach gun resting across the lap of his duster. He hadn't yet eared back the external hammers, but he was ready for the possibility of some idiot trying to hijack their load. He would show the weapon only if that happened; if that didn't work, he'd kill the thief without a second thought.

He was partial to these short-barrel weapons. The Americans, as they did with everything else, had names for them. The "street howitzer," "the town-tamer," "the crowd-pleaser." As a student of some history, he was fascinated by stories of Wyatt Earp, John "Doc" Holliday, and particularly details of the growing fact / legend of the gunfight at the OK Corral that had taken place in the mining town of Tombstone, Arizona, on October 26, 1881. Holliday had used a 12-gauge Greener. He affectionately gripped the fore-piece of his Ithaca and held it closer to the door, just in case. At this hour you never knew who or what....

Three very heavy boxes lay in the back of the truck, covered with a canvas and packed among other sacks of vegetables and the junk any laborers would be expected to be moving for sale the next day. Traffic along the Avenida da França at this hour was spotty, but the main street along the long strip of docks and wharves was never empty. Carts, wagons, trucks, and their cursing, often-aggravated drivers always plied the street along which ships from all over the world were docked for loading.

The driver was searching for one of the largest. His instructions were specific, Pier 12, Dock 3, and her name was Cyclops. She was flagged United States and she was a naval support ship, meaning that it was likely there would be armed guards somewhere along the dock and certainly at the several loading stations where her cranes would lift the palletized cargo onto her decks.

There she was.

He and his rider leaned out of the cab to stare at the behemoth. They had never seen one as large as she. Cyclops was longer than any other ship docked there and taller than the other steel-hulled ships by far. An odd-looking series of girders, overhead stanchions, braces, brackets and cables ran the length of the ship and both sides were lined with enormous derricks, obviously for loading ores, earth and fuels.

Having found the pier and dock, he drove directly to Loading Station 7, circled to offload from the rear of the truck, and backed up to the platform where a pallet with hoisting cables already attached sat empty, surrounded by a trio of Brazilian guards, all armed with pump shotguns and, from what he could tell, Mauser C96 semi-automatic pistols. Four U. S. Navy seamen stood behind them, each armed with identical shotguns and holstered Browning .45 caliber pistols.

"Somebody important is moving this stuff," he muttered to his guard. "These broom-handle Mausers are expensive, and they've all got them. See those red 9s engraved into the grips...usually, only officers have those side-arms because they cost so much."

"For sure, my friend," came the reply. "Let's get this job done, get paid, and get out of here. This whole thing makes me nervous."

With considerable grunting and cursing the waiting seamen hauled the heavy crates from the truck bed and shifted them to the pallet. Heavy winches far above on the Cyclops' deck whined, groaned, and hauled the pallet skyward until it disappeared over the side of the ship. At that point a smartly dressed man in civilian clothes stepped to the door of the truck and handed each of the two men inside a heavy envelope.

"Inspect it, please," he said in a quiet voice that, nevertheless, carried a warning. "We want to ensure that you are properly compensated for your loyalty and your work. We know this was risky for you. I'm sure I don't need to emphasize that you will forget all about this night's work and this transaction."

"What work tonight, sir, and what transaction?" the driver responded with an understanding air.

"I can't imagine," smiled the well-dressed man who disappeared into the mists swirling along the wharf.

Later that day, February 16, 1918, Cyclops picked up the pilot who would guide her out of the bay, through the narrows of the coastline, and into open water. Four snorting tugs belching black smoke from their tall stacks shoved and towed her away from her berth until the giant vessel began to move under her own power. Once into open water she dropped the pilot and put to sea.

Chapter 2

Heavy Weather

The gigantic ship creaked with the increasingly heavy seas. Overhead the wind of the South Atlantic, never a friend to sailors or ships, howled through the massive structure of king posts, girders, guy wires and coaling booms that defined the purpose of the craft. She was a combat support ship, a fleet collier or coal hauler for American and British ships in that part of the world.

This massive vessel, built in Philadelphia in 1910 by William Cramp and Sons, was truly a monster. She was one of four Proteus-class support ships constructed prior to World War I. Her first years involved transport of coal to American and allied shipping in the Atlantic Ocean.

She had been commanded from the day she came off the ways by Johann Georg Wichman who took the name George W. Worley, once he settled into the United States as an American citizen. Worley was a remarkably strange individual who was intensely disliked by his crews.

Originally, the ship was on the register of Naval Auxiliary Ships and operated as such until that branch was abolished and America entered World War I in July 1917. At that point Cyclops became a U. S. Navy support ship and her crew were Naval Reservists on active duty.

The collier was outfitted fore and aft with four .50 caliber Browning water-cooled machine guns once she began trans-Atlantic resupply runs with fuel, medical personnel and equipment for the American Expeditionary Force in Europe. During this entire time, George Worley had been her only commander.

_ _ _ _ _

Worley grew uneasier with each passing minute. The ship was talking to him, and nothing he perceived or sensed was good; it did not feel 'right' in that peculiar way that speaks to seafarers with certainty but is completely imperceptible to land-locked civilians. The monstrous vessel was 545 feet long and 65 feet in her beam, larger than the battleship USS South Carolina she had refueled several years before. Ordinarily, this storm would not be any threat, merely a dicey nuisance to be ridden through, but now warning bells were clanging in his mind.

From the time he had arrived in the port of Salvador, Brazil, nothing had gone according to plan as he saw it. His task was to unload the coal and take on manganese ore in addition to the fuel Cyclops would retain for her own use. The two cargos were poles apart in the way they had to be loaded, settled in her bunkers and maintained in-route to prevent shifting; while Worley knew of the exchange in Salvador, he liked nothing about it. The ship seemed heavier, less responsive to her helm.

Complicating things even further was the report he had received from LT Conrad Nervig, a Navy officer assigned to Cyclops on her trip from Norfolk Naval Station to Brazil. Nervig had informed him that he detected the ship's deck swaying or torqueing when sizeable waves struck her. Moreover, two of his petty officers from the engine room told him that they could not get the engines to operate at normal efficiency; there was a problem they could not detect.

'In the South Atlantic with this Goliath of a ship I have to be blessed with a gaggle of idiots and incompetents for a crew,' he snarled to himself.

Once in port, the ship remained docked for two weeks, offloading 9,690 tons of coal and taking on 10,800 tons of manganese ore for the Baltimore steel mills. Worley received more bad news when a lieutenant from his engine room informed him that one of Cyclops' two huge engines was inoperable. The engineer had discovered a cracked cylinder wall in the starboard engine. Worley filed a report with the local Navy representative and was told to have it repaired upon reaching the United States.

That was a hell of a response from a naval rep who ought to know what such a directive implied for a ship the size of this one. It reduced the ship's speed to ten knots an hour. Raw danger had finally reared its head. The ship now had to traverse hundreds of miles of open sea to reach his private destination, overloaded with manganese ore, something the ship had never carried before, experiencing other problems sensed by Captain Worley...and do it on one engine.

To top off his troubles with this ship and her crew, on the day of her departure he was ordered to take on board 73 local sailors from varying ships, duties and origins. More junk to have to deal with. 'This is a logistics support ship, not a personnel jitney,' he thundered silently to himself. To add to his fury, the American Consul General Alfred Louis Gottschalk, a former sugar baron in Brazil, also boarded Cyclops at the last minute.

This was one more illustration of the circus he had to endure in getting this ungainly tub back to where it was supposed to be. What really infuriated Worley, however, was the complication this posed to his dealing with the three heavy crates he'd had brought on board the previous night and for which he had plans other than those the shippers had in mind.

The large wooden boxes contained a shipment of gold bars sent by an organization he knew was associated with crime along the eastern seaboard of the huge nation to an organization with which he was very familiar...the nation of Germany. It was a contribution to the war effort by the Kaiser to force his nation into her rightful place among the powers of Europe and to further ensure her victory.

Worley was no avid follower of political matters; he was aware of the timeline that began on June 28, 1914 when Serbian anarchist Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie. At that point the world caught fire as Germany declared war on everyone and everyone declared war on Germany. When the Kaiser's government finally struck a deal with Lenin's new Bolshevik dictatorship in Russia, World War I became the most vicious meat grinder of a conflict in history with protracted trench and chemical warfare and no-holds-barred submarine combat.

Worley wished his birthplace well in whatever it could accomplish. He hadn't acted disloyally to the United States, his adopted land, though he was known to sympathize with Germany; it was just that he had other plans once he had discovered what the unregistered shipment was.

The Kaiser didn't need that gold; he had plenty of it. George Worley did. He had one unscheduled stop to make before he took Cyclops to Baltimore. At this rate, however, Worley wasn't certain he could get this ship all the way there.

Chapter 3

Affections

The lovely transgender girl whispered to Mark, "My boy, make love to my breasts; I simply need you. Oh, Lord, your fingers are so skillful with my nipples. What you do to me makes me want to never again wear a brassiere so my boobs will stick out and...and...everyone will see my nipples."

"Lover, you already don't wear bras most of the time, and when you do they are open-tip or see-through or half-bras. Your tits always stick out, and everybody for miles around sees and wants to touch your nipples. You've got student interns around our office who are so hot for you that the place resembles a sauna. Kimberly, the girl who runs my marina, actually asked me if she could borrow you for her upcoming vacation! Which she wants to spend at our house, anyway."

He laughed softly as he gazed at the girl beneath him. "Then there's Rachel, that stunning fifty-year-old wife and mother who is our textile rep. Or Karen-Ann Jellicoe over at the service plaza. Like everyone at Peter Paul's Mounds Restaurant. Do you realize how many of those men and women and students want to kidnap you for a weekend and take you apart?"

She laughed at his compliment. "I thought I've been restrained in displaying my sexuality, sweet boy."

"Ashe, one of the reasons I am so in love with you is that whatever you are, restrained is never, ever it! And NO, you cannot do all those people, either." He laughed at her expression of mock disappointment.

"Wellll, okay, Marcus. I guess with a lover like you occupying my life I have no time for anyone else, anyhow. And I certainly don't have any more room!"

"Speaking of our intimacy, Princess, let me get under you now. I have appetites, too, you know."

The girl stood, shook out her copper colored mane, and watched as her man lay down on the lounge. He was so beautiful. She and a host of men and women thought that he was the epitome of sensuality for a male. She had not told him of the several young men who were hot for him or the three sixty-year-old beauties in Plans and Operations who, despite their own marriages to loving husbands, bothered her constantly to coax Mark to join their lesbian trio for an entire week.

She had wondered several times if Mark would enjoy the two beautiful older teenage men, Kenneth and Bradley, both having just entered college, who worked during the summer for PRISM. Their interest in Mark was a poorly hidden subject around the office. She felt a buzz of excitement at the thought and realized that she would be extremely aroused watching their intimacy, if Mark was willing, that is. She and Parker had already opened a section of their erotic website for "Beautiful Men With Long Hair" and it had become one of their most in-demand sections for downloading files.

He was steel-hard and his shaft stood upward without his touch, bobbing heavily as she straddled him. He watched her breasts jiggle and the way her abdominal muscles corded with her movements. He thought she had absolutely luscious boobs.

Full, unscarred under their lower curves, their nipples fat and pointed...Lord, he thought...she was stunning in tight sweaters, low-cut blouses and cropped tops of all sorts. In heavy net they stuck out so much that she was nearly undressed when out in public. And Ashwynde absolutely thrilled at every opportunity to show off her assets.

She pulled her ever-present tube of scented gel from somewhere and smoothed it into her cleft, then lightly coated his shaft until it shone wetly. Finally, she whispered, "Oh, God! Now, Mark."

She slid down his penis until she rested on his body, her own completely stuffed with his huge organ. She threw back her head and cried out, "Oh, perfection! Oh, such beauty! You own me, Mark! Mmmmm...." Her voice trailed off into silence in which they could hear the sticky, wet sounds of his slow entry and exit from her hole.

"Intimacy with you, precious man, is a heaven-sent gift. Just simple thoughts of you arouse me wherever I am. I get so hard that even with my pleated skirts, I stick out enough that others can tell I am hard. I love it, but every now and then thinking of this and you makes me come, and that can be rather inconvenient at times. Such as some of my meetings. I...am...so...hard! Look at me, Mark. My cock rests on your body and I can feel your soul, it seems. My balls are swollen, so tender, and I'm going to come again. You just turn me inside out, Marcus," she gasped.

"I can feel that gold ring in the mouth of your cock. Mark, Mark, MARK!"

With that, she spurted a jet of cream up the length of his torso, hoping it would reach his face and pleased that it did so. Her loss was thick, sticky, with the hue of buttermilk. Using the index finger of each hand he covered his nipples, then coated the silver chain attached to his navel piercing. Finally, he gathered the remainder of her splash and swallowed it as he stared at her.

"You do actually own me, Mark, do you understand? In my own heart I consider myself your precious property."

"I understand, Princess. That's why I'll never take advantage of that or of you."

"Mark, I was representing PRISM in a meeting with the city planning board last week, and you came into my thoughts. I didn't even have any special situation in mind...just the thought of you and the sensation of you sliding inside of me. I became so hard that my stem stuck out from under my skirt. We were sitting in a circle away from the table, so I was in full view. I had on the black turtle-neck sweater you gave me and that lemon-colored micro-skirt...no hose, and my black spikes."

"Ashe, why do you suspended me over an open pit waiting for what happened?"

"I know Sheila the city manager saw me, and Jason and Eve on both sides of me, too. He never took his eyes off me from then on. Sheila winked, and Eve whispered, 'Love it...and you.' I finally crossed my legs to conceal my cock. Just before we left she passed me a note that said, 'Ashe, you are so beautiful. Do you think that sometime soon we could...?' I smiled at her and said, 'Yes, I would love that, Eve.'"

"I like for you to do that, Ashwynde. It arouses me and I want you to enjoy the thrill and the compliment of it. I'm honestly amazed that you continue to get away with your casual exposure and never get a citation. But, lover, with a beauty like you on display, who in their right mind would ever cite you for anything except 'Failure To Reveal More'?"

An hour passed in silence as his young lover slid around on his sticky abdomen, moved up and down on his shaft, licked his cum and coated her nipples with it, sighing and whispering to herself the entire time. In the end, Ashe straightened her legs out fully and rested completely on him, burying his cock within her body, her flesh upon his. She threw back her head, gathered her mass of red hair and caressed her face with it, then sat still.

His girl was an expert at creating sensuous and unforgettable moments. He wondered how he could have been so blessed with this endlessly hungry beauty who seemed determined to weld herself into his body rather than simply making love with him.

"Mark, tomorrow I have a meeting with Kittrick L'Deuve and his wife Diane. It'll probably be dinner with them while we talk business, and I may even decide to stay over for the night. Is that all right with you?"

"Ashe, you and he have already benefitted this organization with the research you and he have done on long-forgotten wrecks. He's got more books, papers, family records and nautical information than anyone I know. He has things the Library of Congress doesn't have! Is this another one of your projects?"

"Honey, I am working on something, but I'd rather not say anything more until after our session tomorrow. He has something highly unusual for me, and while I think I know what it is, I'd just rather keep my mouth shut till after tomorrow."