Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction Group 3 | Page 270

Birth of the Battleships The Independent Schools Foundation Academy, Schrantz, James - 11 Boom! Boom! Boom! The sound of hammers against steel echo through the shipyard. Skree! Skree! Skree! The sound of drills and saws pierce the air. Everywhere, people bark orders back and forth whilst the workers keep on working. It is the year 2023, and the Chinese government has ordered the construction of a massive fleet of battleships. These battleships would operate under the command of Admiral Zheng He and would be supposedly indestructible. This project would require many resources to complete, and only the best workers were to participate in the construction of these massive beasts. You are one of them. You are forced to work twelve-hour shifts, hammering and drilling and pounding away at thick plates of steel with large machines. As you await the end of your shift, you try not to think about the family that you left behind. You and your friends are sitting in a circle, snacking on gross, soggy sandwiches as you tell jokes and share stories. Riiiing! Riiiing! Riiiing! That was the alarm sounding for the end of lunch. You stuff the rest of the sandwich in your mouth and continue to work. Today, it’s your turn to operate the shipyard’s massive industrial crane. It is the easiest task, so everybody takes turns doing it. The job is pretty simple; you climb up the tall ladder to the top of the crane and spend the rest of the day lifting supplies back and forth between the beastly CAT-5s’ and the shipyard’s construction area. In between loads, you peer out of the dusty old crane window and stare at the battleship. It’s been twenty years since you first started working on it, and it was almost complete. The only downside was that the construction of this fleet was top secret; you have lived the past twenty years as a dead man. Nobody outside of the operation knew you were alive, and you always wonder about how much the outside world has changed since 2003. Apparently, there was this new thing called ‘Youtube’ that everybody was crazy about. “Oi! Whaddya’ think you’re doing!” an angry officer shouts through a megaphone, “Get to work!” you shake your head and pull your mind back into reality. When your shift is over, you climb down the ladder and began walking toward the checkout counter. For work like this, security measures are required to make sure that you none of the workers can escape. You are about to check out when all of a sudden, Boom! You whip around just in time to see a cloud of smoke rise from the hull of the ship. You dash over to the scene. Three officers are already investigating. All around, workers are calling back and forth in protest. The officers just ignore them. As more officers come in to set up a cordon, you see a trail dust leading deeper into the ship. You freeze. A single thought passes through your mind before you dart through the crowd and into the hull of the ship. You are suddenly engulfed in an eerie silence. The shouts of the angry workers fade behind you. You look around. Nothing. You listen for the slightest sound. Chip! Chip! Chip! A subtle scraping sound echoes from the otherside of a door. You slowly creep towards it, and bust the door open. A strange figure looks up in surprise and drops the match that he was trying to light. You charge forward and tackle him before he can react. “Gotcha!” you shout as you knock him down. He came prepared. From his pocket, he whips out a bloodstained butterfly knife and points it at your neck. Unfortunately for him, you have been prepared for the last twenty years. You pull out a knife of your own. The battle is on. Both of you jump back and forth, swinging you knives around in a vicious dance of flesh and steel. He lunges forward, you step to the side and nic him in the leg. Thud! He falls to the floor, struggling to get up. Just then he swings around and when his knife is less than an inch away from your neck, it is knocked out of the way by an officer. He had followed you into the ship and saved your life just in time. You were thanked for your service and in return, the officer explained to you what had happened. “The spy was attempting to take down the entire ship before escaping in a private helicopter that we later found on the roof of the construction complex,” the officer reports. You were given a promotion and were offered a job that you just couldn’t resist; to become a general onboard the fleet’s mothership, operating side by side with Admiral Zheng He. The fleet that was already constructed, that is. Apparently, the ship that you were working on was slightly delayed … by eight years ! “Eight years of my life wasted on some useless hunk of steel,” you think to yourself. Well, thinking about it ain’t gonna’ get those eight years back anytime soon. You are helicoptered on to the mothership where you will serve the next few years of your life ‘for the greater good of all humanity.’ At least that’s what they tell you.