Never Say Die
The clank came first. An auditory signal that the ocean depths were exploring the structural vulnerabilities of the unmanned underwater vehicle. Donner, as the crew knew it, was descending toward the Axial Seamount, a newly formed underwater volcano several hundred miles off the Oregon coast. Thousands of feet above the Donner on the surface of the Pacific Ocean, the R.V. Matuszak rolled gently over the open-ocean waves. Inside, a crowd of people stared at a wall of screens waiting to catch the first glimpse of their target.
Benthic Labs had been researching the volcano and the plume of organic life that came with it for the better part of a year. Donner and its sister UUV Blitzen would make several trips a week down to the ocean floor, collect samples, and bring them back to the Matuszak for study. But it was their discovery over a month ago that changed everything. A quick mention of their find in several local papers throughout Portland and Astoria and Benthic Labs suddenly found their funding increased tenfold. Private investors, museums, and, strangely, a commercial real estate company had thrown serious cash at the small research firm.
The UUV control room inside the Matuszak was awash in red light. On one wall, six different monitors played live feeds from the cameras attached to Donner some 4,000 feet below them. Save for the typical grey ocean detritus that swirled in front of the cameras; the screens were mainly deep indigo.
Jake Carnes, the UUV technician, dove the Donner deeper and deeper as a readout on a screen ticked off each 10-foot interval. With the advent of GPS, it was becoming increasingly easier to find and re-find objects throughout the ocean. Carnes knew that if he followed the point on his digital readout, he'd more or less land within a few feet of the target.
In the back of the room, a man tapped the pads of his fingertips together - waiting. He'd come aboard at the behest of the new investors, never introduced himself to the crew, and was growing more and more impatient. The fact that he wore a suit onboard a working research vessel told the crew all they needed to know: this guy was not only out of his element, he was, more than likely, a giant douche.
"We should be coming up on it now," said Carnes, his eyes darting across the various screens looking for the first sign.
The man in the suit sat forward in his seat. A radar readout on one screen showed that whatever this object was, it was huge.
Donner's bow light caught it first, a giant wooden structure so large that it seemed to pull everyone in the room toward it. As the cloud kicked up by Donner's thrusters settled down, the rest of the object came into view. Sitting on its side were the silted and deteriorated remains of a 17th-century sailing ship. Carnes pushed Donner back and down the side of the object until it ran down the stern nameplate. Thousands of feet above the wreck, the group saw the word "INFERNO" slide across their monitors. For the first time all day, the man in the suit smiled.
---
Guillermo Pérez, a notorious Spanish pirate known throughout the world for his violent temper and his namesake birth defect, had amassed a small fortune through systematic plundering of ships crossing the Atlantic en route to the colonies. He held enough treasure to purchase a navy in the holds of his two ships. But unlike other pirates who spent their ill-gotten gains in ports throughout the Americas and Caribbean, Pérez's greed forced him to hoard all of it. He paid his crew just enough to keep them from mutiny and only spent his plunder on improvements for his ships. As such, the Halcón, and Pérez's flagship, the Inferno, were some of the fastest and most feared ships to sail the seas.
Pérez assumed the British armada wouldn't pursue him around Cape Horn. The waters were too unpredictable, and despite the vast fortune onboard Pérez's ships, it wasn't worth the risk. The British, however, thought differently. Through his pirating endeavors, Pérez had procured a staggering amount of treasure, including priceless items seized from the holds of British ships. One item in particular, the Crown of Leamington - a present to the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony - sat in an unassuming pile in the hold of the Halcón.
The Crown of Leamington was so valuable that the British were told to take it back by any means necessary. And so, they took the risk of sailing through the waters of Tierra Del Fuego after Pérez.
To his credit, Pérez managed to lead the British on a months-long chase up the western coast of South America and Mexico. But with his crew tired and his ships in need of supplies, the British were quickly closing open water by the time Pérez had made it to Point Conception off the California coast. In an effort to distract and confuse the British, he ordered the crew of the Halcón to sail into the protected waters of Morro Bay while the Inferno continued its route north.
The British, realizing the deception, but assuming the Crown were held in the Inferno, continued on. The fate of the Halcón has remained a mystery for the past several hundred years. Some claim they pursued the British and watched as Pérez and the Inferno were inundated with cannon fire, causing the sea cliffs in a small harbor on the Oregon coast to cave in around the ship. Others believe the crew of the Halcón purposely sank the boat somewhere along the jagged coastline of Big Sur - leaving its fabled treasure to churn below the rough seas.
But Pérez, not willing to have his riches fall into the hands of the British or into the deep abyss of the sea, had other plans. And so, as the feared Pirate Captain, Guillermo Pérez, also known by his long-hated nickname "One-Eyed Willy," instructed his men to dig tunnels to make their way out of the grotto the British armada had created around them, enacted his established protocol should he ever be separated from the Halcón.
Guillermo "One-Eyed Willy" Pérez never made it out of the cave. But on a tablet in the hold of the Inferno, he chiseled in a complex puzzle that would lead to the location of the Halcón.
---
Troy Perkins walked to the monitors in the Matuszak's control room. He straightened his tie and flattened his suit.
"There. That's where we're going," he said, pointing a finger at a gaping hole torn into the side of the Inferno when it sank some 30 years ago. One-Eyed Willy's treasure had been nothing but a thorn in his side since a group of kids discovered it a few decades ago. A series of events prevented his father's company from foreclosing on several properties and building a luxury golf course in their place. Instead, the company floundered, and it wasn't until Troy took over for his father a few years ago that he was able to begin to right the ship.
Now, aboard the Matuszak on an expedition his company helped fund, the tide was about to turn. Not only would he collect the remaining treasure from the Inferno, but he'd finally learn the location and fate of the Halcón and take that treasure for himself, too. Troy Perkins pushed Carnes' hand out of the way and drove Donner through the hole in the side of the ship and into the dark future beyond.
