Privateer Characters: Li Hua and La Contessa Valentina Setting: Aboard the MS Rhapsody, international waters Content: Fierceness. Murder and fire. Summary: Bad girls getting into trouble, making it worse for everyone else.
The regal looking and impeccably white MS Rhapsody had ten decks altogether. Decks one through three were off limits to passengers, except for a small boarding section on deck three where one first stepped into the grandeur from the gangplank, dedicated entirely to the mysterious workings of the Rhapsody's very drawn, taciturn and trustworthy staff. Five and six were largely private cabins, and four, some of six and seven were mostly dark on this journey. They housed shops for tourists to browse and hemorrhage their money, spas and pools and daycare centres; cruise line luxuries to keep a person distracted and absolutely relaxed for the duration of their thundering passage through the sea far below. Distraction on a cruise ship was less about distraction from the real life that a stressed, anxious, hard working and little thanked person chose to escape from by treating themselves to a cruise vacation, but distraction from the fact that they were surrounded by salt, which meant corrosion and eventual death for anything that touched it including the giant MS Rhapsody who's every spotlessly shined white surface degraded even as they stood on it, and the fact that a cruise ship was not built for seafaring so much as maximum capacity and maximum pampering. They don't carry as much fuel as they do shrimp cocktails and sacrifice plating that would withstand rough weather and high seas for pedicures. Very few people are ever as close to death as they are on a cruise ship.
It was decks eight and nine that were the real jewel of the MS Rhapsody. It was on these decks, great balconied expanses where one could circle and look down at the churning water so far below that the sound barely reached the observer, that the Rhapsody welcomed its passengers to dine, gamble, drink and dance; the deep carpets and sensuous desserts and switch of colour scheme from tropical salmon and lemon to rich wine and cobalt suggested these entire two decks might devolve into orgy with the wrong turn at the right hour. It was perfect.
The Rhapsody set sail from Madripoor with a bone-shaking thunder of its horn little more than an hour ago. Even with the moon high in the sky, floating serenely well above the thunder of the engines felt like being at the edge of the world, surrounded by inky blackness. All of the stars above were scrubbed out by a thick, tropical mist carrying an electric energy that put the passengers of the Rhapsody on edge as they breathed it in like storm-sensitive dogs, unable to ignore the impending rain. In her cabin, Li Hua let one of her sisters brush her long hair while the others retouched their make-up, all listening for what they would feel in their bellies as the engines cutting dead, and the signal for the party to begin.