Dutch Harbor Alpha

No bear belonged on a boat. Neither did an eagle, a wolf, and whatever Frank’s animal was. That’s what Adam was thinking as the 108-foot trawler heaved and dipped in the treacherous Bering Sea. The ancient, malfunctioning engine had shut down again. The noises from below were absent, which created a surreal lull in sound with the ocean raging around them. Knuckles white on the trawler’s navigational joystick, Adam Bershov held his breath and did a slow count in his head. One…two…three—if the motor didn’t catch soon—four…five… With a screech and a jolt, the engine kicked back in. Adam released his breath and eased his stranglehold on the controls. A twenty-foot swell of icy seawater crashed over the main deck. Ephraim and Frank had braced near the winch for the direct hit, but Caleb struggled to hold his footing, one hand tangled in a crab pot, the other arm spinning a cartwheel for balance. Once the boat crested another swell, Adam moved Night Shift forward to the next trap in the long line of crab pots. Adam crossed his fingers and prayed the engine wouldn’t give up the ghost before they’d hauled in the final pots. The boat was smaller than most commercial crabbing ships and was a total piece of junk no other captain would be caught dead in. But beggars couldn’t be choosers. If polar bears had long tails, his would be been tucked between his legs when he’d met with Richard Beaner, the owner of Night Shift. When Richard had shown him the decrepit trawler, Adam had nearly choked. Inside, Adam’s bear had bristled, a sure sign of disapproval. The exterior looked like it was held together by rust, and the interior was filthy. Beaner had told him to take it or leave it, but the ship came as is. The deplorable conditions were at the top of the list of reasons his new crew of shifter fishermen bickered so much. The bunkroom was tight and smelled like three-day-dead halibut. Adam had taken to sacking out in the wheelhouse. And the galley was ill-equipped with only one working stove and oven. Adam’s hand had trembled when he signed the contract. But once he’d committed to assuming the role of captain, he dove in. First thing he did was place a Help Wanted ad in several newspapers using the corporate name, Grendel Unlimited. Grendel had long been a code identifiable to shifters like him. It had been the fastest way to find shifters willing to work with other shifters. The world knew of their existence, but Adam, for one, was hesitant to flaunt his true nature among non-shifters. He had nothing against them, but had subscribed to the belief that the less known about him and his bear, the better. After placing the ad, he’d rented a dilapidated house in Unalaska and converted the bedroom to a dormitory to house the crew he’d planned on recruiting. Although the house had seen better days, its location southeast of town put them right up against the foothills. He hadn’t counted on the men he recruited being slobs, or having to be a den mother to them all. “Watch what you’re doing, will ya?” Benjamin, or Ben as he’d asked to be called, bellowed above the wind, drawing Adam’s attention. Water ran off his blond Viking-style beard, and he wore an old woolen cap to protect his head. Ben had just arrived back on deck after fixing the motor again. Frank had been breaking up the ice forming on the deck and had jabbed Ben in the chest with the shovel handle. Ben pushed Frank in the back, so Frank deliberately jabbed the handle in Ben’s face. The gesture might have appeared more threatening if Frank weren’t wearing one red boot and one yellow. The mismatched pair had bald patches on the soles. The yellow one had a hole in the heel, and every time a wave crashed over them, water that had gotten inside leaked out the back, as if the boot was taking a piss. “I was here first, you dumb bear. Why don’t yaou f*****g watch where you’re walking?” Frank flipped a finger in the air. Scowling, Ben turned his back on Frank and slipped across the icy deck to help Ephraim prepare to haul up the next pot. Both men began waving their arms frantically, as if they were arguing about the best way to snag the mooring line attached to the location buoy. Adam shook his head, discouraged. He reached for the Rubik’s Cube he’d set aside when the engine failed earlier. He’d found trying to solve the puzzle calmed him. The crew would figure out their s**t soon enough. The snow crab, or opilio crab season, opies for short, couldn’t be a bust. They all needed the money from what he had hoped would be an abundant haul. But only he and Ben had fishing experience, a fact that worked against them. They were now on their last lines, and the crab hold was barely half full. Adam muttered a plea under his breath that the upcoming pots had more crabs in them. He’d followed his, or rather his shifter intuition, when choosing spots to drop the steel and mesh traps, but had doubted his decision before the first pot even crashed into the water. His shifter senses had been great when he’d been working on his family’s seal boat out of Adak, the farthest west outpost in the Aleutian Islands. As a polar bear shifter, Adam trusted his hunting instincts with seals. But crabs were entirely different sea creatures, a species that existed completely submerged for all their lives. And YouTube videos and reality television shows couldn’t teach instinct. “I can’t let them all down,” Adam murmured, but his voice was lost in the roar of the wind. He tossed the Rubik’s toy aside and returned his attention to fighting the controls to maintain his course despite the harsh northern wind determined to push them back. The bow of the ship dipped low in the trough between swells, and Adam’s gut lurched. Worst roller-coaster ride he’d ever been on. He gritted his teeth against the boiling nausea. He didn’t just worry about himself. His whole crew, all greenhorns except Ben, had staked everything on this operation. They’d all been desperate to earn money to support their families back home. They’d pawned everything they could, begged for whatever their packs and clans could spare, and made their way to Unalaska to try their luck with him. Every morning Adam woke with an ache in his gut and a heart heavy with doubt over their chances of success. And that was just on the mornings when he managed to sleep. Most nights, he lay awake, worry eating at him like a shark ate away the carcass of an orca—one excruciating gobble at a time. “Ho, Daniel!” Ephraim shouted from below, waving an arm wildly at the fourth deckhand. “Get ready. Another pot coming up!” “Ready!” Daniel shouted back as he scrambled into position on the far side of the sorting table. Adam’s acute shifter hearing allowed him to detect the windblown conversation as if the men were in the wheelhouse with him. He could also smell the salt from the sea, the snow in the air, the briny aroma of fish and crab in the ice forming on the deck equipment. Fortunately for him, his inner bear also functioned as a furnace, keeping him from shivering in the thread-bare peacoat he’d bought at a secondhand shop in Anchorage. The bridge heater had crapped out four days into their trip, but Adam had instructed Ben, the boat’s engineer, to focus on keeping the ship’s motors functioning. It was more important they stay afloat and return to Dutch Harbor. “f*****g Richard Beaner,” Adam muttered. He’d known what shitty condition this ship was in and probably laughed, knowing whatever they made, most would go to him. And Adam was a bigger f*****g i***t for signing the contract. He pushed the power control into a lower gear. Technically, he should idle the engine, but he feared that if he did that, the motor would stall again. “Here we go!” Ephraim, dressed in a patched green slicker and fire-engine red oilskin pants, hurled the grappling hook into the surging sea and snagged the line attached to the crab pot. Holding his breath, Adam leaned forward in his captain’s chair, eyes trained on the line Ephraim was hauling in hand-over-hand. It was one pot, he told himself. It would be stupid to get his hopes up based on the contents of a single trap they pulled from the sea. Ben was now on the crane, gathering the cable in. Gears on the winch howled, as if in protest of the heavy load, made heavier by the ice on the lines and rigging of the crane arm. A shout went up from the deckhands as the top of the cage came into view. Adam surged out of his chair, craning for the first view of the pot. “Saaaweet!” The tasseled pom on Frank’s orange stocking cap was lost to view as he hauled the bright red float device clear of the gunwale, dropping it on his foot and stumbling on it as he reached overhead to help guide the half-loaded pot onto the ramp. The cage swung wildly as a wave crashed over the railing. Before the crew regained control, it veered around and bonked Daniel in the head. The wolf shifter staggered backward and lost his grip on the guide rope just as they wrestled it into place on the unloading ramp. The corner of the cage slipped and landed heavily on Ephraim’s foot. “Son of a biscuit eater!” Ephraim hollered, hopping around on one foot. “Control that fricking-fracking line, or I’ll rip your head off and spit down your neck. Holy bone-crushers!” Adam grabbed the microphone and shouted, “Come on, you guys. Get it together. We only have seven minutes before we hit the next line.” He pushed the boat faster, praying the engine didn’t cut out again. He seemed to be doing a lot of that lately. The crew continued to shout at each other, disrespectfully drowning out Adam’s orders. Christ on the cross, they had to work better as a team if they were going to survive as a crew. Ephraim and Daniel managed to stop arguing long enough to swing the pot back into place. The steel frame of the door clunked as Caleb unlatched it and flipped it open. Ben operated the lever to raise the ramp, tipping the contraption to a forty-five degree angle. The crabs spilled out onto the stainless-steel platform, the only new thing on the junky boat. Caleb slipped on an icy patch, barely holding his footing as he slid across the deck to help sort the crabs. Females and young crabs not of legal size were culled and tossed back overboard. Watching the deckhands sort the crab made Adam’s bear hungry, but he shoved the desire away. Later, when they were on dry land, he’d let his animal run free and head to a faraway, unpopulated cove where he knew salmon was abundant. Until then, he’d fuel his body on the ramen noodles and mac ’n cheese in the galley below. “Fifty-seven,” Ephraim shouted triumphantly. A grin spread over Adam’s face. Maybe this season wouldn’t be a bust. It was the largest pot they’d hauled yet. Once it was emptied, Daniel shoved the coiled rope and buoy inside and then slammed the trap door shut with a clang. Ben engaged the winch, and the cage spun as it was lifted free of the ramp. He swung the pot off the ramp, sending it toward Daniel to be stacked until it was needed for the next line. He and Caleb guided the cage onto the stack of other empties they’d already retrieved while Ephraim prepared to cast out the hook for the next pot. “Great job, crew,” Adam yelled over the loudspeaker. Below, he noted rare smiles on the guys’ faces. Hope buoyed in Adam’s chest like the bobbing orange and white striped float they approached on the heaving sea. If their luck held, and the rest of the pots in this string were similarly loaded, there might be a chance they’d hit their quota. The boat climbed a large wave, then pitched precariously down into the trough. When the bow submerged, Adam had to fight for control again. On the open deck, the crew grabbed onto rails and equipment to keep from being swept overboard. Adam’s chair in the wheelhouse shimmied violently. An ominous boom resonated from below deck, and the ship shuddered to a halt. “Motor’s blown!” he shouted over the PA. “Ben, get down there and get us restarted.” He’d wasted his words. Ben had already dropped into the hold. Without power, the boat was a victim to the waves, pitching and heaving as each one crashed against the hull. He barely had any control of the rudder and were in danger of capsizing. Even if they all shifted into their animals, chances were strong not one of them would survive the Bering Sea in January. Adam fingered the marine band radio, praying hard he wouldn’t have to put out a distress signal. But the safety of his crew was more important than his unwillingness to divert other ships from their jobs to come rescue them. Instead, he used the intercom to talk to Ben in the engine room. “Talk to me, Ben? Can you fix it?” Ben just grunted in response. As much as Adam wanted to push him for reassurance, it was best not to distract him while he was working. On deck, the hands were still clinging to whatever they could find to avoid being tossed into the sea. The boat reeled again, the bow twisting around ninety degrees. The compass needle on the control panel swung wildly. “Cap’n Adam, you gonna be able to straighten this out?” Caleb shouted over the wind as he wiped seawater from his face. At this distance, Adam saw the man’s teeth chattering. Caleb was possibly the least equipped of all of them. His oilskins were two sizes too small, and the jacket had a rip along the seam under the arm. As Caleb fought to keep his balance, the white lining kept flashing. His long blondish-brown hair was in a ponytail and looked like feathers in the wind. “Don’t be fuckwit, bro. Adam’s got this,” Frank said, tossing a salute toward the bridge. His words were sure, but his tone was laced with skepticism. “Now, back to work with you. That bait ain’t going to cut itself.”  “Daniel’s on bait!” Caleb’s features were sharp and defined, definitely angry. “Will you dimwits quit fighting?” Ephraim said. “Once we’re off this stinking pile of poo, you can go at it to your heart’s content.” Daniel laughed. “Stinking pile of poo? Who the f**k talks like that?” Ephraim, his glasses fogging in the cold, scowled at Daniel before turning his back on him. Hanging on tight with one hand on the railing as the boat rocked perilously in the angry Bering Sea, Daniel thumped his belly with the other and started singing. It took Adam a moment to recall the name of the song, “Sloop John B,” especially since Daniel had changed the words to suit their situation, singing nonsense verses about the nasty conditions of the boat. When he got to a musical description of the head, a toilet on a boat, laughter spread among the guys. At least Daniel was amusing, if not an asshole most of the time. “Ben, what’s going on?” Adam asked again as the boat heaved up one particularly large swell. The Rubik’s Cube slid down the counter and was stopped only by the lip built into the surface for just these types of conditions. “Almost there,” came Ben’s reply. Angry banging sounded over the walkie-talkie system, accompanied by colorful language. “Fingers crossed. I’m restarting now.” Adam held his breath. Nothing happened. More colorful swearing and lots more banging followed. Adam reached for the boat’s VHF radio once more, and his gut clenched as he prepared to call in the SOS. Most of the other crews had been decent, giving his guys old oilskins or heavy-weather gear. But Adam had been monitoring the other boats’ positions and, unfortunately, the Cash Cow was the closest to them. That crew struck Adam as bullies and worse. Ben’s voice came over the handheld radio. “Okay. Trying again.” The engine ground out a frightening noise, like metal on metal, once…twice. After a loud bang, Adam finally felt the vibration of the humming, working motor under his feet. The rest of the crew felt it as well, and a happy roar went up, along with one excited victory screech from Caleb. Twenty-five more pots to go.