Crimson Tide
It was another splendid morning on the Maritime Line, and the railway was busy thanks to the tourist season and passengers who were crowding the trains with passengers.
One such formation was being worked by Charles and Sophie, where were double heading a much longer train. Charles, however, was not in too good a mood. "Why do they call it football?" he asked.
"Why does who call it football?" Zipp asked.
"These Americans," Charles said. "They call their sport American football, but the ball rarely if ever comes into contact with the player's feet! And for that matter the ball isn't a ball. It's an oblong. It shouldn't be called American football. It should be called American hand oblong."
"Doesn't really roll off the tongue, does it?" Sophie said. "That's why they usually refer to the place we were built as BRCW rather than Birmingham Railway and Carriage Works."
"And there's another thing!" Charles grumbled. "These players can't even pronounce place names properly! It's not 'Bir-Ming-Ham,' it's 'Bir-Ming-Um'. No ham involved! I sincerely hope these Americans don't import any more of their silly language to this country. I've had quite enough of people calling chips 'fries'."
Thankfully, Charles stopped after that. Now then, you are probably wondering why on Earth these characters are discussing American football. Well, that's quite the story.
Following several British sports networks acquiring the rights to broadcast American Football games, interest in the sport in the UK reached an all time high (even if many grumbled it was basically rugby with body armour). So much so, that British teams began to form, and one of these teams was the Whitechapel Brewers.
To play them for their first big televised game, an American team had been flown over to play them. Many people were excited.
"So, what's this team called?" Sophie asked.
"The Crimson Tide, apparently," Pipp said. "I don't know a huge deal about American football but apparently they're huge in the United States. They're attached to a school, apparently."
"Americans use the word school to mean university," Zipp said. "It can get quite confusing at times."
"I can tell," Pipp said. "I asked for jam one time in Strasburg. The waiter had no clue what I was talking about!"
As they rumbled along, Charles decided to crack a joke. "Maybe they'll have an egg and spoon race!"
"Do eggs and spoons race?" Sophie asked, choosing to play into the joke for a moment.
"The children race with eggs and spoons," Zipp said, with a frown. "And there was always one kid who glued his egg to the spoon and cheated. It was so annoying, especially as the school never did anything about it."
"I thought you two were privately educated," Charles said.
"Yes. Private school."
In the highlands of Scotland, something altogether different was going on. A Royal Navy submarine was prepring to leave the base for a new patrol across the globe.
The Captain took the radio. "Charlie Oscar, this is HMS Audacious. We are ready to commence our sea trials, over?"
"HMS Audacious, you are cleared to depart dock. Navigate to Marker Oscar Kilo and report sounding. How copy, over?"
"Charlie Oscar, solid copy. Out."
He placed the radio down. "All hands to stations. Engines to Half Ahead, Revolutions 1,000."
There was soon a familiar electric hum as the nuclear submarines' generators fired up, and the submarine got underway towards the first marker point. The small seaway had a few ships in it, but this wouldn't be too hard for a submarine to get around.
Little did any of them know, but there were traitors in their midst. And these people were about to turn on their own crew.
"Charlie Oscar, this is HMS Audacious. We have passed Marker Oscar Kilo. Preparing to dive, over."
"HMS Audacious, understood. Have a pleasant voyage. Charlie Oscar out."
The submarine began to descend below the waves- and then it happened.
The train had now stopped for a break, and the players had gotten out of the train for a quick rest.
"These trains are so cramped!" said one of the players. "Why couldn't we have taken a motor coach?"
"The British also seem to have tiny motor coaches," said another. "Everything about this country is smaller."
Pipp got out to talk with them. "A motor coach as opposed to what? We don't really use horse and cart anymore, although my mom can remember coal merchants using horses into the 1980s."
"You're American?" asked another player. "But I thought you were royalty!"
Zipp joined the conversation. "We're nobility, not royalty. That's the level below."
"Our mom's a duchess!" Pipp said, knowing that would excite them.
"Do you know the King?" asked another player.
"Err, no," Zipp replied. "That's several levels above us. The Dukes and Duchesses of Dorset are fairly near the bottom of the Duke pecking order."
"How can you be English nobility if you have American accents?" asked a fourth player.
"Simple, really," Pipp said. "Mom has a similar accent, which she picked up from the fact our grandmother was American."
Just then, there was a sound of slamming doors. "Looks like it's time to go again," said one of the players.
Pipp and Zipp reboarded their engines. "I really must ask them how scoring in their game works," Zipp mused to herself.
Just then, a coach roared by on a nearby road. It was also full of people, and they began to wave at the train.
Charles looked over. "The nerve they have, overtaking a passenger train! If it's a race they want, a race they shall get."
Utter chaos had broken out aboard the submarine. The captain was trying to make sense of what was going on. "What's happening down there?"
Suddenly, his First Officer turned to him, with a loaded gun. "We," he said, "are relieving you of your command."
"What is this, a mutiny?" the Captain said. "Well, not on my watch. I swore to defend this nation to my dying breath, and that I shall." He then hit a button on the desk that triggered an alarm.
The First Officer responded by pulling the trigger as more personnel flooded the bridge. "An exceptionally poor choice of words. Somebody silence that alarm."
A crew member turned the alarm off, and they shifted bodies out of the control consoles. "HMS Audacious is ours, sir."
"Excellent," the First Officer replied, and took his position at the periscope. "Ah. It seems somebody picked up that little alarm. There's a destroyer approaching our position."
"Shall we dive to avoid it?"
"No. The loch is too shallow for us to evade. Load torpedo tubes."
The display changed on the weapons platform from red to green.
"Tubes loaded."
"Lock target- HMS Duchess."
"Target lock error. Needs Captain's override."
The First Officer smiled. "That won't be too hard." He moved from his post, lifted the Captain's arm, and placed his hand on the fingerprint console.
"Target lock released. Awaiting fire clearance."
The First Officer looked at his display. "Fire."
"Roger. Torpedoes away."
A pair of torpedoes were discharged from the front of the submarine, and took a few seconds to find their target. Through the periscope, the First Officer saw both impact the destroyer, a pair of explosions blowing open the hull. Seconds later, the destroyer's magazine detonated, ripping the ship apart in a series of fiery explosions.
"Target destroyed."
The First Officer nodded. "Set a course for open seas. They can't detect us out there." He accessed a device and wrote a message.
Submarine secured. All glory to the House of Stuart.
A response soon came back. Weapons complement?
Trident missiles confirmed.
There was a short pause before the next reply. Excellent. You shall be rewarded handsomely for your service.
The express raced through the countryside, with the players onboard being bounced about like peas in a frying pan.
"This isn't a race!" Zipp said.
"It is now," Charles said. "The honour of rail is at stake, and I want it to be written in the history books that the train got there first!"
Unfortunately for him, there was engineering works on the way into London, and combined with the heavy rail traffic that normally permeates the capital this led to delays. Charles and Sophie pulled into the nearest station to the former Olympic Stadium, which was to host the game.
Charles saw the coach had already arrived. "We've lost," he said, despondent. "All that work for nothing."
Sophie tried to cheer him up. "It's not about winning," she said. "It's the taking part that counts. And the history books will remember that the train that carried the Crimson Tide to their first ever game in the United Kingdom was pulled by a pair of heritage locomotives!"
That, at least, cheered Charles up. "I guess it isn't so bad when you look at it that way," he said.
As the train was moved to the carriage sidings, the sounds of excitement filled the air. After all, when game day arrives it's hard not to feel the cheer!
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awesome chapter mate cant wait for the next chapter
Opaline beware we have waffles
Wouldn't it make more sense to only mention passengers once and not twice here?
who we're double heading a much longer train.*
I'm sorry to say that'll likely not happen Charles.
We call that jelly over here.
Oh boy...
As much as I want to ask how this relates to the chapter, but something tells me it has opaline written all over it.
Plus, winning isn't everything. Which ironically is the title for one of the chapters in the book I'm writing.
11854803
Bus!
11854805
Beware.
11854811
1. Possibly.
2. Ironically, your fix has a typo in it.
3. Huh.
4. Indeed.
5. Yes.
6. This is setting up the next section of the story.
7. Agreed.
11854906
2.
6. Got it.
11854921
2. Np.
6. This series is going places.
11854946
gotcha
11855030
Np.
11854758
I believe it.
Okay... I have no clue what to say in this chapter. I mean, it had 2 different subjects in it. One with sports, and the other, a conspiracy in the naval setting.
11855596
Cheers.
11855598
I'll admit this one was a bit different, but appears not to have worked. Oh well. You can't win them all.
11855634
But, I will admit, this was a bit better than most times I’ve seen someone try to utilize 2 different settings. Or 3, 4, or 5 all at once in one single plot.
11855635
Thanks. The next chapter should be rather more to your liking.
11855637
Sure.
But I will say, if it were up to me, maybe for the setting for the main cast to fit better with the conspiracy bit, maybe I would’ve had them trying to get more answers to the riddles they were given.
But still, I will give this chapter points in creativity, regardless.
11855639
Cheers. I'll keep this in mind for future chapters.
If they're Americans, they wouldn't call it a motor coach. They'd call it a bus. ...Sometimes an RV, but I don't think that's what he was implying here. Likewise, nobody here says lorries.
11877130
I'll admit I'm more familiar with American West vernacular, where the term is in more common use. Then again, coaches are called cars, trucks are called freight cars... it's all so confusing.
NGL, this chapter's a bit of a mess.