Below decks

HMAT Tyche – Mary Protandry’s Quarters – 15 September 1946 – 1447 Hours

Mary Protandry unfastened her coat with careful fingers, hanging it neatly on the hook riveted into the steel wall. The cabin smelled of old oil, wet rope, and the sharp bite of iodine. It was the proverbial sardine can.

Fifty crew, four hundred and fifty passengers, all crammed into this smelly, leaky metal shell for the two months it would take to travel down the east coast of America, through the Gulf of Mexico to the Panama Canal then back over the pacific to Melbourne.

A voyage where men outnumbered women ten to one. She was already feeling overwhelmed by the unwanted male attention. Even if she found a woman amenable to her charms this ship would never allow for a discreet romance. She sighed in mild frustration. There were hardly enough woman on board for her liking, and then of those that might possibly enjoy her company, few would be inclined to her rather unique sexual kinks. She didn’t just dress in a masculine way, in the bedroom she preferred to play an ultra dominant role…

The refrigeration crate sat in the corner — a battered Navy-issue Kelvinator unit. It thrummed quietly, its insulation straining against the heat of the Atlantic crossing.

Inside were vials of Penicillium cultures. Not the weak laboratory strains of Oxford or Maryland, but fierce, wild variants, scraped from soil in Malaya, New Guinea, the jungles of Burma. Strains that had thrived under the careless boot of the Japanese Empire. Strains that promised new, more powerful forms of penicillin.

Mary checked the seals, reassuring herself that the temperatures were holding, and closed the hatch with a click. She had barely turned when there was a knock at the door. Sharp. Measured.

“Coming,” Mary called. She brushed dust from her skirt and opened the door. Standing before her was a man sculpted for propaganda posters. Something in her bones screamed danger. It wasn’t just the Walther PP he casually held aimed at her - but that helped. It was his arrogantly superior expression.

Blond hair parted with military precision. A square jaw. Eyes the glacial blue of a sunlit glacier — bright, merciless. His smile was wide, teeth flawlessly white and utterly disturbing in its insincerity. We wore civilian clothes — grey almost black suit tight across his broad shoulders. European and expensive. Mary intuited that he would look much more at home in a black Hugo Boss tailored Schutzstaffel uniform.

Two men flanked him — one rougher, heavier in dressed like a Dockworker, cap pulled low carrying a long canvas bags that sagged heavily, the other was Irwin, scared and meek, almost effeminate, dressed in a trousers and white shirt.

“Guten Abend, Fräulein Doctor,” the blond man said, his accent smooth, aristocratic. “I am Kruger Gasspuk.”

Mary blinked. “I don’t know you.”

Gasspuk’s grin widened. “You will.”

The docker thug dropped his bag and drove the barrel of his submachine-gun hard into her side. Cold, greasy metal pressed hard through cloth.

Gasspuk stepped closer, and without pause produced a long, curved knife from inside his jacket. A blade used for slaughtering pigs. The steel caught the cabin light with a vicious gleam. “I’ll make this simple,” he said, voice low, honeyed. “The samples. Now.”

Mary tensed. “Over my dead body.”

Gasspuk chuckled. A sound as hollow as the grave. “Let’s not be so dramatic. You stole them. I will steal them from you. I’m a pragmatic soul. We don’t need to make this unnecessarily messy. Do we?” He seemed like he would enjoy making it messy. He nodded. Irwin pushed past her, heading straight for the refrigeration crate. The second goon stood guard at the door, fingers tapping against the canvas strap of a machine gun.

Mary moved to intercept but Gasspuk seized her wrist. He twisted cruelly, spinning her into the wall with brutal ****. She struck face-first, pain flaring white-hot through her shoulder and temple. Blood trickled from her scalp.

Gasspuk pressed close. His breath smelled of cigarettes “There, there, Fräulein Doctor,” he murmured. “It will be easier if you do not resist. But it will be more fun for me if you don’t.”

The words chilled her worse than the knife blade now tracing the neckline of her blouse, moving down and cutting buttons off one by one. Kruger grinned as he saw her brassiere.

Irwin stuffed the precious vials into a satchel, “let’s get out of here,” he said in German. “If she’s dead or injured there will be trouble. Come on.”

“A moment…” Kruger said as he slipped his knife up between her breasts and cut her bra in half, her breasts spilling free. “We have time to tie her up… gag her and have some fun…”

Mary’s vision blurred. Panic clawed at her throat. She had to act — but how? Her mouth opened for a scream just as she heard boots hammering on the steel deck. A voice, Australian, barked from the hallway: “You forgot one thing, Fritz — Me.”