Cruise to Pandora: Lucky & Led Cruise Ship Mystery Series

By David P Remy

Lucky & Led are caught up in another cruise ship mystery. Yes, Led sees the girl of his dreams aboard this very cruise. This time our characters become embroiled with a ghostly crew of pirates from a sailing vessel long ago sunken deep down in the Great Barrier Reef. All looks hopeless until the secret weapon brought on board unleashes the spectacular weapon of mass destruction. But, who is behind all this mischief? Could it be one of the ship's own? A mutineer? That's what our favorite cruisers are about to discover as they ferret through the off limits corridors in the belly of the ship. Enjoy the third in the LUCKY & LED CRUISE SHIP MYSTERY series as Lucky, Led & companion cruisers get a vacation full of adventure. Oh, by the way, will Led actually find and keep his girlfriend this time? You'll just have to download and read CRUISE TO PANDORA.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781623091330

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Candi and Bambi each slouched back next to each other wearing their matching chartreuse velour tops with the seat belt crossing over their midriffs accentuating the feminine positives. They possessed seats 23-D and 23-E with Mom and Dad commanding the bookend mid-section seats 23-C and 23-F. They were aboard Delta’s, formerly known as Northwest, formerly known as Northwest Orient, daily 747 service to Sydney, Australia. A relaxing fourteen and a half hour nonstop long haul flight extravaganza. As far as Daddy was concerned, the cost of the seats was the most extravagant part of the adventure.

You’ll live through this, young ladies, I assure you, the passenger in seat 23-F casually commented. The twins were frustrated…nothing new in their lives. Dad was the coach figure of the parental pair, a true motivator. The twins had long ago tuned him out…they remained intransigent in their chosen frustration.

Why can’t we get the Wi-Fi to work? Candi sing-songed. How can I do my research for all that homework I’ll be missing while I’m on this cruise?" Candi was the scholarly member of the twin team.

Right…how can I keep tabs on Randy? Bambi mimicked. And Bambi was the head and shoulders leader in the bimbo category. Identical twins strictly only in the physique category.

What kind of cheese you want with your ‘wine’, ladies? Dad snarled. Chuck Collins leaned forward and winked at his wife, Marge. I look at it as a golden opportunity for fourteen hours of quality family time. We lost a half hour, already. The twins were already sleeping.

Ensconced exactly three rows behind in row 26-C, D, E and F sat four extremely quiet lads dressed alike in a blue work uniform. Feigning just enough movement to prove that they were alive, the Malaccan looking men stared vacuously at the monitors on the seat back in front of them. The language selections offered were English, Spanish, German, French, Mandarin, and an Indonesian dialect spoken mostly in Jakarta. None of them were germane to their ears. The music selections also proved foreign to their hearing. So, they settled in watching the image part of the movie with a shared unspoken hope that the R-rated movies would fill their eyes with beautiful women and seductive scenes…no language skill required to understand those.

The giant 747 was filled almost to capacity. A profitable run for the airline, no doubt. Occupying two of the seats, Lucky Harris and Led Daley filled seats A & B in row 25. Led held his camera up to the window to catch shots of the cloud formations which were a few thousand feet below.

This is so awesome, Led cooed. I can’t believe that I finally got a chance to take this cruise with you, Old Man. I always dreamt of going to Australia.

Third time charm, my friend, Lucky responded. As pay back, I’ll be expecting a whole new level of respect from you from now on. No more of that ‘old man’ stuff.

Anything you say, Old Man…I mean, Reverend, Led grinned as he took yet another shot of a cloud formation. "I’m never sure if those are camulus-cirrus or numbus clouds, he offhandedly remarked.

Uhmm, that would be pronounced cumulus-nimbus clouds, Youngster. You need to watch the weather channel more astutely.

Yeah, yeah. I watch it if there’s a hot looking woman telling me about the temperature. That’s always hot weather forecasting to me. Led was expounding more on his favorite topic: women, girls, ladies, the fairer sex, the feminine gender and he occasionally used the arguably non PC term, chicks, as in chick-flick’, many of which were to be found on his instant queue with the movie service to which he subscribed.

OK, OK, enough, already. Let’s put your money where your mouth is this time. I’ll challenge you to come up with a really viable possibility for a continued relationship after the cruise. You seem to do pretty well while on the cruise, but not much follow through, as we say.

We? You got a mouse in your pocket, Old…oops, Lucky? Yeah, I admit the first couple of times were pretty much duds. The first one, Breath, she’s probably still in jail. The second one, Crystal Lee, well, she contacted me a couple of times, but that slowly fizzled out. I’m fighting a losing battle against the cruise mentality…all fun and games underway and then nada once the cruise is over. I’m finding out that long distant relationships are pretty much doomed.

We live and hope to learn, my friend. Lucky tried to doze off…at least rest his eyes.

The pilot had turned off the seat belt sign so Led decided to stretch his legs. As he strolled up and down the aisle. He walked forward and was thinking of climbing the steps up into the First Class section. That attempt failed miserably.

Oh, oh, nope. Not on your life, Young Man. No one is allowed up there unless they have paid the fare. The ever vigilant flight attendant caused Led to freeze with his foot placed on the first step.

Humbled with this defeat, he stepped back into the lowly Coach section and surveyed the various passengers as he looked for an interesting pose or two. He took several shots and then stopped. His viewfinder was suddenly filled with a most awesome heavenly vision…in stereo. Not just one beautiful creature, but two, and they were exact replicas of each other. How could God be so good as to make two perfect images? He had to snap more than one picture of them. A once in a lifetime chance to digitally record a miracle.

Just then the plane shook from a bit of turbulence and the seat belt sign was illuminated. The senior flight attendant announced: The Captain has turned on the seat belt sign. Please return to your seat and fasten your seat belts. Thank you. The flight attendant had done his duty on behalf of the FAA.

Back so soon? Lucky unbuckled his seat belt and got up to let Led slide into his window seat. He had earlier, in his mind, accepted the reality that he would not get much rest with Led popping in and out. Oh, well, the sacrifice was worth having the companionship.

Orders from Head Quarters. You heard the announcement. But, did I ever luck out. There are a couple of truly gorgeous girls a couple of rows ahead of us in the middle seats. And, I bet they’re twins, I kid you not, Led gushed.

I hear some of us come in pairs and even three of a kind or more, sometimes. Did you get their pic? You’ll only see them for another twelve hours or so in your life and the countdown is on.

I did, I did, Led tapped his camera. All wrapped up in my 32GB chip. But, better to have seen them once than not at all, right? You’re always going on about counting your blessings. Well, there are two big blessings in row 23. I counted them…over and over.

Lucky reclined his seat and attempted to doze off. He fell into a reflective frame of mind about his life and how he had managed to stumble upon this unbelievable good fortune. Following his retirement from the U. S. Navy chaplain corps, he had returned to his Dad, Colin Harris’, home area to become the administrator of a large retirement facility which once was a seminary; Lucky’s very own seminary, actually, where he had trained for his life as a minister. The seminary closed due to the dwindling numbers of new vocations to the ministry and was subsequently sold to a real estate conglomerate which converted old Saint Clairvaux’s into a retirement village.

Through a stroke of good luck, he had found out how to become a cruise ship chaplain and had been sailing with various cruise ship lines off and on for several years now. Lucky was a volunteer and one of the perks the cruise company allowed him was to take along a guest. So Led, Lucky’s ever industrious handyman found his opening to accompany Lucky as the guest on a cruise now and again during vacation time from his college courses and handyman jobs.

Lucky and Led met at their hometown airport initially. Lucky was a volunteer for the USO, the United Service Organization that helped military personnel while they were traveling on leave or change of duty stations. Led was a red cap working his way through college. They struck up a friendship and Led became Lucky’s handyman to help him around the house and yard. Little by little, Led coming to know of Lucky’s travels, found the time to accompany Lucky. Well, wiggled his way in. As he put it, it’s my opportunity to globalize my search for the perfect woman. The arrangement suited both Lucky and Led. It was all good.

Finally, settled into their seats, compliments of the pilot’s orders, Lucky continued to doze off. Of course, no such waste of time for Led. He automatically retrieved his iPhone from the carry on and began fumbling with the settings. After a couple of minutes, Lucky vaguely heard Led mumble something like, Why can’t there be Wi-Fi on this flight?

CHAPTER TWO

Watch out for that fork lift! The Hotel Director was screaming at the top of his lungs in his attempt to be heard over the truck noise on the wharf. The Reef Star was the ship scheduled by its owner, the Royal Danish Cruise line, RDC being its symbol on the world’s stock exchanges, to offer cruises in this part of the world…the down under. The ship’s name was extremely apropos as the itinerary included sailing around and within the Great Barrier Reef, the GBR, bordering much of the east coast of the island continent.

The Reef Star had just finished a dry dock period and had been refurnished and upgraded to the tune of $54 million paid for in U.S. dollars. No matter where in the world one traveled, English seemed to be the preferred language to be used among the multitude of languages spoken and the U.S. dollar was almost universally accepted. Though this remained a fact of doing business in the world at the beginning of the twenty-first century, one could still find a bit of the provincial or colonial attitude kneaded into the more exotic cultures when touching so many exotic shores.

As fitting a backdrop for the ship’s berth, more spectacularly than even Hollywood could invent, loomed the world famous duet of icons: the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera House. The ship was being brought back to life for the inaugural cruise following the ship’s month long embarrassment by exposing its naked keel for the world to see. So unladylike for a naval vessel possessing the heritage of the Reef Star. She felt her pride restored now since her privates were modestly under the vestment of the sea water again.

Samuel Thornton, the Hotel Director, was not used to being in the trenches, anymore. He was the chief department head, for god sake, not a common wharf rat. But, the success of this voyage would be the benchmark for the Cruise Critic articles sure to be written by the self ordained commentators entrenched on board…the Walter Winchell’s and Liz Smith’s, of our year 2012 and beyond…if these modern gossips had any say about the longevity of their prattle.

Samuel, a tall, rather broad in the shoulders, African-Brit, if Brits use the term, like the Yanks use African-American, had worked his way up the ladder, literally, a ship’s ladder. He had once been on the driving end of the very forklifts which he now commanded like they were a flotilla of destroyer frigates. The thousands of tons of stores and other supplies must be brought on board in the miniscule amount