SPENCER – a piece of micro fiction

Spencer, the name he currently went by, watched the ship through his telescope as she slowly worked her way up the Thames estuary. He knew the captain, Lawson, had been given command of the ship just for this voyage. Spencer also knew that Lawson was not on the ship. The planning had been meticulous. With this one action the navy would lose one of its larger warships. The ship was part of the fleet that had brought Charles and his brother back to England. Her loss would be a stab at the prestige of the navy. It would also make it a little easier for the Dutch Republic. Spencer smiled, his facial scar and crooked teeth giving him a somewhat diabolic appearance. “This would teach the English to seize Dutch shipping and then pay their own sailors with the loot they have taken.” A new war was coming; Spencer could sense it. He hoped he would be around to take part, but if not this would be a first blow. He looked again through the telescope; it should not be long now. So intent on the ship Spencer did not notice the English troops drawing nearby. When he did, he realised that he had been betrayed, but it was too late now. He dropped the telescope and tried to draw a pistol. He fell with three musket balls penetrating his torso. He did not die, then. But the troops could not understand why he smiled. The powder magazine on the ship blew. The side of the ship ballooned out and then with a blast that Spencer and the troops felt as well as heard the vessel lifted out of the water and disintegrated. Debris and bodies, and pieces of bodies falling around them. One of the troopers fell, pierced by a piece of debris, the others were stunned. Spencer, leaving a blood trail behind, crawled his way to the water’s edge and pushed himself, or fell, it was hard to tell, into the waters of the estuary. The End.