The cargo ship Orpheila, in Tobruk harbour, is the target of a very gifted set of individuals. The prospective pirates are Mademoiselle Mimi Dubois, La Résistance fighter and mistress of skills; Miss Madeline Forsyth, SOE operative and a living shadow; Sven Hyse, Norwegian Resistance soldier and shapeshifter; and Doctor Jackal, timid physician with his less than timid friend Mister Hades.

Tobruk, Libya, August 1942

As Madeline continues to seek a route into the rear crew sections of the cargo ship I slide through the shadows towards it’s prow. I discover a set of four cabins, two of which are lit, I slide up the surface of one of the portholes and look inside. I see a man sat at a writing desk with his back to me, hanging on the back of his cabin door I can make out his coat and it clearly bears the insignia of a ship’s captain. Making a mental not of the captain’s cabin I move further forwards towards the structure at the very front of the ship.

The structure at the front of the cargo ship has three heavy doors, two of which are very obviously locked. Looking around, I spot a large seagull perched atop one of the ship’s communications masts. So Sven is still keeping an overwatch on things. I slide back across the deck, sticking to the deepest shadows and begin to glide up the mast by wrapping myself around it in a long spiral. As I near the top of the mast I whisper to the seagull the location of the captain’s cabin, and hoping that I haven’t just spoken to an actual seagull I start to descend once more.

When I am most of the way down one of the doors on the cabin doors at the prow of the ship opens and light spills out onto the deck. A sailor, with the air of an officer, walks towards the stern castle. I freeze, and hope that he doesn’t look up and notice the odd shadow wrapped about the mast. He doesn’t. As soon as he enters the stern castle I make the rest of the drop to the roof of the wheelhouse. I look back up and notice that the gull has gone. A moment later, and I spot another officer looking sailor walking back towards the cabins. Shift change I guess.

As I watch him walk towards his cabin, I notice movement near the captain’s porthole. I move so that I can get a better view and can see a large seagull perched on the edge of the porthole looking in. I carry on with my investigation of the cargo ship, I slide down the side of the sterncastle and in across the ceiling of what appears to be a chart room. I can see detailed charts of the seas around Tobruk harbour, a larger scale chart of the open Mediterranean Sea, and finally a detailed chart of the sea around the coast of southern Italy. That all ties in with our information of the ships planned route.

Believing Madeline to still be searching for a way into the rear crew quarters I focus my attention on the cargo bay. I am fortunate to find that the covers don’t fit very well and so there is enough room for me to slip in and across the roof of the main stowage area. The hold is eighty percent full, with at least a third of it being taken up by three gigantic fuel tanks. I get down to floor level and investigate the pallets of cargo. As we had been informed, it all seems to be dried food stuffs and machine parts. There is a single hatchway that leads from the hold towards the bow of the ship.

I look through the porthole in the hatchway door and the room beyond is in complete darkness. I solidify and turn the handle. The room beyond is filled with stowage cupboards filled with supplies to carry out basic repairs as well as tarpaulins and rope. There are also access hatches for the anchor mechanism and machinery. There is also a staircase that leads upwards, I head up and discover that it leads to the unlocked door in the structure at the prow of the ship. I retreat back to the cargo hold and very carefully draw out a map of what I have discovered. Once completed I retreat back to where Doctor Jackal is smoking in the shadows. Madeline, having found no way into the rear crew compartments, is already there and so with a quick wave at Sven seagull we then return to the safe house.

Once back at the safe house we discuss our next steps. I believe that we should slip aboard and stow away until we are out in the middle of the Mediterranean and then take the ship by force or subterfuge. Doctor Jackal believes that we should forge some travel documents and board at the last minute under the guise of Germans travelling to southern Italy. Sven and Madeline are not averse to either plan, and so the discussion circles for a while. Eventually we decided that if we are going to try and board the ship that we will need more detail and we will need an idea of what the papers should look like.

Sven transforms once more into a large raven and hops up onto the inside of the window, we open it and he flaps up into the night sky. Twenty minutes later he returns and informs us that the harbour masters is all dark and locked up. As Madeline is preparing the materials for forging some travel documents I shift once more into shadow form and slip out across the roofs of Tobruk.

The inside of the harbour masters contains an office running the full width of the building, with two doors leading further into the building. I search the outer office and find the harbour ledger, and after a few short minutes I find the entry for the Orpheila. It had docked empty two weeks previously and was due to sail on high tide at oh six hundred hours in two days time. The notes in the ledger were brief, but at least we now had confirmation of when the ship would set sail.

I moved through one of the doors into a back office, it was full of documentation with regards to the administration of the port. Shipping cargo volumes, port fees, time sheets and the like. But a complete lack of anything regarding the military operations moving through the port. Moving through a second door in the rear office I discovered a small kitchen and a toilet off of the interior corridor as well as a staircase leading to the upper floor. Upstairs consisted of three rooms. One of them was full of old and worn filing cabinets. They were wooden, and would once have been considered well made, but time had robbed them of any craftsmanship and they now seemed dilapidated. That, and the volume of undisturbed dust led me to believe that this room was not used.

The other two rooms on the upper floor were both offices. And not only that, but they were clearly the offices of German military officers. The papers on each desk pointed towards a Major Becker and a Captain Mayer. I quickly search both offices and turn up a pad of blank travel orders for military transport in the captain's office and a number of official looking stamps in the major’s. I steal a few of the blank travel orders, not enough to be noticed, and slip away once more towards the safe house.

I arrive back at the safe house not long before dawn breaks, the others have managed to get some sleep while I was on my nocturnal adventures and so I climb onto my cot and fall into a deep sleep as well. When I finally awake I discover that Sven and Henry have headed out to keep an eye on the Orpheila while Madeline has been had at work forging the travel documents. I spend most of the day resting, and just after eighteen hundred hours Doctor Jackal returns. Not long afterwards a large seagull lands on the windowsill and a few seconds later Sven is stood in our little room.

While Madeline is putting the final touches to the forged documents the discussion once again turns to how we are planning on taking the Orpheila. Yet again, Henry wishes to give the crew the opportunity of delivering the ship to Malta of their own free will. Possibly after we have bribed them. I, however, still believe that force is likely to be our only option. Sven then pitches in with;

A few deaths on their side might make for an optimum surrender.

That simple statement seems to end the discussion and we turn our attention to what both Henry and Sven observed during the day of watching the ship. It would appear that the remains of the cargo has been loaded and it looked like there was a change of watches about sixteen hundred hours. That, and the change of watch that we observed overnight points to an eight hour shift pattern with three watches in a day. With our estimation of twenty crew that puts six or seven sailors on each shift. That gives us a good chance of overpowering the crew if we are swift and decisive.

Our host, Ahmir, informs us that he is scheduled to make radio contact during the evening, and we inform him to say that we are on schedule. Madeline, who has been working all day on the documents, hands me the papers and informs us that all that is required now is the correct official stamps. As Madeline gets some rest, I prepare to head back to the harbour master’s offices. Just before I depart, Sven asks me to see if I can locate a ship’s manifest for the Orpheila while I am there.

Once inside the outer office I once again open up the port ledger and find the entry for the Orpheila. Next to it is a reference code that I realise refers to a file, I locate the file in question in the rear office and manage to locate the crew manifest. Quickly copy down the pertinent details, they are as follows;

Orpheila, Registered as an Argentinian vessel, Captain Santiago Garcia, First Officer Alvarez (pilot), Second Officer Fernandez (pilot), Chief Engineer Sanchez, Crew - Chief Petty Officer, two navigators, three engineers, five able seamen

Replacing the files as I found them I then move to the upstairs offices and after a short search find a couple of examples of the type of travel papers that Madeline has forged. I head for the Captain’s office and using his stamps, replicate them exactly on Madeline’s forged papers. I then slide back across the rooftops of Tobruk to the safe house. The Orpheila is due to set sail in just over twenty four hours.