With the heavy weight of the doubloons secured against his hip, Hugo's heart finally found a steady rhythm. He didn't return to the center of the tavern to join the drowning roars of the pirates; instead, he slipped out the side door and made a straight line for the Sea Serpent.
The ship was a silhouette of jagged lines against the moonlight, quiet save for the rhythmic creaking of its timbers. One or two watchmen were slumped against the rail, their heads nodding in a drunken stupor. Hugo moved past them like a ghost, retreating to his cramped, salt-stained cabin. He knelt by his bunk and shoved the two leather pouches, the one containing his earnings and the one containing Barbossa's predatory loan, deep into the straw of his hammock.
Lying there in the dark, the hammock swaying gently with the harbor's pulse, Hugo found no sleep. His mind was a storm of calculations.
Barbossa's greed was more blatant than Hugo had anticipated. The seventy-thirty split was an insult, a clear sign that the old pirate saw him as a lucrative tool rather than a partner. But Hugo was a pragmatist. He knew he needed the Sea Serpent's deck, its cannons, and its seasoned, bloodthirsty crew to act as his initial platform. He needed a foundation before he could stand on his own.
The condition he had forced upon Barbossa, that Hugo alone would choose the next target was his only real leverage. He had to present a prize so massive, so tantalizing, that Barbossa would be blinded by the glitter of it. He had to make himself indispensable, ensuring that even after the gold was counted, Barbossa wouldn't dare slit his throat for fear of losing the next fortune.
Hugo closed his eyes, searching his memories of the future. What was his true advantage? It wasn't just his ability to read a current; it was his knowledge of history. The Caribbean of this era was a graveyard of legends, but Hugo was the only man alive who knew which of those legends were made of solid silver.
The Black Pearl? No, she was a ghost story wrapped in a curse, and her current whereabouts were a deadly enigma. The Aztec Gold? He shivered; that was a one-way ticket to a colorless, tasteless eternity. The Fountain of Youth or Poseidon's Trident? Those were myths for dreamers and madmen. He needed something real. Something heavy.
Names of famous shipwrecks from the Age of Discovery flashed behind his eyelids like lightning. The Spanish Treasure Fleets, laden with the stolen wealth of the New World, only to be scattered by the wrath of the Atlantic...
Then, a name surfaced from the depths of his memory.
The Santa Trinidad.
She was a legendary behemoth of the Spanish Silver Fleet. According to the records Hugo had studied as a navigator, the Trinidad had deviated from the main shipping lane to evade a pack of English privateers. She had blundered into a treacherous, uncharted stretch of water known as the Razor Reef and vanished without a trace.
In the twenty-first century, her salvage records had been a sensation. The gold coins and silver ingots registered in her manifest were enough to stabilize the economy of a small nation. The reason she remained lost for centuries was simple: the currents around Razor Reef were erratic, and the reef itself was a labyrinth of jagged limestone that didn't appear on any 18th-century chart.
But Hugo knew exactly where she lay. He knew how the currents had shifted over the centuries and how to navigate the "blank spots" on the map that terrified other mariners.
This was the perfect lure. It was a prize great enough to drive Barbossa to madness, yet hidden enough that Hugo was the only key to the lock. The dangerous navigation required to reach Razor Reef would only further cement his status as a "Sea God."
With his plan solidified, Hugo's mind finally quieted. He drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep, the clinking of doubloons echoing in his subconscious.
Early the next morning, as a bruised purple dawn began to bleed into gold over the harbor, Hugo took the fifty doubloons and returned to the Port Authority. He didn't bother knocking this time. He pushed open the door to Clark's office with the confidence of a man who owned the world.
Clark was hunched over his desk, mid-yawn, his eyes bleary and rimmed with red. He started at Hugo's sudden entrance, his mouth hanging open. "You... what is--"
Hugo didn't waste a breath on pleasantries. He slammed the heavy leather pouch onto the mahogany desk. The sharp, musical clack of fifty gold coins was the only introduction he needed.
Clark's eyes bulged. He snatched the bag, upending it onto his desk. He counted them with trembling, ink-stained fingers, his lips moving in a silent, greedy prayer.
"...forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty." Clark looked up, his previous contempt replaced by a fawning, oily smile that made Hugo's skin crawl. "A prompt payment, sir. A very prompt payment. The Sea Fairy, was it? I shall finalize the registry immediately."
He deftly retrieved the deed from a stack of yellowed parchment, his quill scratching across the surface in a frantic, flowery script. He pressed a heavy wax seal onto the bottom, the red wax still warm when he handed it to Hugo.
"There you are, Mr. Hugo. She is yours. May she... well, may she stay afloat long enough for you to enjoy her."
Hugo took the parchment. It was a thin, fragile thing, but it represented every scrap of his labor and his growing debt to a pirate. In the owner's column, his own name sat in crooked, hurried ink.
As his fingers brushed the paper, the "Great Navigator" system surged to life in his mind, more vibrant and urgent than ever before.
[Verification: Sloop "Sea Fairy" (Critical Damage)]
[Ownership Confirmed. Legality: Absolute. Spiritual Bond: Initiated.]
[Prerequisite Met: "Classical Shipbuilding" Technology Tree... ACTIVATING.]
It's done.
Hugo suppressed the urge to roar with triumph. He gave Clark a curt nod and walked out of the building, his pace quickening as he headed toward Berth Three. He didn't look back at the Sea Serpent. He headed straight for his wreck.
He reached the northern end of the docks, where the Sea Fairy sat tilted in the muck, her broken mast pointing at the sky like a shattered bone. To the rest of Tortuga, she was a joke. To Hugo, she was the beginning of an era.
He jumped onto the splintered deck, the wood groaning under his weight. He stood at the center of the ruin, clutching the deed to his chest, and closed his eyes.
"Activate," he whispered.