ShipLog Story: Two Sides of the Strait

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Piracy is often seen in black and white—criminals and cargo, threats and response. But behind every skiff is a story, and behind every decision on the bridge is a person weighing more than just protocol. This ShipLog story looks at the difficult, quiet choices that rarely make the headlines.

ShipUniverse Note

• This post is part of our Wednesday ShipLog Stories series at Ship Universe
• We spotlight the human side of the maritime industry through fiction that is based on real-world scenarios.
• For questions, feedback, or to share your own story, please get in touch with us

Hassan crouched in the doorway of the cinderblock room, watching his sister sleep. A low wheeze escaped with every breath she took. Her tiny chest rose and fell too quickly, like she was always catching up.

Samira was only six.

A cracked plastic fan turned slowly above them, pushing warm air in circles. Outside, goats bleated and someone argued over a diesel price, but in here, it was just the sound of her breathing and the quiet hum of worry in Hassan’s mind.

He was seventeen. Thin, quiet, sharp-eyed. He noticed things. Like how the pharmacist no longer made eye contact with him. Or how his uncle had stopped asking about school.

Their mother had died the day Samira was born. His whole life had become the space between that loss and this one.

She coughed in her sleep, a dry, painful sound. Hassan wiped her mouth with a cloth that had been rinsed too many times.

The clinic said the antibiotics were gone. Maybe next week, if the truck made it past the checkpoint. But she didn’t have a week. He could feel it in her hands—how cold they stayed, even in this heat.

He sat down beside her mattress on the floor, pulling the thin blanket back up to her shoulders. She stirred but didn’t wake.

Hassan looked around the dim room. One small window. A plastic jug of water. A torn schoolbook on the floor with her name scribbled inside.

He didn’t pray often, but he did now. Quietly, without words.

Samira breathed in again—shallow, rattling, uneven.

He closed his eyes.

Hassan didn’t remember much about his mother. Just a voice that hummed over boiling rice, a hand brushing his hair back before bed. She had died the day Samira was born, and since then, the world had been a long stretch of dust, hunger, and half-promises.

Now the village clinic was out of medicine again. The nurse didn’t meet his eyes when she said it. “Try next week.”

Next week might be too late.

He sat outside on a plastic crate, the photo of Samira warm in his pocket.

Farah found him there, as he always did—loud, confident, chewing sunflower seeds like he had all the answers.

“There’s a job tonight,” he said. “Easy one. A run at a slow ship. Nobody gets hurt.”

Hassan didn’t look up.

“They just want to scare the crew. You don’t even need to shoot. Just be on the boat. Wave the gun, and you get paid.”

Hassan said nothing.

Farah leaned closer. “I know you need the money. You think I don’t see it?”

It was true. The walls in their room were thin. Everyone heard Samira coughing. Everyone saw Hassan walking back from the clinic with nothing in his hands.

He closed his eyes.

“I won’t hurt anyone,” he said quietly.

Farah nodded. “You won’t have to.”

The bridge of the Horizon Vale had the stale chill of too much air conditioning and too little movement. Captain Elijah Renn stood with one hand resting on the edge of the console, the other slowly turning a pen between his fingers.

The new LRAD had been installed just days before departure. Compact, efficient, and fully within legal limits—on paper. At full strength, it could flatten a grown man with sound alone.

“System online and calibrated,” the tech officer had said. “Tier 2 setting per corridor protocol.”

Tier 2 was the sweet spot. Aggressive, but defensible. Loud enough to make someone reconsider, but quiet enough to avoid courtrooms and headlines.

Renn reviewed the alert from HQ. Another policy revision, this one dressed up as “tactical guidance.”

t was the usual double-speak. They wanted firmness without fallout.

Renn had served in the navy years ago. He understood force—but also when not to use it. That line got thinner out here every year.

Outside, the water stretched out in deep ink-blue. Calm seas, soft breeze, low swell. Perfect conditions for a fast skiff.

He sipped from a chipped ceramic mug. The contractors were already pacing the deck with rifles slung and radios clipped.

“Any radar under ten meters, notify me directly,” he said without looking up.

“Aye, Captain.”

Renn stepped closer to the window. Cargo secure. Crew steady. All systems green.

But the corridor ahead was marked in red. And if anything came out of that darkness, he’d have to choose fast—whether to fire, or wait.

Sometimes, there was no right answer. Just the one you could live with later.

The skiff rocked gently as the engine sputtered over the low waves. It was a borrowed boat, patched up with glue and wire, and the motor sounded like it could fall apart any second.

There were four of them onboard. Hassan sat near the bow, arms tucked in, one hand on the butt of a battered AK. It was sandy and rust-streaked. The magazine clicked loosely with every bump of the hull.

Across from him, one of the men, older, with a wild look in his eyes, was muttering something under his breath and tapping his foot against the floorboards. He hadn’t stopped grinning since they left shore.

The others sat in silence.

Hassan stared out over the water, his vision soft. The sea blurred into the night sky. His mind wasn’t here. It was back in the village, in a room that smelled of dust and boiled rice.

He remembered Samira laughing, her voice cracking from the cough but still trying to sing. She’d been drawing with a piece of charcoal on the back of a broken tile, sketching boats with wings.

Her hands were always cold now.

He blinked hard and shifted his grip on the rifle.

The sky had gone fully dark. Moonlight skimmed the water. Farah passed him a set of binoculars. Hassan lifted them to his face, trying to keep his hands steady.

There it was. Long, dark, heavy in the water. A cargo vessel, unescorted. Lights fore and aft.

“That’s the one,” Farah whispered.

Hassan lowered the binoculars and handed them back without speaking. The skiff picked up speed.

He looked down at the weapon resting in his lap. Then out at the sea ahead.

He thought of Samira again, how she used to say she wanted to see a real ship one day. A big one. One that didn’t creak.

Now he was about to try and climb aboard one, and nothing about it felt real at all.

“Contact. Thermal hit, port side. Five meters, moving fast.”

Second Officer Tran’s voice was steady, but a little too quick.

Captain Renn turned to the console. The target signature pulsed in red—a heat trace against the black sea.

“How fast?”

“Eight knots. Closing.”

He leaned closer. Small craft. No lights. Likely fiberglass hull.

“Put spotlights on them,” Renn said calmly. “Let’s see how they respond.”

The exterior lights snapped on in stages—halogen floods along the deck rails, bow-mounted beams cutting through the dark like blades. The ocean lit up in silver flashes.

The small skiff jolted in the beam, slowing slightly. Still on approach.

Renn opened the comm panel and keyed into the tactical systems.

Officer Tran looked over. “Command recommends full activation of the pulsed light deterrent. Documented effect profile: nausea, vertigo, confusion, possible visual impairment. They flagged it as corridor-cleared.”

Renn didn’t answer right away. He scanned the skiff again. No wake trail suggesting evasive behavior. No return flashes.

“They brandishing?” he asked.

“Not yet. But it’s close.”

He could feel the tension settling across the bridge like dust. The guards outside were already keyed in, waiting for orders.

Renn exhaled slowly. “Hold Tier 1. Keep it audible.”

Tran hesitated. “HQ said—”

“I read what HQ said.”

Renn stepped back from the console and folded his arms in silence.

The crew held their positions. The ship cut through the dark, systems humming.

On the screen, the skiff kept coming.

The sound hit like a wall. Hassan felt it before he heard it. His chest locked up, ribs buzzing, eyes watering from a pressure he couldn’t see.

One of the men screamed behind him and dropped hard to the floor of the skiff. Another clutched his ears, stumbling sideways.

Hassan leaned forward and threw up over the side. His stomach emptied in seconds. The taste of salt and bile mixed with the cold slap of ocean spray.

His grip on the rifle failed. It slipped across the fiberglass deck and rolled toward the edge. With barely a splash, it disappeared into the sea.

He tried to stand, but the skiff tilted under him. The world wouldn’t hold still. The noise from the ship had stopped, but the ringing in his ears kept pulsing like a distant engine. He moved a hand toward the side rail, missed it, and slipped.

His foot caught the edge of the skiff, then nothing.

Cool saltwater swallowed him.

The shock knocked the air from his chest. The sea gripped his shirt, pulling him down. He kicked, surfaced, and gasped just once before going under again. The weight of his soaked clothes and boots dragged hard. He clawed upward, broke the surface, then dipped again.

No one on the skiff saw it. They were still recovering from the sound, crouched low and shaking their heads clear. One of them yelled something, but not at him.

From the bridge, Renn watched the skiff in full floodlight.

He tapped the console once, zooming in on the overhead drone feed. One target had collapsed. Another had dropped his weapon.

“Kid fell. No counterfire,” he said quietly.

No one on the bridge moved. The sound of the LRAD still hummed low in the background, steady and controlled.

"Motion in the water," Tran said. "Port side, just beyond the skiff. Think someone fell in."

Captain Renn didn’t flinch. He stepped forward and leaned over the shoulder of the drone operator.

“Confirm visual.”

A few seconds passed, then a weak thermal signature pulsed near the skiff. Small, erratic.

“Light him,” Renn said. No one moved for a second.

The bow spotlight swung in a clean arc across the sea and away from the pirate boat. The beam landed on a splash, then found a figure—a boy flailing, half-sinking.

No gun. No aggression. Just arms and water.

One of the pirates on the skiff finally turned. They saw him and began shouting.

“Do we intervene?” Tran asked.

“No,” Renn replied. “Just hold the light.”

They watched in silence as the skiff turned, drifting back toward the boy. One of the men reached out and hauled him aboard.

Renn said nothing for a while. The bridge was quiet.

Then he turned to comms.
“Log it,” he said.

0419Z – Contact in water observed  
LRAD disengaged  
No weapons visible  
Illumination support provided  
No further action taken  

Salt burned his throat. Every breath scraped. He lay flat on his back in the bottom of the skiff, coughing water and gasping for air that didn’t seem to come fast enough.

Someone had yanked him from the sea. He didn’t know who. Maybe Farah. Maybe not. No one spoke.

The stars spun above him.

His shirt clung to his chest. His boots squished with every shift of his feet. He could feel his heartbeat in his teeth.

The spotlight from the ship still followed them. He didn’t look at it.

A wave slapped the side of the boat. Someone finally muttered, “You dropped the gun. You will pay us back.”

Hassan turned his head and spat seawater. His stomach clenched again, but there was nothing left to throw up.

He closed his eyes. All he could see was white light, all he could hear was the hollow pulse of silence after sound.

The motor kicked in. Someone aimed the skiff away from the ship, and slowly, they began to drift back toward the coast.

Hassan didn’t know if it was failure or mercy. He just knew he was alive.

Officer Tran glanced at him. “Think they’ll come back?”

Renn didn’t answer right away. He watched the radar screen as the blip faded to the edge of range.

“No,” he said finally. “Not that one.”

Tran hesitated, then said, “If we’d escalated... Doubt they would have turned back for the kid.”

Renn gave a small nod. “Situations like that... you escalate slow. Slow as hell.”

He closed the terminal and stepped out onto the wing of the bridge. The night was still. The ocean flat.

The LRAD was powered down. The deck lights dimmed.

The Horizon Vale resumed her course, and the ship moved forward like nothing had happened at all.

The skiff had made it back before sunrise. No one said much. They dropped Hassan near the edge of the village and kept going.

He didn’t ask about the pay. He already knew.

The rifle was gone. The job had failed. No cargo, no cash, more debt.

Inside the house, the fan still hummed in slow circles. Samira lay under the same blanket. Her cough was softer now, but still there.

He sat beside her and poured water into a chipped plastic cup. She drank a little, then fell asleep again.

Outside, goats wandered past the door. A neighbor argued over fuel.

Everything was the same.

A knot settled in his throat. Heavy. Bitter. It tasted like failure. It stung behind his eyes, but he wouldn’t let himself cry.

There was nothing left to do but sit still and listen to her breathe.

This ShipLog Story from Ship Universe, Two Sides of the Strait, reveals a side of maritime piracy that is often overlooked. It tells the story of a Somali teenager, forced into desperation, and a commercial ship’s captain who must weigh the difference between procedure and principle.

The story is not about heroes or villains. It’s about decisions. A captain chooses to slow escalation, despite orders to act more aggressively. A boy tries to survive a mission he never wanted to be part of. In the end, no shots are fired, but the problem remains. Behind every attempted boarding is a life shaped by poverty, fear, and survival. And behind every defense system is a decision made in real time by someone trying to get their crew home safe.

To explore the real-world tools involved in maritime security, the table below breaks down key piracy deterrents and their effects on human targets, especially in cases like the one portrayed in the story.