by John Ringo
Next up: Aubrey and Maturin. Which Walker said was more historically accurate. That should be interesting.
“Friday is low on fuel,” Olga said. “They’re officially declaring they need fuel.”
“How low?” Sophia asked.
“Three hundred and fifty gallons,” Olga said. “I figured it out. That’s about a day’s worth the way we’re going. Assuming they don’t have to make a speed run.”
“LeEllen should have called that in sooner,” Sophia said, frowning. “Okay, I’ll call it in to Flotilla. If needs be we’ll cross-load; we’re nearly topped up.”
* * *
When Olga had gone below, Sophia picked up the radio.
“Flotilla, Division Seven, over.”
“Seven, Flotilla, over.”
“One of our boats is nearly out of fuel. The other two are in good state but it’s been luck of the draw on finding boats with fuel and Friday drew the short straw. We can cross-load but we also are about topped up on supplies and have some passengers. Request permission to do a drop-off and tank run. Over.”
“Roger, Seven, I’ll pass that to the flotilla commander. Anything else, over?”
“Be advised, Friday is one day from dry and also low on water,” Sophia said. “Can cross-load to keep her running, but would like a reply as soon as possible. That’s it. Division out.”
* * *
“Division Seven, Flotilla Commander. Need to speak to your division commander, over.”
“Division Actual, aye,” Sophia replied.
“Cross-load fuel, then return main squadron for supply and passenger drop and tanking. Do you copy, over?”
“Return main squadron, aye. Cross-load for run, aye.”
“Take crew rest aboard larger vessels, then return to sweep. Flotilla out.”
“Woot,” Sophia said. “Back to civilization, such as it is.”
* * *
The first thing that was evident was the cruise ship M/V Boadicea on the horizon. In a sea of darkness it was the sole bright spot. As they closed with the squadron center, more ships became apparent. The Grace Tan. The diesel tanker Ho Yun. The Paul Østed. Other, smaller, support ships. Motor yachts in a ragged formation following along like attention deficit baby ducks. Zodiacs zipping between the ships even at this late hour. A Zodiac filled with a Marine clearance team passed a few miles to port, headed out for some heavy clearance.
“Squadron, Division Seven, over,” Sophia radioed when they were about five miles from the formation.
“Division Seven, Squadron. Switch to Forty-Six for Squadron Traffic Control, copy?”
“Switch Four-Six for Traffic Control, aye,” Sophia said, switching frequencies. “Squadron Traffic Control, Division Seven, three motor yachts, requesting orders. Be advised, one of us needs to tank, over.”
“Division Seven, TraffCon. Unrep not authorized at night absent emergency. Are you declaring an emergency, over?”
“Negative, Squadron. They can probably hang in there till morning. Request early tanking, over.”
“Roger, I’ll make a note. Come to One-one-four. Move to rear of formation. Join motor yacht contingent to the rear. Do not approach within one hundred yards of other motor yachts. Do not approach within two hundred yards of ships. Copy?”
“One one four, aye,” Sophia said. “Rear of formation, aye. Motor yacht contingent rear, aye. Do not approach within one hundred yards other yachts, do not approach within two hundred yards ships, aye.”
“We’ll try to get you tanked after dawn. I’ve made a note to unrep ops. Keep somebody on radio watch that’s actually on the radio. TraffCon, out.”
“Friday, Business, Bella, over.”
“Finally Friday, over.”
“Risky Business.”
“Follow me,” Sophia said, slowing down. “We’re to get behind the rest of the motor yachts. I’ve put in a request for tanking at dawn. No unrep at night. Friday, can you hang in there?”
“Should be fine, Bella, over.”
“They also don’t want us to be closer than a hundred yards to other yachts and two hundred from ships,” Sophia radioed. “Let’s try to actually look like we know what we’re doing. I’m going to come to One-one-four. Try to turn on the same spot I do and get right in line. Copy that, over?”
“Friday. We can do that, over.”
“Business. Let’s make a show even though nobody’s probably up at this time of night.”
“Try to maintain a line with regular interval even after we join the formation,” Sophia said. “Turning to one-one-four now.”
* * *
“Holy crap,” Ryan Reppe said, looking through binos at the approaching division. The master mariner was the midwatch officer of the deck of the Grace Tan and monitored TraffCon since it was where most mistakes started to show up first. He’d wondered when the division was going to turn but as they tracked like beads on a string, instead of heading to the rear like a gaggle of idiots, he was mildly impressed. “That division may know what it’s doing. Will wonders never cease?”
“Seawolf’s division,” Katie Phillips said. Phillips had been a deckhand before the Plague with some experience as a watch stander on large vessels. Ships like the Grace Tan and modern freighters were largely self-driving when at sea. They followed preprogrammed courses that only needed a human staying awake to watch for emergencies. She’d been with the squadron for two months, unlike Reppe and was now studying for her master’s ticket.
“Seawolf,” Reppe said. “Oh, the admiral’s daughter?”
“Commodore, sort of, but, yeah. She’s pretty good.”
“Hopefully they can figure out how to unrep without sinking their boat,” Reppe said.
“Seawolf could unrep at night,” Phillips said, shrugging. “And her captains could probably do the same . . .”
* * *
“Glad we’re not unrepping at night,” Sophia said, yawning. “Your conn, Mr. Walker. Try not to hit anybody.”
“Will do, ma’am,” Walker said. “Little breezy this morning. Mind if I take the mid-deck helm?”
“Not at all,” Sophia said. “I think I’m going to just hang out for a bit before I head below. It’s nice to see signs of civilization for a change. It’s going to annoy the hell out of everybody, but I want you to do radio checks on the thirty and hour with both the other boats. Nobody is going to go to sleep on this watch. And keep a check on Friday’s fuel. We should have cross-loaded more. If there’s an emergency, wake me up.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Walker said.
Walker did three checks on the other boats, then set the autopilot and made a quick trip to the galley for a cup of coffee. He checked their position and it was still tracking to the Grace Tan. Knowing what he’d find, he went up to the flying bridge.
The fifteen-year-old ensign was curled up at the helm of the boat, shivering slightly, sound asleep. He pulled a blanket out of a drybox and tucked it around her before heading below.
* * *
“Ma’am,” Walker said, shaking the ensign’s shoulder.
“Left, left, left!” Sophia said, sitting up. She rubbed her eyes and shook her head. “Fuck, I hate those . . .”
“Yes, ma’am,” Walker said, handing her a cup of coffee. “They are a bitch and a half.”
“Know any tricks to handling them?” Sophia said, sipping the coffee. She was gray in the predawn light.
“A few,” Walker said. “They don’t make them go away, just make them less horrible. If they work at all for you.”
“Later, maybe,” Sophia said. “What’s up?”
“Starting unrep ops in thirty minutes,” Walker said. “Most of the boats waiting are dry. We’re actually not scheduled until eleven hundred if, as they said, we get in then. The Friday thinks it has enough to make it to this afternoon. They asked if we had inventories, I said yes. They didn’t seem to believe me. Our first operation is passenger drop-off but we’re to use the offshores and take them to the Boadicea. Boat is wor
king fine, Batari is making breakfast.”
“I swear to God, Walker, I can get Da to make you an instant chief petty officer, at the least,” Sophia said.
“Oh, I’m not qualified to be a chief, ma’am,” Walker said, grinning. “I don’t have a coffee cup welded to my hand.”
“Okay,” Sophia said, looking around. “I’ll get everybody to get their paks ready. Since we’ve got time until unrep, we’ll get them fed first. That will take some of the strain off the rest of the squadron.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Walker said.
“Get some sleep, Tom,” Sophia said. “You’ve earned it.”
“I can keep going for quite a while, ma’am,” Walker said. “And you’re probably going to need help today.”
* * *
“Sunk Investment, Sunk Investment . . . What is it about ‘come up to our port side’ you don’t understand? We have guns and we will use them. Over.”
“Dry” turned out to be an understatement of the state of most of the boats in the ragged formation. During the night four had fallen out of formation when they had to shut their engines down and go to generator only to make it to morning. A smaller resupply ship, designed to support megayachts, had been running around behind the formation since dawn tracking them down and getting them fueled back up.
Two more were under tow having had “mechanicals” overnight. They were awaiting engineering survey crews from the Grace to determine if they could be repaired or would have to be abandoned.
And the resupply was not going quickly. The skippers and crews of the boats were rarely experienced and the little experience they did have was tooling around the ocean looking for survivors. Coming alongside a large ship for underway replenishment, not so much.
One thing that was holding things up was that there were some supplies to come off and some supplies to come on. Everyone was supposed to have an inventory of what was to come off and what was a critical resupply item. So far, few of the boats had had that. So as each came alongside there was an argument with the resupply crews about what needed to be onloaded and offloaded. The crews were particularly protective of their gathered liquor stores and virtually all of them wanted toilet paper and parts.
“Uh, Grace, our starboard side hull is sort of weak. We really need to come up to your starboard, over.”
“Define ‘weak,’ Investment, over.”
“We sort of have a leak there. The hull cracked when we were clearing another boat. We’ve got it glued with Aquaseal but it’s still leaking. Bilge pump is handling it but I’d rather not come up to port if that’s okay. Over.”
“You’re floating around on a cracked hull?” TraffCon screamed. “Stand by for lifting operations. We’ll take you aboard and check your hull. And you had better be serious or you’re not going to be a skipper anymore. Switch to fifteen for lifting instructions. Jesus, people. Tell us stuff like this first, okay? Finally Friday, Finally Friday, over.”
“Finally Friday, over.”
“Come alongside the Grace, our port, our port, do you copy, over?”
“Come alongside, Grace port, aye.”
“No cracked hull, Friday, over?”
“No, TraffCon, over.”
“Mr. Walker,” Sophia said. “Take the conn. I’m going to change into uniform, then get over to the Friday for their unrep.”
“Roger, ma’am,” Walker said, taking the helm.
“I’ll try to get back aboard before we come alongside,” Sophia said.
After a quick change and washing her face she jumped in the Zodiac and zipped up to the Friday as it was cautiously maneuvering up to the much larger ship.
She tossed the mooring line to one of the crew assembled on deck and boarded without asking permission. She was pleased to see that there were stores piled on the boat’s aft deck, ready for offload. Including liquor. If it wasn’t all the liquor, that was beside the point. They’d included liquor. No toilet paper, though.
“You taking over?” LeEllen asked as Sophia came up on the bridge. She was creeping up to the larger boat.
“Your boat,” Sophia said. “I’m here to smooth out any problems. That’s all.”
The crew already had every fender on the boat tied off on the starboard side of the motor yacht and there were more tied off on the Grace Tan. Port was the lee side, the downwind side, of the massive supply ship. If they were in a harbor, they could just have tied up to the bigger ship. The problem being at sea there were waves. The two ships could not actually tie up to each other. Unrep required that the smaller boat first tie off at a slight distance from the larger ship, then hold that position as the two ships moved along, side by side. The fenders were there to keep the smaller ship from being cracked like an egg if they did touch.
There were three yachts on the deck of the supply ship on cradles. From the looks of them, they were being refurbished to be added to the squadron. Sophia sometimes wondered if her da was doing this just to “own” more motor yachts than anyone else in the world. There were no open cradles so she wasn’t sure what the Grace intended to do with the Sunk Investment. From her experience with Skipper Buckley, sink it and fire him was the correct answer.
A dinghy came alongside and a team led by a man in his fifties clambered aboard.
“Who’s the skipper?” the man yelled.
“Here,” LeEllen said as the man came up on the flying bridge.
“I’m the away unrep boss,” he said. “Blake Parker at your service. I’ll take the helm. You run your crew. From now on, making sure you don’t sink is my responsibility.”
“Your conn,” LeEllen said, lifting her hands from the wheel.
“Any chance you’ve got an inventory?” the man asked as he expertly came up to the bigger ship. “On and off?”
“Here,” LeEllen said, pulling out a printed out sheet.
“Barry!” the man yelled. “Inventory!”
“Seriously?” the younger man said, coming up on the flying bridge and taking the sheet. “Roger, I’ll call this in.”
“They’re about dry,” Parker said, looking at the gauges. “Get the fuel hose over here first.”
He conned the boat up to the supply ship which threw a line attached to a rubber covered grapnel onto the sundeck. The unrep crew quickly got the line onto the boat, then used it to haul a heavier line onto the yacht. With that they got four lines aboard so that the yacht was essentially moored, at a distance, from the supply ship. By the time the fourth line was in place, the fuel hose was already being lowered from the supply ship.
“That is a well trained crew,” Sophia said wistfully.
“They should be,” Parker said. “We’ve been doing this enough. Who are you, Ensign?” he said, looking at Sophia, quizzically.
“Division commander,” Sophia said.
“Here to tell us what we’re doing wrong?” the unrep boss asked.
“Here to make sure my crews are doing it right,” Sophia said.
“So far so good,” Parker said. “You’ve actually got an inventory. That’s a big help. We used to tell the boats to bring it over when they joined so we could have stuff ready. Nobody ever had one so we gave up. We just do it on the fly, now. Pain in the ass.”
“All three of my boats have their inventories prepared,” Sophia said. “Would it help to get them over to your people?”
“A lot,” the unrep boss said, looking over his shoulder at her. He keyed the radio on his shoulder. “Charlie, Blake. This division’s actually got its inventories and stores requests. Want to send somebody around collecting them?”
“On it.”
“We do have some toilet paper,” Blake said. “One of the boats found a container that we could get to. But don’t ask for feminine hygiene products.”
“We’ve got some,” LeEllen said. “And the boats have been sharing around.”
“This boat’s got a problem with its ROWPU,” Sophia said. “We think it’s the filters but we haven’t found any that fit in our clearan
ce. Any chance you’ve got some of those?”
“Depends on the make,” Parker said.
“HRO,” LeEllen said. “Seafari mini. We think it’s the sea strainer rather than the osmo membrane. But we don’t have any parts for either.”
“Charlie,” the unrep boss radioed. “Got somebody can check out this boat’s ROWPU?”
“Not right now. I’ll put it on the list. What’s the make?”
“HRO Mini,” Parker said.
“Stand by.”
The unrep crew had brought over a set of cargo nets on a zip-line and were working with the Friday crew to move the material on the aft deck into it. As soon as one net was loaded, it was sent back aboard the ship on the same line.
“We don’t have any parts for a Mini onboard. I’ve got a couple that are in good shape and would probably fit. I’ll send Mellan over as soon as he gets freed up.”
“Okay,” Parker said. “You heard the man.”
“Thought that might be the case,” LeEllen said.
“You’re not asking for anything?” the unrep boss said, looking at a copy of the inventory.
“We’ve been salvaging a lot,” Sophia said. “And sharing around. And I told my people not to ask for stuff you’re not going to have. About the only thing this boat needed was fuel.”
“You, young lady, are a delight,” Parker said. “People are asking for fresh vegetables. Right. Like we’ve got those. We’re about done here. That your Zod tied up, Ensign?”
“Yes,” Sophia said.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll catch a ride to the next boat with you. We’re sort of overloaded.”
“Not an issue,” Sophia said.
The untie was done more or less in reverse with one line after another going back aboard the supply ship until the yacht was free. Parker maneuvered it away from the Grace until it was a hundred meters out, then lifted his hands from the controls.
“Your boat, ma’am,” the unrep boss said. “And I thank you for being prepared.”
“Thank you for a professional job,” LeEllen said.
“Call in to TraffCom for parking instructions,” Parker said. “Ensign, after you.”