“There are people in the water, XO,” Ops said, looking through binoculars.
“They’re alive?” Sara said. “How could they still be alive after this long in the water?”
The lieutenant looked at her. “It’s only been ninety seconds, Captain.”
Sara looked at the clock. He was right.
“Damage control, report,” she said into the handheld.
“Damage control reporting, Captain!” Chief Moran yelled over the handheld with the sound of rushing water in the background. “The bow’s all torn up! The portside bow is buckled all the way back to the collision bulkhead! We’ll shore it up, slow down the flooding, but she won’t last long, especially in heavy seas!”
“Understood,” Sara said. “Carry on.”
“Aye aye, Captain!”
She went back into the bridge and got on the pipe. “All hands, all hands, this is the XO. Brace for collision, I say again, brace for collision. We have sustained serious damage to the bow and we’re going to put her ashore so we can keep our feet dry. This is the last time, folks, I promise. Grab hold and hang on, it won’t be long.”
She went back out on the starboard bridge wing. They were proceeding in reverse back down Resurrection Bay and into the cove formed by the middle and northern peaks on Fox Island. There was a good beach there, made of nice, solid gravel with a steep incline that Sara hoped would serve to adequately ground the Sojourner Truth and keep her from sinking altogether.
The cutter was shuddering, as if with disbelief at this outrage perpetrated against her. Sara rested her hands lightly on the railing. It was folly to anthropomorphize wood and steel, but she heard herself whispering anyway, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
She was facing aft, in the direction the ship was traveling. The northeastern point of the island began to curve around the ship in a granite embrace. The beach was rapidly approaching. “Tommy?”
Tommy’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “All hands, brace for impact, I say again, brace for-”
Sara grabbed the railing, braced her feet, and held on.
The propellers hit first. Sara was knocked off her feet by the vibration. The keel hit next in a grinding, shrieking protest of steel over rock.
In her mind’s eye Sara followed the action in the engine room as the EO pulled all the stops and ordered his crew out in case of fire or flood or both. She pulled herself upright. “Tommy, let go the anchors!”
There was no corresponding reply. “Tommy! Let go the anchors!”
Tommy’s head poked out of the hatch. “Uh, we can try, Captain. But…”
Sara met Tommy’s apologetic expression and realized that when she ordered the Sojourner Truth to ram the Star of Bali the anchors had probably been pushed into the emergency bulkhead along with the bow. She staggered forward and looked out over the bow to see the deck crew clinging to cleats and stanchions. The Sojourner Truth’s hull settled.
And then there was silence.
The chief picked himself up off the deck, looking white and shaken. “I don’t ever want to have to do that again, Captain.”
“Me, either,” Sara said, trying to smile, and then turned away quickly, before he could see the tears in her eyes.
MUSTANG SUIT OR NOT, Hugh was already numb with cold when the life raft exploded out of the water not a foot from his head. Floating on his back, he watched it shoot into the sky, where it seemed to hover for a moment or two. It fell back into the water with a mighty smack.
It took a moment to realize that salvation was at hand. When that moment came, he paddled clumsily over to the raft and began a laborious ascent over its side. Every muscle screamed as he hoisted himself up with the aid of the rope threaded around the raft’s gunnel. As he was somersaulting inside he saw with mild surprise that another man was climbing over the opposite side of the raft.
They tumbled in together and lay on their backs, staring at the sky and gasping like stranded fish. Hugh raised his head and looked at the other man. He looked familiar. It took a while-everything seemed to be moving in slow motion-but eventually he figured out why. “Why, hello there, Mr. Fang,” he said, and then had to repeat it in Mandarin.
Fang’s face twisted. Hugh tensed instinctively. If Fang had had a weapon, he would have killed Hugh on the spot. Instead, he doubled over and began coughing up seawater.
Hugh relaxed again and lay where he was, wondering somewhat dreamily if perhaps he should search the raft for some way to restrain the pirate. He didn’t want to move, though. He was just starting to warm up.
A shadow came up beside them and belatedly he became aware of the sound of an engine. Something hit the side of the raft.
“Hey,” someone shouted, “grab the line!”
He looked up to see a row of faces peering down at him from the side of a small cruise ship.
He blinked at one of them. “Lilah?”
A FISHING BOAT SKIPPERED by a crusty old fart was the first to arrive off the Sojourner Truth’s bow. He’d never seen anything like it in all his born days, nosireebob. Oh, it was a woman commander? That went a long way toward explaining things. Our tax dollars at work. Sure, he’d let someone board to use the radio. The deck crew jury-rigged a bosun’s chair and Ops slid down in it to the fishing boat and disappeared into the old fart’s cabin.
After the first flurry of orders, Sara subsided into her chair on the bridge and watched numbly as the crew went about the tasks of making the ship as secure as possible and to alert command to their present location. Any minute now she expected to see a fleet of aircraft coming over the horizon like the leading edge of an invading army. She ought to go below, inspect the damage, check on the injured.
Hugh was gone. No matter how many times she repeated the words she could not quite believe them. Hugh was gone, and she was alone. No more shared suffering through required parental visits home to Seldovia. No more fights over who had to move where when one of them got transferred. No more quickies in hotel rooms.
No more Hugh. How could she still be breathing? How could she still be here, when he was not?
She became aware of the tears running down her face and of Mark Edelen standing nearby, looking helpless and not a little frightened. “XO-”
“Let her alone.” Tommy’s voice was almost unrecognizable, rough and loud. “Just let her alone, Chief.”
So they did, leaving her bent over in the captain’s chair, tears dripping off her chin and into her lap. After a while she stopped seeing them as they moved around her, stopped hearing their voices when they spoke.
Sometime later she felt a tap on her shoulder. She looked up to see Ops standing in front of her with a concerned look on his face. His mouth moved, but she couldn’t make out the words. She shook her head tiredly and put up her palm to fend him off.
He wouldn’t go. She knew a tiny spark of anger, immediately quenched by grief.