“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 working 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.