The Admiral’s scowl deepened for a moment, then a grin broke past it. “By God. Amanda Garrett, you’re a provisional captain for less than thirty seconds and you’ve already got a handle on flag-grade politicking. Package accepted.”
Amanda nodded into the screen. “Thank you, sir. I hope I can manage the job.”
“I hope so too, Captain. Because if you can’t, then we’re all in a lot of trouble.”
As dusk started to settle, Rear Admiral Wilson Garrett, U.S.N., retired, ambled down toward the little combined pier and boat shelter on the bay shore below his gray ranch-style home. Standing on his short stretch of pebbled beach with his hands tucked into his jeans pockets, he scanned the expanse of Chesapeake Bay.
A lifetime’s experience of gauging maritime courses and speeds told the weathered and white-haired little man that it should be soon. And sure enough, after a few minutes’ wait he spotted the familiar white hull coming around the forested headland to the south. The Seeadler was running on her auxiliary engine, and there was only a single figure in her cockpit.
Wils Garrett found himself reflecting that it must have been an awfully long and lonely haul for that boy. As the sloop turned in toward his property, he crunched over to the dock to handle the mooring lines.
For a brownshoe, the lad was a good boat handler, and the sloop brushed against the pier fenders with hardly a bump. “How’d it go, son?” Garrett inquired, tying her off at the bow.
“No problem.” Vince Arkady vaulted up out of the cockpit and onto the pier with the stern line. “I just brought her up on the engine. I’ll leave the sailing to Amanda.”
“I know what you mean,” Garrett replied. “She has the touch for that kind of thing. I never really had the patience for it myself.”
Garrett caught the wisp of hope that drifted across the aviator’s face. “Is she here, Wils?”
Garrett shook his head. “No, son. She didn’t get home until about ten last night, and she was gone by six. I expect the same tonight. She’s hip deep in getting ready to hand over the Duke.”
Arkady straightened abruptly from where he knelt by the mooring head. “Give up the Duke? What are you talking about?”
“Eddie Mac Maclntyre’s offered her a new command. There’s some trouble on the African Gold Coast and they need her out there ASAP.” Admiral Garrett let his voice soften. “She’s gone, son.”
Garrett watched as the emotion played across Arkady’s face for a moment, then the guards of stoicism slammed down. “Yeah, I guess she is.”
Stiff-spined, Arkady reboarded the Seeadler to collect his gear. Keeping his peace, Admiral Garrett crossed his arms and leaned back against one of the dock pilings, watching as the younger man stacked his shaving kit, duffel bag, and roll of dirty laundry on the pier deck. It was never too good to push someone that full of feelings until he’d cooled a little. Garrett waited until Arkady had disembarked again before speaking.
“Ready for some words of wisdom yet?”
Arkady started to snap back, then caught himself. That wry smile that Amanda had liked so much crept back across his face. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I think I could really use some just now.”
Garrett nodded. “Okay, then here you go. There’s been a lot written about people ‘sacrificing for love.’ Well, let me clue you in — that’s a load of bullcrap. A good thing is where two people add to each other, not take away. If either individual is lessened by the relationship, then something is wrong.
“Now, you and Amanda have been damn good for each other. You love her and she loves you. It stands out all over the two of you whenever you’re in the same room together. However, I can tell you one thing right now, and this is from personal experience. While my daughter is one hell of a good naval officer, she would make one stinkin’ navy wife.”
Garrett straightened and hooked his thumbs into the belt loops. “I can tell you something else too, son. You have places to go and things to do yourself, for yourself. You would not be happy being a camp follower.”
It went quiet on the pier, with only the slosh of the waves and the creak on the pier dolphins. “So what the hell do we do, Admiral?” Arkady asked eventually.
“Son, I don’t know. That’s something the two of you have to work out. And I do not envy you the job.”
Arkady looked down at the pier decking, the evening breeze ruffling his hair. “It really stands out around us that much, huh?”
“Oh yeah, if you know what to look for. To tell you God’s honest, I was halfways figuring and halfways afraid I’d have a son-in-law when the two of you got back from this cruise.”
Arkady managed another wry smile and dig into the pocket of his jeans. His hand emerged with a small black velvet ring box. Thumbing it open, he studied the bright gleam of gold in the fading daylight. Then he turned deliberately and threw ring and box both as far off the end of the pier as he could. There was a final glint, and then they disappeared in a small splash.
“You know,” Garrett said mildly, “Amanda is a very practical young woman. She wouldn’t have minded you taking it back.”
“I know it,” Arkady replied. “But it’s like the reason they break the champagne glasses at the end of the toast. So they can never be used again for a lesser purpose.”
Admiral Garrett gave an agreeing nod. “I see your point. She is worth it, isn’t she?”
“Damn straight, sir.” Arkady began collecting his gear from the dock. “Well, I guess I’d better be getting out of here.”
“Don’t you want to wait and see her again before you go?”
“Nah, I don’t think so. It’ll be… simpler if I don’t.”
“I guess you’re right,” Garrett slung Arkady’s duffel bag over his own shoulder and they started up the path to the house. “But come on in for a drink first, anyway. She’s not going to be back that soon.”
All that lay before the big destroyer were the gray steel cliffs of the closed dry-dock doors, and the only vista that could be seen from her bridge were the waters of the Elizabeth River, sullen and murky beneath an overcast sky.
Not to Amanda Garrett, however. Sitting in the plastic shrouded captain’s chair, she could see many other things and times and places. There were the steel-colored rollers of the southern Pacific thundering eternally eastward through the gap of Drake’s Passage, the soul-piercingly beautiful flame of an East China Sea sunset, and the limpid blue of Mamala Bay with the snowy whiteness of the foam peeling back from the dagger-sharp bow of her ship as they headed out from Pearl.
“It’s time, Skipper.”
Ken Hiro’s voice returned her to reality. The bridge was a gutted skeleton of itself. The console chassis stood empty, stripped of its electronics. Bunched and coiled cable ends were taped to the bulkheads, and the air stank of fresh paint and arc welding.
Amanda slid down from the elevated chair and cast a last professional look at how the rebuild was coming.
The long foredeck of the warship gaped open. All three of the Duke’s Vertical Launch Systems had been unshipped. One would be replaced with the angled twin barrels of a l55mm VGAS bombardment system, the other two with augmented launcher arrays that would add to the Duke’s arsenal both the navalized variant of the Army’s ATACMS land attack missile and the Block IV Standard theater ABM.