“. . Pag, go see if you can get one of those cargo-handlers moving. We’ll jam it up against the door… And pick up some more seven six two… ”
“Oh, God. Oh, God, yes. YES! YES! YES!”
“Roger, Division, breaking contact now… ”
“Now all I need to find is a container-load of shoes… ”
* * *
“Good Lord,” Paula said. “That’s gorgeous.”
The long-sought dress was basically red but the holographic silk changed it to rippling cascade of different shades from pink to burgundy.
“Can you alter it for me?” Faith said. “I got it sort of large… ”
“Easily,” Paula said. “We’ll need some time to do a fitting.”
“Annnd we have more,” Januscheitis said, patiently gesturing to PFC Kirby who was more or less invisible under a pile of fabric.
“I figured you were about Sophia’s size,” Faith said, pulling the dresses off the PFC. “There’s a bunch… ”
“Ahem. LT? Now that we’ve got that emergency fixed?”
“Oh, yeah, the liner,” Faith said, grumpily. “Right, where’s that techy? We need to see if we can get the port side embarkation ramp open and the starboard side closed… ”
* * *
“Are you sure that door’s going to hold?” Dougherty asked, nervously, looking around the interior of the cruise liner. He’d puked, again, when he had to walk nearly knee deep in dead bodies just to get to the hatch controls.
“No,” Januscheitis said, sighing. “But we’ve got it chocked, braced and a cargo handler jammed up against it. And the other door is open and tied back. If the first one fails, well, they ain’t getting’ past the second.”
“If the infected get into that cargo container, every woman in the Fleet will tear you apart limb from limb, Staff Sergeant,” Faith said. “You’re not a woman. You don’t understand.”
“No, I don’t, LT,” Januscheitis said. “But we were fine giving you cover fire while you found a dress. And it’s damned pretty, ma’am. It will look good on you.”
“Thank you, Staff Sergeant,” Faith said, giving his arm a punch. “Sorry I went a little nuts back there.”
“No issues, ma’am,” Januscheitis said. “It’s sort of why we follow you around.”
“So… What do you need to get this hatch open,” Faith said, pointing at the offending hatch, “and that hatch closed?”
“Power,” Dougherty said. “And some time and tools. And not having to worry about getting eaten by zombies would help.”
“Get the pierside hatch closed and you’re golden on that one,” Faith said. “But it would be nice if we didn’t have to fight out way out of the ship to get back to the boat so… water side open first, maybe?”
“I’ll go get some tools… ”
* * *
“The pier side embarkation doors are closed all three liners,” Lieutenant Chen said. “And water side are all open. Infected have been cleared from all embarkation areas and the pier has been somewhat secured against infiltration from the city.”
The rest of the Squadron had arrived just before dawn. Captain Smith had called for a “command and staff” meeting at 0800 hours to prepare for clearance of the vessels. Given that getting the embarkation areas of the liners was the most critical step, things seemed to be going well enough.
“Reconnaissance and clearance has been conducted on the supermax up to the level of Deck Five. Ground team commander?”
“It is believed that stores were being prepared for distribution either to passengers in cabins or to secure areas,” Faith said, looking at the notes that Januscheitis had given her. She was really uncomfortable speaking in public and especially to the “command and staff” meeting. She’d never met half the people there including the new senior Marine, she was bleary from sleep deprivation and she was terrified she’d look like an idiot. Which led her to read slowly and in a monotone.
“The stores were stockpiled in the embarkation area. Most of them were in non-metallic containers so the infected were able to… access them. This led to high levels of infected in the embarkation area. The watertight doors between the embarkation area and the atrium on Deck Five were all open. Continued infiltration of infected into the embarkation area led to a decision to commence clearance for the purposes of finding the entries and securing them.
“Infected subjects were found in all areas up to Deck Five. There were indications that there is a significant infected presence above and below Deck Five as well as on Deck Four, the embarkation level. Primary watertight doors leading to the embarkation area were closed and partially secured. The doors don’t have manual dogs on them, it’s some sort of electronic locking mechanism, so the best we could do was jam them shut.
“On the other two liners we started by finding and shutting the doors, first, then entering with technical personnel to get the embarkation hatches switched around.” She paused and her lips worked for a second. “By midnight, all embarkation areas were converted to water-side entry. Significant infected levels, in excess of the Boadicea, were found on all vessels. No evidence of survivors. However, penetration was limited to embarkation areas and immediate surroundings.
“I would like to commend Mister Gregory Dougherty, engineering mate from the Garcia, on his ex… emplary actions in getting the doors switched around often under conditions of some threat. That concludes my report.”
She sat down quickly.
“I know that you have the word ‘exemplary’ in your vocabulary, Lieutenant,” Steve said, drily. “But that really didn’t sound like your writing.”
“Staff Sergeant Januscheitis has been training me on… military report writing, sir,” Faith replied. “But in this case, yes, the Staff Sergeant pretty much wrote the report, sir. We got the doors configured by midnight. We were still picking out and clearing infected on the pier at one. There were a bunch of the little bastards. The Staff Sergeant and I worked on the report last night but I think I passed out around four. The Staff Sergeant shoved the report into my hands on the way to the meeting, sir. I really don’t know what I’d do without the Staff Sergeant, sir.”
“So you’re working on, what, two hours sleep?” Steve said. “Remember the thing about no more than twelve hour’s clearance a day, Lieutenant?”
“That would be on me, sir,” Chen said. “We were trying to prepare for the arrival of the Squadron. I wanted things to be in place so you could begin clearance ops without issue.”
“And it just took longer than we’d thought, sir,” Faith said, shrugging. “I didn’t go into detail on getting the doors configured. We had to have a generator to run them. And every time we cranked the generator, we’d find we’d missed a damn hatch and, hello, here come a bunch of fricking zombies! Then Greg would dive for cover while we fought out way through the infected to the hatch we’d missed and get it closed. Or hatches in one case. So it just took a long time.”
“You’re off duty until tomorrow morning after this meeting,” Steve said. “As are the rest of the members of your team. We have sufficient Marines for this clearance and I’m not going to have you or your team clearing in your condition.”
“Yes, sir,” Faith said. “I can still clear, sir. Meetings not so good but I can clear in my sleep. But for my team I thank you. They really busted their… butts yesterday. Sir.”
“Before Lieutenant Smith leaves, any questions? Captain Wilkes.”
“Any intel on the ships other than ‘there’s lots of infected,’ Lieutenant?” Wilkes asked.
“We found a security point on the supermax, sir,” Faith said, tapping the report. “There are the usual brochure maps and one detail map that covers the non-passenger areas, sir. We also recovered several keycards, one of them a senior purser. They give access to some areas. We found one door we couldn’t open but… That’s as far as we got, sir.”
“Numbers?” Wilkes said. “Useful intelligence?”
“I’ll cover that, Captain,” Captain Smith said. “For your general information on clearance of a large ship, you can never determine numbers of survivors or infected until you open a hatch, Captain. Infected only need water. They’ll eat each other if there’s no other food source. If there are reserves of water, you can expect infected. So when you analyze the map, assume infected in any area with fresh water sources. Survivors are generally, not always, found in areas with food storage below the fresh-water tanks. Otherwise, your guess is as good as anyone’s.”