John Ringo - To Sail a Darkling Sea

“Division, Senorita ,” Sophia answered in a Spanish accent. “Aqui, over.”

“Bringing up the gunboats. Squadron is punching down a Marine team. We’re to do the zombie boogie, primary clearance at dawn. Sending DivTwo down to the next cluster to check it out.”

“Roger, Division.”

“I wonder which Marines they’re sending,” Paula said.

“Three guesses,” Sophia said. “And Hope and Charity were unavailable.”

“Zombie boogie?” Olga asked.

“We crank the music all night,” Sophia said. “Have a party. Lots of lights.”

“Flares,” Paula said. “Fireworks if we’ve got ’em.”

“Then in the morning, well, party’s over, we politely ask any zombies who have turned up to lie down, be good zombies and enjoy their afterlife.”

“Now is when I would like to be on the gunboats,” Olga said as the boats began to jockey into position. “If I went over there and asked them nicely, do you think they would let me play with their big guns.”

“I’m sure they’d let you play with anything you’d like,” Sophia said. “You can probably stop by during the party.”

“So you’re talking about a real party,” Olga said, looking over at her.

“Pretty much, yeah,” Sophia said. “Booze, snacks, trying to carry on a conversation over the music cranked up to atomic level. There’s usually not nudity or anything. And since we’re as close as you get to the cops, you don’t have to worry about them breaking it up. But I need to get the boat turned around, now that the gunboats are in position. Have to have the speakers facing the beach, you know?”

Olga watched as the crews got the.50s set up and loaded. Then they opened fire.

The big bullets smashed the crowd of infected into zombie goo in seconds. The seagulls were properly thankful.

So were the people up on the cliff. They were waving fit to die. Olga could see that some of them were crying. Then someone apparently found some spray-paint and started waving a badly painted american flag. The stars were black dots but it was the thought that counted.

Olga waved to the group then realized she really should have put on some sunscreen.

* * *

“Division One. Captain’s call, Senorita, Nineteen hundred hours.”

“Paula, we’ll need to lay out some of the special stores.”

“On it, Captain.”

* * *

“Why am I not surprised,” Sophia said, drily, as Faith stepped onto the wash deck.

“Shewolf… Arriving… ” Olga intoned over the intercom.

“Oh, good God, sis,” Faith said, laughing. “You’re really going over the top, huh?”

“It’s a captain’s call,” Sophia said. “Should we be less than formal? I didn’t have a bosun’s whistle. I looked for a wave file on my computer, but the closest I could find was something from Star Trek. And it ain’t, actually, a bosun’s whistle. Now get out of the way, Lieutenant, my boss is coming alongside.”

“LitDivOne, Arriving… ”

“Hello Seaman Recruit Zelenova,” Chen said, waving at the girl on the flying bridge. She had at least donned shorts and T-shirt for the “captain’s call.” “Is she shooting for… ”

“Played Starcraft, have you, sir?” Sophia said, laughing. “Hey, Olga, give ’em the Valkyrie thing… ”

“ ‘Valkyrie … prepared,’ ” Olga intoned.

“Oh,” Chen said, bending over as if punched. “That accent. That’s not even Russian. It’s German or Swedish or something.”

“She used to do voice acting,” Sophia said. “And turns out she’s Ukrainian. Sort of. So, now that you’re here, sir… ”

“Let’s get started,” Chen said. “After you, Lieutenant.”

* * *

“One of the reasons to have this here is that Lieutenant Smith has the big plasma,” Chen said. The music was being pumped to the gunboats, which had been refitted with big speakers and was turned down on the Senorita so they could discuss the plan. “And we have actual intel this time.”

He’d already connected a laptop to the port on the TV and now brought up a video file. It showed the complex from a high, sideways angle. He froze it as it showed a group on the roof then zoomed in several times until their faces were clearly visible.

“Is this Predator, sir?” Sophia asked.

“Satellite,” Chen answered, drily. “Turns out it’s pretty detailed. But that’s not all. This is a recent satellite pass. They’re not moving them for stuff but they sweep constantly and they happened to be in the area. You’ve got no idea how big this video file is. Nearly a terabyte.”

He zoomed out until the roof-top was barely visible the pointed with his cursor and zoomed in again.

“There are rooftops, like this one, with plantings on them, here, here, here, here, here and here. Also in this small, unnamed town over to the side, here. There are two there and they have… ” he said, zooming in. “Catwalks between their buildings. This one should be easy. We’ll pull out the people with the security teams from DivTwo. The main town,” he said, zooming back, “is another issue. The Avenue De Colon follows the water line for about a kilometer then bends back up the hill and joins the Calle Juan Sebastien Alcano. Then about another kilometer to the first site. The entrances to the primary building seem to be on top. They are blocked to prevent entry of infected. There are three buildings that have survivors and they are all connected on top. There are two additional buildings nearby and, well, several in the interior. It is the determination of command that those cannot be cleared at this time absent this being an easier clearance than it looks. Lieutenant Smith… She wolf, any thoughts?”

“I saw the sub video when we got punched down here, sir,” Faith said. “This is bigger but not a lot. All I’ve got is the obvious. Land, grab some wheels, roll hot to the door, extract the survivors and roll back, sir. The one thing I’ve got is… Okay, couple things. You know, sir, and I know that with these screwy, twisty roads… Infected aren’t that smart, sir. Most of them are going to get trapped up on the cliffs trying to go straight for the lights. So we’re not going to get most of them down on the beach, sir.”

“Yes, I do realize that,” Chen said. “It’s one of the reasons that I contacted Squadron and asked for support.”

“And as we move along and engage, it’s going to attract more of them,” Faith said, taking a deep breath in thought. “We’re going to have to create fall-back points, move a team forward, have them attract them, bring them back to the defense points and engage. Then do it again. It’s going to be slow, sir.”

“If I may, sir,” Sophia said.

“ Sea wolf,” Chen said.

“Go straight, sis,” Sophia said. She took the cursor and went straight from the beach to the first set of survivors.

“That’s a two hundred foot cliff, Lieutenant,” Chen pointed out.

“No, sir,” Sophia said. “With respect. It’s a hundred and fifty feet of condo , a fifty -foot cliff and more condo, sir. The gunboats with security teams cover infiltrators down Avenue De Colon. Marines clear this condo complex,” she said, pointing to one at water level. “Then they send up an assault ladder from the roof, go up and clear that complex, if it has infected internal, then extract the survivors down. It probably has internal infected. Otherwise they wouldn’t be getting around with ropes on the exterior balconies, sir. But going straight means your supply and extraction line has less sides to get hit by the infected. Sir.”

“You just like that one cause you like to climb,” Faith said. “That’s your sort of thing.”