John Ringo - To Sail a Darkling Sea

“But does it make sense to you, Shewolf?” Chen asked.

“Unfortunately, yes, sir,” Faith said with a sigh. “We’ll probably need support getting them down the ladders, though. And it doesn’t cover extracting the other refugees. But… Gimme a moment, please.”

She zoomed the image in and out then hunted around on it.

“Okay,” she said, finally. “This is still going to take at least all day. Maybe more. We go up the cliff. Ugh. Then we put in machine-gun points here, and here,” she said, marking two points on one of the condos. “That will give us coverage down this road here. Then we cross, go up this condo, which doesn’t have survivors but is the shortest distance, cut over to this one, which does have survivors, and extract them. Pretty much the same with this one to the left. Sir, we’re going to need all your ground capable security personnel to man these points and help extract survivors, sir. I’d recommend that the extraction in the second village be held until we complete this one, sir.”

“I’d agree with that, sir,” Lieutenant JG Elizabeth Paris said. The instant Lieutenant had been the sole survivor of her family on a sailboat. She’d been into sailing and boating since childhood, knew small boats and the ocean and was still sane despite her experiences. Now she was in charge of three.

“Concur,” Chen said. “I will manage the overall operation. Lieutenant Smith, Shewolf, will be in charge of the Marine force and primary clearance. Lieutenant Smith, Seawolf, will be in charge of the forward security teams and extraction. Lieutenant JG Paris, will be in charge of over the water extraction and the local security teams for that. Hand-off will be at the water. Seawolf will cover Avenue de Colon. Callsigns will be Team Shewolf, Team Seawolf, Team Paris. All clear?”

“Clear, sir,” Sophia said.

“Let’s start figuring out the teams and detailing it out as well as we can,” Chen said. “After all, we’ve only got all night… ”

* * *

“Ahem,” Olga said as the captains were preparing to depart. “Lieutenant Chen, sir?”

“Yes, Seaman Recruit Zelenova?” Chen said, formally.

“Since there is nothing to do for a while, would it be okay if I accompanied you to the Wet Debt ? I was wondering if I could play with your big guns. The Marines only gave me little guns and I’m longing for some big guns.”

“We usually fire in the morning… Seaman Recruit,” Chen said, rolling his tongue around in his cheek. He knew he was being played but sometimes being played wasn’t all that bad…

“Can’t I just… stroke the trigger on your guns a little , sir?” Olga said, coquettishly. “I really like to fire off big guns in the dark. Maybe with a little light… ”

“Sir, if I might suggest you just give in on this one?” Sophia said. “She’s really into big… She likes weapons, sir. And there’s no real issue with firing off some of the BMGs at night. The zombies don’t care. Sir.”

“All aboard, Seaman Recruit.”

“I just love being an Recruit,” Olga said, clapping her hands girlishly. “I like being trained. On the way over, perhaps you can teach me something about Seamen, sir… ”

* * *

“Ooooh,” Olga said, stroking the breach of the Browning machine gun. Her eyes were closed and she was writhing in time to the stroking. “Ooooh, ooooh… ”

“You wanna… ” Mcgarity said, trying to keep some professional demeanor. “You wanna… ” He finally just started laughing.

“I think I need some alone time… ” Olga panted.

“ You need some alone time?” Rusty said. “What about us ?”

“I dunno big boy,” Olga said in a perfect Mae West voice. “Is that a roll of silver dollars in your pocket or are you just glad to meet me?”

“So… ” Mcgarity said. “You wanna blow off a few rounds on the big gun?”

“I’m not sure I can get my mouth arou… Oh, you mean fire it?” she asked. “That would be swell !”

* * *

“Where’d you find her?” Skipper Poole of the Noby Dick asked.

“She was one of the chicks on the Russian yacht,” Chen said, sipping a beer. They were up on the flying bridge of the fishing boat watching the team prepare to fire. Okay, watching Olga prepare to fire.

“She’s a pistol… ”

* * *

Anarchy went through the procedures for arming and firing an M2A1 BMG Mod1 while Rusty opened up the battle box and got it loaded. The battle box was a customized water proof rounds case produced on the Grace Tan that held ten thousand rounds of linked ball. One of the reasons to use the fishing boats as gunboats, besides hard points, was that they could handle the weight of all the rounds.

When they’d all donned hearing protection and the gun was ready, Olga let loose a five round burst at the dimly visible cluster of infected on the shore. Most of the rounds were high but she didn’t seem to care.

“Oooh!” she said. She fired another, longer, burst. That one was on target. “Mmmm… ” she moaned. She held down the trigger…

“Oh, God! Oh, God! Yes, yes, yes! God YES, YES, YES, OH GOD, OH GOD, OH GAAAAAA… ”

She stopped firing when all the infected were clearly down.

“Oh,” she moaned. “I need a cigarette.”

“Seaman Recruit Zelenova?” Chen called from the bridge. “A moment of your time?”

* * *

When Olga got up there, Chen gestured with his chin for Poole to find business elsewhere and patted the vacated seat.

“Sit, Seaman Recruit,” Chen said. “You said you liked to be trained. Time for some training.”

“Of course, sir,” Olga said, throatily.

“That would be ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ ” Chen said. “I enjoyed, as any heterosexual male would, your little display. But this is not play time. This is professional time. Can you distinguish the difference?”

“Yes, sir,” Olga said. She’d dropped the accent.

“The display was more or less what I expected,” Chen said. “Which I didn’t mind. It was good for morale. All good. But tomorrow, you’re going to be over there,” he said, gesturing with his beer bottle to the shore. “With a bunch of other people. With guns. Surrounded by infected. Trying to do a very demanding and stressful job. People will be barking orders. Some of them conflicting. Things will go wrong. Problems will have to be solved on the fly. Even if things go wrong, people will have to stay focused. They cannot, absolute can not , be focused on Seaman Recruit Olga Zelenova and her shapely ass and legs. Which means that Seaman Recruit Olga Zelenova has to be a non-entity. Just someone to be given orders and obey them to the best of her ability without being Olga the Great and Sexual. The question, SA Zelenova, is can you do that? Because if you cannot, you need to be back on the boats, not on the land.”

“I can dial it down, sir,” Olga said. “I can even turn it off without… turning people off, sir. Yes, sir.”

“Good,” Chen said. “I hope you’re right. Because Petty Officer Mcgarity will be your boss tomorrow. And I need him thinking about the mission, not how he can convince you to get in a little quicky in an unoccupied condo. Cause sure as God made little green apples, the shit will hit the fan right when he’s thinking about it. And, Seaman Recruit, if you actually do bunk off for a little bunk time, or wall time or floor time, I will put both of you off these boats so fast it will make little blue Cherenkov radiation trails.”