John Ringo - To Sail a Darkling Sea

“So, we’d cleared the town . Freaking gunners had made piles of infected. But there were two little towns off to the side. And you know how the infected come to those flocks of seagulls.”

“Like, well, seagulls,” Lieutenant Volpe said.

“So we come around a corner and there’s, like, this wall of zombies,” Sophia said. “I’m in the lead in a little Toyota RAV4 with Rusty out the sunroof with the Singer and all I can think is ‘roll up the windows!’ For some reason, ‘open fire’ doesn’t even cross my mind. So, that’s what I say. ‘Roll up the windows! Back up!’ And I’m on the radio, ‘Roll up your windows, back up!’ And all of a sudden it occurs to me that there’s a guy with a machine gun stuck out of the sunroof for a reason … ”

“And they say you’re the smart one,” Faith said, shaking her head.

“Didn’t he open fire, ma’am?” Januscheitis asked.

“No rank in the spa,” Faith said. “Jan owes a quarter. Unless it’s one of the ones with a bazillion screaming zeds. Then rank is fine.”

“No he didn’t open fire, Jan,” Sophia said. “Because the Sergeant Major had been putting the fear of God into everyone. And, besides, it’s Rusty. He’s not the sharpest Halligan tool in the shed. So I kind of go, ‘Uh, Rusty?’ ‘Yes, ma’am?’ ‘You can open fire.’ ‘Oh, thanks!’ And it wasn’t even a real wall. About twenty. Rusty pretty much took care of it. I’ll leave the ground combat stuff to you Marines.”

“I was sorry to hear about Specialist Mcgarity, Miss,” Januscheitis said. “He was a good man.”

“He was,” Sophia said, taking a sip of wine. “For God’s sake, watch your step boarding.”

“Heh,” Faith said. “Watch your step in the bilges. I still think Pag pushed him.”

“Oh?” Sophia said. She really was tired of discussing her sole casualty. She missed Anarchy which was as much a reason not to talk about it as any.

“The bilges on these things are massive,” Lieutenant Volpe said. “I don’t think they used to be filled with sewage but they are now. And oil and occasionally zeds. So Corporal Derek Douglas has decided he is on a one man crusade to eliminate the word ‘zombie’ from the vocabulary. This is not a zombie apocalypse. These are not zombies. They are not the living dead and do not particularly eat brains.”

“The Gunny told him if he rolled his eyes one more time behind his back he was going to scoop them out and feed them to him,” Januscheitis said. “That was right after the Gunny had used the z word.”

“So there was a little ‘incident’ in the bilges,” Faith said, grinning. “They’d just popped a deck hatch to check a portion of them and Derek… slipped. Or, possibly, was pushed.”

“He wasn’t injured,” Januscheitis said. “He was just covered in oil and crap-filled water. Which since he was in the water got in under his gear. And it still stinks.”

“Which has got him to shut up about the zombie thing,” Faith said. “Thank God.”

“Oh, I can’t wait to get back to cruising,” Sophia said, leaning back in the water. “Looking for survivors, do a little fishing, clear some small boats, auto-pilot and just go !”

“Meanwhile, we’re going to be training on boarding from zodiacs ,” Faith said. “Which we’ll apparently be taking all over hell and gone. While you’re catching a suntan on your flying bridge.”

“You can catch a suntan on your zodiac,” Sophia said. “Of course, you’ll be being beat to hell while you do. Have fun.”

“I hate you,” Faith said. “I really do.”

“From what PO Paxton says about you, you should be the captain,” Sophia said, yawning and looking at the print-out from the new guy’s “nautical training course.” “Scored a ninety-eight on the written? That’s better than most of our pro captains. Better than I did.”

It was ten AM but she’d had a late night partying with the Marines. Even Faith had finally gotten into the act. Which sort of pissed Sophia off since Faith was a way better dancer. And she could drink better than Sophia, who had been practicing for God’s sake.

The new crewman was both fairly good looking for an older guy and oddly… unnoticeable. He should have been sunburned after going from a compartment to the nautical course but instead was just starting to brown. Eyes so blue they were nearly black, grey-shot black hair and she could look him in the eye standing up which meant he was short as hell for a guy. There was something about him she couldn’t put a finger on. She’d been raised to be a paranoid and compared to most of her generation she was. But in this case what should have triggered paranoia, “something odd,” was instead triggering a feeling of… relief? She had the oddest feeling that the man, unnoticeable though he might be, was going to be a real asset.

* * *

“I’m a quick study, ma’am,” Walker said. He was trying not to laugh at the situation.

“The only question I’ve got is can you take orders from a fifteen-year-old?” the girl said, looking up finally. “According to this, you’ve also got some civilian shooting experience and you’re a vet. Which is great. But I’ve been fighting this damned war since the last sign of civilization fell. So can you, will you, do what you’re told when a fifteen-year-old girl tells you to do it?”

“There was a saying in the Army, ma’am,” Walker said. “Respect the rank, not the person. But you have been doing this job the whole time and you’re still alive and sane. So I respect both. And I’ve taken orders from people younger than myself. Yes, I’ll follow your orders, ma’am.”

“Sorry,” The Lieutenant said, shrugging. “We got a guy came down with the prize crews and he did not have that attitude. Which was why I pitched him off my boat as soon as we got back. There can only be one captain on a boat. And they took most of my crew down in Gulmar. They’d been with me for months . Paula and Patrick went back to when Dad kicked me off the Tina’s Toy to take over a boat. I’m not handling the transition very well. But… Welcome aboard the Bella Senorita .”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Thomas said. He really was trying not to chuckle that he was now working for one of the youngest officers in the DoD. One of the youngest in history if his recollection was correct.

“If I may ask a question, ma’am?”

“We don’t usually stand on that much ceremony, Walker,” The Lieutenant said. “But go.”

“Aren’t you one of the youngest officers in Navy history?”

“There was a fourteen-year-old probationary third in the War of Eighteen Twelve,” the skipper said. “But my sister has him beat. There hasn’t been one younger than sixteen since. That young was more of a British Navy thing. They had a twelve -year-old Lieutenant put in charge of a prize crew during the Napoleonic Wars from what one of the Limeys told me. That kid had to be peeing his short pants. But, yes, my sister and I are sort of throw-backs. Da points out that this is also the smallest and most desperate the Navy’s been since the War of Eighteen Twelve.”

“A valid point,” Walker said. “But historically interesting.”

“We are living history,” The Lieutenant said, shrugging. “Each and every one of us. The founding fathers and mothers of a new nation. Which Da points out at every opportunity. Usually adding ‘conceived in liberty’ although we’re pretty much all stuck in conditions of tyranny. The next step is meet the rest of the crew. We also have a new quote engineer coming aboard. We’ll see how that works out. And Olga is staying aboard, thank God. That much I insisted on.”