John Ringo - Under a Graveyard Sky

“Wolf, Kuzma,” Kuzma said. “Mind if I accompany?”

“Up to you,” Wolf replied.

“Grab a respirator,” Seawolf said.

“Respirator?” Kuzma asked.

“For the smell.”

“You get used to it.”

“ Once upon a night we’ll wake to the carnival of life ,” Steve crooned to the blaring music, his feet propped up on the flying bridge and just enjoying the ride. “ It’s hard to light a candle, easy to curse the dark instead…”

Sea Fit always seemed to find the big ones. And this time Captain George was being cagey. He’d just said “you’re going to need all your clearance teams.”

Steve after some thought had centralized the “clearance teams” on the Toy . It just made sense. Captain Blair had picked up a former Army cook who was comfortable enough to do clearance on small boats. But right now, hard clearance was still relegated to Faith, Fontana and himself. And that way they had all their throw-weight concentrated.

He kept his voice low: singing wasn’t one of his gifts. But he could hear Faith caroling along in a high, perfect, soprano and even a deeper and not bad tenor from Sergeant Fontana. They were busy prepping gear on the aft deck. If the rolls bothered them it wasn’t apparent. He heard Faith laugh about something and wondered, mildly, if putting her alongside the older and presumably heterosexual SF sergeant was a good idea. He wasn’t a jealous angry father type by any stretch and trusted his girls to make reasonably intelligent decisions.

But Faith was still a bit young to make mature and intelligent decisions regarding romance and, face it, both his daughters were hotties. The main issue he had wasn’t if something happened. He knew Faith generally knew the guidelines on that sort of thing. They’d had discussions on the subject. And in Fontana’s position, the temptation had to be fairly high. The real issue was when, not if, something went wrong and dealing with the aftermath. Faith was both passionate and, at this point, about as deadly as they came.

It didn’t, for now, appear to be a real issue. But it was just another nagging problem at the back of his mind.

Like the Coasties. The “headquarters” hadn’t gotten back to them at the three day limit. The sub was still out there. It even maintained the same general position relative to his boat. The ESM mast was scooting along the surface, five klicks or so, port, forward. Just in case he got a call he guessed. He’d put them on the Large, since they had some people who could figure out the systems, and pointed out that they didn’t really have the fuel to use it, then showed them the flotilla’s usage. The Coasties were…coasting. They were being useful, helping out on the Victoria , working on boats, but until they got some orders they couldn’t really do much.

They’d gotten two more boats up and doing rescue/clearance, Blair was over on the Changing Tymes , now, Sophia had taken over the Worthy Endeavor , taking most of his crew with her! And they’d found Captain, with an actual ticket and everything, all ocean, all tonnage, Geraldine Miguel as a survivor on the 72" N2 Deep . After taking a little break in harbor and getting her boat cleaned up the tough “forty something” captain had immediately headed back out to sea. And on her first day with a crew drawn from the women “sick, lame and lazy” had cleared ten life rafts and rescued six survivors. She’d do.

He paused in his ruminations and picked up his binoculars, peering into the distance. The Toy was a yacht, not a sport fisher, so it didn’t have a tuna tower. Which slightly limited the distance at which anything could be spotted. That depended upon the conditions, of course, but in general, height equaled how far you could see at sea.

That also meant that up on the fly bridge he could see further than the helm. Which meant he was the first to spot the target.

By the same token as having a higher spot to look from, being higher above the water meant you were more visible. And this boat was visible from too far away. Then the music cut off.

“Captain Wolf?” the helmsman called over the radio. “I think I’ve spotted it on radar…?”

His new helmsman, Gustav Fleischmann, had had some experience with small fishing boats. Graduating to the Toy was an adjustment and he was still unsure about all of the readouts. But he could and would drive a boat and he seemed fairly reliable. Sure of himself…not so much. Then again, Steve wasn’t so sure of him and generally took the boat for close maneuvers.

“Roger,” Steve said. “I’ve got it on visual.”

He wanted to curse. The boat could be a gold mine or a bust. But it was even larger than the Large. Much larger as he finally spotted Sherill’s Bertram alongside. It looked like, well, a toy boat. In fact, the boat was much much larger than he’d realized. It wasn’t a boat, it was a… Small cruise ship? Megayacht? He wasn’t sure.

He flipped channels for the flotilla frequency.

“ Sea Fit, Toy , over.”

“Sea Fit, over,” Sherill answered back immediately.

“ Fit , you sure know how to pick ’em.”

“You like? We get part of the swag, right? If you’ve got it, we’ll continue.”

“Oh, no,” Steve said. “This is an all hands evolution. All boats, relay, proceed to location of Sea Fit for all hands clearance.” He paused for a moment, then keyed the radio again. “ Fit … Is that thing listing?”

“Yeah,” Sherill replied. “And you gotta see why…”

* * *

“Bloody buggers…”

The megayacht was…massive. As long as the cutter with some of the same lines but…prettier. It was anything but utilitarian. And it was, indeed, listing.

On the starboard side of the yacht was a “boarding and support center” that was basically a door in the hull of the boat that dropped down to water line. There was also a boarding ladder down from the promenade deck, which was above the height of the Toy’s flying bridge.

The reason for the list was immediately apparent. There was a heavy hawser pointed straight down from the boarding area for “support boats.” Attached to it, as was apparent from looking down through the crystal clear water, was a sport fisher, probably as big as Sherill’s bertram or a tad bigger. About sixty feet down. Bobbing up and down from the swells. Underwater.

“I can’t believe this thing hasn’t capsized,” Sherill said over his loudspeaker.

The yacht also had a contingent of zombies. But they were sort of background to the big fishing boat attached to the much bigger ship.

“Well, that there’s a puzzler,” Fontana said, looking over the side of the Toy . He spit in the water. “It’s so clear I sort of thought it would keep dropping.”

“You don’t realize how clear til you see something like that,” Steve said.

“And them,” Faith said, pointing to the circling sharks.

“Okay, here’s the puzzler,” Steve said. “The way the zombies are now, they’re easy meat.”

They were lined up on promenade deck, their arms waving and reaching for the nearby boat. There was a waist-high railing but there was plenty of room above it for a shot. Of course, there was a steel bulkhead behind them, which meant that any round was going to bounce. At least any that went through.

“Bouncers,” Fontana said.

“Move back to the aft deck,” Steve said, pointing but not looking. He was still considering the sunken boat. “The problem being, that someone is going to have to go down there and release that thing. If you try to cut the hawser…you don’t want to get close enough to cut the hawser. It’ll snap back like a sixty foot taipan and twice as deadly. That means raising it or releasing it. Raising it…no. However, there is, unless I’m mistaken, a quick release on it. So…hook up a line, pull and it goes into davy jones locker.”