John Ringo - Islands of Rage and Hope

“Starting unrep ops in thirty minutes,” Walker said. “Most of the boats waiting are dry. We’re actually not scheduled until eleven hundred if, as they said, we get in then. The Friday thinks it has enough to make it to this afternoon. They asked if we had inventories, I said yes. They didn’t seem to believe me. Our first operation is passenger drop-off but we’re to use the offshores and take them to the Boadicea . Boat is working fine, Batari is making breakfast.”

“I swear to God, Walker, I can get Da to make you an instant chief petty officer, at the least,” Sophia said.

“Oh, I’m not qualified to be a chief, ma’am,” Walker said, grinning. “I don’t have a coffee cup welded to my hand.”

“Okay,” Sophia said, looking around. “I’ll get everybody to get their paks ready. Since we’ve got time until unrep, we’ll get them fed first. That will take some of the strain off the rest of the squadron.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Walker said.

“Get some sleep, Tom,” Sophia said. “You’ve earned it.”

“I can keep going for quite a while, ma’am,” Walker said. “And you’re probably going to need help today.”

“ Sunk Investment , Sunk Investment …What is it about ‘come up to our port side’ you don’t understand? We have guns and we will use them. Over.”

“Dry” turned out to be an understatement of the state of most of the boats in the ragged formation. During the night four had fallen out of formation when they had to shut their engines down and go to generator only to make it to morning. A smaller resupply ship, designed to support megayachts, had been running around behind the formation since dawn tracking them down and getting them fueled back up.

Two more were under tow having had “mechanicals” overnight. They were awaiting engineering survey crews from the Grace to determine if they could be repaired or would have to be abandoned.

And the resupply was not going quickly. The skippers and crews of the boats were rarely experienced and the little experience they did have was tooling around the ocean looking for survivors. Coming alongside a large ship for underway replenishment, not so much.

One thing that was holding things up was that there were some supplies to come off and some supplies to come on. Everyone was supposed to have an inventory of what was to come off and what was a critical resupply item. So far, few of the boats had had that. So as each came alongside there was an argument with the resupply crews about what needed to be onloaded and offloaded. The crews were particularly protective of their gathered liquor stores and virtually all of them wanted toilet paper and parts.

“Uh, Grace , our starboard side hull is sort of weak. We really need to come up to your starboard, over.”

“Define ‘weak,’ Investment , over.”

“We sort of have a leak there. The hull cracked when we were clearing another boat. We’ve got it glued with Aquaseal but it’s still leaking. Bilge pump is handling it but I’d rather not come up to port if that’s okay. Over.”

“You’re floating around on a cracked hull ?” TraffCon screamed. “Stand by for lifting operations. We’ll take you aboard and check your hull. And you had better be serious or you’re not going to be a skipper anymore. Switch to fifteen for lifting instructions. Jesus, people. Tell us stuff like this first , okay? Finally Friday , Finally Friday , over.”

“ Finally Friday , over.”

“Come alongside the Grace , our port, our port , do you copy, over?”

“Come alongside, Grace port, aye.”

“No cracked hull, Friday , over?”

“No, TraffCon, over.”

“Mr. Walker,” Sophia said. “Take the conn. I’m going to change into uniform, then get over to the Friday for their unrep.”

“Roger, ma’am,” Walker said, taking the helm.

“I’ll try to get back aboard before we come alongside,” Sophia said.

After a quick change and washing her face she jumped in the Zodiac and zipped up to the Friday as it was cautiously maneuvering up to the much larger ship.

She tossed the mooring line to one of the crew assembled on deck and boarded without asking permission. She was pleased to see that there were stores piled on the boat’s aft deck, ready for offload. Including liquor. If it wasn’t all the liquor, that was beside the point. They’d included liquor. No toilet paper, though.

“You taking over?” LeEllen asked as Sophia came up on the bridge. She was creeping up to the larger boat.

“Your boat,” Sophia said. “I’m here to smooth out any problems. That’s all.”

The crew already had every fender on the boat tied off on the starboard side of the motor yacht and there were more tied off on the Grace Tan . Port was the lee side, the downwind side, of the massive supply ship. If they were in a harbor, they could just have tied up to the bigger ship. The problem being at sea there were waves. The two ships could not actually tie up to each other. Unrep required that the smaller boat first tie off at a slight distance from the larger ship, then hold that position as the two ships moved along, side by side. The fenders were there to keep the smaller ship from being cracked like an egg if they did touch.

There were three yachts on the deck of the supply ship on cradles. From the looks of them, they were being refurbished to be added to the squadron. Sophia sometimes wondered if her da was doing this just to “own” more motor yachts than anyone else in the world. There were no open cradles so she wasn’t sure what the Grace intended to do with the Sunk Investment . From her experience with Skipper Buckley, sink it and fire him was the correct answer.

A dinghy came alongside and a team led by a man in his fifties clambered aboard.

“Who’s the skipper?” the man yelled.

“Here,” LeEllen said as the man came up on the flying bridge.

“I’m the away unrep boss,” he said. “Blake Parker at your service. I’ll take the helm. You run your crew. From now on, making sure you don’t sink is my responsibility.”

“Your conn,” LeEllen said, lifting her hands from the wheel.

“Any chance you’ve got an inventory?” the man asked as he expertly came up to the bigger ship. “On and off?”

“Here,” LeEllen said, pulling out a printed out sheet.

“Barry!” the man yelled. “Inventory!”

“Seriously?” the younger man said, coming up on the flying bridge and taking the sheet. “Roger, I’ll call this in.”

“They’re about dry,” Parker said, looking at the gauges. “Get the fuel hose over here first.”

He conned the boat up to the supply ship which threw a line attached to a rubber covered grapnel onto the sundeck. The unrep crew quickly got the line onto the boat, then used it to haul a heavier line onto the yacht. With that they got four lines aboard so that the yacht was essentially moored, at a distance, from the supply ship. By the time the fourth line was in place, the fuel hose was already being lowered from the supply ship.

“ That is a well trained crew,” Sophia said wistfully.

“They should be,” Parker said. “We’ve been doing this enough. Who are you, Ensign?” he said, looking at Sophia, quizzically.

“Division commander,” Sophia said.

“Here to tell us what we’re doing wrong?” the unrep boss asked.

“Here to make sure my crews are doing it right ,” Sophia said.