Karen Rock - His Last Defense

More water crested the port side, sweeping beneath the sixty crab pots left onboard. It lifted the sorting table in the middle of the boat and then slammed it down with a loud bang.

She winced. Was it damaged? Anxiety coiled inside her. She couldn’t afford the time to do a major repair. As a twenty-eight-year-old female rookie captain, she had a lot to prove.

She’d worked her tail off on fishing vessels ever since she was old enough to know she wasn’t cut out for the traditional lifestyle of her Inuit ancestors, and realize that if she wanted to help her single mom make ends meet, fishing the Bering Strait was the Alaskan version of the lottery. The stakes were high as hell, but the potential for payoff kicked butt. Most days, Nolee understood the sea, and the mentality it took to work it. Today? She and the sea were not on the same page. At all. Making her wonder what she’d been thinking to talk her commercial fishing company, Dunham Seafoods, into letting her captain a ship of her own.

A picture of her large Alutiiq family, taped beside her radar, caught her eye. Her aunts, uncles and cousins goofed around for the camera, while her mother stood slightly apart, frowning.

Would her critical parent be proud of her?

“What’s going on, Pete?” she called to her engineer.

The men had heaved the metal sorting table upright and Pete squatted beside it. “Wheel’s broken.”

Suddenly the bow dipped, and her eyes widened as a three-story wall of water rose and rose and rose in front of them.

“Take cover!” she screamed into the mic.

In an instant, the Pacific Sun bashed through a rogue, tsunami-sized wave, cleaving forward, plowing just below the surface, the world water. A deep shudder rattled through her and her breath was knocked clean out of her.

Reacting on instinct, she advanced the throttle, giving the ship more horsepower. They needed to bust through the wave. Not dive. She kept her hand steady on the controls, pleading with the sea to release her and her crew, and then they broke the surface, the gear scattered, her men gone.

“I need to hear from everyone, now!” she thundered, barely able to hear over the blood pounding against her eardrums.

Tyler crawled from between a couple of pot stacks waving an arm overhead, while the rest of the men staggered from their positions, clapping each other on the back, punching the air.

“It’s getting squirrelly out there,” she announced when she trusted her voice not to betray her concern. Crab fishing and coddling didn’t mix. “Inside, guys.”

Her men shook their heads and disappeared from view into the galley below. Just then a piercing alarm shrilled. She shot to her feet. The high water sensor!

Pete appeared on deck and sloshed through the rolling water to throw open the hatch down to the keel, Everett fast on his heels. A sickening bile rose in her throat.

Stu, her relief captain, raced up the wheelhouse stairs. “Leak?” he asked, his voice a gravelly smoker’s rasp.

She nodded, then flipped on the speaker to the engine room. “Pete. Tell me what’s going on.”

The sound of rushing water crashed through the speaker.

There was static, and then Pete’s faint voice emerged. “We’ve cracked the cooling pipe. Nine to ten inches.”

“How much pressure is coming through there?” A rush of air escaped from between her clenched teeth.

“It’s gushing.” His gruff words were like hands on both her arms, giving her a shake.

She cleared her clogged throat, twice, then asked, “Can we replace it?”

“Yeah. But not out here. We don’t have that piece.”

The boat dropped several feet, rolled. “Rubber wrap won’t hold it,” she mused out loud, her pulse skyrocketing. Clamping down her panic, she turned the boat slightly to keep it from pitching so much.

“It’s our only shot,” came Pete’s grim voice.

“All right. Use baling and wire it up good. Stop that leak.”

“Roger.”

After several minutes of battling growing swells, more alarms blared on-screen. Failed bilge pumps. Engine power loss.

No.

She blinked at the words and a dark shadow pressed at the base of her skull, rising. The possibility of the ship sinking seeped into her consciousness. Squeezed. Nearly drew blood.

She pressed her eyes shut for a moment. Gathered herself. “Stu, I’m heading out. Keep us afloat.”

“Roger. Will do.”

Grabbing her gloves, she clattered downstairs and donned waterproof gear. She blasted by the remaining hard-faced crew and scowled when they rose to follow her. “Stay put,” she ordered, then listed, side to side, down the short hall to the portal and shoved down the latch.

Instantly, the wind snatched the door, swinging it wide and making her stumble, frigid spray buffeting her, knocking her sideways. Her boots skidded, and she crashed to one knee. Warm, iron-tasting blood washed across her bitten tongue.

She ignored the ache in her leg and pushed on, fighting her way to the engine room. Her breath came in short gasps that misted in the salty, water-logged air. After climbing down the wall ladder, she dropped into knee-deep flooding.

Pete labored over the cracked pipe. She shoved through the brackish swirl toward Everett and spotted three mostly submerged bilge pumps. A dark ring scorched their tops. They’d overheated. Beyond fixing. Her mouth vacuumed itself dry.

“Tell the guys to put on their life jackets if they’re not on already and bucket this out while you replace those.”

Everett frowned fiercely. “We’ve only got the one spare.”

She swore under her breath. Not enough. Not even close.

“Hook it up fast.”

Everett grunted, then clambered topside.

She thought quickly. Without enough operating bilge pumps to stop the rising water, and the pipe still spraying, the engines wouldn’t reboot, leaving the floundering Pacific Sun at the mercy of the relentless sea. Buckets wouldn’t do much.

Still. She wouldn’t quit. If she lost this eight-million-dollar boat on her first time at the wheel, she might never have another shot at captaining one and leading the independent life she’d worked hard to achieve.

But even more important, the safety of her men came first. They counted on her, as did their families. Even as another wave tilted the wet world sideways, sloshing frigid water past her knees, Nolee couldn’t help thinking about them. Everett had a newborn son. Pete had postponed his honeymoon until the opilio crab season, which they’d gotten special permission to fish early, ended. They all needed this run.

She wouldn’t let anything happen to them.

Back in the wheelhouse, she snatched up her radio, her eyes meeting Stu’s. “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. This is the vessel Pacific Sun. We’re taking on water.”

White noise crackled through the speaker. “Roger. Pacific Sun, this is United States Coast Guard, Kodiak, Alaska, communication station. Over.”

She relayed rapid-fire specifics. “The seas are pounding us,” she concluded, her voice hoarse. “Not sure how long before we capsize.”

Speaking the words made it all the more real. She’d never been seasick a day in her life, but right now, she knew a whole lot about heartsick.

“Roger that. Jayhawk is on the way with ETA of twelve minutes. Swimmer and pumps will be deployed.”

Bittersweet relief washed through her as she left Stu at the helm and joined the bucket line. On one hand, she didn’t want to be rescued. Never had. But on her life’s balance sheet, the US Coast Guard owed her big-time for the life-gutting sacrifice she’d made to them nine years ago when she’d given up the person who mattered most to her. They could damn well pay up with some help today.

She passed heavy pails among her crew, fighting a losing battle against water that wouldn’t stop coming. Half the buckets spilled or sloshed most of their contents before making it over the rail, the deck pitching so fiercely below their feet they could barely maintain balance. She worked fiercely, doggedly, and thought she’d weep with relief when she finally glimpsed orange as the Jayhawk passed over the ship. Keeping her head down, she continued to pass slippery, frigid buckets until Tyler pointed out that the rescue swimmer was on his way down.