“They seemed to think you’d need a good stealth man for your exec, ma’am,” Beltrain said, “and I learned the trade from the best.”
“Ha!” Amanda started to shake his hand but it occurred to her that, technically speaking, she was no longer a member of the United States Navy. Strict fleet protocols didn’t apply to her behavior any more so she could damn well administer as many overjoyed hugs as she desired and she did so.
Another man – a tall, raw boned, hound-featured man in an engineer’s coveralls – stood to as well. “You don’t want to hug me, Captain, I’ll get oil all over you.”
Possibly so, but she still tightly gripped one of his callused tool-scarred
hands in both of her own. “To hell with that, Chief. But damn it, you’re retired! For real.”
“Oh, I still am, sort of,” Chief Carl Thomson, the Cunningham’s former senior engineering officer, replied. “I’m double dipping, same as you. I’m a civilian working under contract to Galaxy Maritime.”
“But you had a consultant’s slot with Lockheed Shipbuilding!”
He lifted his shoulders. “You know how it is, Captain. I got fed up sitting on the beach and I liked those
old Glencannon stories I used to borrow off you. I figured this was as close as
you could get these days to bossing the engine room on a tramp steamer.”
Arkady, Beltrain, Thomson. Amanda looked from face to face, each so well remembered from her first command and from triumphs and disasters shared in Drakes’ Passage and the China Coast. She tried to control the moist burning in her eyes, urgently wanting to not make a fool of herself.
She recalled her idle thought of the previous day. A warrior did have many
homes. And she was returning to one of them now.
MV Galaxy Shenandoah
The Port Jackson approaches, Outbound
0222 Hours; Zone Time, October 10, 2008
As Amanda unsnapped the latches on her suitcase, she sensed the deck beneath her feet pitch almost imperceptibly. The Shenandoah was taking the lift of the first open ocean swell. Pausing, she gauged the roll of the wave down the length of the mammoth bulk carrier, listening for any creaking play in the frames.
Nothing save for the steady rumble of the engines and screws. She was a tight “rigid” hull and Amanda smiled, pleased yet again.
The Captain’s cabin was spacious – and, from a naval officer’s point of view, positively luxurious, coming with indirect lighting, a large, built-in desk and full-length settee. There was even a bed, a genuine bed, instead of a bunk. All of the furnishings and fittings had been done in the dark blue and white company colors. Obviously, the Galaxy Maritime Consortium did not believe in parish-rigging its ships.
And there were windows. Not merely portholes but curtained windows. Beyond them, the beach lights of Sydney Harbor National Park were drifting past in the darkness.
Amanda swiftly unpacked the few things she had with her, staking her claim. Unzipping her boots, she slipped them off, wiggling her nyloned toes appreciatively on the thick fitted carpet. Taking her hairbrush with her, she crossed to the desk. Sitting down, she opened the laptop computer. A number of these “laptops” could be found spotted around the stern section of the Shenandoah, serving a multitude of interesting purposes.
Keying the computer to life, Amanda consulted the small cheat sheet she had been given. It would be a few days before she had the secure accesses down pat.
“Communications, this is the Captain,” she said experimentally.
“Radio shack, aye,” a voice promptly replied from the laptop’s speakers. “Welcome aboard, ma’am.”
“Thank you. I understand there is a logged message from NAVSPECFORCE headquarters
for me.”
“Yes, ma’am. You are instructed to personally notify Admiral MacIntyre of your arrival
aboard and your assumption of Phantom command via direct link.”
“Direct link?”
“Yes, ma’am. The Phantom Force commander has a direct secure access to the Commander and
Chief NAVSPECFORCE at all times. Admiral MacIntyre’s standing orders.”
Amanda lifted an eyebrow. “Very well. Make it so.” It would be after four o’clock in the morning in Hawaii but orders were orders.
From amid the cluster of exhaust stacks atop one of the Shenandoah’s funnels, a steel shaft like a submarine’s periscope extended into the night. At its head, a finely polished mirror swiveled, aiming an invisible laser beam through a hole in the clouds to a Milstar communications satellite hovering in the southern sky.
Amanda had given her hair only half a dozen of her nightly hundred strokes when the call went through.
“MacIntyre here.” The voice at the other end of the link was thickened by sleep. Direct link must mean through to MacIntyre’s quarters as well. Amanda had a momentary image of the man coming up on one elbow, a sheet across his chest and his hair rumpled.
Possibly it was just her exultant mood but she found the image … interesting. Someday, under more controlled circumstances, she might speak further with Christine on the subject of Elliot MacIntyre.
“Sorry to wake you, sir. This is Amanda Garrett. I’m aboard the Shenandoah and I have assumed command.”
“Shenandoah?” MacIntyre’s voice cleared instantly. “What’s your status?”
“Operational, sir. I’ve had my first walkthrough of the ship and we are underway at this time.”
“Excellent. Well, what do you think of her?” MacIntyre sounded amused but maybe slightly tense as well, as if hoping for her approval.
She drew her brush through her hair a seventh time and came to a decision. “I’m eminently satisfied, Elliot,” she said, concluding that a Captain-under-God of the Merchant Marine could
decently address an Admiral by his first name. “With the ship and the crew both.”
The Darwin Hotel
Darwin, Australia
2344 Hours; Zone Time, October 14, 2008
The lounge bartender at the Darwin wondered if he was going to have a feminine drunk on his hands before the night was over. The blonde sitting alone in the mock Tudor shadows of the back booth hadn’t quite made it yet, but she was working on it. She’d been brooding between her high voltage rum and Cokes long enough to not quite tip over the edge, but it was only a matter of time.
It was probably down to problems with some bloke, the bartender decided, shooting another glance at the grim little figure in the pink Capris. She was cute enough for it and there was a mix of anger and despair to her drinking. Maybe it would be best to drive the cork in on her now before he had a row to deal with.
The bartender’s consideration was diverted by a new arrival passing through the door from the gentlemen’s bar: a tall, broad-shouldered man clad in a sports shirt and Levi’s, a Yank from the look of him. Likely one of the mob from the ships out in the harbor. Any number of them had been through of late. Good customers if you could cope with the peculiar accent.
