Chapter 7: (v.3) Chapter 7

May 4, 2049

Motor Vessel Wanderer

21.61N 155.9E

Mitzi followed Eileen into her cabin, sat at her desk, and turned on her computer. Once booted up, she addressed her boss. “Kirby gave me a thumb drive with a bunch of navigational charts and search patterns. Want a look at them?”

“Not right now. The budget calls me from afar.”

“Lucky you.”

Eileen crossed to her desk, picked up her coffee cup, sipped, and made a face. “Ugh. Cold.” Mitzi pushed her chair back, but Eileen added, “Don’t bother. I’ve had enough of this stuff for a while. Can you print the charts, or are they too large?”

“Some are pretty big. I could section them and do screen prints, though.”

“Sounds like a plan. Before you get busy, send them to my computer, will you?”

“Sure.” Several mouse clicks and Eileen’s computer dinged.

“Thank you,” she acknowledged, opening the financial files in the money folder. “Might as well get started.”

One hour later, Eileen sat back in her chair and rubbed her eyes with her palms. “Damn, I hate this stuff.”

She’d been so engrossed in project finance, she hadn't noticed Mitzi had left the room. Now, when she clicked the door open on her return, Mitzi carried a teetering stack of multiple-sized papers.

“Here are the charts. Turns out, they have a big digital printer down in the Oceanographic lab.” She set the pile on the conference table. “The more interesting ones are on top.”

Happy to take a break from numbers, Eileen joined her assistant and helped lay out the printouts so people could see them.

“Looks like we’re in for a lot of traveling, boss,” Mitzi said, tapping a chart with a fingernail. “Check out this one.”

Labeled “Proposed Search Area and Pattern,” it showed that over two-hundred thousand square nautical miles were to be investigated. The box measured four-hundred by five-hundred nautical miles—a gigantic chunk of ocean. Somewhere beneath the surface, hopefully, lay what they sought.

Kirby Peterson tapped on the doorframe, then entered. Stepping to the table, he took in what lay on the polished plastic top. “Ah. You guys work fast. Had a chance to look over my proposals?”

“You did the navigation calculations?” Eileen asked.

“Sure did. I’m not just a pretty face, you know. If I take my shoes off, I can do calculus.”

The women chuckled. “Please don’t,” Mitzi added.

He flipped through the stack and unrolled a chart. “This one might interest you. Since we don’t know where, or what, exactly, we’re looking for, the best type of search is called a creeping line. Our instruments are good out to about twenty or twenty-five nautical miles, but to be safe, I used fifteen as the sweep width from port and starboard sensors, making our tracks thirty nautical miles apart. Any thoughts?”

Eileen puffed her cheeks, then released the air. “Poof. That’s a whole lot of back and forth.” She counted the iterations. “I see seventeen of them.”

“Well, true, but somewhere we’re going to hit paydirt. I can feel it. Maybe your enthusiasm is catching, Eileen.”

“Hope so. We need it. Otherwise we’re in for a real boring cruise. Okay, Kirby, I agree. Let’s get this up to the Navigator and plead our case.”

Three-quarters of an hour later, they were back in Eileen’s office. “Wow. I didn’t know I had that much clout,” she exclaimed, setting the approved routing atop the annotated search chart.

“Hey,” Kirby said. “You’re in charge, kiddo. They are supposed to go where you tell them. You made a lot of points with the Skipper and Exec by going to the Nav officer first, though.”

She stepped to the credenza, snapped the coffee maker on, and said, “I’ll propose a toast to our success once this darn thing stops burbling.”

* * *

By two in the afternoon, the readiness meeting concluded. Every department reported their preparations complete, and their personnel were eager to begin. Along with “my little sub is ready,” Kirby added, “So is the special equipment. I double-checked just this morning.”

Heads turned at that, but nobody said anything. They knew he had secrets he couldn’t reveal.

Normally, the ship cruised at seventeen knots. They’d recommend the ship’s speed be reduced to ten for the foreseeable future. Any slower and the towed arrays couldn’t maintain their depth easily. Any faster and they would become less efficient. Wanderer carried the very latest in oceanographic sensors, some on their initial trial runs, and the scientists would assess their effectiveness.

Eileen dismissed the others, asking Captain Bowder to follow her to her office.

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, doing as she asked.

After filling mugs with coffee, Eileen gestured to the chair next to her desk. “Have a seat, Phil.”

He took a sip of the brew as he sat. “What’s up?”

“I noticed a lack of concrete instructions for you and your troops from my higher-ups. I have the original tasking message, but it isn’t very detailed. Can you fill me in?”

“I was told we’d be nothing more than a security force. Against what, I do not know. Not sure if there are any pirates down here, but one never knows.”

“Pirates? As in, arrh?”

He grinned. “Probably not. However, my group had ship-to-ship training before we deployed to the Wanderer. Highlining across, climbing up from a RHIB, things like that.”

“What’s a RHIB?”

“Rigid-hulled inflatable boat. I checked the other day. We carry three of them. Enough for my entire gang if necessary. Our armament is designed with those boats in mind.”

“You mean those little black things you’ve been shooting off the fantail?”

He laughed. “Well, they look small, but they have a lot of firepower. Used to be called TEC-9’s, but we’ve added a couple of improvements. You have a few M-16’s on board, but they are hard to swing around in a crowded environment. Our ‘little black things’ can get the job done.”

Eileen laughed in return. “Yeah. I guess so. Your guys have destroyed a lot of packing crates in the last two weeks.”

“Practice makes perfect. If we have to use them, we’ll be ready.”

“Have your men settled into their new quarters?”

“Yep. Thanks for getting us out of the bilges. They were growing mold for fun and betting on who had the most in their boots.”

Ten minutes after Phil Bowder left her office, Eileen stood from her desk, stretched to the overhead, and heaved a sigh. “Enough of this paperwork. Time to visit.”

The designers of MV Wanderer, who built it with research in mind, had laid it out logically. The Main Deck contained most common areas such as the mess, galley, laundry, lounge, hospital, and the computing and server room.

One level lower, Eileen’s stateroom was also her work area, separated by a drawn curtain. Far forward on what was called the Forecastle Deck, or Fo’c’s’le, other personnel cabins lay port and starboard, moving aft. Enough space for eighteen scientists or assistants. Five such compartments were between two companionways running fore and aft.

Lower, on the 01 level, five crew members, plus one technician, had their quarters. It was into these spaces Eileen had quartered Captain Bowder’s troops, four to a room, using bunk beds.

Nobody appeared to be in the mess, but tantalizing scents wafted from the galley. As she passed, she encountered a cook. “What’s on for dinner?”

“Beef stew. Have to use up the fresh vegetables before they go bad. Any idea when the supply ships get here, ma’am?”

“No. But I can check and let you know.”

He touched two fingers to his forehead as he went back to the heat from the multiple stoves. “Thanks.”

Two off-duty Navy crewmen were in the lounge playing backgammon, a game she was familiar with. As she watched, she detected three rule violations. “Was that legal?” she asked.

One sailor glanced up. “Sure, ma’am.”

“Not in the game I know.”

“That’s ‘cause we’re playing Acey Ducey. Kind of Backgammon, but cutthroat like,” the other man said.

Just then, the first person rolled double sixes and crowed. “Now I gotcha!” and bumped half the other players’ tokens off the board.

Eileen wandered farther aft, shaking her head.

Hunkered over a piece of equipment pulled out of the rack on rollers, five members of her team stood in a circle. “What’s up?” she asked.

“Won’t calibrate,” one of them said.

Another pulled a circuit board from a box and handed it to the first. “Try this,”

Once he seated the new card and the machine powered up, lights flashed and a triple-beep sounded.

“Thar she blows!” crowed another bystander.

Across the space, another technician sat on a stool reading a manual. Occasionally, she glanced up at a video screen which, at the moment, displayed nothing but an uneven row of blue dots connected by a thin yellow line.

Eileen peered at the readout. “We have that much under the keel now?”

Startled, the tech set the book on her desk with a thump. “Yes, ma’am. Forty-three thirty-four meters to the bottom. Um, a little over fourteen-thousand, two-hundred feet.”

“Long way down.”

“You bet.”

Eileen glanced at the book she was reading. “Tough going, isn’t it?”

“Nobody said a Master’s was easy. That’s for sure.”

She patted her shoulder. “Just keep going, you’ll make it.”

“Hope so.”

On the starboard side, opposite the Main Lab, two techs were fussing over a torpedo-like object. Panels were open and probes with cables attached flowed across the decking to a workbench.

She rapped on the metallic nose of the device with a knuckle. “When does this get launched?”

Neither of the men looked up. One said, “Gotta be ready by zero eight hundred, or we’re dead. Boss lady says so.”

“I don’t remember saying exactly that, but it’s scheduled to go over the side early. We use the deep-scan capability, and we need it now.”

Their heads popped up out of the innards of the machine. “Oops, sorry, ma’am. That’s the way the order was relayed to us.”

Eileen smiled. “I’ll rescind any undue termination requests if it isn’t.”

“It’ll be on-line, that’s for sure. Just have to get this dang self-leveler to self-level.”

“Keep at it.”

Noses deep into a repair manual, neither one answered.

At the end of her tour, Eileen lifted the locking bar to the weather door that led to the fantail. Outside, the skies were hazy, but with bright sunlight. Wave height she estimated was about five feet. The air had a feel to it, which normally signified a storm. Phil stood at the portside railing, sighting a pistol at the horizon.

“Whatcha aiming at, Tex?” she said with a smile.

“Wave crests.”

“Oh.” As if that explained it.

Phil remained rock steady, still aiming. “Watch when one breaks over and the curl turns white.”

She stared at the swells marching past at ten knots. Suddenly, one to her right broke, foaming at the top. Phil swung his arm in that direction and fired.

BOOM!

Eileen jumped, clapped hands to her ears, and watched as a thin column of seawater erupted vertically. “Damn, that’s loud.”

“You get used to it. Normally, we’re required to wear “mouse ears,” but out in the open, the sound isn’t too bad. We wouldn’t use these particular weapons indoors. Our short MG’s have suppressors at the muzzle.”

“Machine guns, right?”

“Yep.”

Another wave topped, and Phil fired again. This time, Eileen was ready and didn’t flinch. After the third and fourth report, she gripped his shoulder and said, “Have fun. See you at staff meeting in the morning.”

“You bet.”

Opting to stretch her legs once more, she strolled up the narrow strip of deck on the starboard side, dodging the sharp edges of equipment, until she reached the foredeck once more. Entering the skin of the ship, she ended up right at her front door.

Mitzi greeted her. “Hi, boss. The echo lab just called. Something interesting coming up in about a half hour. They want you down there.”

Anticipation brimmed over and she smiled deeply. “At last. Something other than miles and miles of water.”

Five minutes later, she entered the echo lab, named so because the room housed the monitoring equipment for all the depth-sounding gear and sonar. “What do you have, Captain?”

Robin Kirk, the head technician, turned and scowled. “You know I hate it when you call me that,” he said halfheartedly.

“I know. Sorry. I’m trying to break the habit.”

He traced a line on the two-foot wide monitor hanging from the wall. “See this jump right here? It hopped a few more times, then dropped back out of sight.”

She peered at the legend along one side. “Yikes! Two-hundred and ten feet tall? What do you think? Ridge?”

“Not sure. Could be. I’ve logged the position—it’s eighteen nautical miles off our base course—so we can check it on the next pass as long as it extends farther south.”

Eileen moved to the sonar display. “Anything from this?”

Robin shook his head. “Nope. Just an increase in bottom scatter. No definition at all.”

“Hmm.” She cupped her chin in her palm, something she always did when thinking. “Okay. Let me know when we’re about to pass by, or over, it on the way back.”

“Yes, ma’am. Will do.”

Moments later, she was back in her stateroom watching the tiny dot that was the ship crawl across her monitor, wondering what might lie hidden under them. In the previous three days, nothing of interest had appeared. They had discovered a large metallic object, but after consulting naval records, they decided it was likely a Japanese cruiser reported sunk at those coordinates. A green X marked that spot on her screen.

Their course, ever reversing, crept along the display. At each end of their search pattern, they’d turned ninety degrees south, cruised for thirty nautical miles, then turn once again to head back in the other direction.

“’From tedium to apathy and back again, with an occasional side trip to monotony,’” Eileen quoted from one of her favorite movies, Mister Roberts.