“Excuse me.” Staurulakis halted again, shielding her gaze with a gray-gloved hand as she read the repair and readiness status of each object she looked at. “But can we pressure test that sonar dome one more time?”
“We already did that twice, Commander—”
The radio clipped to her web belt, her Hydra, clicked on. “Commander? Comm here. Where exactly are you right now?”
“XO here. Down in the dock. By the bow dome.”
“Got a message for you. Running it down.”
“Never mind, I’ll be right up.” She clicked off. Said to the super, “I’m not confident we found the weak point. Out there in some sub’s torpedo danger area is not when I want to find out we have a reduced acoustic capability. Keep pushing, okay? We appreciate everyone’s efforts.”
“You got it, Commander. Fix yer battle damage, get you back out there to fight, that’s why we’re here.”
Pompously put, but the shipyard people were coming through. Three shifts, working around the clock since USS Savo Island had pulled in. Despite the missile raid drills and the flights evacuating military dependents back to the States. Almost all the workers were locals anyway, Chamorros and Filipinos. The naval shipyard had been BRAC’d years before, but the wharves, cranes, and most of the other facilities — foundry, labs, motor rewind, industrial gases — had remained. Now hastily remanned, the facility’s wharves were lined with damaged ships.
No one knew what was coming. Invasion, perhaps, or the bombardments that had preceded the landings on Taiwan and Okinawa. Worst of all, a nuclear strike like the one that had wiped out an entire battle group at sea. The Army had moved a THAAD battery here from Meck Island, and the Air Force a squadron of F-22s, but they wouldn’t be enough to stop a serious attack.
The story of the whole war so far. The Allies had been surprised, outmaneuvered, outthought, and overwhelmed. The only good news was that the carriers were still holding east of Hawaii. Which meant her husband, Ed, aboard Vinson, wouldn’t see action for a while. So she could stop worrying about him. Short of the usual back-of-the-mind anxiety about flameouts or bad landings. But he was a solid flier. A squadron leader, now. And since the wedding, he’d promised to take fewer risks.
Thank God, at least they still had an operational dry dock out here. The huge, hollow mass of steel could be ballasted down, allowing a ship to be floated in. Then the ballast was pumped out, buoying the carefully propped-up vessel and exposing the hull for repairs.
The missile had come in from astern during a confused nighttime imbroglio in the Taiwan Strait. They’d known a sub was out there, but hadn’t been able to localize it closely enough to neutralize. Though the missile could have been air-launched, too, programmed to loop around and approach from astern to maximize surprise.
At any rate, it had bored in so fast — transonic, or supersonic — and so low that their radar had picked it up only a second before impact. Savo’s electronic-countermeasures team had managed to spoof it away from the centroid, but not enough to miss entirely.
A hundred yards ahead and above, another coverall-clad figure, also female, waved and started down. Two men trailed her down the steel stairway that descended flight after flight into the dry dock’s Stygian depths.
Hitting at an angle, the warhead had penetrated before explodings. The blast had blown off everything forward of the wildcats. Lifelines, bulwarks, bullnose, ground tackle, both anchors, and the upper part of the stem down to four feet above the waterline. The anchor chain had run out with a grating thunder. After they’d gotten the fire under control, Captain Lenson had ordered them to cut away what was left, leaving a gaping hole. “Have to call her Old Shovelnose from here on,” the first lieutenant had cracked.
The damage-control teams had welded and shored bulkheads, but they’d had to avoid taking heavy seas head-on for the agonizingly slow twelve-hundred-mile creep back. During that passage, apparently, more of the forward stringers had cracked and separated from the shell plating. The Tiger Team engineers from Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard had reviewed the damage documentation Cheryl and the chief engineer had prepared, and translated that into work orders. Savo had to wait her turn — she wasn’t the only battle-damaged ship around — but eventually it had come.
Since then both the yard and ship’s force had been cutting, fabricating, welding. Covering everything in the ship with dust, and tracking grinder grit over the decks. But cleanliness was the least of her worries now. Neither was aesthetics, though she hated that the new bow wasn’t as graceful as the old. Where the original had been sharp, it was square, shorter, cruder, and carried only one anchor. A hasty wartime repair, for a ship needed back on the front line. The super had promised to have everything buttoned up before dawn tomorrow. Get her off the blocks, a quick engine test, then under way to load ammo at the magazine wharf.
Everyone expected the next phase in the Chinese offensive. Only what would it be? She murmured, “Glasses: power off,” as the approaching woman angled to meet her, snagging the admiring gazes of the male workers. No wonder, the way she filled out her coveralls, that long dark hair flowing from under her hard hat…
“XO. Good morning.”
“Good morning.” Cheryl tucked the glasses away and returned Lieutenant Amarpeet Singhe’s salute. “Amy? Dave? And Master Chief. What’s this little party for? I said I’d be right up.”
Singhe was Savo Island’s strike officer, in charge of the Tomahawk and Harpoon missiles, though she had other responsibilities too. The taller lieutenant behind Singhe was Dave Branscombe, Savo’s communications officer. The third, lagging them, was Master Chief “Sid” Tausengelt. The senior enlisted’s receding hairline and grooved cheeks went with his being probably the oldest person aboard.
“Thought we’d bring this one down ourselves,” the comm officer said, handing over an aluminum clipboard.
Cheryl carried it to where sunlight slanted. They stepped around water-soaked oaken blocks as big as buffaloes, picking their way between pools of dirty slime, over the uneven rusty steel. Other balks had been stacked into a makeshift shelter. She doubted they’d afford much protection. If the enemy hit this harbor, a ballistic-missile cruiser parked helplessly in the single floating dry dock west of Hawaii would be a prime target.
“As soon as we realized what it was, we printed it out and called your cabin,” Branscombe said. “Then we got on the Hydra.”
“Dave was going to bring it down, but I had to come too,” Singhe said. “I grabbed the master chief on the way.”
What the heck? Cheryl flipped the cover up.
TO: COMMANDER CHERYL STAURULAKIS USN
EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY ASSUME COMMAND USS SAVO ISLAND.
That was all. Other than the prosign BT, which just meant the end of the text proper.
Shouldn’t there be more?
But maybe that was all there had to be.
And maybe it wasn’t really a matter for congratulation.