Hail asked Tayler, “Can you please bring up the video on the hatch camera and track the group until they go over the rail?”
“Will do,” Tayler said, transferring the video from the hatch camera to the monitor closest to Hail.
Hail’s stomach growled loud enough for everyone in the room to hear.
“I think we should get some popcorn,” Hail told his crew.
“Yaaaaa,” squealed Alba, clapping her hands together. “Popcorn and an action movie.”
Alba was occupying the second analyst station next to Pierce Mercier. Both analyst stations were built behind the pilots’ stations and elevated on a second tier. Behind the analyst stations was a third tier that held Hail’s big captain’s chair. Alba was the oldest young person in the room. She was twenty-two but Hail thought she acted more like sixteen. She had graduated from Stanford University with a degree in Foreign Language Study. His analyst had short dark hair and Hail couldn’t recall ever seeing the vivacious woman without a smile on her face. Alba Zorn’s job was Security Analyst and specifically she was the ship’s language specialist.
“Of course you guys are flying,” he told the pilots.
“And your hands are full too,” he said to Tayler.
“So that leaves me and Mercier and Alba to share the popcorn.”
For the first time since Hail arrived in the security center, the two data analysts looked pleased to be sitting one row back from the action.
“Can you do the honors?” Hail asked Pierce Mercier.
Mercier picked up the phone, dialed a six-digit number and requested a bowl of popcorn.
Hail watched Dallas and Tayler’s monitors. He considered climbing up the two tiers behind him and sitting down in his chair, but he had done a lot of sitting today and felt like standing. Standing burned more calories than sitting and that might be the only exercise he got today.
Poison, Ratt and Scorpion’s cameras were transmitting video to each of the pilot stations. Each of the weapon systems lifted off from deck two and began flying toward the light above.
“Don’t forget the lemonade,” Hail told Mercier before he hung up the phone.
“Yaaaaa,” Alba yelled, clapping her hands together again. “Popcorn and lemonade and an action movie. Dang, most people would have to be on a cargo ship in the middle of the frickin Java Sea to get an afternoon of fun like that.”
“Clearing the hatch in three, two, one, hatch cleared,” reported Tayler.
“What do you want to do, Skipper?” Dallas Stone asked.
Hail looked at the monitor that showed the pirate’s boat slowing as they approached the port side of the Nucleus.
“Take the drones over the starboard side, stay low, circle around the back of the ship and come up from behind the pirates. I think a surprise meeting would be best.”
“Roger that,” Dallas said.
In a tight group, the three weapons traversed the width of the ship, flying just feet above the white cargo containers. Hail watched the video until the drones disappeared over the starboard railing.
Hail looked at Mercier sitting in front of his station, doing nothing except waiting for popcorn, and asked him, “Mercier, please get a camera on these pirates and let’s see if we can ID their country by what they are wearing.”
“Sure, Marshall,” Mercier said, “But you don’t need an analyst to tell you that it doesn’t matter where they are from. They are here for money. If they can take control of the ship, they will hold it until they received a ransom.”
Hail huffed and said, “Well, we know that isn’t going to happen. Please humor me.”
Mercier touched his screen and opened another gun port on the portside of the Nucleus. The angle from this camera was much better than their previous view. Mercier zoomed in so close that instead of five nondescript pirates, five ugly men with stained and rotten teeth appeared on Mercier’s monitor.
“Transfer it to big screen number two up top, please,” Hail requested.
Mercier touched a few icons and the video from his small screen appeared on one of the big screens mounted on the wall above the crew.
“Maybe I won’t have that popcorn,” said Alba cynically. “Can you pull the camera back a little,” she asked Mercier. “Sometimes close is too close.”
“I just want to see their clothes, or whatever clothes they have on.” Mercier said. He zoomed out about four feet.
Mercier studied the pirates for a moment and said, “I can’t tell anything by the dirty rags they’re wearing. Indonesian or Malaysian maybe. It is so damn hard to tell. They are all carrying AK-47s, if that helps at all?”
“Yeah, right,” Hail laughed. “Every man, woman and child in this hemisphere carries an AK-47.”
“Just coming around the stern of the ship,” Dallas reported.
“Stay low, stay low,” Hail told him. “I want you guys almost touching the water. What’s the status on the mother-boat?”
Tayler moved her joystick and re-centered Queen’s camera on the boat below.
“They are still a long way away,” she said. “I don’t think they’ll be able to see Ratt, Scorpion and Poison from that distance. And even if they do, they won’t have a clue what they’re seeing.”
The pirate boat touched the hull of the Nucleus. At twenty knots, a light touch from the massive cargo ship was amplified into a violent jarring of the small pirate craft. The pirates all fell down in the middle of their boat and then scrambled back up to their feet.
“What are they doing?” Hail asked.
“Not much,” Mercier replied. “If they have done this before, then they are expecting our ship to start making sharp turns. The other thing they would anticipate is getting hit in the face by a firehose shot from a panicked crew on deck. None of that is happening and they’re wondering why.”
“OK, so what are they going to do next?” Hail asked Mercier.
“If they follow international pirate protocol, or IPP,” Mercier joked, “Then they’re going to swing hooks up to the railing and climb aboard.”
“Well, we can’t have that, can we?” Hail said emphatically.
“Where is the popcorn?” Alba asked.
“We’re almost up to them,” Dallas informed everyone. “Thirty meters.”
“Pull back on the camera about five feet,” Hail told Mercier.
Mercier zoomed the camera back until it showed the wooden boat next to the Nucleus with a perimeter of five-feet of water surrounding it. The waves were hammering on the little boat and Hail wondered how long the pirates could hold out under those current conditions.
“Are you guys ready?” Hail asked his pilots.
“Ready,” they all said.
“Alright, bring up the drones and meet our pirate friends.”
There was a lot of commotion down on the sea below. The pirates’ little boat was tipping from side to side and bouncing around from the five-foot wakes that rolled off the Nucleus. The pirates didn’t seem to notice the three remote flying machines that had just appeared above the dirty lip of their boat. The flying saucer-like aircraft, roughly the size of a big hula-hoop, hovered above the water, keeping perfect pace with their boat. Ratt was flying in front of the bow of the pirate’s boat, and Scorpion and Poison maintained a measured three-foot distance on each side of the pirate’s wooden craft.
For what seemed like a minute to the security crew, but was closer to fifteen seconds, the pirates remained oblivious to the strange objects that hovered and surrounded them. The pirate, who was in the far back of the boat wrestling with the powerful outboard engine, was the first man to notice Ratt hovering directly in front of their boat. An instant later, his expression turned from confused to fearful when he noticed the other two air machines on either side of his boat. The pirate working the tiller yelled something to his men who scanned their surroundings and took in the strange sight as well. Initially, the grimy and water-soaked pirates looked at the objects as if they were alien invaders that had come to earth from outer-space, which wasn’t far off the mark from their perspective. Then the pirates all seemed to recognize the outline of a weapon hanging underneath each of the flying saucers that they were very familiar with. Matter of fact, each pirate in the boat had one hanging over their own shoulder. The only difference was the 45 caliber fully-automatic mini-gun that was mounted under the remote controlled drones could fire at double the rate of the pirates AK-47s. The flying guns also held a hundred and twenty rounds of barrel-fed ammunition. The pirate’s AK-47s had a single magazine of thirty rounds.