Captain Garrett looked back over her shoulder, smiling ruefully. “I can really pick ’em, can’t I, Chief?”
Tehoa grinned back. “It’s no fun if it’s too easy, ma’am. By your leave, I’ll go do a walk around in the main hull.”
“Carry on. You’ve got about half an hour before we hit the engagement zone.”
Tehoa dropped down the ladder into the Queen’s central bay. Methodically he began a circuit of the seafighter’s battle stations, checking out systems and personnel alike, exchanging a few quiet words with the hands. Danno and Fryguy at fire control, Lamar and Slim in the starboard power room, the auxiliary gun crews at the hatch mounts.
Like the Boghammers, the Queen carried a couple of extra souls aboard this night — extra ammo humpers ready to feed the ravenous autoweapons during a prolonged battle. With the Marine landing team absent and with the miniraider Zodiac unshipped, there was plenty of room for them as well as for the small mountain of cartridge and grenade cases lashed down along the centerline of the bay.
“Yo, Scrounger! How’s things going in here?” Tehoa called, looking in through the port-side power room hatch.
“Green boards, Chief,” the brunette turbine tech replied, turning away from the silent main engines. “Everything’s looking okay.”
Those were her words, but her expression didn’t match with them. Sandra “Scrounger” Caitlin had something on her mind and under her skin. Tehoa simply stood and looked at the young woman, waiting for the truth to come out.
“Chief,” she asked hesitantly. “Do you have a second? I need to talk to you about something.”
“If I don’t, I’ll make one. Come on, let’s hit the ward room.”
With the seafighter called to quarters, the little mess-room/living space was empty. Tehoa slid into one of the bench seats and waited while Scrounger took a Coke she really didn’t want from the refrigerator. Patiently, he gave her the time she needed to start at her own beginning.
“Chief,” she said finally, her eyes lowered to the unopened beverage can in her hands, “have you ever heard of ‘The Touch’?”
“The Touch? You mean where someone gets a premonition that they’re going to be killed on a mission?”
The girl nodded without lifting her eyes. “Yeah.”
“I’ve heard the stories. I’ve never seen it happen myself, though. What’s the word, Scrounge? You thinking that maybe you’re going to buy the farm tonight?”
“I don’t know, Chief,” she replied, looking up, her eyes dark and troubled. “I really don’t know. I just have a really funny feeling about this run. Like nothing I’ve ever had before.”
“Scared?”
She shrugged. “Yes… But not much more than usual when we’re guns up. It’s just… I don’t know. I can’t describe it.”
The CPO studied the little turbine tech’s eyes, looking deep into them and around the corner to where she kept her soul. “Why didn’t you tell me about this before we launched tonight?”
She shrugged again. “I couldn’t let you and the rest of the crew down, Chief,” she replied softly, “even if it does mean that I’m going to die. I can’t. If it comes down to a choice between being killed and not being able to live with yourself anymore, what’s the difference?”
Tehoa thought for a long moment. “None, I guess, Scrounge,” he replied finally. “I’ve never felt The Touch or anything like it. No imagination, I guess. Either that or I’m always so busy before a big show I never have the chance to notice.
“Anyhow, the way I’ve got it figured, when I put on the uniform, the Navy never guaranteed that I’d ever get out of it alive. They just promised that if I did die, it would be for something worth dying for. Now I don’t know if this U.N. job is exactly worth taking the big fall or not. That’s not for the rank and file like you or me to make the call on. I only know that I’m going to try and hold up my end of the deal.”
Scrounger half-smiled and nodded her head. “Me too, Chief. I guess I only wanted to talk to somebody about it.”
Tehoa gave the turbine tech a light slap on the shoulder. “Trust in your ship and your crew, and trust in being alive, Scrounge. Like I said, I’ve heard lots of stories about guys getting a premonition, and most of them end up with the guy still alive and well on the other side of it.”
“I’m going to be fine, Chief.”
“Damn right you are, sailor!”
Suddenly, the compartment’s overhead speaker clicked on and Commander Lane’s voice interrupted them. “All hands, we are approaching the engagement area. Close up to action stations! Fire control, arm your pedestals! Surface engagement package! Auxiliary gunners, man your mounts! Power rooms, initiate turbine start sequences! Stand by to go on the cushion!”
“That’s it, Scrounge. Let’s go!”
The Chief and Caitlin slid out from behind the mess table. Realizing she still held the unopened pop can in her hand, Scrounger took a second to toss it back into the refrigerator.
Tehoa gave her a grin and a nod. “See you after the show, Scrounge.”
The girl replied in kind, “Later, Chief.” Then she was gone, hurrying to her station.
She’d be fine, Tehoa decided; starting for the ladder to the cockpit.
Topside, he found the command crew hard at it, Commander Lane and Ensign Banks sweeping through the prestart checklists that were now engraved permanently on their psyches. As always, their palms came up to exchange the ritual high five as the first turbine began to crank.
Chief Tehoa suddenly understood the meaning of that gesture. His pilot and copilot were making their own wordless promise to see each other alive after the battle.
Captain Garrett held her station at the navigator’s console, her slim figure swaddled in the bulk of a battle vest and her fine-lined features partially concealed by her Kevlar helmet and headset. Not relaxed, but totally controlled, she focused on the tactical screens, no world existing for her beyond them.
As Tehoa watched, she inserted a CD disk into the communications deck and pushed a key. A moment later, her recorded voice issued from the radio loudspeakers, broadcasting over the Union standard military bands:
Attention, attention. This is the United States Navy, operating under the mandate of the United Nations African Interdiction Force. All craft, heave to and prepare for boarding and search. All craft, heave to and prepare for boarding and search. If we are fired upon, we will return fire. I repeat, if we are fired upon, we will return fire.
Amanda Garrett had just presented their letter of intent to the Union.
Tehoa donned his own armored vest and his helmet with the integral night-vision goggles. Unlatching and swinging back the overhead hatch, he hoisted himself up into the gunner’s saddle with a grunt. God, maybe he was getting too old for this. Maybe Mary was right and he should take his twenty-and-out next year. The girls were growing so fast. Soon he would miss the whole joy of their childhood. It was something to think about.
Once in the saddle, he took a look around, his night-adapted eyes making good use of the moonlight even without the intervention of the AI2 visor. The low African coastline flowed darkly along the northern horizon, dividing the silver-tinged sea and the starblaze of the sky. Astern, the streamlined shadow forms of the Carondelet and the Manassas trailed in the Queen’s scant wake.
The lift fans of all three hovercraft spooled up to speed, puffs of pale spray escaping from beneath their inflating skirts as they lifted off the surface. Airscrews flickered over in a contrarotating blur of power, assuming propulsion from the retracting underwater propellers. The Queen of the West trembled like a nervous thoroughbred before a race, the self-generated breeze of her growing speed whipping the flag and burgee streaming from her snub mast.