Choosers of the Slain

14

Almost by accident, the Cunningham 's designers had produced one of the most seaworthy vessels in maritime history. Because of her minimal upperworks, the bulk of her displacement was carried low in her fine-lined hull. Combined with her sophisticated pitch-and-roll dampers and her outriggerlike propulsor pods, this made her an exceptionally stable and easy riding platform in heavy weather.

Her crew had reason to be grateful for this. Five hours before, under skies the color of lead, the Duke had cleared the lee of Islas de Los Estados and had entered Drake Passage.

Now, with sleety rain lashing her bridge windscreen like buckshot, she quartered into an unending series of steep-sided rollers that came booming in from the west. Dirty white foam exploded from under the flare of her bow as she pitched into each of the oncoming swells. Intermittently, a seventh wave would break cleanly over her forecastle and the big destroyer would shudder as she shook tons of seawater off of her decks.

Slouched comfortably in the bridge captain's chair, Amanda Garrett was content. This was her brand of seafaring.

"Heads up, Skipper." A flight-suited arm carefully snaked a steaming mug over her shoulder.

"Thank you, Arkady," she said, accepting it and taking a quick sip. "Mmm, you got it right."

"Earl Grey, one creamer, two sugars," he replied, bracing himself against the roll of the ship between her chair and the outer bridge bulkhead. "I checked with the wardroom messman on the way up."

"Thank you again. How are things back aft?"

"Hangar bay all secure. We won't be launching again until this weather moderates." He hunkered down a little to peer out into the murky sky. "God, it's rotten trending toward shitty out there."

"That's a matter of opinion, Arkady. If you plan to serve on stealth ships, you'd better get used to it. This is where we live."

"More of your raider doctrine?"

"Yes. When we go full stealth, we duck from one weather front to the next, like an infantryman zigzagging from one patch of cover to another. Nothing much can protect you from the old Mark One eyeball except Mother Nature."

She tilted the flat screen monitor mounted on her chair arm toward him and called a repeater image up off of the navigational radar.

"Take a look at this. We're picking up Cape Horn."

Arkady nodded his agreement, mentally comparing the glowing repeater image with the charts he had been studying. He glanced across at Amanda, noting the intentness with which she studied the monitor.

"This is kind of a special deal for you just now, isn't it?"

"It is. I've only sailed these waters once before, when I brought the Duke around from the Pacific, but I've read about them since… forever."

Her voice softened and her eyes drifted back up toward the mist-shrouded horizon. "You know, Arkady, this is a very unique and special area. The Atlantic and Pacific meet and merge here. This is the one place where you have no land at all to east or west, just one continuous belt of water encircling the entire planet. The true world ocean."

Arkady felt a shiver ripple down his spine. Damn, this woman could make you feel things.

"No wonder we're bucking heavy seas," he said.

"For Drake Passage and Cape Horn this isn't heavy. It's average. Two months from now, during the winter storm season, then you'll get the heavy stuff. You'll have twelve thousand miles' worth of water, all being driven by hurricane-velocity winds, trying to crash through these straits. Our radar sats have tracked waves two hundred feet high on occasion."

"Holy hell! What do you do if you run into a monster like that?"

Amanda cocked an eyebrow at her Air Division commander. "You sink."

"Once, just once, couldn't this country fight a war off of Long Beach?"

"You have no romance in your soul, Arkady. Some very illustrious people and ships have come through here over the years. Remember talking about Sir Francis Drake last night? These straits are his. He was the first to transit them on his round-the-world raid against the Spanish.

"The USS Oregon came through here as well, on her race around South America to rejoin the fleet off Cuba during the Spanish-American war. The clipper ships too, racing the other way, back when it was ninety days to hell or California."

"You sound like you wouldn't have minded commanding one of those old square riggers."

"A clipper ship? Oh no. While their aficionados won't admit it, most of those old clippers were rickety damn affairs, oversparred and underhulled.

"No. If I had my choice, I'd have taken one of those big old Brandenburg freighters the Germans built around the turn of the last century. Those were the real apex of sailing technology. They were bark-rigged, four- or five- masters mostly. They had steel hulls, steel masts, and steel cable standing rigging. You could drive a ship like that, drive her till the canvas exploded right off the yards."

Her words trailed off and just for a moment she was far away, feeling the Cape winds of another time whip her hair.

The moment was broken by the click and rasp of the overhead squawk box. "Captain, this is Sonar. The hydrothermograph has just recorded that sudden sharp drop in water temperature that you asked us to watch for. You wanted to be notified."

"Yes, thank you, Sonar," Amanda replied into her headset.

"What's that about?" Arkady inquired.

"More uniqueness. We've just crossed a thermocline called the Antarctic Convergence. It's an actual, physical demarcation in this ocean reach that marks the parameters of the South Polar seas."

She keyed a new address code into the interphone. "Communications, this is the Captain. Please transmit the following to CINCLANT: 'The USS Cunningham has arrived on station.'"