It was probably the ringing in my ears that woke me up. I found myself in my own bed in my stateroom. Other than the constant white noise in my head, everything seemed calm.
There was something on my face that turned out to be a bandage. Most of my face hurt, my nose most of all.
I stood up from bed and stumbled a little. My head felt heavier than it should, and I put a hoof on the bulkhead to steady myself. After slowly making my way to the door, I stepped out into the passageway and headed for the CIC.
Hawker was there, looking tired. She turned to look at me and said something.
“What?” I replied. It felt like I shouted, but I couldn’t hear it.
She scribbled something on a piece of paper and showed it to me. It took a second to focus my eyes. You banged your nose when you passed out on deck.
Well, that explained what happened to my face. “How long was I out?”
She flipped the paper over and wrote some more. About twelve hours. You must have been exhausted.
That long? The porthole in my cabin had been covered, but I figured it should be daylight outside. I nodded to Hawker and made my way to the bridge.
Nika and Sweetie Belle were there. Both looked tired. Somehow, the bridge coffee maker had survived the battle, and Nika helped me get a cup. By talking directly to my ear, she was able to tell me that I had been found lying face down on deck apparently sleeping soundly with the exception of having my nose caved in. She said that it was no wonder, since I’d participated in the extraction of the Equestrians, the initial radar intercept of the paratroops, the most intense part of the fight, and the recovery operations afterwards.
Sweetie shrugged. “You did good,” it looked like her lips were saying.
I still felt unwell, but I didn’t think I could go back to sleep. My nose was starting to hurt, so I went down to the medical room to see if I could find some painkillers.
The Corpsmen had already gone, although some of their supplies had been left behind. The two injured Army men had apparently pulled through and both lay quietly. I was unable to find any anesthetics that didn’t require an IV, so I went looking for liquor.
It felt like some nice chilled vodka would do me some good, so I checked the walk-in freezer in the galley. I was only somewhat surprised to find a body wrapped in a blanket. It was perhaps the easiest way of keeping a cadaver at sea. I wondered if he had been vital to the bio lab in hold three, and whether operations would continue in the next few days.
We cruised back across the Pacific. This route was almost becoming a commute for us. Within a week of leaving Chinese waters, we had most of the containers of biological weapons samples tested and tossed overboard. The Army team stayed busy. Having experienced combat loss myself, I knew that work was a good way to cope.
Speaking of work, we had plenty to go around. There were several repairs that needed to be made. There was no way we could fix the blown apart bridge wing properly, so it was repainted and modified to appear to be damage other than the result of an explosion.
None of the small bullet holes had appeared in anything vital. It was a long process to locate them all. Patching them and repainting was comparatively simple.
The number one hold cover was probably damaged beyond repair. It wouldn’t slide open correctly now, and looked too much like battle damage. We fixed it so it stuck out less and covered it with a tarp. Penny apologized for blowing a hole in it, but her quick action in the CIC had probably saved us.
We were planning a significant period in dry dock upon our return to Norfolk. Heinlein had already been up on blocks more than most ships were in their entire lifetimes. Still, there was work to be done.
I was also committed to spending a long time in Washington. The uncomfortable truth was that I had a lot of explaining to do. I had a few ideas, but it felt like I was running out of maneuvering room.
After another trip through Panama, we headed through the Caribbean and up the east coast. The Army techs got their lab torn down and we unloaded everything back in Baltimore. After that, the ship went back to Norfolk, and I went to D.C.
I had a meeting with Sally Townsend, a meeting I’d called, in fact. Used carefully, very carefully, the media can work to your advantage. She was going to get the story of a lifetime, and hopefully I was going to get rid of my troubles and come out of it unscathed.
As of yet, no organization investigating me had the whole picture of what was going on. Hopefully, I could either keep them from getting that, or shut down the investigation before they could. The only way I could see to do that was to make things as complicated as possible and get protection. The CIA was where most of that came from, but I had to have more powerful friends than I already did. Nevis was out, and there were few others who could be named-dropped to make people take notice.
I called up a couple of Virginia’s Congressmen. Simply getting their numbers was probably the easiest part. Of course, the men didn’t answer their own phones and I had to convince the secretaries that I was interesting enough to write down my information so they could get back to me.
Norfolk, Virginia Beach, and the whole Hampton Roads area all relied heavily on the shipbuilding and naval industries. The Congressional districts in the area were in the middle of petitioning congress for federal funds. I called the Congressmen to offer my help as a local business owner.
If I did say so myself, I made a good case for why I should appear before Congress to plead the case for Hampton Roads. It was not often that someone willing offered themselves to testify to Congress, and I was invited in.
On the day I was set to appear, I wore a suit that I had had no need for on the high seas. It felt uncomfortable, but I reminded myself that it would only be a couple of hours. I also wore the small pin from the Presidential Medal of Freedom set. Any member of Congress would know what it was.
The questioning from the Congressional committee was mundane. I talked about the impact the nautical trade had on the local economy and how culturally significant it was. Finally, near the end of the session, I got the question I had been waiting on.
“Mr. Canvas, how did you earn that Presidential Medal of Freedom?”
“I’m afraid that’s classified, Mr. Representative. You’ll have to take that up with the President.”
My statement had the desired effect of giving the Congress something to talk about. I had Sally Townsend bring it up later in a press conference, alerting other reporters.
In return for doing what I asked, I was going to have to give Sally my story and do it for free. She drove a hard bargain, but I figured I could handle it.
I got her access to the dry dock and allowed her to take pictures of the ship from strategic angles to minimize the detail that could be seen. She began putting together the story, with editing from me to keep the really secret stuff hidden.
To be fair, I did tell Hanley about it before the story ran. He was even more angry than I expected, and I thought he might blow out an artery or something. I told him that he should begin preparing a statement from the CIA to respond to the inevitable reporter inquiry that took maximum advantage of the free publicity.
I also warned David to get ready. He would be handling all the news traffic coming to me. In preparation of the onslaught, I ditched all my old contact information and got a new phone, just in case someone had managed to get the number.
The story broke about like we expected it would. CIA and military hire young and handsome stallion to go in harm’s way for America! That’s not actually what the headlines said, but it was the most interesting thing to happen in the news for months. With all the attention, the President was forced to release the details of the Medal of Freedom, which only made it that much more interesting.
As part of the agreement, Sally Townsend got all the credit for discovering the story, and was the owner of the only known pictures of the ship. After that, our agreement was that I was free to do what I wanted as long as I didn’t divulge any details that I hadn’t told her. That was fine; I didn’t want to talk secrets either.
David submitted to me a list of media inquiries and their attached dollar values. I had TV interviews, book deals, and job offers.
Even with all the publicity flying around, there were still investigations being run. If anything, they had intensified. Sally Townsend did one more favor for me. She exposed the investigations and explained that the reason I looked so suspicious was because I had to be secretive about the covert work I did. With her face on TV, and the right words, public opinion came crashing down and stopped the investigations cold.
Nevis didn’t benefit, but he was a nobody to the public and no help came his way. The last I heard of him, he had taken a job with some fishing company.
Despite all that had happened, the rest of Traveler’s crew had remained anonymous and operations could continue. The ship spent a while in dry dock being modified.
The superstructure was changed up to alter its shape slightly. The bridge was expanded and armored. The distinctive aft crane was removed and a tower-type crane replaced it. The new crane was backed up against the superstructure and looked much different, but it was still capable of everything the old one had been.
The ABLs were moved from the fake shipping containers to the number three hold, which had been converted to another weapons platform. One of the quad Harpoon launchers was moved in from the number four hold. This allowed us a little better damage control, and also allowed the hold covers to be reshaped for a smaller profile and a different look.
Below the ABLs the empty space of the former number three hold was taken up by an area large enough to accommodate the Army bio lab again, if need be. The rest of the space was devoted to fuel, so we could increase our range.
The hull was given an ugly coat of pea green, and the decks were painted to make the hold covers less visible when viewed from above, such as in satellite photos.
Internally, not much was different. After some careful calculations, it was decided that the radar output power could be increased somewhat without burning any components out. That would give us stronger returns and maybe make stealth objects show up better.
As we prepared to pull out, I got a call from Hanley.
“Your reporter friend wants to accompany you on a job.”
“I told her no,” I said. Not that Sally hadn’t pleaded with me.
“Well, I told her yes. Think of her as a guest of the CIA.”
“In other words, you’re paying me.”
“Not that much of a guest.”
“Then what’s in it for me?”
“Fame. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
I realized there was nothing I could say that wouldn’t make me sound like a whiny colt. My plan had worked too well, and Hanley was first in line to make me pay for it.
Sally Townsend and Todd showed up at the shipyard and came aboard. Luckily, her entire attitude towards our secrecy had changed since being let aboard legitimately. We still had to go over some ground rules, but she was receptive.
During emissions blackouts, she wouldn’t be able to do anything to interact with the outside world. This was probably the most difficult thing for her to swallow, since as a journalist she thrived on communication. She would get to update regularly, as part of her assignment was an ongoing series that would keep people tuning in to her network.
Also, we couldn’t allow detailed pictures from inside the ship. A blank bulkhead was fine. The gun magazines were not. We also had to limit pictures of the exterior to prevent anyone from realizing what the ship now looked like. There were a few photos that hadn’t been published yet that I’d allowed her to take from before that showed the ship in its last incarnation. We could work those into the narrative and maybe pull off the illusion that the ship still looked that way.
She also had to take for granted that we knew what we were doing. When someone told her to duck, she had to instinctively do it rather than ask, “why?” She may have been in country during wars, but we were closer to the edge of combat than she had ever been before and any delay in following an order could get her killed.
We discussed all of this and more while we sailed from Norfolk back towards Asia. Todd shot clips for Sally, and they edited them together to make a recognizable story. They had a short interview with me and she talked about what little she could regarding the boat. We agreed that whenever someone from the crew who was not me appeared in video, they would be blurred.
The first video was sent out and seemed to be a popular thing to watch on TV in the U.S. It was rebroadcast on the internet and had all indications of going viral.
As usual, we didn’t know yet what the CIA wanted this time. I didn’t know how much more we could keep going over there and expect to keep finding things to blow up.
The second report by Sally Townsend was largely a rehash of the first, as nothing had happened, and there’s only so much you can talk about aboard a secret ship with a secret mission.
Unfortunately, a denizen of the internet carefully picked through the video and compared one of the shots to a file of porn he had. The woman seen fleetingly in the video had her face blocked, but it appeared to him that the body was the same as Hawker Hurricane.
It was really more of a lucky guess than anything. Hawker had only been doing her regular job in the video, and hadn’t worn anything more revealing than shorts during her time on the ship. At least nothing that I had seen. What she and Andy got up to in private was their business.
Lucky guess or not, it made for an interesting story. Within days, the internet was flying with accusations that the former pornographic actress Hawker Hurricane was now working as a mercenary for the CIA.
We had a discussion about it. Plausible deniability was on our side, and if we never showed her in another video and didn’t bring it up, they hype would probably pass. On the other hand, it was up to Hawker.
“Well,” she said, “these news reports that Ms. Townsend has been making have been lacking in some excitement. Honestly, I don’t think it would hurt our security much.”
“I’m sure you’ll get the same book deals and other offers that I did,” I said. “Probably more.”
The media of the United States and the United Kingdom went nuts when Hawker made herself known. Her regular income on royalties of her porn tripled. The same flood of inquiries and proposals came, but there were more of them. All of that just goes to show that sex sells.
Hawker’s celebrity seemed to be more popular than my own, and I was actually glad. I didn’t need the money that seems to get thrown at you when you’re popular, and I was happy to step aside and let her be the main focus of Sally’s news reports.
There were entire websites set up online devoted to trying to figure out who else was part of the crew. People had jumped to the conclusion that one porn star aboard surely meant that there had to be someone else interesting. To our relief, they never made any other significant accusations or discovered anyone else’s name.
That didn’t stop already established celebrities from trying to become involved. We laughed off their messages one after another. I actually did consider Paris Hilton’s request, if only because I might actually be able to fulfill every American’s fantasy of shooting her.
When we finally got orders, Sally was able to pull a whole new report out of rehashing information in a different tone of voice to indicate things had gotten more serious.
The objective this time was simply to conduct reconnaissance on the Chinese coast and make sure they didn’t attempt to do anything with the biological weapons. Since the production facility had been destroyed, nothing new would be produced, but that didn’t take into account the weapons that may have already been deployed.
We had no idea what kind of delivery methods they might use. Ballistic missiles we’d seen, as well as regular bombs. There might be something else that we hadn’t thought of, but hopefully any action on our part wouldn’t be necessary.
Sally got another report out of how we were now sitting on station and waiting. The missions often involved a lot of waiting, she explained.
It’s too bad that doesn’t make good TV. When the public realized that she was not really offering anything new with each report, the viewership began to fade. I was all right with that. Maybe it would finally get us some peace and quiet and get Sally and Todd sent home.
Sadly, things never stayed calm when we needed them to. The CIA ordered us to move out of the East China Sea and down towards Taiwan without explanation. I sensed that something was happening, but nobody would tell me what. Typical.