To Sail a Darkling Sea

outriggers and some of the winches removed. The hard points for the outriggers now held two modified M2 “MaDeuce” Browning.50 caliber machine guns.

“Faith, decorum,” Steve said, facepalming. “Among other things, phraseology.”

“Water-cooled, sir?” Gunny Sands said, examining the copper pipe wrapping the barrels of the machine guns. A flexible plastic hose ran from the pipes to a strapped down 55 gallon blue barrel.

The group there to “evaluate and support” the test included most of the surviving Marines as well as some pre-Plague Navy personnel and some “post-Plague, hostilities only” survivors who had volunteered for Naval service as gunners.

“Got it in one, Gunny,” Steve said. “Hopefully, with enough cooling, the weapon will be able to fire more or less continuously and thus tear up large numbers of zombies close to the waterline. The question is whether the design will hold up to continuous fire. Both in terms of barrel heat and vibration from the firing.”

“Ooo, ooo!” Faith said, holding up her hand. “Me, me!”

“Don’t think so, kiddo,” Rob Cooper said. The former maintenance engineer of the Voyage Under Stars patted the barrel proprietarily. “My build. I get first crack.”

“However,” Steve said. “This is an endurance test. And while the butterfly trigger has also been modified to be locked down, everyone will take turns maintaining fire. Because I’m fully aware that at a certain level even the Gunny is going ‘Oooo, oooo, me, me.’ ”

“Bit, sir, bit,” Gunny Sands said. “I’d rather be shooting up zombies with it. Is this going to be a Marine weapon, sir?”

“Not primarily designed as such, no,” Steve said. “The crew will be Navy. Marines will be used for landing parties. But, if everyone would don hearing protection… ”

* * *

“Now I know why the swabbies were unloading all that fifty!” Derek shouted as he hooked up another belt.

“I’m glad somebody thought of snow shovels!” PFC Kirby said, dumping another shovelful of spent brass and links over the side.

The test had started with a fifteen-second continuous fire. When there was no evidence of heating, it went to a one-minute, then two-minute, then a ten-minute test. While there was no heating at ten minutes, it was apparent the system needed some lubrication. The M2 Browning machine gun was living up to its name, working like an actual machine. The system fired between 475 and 575 rounds per minute. In ten minutes, that was five thousand rounds. And the.50 caliber was an unquestioned man-killer. Although the current target was open ocean, 50 caliber was considered a “light-materials” gun, i.e., designed to destroy vehicles and even small tanks. Even without its “armor piercing” rounds, it would penetrate a car block. When it hit humans they tended to explode and the round kept on going.

The entire group, even Gunny Sands, had at one point or another gotten to fire the weapon. The “support group,” both Marines and some Navy personnel, had been busy keeping one of the weapons fed and the brass and links cleared.

“Feeding these beasts is going to take some muscle,” Seaman Apprentice (Gunner) Bennett said. Rusty had volunteered to join the Navy when Anarchy was “cross-service transferred” to be one of the gunners. As a tanker Anarchy was intimately familiar with the MaDeuce. “Fortunately, I’ve been getting it back.”

There were two fifties mounted on the back of the converted trawler and both of them were in continuous fire.

“Check fire,” Steve shouted. “Break them down and check for wear… ”

* * *

“With them not getting hot, the barrels are taking the rounds just fine, looks like,” Gunny Sands said, examining the modified barrel with a penlight. “I’m not seeing any real wear at all.”

“The breech looks good,” Gunner’s Mate Third Class Mcgarity said, checking the parts with a loupe. “We’ll have to keep it lubed if we’re firing over a minute or so, but with continuous lube, I don’t know how long you could fire one of these.”

“The question, sir,” Gunny Sands said, “is do we have a target?”

“We do indeed,” Steve said. “We do indeed, Gunny.”

* * *

“Pretty,” Sophia said as the division pulled into the harbor of Valle Gran Re in the Canary Islands.

The small town on the island of Gran Re was surrounded by dry, rocky mountains and virtually cut off from the rest of the not particularly large island. The harbor consisted of a large, modern, outer breakwater to protect it from the heavy deep Atlantic seas as well as a smaller, older one interior. Both could be driven on by vehicles as evidenced by the abandoned cars and trucks. The inner harbor was still scattered with shallow-draft small-craft painted in a variety of bright pastels along with a few large sailboats. Two motor yachts, one at least the size of the Large, were tied alongside. The buildings of the town were mostly stone block, whitewashed or also painted in a rainbow of pastels.

“Scenic,” Faith said. “So’s the greeting party.”

And there were infecteds. They weren’t concentrated, ignoring the boats as usual, but they could be seen foraging for food on the water’s edge.

“With due respect, Ensign,” Staff Sergeant Januscheitis said. “Might I call your attention to the shoals forward.”

“Got it under control, Staff Sergeant,” Sophia said mildly, turning to port. “I haven’t spent a lot of time in harbors, but I have been around this block a time or two.”

“We’ll set up for fire on the inner jetty,” Lieutenant Zachary “Zack” Chen radioed from the USNA Wet Debt, formerly the Fishing Vessel (F/V) Wet Debt, a sixty-foot oceanic shrimp trawler. Lieutenant Chen was the division commander for Littoral Clearance Division One. The recently rescued navy lieutenant had previously been an ordnance officer on the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Truxtun. The Truxtun was also known to be somewhere in the Sargasso Sea but with the exception of the lieutenant and another survivor from a life raft, so far nobody had seen hide nor hair of it. It wasn’t at its last reported position; Sophia had broken away from the division on the way down to the Canary Islands to check. He’d elected to command the division from the fishing trawler. The No Tan Lines carried the Marine Assault Team and would act as a ferry for any survivors from the town who wished to evacuate.

“Stand by while we anchor and watch the shoals.”

The Wet Debt dropped anchor off the jetty seaward towards the outer breakwater. It dropped anchor nearly at the breakwater, paid it out, then used the pivot point to arrange itself so it was at a forty-five degree angle to the inner jetty about a hundred meters out. There it dropped two more “stream” anchors at points of a triangle and last paid in on the main anchor so it was about a hundred and fifty meters from the jetty.

The second fishing trawler, the Golden Guppy, did much the same thing at the reverse angles, starting from landward. Then Sophia dropped anchor with the No Tan Lines well back, in line with the end of the jetty and in parallel.

“You know,” Januscheitis said. “The sound of an anchor going down used to be one of those great moments. Port call. Exotic wom… Port calls… ”

“Join the Marines, they said,” Derek said. “Travel to foreign lands, they said… ”

“Meet interesting zombies and kill them,” Faith finished. “I say we just party til tomorrow.”

“More or less the plan,” Sophia said, shutting down the engine. She flipped on the stereo and set it to full blast then plugged in her new iPod, Mister Lawton’s “gift.”

There had been a stash of iPods on the Alpha. Apparently Mickerberg handed them out as party favors. Problem being, nobody had the “permissions” to load anything on them.

Lawton’s company hadn’t been involved in hacking but Lawton himself had attained his degree in computer engineering at the age of nineteen. He was a past master of all things hardware and software. For him, creating a bot to fix the permissions issue was child’s play.

Thus what he had given to Sophia was not just a newer and better iPod but a six terabyte hard drive filled