Repost HMNZS NIAGARA

[drmarkbailey]

I have the As-NZ material from the old site and will repost it over time.

Again, the formatting has not carried over, sorry. I just do not have the time to spend hours reformatting it.

Cheers: Mark

[drmarkbailey]

HMNZS NIAGARA

HMNZS Niagara.jpg

The base

The infrastructure brief was fascinating, she had no realised just how much had been going on in the couple of months she’d been away, and then recuperating. Which she was still doing, Monday was her formal start, but being well briefed she was getting in ahead of the power curve. The RNZN had taken over the entire facility in Wellington, from the face of the T-wharf to Queen’s Wharf road. The big refurbished warehouses were being refitted as accommodation and living quarters – very good ones – with a big gym, and an indoor area which while meant for sports was also a handy indoor parade ground for training when it was too hot and sunny, earthquaking, raining, sleeting, snowing or blowing a gale: on any normal Wellington day, in other terms. They already had a large operations room with their Maritime Trade Operations people co-located there; it included a vast but old-fashioned series of wall and table maps showing New Zealand waters, with more showing the details of each major port and its approaches.

The new wrecks, mined waters, barrage locations and position of every mine positively identified were all marked. Too many of the mine location spots also had a wreck marked, close by. She peered closely at the large map, yes, there, in the waters off Bream Head between Poor Knights Islands and the Moko Hinau Islands, the wrecks of HMNZS Puriri and RMS Niagara were both plotted. So was the location of KM Orion’s barrages because the sinkers were all still there and could be mistaken for modern mines.

After all, the barrage locations of today’s fields overlapped one of Orion’s. And the huge wreck of the container ship MV Maersk Marienburg, lay on the sea floor barely five miles from Niagara.

“So much for learning a damned thing from our own naval history,” she muttered to herself.

“Ma’am?”

“Nothing much, Leader,” she said to the old MTO Leading Seaman running the plot this watch. “Just reflecting that our political masters can hardly say that we had the slightest excuse not to prepare for a mine threat this time around the buoy.”

“Ah, you spotted Puriri and Niagara, ma’am. That’s why we MTO plotted them and the others, and the old minefield locations. It makes just that point to the politicians when they come in for briefings.” He paused, obviously considering something, then he nodded slightly to himself. “The boss, Lieutenant Miller, his great uncle was on the old Claymore with Williams back in 1940 when they were salvaging Niagara’s gold. Thought it might be a worthwhile idea.”

She made a mental note. “I’ll tell him that it was a good idea, Leader. Does this shipping plot mirror the one at Philomel?”

“Yes, ma’am, it’s the master recognised maritime picture, we just mirror it here in those screens over at the MTO desks and we add the local VTS feeds there, we then plot manually here one they enter coastal waters so we can keep an eye on their movements through the waypoints.” He shrugged. “It’s good training for new MTO as well, they manually track the ships then debrief the Masters, and rebrief for the outbound voyages.”

“Good cooperation?”

“Yes ma’am, they know that ignoring NCAGS advice from MTO would void their war risk insurance, and that we do our damnedest to keep them clear of the threats. Their reports are excellent, and we all know that the best report is that nothing happened and the voyage was routine and boring.”

“True, that, thanks Leader.”

The Niagara CO, another Lieutenant Commander, and his Supply Officer then joined her to continue the tour. Her sweepers were a lodger unit here, unlike the situation at Newcastle, where McCann commanded both the base and the sweepers, although his XO basically ran the base so he could concentrate on the mine battle side of life.

“So, ma’am,” said the Supply Officer, we have the advantage of excess under cover volume here, so Shed 6 is entirely yours and includes a big layout and racking area for all your gear.”

“Avoids much of the usual wharfside mess sweepers generate, Christine,” added the base commander, Lieutenant Commander Joshua Falau. He was a very big man, nearly 6’6” but appearing like a squat toad from a distance due to enormous shoulders and very heavy musculature. “Makes life a bit safer and you have the use of the crane there too, as well as the open layout area and its crane as well.”

He shrugged. “It’s a shared facility and a lot of Army’s gear crosses it, plus military deliveries and merchant ship overflow for the Ro-Ro as well.”

“So management is complex. Not a bad idea to place you in command of the base and me as a lodger unit, it’s a different arrangement to what the Aussies use.”

He nodded. “And to be frank you have a hell of a job trying to build what is essentially an extempore MCM capability from scratch after the blasted war has kicked off. You just don’t need the distraction with what’s on your plate.”

She nodded. “Appreciate that, Josh, and the facilities too. Deconfliction?”

“Priority management, complicated but works fine with a little give and take. And for the southern half of Niagara’s wharfage you have first priority, plus the No.6 shed crane, second priority for the other crane now that we’ve restored the trackway so it can service the northern inner wharf as well. Plus I have two mobile cranes, ten tonners.”

“Hmm. Think we’ll keep the base post-war?”

“Yep. Mostly because post-war is off in the never-never. Even when things wind up in Europe and North Asia, South East Asia’s going to be a war zone for years by the looks, maybe decades, and on top of that the Chinese are obviously trying to re-establish the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, starting with their takeover of the South China Sea inside that nine-dashed line nonsense. They are a regional hegemon on the make and in first growth phase.”

Christine grimaced. “Oh, joy. More catch-up to do.”

He nodded. “Yep. And won’t your ships make nice little auxiliary gunboats for the shenanigans there in a year or so? Six thousand islands and a what, twelve-way civil war where an AK-47 is high tech and lots of local forces are using spearmen and the golok and the parang?”

He grinned. “Makes cutlass and boarding pike quite useful, dunnit?”

“Ha! You’re just jealous, you overgrown maniac. The Aussies are just plain crazy. Thought of you coming at me with a sword or a pike’s a bit worrying!” She thought about this for a moment, then grinned. “I’ll stick with my trusty old SLR. My kind of equaliser.”

Falau looked at her. “You’ve nicked it.”

“Nick is such a strong word. I’ve signed it out as my personal weapon from the Australians. All legal and above board,” grinned Christine.

“And they wrote it off, didn’t they. Lemme guess, lost when Wilcannia had to abandon ship.”

Christine’s grin widened. “I have no idea about Australian internal processes,” she said loftily, “I know that I signed it out and that it was on charge to me when doing makee-learnee over there. They said to take it with me as they’d sort the paperwork. They can audit it or ask for it back any time they want.”

He grinned. “Cheat. True on the sharp pointies, but. I saw the ones the Aussies shipped your lads, very nice gesture and really nice weapons. Getting a bunch made up here too for my lads and lasses, so we can have comps. It’s not like we don’t have the indoor sports centre to run them in and the PTI’s are champing at the bit. It will also help ‘em fit in with your mob, oh, by the way, I want to talk to you about your ships always having a few of my people aboard when they go out. And we will be manning the towfish boats.”

“With girls? Like the Aussies? And they are those big seventy foot fibreglass jobbies, yes?”

“Yep, same as the Aussies do, and yep, built locally buy a motor yacht builder. Gotta be bigger than the RAN ones due to the rougher waters here, although they are swapping some of their faster aluminium ones for some of ours. Auckland for Bass Strait.”

Christine nodded thoughtfully. “Makes sense. That’s all good, as a package that integration of base and sweeper has worked to create a seamless relationship between base and seagoing in Newcastle and elsewhere, brilliant for morale, chat with Jack Horner when he gets here for his take on it too.”

“The VC?”

“Yep, he’ll be here in a while. Well worth grabbing lessons on morale and teambuilding from, as he’s a right natural at it. Good bloke, too. Just be aware that you’ll lose people when we lose sweepers, and that’s hard, very hard. Made very sure that there’s no daylight between your staff and the Chaplains, and that they have vehicles any time they want. You’ll also need a bunch of available cash to help tide over any young widows with no clue about their family finances, which means teeing up some sort of training for ‘em’s a good idea too, I’ve got that stuff, I’ll get it to you. Have a chat with Namoi, they’ve done a bunch of this and there’s no point re-inventing the wheel. You’ve Tracey McCann’s contact details, ask her as she’s up to her eyebrows in all of that. There are a bunch of issues like that.”

She grimaced. “Believe me, it happens, ask Clarkie and Jack. That’s why I’ve got my pusser drawing up basic how to manage your money training for the troops and their spouses. Namoi manages that particular problem with a special little pool of money in the ship’s fund that everyone donates a little bit to, every pay day. When it gets too big they have a family barbecue for everyone. That’s a big lesson learned after Birchgrove Park was lost. Lots of lessons like that, pick their brains as much as you can.”

Falau finished scribbling in his notebook, his face rather grim. “Hard lessons and bad to contemplate, really not the sort of thing you like to dwell on, but all the more important for that.”

“Pretty much.”

Christine shook her head, back to business, although that was business too. “OK, so single accommodation here, and for marrieds we’ve requisitioned and converted the Continental just down Grey Street for flats for them. That’s good. I’ll need a room here but I intend to live at our house as much as I can, which won’t be much as I’d like….”

Falau interrupted. “You have a sort of day cabin like I do, it’s actually a small suite, it’s actually above your office and yes, ensuite and double bed for you and Jon. Stole the idea from the Aussies. Understand about your house but it’s half an hour’s drive away at a minimum and there will be lots of occasions you just won’t be able to go home. Does Jon need a contractor role here? We can always use a sparky.”

“That sounds fine, and no chance as much as I’d like that. It’s his high tension ticket. He got grabbed the instant we came back. He’s working as a team leader with a high tension contractor, doing building and maintenance on the city HT distribution side. It scares the hell out of me really, dangerous work and a lot of it is underground. Pays well, he earns a lot more than I do. Silly sod wanted to join up, got knocked back by the regs, HT’s a protected trade as power distribution’s critical to the war effort and we are desperately short of experienced HT tickets.”

She shook her head. “Men! That said it means we have a straight run if we need access to sparkies and such. Anyway, back to the base, everything under cover, even the cables, wires, Orepesa’s and AMASS. Not actually good because we have to double handle everything but it has maintenance advantages so we can live with it if we have the right racking, racking we can safely board, work in and move around it, and heavy forklifts. Do we?”

“Aaaah…well about that,” said Falau slowly.

They set to settling a few of the finer points of organising a lodger unit at a shore operations base.



HMNZS Niagara, Wellington, New Zealand (Post WWIII image taken during the still-ongoing Archipelagic Wars, note corvette, MSA and towfish boats alongside)

Saturday Night

Jon gently stroked his wife’s bare back and she lay curled into him, both in the gentle haze of afterwards.

“I understand Tracey and Michelle a lot better now.”

“Hmm? How do you mean, love?”

“I understand why both need children right now. I desperately want to get pregnant, and I can’t. Not yet, and I may not survive until the time I can.”

She shifted and rose on her elbow, which Jon found highly distracting, causing her to smile gently at her husband. Then he looked at her with troubled eyes. That was the subject for them, had been for weeks and they had discussed it in great depth, including the wider family in those discussions.

And an offer had been made which had totally blindsided them. They had never expected it – but family is family. And family will do much when the circumstances really are life or death.

“We have a … sort of a solution to that, and you know that, love. Not a great one or the one we should have, not one we wanted or even like, but a solution. And you know that I’d do it automatically if … “ he paused and took a steadying breath which did not remove the fear in his eyes, “if you did not return.” They had already discreetly taken that precaution.

It had been just after they got back home, a couple of weeks ago. They’d been talking about the changes the war had made to them, how they now had such a different view of marriage comparing their pre-war expectations with what they had seen people build under such dangers as in the 2nd Squadron in Newcastle. They had been amazed and surprised too about the ridiculous media hysterics about the soaring marriage rate and subsequent birth rate among military wives. Such media never bothered to link their nonsense to the casualty rates. They’d been discussing all of this, the Squadron in Newcastle and how badly the military husbands and wives wanted children – including Christine – and how that was just impossible for her due to her duties. They had told the family about the backup precaution they had taken. Jon’s older sister had gone silent for a long time, then vanished with her husband to make sandwiches for lunch. Her return had included a conversation that brought all others to a screeching halt. And she’d laughed at both of them, at their expressions, when she had made the incredible offer. She’d slapped her hips with both hands, thrown her head back and roared with laughter. “I’m a big old heifer with genuine child-bearing hips, guys, having bubs is easy with this kit, and we have our six! Of course I’d go surrogate for you, Chrissie. We could implant one or two of those fertilised eggs of yours right now, if you wanted. But I guess you’ll want to think about it a bit.”

Then her face had sobered as she looked at the stunned faces of her little brother and half-blinded, heavily bandaged sister-in-law, really, really looked seriously at them. “You barely made it out alive last time, Chrissie. There was one inch in that between life and death, wasn’t there? And every day at sea is going to be a next time for you. And I know about the losses because you told me in your letters. And I know that you really, really want kids, and I know that your duty must come first, and I know that you are putting your life on the line for me and others like me. So I can bloody well step up here. It’s the least I can do, we are family. Please take out this insurance. I am deadly serious about this. You can bear as many of your own kids later as you want if you live through this but there’s no guarantee except this one, is there?” She’d glanced at her husband.

His brother-in-law had looked them as well, reaching out instinctively to hold his own wife’s hand. He’d just smiled gently and said “Toni and I have talked about this, and it’s a very serious thing, and we both agree on it.” He’d smiled again. “Besides, Toni’s a bit crazy, she likes being pregnant and we’re already uncle and aunt for your kids, eh? Not like we won’t be seeing the little tackers all the time, is it? We live in the same street for goodness sake and our youngest is only 14 months, some more cousins will fit right in. And we are family, first and foremost. Think about it, but not for too long. We see the news and it’s getting worse, if done, this should be done quickly”

Jon looked steadily at her. “Love, I think we should run with it, and now. It’s only a couple of weeks before you are back in the thick of it again.”

His voice sank to a whisper. “And there are no guarantees.”

She lay back down, her eye filling with tears. “Yes,” she whispered, “oh, yes,” and she reached again for her husband.

Monday Morning

Lieutenant-Commander Christine Stefanovic metaphorically girded her loins as she got out of the car. She was still not used to driving with one eye, and even though the traffic this early was bearable she still found it disconcerting.

First day back on the horse, here’s your anvil and the deep end of the pool, she thought, mind the splash!

The 25th New Zealand Minesweeping Flotilla had been resurrected on pretty much its WWII lines and nomenclature. It had been changed from the 1st RNZN Minesweeping Squadron so that it now had an instant history, and an honourable one. Just as in WWII, they had two Auxiliary Minesweeper Groups, the 94th Auxiliary Minesweeping Group at Auckland and the 95th Auxiliary Minesweeping Group at Wellington. Wellington had the main base, the RNZN had taken over the old T-wharf and named it HMNZS Niagara, after the gold-filled liner of the same name which had been mined early in WWII. Another Lieutenant, an old engineer from reserve, ran the base side of the Squadron’s ops in concert with Niagara’s CO for her. She had an XO and he was effectively a second XO. It was coming together nicely. She’d seen him briefly, he’d just waved from where he was paying close attention to a bunch of civilian contractors working massive turpentine timbers into the wharf for repairs and reinforcement. I like an officer who’s too busy with his duties to poodlefake with the boss, she thought.

The Flotilla was not in the best shape, but she had a plan for that, and a very good loan Flotilla XO. He was standing on the wharf waiting for her. It was war. They were not standing on ceremony, something minesweeper types had a distinct aversion to anyway. And the newly promoted Lieutenant Clarke, temporarily ex-HMAS Wilcannia, was going to be a God-send while his badly bent but now salvaged ship was being slipped, stripped and rebuilt. She had him for a couple of months, and she’d been promised Horner VC for maybe five or six weeks when they sent the first of the new-style AMS over. The Australians had been generous to a fault, taking the view that it was better to short yourself a bit and accept a low risk level from doing so, while simultaneously reducing an ally’s risk in a big way. And Clarke had brought Chief Graves along. Nobody was going to mess with them or complain about them being very … direct in their advice. Not with their record and operational expertise. She’d long since worked that out.

What kept the butterflies going in her midriff was…

Clarke strode over, saluted, and said in a low voice, “you look as tough as nails and ready to rumble, ma’am, so don’t sweat the image one bit. Not waving the bloody shirt but looking like we’ve been in a punch-up helps like you would not believe. They’ve taken losses but morale is really bucking up over the last two days now that they know a hard case with fighting experience and who knows the game is here.”

… girl stuff. And the nightmares.

She still could not help being nervous. Worse (in her mind) was that all the scars were raw and purple, very vivid against her skin, and even worse than that was the all-too-common public recognition of who she was. What she did not see was what the men and women of her Squadron saw and felt vast relief over; what they saw absolute proof that they had someone running the show who had been there and done that, but who had brought back much, much more than a T-shirt.

The head-shrinkers were helping a lot, and Jon was her own rock, yet she was still terribly self-conscious about going about in public. The bandages would be finally coming off soon, they were now just protective, to keep medical ointments in contact with the very delicate new scar tissue and to keep the sun and weather off them. So another week or two. She knew that the mask covering the ruined third of her face would both help and hinder – she’d settled on plain glossy white, but she felt the stares like daggers when she was in public, even with her husband. It was less so when in uniform; the reasons were then obvious, as was the NZGS.

So to hell with them, woman! “I am as nervous and self-conscious as blazes, all banged up like this, dammit I feel like a freak show sometimes Clarkie,” she said, quietly, “but I think I’ve got a grip on it.

“Then you are doing better with the nightmares than I am ma’am,” he replied, equally softly, “but that does not matter, what matters is that we project the aura of knowing what the hell we are actually doing: and that, ma’am, that we have down pat.”

Yes, getting back on the horse was going to help. A lot.

Another Lieutenant, RNZN this time, hastened over and saluted. She returned it.

“Ah, Lieutenant Dennis Wilde, I see. Good to see you, Dennis. Pierhead jump into this Flotilla XO posting, I was told?”

“Yes ma’am, I was supposed to go to Endeavour, but you know how it is.” He grinned. “Besides, this is an XO slot with two groups under it, quite a bit more challenging than senior watchkeeper on a tanker, ma’am!”

She nodded, carefully. “Sure will be. Especially as you’ll mostly be in Auckland with the other half of the Flotilla so we can coordinate bringing both Squadrons up to spec. Basically, you’ll be acting quasi-independently up there with the 94th, we’ll adjust that of course with ship swaps between Groups to harmonise procedures, we’ll scurry back and forth ourselves and it all means one cast-iron bitch of a coordination task for you and me.”

He nodded soberly. “And that’s not an issue the Aussies have had to deal with.”

“True,” she said, “but it’s necessary. We cannot risk having you and I both killed on the same ship. Our basis of experience is way too shallow to risk that.”

She nodded. “Our first principle has to be to make sure we preserve every shred of expertise, and we know we are going to lose ships and men. So what we learn we have to spread around, really fast and we do not risk putting all our expertise eggs in one basket, ever. So the best of our skippers have to step up as well, like shadow XO’s for both of us at Squadron level. It’s almost like a shadow posting, really.”

“Lousy way to do business, ma’am, but all the alternatives are worse.”

“Yep.”

Then she introduced him to Clarke and gave a potted brief.

“So, Dennis, I am Flotilla CO but will keep learning from Commander Boulay, who you will meet tomorrow. He’s actually on medical rehab leave and still in a wheelchair. He’s learning to walk on his new tin legs, and he’s going to be in mufti most of the time. He’s volunteered to come over here to help us get on our feet as fast as we can – his joke, not mine, man has a graveyard sense of humour but it’s genuine. He’s pointed out that their system, where he commands both the Squadron and the base-ship, is a little like the system we have to use. He’s right. So your job as Flotilla XO is to learn as fast as you can, as much as you can, so stick to Clarkie here like glue, basically he’s acting in your job for a few weeks and you are officially supernumerary, which is awkward but make it work. There can’t be any daylight between you two while he’s here. He’s got a heck of a lot of minesweeping experience so absorb that like a sponge.”

She grinned, “and just remember that he’s a terrible ship driver. Keeps bumping into Russki submarines and beaches and stuff.”

Wilde smiled slightly, and then nodded soberly. “I had noticed the arm, ma’am.”

“Heh,” said Clarke, “got a warrie. Y’know ma’am I thought about having one of those emo earlobe tube thingies hipsters have in their ears stuck into the hole in me arm. Might be a conversation piece, I thought. Then the lads suggested maybe making some tiddly ropework to decorate it, my Wilcannias were really full of helpful suggestions.”

He shook his head sadly. “Then the poor buggers made the mistake of telling my missus about their ideas. She did not actually maim any of them and the bruises on the lads will fade any month now.”

They grinned comfortably at each other.

She changed the subject. “So you two got together over a beer yesterday, eh?”

“More than one, ma’am”, said Clarke, “after Church we met up and spent a long time up at The Backbencher, started with their mussels in a laksa sauce and got kicked out at closing time.”

“Hmm,” she said, rubbing her chin, “I happen to know that’s a lunchtime dish up there, so you two most of a day mulling over the problems of the minesweeping world, eh?”

Serious nods greeted this.

“No documents with us ma’am, but we took a lot of notes and we watched our mouths,” said Clarke. “Parliament’s sitting on weekends now so we saw more than one of your politicians blanching when we discussed some of the lessons, specially ‘bout the crew loss stats and handling the bodies and the families. Parliament is sitting, and it’s not called the backbencher for nothing. Place was full of them and staffers.”

“And I learned a lot, ma’am,” said Wilde firmly, “especially about morale. They have already been where we are, and what they do works, so using that knowledge is just a no-brainer. We do have to be careful to tweak it to our needs rather than be seen to be just copying. But that we can do.”

“Good,” she said, “well done and keep that up, brief me when you have firmed up thoughts on your program.

She then eyed Clark suspiciously. “You and Jack were thick as thieves just before we left. Did you…?”

Clark looked as innocent as he could manage. Which was not much.

“Bastards. Did you bring enough for everyone?”

“Cutlasses for everybody!” carolled Clark, Graves and Wilde in chorus as they laughed.

“Got ‘em engraved as a gift from us in the 2nd to your blokes too,” said Clarke, “that way they’ll have a connection.”

She shook her head ruefully then nodded at the two sweepers visible alongside from this angle. “We already have some lessons being applied.”

Both ships had obvious new additions to their armament. At this stage it was just 20mm Oerlikons and a bandstand for the old ex-Army 25pdr guns currently in the workshops being hastily converted to a naval mount but it all helped. Army had many more guns than carriages for the 25pdr. The main problem here was that they had been too hastily formed to settle in to the work – or even be trained in it properly – and then hammered flat by heavy losses. They had now lost no fewer than four MSA and to everyone’s horror only two of the 61 crew members of these very small ships had survived. And shipping losses around New Zealand had been high as the dozen sinkings around the coast attested to. Worse, it had been the RNZAF which had made the only submarine kill in local waters and, unfair as it was, the RNZN had been criticised for “not doing their job”, with the worst of that falling on the minesweepers. Most vitriolic were those same critics had furiously opposed acquisition of any MCM capability prewar as a waste of public money better spent, in their eyes, on personally profitable boondoggles or political esoterica such as the electorally essential left handed red-headed gay surfboard rider demographic or somesuch.

Ignorant pundits, ideological grifters and the greasier form of politician were never more furious than when proven wrong by a pesky reality. The only group which had rallied publicly to the defence of the minesweepermen had been the shipping industry, who knew that they were doing the best with what they knew and what they had, and paying a heavy price for the prewar inactions of others.

Stefanovic was looking forward to the first opportunity she might have to ram a verbal longsword through some of those people. She already had a little list and some training from Tracey McCann.

“OK, we are sailing in three hours, which gives me time to check out the office and talk about today’s ops with the COs and the senior base staff. Chief, I want you to have a good look at handling procedures and processes. I noticed that the accident and injury rate is about 28% over the 2nd. I suspect it’s just a residue of learning from a less experienced basis, and you know as well as I do how that can lead to institutionalising unsafe practices.”

She glanced at her watch.

“Let’s get to it.”

oOo

“How’s the office, ma’am?”

“Fit for purpose.”

So much for small talk, thought Mick Richards. He was really unsure about this. What was now the 25th had had a very hard time… well, both groups had; they had been independent units until recently. WELLGROUP, now the 95th Auxiliary Minesweeping Group, had taken the heaviest losses and lost the most merchant ships in their area. The new structure might help, and the injection of up-to-date lessons from over the ditch had helped.

The new flotilla commander finished introducing herself to the last MSA commander and walked to the front of the room. He had to admit that she looked formidable; certainly her reputation within the RNZN was high, and the NZGS attested to that. He noticed that she was still walking with a slight limp.

Time to girl up, you, Christine thought to herself.

“Right, you all know the story to date and I’m not going to waffle on about that. We all know that the response to the threat was too little and too late, and we all know that we have paid a price for that. I want to stress that it would have not made a lot of difference had we been further up the preparation curve, people. The Australians were more prepared than we were, and their losses have been higher. What matters is what we do now. We have our own mine battles here and we have called in the clans to help. The Five Eyes and the Japanese are all assisting. I’ve spent the last day with CN and his staff, and with the Australian staff who came over. Bottom line. We’ve got six AMS updated to reflect our mutual lessons coming, these are the longliners new from Japanese yards and refitted to purpose in Australia. We will be getting Countess of Hopetoun class as well. Bloody good ships. Numbers not firm yet but at least six, including two from building slots earlier in the program. More on those two in a second.”

This caused quite a bit of a stir. She smiled, coldly, Mick thought.

“These AMS will obviously all be fitted with the same kit as the RAN has, and I think I have won my argument about minehunters too. The Australians still have the building forms for the Bay class catamarans at Tomago and are building six more. Yes they are only a roadstead hunter and the weather here makes them marginal, but I think CN will get two through the Government, they will be for Auckland with its longer approaches through the Bay of Islands and better sea conditions. Here we will use instead two modified Countesses, different engine plant to make them quieter and a Japanese containerised sonar system. We won’t be using ROV with them, though. Too slow in our currents and high sea states and we are not experienced in using them. Instead we’ll be using a new system which the Australians have been developing. It’s a modern spigot mortar with 24 bombs, which are fired in a very tight pattern to physically destroy the ground mine. Range is 1000 yards so mines can be identified, plotted and then destroyed at distance from the sweeper. Cheap and dirty but effective and fast to get in to service, as if that’s unusual for us.”

She looked around the room during the susurration of quiet voices, seeing approval. “All that said, we now have the job of getting the mission done through the interim period until all this nice shiny new kit becomes available. And that’s our job, gentlemen. To assist with that we’ve got Lieutenant Clarke here for a while because his ship’s getting repaired, he’s CO HMAS Wilcannia and Chief Graves is his assistant. The Chief is actually the XO of Countess of Hopetoun after their XO got killed in action but Jack bent her a fair bit so she’s off at the panelbeaters and the Chief said he liked our beer. Pick their brains. All the lessons learned in the three Mine Battles off Newcastle, the iron ore ports and in Bass Strait have been paid for in cold hard cash and you know what I mean by that. In addition, Commander Boulay is over here, he commands the Squadron based in Melbourne and is able to do light duties here for us while he recuperates a bit. He’ll mostly be in mufti as he’s actually on medical rehabilitation leave while he gets used to his new tin legs, but he’s here specifically for you to talk to about lessons learned and ways the Australians have found to keep going in the face of heavy losses. His wife Marie is here with him, she’s acting as his keeper and is making sure that he does not overdo it. Don’t let him overdo it but don’t hover, either.”

She smiled and it subtly changed the tenor of the room. “I had a chat to Mrs Boulay and she said that’s her job. She’ll tell you to bugger off if she thinks he’s overdoing it, trust me on that score. Sit down and have a cuppa with the man, and just chat about what worries you.”

There were quiet smiles at the little sally.

She noted the looking around.

“He’s not here right now, I actually sent him back to his hotel to rest as I thought he was overdoing it on the first day here. Also, I’ve tasked the Supply Officer to sort one of those little electric scooter things for him. Proven to work earlier with Horner VC when he was recovering from losing his leg. Better than a wheelchair but pass the word to your crews about who the gaunt-looking old bloke in the scooter really is. One of our duties is to make sure that he does not overdo it by accident.” She looked around.

“Got that, folks?”

There were nodding heads and “yes ma’am’s”. She nodded in turn.

“I’ve got him on gentleman’s hours and he’s got the smaller training room. He’s prepped a series of training sessions and is also working on tactical appreciations of the attack here as our waters most resemble those of Bass Strait where he’s been fighting his mine battle. Be aware that CN’s going to attend as many of those as he can and is trying to drag the Minister and senior staff along too. Those will be the only days he’ll wear uniform, so he says, and I have agreed with that.”

She paused and looked at her notes. “He’s also going to be talking to you on something he has had a lot of success with in his Squadron, small learning and leadership circles mostly run by junior sailors. I’ve done a run down to Geelong and I assess that it works quite well, especially in identifying unsafe practices and correcting them, there was a lot of buy-in from the troops. So again have a chat to him about it and see if it suits your style and your ship.”

“Ok, now we’ve the briefing by the intel types,” she nodded at the intel shop people, “and the pattern here off Wellington and Auckland looks exactly like what’s off Newcastle and Port Phillip. It’s very different to Darwin and the Pilbara ports, very different again to Timorese waters, and with a twist similar to waters off Perth. All that makes sense given the attack methodologies, we, Newcastle and Bass Strait are surface laid moored and groundmine fields with submarine refreshment of the groundmines. As the droggies said, it’s the current here in Cook Strait and in Bass Strait and off Newcastle which make these three locations so similar. The groundmines quickly get below the current in scour pits so they stay in one place, the moored mines are walked through the swept waters by the current. Back in Newcastle I asked the 2nd to recover some sinkers and that’s when we found that some of them have modified to adjust the mine submergence depth as they walk in the currents. Thoughts are that the adjustables are meant for us. The modern sensor packages of the moored mines include specific anti-sweeper targeting and so do the groundmines.” Unconsciously she touched her face, caught herself at it, and smiled – but it was not a friendly smile at all. “Nice to be considered to be oh-so-special, I suppose. Ivan fights very hard, and he does stuff differently, but he’s not stupid, especially at this form of warfare. They want us dead, people, and they’ve specifically targeted us, dunno about you but I take that a bit personally.”

The answering nods were thoughtful.

“So. You know the plan of attack. Known groundmine fields are charted and we’ll be avoiding them off this port for now. Towfish boats leave in thirty and start their threat update pre-sweeps. We are better off than the Australians are there, folks, as we can do a lot more processing aboard our bigger towfishers, so they can do live force protection for our sweep formation. Their towfishers can’t do that nearly as well for all we have the same sidescan systems. Keep both your self protection watercolumn and bottom scan sonars going, if the lead ship has either of these go down we’ll rotate as we’ve been practising. MSA are doing AMASS sweeping behind the AMS, lead MSA is rescue ship, danlayers doing their thing behind us all. This is a main route full clearance sweep. AMS will move to up-current parallel runs after two sweeps, see if we can catch any upcurrent walkers before they foul the channel. MSA get six runs in on the main channel after the AMS complete two, that will give us eight mag and acoustic sweeps. That takes as long as it takes, should not be more than 28, then back in for 12, then we start on the secondaries after giving the main another pass.”

A question came in. “Lead-ins and outs, boss?”

“Nope. There’s not the resources. Not with AMS or MSA either. Not for normal traffic and that includes the ferries. Part of the problem in the past has been lead-in-out disrupting the regular sweep patterns. That’s how holes appear and the walkers have crept in through the gaps. We’ve lost ships because of that.”

“I am worried about the ferries, ma’am, we’ve been lucky so far.”

“Agreed on all counts, which was why the decision went to the War Cabinet, with me there with the Chief to ram home the point.” There were startled looks at this statement. Of the six ferries, two had been requisitioned by the RNZN and painted grey. Three car and one rail ferry remained and they were economically essential. The Australians had shaken loose a pair of fastcats. These were known locally as “vomit comets” in a tribute to their effect on passengers in any sort of seaway, they had been tried during the 90s and had been a qualified success at best. They were purely for passengers and that helped by minimising passenger numbers on the monohull ferries, but being second hand they had a few reliability issues could not handle vehicles or some of the worst weather conditions.

She shook her head slightly. “Not Navy’s call in the end. We lose one and we’ll take the blame, though. That’s why the training sweeper has come down from Auckland and is going to have a …,” she paused for exactly the right words, “… specific sort of operating profile.”

This raised a few eyebrows.

“Erm, on the ferry route, ma’am?”

She grinned broadly. “Oh, perish the thought! Yea and verily perish it, I say! That would be illegal, immoral and probably fattening …”

“Not fattening for the poor national service noobs, ma’am!” There was general laughter at this sally. Cook Strait was one rough stretch of water.

She smiled, genuine amusement this time. “We all have to get our sea legs,” she intoned piously, “and the training route, oddly enough, does follow a shallow-deep-as-can-be – shallow path. To maximise training, of course. And that’s within my authority as she falls under my command in these waters. We’ll also be doing all our AMASS string-testing on that route. Ah, hmmmm, … oh yes, there’s a good’un! The currents are good for it, obviously. Yes, good currents.”

There were grave nods with matching grins. You did the best you could with what you had. The ferry route had been changed to the deepest route possible. At least that minimised the groundmine threat a bit. The leading in and out had caused chaos in their route maintenance and it was essentially just PR. It was just not effective and they all knew now that it had cost ships and lives.

“OK, that’s it, let’s be about it.”

As they walked across the wharf the CO’s stopped for a quick huddle.

The CO of the MSA Futurist looked at Mick. “She’s out on Killegray with you isn’t she Mick?”

“That was in the brief we just had. Yes, C2 issue really. The Boss needs an AMS and it’ll probably be us for most of the time too. Killegray’s the biggest ship and has the best comms fit by a country mile, just finished installing it.”

“Well you had double the generator capacity of anyone else from the start. Volume and power. Don’t envy you, but.”

“Eh? Where did that come from?”

Wither’s face now bore something very like a sneer. “She thinks she’s hard as nails, eh? Didn’t you pick that up in the brief? She’s a f…”

Mick’s voice held active menace and a lot of anger. “You shut the fuck up right there.”

There was shock on all the other faces, as Mick had shirtfronted him. Mick released him and he staggered back.

“Listen up in case there’s any other shitheads like you in this mob. You talk about the Boss like that and you will fucking well answer to me. In fact,” he glared at Futurist’s CO, “you fucking well can, when we get back in, you and me in the boxing ring first up, unless you’re the yellow backstabbing bastard I think you are. For this Navy she’s got the fucking T-shirt on this one and I could not care one flying fuck for your opinion. Show me your fucking gallantry star you whining shit, show me the kit you’ve brought in, she’s got the heavies on-side, new and better ships, tactics, the help we’ve all been fucking screaming for ever since this war kicked off. We’ve tried and fucking died, and we fucking died failing. And I don’t fucking care if she’s made you afraid of her because she’s got more balls than you do. You’ll act like an officer and you’ll do your job as well as she’s doing hers or I’ll take you apart for it like I’m going to do when we get back in.”

He glared around the small group. “And anyone else who feels the same way can form a queue at the boxing ring when we get back in, I’ll take on anyone on this one.”

He turned and walked towards his ship.

Futurist’s skipper turned to the rest. “What the fuck’s got up his arse, he shagging her or something?”

Kapuni’s skipper’s fist lashed out and decked him, then they hauled him to his feet.

“That’s enough!” Dennis Wilde broke in to the circle. “I did not catch all of that but I caught enough and thank fuck that none of the Aussies caught it.” He turned to the group. “This sort of shit, from some of the commanding officers? If nothing else proves all our critics right, this does!” Get to your ships and pray that your men don’t know what a fucking goat rodeo we really are!”

He glared at the Futurist’s CO. “And I think I’m third in the queue for a boxing session with you now. Withers. You. Are. Gone. Although I’ll see you in the gym when we get back in, I will let you prove that you are just a fool, and not a coward as well. You are relieved of your command, Sub-Lieutenant Withers, and I am detaining you pending possible charges. I’ll have your kit sent ashore after we get back. Your XO can take your ship out today. The rest of you – get a signed statement about what just happened, to me within the next twenty minutes. Facts and not opinions. You, Withers, get to the spare duty cabin in the wardroom and stay there.”

Withers looked around, saw the contempt on their faces, and left in silence.

“And this is exactly what we have to sort out, gentlemen,” said Wilde in a conversational tone. “How many of us have known that Withers was the worst weak spot we had. Oh yes, they know up the chain, have for months. Think I have not been in-briefed? And we did nothing about him, did we? And now this. It can’t be hidden now. Not after that. But I am the Flotilla XO now and it’s my job to be the ruthless bastard.”

He looked them in the eyes and there was not an inch of give on his face. “I have no problem with doing my job to the best of my ability, and I just plain love being the bad cop to the Boss’s good cop. And remember that this did not have to happen this way at all. That’s a failure of leadership we can all share. Twenty minutes gentlemen, for your statements to get to me, and I’ll be having one-on-ones with each of you as soon as I can. I need to know the strong points and the weak spots in your ships, your men, and you.”

He looked at the departing figure. “None of us want a repeat of this disaster.”

oOo

Wilde walked up behind Richards as he was talking to his Buffer about the usual issues.

“Excuse me please, Chief. CO, a couple of minutes, Flotilla business.”

The Chief nodded and left.

“Bit awkward having you as Flotilla XO, Dennis, as we are classmates.”

“Heh, and you are same day promotion as me and senior because of the alphabet!”

“What’s up?”

“I just relieved Withers of his command and will be preferring charges, conduct unbecoming at least. He made it worse after you left and one of the others snotted him for it.”

“I’ll….!”

Wilde interrupted. “You’ll do nothing, Mick, nothing at all. My job, eh? Glad you did not. I have given him the chance to, ah, have a sparring session with you when we get back so he can at least prove that he’s a loudmouth and a fool, and not a coward. So simmer down. That’s why I am telling you now. I also want a signed statement from you, just like the others, on what happened, just the facts, but include your challenge to him. The others probably will. And expect a pro-forma kick in the pants for it – after you meet him in the ring.”

He sighed. “It was going to come sooner or later with him and this is actually the best possible time for Withers to shoot his mouth off and get squashed by the Flotilla XO.”

Richards grunted. “OK, good point. What are you going to do with him? He’s a lazy loudmouth and I think he’s yellow, but maybe he can prove he isn’t.”

“Is he incompetent?”

Richards was grudging. “Not entirely. He’s lazy and he’s a classic weasel.”

“He’s useless in our Navy for a long time. Probably send him across the pond as a JO aboard an Aussie auxiliary, a big one, with a brief on his problems and a bootprint on his arse from the Commodore. If he’s worth salvage, well…”

“Yeah, we need every man, I know. But not for command!”

“No. He’s done his dash there, Futurist is the bottom of the stack by a long margin. I’ll give his XO a try on this sweep, see how he goes. If he’s OK might give him a shot. There’s basically no other good options.”

“Might work, he’s a Mid but he’s an ex-troop. PO.”

Wilde sighed again. “Yeah. Now for the hard bit.”

“Eh?”

“Briefing the boss on this frigging mess. Hardly what she needs first day, but I’ll sort all the organisation and paperwork.”

“I’ll come in after you to apologise to her.”

“Apologise? What on earth for?”

“For losing my temper, Dennis. If she’s going to be mostly on my ship, she needs to know that I am not a bloody loose cannon and I feel like one right about now. I should not have lost my temper like that. No excuses.”

“Point.”

oOo

They had made a brave sight as they sailed. It had been a hard thirty hours and they had ten more to go. Stefanovic yet again looked at the formation, on the radar this time as dawn was still two hours away. A V of three AMS streaming double Orepesa rigs set deep and towing AMASS, four MSA behind them with AMASS, two dan-layers working the edges and a pair of towfish boats ahead of them.

Eleven vessels under my direct sea command, not bad for a beat up 28 year old two and a half, she thought, seven sweeps, three more to go and the modelling suggests 97% clearance of the main channel south-east from Wellington, three moored mines in the close walking in zone and one ground mine detonated right in the channel.

She glanced at Lieutenant Richards, solid performance from what I’ve seen, for all he was horribly embarrassed by his losing his temper with Withers, she thought. He owned up to that, and his seamanship, command methods and fatigue management for the crew has all been first-rate. Yes, I think he’ll do.

“Formation and station keeping’s a lot better than on departure, Mike,” she said, “the ships are much improved.”

He glanced up from his chair. “Biggest formation sweep we’ve ever done, boss, and the most complex. Still not where it should be, though and it’s starting to get a little looser, I think.”

“Think fatigue’s kicking in? You’re a bridge resource management guru, aren’t you? I read your recent article.”

“Yep, sure do boss, and kinda-sorta. BRM’s really come from lessons learned from bad accidents on the aviation side, cockpit resource management. What we have here, especially on the MSA, is a whole-ship issue. They have less ability for good fatigue management with their much smaller crews.”

“Hmm. Good point, and we still specialise too much with our manpower, which does not help. There’s evidence here to start to collect to present to the system about integrated ratings for ships like these. There’s nothing complex about them at all, not like a corvette or even a big auxiliary.”

Richards thought for a moment as he scanned the bridge and the formation.

“That will put the cat amongst the pigeons, boss. Been told more than once that merchant experience does not matter that much in the RNZN, it’s why my Master’s ticket still had to be validated by running me through a warship’s bridge.”

She laughed softly. “Idiots, we are overrun by idiots. Lemme guess, they used Endeavour?”

He smiled, just visible in the dim red light from the chart table. “Yes. It was embarrassing, too. They really did not have much of a clue as to ballasting, and I’m a tanker Master, so I rewrote their procedures and trained them up, then fixed their procedures for leaks, fire safety, you name it. They were a decade out of date. And let’s just not talk about BRM.”

She nodded. “Well, we’ll talk about it. Have a think about what we can do to use BRM precepts to manage fatigue and improve our operational performance. I am quite willing to put hard limits on MSA operations times for example, if we can demonstrate no drop in outcomes and, say, a lessening in fatigue related accidents and injuries.”

An open mind in a regular, how refreshing, he thought. “I’ll keep working away on that then, ma’am.”

“Thought you were already walking that path,” she noted.

The crew of warships tell stories naturally, there’s often not much else to do on a quiet watch. Even when busy juggling almost a dozen ships on a complex task a lot of information can be exchanged. Much of it is non-verbal and comes from cues no landsman understands.

Hmm. We’ve got a good one here, he thought to himself.

oOo

Dennis Wilde watched as the sweepers approached the wharf. Two MSA had just left for preliminary sweeps of the western route, and to keep sweepers at sea, but the bulk of the Group would be down for 12 hours before going out again to hammer the main western channel. He’d been cycling in and out on the towfish boats with Clarkie, spending time on a few different vessels and he was as exhausted as anyone. And between the two of them they had a decent enough assessment of each AMS and MSA. While the crews would get some kip, they’d started working up a training plan to reinforce all the weak spots.

There was a whining noise and they both turned.

Clark threw a jaunty salute. “Looking swish on that scooter, sir!”

Phil Boulay was in uniform, which was a little unusual.

“You manky bastard, Clarkie. It had to be you and Tiny that added the frigging racing stripes. Marie almost wet herself she was laughing so hard. And that’s a quote, dammit!”

Clark nodded, a lot more soberly than Wilde expected. “Good, and guilty as charged, sir, I have not seen her laugh in weeks now and that’s really unlike her, she’s normally a happy soul. Sophie worded me in, y’see. Says Marie’s been getting way too tensed up over all of this, wound tighter than a drumline and no rest for her since you got yourself all blown up. Let me guess, there was a slightly hysterical edge to it? Yes?” Phil nodded.

Clarke’s face grew serious. “Thought so. She’s a bit better now, I hope.”

He grinned suddenly. “Just wait for the next one.”

“Bloody hell,” said Boulay gloomily, “I knew it was gonna be trouble when our wives became mates at Creswell back in the 80s. Where’s Killigray berthing? Number four inner? Want Christine’s assessment, then going to shoo her off home for twelve solid. You two take the weight until she gets back, be around dawn I guess. Know you are knackered, suck it up, princesses.” He then trundled off on his scooter, muttering darkly to himself.

“So that’s why the uniform, eh, Clarkie.” It was a statement.

“Yep. He can order her and he will. In fact he’ll have to, I think. Jon’s waiting with the car ‘round the back of the shed.”

“So it was you with the racing stripes?”

“Of course, me and Tiny, next one’s going to be a ripper, we’ve teamed up with a local spray painter.”

“Spray painter? What, giving the scooter a new look?”

“Hello Kitty scooter. Marie will laugh herself silly.”

“You’re an evil bastard, you know that, don’t you?”

“Yep. And we can keep this up forever.”

“Clarkie, got a question.”

Clark turned and looked carefully at Wild. “Dennis, that tone means it’s a question you don’t really want to ask. So ask it.”

“I am actually worried about the boss. How does a marriage like hers work long term. Not my thoughts or words but the question’s being asked here…”

Clark nodded, “yep, the question being how does it work when the wife has bigger balls than the husband, you mean?”

Wilde looked shame-faced.

“It’s a stupid question, really, when you actually think about it. Firstly, what’s the real difference between what she does and what a wife who’s a paramedic does in terms of skill, danger, risk to life and plain old being up to your eyebrows in blood and guts and twisted metal? The answer is not much, except that the paramedic has it all a lot worse. Don’t think that they did not ask that same question, because they did. And Jon’s a sparkie, a high tension sparkie too, which is bloody dangerous work. Their industrial accident death rate is way higher than the ordinary military rate – I’ll cheerfully steam about in a minefield all say ‘cause I know the risks and understand them. No way you’ll catch this little black duck going anywhere near a squillion volt high tension system! Scares the tripe out of me.”

He paused. “So the answer is that there’s work-life, and there’s home-life, and both worry themselves sick about the dangers the other faces at work. Ask her and she’ll tell you that Jon’s job’s much more dangerous than hears. The answer in the home-life is selflessness. Each does not worry about their own needs much, being focussed on meeting the other’s needs. Chris likes being a home-maker whenever she can. You know she’s a fantastic cook, absolutely loves baking? Jon likes being the home-builder. He’s just finished building her this amazing Roman-style brick oven so she can bake wood-fired bread and cakes and pizza and stuff. Dennis, both take off their professional skins when they walk through the front door and are husband and wife.” He hesitated, visibly.

“What?” Wilde was puzzled.

“No, dammit, you actually need to know. You’re her Flotilla XO and you need to grip up her being here as much as possible with you taking as much as you can of the Auckland load.”

“Well, I’m an Auckland lad but my girlfriend’s here, met her three years ago when I moved down here the first time,” said Wilde.

“You serious about her? You living together?”

Wilde looked uncomfortable.

“What, you don’t know yet?”

“No. Um. Not fully. Um. Maybe. Um. It’s a big jump. But it has so much potential…. She’s not wedded to Wellington, she’s not a Wellington girl, she’s from Napier. And I am gibbering. Why?”

“Dithering git,” Clark continued, “as for the boss, it’s really very personal. Personal that impacts work.” Clark looked at him narrowly.

“Shit, I don’t want to know but I need to know, right?”

“Yep.” Clark paused for a second. “And you might be being an idiot with your girlfriend, well, actually your defacto wife if you are living together too. The way things are it will take many months to get on top of this and get survivable ships. Ask yourself if you can guarantee more than one chance in five of being alive this time next year.”

Wilde thought about it for a full minute, then sighed.

“You are right on that you bastard, head’s in the sand. And that means I really do need to know. Tell me.”

“They are having a baby, no, don’t look like that, she’s not pregnant, her sister in law volunteered and is going surrogate for her because the family understands the demands of her duty as well as she does, so it’s Toni who’s pregnant with their baby, and she likes being pregnant oddly enough. Woman’s a Saint. Got six of her own.”

Clark approved, he saw the wheels turning immediately behind Wilde’s eyes.

After a couple of minutes of silence, Wilde spoke up.

“Then I’m going to frame this in morale and consistency terms, Clarkie. Boss stays here except for check visits to make sure standards are aligned, say monthly for a few days, while I do check visits down here. That also makes intuitive sense and keeps her here near defence central. It’s also cover, anyone looking at my proposal will think that I’m bucking for my own kingdom. That’s fine, I don’t care because the people who matter will know why – I assume the Commodore knows. She going to make this known?”

“Yes, but I dunno when, she’ll be in a tizz about it for a while not that you’ll see any of that here at work. Toni says that the implant’s only a few weeks ago, baby’s doing well but early days, nothing’s going to be visible for a while yet, the family’s in the know and keeping quiet, but she’ll have the distraction, and the grief of knowing that she can’t bear her own children yet. It’s a pretty hard road.”

“Bloody hell yes. Big move.”

“Yes, but just think about it a bit. She barely made it out alive last time, so you can see why they are doing this, but the offer came from Toni and her husband unprompted.”

Wilde shook his head. “Wow, just wow. You are right, the woman’s a Saint.”

“Heh,” said Clark, “I’ve met Toni and Ian, she’s cracking jokes about him liking it as she goes real quiet when she’s pregnant and her boobs balloon up. She’s got a really wicked sense of humour.”

oOo

The Soviets had thought their campaign through, fully understanding that the New Zealanders were entirely unlikely to get access to any specialised mine hunters within a couple of years at least. These could tell a mine from a rock from a drum. It took a specialised sonar and a specialised crew to do that. So instead of the sort of tactics one used in European waters where state-of-the-art minehunters were common, like using decoy fields to eat up the time of such ships, they had worked it out properly. If you want to cause disruption in a very remote region you could not get access to easily after using up your oldest and least valuable assets, what could you do? Well, what the Soviet mine-planners did was use a lot of delay mines. Standard tactics, except that theirs used refitted moored mines on delay release timers as well as ground mines. Well, everyone did that sort of thing really… but there was something nobody else did and that was think about the third and fourth wave attacks after the initial fields and delayed release (or activation) mines which extended them. So off New Zealand, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, parts of Australia, Panama, St Lawrence seaway, Irish Sea and Gulf of Mexico they’d done something unusual. When their minelayers laid their fields just before or just after the outbreak of war, they’d laid “dead” barrages as well as the live ones. The disguised minelayers had done the same thing in the months after the war began. These “dead” barrages contained the same mix of effects, but used different mines – more modern ones to be plain about it. And they were laid intermingled and overlapping. Specifically, they were designed for disruption and barrage longevity in the face of the second tier countermeasures sure to be in place so long after the outbreak of war. And again these were not like WWII barrages, blocks of sea filled with lines of moored contact mines in neat rows and at set intervals. They were long, curving and recrossing linear fields and lines of mixed groundmines (KPM, RM and PRM series with the bulk being massive UDM and KDM series) laid in the shipping channels with carefully sequenced mine activation times. The idea was to foul a definable area but not in a definable pattern within that area. The beauty of it was that if you won the war (or peace otherwise broke out) you could release the boundaries of the barrage and so ensure safe navigation for all concerned. As for clearing it – that was somebody else’s problem. With New Zealand and a few other places the Soviets had gotten a little lucky. The Kiwis had not had a minesweeping capability at all. So by the time they had sorted themselves out and started route surveys using commercial sidescan sonars the fields had been in place for months. There was a lot of junk on the seafloor and the mines had had time to start to sink into the seabed in scour pits. They were also not laid to a real pattern, so most were classified as junk. This was especially true of the third wave mines, which were all ground mines.

And the Soviets had updated the electronics and sensors on all of them, even using imported Japanese-made batteries to guarantee longer life times.

The KPM was not a new mine at all, its breed had first appeared as long ago as 1957. It was a rocket-propelled rising mine with a relatively small warhead by modern standards. Just 135kg of good HE, about the equivalent of 360lb of TNT. The KPM in the nice, shallow Bay of Plenty barrages were there as anti-sweeper mines and a number of them had been laid in the main shipping channel by a departing Panamanian geared general cargo ship a month after the war broke out. Her real ownership was buried in layers of owners and shell companies and she’d had a deck cargo which included 40-foot containers ostensibly bound for Puerto Montt in Chile, with floats, racks and netting for the mussel farms there. A typical load for a tramp. NZ Customs had even checked one of them, opening the door to see if it matched the manifest, which it did – for the first couple of feet anyway. Laying the mines had been as simple as departing at night, opening the container, removing the small amount of false cargo, extending the rails, activating the mines and checking their performance and data load and then rolling them out over the side.

oOo

Wilde liked the Bay of Plenty, just as he liked Auckland – well it was his home town. He’d spent much of his childhood and adolescence fishing hereabouts. There were quite a number of yachts and people out in large aluminium boats, heading for their favourite fishing spots. They could tool about in an active minefield all day with perfect safety and they knew it – it had never been an option to close the waters to such vessels. Flood tide just after dawn, thought Wilde, yep, the fish will be on for sure.

He looked aft at the MSA, Matai, which was astern of the ship he’d chosen to spend much of his time on, the AMS HMNZS Aroha. She was one of the longliner hulls the Japanese had provided and she had been locally modified. He approved very much of her CO and her crew had shaken down well. This was a routine maintenance sweep on the main eastern channel, twelve hours overnight and just with AMASS.

He turned to the CO as she joined him on the port bridge wing. As was usual on the AMS, she was a recalled reserve. He’d been pleased to tell her last night that she’d been promoted to Lieutenant. They’d known each other for years, she’d married early, gotten out and had identical twin girls, and was back now.

“Well, I am glad I settled on Aroha for this Group Jillian.”

“Why so, Dennis? Comms?”

“That and spare accommodation. I really don’t like displacing some poor sod with hotbunking. And it means I can keep on top of my paperwork as well, that little desk is very useful.”

Jillian cast her eye on the channel markers, still on line, then glanced to port at Rangitoto Island.

The Midshipman – her XO – sang out from inside the bridge. “Coming up to the ten fathom line in a bit, boss, in the fifteen fathom hole right now. Big ketch approaching from starboard, silly bugger does not look like he’s interested in giving way to sweepers.”

This was a standard problem. Yachties mostly had a good idea of rule of the road, but some did not. And they were a genuine hazard when they did not. Those clowns had heard of “sail has right of way” and that was about it. They did not understand that sweepers when sweeping had right of way over everything that floated and was under command. Two yachts had managed to interfere with a sweeper, collide with the AMASS and get themselves sunk.

This was described by the Navy to their irate owners as “tough bloody luck, sunshine, learn the rules of the road”.

“No rest for the wicked,” said Jillian,” best do the routine.” She looked at Matai, astern.

Wilde nodded his head as she ducked back inside the bridge.

The KPM ‘decided’ that the target met its criteria. It was well placed, too, on the port side of the channel as a ship was outbound. As the sweepers were inbound, the mines were on their starboard side. It ‘noted’ the position of the noise source and its rocket motor ignited. The KPM was a rising mine, and the clumsy-looking warhead launched from its cradle in a vast cloud of howling bubbles. It tracked across the channel and somewhat unusually scored a direct contact hit just forward of the noise source.

Detonation.

There was not the slightest warning. Wilde had turned to his left and was looking forward, in the process of stepping, with his right arm partially in the door opening and swinging forward. The searingly hot blast stripped the flesh from the back of his hand and burned most of the rest but otherwise mostly missed him, he was slammed into the port screen, hearing his left leg and some ribs crack as he hit the steel while feeling a mighty blow to his head as it hit the port pelorus repeater. He then bounced off and hit the port side of the bridge structure just forward of the sliding door, blacking out just before he hit. He was only out for a second or two, regaining his senses just as the fire from the main fireball inside the bridge poured out of where the door and window had been washed over him. He frantically beat out the flames with his bare hands, barely noting the burns on his legs and the hands themselves. He pulled himself up on the forward screen and looked into the wrecked bridge. He couldn’t. The deck was arched up by the explosion and it was filled with smashed steel, an inferno as the flames took hold. He saw a smouldering leg. Probably the Mid’s, he thought. No-one could have lived through that.

That must have been the fireball from the blast. God hold you in the palm of his hand, Jillian, at least it was quick. She mined just forward of amidships and she’s still in one piece? Not a big mine then.

She was already listing wearily to starboard, silent, all machinery stopped. He tested his leg and looked at his charred right hand. I can still bear a little weight, so broken but not entirely so. Left arm not great either but I can still use right arm OK, well a bit, but the hand …! OK. Get aft.

Wilde hobbled aft using the guardrails and screen. The latter was still there and he was able to scramble down it, meeting the Chief who was running forward with two men.

“Sir…!”

Wilde found his shout to be dim and sort of muzzy.

“No hope, Chief, the explosion must have been shallow, I was on the port wing and lived. Skipper was on the starboard wing I think, nobody inside the bridge is alive and it’s a furnace now. Have you seen the starboard side?”

“Ripped right open, big chunk of hull peeled out maybe ten, fifteen feet. Too smoky to see much more but the side’s blown right out of her and the engine room has filled. She won’t swim for long.”

“Agreed. List is already ten or more degrees. Any survivors from the engine room?”

“One. Was another but he was horribly burned and died as soon as Mathias got him to the deck. Orders?”

“Abandon ship port side right now. Drop the Carley and the inflatables, get the wounded sorted, I want a PFD on them and a man with a life-ring with each wounded man.” The AB reached for him. “Not me you twit, I’m mobile.”

“Take the help, sir, you are not that mobile and you are a lot more busted up than you think. Those burns are bad too. She’s listing worse,” he turned to the AB, “get him aft clear of the superstructure and into the Carley. She’s losing buoyancy fast and will probably capsize. I’ll get the rest sorted. Move your arse sir!”

Swearing, Wilde took the help and they hobbled fifty feet aft. Four men had already dropped the Carley and it was bobbing alongside, secured by a thin painter.

“Wounded first!”

“You are the worst bloody wounded sir,” said a bleeding leading hand.

“Well bugger that, other wounded first then, I can still hobble, anyone less mobile?”

“Well, yes, sir, compound fracture, splinted quickly, and three blokes with broken ankles.”

“Fine, get ‘em into the Carley, she’s not gonna last a lot longer.”

They opened the guardrail and manhandled the men with disabling leg injuries on to the ship’s side amid shouting and swearing. Forward, the fire was worsening rapidly, flames and black smoke gushing from the bridge block. The list was twenty degrees. The lowered the men towards the water. Wilde, himself outboard but clinging to the guardrail, ordered two men to get into the water to help them in to the Carley. Both slid quickly down the side and boarded the Carley in seconds, standing on the raft’s submerged platform. They then grabbed the four men with broken legs and ankles and eased them into the float.

“Now you, sir,” the Leading Seaman secured a bowline around him, “slide down on your arse, let us take the strain, your hands are too burned to use.”

“OK., get one of the inflatables alongside the Carley, I want the man with a compound break in it if we can manage it.” He yelled aft over the roaring of the flames forward, “Chief, everyone aft accounted for? No-one left aboard?”

“Yes sir, checked where we could. Everyone left alive is here.”

“Let’s get away now, then, we need to get well clear before she goes. Can you see Matai?”

“No sir, too much smoke!”

Wilde yelled back. “OK, let’s get them away, Chief!”

Less than a minute later he was in the water next to the Carley, and the men hauled him in. Wilde gave a sort of moaning grunt, but he did not scream.

“Fuck that hurts,” said Wilde a few seconds later. “I don’t recommend salt water and burns, who’s got the compound break? You? Splint holding? We’ll get you into the inflatable as soon as we can.”

The four men who had remained on deck joined them in seconds by sliding down the hull into the water, then clinging on to the straps. There were nine of them all up.

“Cast off the painter. Everyone fit to paddle, grab one and you blokes help swim us away from her, here …”

The AB snatched the paddle first. “Don’t be an idiot, sir, look at your hands. Told you that you were the most badly wounded. Busted up leg, arm screwed up, your right hand is, well, you can see it, leg burns and – you know your left ear’s missing, yeah?”

“What? Bullshit!”

“No bullshit sir, you are bleeding like a stuck pig. In fact,” he put the paddle down and grabbed his combat dressing, handing it to one of the other wounded. “Get this on his head. Plenty of sharks around here and don’t want the boss to chum them up, do we?”

Astounded, Wilde listened to, and then joined, the harsh male laughter.

“What the fuck did I wipe that off on? Might have been the pelorus repeater. No bloody wonder I got knocked out for a bit.”

“Whatever, sir. Hey at least it improves your looks, eh? Um, the skipper, sir?”

Wilde shook his head slightly. “She was on the starboard bridge wing, right above the hit. No-one inside the bridge made it out.”

“Fuck! She was a good skipper.”

They were now twenty feet away from the hull and moving away, still in the smoke and not able to see much, but she was listing more, and various crashes and other sounds were coming from her through the roaring of the huge fire consuming her. Amidships was a bonfire, the whole superstructure block was burning. Flames belching from every opening. They could see an inflatable about forty feet away but the gap was growing, the breeze was moving it faster due to its greater sail area. It was just fifteen minutes since they were mined.

Just then they heard a second heavy thud, and the men in the water cried out in alarm.

“Shit, what was that? Explosives locker, probably.” Wilde looked anxiously at the men in the water alongside the Carley float.

“You blokes OK?”

“Yes sir, felt that like a kick in the guts but it was not more than that.”

The others chimed in, all had felt it and all seemed OK, or said they were.

Wilde could at least be the lookout. They were sixty or seventy feet away and she was showing her bilge keel, and heavily down by the bow.

“She’s going, we might have ten minutes, men, so keep at it. Another forty feet and we should be fine but further is better. Damn this smoke!”

He scanned again. “A boat, tinnie.”

He cupped his hands and called out. “Ahoy the boat, do you have a line, we need to get clear as she sinks!”

The two men and one young boy on the boat gesticulated and threw a line. One of Wilde’s men grabbed it.

“Slipknot only and stand by to release it! One touch too much power and we’re in trouble, and he’s not trained!”

“Aye, sir.”

“Ahoy the boat, idle speed only, we have men in the water hanging on to the raft, very slow, just tow us out fifty yards then we’ll cast off!”

“Got it!”

The fifty yards seemed to take forever, Wilde kept the men in the boat informed as to their speed, which was half walking pace. He glanced back at Aroha but could not see her in the smoke.

The Leading Seaman was looking around. “Where the fuck’s Matai? She was only three cables astern of our string. She should have been here in five or ten bloody minutes.

“Probably on the other side, Leader, smoke’s all coming this way, it would make sense to make for Aroha’s starboard side after sending the small boats into the smoke at slow speed. Reckon she’s over there. We’d not see her. Not in this. Vis is only eighty feet in here.”

A shout came from the tinnie. “We’ll keep going for a bit mate, we’ll be out of the smoke in twenty yards,” called the boat’s coxswain.

“OK,” called Wilde. “Then stop and come alongside, see if you can take one a couple of the wounded, got some blokes with broken legs over here!”

They were gently towed out of the smoke three minutes later. The Leader saw it first.

“Fuck me! Sir, Matai’s sinking!”

Wilde’s head snapped around. Matai’s bow still reared from the sea, but she was obviously starting her final plunge. Small craft were converging on her and her men were jumping in to the water.

“That explosion was a second mine,” a voice said dully, “what the fuck do we have here?”

It took Wilde a second to recognise the voice as his own. Then the tinnie was alongside, and two others were approaching. So was a large motor-yacht. Wilde started issuing orders.

oOo

Ten minutes later Wilde boarded the big motor yacht, after making sure that his four wounded had been loaded aboard her and secured in bunks. Then he was helped aboard, drawing horrified gasps from a bikini-clad young woman and a similarly clad girl as they saw the extent of his burns and other injuries.

“Phone, phone, give me a mobile phone!”

“You need…”, one began.

“I need a phone, right now!”

The burley owner of the boat handed a phone to him, then balked as he saw the state of his hands.

He looked at the pretty young girl and her stunning older sister. “Miriam, get the first aid kit and a bucket with fresh water and ice in it…”

“Yes daddy.” She gulped and scurried away.

“… Taya, help with the phone and when Merry brings the kit, clean those burns and bandage when you can.”

“Yes dad,” she nodded, surveying the injured man with her eyes.

Wilde drew breath. “My men first! Right Coxswain. First, head into the Ferry terminal at Pier 4. Full power but stay well clear of the shipping channel! I think I know what the bastards have done here, it’s mined, obviously, and twice is enough for one day. Now, dial the following number for me please, ah, Taya?”

The beautiful brunette nodded, dialled, then held the phone to his ear.

The number dialled was the Operations Watch Commander at Philomel, it rang as they motored slowly clear of the channel. Wilde took it gently in his less-burned left hand.

“Ops, Able Seaman Jameston speaking.”

“Able, this is Lieutenant Wilde, Flotilla XO of the Minesweepers, gimme the watch commander.”

“Sir, he’s…”

“Busy, join the club, Able, I just got fished out of a frigging Carley raft and I am watching my ship sink, so I am busy too so put him on right bloody now, he has to close the port because I can’t. I’m on a motor yacht with some of the other wounded survivors and I don’t have any bloody comms.”

“Sir! Here now! Urgent! XO of the sweepers!” He heard her calling for the Watch Commander.

“Lieutenant Commander Williams, that you, Dennis?”

“Yes sir, put this on speaker and tell the AB to take good notes. Quickrep. Aroha was mined amidships and shallow at about 0645, just in the fifteen fathom hole inbound, east channel, starboard side amidships, wrecked the bridge and set her on fire, blew a huge hole above the waterline as well as below, she’s on her beam ends and sinking now. Matai was astern, I think she slipped and came around our starboard side as we were abandoning, we could not see her in the smoke, she was then mined a cable away, she sank quickly. Survivors, nineteen from Aroha, so twelve dead, two made it out of the engine room but one died on deck, we could not retrieve the body, four of the worst wounded on this motor yacht with me, we are headed to the ferry wharf, have ambulances from Auckland General waiting there, then they’ll bring me over to Philomel. Do not know about Matai but she sank before we did, Aroha’s still sinking but not on the bottom yet and I hope she’s drifted out of the channel. Tell the harbourmaster to close the port. Tell the intelo and the droggies to get all the latest sidescan surveys as well as the first set we made back at the start of this, same scales and on tracing paper. Make damned sure that they print that on the best tracing paper they can get and to exactly the same scale. We need overlays. Get a light table – I think I have an idea of what the bastards did and we can prove it that way I think. Have a car at the berth for me to get me up to the ops room, I am a bit banged up and walking hurts. Tell the MSOPSO to rig double AMASS with three acoustic cans each, using one merch profile and two minesweeper profiles on high power, then to get every damn sweeper out there on steerage way, low power, lowest possible speed for silent sweeps and this is important, they start at the docks themselves inside the harbour. I am pretty sure they are primary acoustics. Two-ship groups a mile apart, western channel only, twenty-four-seven for the next week at least. Towfish boats ahead and astern of the formation. One towfish to go over and plot the wrecks of Aroha and Matai to see if they block that channel. Don’t think they will but have to check water depth over them. Got all that?”

“Start at the docks? Shit. Got it – Dennis. Jillian?”

“She didn’t make it Bungy, she was in the bridge or on the starboard wing. No-one got out. She’d never have known what hit her. The starboard side of the bridge was blown away, direct path of the blast. That car. Change of plan. Have a Chaplain with it. I’ll be coming in on motor yacht – wait.”

“Coxswain, sorry dunno your name, what’s the name of this motor yacht?”

“Hedge Fund! Name’s Nick! And the name’s a joke, dammit!”

“Bungy, motor yacht MY Hedge Fund, it’s a joke says Nick the Coxswain, so tell the guardboat to let ‘em berth. I’ll go straight from the wharf to Harry and Jillian’s place. It’s only a few minutes. I’ll tell Harry. My duty. Then I’ll come in.”

“Shit. Man…”

“She was good, Bungy. She ran a good ship. And I was there, she never knew what hit her. He needs to hear that from me because I was there.”

“Harry will be at work, Dennis.”

“Shit, of course he will. Lost track of the days. I’ll still go, still my duty. Don’t let out that it’s Aroha that’s been sunk!”

He took a deep breath. “Tell the intelo and the droggies to start an absolutely minute comparison of every single hard target in the channel one mile out from the ten fathom line. Tell them I want to know everything possible about the scour pits around each one, no matter how big or small.”

“Oh, crap, that means …”

“Open line! And yes. Yes, it does mate. And pass all that stuff to Christine Stefanovic and the Aussies as fast as you possibly can. They’ll have synchronised it, I think.”

“Hell yes. You said you were banged up, you OK?”

“Yes and no, nothing to stop me from doing what we must do or risk losing more ships. I’ll get it sorted as soon as we’ve met in Ops. See you in about two hours.”

He hung up.

In the Ops room, the senior ELINTer had walked over to listen, and she’d also been taking notes.

“Sir, bad idea for him to tell the family, isn’t it? That’s…”

“Yes, Sub, it’s the Chaplain’s job. Except here. Dennis and Jillian have known each other since they were 14, went to school and then uni together and pretty much everyone thought they’d wind up together. Then Jill met Harry and fell hard for him, and Dennis backed away. They were best mates and it might have led to something, but he let her go when she saw what was going on. Big-hearted act for an early twenty-something. Thing is, they have been best mates ever since, he and Harry get on like a house on fire. And he’s “uncle Dennis” to the twins. He’s got the moral right here, and not one of us would stop him. He’s going to tell a mate that his wife, and Dennis’s oldest friend, has been killed.”

“Poor bastard.” She whispered.

“Got it in one, Sub.”

oOo

“How’s that, Dennis?”

“Helps a lot, thanks Nick, Miriam, Taya.” His hands were in a bucket of cold but not icy water and the older and taller brunette, Taya, was trickling more over the much worse burns on his legs. They’d splinted the damaged left leg, which they all thought had to be at least fractured, even though it was not obviously broken. The bad news was that the burns mostly did not hurt that much, which meant full-depth burns. The hand burns were very painful except for the back of his right hand, which was very bad news. They’d had enough to bandage up some of the cuts and such, but that was about it. Mostly they’d been looking after the four with broken ankles and legs, managing splints at least. They had had some half-decent painkillers, which had at least taken the edge off for them all. Panadene Forte and whiskey with a concussion chaser. Yay.

“Dennis, you really need to get to hospital,” said Taya. Her father had already made the same point.

“No, no way. Not yet. Duty comes first in this game, and there’s a lot in what happened today which applies in other places. Got that ball rolling, need a bit more time with them on that, then I can get this stuff seen to. And I have to tell my friend’s husband about her death.”

“Do you have to do that yourself?”

“No, Taya, there’s a system, but she was a very good friend and one of my oldest friends. I thought once she might have been more, but that did not pan out for us, and her husband is also a bloody good friend and their little girls are like my nieces. I have a moral duty, I was the last living person to speak to her. It’s my job.”

She hesitated a little.

Dennis noticed this. “What’s up?”

“Anyone in your life right now?”

He was a little startled. “Yes, Taya, there is.”

“Damn. Ah well, I had to ask.” She bent to her task again, then looked up. “If that changes…” she blushed furiously. “Oh, I am being such an idiot.”

“Thank you, Taya,” said Dennis softly.

She looked up again. “What for?”

He smiled, rather sadly and wistfully. “For reminding me of what’s actually important in life. And know that if there wasn’t, I’d take you up on that in a heartbeat.”

She smiled briefly.

oOo

They’d offloaded the four other wounded and the paramedics had tried to convince the Lieutenant that he should also come. He’d simply ignored them, dictating softly to Taya as she wrote for him – she had the neatest handwriting between her and her younger sister. She only got the gist of what he was saying, but it frightened her more than a little. They’d continued until approaching the wharf at Philomel, covering the loss of the ships as far as Wilde knew them and pinning down times and places – the yacht’s GPS system had been vital to that.

Dennis had thanked her father, and her sister. They Taya had stepped in close and kissed him gently on his right cheek.

“Please keep in touch, Dennis. I added my details to that, I want to make sure that you are OK. Alright? And you’ll be in Auckland General?”

He’d just nodded.

Her father had looked at her very oddly then gone to back the boat out. “We are heading back out, maybe we can help a little more, then we’ll go home.”

“Dad?” Her little sister was a bit confused, she was only just 16 and had been looking forward to a day of fishing – they were all keen fishermen – and her father had explained it simply.

“Miriam, we just watched about twenty men and women die. We’ll help until our fuel runs out if needed, but this is no day for fun now. It’s been a very bad day. Could you go below and organise a sandwich or something for all of us please, and a mug of tea for us all, too? Taya, up here.”

She’d climbed up on the flying bridge.

“Dad?” He was looking very, very uncomfortable. Then he glanced at her and went beet-red.

“Sweetheart, some, aaaahh, effects of a young man on a young woman are obvious when she’s in a bikini. Miriam has not noticed yet but she will. Can you hose down the fishing deck please, and …” He fell into a hideously embarrassed silence. She was his daughter.

She glanced down and went scarlet, even her chest going red, and hurried away. He was her Dad.

Ten minutes later Miriam emerged with a tray of sandwiches, all the tray’s cut-outs filled with big sealed insulated mugs of tea, and climbed up to the flying bridge.

“Here, Dad. Ham and cheese and lettuce for everyone. Hey Tay, why are you soaked?”

“Hosed the oil and stuff off the deck aft and scrubbed it a bit.”

“You’ll catch your death! You must be freezing!”

She rubbed her goose-bumped arms. “It’ll dry off in the wind, Merry, but that cup of tea will be good.”

Her father kept his eyes on where they were going, his focus on safe navigation.

oOo

Wilde had turned to the ABMED as Hedge Fund backed away from the wharf. He’d said very sincere farewells to her owner and his daughters. At least this was away from the damned TV cameras which had infested the ferry wharf as the wounded were carried to the ambulances. He’d ignored the yelled questions and the lenses focussed on him – and he’d briefed his men carefully.

“No. Simple as that. Call all the doctors you like, don’t give a shit. I’ll still say the same.” Then he clambered awkwardly into the front passenger seat of the car, using his elbows mostly, and grimacing with pain. He’d taken the tablet, but refused the injection. Some of the burns and the leg hurt like fire, but medical types could be sneaky, and he had things which simply had to be done.

Even if the one thing you really wanted to do was not to do those things. Fortunately, the painkiller started to kick in before they got to the school.

oOo

“Lady, I don’t care if you are the principal, shut the fuck up, I just do not give a crap, just tell me what classroom Harry Komisse is in, and do it now. No, I won’t bloody wait because no, this won’t bloody well wait and no, I am not going to tell you. Except that you will need someone to take over his work!”

“No, I can’t…”

The secretary had paled, very suddenly, when they came in and was still white as a sheet. So were three of the teachers who had been attracted by the raised voices. “He’s in B12, through that door there, down that corridor, first right, first classroom on the left.”

“I’ll take them,” said one of the teachers.

“Thanks.” Wilde and the Chaplain went off, Wilde grimacing in pain at every step and obviously not very mobile. The Chaplain was supporting him as best he could given his wounds and the fact that he was still half-soaked in oil.

“Lorraine, I am …”

“Shut the fuck up you idiotic incompetent useless cow. Are you really so fucking stupid that you can’t work out why a severely wounded and badly burned Navy man still soaked in seawater and fuel oil and a Navy Chaplain are here to see Harry, and it can’t wait for anything, not even for him to have serious burns treated? Harry’s wife’s Navy, you drooling shithead!”

“And she’s almost certainly dead, you worthless fuckwit,” hissed one of the teachers venomously. “Lorraine, while this… this retard drools in the corner, get someone shifted to my classes, I am not on until this afternoon. I’ll take over Harry’s now.” She obviously got a grip, glared poisonously at the principal, and stalked off towards the classroom, towering rage visible in every movement.

“There’s no privacy here,” said the Chaplain, all the classrooms have full length glass windows on this corridor.

“And he’ll know the moment I walk in,” said Wilde grimly.

The teacher caught up to them. “Do you want me to go ahead, bring him out? Sorry about that back here, she’s a genuine progressive idiot and she has no brains.”

“Is there somewhere very close and private?”

“Not close, only the offices we came from,” he replied.

“That bridge is burned, then,” said Wilde. “Here we are. Chaplain, wait just outside the door please.”

Wilde just opened the door and stepped one short pace inside as the faces of the students turned towards him in shocked surprise. Komisse was facing the whiteboard a writing mathematical solution on it and turned just as Wilde spoke.

“Harry, come outside here, now.”

His eyes widened and he went white with shock. “Dennis, what…”

“Outside, now, Harry. There’s been an incident.”

He moved quickly towards the door. “Tell me she’s alive, Dennis!”

He quickly stepped into the corridor and shut the door, the student’s faces all turned and looking through the glass.

“Dennis!” He had not even seen the Chaplain, and had not noticed the other teacher darting behind him and entering the classroom, opening and then closing the door as quickly as she could. Wilde gripped his friend’s shoulders, not even feeling the physical pain for it was submerged in something far greater, and far worse.

“She’s gone, Harry, she’s gone. I’m so sorry mate, we were mined and she was on the starboard bridge wing directly above the blast. She never knew what hit her, Harry. No-one inside the bridge did, no-one there survived. She never knew what hit her. That whole section of the ship was blown away. She could have known nothing of it.”

Inside the classroom, the teacher yelled at the students, all young teens. “Look at me!”

All their faces turned back to her, confused. “Look at me and do not look anywhere else. We owe them as much privacy as we can give them. All eyes on me.”

“What…” began one of the students.

“No questions yet.” She glanced towards the corridor. They must have moved away a little. And the students had not heard. But they’d seen enough.

“Sometimes there is very bad news. I do not know anything else, nobody does. A friend of Mr Komisse has come here to tell him some very bad news. That’s all I know, and all you know. And that is all you can say. If you make up rumours you will only hurt people who do not deserve it, and that would be unspeakably vicious and cruel because this is real and no game. Do you hear me?”

oOo

Wilde was wilting, more with emotional reaction than anything else, although he knew the shock, concussion, drugs and the wounds were taking a serious toll on him. Just a little more time to do what absolutely had to be done. The secretary had driven him – he had not even realised that the driver and Chaplain would need the car to take Harry to get his two little girls. There had not been much conversation in the car on the trip back to the base. He’d filled her in on the basics, though, as she needed that. He’d been darkly amused that the principal had had to be sedated as she’d gone into hysterics, not due to the terrible news, but because she’d been so offended. He needed someone to focus on to deflect the anger and the grief. She’d done that for him, at least.

They drove up to the entrance to the operations building. Getting through the gate had not been difficult, they had been expecting him. He could see that they were expecting him here too as there was a damned ambulance outside the building, mostly because Bungy Williams was outside as well, poking another Lieutenant Commander in the chest. As he had red between his gold stripes he was obviously a doctor trying to – well, do his stuff. It did not stop Wilde from starting to get angry again. It felt good – but he wrestled with it.

“Thanks, Lorraine. Gimme a hand out if you would, this should be fun for you to watch, just so you know we have our own issues.”

She stopped the car and got out, then went around to help him out. The left leg was getting bad, swollen, burned and now pretty much locked up. Luckily, with the Endone he could not feel much from it beyond a weird sort of very deep ache with occasional dagger-thrusts in it. They made him gasp and grimace.

As soon as they saw him, the Doc and his two medics approached. Wilde just headed for the door, and he was quite close to it. Williams was behind them, grim-faced.

Wilde got to the door with Loraine’s assistance, then pointed at the doctor.

“With all due respect sir, piss off. I’ll call you when I need you.”

“You can’t…”

“Well, sir, I can and just did, because if what’s in my head does not get out into the circuits now that I’ve had a small chance to think about the implications of watching my best mate and a bunch of her crew die, then it’s probable that more ships and more men will die. My own condition simply does not matter in the light of that because my duty matters more. So, sir, I’ll call you when we are done.”

The doctor shook his head, then sighed. “Dammit, I get that, but I have my own duty, and if those burns don’t get treated ASAP the infections will cost you your hand and may cost you that leg, or your life.”

“Nature of the business, sir, and price we pay, isn’t it? And right now I simply don’t care. The risk to one life versus risk to fifty, or a hundred. I don’t have any choice there, and neither do you.”

He looked at Wilde and pursed his lips. “Idiot,” he said without heat, “does not stop you from being right, does it? But I do have my own duty. So we’ll follow you in to at least do some basics while you debrief. I will warn you that it’s going to be extremely painful and yes, even through the Endone, as I can’t give you morphine yet.”

“I think that might even be earned, in a way. What with what I just did to the husband of my best friend, doc.”

“Now that comment truly is idiotic. Let’s go then.”

oOo

Wilde looked out the window of Auckland General. Yesterday and the night had been very bad, in some ways this morning had actually been worse. But that was a private problem.

The phone call had been arranged, and he picked it up with his less bandaged left hand. His right – he’d keep some of the use of it in the long run. Not much, but some.

“Hi boss.”

“Dennis,” said Christine, “it does not express a millionth of it, but I am sorry about Jillian Komisse and her crew, we’ll raise a glass later for them. I reckon your information saved one or two of our ships yesterday. They activated just after we got your phoned-in quickrep. One loaded tanker wore a minestrike and she’s beached inside the port now. No casualties, it was not a big mine but she’s not a big tanker and there’s diesel oil all over the harbour. We’ve raised four, your lads have raised five, not including the first two. We’ll lose more ships, but not yesterday, and that’s because of you. Got it?”

“Yeah boss, got it.”

In Wellington, Christine was puzzled. Lacking the visible cues of body language, she’d closed her eye and concentrated on his tone, she looked at the note Boulay slid across the desk towards the speakerphone.

“Something else’s up with you, Dennis. I know about the wounds and stuff, you got something else? Spill.”

“Shit. You’re good, boss. Giselle dumped me by bloody text message half an hour ago. She can’t take the strain of me being in the Navy and getting a bit blown up.”

“What? Then she’s a bloody disgrace to womanhood, Dennis, and I hate to sound so effing trite but you are better off without her.”

“Yeah. Lucky I had not gone to see her with the ring, eh? Lucky. Old. Me.”

Christine and Phil Boulay looked at the phone, horrified. This? On top of what he’d just been through. Bitch, Christine mouthed silently to Boulay. He could only nod. He pointed to his distinct lack of legs, shook his head in negation, then pointed at her and jerked his thumb in a general northwards direction.

“I’ll be up there as soon as I can, Dennis. Tomorrow first thing in the morning at the absolute latest.”

“Then go out on the dawn runs, boss. That comes first. See the wounded after the run. And they won’t let you in to see me until after they debride anyway, and you don’t want to be here when they do that. Too screamy. Serious. I am really worried about how fragile morale is.”

oOo

She looked out of her father’s office window at the magnificent view. “Dad, I am just taking in some flowers to all of them, make sure that they know we are at least a bit concerned for them. That’s all. That really is all, it’s not like there can be anything else, is there?”

He sighed and nodded slightly. “Taya, that’s not all. Didn’t you tell me that he already had someone?”

She looked at the view again. “Yes, and I am not going to try and move in on that. I am not that sort of woman, you raised me better than that.”

He spoke very gently. “Then where did this come from, love. This is really unlike you, and you are not a psycho stalker or such.” He snorted gently. “Spoiled rich kid maybe.”

“Hah! And not a soulless little rich slut with a coke habit, either,” she replied somewhat acerbically, “that circle of spoiled brats is one little circle of our bubble of society I really despise.”

She looked at her father, “you know that they’ve tried to get their hooks into Merry since she was 15, don’t you? Oh, don’t worry,” she laughed, but he shot to his feet as raw fury erupted on his face, “I’ve been telling her what evil bitches they are and how they tried to recruit me at the same age.”

His anger did not deflate, if anything it roared higher. “I remember that conversation, Tay.”

“And I remember the, hmm, direct action you took. So do they. But a new lesson would be nice. Same slags and scumbags, only even more sleazy eight years later.”

She turned and looked at her dad. “If you and some nice big lads from one of the construction crews pay a little visit to Edain Stubbs, esquire, and give him a little lesson, he’s the ringleader of that particular circle. They’ll get the message.”

“The old money circle?”

“Yep. Same perverts and degenerates, different day.”

“You never fell for that, and you have a harder edge, more ruthlessness it seems, Tay.”

“You and mum are nouveau riche, which tars us as fresh meat and uppity in the old money eyes, and they expected us to play their game and be their bedroom toys. But you’ve got a moral framework you live your life to and mum’s the same and a hellcat to boot, and you both raised us on your own middle-class values. So we do not fit in and they hate us, dad. Remember how you and mum and you raised us to be better than that, too. No allowance and a job as a check-out chick if I wanted pocket-money. Same as Merry is doing as a shop assistant. Which job I did for two years at school, I remind you. And I am building my own little business teaching financial matters and doing personal investment for women without a clue in such matters. Think that even one of those bitches has ever lifted a finger in their pampered lives? I can’t tell you how much that has helped Merry and I.”

It was her turn to sigh. “And Dad, I do not know what the hell happened. I have never felt like that before. I’m putting it down to the surprise, the shock, and the danger. I mean the ship was right there in front of us and I saw the explosion and bits flying everywhere just as you did and then it burned and sank. And the other one got its stern blown off and it sank too. And we got those busted up men out of the rafts. And then I sat there writing down all that he did and saw when getting off the Aroha, so that he could report it. We could have been next, Dennis said. What really hit me was how calm and methodical he was, just doing what he had to do despite the fact that he was obviously in severe pain despite that Panadene Forte we had. It was an experience I have never even dreamed I’d be involved in and I think that’s it. It was so … so real. I’m glad we did not have to recover any of the bodies or anything like that when we went back out. So I think it’s the, I dunno, the reality of it that gets me? We live in a pretty wealthy bubble of people who are very pleased with themselves about their own cleverness, and that really punctured the bubble, didn’t it? And it showed our little bubble to be pretty damned shallow, just quietly.”

“Well, yes. Good points. It’s been a weird two days since then.” He thought for a second. “You are heading over now?”

She nodded.

He nodded back. “See if there’s anything they want, from a beer up to a visit from the All-Blacks, and I’ll get it sorted.”

She looked at him in surprise. “It brought it home to me too, love. Nineteen men and one woman died in front of our eyes. And she was a mum only a few years older than you, with two little girls. Six seriously wounded on top of that. I don’t think business does enough for them. And that should change.”

She smiled slightly. “Then get on the blower to the All-Blacks now, dad, who would not want a visit from them?”

She paused, thoughtful. “Do something for the little girls and any other kids?”

“Already on it, love. Talking to Auckland Girls Grammar, only be a hundred k or so per girl to set up a fully paid scholarship for them, they are only little. Their dad, poor bastard, is a school maths teacher himself. Reckon we’ll be able to set up a big scholarship fund for the orphaned kids of all the dead.”

“You big softie, we are going to look after those two girls ourselves, aren’t we.”

“Yes. Uni, careers later if they want, the lot.” But he went pale when he said it.

“Dad? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Bull. Spill. I’ll get it out of you eventually.”

He walked to the vast window and looked unseeingly at the view for many minutes while his daughter stood, silent, watching quietly but deeply concerned.

He spoke very quietly. “I had my binoculars on them when they were hit. I saw a woman walk out of the bridge a split second before the explosion. She was ripped apart, most of her was blown a hundred feet into the sky, Taya. That was their mother, only one woman died. Her name was Jillian Komisse. One of the little girls is named Miriam, like your little sister.”

She dashed to him and hugged him. “Dad, that’s awful, dreams?”

His voice was a whisper. “Terrible, terrible dreams. I keep seeing it. And it’s her, and then it’s you, or Merry, or your mother.”

oOo

Christine walked in again to say her farewells just as the poised and elegant young woman was about to leave. Her four sailors had all required reconstructive surgery on joints. A broken ankle or leg from that sort of shock was not normally just a simple fracture. Normally the joint or bone was shattered, needing complex surgery to repair even partially. She saw her look at her a little uncertainly, she obviously did not understand the uniform well, and then look in surprise at her half-masked face. Christine did a quick scan herself – higher-end designer clothes, Hermes handbag, obviously genuine, fresh flowers on each bedside table and a fourth bunch held in her arms– and made the connection.

She walked over to a cheerful chorus of ‘morning, ma’ams’ from her men, waving in acknowledgement and calling back.

“Taya St Jorre?”

The young woman looked startled. “Yes, how did…?”

“I know? It’s my job. These lads are mine, and Dennis works for me too, and I have had two conversations with him today. And I also read his report. One more bunch of flowers there, are you on your way to see him?”

She nodded. “Yes, this is my first visit, Dad and I have been working on a few things. Was Jillian Komisse one of yours too?”

“Yes, she was, may I ask why?”

“Then I’ll need your contact details, please, Dad’s in the process of setting up a full scholarship for her two little girls over at Auckland Girls Grammar and we are working on the Auckland business community for an education fund for the kids of those lost.” She shrugged. “Dad says that it’s the least we can do for people who die protecting the city, and I remember Dennis saying that they are not the first and won’t be the last; so the business community damned well needs to step up.”

Stefanovic was startled. “That’s very generous, I wasn’t aware of this. I command the minesweepers overall and we will certainly work with you!” She hesitated a little, “is that one scheme or two?”

“Two, my father has said that our family will take care of the two little girls ourselves if Mr Komisse permits it. Once their father says it’s OK, we’ll just pre-pay all their expenses now so they have a pair of slots waiting for them.”

“Can I ask why?”

Stefanovic was fascinated to see the young woman’s splendid poise crumble to dust and her eyes fill with tears. So Christine jerked her head, outside. They walked into the corridor, she dried her eyes but the poise was just plain gone.

“Why do you wear a white mask over a third of your face?”

Christine considered her for a second. “Because I need to. I was shot in the face in a battle off Newcastle – Horner’s Action – a few months ago, and about a quarter of my face, and an eye, was destroyed.” She waited. The younger woman took a deep steadying breath.

“Dad was looking at the ship through binoculars when the explosion happened. He saw Mrs Komisse walk out, and get blown apart. He says that he saw most of her get blown into the air. Then we took the wounded in to the hospital, and Dennis to the base. It affected us.”

“Ok. When we meet, he can talk to me about the nightmares if he wants. It helps a little. Yes, we all have them. You have another bunch of flowers. You going to see Dennis?” Now that’s interesting, why is she now blushing?

They started to walk.

“I have to go, I have seen him. You know the way?”

“Yes. I am a bit nervous about that though, you seen him, is he generally OK aside from the obvious?”

“No. Burns are very painful. His right hand is ruined but he should keep some use of it. And his leg got a sort of long crack up the femur, the knee is basically wrecked, they will do a knee replacement in a few days when the concussion is sorted out. You just don’t mess about with that. You know that his left ear is gone?” She nodded. “Yes?”

“But he was very focussed the day before yesterday?”

“True, and he’s a good operator, running the force without him for even a few weeks will be very difficult.” She stopped at the cross-corridor. “My point of departure.”

“So why is he not more OK? I don’t understand.”

“Because some of us are cowardly, self-centred, narcissistic bitches, Miss St Jorre. Jillian was his best friend who he thought he’d wind up with, and she fell in love with and married Harry. He was right there when she died, and had to tell Harry, who’s also a very close friend too. He saw two of his ships sink and lost 19 other men. Then on top of that his damned girlfriend, who I think he was just about to propose to, dumped him yesterday morning by text message. All too much for the precious little snowflake apparently and she’s had an attack of the vapours. So he’s taken an absolute hammering emotionally and physically, I just hope it does not break him – why d’you think I am here still?”

She started to turn. “So tell him what your Dad is doing for the twins, please. And for the kids. He needs some good news. I have to go. I’ll be in touch through Dennis if you give him your father’s contact details.”

She nodded, turned and left.

oOo

She had sat outside the burns unit’s ward in confusion for the last half hour, her thoughts and emotions in absolute tumult. She could visit – he was not one of the really bad cases with massive burns, what had the nurse said? He’s got serious burns but he’s not burned, that’s how we put it, that was it. But did she want to? Because if she did, she had a chance... And deliberately working catching him on the rebound is despicable, she thought. So what the hell do you do? What do I want? I want what any woman raised to sensible middle-class values wants, a stable long term relationship, an interesting life, children. It’s not as if money will ever be an issue for me. I get plenty of offers and pressure for sex from men in my group, and I loathe most of them and dislike the rest. Shallow, spoiled brats or unformed boys respectively. Boys want little but sex. Men want relationships, and he had that, and she threw it away. So do I want him, then? Maybe, he’s as hot as hell, which does not really matter, and he's a serious man doing serious things, which really does matter. He’s no spoiled brat wasting his time. So he’s very attractive to me. Got that. Am I interested in seeing if it would work? Maybe. And that’s a strong maybe: that’s more yes than no. And he’s so very different. So the maybe is really a qualified yes, isn’t it? Qualified by fear, well, maybe uncertainty. And your physical reaction to him was almost painfully intense. She shook her head slightly. It still is. So. Try. See what happens.

She sighed. “What do I do? What if,” she whispered, “what if I am simply honest. Totally honest. Just that, both with him and with myself. And see where simple honesty leads.”

oOo

“Hello Dennis, it’s Taya, and you look like you’ve been hit with a hammer. What happened?”

“They debrided the burns, Taya. It’s painful, even with the anaesthetics. You look tired.”

“Nightmares. I’m a soft girl from a well-off family who’s had an easy life in a social circle that she despises, and who regard her family as parvenu’s and her as little more than fresh meat. So the day before yesterday was a life-altering event for me”

He was a little startled. “Whoa, where did that come from?”

“I just walked in to an entirely alien world. I ran into your … boss? I don’t know what the uniform means, I’ve got to learn that. Woman with the face mask. Christine. She told me why she wears it, never met any woman that tough before, when I was visiting the others before coming here. We had a quick talk and she said much more then she knew. I’ve been sitting outside thinking for maybe forty minutes. Bearing in mind what I said to you, and what she said to me unknowing, I was almost too scared to come in here. I finally decided that the only way I could face it, and you, was by being absolutely, utterly honest with you and with myself.”

“What she said? I don’t understand that,” said Wilde.

“She told me that on top of everything else, some women are and I quote cowardly, self-centred, narcissistic bitches, unquote. Accent on the bitches, by the way. She’s not happy with what your girlfriend did to you. Neither am I, because it offered me a pretty despicable opportunity, if I were also a cowardly, narcissistic, self-centred bitch. Hence my sitting outside for forty minutes in emotional confusion. But first things first.”

“What?” He was more than slightly overwhelmed by this. So she described what her father was doing, and what her family was doing. He was silent at the end of this.

“Why are you, your family personally, offering to help the twins, little Emma and Miriam, like this, Taya? I am not questioning motives and certainly not your generosity to a friend whose world has been smashed, I need to understand so that when I speak to Harry about it I can explain it to him.”

“One reason, my little sister, you saw her when we got you aboard Dad’s boat, she’s named Miriam. Another, Dad found out that Mr Komisse is a teacher. The third reason is the main one and I would tell you, but it will hurt you. And I don’t want to hurt you. You have been hurt enough and in too short a time. I won’t do that unless you ask me to. So please don’t ask me to, not yet. Not yet. There’s been too much hurt.” She looked very upset.

He thought about it for what seemed like a long time. “Tell me, I think I have to know.”

“Please, Dennis, please no, not yet” she begged.

“Tell me, please, Taya.”

So she did, as gently as she could.

The sheer pain was unbearable. “She was torn apart, and tossed into the air like a broken doll!” The dammed grief broke through then, and she hugged him, giving such comfort as she could.

oOo

“Ma’am, this is not smart. Muritai’s just a pissy little 160 ton MSA with stuff-all comms.”

Stefanovic just nodded. “I don’t need comms for this. I just need to be on the lead ship. Just like the past three days. It also gives me a good look at each ship and I do need that.”

The old Warrant Officer sighed. “Morale?”

“Morale. And a sort of seriousness. I’ve got the Australians holding the fort at Wellington which leaves Auckland like shags on a rock as my XO is wounded, no way can he get back to sea for weeks, probably months. And we have lost two AMS and a MSA now, Aroha sunk four days ago, Manuka damaged, Matai sunk with Aroha. But we’ve raised 14 mines between us, the Australians have taken losses too but again these KPM’s targeting us do not have big warheads. Oh, they are enough for us, but not one of the three merchies mined have been sunk. And two of those mines were monsters, UDM’s or similar. You have to admire their mine warfare planning, they are streets ahead of us in all aspects of this.” She shook her head.

“Ma’am, how bad’s Manuka?”

She smiled sunnily, which surprised him. “We did not lose anyone at all! Even the wounds were minor. Her forward bilge pump was running and the mine seems to have aimed itself on its radiated noise. So she got her bows blown off. Last night about 0200. Danlayer was able to tow her in just after dawn. Media was all over it and the Chief was in town so he dragged the Minister down to the wharf to see her berth and to see the crew. She’s in no danger of sinking but she’s out for a couple of months.”

Her face went serious. “I have asked the Chief to formally request a relief AMS from the 32nd, and from 2nd Squadron if at all possible as I know them well. We will see what they say but I’d be surprised if they don’t respond positively.”

“Why, ma’am? Surely they have their own problems?” He looked aft at the sweep.

“Well yes, they do, but they are more than willing to help us catch-up as it eases the burden on both of us over the longer run. And they are awash with manpower now with the conscripts, the refitted Japanese AMS are coming from the yards while their production of Hopetoun class is looking good. They do not have spare capacity but they have enough to help out. Besides, they say that the warning we gave them and our assessment of the third wave attack saved their arses, meaning they did not lose ships by being caught by surprise like we were. No, they will help if they possibly can.”

oOo

HMAS Namoi

Commander Mike McCann looked at his XO and skippers. The planning had not taken long, as they had anticipated the orders from COMAUSFLT via COMAUSMINFOR.

“Right, I will cut the orders for this. OPS, sum up please so I can tick off the main points of the plan for Fleet.”

“Sir. Send 3rd Group, composed of two Hopetoun class AMS and two Bangka Nurses class AMS, to Auckland. The Kiwis there are below 50% efficiency by their own metrics, which are ours with a rebadge, and they are declining but only slowly – they really are doing their damnedest. Wellington’s at about 70% but steady. One additional AMS, from Melbourne, to be sent to Wellington to boost them a bit. To prevent problems here, AMS Bonthorpe to be moved to create a temporary 4th Group, being replaced by the new Avernus where she is. Two MSA, one of which is loaned from Sydney, to be assigned to the 4th Group so we can maintain our channels. This will give us 1st and 2nd Groups at 100% and 85% efficiency, recoverable in about three weeks, 4th group at about 60% efficiency, recoverable in about nine weeks.” He looked up. “That’s being quite optimistic, but you’ve gotta have a plan. 32nd Flotilla 2nd Squadron 3rd MS Group to be rebadged as 32nd Flotilla 2nd Squadron 1st Deployment Group, with the transport ADV Aurora added. She’s too much carrying capacity at 4,500 tons deadweight but she’s available and can carry the four towfish boats as deck cargo. Been talking to CO Niagara, Josh Falau, good man, he’s stretched for wharf space so he thought outside the box and he’s installing a heavy clump mooring so she can stern-berth to the pier for when she goes down there. There’s space at the new facilities at Philomel but no berth there for Aurora so she has to go to Wellington.”

“Have to be very heavy, their winds can be hellish, sir.”

“He knows his own port, says it will be fine.”

“Fair enough.”

“Right, done.” He turned to end the planning session. “Right, Jack, your show now. Four day passage as planned, leaving tomorrow. All the paperwork for Shelley sorted? Yes? Good. Glad the boss was able to get approval for that, just exercise normal discretion. Expect to be there for six weeks as a minimum, that’s certain to stretch in my humble opinion, probably for several months. You’ll be working for Christine directly, I suspect for the entire time, don’t think she’ll be able to get back to Wellington for a while. Phil’s been extended there. If you need another AMS we can stretch, I’ll have a ship nominated to send at short notice but she’ll be new, and the two Nurses class you have are green as grass.

“That gives me two Hopetoun’s, sir, one with a veteran crew and one fully trained but unseasoned. Going to be good for working up procedures with similar ships. Be nice for a change, and good inter-Allied PR opportunities and all that stuff. Also the best ships for it.”

oOo

“You keep coming back with flowers, Taya,” Wilde said softly.

“Flowers do help.” She was arranging them with both care and great skill. “The last of the boys was discharged from hospital this afternoon. Doc told me you’d be here for a few days yet, burns and the replaced knee being what they are.”

He looked at her with seriousness and close attention. She was a tall young woman, as tall as he, well and expensively dressed as always, poised and elegant with perfect bearing. A slender figure, short brown hair and enormous liquid brown eyes set in a strikingly beautiful face. Two years younger than him, and she’d told him about her small and slowly growing financial advice and financial training business. Capitalised with her father’s assistance but as a commercial loan – she had to make it work herself. She prospered or failed on her own merits and things were going well for her. Fit, she was a swimmer and a competition-grade squash player, both sports were something they shared. Well, had shared. He’d never play squash again.

“Perhaps there was a question in there, Taya. What motivates you to keep coming back like this at all?

“That question.” She sighed, finished arranging the flowers – orchids this time – and sat in the chair next to him, reaching over and taking his hand. “It’s complicated.”

He just sat, and listened to the silence, looking steadily into her enormous eyes. He already knew about how her family did not really fit into the social world their wealth seemingly placed them into, and how much she loathed most of the people her age within that world.

“My little business will do OK.” She looked at him. Honesty, she thought to herself, with yourself as much as with him. “I use it as a shield to fend off a lot of the social trust-fund kids set. It’s gauche and so terribly middle class, in their eyes. That’s pretty much why I developed it but it has only accented and deepened my social isolation. I do not do coke, empty partying, or orgies, I see that their lives themselves are pretty empty, and that’s not good enough for me.” She glanced at him, then firmed her gaze. “Dennis, at 24 I have never had a boyfriend. In fact I shocked my doctor by telling her I’ve never … been active, shall we say.” She blushed deeply, but her gaze did not alter. “And I am very definitely not gay. When I asked you on the boat if you were attached. I simply could not believe what I’d just said.”

She gulped and looked away. “This is hard, but I swore to myself that I’d be honest with you and be as honest with myself, and simply see where that led. I felt a powerful physical attraction to you then, and I feel it now. I was upset and ashamed of myself after your boss told me about you being dumped….”

“Why,” said Wilde very quietly.

She looked steadily at him. “Because the thought entered my mind that I might catch you on the rebound.”

“And that made you ashamed?”

“Yes. It’s how the people I most despise would think. They tend to think of others as sort of irreal, like cardboard cutouts of people who they can treat as toys.”

“And you … have made a different path for yourself.”

“The one thing they are not is honest, when dealing with others, or themselves, and if nothing else, I can be that. At least I can keep my self respect that way.”

“Taya, you can have no idea how much I appreciate that honesty in you.”

He paused, and they sat in stillness for several minutes. There was not the slightest hint of tension in that silence.

Wilde spoke again, and again, quietly. “I know that it is time for you to go now. Please come back tomorrow, and when you do, please bring your father. Can you do that?”

“Why?”

“Tomorrow, Taya. Can that wait until tomorrow? Please?”

She nodded slowly. To her surprise, he gently leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. She turned gently, to kiss him softly on the lips

“Just so that you know, the attraction is very much returned. And it’s got nothing to do with rebound.”

Confused but oddly happy, she rose silently, nodded, and left.

oOo

The formation had snaked around and was headed back up channel, last run for the day, they’d been out since dusk yesterday. It was slow work. It was colder now in the westering sun and Stefanovic was exhausted. She had finished the oh-so-traditional cold bully beef sandwich which was all they really had on the tiny MSA and took the strong cup of tea from the AB with a nod of thanks, and grabbed the screen with her left hand to brace herself as she sipped it. The little Muritai was very lively in the rising chop, it rose fast in this shallow water, but the whole column behind her was in violent motion, for they were only making three knots over the ground.

She was quietly pleased, the acoustic elements of AMASS, called ‘Foxer’ in tribute to the WWI acoustic decoy of the same name, had triggered three mines in this channel. She leaned hard on the screen, squeezed her eyelids together and shook her head against the fatigue…

WHUMPH

Snap. Everything flexed as the massive shockwave smashed into the little sweeper and Christine was tossed to the deck.

There was a sort of fading ZZzzzwru sound as the power died. Everyone who earned their living on deep water knew exactly what that sound meant. Then the alarms started shrieking, as if the ship was in mechanical pain. She glanced aft from her position flat on her back on the deck.

Now THAT is an impressive pillar of water – ground mine. Big one.

Ow. That hurt.

“Ma’am! You OK?”

“Left wrist. Not serious. You? The crew? The ship?”

He reached to help her up. “Smacked in to the overhead. Not serious. Helmsman’s OK, have to find about the rest. Heavy mine. Shock’s knocked us out, she’s not shockproofed after all.” Behind him the helmsman darted out to hoist the two black balls to show she was not under command.

She got to her feet, with a little help, and winced.

“The wrist?”

“Sprained I think, probably not broken, I’ll live. Bet my arse is bruised, though.”

“Heh…”

The emergency generator cut in, and some power returned. He ducked back into the bridge and reached for the engine room handset.

Five minutes later the rescue ship was visible, closing at full power as they’d drifted out of the channel, the other sweepers of course continuing the sweep. A danlayer was approaching, preparing a tow, a difficult evolution on these small ships in worsening weather.

oOo

The rain was flowing from the lowering cloud base.

“No, ma’am, I am CO and I am ordering you off, along with AB Soong. You’ll both transfer to the rescue ship. You are useless here with your wrist and his arm. She’s leaking badly through the stern gland and it will be a struggle to get her back. Main engine mounts are welded steel and they are fractured, so no way to run the main engine. She’s my ship and that’s all my job. You have the Squadron to command, so,” he smiled, “get off my ship and go do it.”

“You, sir, are an arsehole,” she said, smiling, “doesn’t stop you being perfectly right, of course!”

oOo

Vidcon was an awkward format, but it was convenient. It was quite new to Philomel.

“So sir, Muritai was gotten back with great difficulty and has been dewatered, her sweep was a write off, mostly, she’ll be slipped tomorrow, pumps will be running through the night to keep her afloat. Her crew’s a bit banged about but they did a fine job and they know it. Morale’s not great but it’s steady as they know they are doing a good job and the fact that help’s on the way from across the pond will help – but they won’t be the cavalry arriving, they’ll be a helping hand to a mob who’ve held and are holding the line, although at heavy cost. And that, sir, will give them their spurs. Business community here’s doing some good stuff, I’ll be meeting one of them tomorrow about that.”

“Agreed, and keep me posted on that too. On the Aussies, that’s the song we are singing to government, too, it helps that it’s simply true. We want it kept under wraps until they steam in, though, that’s just good security.” He paused, then continued, “it’s 2300, you at sea tomorrow?”

“No, sir, doc forbade it, I still think that the wrist was only sprained, but I sure as hell broke the damned thing jumping across to the rescue ship. Gotta say that I miss depth perception, you don’t get any with only one eye. I did not jump at the right time and fell very heavily, landed badly.” She grinned, “but you should see my backside sir, landed on it twice now and I am sleeping on my front for the next week I reckon.”

The Commodore shook his head, smiling at the joke. “Last time I checked, Lieutenant Commander,” he said with mock severity, “backside inspections were not a feature of the RNZN and if they are it sure ain’t my job. Think I’ll leave that up to the medics and your husband, he’ll be there shortly I think I was told. Fatigue on the ships?”

“Tired but managing it sir. Down for ten hours now so everyone should get six in the rack. It’s enough.”

“Ok, you do the same. Signing off.”

oOo

“Boss, what the hell have you done to yourself?”
“Dennis, why the fuck are you in uniform?”

Both smiled at the simultaneous comments. Wilde gestured to her.

“So, Dennis, why are you in rig? You are not being discharged until tomorrow and you are on med leave until the burns heal up a bit and knee … and the cracked leg bones enable you to walk. And even then I know you are seeing the docs daily to get things checked.”

“Park that one, boss, you’ll see in a few minutes anyway. Now what’s with the limp and the cast on your arm?”

“Eh… “

Behind her the door opened again and a large, grizzled looking man and a tall, slender, elegant brunette walked in, and did something of a doubletake.

“Oh, boss, may I introduce Mr Nicholas St Jorre and his daughter, Miss Taya St Jorre? Sir, Miss St Jorre, my Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Commander Christine Stefanovic.”

There were mutual handshakes and “please call me’s.”

“Sorry, sir, Miss St Jorre, one second please; boss, what’s with the limp and the arm?”

“Meh. Nothing that matters. Muritai triggered a UDM with the sweep, too close. Really big warhead on those suckers and Muritai’s just a little MSA, so the shock knocked her out and popped the stern gland so she was flooding fairly badly for such a small ship – don’t worry they got her in but with difficulty, I just came from the slipping. Sprained the wrist and fell badly on my back, then broke the wrist and fell again when jumping on to the rescue ship. My rump is black and blue. My husband is a bit amused by that, the ratbag.” She smiled fondly.

“Jon’s up here?”

“Yup. Came up last night. And I am seriously ticked off, doctors have forbidden me from going to sea with the sweepers for a week.” She looked him over and grinned. “And my XO’s lazing about doing stuff-all, the idle sod.”

“Now… no.” She cocked her head slightly and considered Wilde, then turned her head and addressed the new visitors, noting the flowers held by the young woman. “Nick, Taya, I think we do need to speak, later. Lieutenant Wilde has informed me of your efforts with the families of my dead, and at the very least I want to express my most profound thanks. But I think my errantly attired Executive Officer has some matter of importance to discuss with you. I shall…”

Wilde interrupted. “No, ma’am, please stay. This is something you probably need to hear too, in a way.”

He stood up somewhat shakily, causing Taya to move quickly to his side to support him, something her father noted with an interested eye. Stefanovic just smiled gently. She knew the signs.

“Sir, your daughter has been here every day since you pulled us from the rafts. She has been supporting the wounded from HMNZS Aroha and Matai. I have come to regard her as capable, modest, honest to a fault and admirable in all ways.”

He glanced at her and smiled, which she returned. “We also share a mutual attraction. While this is unbelievably old-fashioned I have good reason for it. May I ask your permission and approval that I may court your daughter? I am a man of honest if modest means, with, I actually regret to say, a lifelong naval career ahead of me. Make no mistake, it’s my vocation and the regret is only for the effect on others of the dangers involved, which you have seen at first hand. That is the reason I am asking for your permission and approval, for if you permit this and a mutual relationship comes from it, then your daughter will be exposed to … uncertainty and impacts that she would not be, otherwise. And they may be devastating.”

Nick looked a little like a stunned mullet at first, but he’d seen his daughter’s movement, and realised exactly what her feelings and views were despite the astonished look on her face.

“I appreciate that honesty. We did not raise our daughters to be hot-house flowers, and I believe you may have been told of the social grouping they find themselves in. We know how bad some parts of that social group can be.” He looked at Taya inscrutably. “She also has her own strength and she was not raised to be a coward, or to be dishonest, either.”

He took a deep breath, “so yes, I give you my permission and approval.” Then he smiled ruefully, “even if I feel like I am saying words out of some blasted period melodrama. Am I supposed to say that you’re welcome in my house or something?”

Wilde shrugged as his arm slid almost unconsciously around Taya’s waist. “I dunno, never dreamed I’d say something like that. I do realise how old-fashioned asking like that was, but,” he looked at Taya and smiled uncertainly, “if something certain does come from this then everyone has to know what my, our, intentions would be, and from the start that my job is at sea, and that it’s the most dangerous job out there. Honesty, you see.” He nodded at Christine. “Ask the boss ‘cause she’s right. A busted wrist isn’t much worth mentioning in this game, and what happened to me just means I was very lucky. What happened to Jillian is what a bit of bad luck looks like.”

Taya spoke for the first time, softly. “You loved her, didn’t you?”

He nodded. “Yes, of course, always did from the second I first met her, but she did not love me the same way, and I was never willing to trap her, that would have been contemptible. She loved Harry and stepping back from her was the hardest thing I had ever done at that age.”

“Well. Dennis, Taya, that was an interesting start to the day. Now you sit down again Dennis. I am going to invite Nick downstairs for a doubtless awful cup of coffee, and to discuss a bit of information coordination and planning and stuff. Dennis, later. You’ll be on at least a couple of weeks med leave and then light duties shoreside for weeks more. But I’ll make sure you’re in the loop.”

Then she shooed Nick out of the door.

“Taya, I…”

“Shh.” She put her finger on his lips. “We have both started whatever this might become with absolute honesty. I can think of no better start. Besides,” she smiled impishly, “think of the confusion amongst the party set!”

He smiled slightly. “True, but I am very serious about the danger to you here. If this is more than our hormones on the warpath, and that’s not as likely at our age as it is with teenagers, because we are both pretty serious people doing serious things, then you risk having a Chaplain at the door one day. Remember what your father saw.”

“I have my own courage,” she said. And she kissed him.

oOo

The lift door closed. “What do you really think, Nick?”

He looked her, one tough lady, he thought.

“Never say no when you know it cannot be enforced. She’s a 24 year old who’s never been with any man and we have despaired of her finding anyone. We thought her standards were too high but that was not it. She does have high standards, true, but she loathes the young men in the social set we are in, who really are a pack of immature trust-fund babies. She’s also been targeted by prettyboy gold-diggers and to use another period melodrama word, rakes.”

“Hmm. OK. I’ll accept that. He, by the way, is an excellent officer with a very good career ahead of him, if he lives. He also has absolutely no idea of who you are. No idea, I asked him, he thinks you are a financial industry bloke of some sort – he’s interested in Taya because she’s Taya. He has seen your yacht and knows you are well-off, but that’s it. He has no idea that you are the second or third wealthiest man in this country.”

“You’ve looked me up.”

She snorted. “No, I have investigated you and there was nothing legal or nice about it. You’ve injected yourself into my world and we do things differently there. First thing I did was talk to NZSIS. You are a ruthless bastard in business terms, a sharp operator indeed but you stay on the right side of the law and you are free from the scandals and corruption of too many of your peers. Even your skeletons in the cupboard are not too bony.”

“Bloody hell! That’s…”

“Ruthless? Invasive? Immoral and fattening? I don’t give a damn because I have nothing to prove to anybody anymore and am at bad odds to be alive in a year anyway. My duty is what it is, and nothing else matters.” She turned and faced him as the lift doors opened. “You are almost twice my age, but I’ll give you a run for your money on the ruthlessness racetrack any day of the week.”

She smiled mirthlessly. “Only I’ll have a sniper in the tower, too. I don’t play fair.”

“Hmm. I can admire a tough operator and actively like right bastards, it’s why I married a hellion. Keeps me on my toes and makes life fun. Yet it’s unusual in a woman.”

She shrugged. “You send money out to conquer. I send men out to die, or at least to where they can be killed, and get very pissy when I cannot go with them. And I am very different from what I was six months ago.”

He raised his eyebrows as they walked towards the canteen and – doubtless – awful coffee.

“Your husband must also like hellions, then… No. That’s wrong. He’s the only one you can expose your soul to, now.”

“Hmm. Nice serve! And yes, we were very different people before this,” she touched her face. “And yes, because his job’s just as dangerous as mine, he’s a protected trade, high tension electrical contractor, mostly working in Wellington these days. We are each other’s refuge in many ways. It works as well for us just as being right bastard and hellcat works for you and your wife.”

“Touché, and the ball is neatly returned. OK, got the message and we’ve both tested each other’s mettle and found the other to be each other’s sort of splendid bastard. Yours is not a world I understand – you know what I saw? Yes? So tell me then, starting with why you wear that part-mask. I must know what she’s getting in to. Her mother knows her better than she knows herself and thinks she’s falling head over heels and does not know it yet.”

“Wise for both of you. He’s the same, in my opinion. They can still make a mess of it, though. So if it happens – and I think it a good chance so mark my words – it will happen fast. He’s already seen that it might, so he’s simply bypassed all the usual stuff and nonsense of a relationship such as Jon and I went through and cut to the chase, he’s got serious intent and he’s seeing if she does too, and vice-versa, and he’s announced it. We all understand that we might not have much time, you see. I am a little surprised at his approach but if she started from a position of transparent honesty it speaks very well of her and explains why he asked you the way he did. He knows what I know, we have a very high chance of not making it. Everyone knows, now, what they intend to explore and what his intent is if it works between them. Saves time and messing about, y’see?”

“Yes, it does clarify matters! Now, tell me.”

They ordered coffee, and she did so, while he listened intently.

At the end, fifty minutes later, he spoke, just once.

“Your world knows you are the ones holding the shitty end of the stick because you are doing things the old-fashioned way. And it costs. And you are comfortable with that.”

She simply nodded. “No choices there. We have to be.”

“So you live with … intensity.”

She stood and looked out the window, seeing he knew not what. “Gethsemane, Nick. Read Gethsemane and you will understand us better. Kipling… Kipling knew.”

They shook hands and she left. It was only a minute or two until his daughter appeared.

“Dad…”

“It’s fine, Tay, it’s better than fine, and you are an adult, as is he. I just spent an hour with Christine, and I understand what he is and a bit of what his world is. It’s a strange, alien and deadly world he lives in. He’s a good man with a good reputation in a hard field and I think we’ve seen his courage – there is little that will scare that young man. His intent is as clear as yours, for you have both been honest with each other from the start and you are really just at the start. I am happy no matter what happens, there’s no chance of his being a backstabber and none of his being the usual sort of creature which has chased you. He’s got no idea about that, or us, so I suggest you just ignore those as irrelevancies. Because it is, with him. He’s most certainly not a prettyboy either! You have seen him at his absolute worst. He’s interested in you because of you, and for no other reason, but you must know how dangerous his world is. That was the real eye-opener for me.”

He sighed. “Taya, it’s been my job to protect you, including from the hazards of too much money. That’s why you have values so different from your peers. Be warned here of a different danger, in his job casualties are very heavy. He will be back out, risking his life every day, within a few weeks. I cannot protect you from that and would not if I could.”

“Dad…”

“All I am saying is use every moment to its fullest. Life is for living, take big bites, don’t nibble around the edges. No more, and no less. The rest is up to you two.”

She nodded.

[drmarkbailey]

oOo

The little Squadron was a remarkable sight as they steamed into Auckland Harbour. They’d slowed a little outside the port to fit their figureheads, they all had them now. By general agreement and on the basis of the most profound respect, the Bangka Nurses class all had a likeness of the Nurse they were named for, beautifully carved and meticulously maintained. The New Zealand Chief of Navy was present on the new minesweeper wharf at Philomel, of course. The base had been extended by filling in a quarter of the bay next to Stanley Point ferry terminal, and now had a broad overpass crossing Calliope Road to the big chunk of Stanley Bay Park that had been compulsorily acquired and turned into the warehousing and accommodation the base needed. Oddly, the Kiwis had left the ferry terminal, so the base had a civilian ferry wharf in the middle of it.

The four Australian auxiliary minesweepers were two different classes, but they looked quite similar, low-slung, one or two raked funnels, two raked masts with derrick booms and elegant curved bows with wide flares for improved seakeeping. And they had no visible bridges, just a low deckhouse amidships. In fact the top of this was the bridge and insofar as they had one, the operations room and machinery control room as well. All of it was in the open. While not comfortable it meant that when sweeping there was not one man below decks, and it provided superlative situational awareness. Both mattered more than any level of comfort. In Australian experience, the power of modern mines was so great that nobody inside the structure of the ship had survived when a ship was mined – the solution was obvious but demanded a major change to normal practise, back to far older ways of doing things. Other points of experience showed too, they all had a 57mm open mount, a modernised version of the old WWII Molins gun, to enable them to at least put up a fight against a low-tech opponent, recalcitrant merchant ship, disguised minelayer or as recently proven to be necessary, a surfaced submarine. They also had three old 20mm Oerlikon mounts on each broadside for the same reason. Being who they were, they had all “acquired” a raffish collection of other automatic weapons as well, among which old Bren and Lewis guns predominated, although the odd WWI or WWII German, Italian and Japanese machine gun was there too.

The four ships berthed to no particular ceremony aside from a gaggle waiting on the wharf. Countess of Hopetoun, and her sistership Nepean outboard berthed first, then the sisterships Sister Clarice Halligan and Sister Ellen Keats berthed aft of them. The support ship ADV Aurora – just a geared freighter painted grey-green and part of the RAN Fleet Auxiliary – berthed at the cargo wharf, and was quickly discharging additional AMASS systems and containers filled with ammunition, steel cable, Orepesa floats an all the innumerable tons of clutter the sweepers used. Much of it was for the RAN units, but most was for the Kiwis themselves.

The maritime component commander, Commodore Dyke, walked across the brow, saluting as he stepped aboard, then turned, walked forward a couple of paces and saluted the waiting Lieutenant.

“Sir, good to meet you at last,” said the Commodore, “you made a fast passage.”

The salute was returned, “well sir we literally had fair winds and following seas, it was like being in a big armchair all the way across.” He glanced aside and smiled – the Commodore had already noted the spectacular redheaded woman in the somewhat scruffy Navy overalls. “May I introduce my wife, Michelle? She is the attached war correspondent.”

He turned and offered his hand and found himself looking into the greenest eyes he had ever seen. “Hmm. Yes, Tracey McCann has mentioned you, I think. Slightly unusual to ship over with your aboard, isn’t it?”

“Not really,” Michelle replied, “I am accredited with Fleet and spend most of my time at sea on this ship and others, so being attached for this event is just an extension of that. It’s not an issue with the crew either as I am a civvy and am just part of the furniture now even if I am the CO’s wife.” She shrugged, “got a couple of stories to file right now in fact, and I really want to team up with your warco here, I have not been able to find as much on your sweepers as I thought…?”

The Commodore winced. “Yes, we’ll talk about that a bit later I think. How’s Tracey?”

“Waddling about the base like a penguin, the lucky girl!”

“Eh, waddling? I heard on the grapevine that she was pregnant, how far along is she?”

“Twins! She’s big already because there’s just not that much of her. All the troops have gone super-soft and gooey about it. I am jealous, Jack and I are trying, but…”

“Hey, maybe your luck will change while you are over here then. Twins! Good grief. She must look like she’s stuffed a medicine ball under her shirt. Anyway, we’d best be about the quick tour of the ship as here comes the Minister.” Michelle smiled and reached for her camera.

The visit had been tightly scheduled, the RNZN had some of the Hopetoun class in the supply line but they were some time away from arriving. The Minister had been impressed with the Countess, made thoughtful by the hundreds of repaired bullet-holes and intrigued with the unusual touches around her, starting with the figurehead and extending to the little things, like the tiny but beautifully carved little shelf in the cafeteria with its little solid gold crucifix, and list of names on the small brass plate secured on its front. He’d nodded in respect when told it listed the men of the ship’s company killed in action aboard her.

He’d then wrecked his appointment schedule by going aboard HMAS Sister Clarice Halligan. He’d looked at the similar figureheads and asked what the uniforms were. Told they were WWII Army Nurse uniforms, he’d asked why: then he’d been informed of just who they were named for, and why. He’d thought the names rather long, and had been surprised that they’d been lengthened at the request of the crews to include the medical rank of the nurses and that it was always the custom to use the entire name where possible. In signal traffic, they tended to use the initials, which confused the larger ships. When he’d again asked why, he was told that the families and descendants of the massacred nurses had been invited to each ships’ commissioning. After meeting them the crews had insisted. And making fun of the ship’s names – they were very literally fighting words. He’d dryly asked the CO if that was pre-emptively excusing possible punch-ups, only to have Commodore Dyke tell him that there was not a military man in either country who would not feel the same way.

“We don’t blame today’s Japanese in any way at all, Minister, they didn’t do anything,” said the CO, “quite the opposite, and we hunted down and executed the murdering rapist bastards responsible. Today’s Japanese gave us these ships and that closes a circle in some ways. No, it’s that they were Nurses, not fighting men, and they died so hard, and they died so very bravely, and they died knowing they were to be murdered and that no-one could possibly save them. No military man who knows how the Bangka nurses faced their murder on Radji beach that day will permit insult to the memories of women like that.”

Commodore Dyke simply nodded. The Minister looked at him quizzically.

“Minister, that’s simply the naked truth. It’s the same as if someone deliberately insulted our dead from the Timor Incident, the one Australians nicknamed ‘Second Tol’, any of our servicemen would go to knuckling stations right away, in or out of uniform, and any Australian serviceman would too. Same deal here. I’ll send you a brief on what happened that day on Radji Beach, I warn you that it will move you very deeply.”

The Minister smiled slightly and inclined his head. “Does that include you, Commodore?”

“Of course, Minister, absolutely!”

The Minister’s eyebrows shot up.

“Of course,” Commodore Dyke said ruminatively, “I’m old and not as up to the mark for a punchup as I was twenty years ago, so I would not expect to win, but they’d know they’d really pissed me off.”

He shrugged. “It’s a pretty unlikely event, Minister, with the war incidents like that are extremely low.”

“KGB front organisations,” the Minister noted.

“Greens, anti-nuclear groups, Socialist Alliance and the so-called Antifa who are just pathetic LARPing wannabe copies of Mussolini’s Camicia Nera or Ernst Rohm’s Sturmabteilung, NZSIS pretty much has their measure I think.”

oOo

The briefing had been comprehensive, and then they all looked at him. The intelo’s final point was just plain nasty, they had been very lucky. They had confirmed that a limited detail survey of the channel had revealed a small artificial object precisely close to where the explosion that had sunk Matai had occurred. Not a smoking gun – but very close to one. Then they’d dived there and found a KPM trolley. Voilà! One smoking gun.

Careful here, Jack, there’s a delicate line, and it goes with the territory.

“Good, solid brief.” He looked at Christine. “The depth, sophistication and scale of their planning is a real eye-opener, ma’am. And it’s laid out on a platter in this Gulf, I think they made a mistake here. I see the same patterns in our waters but the conditions there really jumble it up. Here, it’s sort of clearer, we can tease out the waves of each attack. My professional opinion is that you’ve done a solid job here and held the line. I also have a nasty suspicion that they have more little surprises for us. They laid this trap with the original lay what, about a year back or even more. They are good, we are up against the best here. 92 mines accounted for, all up. Concur that it’s only a fraction of what’s out there.”

Then he stood and walked up to the map, looked at it and turned.

“But we’ve met what they did and we’ve fought them to a draw, haven’t we? Not too shabby for a bunch of noobs with outdated tactics and what were, for us at least, deathtrap ships. Oh it’s cost us, and I have no doubt that they are not displeased with the results, but all our ports remain open, merchie losses are not that high, and we are still in the fight. And that, ladies and gentlemen, that’s on all of us. We all held the line, kept the ports open and paid the price for what we have learned.”

I hope that ran the line fairly well.

“The sweep plan looks solid to me and I of course agree that concentration on the channels and Q-routes to the drop-offs is vital. Number one priority, keep the port open. I had a quick confab with the intel shop and I am as concerned as they are about the broader areas of the Gulf. There have been the smattering of minings as you know, with the loss of two merchant ships before strict adherence to Q-routes was mandated and five losses since, one merchant ship and four local craft. I agree with intel that the merch loss there was a nav screw-up aboard the ship, they left the Q-route. What’s concerning is the lack of pattern to the other losses. I like the investigation Int have done with the port as to the pattern of merchant ship anchorings, but most significant was the reporting of some of the local fishermen, who’d seen a couple of ships apparently drifting after they had delayed berthing and in one case, reported a breakdown after leaving.”

He looked at them. “Off Newcastle, Wellington and Bass Strait, the Sovs studied what happened in WWII and discovered how the German mines had walked in the current. They applied that where there were strong current moving across the Q-routes. It’s one reason we swept a very long route northwards into the current. It’s been safer than the eastward routes. Here there’s not such strong currents, and your density of moored mines has been low compared to the three I mentioned. Your intel suspects, and I agree, that they have scattered the bulk of the Gulf with mines, and mostly groundmines, and that they are activating to a pattern we have not fully worked out yet. And they’ve had the best part of a year to sink in to the sea floor a bit and grow a nice thick coating of marine growth.”

He mused a bit. “I’d love to see one, because I wonder if they applied a coating to actually encourage that. But we have no hunters and our sonars cannot pick them out. The Squadron CO and I will discuss available options on this one.”

“Anyway, the plan is for the two Bangka Nurses class to join the campaign in the channels – that’s critical. The two Hopetouns will work the main Q-routes for forty sweeps or so and then start on a planned one that has not been cleared yet. Now that will be interesting, because it will tell us a lot about the state of the rest of the Gulf. We’ll be able to tell if they have generally fouled the gulf and get an idea as to the density. I think this may well cost us a sweeper as we’ll be using a two-ship, which is less efficient. So I have asked COMAUSMINFOR, through my chain of command, to have a replacement designated at all times for rapid release. Finally, because your Int folks are nasty, evil-minded little gits,” he grinned, “just like ours are back home, they had a nasty, evil, little git-like thought. We have not seen the sort of mobile and stand-off mines the USSR has developed since 1985, have we? And the Gulf is perfect for them, so the Int folks are looking for a fourth-wave attack system and think that might be a good candidate. So we need to look for cases where a ship gets mined and someone sees a torpedo track – they use rocket-powered torpedoes in these things. So we are also going to tow more ironmongery and the towfish boats we brought over are fitted with a hydrophone and a recorder. It’s trail and forget. We have a dozen of them for you as well, and have also brought over the kit for planning shoes for your stems. We have an acoustic decoy, just a kite that comes off the planning shoe, it streams the kite a half-cable out and it’s powered from the ship. The decoy is aimed at the enemy’s acoustic sensors where they have us as targets. The first fruit of the mines we captured aboard B-39, I am pleased to say.”

This news was well received.

oOo

They had shared not quite a third of a bottle of single malt while awaiting Taya and her mother.

“You are waxing philosophical, Dennis. I do agree, though, about Lewis. Remarkable man for a Popish bead-squeezer.”

“It was a time of great thinkers. Huxley, for example, how prescient was he?”

“On what respect do you focus?”

“Taya and I have been discussing her social level, why she has a bone-deep dislike of them. Huxley, in Brave New World, 1931 I think it was published, describes a dystopian world where the Left has built a utopian tyranny which uses unlimited sexual freedom as a substitute for political freedom. He illustrates how the Left holds out traditional sexual roles and mores as a form of bondage, or restriction. The modern left called it the “sexual revolution” for good reason. They encouraged people to indulge in much of that free love nonsense in the context of making a political statement to build a utopian ideology so as to make whoever is doing this to feel “free”. But the price of that so-called “freedom” was totalitarian control by the Left where they are above all laws – look at the political dynasties in the USA if you do not believe it. The price was the masses had to uncritically accept all of the other political positions of the Left. What they call sexual freedom, in what passes for public discourse in the mass media and academia today, is the monopoly of the Left and the price of it is surrender of your actual freedoms.”

“Hmm,” said Nick, “as George Orwell said, in a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

“Yes. Writ large, what the self-styled “progressive left” is selling amounts to a modern version of feudalism, in which a self-appointed aristocratic elite, whose status is maintained by the promotion of a self-serving ‘progressive’; really merely pagan and neo-Marxist dogma, is anointed to tell the rest of us peasants how we must live our lives, not unlike the Divine Right of Kings. They are too ill-educated, ignorant and irreal to understand that feudal aristocracies came from a class of warrior elites who had to fight for local stability first. Their model is the aristocracy of the Sun King in its most corrupt stage, to be imposed by stealthy fiat. We peasants will be compelled to create wealth for them, as they enjoy an opulent existence without earning it; the likes of Taya’s social layer couldn’t produce something genuinely useful if their lives literally depended on it. They cannot understand why she’s running her business, it’s outside their worldview, the work of the peasantry. In their world, over-educated uselessness becomes a virtue, as they are simply ‘above’ having to produce anything. Being the new aristocracy, and one which has become corrupt before any warrior, chivalric or aristocratic responsibility phase; well, that’s why they tried droit de soigneur on Taya, and are trying it on Merry. Looked at from the perspective of a class of wannabe Louis XIV style parasites, it certainly beats actual work.”

Nick snorted. “Oddly enough, you have encapsulated a lot of what I feel about the worst of them, but there are notable exceptions.”

“Of course, and they will be the better of them, and disliked by the rest.”

“True.”

oOo

Michelle was exasperated, but was not showing it. She’d finished the demonstration sword drill – although it was a far better backsword in her case than a cutlass. The New Zealand commercial morning show host was no fool, but she was asking fluffy and rather asinine questions, had ignored some of the important stuff, and was truly pissing her off. Lucky that this was live – aha.

“Well, Fiona, I am not a crew-member, I am a war correspondent and I am not a member of the Royal Australian Navy – I just work with them. We do not have female crew-members aboard our auxiliary minesweepers, they do have them aboard the minehunters but those work very differently. Here, let me demonstrate why!”

She wiped the blade and sheathed her backsword, and walked over to where the crew had just finished a bit of boarding pike training – it ended with freeplay for which they used non-edged training pikes – so the lads were all warmed up. That they provided serious eye-candy for the mostly female audience of this show was something she’d planned on days ago.

“Jacko, Damien, can you play the clump game with me please?”

“Sure ma’am!” Both saw the evil gleam in her eye. “Got a thirty kilo tri-clump off the secondary planing shoe right here! Used it for warm-ups. What do you want?”

“Two-way pass for ten, three-way for ten, then move to four-way?”

“Ha! Ambitious, are you? Righto ma’am.” He looked at the news host, looked at the clump and then back at Michelle. “Clump’s pretty clean, but I’ll chuck a smock at her. Don’t want her to wreck her shirt.”

Of course it would, thought Michelle, you and the lads just happened to do the fighting drills without your shirts on, just like I told you. Won’t be a dry seat in the house, either. Speaking of which…

She shrugged out of the overall top and tied the arms around her waist, leaving her in a tight, supportive sleeveless dark grey sweat-shirt but, as she had also planned in case this happened, without a bra underneath. She sighed mentally. I am not a hypocrite. If I exploit the men in that way, I cannot excuse myself, can I? To do so would be dishonourable.

The TV showed a number of men gathering in a loose circle. Some carried martial arts training gear like singlesticks, or actual steel training cutlasses and protective gear. All were heavily muscled. In the midst of them was a heavily scarred young man with an artificial leg. He had a wide grin on his face, which was crossed by an astonishing scar.

“OK, Fiona, as you can see, the men are a pretty fit lot. That’s because they do a massive amount of heavy manual work on these ships. They are old-fashioned ships that way. Now, I am in the top ten percent of body strength for a woman of my bodymass – here, let me get this smock on you to save dirtying your blouse – now, as you can see, they are casually tossing a thirty kilogram lump of steel to each other. Smart-alecks, I asked them to pass it. Now I will join in when they hit ten passes…”

Ha! Make it forty, ma’am, past twenty already! Forty’s your handicap, eh?”

“… OK, competitive smart-alecks then, and you join at forty one when I call you. Got it?”

“But…”

“When I call you, Fiona!”

She moved in and they counted to thirty, then closed up and passed the clump instead of throwing it.

“Thirty-six, move in, Fiona!”

She did, and Michelle passed her the clump at forty-one. She struggled gamely with it, and passed it to Jacko. They kept this up, and she dropped it at forty-five, a creditable effort.

“Step back Fiona, you’re out of the game!”

They kept passing the clump. By eighty five Michelle was as soaked with sweat as the men, her saturated sweat-shirt glued to her, and she was starting to struggle.

“C’mon, ma’am, keep going on just one more!”

Chest heaving like a bellows and muscles standing out on her arms like cords, she dropped it at ninety five and stepped back. She put her hands on her hips, pushed her shoulders back and chest out, and tilted her head back so she could breathe as deeply as she could, filling every crevice of her lungs to flush the excess CO2.

“Good one ma’am, that’s two better than last time! Gotta drop your handicap to thirty nine.”

Panting, she shook her fist at him, mock-angry. “You ratbag! I like my chick’s handicap score!”

The camera was on her, of course. That was the point.

“How…”

“No,” she gasped, “Fiona, let me catch my breath, just watch the men. This is a game in the Squadron.”

Darren dropped it at 126, causing Jacko to raise an arm in victory.

“Thanks guys”, said Michelle at the grinning pair, both slick and running with sweat. Yup, not a dry seat anywhere, she thought ruefully, the boys will be getting chased on every run ashore. “Now, Fiona, that’s just a game the men invented for a bit of fun and for PT. But see the lesson? Darren passed it 125 times and it’s thirty blasted kilos. I managed 45 passes, which I am a bit proud of as it’s a personal best by two, puts me right up there with the bottom of the pack, which is all men. You managed five with no training and cold muscles, that’s quite creditable, it’s pretty much where I started. But the game is actually necessary, these men need that strength all day and all night and women just cannot build it like they can. That clump is actually quite light at just thirty kilos. See the point?”

Fiona nodded – she was not stupid. “There is a need on these ships for a lot of physical strength, but not on other ships?”

“Right, horses for courses. Simple as that, really.”

“But the New Zealand Navy has women on the same ships.”

Michelle’s face became very serious. “Only a few, because you are very short of skilled manpower, and all are commanding officers plus the Squadron Commander. She’s a close personal friend of mine, we were both in that fight off Newcastle and both of us were wounded there,” she refused to call it ‘Horner’s Action’, the name by which it had become known. “One of those CO’s has been killed, and trust me on this, Lieutenant Commander Stefanovic was called a formidable fighting man by the Russian submarine Captain for very, very good reason. Fiona, she actually kept fighting with an eye and a quarter of her face blown away and other wounds. She’s someone your country should be very proud of indeed, and she’s exactly the right officer to command your minesweeper Squadron. She’s a very serious woman and fighter, and she’s very highly respected.”

She waved her hand. “But she does not do heavy manual work actually working the sweeps, it’s just not her job. Any woman with the physical strength to do so is going to look like a fireplug with boobs, and is going to be infinitely more valuable as a Physical Training Instructor running strength and fitness training in a recruit school somewhere, isn’t she? Again, it’s just common sense, horses for courses.”

oOo

“Yes, the boss was watching. I asked her why the display, said it was unlike her. Told her that the boys were wondering.”

“What did she say?”

“She said that she was not a hypocrite, said that as she asked us to put on a beefcake show for PR on TV, that she’d bloody well do her bit too no matter how much she was embarrassed by it. She said that to do otherwise would be dishonourable.”

“Was she embarrassed?”

“Very. Went bright red. You know she can’t hide that. Boss just laughed, but you could tell he was proud of her accepting embarrassment to protect her honour.”

“Hmm. Right-o and fair enough. Spread that to the boys, a matter of honour, and just doing the same job she asked us to do.”

oOo

It took them another week of solid effort until they were even remotely confident about the main channels and were working on the main Q-routes, then they tackled the new route. This was the first run, and probably one of the more dangerous ones – but there would be dozens of those. Countess of Hopetoun was in the lead, of course, Nepean behind her, both with double Orepesa and AMASS strings deployed, as well as the new decoys. They were both tense. Both crews were.

Horner looked at Stefanovic. They were leaning on the forward edge of the open bridge, far enough away from the OOW that their conversation could be private. “Docs are going to be seriously pissed off at you, Christine.”

“Hmm,” she sort of agreed, “not as pissed as the Commodore will be, but that’s OK. What can they do to me that’s worse than what has already been done? Really, Jack? Put me into a job that’s more dangerous than this one, perhaps? Call me nasty names?”

She laughed sourly. “You and I were there Jack, there is nothing anyone can do that’s a thousandth of that. And we are …” she shut up.

“Heh, you got that feeling too, eh? I’ve already spoken to them. They are sending Acheron straight from the yard so three of the four Countesses in service will be here.”

“Dear Lord what are they expecting?”

“Really? An insight into what’s to be expected off our own ports but in a more investigable environment, it’s calmer and shallower here, with a better bottom and slower currents. And you do not have the ships or expertise to deal with it without taking the sort of flogging we took early on. We can do it because we have the Bangka Nurses class coming on line just as the Hopetoun’s are, and the Hopetouns are the most survivable ships we have.”

He looked at her narrowly. “There’s too much bitterness in all of that, Christine.”

“No, Jack, it’s not bitterness, it’s I dunno, tiredness and grief.”

“Tiredness I get. Grief? C’mon, spill. That’s not like you – are you OK?”

She sighed. “As OK as you are, Sunny Jim. No, it’s a grief you cannot have, really, girl stuff. Shelley’s telling me about Tracey, and how you and she are trying. Ha! Rule one for Shelley she said, trip Jack over at every opportunity and jump him so he can’t get away, indeed!”

Jack smiled. “True, that, and I fight mightily to escape her clutches, but I never succeed. But I take a terrible revenge! I get home, ambush Shelley in the hallway, mow the lawn, ambush Shelley in the laundry…”

Christine laughed. “You don’t have a lawn!”

He smiled. “Also true that. Makes ambushing Shelley easier. But that’s not what’s eating you. Spill, Christine.”

“Girl stuff, yes.” She sighed, and looked very uncertain. “My sister-in-law is going surrogate for Jon and I, she’s having our baby.”

“Brilliant! Ah. I get the grief. You know I want to say congratulations, and that is not what you need to hear. I get it, you want to do as Tracey and Shelley can – well, you need to girl up to the fact that they are civvies and that the uniform you wear means something higher and bigger than us or what we want, and be incredibly grateful to your sister-in-law. I mean, wow. Just wow. I wanna meet the woman! That’s just amazing; and good on her. You and Jon will have your child irrespective of whether we come back today.”

“Ouch. Make with the tough love why don’t you.”

“Yep, ouch, and I really don’t like saying that either to a close friend. It’s what we do and here’s the rub, we both have scores or hundreds of others who are in the same boat looking to us to make sure as best we can that they get back at the end of the day. And at the end of the day, you and Jon will have your baby even if we get blown to smithereens seven seconds from now.”

Then she smiled, just a tiny bit. “Our baby.”

They detonated the first mine four hours later.

oOo

The secure line from Philomel was a STU-2 these days, thanks to American assistance, and this made it easier to talk.

“So that’s it boss,” said Horner, “two days on the H-9 route and three mines. Two KPM’s attacking the decoy-sweeps, got the Countess in overnight for repairs as we took a bit of damage, and a heavy ground mine, probably the usual UDM or KDM series, so Nepean’s not a virgin any more. It was a heavy shock in waters this shallow, lost half the AMASS and she’s flooded some voids in the double hull and is leaking aft through the starboard shaft but we are both serviceable, out tomorrow. Kiwi’s are pretty good, but the mine density model they’ve built scares the tripe out of me. It suggests four, maybe five hundred freaking mines in the Gulf alone. And the model is low-medium case, it might be low balling it. We know that they laid mobile mines off Sydney and they are starting to think that we have a fourth wave attack composed of those things here, too. Nice laboratory but it’s going to cost us.”

He listened for several minutes, then hung up.

“Ma’am,” he said to Stefanovic, formally as they were not alone, “what we talked about at sea over the last couple of days?”

She nodded.

“Yup.”

“Oh crap,” she said, then sighed. “I had better call the Commodore.”

oOo

She’d had a hard week. After the live morning show strength demonstration her arms had hurt for days. She did a bit of running and a little bit of strength training and thought herself reasonably fit, but it was obvious that she’d been working to low standards.

Fiona McClintock had thought long and hard about the offer for almost week before accepting it. She’d been accused at the station, jokingly she thought – well hoped – of being way too interested in fit young Australian sailors. Well, there was one…. She’d then had many conversations with Michelle Horner and had been quite frightened by them, and scared spitless of her suggestion. As she said to her co-workers, she could die doing this, five Australian correspondents had already been killed. Michelle Horner had been shot doing this. Her husband had lost a leg and was scarred like a ruined Adonis from doing this. She’d not realised how much even these few discussions had changed her views until they’d asked her something that had stunned her into silence: ‘what’s a Victoria Cross?’ And as the oldest present, a real old-fashioned journalist who had covered Vietnam, had told her in front of them all that the risk made it very well worth doing as it could well establish her an international reputation: and if the danger of getting killed had not scared Martha Gellhorn away, why should it do so to her?

The others had looked at him as if he’d suddenly sprouted a second head with horns on it.

Embarrassed, she’d had to look up Martha Gellhorn. And decided that while she was no Martha Gellhorn, she was not entirely not her either. At which point her friends had looked a bit cross-eyed at her.

The rest had been surprisingly easy – she had no idea that the wheels had been well and truly greased. Then they’d run her through some basic training, simple stuff like why you always wore a PFD and how to use it, first aid, how the ships worked, how to back up a bloke on a fire hose, how to board a life raft, and what the mines did. An inspection of the mined HMNZS Manuka on the slip had been the highlight of that, although she’d been told that what had blown her bows off had been a very small, only 135kg of explosive or 10% of the heavy ground mines.

She’d imagined a blast ten times bigger, and had gone a bit pale.

Now she was at sea it seemed a bit better. Michelle Horner had been showing her the ropes of the ‘on your own as a warco’ side, which was what the written stuff needed, and she’d reciprocated with the ‘video essay and snapshot’ side, where Michelle, who came from print media, had little experience even if she was an expert still photographer for that same print media. It was also a longstanding hobby. It was not easy to do alone, but she’d been managing. They’d done a few days on the New Zealand sweepers and then moved to her husband’s ship so she could see the difference. There were three of these oddly elegant minesweepers now, a new ship had turned up a few days ago and she’d done some time aboard with Michelle, they were still – what was the phrase – working up, that was it, as a crew.

She’d been secretly pleased to only be a little bit seasick. They had raised two mines so far, which had scared her. Those were big explosions and she’d never actually even seen an explosion before. And she was amazed at how busy she was, and how exhausted she got. Just moving around the ships was tiring and the crews had no sympathy at all. They’d said it was a symptom of being unfit by their standards, and that she should eat more protein because she’d be developing a lot more strength than she had had before, gaining weight but losing inches around the waist as her body responded. She was well aware that muscle was heavier than fat and this was fine by her.

It getting light but was still predawn, the shore-lights were still visible across the black water as she walked to the centre of the bridge deck and leaned on the screen. The XO grinned at her, at worst she was only marginally in his way, and she was easy on the eye to look at.

I might as well, she thought gloomily, get some benefits from all this exercise, I am exhausted. And the stories have been very well received,” she said to herself, raising her camera in her left hand to capture video of the bow.

“Coffee!”

Michelle handed her a mug of lousy coffee as Fiona slewed the camera towards her. “Yes they have been. The idea of mounting the four cameras to cover the decks ahead and astern was great and the footage…”

Someone saw the glow of yellow-green rocket-light under the water. “Ware starboard!”

Michelle violently shoved Fiona off her feet to her left and they both sprawled to the deck, which seemed to rise and smash into them amidst a roar that seemed to fill the world. Then they were soaked as what seemed like half the ocean fell on them, mixed with the odd chunk of steel.

They slithered to port in the water, banging into a couple of things, then the water went away. Michelle reached out and grabbed the screen, then hauled herself to her feet, then helped Fiona to stand.

“Anything serious,” Michelle shouted, everything seemed muffled. Fiona seemed shaky but alright, she was videoing, which argued she was OK, Michelle looked aft and saw her husband looking back at her, she nodded at him as a universe of relief flooded through her.

She looked forward, her camera coming up, not seeing Fiona’s video swinging over her, both were soaked and a little banged up, just scrapes and bruises – but the starboard forward comer of the bridge deck was smashed and curled back. She captured that, and the men already running forward, to OOW lying motionless on the deck but already being shoved into the recovery position after having his airway checked. Then she taped Horner, VC arriving, already snapping orders; he gave Fiona and then his wife a one-second scan which she returned, he could almost be seen to be thinking these crew have no serious injuries, then both turned to their attention to the radically altered foredeck.

Horner snapped into his handset, “XO, MUD major blast damage starboard side, we are obviously holed and flooding. Starboard bulwarks blown away, deck peeled back, hole extend below waterline S1 crane wrecked, Molins damaged, forward hatch cover blown off, starboard shrouds gone, mast broken and trailing to port, MUD get the RHIB into the water immediately to find the lookout, I’ll grab a team to cut the mast free so it does not foul the port prop. XO, establish the flooding boundary,” he turned and bellowed, “ECR report!”

“Forward ER filling sir, pumps are slowing it but we won’t hold it without a team in there now! AMR dry, aft ER dry, gennies and port engine operational! Got power and propulsion and pressure sir!”

“XO, did you copy that?”

The answer must have been affirmative, “do not risk the team, even with the forward ER filled she will still float and we can still seal and HP air the compartment if we must.”

“Yeoman!”

“Sir! Aldis is out, radio is out!”

“Very good, by semaphore flag to Nepean, continue sweep with Avernus, moderate damage, port engine operational no current danger of sinking stop. Report mining and position to Philomel ops retrans COMAUSMINFOR stop. Casualties low end.”

“Sir!”

“Rightie-o, then. Helmsman, you have nothing much to do right now that the black balls are up, you two warcos, grab a cutlass or a boarding axe or both and follow me, we have to cut the mast free. Or at least the topmast.”

“Topmast,” panted Fiona as they clambered down on to the damaged foredeck, which was as slippery as greased glass because it was covered in oil. It was very difficult to walk on as it the ship was listing fifteen degrees to starboard, with the starboard side just coming awash “what’s a topmast?”

Michelle pointed at the smashed mast and derrick, “the lower half of the mast is steel, that’s to support the derrick, observation lookout, radar and stuff. The upper section is wood, for light weight, has signal lines and stuff including lights on top. High but light, y’see? All those lines are trailing in the water now and will tangle on the port prop if we move again, so we have to cut the wooden mast and all the lines free. Going to be a bitch of a job. You take a cutlass and start cutting all the ropes going over the side, OK? Start here. Don’t worry about damaging the timber hand grip on the top of the bulwark. Just get the lines cut. The men will have to cut through the mast with the boarding axes, that job’s beyond us. I’ll get the ropes forward. Go!”

Twenty minutes later it was coming under control. Fiona had been sent to video the ongoing damage control efforts in the forward engine room which was still touch and go. She lacked the strength to be of further help once the mast was cut free. The list had stabilised and Countess of Hopetoun was in no apparent danger of foundering. Aft, they’d fished the indignant lookout out of the water, recovered the Orepesa sweeps, and anchored the AMASS sweep using the aft anchor. Horner was back on his open bridge and the ship was making bare steerage way back towards Auckland while Nepean and Avernus continued the mission.

Horner turned his head towards the two warco’s. “Shelley, you stay here and do your stuff. Miss McClintock, get into the forward engine room and document the damage control work there, take your nice watertight video and batteries and stuff, it’s probably a good story for you and I really want your video for damage control lessons and training. Go.”

oOo

It was a hot slanted steel box crammed with machinery, filled with the roar of other machinery, frantic pounding and hammering, and the calls and bellowed orders of men as they manhandled tools, great baulks and wedges of timber, arcane pieces of equipment, mattresses and curiously stiff hoses. At the shallowest, where she was, the men were up to their waists in a filthy mix of oil and water. On the far side of the slanted box, they laboured up to their shoulders. Initially Fiona had seen it as alien, then, after twice being told to stop trying to help and to continue filming because that was the best thing she could do for the ship, she’d started to see patterns emerging from the apparent chaos. She’d had to scramble out for the extra battery pack for the watertight camera once, moving quickly and falling repeatedly, frantic to return. Now she saw it as an intricate dance, almost ballet like. She’d passed things when told to, yelled a warning more than once, dived under and grabbed a dazed man once after he’d slipped, then struck his head with a sickening thud she had not heard, and slid under the oily surface.

That had earned her a slap on the back and a nod from the Chief, who’d grabbed him and carried him to the hatch, where he’d been lifted out. Finally, after a time that lasted a minute and a million years, the Chief had called her over. She eeled though the half-forest of rough, oily timbers and bracing. She was up to her neck on the filthy water and he yelled into her ear.

“Need you to video all that,” he’d pointed the top of the overhead, barely eighteen inches above the surface when she rolled to starboard, “right to the deckplates, catch the whole damaged area. Can you do that? Must show the skipper! It’s important.”

“Yes,” she’d yelled back, “but you’ll need to grab me and stick me down into the angle, there, between those two big pieces of wood and hold me there for thirty seconds! I need that time to scan it properly, then pull me up. Can’t use my hands to hold me there so you’ll have to stand on me! Got it?”

He nodded.

“We winning this one are we,” she yelled back.

“Yes, your video will show me if we have. Hyperventilate a bit first and give me the signal!”

She did so, then looked at him and nodded. He grabbed her by the overalls, between the shoulderblades and by her arse, then quickly slid her headfirst and almost inverted deep between the timbers – then put his boot on her to hold her there. He counted 25 seconds, ducked under, grabbed her again and pulled her out. She emerged, took a couple of breaths and said he’d have to do it again – despite the brilliant floodlight light fitted to the camera the visibility was bad.

It took three more attempts until she was satisfied and she was looking a bit battered by then, having been bumped against the rough timber by water movement and mischance. The six men in this hour-shift’s damage control team watched this with some astonishment.

“Right, reckon that’s got it all,” she said after she emerged from the fourth submerged expedition into the timber-maze.

“I think the water has stopped rising, might be going down a bit too,” said the Chief judiciously. “Let’s take this to the bridge, OK?”

“Fine by me,” she shrugged, “won’t say that was a lot of fun.”

oOo

“Looks pretty good,” said Horner at the small screen display. Hard to tell down here at the bottom but stuffing it with mattresses bolstered with shot mats to provide bracing points is the best that can be done.”

“Still be pissing in there with the pressure, boss,” said the Chief, “what’s the draft forward?”

“Twice normal.”

“That’ll do it.”

“Yeah,” said Horner, “but we have not lost the compartment, and a motorboat’s bringing out two more submersibles. Chief?”

“Should start to dewater it, boss. I think we are very slowly dewatering it now. If we are then we can see and wedge some of the smaller leaks as they emerge. Just can’t detect them under that crap.”

“Agreed. Oh, and Miss McClintock?”

“Um, yes?”

“That was very well done. Have a cuppa then get back in there when the two additional submersible pumps arrive.”

She nodded, exhausted.

He grinned at her. “You look like a drowned rat that’s been whacked with sticks after falling off a mountain bike and bouncing down a gravel road for half a mile. How are you holding up?”

“Oh, bloody great. Best bit was the Chief grabbing me by the arse, sticking me under the water and then standing on me. That was such fun. And I got it on video.”

Horner, his wife and the Chief smiled knowingly.

“Hey Fiona,” said Shelley, “welcome to the minesweepers.”

“It is always like this?”

“Naah,” said the Chief. “not on Wednesdays. Wednesdays are good.”

She hit him on the shoulder. “It is bloody Wednesday!”

“Bugger,” ruminated the Chief, “there goes that theory then.”

oOo

Countess of Hopetoun steamed slowly into Auckland harbour with a cloud of small craft buzzing around her, being kept at bay by a quartet of RNZN RHIBs purposefully crewed by very large RNZN Maori sailors with serious anger management problems. She was listing ten degrees to starboard, down by the bows with significant visible blast damage – it all looked a lot worse than it was, no-one had even been severely wounded, let alone killed. Although the OOW was still seeing stars and would need hospitalisation – you just did not mess about with severe concussion. She was leaving a broad iridescent trail of diesel oil which would doubtless cause exploding heads among the local watermelons – green on the outside, red on the inside and mostly employed by the KGB as useful idiots.

“Well, I s’pose we are fill for the blasted newsies,” said Horner as he replaced the radio handset. “We’ll berth starboard side-to, XO, on two catamarans so the divers can start a hull survey immediately. They are waiting on the wharf now. Tide’s on the ebb so it will push us on to the wharf. I’ll park the bow on the catamaran so there’s no impact there – we got the figurehead rigged yet?”

“Being done now sir. I’ve had a good look forward, went into the hold,” he was soaked, Horner had noted, “and we don’t have a lot of daylight in there so the inner hull’s pretty much intact. Biggest is a split about six feet long and two feet wide at the worst. It’s mostly only four to six inches, though.”

Horner raised an eyebrow.

“Yes boss, all passed to Philomel and they have men and kit waiting. Said they’d probably be best stuffing from the outside while rigging internal shoring across pads, after wedging as much of it as we – they – can. Manuka’s on the slip, Canterbury’s in the graving dock so they are putting us into the little slave floating dock tomorrow. So they want to dewater us tonight. Draft’s too deep for the slave dock, no choice.”

“Gonna be a long night then. OK, in your copious free time get the men racks ashore and rationing there too, they did well and they are knackered, I want them to get the oil off and have a full night turned in as far as possible. Get me some Kiwi watchkeepers for the night if you can, we will be on board.”

The XO nodded. He knew that they’d not get a lot of sleep themselves, but they’d get some. “I’ll get chef to sort some hotboxes for us boss. Ma’am as well. I assume she’s staying aboard too?”

Michelle nodded, and glanced at Jack, who smiled very slightly.

oOo

So who’s this guy?

No idea. Never seen him before.

Ice queen finally getting laid.


Don’t know if she’s spreading for him man.

Bastard if he is


You blew your chance at the money years ago.

She’d have come around.


Like hell. Think he’s a pleb?

Don’t be stupid. Foreign money. Has to be.
How could it be anything else?


oOo

The additional pumps had helped a lot, and she’d videoed the whole process of – mostly – dewatering the compartment. The buzzing news helicopters had certainly seen the slick – although most of that was from the ruptured deep tank forward, of course. The sight of the damaged AMS steaming slowly back to Philomel had been a focus of the day’s local news.

“And that’s why I’ve got to get back to the studio! And it’s rush hour, and the ferry’s right there on the next wharf! I’ve downloaded all the vid to one of your computers already. I gotta run!

The Countess was berthing.

“OK, OK,” soothed Horner, “but you are still all banged up, still look like a drowned rat, and are still soaked in water and oil. You also stink, frankly, and have to …”

“No way! No time!” She paused her feverish jittering, “I have a job to do. Seriously. It’s the job.” The jittering restarted.

Horner sighed. “Can’t argue with that. I’ll organise a car…”

“Nope, rush hour, nope. Won’t make it in time. Studio’s ten minutes stroll from the ferry terminal. Half that ‘cause I’ll run it.”

“Dammit!”

Michelle was laughing. “Jack, send an ABMED on the ferry with her. He can bandage her up and treat the cuts, scrapes and bruises and stuff if he can hold her down long enough. Hey, maybe some passengers can sit on her for a bit.”

“Har har har,” said Fiona, jittering.

“OK, do that, now go, but be back here tomorrow.” Horner knew when he was beaten. “And can you stop jittering about like a manic spider on a cocaine bender?”

oOo

“Ma’am, for fucks sake sit still for a second!”

“What’s with the ma’am bit anyway?”

“Captain’s wife’s a warco too, she’s ma’am. Big boss’s wife’s a really, really pregnant warco and she’s definitely ma’am. So you get it too, now sit still while I get the oil and crap off this scrape on your back…! Dammit, how did you get that through the overalls and a T-shirt?”

“Chief needed video of the damage to the tank tops.”

“Glad the water’s below them then. Explains why the foredeck’s not awash now.”

“It wasn’t. Still knee deep over them.”

“You went under the deck plates in the forward engine room when it was still flooded!?”

“Well,” she said reasonably, “only I know how to use the camera. And I had help. Chief stuffed me under them and then stood on me to keep me there.”

“What!”

“Well, it’s very sloshy under there and the vis is crap.”

“I don’t bloody believe this. I’m gonna throttle the Chief. Did you have a face mask?” He looked closely at her back again – he’d got her out of the top half of her overalls at least and had pulled up the back of her T-shirt. “Explains why some of these bruises look like boot tread, but.”

“Face mask? Nope. Had to look. And hey, I had a rope around my feet. It wasn’t like I was gonna drown. Boy’s’d pull me out.”

“WHAT! Bloody hell no wonder your eyes look red.” He rummaged about in his kit. “You are going to get raging conjunctivitis at best.” His hand emerged with a wash bottle and the right medication.

“Eyes. Stop jittering, ma’am! EYES DAMMIT! Now. Hold. Bloody. Still. Ma’am. This is serious. I have to check for damage to the surfaces of the eyeballs. Then rinse and disinfect. This is really gonna sting. Lord knows what was in that, that’s bloody bilgewater and oil, full of crap, bloody stupid chief, no facemask …” the muttering died off as he worked.

The ferry crew had just waved the unlikely pair aboard, both in RAN overalls but McClintock with a NZ flag on one shoulder and “War Correspondent” on the other shoulder patch. One was grubby but mostly dry and lugging his white, red cross bedecked kit, the small woman was battered, scraped and bruised, sodden, oil-soaked and stinking of low-quality diesel, and she was messing about with a laptop and a very expensive looking video camera. Now the bemused civilians were watching all of these antics play out.

After a lot of creative swearing and a lot of furious blinking from the correspondent, she looked blearily at the ABMED.

“Feels better, did not realise how sandy my eyes felt.”

“Sandy. Oh, how truly good,” muttered the ABMED. “bloody stupid chief, no facemask …”

“Hey,” said Fiona. “You were on the upperdeck the whole time I was below, anyone work out yet how come we are not all dead?”

Well, she’s now keeping a bit still so I can go back to checking the abrasions, thought the ABMED, “oh, the mine? Was not a big one and it did not contact the hull. Probably a KMP, rocket propelled jobbie like what sank Aroha and Matai and blew Manuka’s bow off. Reckon those were direct contact hits. Aroha certainly was, wreck’s got a twenty-foot hold blown in it, that’s why half her crew was killed, poor bastards. They have a contact or a hydrostatic fuze, Boss thinks it was set pretty shallow and went off maybe ten feet away from the hull, maybe six or ten feet down. Only 300 pounds or so, so equal to about 450 pounds of TNT. So quite small compared to those bloody ground mines, which are over a ton of explosives. Poor buggers on Akuna and Whyrallah met those off Newcastle and there were precious few survivors lemme tell you.”

He sighed. “Gethsemane. Gethsemane with mines instead of the gas, I suppose... We still don’t know what sank Birchgrove Park with all hands or Adele with most of hers but they were probably moored mines, and that’s just from out bloody Squadron. The Melbourne boys have had it as bad. Here we have lots and lots of sodding ground mines and these little anti-minesweeper mines which make it personnel, like. A’course, small they might be but it was still plenty to blast the crap out of us but near not enough to sink us. The Countess is a tough girl. That mine could well have sunk an older type of sweeper.”

She got the overall top on over her T-shirt again as they approached the dock.

“I am not done yet,” said the ABMED mildly. “And you have blast overpressure trauma which the CO’s wife does not have, so you need to get a cat-scan of your brain ASAP. Might be a bit of brain bleeding, y’know.”

“Eh? Oh. Damn. That might explain the ringing. Well, catch me if you can, then,” said Fiona. “I’ve got a studio to get to.”

“Hmm. Ringing. That’s not actually good, y’know? Hang on, no running. Your eyes are not good, you’ve been hit by blast and I can tell you that your depth perception will be shot after those drops. Which I am coming along so I can repeat it all as soon as I can.”

“Bugger.”

oOo

He was not being deliberately rude. He had not really felt up to attending, but it was important, and he’d understood why. It was for Harry and Jillian’s kids as well. Taya was even less enthusiastic – but her father had asked and she’d also understood the necessity. In fact, the conversations at the ‘top table’ where they had been were fascinating. Her father had chosen who was seated there with care, they were all friends, and he’d explained that he would not explain who or what Dennis was, and that they should not ask for anything he did not volunteer.

That part of the evening was over and the after-party was just starting – they were leaving, and slowly, too. It was all Dennis could manage at this stage and even that slow progress was with her assistance. Sure enough, their path to the door became somewhat obstructed.

Wilde did a slow and deliberate survey of them.

“Well, well, well, Taya, I really do see what you mean.”

The little circle around Taya and Dennis looked puzzled. They had been a small centre of the ebb and flow of attention at this event, which was locking in funding for an education fund for the children of the men who had – and would continue to – die in ‘The Gulf Mine Battle,’ as Michelle Horner’s articles and Fiona McClintock’s truly spectacular TV reporting had Christened it. What was the tail-off of the real event was the start of their rather more frivolous one, and a circle of the twenty-somethings, curious about Taya bringing someone they did not recognise and so unrelated to their circle, had coalesced.

They had no idea what to make of Dennis. They had seen him at the ‘top table’, still barely mobile and with a complicated external brace on his leg, itself oddly lumpy under the overlarge pants due to the bandages there, hands and head still also bandaged, accenting the missing ear and other damage. He was in civvies – the suit had appeared rather mysteriously that afternoon – which gave them no clues.

“What do you mean?” asked one of the young men, more puzzled than anything else.

“What I have observed of this group shows that C.S. Lewis was right regarding men without chests,” Wilde responded mildly, in a conversational tone. This caused more puzzled looks.

“Surely you get the reference? Where were you educated, that you do not? It’s the first chapter of C.S. Lewis’ Abolition of Man. He explains that ‘The Chest’ is one of the indispensable liaison officers between cerebral man and visceral man. It may even be said that it is by this middle element that a man is a man: for by his intellect he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal. So Lewis says that without ‘Chests’ we are unable to have confidence that we can grasp objective reality and objective truth. As he said, We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”

“Who are you?” said another, “I’ve never seen you before and Taya’s never brought a boyfriend along, are you a cousin of hers?”

Dennis, who had been told much about them by Taya, and who had observed the games these people had played for much of the night, smiled slightly, started a response, and then was surprised that it was Taya who answered in a serious tone as she firmly tucked her arm into Dennis’s.

“No, he’s certainly not my cousin or my boyfriend. We are a courting couple.”

“What?”

Dennis, realising immediately what she was doing, joined in expanding the smokescreen. “With her father’s approval, of course. If I may ask, I’ve never heard of any of you people, who are you all, and what do you do?”

Taya pointed and ran around the circle, naming each but not introducing him.

“Hmm. I’ll never remember all the names, but you get that. Now, what do you all do?”

With slight belligerence, one responded. “Enough about us, who are you and what do you do?”

Dennis looked calmly at him, looking him up and down, and seeming to find something – lacking. “I’m Dennis, and I do that which brings me virtue and personal honour, ‘Chest’, if you will, more than that I will not discuss as you have no need to know. Suffice to say,” he glanced at his heavily bandaged and ruined right hand, “that what I do has its hazards.”

Nick suddenly materialised beside them.

“Taya, time Dennis should return, perhaps? He’s only been out of hospital for a couple of weeks, he’s certainly nowhere near being recovered yet.”

Dennis smiled at Taya’s slight and he knew, instinctive, tug – she wanted away and he could not blame her. “We were on our way, Nick, just stopped to chat with these…”

“Appetites might be the word you are looking for, Dennis.”

They both chuckled. “Ah, you recalled our philosophical chats, Nick.”

“Oh yes, now shoo, you pair.”

The Deputy Minister for War Finance approached him, they had been friends since university. Nick glanced at the group around them – unknowingly crass, they had not moved except to let Dennis and Taya pass.

“Philosophical chat?”

“Why he does what he does, and why he won’t change. He’s not yet fully aware of the full … scope, you see.” He glanced at the observers, “and he just does not care anyway.”

The politician smiled. “So… partial?” Nick nodded and shrugged. “That speaks well for his focus. Perhaps he’s a bit wiser than us, Nick. When I think of all the time Jenny and I wasted in that formless groping for connections at an age when you both have no idea of what you are doing... to focus on seeking the most important connections, how did we forget that?”

“It’s certainly what his boss said,” he mentioned no names as they had had that conversation too, “it saves so much time and that formlessness you mention: the focus. I feel something, if you do too, then let us explore that shorn of the other distractions, with the most favourable outcome known and accepted as such to both from the very start. Focus, as you mentioned. Everyone knows exactly what’s on the table, but it does depend on utter honesty.”

“They have that. And she’s almost glowing, Nick.”

“I know, but the risk, Tim, and the dangers! His boss briefed me on all of that.” He shook his head. “Man, I need another drink.”

“That I can help with, come on mate.” Both turned and departed.

They looked at each other in bafflement. “What’s that all about?”

No-one had an answer.

oOo

Taya? Dennis? WTF?

She said not a boyfriend.
She said they were a court couple LMAO

Whats that mean.

Don’t know. Fuckbuddies I guess



oOo

“This one.”

“Bit premature isn’t it Helena?”

She shrugged. “Decent investment in any case, and I have a feeling about this. It’s actually on the rental market and vacant right now, we’ll get it for a bit under two. It’s half an acre and big, old Edwardian place so a business could be run from it too.”

“Hmm. True. OK, we’ll have a look this afternoon.” He riffled through the photographs and plans. “Four big bedrooms, big living areas, five garage spaces, pool, 67 Stanley Point road, looks like a very nice place. Been done up with care and attention to detail. Ok love, get it sorted out, I have learned to trust your judgement in such matters.”

oOo

“Sir, read this.”

He glanced at the young female Leading Seaman and then at what was in her hand. The battlewatch commander at Philomel was a busy man – he had no time for the social pages of the local paper.

She raised her hand. “Seriously, sir, it’s about Lieutenant Wilde.”

It was not a screaming headline, at least…

“And sir? In this society context, that’s a screaming headline,” she said helpfully.

“Dammit!” He read.

New Zealand’s Most Eligible Heiress has a Mystery Man!

Svelte and mysterious Taya St Jorre, the wealthy heiress to construction and development magnates Nicholas and Helena St Jorre, New Zealand’s third-richest family, has been seen around town with a mystery man! The tall and bearded “Dennis” is said by Taya to be courting her. The dark and mysterious “Dennis” has recently suffered a serious accident…

“Oh hell.” He read the whole article. “What are they? Five years old? What a total load of bullshit, too. Can’t these illiterates write? They obviously have no idea…”

“It’s most made up nonsense. Also that does not matter, sir. Think the local paparazzi will be on to this or what?”

“Oh, how truly good. Time to call in the heavy mob.”

oOo

“Ah,” said Dennis, looking at Nick and Helena – call-me-Helly – then glancing at Taya, then back to Christine and her husband, and then at an amused Horner, VC, and his stunning wife with her astonishing sea-green eyes. Which two couples had mightily impressed the St Jorres. Michelle had just spent ten minutes explaining the paparazzi side of her profession. And what was happening, where they could now barely leave private spaces or the base without being pursued.

“I simply don’t care, Nick. I care about Taya. You fought your way to the top, that’s admirably well done as it’s hard in any profession. Yet you did not let it wreck you and Helly, and you did not let it wreck your daughters. You act like middle-class people. So in my view you are just middle class people with a stack of money. Whooptee-do. Same as if my mum and dad had won the lottery. Therefore, you are wealthy, so what? It seems to me that you actually rejected the overt I-am-better-than-you attitude of the social set you sit parallel to. None of you seem to have joined it, to me at least.”

He thought for a moment.

“Do you understand why it makes no difference to me?”

They knew the question was rhetorical.

“Looking at the social circle is interesting and I have had the time to do that. They actually think that their money means they have power. And to a very limited extent in a very limited sphere it does, so they confine themselves to that sphere and think themselves powerful people. It’s an illusion, and sort of pathetic. Because it’s a tiny little sphere, really. Lieutenant-Commander Stefanovic there has infinitely more power than they, or you, do. So does Lieutenant Horner, and so do I. Every single day, she orders us into a life-threatening danger, and off we cheerfully toddle to obey. Aboard any ship, any of us can, are trained to, and will, order men to do things which they will die doing. And they will do what we order them to, because they know we will too, when so ordered ourselves. We are in a war and we actually do it every day. Nick, the worst you can do is sack somebody, really.”

“Ma’am, what was your reaction to this sort of thing,” he gestured at his leg with his maimed right hand, “and Jillian, and the loss of two of our ships and their crews?”

She looked at him. “You bastard, Dennis,” but she said it entirely without heat. “Same as anyone’s in my position. I ordered them straight back into the minefields and made sure I was there with them.”

She looked at the St Jorres. “But make no mistake about this please. Every single one I lose takes a bite out of my soul.” Jon gently took her hand.

“Dennis,” she said, “what’s the worst thing about being wounded and unable to go out for at least another fortnight or month?”

“Now you are the bastard, ma’am.” Again, there was no heat in this. “The worst thing? Not being out with my men. I belong out there, it’s my job, and it brings me honour.”

Helena nodded. “I see, now, why you don’t care, Dennis. Do you really expect to survive this?”

“You ask that because of your daughter, and that is right and proper,” Dennis said. “The answer is that I do not know, and that I have thought about it, and that I have accepted that I might, or might not. That’s in the hands of God, not me.” He gathered his wits and looked at them serenely, then looked steadily at their daughter, then back at them. “The fact is that I have fallen in love your daughter. I believe she loves me in return.” He did not see her eyes fill with tears or see her small nod but he felt her hand tighten on his. “And while we love each other we are still not sure that we can make this work, worse, I recognise the danger to her in that.”

Taya spoke softly. “That danger is there, now, and it won’t go away now either.”

“And you do not know if you can take standing on the wharf and wondering if he’ll come back,” said a strong male voice, “you and I need to talk. That, well, that I can tell about,” he shrugged and started to stand, “I found that strength but it was hard won, perhaps I can tell you something about that.”

Michelle nodded at Jon. “Taya, Jon, Helena, we should go into the next room. Now. To talk about that.”

She gathered them all by eye, then stood and left with them.

This left the men nonplussed, and looking oddly at Christine.

Jack got up and poured them all a half-tumbler of the single malt he’d brought along, distributed them, and sat down again.

“Nick, it’s a funny business, really,” he said. He slapped his tin leg. “Nearly been killed half a dozen times, been busted up and all that jazz. Trust me on this, the little revelation you and Helena just went through is a big thing for you, I get that. We’ve gone through it, yet means a lot less to me than getting chased by idiot photographers. They are a security risk, they pose a risk to my men.”

Christine sipped. “But yes, Dennis’s right. That’s what Jon found out, it’s unbelievably hard to wait on the wharf. Takes courage and selflessness, fortitude and steadfastness.”

Horner nodded towards where his wife had gone. “Michelle’s deeply afraid of it too.”

Christine looked at him steadily. “That statement was declarative, Jack, not presumptive.”

He tried to stop it, he really did, and he stood no chance. Horner’s face blossomed in a huge smile.

“Shelley’s pregnant, isn’t she.” It was a statement.

“As my old granddad said to me once, I can’t dissimulate worth a farthing, y’know. I was six, dammit! How can a six year old dissimulate? Yup. She told me last night.”

The congratulations came thick and fast.

And so, Christine dropped her little bombshell.

oOo

Helly St Jorre liked the diminutive of her name. It was not her husband’s pet name derived from Helena as everyone thought, it was their private joke – yet very seriously meant – that it was derived from Hellion. She knew exactly why, for she was a mischievous, unruly and troublesome woman, very strong-willed, very determined. She well-knew that her own mother had it right: it had taken a remarkable man to tame that in her and harness it to family. She was comfortable with that. It was what she was and she was comfortable with living in her own skin. She was actually something far more dangerous, a hellcat, when defending her family. And that was why they had looked at the world their success was taking them to – and rejected its values.

“Ti-ti.” She took her daughter’s hand and used her baby name. “Do you truly love this man?”

“Yes, mum.” She looked in to her eyes. “Remember the lust isn’t love talk we had when I was eighteen? I’ve never forgotten it. I feel the lust very strongly, and it’s entirely different from the love. It’s almost painful how much I want him and I … offered. He said he wanted to very much, but very gently said no, because we had no time for lust, sorting out the love was the only thing that mattered and it was separate. Lust I can control, this other thing I cannot control in any way, not painful or uncomfortable, but the positive opposite of both and we have no words for that, really. I fully understand the difference, it’s like I have fallen into a cloud, and want to fall.”

Her mother just sat, holding her hand, stunned.

Jon shook his head slightly. “That’s an honesty so deep it’s naked, on both your parts. Shelley?”

She thought for long seconds, then closed her sea-green eyes. “On the deck of a ship, in the middle of death and destruction in the floating wreckage and oil of two ships lost with most of their crews, I asked my best friend Tracey when she realised she was in love with Mike McCann, a man most of twice her age. I had just started sleeping with Jack, perhaps confusing things for us a little, mixing lust and love in a way you very carefully have not. I think that’s deeply clarifying for you both, and truly remarkable. They had shared tremendous dangers at sea, he’d saved her life, but that was after they became lovers. She said that she fully realised it when she could no longer deny to herself that she needed to give herself to him, to be his entirely, and that she needed him to give himself to her, for him to be as entirely hers, as well. Mutual. They were married by the time we had that conversation, it was before she fell pregnant. She said that they gave themselves entirely to the other, that it was so warm, what they had achieved, and that it was like living inside a candle-flame, each within the other. It’s a very traditional thing, each self-sacrificing, intent on the other’s need and not their own, so hard to do, utterly alien to the Mills and Boon view of love and marriage. We live our lives hot and fast because we know that we are at high risk of not getting out of this job alive, but we live them deeply, and profoundly.”

She looked steadily at Helena. “Jack and I have that, too. We work very hard at it, and it terrifies me that I can’t go to sea with him now.”

“Ah,” said Jon. “Wonderful news, Shelley, simply wonderful. I had wondered why you were so deeply frightened.” He leaned over and gently kissed her cheek. Eyes closed, she was weeping silently.

He glanced at the puzzled mother and daughter. “She cannot go to sea with him now, she must stay behind, for the little innocent growing under her heart cannot be placed in such danger.”

He hesitated not at all. “We are too, Shelley, my big sister carries our baby, as surrogate for Christine.”

“Why,” said Helena. It was a statement more than a question.

“Because we cannot wait, Helena. We cannot. Christine may not live very long, there’s no end to this war, and we already know that the sweepers are wanted far forward in island waters as auxiliary gunboats. So when the danger ends here it will just move forward, into more danger. We cannot wait. Jack and Shelley cannot wait either.”

Jon looked at Taya steadily. “And as you love Dennis, neither can you.”

oOo

“Neither can you.” Horner then sat back in his chair.

“They have only known each other for a few months! A very few!”

“So what, Nick? Welcome to the tip of our spear. It’s sharp and pointy, and with one small twitch it cuts your life away from the world. When two people click under this sort of life pressure they click solidly. When did you realise you’d marry Helena?”

Nick stood and walked to the window.

“When I realised that I could see my unborn children in her eyes.”

Dennis closed his eyes as if in profound pain.

Nick turned with vast reluctance. “That was two months or less after I met her. It took me another year to get up the courage to ask her, I was so scared, so scared that she’d say no. I carried the ring for most of that year.”

“With me it was nine weeks after that day in hospital that I described. I realised that I was wasting time we simply might not have. I did not even have a ring. Ha! I did better than Mike, though! Not only did he not have a ring for her, they were only engaged for eight hours before they were married. It was weeks, for us.”

Dennis had sat silent thoughout most of the conversation, in silent, shattering turmoil. Now he spoke softly.

“Nick.”

“Yes, Dennis?”

“I wish to marry your daughter. I am not alive without her, and, God help me and her, what you said then, that cut me to my soul. Those words I have thought myself … I have seen our unborn children in her eyes.”

The colour drained from Nick’s face.

He stood with his usual difficulty and faced the older man. “You have my word that we will do nothing until our wedding night. That is already … something we have discussed. I cannot return to sea for another few weeks, the replacement knee does not permit it. It must be before then, if you agree.”

Nick stood, looking hard at him but not really seeing him.

“Yes. God care for you both, and yes.”

Dennis gave one decisive nod, then turned and hobbled slowly through the door. Horner raised his hand when Nick went to follow, and slowly shook his head.

“Difficult enough to propose to her in front of her mother, Nick. And you already know how she will answer, don’t you?”

oOo

It was a different ring, he’d had it for some days now, it had been devilishly difficult to get it sorted without anyone – especially the damned photographers – knowing.

And so he just entered the room, nodded to Jon and held out his crutch. Jon stood and took it immediately. All eyes were on him, he ignored all but one pair.

“Taya Herodias St Jorre, I love you and I believe that you love me, is that true?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Then come to me, my beautiful Taya.”

She stood and walked to him, uncertainty in every motion. He reached out and took her left hand with his maimed right.

“We have known each other for a short time, but that short time is a time lived with deep intensity, utter honesty and great focus, a focus on the only question that really matters. We have been discussing things and unknowing, your father said words which I too have thought, and which I must now act on, for I cannot imagine a life lived without you and would think it full and complete whether it was a month or a century. I love you, you see, and I have seen our unborn children in your eyes, so I ask if you will have me as your husband, and be my wife, Taya.”

“Yes, I will,” she said softly, overcome; and behind her, her mother wept silent tears.

He took moved her left hand gently, as best he could in his maimed and still heavily bandaged right hand, and slid the ring on to her finger, then they simply stood and looked into each other’s eyes, silent.

oOo

“Right.” Horner looked up at his ship’s hull from the floor of the graving dock. They’d repaired what they could in the slave dock while waiting for Achilles to be undocked, and now they had most of a week.

“So the forward ER’s mostly sorted, it was cable runs and such, still got some shoring in there but the machinery’s mostly sorted. That is the main problem now.” The engineer was pointing at the plating now being cut away, and there was rather a lot of it.

“So having surveyed it and talked at length to Evans Deakin, what we are gonna do is simply cut away all of that. We are manufacturing basically a fifty foot lump of shell plating and double-hull, with excess lapping plates all over the place. We’ll then stick it in, weld it in place with the lapping plates, then make with the rest of it, adding and subtracting steel where we have to.”

“So rough, quick and dirty but it’ll work, eh?” The engineer could not tell if Horner was happy or not.

“Yep. Kiwi bodge it is not, though, We are trialling this with Evans Deakin, there’s a rep here, as we’ve kinda proven that this class is so tough that you have to beat ‘em to death with a stick. So this is what the SOP will become. They were working like maniacs with the IT nerds to develop a software package which means they can just excise a chunk of the standard design and do plug and play on damaged sections. That way we can chop outside the distortions at the nearest frame, and know that the new section will just slot in to within a few mil. That’s why the lasers, we found with them that her hull was actually slightly wracked, so we jacked it, just a quarter-inch, and now the measurements all match. Fast repair, but not bodgy repair, oh no.”

Horner was nodding as the Evans Deakin man joined the conversation.

“The Kiwis are good at this do-it-quick bespoke stuff,” he added, “but yeah, it’s a way of really speeding up repairs on these simpler ship structures. We can map it and start building the hull section within hours of the ship making port. He nodded at the cranes above the dock. “So her hull section’s already built and waiting up there, it’s fitted with wiring and internal fittings. Just not the crane as we can’t get one in-country, so we’ve got a temporary for you from a trucking company. Non-standard but the controls are the same, and it will do the job.”

“Hmm,” said Horner. “Does that mean that you can do a HMS Zubian on this class?”

“Zubian? Hang on, lemme think, oh, the WWI Tribal class made of two surviving halves of two ships, Zulu and Nubian. Yes. It also means we’ll be a bit faster on repairs to ships which lose ends, especially sterns. But they’d be constructive total losses normally, and this means they are not.”

He grinned. “It also means that the skills will develop to meccano kit the ships. We are already talking to the Kiwis about building ships in bits in small light industrial facilities and assembling them on a new site.”

“Interesting”.

“Needful, more like. This repair is about half that of Manuka and when equalised it’s costing only about 70% of Manuka’s fix and it’s a lot faster.”

“Significant savings there, especially in time,” said Horner, “really, really going to need that.”

The two engineers blinked at each other.

“Erm … can I ask …,” said the Evans Deakin bloke.

“No. You cannot.”

oOo

Christine looked at the scene with some dismay. The bridge-crew of HMNZS Sanda wore faces more horrified than dismayed.

The falling spray from the enormous detonation showed that the minesweeper had been broken in two.

“Better that ship than us.”

“Ma’am?” The voice was horrified at what she had said.

“XO, that was a heavy ground mine. Sanda is a first-generation conversion of a lighthouse-tender, but her crew is now an experienced one and thus very valuable, which Sanda herself simply isn’t. This crew is in fact one of our most experienced ones. There would not have been more than a bare handful of survivors from this crew – none of us for a start as we are inside the bridge. This ship would have been blown to pieces with very few survivors.”

She pointed. “Tell me what you see,” she commanded.

“Ah, bow gone, well, it’s still afloat but broken free of the ship and is floating vertically. Um, the remaining two-thirds of the ship is still afloat but looks to be sinking by the bows, both stacks remain standing, crew should be able to abandon ship OK?” His voice was very uncertain.

“Not bad, Sub. Doubt very much that she’ll sink, though. Yeoman, signal Avernus by lamp and flag, report casualties and status, rescue ship will stand by you. Tell the rescue ship to report status as necessary.” She spoke again, “I doubt they’ll have a functional Aldis lamp or radio at this stage. CO, we will continue the sweep.”

She resumed her station on the port bridge wing, using her binoculars one-handed, casting frequent looks at the shattered Avernus as she slowly fell astern of them – they were only doing four knots.

The XO went up to his skipper. “Boss …”

“No, do not say what you are about to. Think, instead, about what she said and how she said it. She’s been there, done that, got the scars to prove it, and they are her boys too, and we have a mission to focus on. So we take the knocks and keep doing the mission. Think on that and we will talk later. And think about what the load of command means, that she has to think that way.”

The Yeoman bustled up and caught the CO’s eye. He followed on to the bridge wing.

“Ma’am, report from Avernus by flashing light.”

She nodded.

“Flooding boundary established at aft bulkhead 1ER. No fire. No major leakage. Eight WIA two prob mortal. Transferring to rescue ship. One missing presume KIA as was forward…”

“Damn,” she said softly.

The Yeoman eyed her. “Ah, 2ER operational, bow remains afloat. AMASS moored, sweeps recovered. Intend to secure bow and proceed to port. End.”

“Very good. Damn, more lost. That’s one tough design. Says a lot for the weld quality, that AMR-forward engine room bulkhead has to be distorted to hell and gone. One KIA instead of 85 percent of the crew dead, makes a good change even though it’s one man too many and might be three. COMAUSFLT and their Chief of Navy will be pleased with that. Yeoman, signal ‘approved’. Order the rescue ship to port at best speed once casualties are aboard, helicopter medevac transfers encouraged as required and use that word. Order the nearest danlayer, I think it’s Queenstown but check, to escort and assist Avernus. Inform Philomel of everything Avernus just reported and get a tug enroute with additional pumps just in case. CO?”

“Ma’am?”

“If you have one or two additional men – qualified trainees if possible plus the SBA – can you send them over in a RHIB, with the RHIB to stand by until the danlayer gets there. Don’t want them feeling abandoned and the RHIB can keep any overly curious civvies away. SBA to return when no longer needed by Avernus.”

“Ma’am.”

oOo

Jack turned to his wife as the RHIB from Countess of Hopetoun bustled toward yet another accursed yacht getting too close to the smashed sweeper. “Fiona’s OK, a bit banged up but that’s it. Hell of a story, it’s not often a ship staggers into port triumphantly towing its own bloody bow!”

“Why didn’t they hand it off to the tug?”

“Pride of accomplishment I guess. We’ve organised the floating crane to lift it on to a barge so the tugs will take it when she gets a little further in. The leaks have worsened but the dock’s free and is prepping to take her right away. That will keep Brad happy.”

“So will proximity to any female irrespective of species or phylum,” Shelly remarked acidly.

Horner eyed her appreciatively. “Hey, you cut him off at the knees, then I had words, and …”

“… that’s why you do the ‘mine, all mine, bwahahaha’ act with me whenever he’s in eyeshot, because it drives him nuts?”

“Guilty as charged!”

She smiled. “And what did you say to him? All I saw was you nose to nose with him, all bared teeth and tightly gripped lapels, in behind the potted fig tree”

“Oh,” he said cheerily, “just the usual, full description of his immediate and unpleasant death followed by an unmarked and unlamented grave, the usual!”

“My hero!”

“Nope, that was what I told him you would do to him. I told him that was the soft and girly option, then I got nasty.”

“Ah, good. He does need a good thumping every so often to keep him in line.”

“He got that later that night. Off-base. We have a wary truce now. And,” he indicated the sight before them, “he has done a good job of seamanship here. He’s a swine I dislike, but he’s a competent swine and I can’t dislike that.”

Curious, he eyed his wife. “So what did Fiona say to him?”

“Oh, I briefed her well, so when he hit on her she just looked him up and down and said that she’d switch to girls or random passing quadrupeds before he got a second glance from her, because dissolute ageing rakes with thinning hair revolted her beyond all reason.”

Horner laughed, “oh, wow. Just wow. And I thought I was nasty to the little sod!”

“Çoxswain, close up to her starboard quarter where that group is, I want to hail her and see if the Warco needs a lift to shore.”

“Sir!”

oOo

Ten minutes later McClintock was aboard with her equipment. She had stories to file and Avernus was creeping towards Devonport Dockyard too slowly – she had a job to do.

“Shelley, don’t fuss,” she said, “it’s nothing much, just hit by a few bits of flying wreckage.” She shrugged. “most everyone was. Have I got good footage!”

“Hmm. Beg to differ. The broken nose and cut is not much, bleeding a lot but they do that, but that cut to your noggin looks nasty and your arm’s a bit messed up. Hair’s all clotted up with blood and the side of your overalls is soaked. And why are you so bloody manic?”

“Yeah, SBA stitched up the scalp wound, heads bleed is all, and the rest is pretty superficial except for the arm and it’s still working.”

Michelle looked more closely at her. “I know that look, there’s something else, spill.”

“Just keeping it together!”

“Balls you are.”

McClintock shook her head, so Michelle pulled her aside for a whispered conversation. That lasted a couple of minutes. Then Michelle hugged her quickly.

McClintock turned to Horner. “Thanks, Jack, I really need to get this in.” She grimaced a little. “Would not mind a hand back to the studio, either, I was aft of midships but that was one hell of a smack and my legs are damned sore. SBA had a look, said it’ll pass, shock damage only. Everyone…”

“… has the same, “said Jack. “Yeah, got that, the RHIB can wait for us for half an hour, Avernus is still ninety minutes from docking but she’s another hour until they even start pumpdown and I only need to be there to see Harrison when she is passed to the dock’s custody. Not like she’s going anywhere for a bit. I need to see his lads.”

He did not see the blood drain from Fiona’s face.

He gave the order and they got into their shock mounted seats, then the RHIB blasted towards the ferry wharf at 45 knots.

They berthed at the pontoon at Pier 3B, next to the beautifully restored bulk of the 1912 terminal building, drawing startled looks from the moderately crowded foreshore.

“Keep her here until we get back, Leader. Should not be more than fifty minutes.” He tapped his radio.

“I’ll be on radio is anything happens.”

He saluted. “Aye, sir.”

Jack shouldered most of her gear. She kept tight possession of her camera, and they headed up into the CBD with Michelle keeping a weather eye on her friend. They were deep in discussion about the mining and were ignoring the civvies.

Jack noticed that she was limping a bit less as they got to the studio and she signed them in, and looked around with interest as they walked through the studio area, peering at the morning show set as it rattled on.

Fiona walked into her work area unannounced.

Her boss looked up, startled. “Shit, Fiona! What the hell happened, and who …?”

“Oh, Megan, this is Lieutenant Jack Horner VC, Commander of the Australian 32nd Flotilla 2nd Squadron 1st Deployment Group, and his wife Michelle. Shelley’s a Warco with the Group and has been teaching me the Warco ropes.”

“I mean you, Fiona, you are hurt, there’s blood all over you! Your hair’s half-soaked!”

“Bit banged up,” she admitted, “nothing much, nothing broken except for my nose, rest is just cuts and crap. Y’know we got mined?”

“You were on that ship?”

“Megan, I tell you what ship I am on every time I go out. SOP. What’s the use of telling you if you don’t take any notice of it? Yes, I was aboard HMAS Avernus. Yes, we got mined, ship was blown in two. The crew …”

“Fiona! You cannot discuss the casualties.”

“Oh, yeah, sorry Jack.”

Fiona’s boss was bristling, so Shelley jumped in.

“That’s the professional deal, part of being a War Correspondent, even a local one. We can never talk about the casualties until we know, iron-clad, that their families have been informed first. Yes, we lost men. What’s left of Avernus has not even docked yet. Absolutely no-one wants the families to find out that their son or husband has been killed from some news report. The standard line is there were casualties, no further information is available until the families have been informed. Golden rule and we never, ever break it. Make damned sure that your people know that to their bones, and never treat it like just a story. It’s not. Brief them again and right bloody now because you also obviously forgot it. That’s the deal.”

The bristling subsided. “Fiona?”

“Mined, ship broken in two, we kept the stern afloat and the bow also just barely stayed afloat, forepeak kept it buoyant. Rigged it and towed it in. She’ll be docking in a couple of hours. Vast amount of footage, need to get back in time for the docking and drain down, recommend we do a half-hour special on it.”

“We?”

“How it works, I’m not in the chain of command but everyone helps where they can when it hits the fan. And it hit the fan big time. Sucker had the equivalent of about two or three tons of TNT in it.”

Megan the producer looked speculatively at them. “I’d like to do a break in with the three of you, and a live interview.”

Horner looked at her coldly. “Overly dramatic, isn’t it?” he nodded at Fiona “I am military and so not one to wave the bloody shirt, or is this media culture and a case of bleeding and leading?”

Megan winced. “I think I deserved that. And yes, being honest, drama equals ratings.”

Horner continued, “and that means sensationalism and to be frank, the usual press over simplification sometimes amounting to outright lies. So if those are the conditions, the answer is definitely no. And before you say that Fiona’s your employee, you need to know that the contract for accredited War Correspondents with the RNZN is the same as for the RAN. So no, you cannot actually order her without RNZN PAO approval.”

Megan looked surprised.

“My wife’s a Warco and a damned good one, that’s why she’s basically giving Fiona OJT. We helped write this stuff, what Warco’s can and cannot do, and we deliberately structured it to help the Warco’s as much as possible, but lemme tell you that bloody shirt and no control over questions won’t fly. End of story, you follow the rules and that’s that. We are at war and cannot permit information leaks which help the bad guys kill us. Those are the stakes for us. There are rules and you must not break them. Military lives depend on that.”

“Ah…” she leaned back and thought for a second. “What about your RAN Warco interviewing our Warco about her reactions to today, with you present as the RAN commanding officer? Would that work? I admit to shamelessly wanting to get Fiona on-camera looking as she does.” She glanced apologetically at McClintock, “that’s the game, you know that, ratings are what pay our salaries in the end.”

Fiona shrugged. “No argument there, I know that’s why the network sent me out on this gig.” She dabbed again at the cut on her broken nose, it was seeping again, “already got the skin off my nose, I don’t care. Up to Jack, it really is his call.”

“Hmph. Not entirely, McClintock, not at all. I need to make two calls to clear this. In private.”

Megan gestured at the next office.

oOo

They cut to an ad and sat them down. As this was “raw” it was also going to be brief. And some themes and processes had been agreed. Among them was that Jack stayed on his radio.

The usual vapid anchors had been briefed but stared at them as if they were space aliens, then slipped into their appointed roles.

“As you have seen in the news, another of the minesweepers operating out of Devonport dockyard has been damaged by a mine, here to…”

As they cut to air, Horner promptly disrupted everything.

Charlie Oscar this is Hotel Two, over.

Horner held up his hand. “Charlie Oscar actual.”

Charlie Oscar from X-ray Oscar retrans, Charlie Oscar Lima Hotel Two has requested a watch to supplement before and spell after docking, over.

“Approved, X-ray Oscar overwatch, minimise traffic minutes zero eight Charlie Oscar actual out.”

Hotel Two ack minimise eight mike. Out.

Horner shrugged slightly and looked at the lead anchor. “The war does not stop. You have eight minutes of my time.”

To their credit, they did recover quickly. “Thank you sir. Lieutenant Horner VC is the commander of the Australian minesweeper group, his wife Michelle is an Australian war correspondent attached to his force, and she will briefly interview our own War Correspondent Fiona McClintock, who was aboard the ship which was mined and as you can see who was injured in the attack.”

Michelle picked this up immediately. “Thank you for the introduction, but please note that she has been wounded in action, not injured. That matters. Fiona, how does progress on clearing the mines look to you at this stage?”

She shook her head and grimaced a little. “It’s a long, hard struggle, endless hours of absolute focus and very hard work by the crews, a sort of focussed, demanding boredom brought to a crashing halt by stark terror. The crews are used to it, how they do that I have no idea, I was a gasping wreck for minutes after I came to, they just carried on with the job. One of the crew checked me over, saw I was stunned and coming to, not knocked out, and got me sorted. They had already triaged casualties and established a flooding boundary by then. There were a lot of smiles, though.”

“Smiles?”

“Like us, the RANs 32nd had very severe crew losses in their first generation auxiliary sweepers. The ship I was aboard is new and she might have been blown in two but neither bit sank. She’s a very, very tough little ship. The new concept of nobody inside the ship when sweeping is also brilliant. When we were mined, everyone on deck was thrown upwards. The men strapped into their shock-chairs were not even bruised. People moving about like I was were thrown about, lower limb wounds and wounds from landing – I landed on the blasted sweep winch – but nobody got a broken neck from being slammed into the overhead. We had fewer and lesser casualties than Aroha and she was sunk by a much, much smaller mine. So the crew was pretty happy to just get a bit busted up rather than what used to happen.”

“What is the New Zealand Navy view of the arrival of the Australian 32nd Flotilla 2nd Squadron 1st Deployment Group?”

Fiona thought for a second. “Positive, of course. They knew they were holding their own yet it was at a constantly increasing price in terms of manpower, every ship lost took with it most of its crew, so we had the same problem of bleeding out expertise, we were losing experienced personnel faster than they could obtain experience. That’s a losing game. So we could only get worse at the game, and it’s probable that the Russians planned it all this way. They are the masters of the art when it comes to mine warfare and boy, do they learn from their history! That’s why our mine battles look like little versions of the dreadful Mine Battle of Cape Juminda in Estonia. Four big convoys went into the minefields off Caper Juminda in August 1941 and at least fifty ships did not come out, perhaps 15,000 to 20,000 people died, it may have been the bloodiest naval disaster since the Battle of Lepanto, where around 40,000 men died, although we did liberate about 8,000 Christian slaves from the Ottomans at Lepanto. The Soviets have tried to impose something like that Juminda concept on us. This is a very sophisticated and complex attack and it does not stop until the last mine is lifted, which will be many years from now. The Australians had the same problem early on with heavy losses, knew we are coming off a lower expertise base and sent us help to hold the line. We really appreciate that.”

“The same question in reverse,” said Michelle.

“Same sh … same stuff different day,” relied Fiona, wincing as she moved her feet. “This is their job, does not matter much where they are doing it. Oh, they are happy to lend a helping hand and remember, they have exactly the same sort of problem off their own ports. Because the Gulf is laid out how it is geographically, it’s actually a bit easier here in some ways, so a major part of the job is unravelling just what the Soviets have done and why.”

She leaned forward. “What’s important here is that right here, right here in remote, distant, boring old Auckland and Wellington, men are fighting and dying in a strange war of man and ship against lethally dangerous robots, robots that are perfect at waiting. The enemy is not over in the ruins of Indonesia or the maritimes, he’s right here within sight of the CBD. Go to the beach and look out – that’s a battlefield and men and ships are fighting on it every day.”

Michelle turned to her husband.

“Lieutenant Horner, comments?”

Jack steepled his hands. “That’s simply right. The RNZN 25th Minesweeping Flotilla’s Auxiliary Minesweeper Groups tackled the fields here head on and paid the price for that – we all do – and the bottom line is that they held the line and have kept your ports open. That has attracted far, far too little public attention here. It was an extremely hard thing to do and as War Correspondent McClintock said, it cost ships and too many lives, but you get that in this game. We were sent over to help the 25th catch its breath, and that has worked. The Gulf Mine Battle is a very long way from over, but your ports are open. They have never been closed for more than a brief time. As the whole New Zealand economy depends on that, well, you can see the scale of the achievement of the RNZN auxiliary minesweepers.”

“Fiona, what happened aboard the sweeper you were on?”

She again shifted uncomfortably. “Oh, nothing unusual really. It’s the second time I’ve been mined as you know, bearing in mind that we were standing next to each other the first time and both got banged up.”

Michelle nodded.

“Anyway it was a big ground mine and it went off quite close to us, so the deck smacked us upwards. When I came to I was able to stand up, and noticed that we were already stopped and down by the bows, so I got up to the bridge deck and went forward with my camera. The bow was gone by the time I got forward so I started to record the usual events. The SBA grabbed me after about ten minutes when it was obvious that we were not going to sink, by that time the rescue ship was closing, we’d slipped and kedged the array and recovered the sweeps. That’s when the CO ordered the deck to prepare to get the bow under tow. The blasted thing was still floating and to my surprise it stayed that way. It’s a bit odd to see a ship steaming slowly towards port towing its own bow, but that’s kind of life with the minesweepers.”

“What did the other ships in the formation do?”

“Continued the sweep of course. That’s the mission. It was a mixed formation too, our ships and Australian.”

She glanced at Jack. “Sorry to say this and I’ll have to explain it very carefully, but I am glad that the sweeper I was on was the one mined…”

Seeing the possible controversy, Horner jumped in. “I understand, and my duty requires that I must also be in a way, for if a ship absolutely had to be mined today, better it was one of my ships.” He nodded at the startled expressions on the anchors faces.

“Sounds cold, doesn’t it? Welcome to my war. But the RNZN vessels there were old-style, had one been mined there would have been precious few survivors. As one of my sweepers, a Royal Australian Navy vessel, was mined, there were by comparison, relatively few casualties. And that’s just the pitiless calculus of war. The ship is probably repairable as well, so we did not lose a ship sunk and 30 men killed. We had one very badly damaged and fewer casualties.”

The male anchor broke in. “So your losses were light? How many killed?” This comment earned a horrified look from Fiona, her face crumbled, and Horner’s face set like stone. Michelle looked at him, well knowing the danger signs, and shook her head slightly.

He leaned forward and looked into the camera, and when he spoke his voice had sword blades in it: killing fury, but restrained.

“Light. Loss. Light bloody loss. Never forget John Brereton’s words on light loss, for no losses are light, boy.” He closed his eyes and leaned back.

“Our loss was light,” the paper said,
“Compared with damage to the Hun”:
She was a widow, and she read
One name upon the list of dead
Her son, her only son.

“Light. Loss. I’ll let that old agony in that beautiful little jewel of a poem speak for us.”

He leaned forward again towards the anchor and let the mask fall entirely away. The expression on his face made the thirty-something anchor physically recoil. “Never throw such words into the face of a fighting man again, boy!”

Fiona had entirely broken down, burying her wounded face in her hands, shoulders shuddering. Michelle rose crossed the small space with two quick strides and knelt next to her, putting her arm carefully around her bloody head and tucking it into her shoulder, making soft, inarticulate comforting noises.

“Interview’s over now,” said Horner. Then he looked very closely at his wife. Later, she mouthed.

They cut quickly to an ad break.

Michelle, still holding Fiona who was now sobbing brokenly, looked up and spoke.

“Jack, get out now and wait for me on the street outside; calm thoughts, my husband, calm thoughts. Give up the vor on this one.” He nodded tightly, turned and left immediately.

Her hand gripped something they did not recognise at her utility belt. It looked like the handle of something, as her hand fit between two large lenticular silvery metal discs. “You fool, you brainless, unutterable fool, I want nothing more than to draw this rondel and ram a foot and a half of live steel through your chest for what you just did. You’ve shattered Fiona who did nothing to deserve it, and Jack’s self-control was inhuman!”

“What…!?”

“Of course we lost men out there! We told you that! We told you not to bring it up or discuss it in any way! The families might not know yet, you fool. Each death takes a bite from his soul and you treated it like it was nothing!”

She saw bovine incomprehension in his face.

She drew breath and murmured quickly to Fiona, then tried to explain, as if to an especially unintelligent child.

“You broke the rules. Do you not understand that my husband is an extremely dangerous man who personally killed or disabled nearly thirty Russian fighting men in less than twelve minutes of hand to hand combat? And you provoked him by breaking the rules and treating his dead as a meaningless soundbite? Are you fucking insane? Safer to try and take him, boy, grab a blade and have at it! Your life expectancy would be perhaps one second. You have no idea how enraged we are. He’s training me to be a dangerous woman, so perhaps do me that favour, grab a blade and have at me, c’mon, I’ll give you first strike, and take perhaps a second longer to kill you.”

He again recoiled.

“Coward!” Michelle sneered at him in contempt, then to the astonishment of the studio crew picked Fiona up and carried her out of the studio. She was only fifty five kilos.

Megan ran towards her as she was exiting, Fiona still cradled in her arms. Jack saw them and took her, setting her down and holding her, and whispering to her to just let it out.

“I am so sorry about that…”

“His fault, not yours, Megan,” said Michelle tiredly, “I know that you briefed him. He’s blacklisted, tell him that. No RAN personnel will ever talk to him again.”

“But…”

“Send him over tomorrow and we’ll have the RNZN PAO brief him, then I’ll tell him the facts of life. But he’s done with us. Done. Your Navy will blacklist him too.”

Jack spoke. “Love, you stay here and sort this mess. I’ll get Fiona back among her comrades.”

Michelle shook her head at Megan’s forming protest. “We know about this. She’s no longer yours in any way that counts, because she’s become one of us, just as I did but she’s done it over a much shorter and much rougher road. What she most needs now is to be among people who understand what she is, because that’s what they are.”

Then she glanced quickly at McClintock – she could not see – so she closed up and whispered quickly in the producer’s ear. She went white with shock, and then red with anger. She turned and ran back inside.

oOo

Three hours later the Horners were at the Calliope Dock, with Michelle filming the emerging damage to Avernus as the water was slowly pumped out. Jack glanced around and said to her softly, “the Leader or the AB?”

She sighed, but did not stop filming. “The Leader. Nice guy. They’d only had a few dates but at the very least she lost a new friend. The mild sedation will help, talking to us will help more. We still going tomorrow?”

He just nodded. “Yes. Gethsemane.”

She shuddered with the horror of it.

oOo

The venue was beautiful. A large, immaculate and beautiful Edwardian house in stunning grounds. The front garden ended on a short cliff, as it was perched on the bluff overlooking Stanley Bay and the Devonport dockyard.

It was small and held in the front garden, in the arbour with a magnificent view of the estuary mouth and the Gulf beyond. Apart from the priest, bride and groom, barely two dozen people were there. Just the closest family and a handful of friends, the Horners and the Stefanovics. And Michelle Horner, a skilled still photographer, did the photography to guarantee that no imagery would become public. In the end, just one did, in the RNZN’s Navy Today, an image of a uniformed Dennis and radiant Taya stepping through the traditional sword arch: any criticism that two naval officers barely made an arch was made difficult by the point that one side was a VC, and the other a New Zealand Gallantry Star.

They stood together looking at each other, lost in mutual wonder, underneath the flowering wisteria of the arbour as Nick and Helena approached them. The small reception was just ending. It was of course the same garden where they had been wed.

“We said that we’d give you your week’s honeymoon location as a surprise, Dennis,” said Nick.

“So here it is, love,” said Helena to her daughter, face dimpling in a gentle smile.

She handed Dennis a substantial parchment envelope. Puzzled, he offered it to his new wife to open.

“I don’t understand, mum,” she said as she extracted a thick wedge of documents instead of the tickets she had expected.

He mother’s face blossomed in a huge smile.

“You don’t have to go far, love, your honeymoon is here, in this beautiful place. This house is our wedding gift to you both. And for this week Michael the chef and some of the staff from the Rialto will be here during the day to sort out meals and domestic things for you. In the evenings you’ll just have to entertain yourselves,” said Nick, smiling gently as his daughter blushed prettily.

Helena nodded. “And no, it is not an extravagance although it may seem so. It’s to save your time and take away a lot of the stuff and nonsense, seeing that you two have not moved in together and gotten all that domestic stuff sorted already.”

Nick chimed after his wife, “we all understand … the points of time and risk we have discussed. This means you can focus as you have been, on each other. That is what this gift really gives you.”

Then her little sister Miriam zoomed up, a living ball of wide-eyed excitement. “My present’s on the dining room table! Come and open it!”

Laughing, they moved off. Taya squeezed her new husband’s hand, then let go to speak briefly with her mother.

“Mum, just so you know,” she said softly, “we’ve talked about how tonight is for me?”

He mother just nodded, a quiet smile playing around her lips at the memory of that discussion. It had been disconcertingly frank.

“I’ve never been on the pill, and I have not started. I told Dennis that we should not delay, he agreed.”

Her mother nodded, just once.

oOo

You are shitting me

I shit you not. No media, no society
Tiny attendance. Completely private
Not one of us was there Not one

No that’s impossible

Biggest event of the year and NOT
ONE of the right people was invited.

Who is he? Who knows whats
going on?


Who knows. Not me. Enough to say
that none of us have a shot at the $$
No chance now the bitch is married


Actually married. Where did
this come from?


No idea. Did you know
that she was a virgin?


Bullshit she’s 24!!!!!



No bullshit. You’ve never
screwed her! I checked with
everyone and I mean everyone
Lots of bull from the guys
But the girls all knew
It’s the reason they hate her


Fuck she really was the ice queen
Shes too good for us eh
Who is this guy????

oOo

A great tension sang within her as she kissed her husband, and he turned, then walked towards the Sanda’s brow with Jack Horner. It did nothing at all to mask the fear. She glanced at the tall redhead next to her, the fear was open on her face too.

“Is it worse for you, Shelley?”

“Because I used to go out, and now I can’t?” Michelle sighed. “I do not think so, not really, Taya. I admit to having, well, no, aah, become used to having had in the past I guess…. Well anyway I had this very weird sense of comfort that if he was killed I probably would be too. Tracey said the same, but now it’s the same fear as Jon discussed with us. I could pretend I was one of them, but I am not, really. Never truly was, I was a welcome visitor, but still a visitor.”

She placed her hand on her abdomen. “Now I am certainly as afraid for him as you are for Dennis or Jon is for Christine, but I am truly terrified for this little one’s sake. Our husbands are the real deal, and they have to do what they do. Boy did I learn that the hard way off Newcastle that night. They are doing a man’s job and we just don’t fit in big chunks of it – just ask Christine! Tracey has said to me that while she’s just as scared as we are, she draws a lot of comfort now because she knows and Mike acknowledges that she’s doing a real woman’s job now. I think I have to learn that. I don’t know if I can. I don’t know how.”

Taya nodded slowly. “Me too.”

“Eh…. what? Does that…? You only finished your honeymoon two weeks ago! And it was what, a week?”

“Not sure yet. I’m regular as clockwork and a few days overdue. Dennis and I don’t know whether to jump up and down excitedly or not, yet. Not that he can jump yet. Can’t try a test for a week or two yet either.”

“Umm, does this call for…”

“Tea. It calls for tea,” said Taya very firmly. “just tea.”

“Ha! So you are reasonably sure then.”

“Reasonably, and I feel kind of funny. And not taking any chances obviously. Seems a bit odd to go from hey-married-this-is-all-new-yippee to maybe-I’m-pregnant in less than a month!”

“Well, what can I say. Yes. The Countess’s galley has tea. And the chef-o makes scones every day when alongside. They’ll be hot. And I want to get the last bit of my story sorted, want a cup?”

“Good scones?”

“Yup.”

“Big scones, not wimpy little ones?”

“Yup.”

“Butter and jam?”

“Yup.”

“Can you stand your spoon up in the tea?”

“Yup. Navy tea. It’s black as tar. Enamelled pint pannikins, too. And they have tinned condensed milk to put in it.”

“Woohoo! The good stuff! I’m in. My old grandad was a WWI vet and he made it that way. Kept ‘em going on the Somme in the winter of 1917 1918, he said.”

They started back to the Countess of Hopetoun. She was out of dock now and would be going back to sea tomorrow. The Avernus was still in the Calliope dock, being worked on three shifts and she was due out in a couple of days to be mated to her rebuilt bow which was already on the slip vacated by the now-repaired Manuka. It was musical chairs with bent ships.

She whispered “Will it ever end?”