When you do look up at the horizon, you may not like what you see …
Tsunami, Drill Site #2, Contract Day 48
The wind howled past the Can like a lost soul, and the rhythmic surge of the surf jolted the Can as the waves swept around it, with an undertone of torrential rain and spray sluicing down over it.
The report on Tommygun’s WRAITH laptop could, strictly speaking, wait until they were outward bound. She was about as much of a fan of paperwork as Mister Jamie, but capturing the lessons learned from a Contract deployment was important.
It was also a good way to project calm, which was as essential as any other precaution. The subdued noise level of people working didn’t preclude them watching her.
Shift A was off, and they were in their racks with the curtains drawn. Jello had B shift, who would normally be out of the Can, doing chores, with the injunction to keep the noise level down to let people sleep.
The chances of people actually being able to sleep through this weren’t great, and the chores were mostly make-work, but they kept people occupied. Jello was doing well, and she left him to it.
Her phone pinged with the next weather update from Swagman.
Hmmph. No surprise there. The eye of the hurricane headed straight for them, so they would get the worst of it coming and going.
A flag on WRAITH alerted her to an email from the Point Negotiator, asking for a schedule update. He had a communication from the Contracting Entity, adding up to, “Are you done yet?” Apparently they’d had some mini-quakes in the area.
Predicting quakes is fortune-telling. Y’all are just going to have to possess your souls in patience while I fix what you fucked up. She toned down her email, pointing out how many things she wouldn’t know until the hurricane had blown over and they could inspect the damage. She knew better than to set herself a deadline she might not be able to meet. Contracts had enough crazy deadlines without her adding more.
The howl of the wind went slowly up the scale. They were getting close to the eye. They’d have a short respite before the winds picked up again.
CRACK! The Can lurched to one side and fetched up against the cables with a jolt, to the soundtrack of curses and exclamations from the people flung every which way.
Tommygun’s grip on the laptop table kept her from going galley west. She slammed the laptop shut, stood and raised her voice to the commanding pitch needed to cut through the babble.
“Auger! Get back to your day job. Check for casualties.” Auger frequently complained about being a drill operator with a hobby.
“On it, Boss.” She sounded fine, so Tommygun went on to the next thing. The Can shook back and forth with the changes in the wind.
Tommygun kept her grip on the table, working through what must have happened. Cable snapped.
The lurching and jerking from the wind would put extra strain on the remaining cables, making them more likely to fail in their turn, making the problem still worse, in what the vac heads called a cascade failure. The end of the cascade had the Can rolling off the island and floating off to get slammed against the rocks.
Tommygun glanced down at the weather update. Wind speeds of 155 knots, Class 5 hurricane in anyone’s language. Worse on this water soaked piece of crap planet with its denser air and idiot aliens.
I should have said screw the schedule and pulled us back up to Swagman. And I didn’t, and this is the next thing that can kill us, and I need to get a plan together. They were about a half hour to the brief respite of the eye.
She checked Jello with a glance. He seemed okay. “Jello, volunteers for a work party. Lockout when the winds go below 80 knots. We’ll rob a cable from the drill site.”
“Copy, Boss,” he said.
She hit her phone. “Swagman, we lost a cable. I’m going to lead a work party to get the Can lashed down again. I need continuous weather updates, surface winds and how long we’ve got once the eye is over us.”
The face on her phone screen wasn’t Ariel, but a black guy she didn’t know. He hit a switch. “Copy. Captain to the bridge.”
“Text me the updates.” She ended the call.
Auger’s voice called her attention to the next problem. “Spinal board!”
Two guys hauled the spinal board over and helped Auger strap the casualty onto the spinal board. Auger snapped, “Boss, I need the EMR’s.”
Jello didn’t hesitate. “You got ’em.”
Tommygun listened to the casualty report with half an ear. Jacko, on the spinal board, had had his bell rung pretty good against the Can’s steel wall. He was out of it, along with the guy with cracked ribs and the one with a wrenched shoulder. The guys cross trained as Emergency Medical Responders would be assisting Auger.
A ping from her phone brought her attention to the next weather update. The winds were down to 120 knots as the edge of the eye approached. She started putting the plan together, bearing in mind everything would take about twice as long with people having to secure themselves against the wind and watch their footing on the wet rocks.
The winds fell to 80 knots more quickly than she had expected. The creaking and grinding of the Can reduced as the winds fell, and the other cables held.
“Jello.”
He settled his mask on his face. “Go for lockout, Boss.”
“Lock out.” Tommygun led the way out into the screaming wind and horizontal rain.
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