Open seas: Just Add Water Read online

  Open Seas: Just Add Water

  By Erik Schubach

  Copyright © 2017 by Erik Schubach

  Self publishing

  P.O. Box 523

  Nine Mile Falls, WA 99026

  Cover Photo © 2017 Golyak / DepositPhotos.com license

  Cover elements designed by Darina Cico / Pexels

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, blog, or broadcast.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  FIRST EDITION

  ISBN 978-0-9993740-0-9

  Chapter 1 – Clearing My Head

  The Coast Guard Cutter, USCGC Steadfast had been in our home port for three days now for maintenance, refueling, and resupply. I was itching to get back on the water again as I sat under a pier near my boat in Ilwaco, Washington. Just a stone's throw away from where the Steadfast was in Astoria, Oregon.

  It was a seventeen-mile drive or a fifteen-mile swim, but as fast as I could swim and how easy it would be for me, it was still faster to drive over the Astoria-Megler Bridge. The Kraken, the old retired research vessel I lived on, would take over an hour to eat up the distance at its top speed of twelve to fourteen knots. Overland, it was less than half that time.

  I inhaled the air, I could feel the barometric pressure dropping quickly. I could taste it in the air, a storm like no other was coming. I didn't need to listen to the weather reports that were talking about the freak storm that was roaring in toward the west coast, nor see the dark clouds roiling beyond the horizon, to know it was out there.

  But what those reports didn't tell us, was that something was off about this storm. It wasn't right. I could feel the water temperature dropping too fast from where I sat. It was unnatural, and the wrongness of it set my nerves on end.

  It wouldn't be long before the first calls would start coming in and the crew would be called up to head out to assist sailors caught off guard by the sudden violent weather system.

  I sighed, they didn't know just how bad this one was going to be. The Steadfast had only about a four-hour window before the storm hit landfall, and five hours maximum before we needed to get out past the jetties and the Columbia River Bar, and into the Graveyard of the Pacific before the corridor will become unnavigable.

  That only gave me an hour or two to swim. I started to reach for my jacket as I stared longingly at the water when I hesitated at a voice behind me. “Mera?” I chuckled at the old nickname that was bestowed upon me by my high school swim team. Mera was Aquaman's wife in the comics. I got it because of my ability to stay submerged for longer than any of the other swimmers.

  I chuckled at that. If they only knew. Actually, my name is just about as ironic as that, Marina, Marina Caliban. Mom knew even back then.

  I looked back to the blind man making his way between the pylons. His white cane tapping them and the concrete pilings of the seawall I was sitting on by the brackish waters of the Columbia delta. The point where the waters of the Pacific Ocean mixed with the fresh water of the Columbia River.

  I brushed my long brunette hair over my shoulders to dissuade the rising breeze from blowing it in my face. “What is it, Max? You shouldn't be down here, the tide is coming in.” The tide differential here was only a couple of feet, but that was still enough to rise above the sand covered concrete I was sitting on.

  Maxwell Eddie Preston; Meep to his friends; and I have been thick as thieves since the first grade. He lives below decks on the Kraken with me now, and seeing or not, he's one of the best mechanics on the waves. He earns his keep on my floating home by keeping it above water for me. He is also the only person besides my mom who knows... well, knows everything about me. For a geek, he is as funny as shit and my best friend.

  He nodded to me and came over to sit beside me. “I know. But I just wanted to come out to tell you that that storm is coming in faster. They are saying it will hit landfall in around four hours.

  I smiled at him and nodded to myself. “I know Meep.”

  He chuckled. “I thought you might. I've got the Kraken battened down and brought your pager.

  I blinked at that. Oh crap, I patted my left arm, how had I forgotten that? I'm sure it would be flashing and buzzing soon, calling me back to duty.

  I took the bright yellow waterproof box from him. Thanks, Max, you're a life saver.

  He beamed at me, and I shoved his shoulder playfully. He had been sort of an awkward boy growing up, and he had grown into an awkward man. He still had his baby fat that never seemed to leave him, and he had that mop of hair of indistinct color, stuck halfway between blonde and red. His crooked smile and just as crooked laugh, were to me his most endearing quality.

  Unfortunately, not many girls as we grew up would look past his affliction or his slightly chubby appearance. It was their loss, my buddy was one of the smartest people I knew and had a sharp wit, and was as loyal a friend as anyone could wish for.

  “I'm just going to take a quick swim before I get ready for the call. I need to clear my head. Something isn't right about this storm coming in.”

  He nodded and said, “The air pressure and water temp are both dropping too fast.”

  I smiled. He could see more than any sighted person at times.

  I started stripping off my leather jacket and my clothes, handing them to an amused looking Max as he started stuffing them into the mesh bag I had tacked above the high tide mark on the piling we sat by. I stuffed my panties and bra in it myself to his snickering.

  I gave him a crooked smile and teased, “Take a good look perve. It's the only free show you're going to get.”

  He chuckled and placed both hands over his heart. “You cut me to the quick, Mera.” Then he added, “When I write my memoirs, this is where I'll say I brailled your body.”

  I rolled my eyes as I stood there naked, with only the pager strapped to my left bicep, the clothing would just slow me down. I looked at my hands, spreading my double jointed fingers wide to look at the webbing membrane between them up to the first knuckle. When I was a child, the doctors kept telling mother they could cut the webs out surgically so my hands would look normal. Mom kept refusing, saying if it didn't interfere with my development, then not to ask again.

  I flexed my double jointed toes outward to examine the webbing there before I turned to Max. “Get back aboard the Kraken, the tide is coming in, and I'm sure the storm swell is going to top the charts on this one.”

  He nodded and stood, keeping my leather jacket with him. He smiled in my direction as I just stepped back a step, over the edge of the concrete and plunged into the water. The water was in the mid-fifties this early in the fall. It was invigorating for the few moments it took my body to acclimate to it.

  I sank to the silt bottom and closed my eyes and just listened to all the boats cutting through the water on this side of Sand Island. The stress of my day, of my caged feeling from being on shore for so long, just bled away.

  I heard a swishing and opened my eyes and looked at a chinook salmon cutting through the brackish and cloudy water. I smiled then headed around Sand Island to the southwest and toward the north jetty and open seas. Slipping quickly past t
he plethora of pleasure craft darting about that were not heeding the weather warnings yet. Once the black clouds are seen on the horizon, they'll all scurry to port like rats.

  I was elated to be free again of the unnatural constraints of my humanity. I hesitated after ten minutes or so and surfaced for the first time as I contemplated. Was I truly human? Mom insisted I was just the next evolution of man, and we hid from everyone what I found I could do. Just what I needed was to be strapped to some dissection table somewhere.

  I dove and tasted the sea as I passed the jetty, faster than any commercial vehicle, and faster than some pleasure craft. I sighed that I couldn't go to depth since I was wearing the pager, as it was only good for sixty feet or so.

  The current at the Columbia River Bar, shot me out into the Pacific like I was being fired out of a fire hose. It was always thrilling! I dove under an incoming cargo freighter, running my fingers along the underside of its hull then breaking off before the powerful churning propellers came fully into view.

  I veered south and just swam for an hour, diving out of the water acrobatically like a dolphin from time to time to whoop my pleasure. This is what I was born to do!

  I floated on the surface, watching the horizon, seeing the sky darkening and feeling the leading edge of the storm swell that was being pushed by the winds and rain of the monster system heading our way. I sighed and turned around. The call would be coming in soon.

  I chased a juvenile leopard shark for fun on the way back, I was moving so fast I think it thought I was a bigger predator. I swam shallow and avoided the River Bar altogether on the way back. I didn't have time to fight that powerful current just now, as much fun as it was to power my way upstream into the delta, the Steadfast was going to need me soon.

  As if I had conjured it, just as I rounded Sand Island and the pier near the Kraken came into view, the pager on my arm started buzzing, and the red light flashed on it. This was it. I turned away from the pier, where my clothes waited, Max could get those after the storm passed.

  I dove under the Kraken and came up in the moon pool, which was the entire reason I bought the Kraken with every penny I could scrape together to save it from the scrapyard. I could enter and exit my boat from where the small research submersibles launched without anyone seeing me.

  I poured on the speed and broke the surface, flying up twelve feet, and I grasped the railing of the upper catwalk.

  Hey, it's a girl's prerogative to take a shortcut if she wants. One day I'll make it the entire distance, just watch me, fifteen feet has been my target to make for the last few years, and I'm inching toward it every day.

  My feet clanked on the metal catwalk, and I sighed as I wrung out my hair and headed to my cabin to get dressed and call in.

  Jethro Tull that was echoing around in the ship from where Meep was blasting it in the engine room, and I found myself walking to the beat. I smiled as I walked. That invigorating swim was just what I needed to clear the cobwebs.

  Chapter 2 – Hoist Anchor

  After calling in and getting dressed, I had to smile when I was grabbing my gear, seeing Max had placed my leather jacket on my rack, the bed fastened to the wall of my little cabin. He found it odd I didn't take the larger captain's cabin, and to tell the truth, I wasn't sure why I felt more at home below decks.

  I had donned my jacket and snagged my gear as I headed out. As I descended the metal gangplank, I glanced back at the Kraken and smiled. Anyone else would have seen a floating shipwreck waiting to happen.

  She was nn old decrepit eighty-foot long harbor tug that had been converted into an oceanic research vessel in the 1970's by none other than Jacques Cousteau for a project he was doing here off the coast of Washington, in the Graveyard of the Pacific. She wasn't pretty, but she was mine; my home, a minnow compared to the Steadfast, but mine.

  Max thought I was insane, but I had fallen in love with the moon pool, and threw out the bait. “Maybe you're right, you probably couldn't get her operational again anyway.” And that is how I got my onboard mechanic. Meep got the powerful engine operating by the following year when I was promoted from ensign to lieutenant junior grade.

  I can't tell you my elation the one and only time we took her out. We had to pilot her twenty-six miles from the temporary slip I was renting near the scrap yard to her new home here in Ilwaco. Max continued to repair all the other systems since then, and one day I want to take her out to sea.

  He stepped out on deck and looked down with his ears. That's what I called it when he cocked his head, trying to hear something. I called out, “Keep an ear on the weather reports and batten down the ship. I'll check in once the storm starts letting up.”

  He nodded with a smile and raised a hand. “Will do, see you on the flip side.”

  We've never said goodbye to each other, and I don't even remember why. It was just some sort of pact we've kept since we were young.

  I tasted the air as a light rain started, the storm was moving even faster now, what the hell was pushing it? The air pressure was dropping faster than I had ever felt, even when I was in New Orleans during Hurricane Zachary when I was doing my search and rescue training.

  I sighed and got on my Ninja. A couple minutes later I was screaming down the 101 on two wheels, heading toward the Astoria-Megler. The horizon was dark and roiling by the time I was crossing the bridge, my eyes picking out all of the ships scurrying to port. I smirked and mumbled into my helmet, “Run little piggies.”

  I shook my head. They should have listened to the advisories hours ago instead of waiting until the last minute like that. It just caused congestion and the possibility of a collision or worse. I sighed, I guess I'd be out of a job if everyone were sensible on the waves.

  As the rain started getting a bit heavier, I found myself sighing again as it got the skin of my cold hands wet, and that cold drifted away to a pleasant building warmth.

  I poured on the speed until I arrived at the Command Center in Astoria. I pulled up alongside a huge black Chevy truck that had just parked, and grinned as I took off my helmet after dismounting.

  A big butch Hispanic woman stepped out of the truck, looking over her mirrored shades at me. As always, she was already geared up and ready to go. She smirked at me with that wicked humor in her eyes. “You look like a drown rat Hotdog. Don't you have any sense not to ride that donorcycle in the rain?”

  I quipped back with a smirk of my own, “Nice truck, Hitch, trying to compensate for something?”

  She chuckled at that, grabbed her crotch, and said, “I got all I need right here chica. And I make the truck look good.” She winged her brows. “I can make you look good too as I'm good at accessorizing, it's in my Latina genes.”

  Camila Riviera, lieutenant junior grade. She was about the least Hispanic person of Hispanic descent I knew. Whenever she added some Spanish into her speech, it was as awkward as if I tried. I'm pretty sure whatever words she knows are from television and movies. Her family is third generation American, making her fourth gen.

  I shook my head. “Sorry, but I prefer my women a little...” I contemplated the word I was searching for. Girly? No. I settled on, “Softer.” It was true, but even if we were attracted to each other, it was against code for two people assigned to the same cutter to fraternize like that. But even so, that didn't make Camila's banter any less humorous.

  Being the only two lesbians on the crew, everyone assumed that Hitch and I were an item, at least in their lusty dreams. It was a phenomenon I have experienced my whole life, where everyone assumes all gay people or lesbian people knew each other like there's some sort of secret club or some dumbshit thing like that.

  I'm sure if I liked the more butch end of the rainbow, Hitch would be quite a catch.

  She said in an almost patronizing tone, “It's probably for the best. I'd wreck you.”

  I snorted at her as she pulled me into a headlock and ruffled my hair before releasing me. Then her dark eyes turned to the horizon as we could see the cl
ouds brighten up from the lightning that was hidden away from us at this distance. She was suddenly all business as she muttered, “It's a monster.”

  As we headed into Command, I nodded my agreement. It truly was, I could feel it in my bones. A feeling I haven't felt since Zachary, and it was terrifying then.

  I glanced at the brunette beside me. She was easily as big as any of the men on the Steadfast, and her flat top buzzcut and mannerisms made you look twice before realizing she was a woman. But her face was pretty and almost looked out of place on her muscular form. I'm pretty sure she's trying to model herself after that actress in all those action films, Michelle Rodriguez.

  The crew calls her Hitch because of her uncanny ability with knotting the mooring ropes. And she is one of our boarding specialists. She keeps offering to teach me and the other two female crew-members how to tie ropes, but I'm quite positive she was meaning different ropes and in a different setting.

  I... was stuck with the name Hotdog. That's all I have to say on that subject.

  We checked in with the guards on duty and then she peeled off. “See you in the ready room.”

  I nodded, mock saluted, and headed down the bustling hall to my locker in the shower room to gear up. The place was pretty hectic as they called an all hands on deck with the oncoming storm. The locker room was crowded too.

  The men and women of the Steadfast, the Jayhawk rescue choppers, and response boats were all here gearing up. I got some catcalls when I came in. Flipper, the rescue swimmer from the Steadfast's smaller Dolphin chopper called out, “Hotdog is in the house.”

  I rolled my eyes at the lanky, and cocky man. Like most of the swimmers, he kept his head shaved clean, and was nothing but wiry muscle. I snapped his bare ass with a towel from my locker, then started to strip down to get into my gear. Everyone ooed and chuckled at his yelp.