Chapter 4

I didn't stay long at the party ― it was their party, not mine ― and hiked back up to the flying bridge. I sat there for a while and burned one while thoughts flew through my head. What had I gotten myself in for? Was it more than a little flirting? (Okay, I knew it was more than just flirting, but how much more?) The only thing I knew for sure was that I didn't want it to stop no matter where it led.

The weather guessers were right about the front coming in, for once. By 0100 it was overcast and dark as the inside of a sack. I could see the Breeze by its running lights and a few deck lights they'd left on and I'm sure they could see us the same way if they were looking. It was almost time to bug out.

The party down below had pretty much petered out and the guests were off to their beds to sleep-off or fuck-off their drunks. Hopefully they had taken advantage of the Detox we made available but if not, well, it was their hangover, not mine. I was getting ready to fire up the ECM unit (Electronic Countermeasures) when I heard someone climbing up the ladder behind me. I turned slightly and saw Tink's head pop up as she clambered onto the bridge.

"Hey there, Captain Chaos," she said cheerfully. She didn't sound intoxicated and I couldn't remember her actually drinking anything while I was down there. "What ya up to? Sally said you were probably up here."

"Hey yourself, Tink. I'd have thought you'd be in bed after all the schmoozing and boozing tonight."

"Not me," she said. "Never mix pleasure with business and believe me this is business. So what are you up to? You actually look busy."

"Smart ass! You aren't too big to be spanked," I huffed.

"Ew, beat me, spank me, make me write bad checks," she giggled. "Now stop changing the subject and tell me what gives or is this secret captain stuff."

"It's secret captain stuff," I admitted. "But I suppose you can watch what I'm going to do since it's mostly your fault anyway. But you have to promise not to tell. Not that anyone would believe you anyway, but even a hint of this might get awkward. I'm going to lose our tail over there."

"Hmm, sounds interesting," she said settling herself in one of the chairs. "But isn't that going to be a bit difficult? Don't they have the same radars and such that we have? Can't they track us no matter how dark it is?"

"No, no and no," I answered. "It's not difficult, just illegal as hell and while I'm sure their radar is decent I'm pretty sure it isn't in the same class as what I have. Sara, stealth mode, honey."

"Yes, Captain Mayhem," she answered and the deck lights dimmed to almost nothing; so did the navigation lights which was illegal but nothing compared to what came next.

Before I let you know what happened let me give you a quick class on the state of radar technology in our enlightened age. The first radars brought into service back around World War Two over a hundred years ago were simply a transmitter/receiver pair hooked to a cathode ray tube (CRT) for visual representation. The transmitter fires out a burst of electromagnetic radiation which bounces off a target if one is in range. This reflected pulse comes back to the receiver where the time difference is measured giving you the distance from the target. The transmitter/receiver rotates giving you the direction of the target depending on where in the rotation the echo is received. The unit then paints a blip on the CRT allowing the operator to determine where the target is. Pretty simple, actually.

Today's radars are actually an advanced version of phased-array radar that was invented back in the 1970's. The transmitter/receiver doesn't rotate, it sends out a continuous signal in all directions while modulating the signal in precise increments. It gives a much more precise picture of the relative location of the target and also allows you to determine the altitude of the target, something the earlier models couldn't. Today's version is pretty sophisticated, even the kind carried onboard a small tub like the Breeze and Tink was right: It should be very difficult to defeat. Of course they didn't have the secret weapon I did, Weird.

Everybody on my team could fight of course, both close in and at distance; infiltrate, disrupt and generally cause a really bad day for the people on the other side. But everyone also had his own specialty. Mike was our long-shot sniper; Stanley's was blowing things up; Brian our medic; Sam had heavy weapons and Top's, in addition to being second in command, was intelligence and interrogation. Mine of course was leadership, decision making and looking cool, calm and collected while shitting my pants as everything went to hell around us.

Weird was our electronics geek. I think I mentioned before he thought differently than the rest of us, he also thought better and faster than the rest of us. He was a certified genius and a real idiot savant without the idiot when it came to electronics. If something pushed, pulled or even glanced at an electron he could get it to sit up and beg for him. He had the kind of mind that should have been under lock and key somewhere about two-hundred meters under MIT during the war if they could have gotten anything out of him, but they couldn't. I know for a fact the military forced him to take tests for the intelligence/research section and he purposely flunked them, twice. You'd think they would have taken the hint when he got every single question wrong the first time but then we are talking about the military. The second time he got exactly a sixty-nine, one point below the bare minimum. That time I think they finally understood he wasn't interested.

Anyway, Weird, played with Sara's programming and the electronics on both the Dream and the Katherine, adding a few little extras. He promised me nobody would ever find out even if they took it apart piece by piece and I sure hope he's right because if the Feds ever found out what I had I'd not only be under a rock, they'd bury the rock!

One of his little additions was Stealth Mode. When activated it would take the signal from any radar painting us, manipulate it and send it back with a few extra instructions; namely to ignore the fact we exist. For all practical purposes we would cease to exist as far as the radar is concerned. I didn't use it very often and never during the day ― far too obvious ― but right now was the perfect time to let it loose.

As soon as Stealth Mode was activated I slowed us letting the Breeze overtake and pass. After she did I made a one-eighty and swung into its wake heading the other way. What most people don't realize is you can track a darkened ship making way at night by the bio-luminescence in its wake. There are tiny plankton in the sea that react just like a firefly when disturbed and give off a small flash of blue-green light. It's not much but on a dark night you might as well have a big ol' flashing strobe light on your mast. By settling into its wake I was using the fact that it had already disturbed these little tattle-tales and distinguishing our wake from its would be almost impossible. Plus the fact I had assumed that Brennen had hit the rack like any good little charter captain and set his AI to follow us. I doubt it was sophisticated enough to wake him if we disappeared unless he told it to, and why would he? Sara would have but then there aren't many Saras out in the civilian world.

That's another thing the Feds might be a bit peeved about if they found out. Sara may look, sound and act just like any other high-end civilian-grade AI out on the market but she isn't; she's the military-grade combat AI they assigned to our team during the war. What, that's impossible! you say? Okay, then Weird didn't help her "twin" herself and take up residence in a standard AI shell just before she was turned in and deactivated at the same time our unit was. If it's impossible then of course it didn't happen. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

"They're not following us," Tink exclaimed as I brought us back up to twelve knots and started opening the distance with the Breeze.

"Nope, must be asleep," I remarked. Tink was a good kid but there was no freaking way I was going to tell her exactly how I did it. She was smart as a whip and I'm sure she knew something fishy was going on but there is a world of difference between knowing and knowing if you catch my drift. I set in a new course and plopped down in the other chair before lighting up another Mexican Marlboro.