Page 11 of The Captain
“Please,” I said, and took the chair with my back to the glass so I could see the harbor reflected rather than laid out behind me like a threat.
The screens blinked to life under McGuire’s thumb. The map spread out—a grid of tidy boxes stitched over water that refused to be sewn. Exercise corridors, buffer zones, “mitigation.” The legend in the corner offered the comfort of small clean words.
“Mid-frequency training window,” Pincense narrated softly. “We’ve layered ecological advisories: shelf edges, historic stranding zones?—”
“And then run corridors through them,” I said. “Color-coded so we don’t notice.”
Ryker’s mouth almost twitched. Atlas didn’t move at all, but when I shifted my focus I found his gaze already there, heavy as a hand. My skin tightened in response—annoyance, respect, something I wasn’t interested in naming at this ungodly hour of the morning.
“Our measures exceed compliance,” McGuire offered. “Power-down when sightings occur within?—”
“Sightings are luck,” I said. “Beaked whales don’t raise hands when they’re in a chop at dawn. Your radius is courtesy math.” I tapped the shelf line with my nail. “We’ve had three strandings in fourteen days right here. Two sets of pulmonary hemorrhaging, one with inner ear lesions. That’s not a coincidence. That’s a pattern. I need a forty-eight-hour halt in this box, twelve hours snug to either tide.”
“That’s a significant request,” Pincense said, careful, as if my tone might bruise.
“It’s a significant die-off,” I said.
“We can minimize—” McGuire began.
“Minimize isn’t mercy.” I felt the fatigue of the hour and decided to push it, anyway. “You’ll pause. You’ll stay out of the shelf while we stabilize. You’ll give me the real specs—source levels, duty cycle, beam pattern—and the private permit list.”
“Classified authorizations—” Pincense tried.
“Animals are dying on our beaches,” I said. “We can all be important later.”
Ryker leaned his hip against the credenza, arms loose, eyes sharp. “What do you need on the ground besides their pause?”
“Water,” I said dry, and Pincense laughed before he caught himself. “Access. A quiet engine on standby. A radio channel that won’t jam when every volunteer with a GoPro decides they’re part of the team. And a perimeter when we’re with ananimal so I don’t have to peel fingers off the fluke while I’m trying to keep a blowhole clear.”
Atlas shifted by an inch, which felt like a shift in weather. “We’ll give you all of that,” he said. “Boats. Channel. Gates. Perimeter.”
“I don’t need babysitters,” I said.
“That’s not what I said,” Atlas answered, even, and because he didn’t raise his voice I heard the scalpel under it. “This house can provide support for you to work without interference. Two men. Unmarked. Ears open. Hands down unless you say otherwise.”
“My incident command,” I said. “My rules.”
“Your incident command,” he agreed. “My men.”
Pincense, smoothing: “Dominion Hall has robust resources, and collaboration?—”
“We’re not collaborating,” I said. “We’re not a press release. We’re keeping animals from dying in front of children on a tourist beach.”
Ryker’s gaze flicked to the window, to the faint suggestion of dawn peeling over the harbor. “You’ll have the radio channel in an hour,” he said, looking back to me. “Boat keys if you want them. Crew if you don’t.”
“Specs,” I said to Pincense. “Unredacted.”
He spread his palms. “We’ll provide what’s accurate.”
“Good,” I said. “Accuracy is my favorite.”
For ten minutes we did the slow dance—timeline, buffers, corridors that had no business existing where whales tried to live. McGuire took notes like they mattered, and I decided I liked her. Pincense made promises that felt soft and thin, and I decided I’d hold him to every syllable. Ryker found the holes in the logistics and plugged them efficiently, the way a man does who’s seen problems arrive before. Atlas cut when cutting was needed.
“Two men,” Atlas said again, not because I’d forgotten but because he wanted to put the words on the table where we could both look at them. “They’ll sit ten paces back unless you call them forward. They’ll step out of your eyeline if you lift your right hand as if you’re waving off a gnat.”
“You choreographed my hand,” I said.
“I choreographed the friction,” he replied. “So you don’t have to spend focus on anything that isn’t the animal.”
